Mysterious Skin

  The following minutes filled with standard john/hustler dialogue. “Can I buy you a drink?” “Sure.” “What do you like to do?” “Just about anything, as long as it’s safe.” “I usually pay a hundred and twenty.” (I tried to suppress a gasp; still, as I’d soon discover, he’d quoted an average price.) “That sounds good.” “Whenever you’re ready to go, just say the word.” “How about now?”

  Neil-the-john lived in Texas and visited the city on business. His hotel smelled poisonous, hospitallike. I might have sneezed if not straining to appear as healthy and attractive as possible. When the door shut behind us, he took hold of my belt buckle and tugged me forward. “Happy Halloween, my little boy.” I’d forgotten the date. I closed my eyes, conjured up a mental picture of a witch steering her broomstick across a bloated orange moon, and waited for the hour to end.

  For the umpteenth time, I skimmed Eric’s letter for specific sentences and words: extraterrestrials…abducted and examined…Little League…totally tiny nearby town. I stared at one word in particular, the name of the place where Brian lived. Yes, I remembered. I had been to Little River. Once, long ago. That summer.

  The Panthers’ game had been called due to a sudden rainstorm. One player remained standing in the dugout. His parents hadn’t arrived to retrieve him. Brian. Coach had comforted him. “I’ll drive you,” he said. He opened the station wagon’s backseat door, and Brian crawled in. But Coach hadn’t taken him straight home. He had detoured to his own house; had invited us inside. The usual stuff followed.

  Afterward, Coach had driven the station wagon to a munchkin town north of Hutchinson. Little River. I could remember the storm, the thunder, the windshield lined with tendrils of rain. I could remember the sweaty exhilaration that had always fizzed in my body after Coach had loved me. I could remember Coach beside me, one hand on the wheel, one hand on my knee. And I could remember Brian—yes, at last I thought I understood his piece in my past—as he’d sat in the station wagon’s backseat, arms held stiff at his sides, his baseball glove still on. The car sped toward Little River, and as the town approached I kept turning to look at Brian, the black pinpricks of his eyes all blurry and blazing, as if trying to focus on something special that once was there, but was there no longer.

  Zeke came from L.A., part of the “just in town on business” contingent of Rounds johns. He wore the expression of a female sword swallower I’d seen years ago at the Kansas State Fair—the face she’d made after the sword had slid in to the hilt. That wasn’t the least bit attractive; still, Zeke approached me before anyone else did, and I wanted to finish for the night, needed the six twenties in my back pocket. He stood beside me, habitually touching himself here and there—for example, brushing his fingers against a shoulder, reaching down to scratch an ankle. It reminded me of baseball; the signals coaches give from the third base line as their players step to the plate. With Coach, knee touched to elbow had meant “don’t hit the first pitch”; a rubbed nose, “bunt.”

  “Let’s go,” Zeke said. I followed him out, grabbing my jacket from the coat check booth. Rounds’s doorman, chummy with me by then, glanced at Zeke’s unsightly appearance. He raised an eyebrow, perhaps flabbergasted I’d chosen someone so ugly. I didn’t care. The money was more important. Besides, I liked his name.

  Our taxi took us to a midtown hotel. Lights from the street’s various theater marquees made everything pulsate. Doormen, desk staff, and room service were decked out in two-piece black suits. They looked like snooty penguins, their eyes on Zeke and me as we stepped into the lobby. I put my nose in the air and boarded the elevator.

  The hotel’s rooms were small, warm, meticulously designed. An oversize reproduction hung from the wall above the bed, a detail from a Flemish painting I recalled studying during a high school art class. In it, a blurry milkmaid hovered over her pitcher. A window’s ghostly sunbeam caught the glint of her jewels, the white of the milk. The picture made me want to cry or, better yet, leave.

  Zeke saw me staring. “Vermeer,” he said. “Well, sort of.” He reached out, unbuttoned my shirt’s top button.

  In seconds I was naked, more myself than I’d been when dolled up in the silly dress clothes. But Zeke hadn’t removed a stitch. He fell on the bed, rested his head on the pillow, and sighed. “I suppose it’s my turn.”

