WARNING
This story details explicit gay sex between men, teens and boys. If you find this kind of thing distasteful, or if you are underage wherever you live, then stop reading this now, and delete this file. The story is completely fictional; the author does not condone or encourage any of the acts contained herein.
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Craigslist
Chapter 94
By: Tim Keppler
Edited by: Bob Leahy
What would you be willing to do if you were, say, eighteen, had lost your job, and had no prospect of finding another in this economy? You have no savings, no supportive parents to fall back on, and are very close to being evicted from the place where you've been living. What would you be willing to do to survive?
This is a question that's fascinated Dinh for a month or so now. He's been thinking about making another porn video, and his concept is really interesting. He'd like to make it with straight boys specifically, with straight boys who have never had any kind of intimate physical contact with other guys. If you look at seancody.com, or corbinfisher.com, what you see are guys who have had some experience with other guys. Either they've experimented on their own, or the film makers have given them a chance to explore, to get comfortable with guy-on-guy sex. That's not what Dinh wants. Nor does he want bisexual actors. He wants to film the awkwardness, the discomfort of straight guys being paid to have sex with other guys for the first time. The more rigidly hetero they are, the better it will be. The guys who can't get it up become the de facto bottoms. The guys who can get it up become the tops. It's sort of an evil concept, I think, but it's interesting. And I have to wonder if there aren't a lot of guys out there who'd be willing to trade their economic distress for some sexual distress.
The question is, where do you find down-and-outers who are cute enough to be compelling in a video? Craigslist comes to mind, but it doesn't really have a place to list something like this. I mean, you could probably list it under "Gigs à Talent," but there you're going to be attracting mostly models, and those guys will be used to working in front of a camera. Dinh wants guys who are markedly unused to being in front of a camera. You could also go after hustlers, I suppose, or "escorts" as they prefer to be called, but these guys will be sexually experienced with other guys. Again, that's not what he wants. He wants them awkward. So, what he does instead is to put up flyers on public kiosks at the local junior colleges – De Anza, Foothill, West Valley, Cabrillo, Cañada, Gavilan, and a host of others. His theory is that kids going to community colleges are likely to be there because they don't have the money for a full-fledged university. His flyers offer part-time employment, but are pretty vague about the actual job responsibilities. They provide an email address, and request a resume, a recent photo, a phone number and an email address.
These flyers are, in fact, so cryptic about the job that I don't expect him to get much of a response, but I am dead wrong. He gets an avalanche of responses, so many, in fact, that he asks me to help him sort through them. "Pull out the cute ones," he says, "and discard everything else." It takes us a couple of days to make our way through nearly a thousand applicants, and when we're done we have about 150 applications left. These Dinh prioritizes, and then he starts calling them. He'd considered sending them an online questionnaire, but what he needs to know about them isn't something he could necessarily expect them to answer online. He wants to know whether they're straight or gay, whether the straight ones have ever had a sexual experience with another guy, whether they have girlfriends, how they feel about the idea of gay sex, and what their annual income is. From these telephone interviews he's able to identify a pool of thirty-seven cute straight boys who find the idea of gay sex revolting but who are having such a hard time surviving that they'll do anything for money. These are the ones he targets.
After prioritizing the thirty-seven qualified applicants, he calls each of them again, explains that he's making a porn video and that, if they're chosen, they'll have to have sex with another straight guy. He gets a lot of revulsion, and a lot of anger. One guy tells him that no amount of money could get him to have sex with another guy, but then he asks what Dinh's paying. When he hears the amount, he's not quite as reluctant.
So, out of the thirty-seven qualified applicants, he ends up with nineteen who agree to an interview and screen test. He starts those interviews on Saturday afternoon, and spreads them across the next week. Dinh's interview style is interesting. He holds the interviews in the basement of Evan's house next door, which is fully furnished and even has a bed. This is where some of the scenes from his previous videos were filmed. He starts by taking them through the premise of the video and the demographics of the audience he's aiming to reach. "A lot of men are very turned on by seeing two women having sex. Statistical surveys I've seen recently suggest that a lot of women will be turned on by seeing two men having sex, and if you look at the stats related to the audience for Queer as Folk, a gay drama that was on Showtime a few years ago, at least 50% of the audience was made up of straight women. That's a significant audience for us. But, those straight women were tuning in to see a gay drama, so that's what we'll be making. It'll always be clear that you're straight. That's the turn on. But you will fuck and be fucked by men. And, let's face it, the other half of the audience for this video will be gay men, many of whom have fantasies about taking a straight boy."
Dinh's explanation of the video scares away five of the nineteen applicants, leaving fourteen. That number drops to nine with what comes next. For the screen test, Dinh wants the boys naked, and instructs them to strip and stand in front of the couch so he can film them. He needs to see their bodies, certainly, but he also wants to see just how much apprehension they show while stripping in front of a guy they know is gay. All fourteen are willing to get naked, but Dinh has another surprise for them. He's enlisted the help of his friend Thanh, one of the actors in his previous videos. Once the boys are naked, Thanh comes out, also naked, and caresses them a little, running his hand over their chests and bellies, and holding their dicks. It's at this point that five more flee. "I can't deal with this," one says, jumping quickly into his clothes before sprinting up the stairs and out of the house. "No...no...no..." cries another, before running from the room. Nine, however, stay put and allow themselves to be "handled". They're clearly revolted, but they let it happen to them. As each of them dresses and prepares to leave, Dinh asks if he's still interested. Each nods, sheepishly.
