Easy Sunday Cities

Los Angeles

“Isn’t this romantic?”

Gene looked over at Aaron Trimble to see if he was being sarcastic, but he looked like the comment was straight. They were late getting to the ranch party up beyond Santa Clarita on I-5 toward the Los Padres National Forest, because Gene’s agent was anxious to pull off into a rest stop so that Gene could give him a behind-the-wheel blow job. To Gene it was considered paying the rent and Trimble, though twenty years older than Gene, had a nice enough cock, and this was, after all, Sunday. Gene had long thought of Sunday as an “easy day”—one on which he would let himself be easily made.

Trimble’s excuse had been, “You look good enough to eat. Like bees to the honey, baby. With you it’s like bees to the honey—especially dressed like that.”

It hadn’t been Trimble who’d done any eating though. He’d force fed Gene his cock.

Trimble had been the one to tell Gene what to wear to the party—where Gene was supposed to hook up with an assistant producer who was sitting on his novel manuscript, holding it hostage for getting filming started because he wanted something from Gene first. The clothes were from Gene’s House of Oliphant period. While Gene was modeling there, he got to keep most of the clothes he wore on the catwalk. This was from Oliphant’s adult male collection—the one he’d shown in Chicago five months earlier, the last time Gene had seen Oliphant. Oliphant had sent Gene’s stuff out to Chicago, to Kenton Blackburn, Gene’s publisher and new master—at least that’s how Gene saw it—after Gene left his fashion house.

The top was a cut-off black mesh athletic T, rendered in shiny material and showing Gene’s very nice six pack. Below he was wearing skimpy, red silk athletic shorts over a red silk jock strap. His feet were in sandals. He’d come out of Trimble’s Santa Monica beach house with a small red swimsuit, but Trimble had said he wouldn’t need it despite the fact that they were going to a pool party. Gene tossed it in the backseat of the car anyway, just in case.

Trimble was pointing to a hilltop they were passing on I-5. “Looks like Tuscany, doesn’t it? It’s a winery. Have you ever been to Italy, Gene?”

“I’ve been to the Little Italy section of New York City,” Gene answered.

Trimble laughed. “You need to get around more.”

“If you’d get this movie deal on solid ground, I’d be happy to do the world tour. I could write my next novel.”

“Patience, little guy, patience.”

Gene was out of patience after five months out here with the sale of his novel to the movies being on again and off again, often determined by how recently he’d been laid on some movie mogul’s audition coach. Who knew how many of these fuckers out here fucked young male hopefuls? Even Aaron Trimble, the general agent Kenton Blackburn had brought Gene out to L.A. to hook up with to handle the movie rights sales had had him on his office coach and by his pool and in his bed—and now, when he felt like it—in the pool house at the Santa Monica beach house. Trimble was giving Gene a room in exchange for privileges. Gene was making ends meet while he waited for something to happen on the movie deal by renting his body out.

If Gene hadn’t made the room-in-exchange-for-sex deal with Trimble, he’d have run out of money long before this. He’d spent his advance money on the novel quickly out here, which wasn’t hard to do. There would be more when the royalties came in—the novel was selling well enough for this dickering to happen on movie rights—but that wouldn’t start for a few more months.

Gene had essentially been abandoned in Los Angeles. Blackburn had brought him out here, saying they’d have a movie deal quickly. But he hadn’t told Gene what “quickly” meant in California parlance. Gene and Blackburn had reached a parting of sexual interest fairly quickly, though. Blackburn had discovered he had more of an appetite for rough sex than he had realized and Gene had discovered that he didn’t. So Blackburn was back in Chicago now. Gene was still in his stable of writers and was working on a second novel, but they were waving at each other from half a continent’s separation.

Now it was Hollywood and Gene trying to scrape up enough money to get back to New York. Today was attending to two needs at once. One of the last hurdles in formally signing a movie deal on the novel was a producer, Cory Kadowski, who had signaled his interest in Gene. And Trimble had worked out that they could get to Kadowski today, as he would be at a ranch pool party up near Santa Clarita by also taking care of the expressed interest in Gene by the ranch’s owner and party host.