  I watched as he undressed. His clothes were a few sizes too big; their bulk on the floor made me want to giggle. But there was nothing funny about Zeke’s body. I searched for a description. “Skinny” and “slim” missed the mark. “Emaciated” was better. His knees were square bulbs, floating in his legs. His ribs made me recollect a section of abandoned railroad I’d once seen pushing from the cracked earth after the Cottonwood River’s flood waters had receded.

  But worse than the knees and the ribs was Zeke’s skin. It seemed as white as the milk in the Vermeer pitcher. Purplish brown lesions scattered across his stomach and chest, angry blemishes that looked ready to burst. More marks disfigured his shoulder, an ankle, his knee’s knobby vicinity. He was a compressed landscape, a relief map.

  “I hope these don’t disturb you,” Zeke said. “They keep popping up in the most unexpected places. Don’t worry, this is the safest encounter you’ll ever have, I assure you that.” He turned over, presenting me with his boxy ass, more outlines of ribs, his hard backbone. He spoke into the pillow. “Just rub my back for a while. I need”—I thought he would say “you,” which would have horrified me—“this.” I couldn’t see his face, but he seemed on the verge of tears. If he cries, I thought, I will sprint home. He patted the bed. “Make me happy, if only for a while. You’ll get your cash.”

  I sat on his ass and placed my palms on his back. I wasn’t hard, and my dick drooped against his ass crack. My thumb touched another lesion, this one just a small purple blotch. It appeared as harmless as a mole. I have to make him happy, I thought. It was my duty. I was locked here, in this new place where KS no longer meant the abbreviation for Kansas, but something altogether different. I pressed my thumb into the lesion, wondering if it hurt. I began to massage his back, and as I did, his head relaxed into the pillow. It appeared artificial, something I could untwist and remove and hurl across the room like a basketball. Above me, the milkmaid continued in her frozen moment of pouring the milk for someone she loved. It was a beautiful day. Her cheeks were flushed, her mouth curved into a smile that displayed her joy in performing such a pure task. I watched her face and pushed harder, kneading the flesh beneath my hands.

  Zeke grunted softly. On a simple black table beside us, his wallet was stuffed full with credit cards and cash, the edges of bills clearly visible in the lamplight.

  Afterward, I needed to be with Wendy; it was time to come clean about hustling. The cab driver passed a corner grocery. “Stop here,” I yelled. I bought Wendy a bundle of flowers: roses, carnations, and other varieties I’d only glimpsed in encyclopedias or a foreign film I watched once during a particularly spectacular acid trip. I walked the remainder of the way to the small coffee shop and café where she worked.

  South American Blend sat two avenues and five streets from our apartment. With the sudden cold weather onslaught, the store’s business had begun picking up, and Wendy had volunteered to work overtime. She had been staying past midnight, serving desserts, cappuccinos, and hot chocolates to pretentious people who occupied entire tables to “read” French literature or books about philosophical bullshit. When I stepped inside, I smelled the swirl of French roast, Irish mocha, hazelnut cream. The smell, infinitely more exotic than Mom’s instant Maxwell House, still reminded me of her somehow.

  Wendy greeted me at the counter, stirring a tea strainer through a teapot’s steaming water. I held out the flowers, and she put her hand to her mouth. “For me? You shouldn’t have.”

  After she’d placed them in a bowl, I leaned over the counter, my mouth to her ear. “Please say you’ve got a minute,” I whispered. “We have to talk.”

  Wendy’s boss had left fo
r the night, and the customers looked sated for the time being. She followed me to the table nearest the counter and pushed me into a chair. “What did you do now?” Her tone of voice hadn’t changed since she’d lectured me years ago, when I’d first started hustling in Carey Park.

  My mouth opened twice, but nothing came out. On the third try, I said, “I’ve been at Rounds. It’s a hustler bar on the Upper East. I’ve been hustling.”

  Wendy’s expression looked like a special effect. Anger registered somewhere within it. She checked the counter, saw no customers, turned back to me. “Do you think I haven’t figured out what you’ve been doing? Where you’ve been at night, dressed like a goddamn teenage executive, or where you’ve been getting money for beer? It’s been part of you for years, did you think I’d believe you’d stop now? Especially now, in a city where you can make thousands doing it? No, I’m not that stupid, whether you think so or not.”