What would you be willing to do if you were on the brink of indigence and homelessness? The answer is nearly anything, as these nine boys have proven. I think they may have stronger stomachs than I have. The idea of eating pussy is so revolting to me that it makes me nearly nauseous just thinking about it, but sucking dick, swallowing cum, licking ass – none of these bothers me at all. In fact, they excite me. I invite any of those wise christian reparative therapists like Joseph Nicolosi or Warren Throckmorton, therapists who think that I can and should be changed, to come suck me off, or better yet, to come suck on my ass. While they do that, I would invite them to ponder the enormity of the task it would be for them to become gay, to actually learn to enjoy gay sex (assuming that they don't already). What's good for the goose is good for the gander, or should that be what's good for the gander is good for the other gander? If they think sexual change is possible, they should prove it.
In the course of auditioning these boys, he actually gains four more, guys who applied a little late, but made it through Dinh's interview and screen tests. That leaves him with thirteen cute, straight, and very squeamish young men. "How many of them are you going to use?" I ask, looking at the still photos he took of their auditions.
"I think I may use all of them."
I give him a long look. "What makes you think that half of these guys will be able to get it up? What if they can't get aroused?"
"That's going to happen. I'm working on pairings now to try to avoid that, but it'll happen. I have an idea for that situation. I plan to give the boys a quarter of what I've agreed to pay them a week before their shoot. I'm sure they'll spend it, and once they do, they're indebted to me. Then, if they can't perform, I'll give them a choice of repaying the money, or filming something else."
"What else would you film them doing?"
"Being spanked. There's a guy in
My oh-so-innocent-looking Dinh is an evil little imp sometimes, and this is one of those times.
He starts filming on Monday with Mike and Jim. They're both seriously cute. One's brunette and one's blond. Both are nineteen, in their first year at De Anza. Both were soccer stars at their high schools. They have a lot in common, including deep-seated heterosexuality, or at least that's how it initially appeared. Once they're naked together, though, Jim has an almost immediate hardon. Dinh tells them to kiss, and Mike gives Jim a peck on the cheek. "No," Dinh admonishes, "kiss like you'd kiss your girlfriends."
"I don't kiss guys," Mike responds.
"You do if you want to be paid," Dinh responds severely.
Mike looks stricken, but leans in and kisses Jim. It's not a bad kiss, but lacks passion.
"Now stroke him," Dinh says to Mike. "Run your hand down his chest, down his abs. Then kneel in front of him and take his dick in your mouth." All these directions are being recorded. Dinh wants the audience to know that this was not voluntary, that this was coerced. This is a kind of S/M video. He wants that to be clear.
Mike looks shocked. "But I can't..."
"What did you think you'd be doing? What did you think I was paying you for? I told you that you were going to have sex with another guy. This is how we do it. Well, it's one of the ways. You get to be the cock sucker because Jim's the only one with a hardon."
The first time Mike touches Jim there's a play of emotions on Mike's face. There's anger, and revulsion to the point of agony. They're just so deliciously awkward with each other. He does as Dinh's instructed until he's kneeling, staring at Jim's hardon. Then he looks at Dinh plaintively. "Get on with it," Dinh admonishes.
Mike looks at the dick in front of him, and finally gives it a lick. Then he takes it in his mouth, but once it's there, he stops. He doesn't move. "Blow him," Dinh commands. Mike begins to tear up. He starts to cry. But, he starts to slide back and forth along the shaft of Jim's dick...slowly. He does this for maybe five minutes, until it looks like Jim is getting close to blowing a load. Then, Dinh tells Mike to stop. Mike pulls away abruptly. He's clearly relieved. But that relief is short-lived. "Flip around, Mike. Get down on your hands and knees. Jim, I want you to fuck him. There's a condom and a bottle of lube to your right. Use lots of lube. Go slow."
Mike flips around so that he's on his hands and knees. He's sobbing now. "Please," he says, staring at the floor. "Please don't..."
Jim is rock-hard and oozing. He rolls the condom onto his dick, lubes it liberally, lubes Mike's asshole, and begins to slide into him. Mike screams. "Go slow," Dinh repeats. JIm withdraws, and then slides back in place. He establishes a rhythm, and finally makes it fully inside Mike after about ten minutes, ten minutes during which Mike has never stopped sobbing and begging. "Please, please, I'll do anything, please don't...hurt..."
Once inside, Jim begins to withdraw, and then to plunge back into place, as if he were fucking his girlfriend. Mike's agony, Mike's utter degradation, is Jim's delight. Watching the video with Dinh later, I have a real sense that this was a conquest for Jim. He seemed to relish the power he had over Mike. Maybe that's why he could get a hardon. This was essentially a rape. All the motives were the same. The only difference was that Mike had agreed to it. He hated every second of it. He clearly felt degraded and dirty. He felt humiliated. But, he'd consented. Once again, I'd call upon those honorable and compassionate reparative therapists to come and participate in Dinh's study. Come and try to be gay. See how a sexual transformation feels to you, assuming that we can find anyone willing to fuck something as ugly as Warren Throckmorton.
Jim ultimately cums. Mike's dick has been flaccid from the start. He's never stopped crying. Once he's cum, Jim withdraws. He takes off the condom, throws it in the trash, dresses, collects his money, and leaves. Mike hasn't moved. He's inconsolable for nearly ten minutes, ten minutes during which Dinh continues to film. Finally, he gets control of himself. Dinh slides a box of tissues over to him to wipe up the lube that's leaking from his ass. He, too, dresses, and collects his money. Then he turns to Dinh. "This was the most horrible thing I've ever done. How could you ask me to do this?"
"I paid
you for it, and this is what straight
Please, Mr. Throckmorton, Mr. Nicolosi, please call us. We can help to re-orient you. We can treat you for your pernicious heterosexuality. Please let us help cure you.
