ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
We shall see, friend. We shall see.
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The houses in rossford
- Thread starter ChrisGibson
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ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
THE HOUSES IN ROSSFORD, CHAPTER TWO, DIRTY/MOVIES CONTINUED
I WOULD DIE FOR YOU!
I've been dying just to feel you by my side
To know that you're mine
I will cry for you
I will cry for you
I will wash away your pain with all my tears
And drown your fear
The music pumped all through him as he made his way through the hot bodies dancing slowly, slowly now under the red and blue light, pulsing into him like a drug in the blood, or like the pills he had taken an hour ago, at Barry’s advice, not paying much attention to what they were. He’d been in the mood. He was still in the mood. For just a little bit he was totally and completely there. In the tiny little sports briefs with JUST US BOYS embossed on the waistband that showed off his tight light ass, his nice package. He moved through the crowd in sunshades and the little cowboy hat, moving against Noah or Barry or Rod, some folks he’d never seen, some guys who he knew were New York models here for the weekend. And then, now and again, he was startled out of his high by someone so fat, or so old, or so out of it that he could not have possibly been anything but that other business Guy dealt in, the business that Johnny Mellow had already put under his large nose, and over his gums.
But his nose didn’t feel large here. He felt here the way he did whenever he’d done a movie.
…You will believe in me
And I will never be ignored
I will burn for you
Feel pain for you
I will twist the knife and bleed my aching heart
I'll tear it apart
He sang with the background music:
“Da da da da da… Ah ahhh ah ahhhh!”
As he laughed he heard Derek laughing beside him.
Derek all black hair and sharp angles, but tonight his black eyes were covered in shades and they laughed and embraced and then made out and, ooh, he felt himself getting so hard.
“Johnny Mellow! Johnny Mellow pornstar!”
“Derek Everett! Derek Everett supermodel.”
“I fucking wish. Semi super model.”
There was the little end of a joint in Derek’s hand, and a beer in the other. He pulled on the joint, handed it to Johnny. Johnny took a puff and it went all through his nose, filled his lungs. It burnt through him and then settled down gentle. Derek poured beer into his mouth, fed him like a baby, and then Derek was shot gunning him, breathing marijuana into him, and they were exchanging it. Derek was trickling the last of the beer over both of their heads. He kissed him again, sloppily wet with the taste of beer and weed, and they were making out hard. Then Derek whispered something, and they were close in the hot packed room and Johnny was getting down on his knees, feeling Derek’s package, pulling his jockey’s down, swallowing his cock. Licking the head, going up and down the shaft and then taking it in and out of his mouth for dear life while Derek fucked his mouth and the music went through Derek and shoved itself in and out of Johnny’s mouth, or maybe the blowjob went through the house. He didn’t know. This shit he was on kept him horny even after he’d been doing it all day. But he wanted the real stuff without three cameras and having to fuck or be fucked in strange angles where the film could get everything. He got up off of his knees, some of the salt of Derek’ pre-come in his mouth and said, “Would you fuck upstairs?”
Breathlessly, Derek said, “Yeah!”
And they threaded their way through the crowds.
What Johnny meant was in a bedroom upstairs. Maybe the bedrooms were small. Maybe Derek was impatient. Certainly, the house was so crowded it was hard to move through. Everyone was in various stages of nudity. He saw lots of cocks already, so when Derek put him against the wall, pulled down his briefs and started eating out his ass, he told himself not to care. Everyone was here and no one was watching.
Violate all my love that I'm missing
Throw away all the pain that I'm living
You will believe in me
And I can never be ignored
Noise and bodies were swirling around him and nobody cared, and people saw him fuck and get fucked all day long. So here, face half smashed against the wall, mouth open in sloppy ecstasy Derek fucked him while cokeheads passed by.
… I'd sail ships for you
To be close to you
To be a part of you
'Cause I believe in you
I believe in you
I would die for you.
THE DOORBELL RANG, and Layla stood before it.
It rang again.
Layla did not move.
Once again, the doorbell rang.
“Layla!” her mother shouted.
Layla Lawden waited for her mother to arrive at the door, and then when Adele said, “Why didn’t you answer the door!” Layla hissed: “Why didn’t you? I have to make an entrance.”
Adele moved to the door, but Layla waved her hand down and whispered, “Wait till I’m upstairs,” before running up to her room.
Adele counted to five, opened the door and said to Will Klasko, with the artificial brightness she always used for white people, “Hello! Come in!”
“Thank you Mrs. Lawden,” he said, coming into the house and looking around the foyer.
“Hold on,” said Adele. “Layla’s upstairs getting finished. Layla!” she called up the stairs with a sweetness that made Layla wrinkle her brow and hold her tongue from saying something smart.
Down the stairs came Layla, looking surprised. At first, she had affected surprise, but on seeing Will Klasko she actually was surprised. She’d never really noticed him before. Why hadn’t she paid attention? Why hadn’t she realized how handsome he could be?
“Will… you…”
“You look really, really beautiful, Layla.”
“I was going to say the same thing,” she said. And then amended. “I mean… I was going to say you look really nice.”
“You don’t have to say that.”
“No,” Layla discovered. “I mean it.”
“Well, I think you both look very nice,” Adele told them, wanting to throw her daughter out of the house so she could have some alone time.
“We don’t want to be late for the movie,” Will said, and Adele thought she could have kissed him.
“No. No. Let me get my jacket.”
Will took his off and brandished it for her.
“Take mine, my lady?”
Layla stopped in her tracks, looking at him strangely.
“Was that too much?” he said.
“Almost,” said Layla. “Yes.”
Guess what I did tonight?”
“Does it involve Eagle Studios porn?”
“No,” Brendan turned to Dena. “And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t bring that up again.”
“Sorry,” Dena said. “I was just playing.”
Brendan didn’t say anything, and then he told her, “Well, I helped Will Klasko get dressed for his date with Dena.”
“I didn’t know you guys were friends like that.”
“I didn’t either,” Brendan said. “You know, I don’t really have that many friends.”
“No one does, you know,” Dena said. “People just… People want to be liked so bad, so they always go ‘My friend this, my friend that.’ I don’t think you have any less friends than anyone else.
“But I wish I did. I mean,” Brendan explained, “I wish I did have more friends. I’d really like that. I think… It was fun tonight. You know what Will said to me?”
“Hum?”
“He said that I had it all together. That I was different from him because people thought I was cool, and I had you, and I was… Together. I’ve never thought of myself like that until tonight. Heck. I don’t think of myself that way now. Dena, do you think we really see ourselves the way people see us?”
“To tell you the truth,” Dena said, “I never really see myself at all. And I don’t really have much of an inkling of how folks look at me. If they do.”
“They must, Dena. You’re smart. You’re pretty. I might not know that much but I do know I got a prize. I know people look at me and wonder, ‘How did he get her? Hot as she is?’”
“Stop.”
“No,” Brendan squeezed her shoulder.
“And then they look at you and they know, ‘Because he’s hot too!’”
Brendan snorted.
“That… I don’t believe.”
“I didn’t get the part with the peanut,” Layla said as they walked to the car. “You know… I thought I was very refined. I’d still like to think I am.”
“I know you are, Layla,” Will said. “You’re what my granddad calls quality.”
“Shut up,” Layla laughed. “Besides, “I’m not quality enough to know what the hell the peanut means.”
“Well, I didn’t understand that. Or the woman floating away on the balloon.”
“Oh, my God!” Layla remembered something. “Did you see the movie I’m Not There?”
Will laughed. “I got it out from the library last week.
“All right. Be honest. How did it make you feel?”
Will chuckled and told her, “Like I wasn’t there. I didn’t know what was going on!”
“I know. Me neither. No, I mean, I got what was going on. But the cover of the movie said, seven people, and they’re all Bob Dylan. And I was alright with that. I thought they were going to be, you know, like Bob Dylan at different times in his life. Only it turned out that none of them was Bob Dylan.”
“Everyone was supposed to be someone else who was Bob Dylanesque, right? Like they embodied some Bob Dylan quality.”
“Which,” said Layla, “is not the same thing as being Bob Dylan.
“And then they had the one with Heath Ledger where he was an actor who played a singer who was someone like Bob Dylan. What the fuck was that?”
Layla burst out laughing. “I’ve never heard you say the word fuck before.”
“I’ve never had to say the word fuck before,” Will said. “But that movie changed me. “
“And then the Richard Gere thing— where he was Billy the Kid but not Billy the Kid and Billy the Kid was Bob Dylan—”
“Oh, shit! I know. And then I watched the commentary.”
“Did you, Layla? How? I wanted to, but the movie took too much out of me.”
“I thought the commentary would explain it more. But they were talking about how Bob Dylan was so complex they had to do him like this. Well, I just turned the DVD player off after that. I mean…. I could follow Gandhi, and Gandhi was, well…”
“Gandhi.”
“Exactly. And I could follow Jesus of Nazareth, and he was Jesus. But Bob was so complex they had to make a crap movie like that.”
Will was laughing so hard he was doubled over now.
“Well,” Layla said. “I just couldn’t except some bullshit like that.”
Will kept laughing and Layla opened her mouth, but now she was laughing too. She just repeated, “I couldn’t. I couldn’t… I couldn’t accept that bullshit. I didn’t understand, and I knew I didn’t understand everything. But I also knew I was being bullshitted.”
And then Will said, “But that’s what I like about you?”
“What? That I cuss too much?”
“No, Layla. Well, yes actually.”
“And can’t stand bullshit?”
“Well, definitely that too,” he said. “But really, it’s how even though we might not get something… it doesn’t stop us from giving it a try.”
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Layla and Will make such a cute couple! I like that you have both an interesting story and great sex scenes. 
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Why thank you sir, why thank you very much!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
THE HOUSES IN ROSSFORD, CHAPTER TWO: DIRTY/MOVIES CONTINUED
Before he came to, there was that deep throbbing in him. Way deep. Asshole deep, and he squeezed himself together like an accordion and savored it. But with consciousness came the sickness and the disorientation. Things were beginning to piece themselves together. Just enough. The hallway was emptier than before. Music was still loud. His head was throbbing. Everybody spoke too loudly. Bursts of red and blue were in his eyes. Where was he? Wasn’t he? Derek Everett was deep fucking him. Where was Derek now? Blindly, Johnny stumbled through the house looking for someone he half trusted. Anyone he had let himself really like would be too fucked up to help him.
With as much care as possible he came down the stairs to the burst off screaming noise that was the main floor, that was the place they usually worked. He looked from face to face, from body to body. And then, there he was, tall and narrow, plain and good natured with his camera, filming. That filmmaker Guy had hired. He staggered toward him.
“Todd!” he croaked.
Startled, Todd Meraden let the camera drop to catch Johnny. Johnny opened his mouth to say, probably, “Thank you.”
But instead he turned his head and threw up.
“I’m usually much more sophisticated than this,” Johnny’s voice came from the pillow his face crushed into where he lay on Todd’s bed.
“I try to maintain,” he began, and then moaned, “Owwww…”
Todd stood over him solicitously. “I’ll get you some water. Can you handle water?”
“Actually,” his words came out more imprecise, the more precise he tried to sound, “Water is pretty much all I can handle.”
“All right,” said Todd. “I’m just going to go to the sink.”
As the water in the little bathroom ran, Todd said, “I had planned to go home and come back tomorrow. I don’t want to leave you here,” he said over the running water. He came out.
“Here you go, Johnny.”
“That’s my stage name,” Johnny said, taking the water.
“Oh.”
“My real name is Paul Anderson.” As Johnny Mellow drank the cup of water, trickles escaped and ran down his chest. The cowboy hat was gone so all he had on was white briefs.
“I never tell anyone that,” he said, reflexively. He belched.
“I’m sorry. That was so. I’m so…”
“I’ll get you more water,” Todd said.
He came back a moment later, and Johnny drank. The music from down below thumped up into these white carpeted rooms Guy had set aside for Todd.
“Thank you. You’re really kind,” Johnny told him.
“Johnny, Paul… uh…”
“Who’s Paul?” Johnny said.
“You just said,” Todd began, and then said, “Johnny. You’re really not well. I’m going to take you home and bring you back tomorrow.”
“Oh, I can’t leave.”
“Well, you can’t stay here. Not the way you are.”
“I’m,” everything Johnny Mellow had said was slurred and stupid. Nothing had come out right. Now as he said, “I—” his voice caught on something. He leaned over on his side and threw up again, for a long time.
Todd looked on, helplessly, and when the retching was done, he said, “We’ve got to get some clothes for you. Where are your clothes, Johnny?”
“I dunno.”
“I should find some clothes. I should take my camera. Hold on Johnny.”
Johnny was on his side. Todd pulled his underwear band and looked inside.
“Medium. I’d guess… size thirty-four. You a thirty-four, Johnny? I’ll be back. It’s so many naked folks around here there’s got to be someone’s clothes lying around.”
As Todd left the room, heading back to the party, he heard Johnny in a sing song voice murmuring: “Roun’ roun’ roun’’
London bridges falling roun
Falling roun
Falling round
Longdon’ bridges falling roun
My fair lady
No, Johnny remembered, falling down.
London bridge is falling down.
My fair lady!
There it was!
Johnny Mellow put his hands to his damp head and realized his cowboy hat was gone. His wonderful, sexy cowboy hat. He was so sexy with his briefs on, with guys running their hands up and down his chest, touching his package, cupping him there, touching his ass, winking at him, murmuring about how he’d fucked the life out of them. Not like this, not crumpled up, high and sick all over the place. Not without his hat. Goddamn, he’d been so fucking beautiful.
“All right, Johnny, get into these clothes. I need you to get into these jeans. Can you do that? There you go.”
Todd had the jeans halfway on Johnny and was pulling the tee shirt over his head when Johnny said, “Todd, you’re so nice. You’re so good. You’re just like my grandpa. Not old like him. Or dead like him. But like I think he was when he was young. You’re so nice. Are you gay? You can’t be gay. Gay guys are assholes.”
“My boyfriend thinks I’m very gay. I can assure you,” Todd said. “People are people. Some of them are assholes. Now come on and help me help you get these jeans on.”
“I’m an asshole,” Johnny said, reflexively at first. And then he burst out, “I’m an asshole! I’m an ASSHOLE.” And began weeping.
FENN HOUGHTON did not want to answer the knock at the door because it couldn’t mean anything good. Todd had a key to the house, and no one else should come knocking past midnight, hell not past nine. Anyone who might would have had the sense to call first. So, at the knock, Fenn stayed in bed. In fact, he crawled deeper into the covers.
The knock came again, and Fenn thought, “It could be the police with news about Todd. It could be some woman trying to escape being raped. Like the woman I heard about in New York. She kept screaming, but no one would come out of their apartment to help her, and so she died.”
Carried away by Christian duty and an overactive imagination, Fenn hopped out of bed, pulling his housecoat over him, and ran down the steps, into the living room and over the carpet to answer the door.
“Todd!” And then he looked at the man slumped in his arms.
“Who the fuck is this?”
“Johnny Mellow.”
“Johnny who?”
“Would you just help me?”
“Ah!” Fenn remembered himself. “Give him here.”
Together they brought him through the door, and in a slurred voice the boy, for that’s what he was, Fenn observed, declared, “My real name ish Paul Andershin.”
“Well, my real name is Fenn Houghton, and we’re going to put your ass to bed.
“This,” he said to Todd, “is turning into the crazy ass end of a long ass day.”
“We’ll take him to the back bedroom,” Todd said.
“The hell we will. We’ll put him right here on this sofa. Um, over here,” Fenn lurched him across the living room. They let him go gently. Johnny Mellow groaned.
“There you go, deadweight,” Fenn said, stretching out his arms and rubbing them before turning to Todd.
“Now, are you going to tell me who the hell he is?”
“He was at the party.”
“The party you were taping for your movie? At the porn place?”
“Yes.”
“So what’s Alfalfa over there doing hanging out with pornstars?”
“Fenn, he is a pornstar.”
Unimpressed, Fenn turned to look at him and still remained unimpressed.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“I thought they were cuter than that. Not that he’s bad, but… It’s a thousand white men just like him here in Rossford.”
“Well, not really,” Todd differed. “He takes off his clothes and has sex with people. I saw him do a movie today. I taped it.”
“Jesus God,” Fenn murmured.
“He’s not bad. No matter what you think.”
“I don’t think anything,” Fenn said. “Well, I do think… What the hell is in him? Do we need to get him to a hospital?”
“No, apparently this is sort of a frequent thing. Only, I couldn’t leave him there in the shape he’s in.”
Johnny Mellow yawned and stretched out on the sofa. Then turned around and went back to sleep.
“Well, he can’t just sleep in his clothes,” Fenn said after a while.
“Those aren’t his clothes,” Todd said. “When I found him… Well, he found me. He sort of collapsed on me… He only had underwear on. But it was that type of party.”
“You say it like I’m supposed to say, ‘Yeah. That type.’ What type?”
