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I’m impressed. Hammer wouldn’t know an ellipse from an eclipse, but he knows which one works in cyberspace.

“They all want to know, how much—”

“Three hundred,” he says. “Three.
Hundred
. Donation. Put that in caps. Three. Zero. Zero. Spell it out.”

“I can’t use numbers?”

“No, spell it out. Then put in those dots.”

“Ellipses,” I say. Somehow, I need to let him know, I’m more than a typist.

“Yeah, then write, ‘To
start
.’ Make sure you slant, you know, the word—start.”

Italicize, I think, but keep my mouth shut. One grammar lesson a day.

“When?”

“Tonight. Put those dots. Then, ‘When my bro goes to sleep.’”

“Your brother?” I type, hit Reply and look up from the keyboard. “But you live
here
.”

“Dude.” Again, he could be talking to a retard or a child. “They don’t know that. This is them. Looking at me. I can say, like, whatever, and they’ll believe me.”

I’m starting to appreciate Hammer’s natural grasp of cyberspace.

Bling! Bling! Bling! Bling! Bling! Bling! Bling! Bling!

“‘Take off your belt.’ And ‘Why are you not typing?’”

“Tell ’em, ‘I got one of those voice machines. Speak ’n spell,’” Hammer says, and I fall back in love, a little. Who knew. Hammer’s a triple threat: beauty, brains, and brawn. Done talking, he fires off a series of sullen looks. Stop. Stand. Pose.

I love looking at him (standing in front of me) and comparing him to his time-delayed image of him (on-screen). I can’t decide which Hammer I like better.

I study his moves. Jiggle. Move. Slide. Turn. Gyrate. Hammer’s mastered the art of making it seem like he
might
do something. Suggestive. Seductive. But then he pulls everything back, pauses and—leaves you hanging. Somehow, in the gap between doing and doing nothing, he makes you
think,
“Okay,
now
he’ll do it.” (“It” being whatever you imagine.)

“Have you done this before?” I ask. “That’s me asking.”

“Back home. I had all these girls looking at me. My dad found out.”

“Your
dad
knew about this?”

“
Dude
,” he says, using word that lets him speak without communicating (or, my “Sure”). His fingers creep down and play with the belt buckle. The blings jump from active to insane.

“That sure got ’em excited,” he says, and lets his hand drop.

“Wait, who are you talking to?”

“
Duh
,” he says, “my homie.” He looks me in the eye. I’m meant to know, I guess,
I’m
his homo homie. Insta-blush. Far as I know, only straight dudes use the word
homie.
Maybe I’ve misread him. He’s just a really chill straight guy. I feel like a total dork.

“What’re they saying?”

“What’s your name?”

“Make something up. Or don’t.” I don’t. He glances at my motionless hands and smiles. “
Now
you’re getting the idea.”

“What idea?”

“It’s better when—” He slides the belt out a little bit and looks down, pink tongue to lip. He better stop that or his typist’s going to whip it out and bust a nut. “Make ’em wait.”

“Your dad found out.”

“Yeah, o of ’em, a trick—you know what that—” I shake my head. “A trick, can be your hookup. Or your sugar daddy. So this one is my sugar daddy. He rents an apartment near my house. Sweet. Every time I wanna pull a show, I tell my mom, ‘I’m visiting my friend down the street.’ What now?”

“Huh?”

“What do they want to know.”

“Oh, right.” I read, “‘Show us your feet …’ and ‘… wanna see you in boxers’ and ‘when are you gonna stroke it?’ and ‘touch your nips.’ Nips?”

“Nipples! ‘
No
special requests.’”

Bling! Bling! Bling!

“Please Please Please.”

“Takers, users, time wasters, this boy needs some give.”

Bling! Bling! Bling!

“‘Check your wish list.’”

“Yeah, today’s wish list is hella different.”

I type exactly what he says. I feel weird having a convo when I don’t have a clue what it’s about. If this is all about “give ’n take,” what am I getting for my voluntary carpal tunnel? A front-row seat. Kind of like an “All you can eat” buffet.

Bling! Bling! Bling!

“They want to know, ‘Enough for today?’”

“We get to that when …” His voice trails off as he unbuckles the belt. “We get to that—”

I start to understand why Hammer and Peanuts spend so much time in here with the door shut. There are shows to perform, clothes to remove, and wish lists to fill—“fans” to satisfy.
I feel sick to my stomach. Hammer—
My
Fantasy Boy—has morphed into Hammer, My Worse Nightmare. I hate this. I feel trapped. Same as Serenity Ridge? But a boy stripping in cyberspace is nothing like Serenity Ridge.

