Please consider donating to nifty.org. All gifts, great and small, are appreciated. If you have any comments for me, feel free to contact shoreboy12321@gmail.com.
Para bailar la bamba,
Para bailar la bamba,
Se necesita una poca de gracia
—Traditional folk, Jarocho
One week after the townhouse fire, they were anchored off the coast of Virginia, and Mike was done, had had it. The End. Flash disclaimers: no animals were harmed in the making of this film; all actors were eighteen or older at the time of production. Roll credits.
He swam out to sea, far enough so he couldn’t make it back. Not a great plan, but he didn’t need a plan that was great, just one that would do the job. He swam away from the yacht as far as he could till he couldn’t see it anymore, then swam some more. This wasn’t the way he wanted the rest of his life to be. He wouldn’t let anyone touch him. Not Ben. Not Chris. He didn’t even want to be seen. The one thing the orderly Barkley got right, he was a freak.
He swam for miles. The yacht had long vanished, the coastline gone hours ago, his arms were finally growing tired. Still he swam. He’d go till he hit England or France or whatever the fuck was on the other side of the Atlantic. He was getting more than tired. He was getting delirious. Desperate, he wanted to rid himself of life, wanted to shit it out of his body like diarrhea, vomit it out like bad Little Neck clams. He managed seroconverting. It was sketchy at times, dicey, simmering under the surface, something he sealed a bargain with, had lived alongside. But this wasn’t something manageable, something he could ignore, something he could live or bargain with. This made him not him. He swam harder. Furiously faster. Further out. Not a chance of returning.
How much longer could he keep it up? If nothing else it was becoming tedious. He was bored killing himself. He could feel himself shiver, and yet it was July, after the Fourth for god sakes, but he was cold nonetheless. Maybe the cold would kill him first before he drowned. He wished he could stop thinking. The time for thinking was over. Thinking was overrated. Still he swam, one arm in front of the other, one kick and then another. Exhaustion kept at bay, but he could feel it creeping up on him like sleep. It was in the corner of his eye. He could never spot it, for when he moved to catch a glimpse, it moved, lingering just at the edge.
He rubbed his eyes. They stung from the salt water. He hated the taste of the brine, hated almost everything right now. Except for Ben. Except for Chris. They let him be. He wished they hadn’t, wished they’d pressed him, badgered him, made him talk about it, but anytime they tried, he’d storm out of the room. So once they’d bought Boris and Roger’s yacht and drove into the Great South Bay and points south, no one brought it up, no one talked about anything. Talking was overrated. Swimming was everything now. A goal in and of itself. Dying was everything. Dying consumed him. Dying. It’s an active verb, isn’t it? Means: Not Dead Yet. Because he wasn’t, and because this thing had been on his mind for weeks, he knew he wasn’t dead yet--he pictured Ben and Chris as he put one arm in front of the other. He wished inside he were dead, but he wasn’t--he was very alive. Too alive, if that was a thing. He was conflicted, confused. He hoped in death he would escape confusion. There wasn’t an easy answer. Either he cared for one or the other. He pictured he was with one or the other. It was a binary choice. And yet either choice was null as he felt himself to be null, he’d never satisfy either one. So, the coward that he was, he search for a third option: he swam. Thinking about any of this pissed him off and he swam faster, tried to outpace his thoughts. He doubled down on his strokes, kicked faster, harder, frantically wanting to die before these feelings killed him.
Then he began to do something he couldn’t remember the last time he did it: he wept. Real body sobs. Made him stop in the water. Convulse. And why not? He was alone. He was in the middle of the fucking ocean. Who’d see him weep? Fish? Mermaids? If one caught him boo-hooing with his face in the water, he could always say it was the salty ocean not salty tears in his eyes. He accidentally inhaled water as he sobbed. Choked. He was going to Davy Jones’ locker soon, so did he care if he choked? He’d be meeting Davy Jones soon. Davy Jones. Wasn’t he one of the Monkees? He laugh. He coughed. He tread water. He was laughing and crying. He was tired, really tired, hadn’t slept for days, tossing and turning, wrapped in his desires and the utter pointlessness of feeling anything at all. He’d swum for hours and hours, far, far away, and if not physically swimming away, then for days and days he’d been mentally, emotionally swimming away. Closing off; shutting down. Away from everything. Away from anyone who cared. Treading water, his excuse for living.
Suddenly cramps. He folded in half, exploded bubbles underwater. Saw his toes. Coming up for air, he threw his head back, wailing to the sky, crying Fuck you! for meeting Ben who introduced Drax, and the path his life took. But how could he ever really curse meeting Ben? And with Ben came Chris. He heaved and bobbed, sputtered profanities into the sky, shouted blasphemies into the water, thrashed violently against the waves, but there was nothing to make contact with, nothing to hit to make him feel better, only worse, more hollow, empty. Yelling at God, at the sky, was as fruitless as tossing matches at the sun. The sun didn’t care. It laughed.
And at last he was growing weak. It couldn’t be much longer. Small whitecaps broke around his ears. Soon. Soon. He’d wait right here. Death knew where he was. He didn’t have to search any farther for it. Soon it would find him.
But like an obligation he couldn’t get out of, like a promise he couldn’t keep, his tangled love followed him, came in sight--Chris at the bow with binoculars trained on him, Ben at the helm navigating to where Chris pointed. They sped up their approached with Chris waving his arms. They didn’t press, didn’t ask, didn’t tell, but they also never gave up.
But just as they pulled alongside, Manetti’s body gave out. He slid into the depths, went to meet Davy Jones. The Jolly Roger pulled up beside where they’d last seen him. Ben cut the engines. Manetti was finally let go, threading down to the bottomless sea. Chris jumped in the water. Turbulently he dove kicking down, searching desperately for Mike, saw nothing but fingertips disappearing into the grey expanse below. He kicked frantically till whole fingers, then a hand, came into view. He grabbed it, pulled on it till he grasped the whole hand, Mike’s still warm hand, then the arm, and pulled and stroked and kicked stubbornly trying to rise to the surface. He made no progress with the heavy body. He hadn’t taken in enough air and it was rapidly running out. His lungs burned but still he kicked doggedly, didn’t matter he wasn’t rising to the surface. He’d let Mike pull him under before he’d give him up to the sea.
There was another splash. Ben dove beneath them both, found Mike’s other arm. Together they pulled till the surface came into view. The sun glistened like a bobbing orb rippling far above. They sliced water with their free arms, kicking stubbornly with their feet, chasing their breath, racing their own bubbles to the surface. They broke through the ocean’s skin and gasped for air. Ben had left a life vest waiting close to the boat. Chris grabbed it and tucked it under Mike’s chin. Mike coughed salt water out of his lungs, barfed water back into the ocean. Dazed and half conscious, his chin rested on the orange life preserver. He eyed Chris. He eyed Ben. For a second he thought he’d risen into heaven looking at the brothers. But then he remembered who he was, where he was, what he was, felt the whitecaps break around his ears.
Maybe death hadn’t found him today. But if he had any say, he’d let it find him. One day. Soon.
***
The yacht they bought from the morticians, Boris and Roger, called--what else?--The Jolly Roger, skull and crossbones painted on the stern, bobbed gently in the harbor. Tucked in their rented slip, the vessel swayed slightly as Chris woke from a nap. He felt the movement so he knew they were still on the sea. There was something comforting living on the ocean over the last several months. Maybe it was growing up so close to the beach; it was the one place of refuge he knew he could always turn to. She was always there, constant, unchanging from one season to the next. Each year he grew older, she never did.
Veracruz was a port town similar to Long Beach in a lot of ways. The smell for one. Brackish water mixed with heavy industry. Massive freighters carrying millions of tons of crude oil sat next to cargo ships with thousands of stacked containers from all over the world. Millions of transaction enacted daily. The port covered over five hundred acres of water, nine hundred acres on land. Veracruz was one of Mexico’s busiest ports, its open hand to the world. The volume of exchange was hard to fathom, but it had been a gateway for centuries. Its open hand brought with it Caribbean and African influences. You could hear it in its music, see it in the people.
The pleasure boats docked closer to the city hotels and to the city’s center; the massive ships stayed out by the barrier reefs with its nearly thousand foot quay connecting it to land. It was an extremely active port, a lively scene in the daytime, with huge cranes loading and unloading cargo till late afternoon. Then activity ebbed, trucks loaded with containers drove off, and the harbor took on a more serene and festive mood.