“You only have to do two of them today,” Trimble said, as he roared past the Tuscan-style winery compound on the hill overlooking I-5. “It’s a stag party, though, just randy men into young men. I’ve gotten you in as one of the roaming chickens—guys like you who look young but aren’t too young and will lay around with their legs open to any guest wanting to plug them. But if you let anyone other than Kadowski and Danner do you, that’s up to you. I’ll be playing elsewhere. I can have you at home.”

“You make it sound so delicious,” Gene said.

“This is where the world of fake meets the world of reality, kid,” Trimble said, with a laugh. “You’re just fortunate that you got looks and the right pheromones—honey to the bee, that’s you. You got a leg up on most other young guys out here. With you, it’s just like honey for the bees.”

“I’ve heard something like that before.”

“You’re just lucky you got both Kadowski and Danner who want to get into your pants. We’re just about home free on this. Kadowski’s that last cock that needs sucked, I promise.”

“I sure hope so,” Gene said. “I’m just about tapped out.”

“Not like most young guys out here,” Trimble shot back. “As long as you take my cock, you’ve got a roof over your head in L.A. That’s more than most young hopefuls can say out here.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

The door of the ranch house was opened to them by a butler, but the rancher himself, Cliff Danner, a regular star of an L.A.-based soap opera, was close behind, gladhanding them into the house, welcoming them both but with his eyes plastered to Gene only, obviously liking what he saw.

Danner had been on the soap opera for over twenty years, his character having developed from a young, teenage heartthrob who was making a mother out of all of the young girls drifting in and out of the script plots to one of three brothers vying for control of a Mafia-financed international restaurant chain upon the death of the family patriarch. This storyline had been approached and retreated from on the television program for the last two years.

Danner was in his late forties, and he had aged extremely well, thanks to all of the handling and sculpting and grooming that the television studio could apply. He was thickening a bit around the middle but, thanks to careful attention to his six pack, he was on his way to becoming a Zeus rather than a fatty, and he had retained his chiseled ruggedly good looks and a healthy head of now gray-blond hair. He was just wearing a Speedo, flip-flops, and a beer can. This was a pool party. The distinctive curve left down his thigh in the Speedo material made quite clear that he was hung, which had helped him maintain position in his role over the years. He had a hairy chest, but it was tastefully groomed. He looked handsome, tanned, and plastic. It fit right in to Hollywood.

A large number of very expensive cars had been parked haphazardly around a large graveled motor court at the front of the house, and Gene and Trimble had been able to hear a raucous party going on in the pool area at the back of the house. They could tell what sort of party this was before they even got to the door. Two men, the bottom young and the top middle-aged, were fucking on the hood of a Lexus convertible not far from the front entry.

“Hal Taggert is here, out at the pool, Aaron, and said he wanted to know the minute you arrived. He wants to talk to you.” Danner was speaking to Trimble, but he was looking at Gene and had a hand on the young man’s forearm. “I’m sure that your young friend here would like a tour of the house before I bring him out.”

“Did Cory Kadowski come? Has he arrived yet?” Trimble asked somewhat anxiously.

“Yes, he’s here, but I want it first,” Danner answered.

There wasn’t much question in Gene’s view what getting a tour of the ranch house would entail.

He was quite right. The house was huge, of course. It had a bedroom level that a small hotel would be proud of. Danner showed Gene a couple of the rooms with beds, including the master bedroom. At another one in a wing away from the pool terrace, He stopped, and said, “This is a room that you alone can use today. You’ll find there are restraints on the bed, if . . . I’ve heard Cory . . . well . . . you know. God, you’re beautiful,” he suddenly added. He pulled Gene to him, slipping the black mesh belly T over his head as he did so, and they went into a kissing and fondling embrace there in the doorway to the bedroom.

“Here? Now?” Gene asked.

“Yes, quickly,” Danner answered, his voice breathy.

It wasn’t long until Danner’s Speedo slipped to the floor and Gene went down on his knees in front of him and took the TV star’s cock in his mouth.

