Danny's Choice

Brent’s Story

Hearing the click of the lock behind me in the sacristy was what I would identity as the “Go” square in the honest autobiography I probably could never dare write.

Before that, Father Timothy had been standing at the sink counter, drinking the last of the communion wine, while I, fulfilling my altar boy duties, washed and dried the chalices after the last service of the morning.

“Father,” I had said, “do you know what last week was for me?”

“As I understand it, your papers removing your parents as your managers went through, Brent. I still am not sure that was the approach to take. Your parents have meant well. They have been trying to balance your acting career with having a normal life. You know that I have counseled--”

“More important than that, Father, I turned eighteen on Thursday.”

I heard him take his breath in and start to breathe hard. “You know, Brent--”

“Father, I’m not wearing anything under this alb. I’ve been naked under this alb through the mass.”

That’s when I heard the click of the lock behind me in the sacristy. He came in behind then, an older, gray-haired man, but still handsome and wiry, and with strong arms. Father Timothy had never been one to be above honest physical labor. I knew he was still hard bodied. I also knew, though, that he could be gentle and wasn’t oversized. I had researched well. There had been other altar boys before me. I had seen him with them; they had talked to me about him--he himself had talked to me in ways that told me that he ached for me but that it would go no further until I was of age. He said he would never go with anyone under eighteen. I had a plan--to start with someone sensitive and not too taxing.

“Brent.” It was almost a pleading voice. I could feel his hot breath on my neck and his strong hands on my hips. I reached down and untied the sash around my waist and let it fall to the floor.

“Brent. You know how much . . .”

Yes, I knew how much he wanted me. I knew the looks he’d given me, the touching. And I knew I wasn’t the only one, or even the fifth one.

“Don’t talk, please. Just be gentle with me. I’ve never before . . .” I took one of his hands in mine and brought it up to my mouth and opened my lips to his middle finger. I heard him gasp.

“Oh my . . .” I knew it was a strain for him not to say the next word, just as I knew it must have been a lifetime struggle for him to maneuver between the values he espoused and the desires that plagued him--that, indeed, had probably led him into his profession.

He was trembling, but it didn’t keep him from pulling his hand away from my mouth, to stand close behind me, keeping his chest plastered to my back as I leaned over the counter. I felt his hands on my hips outside the alb, bunching up the material to my waist. I heard him gasp when he found I hadn’t been lying about being naked underneath. And then the hands were on my naked thighs, moving up my hips and waist--and up to covering my pecs. He was kissing the back of my neck. The hands went back to gliding over my naked torso--checking to make sure that I was real and indeed naked--and I was finding the arousal that the hands of another could cause.

I’d never hardened up before without the work of my own hand. But I was hard now, and I felt as well as heard his intake of breath when he discovered that. Having touched me there with his hand and finding me in erection, he let his hand encircle it. His hand was trembling. I jutted my buttocks back into his crotch.

“Oh, Sweet Jesus; oh, sweet boy,” he murmured, beyond control now. He slid down on his knees behind me and plastered his face to my crack. My arousal meter zoomed right up there, and I let out a long moan, moving a hand back to cup the back of his head, holding his head in close to me. At the same time, I widened my stance. That tongue in my crack was driving me crazy. So was the hand encasing my cock and slowly stroking it. Who knew there could be this much pleasure? I did know that there was to be pain too. At least at first. That was why I’d chosen him for my first. The others had told me that he wasn’t so bad--that it was the younger Father Paul I didn’t want to be my first.

I had to question them to discover they were talking in terms of size and vigor.

His hand released my cock, briefly, to cup my balls and weigh them and roll them together in his palm. Then it moved up to encase my cock again. I rocked back and forth and moaned. “God, God, God,” I moaned, not feeling any restraint at all in my language. Farther Timothy was too occupied to care.

He hadn’t given my cock more than four slow strokes after that when I tensed and couldn’t hold it. I shot off against the counter cabinet doors.

