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T
hat night I got back to Dav-Ko after one a.m., exhausted and a little buzzed, and as I was rolling over the drive and pulling into the raised carport, I misjudged the distance and bumped the rear of our brown stretch with the tip of Pearl’s right fender.

Hearing the thud I got out to take a look. I’d dislodged a piece of front chrome molding. Surely a five-hundred-dollar repair at the Lincoln dealer’s body shop and the loss of a day’s rental for the car, another twelve hundred bucks.

I was pissed. When I got inside Joshua was just leaving for the night, shutting the office down and forwarding our phones to the answering service.

After he’d gone I remembered what Jackie, our New York mechanic, used to do when a chrome strip or a piece of molding came loose on one of the older Caddys. I located a tube of Krazy Glue in our tool cabinet and went back outside to see if I could reattach the molding.

The glue worked. Five minutes later Pearl’s fender strip
was in place and as good as new except for a tiny, almost unnoticeable ding.

Back in the office I entered my “Time-In” in the computer after tossing the glue on the desk. I could hear an Etta James CD playing in Portia’s chauffeur’s room/bedroom. I knew that I’d better go in and say hello.

“Bruno!” she called from across the room. “Hi, darling.”

She wasn’t alone. She was close-dancing with a partner, a young guy. Portia pulled her head from his shoulder to introduce us. “This is Sidney,” she whispered. “He’s my friend. A personal trainer and massage therapist.”

The kid was tanned and overmuscled and looked as if he’d stepped out of a gay men’s magazine.

Both of them were giggling and nicely gassed on drinks and whatever else they’d been drugging that night. Portia was wearing her favorite oversized man’s dress shirt and her thonged panties. Sidney, a tight tee and sweat pants. L.A. fitness casual.

I knew that the kid being here with her was payback, Portia’s way of showing me what a jerk I was for pulling back and avoiding contact with her.

She asked me if I wanted a Cuba libre. I said yes because I needed a pick-me-up after the annoyance of Pearl’s fender ding.

Crossing the room I sat down on one of the puffy velour chairs Portia had brought in weeks ago to dress the place up.

The shit was starting. “Sidney and I first met in a yoga class at my gym. He’s from Chicago,” she purred. “My young friend has a spectacular body, don’t you think?”

“Sidney looks like he lifts weights day and night,” I said. “He’s an impressive physical specimen.”

Portia was leering. “Sidney darling, slip your shirt off,
beautiful boy. Bruno ought to see what’s possible when a fellow devotes himself to improving his body.”

Apparently Sid was shy but equally as drunk as his skinny, grinning host. He also stuttered a bit. “Ca-ca-c’mon Porsh, you’re ma-makin’ me nervous. You know I don’t la-like to show off.”

“Bruno, Sidney’s bisexual.”

“That’s just swell,” I said. “He’s in the right town for it too. The very rectum of deep thinkers and financial opportunity. How about that drink?”

“Of course” she said. “Help yourself?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Across the room I spotted a one-third-empty half gallon of rum, ice, some limes, a tall glass, and a quart of Coca-Cola on the magazine table. But, as I started toward the bar, Dav-Ko’s office manager changed her mind, breaking her hold on her personal Ken doll. Her shirt was open, exposing her tits as she slinked her way across the floor to mix me a drink. “No, no, no,” she purred, “I’ll get it for you. My treat. Service with a smile.”

“Mind going easy on the mix,” I asked.

It was then that the bell went off in my head and I fully got the message. Earlier that night, when I knew my assignment with Stedman was ending, I’d phoned in to tell Joshua my ETA to the garage and to let him know my out-of-pocket expenses for the run. Portia was in the office, in the background. I could hear her lecturing a driver. She knew I was on my way in. But the extra glass on the magazine table was the real giveaway. She’d been expecting me.

I decided that I didn’t care. Let the woman have her even-steven for the way I’d treated her. Let it play out. Screw it. I deserved it. I had it coming. Maybe after tonight we’d be able to get back to where we were before the whole mess began.

She handed me my drink and I took a hit. A good one. The glass was mostly rum and ice. Now I was okay. I could relax. I was fine. I took another long hit.

Ms. Portia was smiling, a drunken leer, her teeth stained by red lipstick, her boy’s white hair and pretty face glowing in the soft light. She rejoined Sidney and pressed her tits against his chest and began dancing again. Etta on the CD player wailing out “At Last.”

