The People in Rossford

“HELLO! HELLLOOOO! Is somebody here? Well, I’m coming in—Damn, this is nice! Damn this is… Is this the place where they make them nasty movies? Is this—? SHIT, GODDAMN!”

Noah jumped up from the bed where he was sprawled, and Tristan said, “What the fuck!”

It was Guy who moved away from the camera while his other cameramen looked amazed and came up to Danasia.

“I’m Guy,” he said.

“I’m Danasia,” she said. “So I guess you weren’t playing,” she told Noah, who was placing a towel over himself. “You really do make nasty movies. Do you ever make em for ladies?”

Guy smiled at her, and she said, “Cause I could show you a nasty movie. I could show you some freaky shit, if I had the time.”

The director chuckled and said, “I bet you could,” while Noah, in his shorts, took Danasia by the hand and walked her out of the room.

“I got tired of waiting,” she said.

“I was going to be done in minute,” Noah said.

“You’re not done now.”

“Shit!” Noah broke off. “You’ve taken me out of my zone!”

“You have a zone?” Danasia said. Then, “Well, I guess you’d have to. If you do this. Can I see some of your stuff?”

“No,” Noah said, looking at her strangely.

“Can I stay here and watch, then?”

“No.”

“Why?” Danasia said. “It’s not like it’s private. You got every Tom, Dick and Hairy Ball sitting around watching the shit.”

“Yeah, but I’m not there when they’re watching.”

“Whatever,” Danasia threw up a hand. “I think white folks get worked up about strange shit.”

“Maybe,” Noah said.

Then he said, “You know what? Grab yourself a drink. And some food. And there’s a pool and… I know you won’t be intimidated by anyone here, so, just say hi if you see anyone. I gotta go back and finish some stuff up.”

“You have a really big dick, you know that?”

Noah didn’t know what to do with that, so he said, “Thank… you?”

“Not a compliment so much as it’s an observation,” Danasia said. “I don’t really remember much but that it was big, for such a little guy. And nice. I think.”

“Little guys usually are bigger,” Noah said, clinically and without conceit. He shrugged. “I don’t know why. It just is. It doesn’t really seem to help me out much in life once I walk out of that door.” He pointed to the large front door. “I’ll be done in a bit,” he told Danasia. “I’ll come and get you.”

When Noah walked back in, Guy was shaking his head and chuckling, “New girlfriend, Noah?”

Noah shook his head with a grin while Tristan chuckled doing the same. Tristan was unabashedly and openly gay.

About half of Guy’s Rude Boys had, or alleged to have girlfriends. If they were real and lasting, as opposed to an endless string of pissed off and disappointed virtual beards, and Noah knew some of them were, then he felt a little sorry for them. Noah had never had any type of significant lover, but he strongly suspected any woman who had a man who was being fucked or fucking other men, had something she really didn’t need. Naomi had raised him, or tried, and man after man had caused her pain. He remembered pretending to sleep through his mother sobbing, or choosing to ignore her occasional black eyes. Who knew men, really? Especially the ones who said they were straight? A thousand frustrations and endless blame made them the worthless things Noah really thought they were, which is why he’d never dated one. The only men he ever liked were the ones he met for the night, or he met here. When he was fucking you, or you were fucking him, he was beautiful and happy and satisfied, and all the shit that covered both of you burned away. At least for a little bit.

“I can let you go now,” Guy was saying. “We got enough for two movies and for two movies, my friends, you’ll both get paid, and bottoming prices too, both of you!”

“All right,” Tristan said with a thumbs up and a goofy laugh.

“Oh, Noah,” Guy called him over. “I’m not going to need you for awhile. But you’re getting paid well, and I’ve referenced you out to Corby.”

Noah opened his mouth to protest.

“I know,” Guy cut him off. “Corby’s a shit. And you’ll probably have some bullshit dialogue, but he pays well, and it’s folks you know. He has respect for you. Has respect for me.” Guy shrugged. “The work’s good and,” Guy slapped him lightly on the cheek, “I’m seeing too much of you, kid. It’s too much of your perfect baby soft ass. I need some more Johnny Mellow.”

“Yeah, well that’s finished,” Noah said.

“Fuck him!” Guy said, not really meaning it.

“I really don’t want to go to Florida,” Noah said. That’s where Corby was.

“Well,” Guy thought. “You can do camera and stuff. Direct a little. That’s all I got for you.”

“I don’t need it all the time. Just… when I come around here.”

