My stomach was churning even after I had mixed the emptiness of my insides with a bottle and a half of red wine. The cheap motel room around me was blurred by my bloodshot vision, my fingers trembling around the cigarette I had ignored till it burned into the filter. I dropped it into the ashtray on the bed and lit another stick. Staring at the dark figure of my reflection in the blank television screen across from the bed, I saw myself... sprawled over the stale dusty sheets, hair disheveled and shirtless. My shirt had smelt too strongly of things I didn't want to face; I cringed just at the thought of the shirt left soaking in the toilet sink. Tapping more ash into the ashtray that was already filled with half-smoked cigarettes and burnt cigarette butts, I wiped at tears that weren't there.
The last time the world drew out into the open such blanks and numbness was when I had stayed in my bedroom for the whole of two months. I foggily realized it was only a day ago when I got out. Maybe it hadn't let me go.
The last time things felt this way I couldn't recall what had left me feeling so empty. This time, to keep me seductively tortured, I had the memory of being on my knees, on hard gravel, with the heavy handle of a nightstick jutting at my ear.
I closed my eyes to allow the afternoon's visuals to creep under my eyelids; the smells impounding me once again, the gruff voice and everything it said arresting my discomforting desires. I put out the again un-smoked cigarette and washed more wine down my gut. Turning to the bottle of cough syrup that I had left on the bedside table, I forced a weak smile in reply to its silent taunting. Then I feigned a cough or two, reached for the bottle and gulped down a quarter of its contents.
It helped.
The buzzing and vibration of my cellphone woke me just after midnight. Groggily I answered, then found myself alert enough to scramble for a pen, my body moving as if guided by forces beyond my control. I couldn't recognize the voice on the line, but it repeated twelve digits that I scribbled hastily over the back of my wrist. They looked like a secret I couldn't decode, and I stared at them, fascinated. I was like a child learning of the magic of numbers.
"He'll be expecting your call..."
"Hmm? Oh... How..." I mumbled, trying to get my thoughts to focus.
"We had to tell his agent who was asking... Was it meant to be confidential?"
"Oh... no... That's fine. Thanks again."
After the call I laid in bed with my wrist held above my face, angled in the thin stream of light that sneaked past the drawn curtains from the corridor. I checked the time; it was 12:47. Was it too soon, or too early to call, given the hours I assumed rockstars keep? I got out of bed, grabbed my pack of smokes, stuffed my lighter into my pocket, and threw my jacket over my bare upper body. Taking my keys and leaving the room, I got into my car and pressed play on the stereo.
Racy days
Help me through the hopeless haze
But my, oh, my
Tragic Eyes
I can't even recognize myself behind
So if the answer is no
Can I change your mind?
In a shaky daze I drove around looking for an open liquor store, and when I found one, I put two more bottles of wine on my card, along with a pocket-sized bottle of scotch and a carton of smokes. The small town, on the outskirts of nowhere, hung off the side of the highway; its couple of diners, motels and gas stations catering mainly to all-night freight truck drivers and the lonely lost. The town seemed deserted, with dim streetlights mocking with their skeletal heights; I parked in an empty parking lot and nursed my anxiety with Johnnie Walker. The stereo kept playing, his voice kept calling out to me^× so come on, oh come on, oh come on^×and my lips wouldn't stop quivering, wrapped around one cigarette after another.
Close to three hours pass before I finally found the nerve to give the number I had been staring at a call. Then I realized my cellphone was in the motel room. An entire day of poor choices and I was still being fucked with^×I couldn't believe how bad the man upstairs had it for me, and in my bad drunken humor I wished he at least had a big dick. Spurned by my sudden impulsive nerve though^×which I knew would pass like a cameo phase if I didn't act as impulsively as the moment^×I sped to the first payphone I managed to catch sight of from the road towards the motel.
Standing in the harsh bright lights of a gas station, with my eyelids weighed down more by the days' alcohol than their events, I stared at my wrist some more. The numbers hadn't lost their dance in my eyes.
"I was expecting your call."