“One where pornstars in their underwear pass out all fucked up on drugs.”
“Oh.”
“Say, I’m really, really tired, baby.”
“Um hum.”
“We’ve got to be up and back in Port Ridge by about noon, so do you think you’ll be able to wake me?”
“Yes, my dear. I’ll wake you just the way you woke me,” Fenn yawned. “Let’s go to bed. Uh… wait…”
Fenn went down the hall into the closet and brought back an old blanket that smelled of cedar.
“There we go,” he said, and draped it over Johnny Mellow.
“You won’t believe the day I had,” Todd said.
“Well, as of now, sense I put a pornstar to bed on the good sofa, I think I will.”
“But this has been the lightest part of it, Hought.”
“Well, I think I can top you. Not in nudity, but certainly in tragedy.”
“I just brought some coked-up kid who was naked when I found him into our house. Top that for tragedy.”
“I just found out the playhouse is going bankrupt and we lost our star because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.”
“Oh,” Todd said, and then was silent for a minute as they headed up the stairs.
“That does kinda beat me.”
“Um hum.”
The sunlight shot from one end of Paul Anderson’s brain to the other when he woke up, and over him was a composed, slightly amused face.
“It’s good that you wake up now. Take this now. It will help you. You’ve been too screwed up to get up until now.”
Obediently he took the pills and lifted the drink to his mouth before snorting.
“What is this?”
“You know what it is. You can’t be that stupid,” Fenn said.
Johnny Mellow lifted the beer to his mouth again. “It’s so early in the morning…” And then he said, “Isn’t it? I mean, I’ve got to be back by—”
“It’s about eight,” Fenn said. He was in a long, very old red flannel housecoat. “And as for that—” he pointed to the beer, “Hair of the dog is the best thing.
“But you know, I am surprised. I thought all you guys were weight lifters and trainers and all of that. Into that good healthy life except when…”
“Fucking each other,” Paul said through the beer.
“I guess some of us are,” he said. “It makes you feel better to think of yourself that way. Ohhh.”
Paul groaned and lay back down.
“But a lot of us are what I am right here. Fucked up.”
Paul said, “I remember you. I dreamed you. I… Don’t know where I am.”
“Todd brought you home.”
“This is Todd’s house,” Paul tried to sit up again. “It’s very nice. You must be Fenn. He talked about you all day.”
Fenn tried to hide his smile and said, “Really? Oh… It must have been a long day.”
Paul laughed, tired for a while, and then said, “Well, it was. But…” he looked at Fenn thoughtfully. “You probably wouldn’t have much of an idea what a long day is for me.”
At this Fenn began to laugh.
“No,” he said, trying to recover. “No, I really don’t think I can. I would like to, though.”
“Really?” Paul said, grimacing.
“Yes, really? Why not really?”
“Well,” he said after a moment. “The only time people think what I do is interesting is when they are really stupid fat middle aged men who think that it means I’m an escort and maybe they’ll get a fuck out of me. For some money. Or, they are horny guys who are kind of young. But… they’re kinda dumb too. Sometimes they think they want to be pornstars. They feel all giddy and crap just to be next to you. And… if you don’t have any self-esteem then it feel good that people feel good having you next to them. But… usually polite people, no matter what they do when they’re alone, they act like they have no interest in you at all. Like you are the lowest thing on earth. And maybe I am. I don’t know.”
Fenn shrugged and took back the empty beer glass, negligently pushing Paul back into the covers.
“I don’t know,” he said. “You don’t seem very low. I’ve met low people. I…”
And then he said, “I should let you get back to bed.”
“No, it’s alright,” Paul said. “I’ve slept all night.”
Fenn nodded and sat back down.
“I’ve just wondered how you do it,” Fenn said. “I mean, skip the why. I would wonder how. I wouldn’t be able. I mean, I’ve heard people say they’d like to be pornstars, and I think well, I’d like to have the life of a porno. You know. Where good looking people screw you left and right to abandon. Hell, once upon a time I think I did have that life.
“But it’s the whole business of the cameras. The actual having to shoot a movie. I don’t even like it when a lover talks during sex, let alone a director. How you do that? I would like to know?”
Paul was quiet for a second. He sat with his knees pulled up to his chest, like someone at a slumber party.
“You know what?”
“Hum?”
“I feel like I know you. The same way I knew it was safe to go to Todd, and it was the only thing I knew last night. I feel like I know you.”
“Well…” Fenn shrugged. “Thank you.”
“I have never had a serious sex partner off screen,” Paul said. “Most of the time sex is my job, see? And when I first started doing movies, I really didn’t have a lot of experience, or a boyfriend I could have sex with a lot. So, for me, on screen was pretty much it. I was so horned up. And then, I think there was the whole thing about being watched. It sort of excited me that I was being watched. I think if it was someone like, say my priest back home. Or my mom or…
“All of these people made me feel ashamed growing up. I didn’t want to be seen… period. I mean I didn’t want people to see me walking or talking, let alone fucking. But here is this whole other world where people pay to SEE me do the dirtiest thing in the world. The thing people say is so trashy, but they can’t help watching.”
Paul looked over at Fenn and saw a secretive smile on his face.
“What?”
“Last night I did something I’ve never done before.”
“Huh?” Paul furrowed his brow.
“I took out Todd’s credit card—Todd’s—and I got Guy McClintock online. I saw you. I saw you in a movie.”
“Oh, God!” Paul sounded suddenly sick.
“No, just listen. I… wanted to understand. You know. That’s what I told myself a long time ago. People love to judge… everything. Don’t they? They just point their fingers left and right. Well…. I wanted to know. And so, I watched.”
Paul waited for him to continue.
“I was so… turned on. Everybody gets turned on when they see a porno, but nobody really asks why. You… the way you looked, like you were in this zone. In this other place. Like when religious people go into ecstasy. It was like you and the other person didn’t care who was there. You all were so into each other. So, into the moment. And it was scary. The way I felt. The way you looked, like you were on the edge of something. Something you might not come back from. Something I had to watch at two in the morning while my boyfriend slept because it was secret, it didn’t belong in the ordinary world. I don’t know… It was actually sort of amazing. So, I don’t really have anything to say about it. Because I don’t know what to make of it. It’s just one of those things that sort of… defies a straight judgement. But then… I think that’s really most things.”
Before he came to, there was that deep throbbing in him. Way deep. Asshole deep, and he squeezed himself together like an accordion and savored it. But with consciousness came the sickness and the disorientation. Things were beginning to piece themselves together. Just enough. The hallway was emptier than before. Music was still loud. His head was throbbing. Everybody spoke too loudly. Bursts of red and blue were in his eyes. Where was he? Wasn’t he? Derek Everett was deep fucking him. Where was Derek now? Blindly, Johnny stumbled through the house looking for someone he half trusted. Anyone he had let himself really like would be too fucked up to help him.
With as much care as possible he came down the stairs to the burst off screaming noise that was the main floor, that was the place they usually worked. He looked from face to face, from body to body. And then, there he was, tall and narrow, plain and good natured with his camera, filming. That filmmaker Guy had hired. He staggered toward him.
“Todd!” he croaked.
Startled, Todd Meraden let the camera drop to catch Johnny. Johnny opened his mouth to say, probably, “Thank you.”
But instead he turned his head and threw up.
“I’m usually much more sophisticated than this,” Johnny’s voice came from the pillow his face crushed into where he lay on Todd’s bed.
“I try to maintain,” he began, and then moaned, “Owwww…”
Todd stood over him solicitously. “I’ll get you some water. Can you handle water?”
“Actually,” his words came out more imprecise, the more precise he tried to sound, “Water is pretty much all I can handle.”
“All right,” said Todd. “I’m just going to go to the sink.”
As the water in the little bathroom ran, Todd said, “I had planned to go home and come back tomorrow. I don’t want to leave you here,” he said over the running water. He came out.
“Here you go, Johnny.”
“That’s my stage name,” Johnny said, taking the water.
“Oh.”
“My real name is Paul Anderson.” As Johnny Mellow drank the cup of water, trickles escaped and ran down his chest. The cowboy hat was gone so all he had on was white briefs.
“I never tell anyone that,” he said, reflexively. He belched.
“I’m sorry. That was so. I’m so…”
“I’ll get you more water,” Todd said.
He came back a moment later, and Johnny drank. The music from down below thumped up into these white carpeted rooms Guy had set aside for Todd.
“Thank you. You’re really kind,” Johnny told him.
“Johnny, Paul… uh…”
“Who’s Paul?” Johnny said.
“You just said,” Todd began, and then said, “Johnny. You’re really not well. I’m going to take you home and bring you back tomorrow.”
“Oh, I can’t leave.”
“Well, you can’t stay here. Not the way you are.”
“I’m,” everything Johnny Mellow had said was slurred and stupid. Nothing had come out right. Now as he said, “I—” his voice caught on something. He leaned over on his side and threw up again, for a long time.
Todd looked on, helplessly, and when the retching was done, he said, “We’ve got to get some clothes for you. Where are your clothes, Johnny?”
“I dunno.”
“I should find some clothes. I should take my camera. Hold on Johnny.”
Johnny was on his side. Todd pulled his underwear band and looked inside.
“Medium. I’d guess… size thirty-four. You a thirty-four, Johnny? I’ll be back. It’s so many naked folks around here there’s got to be someone’s clothes lying around.”
As Todd left the room, heading back to the party, he heard Johnny in a sing song voice murmuring: “Roun’ roun’ roun’’
London bridges falling roun
Falling roun
Falling round
Longdon’ bridges falling roun
My fair lady
No, Johnny remembered, falling down.
London bridge is falling down.
My fair lady!
There it was!
Johnny Mellow put his hands to his damp head and realized his cowboy hat was gone. His wonderful, sexy cowboy hat. He was so sexy with his briefs on, with guys running their hands up and down his chest, touching his package, cupping him there, touching his ass, winking at him, murmuring about how he’d fucked the life out of them. Not like this, not crumpled up, high and sick all over the place. Not without his hat. Goddamn, he’d been so fucking beautiful.
“All right, Johnny, get into these clothes. I need you to get into these jeans. Can you do that? There you go.”
Todd had the jeans halfway on Johnny and was pulling the tee shirt over his head when Johnny said, “Todd, you’re so nice. You’re so good. You’re just like my grandpa. Not old like him. Or dead like him. But like I think he was when he was young. You’re so nice. Are you gay? You can’t be gay. Gay guys are assholes.”
“My boyfriend thinks I’m very gay. I can assure you,” Todd said. “People are people. Some of them are assholes. Now come on and help me help you get these jeans on.”
“I’m an asshole,” Johnny said, reflexively at first. And then he burst out, “I’m an asshole! I’m an ASSHOLE.” And began weeping.
FENN HOUGHTON did not want to answer the knock at the door because it couldn’t mean anything good. Todd had a key to the house, and no one else should come knocking past midnight, hell not past nine. Anyone who might would have had the sense to call first. So, at the knock, Fenn stayed in bed. In fact, he crawled deeper into the covers.
The knock came again, and Fenn thought, “It could be the police with news about Todd. It could be some woman trying to escape being raped. Like the woman I heard about in New York. She kept screaming, but no one would come out of their apartment to help her, and so she died.”
Carried away by Christian duty and an overactive imagination, Fenn hopped out of bed, pulling his housecoat over him, and ran down the steps, into the living room and over the carpet to answer the door.
“Todd!” And then he looked at the man slumped in his arms.
“Who the fuck is this?”
“Johnny Mellow.”
“Johnny who?”
“Would you just help me?”
“Ah!” Fenn remembered himself. “Give him here.”
Together they brought him through the door, and in a slurred voice the boy, for that’s what he was, Fenn observed, declared, “My real name ish Paul Andershin.”
“Well, my real name is Fenn Houghton, and we’re going to put your ass to bed.
“This,” he said to Todd, “is turning into the crazy ass end of a long ass day.”
“We’ll take him to the back bedroom,” Todd said.
“The hell we will. We’ll put him right here on this sofa. Um, over here,” Fenn lurched him across the living room. They let him go gently. Johnny Mellow groaned.
“There you go, deadweight,” Fenn said, stretching out his arms and rubbing them before turning to Todd.
“Now, are you going to tell me who the hell he is?”
“He was at the party.”
“The party you were taping for your movie? At the porn place?”
“Yes.”
“So what’s Alfalfa over there doing hanging out with pornstars?”
“Fenn, he is a pornstar.”
Unimpressed, Fenn turned to look at him and still remained unimpressed.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“I thought they were cuter than that. Not that he’s bad, but… It’s a thousand white men just like him here in Rossford.”
“Well, not really,” Todd differed. “He takes off his clothes and has sex with people. I saw him do a movie today. I taped it.”
“Jesus God,” Fenn murmured.
“He’s not bad. No matter what you think.”
“I don’t think anything,” Fenn said. “Well, I do think… What the hell is in him? Do we need to get him to a hospital?”
“No, apparently this is sort of a frequent thing. Only, I couldn’t leave him there in the shape he’s in.”
Johnny Mellow yawned and stretched out on the sofa. Then turned around and went back to sleep.
“Well, he can’t just sleep in his clothes,” Fenn said after a while.
“Those aren’t his clothes,” Todd said. “When I found him… Well, he found me. He sort of collapsed on me… He only had underwear on. But it was that type of party.”
“You say it like I’m supposed to say, ‘Yeah. That type.’ What type?”
“One where pornstars in their underwear pass out all fucked up on drugs.”
“Oh.”
“Say, I’m really, really tired, baby.”
“Um hum.”
“We’ve got to be up and back in Port Ridge by about noon, so do you think you’ll be able to wake me?”
“Yes, my dear. I’ll wake you just the way you woke me,” Fenn yawned. “Let’s go to bed. Uh… wait…”
Fenn went down the hall into the closet and brought back an old blanket that smelled of cedar.
“There we go,” he said, and draped it over Johnny Mellow.
“You won’t believe the day I had,” Todd said.
“Well, as of now, sense I put a pornstar to bed on the good sofa, I think I will.”
“But this has been the lightest part of it, Hought.”
“Well, I think I can top you. Not in nudity, but certainly in tragedy.”
“I just brought some coked-up kid who was naked when I found him into our house. Top that for tragedy.”
“I just found out the playhouse is going bankrupt and we lost our star because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.”
“Oh,” Todd said, and then was silent for a minute as they headed up the stairs.
“That does kinda beat me.”
“Um hum.”
The sunlight shot from one end of Paul Anderson’s brain to the other when he woke up, and over him was a composed, slightly amused face.
“It’s good that you wake up now. Take this now. It will help you. You’ve been too screwed up to get up until now.”
Obediently he took the pills and lifted the drink to his mouth before snorting.
“What is this?”
“You know what it is. You can’t be that stupid,” Fenn said.
Johnny Mellow lifted the beer to his mouth again. “It’s so early in the morning…” And then he said, “Isn’t it? I mean, I’ve got to be back by—”
“It’s about eight,” Fenn said. He was in a long, very old red flannel housecoat. “And as for that—” he pointed to the beer, “Hair of the dog is the best thing.
“But you know, I am surprised. I thought all you guys were weight lifters and trainers and all of that. Into that good healthy life except when…”
“Fucking each other,” Paul said through the beer.
“I guess some of us are,” he said. “It makes you feel better to think of yourself that way. Ohhh.”
Paul groaned and lay back down.
“But a lot of us are what I am right here. Fucked up.”
Paul said, “I remember you. I dreamed you. I… Don’t know where I am.”
“Todd brought you home.”
“This is Todd’s house,” Paul tried to sit up again. “It’s very nice. You must be Fenn. He talked about you all day.”
Fenn tried to hide his smile and said, “Really? Oh… It must have been a long day.”
Paul laughed, tired for a while, and then said, “Well, it was. But…” he looked at Fenn thoughtfully. “You probably wouldn’t have much of an idea what a long day is for me.”
At this Fenn began to laugh.
“No,” he said, trying to recover. “No, I really don’t think I can. I would like to, though.”
“Really?” Paul said, grimacing.
“Yes, really? Why not really?”
“Well,” he said after a moment. “The only time people think what I do is interesting is when they are really stupid fat middle aged men who think that it means I’m an escort and maybe they’ll get a fuck out of me. For some money. Or, they are horny guys who are kind of young. But… they’re kinda dumb too. Sometimes they think they want to be pornstars. They feel all giddy and crap just to be next to you. And… if you don’t have any self-esteem then it feel good that people feel good having you next to them. But… usually polite people, no matter what they do when they’re alone, they act like they have no interest in you at all. Like you are the lowest thing on earth. And maybe I am. I don’t know.”
Fenn shrugged and took back the empty beer glass, negligently pushing Paul back into the covers.
“I don’t know,” he said. “You don’t seem very low. I’ve met low people. I…”
And then he said, “I should let you get back to bed.”
“No, it’s alright,” Paul said. “I’ve slept all night.”
Fenn nodded and sat back down.