Guy nodded while Tristan, naked, walked away in the direction of the showers.

“I never asked you why you didn’t need the money?” Guy said in a lower voice.

“Huh, what’s that?”

“Don’t ‘huh-what’s-that?’ me.”

“Joe Callan was at that party where this house got busted.”

“The one where I passed out on the drug overdose.”

Guy nodded.

“He never came back, never told me personally. But I heard from someone who heard from someone that he was upset about missing money. He swore the police didn’t take it.”

Noah opened his mouth. But Guy held up a hand.

“Now I swear to God I don’t give a fuck what happened to that money, or what happened to Joe. But I heard, I heard from that Mexican guy you fucked when you came back into town, that Joe was after you. That’s all. And I worried. But then he dropped off the face of the earth. I didn’t know if he was still after you, or if he was ever after you, or if… someone was after him.”

Noah thought very carefully before speaking, and then he said: “I have heard. I have heard,” he repeated. “That Joe Callan is no longer in the land of the living, and not a threat to anyone. And I know that. And so no one needs to worry.”

“And no one needs to know that you know?”

“No one needs to know that you know either,” Noah said.

Guy cleared his throat and went back to polishing his camera lens.

“What do you need me to do, Noah?” he said.

“I need you to pretend we never had this conversation.”

Tristan was smoothing moisturizer onto his face while Noah was toweling off from his shower when Noah said, “You consider you’re self to be gay, right?”

“Dude,” Tristan said with a laugh. “Everyone here is gay. You don’t stick cocks in your mouth and fuck guys in the ass if you’re not. It’s just you’re in denial, or you’re not.” Tristan shook his head, scooped out some hair gel, began rubbing it into his hair and said, “But man, it’s miserable to be in denial.”

“Well, yeah,” Noah said.

“I’m not trying to make you agree with me,” Tristan said, messing his hair up, spiking it.

“No,” Noah said. “It’s just… I think you’re right. No one here is really straight. I mean, if they are that’s sort of pushing the boundaries of what straight means. I know I’m not, but like, you’ve had boyfriends, right?”

“I had boyfriends,” Tristan said. “I’m not very good at it. I don’t know how to make shit work. And no one half way worth anything wants a boyfriend that says, ‘I get fucked for a living.’” Tristan shrugged.

“But I never have,” Noah said. “In fact outside of these movies I’ve never even had real one-on-one sex with a guy. Well, almost never,” he said. Suddenly he remembered being in Fenn and Todd’s house, sleeping with Paul. The memory made his cheeks hot. It made him totally forget about fucking Jorge that one time here. It was also so personal, he couldn’t bring it up to Tristan.

“And I’ve never been in love.”

Tristan cocked a grin.

“I bet you have, young Noah,” he said.

And then Noah said, “That reminds me.”

He discarded the towel and came back a moment later with his clothes bundled under one arm and an article in another. He gave the article to the half dressed Tristan while he pulled his own clothes back on.

“A church bulletin?”

“Just look at the pictures,” Noah said, pulling on his tee shirt.

“Father… What the fuck!”

“Yeah,” Noah said.

“That’s not a priest,” Tristan said.

“He’s the new priest at this church up in Rossford everyone I know goes to.”

“You know people who go to church?” Tristan said.

“Yes, and I’ve gone a time or two myself, but you’re missing the point.”

“Yeah,” Tristan agreed, his brow still furrowed. “The point is this little monsignor nailed me good a couple of times! There is no doubt this is Bick Throbbing.”

“I just don’t know what else to do,” Barb said.

“How about you just sit,” Father McDonald said. “He’s asleep upstairs and you’ve done everything you can.”

Fenn nodded and said, “I’ll get you something to drink. Water?”

“Scotch,” she said, as Fenn rose. “And you know just how I like it.”

“Whaddo you want?” Fenn said to Father McDonald.

He smiled and said, “I think I will limit it to water, today, Fenn. Thanks.”

“I feel like…” Barb said, opening her hands, and closing them, “I should… light another candle. Or anything. Say another rosary. Just…”

“Barb,” Keith put a hand on hers. “Look. Are you looking at me?”

Fenn came out of the kitchen with the water and the Scotch and sat down.

“Well, then you both listen to me,” Keith said seriously, adjusting his collar.

“God is not… magic. And he’s not waiting for you to do all of these backflips. You’ve done everything you can. Now let him do everything he wills, all right.?”

Barb nodded.