“Don’t mind us,” she said.

“Hey,” I said back. “Just pretend I’m a tired chauffeur having a well-needed nightcap.”

“That’s nice,” she whispered.

“Mind if I help myself to another?” I said, pointing at the liquor table.

“Pleeezzze,” she slurred. “Sidney’s been promising me a mah-sage. You don’t mind if we just go ahead? It won’t embarrass you, will it?”

I nodded no. In for a peso, in for a pound.

With that she picked up her glass, took a last hit, draining it, then crossed the room to pull open the sleeper couch.

She slipped off her panties and long-sleeve shirt to lie on the bed, her ass in the air.

Sidney, as if choreographed, finished his drink too, then stood above the bed peeling off his clothes, down to his red bikini underpants, attempting to appear nonchalant. Near naked, the guy was a living cartoon: the perfect tanned steroid vision of what his West Hollywood clientele expected and paid for.

He produced a bottle of massage oil from his fanny pack on the table then got on the bed with Portia, on top of her, sitting upright, fitting his ass just behind hers. After squirting her with the oil he began rubbing her shoulders.

Portia let out a sigh, then surprised me by doing something
she’d never done with me; for once, she removed the nicotine gum from her mouth, tossing the wad on the nightstand.

At the magazine table I made myself another blast. A big one. I had a secret that neither of my hosts knew about: One more drink and I wouldn’t care. I wouldn’t give a damn what happened.

When I sat back down Sid was in the same position above Portia, except now he was working his hands down into the crack of her ass.

I lit a cigarette and took a long hit at the rum.

“More?” he whispered. Portia’s eyes were closed and she was humming. “Oh yes. Please. Please.”

Now her legs were wide apart and his bikini shorts were off and lying on the floor.

Sid was behind her rubbing his cock against her wet cunt and asshole. Portia opened her eyes then looked over at me as if asking permission.

I lifted my glass to toast the event.

He removed a rubber from his fanny pack on the nightstand and slipped it on. Then he fitted himself deep inside my skinny girlfriend.

A minute into it he leaned forward and breathed in her ear. “How ’bout the ass too? I know you like it up the ass.”

“Oh yes, the ass too,” she purred. “Do me in the ass, Sidney. Please. Fuck my ass.”

My drink was done and I got to my feet. “Okay,” I said, “I’m leaving. Thanks for the demonstration. I’m working tomorrow.”

“Wait, Bruno,” she breathed, stopping, looking up at me, her fat tits dangling beneath her against a pillow. “Don’t leave.” She pushed Sid away.

“You’ve made your point,” I said. “My dick’s in the dirt. I’ve seen enough.”

“Please. There’s some excellent
Peruvian
in my purse,” she breathed. “Have some. Have as much as you like. I don’t want you to go.”

The drug invitation made me change my mind. I was now drunk enough. “Okay, you win,” I said. “Don’t mind if I do.”

I located her handbag and found a two-gram bottle of blow in a velour pouch along with a gold straw and a mirror.

With the two of them lying on the bed I cut out three fat rails on the magazine table then snorted them. Coke has never been my drug of choice and I hadn’t done any in months so the effect was immediate and euphoric. I was whacked—drunk and wired.

“How about sharing,” she purred. “Bring it here, darling. Join us.”

Sitting on the corner of the bed I handed the bottle and straw and mirror to Portia. She cut out several lines, snorted two fatties, then passed the works to Sid, who did up the rest.

Her hand was on my arm. “Can I do you?” she whispered. “Can I suck on you?”

“Why?” I said. “This isn’t my party. I’m not needed here.”

“I want to. I want you to cum in my mouth. You know I love sucking your penis. I love tasting you.”

Unzipping my blue chauffeur’s slacks, I pulled them down to my knees. My cock was iron.

Lying back against the pillow I watched as her tongue began circling the head of my dick. Then I closed my eyes. She wasn’t a deep-throat artist. If she took too much in she began to gag. She was more of pole licker and helmet sucker.

When I opened my eyes again it was because Sidney was banging her from behind, long jarring strokes, interrupting her rhythm and my fun.

“Wait,” I said. “Let her finish with me. Then you can go next.”

Sid smiled but kept at it.

Then Portia stopped and pulled his cock out. She turned around and began sucking him off too. Then back to me.

