The back door of the house swung open. and a tall, thin light skinned girl with curly dark hair down her back in a mismanaged ponytail entered with an almost white baby and demanded: “Have you seen your son?”
“No,” Paul said in a babyish voice, coming to scoop up the baby from his daughter in law’s arms, “But you should stay for dinner, and when you hear him, tell him to come over. How is it?” he said to the baby, jouncing him up and down while the baby smiled and looked down at him in wonder, “How it is, little man!”
So this was his grandson, and his newest grandson. If Elias had children, they would be his grandchildren too, but this child right here was the biological grandchild of his own body, and that was an amazing thing. This gurgling red headed baby was an Anderson, and what was more, he was the biological grandson of Todd, his friend for three decades, the man who had rescued him from the pit of hell and brought him to this town when he had nearly died of a drug overdose at the end of his career.
“What the hell is this?” Maia demanded from the living room.
Paul came into the living room and watched his daughter in law flipping through channels.
“It’s just sluts! It’s just bitches with no clothes. And dudes too. And don’t even look at the internet. That’s just people taking their clothes off and fucking too. The whole world is porn now. It’s not just pornos. It’s everything. Reality TV, that’s porn too. It’s just people thinking they aren’t real unless everything they do can be seen. It’s no limits. That’s all porn is.”
Paul is never sure how much Maia’s generation knows about his past, but he thinks of what Guy said all those years ago. Whenever Paul goes on any gay website, there’s a young boy hosting it, sitting in his underwear, selling sex toys or interviewing a porn star. Or there are underwear models who look a lot like he looked when he was calling himself a model, but was really a prostitute. He remembers looking through Elias or Dylan’s Facebook and seeing young gay men who were, yes, dressed like porn stars, and he thinks how Guy was totally right. They were getting in on the ground floor of things. Paul is sitting down on the couch beside his daughter in law, holding his fat grandbaby on his lap, and she is watching him look like a doddering old granddad, but he got in on the ground floor of this shit a long time ago, and it’s true. Now the whole world was pornographic.
Johnny wasn’t the first actor in Guy McClintock’s studio. He was the first to have a name and a persona and show up in movies frequently. Once Guy had Johnny, they began to film a series of movies around him, all about an innocent from a Midwest that, when Paul thought ot it years later, must have been more Kansas than Indiana. Alongside Johnny came Bick Throbbing, Stan Lightning, Rod Storm and a galaxy of others. In a few years they had gone from the back studio on Lawrence Street to Eagle Studios. Guy moved out of his apartment to the large house on Melrose, and Paul moved from his little apartment over Mrs. Conley to Guy’s old apartment.
Guy’s new large home became a flophouse for boys half homeless who wandered in with dreams of being actors or personal trainers, but stayed to make a masturbation flick which turned into their first porn. But other people showed up, men and women, who didn’t have much to do with the industry, or at least, didn’t plan to take their clothes off.
“I have my hands in all sorts of things,” Guy said. And of course he did. Johnny had snorted cocaine with him the first night they’d been together. And Johnny snorted cocaine a great deal of the time. There was a whole arsenal of drugs—some of them pharmaceutical, that made life a more interesting place. At a party in Guy’s house, Johnny discovered that ecstasy made you want to fuck and be fucked by everyone. When he let Derek Ryder fuck him against the wall in a crowded hallway, people half high passing by, it was the rush of of his life.
Johnny Mellow, kind and sweet on film and yes, kind and sweet in real life, was a hedonist on a scale that Paul Anderson could never have been. Johnny Mellow was who people wanted to see at gay conventions and parties centered on porn where there would be talent shows and the winner of the show would be a new recruit at Guy’s Studio. Johnny, TJ Hellstrom and Burt Maverick were the stars of Gay Pride parades, muscles oiled, shades flipped up, in nothing but their glittering Speedos.
A good porn star was a top and a bottom. Johnny liked flip and fucks, to be the fucker and then to be fucked, and that meant a day of work, meant no eating the night before. Water, cigarettes and coke was the died of the night before. An enema the morning of. Possibly two to get everything out. There were those unprofessional fucks who screwed everything up by not being clean. The day of filming, Johnny learned to take Viagra and maybe ecstasy, anything that guaranteed he’d be super hard and super horny. The best Johnny Mellow was so high he fucked like a jackrabbit, and so messed up he screamed like a bitch when he was fucked in his ass.