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Bryce
and Robbie have been euphoric since their wedding. Bryce has put on a pound or
two because he now eats most of his evening meals at Paolo's, where Robbie has been the executive chef for several
months. Robbie can seriously cook. When he took over as executive chef, he
completely revitalized the menu, adding several new seafood dishes, some lamb,
some pasta, some risottos, and pork loin. What he learned from Thomas Keller
was creativity. Fuse one cuisine with another and what you have is something
completely new. Robbie's starting point is often Italian, but what he adds to
that fascinates me. Sometimes it's sort of Asian, and sometimes it's sort of
French. Sometimes there's a hint of German. Alice Waters, the executive chef at
Chez Panisse
in
"Umm...because you're good?" Jason asks.
Kenny laughs. "That good!"
Bryce
has been moving in a slightly different direction. After the wedding, I took
him to the Sunday service at the
The
Unitarians resonate with Bryce, both because he's been looking for a community
to fit into, and because this community absolutely adores him. I introduce him
to
We
brought Kevin here years ago. He wanted to go to Sunday school, and had a very
bad experience with the presbyterians. We brought him
to the Unitarian Children's ministry, and he was hooked. He came every week for
years. He still comes quite frequently. Fernando Kwe,
a Filipino, ran those children's sessions, but he'll be retiring soon.
"I know," he says. "You don't want to lose me at the Center, but maybe I can give some of our kids a spiritual underpinning, something to fall back on in moments of despair."
He's right, of course, and he's not proposing that he leave the Center. He's simply proposing that he reduce his weekend time. We're sitting on the couch in the office, and he reaches over and hugs me. "I think this is what I want to do long term, Tim. I think I'd like to be ordained as a Unitarian minister. Thao and Nancy Jones have been helping me understand what I want to do with my life. I think this is it. I don't want to go to medical school. Instead, I'd like to help people with spiritual issues. I think this would be fulfilling...for me."
I never supposed that I'd have Bryce at the Center for very long. I assumed that he'd figure himself out pretty quickly. Whether it was medicine or something else, he was bound to find a better gig than mine. So, I'm sad and I'm happy at the same time. I'm sad that he's pulling away from us a little, but I'm happy because this is exactly the right place for him to be. It gives him a community, and a spiritual basis for his life, which Bryce really craves. Ordination can be the result of what amounts to an apprenticeship with an existing church and an existing minister. I couldn't entrust Bruce to any one in whom I have more confidence that Nancy Jones. She will nurture him, and lead him down a spiritual path that will fulfill him without destroying his soul, as the standard christian denominations would do. And as Bryce astutely observes, this can help make the Unitarian Church of San Jose an adjunct to what we're trying to achieve at the Center, which is well-adjusted gay teenagers who can blossom into happy and productive gay adults. All of this makes perfect sense, but it also makes me sad, and I guess that shows on my face.
"Tim, I'm not leaving the family. I love you all too much. I'm just not going to be spending quite as much time at the Center. Some day, four or five years down the line, I may have to quit working at the Center. Once I get my ordination, I might have to make a more significant decision, but we're not there, yet. Today we're just reducing my weekend hours."
I stare at Bryce for a long, long moment. He's very wise. We'll take this thing as it comes, and deal with it as we have to. I have no interest in impeding Bryce's hopes and desires. I love him too much for that. Unitarian ordination, as I've said, is a perfect choice for him. I nod, and then reach over and hug him. "I love you Bryce. You need to do what feels right for you. This feels right for me, too, and I suspect, ultimately, you'll be able to do the gay community more good as a Unitarian minister than as a counselor at Youth Renewed. We'll figure out how to handle the weekend workload."
"Actually, I may be able to help with that. Cooper, a kid in one of my sessions, has just turned eighteen. He's got life experiences that'll resonate with the kids."
Cooper is a Hispanic kid who lives with his parents and five siblings on the east side. Where he got the name Cooper I have no idea. It seems improbable for a Hispanic kid whose parents don't even speak English. Cooper's mother is a house cleaner, and his father repairs refrigerators for a company that sells used appliances. They're very catholic, and very devout. His parents discovered he was gay when he was fifteen. His father saw him kissing a boy who was a year older. His father beat him, rather severely, I'd guess. And then he broke down in tears, sobbing about how humiliating it was that a son of his could be a maricon, a faggot. Since that day, his father has not spoken to him directly, nor have his brothers. His two sisters love him, as does his mother, but his mother keeps trying to set him up on dates with Latinas in the neighborhood. She's clearly in denial.
"Cooper needs to find a job and somewhere to live. He'd be perfect for my weekend sessions, and I was thinking that maybe he could live in the room in the back of the Center where Thao says he lived for a while. Jimmi (our office manager) gave me the key to that room so I could take a look. It's really nice, and would be perfect for a single person."
I don't know Cooper well, but I can well imagine that he has the life experience necessary to relate our kids at the Center. He's petit, and rather effeminate. He's actually very cute, but I suspect that that cuteness has caused him to be victimized in the past. Certainly his recent history with his family has given him an understanding of what a lot of gay kids go through. The best session leaders are able to draw on their personal experiences in order to empathize with their attendees. That's what makes Bryce so good. The persecution he faced from his parents, and the whole Exodus experience gave him a wealth of things to talk about. But, content isn't the only issue. Good session leaders have to be able to listen, and they have to be wise. They have to be able to take the experiences of others and make suggestions about what they can do to survive, and what they can do to improve their situations. This is what Bryce is so good at. It would be very easy for him to simply tell his story over and over. That's not what he does. He invites attendees to tell their stories, and then works with them to find ways of reconciling with their torment and their tormentors. I can't tell you the number of kids he's helped to reconnect with their families, with parents who had rejected their gay kids, and with siblings who initially weren't supportive. He's very good at coming up with strategies for living happily in a straight world, and believe me, that's a gift.