He got up from his small bunk, and climbed to the top deck bar where he knew Mike and Ben would be. Yep, they were there in flowery Hawaiian shirts bought in Miami, sipping vodka cranberries, watching the lights of the city start to flutter awake. The deep azure sky was quickly fading to night. The first stars of the night were unveiling.
“How you feeling, Chief,” Manetti asked him.
“Better,” Chris replied. “Can I have one too?”
Ben looked him over. Always the older brother, he replied with equal measures of bossiness and concern, “If you’re not gonna get sick. But only one.”
Manetti, the ship’s official bartender, asked if he wanted a cherry in his Shirley Temple. Chris glared at him. Manetti mixed his drink, grinning his goofy grin, throwing in a lime. “Arrrrg,” he said in a pirate voice, handing over the drink, “Yer wants to prevent scurvy, matey.” They settled on their barstools looking into town. “Perty, ain’t it?” Manetti said to no one in particular, watching the rippling lights coming toward them across the water. He’d come a long way, Chris thought, since the incident in Virginia months back. They all had, healed some or scarred over. They were deeply tan; Ben and Mike lost weight, and funny, looked healthier for it. Still no one talked about what they all kept quiet about. What was there to say? If you come to an understanding, an unspoken compromise, why talk? So they all slept in the boat’s many separate bunks in different parts of the ship, the large master cabin at the bow left empty. Each alone in his bunk with his solitary thoughts, they sailed the Caribbean, hiding from each other as much as from Drax.
After a long silence Ben spoke up, said Veracruz reminded him of Miami. Long Beach, Chris replied.
The radio softly played a local folk station--guitars, plaintive Spanish songs, son jarocho. A tune came on that pricked up Ben’s and Mike’s ears.
Ben said, “Isn’t that...”
“La Bamba,” Mike finished the thought. “Yeah, a lot different from--what’s his name?”
“Richie Valens,” Ben said.
“Who’s Richie Valens,” asked Chris.
Ben explained, “He was someone who died in a plane crash with the The Big Bopper and Buddy Holly. The Day the Music Died, right?”
“Who died,” Chris asked again.
“Can it, fish bait,” said Mike.
They listening to the familiar song anew through the original folk melody, not as brash as the early rock ‘n’ roll rendition but with complex guitar work and a strong rhythmic invitation to move. Ben asked Mike what they were singing about.
Mike listened intently. Over the last months as they sailed around Mexico and the Caribbean, he’d managed to pick up, relying on his spotty Italian, a pretty decent ear for Spanish. “The guy says: To dance the bamba, to the dance the bamba, you need a little grace. Style, grace, something like that.”
“What’s the bamba?” Chris asked.
“I don’t know,” Mike replied, “The name of the dance, I guess, like the twist or something.”
“What’s the twist,” Chris asked again.
“Please, he needs to be fed to the sharks,” Manetti begged Ben.
“Kidding,” Chris laughed.
Then something stopped Manetti. A light went off in his face as he cocked an ear to the radio. “No, this is good. Listen.” Manetti sang, not very well, but passionately, a refrain, “Yo no soy marinero, yo no soy marinero, soy capitan. He says: I’m not a sailor, I’m not a sailor, I’m captain. I’m captain.” His smile bloomed, the first true smile the brothers had seen since they left New York. Not sardonic or ironic either. Saying something for the first time he believed. “I’m captain,” he sang in his raspy off-key baritone.
The three of them sipped drinks and gazed over the port town, feeling shrouded as evening approached. The rocking of the boat brought them together. They didn’t need to talk. Maybe wounds weren’t healing so much as scabbing over. During their months at sea, they’d developed their own silent language, speaking only when something had to be said. Something like they needed a refill of meds or vitamins, or they needed a new fuel filter. Some days went by when nothing was said, maybe only an exchange of a glance as they ate, a nodded thanks after passing the salt. Their exchange over La Bamba had been the most like an actual conversation they’d had in months, particularly Manetti. Maybe they were ready to talk. Or maybe it wasn’t words they needed to express.
A little buzzed, Chris swayed on his barstool to the song’s refrain. “Bamba la bamba,” he sang in his reedy tenor. As the song went on he got up and swayed to the music in front of Manetti. He’d had a growth spurt in the last few months, actual peach fuzz sprouted from his chin and lip, still skinny as a stick with gangly arms, but taller, eye-height to Manetti. So with Manetti perched on his barstool, Chris looked him straight in his deep brown eyes. He got in close and swayed his hips even closer. “Bamba la bamba,” he sang, a mischievous grin spreading across his face.
***
A brief history of the internet would likely begin with the Advanced Research Projects Administration network, or ARPANET, a U.S. Department of Defense project, based on the idea that if nuclear war took out parts of the country, decentralized yet connected computer operation would allow data to continue to flow in the un-nuked parts of the United States. Comforting thought. ARPANET was a pioneer network for sharing digital resources among geographically separated computers. You can trace a direct line from its initial DoD demonstration in 1969 to the development and adoption of what we now know as the ubiquitous Internet.
Chris was two that year, making his first stack of building blocks--a monumental accomplishment of four blocks high. He clapped his fat little hands sitting on the living room rug, while his mother, dad, and twelve-year-old brother watched a shoot-out on Bonanza.
In 1976, Queen Elizabeth II sent her first email. As she pushed the send button, she placed her white gloves against her lips. She was very excitedly. The royal family, surrounding her, shared in her delight.
When Ben and Mike met at the St. Marks Bath fucking their brains out in 1983, the Domain Name System, or DNS, was established giving us the familiar website suffixes .com, .net, .gov, etc., which was a heck of a lot easier to remember than the series of numbered websites previous used, like, say, 176.191.49.254. Two years later, when bath houses and sex clubs were shut down by the health department in 1985, the internet was well on its merry way. So were Chris, Ben and Mike having dug up Chris’ buried treasure, bought The Jolly Roger, and set sail for a four years voyage hiding on the open seas. Miami, Freeport, Key West, Veracruz, Belize, Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Martinique, Aruba, through the Panama Canal, up to Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, Cabo San Lucas, with a brief stop in Long Beach to pick up Ben’s record collection and check in on Mrs. Prior. Surprisingly, she was better than fine, had an older beau named Burt she’d met at N.A., who actually was decent to her. She was disappointed the boys had to leave so soon, but packed the three sea voyagers a hearty lunch, kissed their cheeks including Manetti’s scruffy beard, and with vinyl records tucked under their arms, they were back sputtering up the California coast by noon, wolfing down Mrs. Prior’s peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and homemade Rice Crispy treats. Mike, Ben and Chris sailed under the awesome Golden Gate Bridge revealing the stupendous San Francisco skyline, August of ’89. Within a week they dry docked The Jolly Roger, and set up house in the Castro. Chris was twenty-two.
A year later, 1990, Tim Berners-Lee develop the HyperText Markup Language, or HTML, which is still the basis of how we navigate and view the internet today. (Where you going with this, Chief? Bear with me, I’ll get to it.) Chris got his first computer the same year. It’s not really a part of internet history, but it’s important to the story because it was important to Chris: his first computer was a Macintosh IIfx. Mike and Ben chipped in together to celebrate Chris getting both his GED and an acceptance letter to Stanford just down the peninsula. Back then Stanford wasn’t next to impossible to get into as long as you had some money. Chris discovered that besides having a mechanical knack for car and boat engines, he had a natural aptitude for figuring out how things fit together--physical or otherwise. The very first thing he did when he got his Mac was to take it apart and reassemble it. So combine aptitude with physical objects to a newly discovered affinity for reading and writing code, Stanford was a logical place to park his butt for the next four years.
Reading and writing code was intuitive for him. He tried to explain it to Ben and Mike, passing around some ganja they’d brought with them from Long Beach; it’s simply another form of language, he said. Ben and Mike tried to follow as he prattled on. It reflects the same rules as any language: the mechanics of verbs, whether motor engines, electrical systems, or logical functions and methods; the structure and solidity of nouns, whether you’re talking car parts or object-oriented programming’s classes and instances; the skin of adjectives, colors, attributes, the aggregate of forms that determine design; finally the assembled thought, the purpose, the reasoning, the expression, the i/o of flowing data, the brain giving orders--what is it you want this thing to accomplish, dude?--it all interlocked in his mind, he’d just never had a way to express it before nor much inkling he even wanted to. But now all that changed: “Hello world!” Ben looked at Mike cross-eyed. Mike took the joint out of Chris’ hand.