The bedroom had its own en suite commodious marble-lined bathroom. Danner fucked Gene on the bathroom vanity. Gene was perched on the expanse of marble between two wash basins, his tail on the front edge of the ledge, his shoulder blades pressed into the mirrored wall behind the vanity, and his ankles on Danner’s shoulders as, leaving Gene in his red silk jock strap, which didn’t encumber access to Gene’s channel by Danner’s thick cock in the least, the TV star pounded away at Gene’s ass . . . and pounded and pounded and pounded. He kept looking over Gene’s shoulder into the mirror, admiring his role as a top. Once a TV actor always a TV actor.

The man had marvelous control and took his time, giving all of his attention to Gene even though there were maybe a hundred guests and rent-boys downstairs at the pool party he was hosting.

Gene went with him, showing him a good time, taking the cock deep, moving his pelvis with the rhythm of the fuck, telling the man he was a master and was killing him—but killing him good.

“You’re very good. I want to see you again,” Danner said when they were back in the bedroom and pulling their scant clothes back on. “If Kadowski signs off on your movie deal, you owe me, and I’ll collect,” he added.

“Yes, sir, I understand,” Gene answered.

At the door, Danner turned and said, “If I want you to stay the night, after the party, you will, won’t you?”

“If you want,” Gene responded. “I’d like that,” he added, knowing it’s what Danner wanted to hear and what his agent, Trimble, would want Gene to say—unless Kadowski wanted to take Gene home with him.

One down, at least for now, Gene thought. And it wasn’t so bad. One more to go. But, what the hell, it’s easy Sunday.

* * * *

Gene’s head was spinning and the world below him was swirling with the bodies of men in all of the colors of the rainbow dancing around the swimming pool. He had taken the pills offered to him when he was by the pool and the gross whale had his flippers around him and was pulling him to the house, but he didn’t do drugs—usually. He wouldn’t have taken them normally. But it seems he did. The world around him was in a slow churn and his head felt like it was lifting off his body. But he didn’t care. He was happy. Why would he take? . . . Oh, right, a slimy rhino was pulling him to the house. Anything to counter the expectation of where that was leading.

The window pane behind the headboard of the bed he was riding the rhino on was cool, and he alternated between pressing his cheek and his forehead to it. When he pressed his forehead to it, he could look down into the pool area, where the party was in full swing with the undulating figures of all of the beautiful men revolving to the throbbing beat in his brain. But not all of the men were beautiful. Some were fat and old and gross—and grabby. And it wasn’t a rhino he was riding. It was the gross man’s face. He was sitting on Cory Kadowski’s face, and the rhino was gripping his waist and eating his ass out.

Then Gene was scrabbling at the window behind the headboard as he was being pulled away. And then he was being pulled from the brass top rung of the headboard. He was sliding down the gross man’s hairy chest, dragged up and over his huge belly. Gene was the size of a mere child in contrast to this blubbery mountain of a man. The man had the strength to do whatever he wanted with him, though. And the man was doing that—positioning Gene’s anus over the man’s erect club. Gene was howling as his ass was lowered onto Kadowski’s cock. He had the cock of a bull, a horse, an elephant. Gene’s head was throbbing and spinning with all the swirl of colors. His ass hurt like hell. It was spread to the limit of splitting by a throbbing baseball bat. But Gene was laughing, calling out, “Fuck me, big boy! Give it to me with that monster cock, daddy!” as he was being lifted and slammed down, lifted and slammed down.

He swiveled on the cock, grabbing for the headboard, his knees dug into the mattress on either side of the tub of lard, using his knees as levers to rise and fall, rise and fall, fucking himself on the monster shaft, his body reversed on the reclining whale. He was looking at anything he could other than the massive, jiggling mound of flesh under him. He concentrated on the cock—on being able to ride it. That, at least, was arousing—to be able to sheath it and service it.

Kadowski lay on his back, head toward the headboard, feet toward the footboard, with Gene now on top of him, pointed at and grasping the top of the brass rung footboard with his hands. The fat man still gripped Gene by the waist and, in consort with Gene’s leveraging off his knees to rise and fall, pulled him back and forth hard on his cock, grunting and groaning, while Gene moaned and cried out and watched all the pretty colors swirling before his throbbing head—and delivered as promised.

* * * *

Earlier than that, after the TV actor, Cliff Danner, fucked Gene in the guestroom bathroom and left him, Gene took a shower, pulled his clothes back on, and went down to where the party by the pool was in full swing.

