Chapter Two

Outside Camille’s Wabash Street office, the early spring air was pure and clean—well, at least as pure and clean as the air in the Chicago Loop could be said to be. Bobby emerged from the old building’s revolving door, shaken, as though he had been through some course of treatment that involved electroshock. The L train, rumbling on its tracks overhead, startled him. He didn’t quite know why his first session with the therapist left him feeling so mixed up, his breath coming in quick, staccato puffs, his heart racing.

“I just wanted someone to love me.”

What he had admitted to the therapist came back to him, like some snatch of music on a distant stereo, taunting, raw, hurtful, and true all at once. Why had he admitted such a pathetic need to this woman, who was really nothing more than a stranger? If there weren’t pedestrians and traffic all around, he might have shouted the question to the sky, seeing if maybe there was a God up there who would supply an answer.

So what? Who doesn’t want someone to love them? Jesus, what a pitiable creep you are. You should march back in and cancel that second visit. That woman has a way of worming way too much out of you.

The bright spring day, unseasonably warm, was a lie. A shining, promising testimony to his failures in life. Sure, he was successful as a marketing executive (except he wasn’t sure how long that success would last if he continued to slip out on weekdays for fucking psychotherapy), but really, he had no one. No friends. His family was half the country away, living in Seattle. And he certainly had no boyfriend.

He wished there was just one person he could call, someone to whom he could release the thoughts and feelings that had been brought up so unexpectedly in the short session. But he couldn’t think of a single person who would be interested, even though his iPhone directory was full of numbers.

Being released from that shrink’s office was like having a plastic bag snatched off his head, though. Bobby felt like he could breathe again.

I don’t know if I want to confront my demons.

Who was it who said if we get rid of our demons, we might also get rid of our angels? I’m with that guy.

Right now, it was just good to breathe. Bobby looked around and noticed that the office buildings in the south loop had emptied, just so everyone could get out and enjoy the sunshine after the claustrophobic winter with its gray skies, arctic winds, snow, and sleet.

Bobby stepped out of the building’s shadows so the sun poured down on him. He wished he could just blot out the last hour, lose himself in the warmth from the rays. He forced himself to take deep, lung-stretching breaths and let the air out slowly. Calm down.

Wow. I don’t want to think about being in Camille’s office. I don’t know if I can go back. She’s like a mirror, only her mirror made me see something ugly. Who the hell needs that? How is that therapeutic?

Bobby strode down Wabash Avenue toward the stairs that would take him up to the L, which rumbled overhead. On the platform, he considered the last time he saw Caden. Bobby had thought the guy would be his best friend for life, the only person he could speak of, outside of his immediate family, who seemed to like Bobby for himself and not for sex. Of course, when he and Caden had first met, Bobby had tried to get him into bed. He tried to do that with just about every “fucking gorgeous” gay man he met, but he was never Caden’s type. That had turned out to be a good thing. Caden showed him, for the first time maybe, how two men could be friends without having a sexual component thrown into the mix.

But now Caden was gone. For good. Bobby stared down the L train tracks, empty as his heart, and thought how he had pushed Caden away with his selfishness and lies. Bobby kicked a flyer that had blown in front of him off the wooden platform and onto the tracks. It was my own damn fault. He knew that now, but how to fix it?

He knew he had only gone to see Camille because of Caden.

Bobby flashed back to last week when he had opened his mailbox to find a handwritten envelope inside. He had almost gasped. How often did people get handwritten envelopes these days? He had turned the envelope over and looked closely to make sure the handwriting was bona fide and not the work of a talented machine. It was real.

The return address on Fargo immediately rang a bell.

It was where Caden’s boyfriend lived. Oh, how Bobby remembered that address! Sneaking out of the back door one cold, frigid winter night to avoid seeing Caden, who had just arrived unexpectedly. Bobby had been playing games, trying to create tension and drama, discord where none had existed. All so he could claim Kevin as his own.

