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backdrifterOn a cool May night, Respa stood once again on a corner in the upper Forties of Manhattan, chilly in the shorts he hadn’t worn in an age. The waistband no longer lay flush to his hips, and his legs looked more like sticks in upside down flower pots than anything else. He wore his hoodie over his tank top for warmth, and he’d borrowed hair clips from Tanya to keep his growing hair out of his face.
He didn’t feel confident, that was for sure.
He watched three sedans pass him by before one stopped, and by that point he was considering going home and telling Tanya the whole idea had been a bust. The window rolled down, and a masculine voice said, “Get in. Quick.”
He obeyed, walking around the back of the car to the passenger seat. He never trusted his customers not to try to hurt him.
The man inside the sedan was white, balding, in his late forties. He wore a short sleeve button down shirt, his tie coiled around the stick shift. He only glanced at Respa before he moved the car, driving west toward Twelfth. Respa could already feel his stomach clenching.
“How much for the whole shebang?” the john asked, eyes on the road.
Respa’s first thought was that he wasn’t ready for the “whole shebang.” A hand job, maybe even a blow job, but not everything else. It was too soon. Instead, he said, “Hundred twenty,” thinking that if he put out a ridiculously high price to begin with, the john might barter him down to a regular price, and he might actually make some money.
To his surprise, the john agreed to it. “I live alone, so that’s not a problem,” the main said, and then he had a slower look at Respa, the old up-down that made its recipient feel naked. “When’s the last time you had something to eat? You’re not a junkie, are you?”
“No,” Respa said quietly, looking out the passenger side window. “I’m clean all over, don’t you worry, sir.”
“You been in the business long?”
“Long enough,” Respa replied with a shrug. “I’m plenty experienced, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“No, no, just honest curiosity,” the man said, but Respa knew better. When he asked if Respa was a junkie, the real question was Have you got any STDs? And when he asked how long Respa had been working, he was really asking Am I getting my money’s worth tonight?
The man had an apartment in the lower Eighties, near Riverside. Respa wondered if he’d picked the building with bringing home strangers in mind, because many of the surrounding buildings had real lobbies, with doormen, and this one had no more than a buzzer panel and two front doors. Perfect, really, for keeping one’s business to oneself.
He lived on the fourth floor, in a one bedroom apartment that looked like it had been furnished with a single trip to IKEA. The john gestured at the bathroom as they passed it, so Respa would know where it was. Respa got no more than a glimpse of the other rooms before he was rushed into the bedroom. The walls were powder blue, and it was as sparse as the rest of the apartment.
Respa took a seat on the spartan white bedspread, and the man stood before him, feet apart. He’d definitely done this before.
“Take off my pants,” the john commanded, and as Respa’s spidery fingers worked at the trousers’ fly, the man unbuttoned his own shirt, letting it flutter to the floor behind him. Respa had to admit his body wasn’t bad; he’d been expecting a hard, round belly under sagging pecs. He pushed the trousers to the customer’s ankles, and the man stepped out of them, neatly toeing off his leather shoes at the same time.
“Socks and underwear. I want you to take those off, too,” the man said. “There’s nothing more pathetic to see than a naked man in just his socks.”
The man lay down on the bed, clasping his hands behind his head, and Respa pulled off both white socks before hooking his index fingers into the waistband of the red briefs. The john was already half hard, which Respa counted as a bonus, and he pulled the underwear all the way off, throwing it on the carpet behind him.
Respa had his working hand wrapped around the customer’s penis already when the man bade him stop, and he paused mid-stroke. “I wanna take your clothes off, too,” the john said, and Respa raised his arms submissively. The hoodie came off first, then the tank top, and the man sucked in his breath.
“Jesus,” he said, “that’s a lot of scars.” He touched Respa’s ribs. “And a lot of ribs.”
Respa pushed his own personality further to the back of his mind, and where he would have otherwise gone off and threatened to leave, he instead said something general about food being hard to find.