  “I don’t think you’re stupid.”

  “Maybe not, but I’m beginning to think you are.” She paused, took a breath, looked me in the eye. “Do I want to hear this? Okay, fire away.”

  I started to pretend I’d been hurt by her comment; decided it was no use. “I’ve been making money,” I said, “and things have been cool, actually. Nothing unsafe at all, nothing that could bother me. You always said during the Carey Park stuff that whenever something bothered me, I should stop.”

  Wendy swabbed her thumb over the table’s semicircular coffee stain. “And tonight something’s bothered you.”

  I told her the whole story. I described the cab ride, the hotel, the room, his body, his skin. “After the massage, all I did was stand at the side of the room, jerking off. That’s what he wanted. There it was, this surreal mixture of the hotel’s decor and this guy’s obvious disease. He just sprawled out on the bed, watching me, jerking off until he came.” I refrained from detailing the dainty pattern of white come/purple blotches on Zeke’s chest.

  Wendy’s foot touched mine. “You just jerked off. That’s all?”

  “That’s all.” Her foot moved away, then came back and stayed. I could tell she wanted to touch and soothe me with her hand—a typical sympathetic Wendy Peterson gesture in this situation—but her overriding anger only allowed me the comfort of her foot. “You’re mad at me,” I said.

  “Maybe. You just have to be so, so careful,” Wendy said. “You have to know that things are different for you now. This isn’t Kansas.” I’d heard that line so many times, but never from her.

  The blue trapezoid shapes on the table’s Formica surface resembled ugly, swollen purplish brown blotches. I wanted to say something more. I could tell Wendy about Brian, but that seemed too complicated, beyond any explanation my confused state could offer. “For the first time in my life,” I told her, “I’m bothered by it. Sex. After tonight, everything just feels fucked up.”

  A postcard from Eric arrived the first week of December. Not a postcard, exactly, but an old paperback book’s ripped cover—a romance titled Gay Deceiver, which I knew he’d stolen from United Methodist Thrift. On the other side was his trademark scrawl.

  Neil:

  Hope all is swell in New York. Hope you’re making enough money, having a good time, etc. Life here is the same as always. Brian and I are trying to kill the boredom. Your mom took us watermelon hunting. She actually chased a raccoon. She claims she’s got pickles ready for me. She’s so cool. She says she’s sending your plane ticket. Can’t wait to see you over Christmas, birth date of baby Jesus ha ha ha. And Brian’s dying to meet you. He says you have a lot to talk about. That’s an understatement from what I can guess. If you wrote back sometime it would be earth-shattering. Anyway I’ll see you at the end of the month—

  Eric

  “Brian,” I said aloud. “Damn.” The idea of him meeting my mom seemed appalling. I wondered again what he truly knew about me, about Coach. Whatever he’d remembered, I hoped he hadn’t blabbed to Eric, or, god forbid, Mom. Why was this happening now?

  Wendy had taped a calendar to the refrigerator. I stared at it, counting the days until my flight, until Kansas, until Brian. “Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.”

  After Zeke, I avoided East Fifty-third. I sat in the apartment, watching TV, numbed by boredom. But that couldn’t continue. Two days before Christmas, I contemplated the return trip to Kansas, my flight the following morning. I hadn’t the foggiest what to buy for Christmas gifts; besides, I didn’t have the dough. One hundred and twenty dollars can be yours tonight, I announced in a game show host’s bray. Wendy was at work, oblivious to my combed and slicked hair, my ironed shirt, my shoes that shone under the bathroom light. “This just isn’t me,” I said. Oh well. I had to go back.

  The piano chanteuse remained as bawdy as ever, substituting nasty lyrics into Christmas standbys. “Jingle Bells” became “Jingle Balls.” “Chet’s nuts,” not “chestnuts,” were roasting on her open fire. I shouldered my way through the crowd, which consisted of three times as many hustlers as johns. The hustlers avoided one another: we were all competition.