It didn’t hurt that he graduated from Stanford in ’94. Two guys in the class before his had a startup called Yahoo! They brought Chris onboard, first as an intern in his senior year, and then fulltime by summer. There wasn’t a whole lot of money in those lean, early days--the two founders were working with venture capitalists who weren’t immediately forthcoming with cash--so Chris got paid, against Mike and Ben’s advice, in options. Since he was a workaholic, staying up writing code throughout the night wired on caffeine and an occasional jolt of amphetamines, he piled up a shitload of options. He kept them in a shoebox under their bed. When the company incorporated the following year, Chris converted a few options each time the stock hit a new high. He made a killing in just the first year alone, and still had an almost-full shoebox remaining under the bed.
In 1996, Match.com was launched, and other dating sites sprang up soon after. One night, after Mike had brought home some kickass Peyote buttons, and during some powerful, transformative sex--i.e., the first night Chris took his first double fist--he realized he should create a new kind of dating site. He bought a domain the next day, and built the site, still amped from the Peyote, over the course of just one weekend. Chris’ life, informed by Mike and Ben, showed him that the rainbow flag not only transcended a spectrum of races and cultures, it also, and more in line with his experiences, encompassed a spectrum of sexual universes. Where dating sites competed for survival in the burgeoning, Darwinian world of online hookups, using the model of top down straight white vanilla sex, the better to toss out the largest net to capture the broadest swath possible, his take on sex was completely opposite: bottom up, a banquet of, not vanilla, but chocolatey rocky road individualized tastes that could be mixed and matched in endless combinations. He started with all the categories and sub-categories of life he profoundly knew to be true, starting with Master Drax and continuing over the last few years in San Francisco: leather, master & slaves, fisters, S&M, bondage, grunge & raunch, hoods & masks, pups & trainers, military, medical, uniforms, watersports, smokers, skinheads, punks, tats, piercings, feet, chastity, bareback, safe, oral-only, bikers, bears, trans, bi-, three-way, rubber, and friendship--you name it, there was a place, or maybe several places, for you somewhere on his site. San Francisco was the perfect beta test city to incubate his idea. His site was free with limited search--proof of concept, man, search is gonna be key, he claimed--but for a few dollars more, a monthly Premium membership gave you unlimited search capabilities. This bottom up approach, this one-size-does-not-fit-all model, this choose-your-own-adventure paradigm--plus add-ons like private messaging, chat rooms, picture sharing, winks, scorekeeping, leaderboards: the whole gamification of getting laid--the site caught fire. First city-wide, then nationally, and within a year, internationally. We’re talking beaucoup bucks here, gentlemen. It, his website, and he, its sole founder, made scads of money from the get go and attracted attention. But, perhaps, attention might not be what he was looking for. But then you have to figure, hey, he--they--couldn’t keep out of site forever.
***
The old guy at the end of the bar lit a Camel cigarette, then went back to reading his New York Post. Babs, a large, very attractive middle-aged drag queen who helped Manetti run the bar weeknights (and who had an obvious, though unrequited crush on him--but that’s another story) served a second Molson to Duke, a young, wiry, over-opinionated hustler who liked to badger Mike incessantly. They were at the center of a long bar captivated by one of Mike’s sea stories, occasionally glancing over at the smoking man reading his newspaper. It was a slow Tuesday night--only four of them in the place. The green neon clock showed it was one-thirty in the morning, a half hour to closing.
Duke looked at the old smoker. “Not cool,” Duke said. Babs checked her nails studiously.
Manetti said, “Boy, that’s what’ch call a genuine New York Post. When’s the last time I saw one of those? Hey, sorry, mister,” Manetti called to the man, striding over. “Sorry to be a pain, but this here's San Francisco, not New York. You can’t smoke in bars anymore.” He stopped and admired the Post’s always subtle headline, CAUGHT! showing Monica Lewinsky hugging Bill Clinton. Mike chuckled, “All ‘cause of a blow job, huh.” The man folded down his paper. Under his black leather cap, what used to be a dark salt and pepper beard had turned completely white, pointed, and quite long; his bald head always with a buzzed crown around the sides, now had grown long; so the wispiest of white hair mixed over his shoulders with his gauzy beard looking like tangled cotton candy. Drax looked at him impertinently. Major black circles sagged under his eyes as he took off his thick reading glasses trying to focus on Manetti. His pupils were ghostly pale, thickened by cataracts. His shoulders stooped. His skin jaundice. An unhealthy sallowness engulfed his entire being. He hacked a loud, phlegmatic cough and took another hit off his cigarette.
“Bourbon neat, barkeep,” he said.
In a cautiously controlled voice, Manetti offered, “Our backyard bar’s open for smoking.” Though Drax looked severely infirmed, he knew a wounded snake was a more dangerous one. He gave Drax wide berth, gave a once over, checked if he could ascertain if anything were holstered under his black leather coat. It didn’t look like he was packing, but you never knew with Drax. He’d surprised many a wary adversary. He shot a glance at Duke and Babs, a little afraid for them if things suddenly went south. “We’re getting close to last call. How ‘bout you and I get us a bottle and we talk out back?” he suggested to Drax.
The infirmed, old man luxuriated in his cigarette, picking off a shred of tobacco from the left side of his split reptilian tongue. Manetti had forgotten about that tongue. It gave his a cold shudder. Drax took another long drag and blew a large plume into the stale barroom air.
“Not cool, old man!” Duke called from the center of the bar, waving his hand in front of his face as if from that distance he was bothered by the smoke. Manetti raised a scolding finger at Duke. Don’t! the finger and Manetti’s scowl warned. Duke usually would take that as a challenge and start arguing with Manetti, but something told him to stand down. He clamped his pie hole and instead blinked over at Babs. Babs took out a nail file and threw a disconcerting look back to Mike.
“These San Francisco street whores--little pansy lung fairies, ain’t they,” Drax said to Manetti. He turned his head only slightly, not bothering to look at Duke but making sure he knew he was talking to him. “Fuck you, cunt,” he said in a raspy tar-stained voice.
“Hey, now!” said Babs alarmed and angry, pointing her nail file at the old man. “No C-word in my joint, pops.”
Manetti sauntered back to Babs and Duke. “Hey kids. This is an old acquaintance of mine,” Manetti said. “Sweetie, would you mind watching the door till closing? I’m going out back so he can finish his smoke. Take off early if you want once the kid finishes his beer,” he said and kissed Babs’ rouged cheek. “Night, Chief,” he said to Duke. “You be good, ya hear me.” He held up that warning finger again, and gave them both his reassuring shark-tooth smile. He knocked Duke’s chin, friendly-like, with his knuckles. Duke sheepishly grinned. Who didn’t harbor a crush for Manetti?
***
The back patio had a little straw tiki bar with two bar stools right off the back door. Mike set his and Drax’s glass on the bamboo surface and poured generous amounts of his best bourbon in each. He set down the bottle, picked up his glass and waited. Off in the harbor a plaintiff foghorn wailed. Drax came out hobbling with a cane, his newspaper tucked under his arm. He limped along favoring his right hip.
The patio bar was perched on the side of a hill. Several picnic tables with ashtrays and snuffed-out candles were scattered about, barstools lined the railings overlooking a deserted alley far below. Manetti positioned himself in back of the tiki bar and Drax slid onto one of the stools. Drax flicked his ash on the floor, hooked his cane on the bar ledge, and set down his lighter, paper and pack of Camels next to his bourbon.
“You grow a...what is that?” he asked squinting. “A goatee?” Manetti nodded yes, running his fingers over it. “Makes you look like a wolf. Suits you,” he said to Manetti. With an undercurrent of disbelief and even a little envy, he went on, “This your place then, huh?” Drax’s eyes were fixed on the bartender, his former stable boy, now spouting a few grey hairs in his unruly auburn mop. Drax’s near-blind eyes shined luminous in the gloom.
“Ben and mine. Eight years now,” Manetti answered. He picked up Drax’s Camels, took one out. He plucked Drax’s smoke from his fingers and lit his from it. He handed him back his cigarette. “Long time, MD. How’d you know we were here?”
Astonishingly, Drax began in an extremely fey manner, flicking his wrist like an effete dandy, exaggerated by his cigarette, “It's an odd thing, but,” It was completely discordant with his brutal nature, so against his persona as Master, full of sibilant s’s, and a very spot on mimicry. “Anyone who disappearss is ssaid to be sseen in San Francissco.” He brought his fingers to his lips and puffed twice.