Since that night last winter, when all his lies were exposed, like bugs being confronted by bright light, Bobby had been really alone. No matter how many guys he hooked up with at the baths, the bars, or online, he could never seem to fill the hole his deceit had opened up back then.

Why would Kevin be writing to me?

He wasn’t.

Caden was.

Inside the envelope was a piece of paper wrapped around a business card—Camille D’Amico’s. The piece of paper holding the card bore a hastily scribbled note:

You need help. Go see her. Then maybe we can talk.

C.

Bobby remembered looking around the lobby of his building, feeling guilty for reasons he couldn’t quite put a finger on, and stuffing the note and card into his pocket.

He’d wondered, heading up to his apartment in the elevator, if he should call Caden to let him know he had received the card. He would thank him for reaching out, trying not to gush, but so relieved that Caden had, after all the weeks of silent reproach. Because he knew it would please Caden, he would promise to make an appointment with the therapist. He would do anything to make amends.

The doors had opened for his floor, and Bobby affirmed to himself that of course he would go see her. But calling Caden? A little voice inside Bobby’s head had told him that wouldn’t be such a bright idea. It would be precisely what his old friend wouldn’t want. Bobby had been calling him, first every day after it all blew up in their faces and then weekly and then every other week.

Caden would never call back. Would never pick up. Bobby had toyed with the idea of calling from a different phone, one where Caden wouldn’t have the number stored in his iPhone’s memory, but gave up on that. More duplicity—just what had gotten him into trouble in the first place. Somehow Bobby didn’t think Caden would take kindly to being tricked, yet again, even in a small way.

But as he’d pushed the key into his front door lock that day, Bobby had remembered how he had clung, with almost feverish hope, to five of the eleven words Caden had written—then maybe we can talk.

Now the train that would take Bobby north to Belmont and his apartment in the sky pulled into the station, crackling and rumbling. He boarded, wondering if one visit with Camille would be enough to get Caden and him talking again.

Nah.

Bobby pressed his forehead wearily against the glass, to stare out through a grimy window at the sun-dappled day, wondering what he should do first when he got home.

Log onto Adam4Adam or just post an ad on Craigslist?

In the end, he opted for Craigslist. For one, it was easier than wading through all the online profiles, playing the back and forth of instant messaging, narrowing things down, weeding out the fakes from the real guys. That had been his experience on Adam4Adam. Online cruising used to be easy, Bobby thought. Now it just appeared to be an elaborate game.

Craigslist, with its neat little time-stamped ads, cut to the chase quicker. Some guys even had clever ways of beating the system that forbade including phone numbers by writing the numbers out, interspersing them with actual words, anything to slip by whatever computer sentries the folks at Craigslist had set up. Bobby wondered why they bothered with this prohibition anyway, when all it took was a quick email to get a guy’s phone number. Everyone was so impatient these days.

No matter.

Bobby was tired too, exhausted from the soul-baring he had just done with Camille. He wanted to forget that whole episode. And nothing brings oblivion quicker than sex. Sex had a way of blocking everything out, pushing all one’s cares out of the picture, intensifying the physical while, at the same time, downplaying the emotional.

Craigslist men-for-men is a world unto itself. It’s like a party with horny men that grows every time I refresh my browser. Usually, I post my own ad with a couple of hot chest shots that showcase my hairless, ripped pecs and one of my taut ass, but today all I feel like doing is cruising the postings, hoping I will find someone who looks, if not tempting, then at the very least, acceptable.

My God. It’s only three in the afternoon on a weekday, and there are dozens and dozens of guys online and looking. Certainly, I can find one to come over and make me happy again, make me feel whole again. Feel my hole again. Fill my hole again.

Bobby snorted out a laugh. He got up from his desk and slipped into a pair of boxers and a loose-fitting T-shirt. Gotta be comfortable for the hunt. He also needed sustenance, so he wandered out to the kitchen to splash some vodka into a glass and top it off with a little cranberry juice.

