California Rimshot

Maybe I'm just stupid. Maybe that's the reason. I have to learn and relearn the same lesson over and over: Sometimes our dreams and goals spin around and bite us in the ass.

I'm Chip Beaker. I'm in a lot of trouble. And it all started with that damn apartment.

Way out on Santa Monica, it sat high over the street and glimpsed the big, blue Pacific, out there heaving against the shoreline. ...A front of windows angled from the sun. Balcony - to sniff that fresh salty breeze. Airy. Roomy. Furnished - OK, in that Ikea flatware look, but I needn't do any heavy lifting to settle in.

...Don't get me started.

Sitting at the breakfast bar, filling out the paperwork, I felt tenant-envy coursing through me. I hadn't a prayer of landing this place. It was out of my reach. But maybe... maybe something could be arranged, something would iron out the wrinkles and I could land in this little corner of paradise with my oversized bath towels, Tupperware, and ancient Ned the bipolar parrot.

The calm super took the forms, looked at me and winked. He swiped his fingertips up my midsection and whispered, "Hope you get it." I'd made him the moment we met - closeted, traditional family at home anchored with at least two fat kids, payday-to-payday, sketchy criminal history, horney as a truck driver. Nevertheless, I gave him a look of shocked disdain. It's good to keep in practice. He chuckled as I huffed out, so I flipped him the bird over my shoulder.

Later, a call came from the landlord. His voice was accented... Russian, I guessed, with a rather unsavory lilt dripping in it.

"I'm looking over your information," he said. "Do you have any other source of income?"

Somehow, I knew bartending four slow nights a week at a West Hollywood cruise hole called Bottom Out didn't impress him as high-flight life choice.

"There's nothing I can really... sink my teeth into," he continued. At his pungent stress on "sink", I realized he was blessed with delicacy of an Australian saltwater crocodile. I recalled leaving a Xerox of my driver's license. It wasn't a bad photo. In fact, I thought it made me look quite youthful and dewy. Evidently, so did he.

"I see... How deeply would you need to bite?" I asked, the answer already filled out in my head.

"Why don't we talk about that? In the flesh?" he oozed.

Sometimes, in life, we come to a crossroads. We realize the decision we make, in that moment, could affect us all the days of our lives. An apartment, even one in the cool of the city, with a view and spacious closets, seemed poor exchange for my self-respect, my integrity.

"Sure," I answered quickly. "...How 'bout tonight?"

"Perfect," he said. "We understand each other."

"I think I can provide what satisfies your needs."

When I hung up, I debriefed myself on exactly what I was getting into. As a younger man, I'd traded some of my time and energy for... benefits. I wasn't a common rental - don't the wrong idea. I didn't haunt stoops and doorways, waiting for some guy with radar bone and a wall of quirts at home. My clients deliberately and discriminatingly were chosen to provide me with lifestyle to which I was thoroughly unaccustomed. Some of them, oddly the most indulgent and receptive, were deep in the coat hangers, with public reputations as bold breeders to uphold.

However, that randy game was long past. The best keptors like 'em young. The older we go in the trades, the smaller the rewards - in every way - and less desirable the clientele. At 25, you're geezed out. And a few years after that, you might as well be Bob Barker doddering in studded chaps.

Still, I wasn't exactly sure what I was in for. For the first time in my life, I wanted someone at my back, so I decided to talk to Ron about it. Didn't really know how to put it to him, though - how to ask for... Help? ...Protection? ...Someone to call the authorities if I fly out a window with splooge in my mouth? I rolled into his bar in Sunset Junction, just west of Silver Lake and its unfortunate innocent-bystander carnage. The smell of beer breath washed over me in a cool wave of air-conditioned familiarity.

While he shot pool and occasionally broke for a smoke outside, I laid out the deal to him. Finally, he propped himself on a cue and studied the table.

"It all sounds pretty safe to me. Don't see why you need help." He made a loud shot and a ball grumbled into a pocket, then thundered in the guts of the table. He took a sip of beer. "If you think it's worth getting boned for a place to live, go for it."

"You wouldn't?"

"Look, Chip, you came to me for permission, right?"

"Well, no, dad, I can make up my own mind, thank you."

"No, no," Ron said waving his finger. "You want me to validate this as a good idea. You want me to say it's OK."

"Leave out the thrift-store psychoanalysis, Ron, and let me have it."

"OK. This is immoral. It's dispiriting. And I wouldn't do it."