“You okay?”

I want to leave.

“Yeah,” I say, lying. I hope he can’t tell. “Your mom … she followed you?”

“T
his guy made a reel—clips of my shows. He threatened me. He said, ‘I’ll send it to your mom if you don’t get with me.’ I told that bitch, ‘No
fucking
way are
you
blackmailing
me
.’”

“And he sent it?”

“Yup.”

“That’s when your dad found out and got mad?”

“Hell, no! Dad wanted in. Fuckin’ deadbeat. Dude
loves
trannies. Anita’s his idea of Miss America. He didn’t give a shit about what I was doing. It was about the Benjamins. He’s the one who busted me and set me up to do more shows. We made
bank
. I was
way
fucked up on drugs. He started pimpin’ me out for reals.”

“Pimp
you?
Like, sell you for sex?”

“Girls, boys, their dads, grannies. For Sale. Stamped it on my body.”

Hammer’s so matter-of-fact about incest and his Pimp Daddy. My father, Moustapha, is a monster, but I doubt pimping me out ever crossed his mind.

“Wait, so you’re bi, or—?”

“I’m whatev. Hole’s a hole. But then—” Hammer’s attention shifts back to his performance.

“Can I guess?”

“Go for it.”

“He wanted in on the action?”

“
Dude!
How’d you know? I split. Back to mom’s house and that’s when—” He punctuates his thought with a move. “I got sent down, dude,
down
.”

Compared to Hammer’s story, mine feels lame. Maybe it wasn’t so bad? Reality check: closet, cam whore. For a moment, I consider. Stand. Walk out. Call home.

He stares at me, unbuckles the belt. He’s got this weird half smile on his face. I can’t read his expression. Blank. Cam whore? Or, serial killer? He’s here, but not. I know that face. If not the same face, then the feeling underneath. Dead. I bet he learned it from being with his dad. Or, it settled over his face, like a scarf.
Working
for his dad. Doing. The way I—

“No!” I shout out and cut off the thought. Hammer’s so far gone, he doesn’t notice. Then, I remember: He’s looking at the Webcam over my forehead. Duh. “Blank” is his show face. But there’s nagging questions. What came first: the blank face? Or, the cam show?

“Peanuts types for you?” I ask. I want to grasp the “how” and “why” of this cam whore show.

He slides the belt out, slow as a rattlesnake on the creep. Done, he dangles it off his index finger.

“I had the number one ranking on this portal. This other kid knocked me down. Peanuts sends him an e-mail and says—hey, can you move the camera so it’s on my hands?” I play with the toggle and move the camera eye down, to his hands. I like being in control. Deciding what the “audience” sees. “The next day, that kid’s site was gone.
Gone
. After that, me and Peanuts, we
tight
.”

“You’re not worried about your dad finding you?”

“Whatta you mean?”

I twitch. My mind’s eye flashes on Blue-Eyed Bob’s face.

“Track you down.”

“Naw.” He knocks back the baseball cap. Chin up, he reveals his face. He curls his upper lip. Snarls. Now, he looks more perfect than perfect. Part man, part boy and all sex. “I know he’s
seen me.
For sure
. One time, he tried getting me back, but he knows—
knows
—if he says one word.
One
word. The End. Told him, ‘I go to the cops and you, Daddy, will go to the joint. Some gang banger’s meat puppet
biatch
.’ Ain’t heard from him since. Now, Mom, she—”

“She never knew. But if she found out, she’d send me back.”

“Where?”

“Juvey. RTC. Foster case. Those are all the same fuckin’ place. Just a different sign outside.” He turns. “Can you bend down and move over that way?”

I look over my shoulder. My face looks back at me in a mirror’s reflection. All this time, I thought he was a natural. Really, Hammer’s been working his moves in the mirror over my shoulder.

“How’s the pervs.”

I scan the IMs piled up, one atop another. “Lots of, ‘We
love
you.’”

“Love?” He snorts. “What they
love
is lookin’ at what they can’t have.”

“You want me to write that?”

“Go for it.”

I type.

Bling! Bling! Bling!

“They
love
it. Lots of exclamation marks and hearts.”

He sticks his left thumb under his waistband, raises his right hand, and gives the camera the finger. He runs through a new series of hot, sexy poses. He has an unlimited supply.