“I’ve just wondered how you do it,” Fenn said. “I mean, skip the why. I would wonder how. I wouldn’t be able. I mean, I’ve heard people say they’d like to be pornstars, and I think well, I’d like to have the life of a porno. You know. Where good looking people screw you left and right to abandon. Hell, once upon a time I think I did have that life.
“But it’s the whole business of the cameras. The actual having to shoot a movie. I don’t even like it when a lover talks during sex, let alone a director. How you do that? I would like to know?”
Paul was quiet for a second. He sat with his knees pulled up to his chest, like someone at a slumber party.
“You know what?”
“Hum?”
“I feel like I know you. The same way I knew it was safe to go to Todd, and it was the only thing I knew last night. I feel like I know you.”
“Well…” Fenn shrugged. “Thank you.”
“I have never had a serious sex partner off screen,” Paul said. “Most of the time sex is my job, see? And when I first started doing movies, I really didn’t have a lot of experience, or a boyfriend I could have sex with a lot. So, for me, on screen was pretty much it. I was so horned up. And then, I think there was the whole thing about being watched. It sort of excited me that I was being watched. I think if it was someone like, say my priest back home. Or my mom or…
“All of these people made me feel ashamed growing up. I didn’t want to be seen… period. I mean I didn’t want people to see me walking or talking, let alone fucking. But here is this whole other world where people pay to SEE me do the dirtiest thing in the world. The thing people say is so trashy, but they can’t help watching.”
Paul looked over at Fenn and saw a secretive smile on his face.
“What?”
“Last night I did something I’ve never done before.”
“Huh?” Paul furrowed his brow.
“I took out Todd’s credit card—Todd’s—and I got Guy McClintock online. I saw you. I saw you in a movie.”
“Oh, God!” Paul sounded suddenly sick.
“No, just listen. I… wanted to understand. You know. That’s what I told myself a long time ago. People love to judge… everything. Don’t they? They just point their fingers left and right. Well…. I wanted to know. And so, I watched.”
Paul waited for him to continue.
“I was so… turned on. Everybody gets turned on when they see a porno, but nobody really asks why. You… the way you looked, like you were in this zone. In this other place. Like when religious people go into ecstasy. It was like you and the other person didn’t care who was there. You all were so into each other. So, into the moment. And it was scary. The way I felt. The way you looked, like you were on the edge of something. Something you might not come back from. Something I had to watch at two in the morning while my boyfriend slept because it was secret, it didn’t belong in the ordinary world. I don’t know… It was actually sort of amazing. So, I don’t really have anything to say about it. Because I don’t know what to make of it. It’s just one of those things that sort of… defies a straight judgement. But then… I think that’s really most things.”
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Did not expect the story to go in this direction but its interesting! Paul is a fascinating character, I hope we get more of him!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Oh, I have so much to say about Paul and where the story is going, and I feel like maybe I should have a separate thread to write something about these folks. I don't know. But I hope the story always takes unexpected turns and keeps you guessing.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
THE HOUSES IN ROSSFORD, CHAPTER TWO: DIRTY/MOVIES CONTINUED
“OH, NOTHING. I’m just watching Todd get dressed,” Fenn said over the phone.
“Yeah,” he said turning back to Paul and watching Todd walk back and forth. “He’s still doing that movie. And you’ll never believe what he brought home.”
Paul shrugged.
“My sister,” Fenn explained.
“And how’d the date go? Really? And Layla liked him? Well… I am surprised.” Silence. “Because she doesn’t like anyone. She takes after Mama. Fine, tell her I said it.”
“Hought!”
Fenn put down the phone.
“Yes?”
“Have you seen my car keys?”
“You left them in your jacket.”
Todd nodded.
“And tell Guy McClintock I said hello.”
“You could tell him yourself,” Paul said.
“What?” Then, to the phone, “Hold on, Adele.”
Closing the closet door and taking the keys out of his jacket, Todd said, “You know… Johnny… Paul… uh…?”
“In this house he’s Paul,” Fenn said.
“Well, he has a point. You could come.”
“I couldn’t,” Fenn flushed with the thought.
“When has there ever been a time when you turned down the chance to do something that would make a great story?”
“And I’m sure we could put you in a film,” Paul said.
Fenn looked scandalized, but Paul said, “I was just kidding.”
“Who knows?” Todd leaned down and breathed into Fenn’s neck. “Maybe we could do one together.”
“That,” Paul said, looking from one to the other, “would make me hot.”
“Well, if you want to be hot, you’ll have to go to Acapulco,” Fenn said, standing up. “Cause that’s not happening. But I need a few minutes to put some clothes on.”
“Well, don’t take too long,” Todd said. “We’ve gotta go soon.”
“You just invited me now,” Fenn said, heading up the back stair. “I’ll be finished when I’m finished.”
By the time they’d reached the house, Fenn Houghton was wearing his poker face as he gazed around the foyer, and he gave Guy McClintock a Mona Lisa smile when the director said, “I’m so glad you could come.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have missed it.” Fenn looked around. “You’d never know there was a party here last night. Well,” he looked to one corner of the room where a large Hispanic housekeeper in blue was scrubbing a patch of floor. “You’d almost never know.”
“Yes. Well, that’s why we pay the cleaning staff so much. Join me at the pool?”
Guy ushered them through the house saying, “Johnny, I wondered where you had gone too. Someone said they’d seen you leaving with Todd. I might add by the way, if the two of you,” he gestured to Fenn and Todd, “are interested in that sort of thing…”
“What sort of thing?” said Todd.
Fenn cleared his throat. “He thinks we had a three-way last night.”
“Oh. Ohhhh. No!” Todd said.
Fenn noted, “We could hardly make it to a two way.”
Guy smiled broadly. “Meradan, that’s what I like about you. Your innocence. But, you know, it’s a lot of my boys who start out very innocent.” Guy stopped and touched Johnny’s cheek, looking at him fondly. “Really, that’s the best kind of boy. The one who keeps his innocence while fucking like a jackrabbit.”
To Fenn’s surprise, when Guy had turned away and continued toward the pool, Paul also turned away, his face red.
“This is going to be the scene of my new movie,” Guy told them while they were sipping drinks around the pool, and Todd had set the camera up.
“It’s not going to be the usual stuff. You know, a short amateur porn thing of two wide eyed innocents discovering the pleasure of cock for the first time. No. This will be a movie. Like Caligula, only modern. I’m thinking we’ll use Johnny here, like in… Hey, did you ever see Pizza Slut? That was a brilliant film he did, back in California when I first was starting out. Well, now Johnny, I think you and Noah could be in a great film with me. Do you think you could memorize dialogue?”
“Well,” Johnny said, “I did used to want to be an actor. I did plays back in high school.”
“That’s the spirit,” Guy said. “This is going to be…” Guy sat back, opening his mouth and his hands to a revelation, “I’m thinking something like A Separate Peace. God, I fucking loved that book. It will be about boys discovering friendship in the midst of war. It will have all the deep, old themes. Forgiveness, faith, courage. Only… with lots of cock, and tons of hot, sweaty fucking.”
“Well, it sounds just like Shakespeare when you say it that way,” Fenn said.
“Yeah,” Guy said. “That’s just what I was thinking.”
Fenn, expressionless, looked to Todd, and Todd turned his head away to keep from laughing.
“Luckily,” Guy said, “Noah is here. And I was thinking we could get Burt into this too. Because… I’ve got the screenplay, and I thought we could give it a good ole read through. How’s that sound?”
“Uh… yeah,” Paul said.
“I’ll be right back,” Guy said, and Fenn said, “Goddamn, I’m so glad I came.”
“BUT I’M SO SCARED Bobby,” Noah said woodenly but, Fenn admitted, with a certain degree of true fear.
Todd leaned in and said, “Noah’s a really nice guy. But he’s very shy… Unless he’s doing his work.”
Fenn gave Todd a sardonic look and Todd said, “Don’t be like that.”
“I mean, Bobby, what if the war never ends?”
“Come here?” the guy who must have been Burt said, holding the script in one hand, and gesturing to Noah with the other. “Come here and let me am… amel… ame—”
“Ameliorate,” Guy said.
“Ameliorate,” Fenn mouthed to Todd, who stopped himself from sniggering and said, “I can’t take you anywhere.”
“No, you just can’t take me to a pornographer trying to direct War and Peace.”
“Come here,” Burt started again, “and let me ameliorate your fears.”
And then Burt got on his knees and Noah said, “But, Bobby, we shouldn’t. The Church says it’s wrong.”
“All, I know,” Burt said, not sounding like he was acting as he yanked down Noah’s shorts, “is I have to follow my heart.”
Fenn wondered why he had expected a pornographer to do a dry rehearsal. Of course, Burt or Bobby or whatever was going to give a real blowjob. Which he was now doing. As if Todd knew what Fenn was thinking, he put a gentle, calming hand on Fenn’s leg. This was, of course Todd’s work, to film these peoples’ lives, and this was their work. So, Fenn just sat there and tried to tune it out.
“Really get in there, Bobby. Really get in there and suck that cock.”
Then Fenn realized that even though Guy had held a camera this whole time, now was the first time he was using it to really film, going around them.
He’s going to sell the rehearsals online, Fenn realized.
Just then, on cue, Johnny walked in and shouted, “You said it was only me, Bobby!”
Burt and Noah stopped as if caught in the act, and Burt stood up and said, while Noah pulled up his shorts:
“It was just you. But…” and then he turned back to the script. “John needed me. He needed my comfort. He had never experienced the pleasure that only another man can give.”
Johnny opened his mouth in what, Fenn noted, looked like credible shock.
But then Noah said, “Don’t be upset… Bartholomew… I was thinking about you too. When Bobby was giving me his mouth.”
Giving me his mouth?
Burt reached out and took Johnny’s hand and then Noah’s. “I was thinking… that we could pleasure each other.”
“All…” Johnny began, his eyes narrowing in suspicion, “at the same time?”
“Together,” Burt said.
“Oh, Bartholomew,” Noah said. “I’ve always wanted to be with you.” He kissed Johnny. “And you.”
And then he kissed Burt deeply, and next Johnny, and then all three of them were kissing and rubbing each other’s chests, and Fenn whispered to Todd:
“Maybe, I’m getting soft, but if what I think is going to happen is about to happen, then I need to… get a drink or something.”
“You’re going to leave me here?”
“You’re the impartial film maker. I’m the one you can’t take anywhere.”
Hotter and embarrassed for being so easily embarrassed, Fenn stood up just as Noah was reaching into Johnny’s jeans and unbuttoning them.
Fenn was startled by the door flying open and Todd stepping into the bedroom.
“What?”
Todd looked behind him, closed the door, locked the door and then kissed him fiercely.
“If you had seen what I just saw…” he said huskily, unbuttoning Fenn’s shirt.
“You want to… Right here?”
Todd nodded into Fenn’s chest, kissing him up and down and unbuttoning his pants.
“I need to. Right here.”
Fenn looked around, flushing.
“Right… No, Todd! Well… Oh, shit. All right.”
And then Todd got to his knees and began tugging down his underwear.
“But only if I get to do you next,” Fenn said.
“Sure thing,” Todd mumbled and then pulled Fenn into his mouth, like that first time when neither one of them had been with anyone for a while and they were both thinking about each other all the time, wondering where the relationship would go, waiting for that moment. Todd had been so tired last night, and then when he’d awaken this morning Fenn was downstairs with Johnny, and Todd had to get dressed. He was so wound up now and in his head was the memory of what he’d just seen Noah and Burt and Johnny giving themselves up to. He took Fenn in his mouth again and again, licking the head of his cock while he heard Fenn moan. He reached up and held his ass in his hands, inserting his fingers, hearing him cry out. He pulled on him, in and out quickly, desperately, mumbling, almost gagging himself. And then Fenn pulled out of his mouth and he almost moaned with sadness. But now Fenn was dragging Todd’s face down, thrusting his tongue in his mouth. And then they were changing places, and Todd was planting his hands on Fenn’s head. When he’d been really young, he’d always wondered what it would be like to touch Fenn’s hair. Right now, even when Fenn said he needed a haircut it was always soft and coarse all at the same time: springy. He wished he could bury his fingers in it. He wished… ah, shit, he cried out. He moaned and rose up on the balls of his feet, his thighs tensing. It felt so goddamned good. Fenn was between his legs now. Now they were helping each other with their shirts, kicking off their pants.
“Now each other?” Todd whispered.
“Yes.”
He went down on Fenn again, and Fenn positioned himself to take Todd in. It seemed like it went on forever. In a corner of his mind Todd wondered if everyone wondered where they were. Or if someone knew. He wondered if there were any rooms under here? Who could hear them fucking in this mansion? They were face to face now, Todd under him as Fenn fucked his stomach and he fucked back and they kissed and fucked and then Todd arched up his pelvis and whispered: “Now, in me.”
It was quick and they pressed tighter and tighter together becoming the same rhythm. Todd squeezed himself amazed as always with Fenn inside of him, and Fenn gasped now and lost control. They came at the same time, rocking and rolling off of the edge of the world and then, gently, like a closing flower, collapsing together.
“Ah… It’s been…” Todd began.
“It’s been about two days,” Fenn said, and they both laughed.
“We didn’t even take down the bed sheets.
“Do you think they all know…? What we just did?”
“Do you care? I mean, do you really give a fuck?”
Todd laughed, and they turned to face each other. Todd ran a hand over Fenn’s shoulder.
“I do,” he admitted. “But that’s just me.”
“It wasn’t you when you came in here all… what was that?”
“Did you like it? “
Fenn lay on his back.
“I always like you horny.
“You know,” Fenn said, “whenever we have sex the good thing is we leave something out.” He sighed. “It’s like there’s always more we could have done. Next time I want you to fuck me.”
“I can still feel you in me,” Todd murmured, squeezing himself, squeezing his legs together.
“I can always feel you,” said Fenn.
“OH, NOTHING. I’m just watching Todd get dressed,” Fenn said over the phone.
“Yeah,” he said turning back to Paul and watching Todd walk back and forth. “He’s still doing that movie. And you’ll never believe what he brought home.”
Paul shrugged.
“My sister,” Fenn explained.
“And how’d the date go? Really? And Layla liked him? Well… I am surprised.” Silence. “Because she doesn’t like anyone. She takes after Mama. Fine, tell her I said it.”
“Hought!”
Fenn put down the phone.
“Yes?”
“Have you seen my car keys?”
“You left them in your jacket.”
Todd nodded.
“And tell Guy McClintock I said hello.”
“You could tell him yourself,” Paul said.
“What?” Then, to the phone, “Hold on, Adele.”
Closing the closet door and taking the keys out of his jacket, Todd said, “You know… Johnny… Paul… uh…?”
“In this house he’s Paul,” Fenn said.
“Well, he has a point. You could come.”
“I couldn’t,” Fenn flushed with the thought.
“When has there ever been a time when you turned down the chance to do something that would make a great story?”
“And I’m sure we could put you in a film,” Paul said.
Fenn looked scandalized, but Paul said, “I was just kidding.”
“Who knows?” Todd leaned down and breathed into Fenn’s neck. “Maybe we could do one together.”
“That,” Paul said, looking from one to the other, “would make me hot.”
“Well, if you want to be hot, you’ll have to go to Acapulco,” Fenn said, standing up. “Cause that’s not happening. But I need a few minutes to put some clothes on.”
“Well, don’t take too long,” Todd said. “We’ve gotta go soon.”
“You just invited me now,” Fenn said, heading up the back stair. “I’ll be finished when I’m finished.”
By the time they’d reached the house, Fenn Houghton was wearing his poker face as he gazed around the foyer, and he gave Guy McClintock a Mona Lisa smile when the director said, “I’m so glad you could come.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have missed it.” Fenn looked around. “You’d never know there was a party here last night. Well,” he looked to one corner of the room where a large Hispanic housekeeper in blue was scrubbing a patch of floor. “You’d almost never know.”
“Yes. Well, that’s why we pay the cleaning staff so much. Join me at the pool?”
Guy ushered them through the house saying, “Johnny, I wondered where you had gone too. Someone said they’d seen you leaving with Todd. I might add by the way, if the two of you,” he gestured to Fenn and Todd, “are interested in that sort of thing…”
“What sort of thing?” said Todd.
Fenn cleared his throat. “He thinks we had a three-way last night.”
“Oh. Ohhhh. No!” Todd said.
Fenn noted, “We could hardly make it to a two way.”
Guy smiled broadly. “Meradan, that’s what I like about you. Your innocence. But, you know, it’s a lot of my boys who start out very innocent.” Guy stopped and touched Johnny’s cheek, looking at him fondly. “Really, that’s the best kind of boy. The one who keeps his innocence while fucking like a jackrabbit.”
To Fenn’s surprise, when Guy had turned away and continued toward the pool, Paul also turned away, his face red.
“This is going to be the scene of my new movie,” Guy told them while they were sipping drinks around the pool, and Todd had set the camera up.