I couldn't believe it. This was the guy who once suggested we roll a drunken drag queen on Los Feliz; I barely talked him out of that little stunt. Now he'd gone all Billy Graham on me.

"You're kidding me, right?"

"I don't whore, Chip. My ass is precious."

"Precious? ...To who? A drunk Mexican soccer team?"

"It's your life, Chip. Do what you want. But it all seems cheap and disgusting."

It occurred to me our perspectives were off-kilter because I'd never filled in Ron on my history as a stash. The set-up didn't mean the same to him as it would to someone who'd... done... made that kind of... arrangement. I decided the best idea was showing him what was at stake.

"Look at this. Here it is," I said, pulling the color property brochure out of my pocket and circling the table. Glancing at it, he said, "Yeah, real nice. Still wouldn't fuck him for it.""

Out of sheer frustration, I blew my top. I left a few moments later, after Ron and I had exchanged scatological profanities - what they'd call in a Shaker community "oaths". I made a few calls and finally lined up Jamal to head downtown with me. And fuck Ron. He'd blow the guy in a second for a keep so fair.

That evening, Jamal and I sat in his car at the landlord's address, across Seventh near Fig, looking at what seemed a mixed residential and office building. Lights blazed at the top where, counting the floors, I assumed my appointment would be waiting. ...Waiting to drive his hard bargain.

"So just, remember, if you get my auto-dial in the first half-hour, it means we're in trouble," I said, checking my cell for no good reason.

"What do you mean 'we', honkey. You're the one fuckin' him."

"I'm glad I got you on my side, Jamal."

I breezed up to the top floor. There was only one door outside the elevator; I stepped out to the entrance, enclosed in slick metal. Just as I was about to knock a perfunctory voice said, "It's open," through an intercom. The speaker was just at ear level and I gave a little start as the sudden words popped out of nowhere, right next to my head.

Opening the door, I paused to scan the place and stopped when I saw him; he stood cross-legged, leaning on a rich desk at the other side of the vast aircraft hanger of a room. He smiled, and indicated with his finger "come" and "sofa", so I did just that.

"There's no point in waiting for to come the street car," he began. His accent was much stronger in person. "You want an apartment. I want some... companionship. I don't think I have to draw for you a picture."

He was burly and handsome in a hawk-nosed, ancient Roman senator kind of way. It was easy to picture him with a glass of Madera, taking in the Mediterranean as a kid gargled his knob. His polo shirt looked like it cost most of Thailand just to stitch up, and his shoes would someday be featured on "Antiques Roadshow" in the "you hit the jackpot" wet-dream.

"I get the idea this won't be a one-time thing," I said, clearing my throat slightly.

"...Depends on our deal."

"One time, you knock $800 off the rent and no security deposit."

"...Once every week, half the rent and I forego security until you move out," he shot right back.

I was feeling a little cocky. "Why don't we defer nailing it down until you know what you're getting?"

He looked puzzled. I was in a mood to gamble: "This first one is free. If you likey, then we do this: Free rent and $100 per visit, every other week."

"You're pretty sure of yourself," he replied. "A hundred is fine - but every week."

"...Then $200."

"...Deal," he said quite unexpectedly. "Would you like a drink?"

As he poured, lit up some weed and made small talk about traffic, weather and Lakers, I scoped out his orgy pit. ...Blood-red curtains, black marble, polished red and white slate floor tiles, and rugs from big endangered animals. ...Very suitable for an outer ring of perdition.

Finally, I put down my wine glass and stood against a wall, facing him.

"I don't know why it's important to me that you know, but I've never done this sort of thing before," I lied.

I began unbuttoning my shirt.

"But you are a very attractive man (that wasn't really empty flattery). I think something like this would be very difficult if that weren't so. (No... not really.)"

My fingers moved to my pants and I unzipped them, then ran my finger up the fly, fingertip just poking inside. He rose from his desk and approached. At full height, he wasn't as big as he seemed across the room. Once he reached me, he thumped open the top button of my jeans, and I gave a little start as they fell open.

"Call me Mig," he said softly, with his accent blurring the line between "Mick" and the jet fighter. He began running his hands up and down my torso, pausing to pinch nipples or run a finger along the root of my dick. It was my intention to look unsteady and a little anxious - the shy always fire the hungry.

"Do you need to call your friend across the street?" he asked, watching me breathe.

I became genuinely unsteady and a little anxious.

"No," I said, stifling a cough.

"There's nothing to fear." His words oozed through a shark's smile.