“Oh God, sorry,” I muttered. I was embarrassed, but this was why I was here, now. I wanted to get good at it. This was square “Go” for me. This was where I started learning to do it better.

“Oh, you sweet boy. If you--”

“Do it, father. Fuck me please. I want it.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus. We will go to the rectory.”

“No, here, now. Don’t make me wait. I want to do it.” What I meant was that I wanted to get the first time over. Then I’d work from there.

I heard the intake of his breath and he stood up behind me, his hands on my waist--on the skin of my waist, my alb bunched up on top of his hands. One of his hands was pulled away and I heard him struggling with the buttons of his cassock--there were thirty-three of them, I knew from having worked with the vestments. It took a while, all the time the hand on my waist holding me with a firm grip, as if I would have second thoughts and would slide away from him and escape.

I had no intention of doing that. I’d planned this for a long time. Still, I was panting and had to fight hard to keep the indecision from creeping in. I’ve done it already; I’ve had sex with a man already. I kept running this through my mind to maintain my resolve. There was no closing that door now. Another man--the priest--had jacked me off, such as it was. But that was sex with a man. And I’d get better at that. This was just the beginning.

It was his skin on me now. He was hard and was rubbing the underside of it on the small of my back. His hands ran up to covering my pecs again, holding me close into his body. He was kissing my neck again. I turned my head for my first kiss from a man. His eyes were a shade of gray. I’d never known that, had never been this close to him before. I could see the ache for me in his eyes.

I assumed this was the point that I showed him with my body that I wanted him. I certainly wanted him to do it and get it over with. I moaned and groaned for him and let my lips part to take in his tongue. I sucked on his tongue, thinking he’d think that was sexy. From his moan and the lurch of his cock at the small of my back, I decided I’d guessed rightly.

He moved his buttocks out, away from me, but immediately brought them back in, this time with his cock coming in lower, pressing into my crack.

I released his tongue and pulled away from his lips. “Oh, shit, shit. Fuck. Fuck me now,” I growled. Yes, now, raced through my mind. Before I lose the resolve. Get on with it. I couldn’t go anywhere, become a star, until I got through this first time--and through all the toning up of the act afterward.

He was looking around wildly and then I saw him reach for the bottle of scented oil we used for the candles on the altar. Right, I thought, I should have come prepared for that. He could be expected to do that.

The oil felt cool between my crack. Slick fingers were sliding into the crack and then probing me. I gave a grunt and muttered. “Gently, gently, please. Oh, God, be good to me.”

He was becoming more frenetic, holding me closer, his grip stronger, his breathing heavier. He grabbed one of my wrists, wrenched my arm behind my back, and pushed my chest flat on the counter.

“Widen your legs,” he demanded in a breathy voice.

I widened my stance and the shallow probing inside my ass went deeper. In and out. In and out. Was he fucking me already. No, it was just his fingers still. But then it wasn’t. Something bulbous, throbbing, was at my entrance, insisting on entry.

“Open, open, open to me, dammit,” he commanded. “Wider. Legs wider.”

I opened my stance even wider and began huffing and puffing as I felt the invading staff moving up into my channel.

“Breathe. Breathe. Continue breathing. And open to it. Relax those muscles. Give it to me. Give it to me.”

I was doing my best. I almost cried out for him to give me a break, this was my first time. God, did I feel stuffed. And the others had said he’d be easier to take than Father Paul? But I’d done it. He was inside me and I felt him relax a bit and that made me relax too. And it helped. I felt my walls loosening, accommodating to him. So, this was it. This was what being fucked by a man was like. Well, it wasn’t so . . . “Oh, Fuck!”

That wasn’t what it was like--not by a long shot. He began to pump me. Slowly at first but picking up rhythm and depth of thrusts. Panting hard--both of us. I writhed under him, which only seemed to hurt all the more and to take him in more deeply with each thrust. So, I settled down, tried to relax, and didn’t fight it. He was in. There was pain, yes, but a hint of pleasure. And I had been told that the balance between pain and pleasure would even out more in the future. And it was done now. Just need refinements from here.