Manetti gave a slow smile of recognition. “Oscar Wilde. Drax quotes Wilde. That’s definitely the first sign of the apocalypse,” Manetti snorted, taking a hit off his own smoke. Drax curled his lips displaying a gummy mostly toothless smile. Manetti exhaled into the overhead fog. “And then Wilde finishes,” Manetti reciting in his own mincing voice, “It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractionss of the next world.”
Drax took a sip of bourbon, then replied in his own gravelly voice, “Haven’t seen any evidence of that yet, but give me a day. I only arrived tonight.” He approved of the bourbon and took a bigger swig. “Bloody literary for a college drop out.”
“I could say the same for you, though none of us boys ever really knew much about you.” Manetti took a long drag. He’d shed all his habits when they were at sea including smoking, but tonight was a special occasion. The cool air and the warm smoke give him a familiar sensation. It provoked some relished, decadent, post-sex memories--something he needed to fortify himself. He took another hit, felt the nicotine work its magic, salving the undercurrent of nervousness being back in Drax’s presence. He’d always been charmed and at the same time repulsed by the man; tonight was no different. “I take a couple of night classes at City College, finishing my degree.”
“Hm,” grunted Drax. He paused thinking back. “Seem to recall you were on scholarship at New York University back in the day,” Drax said, “afore you became just another burnt out porn junkie.” He nudged an ashtray between them toward Manetti.
“Thanks. I was on a wrestling scholarship, yeah.” Manetti flicked his ash and drew deeply from his glass. “I was working out issues. But I’m back now. It’s cheap. I’m getting a degree in English literature next year. Lot of good it’ll do me working here,” he laughed.
“Hm,” Drax grunted again. “You trying to impress me?” He fidgeted on his stool, looked at the darkened buildings surrounding them. He pulled his jacket tighter around his hunched shoulders. “It’s fucking cold for July,” he groused.
“Welcome to San Francisco,” Manetti responded. “Drink up, it’ll warm you. Might even thaw you a bit.” Smoking brought out a sense of security. He went on, “I’m working on something that might interest you.” Manetti cocked his head at the back door. “Working with Babs on it. Besides being one of the best bartenders in the city, she’s a talented lyricist. You met her inside.” The bourbon was loosening him up, warming his gut. “Maybe you knew him when he bartended at The Mineshaft. He was Carlos back then. Big dockworker type. Large black horseshoe mustache?” Drax looked at him blankly. “Well, I remembered him.”
Drax downed the rest of his drink, then plunked down the glass. “Too hard to tell,” he said, pointing to his head. “All that big hair.”
“We’re collaborating, she and I,” Manetti said. He raised his hand eliciting a marque. “Mineshaft, the Musical,” he said with a flourish.
Drax crowed hard once, while Manetti refilled his glass. Drax crushed out his cigarette, drifted in the reflections of an old man, studying the dying smoke. “Hm.” He rolled thoughts over. Manetti watched the old man’s pale eyes flicker.
It was dark out here. Fog lowering. Getting dank, too. Drax looked up and tried to scan Manetti’s face in the dingy light. Mike saw his former director, his dealer and pimp, shiver. Manetti, too, was cold, wearing his usual bar uniform: white tee shirt, jeans, leather vest. He reached up and flipped on an overhead heater. It cast both of them in a devilish orange light. The heat lamp sizzled, chewing on the fog as it warmed them both.
The foghorn again moaned softly. “I remember,” Drax finally began after taking a sip, “taking Benjamin to the Mineshaft for the first time.” He lit another cigarette. It triggered a bout of hacking and a prolonged, phlegmatic rumbling. It ended with him spitting phlegm onto the ground. Manetti raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Drax paused for a second, then took another hit off his cigarette, and ruminated for quite a while lost in the past. “Hm,” he said, looking off in a middle distance. “He’d only been in the city a year. He was still so cherry. Hadn’t taken a fist, hadn’t done scat or been whipped, he’d only been pissed on once but hadn’t drank from the tap yet. You don’t want to rush a boy. Good pornography, it’s best when it records discoveries. We’re born like a rock with all these rough edges, things we’d never do, never even think of doing,” he said swirling around the contents of his glass. “Life wears you down. But you don’t want to smooth a boy down all at once. One step at a time down that long spiral staircase. Make it last.” He put his glass against his nostrils and sniffed. “If you can, you capture that moment when a synapse fires off, that shows he actually likes it, whatever kink it is, that’s what makes your viewer shoot his load. Yeah, sure, it’s also that big throbbing dick, but it’s also that spark of recognition. That identification. And sometimes to get it, you need to go off script. Plant some seeds. See what’s in a boy’s true nature.”
Drax flicked his ash, stared at his ember. Took a long draw sucking in his hollow cheeks. “So this night,” he laughed darkly as the memory grew. He looked up into the fog. “It’s the night of the blackout of ’77, July. It’s sweltering hot in his apartment, we’re naked and dripping in sweat. I wanted him to learn to take a fist. I just slammed him for a second time, mind you, but we were getting nowhere. Been shoving big dildos and butt plugs up his ass, made him show me he could ride some horse cocks, he’s begging for them, shoving ones bigger than my hand in him, but when my fingers touched his hole?” Drax demonstrated for Manetti Ben’s tightly clenched butthole with his closed shaking fist. “My experience, a good slam fixes that, but not Benjamin, not that night. Then the lights go out in his apartment, everything goes black, no light in the air shaft, power goes out in the whole building and you might as well call it quits. Except we’re both higher than fuck, and I tell him, put on your jock and those chaps, I’m taking you somewhere. We usually didn’t go out in public. Some men recognized him, mostly from vanilla stuff that first year. Spreads in the soft core rags, beach boy, long hair surfer, jacking. Pics of him playing with his hole. Some with other pretty boys. He preferred boys his own age he could dominate. He was still skinny, tall though, aggressive with my other twink bottoms. Slapped them around some, nothing too violent, more bossy, really. Naturally verbal I was discovering. Bit of a nasty streak if you wanna know the truth. Had a real foul mouth once he got started. Loved when he got his twink bottom confessing to being his fucktard bitch,” Drax chortled. “Said he got it from his stepdad.”
“Chris’ real dad,” Manetti injected. “Ben’s stepdad used to beat Chris mercilessly.”
“Yeah?” Drax paused interested, curious, mulled it over. “I could see that.” He gave Manetti a harsh once over. Anger flared for a split second then receded as he pulled on his cigarette, letting the smoke drift out his teeth as he spoke. “So we ride in the cab seeing this blackout is going on all over the city, wasn’t just the fuses in his building we’re seeing. We pass a Walgreens being looted, I don’t know, old men carrying out cartons of cigarettes, six-packs. Old ladies with shopping carts full of plastic flowers, boxes of clothespins, the strange things people do. Paper tablecloths and shower curtains, cat food piled in their shopping carts. We pass two cars on fire on Broadway and Eighth, both of us high as shit. We’re in this real-life Hieronymous Bosch painting. It’s the end of the world. Are we really seeing these things? Maybe we are. Guys breaking into the Crazy Eddies carrying out stereos, a pack of dogs run up Sixth Avenue by themselves, no street lights of course, so the driver takes it easy. We get to Washington Street, there’s cops lined up. Ben’s afraid ‘cause of the cops. I have to convince him they’re just dress-up cops, club customers in costume waiting to get in. We get out, climb the stairs past leather men, policemen, bearded lumberjacks, mustache cowboys, we push up the line ‘cause Wally’s at the ropes and he sees me and takes one look at this beautiful boy I have in chaps and a jock on a leash, and opens the rope right up. We’re walking around the bar and I’m holding his leash. I got him to finally cut his hair that month. Made him get a Mohawk, I thought it’d be fun.”
Manetti almost snorted his bourbon through his nose. “You’re shittin’ me. Ben in a Mohawk?” he asked incredulous.
“Of course he didn’t. You think he’d ever go for that, the little priss. But I did get him to cut his hair. Much better. He twern’t at the beach no more, were he? Dorothy ain’t in Kansas.”
“Guess not,” said Manetti. He poured himself another glass and stole another of Drax’s smokes. Drax didn’t seem to care, but he did notice.