“It’s not going to be the usual stuff. You know, a short amateur porn thing of two wide eyed innocents discovering the pleasure of cock for the first time. No. This will be a movie. Like Caligula, only modern. I’m thinking we’ll use Johnny here, like in… Hey, did you ever see Pizza Slut? That was a brilliant film he did, back in California when I first was starting out. Well, now Johnny, I think you and Noah could be in a great film with me. Do you think you could memorize dialogue?”
“Well,” Johnny said, “I did used to want to be an actor. I did plays back in high school.”
“That’s the spirit,” Guy said. “This is going to be…” Guy sat back, opening his mouth and his hands to a revelation, “I’m thinking something like A Separate Peace. God, I fucking loved that book. It will be about boys discovering friendship in the midst of war. It will have all the deep, old themes. Forgiveness, faith, courage. Only… with lots of cock, and tons of hot, sweaty fucking.”
“Well, it sounds just like Shakespeare when you say it that way,” Fenn said.
“Yeah,” Guy said. “That’s just what I was thinking.”
Fenn, expressionless, looked to Todd, and Todd turned his head away to keep from laughing.
“Luckily,” Guy said, “Noah is here. And I was thinking we could get Burt into this too. Because… I’ve got the screenplay, and I thought we could give it a good ole read through. How’s that sound?”
“Uh… yeah,” Paul said.
“I’ll be right back,” Guy said, and Fenn said, “Goddamn, I’m so glad I came.”
“BUT I’M SO SCARED Bobby,” Noah said woodenly but, Fenn admitted, with a certain degree of true fear.
Todd leaned in and said, “Noah’s a really nice guy. But he’s very shy… Unless he’s doing his work.”
Fenn gave Todd a sardonic look and Todd said, “Don’t be like that.”
“I mean, Bobby, what if the war never ends?”
“Come here?” the guy who must have been Burt said, holding the script in one hand, and gesturing to Noah with the other. “Come here and let me am… amel… ame—”
“Ameliorate,” Guy said.
“Ameliorate,” Fenn mouthed to Todd, who stopped himself from sniggering and said, “I can’t take you anywhere.”
“No, you just can’t take me to a pornographer trying to direct War and Peace.”
“Come here,” Burt started again, “and let me ameliorate your fears.”
And then Burt got on his knees and Noah said, “But, Bobby, we shouldn’t. The Church says it’s wrong.”
“All, I know,” Burt said, not sounding like he was acting as he yanked down Noah’s shorts, “is I have to follow my heart.”
Fenn wondered why he had expected a pornographer to do a dry rehearsal. Of course, Burt or Bobby or whatever was going to give a real blowjob. Which he was now doing. As if Todd knew what Fenn was thinking, he put a gentle, calming hand on Fenn’s leg. This was, of course Todd’s work, to film these peoples’ lives, and this was their work. So, Fenn just sat there and tried to tune it out.
“Really get in there, Bobby. Really get in there and suck that cock.”
Then Fenn realized that even though Guy had held a camera this whole time, now was the first time he was using it to really film, going around them.
He’s going to sell the rehearsals online, Fenn realized.
Just then, on cue, Johnny walked in and shouted, “You said it was only me, Bobby!”
Burt and Noah stopped as if caught in the act, and Burt stood up and said, while Noah pulled up his shorts:
“It was just you. But…” and then he turned back to the script. “John needed me. He needed my comfort. He had never experienced the pleasure that only another man can give.”
Johnny opened his mouth in what, Fenn noted, looked like credible shock.
But then Noah said, “Don’t be upset… Bartholomew… I was thinking about you too. When Bobby was giving me his mouth.”
Giving me his mouth?
Burt reached out and took Johnny’s hand and then Noah’s. “I was thinking… that we could pleasure each other.”
“All…” Johnny began, his eyes narrowing in suspicion, “at the same time?”
“Together,” Burt said.
“Oh, Bartholomew,” Noah said. “I’ve always wanted to be with you.” He kissed Johnny. “And you.”
And then he kissed Burt deeply, and next Johnny, and then all three of them were kissing and rubbing each other’s chests, and Fenn whispered to Todd:
“Maybe, I’m getting soft, but if what I think is going to happen is about to happen, then I need to… get a drink or something.”
“You’re going to leave me here?”
“You’re the impartial film maker. I’m the one you can’t take anywhere.”
Hotter and embarrassed for being so easily embarrassed, Fenn stood up just as Noah was reaching into Johnny’s jeans and unbuttoning them.
Fenn was startled by the door flying open and Todd stepping into the bedroom.
“What?”
Todd looked behind him, closed the door, locked the door and then kissed him fiercely.
“If you had seen what I just saw…” he said huskily, unbuttoning Fenn’s shirt.
“You want to… Right here?”
Todd nodded into Fenn’s chest, kissing him up and down and unbuttoning his pants.
“I need to. Right here.”
Fenn looked around, flushing.
“Right… No, Todd! Well… Oh, shit. All right.”
And then Todd got to his knees and began tugging down his underwear.
“But only if I get to do you next,” Fenn said.
“Sure thing,” Todd mumbled and then pulled Fenn into his mouth, like that first time when neither one of them had been with anyone for a while and they were both thinking about each other all the time, wondering where the relationship would go, waiting for that moment. Todd had been so tired last night, and then when he’d awaken this morning Fenn was downstairs with Johnny, and Todd had to get dressed. He was so wound up now and in his head was the memory of what he’d just seen Noah and Burt and Johnny giving themselves up to. He took Fenn in his mouth again and again, licking the head of his cock while he heard Fenn moan. He reached up and held his ass in his hands, inserting his fingers, hearing him cry out. He pulled on him, in and out quickly, desperately, mumbling, almost gagging himself. And then Fenn pulled out of his mouth and he almost moaned with sadness. But now Fenn was dragging Todd’s face down, thrusting his tongue in his mouth. And then they were changing places, and Todd was planting his hands on Fenn’s head. When he’d been really young, he’d always wondered what it would be like to touch Fenn’s hair. Right now, even when Fenn said he needed a haircut it was always soft and coarse all at the same time: springy. He wished he could bury his fingers in it. He wished… ah, shit, he cried out. He moaned and rose up on the balls of his feet, his thighs tensing. It felt so goddamned good. Fenn was between his legs now. Now they were helping each other with their shirts, kicking off their pants.
“Now each other?” Todd whispered.
“Yes.”
He went down on Fenn again, and Fenn positioned himself to take Todd in. It seemed like it went on forever. In a corner of his mind Todd wondered if everyone wondered where they were. Or if someone knew. He wondered if there were any rooms under here? Who could hear them fucking in this mansion? They were face to face now, Todd under him as Fenn fucked his stomach and he fucked back and they kissed and fucked and then Todd arched up his pelvis and whispered: “Now, in me.”
It was quick and they pressed tighter and tighter together becoming the same rhythm. Todd squeezed himself amazed as always with Fenn inside of him, and Fenn gasped now and lost control. They came at the same time, rocking and rolling off of the edge of the world and then, gently, like a closing flower, collapsing together.
“Ah… It’s been…” Todd began.
“It’s been about two days,” Fenn said, and they both laughed.
“We didn’t even take down the bed sheets.
“Do you think they all know…? What we just did?”
“Do you care? I mean, do you really give a fuck?”
Todd laughed, and they turned to face each other. Todd ran a hand over Fenn’s shoulder.
“I do,” he admitted. “But that’s just me.”
“It wasn’t you when you came in here all… what was that?”
“Did you like it? “
Fenn lay on his back.
“I always like you horny.
“You know,” Fenn said, “whenever we have sex the good thing is we leave something out.” He sighed. “It’s like there’s always more we could have done. Next time I want you to fuck me.”
“I can still feel you in me,” Todd murmured, squeezing himself, squeezing his legs together.
“I can always feel you,” said Fenn.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Interesting continuation! I like where the story is going and great writing as usual.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
: ) More tomorrow night
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
THE HOUSES IN ROSSFORD, CHAPTER TWO: DIRTY/MOVIES CONCLUDED
“There you are,” Paul said.
“Huh, oh, yes,” Fenn turned to him.
“Those are the party people,” said Paul. “They’re just streaming in. Things won’t really start till around ten, though.
“I wondered what happened to you,” Paul was in a snug polo and khakis. “You left during the rehearsal, and then when Todd went to check on you, he didn’t come back for a long time.”
“Well,” Fenn said. “Todd just….” Fenn smirked.
Paul smiled, looking confused and said, “What?”
“Todd, felt… inspired, by whatever he saw when I left. He came to… express his inspiration.”
“Oh,” Paul turned away, going red. “Oh, I see.”
“He expressed it very well, I have to admit,” said Fenn.
“That is hot.”
“What?” said Fenn.
“What you just told me. I mean, how you all did that. That is so hot. I…”
“It’s just sex. It’s your job.”
“But, see… that’s it. It’s my job. I mean, I have actually never… Well,” Paul began to explain, rolling his hand in a slow circle.
“I’ve never really made love to anyone. You know. The closest I’ve been to that is in a movie, where it’s supposed to be romantic. Then you’re really free to be into each other. But usually in stuff like this it really is kind of mechanical. Not bad, necessarily but… Romance. I mean, the two of you. You and Todd. And you just did it here.”
“Hundreds of people do it here,” Fenn said. “I’m guessing hundreds of people do it here in a single week.”
“Hundreds of people fuck for a pay check here. Sometimes you like it. Sometimes you really want to do it. For whatever reasons. Sometimes you really need to make a pay check.
“And then, sometimes, at the parties, you really need to get fucked. But half the time, either situation, you’re high out of your mind.”
Fenn said nothing, and after a moment, Paul said, “That’s what I like about you. But… that’s what’s strange about you. I can’t tell what you’re thinking. I mean, you don’t judge.”
“I already told you I don’t judge. It gets in the way of great stories. Plus, I’m an actor and I don’t think you’re any good unless you can pay attention to real people, what they do, how they move. Why they do things. And you can’t get that if you’re spending all of your time trying to judge everyone and second guess them.”
“I was an actor.”
“I know. You said that. And… Actually,” Fenn grinned, “when you all were shooting that movie, you were the only one that was any good. I mean, up until the sex.”
“Yeah,” Paul said. “Then we were all good. I guess.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Fenn said. “I mean… I couldn’t watch. I just felt… isn’t it the strangest? I never turn away for anything. But I felt like if I saw it I would be… intruding on something.”
“If you wanna know the truth,” Paul told him, “I’m glad you left.”
Fenn looked at him.
“I don’t know. I just feel like… We’re friends or something. Todd’s the filmmaker so it’s different, I suppose. But you know, like I told you. I’ve never had an intimate experience with someone I felt close to. I don’t really know if I could have sex with someone, I felt close to, or around someone. I think I can make those movies because no one I actually care about is going to see them. If it was my mother, then… Oh, God. I don’t even want to think about it.”
“How did you get here? I mean here, in the Midwest?”
“Well, Guy is here, of course,” Paul said. “He gets a lot of folks from Chicago, or from Indy. Cincinnati. He’s the big porn daddy of the Midwest because,” he faked an accent, “even cornfed faggots need to see some dick.
“But I come from here. You ever heard of East Carmel?”
“It’s not far from us.”
“No. Well, that’s where my folks are from. I went to school there and everything, and then I went out to California and I thought I’d be a really big star, but… You don’t want to hear all this.”
“I do want to hear it. That’s why I asked.”
“Well,” Paul said, “I went out to be this big star. I mean, I was going to be a big serious star. I’m not like a lot of guys here. They’re all muscles and pretty. Like Noah. Noah is pretty and Burt is muscle. I thought I would do serious theatre,” he faked a British accent. “And maybe through serious theatre find a serious director. Then I would be the next… someone. You know, really big, win an Oscar for some deeply soulful movie.”
Fenn smiled.
“And of course, I was straight back then. I’d slept with a couple of girls, so I was straight enough. But out in LA I started going to clubs, sort of finding myself. And of course where there are actors there are homos and where there are broke actors porn is an option. You really want to hear all of this?”
“If you really want to tell it, I really want to hear it.”
“All right,” Paul said. “Well, then, I didn’t start out doing porn. I started out stripping. Someone said I could be a good stripper. I had an innocent face, and people would go for that. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but I knew that I could get paid. So, I said yes to it.
“I was making a lot more money stripping than acting, and you know how it is with any job. If you want to do what you love. You choose between the job and your… art. Or whatever. And the job wins out. So, I thought, well, hell, I’ll just strip for a while and go back to acting.
“But when you strip there is always someone—especially in some rich and closeted LA scene—who will tell you, if you do … whatever…. You can make some money. You know,” Paul said, when he realized he needed to be clearer, “Blow jobs. Giving them, letting people give them to you. Being an escort. It starts out small. You think, shit, a thousand dollars just to let this miserable fuck go down on me. And out where I was, out in LA with no family or no real friends and rent up the ass, and… I’d forgotten why I came there, it was like, well, okay. Just do it. Just do it this once. So I was an escort, which is sort of like a high level dealer in light prostitution.”
“And then the movies?”
“The movies!” Paul said. “Well, wait. Okay, see, I was still pretty stupid, and one of my… clients I guess you call him, told me about movie auditions. I went. The director told me to strip to my underwear and masturbate. So, then, I knew what it as all about. But I was also getting a check for five hundred dollars and this was better than having to service a real person. So I did it. He hired me and we began making classics at Old Eagle Studio. We started making the good shit. That’s how Johnny Mellow was born. Johnny’s Big Weekend, where he goes to an island and discovers he is gay by screwing about thirty different guys. A huge orgy montage. And of course, Pizza Slut. But…” Paul said anticipating Fenn’s question, “the truth is you get used to it. It is sex. It does feel good. It’s risky and wrong and that feels better. Like you’re really sticking it in someone’s eye.
“Also, having sex with hot guys who you sort of suspect are more or less in the same place you are, have been down the same roads, is a lot better than what you experience as an escort—which is the only sex I ever knew. Except for, in the way back past, two girls back here. And a lot of times you really want to be… appreciated. So, it makes you feel like that. If you’re with all these hot guys you must be hot too. Like, tonight, I’m going to feel really, really hot. Tonight at least.
“Last night…” said Fenn.
“Hum?”
“When Todd brought you home…”
“I was feeling hot,” Paul said, with a raised finger. Then he lowered it, grinned widely under his long nose and added, “until I wasn’t.
“There you are,” Paul said.
“Huh, oh, yes,” Fenn turned to him.
“Those are the party people,” said Paul. “They’re just streaming in. Things won’t really start till around ten, though.
“I wondered what happened to you,” Paul was in a snug polo and khakis. “You left during the rehearsal, and then when Todd went to check on you, he didn’t come back for a long time.”
“Well,” Fenn said. “Todd just….” Fenn smirked.
Paul smiled, looking confused and said, “What?”
“Todd, felt… inspired, by whatever he saw when I left. He came to… express his inspiration.”
“Oh,” Paul turned away, going red. “Oh, I see.”
“He expressed it very well, I have to admit,” said Fenn.
“That is hot.”
“What?” said Fenn.
“What you just told me. I mean, how you all did that. That is so hot. I…”
“It’s just sex. It’s your job.”
“But, see… that’s it. It’s my job. I mean, I have actually never… Well,” Paul began to explain, rolling his hand in a slow circle.
“I’ve never really made love to anyone. You know. The closest I’ve been to that is in a movie, where it’s supposed to be romantic. Then you’re really free to be into each other. But usually in stuff like this it really is kind of mechanical. Not bad, necessarily but… Romance. I mean, the two of you. You and Todd. And you just did it here.”
“Hundreds of people do it here,” Fenn said. “I’m guessing hundreds of people do it here in a single week.”
“Hundreds of people fuck for a pay check here. Sometimes you like it. Sometimes you really want to do it. For whatever reasons. Sometimes you really need to make a pay check.
“And then, sometimes, at the parties, you really need to get fucked. But half the time, either situation, you’re high out of your mind.”
Fenn said nothing, and after a moment, Paul said, “That’s what I like about you. But… that’s what’s strange about you. I can’t tell what you’re thinking. I mean, you don’t judge.”
“I already told you I don’t judge. It gets in the way of great stories. Plus, I’m an actor and I don’t think you’re any good unless you can pay attention to real people, what they do, how they move. Why they do things. And you can’t get that if you’re spending all of your time trying to judge everyone and second guess them.”
“I was an actor.”
“I know. You said that. And… Actually,” Fenn grinned, “when you all were shooting that movie, you were the only one that was any good. I mean, up until the sex.”
“Yeah,” Paul said. “Then we were all good. I guess.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Fenn said. “I mean… I couldn’t watch. I just felt… isn’t it the strangest? I never turn away for anything. But I felt like if I saw it I would be… intruding on something.”
“If you wanna know the truth,” Paul told him, “I’m glad you left.”
Fenn looked at him.