"Have you seen Cooper present?" I ask. "Can he do it?"
"We're going to see that tomorrow. I've started getting the kids more involved in planning our sessions and telling their stories. I want them to tell us what they've experienced, and, more important, to tell us what they learned from those experiences. They need to tell us how they've re-shaped who they are. Some of those stories are pretty heartbreaking. Cooper's story is tomorrow, but we've kind of already seen him in action. He's good at empathizing, at giving advice, and at suggesting ways to deal with the realities that the others face. He cries a lot, though. He's very open with his emotions. Oh, and he's fluent in Spanish, and believe me, that is a big help."
Cooper's presentation is very impressive, mostly by virtue of how he's structured it. He talks about his childhood, about being the youngest child in a loving Latino family, protected and spoiled by brothers and sisters who are on average six years older than he is. He talks about his elementary school years, and about his playmates. Middle school was uneventful, he says, except it was there that he realized he was different, and that he was attracted to other boys. He tried to control those feelings, to push them deep inside so no one would ever know, but in tenth grade he met a boy who triggered all those feelings again, and brought them to the surface. Miguel Ortiz was one grade ahead of him, but needed help in writing. Cooper, who'd volunteered to tutor other students, was paired with Miguel, and they ended up becoming friends. One day, that friendship changed. One day, after working in a secluded corner of the school library on an essay for Miguel's civics class, Miguel leaned over and kissed Cooper, on the cheek first, and then on the lips. Cooper froze. Miguel leaned back in his chair looking worried. "Have I ruined it?" he asked Cooper. "Have I ruined it all?"
Cooper says that he just stared at Miguel. He stared for probably a couple of minutes. Finally he replied, "No. I've...umm...sort of wanted for you to do that. But...umm...I'm sort of...scared."
Miguel nodded, and offered Cooper a ride home. Cooper accepted. When they got to his house, Cooper reached across and pulled Miguel into a kiss, a real kiss. A tender and lingering kiss. Suddenly he felt himself being yanked away from Miguel by the back of his shirt. He turned to see his father standing by the car. "Maricones!" his father screamed. "Get out of the car!" Cooper got out, and closed the door. "Get away from here, you slime!" his father shouted at Miguel, dragging Cooper into the house.
"He beat me that night," Cooper relates. "My father is a big man. I am not. He is much stronger than me. He and my brothers stripped me, and he beat me with his belt. There was blood. The beating went on and on. All the while he was screaming obscenities at me in Spanish. I don't remember exactly what he called me. I wasn't listening. When he was finally done with me, he threw me to the floor, and he and my brothers left the room. I could hear him in the kitchen cursing me, and then crying. My mother came in to check on me, and was genuinely anguished when she found her youngest son, her baby, covered in welts and blood. She treated the wounds as best she could, all the while cursing my father under her breath, but at the same time telling me that I should not have done this. I lost half my family that afternoon," he says, choking on tears. "My father, whom I loved, hasn't spoken to me since. Neither have my brothers. My brothers did speak to my school friends, though, telling them what I'd done. Word spread fast. My life, which up till then had been happy and carefree, became a living hell. So did Miguel's. We were beaten up regularly, called maricones and faggots, and often arrived at class torn and bloodied. The last three years of my life have been...challenging. I was a straight-A student before that kiss," he says, sobbing. "But ultimately, I barely...graduated."
It takes Cooper a couple of minutes to recover. "I will miss my father for as long as I live, but he needed to know about me. I guess what I learned from my experience is that it's really important to plan your coming out carefully. Your parents should not find out by spotting you kissing someone of the same sex. You need to control how you come out, not chance. If I had all this to do again, I would have come out to my sisters first, and let them help me come out to my mother. She could have helped me with Papa. Ultimately, the result might have been the same. I might have lost my father anyway, but at least I would have been responsible for that loss. As it was, I was responsible for nothing, and that was irresponsible."
When he's done with his presentation, he sits down off to one side. Bryce, who has tears in his eyes, comes back to the front of the room. "I can't tell you how sad your experience makes me. I had a similar experience, as you know, but I wasn't as resilient as you. I let my depression nearly destroy me."
"And I would probably have done the same," Cooper says, "if it hadn't been for this place. I needed the support that Youth Renewed provides. Without it, I probably would have tried to do what you did."
Bryce nods pensively. "Okay," he says finally, wiping away his tears. "Michelle has signed up for next week's session. Her story is actually pretty uplifting, and she's got some really good insights about how to handle parents and friends. So, please join us. See you all next week."
There is a feeding frenzy as the kids get ready to leave. One by one they make a bee-line for Cooper, hugging him and congratulating him. It really was a remarkably-told story, and clearly resonated with our clients, these gay kids facing so many challenges in their young lives. As the last couple of kids file out of the auditorium, Bryce approaches Cooper and hugs him, and then I hug him. "Do you have a few minutes?" I ask him.
"Yeah, sure," he says. Bryce prepares to leave.
"Stay with us, Bryce."
He nods. "Okay."
We sit. "Your presentation was very moving, but more important from my perspective, it was very well organized. Presentations like that, as touching as the story itself may be, often don't resonate because they aren't well organized. Yours really was. I was moved, and I've heard a lot of stories like yours. More important, though, the audience was moved. Very well done!" Cooper smiles shyly.
