No Names, page 18
“A movie?”
“Yes,” he grins.
Jean-Marc, nodding with too much energy, adds, “An adult film.”
Takes me a second to register this. “You mean a porno?” The two nod. I actually laugh. For a second I’d thought he meant a concert movie of the band. The music playing beneath the buzz of the crowd presses through to my brain, and suddenly it seems vital that I recognize the song or, really, recognize anything outside of what’s going down. It’s in English—“Livin’ Thing” by ELO. I nudge Pete: “We’ve got to go, man.” I’ve never even watched a porno. Deep Throat, which the whole world seems to have seen, never made it to Hallein because of protests by the born-agains. I’m also laughing because these guys have no idea that I’m the last guy virgin in the world.
Suddenly Pete appears alert. To my amazement, it becomes apparent he’s been following what’s been going on. I thought he was blotto. He says, “Sure,” as if they’re merely asking if we want another round. He then asks, “But how much are we talking?” followed by, “Do we get to pick the girls?” He gestures at the crowd.
I’m not sure why but the absolute insanity of the idea starts evaporating as Pete blathers on, pretending he knows the business.
Jean-Marc suggests, “Let’s go upstairs to discuss details.”
“Someone left the cake out in the rain …” Donna Summer sings beneath the buzz and hum of the crowd. I could never figure out whether the song is a parody or not. If not, it should be. “… and I’ll never have that recipe again …” I murmur to Pete, “Let’s get out of here, now,” but either he doesn’t hear me or is ignoring me because he keeps nodding to the French guys.
Jean-Marc and Jean-Luc stand. Then Pete stands with less difficulty than I might have expected. I’m the last. I whisper in Pete’s ear, “Come on, this is crazy, we need to go.” He responds right out loud, “Yeah, crazy fun!” I plead with him some more, quietly. It’s no use. He’s not leaving, and I can’t leave him here. I attempt to brainwash myself into thinking this counts as an adventure and sure beats wasting life away in the Flats, but sophistry’s not really working right now.
Upstairs, there’s a bed in the middle of a roomless space. Lights and cameras are set up around the periphery, waiting for action. The wooden floor’s dusty, badly scratched.
There’s talk of money. I’m in fight or flight mode; Pete’s all about negotiation. He takes control: “What you’re offering’s not enough, not by a long shot.” It translates to about five hundred dollars each, which doesn’t sound bad at all if one were actually going to do something as stupid as this. Five hundred amounts to more than the whole band has made at any one gig.
I’m staring at the stained bedsheets when I hear Pete asking, “Like what you see?” I turn around to find he’s whipped his dick out. Unreal. His attempt at sounding like a pro? The French guys nod approvingly. Next thing I know, he’s got them up to what’s a thousand dollars apiece.
“Where are the girls?” Pete wonders, tucking his junk back in. “We want to make sure they’re hot.” That sounds less like an old pro and more like a kid in a candy shop.
Jean-Marc answers with a wicked smirk, “There won’t be any.”
Pete wrinkles his brow.
“It’s a gay shoot.” Jean-Luc says this like “We don’t serve Coke, only Pepsi.”
“Pete,” I say right out loud, “let’s get out of here.”
Without missing a beat, and either not hearing me or else ignoring me, he tells them, “Then we want double,” as if that’s also a regular thing. “And, I’ll only do it with him.” He points at me, giving the very same grin he first flashed at the totally unreal slave auction where we first met way back when.
No one bothers asking me what I think. Any other guy would be out of here. But once I stop thinking about the mechanics of it and start thinking about two thousand apiece, I’m thinking I could do it, I’m thinking I could be bought.
Pete leans toward me, speaking low, “Me and you could live off that for an entire year over here! Get one of those boats and live on a canal.” The old, chummy Pete is back in full force. Bizarre as it seems, this turn of events is also serving as our reconciliation. He then asks the French guys, “What about the script? We need to approve the script.”
Once again, Jean-Luc’s smirking. “No script. Only a—how shall we say?—a situation.”
Pete laughs out loud, like we’re all in on the same joke.