“I don’t know. I just feel like… We’re friends or something. Todd’s the filmmaker so it’s different, I suppose. But you know, like I told you. I’ve never had an intimate experience with someone I felt close to. I don’t really know if I could have sex with someone, I felt close to, or around someone. I think I can make those movies because no one I actually care about is going to see them. If it was my mother, then… Oh, God. I don’t even want to think about it.”
“How did you get here? I mean here, in the Midwest?”
“Well, Guy is here, of course,” Paul said. “He gets a lot of folks from Chicago, or from Indy. Cincinnati. He’s the big porn daddy of the Midwest because,” he faked an accent, “even cornfed faggots need to see some dick.
“But I come from here. You ever heard of East Carmel?”
“It’s not far from us.”
“No. Well, that’s where my folks are from. I went to school there and everything, and then I went out to California and I thought I’d be a really big star, but… You don’t want to hear all this.”
“I do want to hear it. That’s why I asked.”
“Well,” Paul said, “I went out to be this big star. I mean, I was going to be a big serious star. I’m not like a lot of guys here. They’re all muscles and pretty. Like Noah. Noah is pretty and Burt is muscle. I thought I would do serious theatre,” he faked a British accent. “And maybe through serious theatre find a serious director. Then I would be the next… someone. You know, really big, win an Oscar for some deeply soulful movie.”
Fenn smiled.
“And of course, I was straight back then. I’d slept with a couple of girls, so I was straight enough. But out in LA I started going to clubs, sort of finding myself. And of course where there are actors there are homos and where there are broke actors porn is an option. You really want to hear all of this?”
“If you really want to tell it, I really want to hear it.”
“All right,” Paul said. “Well, then, I didn’t start out doing porn. I started out stripping. Someone said I could be a good stripper. I had an innocent face, and people would go for that. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but I knew that I could get paid. So, I said yes to it.
“I was making a lot more money stripping than acting, and you know how it is with any job. If you want to do what you love. You choose between the job and your… art. Or whatever. And the job wins out. So, I thought, well, hell, I’ll just strip for a while and go back to acting.
“But when you strip there is always someone—especially in some rich and closeted LA scene—who will tell you, if you do … whatever…. You can make some money. You know,” Paul said, when he realized he needed to be clearer, “Blow jobs. Giving them, letting people give them to you. Being an escort. It starts out small. You think, shit, a thousand dollars just to let this miserable fuck go down on me. And out where I was, out in LA with no family or no real friends and rent up the ass, and… I’d forgotten why I came there, it was like, well, okay. Just do it. Just do it this once. So I was an escort, which is sort of like a high level dealer in light prostitution.”
“And then the movies?”
“The movies!” Paul said. “Well, wait. Okay, see, I was still pretty stupid, and one of my… clients I guess you call him, told me about movie auditions. I went. The director told me to strip to my underwear and masturbate. So, then, I knew what it as all about. But I was also getting a check for five hundred dollars and this was better than having to service a real person. So I did it. He hired me and we began making classics at Old Eagle Studio. We started making the good shit. That’s how Johnny Mellow was born. Johnny’s Big Weekend, where he goes to an island and discovers he is gay by screwing about thirty different guys. A huge orgy montage. And of course, Pizza Slut. But…” Paul said anticipating Fenn’s question, “the truth is you get used to it. It is sex. It does feel good. It’s risky and wrong and that feels better. Like you’re really sticking it in someone’s eye.
“Also, having sex with hot guys who you sort of suspect are more or less in the same place you are, have been down the same roads, is a lot better than what you experience as an escort—which is the only sex I ever knew. Except for, in the way back past, two girls back here. And a lot of times you really want to be… appreciated. So, it makes you feel like that. If you’re with all these hot guys you must be hot too. Like, tonight, I’m going to feel really, really hot. Tonight at least.
“Last night…” said Fenn.
“Hum?”
“When Todd brought you home…”
“I was feeling hot,” Paul said, with a raised finger. Then he lowered it, grinned widely under his long nose and added, “until I wasn’t.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Great to read Paul's story! I can't wait to see where you go with him story wise. Thanks once again for posting so often!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I felt bad cause I posted a little late tonight. Some stuff came up, but you're welcome
Also, having you read this is so much fun for me, because I'm all the way on the other side of it, knowing what happens to everyone, and this is like reliving it all again for the first time
Also, having you read this is so much fun for me, because I'm all the way on the other side of it, knowing what happens to everyone, and this is like reliving it all again for the first time
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
THE HOUSES IN ROSSFORD
CHAPTER
THREE
LIFE IN THE CAYMANS
“THAT’S FINE! THAT’S FINE!” He shouted coming down the stairwell. “See if I don’t show you!”
Fenn, who had been sitting on the couch with Paul, looked up and saw a young man with thick dark hair in a tight black dress shirt and white pants marching down the steps, and up on the balcony were Guy McClintock and Todd. Todd looked down at Fenn and shrugged.
“That’s Bobby Frey,” Paul said.
“Does he do movies?” Fenn looked after him doubtfully. He was very handsome, but he didn’t seem the movie type.
“Go home and cry to your mama, Bobby!” Guy shouted down.
“No,” Paul said as Bobby passed. “He’s one of Guy’s Chicago friends from his other business.”
“Other business…” Fenn began.
“Yeah,” Paul said. “Guy multitasks. It took awhile to get the porn thing up so he used to run drugs to support himself. Still does. Everyone from that end of his business we call Chicago Friends. Cause that’s where they used to come from. I don’t know that much about Bobby. He might be a Cleveland friend. Or a Detroit one.”
“Not a New Yorker, though.”
“No,” Paul said, sagely. “He walks like a Midwesterner.”
They were in the bedroom they’d made love in that afternoon when Fenn said, “If there’s going to be one of those parties tonight—”
“There is—”
“I was going to say, I didn’t come dressed for a party. I don’t even know what to wear to a party like this.”
“I’m sure Johnny will show you something,” Todd said.
“Who…? Oh, Paul.”
“Hum?”
“His name is Paul, Todd.”
“Oh,” Todd said, and smiled. “That’s the thing about you, Fenn. You always get inside of people. You always know so much so quickly.
“Well, anyway, this little ugly standard outfit of jeans and army green shirt is what I’ll be wearing. Cause I’m the filmmaker. But I know you’ll want to be dressed.”
Fenn looked at Todd, smiling, waiting for an answer.
“Cause you’re you,” he said.
“Truthfully,” Fenn said, “I don’t greatly want to go to the party.”
“Do you know?” said Todd, “We could just go back home for a bit, and then drive back here later on.”
“But with the price of gas. Do you really want to?”
“It’s about five-thirty now. If we leave we’ll be back home by seven. Eat a little. Relax. Shower. We can head back here at around ten or nine-thirty. The Party will be at its dirtiest. In fact, it’ll be at the place I stopped filming last night.”
“All right,” Fenn stood up. “We’ll go. I’m going to go say goodbye to Paul and tell him to take care of himself.”
“That is such a you thing to do,” Todd said.
Fenn cocked his head.
“I think that was a compliment.”
“You bet your pretty round ass it was,” Todd said, grabbing that pretty round ass.
“GOD, MY HEAD IS hurting,” Todd yawned as he leaned ahead.
Red taillights floated by in the night.
“Why don’t you switch seats and let me drive. You need rest,” Fenn said.
“Fenn, I love you, but you’re legally blind, and I was the one that taught you to drive so, if you don’t mind I think I’ll get a lot more rest if I’m at the wheel.”
“Suit yourself,” Fenn said and reaching into his breast pocket, he pulled out a cigarette.
“I guess it’ll be about…. Almost midnight by the time we get to the party.”
“What’s it gonna be like?”
“Oh, Fenn, it won’t be like anything you’d call a party. It’ll be…”
“Like an orgy?”
“Well, actually it will be an orgy,” Todd said. “At least it was last night.”
“Wow,” Fenn sat back. “I thought I’d be excited.”
“You’re bored? About going to an orgy?”
“No. I’m mildly terrified is what I am.”
“Well, just hold onto my shirttail. You know,” Todd told him, “you didn’t have to come. I would have been all right if you’d stayed home.”
“And I would have thought for the rest of my life, damn, I missed an orgy. I could have seen an orgy.”
“Do you know Guy offered to do a porno of us?”
“Offered?”
“Yes. It was going to be something we could watch in the privacy of our own home,” Todd grinned, making quote marks.
“You know, I just think that’s weird. I think this whole thing is weird. Ehhh…..” Fenn craned his neck and yawned.
“Whaddit the sign say, babe?”
“You’re asking me? The legally blind one? It said we’ve just entered Port Ridge.”
“Only ten minutes to the land of Sodom.”
“That’s a good title for a play.”
“Or an autobiography.”
“Speak for yourself. Say,” Fenn interrupted himself. “What about for the documentary?”
Todd cackled, “That’s actually a pretty great idea.”
It wasn’t ten minutes. Port Ridge was a small town, and on Saturday night, this late, there was no traffic. They went through blinking red lights, and soon they were on the familiar dead in street, no traffic, only the shadow of Guy’s house on the hill growing larger as they approached.
“Ah, here we are.”
“Up and up the winding path,” Fenn sang. “Todd, this has to be the strangest movie you’ve ever made.”
“We’ll park right here,” Todd said, settling on the street, half a block before the house.
“There’ll be so many cars here, and between getting the valet to park it and getting it back… It’ll just be shorter if we park right here.”
But for the bass thump of music pounding from the house and the occasional raucous scream, the walk up was quiet and still. They were halfway toward the house when, suddenly, whirring sirens tore apart the night and lights were flashing.
“What the…?” Todd began.
Fenn pulled him into the trees and said, “Take out your camera and start filming. I’ll set up the lights.”
Patrol car after patrol car was whirring up to the house and Todd was shaking. But Fenn was cool and calm about the whole business, setting up a small light for Todd to shoot by.
“You got most of the party,” Fenn said. “Now you can shoot its aftermath.”
Fenn stepped out of the trees.
“What are you doing?” Todd hissed.
Fenn shrugged, “Getting a better view.
There were five patrol cars now, with lights flashing in the circle driveway, and cops in blue were jumping out of them and entering the house. Soon the music died down, but the screaming began. Fenn came back to the clump of trees and told Todd, “I’ll bet these people have been looking for a way to close down Guy for a long time.”
“Whaddo you think they found?”
“A bunch of folks fucking and snorting coke and all sorts of shit. That’s what they found,” Fenn said. He walked back to the edge of the street, watching. Another siren whirred and he went back into the bushes.
“Okay,” Fenn whispered, “All you need to know is everyone is getting arrested. It’s a good thing we came late as we did.”
“It’s a good thing we parked the car right here.”
After a while Todd said, “Whaddo we do?”
Fenn shrugged.
“We wait the whole thing out.”
“I think they’re gone,” Todd said. “I think it’s all over.”
Fenn started taking apart the lights, and Todd was shutting off his camera.
“Not at all what I expected.”
“No,” Fenn shook his head. “And don’t think about it too much now, but there goes your seventy-five-thousand dollars.”
“Oh, hell,” Todd muttered. “How’s he gonna pay from jail?”
“He may not stay in jail,” Fenn said.
“Yeah, but somehow it’s doubtful this’ll translate into me getting paid anytime soon.”
“Well,” Fenn said, “now that I’ve brought it up, I say let’s forget about it.”
They were coming onto the sidewalk when a figure came staggering toward them and as Fenn stepped out of the way, the swaying figure crashed into Todd.
“Johnny?” Todd began.
“Paul?”
Paul Anderson, turned Johnny Mellow turned from one of them to the other and said, “It was… awful. The police. They were everywhere. I had to hide with Noah.”
“Wha?” Todd began.
“Noah had gotten pretty fucked up when the police came. So I lugged him around with me to hide. We hid in a closet. Well, I hid him. And now, I was going to get help.”
“Well, I guess we better go,” said Fenn..
“Go?” Todd said. “Into a house that just got raided by the cops? A house the cops could come back to at any moment?”
“Well then I guess we better be quick about it,” Fenn said.
TODD LOOKED AROUND the large door as if he expected a cop to be hiding inside of the foyer. But Fenn simply walked in.
“Goddamn,” he muttered.
The leftovers of the party were still there. A wide screen TV played a porno. Over and over again someone was being fucked in the ass, and under that was a litter of clothing, cups, and what Fenn thought was a bong.
“You do know the police will come back pretty soon,” Fenn said. “I mean, they’ve got too. Nothing’s cleaned up.
“Well, then let’s find Noah,” Todd was already in the living room, his foot poised on the stair.
Paul danced ahead of him. “He’s in the bedroom you all had. He was there with one of the Chicago Friends.”
“The one we saw today?”
“No,” said Paul, hopping up and down on one foot like he had to pee as he waited for Fenn and Todd to come up the steps.
“No,” Paul repeated, leading them down the large hall. “That’s the one I think turned Guy into the police. I don’t know all what went on there, though. I think Guy might of cheated him, or he thought he was cheated.”
Paul entered the room Fenn and Todd remembered, and then he went into the closet and was gone along time. Briefly Fenn remembered Narnia. Then Paul was tugging Noah out whispering:
“Oh, Noah! Noah, be all right.”
Noah was passed out on the floor, twitching a little. and Todd got down on the floor beside him and murmured, “It’s alright, Noah. We’re gonna go now, all right?”
Todd clapped his hands and pleaded: “Open your eyes, Noah. Co’mon! Noah.”
“We need to call the hospital,” Fenn said. “We need to call the hospital, and drag his ass out of this house.”
“You got a cellphone?” Paul turned to Todd.
Todd shook his head, and Fenn said, “I don’t believe in cell phones. Let me check this bag here. Hell, maybe it’s got medicine. It looks like a doctor’s—”
“What?” Paul said.
Fenn had stopped in the middle of talking, opening up the large black, doctor’s bag.
“Oh…” he murmured, “shit.”
Todd moved away from Noah and looking into the bag, gasped.
“What is it?”
Fenn reached his hand out and pulled up a stack of bills.
“That’s got to be…” Paul began.
“Ten thousand dollars,” Fenn finished. “I was always good at practical math. Now,” he continued, trance like, “Paul, go find a phone while I collect some of this.”
“You can’t take that,” Todd began as Paul left the room.
“One, two, three, four,” Fenn stuffed his pockets, methodically. “That’s for the house.”
“Fenn Houghton.”
“Five,” he stuffed his breast pocket. “And these three more should cover the theatre.”
“Fenn,” Todd said, snatching the bills out of Fenn Houghton’s hands.
“You can’t do that.”
Fenn snapped to. He shook his head. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right.”
He took the bill stacks out of his pockets, and put them back into the leather bag, and then said, hefting it: “This is much more sensible. If you’re going to do something,” he lugged the bag in both hands, “Do it all the goddamn way!”
“Fenn!” Todd said.
“Look,” Fenn said, sharply. “You can be the Boy Scout and say No, No, No. But that’s only because you know I’m gonna keep saying Yes, Yes, Yes. Now you know me. I can’t turn away from this. I can’t have this fall in my hands and walk away from it. So either help. Or get the fuck out of the way. Lover.”
Todd opened his mouth, shut it, and then helped Fenn lift the bag. Paul was running back in.
“The ambulance will be here in a moment,” he said.
“All right,” said Fenn. “First thing’s first. You two carry Noah, and I’ll go ahead with this.”
Fenn marched ahead of them, heading down the steps, imagining the blue-white and red of ambulance sirens, or the return of the police and determined to be ahead of them.
“Fenn!” Todd shouted after him. “Aren’t you even a little terrified.”
Fenn set the bag down. Kissed the crucifix around his neck and the then crossed himself before grinning idiotically.
“Terrified,” he said, and continued lugging the bag down the stairs.
CHAPTER
THREE
LIFE IN THE CAYMANS
“THAT’S FINE! THAT’S FINE!” He shouted coming down the stairwell. “See if I don’t show you!”
Fenn, who had been sitting on the couch with Paul, looked up and saw a young man with thick dark hair in a tight black dress shirt and white pants marching down the steps, and up on the balcony were Guy McClintock and Todd. Todd looked down at Fenn and shrugged.
“That’s Bobby Frey,” Paul said.
“Does he do movies?” Fenn looked after him doubtfully. He was very handsome, but he didn’t seem the movie type.
“Go home and cry to your mama, Bobby!” Guy shouted down.
“No,” Paul said as Bobby passed. “He’s one of Guy’s Chicago friends from his other business.”
“Other business…” Fenn began.
“Yeah,” Paul said. “Guy multitasks. It took awhile to get the porn thing up so he used to run drugs to support himself. Still does. Everyone from that end of his business we call Chicago Friends. Cause that’s where they used to come from. I don’t know that much about Bobby. He might be a Cleveland friend. Or a Detroit one.”
“Not a New Yorker, though.”
“No,” Paul said, sagely. “He walks like a Midwesterner.”