Once his hands traveled up to my shoulders, I relaxed. The set-up was clear: He'd push me to my knees, I'd toot the flute and that would be that. But then he disappeared from view. I felt my pants jerked down and a ravenous mouth gobbled my dick.

"Ummph!" I grunted, and fell back on the wall, startled. He was going to town - deep-throating the length of me in long, even gulps.

Wow...

Suddenly, I found my pantomimed arousal much easier to perform. I sighed after one particularly long swallow and reached out for support, grabbing the antlers of what looked like the stuffed head of a midget antelope hanging on the wall.

"Yeeeoww!" I cried as the horn point jabbed my palm. Convinced this was a yelp of passion and I was heating up, his furious sucking grew stronger. I shook the pain off my hand and gave in to the blow-job. Mig was quite the oral artist, really. He swirled his tongue around the cap of my dick and then engorged himself fully on it. My body involuntarily rippled with each stroke.

"Uh... Mig," I whispered in a gasp. "I'm about to come."

He didn't seem to hear me. Instead, he paused to slurp a forefinger, then jammed the wet digit up my ass before launching back on my beet-red dick. That was all the trigger needed, grandma. "Ow," I yelled. "Ahhhhhh!" ...To which his strokes became even more frenzied. I shot my load in his mouth with a moan, and banged against the wall in tremors awhile. His cheeks bulged a moment. Then he took his time lapping my dick clean. At least the guy's neat, I thought.

I leaned against the paneling, not even trying to collect myself. Mig stood and shouted behind him.

"Gnep zee shtep borzinitski snet."

A door at the rear of the room flew open and a woolly buffalo of a man chugged out in a bathrobe. From it's opening in front, an angry dick the size of a celery stalk bobbed like a tuna-boat fishing pole.

I gulped.

When this ambulatory Gibraltar reached us, he flipped me around to face the wall and pushed me against it. Then he squirted a tube of lube up my ass and poked inside me the blunt tip of his vein-shot Louisville Slugger.

"Yeeeeow," I yelled, my cry garbling away into heaving moan as he lanced deep into me and began stroking. After a few life-changing thrusts, he picked me up by my armpits and held me against the wall, about a foot off the ground. There was very little I could do but take it. I whimpered, my face against the wall. Trying to balance myself in flight, so he wouldn't damage anything vital, I reached out, and Tinkerbelle the Gazelle antlered my other hand.

"Yeeeeaaawww," I repeated, strenuously.

From the corner of my eye, I noted Mig watching us intently, jerking his own dick, popped from his pants. "Schmortzi vidish katzendoodle," he said. At that, my giant whirled me a few feet to the sofa, still spindling me. He stripped me of my shirt; Mig helped with my pants and whatever scraps were left. In an instant I was naked and big-bone dumped me on the cushions, never breaking anal connection. Then he knelt behind me, holding my ass in the air and drilling me as I crunched my face in the couch

"Uhhhhnnnnn," I grunted, in something like alarm.

Well, at least I was relatively stationary, not stuck on oak paneling in fuck orbit. My excitable brontosaurus really got his rhythm working at that point, and his thrusting pushed my guts well into my thoracic cavity.

Still connected, the big guy flipped me face up. I yowled a little as his dick twisted a corkscrew in my colon. Mig pushed a cushion under my shoulders and leaned my head back until its top rested on the sofa seat. Then, his way clear, he pushed his dick in my mouth. My midsection bowed up as each man drove into me. I felt their warm, padded hands running up my trunk, raking my ribs with their nails.

Somewhat distracted by a stranger's aromatic rectum so close to my face, I reflected for a moment on angelic Mrs. Carter, my elementary school teacher, and what impression she might gather from this sight.

Mig pulled from my mouth with a cork pop after one final drive and gag from me. "Spatzi pedette prazzhdo," he muttered heavily to the noble ape going crazy between my legs. He was beginning to get to me, and my little wiggles and whimpers each time he drove himself home were beginning to get to him. He made low growls of what I took to be anti-matter components of pleasure.

When the big fellow kept stroking, Mig shouted "Budo". Then repeated it. I decided that must be his name. It beat my choice, Donkey Kong, and fit his size and personality as appropriate death-match opponent for Godzilla.

Budo suddenly pulled out with another boink and moan from me -- genuine, by the way. He left the couch in somewhat of a huff and Mig took his place, plunging his wet dick into my bottom. "No fisting!" I yelped and bucked back on the sofa as his pumping began. At one point, he yelled some more Smirnoff over the couch, I assumed at Budo; my sight was blocked by the furniture's back. The tone was a little different though, explanatory, almost pleading. Through it all he just kept pistoning away.