“Of course there’s no lights or music in the club ‘cause it’s the fuckin’ blackout of nineteen seventy-seven!” Drax coughed a congested string of guffaws that ended in a hacking fit. A sip settled his lungs. Manetti knew Drax was feeling the drink as much as he was. “So, we’re in the middle of this sweltering heatwave, Son of Sam’s on the loose blowing away couples in lover’s lane, and Ben’s making his debut at The Mineshaft on my leash. Struttin’ around, he is, in his jockstrap and chaps, and I got everyone salivating. My boy don’t know his worth, not yet, but the men do. The bar’s all lit up by a thousand candles. Men all murmuring. It’s like a fucking church, which is exactly what The Mineshaft is actually. Am I right or am I right? It’s hotter than shit so I have Ben strip, which he’s high but a little reluctant to do right out in public, but I strip and others are walking around naked, so what the fuck. He asks sort of innocently, what kind of bar is this? Not a bar, son, I say. Let’s go down those stairs, I tell him. We leave the second floor bar, go down naked to the first floor and he’s like a kid in a candy store. His eyes are wide, his pupils like black saucers, and I see he’s hungry for what the store has to offer. There’s glory holes, rim seats, slings, but what does that sick pup pick up on first? There a spotlight and a bunch of men surrounding said spotlight. Of course he’s drawn to it. We go over, and the light’s focused on a bathtub. Two guys are in it getting pissed on by all the men standing around it. He begs me to let him get in. I unleash him, and he runs over naked wearing just his dog collar, making his way through a sea of naked and semi-naked men in harnesses, all their cocks waving, and he climbs in and gets on his knees. More men come over to get a load of this new dirty blond hunk, this gorgeous piece of fresh meat, and of course they want to piss all over him, mark him. He opens his mouth and consumes shit loads of their piss. One short Asian guy nuzzles up to him with his big black bush, and Ben learns to drink from dick, then he takes this black guy’s Johnson and sucks out his piss till the guy’s empty. He can’t get enough drinking piss, piss, piss, piss, piss, and wallowing under the spotlight doing it. No telling what bonus chems are in those streams, but he’s certainly changed after that. He’s a wild man the rest of the night. Hyped and wired.” Drax’s eyes are glowing, the orange reflecting off the white pupils, like a red-eye photograph. To Manetti, he too looks like a wild man, not really here, but in the past, a blind seer, watching Ben decades before soaking in piss, riding the limelight in that tub. Drax takes a sip to extract more of the memory.
“And then this big muscled cop, or a guy in a jockstrap wearing a cop’s shirt, pulls him out. I think he’s going to fuck the shit out of the kid, this big stud cop, but the cop finds an empty sling, pulls Benjamin with him, and then flops back in the sling himself, and slides his big jackboots through the sling’s leg straps. I pull up next to him to see what Benjamin’s gonna do. He’s wet, smells acrid from the piss, short hair slicked back--never looked better--asks the guy if he’s a real cop. The guy, in a low voice, admits he is--he’s the real deal! The fucker should have been out protecting the city but he’s here, looks high, waiting for Benjamin to bone him. Seeing he’s a real cop, ol' Benny pops an instant stiffy. It’s saluting at full attention, with veins so hard around his thick shaft they look like crawling worms, for fuck sake. Men around him notice. I notice. He sticks his engorged meat in the guy in one balls-deep thrust, buries himself right up to his brown curlies. The guy yells to let him get use to his big fuckstick, and more guys hear that and come over. It’s all shadows and flickering candles, and what your eyes can’t see, your brain fills in. Fuck, the sounds they’re making. Not human sounds. Animalistic. Some ritual not even I understand is going on between cop and his former prey, between victim and abuser--roles reversed. He’s fucking someone in his past, or a group of someones, I can tell, ‘cause whatever motivates him out of his past he’s taking it out on this cop in the sling, right here, right now--and it’s something fuckin’ brutally beautifully. It has all the sounds of a rape but let me tell you the cop is absolutely into it. His ass ain’t never had a Big Ben in it before and he’s enjoying the shit out of it. It ain’t a bottom and a top going at it. It’s a top being fucked by an uber-top. That’s what The Mineshift spawned, the original anti-Eden: not butches doing fems, but the homomasculine submitting to the Uber-masculine. We’re in Tom of Finland territory, boy-o. Ben rips the cop’s shirt open, fucking him blindly, pinching the shit out of his big cop tits. They’re exchanging snarls, gorilla grunts, and Fuck Yous. Ben’s smacking him telling him to keep his fuckin’ hole open as he pulls all the way out and torpedoes back in. He’s releasing on the cop’s ass a lifetime of stored up rage. Every cop that’s harassed him, every fight he’s ever lost, every humiliation from his step father, his father, God knows who, it’s in every thrust of his perfectly arched butt. He climaxes shooting all over the guy’s uniform and in his face, but isn’t done with him yet. No sir. He sees he’s got the whole corner of the room captivated. He shouts, Lube! putting his hand out like he’s waiting for a stagehand. He’s in command. He truly is. He’s sweating profusely from the meth, and whatever chem piss is running through his system, and someone puts a wad of grease in his hand. Ben lubes his fist and doesn’t go gently into that good night. No sir. He pulls up next to the cop’s face, pushes his still hard, shit-crusted cock in the cop’s mouth, and pushes his clutched fist into the guy’s ass. Not a gooseneck hand to start, but the full magilla, his big clutched fist plunges into the guy’s gut. You can almost hear it go pop. There’s this loud fart of air as Benjamin pulls all the way out afore he pushes back in. The cop’s gagging on his cock from its girth as he’s struggling with the force of Benjamin’s arm pumping straight into his chute.”
“Jesus,” Manetti said.
“That’s what New York’s finest is crying. Jesus Chris, man, slow down! he’s shouting, but Benjamin’s not listening to any of that shit. Not that he’s punch fucking the guy violently. No. He’s standing next to him, making him suck his shitty cock, pistoning slowly but deeply into this big cop’s ass like he’s kneading a big vat of dough. In, out. Stroke after stroke, sending the guy into both heaven and hell at the same time. Then they’re not even talking anymore, just Benjamin silently watching the cop’s anguished-exhilarated face, watching what he’s doing to the man, what effect he’s having on this cop he’s turned into a meat puppet. All the while the cop’s nursing Big Ben like an infant suckin’ on his mama’s teet. It gets quieter the deeper Benjamin pushes in his arm. Swear to God, it got as solemn as High Mass. Incense, smoke-shrouded men like deacons providing grease and poppers. Wasn’t a cop and a top anymore. More biblical, priest administering to a penitent, more like it. The penitent’s begging for atonement. Like the agony he’s producing pulls the man through to another universe, Benjamin’s tending to him now, fist going in deeper and pulling out. A part of the cop’s colon comes with it, big ol’ prolapse, probably the first one Benjamin's ever seen. Doesn’t faze him, gets him hard again. He just pushes it back in and goes deeper. Wants to see how much gut he can pull out of this sinner. Men gathered around, some stroking, some just watching in awe, trying to fathom what the story is between this naked holy man and the supplicant. When Benjamin forced the man to cum, and forced him he did if you saw his face...” Drax said.
“I’ve seen that face,” Manetti confirmed.