They were in the bedroom they’d made love in that afternoon when Fenn said, “If there’s going to be one of those parties tonight—”
“There is—”
“I was going to say, I didn’t come dressed for a party. I don’t even know what to wear to a party like this.”
“I’m sure Johnny will show you something,” Todd said.
“Who…? Oh, Paul.”
“Hum?”
“His name is Paul, Todd.”
“Oh,” Todd said, and smiled. “That’s the thing about you, Fenn. You always get inside of people. You always know so much so quickly.
“Well, anyway, this little ugly standard outfit of jeans and army green shirt is what I’ll be wearing. Cause I’m the filmmaker. But I know you’ll want to be dressed.”
Fenn looked at Todd, smiling, waiting for an answer.
“Cause you’re you,” he said.
“Truthfully,” Fenn said, “I don’t greatly want to go to the party.”
“Do you know?” said Todd, “We could just go back home for a bit, and then drive back here later on.”
“But with the price of gas. Do you really want to?”
“It’s about five-thirty now. If we leave we’ll be back home by seven. Eat a little. Relax. Shower. We can head back here at around ten or nine-thirty. The Party will be at its dirtiest. In fact, it’ll be at the place I stopped filming last night.”
“All right,” Fenn stood up. “We’ll go. I’m going to go say goodbye to Paul and tell him to take care of himself.”
“That is such a you thing to do,” Todd said.
Fenn cocked his head.
“I think that was a compliment.”
“You bet your pretty round ass it was,” Todd said, grabbing that pretty round ass.
“GOD, MY HEAD IS hurting,” Todd yawned as he leaned ahead.
Red taillights floated by in the night.
“Why don’t you switch seats and let me drive. You need rest,” Fenn said.
“Fenn, I love you, but you’re legally blind, and I was the one that taught you to drive so, if you don’t mind I think I’ll get a lot more rest if I’m at the wheel.”
“Suit yourself,” Fenn said and reaching into his breast pocket, he pulled out a cigarette.
“I guess it’ll be about…. Almost midnight by the time we get to the party.”
“What’s it gonna be like?”
“Oh, Fenn, it won’t be like anything you’d call a party. It’ll be…”
“Like an orgy?”
“Well, actually it will be an orgy,” Todd said. “At least it was last night.”
“Wow,” Fenn sat back. “I thought I’d be excited.”
“You’re bored? About going to an orgy?”
“No. I’m mildly terrified is what I am.”
“Well, just hold onto my shirttail. You know,” Todd told him, “you didn’t have to come. I would have been all right if you’d stayed home.”
“And I would have thought for the rest of my life, damn, I missed an orgy. I could have seen an orgy.”
“Do you know Guy offered to do a porno of us?”
“Offered?”
“Yes. It was going to be something we could watch in the privacy of our own home,” Todd grinned, making quote marks.
“You know, I just think that’s weird. I think this whole thing is weird. Ehhh…..” Fenn craned his neck and yawned.
“Whaddit the sign say, babe?”
“You’re asking me? The legally blind one? It said we’ve just entered Port Ridge.”
“Only ten minutes to the land of Sodom.”
“That’s a good title for a play.”
“Or an autobiography.”
“Speak for yourself. Say,” Fenn interrupted himself. “What about for the documentary?”
Todd cackled, “That’s actually a pretty great idea.”
It wasn’t ten minutes. Port Ridge was a small town, and on Saturday night, this late, there was no traffic. They went through blinking red lights, and soon they were on the familiar dead in street, no traffic, only the shadow of Guy’s house on the hill growing larger as they approached.
“Ah, here we are.”
“Up and up the winding path,” Fenn sang. “Todd, this has to be the strangest movie you’ve ever made.”
“We’ll park right here,” Todd said, settling on the street, half a block before the house.
“There’ll be so many cars here, and between getting the valet to park it and getting it back… It’ll just be shorter if we park right here.”
But for the bass thump of music pounding from the house and the occasional raucous scream, the walk up was quiet and still. They were halfway toward the house when, suddenly, whirring sirens tore apart the night and lights were flashing.
“What the…?” Todd began.
Fenn pulled him into the trees and said, “Take out your camera and start filming. I’ll set up the lights.”
Patrol car after patrol car was whirring up to the house and Todd was shaking. But Fenn was cool and calm about the whole business, setting up a small light for Todd to shoot by.
“You got most of the party,” Fenn said. “Now you can shoot its aftermath.”
Fenn stepped out of the trees.
“What are you doing?” Todd hissed.
Fenn shrugged, “Getting a better view.
There were five patrol cars now, with lights flashing in the circle driveway, and cops in blue were jumping out of them and entering the house. Soon the music died down, but the screaming began. Fenn came back to the clump of trees and told Todd, “I’ll bet these people have been looking for a way to close down Guy for a long time.”
“Whaddo you think they found?”
“A bunch of folks fucking and snorting coke and all sorts of shit. That’s what they found,” Fenn said. He walked back to the edge of the street, watching. Another siren whirred and he went back into the bushes.
“Okay,” Fenn whispered, “All you need to know is everyone is getting arrested. It’s a good thing we came late as we did.”
“It’s a good thing we parked the car right here.”
After a while Todd said, “Whaddo we do?”
Fenn shrugged.
“We wait the whole thing out.”
“I think they’re gone,” Todd said. “I think it’s all over.”
Fenn started taking apart the lights, and Todd was shutting off his camera.
“Not at all what I expected.”
“No,” Fenn shook his head. “And don’t think about it too much now, but there goes your seventy-five-thousand dollars.”
“Oh, hell,” Todd muttered. “How’s he gonna pay from jail?”
“He may not stay in jail,” Fenn said.
“Yeah, but somehow it’s doubtful this’ll translate into me getting paid anytime soon.”
“Well,” Fenn said, “now that I’ve brought it up, I say let’s forget about it.”
They were coming onto the sidewalk when a figure came staggering toward them and as Fenn stepped out of the way, the swaying figure crashed into Todd.
“Johnny?” Todd began.
“Paul?”
Paul Anderson, turned Johnny Mellow turned from one of them to the other and said, “It was… awful. The police. They were everywhere. I had to hide with Noah.”
“Wha?” Todd began.
“Noah had gotten pretty fucked up when the police came. So I lugged him around with me to hide. We hid in a closet. Well, I hid him. And now, I was going to get help.”
“Well, I guess we better go,” said Fenn..
“Go?” Todd said. “Into a house that just got raided by the cops? A house the cops could come back to at any moment?”
“Well then I guess we better be quick about it,” Fenn said.
TODD LOOKED AROUND the large door as if he expected a cop to be hiding inside of the foyer. But Fenn simply walked in.
“Goddamn,” he muttered.
The leftovers of the party were still there. A wide screen TV played a porno. Over and over again someone was being fucked in the ass, and under that was a litter of clothing, cups, and what Fenn thought was a bong.
“You do know the police will come back pretty soon,” Fenn said. “I mean, they’ve got too. Nothing’s cleaned up.
“Well, then let’s find Noah,” Todd was already in the living room, his foot poised on the stair.
Paul danced ahead of him. “He’s in the bedroom you all had. He was there with one of the Chicago Friends.”
“The one we saw today?”
“No,” said Paul, hopping up and down on one foot like he had to pee as he waited for Fenn and Todd to come up the steps.
“No,” Paul repeated, leading them down the large hall. “That’s the one I think turned Guy into the police. I don’t know all what went on there, though. I think Guy might of cheated him, or he thought he was cheated.”
Paul entered the room Fenn and Todd remembered, and then he went into the closet and was gone along time. Briefly Fenn remembered Narnia. Then Paul was tugging Noah out whispering:
“Oh, Noah! Noah, be all right.”
Noah was passed out on the floor, twitching a little. and Todd got down on the floor beside him and murmured, “It’s alright, Noah. We’re gonna go now, all right?”
Todd clapped his hands and pleaded: “Open your eyes, Noah. Co’mon! Noah.”
“We need to call the hospital,” Fenn said. “We need to call the hospital, and drag his ass out of this house.”
“You got a cellphone?” Paul turned to Todd.
Todd shook his head, and Fenn said, “I don’t believe in cell phones. Let me check this bag here. Hell, maybe it’s got medicine. It looks like a doctor’s—”
“What?” Paul said.
Fenn had stopped in the middle of talking, opening up the large black, doctor’s bag.
“Oh…” he murmured, “shit.”
Todd moved away from Noah and looking into the bag, gasped.
“What is it?”
Fenn reached his hand out and pulled up a stack of bills.
“That’s got to be…” Paul began.
“Ten thousand dollars,” Fenn finished. “I was always good at practical math. Now,” he continued, trance like, “Paul, go find a phone while I collect some of this.”
“You can’t take that,” Todd began as Paul left the room.
“One, two, three, four,” Fenn stuffed his pockets, methodically. “That’s for the house.”
“Fenn Houghton.”
“Five,” he stuffed his breast pocket. “And these three more should cover the theatre.”
“Fenn,” Todd said, snatching the bills out of Fenn Houghton’s hands.
“You can’t do that.”
Fenn snapped to. He shook his head. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right.”
He took the bill stacks out of his pockets, and put them back into the leather bag, and then said, hefting it: “This is much more sensible. If you’re going to do something,” he lugged the bag in both hands, “Do it all the goddamn way!”
“Fenn!” Todd said.
“Look,” Fenn said, sharply. “You can be the Boy Scout and say No, No, No. But that’s only because you know I’m gonna keep saying Yes, Yes, Yes. Now you know me. I can’t turn away from this. I can’t have this fall in my hands and walk away from it. So either help. Or get the fuck out of the way. Lover.”
Todd opened his mouth, shut it, and then helped Fenn lift the bag. Paul was running back in.
“The ambulance will be here in a moment,” he said.
“All right,” said Fenn. “First thing’s first. You two carry Noah, and I’ll go ahead with this.”
Fenn marched ahead of them, heading down the steps, imagining the blue-white and red of ambulance sirens, or the return of the police and determined to be ahead of them.
“Fenn!” Todd shouted after him. “Aren’t you even a little terrified.”
Fenn set the bag down. Kissed the crucifix around his neck and the then crossed himself before grinning idiotically.
“Terrified,” he said, and continued lugging the bag down the stairs.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I hope Fenn, Todd and Paul don't get caught by the police and I hope Noah is ok! Great start to a new chapter.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
They better just move fast and play it cool. Let's hope they do. The police station sucks!!!!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
WEEKEND PORTION OF THE HOUSES IN ROSSFORD
CHAPTER
THREE CONTINUED
LIFE IN THE CAYMANS
“So I was hired to tape this party,” Todd said, and that was true enough, “and I was coming back with my partner and—”
“This is your partner?” the police officer, who had arrived after the ambulance said, pointing to Paul.
“Yes,” Paul said, at the prompting of Fenn, who was behind the officer. “We came, and that’s when we found our friend Noah at the door. Mr. Houghton pointed him out to us.”
“A friend,” Fenn said. The less important they were the less it mattered that they were lying.
The ambulance was already going away with Noah, and Fenn said, “I’ll follow it. Where’s it going?”
“Good Samaritan Hospital.”
“Meet me there. Or can they come with me, officer?”
“Uh,” the policeman said, absently. “I guess. You all can’t tell us anything more. Thanks for being good citizens.”
Paul and Todd nodded dumbly, and Fenn was already at the Land Rover.
“Time to get the fuck out of here,” he said, crawling into the back and hovering over the bag.
“Follow that ambulance,” Paul sang in a slightly weary voice.
The Land Rover jumped with the pull of the stick shift and Todd, turning the car around, said, “You can’t seriously be thinking of keeping that money.”
“I’m more than seriously thinking about it,” Fenn said. “But the point is we couldn’t even think about it if we’d just left it in the house. Or all we could do was think about it. Think about… If only we’d taken the money. If only…”
“That’s called imagination, Fenn,” Todd said. “That’s what people all over the world do to stay out of jail. If only I’d killed my mother-in-law. If only I’d slapped that cop. If only I’d bombed my high school class reunion. We imagine. We don’t act.”
“And that’s why people have nothing,” Fenn said. Fenn reached into the bag and handed two stacks of bills to Paul. “And now you have twenty thousand dollars.”
“Fuck…” Paul murmured.
“And see,” Fenn said. “If I reach into this bag then… Here! You have ten thousand more.”
“Fenn—”
“But you have to act,” Fenn continued over Todd. “If you don’t act, then you ain’t got shit.
“Now,” Fenn began from the backseat. “We have to decide if we want to keep all of this, or if we only want about half. Half sounded right to begin with, but really I think I was just being skittish. If you’re going to take. Take.”
“Take?” Todd said. “You mean steal.”
“Steal from who? A drug lord?”
“That’s right!” Todd said. “A drug lord. Probably. We don’t even know whose money it is. A drug lord might come after us.”
“A drug lord, whatever that is,” Fenn said, “might somehow believe that his bag of money he brought to a pornographer’s house to get drugs or for drugs he’d given along with, probably a little sex and a little porn, was taken by Fenn Houghton and Todd Meraden?”
“And me?” Paul added.
“And Paul Anderson, of East Carmel, Indiana? He’d think that, Todd? Instead of thinking the police took it along with everything else, and the money went back to the government? And you think it was the only money taken?”
“You’re right, Fenn,” Paul said. “It wasn’t. This was the money you found. But they found other stuff. Not as much as in your bag—”
“It’s not his bag!” Todd cried.
“But, baby,” Fenn leaned over the seat to kiss his irritated lover, “it’s not anybody else’s either. When a major drug bust goes down the money is pretty much up for grabs. That’s where dirty cops come from.”
“And you think…” Todd said, shaking his head as they turned into the hospital behind the whirring ambulance, “that we can just… take this money and not…”
“What?” said Fenn. “Be punished. Be punished by God who is some white man in the sky that says good little boys turn in bags of money to the cops. Hell no!
“Todd, haven’t you read the Bible? Abraham passed off Sarah as his sister to get into Egypt without being punished. God was cool with it. Jacob lied to his own daddy to get Esau’s blessing and later on Joseph fucked his brothers over just because they deserved it. ”
Todd stopped the car and turned around on Fenn.
“You’re saying… this is a sign from God? This is a gift from God. You get on your knees and pray for enough money to pay your rent and God sends you a job. That’s a sign from God. God does not drop bagfuls of drug money.”
“Apparently he does,” Fenn said, hoisting the back. “Because apparently he did. What I’m saying is you think the universe works because some stingy hardworking God tells you keep your nose to the grindstone and I’ll give you just enough to squeak by whereas I believe in luck. And I believe in lots and lots of good and not just crumbs and I believe if you reach out your hand to take, good things will be there. And, I am sure,” Fenn laughed, running his hands over the stacks of bills, “That God is one beautiful, crooked ass motherfucker, and he has given us this money to do with as we please!”
“You’ll be all right. Noah. You’ll be all right.”
“Won’t he, doctor?” Paul looked up.
The doctor was an aging man with a paunch, and gray hair at his temples.
“He’ll be just fine,” he told Paul. “But we need to get him hydrated. I’d recommend he stay the night.”
Paul nodded.
He almost laughed thinking that the last doctor he’d seen was Doctor Stiffrod in Johnny’s Deep Check Up, and he hadn’t looked anything like this old man. He’d been dark haired and deep chested like Brad Carlton from Young in the Restless, in the old days when he’d been eye candy instead of a middle aged business man. Guy had been directing this movie. This was how he’d met Guy, and he said, “We want to keep this as real as possible. Age the doctor up a little bit.”
The doctor, who was wearing a thong under his white coat with the stethoscope hanging around it had submitted to having his temples artfully silvered.
“Just a touch of daddy bear,” Guy had said.
“Not too much daddy bear,” Brad Carlton told him. They all chuckled.
“Rehhh—”
Paul bent down. Noah was opening his mouth to say something. He looked like a baby bird.
“Rehhh—”
“Noah,” Paul said.
Noah blinked. He croaked.
“Here,” Paul reached for the cup of water on the table. “Drink this.”
Noah nodded, and the water ran down his chin as he tried to drink.
“You remember Todd and his… Fenn? Well, they were coming after the cops had left, and they helped me bring you here. They’re in the waiting room.”
Noah nodded for a long time before he croaked:
“Johnny.”
“Yeah?”
“What happened…? To everyone?”
“Arrested,” Paul said. “We were the lucky ones.”
Fenn came into the room now, and propped himself against the frame. Todd entered now, standing beside him.
“What do we do now?” Noah said.
Paul looked up at Fenn and Todd.
“Noah had come out here for a few weeks to do movies for Guy. But Guy probably won’t be making movies anytime soon.”
“Not on Monday he won’t be,” Fenn said.
“And whaddo I do?” said Paul. “I was working there. I was staying there.
“Well, you’ll just have to stay with us,” Fenn said.
Todd looked at him, surprised, and then said, “Well, that would make sense. If you wanted to.”
“Where else is he going to go?” said Fenn. “Especially at this time of night.”
