E I G H T
“My name is Noah. It’s Noah all the time.”
- Noah Riley
Before he left for LA, Paul looked up how many sleeping pills it would take for him to kill himself, and he got two answers, the first which was highly detailed.
I'm not sure how many it can take to kill you but I can tell you this, it's incredibly hard for you to ingest them orally to kill yourself. Your body will reject taking too many pills and would force yourself to induce vomiting to get rid of it.
The best way is to take a whole bottle, maybe more if you're really sure about committing suicide, grinding up the pills as fine as you can (pestle and mortar would be best, or even using a coffee grinder would be better) and mixing it with warm water. Put that into an enema and shove it up your anus as far as you can so it gets past any feces in the cavity and towards the nerves and then slowly squeeze all the substance inside. Lay on your side and you'll sleep for sure. This way your system will absorb the pills very quickly, much quicker than orally which will almost guarantee your death if not guaranteed.
People use this method with things like oxy, ecstacy, etc. Even beer because it gets absorbed into your system much quicker. The more you overload your system with stuff like this the better the chances of you dying.
The reply was:
Hello ; God is the only one that can save any of us from Hell. We all have fell short of the the glory of God . The good new is he sent his only son Jesus Christ to die on a cross to make a way for all who would trust in him to be saved from there sins. All you need to do is trust in him repent of your sins ask him into your heart and you will be saved! We all are sinners my friend but Jesus made a way for us all to be saved! Find you a good church and read your bible its never to late! God is great my friend! I will pray for you and I know everything will be OK if you trust in our Lord and savior Jesus Christ!
Paul wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He hated misspelling and overgeneralization, and online Christians seemed prone to both. He wasn’t angry at God the way some people he knew were. He knew one guy he did scenes with who went to Mass once a week aside from Sunday and said the Rosary every night. But the truth was he just didn’t want to think about God. Jesus didn’t seem likely, not in the world he had seen. But he also didn’t seem… not real. Paul read the other answers to the query about how many pills it took to kill yourself.
I'm honestly considering this within the next week or so. Even God isn't enough to save me from going to hell.
The one who had first asked the question responded, and the others wrote back:
At his old desk, Paul took off his shades and looked out the window onto the green field that used to grow corn where the road out of town passed, and then he looked back to the screen.
Hey. I can understand why you would want to kill yourself. I want to die too. But I've lost hope even in that! How hopeless am I, huh? I've tried many methods of committing suicide, all have failed.. I've no idea why.. at the end I've just come to the sad conclusion that it isn't my time yet. how I wish it weren't true.. I've given myself peptic ulcers though. Maybe I'll get lucky one day and die from it. But knowing my luck... I'll probably live a long, tortuous life instead..
He remembered last year when he had been at Fulsom and a boy, maybe sixteen or so, saw him and said, “Johnny Mellow?”
His voice had throbbed as if he was seeing, not someone famous, but someone holy, and Johnny nodded, remembering himself and giving the boy a warm smile while he said, “Hey, kid.”
The boy’s eyes had filled with tears and Johnny, who never wondered who was watching his porn was struck. It wasn’t that all of a sudden he thought he was making art, but something in him, in what he was doing, had struck something in this kid, and he wondered about other people in their rooms, alone, touching themselves to him, or even not touching themselves, just watching, mouths open, on their knees, like devotees before saints’ altars.
Johnny shook his head, that kid’s face still before his eyes, and read:
I understand where you are coming from I too am planning this for myself. For you people who tell us to change something well what if u cant get a job that will support you or if you are in abusive situation that is impossible to escape from and you have no one to turn to no skills to take care of your self are you saying being homeless and hungry and in danger is better than dying? I have searched all available options with no solution. I am 43 years old no matter how good I am or how much I talk to God or try to change whats making me unhappy Nothing works I have pleaded with God for 20 years to help me and nothing nothing ever changes I've done it all my husband has ruined my credit, I cant get a job that will support me because they all do credit checks I have major pain on a daily basis that only medical insurance could help with and my husband only pays for himself to have my 1 under age daughter has medicade my state will not adopt the medicaid reform I have no other choice, he is only concerned with himself my children are my only happiness and all i am doing is making them miserable and I am not willing to put them thru this anymore.
Please don't do this. I understand your pain and I have wanted to do this so many times. It's NOT the answer. I care. Please don't do this.
He turned from the computer. He’d really just wanted to know how many pills he could take and not die on the flight back home. Funny how LA was home now. He hadn’t actually been thinking of killing himself. Had he?
An almost aching exhaustion because, when he remembers telling Fenn of the Buddha Face, Fenn who, no matter what, is always his best friend, he remembers saying to him: “The only flaw you ever had, Fenn, is that you take too much on yourself. Even right now you’re imagining yourself right there, wishing you could do something for a boy who hasn’t existed for over twenty-five years.”
That’s how it is with Elias. I can’t have the thing for myself that isn’t pity, is anger, is the wish to protect is… love? I can’t have it for Paul in California, Paul fucking a nurse against a car in East Carmel. But for Elias…yes. It’s always Eli I see, Eli I fear for. Fenn always understood, but when I told him about my, face against the pillow, head banged into the sink, then he really understood. He didn’t say it, but they both understood.
