Shuck (15 page)

Went to a magazine casting for
Blueboy
. This clearly had nothing to do with Phil, because he avoided these antiseptic California magazines like they were West Nile virus. Ridiculous tan lines, shaved
chest and pits. The war on hair is a travesty of the human body, and it's what separates the East from the West.

This cheeseball Michael Lucas told me to take my clothes off and get hard. His Russian accent was so drippy, it had to be fake. He gave me three porn magazines to bone up to, all of which contained, incidentally, Michael Lucas oiled, naked, and giving soap opera faces. I left before His Smarminess could come back to check on me. I was
not
going to give him the satisfaction.

Cruised into the New York premiere of Bruce LaBruce's bisexual opus
Skin Gang
at the ultra-trendy Performance Space 122. I was Phil's date for the night and laughed at all of his jokes, even when he forgot to make them funny.

Trey was there, looking jealous and giving us heat. At the urinals, he told me that one day he was going to be Boy New York and I'd be yesterday's used condom. “Whatever, jealous bitch,” I said, then pissed on his leg.

Highlight of the film was when a hot skinhead jerked off while reading Hitler's
Mein Kampf
. LaBruce is such a genius. I respect subversive artists who focus on making you cum, but still manage to tick people off as a by-product. Some autograph hound asked me to sign a
Homework Hard-on 101
box cover, but I just crumpled it and handed it back because I could tell the prick hadn't even seen the film.

Made a cameo appearance at the Forsythe and White Gallery in Chelsea. Aaron Cobbett played the social butterfly quite well, flitting among fans who came to see his photos of pouty muscle boys in color-saturated sets. His shots, according to
HX
magazine, “are making new again the concept of Lost Boy as
objèt-trouvé
, diamonds in the
rough polished up with Vaseline.”

In my photo, I was wearing a jock strap and enough pancake makeup to be a geisha girl. I made a few contacts (ahem) among admirers, raped the cheese platter of Roquefort, and skedaddled before Aaron got any funny ideas about shooting me again. On the way out, I bumped into his pornstar boyfriend Donnie Russo, who gave me a wink.

Nothing. The way I like it. Watched Derek paint from my notebook.

When I went to bed, my eyes kept bouncing around and didn't want to close, so I went out into the empty city and tweaked around for interesting shit and ephemera:

Detached prescription lenses, shit-smeared newspaper (not a favorite), wish-bone halves, still-breathing fish heads dumped on the street in front of Chinatown restaurants (a favorite), plane tickets for two, dead birds throbbing with maggots, cum-filled condoms, lipstick tubes, baby strollers hanging from barbed wire, Coke bottles filled with piss, fake Fiorucci shoes (I can tell the difference, motherfuckers), peach pits sucked bald.

Objects, in case you haven't noticed, tell the parts of the story that people leave out.

The Lord's day. Shot a video with Donnie Russo called
Brooklyn Meat Packers
. It was pretty hot pissing into this cute guy's mouth and wondering if he could taste the Red Bull and crystal meth. Getting artsy was the thing to do, ever since Terry Richardson had declared in
Nerve
magazine that the difference between art and porn had been erased forever. I had to play my part in the revolution, so I made a crude goblet with my foreskin for pigboy to sip from. Yikes, the looks he
was giving me. I had to keep my left hand behind his head so he wouldn't slip a ring on it.

And that's a hustler's week in a New York minute.

Doormen with white gloves mean business.

At any residential building on the Upper East Side, they routinely chuck heads of state out by the scruff of their cheap Armani suits for the crime of not having an appointment.

But if you're a rent boy like me (funny how that expression doesn't seem to fit anymore), if you smell like sex and refer to tenants by their suite numbers, they'll lead you through the royal gates and apologize for having asked you any questions in the first place. I'm serious.

If you have a convenient hole in the thigh of your jeans, the doormen will know that you have business there, even if it's your first time. If they have any sense about them, they'll realize that your customers are the ones who give them a fat cash tip every Christmas.

The universe takes care if itself.

And you can't take any shit from them because they'll sniff out weakness and make you sign the guest register.

I walked into the elevator, a polished brass space capsule that was shiny and claustrophobic. The doorman followed me in. He hovered a finger over the elevator buttons and lifted his eyebrows, waiting for me to tell him what floor.

“How the hell should I know.”

He nodded knowingly and pressed fourteen. His eyes. I could tell he'd been trained to use them to dilute embarrassment and make
people feel better. Magnanimous prick.

“I'm going to fuck him,” I told the doorman. “Let's just clear that up. Pick me up in half an hour.”

I got out on the fourteenth (he knew better than to expect a tip from my ass) and found the suite door open. I walked into a princess palace of white carpeting and kitschy crystal figurines, shelves crammed with priceless pieces of junk, and antique Chinese furniture sagging under sick wastes of money. Only the stacks of manuscripts seemed out of place.