“What about Noah?” said Paul.
“Tonight Noah is in the hospital,” Todd took over the thinking. “And tomorrow we can worry about tomorrow.”
“But,” Fenn said, looking at Paul and Noah, “We’re not going to leave him all homeless and shit.”
On the way back home, Fenn asked, “What the hell time is it?”
Todd looked out of the window at the lightening sky, then on the radio clock and said, “Crap, it’s almost five in the morning.”
“Well in that case just drop me in front of Saint Barbara’s for the six a.m. and Dan’ll bring me home.”
“Are you serious?”
“It’s Sunday. I’m up. Might as well get church out of the way. Otherwise I’ll spend the whole day thinking about how I should have gone.
Fenn yawned and turned on his side to take a nap.
“You all go to church?” Paul said.
“Fenn goes to church. Fenn is very… Catholic. The old style drinking, smoking, cursing—”
“And don’t forget fucking—”
“Yes,” Todd looked at him and sighed. “That kind of Catholic.”
“That’s right,” said Fenn. “Bring that suitcase into the house and if either one of you even thinks about… doing anything to that money... I’ll kill you. Flat out kill you.”
“He will,” Todd said, dolefully.
Paul nodded.
“I don’t doubt it.”
And whether our tomorrows be filled with good or ill,
we’ll triumph through our sorrows
And rise to bless you still
To marvel in your beauty
And glory in your ways
And make a joyful duty
Our sacrifice of praise!
The six o clock mass was always short and a capella because the organist was not awake yet, or rather, the organist was just waking up now to get ready for the ten o’clock.
Everyone was filing out of the church, crossing themselves, murmuring to each other, and Barbara Affren seized Fenn’s hand while demanding: “What are you doing up at the crack of dawn?”
Her husband, with a wink, said, “I’ve know Fenn since he was knee high, and I’ll bet it’s no good.”
“Well, now,” Fenn considered, “You’d be right.”
They laughed and then Barb Affren stopped laughing at the holy water font, because she knew Fenn wasn’t joking.
“Well, as usual, we have no intentions of asking what you’re up to now,” she said. “But just try to stay out of jail.”
“Father,” she shook the young priest’s hand as they came to the vestibule.
Dan Malloy was a sleepy looking early thirty-something with sandy hair, and he grasped Barb Affren’s hand and then asked, as he held Bob Affren’s, “Fenn, what’s this I hear about jail?”
“I’ll tell you on the way to my house.”
“Your house! No, Fenn. I was going to sleep…”
“Father Dan, now, you’re a priest,” Barb told him. “Sunday’s my day off. Not yours.”
Dan sighed, yawned and rolled his eyes dolefully.
“You can sleep at the house, Dan. And Todd’ll make you coffee. Besides, when you see what I have to show you it’ll wake you up.”
“Oh, Lord, Fenn!”
“You better go, Father,” Barbara Affren said.
“And if it’s too much…” said Bob.
“I’ll leave you out.”
“Please do.”
“This is Paul. Paul, this is my friend and priest, Father Dan Malloy.”
“It’s good to meet you,” Dan said cautiously, and turned to Fenn, “Is Paul what you had to show me?”
“Paul is a who, not a what,” Fenn said, moving through the darkened living room in the early morning house.
“Should I turn a light on?” Paul had been sleeping on the sofa.
“That’s not necessary,” Fenn said. “Just tell me where the bag is?”
“Oh, Todd left it in the Land Rover—”
“Left it in the Land Rover! Is he stupid? Are you stupid? Todd!”
“I’ll get the bag, Fenn,” Dan said in a soothing tone,
“NO ONE TOUCHES THAT BAG!”
Todd came down the steps, his hair sticking up.
“Did you leave the bag in the car?”
“Yes.”
“Give me your fucking keys. Now!”
Todd didn’t argue. He just ran up the stairs and came back, Fenn meeting him on the landing.
“Are you trying to get that bag stolen from us?”
“Fenn, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if it was, really—”
“We are NOT of the same opinion,” Fenn said, snatching the keys away.
“And incidentally, if it did get nabbed from the car, the police could be involved and then there would be real trouble, Sherlock.”
“The police—” Dan began.
“Com’on, priest!” Fenn went out of the house, and into the driveway hidden by the bushes, by the side of the house.
“I,” Fenn said, opening the Land Rover and climbing into it, going behind the back seat and lugging it, “could not keep this from you. You are my priest and just about my oldest friend.”
“All right,” Dan said, suddenly serious.
Dan climbed into the driver’s seat, and Fenn put the bag between them.
Fenn opened it.
“Holy—” Dan cut himself off.
“Say it,” Fenn said.
“Holy Jesus!” Dan hissed. “My… Gosh… My gosh… My God!” Dan crossed himself. “Where did you get this? How did you?”
“To make a long story short, Todd went to go shoot a documentary up in Port Ridge for this porn director. Ever heard of Guy McClintock?”
Dan looked at Fenn severely.
“Of course not. You’re a man of the cloth. A real man of the cloth. Well, anyway, Todd was doing a documentary of him. But last night, when we went up to shoot the party, there had been a drug bust and Paul, who you just met came out from the party—”
“He sells drugs?”
“No.”
“Thank God.”
“He does porn. Anyway, he told us this other pornstar had passed out from drugs and needed our help. So we went to help him and call an ambulance, but I thought medicine or something might be in the bag beside him. Only it wasn’t. It was this money, see? “
“Oh, Fenn…”
“I know!”
Dan, whose eyes had been rolling in his head, suddenly sharpened when they looked at Fenn.
“What?”
“Fenn… you’re going to keep this money. Aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t do that.”
“No…” Fenn shook his head. “I have to do that. You know that. You know me. I can’t turn away.”
“It’s dangerous. Turn this in. Forget about it. Just…”
“No, Dan!” Fenn said sharply. “That’s the difference between us. It’s why I’m me and you’re you. You were always, always afraid.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It is fair. You live your life stepping around imaginary bits of glass. You’re just… so careful. Too goddamn careful.”
“And you think the way you jump into everything, heedlessly, is so damn great.” Dan whispered. “Well, you’re wrong, Fenn. You’re reckless. You’re not careful enough.”
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND. MORE WILL BE POSTED EARLY SUNDAY MORNING.
CHAPTER
THREE CONTINUED
LIFE IN THE CAYMANS
“So I was hired to tape this party,” Todd said, and that was true enough, “and I was coming back with my partner and—”
“This is your partner?” the police officer, who had arrived after the ambulance said, pointing to Paul.
“Yes,” Paul said, at the prompting of Fenn, who was behind the officer. “We came, and that’s when we found our friend Noah at the door. Mr. Houghton pointed him out to us.”
“A friend,” Fenn said. The less important they were the less it mattered that they were lying.
The ambulance was already going away with Noah, and Fenn said, “I’ll follow it. Where’s it going?”
“Good Samaritan Hospital.”
“Meet me there. Or can they come with me, officer?”
“Uh,” the policeman said, absently. “I guess. You all can’t tell us anything more. Thanks for being good citizens.”
Paul and Todd nodded dumbly, and Fenn was already at the Land Rover.
“Time to get the fuck out of here,” he said, crawling into the back and hovering over the bag.
“Follow that ambulance,” Paul sang in a slightly weary voice.
The Land Rover jumped with the pull of the stick shift and Todd, turning the car around, said, “You can’t seriously be thinking of keeping that money.”
“I’m more than seriously thinking about it,” Fenn said. “But the point is we couldn’t even think about it if we’d just left it in the house. Or all we could do was think about it. Think about… If only we’d taken the money. If only…”
“That’s called imagination, Fenn,” Todd said. “That’s what people all over the world do to stay out of jail. If only I’d killed my mother-in-law. If only I’d slapped that cop. If only I’d bombed my high school class reunion. We imagine. We don’t act.”
“And that’s why people have nothing,” Fenn said. Fenn reached into the bag and handed two stacks of bills to Paul. “And now you have twenty thousand dollars.”
“Fuck…” Paul murmured.
“And see,” Fenn said. “If I reach into this bag then… Here! You have ten thousand more.”
“Fenn—”
“But you have to act,” Fenn continued over Todd. “If you don’t act, then you ain’t got shit.
“Now,” Fenn began from the backseat. “We have to decide if we want to keep all of this, or if we only want about half. Half sounded right to begin with, but really I think I was just being skittish. If you’re going to take. Take.”
“Take?” Todd said. “You mean steal.”
“Steal from who? A drug lord?”
“That’s right!” Todd said. “A drug lord. Probably. We don’t even know whose money it is. A drug lord might come after us.”
“A drug lord, whatever that is,” Fenn said, “might somehow believe that his bag of money he brought to a pornographer’s house to get drugs or for drugs he’d given along with, probably a little sex and a little porn, was taken by Fenn Houghton and Todd Meraden?”
“And me?” Paul added.
“And Paul Anderson, of East Carmel, Indiana? He’d think that, Todd? Instead of thinking the police took it along with everything else, and the money went back to the government? And you think it was the only money taken?”
“You’re right, Fenn,” Paul said. “It wasn’t. This was the money you found. But they found other stuff. Not as much as in your bag—”
“It’s not his bag!” Todd cried.
“But, baby,” Fenn leaned over the seat to kiss his irritated lover, “it’s not anybody else’s either. When a major drug bust goes down the money is pretty much up for grabs. That’s where dirty cops come from.”
“And you think…” Todd said, shaking his head as they turned into the hospital behind the whirring ambulance, “that we can just… take this money and not…”
“What?” said Fenn. “Be punished. Be punished by God who is some white man in the sky that says good little boys turn in bags of money to the cops. Hell no!
“Todd, haven’t you read the Bible? Abraham passed off Sarah as his sister to get into Egypt without being punished. God was cool with it. Jacob lied to his own daddy to get Esau’s blessing and later on Joseph fucked his brothers over just because they deserved it. ”
Todd stopped the car and turned around on Fenn.
“You’re saying… this is a sign from God? This is a gift from God. You get on your knees and pray for enough money to pay your rent and God sends you a job. That’s a sign from God. God does not drop bagfuls of drug money.”
“Apparently he does,” Fenn said, hoisting the back. “Because apparently he did. What I’m saying is you think the universe works because some stingy hardworking God tells you keep your nose to the grindstone and I’ll give you just enough to squeak by whereas I believe in luck. And I believe in lots and lots of good and not just crumbs and I believe if you reach out your hand to take, good things will be there. And, I am sure,” Fenn laughed, running his hands over the stacks of bills, “That God is one beautiful, crooked ass motherfucker, and he has given us this money to do with as we please!”
“You’ll be all right. Noah. You’ll be all right.”
“Won’t he, doctor?” Paul looked up.
The doctor was an aging man with a paunch, and gray hair at his temples.
“He’ll be just fine,” he told Paul. “But we need to get him hydrated. I’d recommend he stay the night.”
Paul nodded.
He almost laughed thinking that the last doctor he’d seen was Doctor Stiffrod in Johnny’s Deep Check Up, and he hadn’t looked anything like this old man. He’d been dark haired and deep chested like Brad Carlton from Young in the Restless, in the old days when he’d been eye candy instead of a middle aged business man. Guy had been directing this movie. This was how he’d met Guy, and he said, “We want to keep this as real as possible. Age the doctor up a little bit.”
The doctor, who was wearing a thong under his white coat with the stethoscope hanging around it had submitted to having his temples artfully silvered.
“Just a touch of daddy bear,” Guy had said.
“Not too much daddy bear,” Brad Carlton told him. They all chuckled.
“Rehhh—”
Paul bent down. Noah was opening his mouth to say something. He looked like a baby bird.
“Rehhh—”
“Noah,” Paul said.
Noah blinked. He croaked.
“Here,” Paul reached for the cup of water on the table. “Drink this.”
Noah nodded, and the water ran down his chin as he tried to drink.
“You remember Todd and his… Fenn? Well, they were coming after the cops had left, and they helped me bring you here. They’re in the waiting room.”
Noah nodded for a long time before he croaked:
“Johnny.”
“Yeah?”
“What happened…? To everyone?”
“Arrested,” Paul said. “We were the lucky ones.”
Fenn came into the room now, and propped himself against the frame. Todd entered now, standing beside him.
“What do we do now?” Noah said.
Paul looked up at Fenn and Todd.
“Noah had come out here for a few weeks to do movies for Guy. But Guy probably won’t be making movies anytime soon.”
“Not on Monday he won’t be,” Fenn said.
“And whaddo I do?” said Paul. “I was working there. I was staying there.
“Well, you’ll just have to stay with us,” Fenn said.
Todd looked at him, surprised, and then said, “Well, that would make sense. If you wanted to.”
“Where else is he going to go?” said Fenn. “Especially at this time of night.”
“What about Noah?” said Paul.
“Tonight Noah is in the hospital,” Todd took over the thinking. “And tomorrow we can worry about tomorrow.”
“But,” Fenn said, looking at Paul and Noah, “We’re not going to leave him all homeless and shit.”
On the way back home, Fenn asked, “What the hell time is it?”
Todd looked out of the window at the lightening sky, then on the radio clock and said, “Crap, it’s almost five in the morning.”
“Well in that case just drop me in front of Saint Barbara’s for the six a.m. and Dan’ll bring me home.”
“Are you serious?”
“It’s Sunday. I’m up. Might as well get church out of the way. Otherwise I’ll spend the whole day thinking about how I should have gone.
Fenn yawned and turned on his side to take a nap.
“You all go to church?” Paul said.
“Fenn goes to church. Fenn is very… Catholic. The old style drinking, smoking, cursing—”
“And don’t forget fucking—”
“Yes,” Todd looked at him and sighed. “That kind of Catholic.”
“That’s right,” said Fenn. “Bring that suitcase into the house and if either one of you even thinks about… doing anything to that money... I’ll kill you. Flat out kill you.”
“He will,” Todd said, dolefully.
Paul nodded.
“I don’t doubt it.”
And whether our tomorrows be filled with good or ill,
we’ll triumph through our sorrows
And rise to bless you still
To marvel in your beauty
And glory in your ways
And make a joyful duty
Our sacrifice of praise!
The six o clock mass was always short and a capella because the organist was not awake yet, or rather, the organist was just waking up now to get ready for the ten o’clock.
Everyone was filing out of the church, crossing themselves, murmuring to each other, and Barbara Affren seized Fenn’s hand while demanding: “What are you doing up at the crack of dawn?”
Her husband, with a wink, said, “I’ve know Fenn since he was knee high, and I’ll bet it’s no good.”
“Well, now,” Fenn considered, “You’d be right.”
They laughed and then Barb Affren stopped laughing at the holy water font, because she knew Fenn wasn’t joking.
“Well, as usual, we have no intentions of asking what you’re up to now,” she said. “But just try to stay out of jail.”
“Father,” she shook the young priest’s hand as they came to the vestibule.
Dan Malloy was a sleepy looking early thirty-something with sandy hair, and he grasped Barb Affren’s hand and then asked, as he held Bob Affren’s, “Fenn, what’s this I hear about jail?”
“I’ll tell you on the way to my house.”
“Your house! No, Fenn. I was going to sleep…”
“Father Dan, now, you’re a priest,” Barb told him. “Sunday’s my day off. Not yours.”
Dan sighed, yawned and rolled his eyes dolefully.
“You can sleep at the house, Dan. And Todd’ll make you coffee. Besides, when you see what I have to show you it’ll wake you up.”
“Oh, Lord, Fenn!”
“You better go, Father,” Barbara Affren said.
“And if it’s too much…” said Bob.
“I’ll leave you out.”
“Please do.”
“This is Paul. Paul, this is my friend and priest, Father Dan Malloy.”
“It’s good to meet you,” Dan said cautiously, and turned to Fenn, “Is Paul what you had to show me?”
“Paul is a who, not a what,” Fenn said, moving through the darkened living room in the early morning house.
“Should I turn a light on?” Paul had been sleeping on the sofa.
“That’s not necessary,” Fenn said. “Just tell me where the bag is?”
“Oh, Todd left it in the Land Rover—”
“Left it in the Land Rover! Is he stupid? Are you stupid? Todd!”
“I’ll get the bag, Fenn,” Dan said in a soothing tone,
“NO ONE TOUCHES THAT BAG!”
Todd came down the steps, his hair sticking up.
“Did you leave the bag in the car?”
“Yes.”
“Give me your fucking keys. Now!”
Todd didn’t argue. He just ran up the stairs and came back, Fenn meeting him on the landing.
“Are you trying to get that bag stolen from us?”
“Fenn, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if it was, really—”
“We are NOT of the same opinion,” Fenn said, snatching the keys away.
“And incidentally, if it did get nabbed from the car, the police could be involved and then there would be real trouble, Sherlock.”
“The police—” Dan began.
“Com’on, priest!” Fenn went out of the house, and into the driveway hidden by the bushes, by the side of the house.