He didn’t pump for long--that had been one of the advantages with Father Timothy that the others had told me about. Not particularly long and little stamina. I felt the creaming of my insides, which wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, and then my senses broadened out. They had been concentrated on my channel, any pain anywhere else being dulled and becoming a distant second to what was happening inside my ass passage.

“Please. My arm. You’re hurting me,” I whispered, suddenly becoming aware of his strong grip on the arm he had pinned against my back.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “Sorry about everything.”

But he didn’t seem at all sorry about anything. He wasn’t finished yet. His hands grabbed up the folds of alb at my waist, pulled it over my head, and tossed it to the side. Once again he was running his hands all over my body.

“God, your body is beautiful Oh, to be young and perfection itself again,” he murmured. He pulled me in close to his naked chest again, his hands palming my pecs, his face buried in my neck. He was going hard again--but not as hard as he’d been before. Still, though, he was trying to pump me again, and he was at least partially successful, producing a spurt of cum, which wasn’t as full as his first effort, but that ended in a long sigh from him.

I felt his body relax more and then separate from mine. He pushed my chest down onto the countertop and his hands ran around to my back and caressed my shoulder blades. They moved down to the orbs of my buttocks and squeezed them. “Perfection itself. I couldn’t help myself. Let me help you clean up and then--”

“Take me to the rectory now. Can we continue in the rectory?”

“You want to go to the rectory with me? To my bed?”

“Yes, please.” I had to push this farther now that I had begun. I gritted my teeth, but manage a wan smile for him. “Can we do it again? I’m in my own apartment now--with other guys. No one is checking up on when I go home. This was my first time. I want to learn to do it better. Will you take care of me? I want more.”

We were both naked in his Spartan bedroom at the rectory. The bed was just a double, but others had told me that had been big enough. He was at least fifty, but his body was hard. No fat. The muscles hard. His hair silver gray on his head, but more an auburn as it trailed down his belly and into his bush. The cock not terribly long or thick, but erect now again, as we had stood inside the doorway to his room and rocked against each other and kissed.

I sat down at the foot of the bed, opened my arms to him, and whispered. “Please, let me . . .” I drew him in to me with hands sliding around his narrow hips and cupping his thin, tight butt cheeks. He gasped as I opened my lips to his cock and pushed his uncut foreskin back to the base of the glans with my lips.

“Oh, sweet boy,” he whispered in exhaled breath, as he placed his hands on the back of my head.

I had no idea what I was doing--but I’d done some research, including watching a couple of porn films--well, more than a couple. But I needed to learn. I needn’t be an expert with Father Timothy, though. I just needed to get it done and to have some experience to build on.

As I opened my mouth wider and then closed it over his shaft as I took more of him in, though, I sensed that what I was doing was already good enough.

He fucked me longer the next time, having regained another load, and both of us held it longer before ejaculating. This was the missionary position, I had learned in research. Me on the flat of my back at the edge of the foot of the bed, Father Timothy standing between and holding up my spread and raised legs as he pumped his cock in my channel. This time he had proper lube in his nightstand drawer, and the sliding was smoother, less painful. I controlled my own cock, too, and could back off when I was afraid I was ready to shoot, prolonging the time I spent in the “just about to come” zone. In his excitement, he had shot his load inside me in the sacristy. This time he tried to pull out before ejaculating, but just made it to my rim. I sat right up, though, having already come myself, pulling my legs around to hold him at the small of his back and clutching his shoulder blades in the palms of my hands.

“No, don’t leave me, Daddy,” I whispered. It wasn’t lost on him that I hadn’t said “Father,” and it visibly pleased him that I was saying I wanted him inside me. He slid back in and resumed pumping, the cum mixed with the lube making for a very loose fuck that my walls were comfortable with. I was getting more than a hint of the pleasure that could be involved in the act.

He came again inside me--not in any great profusion, just like had happened in the sacristy. But he’d gone to the heights and had come again. I could feel in his trembling that this was new and special for him too. I hoped that this meant that I could be special to men in this way. I was banking on this being the talent to fulfill my ambitions.

