S E V E N
I did it by not thinking.
-Paul Anderson
And it wasn’t even the money. Well, it was partially the money. But it was the feeling that when they begged him, and when he refused he wasn’t being nice… he wasn’t being… Christian.
“You’re a Christian, right?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, sounding more doubtful than he should have felt.
“Then you can’t be gay…”
“Good boy… Good boy…”
The humiliation as his body had jerked, as he had come inside of her.
This idea of being a Christian and therefore being obliging and being proper, not making it difficult for people, had brought him to some bad places. A pregnancy scare for one. This was a story that almost no one knew. Not even Kirk. Only Fenn, who had been the first friend to accept him as he was, and be completely interested in him, to listen to him without judgment, but also without titillation. The night he lay face down, almost suffocating in a pillow while he was hardfucked, part of Paul knew that this man, who had seemed so nice, who had given him his first taste of cocaine, was just repeating what he had heard and getting his aggression out.
But as the fucking went on, the other part knew he was indeed a faggot and a prostitute, being raped on a bed two thousand miles from home and when the man left—after having paid fifteen hundred dollars—Paul got up long enough to lock the door behind him, and then collapsed on the bed again, looking at nothing.
“You want to know how I did it,” Paul said.
“I just wondered how I couldn’t know that you did it,” Fenn said.
“I never told you, that’s how.”
“But I feel like I should have known,” Fenn said, “like if I had had half of an imagination, then I would have known.”
“It isn’t your job to imagine the most horrible aspects of your friends’ lives.”
“It is my job to have mercy with my friends though. And howdo you have it if you can’t have the sense to realize what they’ve been through?”
“Anything that ever happened to me I put myself through,” Paul said. “The only flaw you ever had, Fenn, is that you take to much on yourself. Even right now you’re imagining yourself right there, wishing you could do something for a boy who hadn’t existed for over twenty-five years.”
Fenn said nothing immediately.
At last he said, “Well, yes then, I do want to know how you did it.”
“I did it by not thinking.”
Rape, pain, disrespect, they were collateral damage. Sometimes the guy you blew, punched you in the face and your head hit the bathroom wall. Sometimes the guy fucking you tried to strangle you. Before the year was out, Russell and TJ had gotten into the cars of strange men and never returned again. Two boys were found in a ditch near the canyons, but the police could not identify them. Later, a mutual friend confirmed that TJ and Russell had been sodomized, strangled and, in TJ’s case, mutilated. And TJ was just sixteen. They had been disappeared, less important even than the girls who were so easily thrown away. You had to be careful, a gay kid meant nothing, a trick meant less. Paul stepped up his wardrobe and began going to the more expensive clubs where wealthy gay men found boys for the night. One evening a toothy black haired one bought him a drink and after buying him two drinks he said, “Can I talk to you?”
“You’re talking?” Paul said.
“Nice, kid.” The man replied. “But are you listening?”
Paul swiveled in his seat. “I am not.”
“What’s your name?”
“Johnny,” Paul said.
“Johnny,” the man assessed, looking like he doubted, but also looking like he didn’t care, “I’m Guy.”
Johnny didn’t know if Guy was trying to date him or trying to buy him. He wasn’t sure if the man knew what he was. He kept buying him drinks, and Paul looked to see if Guy was actually drinking the ones he was getting for himself. He was.
Guy said, “Take off those shades. It’s night.”
Johnny did and Guy said, “Goddamn, sexy eyes! Don’t hide that shit.”
Paul shrugged and grinned, turning red, and Guy said, “There’s the guy under the hardass!”
“Yeah, well,” Paul said, “You have to be a hardass around here. Not being a hardass will get you killed.”
“Being too hard will get you killed too,” Guy said. “So, are we going to your place or mine?”
Paul tried to laugh and said, “Who said we were going any place?”
“You,” Guy said. “The moment you walked in here.”
“Well,” Paul shrugged. “I know what my place looks like. Let’s see your place.”
“Excellent choice,” Guy said, raising a finger to call the waiter so he could pay him.
They jumped in Guy’s convertible and for the first time LA looked like LA was supposed to. For the first time Paul felt like he was living that LA life, the wind blowing through his hair. He wanted to stay with this man and get whatever he had to offer. Right now he offered a joint, and Paul inhaled and then passed it.
He didn’t understand the neighborhoods well enough to really know where he was, but Guy didn’t live in a mansion, and Paul had expected a mansion. He had a very nice apartment, the kind of apartment he wanted one day a complex with a nice lawn in the front and a walk up to what was Guy’s well appointed condo. They drank champagne and snorted blow on his large bed, and then Guy was undoing Paul’s pants, and Paul, high as shit, was letting him, was feeling Guy sucking his cock.
“Let’s get these off,” Guy said.
They undressed and Paul lay on the bed while Guy went down on him, thrilling him, shocking him, making him whimper.
“Turn over,” Guy guided him, and Paul cried out as Guy’s tongue darted into his ass. As he lay on the bed, Guy moved up and down his body, pulled his penis into his mouth and sucked him from behind while thrusting a finger into his anus. As he lay on the bed Guy mastered him, building up the pleasure in him and then making it slake until, at last, like Guy wanted, like they both wanted, Paul mounted him. As they both cried out, fucking in that room, and, at last Paul exploded inside of his, his body shaking, shaking, quivering again, Paul realized this was the first real sex he’d had since Wyman. Half drunk with it, he passed out on top of Guy, and contented, his mouth on the other man’s ear, he passed into slumber.