“I,” Fenn said, opening the Land Rover and climbing into it, going behind the back seat and lugging it, “could not keep this from you. You are my priest and just about my oldest friend.”
“All right,” Dan said, suddenly serious.
Dan climbed into the driver’s seat, and Fenn put the bag between them.
Fenn opened it.
“Holy—” Dan cut himself off.
“Say it,” Fenn said.
“Holy Jesus!” Dan hissed. “My… Gosh… My gosh… My God!” Dan crossed himself. “Where did you get this? How did you?”
“To make a long story short, Todd went to go shoot a documentary up in Port Ridge for this porn director. Ever heard of Guy McClintock?”
Dan looked at Fenn severely.
“Of course not. You’re a man of the cloth. A real man of the cloth. Well, anyway, Todd was doing a documentary of him. But last night, when we went up to shoot the party, there had been a drug bust and Paul, who you just met came out from the party—”
“He sells drugs?”
“No.”
“Thank God.”
“He does porn. Anyway, he told us this other pornstar had passed out from drugs and needed our help. So we went to help him and call an ambulance, but I thought medicine or something might be in the bag beside him. Only it wasn’t. It was this money, see? “
“Oh, Fenn…”
“I know!”
Dan, whose eyes had been rolling in his head, suddenly sharpened when they looked at Fenn.
“What?”
“Fenn… you’re going to keep this money. Aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t do that.”
“No…” Fenn shook his head. “I have to do that. You know that. You know me. I can’t turn away.”
“It’s dangerous. Turn this in. Forget about it. Just…”
“No, Dan!” Fenn said sharply. “That’s the difference between us. It’s why I’m me and you’re you. You were always, always afraid.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It is fair. You live your life stepping around imaginary bits of glass. You’re just… so careful. Too goddamn careful.”
“And you think the way you jump into everything, heedlessly, is so damn great.” Dan whispered. “Well, you’re wrong, Fenn. You’re reckless. You’re not careful enough.”
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND. MORE WILL BE POSTED EARLY SUNDAY MORNING.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Thanks for that portion and I hope you have a great weekend too! I kind of hope Fenn doesn't keep the money.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
There's no telling what Fenn will do.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
THE HOUSES IN ROSSFORD
CHAPTER
THREE CONTINUED
LIFE IN THE CAYMANS
“THIS WAS REALLY just the best date of my life,” Will said then amended, “Actually it was the only date of my life. But you get what I mean, right?”
Brendan nodded. By the grin on Will Klasko’s face he understood what he meant.
“And we didn’t get the movie at all. And Layla was all like, ‘I don’t get this, but I’ll watch it anyway,’ and then I was like, ‘I don’t get half of the movies I see.’ And you know what? I don’t. I just, I think… I don’t think I’m pretentious. I think I’m just curious. Like, if I KNOW that I’m going to get it, right off the bat, then what’s the point? Right? I’d rather take my chances on something and see where it goes. Like, have you ever seen Caligula?”
“No,” Brendan said.
“I’m sorry,” Will stopped. “Am I talking too much? I don’t mean to. I just… I do that sometimes. I ramble. But I don’t mean to.”
“No, no,” Brendan shook his head. “You weren’t talking too much. It’s just… I’m like you. I mean I do things I don’t mean to do. Like drift off. Or frown. It wasn’t you. I really do want to hear about your date. I’ve just got a lot on my mind. You know, it’s not like I have a lot of friends. You said I do, but…” Brendan spread his hands out. “You see you’re the only one here.”
“Oh,” said Will. “Then… Well, if we’re friends, and you have something on your mind, then you could tell me. Right?”
Brendan shook his head.
“It’s nothing big. Not really? I mean… I don’t even know how to say it,” Brendan lay back on his couch, playing with his key ring. “It’s just… Are you religious?”
“Not really,” Will said. “I mean, my parents are Methodist. Or were Methodist. My mom’s a Jew. She doesn’t practice or anything.”
“I was just going to say I could probably talk about it, you know, my troubles, to a priest.”
“You go to confession?”
“Not a lot.”
“What’s it like? Do you really go into a little closet and talk to him through that…. Wicker thing? I mean, the screen?”
“Well, sometimes,” Brendan said. “And then sometimes it’s just a room where you shoot the sh—shoot the breeze with him. I don’t really like that. I’d prefer the little closet.”
“I don’t think I’d prefer it at all,” Will said. “I think I’m too private for it. What happens?”
“Well, you go in, you tell him your problems. All the bad things you’ve done. He gives you some advice—if he knows what he’s doing. And he gives you a little penance. Like… say a rosary or something. And then he forgives you.”
“Forgives you?”
“On God’s behalf.”
“Oh,” Will shrugged. He’d been about to say, “So it’s like going to a shrink,” when he instantly realized that would be the wrong thing to say and then, following this, realized that it couldn’t really be like going to a shrink at all. He’d been to one. You talked about all your problems as much as you wanted to and you paid a bill. You never said, “This is the wrong thing I’ve done,” and there was never a cure for it. Will doubted very much that any of priests at Saint Barbara’s could cure anything. But at least they knew a cure was necessary. At least they offered the hope of one. Now that had to count for something. Didn’t it?
The door slammed shut and Dan Malloy snapped to. He opened the screen and, on the other side, the voice he knew to be Brendan Miller’s rapidly fired:
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
“Oh,” Dan’s large blue eyes blinked on the other side of the screen, “you want this the old fashioned way?”
“Father!”
“All right, already,” Dan sat down in the chair, so only his profile was vaguely showing through the screen. “I just think the old way is so impersonal and so… furtive…”
“Look, Father, I need to be furtive right now.”
Brendan sighed loudly. “We’re just going to start this whole thing over again.”
“Brendan—” the priest began, but Brendan was gone. Apparently someone was outside because he heard Brendan Miller say, “No. Not yet. I’m not finished.”
And then Brendan came back in, crossed himself and said, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
“I bless you in the Name of the Father, the Son and he Holy Spirit. Actually, I like to say Holy Ghost, but that’s more of an Anglican thi—”
“Father!”
“How long has it been since your last confession, my son?”
“It has been six days.”
“Six days. What could you have done in the last six days?”
“Father, I have impure thoughts.”
“Of course you do. You’re sixteen—”
“Seventeen.”
“Well, there you go! Seventeen. All the thoughts that seventeen year old Catholic boys have are supposed to be impure. It’s not impure to think about… physical love. It’s natural, all right? So you need to stop stoning yourself. You need to stop thinking that God hates your… ” Dan whispered, “sexuality.”
“Father!”
“Don’t Father me, Bren. Stop being a hypocrite. You came here for advice, right?”
“And for forgiveness.”
“But if there’s nothing to be forgiven for—”
“Father,” Brendan whispered, “I watch dirty movies!”
“Well,” Dan whispered back, “stop watching them.”
“If I don’t watch them they just play in my head all the time. And, Father, I’m also afraid that if I stop watching I’ll start doing. I don’t want to do bad things.”
Dan looked at his watch and said, “Look, Bren. I’ve got a good forty-five minutes before the evening Mass. So if this is going to be a real discussion, how about we take this to the office? Or the rectory?
“Ahh…”
“I know how much you hate this, but I feel silly giving advice here.”
“You’ve got someone outside the curtain.”
“Mr. Pavone. He’ll be quick. Let me do him, and then I’ll get right back to you. All right. Go sit down and I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“ALL RIGHT,” Dan said in the parish house. “How about you tell me, why you want to see dirty movies? I mean, what’s in them for you?”
“You know, Father! I mean... You know what’s in them?” Then a new thought occurred to him. “You do know, don’t you, Father Dan?”
“Of course I don’t,” Dan muttered, deadpan, as he circled the large dining room table. “I’ve been a priest my whole life. I came out of my mother’s womb with a Roman collar and I was never a teenager.”
Brendan sniggered and said, “Well, then you do know… Sex.”
“Yes, Brendan.”
Dan, who was restless, and like to walk around a lot, finally sat down across from the boy.
“But there’s usually something else. Like, if it’s violent you like the violence or the force and then that’s what appeals to you. Or if it’s soft then you want affection and love, and that’s what’s appealing to you. Every porn is a fantasy and there is something in the fantasy that you like. I mean, you probably don’t like every dirty movie you’ve seen. So, you should figure out what it is in the dirty movies that appeals to you.”
“You know a lot about porn,” Brendan said.
Dan went red and said, “I know a lot about people. I know a lot about fantasy. I know a lot about me.”
Brendan nodded and shrugged.
“I guess it’s the affection. I guess it’s the touching. I’ve seen… the mean stuff. I don’t like that. I’ve seen the rough stuff and I sort of… I guess the whole idea of just letting go and feeling that intensely… That excites me. The whole… wait till you’re married thing. My mother waited till she was married and my dad was horrible to her. Then he left her. I mean, what makes marriage different than anything else? If she’d just… done it with him, then I think that might have been better.”
Dan rolled his eyes and laughed.
“You’re supposed to tell me I’m wrong, Father.”
“If I was a liberal, progressive, hell raising priest I would tell you how right you were. If I was naïve and afraid, I’d tell you I was scandalized. But… I’m me, and me can only listen.”
“And then… I don’t think I want to be married.”
“Not even to Dena?”
“Oh, Father, I like Dena. I mean… I love Dena. But… I… When I think about… making love, I don’t think about her. I don’t want to.”
“Maybe you just have a hard time putting your love for Dena with physical desire. I mean, maybe it just embarrasses you?”
“No. I mean. It doesn’t add up. It doesn’t match.”
“Maybe it does but you don’t—”
“Father,” Brendan said sharply.
Dan nodded.
“I think I’m gay.”
CHAPTER
THREE CONTINUED
LIFE IN THE CAYMANS
“THIS WAS REALLY just the best date of my life,” Will said then amended, “Actually it was the only date of my life. But you get what I mean, right?”
Brendan nodded. By the grin on Will Klasko’s face he understood what he meant.
“And we didn’t get the movie at all. And Layla was all like, ‘I don’t get this, but I’ll watch it anyway,’ and then I was like, ‘I don’t get half of the movies I see.’ And you know what? I don’t. I just, I think… I don’t think I’m pretentious. I think I’m just curious. Like, if I KNOW that I’m going to get it, right off the bat, then what’s the point? Right? I’d rather take my chances on something and see where it goes. Like, have you ever seen Caligula?”
“No,” Brendan said.
“I’m sorry,” Will stopped. “Am I talking too much? I don’t mean to. I just… I do that sometimes. I ramble. But I don’t mean to.”
“No, no,” Brendan shook his head. “You weren’t talking too much. It’s just… I’m like you. I mean I do things I don’t mean to do. Like drift off. Or frown. It wasn’t you. I really do want to hear about your date. I’ve just got a lot on my mind. You know, it’s not like I have a lot of friends. You said I do, but…” Brendan spread his hands out. “You see you’re the only one here.”
“Oh,” said Will. “Then… Well, if we’re friends, and you have something on your mind, then you could tell me. Right?”
Brendan shook his head.
“It’s nothing big. Not really? I mean… I don’t even know how to say it,” Brendan lay back on his couch, playing with his key ring. “It’s just… Are you religious?”
“Not really,” Will said. “I mean, my parents are Methodist. Or were Methodist. My mom’s a Jew. She doesn’t practice or anything.”
“I was just going to say I could probably talk about it, you know, my troubles, to a priest.”
“You go to confession?”
“Not a lot.”
“What’s it like? Do you really go into a little closet and talk to him through that…. Wicker thing? I mean, the screen?”
“Well, sometimes,” Brendan said. “And then sometimes it’s just a room where you shoot the sh—shoot the breeze with him. I don’t really like that. I’d prefer the little closet.”
“I don’t think I’d prefer it at all,” Will said. “I think I’m too private for it. What happens?”
“Well, you go in, you tell him your problems. All the bad things you’ve done. He gives you some advice—if he knows what he’s doing. And he gives you a little penance. Like… say a rosary or something. And then he forgives you.”
“Forgives you?”
“On God’s behalf.”
“Oh,” Will shrugged. He’d been about to say, “So it’s like going to a shrink,” when he instantly realized that would be the wrong thing to say and then, following this, realized that it couldn’t really be like going to a shrink at all. He’d been to one. You talked about all your problems as much as you wanted to and you paid a bill. You never said, “This is the wrong thing I’ve done,” and there was never a cure for it. Will doubted very much that any of priests at Saint Barbara’s could cure anything. But at least they knew a cure was necessary. At least they offered the hope of one. Now that had to count for something. Didn’t it?
The door slammed shut and Dan Malloy snapped to. He opened the screen and, on the other side, the voice he knew to be Brendan Miller’s rapidly fired:
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
“Oh,” Dan’s large blue eyes blinked on the other side of the screen, “you want this the old fashioned way?”
“Father!”
“All right, already,” Dan sat down in the chair, so only his profile was vaguely showing through the screen. “I just think the old way is so impersonal and so… furtive…”
“Look, Father, I need to be furtive right now.”
Brendan sighed loudly. “We’re just going to start this whole thing over again.”
“Brendan—” the priest began, but Brendan was gone. Apparently someone was outside because he heard Brendan Miller say, “No. Not yet. I’m not finished.”
And then Brendan came back in, crossed himself and said, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
“I bless you in the Name of the Father, the Son and he Holy Spirit. Actually, I like to say Holy Ghost, but that’s more of an Anglican thi—”
“Father!”
“How long has it been since your last confession, my son?”
“It has been six days.”
“Six days. What could you have done in the last six days?”
“Father, I have impure thoughts.”
“Of course you do. You’re sixteen—”
“Seventeen.”
“Well, there you go! Seventeen. All the thoughts that seventeen year old Catholic boys have are supposed to be impure. It’s not impure to think about… physical love. It’s natural, all right? So you need to stop stoning yourself. You need to stop thinking that God hates your… ” Dan whispered, “sexuality.”
“Father!”
“Don’t Father me, Bren. Stop being a hypocrite. You came here for advice, right?”
“And for forgiveness.”
“But if there’s nothing to be forgiven for—”
“Father,” Brendan whispered, “I watch dirty movies!”
“Well,” Dan whispered back, “stop watching them.”
“If I don’t watch them they just play in my head all the time. And, Father, I’m also afraid that if I stop watching I’ll start doing. I don’t want to do bad things.”
Dan looked at his watch and said, “Look, Bren. I’ve got a good forty-five minutes before the evening Mass. So if this is going to be a real discussion, how about we take this to the office? Or the rectory?
“Ahh…”
“I know how much you hate this, but I feel silly giving advice here.”
“You’ve got someone outside the curtain.”
“Mr. Pavone. He’ll be quick. Let me do him, and then I’ll get right back to you. All right. Go sit down and I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“ALL RIGHT,” Dan said in the parish house. “How about you tell me, why you want to see dirty movies? I mean, what’s in them for you?”
“You know, Father! I mean... You know what’s in them?” Then a new thought occurred to him. “You do know, don’t you, Father Dan?”
“Of course I don’t,” Dan muttered, deadpan, as he circled the large dining room table. “I’ve been a priest my whole life. I came out of my mother’s womb with a Roman collar and I was never a teenager.”
Brendan sniggered and said, “Well, then you do know… Sex.”
“Yes, Brendan.”
Dan, who was restless, and like to walk around a lot, finally sat down across from the boy.
“But there’s usually something else. Like, if it’s violent you like the violence or the force and then that’s what appeals to you. Or if it’s soft then you want affection and love, and that’s what’s appealing to you. Every porn is a fantasy and there is something in the fantasy that you like. I mean, you probably don’t like every dirty movie you’ve seen. So, you should figure out what it is in the dirty movies that appeals to you.”
“You know a lot about porn,” Brendan said.
Dan went red and said, “I know a lot about people. I know a lot about fantasy. I know a lot about me.”
Brendan nodded and shrugged.
“I guess it’s the affection. I guess it’s the touching. I’ve seen… the mean stuff. I don’t like that. I’ve seen the rough stuff and I sort of… I guess the whole idea of just letting go and feeling that intensely… That excites me. The whole… wait till you’re married thing. My mother waited till she was married and my dad was horrible to her. Then he left her. I mean, what makes marriage different than anything else? If she’d just… done it with him, then I think that might have been better.”
Dan rolled his eyes and laughed.
“You’re supposed to tell me I’m wrong, Father.”
“If I was a liberal, progressive, hell raising priest I would tell you how right you were. If I was naïve and afraid, I’d tell you I was scandalized. But… I’m me, and me can only listen.”
“And then… I don’t think I want to be married.”
“Not even to Dena?”
“Oh, Father, I like Dena. I mean… I love Dena. But… I… When I think about… making love, I don’t think about her. I don’t want to.”
“Maybe you just have a hard time putting your love for Dena with physical desire. I mean, maybe it just embarrasses you?”
“No. I mean. It doesn’t add up. It doesn’t match.”
“Maybe it does but you don’t—”
“Father,” Brendan said sharply.
Dan nodded.
“I think I’m gay.”