The next morning he said goodbye to his family, promised to return in a few months and didn’t look Matty in the eye when he left because his little brother shot him a glance that called him a liar and, sure enough, Paul knew that’s what he was. He drove to Chicago, dropped off his car, got on the plane, went to the bathroom, ground up a quarter of a bottle of pills and went to sleep. When he woke up he was back in LA, and when he came off of the plane, into the sunshine, seeing palm trees in a place where palm trees were never meant to grow and water in a land where it ought not be, young beautiful people wishing to be stars even though stars were balls of gas, he thought how unreal it all was and how that was perfect, because he didn’t want to be real either.
When he returned to his apartment he stripped and then went to the bathroom and fell asleep on the toilet. He didn’t bother to shower, but stretched out naked on his bed and hit the message button on his answering machine. On it Guy was all excited about the next young thing, some hot little number with a cock the size of Australia that he just had to see. So early the next morning, Paul shaved, showered and dressed, and came into the studio, shades over his eyes, Johnny Mellow all over again and glad to be him, glad to do some scenes if necessary, and Guy brought a small kid to him, good looking, but definitely a kid, and short as fuck. Guy said to the boy with the red brown curls:
“This is Johnny Mellow, You may have seen him.”
“Yeah,” the boy grinned, and he laughed nervously.
“We were wondering,” Guy continued, “if you were ready to get fucked? And if you’d like to get fucked for the first time by Johnny Mellow?”
“Uh…” the boy began, “Yes, I mean… Uh, huh.”
“A little nervous?”
The boy went red as Johnny gave him a little grin.
“Yeah. A little.” Then he added, “But I’m ready.”
“And cut,” Guy said in a different voice.
The boy blinked and so did Paul, who had no idea they were being taped. Yes, Paul remembered, Guy had a thing for that.
“Guys,” Guy said, “come in at around eleven tomorrow and we’ll start filming the rest. I needed to catch Noah’s surprise,” Guy explained, gesturing to the boy who must have been Noah. “And Noah, if you don’t know already, you need to learn how to douche. Johnny, can you teach him?”
Johnny nodded.
“We want you to be sort of new and convincing, but if it’s too new, it’s just going to be gross,” Guy went on. “Johnny, introduce Noah to some sex toys. Help him experiment. Nothing too crazy, nothing too big. We’ll start in on this tomorrow.”
Paul remembered how when they had first begun five years ago, there was no Eagle Studios, and now here he sat, shades on, shirt off, smoking beside Burt Lightning, smoking a cigarette while Guy talked off camera to Noah who was naked in the fake bedroom, pulling on his cock for the camera. It took about an hour to shoot the twenty minute video of Noah masturbating on the floor and at one time Noah fucked a pillow and then rubbed his swollen cock against the leather of a sofa. At times he bent over to show his tight ass, expose his asshole, finger it even. At last, eyes opened and shutting, his little body tensing and untensing, his toes locking, his back arched, he shot four—Paul counted them—arcs of yellowish semen all over his chest, onto his neck and onto the floor.
“Holy shit,” Burt murmured.
“Let it go on for about ten more seconds,” Johnny said to Guy, “and then make it a wrap. Don’t even say anything. Just film up and down and watch him all spent.”
“Fucking beautiful,” Guy said while he ran the camera up and down the boy with his eyes closed who was still trembling in the wake of his own orgasm.
When the shooting was done, respectfully, no one said anything for a while and then Guy said, “That was impressive, Mr. Noah. You can shower up, and we’ll see you in the morning.”
While Noah was coming out of the shower and drying himself, Johnny said, “You’re going to love this.”
Noah waited for Johnny to elaborate.
“Bottoming,” Johnny said.
And then he added, as Noah dried his head, “Not because I’m so great, just because this really is where the money is. When there is money.”
“I’ve never done stuff like that. With toys,” Noah said, putting his hand to his behind. “I’ve never had someone put stuff up there.”
He’d had stuff up there, Paul suspected, but not willingly. Where did he come from? What was he running away from. Kyle Norman’s graffitied head, the head he’d never actually seen, blackened his sight as it sometimes did and sucked him into a momentary hole. He shook the image away.
“But you liked it?” Paul told him.
“Yeah,” Noah said in a small, reverent voice. “I did. After I got used to it.”
“Good,” Paul was still shaking away the image of Kyle, disappointed in himself for not being able to lose it after all these years. He concentrated on this boy before him, this boy who was gentle and good looking, cocky enough to survive, who had gotten away from wherever and gotten away from the streets to the safest place there was.
“Guy might want us to do some of that in the video,” Paul told Noah. “You know, where I’m supposed to be doing all that to you for the first time. Before I fuck you.”
Paul said it so negligently. It was just a day’s work. Paul watched Noah turn red, and was surprised at feeling a little embarrassed.
“Say,” Paul turned to him as Noah pulled on his shirt. “You wanna go out or something? Get a beer or some dinner? I don’t really have any friends around here.”
“Me neither,” Noah said. “Yeah, I’m free.”
“Oh, and by the way,” Paul added. “I’m always celibate three days before a shoot, so I’m not rebuffing you. They just like to see a nice load and some passion. It’s something you might want to try.”
Noah chuckled, “I don’t have to try. No one wants me. I’m not doing anything with anyone outside of here. And I’m glad.”
Paul stood looking at him.
“What?” Noah said.
Paul knew he was halfway in love with this little, well built guy. He wanted to fuck him, but he wanted to do it in his bed, wake up with him. He wanted it off camera. He wanted Noah to himself. He felt kind of stupid, but he wouldn’t have been the first pornstar to fall in love with a coworker, to make a go of it.
“I just don’t believe that no one wants you,” said Paul.
