Commitment Issues (5 page)

"Ugggh,” he growled. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuck."

As soon as Animal Chico finished pounding my butt, he pulled out. Animal Chico disappeared and Talent Agent Chico was back. He didn't stop to rest or bask. He just went from fucking to preppy like somebody threw a switch.

I shot, but I had to work my own dick. It didn't take long. My stomach was a mess: sweat, pre-cum, cum. Chico was there with a warm towel, but he wasn't in the mood to help jack me off.

"Anytime you want a repeat, Sean,” Chico said, “I'm here."

"Wow,” I said, and I meant it. You never know when you might need a fuck buddy. There wasn't any pretense of liking each other's company. It was all business, and that was fine sometimes.

"I hadn't fucked like that in a couple of years,” he said. “I'm a bottom most of the time, but I can be versatile with the right kind of guy. You're the right kind of guy, Sean."

"I guess that I'm a bottom all of the time."

"And a really talented one,” Chico added. “That was really fun. We ought to do this on a regular basis."

I got dressed, and we said goodnight with cold, unemotional pecks on the cheeks. It isn't that I'm complaining about Chico. It's great to know where you stand with a guy. Chico and I would never be warm and fuzzy and cuddly. We could fuck, and it's great to know people who like sex just for having sex. The two of us wouldn't ever have an entangling relationship. I was a fuck.

Even if he was a little rough sometimes, I liked being Chico's sex toy. It makes a bottom feel useful. It's probably weird if you aren't as much of a bottom as me, but being useful to my top is one of the best things ever.

And I was absolutely right about fourth gear. There's something about a Harley's transmission. Pothole? Oh my God. And oh, sweet Jesus, when I hit fourth, I wanted to stay up at freeway speed for an hour just so my bike could... I mean... you know.

A clap of thunder made me gun the engine and head home. I hate being wet.

As I walked to my apartment, I saw a couple by the pool. They stared at me. I'm sure I had that fresh-fucked look. I know that I was grinning. There was absolutely no question that I got fucked that day. I even found a little blood on my underwear. It wasn't much, but Chico had rubbed me raw. I loved it. There was no way I could do it every day, but I loved it.

Sleep was no problem. I crashed off those endorphins and closed my eyes before the late news.

Chico's contract was fine. The contract he worked out with the network was even better, and we blew through the three percent level on the first day. Maybe he knew that he could do that on a syndicated show. I would do the show five days a week, and I would make myself available to the network for reasonable personal appearances and interviews at a preset rate.

The best part was that he was able to get it in writing that I owned my voice. There were no restrictions on me making money elsewhere so long as I wasn't doing newscasts or commentary without their permission. There was a phrase about not using my voice in a way that would bring disrespect to my work as a newscaster, but I didn't know what that meant.

After a couple of months of work, the production director told me that the beer company was getting serious about using me for a national ad campaign. Great, just great. The company was naturally willing to give me all the free samples I wanted. The work wasn't going to make me rich, but it was in addition to my regular work doing spots and breaks. If Chico could work out a deal, then this alcoholic would be the official voice of a brand of beer.

I could imagine some awkward conversations: “What do you think of the beer, Mr. Roberts?” somebody could ask.

"Beats me,” I would say with a shrug. “I never touch the stuff personally."

I'm sure there are busybody reporters around who would have loved to run with that kind of story, but for some reason, nobody ever did. The beer company would have probably pulled the plug on that nice monthly check.

Hi, I'm Sean, and I'm an alcoholic. And I am the national goddamn voice for a major brand of beer. It's the story of my life, really. Anybody else would have tried to get the beer account while they could still drink. Me? Not so much.

Most days I was still at the station doing production or reading news magazines. It's a lot of work to stay completely current on the news. My brain became something of an athlete, training for a few hours each day. You never knew when you were going to be on the air live and you had to react to something or you needed some devilish detail that a politician was trying to ignore. Some reporters kept big notebooks, but I kept everything in my head.

Janie Marroquin did the really hard work. She researched everything and wrote all the copy, but I did my part by trying to stay current.