“You must be the famous Jaeven. I'm Dennis.”

I gave him fifty-three, fifty-four, the type of daddy who took care of his boy. I gave my crotch a squeeze and made sure he saw it.

“Yeah. Vodka cranberry.”

“You're good at this. Ice?”

“Why not.”

“Take your shoes off,” he said.

“How do I know you're not going to steal them?”

A butler in a tuxedo (who I guess had been listening) served my drink on a mother-of-pearl tray—without meeting my eyes, of course.

The lights of New York City pulled me like tractor beams to the big bay window and I stood there transfixed, wondering how long I would own all this, how long my reign as Boy New York would last. Dennis reached over my shoulder and laid a stash of twenties in my hand.

I didn't need to look to know that they were twenties. I can distinguish the smell of a twenty from a hundred from a single. They have different degrees of dirt on them. They're born of different transactions. Hundreds have this sinister scent about them, because the
more zeroes you tack on, the higher the stakes. They usually smell like puke, for some reason. Twenties smell like booze. Tens and fives smell alternately like crotch and ass, and that's why I can never tell them apart.

The only thing I wasn't sure about was whether or not he included a tip. I wasn't about to count the money, because only debutantes do that.

I folded the bills into my pocket, the hustler signal that it's a go. In any other part of town, he would've put the money on the nightstand and we'd both stare at it until the transaction was complete. This was the Upper East Side, however, and we both knew the rules were different.

After the Fire's “Der Kommissar” ran through my head.
Don't turn around
. Because if you do, he's going to kiss you. These old men, in the end, want affection more than anything else.

You can never be sure, though. And things can get dangerous in soundproof buildings where you have to rely on doormen to let you out.

We went to the bedroom and I sat on the bed, waiting for him to make me shuck my pants. Instead, he pulled up a chair in front of me.

“Take off your socks, one at a time.”

So I ripped one off and dropped it on the carpet. He looked disappointed.

“Who sent you here, anyways?”

“Phil McDougall.”

“Didn't he tell you anything about me? That I'm specific?”

I was confused so I asked for another drink. The butler brought it, left, and locked the door behind him. Dennis looked at me and wiped
the sweat off his brow with a handkerchief.

“I need you to do it s-l-o-w-l-y. Is that too difficult?”

“No, sure.”

“Okay, now continue.”

He knelt like a shoe salesman.

I slinked the other sock off slowly, like a condom I'd just blown a load into. It was weird but I was getting into it. I'd never thought the curly hairs around my ankle were sexy until now, until they were feeding someone's desire through anticipation and deprivation. He was sweating contentedly a few feet away, happy to be without the object he wanted most in the world: my sock.

Now this was power, I thought. If only I could wield it in the other parts of my life.

The sock was halfway off my foot when the funk started to waft up—me in all my raunchy glory. He was trying his best not to sniff, and I could see in his face that holding back was getting him off. Just thinking about how I had a human puppet more than twice my age made my dick pudge out and poke through the hole in my jeans. My erection didn't interest him in the least.

“Now take it off completely.”

“Slowly?”

“What do you think?”

So I did as he said, exposing dirty toenails, cracked and misshapen. I handed him the sock and he brought it up to his nose with both hands like it contained the last breath of oxygen in outer space. As he inhaled my funk for a solid minute (I shit you not), he turned away from me and gazed out the window at the twinkling lights of New York City.

He was gone.

Eyes tearing up, shirt drenched with sweat. It wasn't my place to know why, even if I was the angel making it happen. It wasn't about me anymore. I was witnessing a religious experience. It was intestinal.

It doesn't mean I was used to feeling ignored in these situations.

I put my shoes on and the butler let me out. The doorman was waiting in the elevator to take me down and I pretended he wasn't there. I walked out into the night, wondering where I was supposed to find a matching sock before going dancing at Jackie 60.

The sock fucker didn't tip me.

I get pissed off when wealthy Manhattanites don't tip, because the people around them have to pretend that everything happens by itself.

Valets have to pretend that cars park themselves, and security guards have to pretend that no unwanted guests ever try to sneak into the building.

I don't hate doormen as much as you think I do.

They have it the hardest because they have to pretend that their building is immune to ice and snow in the winter. They also have to pretend that doors open by themselves, that clothes dry-clean themselves, that taxis hail themselves, that FedEx packages float up the stairs by themselves, that garbage bags are transported magically to the dumpster courtesy of fairy dust from Bloomingdale's. They're also dealers in kink, and masters of covering trails and keeping secrets.
When you don't see the doorman in the lobby, it's because he's manning the back door.

It sticks in my craw that there's a whole network of underlings, me included, who are expected to conspire together to make sure that the world runs smoothly and that everything happens with the utmost discretion—for nothing more than the going rate.

Our charge is heavy, but a tip would somehow make it alright.