He moved around the terrace, smiling at other guests, flirting with them, and politely, with smiles, slipping away from groping hands as he walked the perimeter of the pool, getting his bearings. It was Sunday; he could let loose on Sundays and pretend the rest of the week that he hadn’t. Most of the men were beautiful and muscular and California tanned. He would have happily gone with most of the men here if they were the movie producer he’d been brought here to fuck. None of the good-looking men at the pool were Kadowski, though, and Gene knew they weren’t.

Most of them were uninhibited this late in the party as well. As many were naked as were wearing bathing suits, and the naked ones almost universally were hung, whether they were young, old, or middle aged. Some of them were “chickens,” as Gene was deemed to be. These were young looking and were there to service the men buzzing around them and manhandling them. The least inhibited ones were fucking. The hedonist atmosphere and scent of spunk and testosterone floating across the pool area was contagious.

Gene’s beautiful small body was getting attention with the bold colors of the shiny black mesh belly T and red silk mini shorts he wore as he walked the rim of the pool, and frenzy only increased when he slipped off the shorts and was just wearing the red silk jock strap below.

He accepted drinks—more than he should have—but staved off the free-flowing offer of brightly colored pills—at least to that point.

The bona fide party guests took note of Gene when he drew near and buzzed around Gene like bees to the honey, just as his agent had said they would. Gene recognized a few of them from TV. Two of them, in particular, a Jeff and a Steve, were ones Gene melted to when he saw them on TV. He stopped beside them and gave them a smile. In just pausing and acknowledging Steve’s catcall, Gene was saying “yes.” Jeff embraced him from the front and Steve from the back. Steve murmured in Gene’s ear, “Can you hear the music? Dance with us.”

“It could be fun to do you together,” Jeff said as the three of them were dancing together beside the pool to the beat of rock music, naked and hung Jeff in front of Gene and hung and naked Steve close behind Gene. The three were laughing and flirting and trying to keep the drinks in their glasses from sloshing out as them writhed against each other’s bodies.

“You can if you like,” Gene answered. His agent said he could take whatever pleasure he wanted from the party as long as he fucked the two men he was here to service.

“Seriously?” Steve said. “You’re just shitting us, aren’t you? You do doubles?”

“Sure, I do.” Gene answered. That was the truth. He did.

“Prove it,” Jeff challenged.

Gene, having had two drinks too many, did prove it. It was a chore, because they were both bigger than the average, but Gene was open from Danner’s cocking and the relaxing effect of the drinks, and he managed them. And he enjoyed managing them. Steve sank to the adjacent chaise lounge, bringing Gene down with him, as, standing behind Gene, Jeff ran his hands under the waistband of Gene’s jock strap and pulled it down his legs.

Jeff and Steve fucked him together on a chaise lounge bed, Steve on his back on the bottom, holding Gene’s small, lithe body on top of him and fucking up into Gene’s passage, and Jeff straddling the lounge bed behind Gene, palming the young man’s belly, and pumping Gene’s ass above the buried cock of Steve. The black mesh T went the way of the red silk jock strap. Gene was naked in all his glory, a glory that voyeurs applauded as they gathered around to watch him be double fucked by the two naked hunks. Gene had a nice cock, which onlookers took turns stroking while he was being fucked, but it didn’t rival any of those swinging free around him. It certainly didn’t match up with either Steve’s or Jeff’s.

Toward the grand finale three-way shoot off, Gene froze for an instant, recognizing someone on the other side of the pool. But this had progressed too far for him not to get back into the action of two big cocks on two gorgeous young television personalities churning inside him, and Gene shelved the surprise viewing and went with the glorious fuck.

“Hello, Manny,” Gene said when he’d worked his way to the other side of the pool later. “I certainly didn’t expect to see you here, although I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.” The man Gene had seen from across the pool that had given him pause in the middle of the double penetration fuck by the two TV hunks was his roommate in New York of three years earlier, Manuel Rodrigues, a fashion house photographer by day and a porn filmmaker by night. Gene had needed money enough that he’d been in a couple of Manny’s films. He’d also been in Manny’s bed.

