Boystown 7: Bloodlines (27 page)

Twenty-two or twenty-three, he was younger than my usual type, but in such a small audience I could hardly be choosey. Yes, I could probably wander around until I found a gay bar and find someone more age-appropriate to provide me with a place to sleep, but I do have an ego. And occasionally it needs to be fed.

Sixty-seven minutes later, I finished the deeply moving story of Rock Hudson’s (mostly made up) sex life, and gloried in the minimalistic applause. I made my dramatic exit back to the tiny kitchen, then immediately turned around to come back and mingle with my fans. When I got back out into the coffee shop, a middle-aged couple came over and asked for autographs.
 

“How long have you been together?” I asked politely.

“Twenty-five years,” said the taller of the two. One had nearly white hair, the other black (though it may have come from a bottle). As a set, they reminded me of salt and pepper shakers.
 

“We loved you in
Lust/Anger/Joy
,” said the shorter, giving me a dirty smile. It never ceased to amaze me how many gay men mention that film to me. Since everyone’s obviously seen it, you’d think I’d have gotten at least one residual check. I mean, have the same ten copies of the DVD been passed around the gay community over and over again?

As I chatted with them about what projects I had coming up and whether I’d be clothed in them or not, I glanced around looking for the young man I hoped would provide me a place to stay. Unfortunately, I didn’t see him anywhere. I was beginning to wonder if Salt and Pepper might have a comfy couch I could crash on, hopefully unmolested, when a fancy coffee drink floated in front of me. I turned to see my young friend holding it.

“Mocha latte?” he asked.
 

I smiled and accepted the drink. The mocha latte was in a very large cup, topped with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles. While I was flattered that he thought I had the kind of metabolism that could tolerate a seven hundred and fifty calorie coffee drink, I promised myself only a few sips. Otherwise, I’d have to skip breakfast. For days.

His name was Todd something-or-other and he launched into a little speech about who he was and what his life was like. It’s amazing how many people think a conversation is little more than reading their resume aloud. He was a graduate student studying accounting, which made me nervous since I’d had at least three previous boyfriends who made their money pumping numbers into computers and analyzing the results. He already had a job working for a big firm. And, he’d bought himself a repossessed one-bedroom condo just a few blocks away. The last was most interesting because I was getting sleepy, despite my sips of mocha latte, and wasn’t looking forward to curling up in the front seat of my truck.

Salt and Pepper had graciously drifted off, with a wink and a leer, during Todd’s monologue, leaving the young man and I alone.
 

“Do you have a roommate, Todd?” I asked.

“Well, I thought about it. It would certainly cut down expenses, but in a one-bedroom it’s just not practical. I could have gotten a two bedroom but it would have cost more. Yes, the cost would have been offset by a roommate but they don’t let you put ‘I’m going to get a roommate’ on a mortgage application.”
 

“Aren’t they cruel?” I said, sipping the mocha latte.
 

He giggled. “Someday I’ll get a two bedroom. After I’ve saved up another down payment. Especially if prices stay where they are. I plan on keeping this condo, though, and renting it out. Eventually, I’ll buy a house and rent out the second condo. I’m thinking of getting a real estate license. Did you know you can use your commission as part of your down payment?”

“No, surprisingly, I did not.”
 

“That’s why I’d get the license. I don’t actually want to be a real-estate agent. But if I buy three or four properties in the next five or six years putting the time in to get my license will pay off handsomely.”

Given the way he stared at me, and the way he lost focus when I licked some whipped cream off my upper lip, I was sure he was trying to pick me up. He was just doing it in the most roundabout, un-seductive way. To end the suspense I said, “You know, I’ve never actually seen a repossessed condominium.”

“Well, they look just like—Oh! Um, yes, would you like to come over and see it?” He blushed a pretty pink.

“That would be lovely. Yes.”

“Would you like another mocha latte for the road?” he asked, politely. I could tell he didn’t really want to pay for another four-dollar coffee. I suspected he had his budget planned out to the tenth of a cent.