“What’s your name?” Respa asked as the man lay him down to open his shorts.
“George,” the man said. “No underwear, eh?”
“It’s pointless in this business, isn’t it?” He lifted his hips.
“True, I guess. And what’s your name?” Respa’s shorts flew to join George’s clothes at the foot of the bed.
“Respa.”
“You whores never like to use your real names, eh?” George said with a chuckle. “Well, that’s fine.” He ran his hands from Respa’s shoulders all the way down his torso, simply touching, and then he bent to go down on Respa’s thoroughly uninterested cock.
He knew that if he didn’t seem turned on, though, there would go his money, and what was he submitting to this for if not for the money. He closed his eyes as George lapped at him, and he forced himself to imagine that it wasn’t a forty-something year old stranger with a bald spot between his legs, but Ryan.
He imagined that he was sixteen again, in that golden bubble of time when Ryan had just begun to understand the idea of reciprocal love, before he’d been a criminal on the run. He imagined that it was one of those nights that Ryan’s parents, rest their souls, were out to a late dinner again, and his brothers were out with friends, not due to return for hours. On the insides of his eyelids he reconstructed Ryan’s well-kept bedroom, the institutional green walls, the big dresser in the corner and a shelf covered with hodgepodge in the opposite corner.
And then he conjured Ryan himself, still five foot two and impossibly slender, as teenaged Asian boys tended to be, and utterly naked. Back then the skin of his body had been smooth, unmarked by the scars that had later bloomed all over it. He frowned in reality for a moment, and then the sensation of George’s meaty hands on his inner thighs was replaced by the feeling of Ryan’s smaller ones, and it send an electric shiver up his legs that probably pleased George quite a bit.
When he opened his eyes, he wasn’t ready for the disappointment of finding George in place of Ryan, but George seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly, his hands roving over the younger flesh. He tilted his head back as if in lust, but really he was trying to overcome the saltwater in his eyes with gravity. A single tear managed to escape, and he slapped it dead on his face. George was too engrossed to notice.
He tuned out for the rest of the oral sex, waking up only when George shoved a finger up his ass and forced him to come in bursts that made him gasp. George pushed Respa’s balls up out of the way as he lowered his face, and when Respa felt a wet tongue press against him, he gasped in a less pleased way, and nearly kicked George in his attempt to get away.
“There are some things,” he said, trying to slow his breathing, “I don’t do. That, right there, is one of them.”
“I thought I was paying for the whole shebang,” George said with a frown. “That’s what I see them do on the gay porn flicks all the time.”
“Well, this isn’t porn,” Respa snapped. “This is real life, and I’m a real person, whether you want to think of me that way or not. I don’t do rimming, either giving or receiving, and I don’t do bareback. I don’t fuck at all without lube.”
“But you do other things, right?” George asked, and it was like he’d barely registered what Respa had said.
“Well… Yeah. That’s what you’re paying for.”
“Then I’m gonna get my money’s worth,” George said, and he crawled forward. He was smart enough to keep condoms in his bedside table (though it said something about him), and when he penetrated Respa it was bland and non-traumatic, thankfully. George grunted like a hog throughout it all, too enthralled with whatever he was feeling to notice anything Respa did, which is to say nothing at all. He allowed Respa to use his shower after payment, but when Respa asked for a ride back to his corner, George instead gave him two bucks and told him to hop the train back down.
The night produced two more jobs, the first of them a sparrow of a man who just wanted a hand job as he sat in the driver’s seat of his car. The second man actually wanted Respa to take off his shorts and ride him right in the car, but Respa refused, saying it was no go without lube and a condom. At first he thought he’d lose the john, but instead the man bit his lip and asked how much to be fucked, instead, and back at his own place. Respa named another high price, surprised at how quickly it was accepted. In the end, the john got both his requests fulfilled, given that he had plenty of condoms at home, and he paid Respa a little extra for it.