“Well, then, you know how Benjamin is when he’s in charge. The cop cums all over his uniform, his chest, over his face, shoots over his head. Rope after rope of cum. Men lick it off the walls, off the chains, the cop’s chest, they fall to their knees to worship this new priest among them, some fall to the cop’s ass and chew on his spent prolapse, all pleading for Benjamin to do to them what he’d just done to the cop. They lick Benjamin’s feet like he’s fuckin’ Jesus coming out the desert, kiss his thighs, lick his ass, stick their tongues inside his anus, suck on his armpit, whatever Benjamin offered raising up his arms to his new flock. Three at a time are under him worshiping his holy trinity: god the cock, god the balls, and god the holy anus. The cop slowly gets out of the sling, shaking his head, pushing his prolapse back in, trying to figure out where the fuck he’s been for the last hour, and I come with a can of grease and lay Benjamin back down in the sling, in front of this group of envious men. I lock his arms over his head and hand the cop a bottle of strong poppers to administer to him, then I buckle the strap holding Benjamin’s feet high in the air. He’s spread eagle with men groping his body like it’s a holy relic. I lube my hand and take a good scoop of Crisco and start pushing it into the boy’s ass. I do this a couple of times so he’s filled inside as I start pushing two fingers in his slippery chute. He’s as tight as he’s ever been but he’s also rock hard. You want this, I tell him. Tell me how much you want this, I say. Please Master, he begs, put your arm inside me. I slide in three, then four fingers. Stop fighting me, goddamnit, I say at him. Give him a hit, I tell the cop. I’m getting pissed that he won’t let me fist him, this time, with this audience. The cop bends the kid’s head over the bottle and lets him huff all he wants. He’s breathing in the bottle for a while afore he lets his head fall back against the leather. I can feel now not only has his ass relaxed, he’s trying, as much as he can tied up, to slide down the sling onto my hand. I don’t even have to push. His hole is opening and his weight is falling over the edge of the sling onto my hand on its own accord. And then I’m in and still sliding deeper without me having to do anything. He’s yelling Oh Fucks the deeper he slides down. But I gotta tell you: too much is made over the trust a bottom must have from his top. Bullshit I say. Fisting comes out of the school of S&M, and giving the bottom control of the scene fucks up the dynamic. Fisting was created as a form of punishment as much as it was a form of control. I tell the cop to give him another hit. He does and I’m taking the boy for a ride he won’t forget. My hand comes out and goes back in a second time in the form of a fist. He’s struggling to accept the width but I won’t budge until he lets me in. From sheer pressure he pops open but not without a cry of anguish. Good, I tell him, that feeling is what you can expect for the next hour. And that’s exactly what I give him, no merciful, sensual assplay, but forced punching of his anus until its lips hang loose and sloppy like I want ‘em. The red of his colon starts to show after a while. His first night fisting and I’m developing this beautiful small rose. Push out, I yell at him, make it clap for me. It’s a pretty pink flower for all to see, all pink petals pushing out for the first time. I clear some of the Crisco so the men around on their knees can see it better. Someone goes down and licks it, giving the kid the first taste of what getting his rosebud eaten feel like. He’s loving it. I go for depth after the first hour. Each time he takes a hit from the cop I’m pushing in deeper afore the chemicals have an impact so that when they do I can push him even further. The cop asks if he can take over for a while. Benjamin becomes afraid, begs me no. Did I ask you? I say to him. Sure. Have at it. And the cop, with his big hairy paws, is plunging into him. I make the boy suck my dick while the cop is exacting revenge on the boy’s sphincter. The cop’s even slipping in a couple of additional fingers while he’s alternating hands in the kid’s ass. The cop knows what he’s doing. He’s almost got two hands in but I see pink and then a streak of red in the grease on the cop’s forearms so I have him pullout. I don’t want someone else damaging him. He relinquishes, but not without one last deep punch, sending Benjamin’s head flinging back in agony. His suffering is an aphrodisiac to me, always has been. My dick’s dripping, so I slowly and savagely fuck him. Hours--you been at my receiving end afore, so you know--hours reaming him in chem-filled lust. No need for a bathroom break ‘cause I got my toilet attached to my cock. Besides the chem-piss makes him even more of a whore. Around daybreak, as most all the candles have burnt out, it’s now almost pitch black inside, you can see some outside daylight in the cracks, the last two or three flickering candles are fading, so Benjamin can’t really see but only feel my cock inside him. I slide my hand in next to my cock, which has been tenderizing him these last wee hours. I wrap my fingers in a fist and piston my cock. He don’t know what he’s getting but the whore likes it. In the cavernous dark as the last candles go out, men are kissing him, nursing his nipples, sucking his cock. And he’s moaning, speaking in tongues, is existing on another plane, sucking on other cocks being fed to him, asses bent over for him to eat, and I jack my spooge inside my fist inside him. He’s blathering invites to anyone around him to fist his hole. He’s where I want him. He turns me on so hard, so broken, so open, and I let other guys fist and fuck him, watching along the wall, drinking my beer.”
“Drax, you fuck,” Manetti said.
“He’s struggling under a hairy Neanderthal, fucking his insides out. Benjamin the boy is suddenly gone, surrendered, arms hanging off the sides of the sling. Taking it, accepting it, a martyr to sex. I bend over and ask him why he’s suddenly surrendered. He whimpers, Hunters got me trapped, Daddy, I can’t escape. I’m lost. Cops got me in a back alley taking turns. He’s either lost in his past or his fantasy, but it’s taken him over. He’s biting his lip. Four more men fuck him and four more fist him. I’m kissing him while they do, telling him accept what he is, just a hole for men to use as their cumrag. When I see his hole drooling a steady, cloudy white stream of men’s seed, all pooling on the floor under his ass, I know I want back inside that warm, wet cave. I fuck my baby into daylight. Daddy’s got you, I tell him, won’t ever let you go. Never, never. Then around noon the harsh club lights flickers back on. The blackout’s over. I don’t know how many times I shot into him. I know he shot wads more. Did he remember? Probably half of it. We go out into the daylight, blinded, looking to hail a cab. It’s the meatpacking district and there’s butchers right next door to The Mineshaft, working away in their bloody white aprons, hauling in large stabs of meat. Benjamin looks like just another one of their carcasses. I fold him into the backseat of a gypsy cab. Like one of the many hanging carcasses we ride away from, I look at him, his head’s back, he’s staring at the cab’s cloth ceiling talking to himself. This big human carcass of meat, flecked with viscera across his chest, his innards and viscera of many others--he’s a rock now as smooth as I want him.”
Silence falls between Drax and Manetti. Fog veils the alley from sight. They both sip bourbon. Drax’s cigarette was a stub, had long ago gone out. Drax looks at the cigarette butt in his hand with his white eyes, and sets it in the ashtray. “Best fuck of my life,” he says, downing his second drink.
***
He fumbled with his cigarettes and lighter. He knocked one out of the pack. His lighter shook in an unsteady hand. He’s unable to aim the flame under his cigarette, so Manetti reached over and steadied his hand, and Drax managed to get it lit.
Manetti considered the man on the other side of the tiki bar. Sure, it’s the orange glow from the heat lamp and the backlit fog that created the celestial illusion, but Drax looks like a weary, worn out demon, or maybe, somewhere buried deep inside, an ancient, withered angel is trying to break free of earth; some hybrid of torment and joy merge in his ragged face. He, Manetti, has witnessed that ecstatic tortured look, that rapture firsthand whenever Drax was cumming inside him over the two years he spent captive to his spell. This suspension between extremes, this balance between worlds; no wonder Ben stuck around for more than a decade. Moth to a flame, night after night. It had its draw.
“So,” said Manetti, rolling his ember in the glass ashtray imprinted with Plan B Bar, the name he and Ben chose for their place. He’s pretty sloshed by now, as was Drax, who’s smoking with exaggerated control. “How’d you really find us?” Manetti asked a second time, refilling their glasses.
Drax covered his emotions with each cloud of smoke he exhaled. “Read this article in Wired magazine,” Drax said. “Don’t look shocked. I read sometimes. Takes time with these cursed eyes, but I keep up.” Drax took up his drink, swirled it, and gave it a small sip. “There was this article, a profile of a kid, called himself Alistair Enge. Didn’t want to give out his real name to the magazine. ‘Fraid his mama’d find out, I suppose. He started a porn site, the article said, e-commerce, premium subscriptions, whatnot. The writer claimed it was changing the face of porn. No photo of this new face of porn, but I said to myself, Drax, you old fuck,” he flicked his ash, “where you hear that name afore?” He paused long enough to take a drag. “Then I remembered your pirate story from back in the day. When was that, Michael? Eleven, twelve years ago?”
Manetti thought for a second, stoking his goatee, strands of grey blending in. “Twelve years,” he said.
“Well, I thought to go ask my friends Boris and Roger--they’re still together, if you’re wondering. Wallace died though. Pity, nice pooch. I surprised them one night. Don’t think they were too happy to see me. I asked my old friends Boris and Roger, I said, hey Boris, hey Roger, what you’d ever do with that boat. What was its name?”
“We bought it. The Jolly Roger.”
“The Jolly Roger, yes.” He swirled his drink again and sipped a little more urgently. “So this is yours and Benjamin’s tavern. What about Christian, or is it Alistair now?” Drax held his cigarette to his mouth, sucked hard on the tip, smoke curling around his tattooed knuckles, H-A-T-E.
“Yeah, we own it. Chris has his own thing going, has a crew of programmers and managers, sales, regulatory, things like that. But Ben and I run The Plan B.” He hit his cigarette and blew smoke out forcefully threw his nose. “What made you think of the boat?” he asked.
“Alistair--the new face of porn--in the article said he’d spent time sailing with his husbands around the Caribbean before Stanford. Husbands, plural. Caught my eye,” Drax scoffed bitterly. “Three of you, huh? How does that work?”
“Works quite well,” Manetti replied, taking a last hit from his cigarette and then stamped it out. His brow scowled trying to focus. “So MD. You came all the way out here to...?” Manetti let the question hang. Drax let it dangle.