“Oh no, I’ve barely touched—” But when I looked down I realized I’d finished the drink entirely. “No, that’s fine. Thank you.”

Todd’s apartment added up nicely. It was built in the seventies and was basically a white box divided equally into two rooms. He’d carefully furnished it from a catalogue, presumably with pieces that had been sufficiently marked down. On the walk over, he had stopped talking about himself and begun to ask questions, many of which weren’t exactly about me.

“So, how old are you?” he asked. All right, that one was about me.

“Thirty-seven.” Ish.

When we got into his apartment, he said, “You’ve been an actor a long time.” Which was not especially flattering. “You must know who’s gay and who’s not.”

“Well, it’s not as though I’ve been doing a field study.” Actually, since I avoided sex with artistic people whenever possible, I didn’t have much of what you’d call “first-hand” knowledge of who was gay and who was not. Most of my information I got off the Internet.

Without even offering me a glass of wine, Todd began naming actors and asking if I’d slept with them. I wondered for a moment if he was actually a plant sent by my agent. Would they really pay me to do a play about people I slept with? Should I consider stringing together an hour’s worth of lies?
 

To shut Todd up, I leaned over and kissed him. He was fast with his hands and he quickly had Rock Hudson’s pants around my ankles and my dick in his hand. I broke away for a moment and asked, “Should we go into the bedroom?”

He just smiled at me and led me out of the living room. Well, first I untangled myself from my costume, folded it and set it on the sofa. I had a performance in Reseda the following week and really couldn’t afford for anything to happen to Rock’s suit. Without needing to check, I knew that a trip to the cleaner’s was not in my budget. Wearing just the white oxford shirt, I followed Todd into the bedroom. As we stood next to the bed, Todd did just about the worst thing anyone can do when it comes to my sex life. He handed me a pillow.
 

In
Lust/Anger/Joy
the “climactic” scene for many comes about thirty minutes into the film. It’s a scene in which my character is fucked face down on a bed. In the throes of passion I very nearly eat the pillow. Of course, while filming we simulated the scene—something no one seems to believe which may be why, in real life, I’ve been asked to re-enact it many times. In the first flush of fame after the film came out I didn’t mind so much. Occasionally, it was a lot of fun. After a while, it became a sticking point...so to speak.

I stared at the pillow for a moment, then said to Todd, “This doesn’t feel like it’s about me.”

He looked confused. “Does it need to be?”

“Yeah, it does,” I said, handing him back the pillow. “When you hit forty you’ll understand.”

“I thought you said you were thirty-seven.”

“I was never good at math.”
 

He held the pillow out again and said “Please?” in that twenty-something way that tends to get young men exactly what they want. This time it didn’t. I walked into the living room and began to put my Rock Hudson costume back on.
 

“We could do something else,” Todd suggested, a bit of horny desperation in his voice.
 

“Well, that might work,” I said. The boy was awfully cute, and his bed looked very com—

“There’s this other scene were you give that guy a blow job in the kitchen,” he said in a rush.

Really, there’s much more talking in the film than you’d think. And the characters are actually multi-faceted. It just sounds like soft-core porn.
 

“That’s sweet,” I said. “But...no.”
 

“Oh. I wanted to tell my friends I had sex with the guy from
Lust/Anger/Joy
.”

“No dear, you wanted to tell them you re-enacted the film with me. There’s a difference.”

I exited the apartment with a flourish, and slept in my truck.

BUY
THE GHOST SLEPT
OVER

My Favorite Uncle

Martin Dixon’s carefully constructed, peaceful life is turned upside down when his super Christian eighteen-year-old nephew Carter shows up unexpectedly on his doorstep and announces he’s gay. Martin’s first impulse is to send him back to his parents. But when he discovers that Carter has been in a mental hospital to cure his gay-ness he realizes he’s stuck with the boy. Unfortunately, the two get on each other’s nerves, each driving the other to distraction. Independently, however, they each arrive at the same conclusion. The other would be much less annoying if he only had… a boyfriend.