We slept on the bed, next to each other, but not embracing too closely. He had been working my cock before he drifted off, and his hand lay loosely on my crotch. I heard a sound at the open door, a gaspy sort of sound. Looking up, I saw the younger priest, Father Paul, standing there--an expression on his face going from surprise and shock to interest to lust.

I pulled away from the sleeping form of Father Timothy and sat up on the bed, cross-legged and leaning my torso back supported on one arm planted behind me. I ran the hand of the other arm down my chest and encased my cock. I had practiced this pose before, not having any idea when or if I’d ever use it. But I was already a professional actor, in my own situation drama on TV. I had practiced a lot of contingency poses in my planning.

Father Paul was looking at me intently, his hands fisted up at his side, as if he knew what he wanted to do with them but was fighting for restraint.

“Yes, if you want me,” I said in a low voice. “My eighteenth birthday was Thursday.”

His fingers started to work those thirty-three buttons down the front of the cassock, and when he was done and had parted the sides and stripped off his boxers, it was my turn to gasp. As I had been told, he was twice the man that Father Timothy was. And his cock was standing straight up in a hard curve from his pubes.

“My room,” he said. He held out one arm, and I rose off Father Timothy’s bed and padded down the corridor toward the door at the end of the hall beside Father Paul, who had an arm possessively wrapped around my shoulders.

It was time to move up and to get all the experience and preparation I could. I was moving fast, but the faster the better. The movie I was shooting for was only in the planning stage. But who knew how early casting would be started?

I had known for some time what auditioning on the casting couch meant. I was prepared to give it a go now that I was of age and getting out from underneath my parents’ management. I just needed the experience to make the most of the audition.

* * * *

“I hear that Ted Atkins is planning a movie on that controversial new book by the movie star, Christopher Wilson, Danny’s Choice.”

Grant Gideon, who played my father on the TV sit-drama, Steamboat Landing, turned his ruggedly handsome face to me and said, “Yes, I’ve heard the same. Hoping to play a stereotype--the conflicted gay boy in a world of social judgmentalism?”

We were taking a break off to the side of the Steamboat Landing set, as the scriptwriters fought over the wording of the day’s shoot. As, like most soap operas in the early ’60s, the program was filmed on the cheap, trying to get it good enough in the first take to air within the week. We actors laughed a lot at this daily dance of the scriptwriters. The actors did a lot of adlibbing on the fly, trying to keep a straight face while also trying to make the other actors break up from what the cameras and sound equipment couldn’t pick up.

Grant Gideon had spent a lot of time with me in the last few months during these rest periods. I had a very good idea why, and Grant figured in my plans.

I also fully understood what Grant was saying about the role I played in this sit-drama. The industry was on the cusp of breaking through many taboos in American society. It was the early ’60s, the beginning of the era of free love and “do what feels right” hippies. For years film moguls, for their own amusement and because actual life in Hollywood was a whole lot more open than across the rest of the country, had been weaving in sexual connotation subtext in their works. One of the more subtle of these was homosexuality, which was rampant in the movie city long before it could be talked about in general society.

One of the more popular homosexual themes was that of the love of an older man for a younger one--sometimes even a teenager.

The hint of gay interest--or at least confusion about his sexuality--was the role I had filled in Steamboat Landing for the two years of its run so far--the conflicted teenager in a family of three boys, all with different problems, with a father as a sole parent. The scriptwriters had had much fun slowly weaving the hint of confused preferences into my character in the developing (and interminably meandering) plot in a way that could be read and appreciated by those in the know but wouldn’t normally be caught by the general audience that was still assiduously protecting itself from such evil doings. In recent weeks they’d gone as far as to hint to those looking for it a budding relationship between my character and Grant’s that went beyond the fatherly.