"I think
you have a talent for pathos, Cooper, and here's why that interests me. Bryce
is going to be expanding his horizons. He'd like to become a Unitarian minister
someday, and has agreed to take over the Children's Ministry at the local
Bryce giggles. "It's true. The regulars are really adorable, but there's a lot of longing in the room, which is fine. Everyone knows the rules. They can ask anything they want of me, but they can't touch."
"I'd like you to pick up those three sessions, Cooper, if you're interested. In return, I can offer you a place to live here at the Center. You'll need another job to pay for everything else, but if you're good at this, we can start discussing a regular salary as other sessions become available. Is this something you think you'd be interested in doing?"
"
"Well, let's start with those three sessions," I say with a laugh. "Let me show you the room." We get up and walk upstairs, and I take him down the hall to the room that once was to have been Evan's. I open the door, and he gasps. The room is furnished in vintage Danish Modern furniture reclaimed from my aunt's house. It's truly stunning. It was never my intent to make this place as luxurious as it is. It's just that this furniture was all I had at the time. It's all done in walnut, much of it solid. There's a couch, and an overstuffed chair with an end table between them. There's a row of wall units, a bed, and lace curtains over the two windows. Cooper gasps again as he sees all this.
"I cannot believe this. This is my room?"
"Yeah, if you want it. You'll have to use the communal bathroom on this floor, but it has a shower behind a door that's usually locked. There's also a fridge and stove in a little makeshift kitchen, so you'll be able to cook. I can loan you some money for food until you find a weekday job. Is this okay?"
He gives me a long look. "It's better than okay. It is beautiful. I'm not used to furnishings like this."
"When can you start?"
"Immediately," he says decisively. "Can I move in soon?"
"You can move in tomorrow if you want, and you can take Bryce's sessions this coming weekend. I'd like Bryce to help you through the first couple of weeks to give you a chance to get the hang of it and to transition with the attendees."
Cooper suddenly looks very apprehensive. "Taking over from Bryce won't be easy."
"You'll be fine," Bryce assures him. "Your session today proves that. You may not be a hit on day one, but I wasn't either. It took me a while. You'll be really good."
"Come in tomorrow and get the keys from Jimmi," I tell Cooper. "I'm really happy to have you with us."
Cooper turns abruptly and hugs me. "Thank you so much!" he says.
I hug him back and we walk back downstairs and out the door. I lock up behind us, and Cooper unlocks a bike. "You ride from the east side to the Center on your bike?" I ask, trying desperately to mask my astonishment.
"Yeah," he giggles. "It's good exercise. It helps me maintain my girlish figure."
I giggle. "Well, it seems to work."
He hops on the bike, and heads for downtown. "G'nite," he calls. "Thank you so much."
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In general, Dinh's filming goes as he hoped it would. He shows me the unedited dailies along the way, and there is a priceless quality of agony in the faces of the cute straight boys as they have sex with other guys for the first time. Well, it's not priceless. He's paying them for it. They've agreed to do it out of desperation. They need the money to stay afloat in this economy. But, occasionally it's pretty sad. One very small-framed blond kid who looked all of sixteen came in, and you could see the fear etched on his face. He was terrified, and humiliated. He couldn't believe that this is what he had to do to earn enough to keep breathing. He'd considered selling his ass on the streets, but he figured he couldn't make enough money at that to make it worthwhile. Dinh offered him five times what he'd make from a single trick, and he jumped at it. But, I think he regrets it now. "I'll never be president," he said to Dinh, close to tears.
"Yeah, that's probably true. Do you think that would have otherwise been in the cards?"
"Probably not," the boy says, a single tear coursing its way down his cheek.
During the screen test, Dinh had given him a butt plug to take home. "Stretch yourself," he'd advised the boy, "otherwise it's likely to be pretty painful."
The boy ignored him. "I couldn't bring myself to work that thing inside me. I just couldn't..." He paid dearly for that decision. If he'd been partnered with someone who'd had some experience with anal sex, things would certainly have gone better for him. But this boy's partner was as straight and squeamish as the boy himself. The only difference between them was that his partner had a hardon. He used that hardon as a blunt instrument, as a ramrod, and by the time their scene was done, the blond boy was a mess, and completely out of voice. He'd shrieked, and screamed and cried. He'd begged his partner, "Please...please...take it out...please don't..." It'll add spice to the video, but I really felt sorry for this boy.
Dinh wanted the next couple to fuck from the front, and so slid the bottom boy down to end of the bed so his partner could penetrate fully. Before positioning them like that, though, he told them to kiss while standing and hugging each other. The embrace itself took several seconds. The kiss was just a scream. They pecked on the lips and thought they were done. "No," Dinh complained, "that is not a kiss. I want a real kiss. I want to see tongue, and I want the kiss to last twenty seconds." They both looked at him in horror, and then back at each other. Dinh and the crew thought these guys were going to be sick. Ultimately, they thought of the money, I imagine, and began to kiss, hesitantly at first. With a little more verbal prodding from Dinh, though, they did swap spit, holding their mouths just enough apart that we could film their tongues as they wrestled. Now Dinh has the bottom lie on his back, but before he gets fucked, Dinh instructs the top to suck the bottom's dick. It was another really funny scene as the top approached the flaccid dick ever so slowly and furtively, licking it once or twice tentatively before finally going down on him. "Now, bring his legs up so they're resting on your shoulders. That's right. Now fuck him." Thankfully, this bottom followed Dinh's instructions, and used a fairly stout dildo to stretch himself prior to the shoot. When the top plunged awkwardly into him, he screamed, but his screams didn't last long. In fact, before the end of the scene, both the bottom and the top were moaning loudly. The bottom came first, followed about ten seconds later by the top. "How was it?" Dinh asked.