“Shame about Bichon, but I suppose karma has a way of catching up to even the best of us, wouldn’t you say, Michael?” Drax’s ghostly eyes looked accusingly at him. The patio’s becoming darker each minute by the encroaching fog. “So, how’s tricks, boy-o? Able to turn any out here?”
Manetti returned a cold smile. “No, man. Lifetime ago,” he said, calmly sipping his drink. “Very happily married to two beautiful men. Owner of The Plan B, which we love and live above.” He pointed to a darkened window over the doorway. “Part-time bartender, full-time husband.”
“Not even a nibble?”
“Not even a taste.”
“Why don’t you ask your husbands down? Make it a real reunion.”
“Don’t think so,” Manetti said knocking back a hefty swallow. Drax turned his eyes to the window above, fixated on it. The intensity and stillness of Drax made him uneasy. He prompted, “So you got out here from an article in a magazine. How’d you get here, to this bar?”
“Jamal and I paid a short visit to the good Mister Goodman and good Mister Glass’ West Village home whilst they hosted their annual Towel Party out on the island. Just a short visit for me and Jamal to look around after the morticians visit. Jamal found a postcard on their refrigerator. It was from Haiti. I suppose the man felt homesick. Next to it I saw a post card from Veracruz. Again your story popped into my head. And next to it a postcard from San Francisco.” This made Manetti set down his glass and leer over the bar at the old man. Drax reached inside his jacket immediately raising the hair on Manetti’s neck. He met Manetti’s trepidation with a smile and slowly took out two postcards, Veracruz and San Francisco, and laid them out on the bamboo countertop, postcards Manetti had sent Jake and Tobias years ago from their travels. “On Greeting from San Francisco you wrote about a bar you and Benjamin wanted to open, The Plan B,” Drax said flipping it over and pointing. Drax sniggered, his energy becoming buoyant. His initial weariness dissipated as a smirk overtook his face, his eyes narrowing. “Only thing. Silly me. I got their Towel Party dates wrong. They’d been out for a late dinner and surprised us. Who knew the good Professor Goodman packed heat. Gunned down poor Jamal afore he even knew who the shadows were in his home. Gave me time, though, to slice his neck.” Drax placed his long tortoise shell straight razor on the bar. “Had to chase old Tobias through the living room. He tripped, ditsy old queen. Quickly sliced through the tendons on the back of his neck. Most painful way to go.”
Manetti leapt across the bar grabbing Drax’s shirt, pulling him almost completely over the bamboo top by his collar. Manetti cocked his shaking arm, snot running down his lip, savagely voicing a baleful roar, just as Drax pulled out a snub nose pistol from his pocket. Manetti spotted the gun, dropped him instantly and took a step back wiping his nose on his arm.
“You cocksucker,” he said, hands where Drax could see them, struggling to constrain his desire for vengeance against his emotional distress. He sniffed loudly, making no fast moves while his brain spun in overdrive. Nothing would be stopping Drax, once he snuffed him, from going upstairs and finishing the job of offing Ben and Chris if that was his plan. He need to flush out Drax’s intensions. Speaking quickly, he said: “So you come cross-country just to kill me, because, what, you miss Ben? Mineshaft closed a long time ago, MD. Boys grow up. Birds fly from the nest. Sad facts of life. Still facts.” He kept glancing down at the straight razor.
“You piece,” Drax hissed slowly, “of sexless filth.” He pulled his shirt back down brandishing his firearm. “I don’t give a shit about Benjamin. What the fuck would I do,” he said holding out his arms. “Six months left in this shitty body at best.” A rumble built in Drax’s chest that ended with him spewing a large, green wad of diseased lung hitting Manetti on his lips. “The two fuckin’ million dollars you stole, cunt, I come for my pound of flesh for that.” Gleefully Drax wallowed in Manetti’s helplessness. “Do you one of two ways, eunuch. Either you stick your neck out here, make it a clean slice just like your friend Goodman left this earth. I’ll see you go painless as possible. Or we do it dirty. The tranny and the fruit should be gone,” he said holding up his watch, “else they’re more collateral. Dirty way, I pop a cap in you. That’ll brings down Benjamin and the boy. I wing Benjamin, tie up Christian, and let Benjamin watch me skin the boy the way of Jackson afore him. Take Christian out ever so slowly, layer by layer, piece by piece, in front of my Judas Benjamin, make him feel the twelve years of pain I felt for the next twelve hours. Then he and I descend to where we both belong. Last two chambers for him and me. Forever together. Or clean, like I say. I slice you quietly here, go upstairs, whack the Prior brothers quickly, last one for myself, and we call it a night. What do you say?”
Manetti’s hands were still in the air. “Okay,” he conceded, feeling the spittle hanging off his face. “You’re right. You’re owed your money. Interest. I, we can cover that. Christian’s a very wealthy man. But once we’re done, we're done. Debt paid.”
Drax’s white eyes blinked rapidly. “How you cover thieving Benjamin from me?” he asked in genuine pain. “I think the word Alistair used--it can’t be monetized. And how the fuck do you think you’re setting terms?” Drax words flew out with more spittle, his eyes glistening, years of heartache trying to escape behind his rage-filled eyes.
Manetti mind raced. “Okay.” Part of him knew he’d sacrifice himself if it meant sparing the brothers asleep upstairs; parted of him even perversely would welcome it. But he knew it would stop nothing. Drax was bent on a rampage, he believed none of what Drax laid out. The demon would improvise, whomever didn’t die outright was the lucky one. The unknowns were unacceptable. Drax had him in a corner--physically, if nothing else. “We...I fucked you over. I’m sorry. You have every right.” But finding himself cornered, he felt a spark of outrage an animal exhibits when corned. “Castration wasn’t enough,” he spat, vexed but hushed, “you have to tell me this, let it be my last thought. Is that it?” Drax looked out through his white glowing eyes and slowly, viciously nodded.
“I never stopped looking, y’know. The article got me to the yacht, the yacht to the morticians. They gave up Goodman and Glass before they even had a chance to bleed out. Where was the fun in that I ask you?” Drax luxuriated wildly in Manetti’s utter helplessness, as Manetti saw the depth of Drax depravity. “So your choice, boy-o. Clean?” Drax taunted, motioning his fingers for Manetti to lay out his neck over the bar. “Or dirty, and I’ll make sure to take all the time in the world to see your husbands suffer. Choose.”
Manetti looked down, desolate. There was no choice here. He looked at his vanquisher, then to his glass. “Okay then. Clean.” He nodded to his bourbon. “Cheers, to getting this rotten life over quick as possible.” Drax’s grin widen into a skeletal grimace, as Manetti motioned to his glass, waiting for permission for a last drink.
Drax nodded. “Go ahead, boy-o,” he said, motioning the gun at the glass. “Last one, on the house.” Drax’s eyes opened wide in anticipation. He pulled back the gun’s hammer awaiting Manetti’s final surrender, relinquishing everything starting with his life.
Manetti raised his glass, saluted the unlit window, then threw the bourbon directly into Drax’s eyes. Drax fired, stung, blinded, fired again and hit Manetti twice, but Manetti, his left shoulder and arm thrown back by the bullets, snatched the lighter in his right hand, flicked its wheel, and put the flame to the old man’s long white beard. The alcohol instantly ignited his doused beard, face and hair. Drax’s whole head, right up to his eyebrows, lit into one giant flame. He reeled backward, a human matchstick. He screamed, slapped his head, stumbling, knocking into chairs, tables, wobbling blindly all over the patio. He fired his gun into empty air, senseless of where he was. Manetti smacked the gun out of his hand and kept pushing him back, again and again, toward the railing. Drax was still screaming, clutching his head, the fire mostly out but his face charred, blistered black and red, searing with flesh-smelling smoke. At the railing, he opened his eyes, saw Manetti grimacing, the same expression he’d had shooting the boy Jackson. Manetti gave him a final tap, not one that was even that hard, and the old man flew downward into the foggy abyss, landing head first with a snap.
Manetti held his left side as he stood next to the railing, peering over at the lifeless body when the upstairs windows flew open. He inspected the smoldering, unmoving figure below, its arms and legs bent out at unnatural angles. Manetti looked up, wincing as he pressed his two superficial wounds. Ben and Chris peered down, bewildered, dumbstruck. Manetti waved up at them with his good arm. “S’okay. Just someone with very bad news dropping by,” he shouted to his husbands.
***
Chris danced in front of Manetti. Ben, clean shaven, hair almost back in a ponytail, looked at both of them smiling. Manetti tried not to laugh at Chris’ blatant suggestiveness, looked over at Ben for help. Ben shrugged feigning helplessness. The ocean was calm, the harbor breeze warm. The night sky was a dome of lights, moonless.
