CHAPTER
SEVEN
BEING BORROWED CONTINUED
A FRIEND HAD SAID he looked like California.
“You’ve got the shorts, and the hair, and the… I don’t know,” Daphne said.
There was a mall up in Portage, a half hour away, and by now everyone looked like California. It was as simple as walking into Hollister or one of the many stores full of what his mother wiltingly called “atmosphere” with a roll of her eyes, and buying the cargo shorts, the snug shirt with the logo, the hemp necklaces no self respecting hippie or pothead would ever pay for, the overpriced, and completing the look with thin and impractical leather flipflops.
This was not what Noah thought when he was eighteen. When he was eighteen reality was not a friend. A face pushed into the grass and a rape in the night, surrounded by men he couldn’t see, men who could have been anyone, who made him play sick and skip class, and then turn sick in truth had promptly taught him to escape reality or too much thought. Too much thought terrified him.
So when Daphne said he looked like California, he decided the only thing to do was go to California. He waited until graduation. He’d been saving up money at the store in Michigan City and Billy, who Naomi was living with at the time, sure didn’t want him. It was easy to go. And after a lifetime of Rummelsville, nothing on the streets of LA was that bad.
Guy was working in California then. He had plans for making great films there. When Noah came into the studio, he had already made Pizza Slut. Noah wasn’t sure if that was the type of movie Guy had always longed to make or not, but it was bigger than any movie he’d ever been in. What was more, he had seen it, and to him Johnny Mellow was a star.
For the audition, which Noah wanted to do because he felt confident he could really be a star in this, all he had to do was take of his clothes, stroke himself, show his large cock, stroke it, bend over, and have someone expose his asshole. That was the part that made him shudder. All he remembered was the rape, and no hand but his own and but to wipe had been there.
This was why when Guy asked in another filmed interview, “Do you want to be fucked?” Noah immediately said yes.
Whatever people said about porn, and about the sex business, Noah experienced this. Back in Rummelsville where all the guys had been straight and Christian, and half of those guys had performed sex acts on him building up to rape outside of a parking lot, he had experienced hypocrisy, cruelty, pain and then just the simple truth that nothing he’d ever heard meant anything to him. Daphne and a few other girls said he was cute. Later on the streets men had begged for his cock, his ass or his mouth, with such greed he knew they didn’t see him. He could have been Quazimodo they were in such a state. But here, for the first time, there was attention from Guy. There was acceptance from Burt, strong and buff, and from Johnny who looked all innocence and was also a Hoosier. Guy asked him, simply, if he wanted to be fucked. No chuckling in his ear, no hilbillly son of a bitch yanking his trousers down and telling him ‘Ahm gonna fuck you.”
“Well, try it with this, first,” Guy said. “You gotta practice.”
The practice films of him with the pink gel dildo, and the Pyrex dildo, fucking himself were all there, of Paul, as Johnny Mellow, inserting fingers in his ass, shocking him into a new pleasure.
“It hurts when someone doesn’t know what they’re doing,” Johnny said. “And when you don’t know what you’re doing, either. When you don’t know how to take someone in. Don’t worry,” he chuckled. “I’ll be easy on you. If it’s too much, just say stop.”
He didn’t say stop. The camera hardly mattered. By now Noah knew Johnny, so it was more or less comfortable talking to him. And this was work, work that allowed him to get other types of work where he wasn’t naked or pimping himself to desperate men on the street. He could never remember what he wore, but Paul—or Johnny—came in, chewing gum, looking country and innocent, his marmalade hair a little spiked, that sweetness and shyness in his green eyes. He had one of those old Cuban shirts from the 50’s white with a black stripe down the middle, but it was snug on him and when it was time, when Guy stopped talking, Paul took the gum out of his mouth and put it in the wrapper like a gentleman, and then he pulled Noah to him. And it was the first time he’d been with Paul, the first time he’d done this. Paul’s mouth was all spearmint. Noah was trembling and Paul was whispering where no camera could hear, “Don’t be afraid. Don’t fall apart. I got you,” He was kissing him and whispering reassurance, making love to him, undressing him slowly, covering his body in kisses, gently inserting his fingers, moving them so that Noah made a music and cried out with joy before, in time, Paul sat him gently down, and meekly, humbly, whispered for permission, and then, pulling him down slowly, entered.
“It can be,” Paul said, as all of Paul filled him and Noah tightened on him in shock of the pleasure, wanting to pull him all in, adjusting to sweet Paul’s rhythm, “the most wonderful thing in the world.”
And so it was.
And so it was.
“HELLO! HELLLOOOO! Is somebody here? Well, I’m coming in—Damn, this is nice! Damn this is… Is this the place where they make them nasty movies? Is this—? SHIT, GODDAMN!”
Noah jumped up from the bed where he was sprawled, and Tristan said, “What the fuck!”
It was Guy who moved away from the camera while his other cameramen looked amazed and came up to Danasia.
“I’m Guy,” he said.
“I’m Danasia,” she said. “So I guess you weren’t playing,” she told Noah, who was placing a towel over himself. “You really do make nasty movies. Do you ever make em for ladies?”