“And now for your payment,” Guy said, and Paul wasn’t entirely sure if it was morning or not.
“So there is payment,” Paul murmured. “I was wondering if I was your date or your hooker.”
Paul didn’t seem to mind, and Guy, sitting up in a silk bathrobe, said, “What if you weren’t either. What if you were a partner?”
“Wha?”
“You said you liked acting, right?”
“Yeah,” Paul shrugged, too lazy to get up.
“And you’ve worked the streets. You’ve made your money how you had to.”
At the look on Paul’s face, Guy said, “Who the fuck is blaming you? What I’m saying is how would you like to never have to fuck an ugly guy again? Or have to fuck one in your house? Or on a corner?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about porn,” Guy said. “I’m talking about Johnny Mellow and his cornfed adventures.”
“Who the fuck is Johnny Mellow?”
“You,” Guy said. “You just gave me the name Johnny. Let’s add Mellow to it, and now you’re a star.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“I’m not,” Guy said.
“I’ve never done porn before.”
“We fucking did porn last night. What we did was goddamn pornographic. I’ve never been fucked that way in my life.”
“But on film.”
“Are you afraid your mom’s gonna see it? Back in Indiana? At the local church? We’re doing some basement studio shit for homos in the greater LA area, and Johnny, they’re gonna fucking love you.”
Johnny sat up in bed, shaking his head.
“I gotta think about this one.”
“Think about making forty K in a year for twelve hours a week. Think about the fame even. You don’t know how much these fuckers look up to porn stars.”
Paul shook his head and grimaced with disbelief, “Who the fuck would look up to a porn star?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I would be.”
“Howabbout this,” Guy said, “You and me go shopping for Johnny Mellow. We’ll get him some clothes, and you can try him out and see if you like it?
“My name isn’t Johnny. Or John.”
“My name isn’t Guy,” Guy said. “It’s Sean Fisher. But whoever heard of anybody named Sean or Fisher making it big by starting a porn company? You’re not going to believe this, but its about to be a porn star’s world, and a porn star’s gonna be you, my friend. Whaddo you say?”
“I say,” Paul answered slowly,” that I like the idea of forty K.”
They went shopping and came back with checked Wrangler shirts that fit tight at the chest, snug blue jeans, lots of chewing gum. No boots, that’s overkill. Wrap around shades, ball caps, a cowboy hat. Back at Guy’s apartment they tried on clothes and laughed and Paul got in the mirror and emphasized his Midwestern drawl, chewing on a straw and saying, “Hey, mah name is Johnny Mellow, and I’m from Jasper, Indiana.” He didn’t want to be from East Carmel. That was where Paul came from. That was too close.
While they were fooling around in the bedroom with costumes, Guy slipped a hand in Paul’s pants, and then a moment later he was giving him head, and before the hour was out, Paul was fucking him doggy style on the bed. All the times he’d been working as a prostitute he had never felt in control or enjoyed the sex he was having. It couldn’t even be said that he enjoyed the money. It paid the bills. For the first time since he’d come to California, he was having fun and after he’d finished, coming on Guy’s back and passing out exhausted while Guy ran his hands over Paul’s strong stomach and marveled, Guy said, “I want you to come somewhere with me tonight. Bring your shades.”
In the movie house that Paul wanted to get the hell out of, but trusted Guy enough to show up to, one porno was wrapping up and Guy said, “Don’t look at the guy in the seat next to you, and don’t look in the bathrooms. Just look ahead.”
The next film showed two men coming into an apartment, and then they were making out, snorting blow, getting undressed. By the time Paul realized it was Guy’s apartment and it was in fact himself and Guy, he opened his mouth to protest, but Guy said, “Just watch.”
Paul watched himself being serviced and then he watched himself fucking Guy, and it wasn’t so much seeing himself as hearing the reaction. The camera faded out after he had come, and then the camera was traveling up and down his young, taught body, lingering on his face.
“He’s sweet looking. He’s like a baby.” Paul heard some folks saying, “Look at his fucking eyes. Look how he looks at that guy when he comes.”
And then, in the next film, there he was again, as Johnny Mellow, and Paul didn’t want to watch himself, but he heard the delight when people saw him again and as they were leaving the theatre, Guy said, “How well did we do tonight?”
The ticket man said, “They love that red headed kid. He’s a fucking star.”
Paul’s ball cap hid his hair, and shades hid his eyes. He smacked his gum furiously. “They’re gonna want more of him.”
“He’s going to be the foundation of my studio. They call him Johnny Mellow.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, that first one you ran made some money, but I’m telling you, Johnny Mellow—just in this house—made about three thousand dollars. You find him again and start making some real movies and… Goddamn!”
“You believe me now?” Guy said on the way home. “If you want those tapes back I’m telling you the truth, they were illegal and you can have ‘em and the money. But if you want to get off the streets and into the next big thing…”
“I’m gonna be a fucking star,” Paul said, tonelessly, chomping on his gum.
“Yeah, John, you’re gonna be a star.”
John was going to be a star. Paul Anderson had tons of reservations and had turned to sex work to pay his bills. Nothing was really happening for him. But it wasn’t Paul Anderson who had walked into that club and met Guy, and it wasn’t Paul Anderson who had fucked the hell out of Guy on screen and wowed that crowd. Paul Anderson would pay taxes to the government and put money in his bank account once a week, but from now on, as he sped down Rodeo Drive in wrap around shades and a ball cap that costs more than the wardrobe he had bought from Wal Mart in East Carmel, he decided it was time to be Johnny Mellow.
