Object of Desire. William J. Mann

in love.

      “Fuck!”

      I pulled out in time to whip off the condom and shoot ropes of semen across Ollie’s chest. Breathing heavily, I steadied myself with one hand on the bed, accidentally hitting the remote control. America’s Next Top Model suddenly flashed once again on the screen behind me.

      Ollie came himself then, a paltry dribble compared to my cannon shot. I was already out of bed, flicking off the TV, hunting for a towel in the bathroom.

      “That was hot,” Ollie said as I returned, settling in beside him, pressing the towel against his chest.

      “A quickie,” I said. “Maybe we’ll go a bit longer in the morning.” I smiled. “I’m a little drunk. Three martinis tonight.”

      Ollie shrugged. “Didn’t affect the performance.”

      “Thanks.”

      We were quiet, sitting shoulder to shoulder against the pillows. Outside the wind had picked up. The glass in the windows rattled almost imperceptibly, but I could hear it.

      I had begun to nod off when Ollie spoke again.

      “I’m getting a new job.”

      I opened my eyes and turned to face him.

      “I’m going to be the manager of Spencer’s Gifts,” he said. “It’s in the mall, too.”

      I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

      “I figured Ritz Camera was pretty much a dead-end job, you know? How many people still take pictures on film to be developed? Even though we’ve started selling digital cameras and webcams and stuff, I really think I’ve gone as far there as I ever can. But people will always need to buy gifts, you know?”

      I nodded, closing my eyes again. Yes, people would always need to buy glow-in-the-dark posters of heavy metal bands and mugs made in the shape of women’s breasts.

      I felt immediately guilty for being judgmental. How different was I, really, from this kid? I’d never gone to college; I’d never had any great-paying job. But I was different from him. I’d had one very important thing that he didn’t have.

      Ambition.

      Even if it had almost killed me.

      We dozed off, but I woke up quickly; the lights were still on, and Ollie had slumped forward onto my chest. I gently moved him down into a more comfortable sleeping position and got up to switch off the lamp. Climbing back into bed beside him, I lay facing the ceiling, eyes wide open. Ollie began to snore, a nervous little whistle tickling my ear. I turned on my side, willing sleep to come. But even as I tried, I knew it was futile. I wasn’t going to fall asleep. Not here. Not tonight.

      I waited until Ollie’s snoring had reached a steady rhythm. Then I slipped out of the casita, padding naked past the swimming pool, the pungent fragrance of rosemary hanging in the dry night air. Through the glass sliders, I stepped into the dining room. The clock on the mantel was ticking off the seconds with a fierceness undetectable during the day. In the bathroom, I brushed my teeth and washed my hands and applied a hot, wet cloth to my cock. That would have to do for washing up after sex. I was exhausted. In our room, Frank was sound asleep. His own snoring was far deeper, far more profound than Ollie’s tremulous whistle. Pulling back the sheet, I climbed in beside him, pressing my chest against his back, my lips against the soft white fur on his shoulders. I snaked an arm around him. He stirred.

      “Baby,” he mumbled.

      “I’m here,” I told him.

      In moments, we were both asleep.

      WEST HOLLYWOOD

      Twenty-One Years Earlier

      Out of the hundred or so men gathered around me, I noticed him right away. He was an older guy, maybe even thirty. Well preserved for his age, as Randall would say, with big shoulders packed into a tight white T-shirt. Randall liked older men. He said their receding hairlines were more than compensated for by the expanding bulk of their bank accounts. Whether this guy in the tight T-shirt had money or not, I couldn’t tell. He wasn’t part of the mob pressing in around me, waving their Hamiltons and Jacksons as I gyrated on my box to Kim Wilde’s “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” Instead, he was leaning against the far wall, sipping a Rolling Rock, watching, but not watching me. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

      “Hey, Benny,” I said, leaning down, grabbing the barback by the shoulder as he loaded empties onto his tray, “go get Carlos to take over for me for a while.”

      Benny yanked himself away from my grip. He was still pissed at me for breaking up with him a couple of weeks ago. “Carlos isn’t ready yet,” he said icily.

      I knew what that meant. Carlos wasn’t yet high enough to get up on the box. Carlos, a good Catholic boy from Mexico, had to do a couple lines of coke before finding the courage to take off his clothes and dance. So much for hoping I might get a reprieve to hop off my box and introduce myself to Mr. Tight Tee. It was probably just as well. That one was far too put together for me. He wasn’t like these guys up front, slobbering all over a skinny kid just because he’d taken his clothes off. No doubt Mr. Tight Tee was here to meet a friend, a friend with a real job, a real life. A friend who was somebody.

      “Come on, hot stuff, give it to us,” someone shouted from the crowd. Kim Wilde was mixing into the Pet Shop Boys’ “It’s a Sin,” and I shook my ass and tightened my abs to prove just how sinful it really was. A large black man with very cold fingers was stuffing several dollars into my thong. By the end of the night, I’d probably bring home about three hundred in tips.

      It still boggled my mind to think that guys would pay money to see me naked. Me, the kid Scott Wood had never even noticed in eighth grade, the pimply kid in the back row all through high school who had endured hundreds of paper airplanes bouncing off his head. I didn’t exist then, except to be a failure. But here, in West Hollywood, I was a star.

      I glanced up, over the heads of the crowd, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror on the wall. The pulsing red and gold lights distorted my features, but still I could make out the contours of my body. A skinny little blond, barely any muscle, a stick figure in a bright yellow thong. In school I’d always been embarrassed by how thin I was, forever trying to lift weights to build muscle but always giving up after about a week and a half. In gym class I’d been mortified by my twig of a body. But when Edgar, the club manager, was considering whether to hire me, he’d asked me to strip to my underwear, and I’d noticed the tight smile that had slowly stretched across his face. “Perfect,” he’d purred, running his hands over my torso. “Not a hair anywhere. You look seventeen.”

      But in fact I had just turned the ripe old age of twenty. Randall threw me a party for the occasion, my first since I was fourteen. I was in great spirits that night, filled with ambitious plans. I had come to L.A. to be an actor, and nothing was going to discourage me. “This time next year,” I’d announced at my birthday party, “I’ll be a regular on a TV series.” A few of my friends had laughed skeptically. “You just wait and see,” I’d told them. “I’m trying out for a part on Punky Brewster!”

      I didn’t get the Punky job, and neither did I land parts on Who’s the Boss? or The Facts of Life, all of which I auditioned for. But I hadn’t given up yet. Randall thought working as a go-go boy might hurt my chances of getting on TV, but Randall was a fuddy-duddy when it came to things like that. He was such a serious young man—a med student at UCLA. He was always saying things like, “Consider all your options before you take a leap.”

      Climbing up on my box in my thong three nights a week, I had no idea what Randall was talking about, nor did I really care to know. All I knew was that I was making good money for doing very little—and for this skinny little kid, all that hooting and whistling was kind of fun. Sure, the free booze and free blow that Edgar provided were nice perks, but the best part was simply getting up on the box.

      “Hey, baby, give me a wink,” the large black man called out.