He sat back down, comfortable, fortified, to begin clicking through the ads. He immediately eliminated the guys who were looking to host. I’m too pooped to travel, even if it’s just around the corner—hell, even if it’s on another floor of this Lake Shore Drive high-rise I call home. I want someone to come to me.

Then he eliminated the guys who were parTying. Yes, the capital T is not an error. That T stands for Tina, and Tina is short for crystal meth. I don’t need some nasty-ass tweaker coming over here with his dirty pipe, dirty spike, dirty straws, or whatever the hell he uses to get that toxic shit into his system. Besides, those guys almost always have trouble getting it up, and I don’t want some hungry, high desperate-to-bottom playmate with spring-loaded legs today. Not today. Today I want a big dick inside me to take me away, like the old ad for Calgon bath powder used to promise.

Surprisingly, or maybe not so much, cutting out the partiers and those who were looking to host immediately narrowed the field considerably.

Then he weeded out those who had posted more than an hour and a half ago. If they’re still on, something’s wrong. But it’s more likely they’ve given up, hooked up, or simply moved on and forgotten to take down their ads.

He rose to pour himself another splash of vodka, this time skipping the cranberry juice.

At last, Bobby’s fingers hesitated over one ad that looked promising. The guy in this ad said he was a student at Loyola University, downtown campus, so the proximity to Bobby was good. His stats: six one, 180, red/blue, swimmer’s build. (If the weight is accurate, I don’t have to worry that “swimmer’s build” means Shelley Winters—God rest her soul—in the original Poseidon Adventure.) He claimed to have an eight-inch dick (but then, most of the guys on Craigslist seemed to have eight-inch cocks), low hangers, and loved to fuck. He claimed he was twenty-four.

But the two pics he had attached to his ad were what really set Bobby’s heart to racing. One showed the guy’s dick, which did indeed look sizable—long and thin and hanging down between two freckled, muscled thighs like a snake. It had a very pretty, very purple head, kind of like a plum. Unlike most guys on here, though, he had also attached a face pic, and there was something so sweet about his red hair, freckles, and wide, perfect-toothed smile that it just set Bobby’s blood pumping quickly southward. He looks like a bad boy, a gay Huck Finn come to life.

Bobby readjusted his dick in his boxers and clicked on the hyperlink to respond. He typed:

Hey, man. Saw your ad and am looking to take cock down my expert throat and up my tight ass, as rough and as many times as you want to give it. Play safe, but lean more toward wild than mild. You look like my kind of hot-ass man. On LSD (the drive, not the drug) and am looking for company NOW. Hit me up if you’re interested.

Bobby attached a full-body shot from last summer of him on his bed, loving the way the light defined his muscles and how the sun had crafted a perfect field of white around his hard dick. His face looked hungry. He attached another one that showed the other side. My creamy white ass, framed by the deep tan of my thighs and lower back, should really entice this dude if he’s truly a top like his ad claims.

Bobby hit Send and went back to perusing the ads. He saw a couple more who piqued his interest—a black guy who claimed to have an eleven-inch dick and a daddy with a ripped bod and a face like the actor Sam Elliot—but he would allow Loyola big-man-on-campus a few minutes to respond.

But only a few—he’d found that if they didn’t write back right away, they weren’t interested. If they got back hours later, they were flakes. Hey, I have learned the rules through hard-won experience.

If it’s gonna happen, I’ve learned, it happens quick.

And Loyola guy wrote back right quick. An email popped up in Bobby’s Gmail from Chitown Top Stud. Perfect. He opened it to read:

You sound like my kind of guy. Looking to get my dick drained (four-day load built up) and can come multiple times. You up for some hard-core pounding? Depending on where you are, I can hop in a cab and be to you within the hour. I’m downtown right now, near the Water Tower. So?