There was melody in his voice and my entire being wanted to hum along to it.
"Didn't expect to hear from your agent, but then again, it did take you two months," his voice spoke.
I could imagine his smile.
"So how's it going, Matthew?"
He said my name. I couldn't breathe, let alone speak. But my lips quivered to part.
"Who's Andy?"
I hadn't known myself that those would be the first words I'd ever say to him; I heard him chuckle on the other side of the line.
"If you're asking me that, you already know who Andy is."
I did know; and I didn't know what to say to that. I let the pause hang between us like the connecting phone-line.
"Is calling past my bedtime really just about Andy?"
I couldn't help but smile at his charming cockiness... and the way he seemed to read my mind. A chill ran through me as my jacket flapped open in a cold gust of wind.
"Well, I..." I clutched my jacket lapels close. "Can I see you?"
"Matthew... I don't think that's a good idea."
"I... I bought your band's album..."
Drunken words always come out so sensibly. He laughed into my ear and even through the phone-line it warmed my cheeks.
"If I had to meet everyone who's bought that record..." He sighed. "Where are you right now?"
At a gas station payphone.
"I don't know..." I tried to remember the last sign I had seen on the highway after the incident with the officer. "Somewhere between L.A. and Monterey? Closer towards Monterey, I think..."
"What are you running from or towards?"
It wasn't concern in his voice that I heard; he was speaking my thoughts out loud.
"Anyway, I'm in San Francisco right now... but I'll be flying down to San Diego in the morning. If I drive down instead, I can be in Salinas tomorrow night."
I couldn't understand his courtesy, but I was grateful.
"Thank you, really..." my voice croaked from my clenched throat.
"Don't mention it. There's an old mission somewhere around there that I haven't been to in awhile... It'd be great to visit it again... I'll forward the address and time to that cute girl who called me earlier?"
I nodded, only slightly aware that he couldn't see me, my fuzzy thoughts insisting to linger on the fact that he called my assistant a 'cute girl'.
"Have a good night, Matthew. Try to get some sleep. You don't sound too... chipper."
Again I nodded, and after a quiet drawn-out pause, I heard the receiver click, the line cut under my ear.
Sleep and an existential fatigue clung to my swollen, puffy eyes as I washed the stains of red wine off my lips over the sink, which was still clogged with the discarded shirt from the previous day. I brushed my teeth, flossed, and shaved; I let the froth collect over the shirt that I refused to touch. A quick shower did nothing to calm my skin, which tingled with nervous excitement. Seven dozen questions flew about in my head. I wanted to know this boy. I wanted to feel whatever it is that makes him tick like the world is his very own clockwork. And I wanted to breathe in that sweet scent of his skin again. Would he let me? Uncover the mystery of any of these things... His face clouded over everything my eyes fell upon^×the motel room, the spilled-over ashtray, the bottles and bottles strewn empty by the bedside, my own reflection in the bathroom mirror.
I strove to recollect the boy's smile when he noticed me in Illyas' living room. I tried to mentally adjust the scene, to remove the cock that was in his mouth, the men that pressed against his boyishly soft, glowing body as it writhed in pleasure; I ignored the voice behind me that said the boy could never love me back. Instead I imagined his ready, knowing smile in an empty room, where we stand at opposite walls that slowly closed in from behind us, bringing us face to face.
I was alone in front of the mirror. But still I blushed.
Out again
A siren screams at half-past ten
And you won't let go
While I ignore that we've both felt like this
Before
It starts to show
So if I have a chance
Would you let me know?
The album played on repeat, accompanying me on my drive towards Salinas. My assistant had given me the details, but I was still much too early when I got to the old Hacienda-style mission, which had long since been converted into a restaurant. I ordered myself margaritas on the rocks and Coronas, snacking on a pita sandwich that seemed like the first meal I had had in days. The drinks went down as quickly as the food, and I stubbornly kept more liquor served though my head wanted to be kept clear.
For three hours I sat there in the courtyard, watching the shadows of leaves dance in the breeze and change shape with the oncoming sunset.