"It was pretty gross," the top replied, "but, I have to admit, it did feel pretty good." The bottom nods. It looks like we have some converts. I wonder if Throckmorton would be proud.
In the case of the next couple, Christopher and Fernando, neither partner could perform. Dinh gave them both the option of returning their advance, or performing in a corporal-punishment video. If they decided to make the video, they'd be spanked thoroughly and severely. They should expect it to be very painful and that their asses would be severely bruised, although there'd be no blood. Dinh warned them, "The spanking will go far beyond where you'd like it to end." They both looked at each other fearfully, but, as Dinh suspected, they didn't have the money to return.
"Who will spank us?" asked the cuter of the two boys, whose curly blond hair hung at about shoulder length. He's about 5'8" tall and is quite slender, but has a bubble butt that's just right for spanking. He's very much my type, and Dinh has already asked me to do the spankings if there are any. The other boy is Hispanic with piercing brown eyes. He, too, is cute, but a little tall for my tastes.
"Who's going first?" Dinh asked them. Neither volunteered, so Dinh pulled out a quarter. "Heads or tails?" he asked. "Heads" the Hispanic kid, Fernando, said, and when the coin was flipped, it landed tails up, so Christopher got to choose. Fernando would be first. Accompanied by the camera crew, they all three make their way out of Evan's basement, and out into the back garden. They cross to our house, and go down to our basement. Dinh has been thinking how to get the best shots of this, and concluded that he could get the best angles for his shots if he attached Fernando to the whipping frame. The whipping frame is made from three-inch steel drain pipe held together with elbows at all four corners. The frame itself has steel "feet" that extend in the front and back to keep it stable. At the top, it's chained to reinforced ceiling joists. The frame also has a pipe that crosses horizontally from side to side at about the level of the abdomen. Between the frame, the punishment table, and the multiplicity of whips and paddles hanging from the wall, this place can be pretty scary, and both the boys have a look of sheer terror on their faces.
Dinh points to the frame. "Stand on the bottom metal rung," he says. Fernando does, and you can see the terror on his face. Dinh attaches soft leather cuffs to his ankles, and soft leather cuffs to his wrists. Then he clips the ankle cuffs to the lower corners of the frame. This spreads his legs about three feet apart. Then he attaches the wrist cuffs to mini-winches screwed to the frame that allow Dinh to raise the boy onto his tippy toes. Finally he moves back to a drawer in the corner and returns with a two-inch nylon band that he wraps around the horizontal metal pole and behind the boy's back, synching it tight so that the boy is immobilized. He can move his head from side to side, but that's it. Dinh now run upstairs and call for me to join them. They're ready to start filming. I arrive naked except for a ski mask that conceals my identity. There's no sense in opening a can of worms by having someone recognize the Managing Director of Youth Renewed as a sadist, and from what Dinh wants out of this spanking, that's exactly how it would appear.
"Your disobedience," I say to Fernando, "caused me a good deal of embarrassment at our party last night. It deserves punishment, severe punishment. By the time I'm done with you, I think you'll have a better sense of what appropriate behavior means, and why it's important." The kid is perfect. He looks up and down my naked body, with sheer terror written in his eyes. I walk to the paddle wall, and take down the razor strop. "Remember this Fernando," I say. Then I lay into him with seven good hard strokes in rapid succession. The pain sets in, and he begins to sniffle. I give him seven more, covering the same ground as the first seven, but harder. "Ow...ow...ow...," he begins to scream with each stroke. His ass is reddening nicely, and he's begun to cry. I give him seven more in the same spot, as hard as I can make them. He's sobbing now, and begging me to stop. "Please...please...isn't this enough?" His ass was crimson after the first fourteen strokes. It has now begun to bruise.
"Remember, I told you that the spanking would go on far beyond where you'd like it to end. This is what I meant. We haven't even really begun." All this time Christopher, the blond curly-headed boy, has been sitting off to the side being filmed by one of the camera people, because his expression is one of utter horror. He's been crying softly for several minutes. He knows that he's next.
I move back to the paddle wall, replace the razor strop, and take down a leather paddle. This will let me be more precise, and to concentrate on one butt cheek at a time. I give him seven good hard strokes with the paddle, but only to his left cheek. He's screaming again, and begging. Then I move to his right cheek and work on it for a while. He's shrieking through his tears, sobbing, and imploring me to stop.
I move back to the paddle wall, and return with a medium fiberglass cane. I show it to him. Then I give him six good strokes that run from the top of his ass to the crease where his legs meet his ass. Then I crisscross those six strokes, making sure to go softly enough not to draw blood when the weals intersect. Finally, I return the cane to the wall, and come back with a whippy little steel ruler with holes in it. I've been told by some that this is one of the most painful weapons. You warm up the ass as we've done, and then go at it with this. You don't have to put much power into the blows. The idea is that the pain will grow with each moderate stroke. It becomes excruciating after a while. Finally, I cease. This straight, macho, Hispanic boy is a snotty mess. He's been sobbing uncontrollably for most of the spanking, which is not a very "manly" thing to do from Fernando's perspective. I move in front of him, intending to lecture him on good behavior, and I find him rock hard. On an inspiration, I motion the blond boy to come over to us. "Get on your knees, Christopher, and suck this boy off. If he gets off, I'll go easy on you. Oh, and if he does cum, you swallow his spunk. No spitting it out."
You have never seen a straight boy suck a dick into his mouth faster. He sort of knows what he's doing, sort of. He's not great, but he's not bad. He's good enough, though, and Fernando blows quickly. I grab a tube of topical ointment and spread a thin coating carefully on his ass cheeks. My touch apparently hurts him because he cries out in pain, but this stuff'll make him feel better than he otherwise would. Then we release him and Dinh leads him back to Evan's basement to collect his clothes and to pay him. He's still pretty teary-eyed. "How was it?" Dinh asked him.
