Every time Paul heard about a runaway, his heart sank. He remembered his own running away. He remembered getting on that bus and going to the place he had wished Kyle Norman could have gone, rushing out of the county as if to outrun Kyle’s fate and Wyman’s fate, one’s head chopped off, the other’s head bashed in. He could still see Kyle in track competitions, hair bronze in the sunlight, his long legs and strong thighs golden. The triumphant smile on his face. Even though Paul lost to him, he didn’t feel like a loser. Kyle’s arm flung over him, congratulating him, and in the end, the certainty he and Wyman felt that they shared something with Kyle, and with his boyfriend. Well, then how could someone so beautiful and so free, be trapped by that horrible man, and that worthless mother, and how could his life end the way it had?
As the bus rolled out of the dirty bus station in Chicago, his mind pushed toward the image of Kyle, corpse thrown away, his head rotting in trash behind the house. But this image was hidden in darkness, and his mind refused to see it. Paul fell asleep, dreaming about Kyle, and Kyle turned iinto Wyman and then it was the next day and he had to pee. He moved, painfully, to the bathroom in the back of the bus.
That afternoon they came to the first transfer in Saint Louis, and the bus Paul was on was late, and so he had to remain in the depot for three terrified hours. He couldn’t allow himself to think about what he had done, and if he had not spent all of his money, he would have gone back to Indiana. The next transfer was in Las Vegas, and when he stepped outside there was a burning dry heat he had never known, and so he went back in, thinking the place looked blown and dried out, in some ways like Indiana. Though the mountains were spectacular. Those mountains, black and streaked in white ,were about all this shit, touched only by clouds and maybe by God. There was no long delay here, and he got on the third bus which brought him to LA. At the bus station, like an idiot, he had asked for a ticket to California, and the ticket manager, with the patience reserved for a retarded child, explained he actually needed a city to go to.
“Hollywood!” Paul shouted, and patiently, the ticket manager had said, “L.A.”
Nothing happened for him when he came out of the bus depot into the night. He was definitely in a city and yet it had a different air from Chicago. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt. If he thought too much about it, he might go a little crazy. He was nowhere near home and nowhere near family.
And yet, he felt safe. Staying in East Carmel, remaining in Indiana and being what he was, was definitely not safe. He walked up and down the streets and saw a lot of people like himself, and soon he was hungry. He’d have to find a job. He passed a diner, and saw a girl taking an old couple’s order. Maybe come there in the morning? Waiters got paid on tips and tips were shitty. But it was a living, right? And he had never thought about a place to live. A place to live would be the first thing to find with the little bit of money on his person. He hadn’t thought this through at all.
That night he stayed at a cheap motel where he could hear fucking through the wall, and checkout time was at eleven in the morning. He had Cheezits and a candy bar for dinner, and took his first shower in days. He wished he’d had shower shoes, and he didn’t dare look down or look at all into the filthy stall.
He sat in the chair, looking at the bed, suspiciously, and went to sleep.
Pounding the pavement was a horrible expression. He did it now, and found himself unemployed at the end of the day after going from restaurant to shop to restaurant to shop. And he really just wanted enough to stay in a motel that night. That was three times more than a decent hotel in Indiana and yet, waiters got paid the same everywhere. It was in that despair he thought, “At least the weather’s nice here,” and laughed, then went to the beach. He had never had a wry sense of humor before, and was surprised by its sudden appearance. He slept under a bridge and thought, “I always wondered what it would be like to sleep under a bridge. I didn’t really think people did it. And yet, here I am.”
He stayed around the next day, learning the rules quickly. To not look homeless during the day, to find your place at night. He needed to shave now. He needed so much, and he didn’t know how much longer he’d keep it up.
“Guys would pay for you,” said Russell, a red head who had stayed near him the night before.
“Huh?”
“Guys. Businessmen. Man, you go up the strip and they will pay good money for blowjobs.”
“I don’t think I’d like to do that,” Paul said more slowly than he wanted to.
“Or they blow you.” Russell shrugged. “You just lay back and give it.”
“You do that?” Paul asked. “You’re gay?”
“For fifty dollars, yeah. See that kid over there? Little Mike. He works at the vendor, but he got paid five hundred dollars just to let some old guy fuck him.”
“I don’t think I could do that,” Paul said.
“Well maybe not that,” Russell agreed. “But whatever you could do. Do. It’s better than sleeping on sand.”
Paul nodded, then he said. “Do you go out there? On the streets.”
“Yeah!”
“Could I go with you?” Paul asked. “See how it’s done.”
“Sure thing. Brother. It’s enough horny fuckers out there for all of us.”