“I want him to do my will, though,” Barb said, sullenly.

“Well,” the priest said. “I’m not going to be God’s press secretary today. I’m not going to spin it all right. But I think—and I know this because I lost my mom a few years ago—in a time like this we need to do the hardest thing in the world. Let go. Just admit we don’t have the control and just give it up. And love each other. And give it up, that’s all you can do. You just place it in God’s hands,” Father Keith said. “And you realize it was there all along anyway. Everything is. And sooner or later, after the pain,” he said, looking at Fenn, “you look back and you realize it’s all right. And more than all right.”

He smiled tiredly.

“That’s all I got for you guys, but it’s the truth.”

Barb nodded. She knew she could light candles until the house burnt down, but what was going to happen was going to happen.

“Father,” she said, tiredly. “It’s the truth I needed to hear.”

Noah and Tristan followed the laughter to Danasia who was sitting by the pool surrounded by half naked white guys, rubbing one down with oil and saying, “Now what yawl really need is a scriptwriter. I never saw one of your movies, but the ones for straight people—I was about to say regular folks, but I realized that was ignorant—are so bad. What you need is a really good writer. Like my dad. I bet he could really do some shit for you. I’m on my way to visit him.”

Devin, sitting on the edge of the pool smoking a cigarette, looked up with a grin and a sexy squint in his eye and said, “You think you know someone who could write a script for me?”

Danasia looked at him and said, “Devin, I could write a script for you.”

She looked up from Brock, whom she was rubbing, and said, “You ready, Noah?”

“If you want to get back to Rossford before nightfall.”

“Brock, baby, I gotta let you go,” Danasia said while Brock chuckled and Danasia wiped the last of the oil off on his towel. “It’s been lovely meeting you all.”

“If you ever come to Corby Studios down near Fort Lauderdale,” Devin said, as she left, “tell him you’ve got a script and Devin says it’s killer.”

“Are you a really big star?” she said.

“If you watch gay porn, I’m huge,” he said.

Brock, in his blue Speedo got up and headed inside the house saying, “He’s a fucking Denzel Washington.”

“Only paler,” Noah, noted as they headed out.

“You know,” Danasia said, “it looks like a fun life. I could kind of get with that.”

Noah readjusted the rear view mirrors, and his eyes were inscrutable from his shades.

“Really?” he said, chewing his gum.

“Yeah,” Danasia said. “I mean, everyone’s friendly. Everyone’s at ease… You know what they say, ‘living like a pornstar!’”

“But I am a pornstar. You wanna live like me?”

“I like you enough,” she said. “You don’t seem to be hurting. Financially, I mean.”

“But I look really hurt and fucked on the inside,” he cheesed at her.

“I don’t know what you look like on the inside,” Danasia said. “But I just mean everybody has shit. I mean we’re all scarred.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Noah said. “Well, take my word for it. Everybody you just met is really scarred. And straight porn is like… five times worse from what I know.”

“Really?”

“Like, in gay porn, you’re with another guy. Everything you’re doing to him, if you want to make the big money, sooner or later is going to be done to you, so it makes you a little nicer about it, a little more gentle. Leastways I think. And like our stuff, I think, there’s sort of…like when I did it, I felt like I needed to do it. I know that sounds fucked up, but I really wanted to do it. You can see the need. For some of these guys this is their only outlet and so you’re a little nicer here. At least at Guy’s studio.

“But you’ve still got drugs and shit. Hell, Guy’s place got raided last year. All sorts of drugs, I OD-ed. Almost died. Everyone you just met has like…. Mega depression. You’re all high and happy when you’re fucking, then you crash.

“In other studios folks are always fucked up, or you’re screwing without condoms and you don’t know where folks are coming from, or what you’re catching. In the straight studios, fuck, you got girls just being plowed to death, just fucking high out of their minds, almost being abused.”

Noah shook his head. “That’s the part that pisses me off. Girls just… they do girls so bad.”

And then, suddenly, Noah began to sniff.

“Noah?” Danasia said.

“They just—” Noah began, and his face crumpled up, and then, on the way to Rossford, he burst into sobs.

Danasia tried not to watch for a moment, but she had suddenly come to like this boy, and what was more, he was driving on the highway, and crying, which couldn’t be safe. So she spoke.

“Noah, please. Noah, what’s the matter?”

Noah had long dispensed with his shades. He stopped crying now and sniffling, tears running down his reddened face, he wailed:

“I LOVE my mother!”

And so they drove on.