Chris was feeling good, a bit buzzed. He swayed his hips between Mike’s legs as he perched on his barstool. Chris reached up to the top button of Mike’s flowered shirt. “Bamba la bamba,” he sang.
“No,” Manetti said firmly. Chris unbuttoned it anyway. He reached for the second button. “C’mon, knock it off,” Mike said batting Chris’ hand away. Chris went back and undid the second button and reached his hand under the silk shirt and felt Manetti’s fur-covered chest. He leaned in and lightly brushed his lips, felt his scruffy dark beard. Manetti started breathing unevenly. Chris kissed him slowly, purposefully, sensually. Manetti relaxed, for the first time on their voyage, letting down his guard. Chris pulled away with a spark in his eye, undoing the flowered shirt’s last button revealing the man’s entire black pelt.
Ben stood up behind him and removed the Hawaiian shirt and placed it on the bar. He kissed Manetti’s right shoulder, then his left, then the nape of his neck. He threaded his hands around Manetti’s chest, feeling his warmth and his racing heart.
Chris grasped the man’s belt and Manetti stood up quickly and pushed Chris away. “I can’t,” he cried. “No. Don’t,” he pleaded. Chris got on his knees and unlatched the belt, started lowering the zipper. Manetti was never one for underwear, so when the shorts fell, he stood on the deck naked, exposed for all the world see.
Chris bent in and kissed Manetti’s regrown bush, his soft black hair, brushed it delicately with his fingertips, drew a line along the soft pink lips.
“Stop,” Manetti gasped. “It just a cunt.”
“Not just, it’s you,” the young man said. “You is who I want.” He put his face between Manetti’s legs, breathed him in, licked Manetti. The unfamiliar sensation caused the man to heave a monumental breath, brought a sigh of pleasure but also one mixed with confusion. Shaking he stepped back off balanced. Ben was there to catch him.
Manetti felt weak, fought against his frailty and rallied. Turning his vulnerability to strength, he steeled himself, grabbing Chris and Ben by their hands and yanking them forcefully down to the master cabin. There he ripped off Chris' shirt and tore off the young man’s pants, then turned combatively, and ripped the buttons off Ben’s shirt, held his head forcefully, and sucked his face like he’d been wanting to every day for the past six months.
Ben, still locked onto Manetti’s lips, slipped off his own shorts. Chris came over and stuck his face close to theirs. Manetti pulled back as Chris kissed Ben’s bent forehead, then as Ben looked up at his brother, Chris kissed his cheek. Ben found Chris’ mouth, and slid his tongue over his brother’s tongue. Both men were erect, which Manetti took full advantage of. He suck his lover’s massive member, then his brother’s smaller but still generous meat. He stuck both their cocks in his mouth and tortured them, rubbing their cockheads against each other, sliding his tongue around them, making them leak in arousal. He grabbed bedside lube and rubbed it on Chris' and Ben's erections, then on his front lips and between his cheeks. He positioned himself on his side pulling Chris down with him. Ben laid down in back. Manetti eased his butt, like so many times in the past, against Ben protruding erection. Ben’s stiff and metal-adorned organ slowly slid inside Manetti, familiar and so welcome.
Chris faced Mike and held his cock at Mike’s new lips and looked in his eyes. Mike gave him a smile of permission, and Chris slowly, sensually parted Mike’s virginal lips. Chris rubbed his dick up and down, slowly discovering he could part Mike’s body. Mike helped by rocking back on Ben’s cock, allowing it to penetrate him deeply, then rocked forward to take a bit, an inch, then two, of Chris’s cock. There was electricity in the dark cabin, palpable breath on a face, on a neck, mouth against mouth, inhalations and exhalations exchanged. A painful tearing of skin, slowly, erotically. Of all the collective torture they’d been through, this was the most protracted and agonizing. Like a band aid slowly being ripped off, Mike felt each cell pulling apart, one cell at a time. Tension and desire continually traded places, body parts awash in lubricants, smoothly flowing, painfully, exhilaratingly, new sensations every second between three men who found they were heading into unexplored territory. Mike felt the violation of his organ, both past and present, ravishing him, making him loose control. Once past the initial pain, at first the pleasure was too intense, but the allure of submitting to two men stroking themselves inside his body, became immensely satisfying. Then, after accepting the satisfaction, he recognized he could invert it on the perpetuators. Suddenly he felt more in control of them than they were of him. Writhing between them, he was in charge of their pleasure; he was their Captain. He controlled their body’s rhythm, granting them unending satisfaction through his rhythmic, velvety undulations, navigating their pleasure they sought within his body.
Chris whispered almost inaudible, “Oh, shit. Ben. I feel you.” Their faces so close together not a breath escaped detection by any of them. The three shared this discovering. “I feel you, too, bro,” said Ben deep inside Mike. The closer he drew into Mike, the more Ben’s cock pressed against a wall that barely separated him from his brother. Ben withdrew and then slid back in deep with each stroke, not only thrilling Mike but also erotically rubbing under Chris’ cockhead, pushing his P.A. into his glans. Not one of the three of them saw this coming. They gasped at the orchestra of sensation flowing through their bodies, the variety of pitch and crescendos they could produce. Chris was almost in to his balls, when Manetti cried out in pain. They halted abruptly. They caught their collective breath, holding it. No one moved.
Chris slowly eased all the way out fearing he’d damaged Mike. But the look on Manetti’s face showed how amorous he still felt, how much he wanted Chris back inside. Ben never left Mike’s ass. One of life’s greatest feelings for Manetti was having Ben’s full python buried deep inside him. He nudged Ben until Ben understood to fall onto his back pulling Manetti along with him. Then Manetti rocked on top of him, rising forward to impale himself in a squatting position. He bobbed in a wave of lust against his lover’s groin, sending waves of pleasure careening through both their bodies. He lewdly smiled at Chris, his hands parting his new lips, inviting the young man to come back inside. Mike fingering his twat was an obscene gesture that excited the fuck out of Chris. He knelt like he was in church in front of the holy alter of Mike, as Mike reclined back spreading his legs, fall back onto Ben’s chest. Chris quickly removed his P.A. and slipped in cautiously, but increasingly gave into his arousal, his desire to fuck Manetti as deeply and as hard as he could.
Chris never imagined he could share in such a complicated arrangement, of boomeranging and ricocheting needs and lust-filled desires. He made out with Mike as his cock rocked inside the man, then found his brother’s face alongside Mike and satisfied his forbidden, incestuous appetite, discovering how deep within Mike he could fuck against his brother’s hard, massive cock.
How could they know how good this would feel, how tangled their emotions would entwine, how bound together their souls would become? They united in the moment, tonight, tomorrow, for a lifetime.
Manetti felt the brothers shudder together, felt how wet he suddenly was, leaking out both sides of his body as the brothers continued to quake. And somewhere within, sliding against his core, against his body’s tectonic plates, a quake overtook him too, pulled him over a vista and he could see how this could all work out. He shuddered in gratification of the corruption and purity of this comingling of brothers cumming within him at this one moment. They gasped, all breathing unevenly, laid there motionless except for the rising and falling of their chests.
Chris was the first to make a move, cascading them all to the side, all still holding each other for dear life. Had this even a chance of continuing past tonight? Just because it hadn’t been done before, still it could be done. It’d be messy and complicated. They’d expect no understanding from others of their arrangement. Gee, didn’t that already sound all too familiar? Chris and Mike looked at each other with faces radiating satiation, Ben behind kissing the swirling hairs, the soft opera of Manetti’s neck. They lay quietly for a long time feeling the ocean holding them as tenderly as they held each other.
Mike suddenly exploded. “Alright, you fucking perverts,” he roared between them, snapping instantly into drill sergeant mode. He quickly and rudely untangled their cocks from his body. Rising off the bed, he grabbed the grease. “Prior brothers!” he barked. “Edge of bed with your asses in the air! Now!” He greased both his hands generously. “It’s time you boys ride the Manetti Chariot!” He smacked both their asses hard leaving greasy palm stains on their bums. They responded, excitedly bounding to their knees, aligning next to each other on all fours, pulling and playing with each other’s floppy cocks like naughty schoolboys, while Mike lined up his fingers against their holes. Ben draped his arm over Chris’ shoulder and Chris draped his arm over his big brother’s. “And don’t expect me to take it easy on either one of you sick fucks,” Manetti growled, plunging deep inside their cavities.
Roll credits. Houselights.