“I think I was the more surprised of the two,” Manny said. “I never figured you as ever being outside of New York. You’re lookin’ good and I see that you’re as easy as ever. I saw you earlier, but seein’ as how you were the meat of a big boy sandwich, I didn’t interrupt.”

“You’re looking good too,” Gene said. He was being polite and they both knew it. Manny hadn’t aged well over the last three years, and he’d gone to fat.

“Good enough that you’ll go over in those bushes and let me hump you—for old time’s sake?” They both laughed, but there was no reason for Gene not to think Manny was serious. He’d always been randy, ready to go at any time. He was wearing swimming trunks now, but his erection was pushing them out. He might had gained weight, but his cock most likely was still highly rideable. He’d given Gene some good times.

“I’m on assignment. You wouldn’t know the movie producer Cory Kadowski and be able to point him out, would you?”

“Shit. Kadowski’s an ogre. What do you have to do for him and why?”

“I have to lay down for him. You know that novel I was working on? It’s been published and the movie rights deal is making the rounds here. Kadowski is a stumbling block. My agent says I have to fuck him to get the manuscript moving up the ladder again.”

“He’s a monster, I hear—Kadowski. A real Frankenstein and a bull to boot. And sadistic, I hear. You probably want to stay clear of him.”

“I can’t, I’m afraid. I need the money from a movie deal. Is he here?”

“Yes. He’s over there talking to that shitty agent, Aaron Trimble. The fat guy in the baggy blue trunks.”

“Fuck,” Gene said when he looked over there. “You’re right. He’s a whale. And you’re right about Trimble being a shitty agent too. He’s the agent handling my movie deal.”

“Listen,” Manny said, “if it’s money you need and you don’t want to do it with Kadowski or be controlled by Trimble, maybe I can help you.”

“You? How?”

“You asked what I’m doing out here. The porn films took off and I have a very lucrative Internet site now. You were good in the films—very popular. You need money, you can make a lot of money in porn fast. So, if you’re nice to me, I’d be happy to take you on and set you up in a film fast. I’d pay you for it just as fast.”

“We’ll see how this other deal goes,” Gene said. But he wasn’t a dummy. He hadn’t done too well so far by burning bridges or not keeping options open. “How nice?” he asked.

“Those bushes are still over there, and you make me horny as hell,” Manny said, with a smile

Manny doggie fucked him in the bushes—and they weren’t alone or the only ones fucking in the bushes by the pool. Gene didn’t have to think of him as having gone to fat. He was as strong as ever and he had the same expert cock. He came in behind Gene, had the young man bend over and grab his ankles, and Manny grabbed Gene’s hips between his hands, mounted and penetrated him, and took him swiftly and deep. Gene was yawning open from having just done a double, so he had no trouble with Manny’s shaft and enjoyed the filmmaker’s cocking technique.

When they emerged from the bushes, Kadowski and Trimble were still in conversation across the pool. Trimble saw Gene and waved him over. Before he left, Manny said, “Good luck. Offer’s open. You’re honey to the bees. You still have the same e-mail address as in New York?”

“Yes,” Gene answered.

“So, I’ll contact you to establish a connection.”

“We’ll see,” said Gene as he gave a deep sigh, fought for a smile he could give for the fat ogre watching him from across the pool, and did the long walk.

“This is Mr. Kadowski,” Trimble said as Gene reached them. Gene gave the mountain of a man a wan smile and resisted jumping away from him when he put a flipper—a hand—on Gene’s forearm.

Just then a serving guy passed by them carrying a silver tray with an array of bright-colored pills on it.

“Mood aids, anyone?” the server asked, and fluttered his eyelashes at Aaron Trimble. He instantly identified Gene as another bottom, and he avoided looking at Kadowski. Trimble looked like a good top to him.

“I’ll take a blue one and a green one,” Gene squeaked, already regretting having agreed to let the movie producer lay him.

“Then you can show me what’s inside the house,” Kadowski said. “Cliff Danner told me we had the use of a room in there.”

“Sure,” Gene said, popping the pills in his mouth and downing them with the beer he took from Trimble’s hand.