A reporter for a magazine did an article about me. It was really about the “gay subculture,” but I was one of the examples. I got Chico to do the negotiations with the reporter. Before I talked with the guy, there was an arrangement that he wouldn't use anything that could identify me. My name and city wouldn't be in the story, and my job would only be mentioned in the vaguest terms. The reporter agreed because he wasn't trying to sensationalize his story.

We met a few times, and I liked the reporter at first. When the story came out, I wanted to track him down. He called me a “fairly well-known radio personality.” Fairly? I was just
fairly
well-known?

"Can I sue him over that?” I asked Chico as we sat near his pool. I had become something of a regular at his house, and he seemed to enjoy me being around.

"He was probably slapping you back for not letting him use your name,” my agent said.

Somehow, Chico and I never became friends. He was my talent agent and fuck buddy. He liked me for my voice and my ass, and he tolerated me for everything else. I didn't mean that he was aloof or anything. Our relationship just wasn't cuddly, and it never would be. He didn't know it, but I was going steady with him. It wasn't because I was falling in love with Chico, but I didn't go whoring around. He was my only sex outlet, but I'm sure he was with other guys.

Maybe he didn't have safe sex with them. After that first attempt in the swimming pool, he always used a condom without me having to ask.

One night he used a condom in the swimming pool. It wasn't a latex but polyurethane because we couldn't use a water-based lube in the water. Chico put on the rubber and brought out a bottle of lube that he said was made from silicon.

I floated over and put my legs around his waist, and he took me in the pool. It was the calmest fuck that the two of us had. I think the water slowed him down. Chico showed me that he had a repertoire beyond rough. He fucked me for a half an hour in the water before moving us over to the steps on the side of the pool. Chico pulled out of my ass and guided me up the steps before motioning me to lie back on the cement. He was back inside me in an instant and was shooting a few seconds after that.

Chico's dick wouldn't be in my ass too many times more. That was my choice, but not because Chico was bad or anything. It was a choice because of somebody I met.

I worked late almost every day. Production and preparation took so long that I stopped going to the eight p.m. AA meeting. My home group has always had an eleven p.m. meeting. That's really late at night for me, but I knew that I had to keep going to meetings.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Hi, I'm Sean, and I'm an alcoholic. And I have been in the actual presence of a living god. Adonis, I think.

It happened at the eleven p.m. meeting of the gay AA group, and I was off to the far side of the group. It was a discussion meeting, which meant that everybody who wanted to share something would have the chance. I was rummaging around through something in my head when Wyatt walked in.

Wyatt came in just as the meeting was starting, and I almost fell out of my chair. I was about fifty feet away from him, but I already knew he was special. The entire room lit up when he came in. He just sat down without saying anything, and he stared at the floor for the entire hour. He was shaking, and I think he was crying.

Because this was the gay group, I assumed that Wyatt was gay. It's wrong to make assumptions, but my mind was racing out of control.

He had blond hair with plenty of curls that bounced when he cried. I wanted to run up and hold him, but I stayed put. I would have made a fool of myself, drooling all over the poor kid.

Did I mention that he was gorgeous? I mean, he was fall-out-of-your-chair beautiful. I just wanted to stare at him for hours. I wanted to sit there and drool and soak up his beauty.

Wyatt was really effeminate, and he was dressed almost high-fashion for an AA meeting. He wasn't in girl-drag or anything, but there was... look, if you lined a bunch of people up and gave them all sketchpads and told those people to draw a gay guy, they'd all draw Wyatt.

I was okay with that. He was pretty. He was beautiful. But he wasn't ruggedly handsome.

He looked at the floor. He shook, and he cried.

I got all that after seeing him for about five seconds. When Wyatt took a chair, he picked one several rows in front of me. I could only see his hair and shoulders across the room, but the image of him walking into the meeting room was etched into my memory. He never looked around but stared at the floor with a bowed head. Wyatt seemed so fragile. I wanted to go hug him and protect him.