Honorable Mention - 2014 Rainbow Awards

Runner Up - 2014 Rainbow Awards

“Marshall Thornton’s latest departure from the
Boystown
series is an understated masterpiece, tiptoeing into young adult territory without ever losing sight of its very grown-up personality and audience. From the cartoon-like drawings on the cover of
My Favorite Uncle
to the light-hearted sit-comic tone of the writing, Thornton’s book disguises a complex, sober story under the droll banter and teenaged eye-rolling of
Modern Family
(one, I hasten to add, that would never make it on national TV).” —
Ulysses Dietz, Prism Book Alliance

An Excerpt from
My Favorite Uncle

Martin Dixon was secretly in love with Jax Hammer. Deeply, profoundly in love despite the fact that they had never met, that Jax Hammer was not his real name, and that Martin was double the boy’s age. Theirs was a relationship of the new millennium. Fully digital.

The entertainment center loomed against one wall in Martin’s TV room-slash-office. After closing the mini-blinds and the drapes, setting the TV to a non-neighbor-offending volume and placing a tube of Vaseline, a box of Kleenex, and the remote on the pull-out sofa that no one ever pulled out, he was finally ready to open the secret compartment in the bottom shelf of his entertainment center.

In the compartment were four Jax Hammer DVDs:
A Brief History of Gangbangs
,
Howard’s End
(in which Jax starred as Howard),
Ifs and Butts
, and the football-themed
End Zone
. Martin chose
Ifs and Butts
because it co-starred Jax’s real life boyfriend Rydar King. It also contained Martin’s all-time favorite porno moment in chapter sixteen: spread-eagled on a brown leather sofa, Jax looked up dreamily at Rydar. About to orgasm, he mouthed the words “I love you,” or maybe it was “I love your dick.” Martin wasn’t entirely sure. But he leaned toward “I love you” because a genuine smile spread across Rydar’s face, and Martin didn’t think Rydar would be too impressed by someone loving his dick. He was a porno star, after all.

Martin had seen the moment fifty—okay sixty—times but it seemed completely real each time. The models slipped out of the performance of sex and into the reality of sex, and the idea that it was real was what fascinated Martin.
 

Slipping the DVD into the player and pulling his pants down to his ankles, Martin waited impatiently through the warnings and the threats of prosecution. When he got to the main menu, he started the movie and began skipping through. The moment happened at 1:36:14, but Martin liked to start about ten minutes earlier just at the point where Jax Hammer—

The phone rang. Martin debated whether or not to answer. He did have an anticipatory hard-on and a dollop of Vaseline spread all over his left hand. What he didn’t have was caller ID. He had no idea who was on the other end, and it might be important. It might be an emergency. Though he couldn’t think what kind of emergency. Martin was certain he’d eliminated all the drama from his life, which really should have removed emergencies with it. He figured it was nothing, but he wouldn’t know for sure if he didn’t answer, and the possibility that it was more than nothing would haunt him like a bad debt.
 

He really did need to sign up for caller ID.
 

“Hello?”

“Martin? What are you doing?” It was Ricky. Though he cared deeply about his best friend, his hard-on immediately fled.
 

“Nothing,” Martin lied.
 

“Great, I’m at Marix. You should pop over for a drink.” Ricky worked as first assistant to film producer and wunderkind, Winnie Collier. Collier’s career started when she coerced a writer into a free option on a script about two forty-year-old cops going undercover as skateboarders and then sold it for seven figures. The film never got made, but that was blamed on the writer; Winnie got a production deal, an office, and two assistants to torture. Ricky spent a great deal of time at Marix.

“I can’t pop over. I’m thirty-four miles away. In case you haven’t noticed, there are no good freeways from Long Beach to West Hollywood,” Martin complained. “A trip like that has to be planned a week in advance.”

“Please. You have to come,” he paused tentatively. “There’s someone I want you to meet. Someone you might like.”

A chill ran up and down Martin’s spine. “In that case, ‘no’ just turned into ‘absolutely not.’”

“Irving. His name is Irving, and he reads scripts for Winnie. I’ve been wanting you to meet him for ages.”