"Excruciating. I never knew you could feel that much pain."
"Buy you got off on it."
"Yeah, I know," he says, perplexed.
"Would you do it again?"
"Maybe, but not for a while, probably a long while."
Dinh nods and leads him out of the house, and then returns to my basement where I've got the blond boy strapped into place, and Dinh starts filming.
"Please," Christopher begs. "Please, you promised. Please don't hurt me that much."
I move in and kiss him. "I won't," I assure him. "Your lily-white skin will bruise much more quickly. It won't take as much pain to make you look like you're in agony, although when I'm done with you, I guarantee you'll be sobbing." And he was, sobbing piteously, with a bruised and crimson ass after only fourteen strokes of the razor strop and six with the junior cane. We release him, and I carry him the chair in the corner and set him on my knee. "That wasn't so bad was it?"
"Yes," he says, "but it wasn't as bad as what Fernando got." I nod.
In all, Dinh films four couples, one threesome, and of course Fernando and Christopher who were spanked because they couldn't get it up. The dailies look good, achieving what Dinh had set out to do – to show straight boys humiliated and repulsed by having to have sex with other guys. Women will like it both because of the titillation factor, and because many will enjoy the idea of two guys being forced to do it. Gay men will like it because many gay men have been victimized by just the sort of boys who appear in the video. Dinh thinks the video will be a hit.
It takes him nearly two weeks to edit it, though. He lacks Shawn's, his former film partner's, editing expertise. The full-length video is worth the wait, though. He quickly puts it out on his pay-per-view website, advertising it on a number of websites targeted at his demographics. He's got a Nifty.org banner, of course, and has also included links from extremeboyz.com, discipline4boyz.com, and various usenet forums. He also targets the websites of some of the better-known toy stores catering to heterosexuals, like AdamEve.com, Liberator.com, EdenFantasies.com, and MyPleasure.com. After a week out there on the net, demand explodes, and true to form, Dinh's demographic instincts were dead on: 48% of both viewers and those purchasing the DVD are straight women, while 52% are men, gay or otherwise. He honestly can't get his duplication service to produce the disks fast enough because the demand is so huge. By the end of two months, he's netted $300,000, and that's after all the filming expenses. Who knew that this video would be nearly this popular? Dinh, apparently knew, but all this voyeurism, all this pain and degradation has fired Dinh's imagination for things he'd like me to do to him. That'll have to wait, though, for another time, and another place.
-------------------------------------------
Nancy Jones,
the senior minister at the First Unitarian Church of San Jose calls me on a
Monday morning, and she is near to tears. Bryce assumed responsibility for the
Children's Ministry about three weeks ago, and it's her responsibility to vet
him, to ensure that he behaves appropriately with the children, most of whom
are between five and eleven years old. Bryce is a smash-hit she tells me, but
that's no surprise, and it's not why she called. She called because of an
incident at yesterday's children's service. A Hispanic boy's
father barged into the service quite drunk, apparently, and sobbing piteously.
"Su madre es muerta!" he cried, your mother is dead. Then he lunged for
his six year old son, intending, I presume to remove him from the class.
"Si." The boy replies. We knew this. The whole Unitarian Fellowship knew
this. She had pancreatic cancer and was in a lot of pain. Nearly every night
someone from the Fellowship had taken a casserole to the
"So, her death isn't a surprise?"
"No," Juan responds, sobbing.
"Maybe she's gone to a better place. Did she love you?"
"Si," Juan responds emphatically.
With the boy sitting on Bryce's lap, and snuggled into him, Bryce asks the class what death means.
"It means someone isn't living anymore," says an eleven year old. "It means someone is no longer..."
"Will Juan see his mommy again?"
"No," says a nine year old.
"I don't think that's true," Bryce responds. "She might not cook dinner, or make the beds, but he can still see her. She will live in his heart, in his memories, and she'll live in his conscience. He can talk to her."
"What's a conscience?" ask another boy.
"Juan's mommy taught him to be good. She taught him to do good things. She loved him, and taught him to love. He can remember all that, and when he wonders if something he wants to do is right, he can ask the mommy who still lives in his heart. She can guide him."
By now, it's time for the class to end. "I want each of you to think about what your mommies and daddies mean to you. I want you to try to `empathize' with Juan. Does anyone know what `empathize' means?" Silence. "Empathize means trying to understand how he must feel right now, trying to understand his sadness. I want you to pretend that your mommy or daddy died, to see how that feels. Next week we're going to talk some more about this and I'll expect you to tell me how the death of one of your parents would feel. Okay?" Everyone nods solemnly. "Okay, you can go."
Rather than the normal mad dash for the door, the kids rise slowly, gazing at Juan, who is still cuddled against Bryce. Then they begin to leave the room, some crying. Bryce sits with Juan for several minutes, and then says, "She lives in you, Juan. She will always, always be with you, always be a part of you. And, if you let her, she'll always keep you well. Do you understand?"
"Si," he mutters, starting to recover. "¿Por qué la gente muere?" Why do people die?
"Sometimes, like your mommy, they're very sick and in great pain. Their bodies can't hold up against the pain. Sometimes dying is a blessing, because they'll never get better. This was the case with your mommy. She is no longer is pain. Do you understand?"
Juan nods.
Bryce finally rises, and carries Juan,
who is still clinging to him, out of the room.
"Si," she says, simply. "Le daré eso." I will give him that.
"Bryce turned the whole incident into a
learning opportunity,"
And so he is.