Jean-Marc offers, “The situation is that you are two American guys traveling around Europe.”
“We are two American guys traveling around Europe,” Pete replies, now in full wise-guy mode.
Big laughs all around, except for me.
“Then it should be easy,” Jean-Luc concludes, folding his hands in front of him.
They bring out two backpacks on aluminum frames. The nylon’s threadbare and smeared with what looks to be axle grease. Are they real props or things left behind by other losers like us, those naïve enough to get themselves into a situation like this and who then just disappeared? In any case, we’re supposed to be backpackers who meet in a youth hostel and get it on in the showers. They point to a doorway.
Not especially wanting to disappear, as I fear the actual backpackers might have, I freeze in place, looking toward the opposite doorway, the exit.
Pete whispers, “Let’s do it, guy.”
My legs are about to give out.
“Come on,” he pleads, pulling me gently by the arm. Gently, yes, but still he’s pulling.
Jean-Luc seems impatient and suggests we get started, only it sounds more like an order. He and Jean-Marc adjust the studio lights before lifting bulky cameras to their shoulders.
“The one rule is,” Jean-Marc warns, “never look into the camera. Oh, and another, let us know when you’re about to come.” He instructs us to go to the far side of the room and put the backpacks on. I activate autopilot and follow Pete. The packs are super light, like they’re filled with nothing but tissue paper to make them look full. The cameras start rolling and we’re told to take the packs off, as if we’ve just arrived from the train station. I think of all those college kids from the States we’ve seen in Europe and imitate their no-worries attitude, or at least I try to. We’re then given the signal to strip and head into the showers. It’s our last chance to back out. I hesitate but Pete, true to form, gets naked in a flash. The being naked with Pete’s not weird, the being watched is. My whole body’s shaking. I can’t help it. I turn my back to Pete and the cameras and undress slow, as slow as possible. I fold each item of clothing neatly and place it on a chair.
“Great, simply great,” Jean-Marc crows, “the reluctance adds to the sexual tension.”
Feeling nakeder than naked, I walk into the showers after Pete. It’s like we’re going to our execution.
“At first, pretend you’re not noticing each other as you wash,” Jean-Luc tells us.
We each turn a pair of faucets in the gang shower on. At the squat where we’re staying there’s no running water, so having warm water pouring over my greasy hair and down my waxy skin happens to feel great. It feels real. Yes, this is real, I think, but the next second I think the opposite.
Jean-Marc tells Pete, “Start noticing him, start getting yourself hard.”
I’m not supposed to notice what Pete’s up to till they say so. When they finally do, there’s Pete, impressively erect, cock flat against his belly. I say impressively because I’m not sure I can get it up at all.
Jean-Marc directs us to look at each other meaningfully before Pete approaches me. Not sure what meaning the look’s supposed to be full of.
Like a barker at the county fair, or a Roman emperor at the Colosseum, Jean-Luc announces, “Let the games begin!”
Even through the terror, I want to laugh when Pete, as ordered, starts kissing me. It’s for sure funny, us making out, but the surprising thing is that Pete’s really going at it. It feels weird, though not necessarily bad weird. After all, it’s only Pete. It’s not like I’m suddenly realizing, Wow! Pete’s a gay guy, after all, or Wow! I didn’t know that I’m gay until right this second. I love him, and we’ve been intimate in every way but this. The real intimacy, I guess, is that we’re doing porn together.
They now want me to go down on Pete. Once again, mid-panic, I have to stop myself from laughing because in my mind I’m hearing a declaration he’s made more than once in the past: “I’m not a blow job kind of guy.” I squat on the tiles. It’s maybe a little like drowning, blowing him with water pouring over my head and down my face. Like drowning, but not as difficult as I would’ve thought.
They keep telling us to think about our girlfriends. As if.
The blow job goes on until Pete is ordered to lead me to the bed. We don’t dry off. Who knew youth hostels had king-size beds? One camera comes in close to get our faces. It’s like Pete wants to make sure to give them a good shot, so he starts acting all frantic with desire, deep kissing me as we move towards the mattress and he tumbles us down onto it. At this point I don’t know what to pretend.