  “Merry Christmas.” I turned to see a kid named Stan, one of the few hustlers I’d chosen to befriend. His sense of humor made him my favorite, and I’d often chatted with him before getting down to business. He reminded me of Eric, thanks to his skinniness and dyed hair. When he spoke, he sounded truly prissy, enunciating vowels for utmost effect. He’d fabricated nicknames for some of the regular johns. My favorites: Special Friend (who got his name due to a line he apparently always used), Snooty Tooty (a man who wore headbands, brooches, and garish, flouncy clothes), and Funnel of Love (a troll notorious for lying on the floor, popping a funnel between his lips, and asking tricks to piss into it).

  I listened to Stan until he strolled toward a john who’d been ogling him. Minutes passed. I downed a beer, then another. No one seemed interested. As I finished a third, Stan stepped back to my corner and pulled me aside.

  “No luck?” I asked. The singer wailed away, abandoning her sleazy carols for a tune from Gyp?? y or Guys and Dolls or some other musical. When I moved my head to hear Stan better, the dizzy feeling proved I was swimming toward drunkenness.

  “This guy wants a three-way,” Stan said. “He’s been watching you. He thinks you’re ideal for fucking him while he sucks me off, all that. He’s willing to give us seventy-five each.”

  “No way,” I said. I didn’t even think about it. My answer just popped out. And the reason I’d said no wasn’t because the seventy-five bucks was less than my usual hundred twenty. I said no because the three-way possibility reminded me of Brian. This person I didn’t know, this boy I’d shared with Coach, had managed to infect me somehow, to ruin my once-beautiful memories. I realized this now, as I stood in my hustler’s stance in Rounds, both drunk and unwanted. I turned away, swallowed the last of the beer, headed for the door.

  The walk from Second Avenue to Third felt more like a run. After a while I noticed a red car behind me, slowly following. Before I reached the subway stop, the car inched forward to idle at curbside. The passenger window slid down. A Kewpie doll face hovered inside the shadows. The face leaned forward into the light; I saw the driver wasn’t a doll at all, but a man sporting a buzz haircut and a pink polo shirt. “Hop in,” he said.

  I half-remembered Stan lecturing me about trolls who preyed outside Rounds, men waiting for hustlers who hadn’t snagged a trick for the night, attempting to get reduced rates. Stan had explained how a typical cheapskate john would drive toward the river, park in this or that discreet shadow, unzip, push the hustler’s head toward a stubby dick, and hand over two or three twenties. Stan apparently had done this once and regretted it. “It’s not worth it.” I hadn’t asked why. But now, I didn’t care. I didn’t bother setting terms or getting acquainted first. I opened the door and crawled in.

  “Mind going home with me?” the man asked. “No names. No bullshit. I’ll pay.” His baritone came in brief, hiccuped sentences, as if someone were regulating his s
peech through a control panel, one overzealous thumb pushing a button. I nodded, and his car tore downtown.

  He looked fortyish, straight, slightly criminal. At that point it didn’t matter. We didn’t speak; I put my ear against the cold window. The sounds around us seemed slowed down, far away. Rev, zoom, honk-honk. The radio’s song droned on, a sugary voice repeating, “I guess I’ll have to love you in my favorite dream.” For some reason that sounded pretty. I dozed off at one point, due to the narcotic effects of the car heater and the beer.

  I opened my eyes. The car was nearing my neighborhood, and I thought of Wendy. Sweet dreams, I almost said. We zoomed onto Delancey Street, then crossed the Williamsburg Bridge into Brooklyn. Things got incredibly quiet. Lights, brownstones, and storefronts blurred past. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Brighton Beach,” he said. I’d seen those words on subway maps, and I knew Brighton Beach was miles from Manhattan. I opened my mouth to protest. “No more questions,” he spat. Surprise must have registered on my face, because he smirked and added a much calmer “I hope you’re horny.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” I wanted to blurt, One hundred and twenty dollars horny, but it didn’t seem the time or place. My eyes closed again, and Zzzz.

  When I woke, he was shutting off the ignition. He had parked beside an apartment complex. The world had hushed. I looked around, saw trees, residential houses, even a picket fence across the street. Only the orangy light from the nearby subway station remotely resembled New York. I wanted to be on that now, riding home. But I had work to do. He led the way into a claustrophobic elevator. His calloused finger touched the seven button. I noticed a black crescent on his thumbnail, a dark scar like a half-lidded eye. “Accident with a hammer?” I asked, my words slurring together. He didn’t answer.