Grant had discussed this development with me and, as a self-proclaimed method actor, had suggested that we practice how that could be subtly shown in the TV program. I wasn’t born yesterday, though. I knew that he just wanted to fuck me. I’d been in his dressing room. He had my eighteenth birthday circled on his calendar.

The inside crowd in the Los Angeles film studios ate this multilevel writing on the edge stuff up.

I had been playing in Steamboat Landing for two years, since I was sixteen--playing a character perpetually two years younger than I was. In that time I had slowly caught on to the deeper meanings in the character I played. I would have been pretty dumb not to have. And I had two years to grow accustomed to that--to decide that I identified in real life with the character I was playing--and two years to think of how I could use that to get ahead in the film industry.

I listened to the gossip and heard the rumors. I knew which film stars had earned their rise in films by lying on their backs--and often with someone of the same sex. It didn’t upset me or scare me. I could go with the flow.

My parents had been protecting me from that in my film career, or so they believed, but what I thought was that their protectiveness was what was keeping my career from taking off. And it was interfering with my developing natural inclinations. I didn’t think they were stealing money from me or anything like that by closely managing me. I just didn’t have the prejudices or scruples my parents did--and I wanted to increase the size of the letters in my name on the billboards faster. This was why I filed for--and obtained--my complete emancipation from my parents as my managers upon my eighteenth birth. It also was what had spurred a long-conceived plan to start to unfold.

The timing was crucial. The rumored film, Danny’s Choice--one that purposely would challenge social and film industry standard codes--was the story of a young man coming into touch with his homosexuality and moving into that lifestyle. A story of being cultivated and initiated and completely dominated by an older man until a younger one came along offering him different choices and more independence.

The twist was that the young man found he couldn’t manage to make his own choices and returned to his first, older lover’s control. It would be an art film, not totally a pornographic one--it was the early ’60s, after all. But there would be fondling, kissing, partial nudity and many not-so-subtle references. And some rumors said it would present the sex scenes graphically but artfully. There even were whispers that the actors wouldn’t be faking the sex scenes, they’d actually be having sex--that maybe the most graphic parts would be edited out in a public version but included in an underground offering.

But everyone knows how gossips blow stuff like this out of proportion--not that I wasn’t prepared to play the role however the director wanted it played.

The movie wouldn’t play in mainline theaters and it wouldn’t win any awards--in Europe perhaps, but not in the United States. But the star of that movie would be noticed and, if he played the role well, he’d rise to stardom--on word-of-mouth notoriety as much as anything else. That didn’t bother me. Notoriety was one of the flashier forms of fame.

I was determined to land that lead role. I knew the emotions; I looked younger than I was. And I was determined to play the role well. My stint in Steamboat Landing would position me for consideration, if I could get the attention of the movie’s casting chief and producer. Real life experience would inform a well-played role.

“Yes, I want the role of Danny in that movie,” I answered Grant, looking directly into his face.

“And prepared to do anything to get it?” Grant asked.

“Just about anything.”

“You realize that it will queer Steamboat Landing, don’t you?”

“How so?” I didn’t really care, but I might as well ask what his reasoning was on that.

“If you play an obvious queer on the big screen, the general public will realize that you’re playing that in Steamboat Landing too. You’ll kill the program. The censors will chop us to pieces.”

“You don’t see getting more than one more season out of this sinking ship anyway, do you?” I shot back. “The way the script is going.”

“The way the script is going?”

“If you start fucking me off stage in the program, the general public is going to catch on anyway, won’t they?”

I thought he was going to swallow his tongue before he managed to speak. “If I--?”

“If the writers add in hints of incest, don’t you think that will tip the program over on its side? Don’t you think the general public will start catching on to what’s going on under the surface?”

“Oh, that. I suppose you’re right. But you’re willing to risk all of our cushy jobs here for a chance at a controversial art film?”

“Yes.”

“Ambitious little prick, aren’t you?” Grant said it with a smile. We bantered like this all the time, so I didn’t take umbrage. It did sting a bit, though.