No, that isn't exactly true. I wanted to sit across the room and stare at him. Wyatt was so beautiful that I would have been useless in a conversation with him. If we were talking—no, I mean, he could talk to me, but I would just make baby noises. Wyatt would reduce my conversation to incoherent grunts with drool coming out of the corners of my mouth. Just let me sit back and look at him. Maybe after I had studied him for a few years, I could say something complicated like hello.

At the end of the meeting, the leader asked if anybody had a desire to stop drinking. Wyatt tentatively raised his hand. The meeting leader explained that we have chips and tokens to mark different lengths of sobriety, but the most important chip is the first one. He said you get a desire chip at your first meeting as a sign that you are willing to stay sober. Wyatt nodded, and the leader held out a desire chip.

Wyatt didn't see the gesture because he was staring at the floor, so the meeting leader walked the desire chip over to Wyatt as the rest of us gave him a round of applause. I'm sure Wyatt was embarrassed. The leader said that it was important to keep coming to meetings and that he'd look for Wyatt the next day. Wyatt nodded again.

"If you really want to drink between now and then,” the leader said, “put the desire chip under your tongue like it's a piece of candy. You can drink when the desire chip melts."

I guess somebody thought that was funny a million years ago. It's what every meeting leader says to every newcomer at their first meeting. I guess it's a new line to the newcomer, so I shut up.

We all stand and say a few things in unison at the end of each meeting. By the time I got over to Wyatt's chair, he was gone. I wanted to make sure he had phone numbers of several members, mine included, of course.

Don't get me wrong, I really wanted to rip all of Wyatt's clothes off, but I also know that I'd never do that. I've been sober for a few years, and it is the worst sin you can do in AA to take advantage of a newcomer. We were all new to “The Program,” and we all got sober because others who had been around for a while took the time to tell us how they did it. I wanted to just be close to Wyatt, to stand in his aura, but I wanted to be there for him. He looked so hurt and fragile that I wanted to keep him safe from all the hurt in the world.

I fished my phone out of my pants pocket as I straddled my bike.

"Hey, Chico,” I said. “I'm sorry if it's too late, man."

"Naw, what's up?"

"Want a quick repeat? Tomorrow's Saturday, so I figured you'd be sleeping late anyway."

"I'm going out on the bicycle tomorrow."

"Oh, sorry,” I said.

"Don't be sorry,” Chico said. “Let's do this thing."

"On my way."

I pushed the bike because I didn't want to keep Chico up too late. Should I even be doing this? It felt like I was cheating on Wyatt, but that was stupid. The kid didn't even know who I was. Even if he did, he was a newcomer. Guys with a couple of years in AA didn't have sex with newcomers. But still....

As soon as I was off the bike, I saw Chico at the front door. He was in a towel, which meant he was already in bed.

"I woke you up,” I said. “I'm so sorry about that. It won't happen again."

"Anything wrong?"

"No."

"Then don't worry about it. You got an ass, and I got a dick."

I grinned at him as I walked into his better-than-perfect living room. It was all chrome and glass and sharp angles. Nothing was out of place, except maybe me.

"Let's go,” Chico said as he slapped me in the butt.

Part of me was trying to say that I shouldn't be there with Chico. If I had to choose between Wyatt and Chico, then Chico lost, no offense to him. I don't know why, because Chico was more like the kind of guy I usually like. He was manly and liked sports and the outdoors. I thought he was nuts for riding a bicycle when he could afford a fairly good engine to finish out his two-wheel ride, but it was something he liked to do. I couldn't complain about his hip and leg muscles. He had plenty of power there. Yup, Chico made fourth gear a memorable experience.

When we got to Chico's bedroom, he pulled off his towel. I took off my clothes as fast as I could, and he pushed me down on the bed with one palm to my chest. I almost hit the headboard, and that would have been a sour end to our little romp. He pulled out a rubber and lube and got his dick ready, but he had other things he wanted to do with me first.

Chico pulled out a clothespin from his nightstand. Okay, if that was going onto me, I was about to have some issues.
Ouch
, I thought as he clamped the clothespin just to the right of my right tit.
Ouch
—no, wait. Endorphins.
Man, that's not half bad.