Finally, sliding his cock from her mouth, she purred. “Sidney, let’s give Bruno something special. You and me. Okay, beautiful boy?”

Sid was ready for anything. Beaming. “I love it.”

So they both went to work on me, tongue kissing each other and passing my cock between them.

Sidney was a master at giving head. Cocks were his expertise. He’d take my entire joint in his mouth in one gulp then let it out slowly, holding it in his lips before allowing the head to pop from his mouth.

Then, while she was sucking on me, Sidney dropped down and started tonguing my asshole. Deeply. Then around the rim and back inside again.

A minute or two later, when I came, it was like a planet exploding against the sun. Boom boom boom.

Portia held my jizz in her mouth until she could lean across to Sidney and pass my cum through her lips to his. They tongue-kissed while swallowing my load.

When I opened my eyes the two of them were cutting out lines with the last of the coke. I reached for the rum bottle and sipped from it instead.

When Portia offered me more I refused.

She was smiling. “Did you enjoy that, dear Bruno? Am I back to meeting your needs?”

The words that came from me were a mistake. I was drunk and stoned and stupid and not conscious of the damage I was doing—or if I was I didn’t care. But saying what I said made me realize I had just pronounced my own death sentence.
“Your guy Sidney is a master at sucking cock.” I said. “He’s better than you. Blowjobs should be Sidney’s life’s work.”

Portia was off the bed and slipping into her panties and shirt. “I’m tired now, Bruno,” she hissed. “I’d like to go to bed. Leave, please.”

I struggled up the stairs leaving the two of them in the chauffeur’s room. I knew she was pissed off, but in my mind she had it coming. Anyway, I didn’t care. I’d figure out what to do in the morning.

When I awoke it was because daylight was blasting through my curtains and I badly needed to pee. It was just after dawn and my head was pounding and
Jimmy
began yammering away:
Good morning, asshole! Have fun last night? So it turns out that now you’re a faggot too. Just swell. You don’t care what you stick your dick in, do you? By this time next year you’ll be wearing lipstick and working downstairs on Selma with the rest of your swish pals.

I began to hear noise downstairs too. Real voices. The front door slamming shut.

As I tried to get up, swinging my legs toward the floor, there was a sudden sharpness of pain in my groin, a pulling at my thigh and testicles.

Slipping back down on the bed to a sitting position I tried my best to clear my head. That’s when I realized the problem: My penis and balls were stuck to my leg and some substance—something hard and dry—was covering my crotch area. My pubic hair was a thickened mesh of cemented steel wool. I tried pulling my dick away from the gathered skin of my testicles. It was impossible.

A foot away on the nightstand I saw a folded piece of yellow legal paper. On top of the paper was an empty squeezed tube of glue. Krazy Glue.

Unfolding the note I read the message:

The emergency surgery to remove my superglued penis and testicles from my thigh lasted two and a half hours. After first trying an array of solvents and stinging chemicals it was determined that nothing short of cutting away the skin would do any good. I had a choice, the doctor said. I could lose the flesh from my cock or they could cut away the tissue from the leg.

Because I had alcohol in my blood the guy refused to put me under. I was numbed but fully conscious as I watched him sweating, cutting away at my thigh, removing a seven-inch-long patch of tissue. Part of the urethra opening at the tip of my cock had been glued shut too. An incision was made there to reopen the hole so I could pee properly again. In all, sixty-one stitches were needed.

In my room after the surgery and when the meds wore off and the pain began, I started to shake. I was jonesing in alcohol withdrawal, a tonic-clonic reaction. My body was out of control and the tremors were getting worse all the time.

I rang for the nurse. When she came in and saw me shaking and sweating the on-call doctor was summoned and they hooked me up with a diazepam IV. Half an hour later I was okay.

T
he towering white-haired figure that stood in the hospital doorway blocking out most of the light was part man, part water buffalo. David Koffman had flown to L.A. from New York to help Joshua run the company while I would spend several days at Hollywood Presbyterian.

In bed, in my ward room while he stood there wearing his newest Panama hat, which made him nearly seven feet tall, I gave David my account of the accident—about being in my underpants trying to attach the section of chrome molding back on to the front bumper of Pearl when the tube of Krazy Glue burst open against my shorts.

The lie sounded only semi-convincing and it didn’t account for Portia’s abrupt departure, but the look of pain in my face and my apparent discomfort were real and Koffman was genuinely sympathetic and upset for me. His sombrero came off and he set it down. It covered the lower half of my bed.