* * * *

After the first fuck, Kadowski moved on to more personal pleasures with Gene. He found the restraints tucked under the mattress of the bed in the guest bedroom they’d been lent. In fact, while Gene was engaged in a panting recovery from the reverse cowboy ride Kadowski had taken him on, the movie producer had gone looking for the restraints. So, Danner must have told him they were there for his use.

He spread-eagled Gene on his belly on the bed, stretching his arms and legs up and out, restrained to the corners of the bed. Then he stuffed pillows under Gene’s belly, raising the young man’s buttocks to complete vulnerability and access to him. He crouched over Gene’s buttocks, grabbing the young man’s waist between his hands, and laughed at the cry and jerk Gene gave when he thrust inside Gene’s ass. And then he rode him and fucked him, rode him and fucked him, rode him and fucked him. Half way through the ride, he leaned over far enough to take Gene’s throat in a two-handed choke hold and finished the fuck combining breath play with pelvis thrusts.

The movie producer might have been a gross, fat pig, but he was strong, virile, and long-lasting. He knew what he wanted and he took it.

Gene was left trussed up, panting and moaning, while Kadowski went for a shower. When he returned, he unbound the young man. But he didn’t do so until he had pulled his bathing suit back on and was ready to leave.

He didn’t say “thank you” or “good job” or anything like that. Right before leaving—leaving the party altogether and roaring away in the back of his black Bentley salon car—he did say, “I’ve read most of your novel. It’s suitable for filming. Have your agent drop by my office on Tuesday morning.”

That was the last Gene ever heard from Cory Kadowski.

Gene lay there, recovering, beyond the filtering away of the party guests from the pool below. At length, all was quiet and the sounds of the cars departing from the front motor court died down. Cliff Danner entered the room.

“Aaron Trimble has gone back to L.A.,” he said. “He’ll return for you tomorrow.” He then came over to the bed and, to the sound of Gene’s groans, picked the young man up, slung him over his shoulder, padded to the master bedroom, dumped Gene on the master bed, and fucked him some more in a missionary and then a doggie and then . . .

* * * *

The naked hunk was sitting in the driver’s seat of the classic white 1974 Corvette Stingray convertible, his legs out of the car. The driver’s door was open and his right leg was hung over the top of that, the window down. His left leg, the heel of his foot pressed into the grass was stretched out straight. His right arm was bent over the top of the windshield. The fingers of his left hand were buried in Gene Worth’s wind-ruffled hair.

The Stingray was parked on the top of a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Jagged rocks heaved up out of the restless surf in the cove below, highlighting the rugged terrain of the California coast. No civilization was in sight.

Gene, naked, knelt on the grass between the hunk’s spread legs, giving the hunk a blow job.

The scene faded out and then back in to Gene spread-eagled over the trunk of the Corvette, his legs crouched in the limited space behind the driver’s and passenger’s seats, his chest pressed into the trunk of the car, and his arms stretched out, his hands reaching for the car’s taillights on either side. The hunk was standing in the well of the car behind the seats and hovering over Gene’s back. His right hand was buried in Gene’s hair, pulling Gene’s head back brutally and arching the young man’s back. His left hand was grasping Gene’s waist. He was fucking Gene’s ass in long strokes with a long, thick cock. The cock thrusts, with the view over the sea behind the tableau of the two beautiful men fucking, were clearly visible from the perspective of the land side of the car.

Manny Rodriguez had two other cameramen with him on the photo shoot, and they videoed the action from every angle they could without getting themselves or their shadows into any of the frames. Manny had told the hunk, a guy with classic California beach bum looks picked up on Malibu Beach who did occasional films for him, and Gene generally what he wanted in the movie. It wasn’t anything new really. It started with Gene hitchhiking and being picked up by the hunk in his Corvette. There were meaningful looks between the two in the car and then they went immediately to the blow job scene on the cliff top and the fuck. The last scene was the only thing new. That was a shot of Gene driving the Corvette down the coastal road and the hunk nowhere in sight.

Maybe some of the viewers would be left wondering what the story on that was. Whether after being mastered and ravished, the Gene character somehow came out on top with the nice sports car. But the main thing was that both men were gorgeous and they looked good fucking. That’s what the viewers would be paying for.