"It's beautiful here, isn't it?"
I looked up to see Brandon's face, the cloud over my eyes fading to blend the vision of him and the sight of him in the flesh. He was smiling wide, his eyes shining and marked out enticingly in thin black eyeliner. I staggered, with the alcohol and the tingle running through my veins, when I tried to get on my feet^×it was a silly 'gentlemanly' thing to do that I had learned from public-relations training years and years ago, back when I had first started out in Hollywood.
"Please don't bother on my account," he chuckled, pulling out his chair. "Unless you're trying to steal a married man."
Immediately I noticed the wedding band on his hand, my mind blinking thoughts to recall if he had had the ring on that morning we first met, that morning when he had his face buried in a man's crotch with his ass being fucked from behind^×all in obedience to the man who had warned me of the boy's marital status.
"You look like shit, if you don't mind me saying so," he said off-handedly as he sat across from me, crossing his legs daintily and adjusting his waistcoat to fit tight and perfectly falling over his belt.
Looking down at the crumpled blue button-down shirt I was wearing with jeans that still had dusty stains at the knees, I couldn't help but smile slightly at his pristine appearance. The waistcoat he wore was a woven gray with silver pinstripes, beneath which was a white short-sleeved button-up shirt and turquoise silk-tie. His pants were neatly pressed, black and also pinstriped. I took it all in, only partly aware of my doing so.
"So what's the big emergency, Matthew?" he asked, watching me with a playful smile just before bringing a cigarette to his cupid lips and looking down to light it.
"Well, I..."
"Let me guess... You just had to see me again?" His tilted smile and relaxed composure was disarming.
"Well..."
Before I even knew what I was going to say he casually interrupted me, speaking to a waitress and ordering a tequila-based cocktail I had never heard of.
"Man, I really love this place," he said, gasping. "The old Spanish architecture of the chapel... the creeping vines that have roots pre-dating the civil war... And that bell-tower..."
He nodded in the direction behind me and I turned, only then noticing the bell-tower's looming presence in the landscape.
"I'm hoping to work with images like this one for a video shoot or something," he continued, using his thumbs and forefingers to frame the bell-tower in the air.
From where I was seated across him, all it did was frame his soft features for my gaze^×the fresh youthfulness of his pale skin and slight baby-cheeks, the adolescent wonder that laid comfortably beside the fierce intelligence and self-assuredness in his eyes...
"You are so beautiful," I murmured under my held breath before I could stop myself.
Brandon smiled through the frame, then returned both hands over his crossed knee. We sat in a silence that for me was as comfortable as it was a pleasure, even after my embarrassingly blurted-out thoughts. The sun was setting quickly behind the chapel, outlining its architecture with a radiance and beauty that complemented the boy's presence. Shrill calls of whole flocks of flying birds squawked overhead, the colors of the evening melting over Brandon's figure in the seat as he stared right at me with a cockiness to his pout.
"So what is it, Matthew? Really..." he finally said with a smirk once dusk had crept around us. "I have all night, but... I'm sure there are better things we can do with each other, besides sitting and you staring."
Shying from his question and grace, I took a long swig of my Corona, finishing it, then looked about for the waitress. Brandon leaned forwards in his seat, sliding his cocktail in front of me. Our eyes locked like it did the first time we met; again, I couldn't tear my gaze away.
"I want to know..." I couldn't bring myself to finish the sentence. In my head I kept repeating 'I want to know who you are...' but my tongue refused to comply.
"What I want to know is why I have this effect on people," he laughed, then got the waitress' attention and ordered a jug of beer and a bottle of Mexican wine.
I chuckled with him but felt my ears warming from more than the liquor. I decided to make small-talk. That's how conversations start, I reminded myself.
"You're married..." It was a question disguised as a statement^×though we both knew I already had the answer for it.
"Yup... Just got married a little while back. I was preparing for the band's tour, so it was a little rushed, but... It went smoothly... Are you married?"
I shook my head.
"Yeah, I know," he said curtly, pouring beer into our glasses. "Girlfriend?"
He laughed when I froze at the question.