At that point, it didn't take long for him to come, and I took it with a little jolt and groan. Looking up, I saw him frozen in the air, a grimace on his face, then he growled and withdrew his spent, wilting member.

Well... at least these Ivans didn't come in my mouth.

For awhile, I tried to gather myself. I heard a door close. I thought about getting up, and when I did so, rather slowly, I felt a padded dinner tray some might mistake for a human hand push me back down. It was Budo, he was still naked, and he stuck me again. As his dick's length ran into me, I wheedled meekly, "Don't you guys ever finish?" I let him do his stuff, and I must say, it wasn't the worst fucking I ever had. Slowly my own dick got hard again, and he jerked it in his hand until we both came in messy ecstasy and guttural squeals. Then, strangely, he leaned over and tenderly kissed my forehead.

After that grueling ordeal, I must've passed out. When I awoke, I could feel a bucket-load of come congealing on my bottom. Across the room, a cleaning woman rigorously ignored me as she noisily vacuumed; a scowl imprinted on her face.

As I dressed, I noticed a paper and an envelope on Mig's desk. The paper was a very generous renter's agreement and the envelope contained $500 - beautifully stacked notes in various convenient denominations. The deed I signed and left. The envelope I did not.

As I exited, the cleaning woman gave me one last stink-eye and made the sign of the horns at me. I pondered the charming voodoo all of half a second.

The next morning, I sat all wink-eyed, having coffee with Tricia. I pushed the envelope I'd lightened somewhat across the table to her.

"Here's that $200," I said. "Sorry it's so late -- and thanks."

"I thought you were broke," her eyes narrowed. "How did you get it?"

"I sold my ass to a couple of horney Ruskies and a mutant billy goat."

"Be serious," she said, then shook her head, smiling. "OK. It's none of my business. You don't have to pay it back right now, if you need it."

Tricia gave me that doe-eyed look of feminine over-concern. I made a mental jot never to buddy-fuck a straight woman.

"No, we're good." I sipped my cappa-crappa-cino and tried to relax. I'd paid Luis, his crew of cousins and some Home Depot loiterers to move my stuff into the new place; I wondered if they were done. Filling in Tricia on the apartment, I noticed my excitement wasn't contagious.

"How did you pay for all this?" she asked, utterly refusing to let go of financial issues. "You're not making those movies again. Are you?"

These were some masterpieces I'd made over the years for quick bucks, and after a friend of hers came across one on Manhandler cable download, she screened it herself. Those episodes didn't comprise any of my proudest moments, but they did iron out some sticky rent situations for me. It peeved me that Tricia, utterly unfamiliar to gay male sex, saw how it was done without ever understanding why it was done. Besides, it kind of... mortified her.

"Hey... Trish. Why don't we just drop it? I have a second... income source. It's all good."

Her Mother-Hubbard expression held title to her face and we sat there in awkward silence a moment. I've never been sure what it is about women -- gay or straight -- that makes them believe they can read souls as easily as flipping through a "Harry Potter"; it was delusion that made my teeth grind. It had been obvious for some time - throughout most of our friendship, in fact - that Tricia had a something of a crush on me. For her, my sexual predilection was obtuse and unfathomable, and she tried never to address it. ...Except... of course... when "TwinkBusters II" cascades through her 28-inch High-Def at 2 in the morning.

I patted her hand. "I appreciate your concern. It's good to have a friend like you. But I'm an adult. And, I tell you - I'm boomin'" That last part wasn't entirely untrue. After all, I had a coastal address now.

"You can always stay with me, you know," she said intently.

I shuddered. Yes. I'd roomed before with straight women. Narcissistic personality disorder, damp undies in the shower and all the "Twilight" updates I could handle. Patting her hand again, I said, "Thanks. I mean that."

She checked her watch, saying, "I'd better go." I kissed her forehead. With her red hair and bright Irish eyes, she was quite lovely in that ambiguously female way. If I was hetero, we'd be pumping out pups by now.

Dropping off Tricia at her blankly anonymous office, she was barely out of the car before I floored it out Santa Monica. This was where I was headed all day. I breezed into my brand-spanking new apartment, just as Luis and the crew were finishing up. Paying them off, I plopped on one of the Viking fuck seats and looked out at a wonderful present to myself. As I was drinking in the whole, fresh, Sunset Magazine enchilada, my cell phone rang. It was Cynthia, my sister.