This was the second movie Gene had done for Manny, each on successive Sundays. When Aaron Trimble had gone to Cory Kadowski’s office the Tuesday after Cliff Danner’s pool party, he was told that Kadowski had flown out to London on Monday and would get in touch with Trimble for the next time Gene could “consult” with him on the movie deal.

Gene gave up at that point. After this movie he’d have the travel money he needed.

For now, though, they were wrapping up this movie. Gene already knew that after the film was in the can Manny would take him to some sleazy hotel nearby and bang the hell of him and not return him to Aaron Trimble until Monday morning.

“Can’t help it, baby,” Manny would say. “You’re like honey to the bees. And you’re so easy.”

“Only on Sunday, Manny,” Gene would say. They’d been here before.

But it was Sunday. Sunday in Los Angeles.

* * * *

It wasn’t a Sunday. It was a Tuesday. Gene Worth had been back in New York City for nearly a week. Manny hadn’t given up his apartment—the one Gene had lived in with him—because it was rent controlled and Manny didn’t know whether or how long he’d be staying out in California. He’d given the key to Gene. Gene had spent the week becoming reacclimated to the city and wondering why he’d ever left New York to begin with.

He hadn’t gone out for easy sex on Sunday. He’d stayed in and written on his new novel. He’d made great progress on that, he thought. He already was getting pushy e-mails from his publisher, Kenton Blackburn, in Chicago about receiving a prospectus on what Gene was writing. None of the e-mails had hinted of sex, though, and Gene surmised that whatever sexual relationship he’d had with Blackburn now was over. That was a bit sad, but the professional relationship still was there. Perhaps, Gene thought, he was maturing to not having to have a submissive relationship involved in every professional relationship he had with a man.

For some reason that made him think of Josh Steinem, the fashion designer and literary journal publisher who lived in the five-story brownstone on 39th Street. He kept thinking that that was one man he could have a balanced sexual and professional relationship with. That man had treated him right. And perhaps he’d thought about Josh because of Saturday, when he had gone to Central Park aching for sex—he was highly sexed; there was nothing he could do about that or wanted to change about that—and had taken a man back to the apartment and had been treated as well as Josh had treated him.

His name was Tray. He was black, and tall and slim and well-muscled and wore his hair in long, black dreadlocks. He was a sidewalk poet and, for all Gene knew, homeless. Gene had heard him reciting poetry at the side of a path in the park, standing there with a hat turned in front of him and giving a bright white-toothed smile to everyone who dropped coins in his hat in passing. Gene had heard him from afar and been drawn to the rich baritone and mesmerizing cadence of his words as he recited his strong beat and clever rhyming poetry of an heroic rescue at sea by brave and gloriously described coastal patrol members of the Jersey shore in the previous century.

This theme closely paralleled the setting and background of the new novel Gene was working on, so he sat in a bench on the other side of the poet and listened to him, letting the words roll over him, and, unconsciously perhaps, taking bits and pieces of what he was hearing and letting them insert themselves in what he was forming in his mind to write. It is very likely that the poet Tray provided the inspiration that made Gene’s writing the next day so fluid and so enriching to the building theme of the novel.

The two men eyed each other, and at some point Tray was speaking directly to Gene and reaching into the young man’s soul. The attraction was unmistakable and unavoidable. Tray was quite obviously a sensual man and Gene had come to the park seeking sexual release. Tray looked directly into Gene’s eyes and one of his hands dropped to his crotch and he fondled himself invitingly. Gene rose from his bench, walked across the path, dropped a fifty-dollar bill in Tray’s hat, and stood up and waited.

“You want me to go with you somewhere?” the black man asked.

“Yes,” Gene answered.

“I give cock. Do you take cock?”

“Yes,” Gene answered.

It was the first time he’d ever paid a man for sex. It was worth every penny of what he paid for it, he thought.

Tray was a bull, as Gene had assumed he would be. They lay on the bed in Manny’s apartment, Tray stretched out on top of Gene, and they kissed and fondled each other and ran their hands over each other’s bodies in a mutual total exploration of the other. Tray, in full exhilarating erection, was able to hold himself in check until the heat of Gene’s need built up to the point of sobbing and begging for the cock. Even then, Gene had to take the cock in hand, Tray lying between his spread legs, guide it to his hole, and raise his pelvis to it.