That Johnny Mellow had to work two days a week and the work was work. It was exhausting and he would drive home and sit in the dark sometimes.
But the sex that had become a living was its own drug. He had learned to like sex when he came into this business, and he was around people who were, frankly, sex addicts. He found himself cruising the streets looking for the same boys he had once been, and bringing them back to his apartment to blow or fuck for the afternoon. Sex was a feeling and sex was a business. He always tipped well.
One day he decided it was time to write home. Up until now he had always planned to write when he had that life his family could be proud of. But as time went by, it became more apparent that his life was never going to be something his family could understand. He wrote a brief letter to his mother saying he was in California, acting, and it was hard, and he was doing little films that she would probably never see.
When she returned him a four page letter, he was ashamed and didn’t read past, “Dear Paul…” He wrote every two weeks, waiting for return letters and telling his mother as little as possible. He had just filmed a movie called Pizza Slut when a letter came from home and, as he opened it, he saw that it did not bear his mother’s name, but his sisters: Claire Renee Anderson.
Inside, it simply said, “Please come home. Mom is dying.” She had left a phone number, and Paul… he was distinctly Paul right now—knew he had better call.
The only person who knew everything was Guy, and Paul was embarrassed at how emotional his director, his boss, his occasional lover, got about Paul’s mom. He also noted that Guy kept from saying anything stupid. He knew Guy’s mother had died of cancer, and he knew the director wanted to say something about it.
Paul dressed for his part. Johnny Mellow was an exaggerated Midwestern cowboy, but now he had to dress for Paul Anderson. He had to play the kid he had been. The person he now was could not show. He had to hide the cigarettes. At first he thought of not bringing them, but that wasn’t an option. He thought if he could land in O’Hare, rent a car and then score some coke in Chicago, he would be fine. Guy had friends, Paul knew where to go. He had to show up looking like he was clean, looking like he hadn’t done what he had done, like he wasn’t who he was.
When he came to East Carmel it was two in the afternoon and he arrived in the house surprised the hideaway key was in the same hideaway place. He spent an hour looking himself up and down making sure he was the same old Paul, but he was surprised when, even though he looked the same in jeans and tee shirt and feed cap, still thankfully big nosed, big eared, freckled and awkward, it was the girl who entered the house who had changed.
“Claire? It’s not possible.”
“If you leave for five years,” the tall girl with hair down to her back said, “anything’s possible.”
“You’ve got to be… twelve.”
“Thirteen,” Claire said.
Paul just shook his head, looking lost.
“You’ve been gone half my life,” Claire said. “We thought you were dead. Ma was so surprised when she finally heard from you. I don’t know if Matty even remembers you.”
“I remember him,” they both heard a sullen voice as the back door slammed shut.
A kid taller than Claire, but more awkward, entered the room/ His red hair was dark and down to his shoulders.
“I remember that Dad left, and then Paul left.”
Paul did not answer.
Matty said, “As long as you’re here, you might as well see Mom.”
Merillee looked up from the hospital bed.
“I don’t believe it,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you in this life again.”
She looked at her other two children. She said, “Could you all go and leave me with your brother for a bit.”
Claire nodded and pulled her sullen brother out of the room behind her.
“I can stay,” Paul said, sitting down and pulling on the knees of his jeans, “as long as you need me to.”
“I’m just glad you’re here.”
“I’m sorry I left the way I did.”
“You had to grow up,” his mother said. “You had to get away. And with what happened to your friends. To Wyman. And to that one boy.”
“Kyle, Mama.”
“Yes,” she said.
Paul thought of Jeff and TJ. They’d tried to get away and died in ditches. There were so many friends.
“But how are you, Mom?”
“I’m finishing up chemo, but there was a bad flare up. I guess that’s why Claire called. That and she’s been keeping house by herself. That’s a lot. Even for a girl as capable as her.”
“Well, she’s not alone, Mama. Right now she’s got me to help.
“When do you have to get back?”