“You want to say something?” I ask. He ignores my question and continues working his poses. I sit, mute, hands on thighs and watch him. IMs go unanswered. He tilts his head, rests his chin on his shoulder, looks to the side. “Some dork found my pictures and passed them around school.”

“Copies.”

“Yeah, so I tell my mom I’m gonna home school myself. When the school calls, I was flunking out everything but football and shop.”

“Your mom let you drop out, no questions asked?”

“My dad and me split. What now?”

I decide to digest this information later. I scan hundreds of messages, looking for an average, skipping the weirdo requests: bathroom business, clean up my mess, and doggy style. “Basically, they all wanna know when your shirt comes off.”

“Tell ’em I need three grand in
two minutes
or I step off. No, no! Wait! Don’t write that. If there’s—how many peeps I got watching me?”

“About five hundred.”

“What’s that into three thousand?”

“Into? You mean divided?”

“Yeah.”

“About six.”

“So write, ‘Torso Special. Fourteen fifty.
No face
.’”

“No face?”

“Say, ‘Three minutes, or I step off.’ You time it.”

I post the torso special and note the time. Hammer’s eyes are closed. He moves, slowly, in a trance. On-screen, he looks like he’s dancing. But in the safe house closet, he’s somewhere else. Not here. Present but not accounted for. I’m not sure I buy that life-after-death crap. But if he has a soul, his is gone. Hammer’s a meat puppet. Invisible strings make him dance.

I know the feeling. I felt that way during “treatment” (electric shocks to my dick every time I got hard looking at the nekkid pix). Leaving your body’s all you can do when your body’s trapped.

Meanwhile, the money counter ticks. Up, up, up. Fourteen fifty plus fourteen fifty plus fourteen fifty. It’ll hit three grand in two minutes.

Moving, always moving, Hammer’s hypnotic, hypnotized and hypnotizing. His left hand drops to the shirt’s bottom edge. He lifts the frayed fabric, flashing his perfect stomach. He lets it drop. Moving, moving, always moving. He lifts the shirt, flashes some ab and drops it. Moving, moving, always moving. He lifts the tank and flashes the skin under the boxer’s waistband.

“You know what that”—fingertip to tongue, he wets the tip and draws it along the ridge that runs deep between outer blond pubes and abs—“is?”

“No, what?”

“It’s called,” he says, tracing the ridge, “a cum gully.”

Stops, pauses.

“How much now?”

“Seventeen thirty-five, fifty.” I can’t keep up coz it’s going so fast. There’s a cotton triangle in a dark blue frame. The numbers climb faster than I can count.

“How much time’s left?”

“Nineteen seconds.”

“‘Not fast enough,’ tell ’em that.” His eyes crack, opening slightly, but not all the way. He might be waking up. On-screen, his eyes look sleepy-sexy. Or, like he’s having sex with his reflection. His right hand slowly climbs up, over his chest. Massaging his pecs, he plays with the silver nipple ring.

“Say, ‘Hit it peeps or we go dark.’”

I type the warning.

Bling! Bling! Bling!

The money line shoots up and crests over the two—three—four thousand mark.

“We hit it?”

“Yeah. Now they say they want to see it.” I smirk. “It” means one thing to me and Hammer’s hundreds of fans.

“Tell ’em, I said, ‘
Five Minutes
.’ Put that in big letters. Tell ’em, ‘But.’ Then do that dot, dot, dot thing. ‘Behave yourselves. Or I might change my mind.’”

His left hand drops, hung over the white triangle. His big fingers graze the cotton. They creep over, left, to his thigh. His hand moves up and down. Even though he’s fully dressed, Hammer’s hot and makes bank.

I glance at the monitor, back to him, “live.” He looks sexier on-screen. I look in his eyes. Present? Absent? I can’t tell. Absent might work better. People want what they can’t have. Hammer couldn’t give present even if he wanted.

“How’d you get so good at this?”

“Practice.” His hands hold down the sides of his shirt. He pulls one side up a little and one side down a little, stretching the fabric, gyrating his hips. Thumbs hitched to underwear, he slides the fabric down. His Hammerhood presses, hard, against the shirt.

Creak—

Sound—

I turn, look—

See—

The front door open.

Great, we’re gonna get caught. One of us, literally, with his pants down.

M
y hands can’t move. “What’s wrong?”

I open my mouth. But I can’t speak. I turn my head, look. The door clicks, shut. Hammer nods, index fingers to lips, a silent “Shhh.”