"Random questions aren't cutting it, are they? Come on, Matthew. We both know why I'm here and it's not to talk about the weather... But listen... I can't fuck you or anything like that, if that's what you're after. You can't blow me again either. Illyas has rules.... And plus, fucking guys isn't really my thing, you know?"
I nodded, but I didn't know or understand.
"Andy is Illyas?" I asked for the second time, feeling foolish for it the moment I caught it unexpectedly slipping from my lips.
Brandon let out a slight sigh, smiling. "You need to stop listening to that record."
"Is he though? I just... I know, but I just... I guess I want to confirm it."
"I write my lyrics for three people. One of them is myself, and the other is Illyas."
"Who's the third person?"
"My wife."
I swallowed to clear the cough in my throat, and took a large gulp of the beer.
"You don't understand, do you?"
"No," I spoke honestly, my comfort level beginning to adjust to his presence^×with the help of the alcohol that started to kick in again. "I don't understand it all."
"Tell me what you want to know," he said, quoting a line from his own song. I recognized it and that tickled me, but I was focused on more important things.
"Does your wife know?"
"About my needs^×yes. And she knows I still go to Illyas with them."
"Your wife knows about Illyas?" I couldn't mask my bafflement.
"The three of us go way back... We all went to high school together... It's a little of a complicated story." Brandon's expression masked little. Across his face I saw the sweeping smile of something fondly remembered^×but to be kept aside in a private world. "Let's not talk about my wife though. I know the ladies aren't your thing and well... I try to keep my family life and my... and the Illyas part of my life... separate."
"Do you love him?" It was a question I hadn't realized I had.
"Illyas?"
I nodded.
"Don't you?" Brandon kept playing games with me, and frustrating as it was, it was acutely endearing as well.
"But do you love him?"
Brandon watched me in the silence of a long pause before replying.
"Very much so."
His face had aged with his answer. Sitting across from me was no longer a mischievous playful grin, but now a quiet smile that was wising to where my questions might take us both.
"Then why did you marry your wife?"
Brandon ran the tip of his tongue across his bottom lip, as if they were chapped, then raised his glass to his mouth for a long sip. When he raised his mouth to empty the glass all I could do was watch his neck, mesmerized by the movement of his adam's apple as his throat swallowed down the beer. After he refilled his drink, he set the glass back down on the coaster and let his finger stroke around its rim, his lips faintly pursed in a defiant pout.
I remembered my question; I don't think it ever left his mind.
"Did Illyas send you here to ask me all this?"
The lowered tone of his reply shook dangerously at my already thinly held-together composure; it revealed something of Brandon that seemed dangerously being shaken too. Something in my question had touched on a raw nerve, and as much as I wanted to get inside of the boy's skull, I was painfully afraid that I had offended him... that he would leave.
"No... God, no..." I prayed the contortion of my facial expression would display my sincerity. "No, I... I haven't seen or spoken to him since... that morning."
With an ease that bewildered my already-drunken mind, Brandon's face was again an expression of his boyish charm, the swagger in his eyes starting right back up from where it was momentarily caught in mid-stride.
"The morning I was there?" he asked.
"Yeah. That morning." Was there any other?
"I'm sorry, you know... about what happened that day."
"I don't know what happened that day."
Brandon calmly poured more beer into his glass and drank, then he rested the glass on his knee for a moment before taking more long slow mouthfuls. Casually, he glanced around the courtyard that was almost empty, save for a few couples at tables that were out of earshot; he smoothed down at his waistcoat and adjusted his tie at the neck.
"I want to know what happened." It was a truth that hadn't come up by accident. I had wanted to know; I had wanted Brandon to tell me.
"Maybe you should talk to Illyas..." he said softly, his brown eyes still avoiding mine, looking instead into the glass rested on his knee.
"Was it very bad?"
I could tell from the way his jaw tightened that the smile his lips offered was forced.
"Let's get out of here," he suddenly exclaimed, setting his drink down and slapping at the table with the fingers of both his hands. "If I don't get some action tonight, I think I'm going to just die."