Bobby typed back what was essentially a great big neon hell yes and threw caution to the wind, giving him his cell and his address. Why waste time? The sooner he gets that fine dick over here, the sooner we can get down to business.

His fish-on-the-hook seemed to be of a like mind because almost simultaneously with sending Bobby’s email, his phone started to ring.

“Hey,” Bobby answered, automatically deepening his voice.

“What’s up? You messaged me from Craigslist. I’m the redhead.”

“And I’m the bottom. You up for comin’ over?”

“Yup.”

“Then let’s do it. Ask for Nelson in 2013 when you get here.”

“See you soon, man. And—be clean.”

“Always. How long?”

“Take me fifteen minutes, maybe less. I’ll hop in a cab.”

“See you soon.”

It’s time to hit the shower. God, don’t let him be a flake.

A half hour later, Bobby’s phone rang. He hurried to answer it, noting that the caller display indicated the call was coming from the front desk. Thank God. There are so many flakes in this online hookup world, I’m glad this guy at least had the decency to show up, which is more than I can say for many of my so-called paramours.

Bobby pressed the button that would connect him with the caller. As he did, he checked out his image in the large, gilt-framed mirror opposite the bed. He smiled. He looked good, skin glowing from the hot shower, ripped, everything in the right place. He had put on a pair of black Papi trunk briefs that outlined his package nicely. He turned to look at the back view and loved the rise of his cheeks. Bubble butt… You could set a tray on this ass…

“Mr. Nelson? There’s a man here to see you. Says his name is Andy?”

I guess it’s Andy. We never did exchange names. I wish we had one of those systems a lot of the high-rises have, where you can see what your visitor looks like on your TV, via a closed-circuit system. But I saw Andy’s pics, and if he’s even close to how sweet he looks in them, I know I’m in for a treat. “Send him on up, Jim.”

“Sure thing.” Bobby hung up and lowered the sheets on the bed. He adjusted the blinds open just a hair so the late-afternoon sunlight fell in filtered slats across the sheets. He queued up an old vintage porn—Joe Gage’s LA Tool and Die—on his iMac and was distracted for a moment by the opening shot of a guy on his knees, giving head to a whole roomful of guys. Hot. He made sure to lower the moans, sighs, and groans—and the accompanying cheesy soundtrack—to just above audible. Popping his iPhone into the speaker unit on the bedside table, he clicked on his Pandora “trance” station.

He opened the nightstand drawer:

Lube, check.

Poppers, check.

Condoms, check.

It looks like we are all set to go.

Good thing, too, because right now someone was knocking lightly on his front door. The gentle tap, three times, set Bobby’s heart to racing and an ineffable sense of exhilaration coursing through him, banishing to oblivion the worries he had brought up in that frizzy-haired therapist’s office earlier that day. He hurried to silence the knocking, which was now sounding a second time, and hoped that soon someone would be pounding hard on his back door.

As Bobby reached for the doorknob, he held within his mind’s eye the visual image of that big pink dick and that naughty-boy face as he peered into the peephole. Shoot. He’s standing away from the door. All I can see is a bit of shoulder—a white T-shirt that tells me nothing.

Bobby shrugged and opened the door. The smile he had pasted on his face like makeup dwindled away to nothing.

He is nothing like what I expected. No, the pics, I’m thinking, weren’t fake, but they were taken maybe ten years ago. Or more. Yes, the red hair is there, but it’s rapidly thinning and has strands of brittle gray mixed in with the red. He’s wearing a pair of rimless glasses that do nothing to hide his pale blue eyes, rimmed in red. His nose reveals a drinker—a bit on the bulbous side and marred by broken veins. The usual accompaniments to an aging man are all present in his face—lined forehead, crow’s feet, and jowls that are starting to sag just a bit.

He’s about thirty pounds overweight and looks like he hasn’t seen the inside of a gym in decades. I wonder if the dick pic was even him.