All in all, he hadn’t made out too badly. No violence, and little bargaining. Three hundred for the night. He took it home to Tanya, hoping the sheer amount of cash would keep her happy for awhile, but she was asleep when he arrived, and a sleeping pregnant woman was not to be disturbed.
He didn’t feel confident, that was for sure.
He watched three sedans pass him by before one stopped, and by that point he was considering going home and telling Tanya the whole idea had been a bust. The window rolled down, and a masculine voice said, “Get in. Quick.”
He obeyed, walking around the back of the car to the passenger seat. He never trusted his customers not to try to hurt him.
The man inside the sedan was white, balding, in his late forties. He wore a short sleeve button down shirt, his tie coiled around the stick shift. He only glanced at Respa before he moved the car, driving west toward Twelfth. Respa could already feel his stomach clenching.
“How much for the whole shebang?” the john asked, eyes on the road.
Respa’s first thought was that he wasn’t ready for the “whole shebang.” A hand job, maybe even a blow job, but not everything else. It was too soon. Instead, he said, “Hundred twenty,” thinking that if he put out a ridiculously high price to begin with, the john might barter him down to a regular price, and he might actually make some money.
To his surprise, the john agreed to it. “I live alone, so that’s not a problem,” the main said, and then he had a slower look at Respa, the old up-down that made its recipient feel naked. “When’s the last time you had something to eat? You’re not a junkie, are you?”
“No,” Respa said quietly, looking out the passenger side window. “I’m clean all over, don’t you worry, sir.”
“You been in the business long?”
“Long enough,” Respa replied with a shrug. “I’m plenty experienced, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“No, no, just honest curiosity,” the man said, but Respa knew better. When he asked if Respa was a junkie, the real question was Have you got any STDs? And when he asked how long Respa had been working, he was really asking Am I getting my money’s worth tonight?
The man had an apartment in the lower Eighties, near Riverside. Respa wondered if he’d picked the building with bringing home strangers in mind, because many of the surrounding buildings had real lobbies, with doormen, and this one had no more than a buzzer panel and two front doors. Perfect, really, for keeping one’s business to oneself.
He lived on the fourth floor, in a one bedroom apartment that looked like it had been furnished with a single trip to IKEA. The john gestured at the bathroom as they passed it, so Respa would know where it was. Respa got no more than a glimpse of the other rooms before he was rushed into the bedroom. The walls were powder blue, and it was as sparse as the rest of the apartment.
Respa took a seat on the spartan white bedspread, and the man stood before him, feet apart. He’d definitely done this before.
“Take off my pants,” the john commanded, and as Respa’s spidery fingers worked at the trousers’ fly, the man unbuttoned his own shirt, letting it flutter to the floor behind him. Respa had to admit his body wasn’t bad; he’d been expecting a hard, round belly under sagging pecs. He pushed the trousers to the customer’s ankles, and the man stepped out of them, neatly toeing off his leather shoes at the same time.
“Socks and underwear. I want you to take those off, too,” the man said. “There’s nothing more pathetic to see than a naked man in just his socks.”
The man lay down on the bed, clasping his hands behind his head, and Respa pulled off both white socks before hooking his index fingers into the waistband of the red briefs. The john was already half hard, which Respa counted as a bonus, and he pulled the underwear all the way off, throwing it on the carpet behind him.
Respa had his working hand wrapped around the customer’s penis already when the man bade him stop, and he paused mid-stroke. “I wanna take your clothes off, too,” the john said, and Respa raised his arms submissively. The hoodie came off first, then the tank top, and the man sucked in his breath.
“Jesus,” he said, “that’s a lot of scars.” He touched Respa’s ribs. “And a lot of ribs.”
Respa pushed his own personality further to the back of his mind, and where he would have otherwise gone off and threatened to leave, he instead said something general about food being hard to find.
“What’s your name?” Respa asked as the man lay him down to open his shorts.
“George,” the man said. “No underwear, eh?”
“It’s pointless in this business, isn’t it?” He lifted his hips.