“What did you do to get roles, Grant?” I shot back. “The way I heard it you fucked a program director--a male program director.” And the shot went home, which took more of the sting out of Grant’s “prick” comment.

Our conversation paused, as it looked like the scriptwriters were about to descend to pass out lines. But it was a false alarm and we settled in with our coffee again. Grant settled rather closer to me than he’d been before and placed a hand on my thigh. If I called him on it, he’d probably just say it was part of his method acting thing. I didn’t say anything, though, because it fit in with my plan.

“I hear that your documents dropping your parents as your managers went through,” he said, seemingly changing the topic of the conversation, although I didn’t see it as a change--and Grant didn’t intend it as a change, either, I was sure.

“Yep, on my eighteenth birthday, three weeks ago.”

“Eighteen,” Grant said. “Yes, I have trouble thinking of you as that old. You play younger quite well in the program.”

Trouble thinking of me as that old, I thought. Why do you have my eighteenth birthday circled on the calendar in your dressing room then?

Another pause, with Grant taking up the conversation again. “So you don’t live with your parents anymore.”

“No, I’ve got an apartment with a couple of other guys I went to high school with. They’re doing college. I’ve got other fish to fry first.”

“Is your apartment far from here?”

“Far enough. The bus is a pain. I’m just now looking for a car to buy. Think I’ll get a Thunderbird.”

“I just bought a brand-new Buick Convertible. A ’64 Wildcat. Next year’s models were introduced just a few weeks ago. I got the first one sold in Hollywood.”

“Sweet. Sure would like a ride in one of those.”

“I could give you a ride tonight.” There was a pause; I sensed what was coming. I sensed he wanted to move that hand farther up my thigh--much farther. “I could give you a good ride,” he added in a voice so low I suspected it was gauged to permit me to just pretend I didn’t hear it, if I chose.

I didn’t choose. We’d been bantering on the edge of this enough. He wanted to fuck me and I wanted the expanded experience in being fucked. I gave him a sharp look. We both knew we no longer were talking about driving in a car.

Time to play the wild card. “You want to ride me tonight? You want to fuck me tonight?” I covered his hand with mine and gave him a little “knowing” smile. There, he’d been circling around me for months.

Damn cocky actor. He didn’t skip a beat or anything.

“Yeah, I’d like to fuck you tonight. You really are eighteen, aren’t you? You aren’t shitting me about that, are you? You really know that I can get you an interview with Ted Atkins for that Danny’s Choice part, don’t you? We both know that’s why you’ve been sucking up to me for weeks. You know I’ve wanted to fuck you for the past two years, don’t you?”

The lot Grant had bought up in the Hollywood Hills, overlooking the city, to build his house on wasn’t on the way from the film studio to my apartment. But it was isolated, private, and had a great view from where Grant nosed the hood of the Wildcat to the edge of the drop off giving the big city panorama.

1964 Wildcats are roomy vehicles, and if they’re convertibles, you don’t even have to worry about headroom if the top’s down. After Grant leaned over from the driver’s seat, unzipped my trousers, and took my cock in his mouth--giving me an expert blow job that had me taking copious mental notes--Grant scooted over into the passenger seat, lifting my much slighter body, and sat me down on his hard cock.

I murmured, “Be good to me, but be gentle. I’ve never--”

“It’s your first time?”

“Yes.”

“Hot damn.” Grant slowed down his approach. He was already buried in my ass, with me facing the dashboard, my arms folded on the dash and my head laying on my arms, but he held there and waited for me to accommodate to him.

I did the huffing and moaning and groaning that he thought would go with the first time--and I seemed to have been convincing enough with Grant, who was all kisses and thank yous and careful handling--at least until he got taken up in the heat of the moment. Early in the pumping, with me crouching up, leveraging on my feet, so that my ass was raised a bit from Grant’s crotch and Grant could fuck up into my channel, I started to move my buttocks--back and forth and in a circular motion--just like Father Paul told me drove him wild. It got to Grant too. He lost his control and ended up grabbing my waist and slamming me up and down on his cock until we both had ejaculated.