His fingers on the edge of the table started tapping to a beat in his head, and he flashed me the smile I had been craving to see all morning. Arresting my gaze with his again, he paused the tapping, leaned his body deeply forward, and rested a hand on my thigh under the table. His chest was almost touching the tabletop as he laid low and beckoned me closer with a nod and the grin that his smile had formed. Hesitantly, I tilted myself slightly forwards.
"You know, everything has changed now," he said through his grin, but I was still too taken aback by his surprising advance to ask him what he meant. Everything that had been said all evening, everything around me in the open courtyard, everything... was buzzing like static in my head.
And in an instant that moment was gone. Brandon was sitting leaned back in his chair, his hands folded over his crossed knee, his lips in his subtle classic pout, and I wasn't sure if what happened had happened at all.
"Where's your ride?" he asked coolly, taking out two fifty-dollar bills and leaving them under the ashtray. I started to protest but he put a finger over his own lips and whispered, "It'll be our little secret."
Again, I wasn't sure what he was talking about, but was too busy framing that image of him in my mind to pay much notice. Grabbing the bottle of Mexican wine by its neck, Brandon got to his feet and looked down at me with a frown. He snapped his fingers then put his hand on his waist.
"So are you comin'?"
Like a marionette with its strings in his fingers, my legs wriggled to comply; but before I could place my weight on my feet, my knees had buckled beneath me. My head swam with blank thoughts and the surroundings blurred. I looked up at Brandon's beautiful shaking head and offered him a drunken shrug.
"Dear god... You know I absolutely cannot carry you, right?" His words came out almost as a childish whine, his face dramatically appalled. "I just got these pants starched... How much have you had to drink, dude?"
I grinned up stupidly. "A lot, I think."
Brandon raised an eyebrow and shook his head again, taking out his wallet and slipping another two fiftys under the ashtray.
"That should cover it... Used to be a waiter... People who pay their full bill and big tippers get really good karma," he smiled. "Now get your ass off the chair... Don't make me come over there and kiss you."
I had never heard a threat like that one before. How was it a threat when we both knew^×he had to know^×that the proposed was what I wanted? His eyes weren't giving me any answers, and his tight-lipped tilted smile was an unreadable distraction.
I found my legs attempting to stand again. And this time they managed a wobbly stance, even as the world rocked from side to side around me. I felt his fingers touch lightly on my shoulder but heavy on my soul^×I was drunk enough to believe such dribble... and there was an internal rhyme between 'shoulder' and 'soul' that tickled me...
"What are you grinning about, dude?" he said in a mock defensive tone, chuckling, his fingers slipping from its contact.
He didn't replace them.
"Come on... I'm jealous of your drunkenness. I just want us somewhere where we won't have to worry about driving no more, so I can get myself trashed too."
My legs moved under me, taking slow steps at first then settling into a regular pace, the momentum affording me a semblance of balance. The courtyard was beautiful in the dark, illuminated only with warm nimbuses of light stained orange by candlelit lamps. From afar^×as I found myself walking away and leaving the chapel behind^×the lights seemed to float in the darkness, and the sight kept me looking back over my shoulders.
We turned a corner, the chapel disappeared, and only then did I again notice Brandon beside me. For a moment I couldn't remember how he got there, but then he caught sight of me confusedly looking at him and he smiled. And I recognized that it was a different smile from the one he'd had all evening^×all evening... that's right; he's been with me all evening...
"You sure you know where you parked, dude?
Too many things seemed to be happening at once, and yet in a sticky slow motion.
"Hey, Matthew, easy..." He caught me as I staggered heavily to a side, my feet losing its step-by-step focus and my knees giving way beneath me. "Whoa... Just take it easy..."
My head was spinning, my body losing all feeling^×every muscle in me seeming to suddenly release all tension and control.
"Hey, babe, c'mon... Come on, Matthew..."
I felt his breath on my ear before I heard his voice.
"I can't... smell you..."
"Matthew, shut up. You're so fucking wasted..."
"Why can't I smell you?"