Tray’s thrust was slow and deep. Gene groaned deeply, raised his arms over his head to grasp the top rung of the headboard, and arched his back. He moaned and panted as Tray slow pumped him up the scale of arousal and need into the clouds of ecstasy. While Tray was fucking him, he was reciting poetry—a poem with a heavy beat that matched the timing of his thrusts, his cock bottoming out at the rhyming ends of lines. Gene hadn’t been moved like this during sex since Josh Steinem had fucked him before Gene had gone to Kenton Blackburn’s bed in Chicago. It was only now that Gene realized that this was the quality of sex that he ached for.

The next day he remained in the apartment, writing feverishly, trying to ensure that he captured all of the passion that the black poet had fucked into him before it evaporated.

And that evening, exhausted, he thought. He thought of Tray, the fucking poet, but as he sat and thought, the image of Josh Steinem slowly intruded into his mind to take over his musings.

So, on Tuesday afternoon, he was standing in front of the five-story brownstone on 39th Street and watching Josh Steinem through the display window of the menswear shop pinning together pieces of a tuxedo on a worktable as shop assistants and a tailor bustled around him seeing to the needs of a few male customers.

As he looked he noticed a “help wanted” sign in the window and, soon after that, Josh looked up and out of the window, saw Gene standing there, and smiled. It was as if it had just been yesterday that they had last met—and maybe, Gene fancifully thought, just maybe it had been as recently as Saturday. Just maybe the spirit of Josh had been inside the body of the black bull poet, Tray.

Gene entered the shop, turned and took the “help wanted” sign out of the window, and then turned again and walked over to where Josh was perched on a stool behind the worktable.

“You have a job opening here?”

“Not for you,” Josh said.

Gene hesitated. He hadn’t thought of the possibility of rejection. That scenario hadn’t entered his mind. He was on the edge of crushed.

But Josh saved him. “The opening is for a custodian. If you come to work here, you’ll have to work as a model and you’ll have to work on the literary journal that publishes upstairs. And you’ll have even more challenging work upstairs in my apartment. It will be exhausting work.”

“It sounds like exactly what I’m looking for,” Gene said.

“You’d have to live in. The job would use you full time, 24/7.”

“The job’s beginning to sound even better,” Gene said.

“There will be an audition. I know you’ve auditioned before, but I would want to be refreshed about your skills . . . your considerable skills, if I recall rightly.”

“Should I make an appointment?”

“You can go upstairs and wait for me. I have a bit more to do here. I think you can find your way.”

And Gene did find his way.

Later that afternoon, he lay, exhausted, on his belly, on Josh’s bed, his arm dangling over the side of the bed and his eyes watching Josh, standing naked in the doorway to his bathroom and drying off after his shower. They had fucked twice and Josh had taken his time doing it.

Gene’s thoughts went to what he wanted in a man. He couldn’t think why Josh didn’t have it all. Could he think of this as “it”? Of course he could, if for no other reason than that this wasn’t an easy Sunday. This was Tuesday. And he’d been taken to the top, repeatedly, and over the top twice.

His cellphone went off. He reached over, took it off the nightstand, looked at the text message, and laughed. Then he tapped in an answer, put the cellphone back on the nightstand, and reclined back into the pillows on the bed.

“Something amusing?” Josh asked.

“My California agent sold the movie rights to my first novel at last—he took it to another studio from the one we were trying, without much success. He wants me to come out to L.A. to sign the contracts.”

“So, you off for California again?” Josh asked. He couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice.

“Not on your life. I’m just starting a dream job here. I told him to find an agent to handle my end of the signing here in New York or to forget it. That’s if, of course, I passed the job audition here. Did I?”

“What do you think?”

“Well, it sure went well for me. What about for you?”

“I can’t be sure. I think the audition should continue. Of course, it will mean I’ve got to take another shower because I’m going to be getting all hot and bothered again.”

Both men were smiling as Josh walked back to the bed, walking carefully to avoid the two spent condoms he’d tossed on the floor, while fully determined to add to that collection.

- FINI -