I did what I thought was the appropriate screaming when being taken this way for the first time, and Grant had asked the right questions on stopping or slowing down--neither of which he could have or would have done--but I think I managed to make the right statements of wanting Grant’s cock regardless.

Sitting, panting, side by side afterward, each of us with a hand on the cock of the other--both of us coming to life there again, Grant said, “You do that well for your first time.”

“Thanks.” What I was thinking, though, was that I’d had plenty of practice in a short time. It was Father Paul’s favorite position. And Father Paul had become my favorite priest to practice with. I’m sure there are those who would wonder why I first gave myself to priests. The ways of priests weren’t that great a secret, although the Catholic Church and society as a whole seemed to want to be blind to that--and probably would remain so into the next century. And, since I was reaching for public fame, a priest fucking me was likely to have too much to lose to call me out in public about that. He had more to lose than I did.

“I guess you want me to drive you home now,” Grant continued. He wasn’t hiding the disappointment very well that the session was coming to an end.

“If you get me an interview with Ted Atkins,” I responded, “we can both get naked, you can lay down on the backseat, and I’ll ride you into the sunset.”

The backseat of a 1964 Buick Wildcat convertible is quite commodious indeed.

* * * *

On the following Friday, I rode Ted Atkins’ cock in the producer’s office after work hours, with Atkins sitting on the side of a studio couch and me in his lap, facing him, my arms thrown around Atkins’ neck so that the producer could suck my nipples while I bounced up and down on his cock.

I couldn’t play the “first time” role--Grant had gotten me the interview, and, I was quite sure told Atkins what I would do to get an audition--but I could, and did, play the “I’ve never had a cocking as good as this” role. I think I was pretty good at it. In fact, I think I’m a damn fine actor and deserve the role of Danny on those merits alone. But this is Hollywood. There’s no straight road to anyplace worthwhile here.

Afterward, Atkins said. “You interview very well, young man. Very convincing. It’s an iffy movie, though. So much depends on the investors. I have investors really hot to get a movie like Danny’s Choice filmed. But the leading role in such a movie is all important to men like this. They have to know who they’re dealing with. But, say, there’s an investors’ meeting at my house on Tuesday. Perhaps--”

I hesitated slightly. I’d been hearing rumors that the investors for this movie were no more than a chummy men’s club chasing free-use young male tail--that there was no such movie in the offing. But I had to take the risk.

“I can be there. You’ll put in a good word for me?”

“Well, I’m sure you’d be one of the leading possibilities.”

“Take me home with you tonight. Let me convince you.” My research had told me that Ted Atkins lived alone and was between personal trainers.

When I arrived at the investors’ meeting at Atkins’ Beverly Hills mansion on Tuesday evening, I made the trip by descending the stairs from Atkins’ bedroom where I’d been--on Atkins’ bed with my legs open--the better part of the days since Friday in Atkins’ office.

As I came down the stairs, I saw them--seven middle-aged men, sitting in a semicircle in Atkins’ living room. Sixteen wide-open eyes, including those of Atkins, followed my descent. In anticipation of exactly what I found, I was stark naked.

Damn. My descent was arrested by noticing that, though, all eyes were on me, some hands were otherwise engaged. Anthony. The little Italian dancer, Anthony--the same age as me, hitting Los Angeles at the same time as me, answering the same casting calls as me--was already ahead of me here. Leave it to Atkins to be making this a competition.

Anthony was down to his briefs--although that didn’t mean much, because a hand was doing a disappearing act under the waistband of Anthony’s briefs--and the Italian’s lithe little body was wedged between two of the investors. His legs were spread, one slung over one guy’s lap and the other over the thigh of the guy on the other side of him. The investors’ arms had him in a close hold and their hands were everywhere on his body. Anthony was showing a scared expression, but I assumed that that was pretense--that he wanted the lead role in Danny’s Choice as much as I did.

OK, battle on, I thought as I continued down the stairs. How will it be; how will I take them? I asked myself. Left to right or right to left?