“When I need to,” Paul shrugged.
“What are you doing out there? I’d love to see one of your plays.”
“Right now just cheap little movies that pay the bills,” Paul said. “but one day, Mama, I promise I’m going to do something to make your proud.”
For that afternoon, though, Paul stayed with his mother, and then took the kids to dinner and to the store.
“When’s the last time you got groceries?”
“Three days ago. Matty went.”
“How? The store’s two miles away.”
“I drove,” Matty said.
“You’re twelve.”
Matty shrugged. “It’s East Carmel.”
“Even so…”
“Relax, I took the back roads.”
“I saw your old friend Wyman by the way,” Matty said. “He and his wife have five kids by now. She keeps getting fatter. But so does he.”
Matty smiled spitefully, and Paul wondered how much he knew about the past.
“He’s hurt,” Claire said, later. “He doesn’t trust you. He’s been abandoned.”
Then she added, “We’ve been abandoned.”
Claire was a married middle aged woman now, with grown children. Paul reflected that, considering where they had grown up, it was strange that the second and third generation of Andersons should have such a considerable deepening of melonin content. Her son, Riley, after years of hating the red afro that was his hair, had cut it down and now looked something Malcolm X. Years ago the entire family had been at a party and Claire had arrived, looking beautiful.
“How is my favorite niece?” Fenn had asked while his sister’s daughter, Layla, cleared her throat.
Claire threw her arms about Fenn and told her sister in law, Layla, “You know he just does it to drive us both crazy.
Well into the night, Claire said, “When Paul finally came back home, he brought you with him. That was how I knew he would stay. He’d been living with you and Todd and he was different. More stable. Braver I think. I knew he wasn’t going to disappear anymore.”
That first time Paul stayed for three weeks. And there was an overly talkative volunteer in white name Michael who talked about cell counts and improvements and medicines while his head bobbed up and down.
“I guess,” Paul said, running a hand over his mouse like mouth, “I just need to get a hold on exactly what Mom has. Or had.”
“Well the lymphatic system is part of the body's immune defense system. Its job is to help fight diseases and infection. The lymphatic system includes a network of thin tubes that branch, like blood vessels, into tissues throughout the body. Lymphatic vessels carry lymph, a colorless, watery fluid that contains infection-fighting cells called lymphocytes. Along this network of vessels are small, bean-shaped organs called lymph nodes. Clusters of lymph nodes are found in the underarms, groin, neck, chest, and abdomen. Other parts of the lymphatic system are the spleen, thymus, tonsils, and bone marrow. Lymphatic tissue is also found in other parts of the body, including the stomach, intestines and skin. Does that make sense?”
“Uh, yeah,” Paul said.
“Like all types of cancer, lymphoma cancers are diseases of the body's cells. Healthy cells grow, divide and replace themselves in an orderly manner. This process keeps the body in good repair. And—”
Suddenly, Paul placed his hand in Michael’s crotch. The obviously gay boy looked at him in surprise and Paul, going from frightened, to predatory, began to massage him.
“What else…” Paul continued, rubbing the boy into arousal as his sister and brother sat watching television in the next room.
“Uh…” Michael tried, “In the non-Hodgkin's lymphomas, cells in the lymphatic system grow abnormally. They divide too rapidly and grow without any order or control. Too much tissue is formed, and tumors begin to grow. The cancer cells can also spread to—”
Paul stood up, suddenly, and barked, “I’m walking Michael to his car. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
A few minutes later, a car headed up the road, briefly illuminating the area behind the old barn of the Anderson farm. Rock and roll music drifted across the fields and then was soon gone. Above, the moon was only a crescent, with a wedge of hard white light that, nevertheless, failed to pierce the darkness. All was quiet except for the sound of crickets, and a thumping against metal, a frustrated grunting as, jeans down around his ankles, Paul pressed the nurse Michael’s face into the side of his car and his arm around his throat in a choke hold, fucked him. Paul Anderson was frail, awkward, out of control and scared. As Michael whimpered and Paul, ass clinched, cock wedged deep inside of him, rose on the balls of his heels in triumphant orgasm, his neck muscles straining, he realized it was better to be Johnny.