Guy smiled at her, and she said, “Cause I could show you a nasty movie. I could show you some freaky shit, if I had the time.”
The director chuckled and said, “I bet you could,” while Noah, in his shorts, took Danasia by the hand and walked her out of the room.
“I got tired of waiting,” she said.
“I was going to be done in minute,” Noah said.
“You’re not done now.”
“Shit!” Noah broke off. “You’ve taken me out of my zone!”
“You have a zone?” Danasia said. Then, “Well, I guess you’d have to. If you do this. Can I see some of your stuff?”
“No,” Noah said, looking at her strangely.
“Can I stay here and watch, then?”
“No.”
“Why?” Danasia said. “It’s not like it’s private. You got every Tom, Dick and Hairy Ball sitting around watching the shit.”
“Yeah, but I’m not there when they’re watching.”
“Whatever,” Danasia threw up a hand. “I think white folks get worked up about strange shit.”
“Maybe,” Noah said.
Then he said, “You know what? Grab yourself a drink. And some food. And there’s a pool and… I know you won’t be intimidated by anyone here, so, just say hi if you see anyone. I gotta go back and finish some stuff up.”
“You have a really big dick, you know that?”
Noah didn’t know what to do with that, so he said, “Thank… you?”
“Not a compliment so much as it’s an observation,” Danasia said. “I don’t really remember much but that it was big, for such a little guy. And nice. I think.”
“Little guys usually are bigger,” Noah said, clinically and without conceit. He shrugged. “I don’t know why. It just is. It doesn’t really seem to help me out much in life once I walk out of that door.” He pointed to the large front door. “I’ll be done in a bit,” he told Danasia. “I’ll come and get you.”
When Noah walked back in, Guy was shaking his head and chuckling, “New girlfriend, Noah?”
Noah shook his head with a grin while Tristan chuckled doing the same. Tristan was unabashedly and openly gay.
About half of Guy’s Rude Boys had, or alleged to have girlfriends. If they were real and lasting, as opposed to an endless string of pissed off and disappointed virtual beards, and Noah knew some of them were, then he felt a little sorry for them. Noah had never had any type of significant lover, but he strongly suspected any woman who had a man who was being fucked or fucking other men, had something she really didn’t need. Naomi had raised him, or tried, and man after man had caused her pain. He remembered pretending to sleep through his mother sobbing, or choosing to ignore her occasional black eyes. Who knew men, really? Especially the ones who said they were straight? A thousand frustrations and endless blame made them the worthless things Noah really thought they were, which is why he’d never dated one. The only men he ever liked were the ones he met for the night, or he met here. When he was fucking you, or you were fucking him, he was beautiful and happy and satisfied, and all the shit that covered both of you burned away. At least for a little bit.
“I can let you go now,” Guy was saying. “We got enough for two movies and for two movies, my friends, you’ll both get paid, and bottoming prices too, both of you!”
“All right,” Tristan said with a thumbs up and a goofy laugh.
“Oh, Noah,” Guy called him over. “I’m not going to need you for awhile. But you’re getting paid well, and I’ve referenced you out to Corby.”
Noah opened his mouth to protest.
“I know,” Guy cut him off. “Corby’s a shit. And you’ll probably have some bullshit dialogue, but he pays well, and it’s folks you know. He has respect for you. Has respect for me.” Guy shrugged. “The work’s good and,” Guy slapped him lightly on the cheek, “I’m seeing too much of you, kid. It’s too much of your perfect baby soft ass. I need some more Johnny Mellow.”
“Yeah, well that’s finished,” Noah said.
“Fuck him!” Guy said, not really meaning it.
“I really don’t want to go to Florida,” Noah said. That’s where Corby was.
“Well,” Guy thought. “You can do camera and stuff. Direct a little. That’s all I got for you.”
“I don’t need it all the time. Just… when I come around here.”
Guy nodded while Tristan, naked, walked away in the direction of the showers.
“I never asked you why you didn’t need the money?” Guy said in a lower voice.
“Huh, what’s that?”
“Don’t ‘huh-what’s-that?’ me.”
“Joe Callan was at that party where this house got busted.”
“The one where I passed out on the drug overdose.”
Guy nodded.
“He never came back, never told me personally. But I heard from someone who heard from someone that he was upset about missing money. He swore the police didn’t take it.”
Noah opened his mouth. But Guy held up a hand.
“Now I swear to God I don’t give a fuck what happened to that money, or what happened to Joe. But I heard, I heard from that Mexican guy you fucked when you came back into town, that Joe was after you. That’s all. And I worried. But then he dropped off the face of the earth. I didn’t know if he was still after you, or if he was ever after you, or if… someone was after him.”
Noah thought very carefully before speaking, and then he said: “I have heard. I have heard,” he repeated. “That Joe Callan is no longer in the land of the living, and not a threat to anyone. And I know that. And so no one needs to worry.”
“And no one needs to know that you know?”
“No one needs to know that you know either,” Noah said.
Guy cleared his throat and went back to polishing his camera lens.
“What do you need me to do, Noah?” he said.
“I need you to pretend we never had this conversation.”