Clean yourself up, obviously. Don’t worry about looking a little homeless. They like that shit. Stand here. Not on the corner. That’s too obvious. But like, yeah, against that wall. Just leaning, like you got nothing better to do. Chew on some gum, and when the car comes up to you just ask if you can help him? Real like you don’t even care, like is he lost or something. If you want to live, don’t get in the car with him. Unless you can take him. But you don’t know what he’s got on him. Half of these motherfuckers are so thirsty they’ll suck you in an alley. Make sure you get your money first. And don’t just take anything else they offer. If you haven’t seen the money, don’t be afraid to move on.
In the alley, Paul was surprised when the old man in the grey suit made him come. He was still shivering and halfway out of his body while the man licked his penis and sucked on it greedily.
“I wish you would fuck me,” the man whined a little, and Paul, not knowing what else to say, slipped his penis back into his pants.
“Uh…” Paul told him, “have a good night.”
He walked away from the man, a grimace on his face. If you played Scrabble once, you weren’t a Scrabbler. If you went to the movies once you wouldn’t call yourself a movie goer. More importantly, if you ran once, you weren’t a runner. He knew that. So how come right now he felt like he was a whore? He wasn’t just someone who had let a man suck his dick for cash once. This had changed him. It was so odd, he would say years later to the few friends who knew him intimately, much bigger things happened to him, but this thing that took a few moments remained with him. It stung and he hated to remember it, that very first time, the mingled pleasure of being blown for the first time in a long time combined with the shame of who was doing it, where and why. He reached into his pocket, opened his hand and looked at what he had, stuffing it back quickly, suddenly street cagey and not quite the farm boy from Indiana. That was seventy-five dollars. Enough for a couple of nights in a poor motel. More than a waiter would make on his feet all day. This was simple economics. And he was already a whore.
He figured it took him about a half hour to be ready for sex again, and if he could do this two more times he would be able to go to the bank in the morning, open up an account so he wasn’t walking around with cash, and start some type of life for himself. There was so much he wanted to do with his life, and he would do it. But he couldn’t do it homeless, and so he cleared his throat, tried to make himself laugh and went out onto the street to make his living.
Paranoid about carrying cash, and of course most paranoid about losing what he had worked so hard for, Paul went to the first bank he could find the next morning. He had made two hundred dollars in a night, and he wondered, as he signed the details on his new account, if he could make that every night, or if this was just a fluke. Having received so much money so quickly for so little time, but at an emotional price that he was already feeling, Paul was determined to make this work.
He talked to Russell, and he got up the courage to talk to the other boys on the street, to look through newspapers to find out where he could get more business. But this was after he’d gotten a decent breakfast and after he’d found a room for the night. He couldn’t keep living in hotels. He had to find a real apartment, something that didn’t take up half of his income in a single night. TJ, one of the boys on the street, told him he had a place with two other guys, but Paul had a plan and it involved his own space. He didn’t for a single night, want to sleep in the same apartment with people he wasn’t entirely sure about and who just might steal whatever he had on him. He would spend the money at the motel.
The motel was a place to sleep in the day, and from what Paul had been told, a great place for business at night. All he had to do was sit near his door, knees apart, looking like a disaffected teen and puffing on the cigarette he was learning to smoke for show. And then a middle aged man would role up. He would look at him, the man would look back. Paul would stand up and go to his door. He would feel him down in the guise of a passionate hug, rejoicing that he still had muscles, and then he would say his price. These were days when Paul surprised himself. He didn’t feel like he was in darkness. He had been in darkness for a long time. Back home in East Carmel things had gone dark. He felt like he was rootless and none of this was real and the money was so damn easy. No… it took a short time to earn it. That was more the truth. By the time he’d found an apartment, living over an old, semi deaf woman, he had the money to pay two months rent up front. He’d also developed a taste for the cigarettes he was smoking. He had learned that several men wanted nothing more than to spend a whole night with a beautiful boy in wrap around shades who looked farm fresh from the Midwest, but with just a touch of cynicism. They liked the way he gave that cagey smile from the side of his mouth while chewing gum.
“When I really make enough,” Paul was saying to his friend TJ, one night, “I can finally go to school like my mom wanted me too. I’m thinking about the acting program.”
“You can do a bit of acting now,” TJ told him. “There are studios all over town. I work at them sometimes.”
Paul, not completely stupid, was beginning to understand TJ meant porn. Paul simply dismissed this and said, “There’s this one rich married guy coming tonight, and all he wants to do is rub my back and tell me about how his wife doesn’t understand him. And that’s some good money.”
And this is true. They did want to talk to him, and they did want to rub his feet. But they always wanted to fuck him. Sometimes without a condom. He never thought that would happen. It was all blowjobs to begin with. He let them blow him. But then he blew them back when they asked for it. Sometimes they were clean. A lot of times they weren’t. And then it went to fucking, and then it went to right now, with his face pressed into the pillow while this married man fell on him again and again, making his asshole ache, pulling on his hair, grunting, “Take that, you fucking faggot, take that, take it…” until he lost control, groaned, and came.