Both directors coax him on, “Great stuff, great stuff.”
Jean-Marc wants to know, “Who’s going to top and who’s going to bottom?”
I’m confused.
Jean-Luc sees this, so translates from the English, “Who’s going to be insertive and who’s going to be receptive?”
I get it and I don’t.
Pete volunteers, “I’ll top,” like it’s tennis and he’ll serve.
He takes charge. He lays me down on my stomach and starts pressing his dick against my ass, and all I can think is, That thing’s going in there? I try squirming away, but he pushes me into the mattress.
“Butt-fucking,” Pete says right in my ear. “They want us to butt-fuck.”
Call me the densest guy in the world, but I swear I did not really know anyone did this until right now. Seriously. Of course I know the slang “butt-fucker,” but till this moment it was only something guys called each other back in junior high and didn’t refer to anything actual. I’ll be the first to admit, I’m truly out of it about lots of stuff when it comes to sex. And this time I don’t just think, but whisper, “That thing is going in there?”
I’m freaking out. I twist my head around to see Pete smiling—not wry or sly or goofy but sweet, like the sweetest smile I’ve ever seen from him, like he thinks this is funny and sweet and that I’m funny and sweet, which is crazy because no one’s ever thought I’m funny or sweet, let alone both. Then it hits me: he’s for real in love with me. Through the fakeness of the porn, it hits me: Pete’s in love with me.
He whispers back, “Just relax. And breathe.” I hear him rubbing Vaseline—or whatever the goop in the tub on the nightstand is—on his dick. Squish, squish, squish.
At this point even the scared has been scared right out of me.
He starts slow, very slow, pushing his dick into my butthole. The head’s not even all the way in and it’s excruciating beyond belief, disbelief, and unbelief. I wince massively, barely keeping from gnashing my teeth in front of the cameras. He pushes the head all the way in and that’s it. I yelp—for maybe the first time in my life, I actually yelp—and force myself out from under him. I jump up from the bed, shouting, “Holy shit!” over and over.
Pete laughs all wholesome like a Disney character. “Then you top me, if that’d work better.”
I’m thinking I’ve wrecked everything, but Jean-Luc and Jean-Marc say this is all great, simply great, it makes the straight amateur first-time thing more real. I want to tell them that, for Christ’s sake, the straight amateur first-time thing is real.
Pete gets up from the bed and starts kissing me again. I’m guessing he does this to get me over what he’s guessing’s a crisis. Which it is. I wouldn’t have thought him kissing me would help matters but somehow it does. It makes me reconsider everything I’ve ever thought. His mouth is powerful, unlike any girl’s I’ve ever kissed. It feels like I’m going to be swallowed. He continues urging me on, “Just let go. It’s nothing either of us hasn’t ever thought about before.” I look at him like he’s crazy. With a glittering look, he adds, “At least subconsciously.”
Truth is, I’m consciously thinking I don’t know anything about my subconscious.
He then starts going down on me because any pathetic erection that I might have had has since withered. I try to get back into character, so to speak.
I’m still standing by the edge of the bed when Pete flops down onto the definitely-not-youth-hostel satin sheets and spreads his legs like a girl. He dips his fingers in the tub for a gob of goo, rubs some on my dick, and then, with three whole fingers, puts the rest of it inside his butt. Can’t imagine doing that. It’s almost like he’s done it before. I notice for the first time how the hair on his belly forms a perfect whorl. A good distraction. So are his hands. I’ve never really seen how graceful they are, especially in motion, like herons on the river back home—what a brilliant epiphany at a moment like this! Real poetry. It’s scary how he seems to know how to do what we’re doing and scarier still that he’s so matter of fact about it. It’s probably because he’s so at ease with his body (and, apparently, with mine). I don’t know why but I think it’s funny in a cartoon kind of way when he pulls me by my dick. He raises his ass at the same time, and I find myself inside of him easier than I would’ve thought, if I’d ever thought about it. His hole grips my dick, takes it in. I try to tune out all the psychological crap in my head by focusing on details like the runs in the sheets—as if a cat has clawed them—and the pumpkin pie aroma of his armpits and his crotch.