No less a blessing is Cooper, who has taken over Bryce's weekend sessions and truly made them his own. Bryce was right about Cooper. He is very...emotive. When something touches him, he responds instantly. He giggles and laughs when amused, and when one of our client's stories is particularly touching, he cries. The interesting thing is, none of the attendees at his sessions seems to care. In fact, they seem to value his reactions. He is what he is, and is very clear about that. I think he spent so many years hiding his feelings, that he revels in them now that he's out. And his story is compelling, isn't it? It's so compelling, in fact, that he's become a very good mediator between gay kids and their judgmental parents.
"You can, of course, reject your son," he said to the parents of a tearful sixteen-year-old boy sitting in the corner of his office, "but if you do that, he'll end up in the foster care system, and the county courts will be after you for child support. Or you can do what my father did. He stripped me, and beat me within an inch of my life. He left a few scars on my back, if you'd like to see them," he says, rising and pulling the back of his shirt out of his pants, ready to display them. The mother cringes, and the father looks down at the carpet, in embarrassment. "Or, you can simply accept him for who he is. Is he a bad kid? Has he been a burden to you?" Both parents shake their heads. "Is he pulling down poor grades?"
"No," the father replies. "Mostly A's with an occasional B or B+."
"Is he respectful to you?"
"Always," his mother sniffs.
"Then, why do you want to abandon him to a system in which he will be endlessly bullied, in which his grades will plummet, in which he'll be exposed to drugs and alcohol on a daily basis, and in which he probably will be beaten, as I was. Foster care is a terrible option for straight kids. For gay kids, it is hell on earth. Is that what you want for your only child?"
The mother is sobbing now. "No, but can't he be made normal?"
"He is normal. He's just gay. And if what you're asking is if you can send him somewhere to have him reprogrammed to be a happy heterosexual, I'd suggest you simply abandon him to the streets instead. It'll be more humane. Reparative therapy doesn't work. Study after study shows this, and the sheer number of gay teenagers who commit suicide after going through these programs is proof they don't work." There's a long pause. "So, do you want him on his terms, or do you want me arrange for you to dump him into `the system'." The boy's mother stares pensively, and then focuses on her tearful son, who is curled tightly into the chair across the room. She starts to cry again, and then opens her arms. The kid flies across the room, attaching himself to his mother, and they sob together.
"And you, sir, where do you weigh in on this?"
He strokes the boy's back. "If this is who he is, I guess this is who he is. I still love him. I could never abandon him. I'll always love him."
Yes, Cooper has a knack for pathos, and a
knack developing sessions that resonate, and draws nearly as many attendees as
Bryce did. One afternoon, those attendees include a reporter from the San Jose
Mercury News, who observes the session, and then interviews him for a feature
article on the front page of the "Living" section of the Sunday edition. The
following Saturday, his two sessions are standing room only, and three of the
people standing against the back wall are his mother and two sisters. The
featured speaker is a shy twelve year old, Joey, who Cooper has to coax to
speak up. His story is a sad one. He's an alcoholic, in an out-patient
rehabilitation facility, and living in a Secure Living Environment (SLE) where,
despite prohibitions against drugs and alcohol, both are rampant. His source
for his alcohol was his parents, who were perfectly happy to have him drink
with them when he was straight, but refused to have anything to do with him
when they discovered he was gay. They cut off his supply of liquor completely, sending
him into convulsions as withdrawal hit him, and his father, not satisfied with
the punishing effects of unsupervised withdrawal, beat him so severely that
Joey ended up in the emergency ward at
All three nod. "Let's take five," he says to the audience. "I need a little time to...umm...stop acting like an eight-year-old girl." The audience laughs, and Cooper takes Joey by the hand, leads him to the back of the auditorium, and introduces him to his mother and sisters. The sisters each shake Joey's hand, but Cooper's mother envelopes the boy, hugging him tight. "Lamento que esto que te pasó," she whispers. I'm sorry this happened to you. "También pasó a Cooper. Lo siento mucho." It also happened to Cooper. I am so sorry.
It doesn't matter that he has no idea what this woman is saying to him. All he knows is that, at this moment, he feels love. He feels protected. They hug for many minutes, and finally Cooper disengages the two, and drags Joey back up to the stage to finish his story. And, when he's done, the applause is thunderous, deafening, and Joey tells Cooper that he feels cleansed.
"I've never told that to anyone before. It feels like I've finally put it behind me." Cooper hugs him, and adjourns the meeting. This was an emotional day, and one that none of us will soon forget. I certainly won't, and resolve to find some way to break this boy free from the drug-infested Secured Living Environment he calls home, because if we don't, he'll never get clean. I'm not sure how I'm going to get a twelve-year-old boy out of the clutches of Child Welfare, but it has to be done, and quickly.
So, ultimately, what do you do to wrest a twelve-year-old alcoholic boy from the protective and beneficent embrace of County Child Protective Services, an organization whose mission it is to protect the welfare of homeless children. In their wisdom these child welfare professionals chose to house Joey in something called an SLE, a "Safe Living Environment". It's basically a secured facility that one can only enter or exit with the permission of the supervisor, a man whose moral rectitude is, of course, beyond reproach. It's the supervisor's task to ensure that the housing facility is drug and alcohol free. He does this by frequently (and often intimately) searching the boys as they enter, looking for illegal substances. The only trouble with this picture, my private detective tells me, is that this man's vigilance is not the result of his concern for the wards in his care, but rather to ensure that he is their only source of the drugs and alcohol available to them. In other words, derives a lot more of his income from selling drugs and booze to the men and boys in his care, than he does from the County for their room and board. He wants `em hooked
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