"Matthew, listen to me, dammit..."
I felt a jolt of sensation suddenly, as the back of his hand came into harsh contact with my cheek in a hard slap. My eyes squeezed shut tighter and I groaned. The slap that followed came down harder, throwing my head to a side and delivering a sharp stinging pain that buzzed on my cheek, the pain ringing in my ears. My eyelids flew open as I yelped aloud, an involuntary groan catching in the contraction of my throat^×I gagged. Sputtering, I felt myself being shaken, my senses struggling to return.
My eyes were watering from my gag reflex; I was coughing into turquoise silk and I blinked to find my face buried in his chest. We were leaning on a brick wall, on a sidewalk, under a dull streetlight. Brandon's back was against the wall while I was slumped onto him, my legs tangled on the pavement, his arms hooked under my armpits and thrown behind me to keep me supported upright. It was a pathetic embrace and I felt sorry for myself. I grunted groggily, trying to stand on my feet, but they just dragged and shuffled helplessly over the ground.
"God..." I groaned, trying again. But my legs were like forgotten limbs; my arms hung loosely at my sides. I felt Brandon adjust his hold on me, jerking me up by my armpits to keep me from sliding off him.
"Easy, Matthew... Don't worry... Just give yourself a moment..."
I gradually found myself aware of the hand he had on the back of my head. His fingers were barely slipping through the short-cropped tufts of my hair, but it sent shivers up and down my spine. It made me forget of how pathetic the scene was, it made me not care; it made me just want to have him keep holding me, his warm body so tightly pressed, his smaller build tense and flexed under me as his body exerted itself to hold me up.
As if realizing my growing lucidness, his fingers stopped playing with my hair; I could almost feel his wrist, tilted away to keep from touching me. Was it another one of Illyas' rules? Or one of his wife's? Thoughts of Illyas and the boy's wife made me angry; it made me sad. And it gave me the will to pull away. I didn't dare stay that close to his warmth. A trail of saliva clung to his tie as I pulled my face back, which I looked at in horror. There was a wet stain from my drool on his gray waistcoat as well.
"Shit..." I mumbled, trying to lift my arms to wipe at his clothes.
"C'mon... It's alright... Just try and stand up first..."
My legs dangled for another moment before I pulled my feet flat in place on the pavement. My arms found a hint of strength and left my sides; I grabbed at his shoulders for support to pull myself up. But then I found myself face to face with him, our noses barely an inch apart. Whatever anger or... need to turn away... that I had felt... It wasn't there anymore. And my arms wouldn't push myself off him. His eyes were the color of a stream, mossy brown beneath the sparkling iridescence of the water in the sunlight. I was drunk and imagining things, but I had no imagination for that sort of beauty; it was real in him, this gorgeous boy with the tiny mole under his right eye^×which I hadn't taken conscious note of until that moment.
And the moment seemed to last forever... but that was my imagination.
"Matthew..."
His voice tore me out of my skin and left me wanting to sink further into his. Moving his arms from under mine, he placed his hands on my upper arms. Then he gently pried me from him. I could have cried, but we both wouldn't have believed the alcohol-lined tears.
"C'mon, let's get me drunk," he said, speaking so softly that his words didn't seem meant for me to hear.
With a handkerchief he had unfolded from his pocket-square he wiped at the wet spot on the front of his tie and waistcoat, frowning at me playfully. I was standing three paces away from him, but the distance was unbearable as a reminder of how pressed our bodies had been only a minute or two ago. I watched as the boy straightened-out his outfit and folded his handkerchief neatly into the pocket over his breast. Then he took a step closer, his eyes only leaving mine when he looked down to tuck the loosened front of my shirt back into my jeans. I was stunned and irrevocably charmed by the gesture, unable to move or say a word as he continued to smooth and adjust at my clothes. His fingers were too careful, never applying pressure on my skin; they seemed to barely graze over the material between us... I deeply exhaled my held breath when he fastened the top button of my shirt and tugged my collars into place.
His lowered head finally looked up at me and I saw that he wasn't smiling.