I start thinking too seriously about how this is my first time having sex with anyone and I don’t even know if it’s real because I’m with someone I love, or fake because it’s porn and with a guy. It’s weird, but maybe it hurts that this person—my best friend in the world—might be thinking only of the money and the mechanics. I start going all negative. I’m losing it, by which I mean my mind, my heart, my confidence, and, once again, my hard-on. I’ve got to make this have meaning. All my feelings for over four years have been directed toward this guy lying under me. I hesitate almost too long before making myself press my hips against him. I just have to believe Pete’s really into this sex act outside of the porn act or else it won’t work. He’s kind of moaning and keeps murmuring, “Man, oh man.” I’ve got to not think it’s fake and not think about Mrs. Lac or any of the girls I’ve ever made out with or want to make out with. I watch his body turning underneath me—really watch it—and suddenly being with him becomes like playing music together. Sex and music, music and sex. That’s of course a thing, like universally, and now I’m understanding that thing for the first time. Our bodies start responding, one to the other, like when we’re jamming and intuit what the other’s about to play. I find myself in a maze of rhythm, and soon I’m really wanting to get off with another person for the first time ever. Even with one camera in my face and the other focused on my dick going in and out of him, I’m feeling real feelings, like when we fall into a song. I look down into his face, sequined with sweat and twisted into what looks like real pleasure, and I love him. I think pleasure, and in that instant he announces for the directors that he’s coming, he’s coming, and starts gushing a mass of pearls, and in the next instant I start vibrating, like during a show when it’s going great, and I keep on vibrating until I heave and heave and collapse on top of him, panting.
Jean-Marc snaps me out of my reverie: “You came inside of him?” He drops the camera to his side.
I nod as I roll off Pete who starts licking his own spooge off my sticky-wet ribcage, like a puppy, which should probably be grossing me out but for some reason isn’t.
“We told you not to,” Jean-Luc complains. “Now we’ve got only the one money shot.”
Jean-Marc shakes his shaggy head. “It will have to do.”
Pete reaches down between his legs. His fingers come out gooey. “Pretty!” he laughs.
The heron now in the muck of a marsh.
“Right from the start you’ve had me soul-wise, Michael A., and now you’ve got me body-wise.” I can actually feel Pete grinning as he sings these words and nuzzles into my armpit.
Jean-Luc and Jean-Marc are already putting the cameras away and taking the lights down. When they’re done, they place the money on the bed and leave. Perfunctory.
Pete sits up, cross-legged, and starts counting the bills. “That was better than junk,” he opines, scratching his nearly hairless chest vigorously, “which is saying a lot!”
I ignore that one.
He then gets all serious, pupils huge, and announces, “I’m so apexically psyched about the honorification of the mere fact of being with you.” He flops over on top of me.
I suppose what he says in his weird lexicon is clear, but it’s also not. This state of being together—that long-ago night by the river when we promised we’d be together—remains a mystery to me. Being is so deep yet so vague. I take a nosedive into my own thoughts. Next thing I know, Pete’s snoozing right on top of me, our bellies glued together.
Dawn’s already filtering soft and silver through the windows. It’s unlike any light we have back home. I scooch out from under Pete without waking him. I lie there watching him sleep. Hundreds of nights I’ve seen him sleeping but have never before watched. Maybe it’s a faggy thing to do. I don’t care. His face flickers. I try rappelling down into his subconscious, to know him completely. As if that’s possible. As if that’s possible with anyone, even with oneself—myself in particular. I have no weird or guilty thoughts or feelings about the two of us having had sex, or even having had sex with a guy, which is surprising given my leftover Catholic stuff. He’s not only the only guy I would ever have done porn with but also the only person. How’s that for intimacy? One thing scares me, though, as I’m falling asleep: maybe he’s the only person I would ever have sex with. Ever, meaning at any time, and ever, meaning in any way.