“True, I guess. And what’s your name?” Respa’s shorts flew to join George’s clothes at the foot of the bed.
“Respa.”
“You whores never like to use your real names, eh?” George said with a chuckle. “Well, that’s fine.” He ran his hands from Respa’s shoulders all the way down his torso, simply touching, and then he bent to go down on Respa’s thoroughly uninterested cock.
He knew that if he didn’t seem turned on, though, there would go his money, and what was he submitting to this for if not for the money. He closed his eyes as George lapped at him, and he forced himself to imagine that it wasn’t a forty-something year old stranger with a bald spot between his legs, but Ryan.
He imagined that he was sixteen again, in that golden bubble of time when Ryan had just begun to understand the idea of reciprocal love, before he’d been a criminal on the run. He imagined that it was one of those nights that Ryan’s parents, rest their souls, were out to a late dinner again, and his brothers were out with friends, not due to return for hours. On the insides of his eyelids he reconstructed Ryan’s well-kept bedroom, the institutional green walls, the big dresser in the corner and a shelf covered with hodgepodge in the opposite corner.
And then he conjured Ryan himself, still five foot two and impossibly slender, as teenaged Asian boys tended to be, and utterly naked. Back then the skin of his body had been smooth, unmarked by the scars that had later bloomed all over it. He frowned in reality for a moment, and then the sensation of George’s meaty hands on his inner thighs was replaced by the feeling of Ryan’s smaller ones, and it send an electric shiver up his legs that probably pleased George quite a bit.
When he opened his eyes, he wasn’t ready for the disappointment of finding George in place of Ryan, but George seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly, his hands roving over the younger flesh. He tilted his head back as if in lust, but really he was trying to overcome the saltwater in his eyes with gravity. A single tear managed to escape, and he slapped it dead on his face. George was too engrossed to notice.
He tuned out for the rest of the oral sex, waking up only when George shoved a finger up his ass and forced him to come in bursts that made him gasp. George pushed Respa’s balls up out of the way as he lowered his face, and when Respa felt a wet tongue press against him, he gasped in a less pleased way, and nearly kicked George in his attempt to get away.
“There are some things,” he said, trying to slow his breathing, “I don’t do. That, right there, is one of them.”
“I thought I was paying for the whole shebang,” George said with a frown. “That’s what I see them do on the gay porn flicks all the time.”
“Well, this isn’t porn,” Respa snapped. “This is real life, and I’m a real person, whether you want to think of me that way or not. I don’t do rimming, either giving or receiving, and I don’t do bareback. I don’t fuck at all without lube.”
“But you do other things, right?” George asked, and it was like he’d barely registered what Respa had said.
“Well… Yeah. That’s what you’re paying for.”
“Then I’m gonna get my money’s worth,” George said, and he crawled forward. He was smart enough to keep condoms in his bedside table (though it said something about him), and when he penetrated Respa it was bland and non-traumatic, thankfully. George grunted like a hog throughout it all, too enthralled with whatever he was feeling to notice anything Respa did, which is to say nothing at all. He allowed Respa to use his shower after payment, but when Respa asked for a ride back to his corner, George instead gave him two bucks and told him to hop the train back down.
The night produced two more jobs, the first of them a sparrow of a man who just wanted a hand job as he sat in the driver’s seat of his car. The second man actually wanted Respa to take off his shorts and ride him right in the car, but Respa refused, saying it was no go without lube and a condom. At first he thought he’d lose the john, but instead the man bit his lip and asked how much to be fucked, instead, and back at his own place. Respa named another high price, surprised at how quickly it was accepted. In the end, the john got both his requests fulfilled, given that he had plenty of condoms at home, and he paid Respa a little extra for it.
All in all, he hadn’t made out too badly. No violence, and little bargaining. Three hundred for the night. He took it home to Tanya, hoping the sheer amount of cash would keep her happy for awhile, but she was asleep when he arrived, and a sleeping pregnant woman was not to be disturbed.