When the opening was right I reminded him of something that I’d only realized myself the week before: Our com
pany had just passed its six-month mark in business. I was now a full 25 percent partner.

“Were you drinking when the accident happened?” he asked quietly.

I blew up: “No, for chrissake, it was six a.m. in the morning! I was getting the car ready for an airport run. Remember, we had a deal about my drinking. I really resent that kind of question.”

David apologized. He could see what I was going through. And Portia’s quitting, I added, was an unfortunate coincidence—icing on the cake to a really fucked day. Nothing more.

The meds I was on were starting to make me feel a little giddy and I went on to tell him about my run-in with Frank Tropper a few weeks before, and his dealing drugs, and explained that Portia had been put on probation as a result. This, of course, was a lie, but her resignation the morning of the incident was now beginning to fit in nicely with the stream of bullshit I was concocting. “Bottom line, we’re better off without her,” I said. My new partner had no choice but to nod his head in agreement.

Then two of our drivers, Marty Humphrey and Cal Berwick arrived to pay their respects, both of them dressed in cop shades and black driving gloves. It surprised me when Koffman approved of the new thug look and he even suggested that we might consider advertising our driving staff as chauffeur-bodyguards.

I was on a roll so I blurted out that the idea was absurd, that advertising that nonsense would open the door to legal licenses and hiring restrictions that could make the task of hiring decent drivers even more difficult. The white-haired giant in the plantation owner outfit seated near me nodded his head in agreement.

The next day Dr. Rilke, the guy who did my surgery, came into the room to give me his evaluation. He was freshly tanned from a long weekend. It came to me that this was the first time in three years I’d gone this long without a drink—or a hard-on.

Rilke, who had body odor and seemed perpetually distracted, checked my chart then put it down. He peeled away my bandages, poked me and pressed and squeezed, then offered his assessment of my red and oozing crotch. “You’re progressing well.” The guy needed deodorant—a class he must’ve ditched in med school.

“What else?” I asked, turning my head away to cop a gulp of fresh air.

“Well, you’ll experience epidermal numbness on your penis and testicles. But that’s to be expected as well.”

“Permanent numbness?” I asked.

Rilke was folding my bandages back down and taping them closed. “Doubtful,” he said. “Just give it all time to heal.”

“Hey, good news.”

Now done with taping my body, Dr. B.O. pulled up a chair and sat down. He made some notes on my chart. “There is another factor that comes into play: the psychological component.”

“Which means what? Don’t tell me that I may never get a hard-on again?”

“That’s not my area but anxiety after this type of injury can become a factor. If you’d like I can refer you to someone. We have people on staff here.”

“Not interested. Thanks.”

“Then, if I were you, I’d give myself as much time as necessary. Don’t rush things.” He looked at my chart again. “You’re unmarried, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Avoid sexual contact for a few weeks.”

Portia’s face suddenly popped into my brain and I felt myself wince. “That won’t be a problem,” I said.

The twitchy doctor adjusted his glasses. “There another issue we need to discuss,” he said. “Something I’d think long and hard about if I were you.”

“Okay. What? Tell me.”

“Your blood test showed significant liver deterioration and we had to administer anticonvulsives. You’re a heavy drinker, correct?”

“That’s genetic,” I said. “It runs in my family—my father and brother.”

Rilke was whispering. “I’m not talking about genetics, Mr. Dante. Your problem is substance abuse. When you were admitted you had a blood alcohol level of .16 and there was evidence of cocaine and traces of the chemical compounds found in Xanax and Vicodin.”

“Like I said that stuff runs in the family. From time to time I deal with anger and depression. The pills help.”

“There’s a newer compound out called Lexapro that’s been quite successful in treating those symptoms. Patients in recovery have reported excellent results. You should look into it.”

“Thanks anyway. I’ll pass,” I said.

The next day was release day. A new Filipino nurse came in to check my meds and change the dressing. She was tiny and in her early twenties with a pretty dark face and eye makeup. Her long black hair wrapped in a bun. Her badge name tag read “Esperanza.”

Esperanza removed my sheet and blanket from the bed,
then pulled off my blue hospital shirt. Then she peeled away my bandages and began a sponge bath starting with my back and chest. When she got to my crotch area and began softly dabbing my cock and scrotum with the warm cloth I knew I’d be okay. Bingo!