Nonetheless, Bobby considered himself forever the optimist and hoped that at least the cock portrait was for real. At least dicks don’t age—much—or shrink, right?

Bobby replanted the smile on his face and opened the door wide, ushering Andy inside. He muted the voices in his head that were yelling at him, a chorus of scolders. They wondered why he was taking this any further. The guy is obviously not even in the same league. And I know what the voices are telling me is true—that, once upon a time, I would have just patted the guy’s shoulder, looked into his eyes, and said, politely but firmly, “Sorry you made the trip, but I think I’m gonna pass.”

But now, Bobby just wanted sex, never mind that those same voices were telling him sex was just another word for oblivion. Bobby told himself: he’s a man with a presumably hard dick. I don’t want to go back to square one online.

You just want to get it over with. And how in the hell is that the right attitude for sex?

Bobby gestured toward the bedroom. “Wanna come back to my room? I’ve got some porn playing. Good stuff. You like Joe Gage?”

But the guy didn’t reveal his feelings one way or another about the director Bobby considered the master of precondom porn, the best of the best. What he did do was follow along, like a puppy, as Bobby led the way back to the bedroom. Bobby noted that his breathing was heavy. The guy is either a smoker—yuck—or he’s already getting excited and is panting a little. Let’s hope, for both our sakes, it’s the latter.

But the charred tobacco smell wafting off the guy told Bobby it was more likely the former.

In the bedroom, Bobby shut the blinds fully, deciding the atmosphere was no longer necessary. Bobby, just like everyone else in this warren of Near North Side high-rises had binoculars—which were used, as everyone else used them—for spying, Rear Window style, on neighbors. Bobby didn’t want any prying eyes seeing, even through partially closed blinds, what he had “gotten lucky” with today.

He had a reputation to uphold.

Didn’t he?

He stood by the side of the bed, watching dispassionately as Andy undressed, clumsy. His knees creaked as he bent down to unlace his sneakers. Bobby would have chuckled, if it weren’t so sad when the guy’s foot got caught up in the bottom of his jeans and he almost toppled over.

Slowly, with a sense of resignation Bobby hoped didn’t show, he brought out the lube and set it on the nightstand, throwing a handful of condoms, like confetti, on the bed. He sighed and shut off the new age music, turning up the volume on the porn to fill the room with synthesizer music and the sound of butch men grunting, groaning, and whispering filth.

Bobby guessed he could just close his eyes and listen.

Bobby took one more glance at Andy as he pulled down his boxers. He was relieved to see that at least the dick shot didn’t lie. Andy’s dick was as big as advertised, and it appeared to be rock hard, almost so tumescent the thing looked about ready to explode. I wonder if he popped a Viagra before coming over.

Bobby slipped out of his briefs and knelt on the bed, facing away from his lover-of-the-moment, so he could watch the action on the screen while the guy stood beside the bed and fucked him. Although it was obvious, Bobby pointed it out anyway: “Condoms on the bed.” No way was it worth catching something from this fucker.

Bobby squinched his eyes shut and held his breath as he felt the guy press close, his heavy breath on his back. Bobby lowered his head to his arms, crossed before him on the bed. He felt exposed, vulnerable. He reached down and tugged at himself and discovered he was not even a little bit hard.

A voice bit into his consciousness, one that sounded very much like his therapist’s, and she asked, “So why are you doing this?”

Bobby had no answer, other than sending out one thought telepathically to the guy, who was now pushing himself inside Bobby, making Bobby wince. Just get it over with quickly…

It didn’t hurt.

He pumped a few times, no more than three or four, and cried out, “Fuck!” gasping and groaning as though he was having the world’s best orgasm. Instinctively, Bobby clamped his ass muscles down on the throbbing cock as it emptied—Bobby hoped—inside the condom.

Bobby peered back through his legs to witness the specter of fat thighs moving away. The condom, now full, hung from Andy’s rapidly deflating cock. Bobby couldn’t help it; he snickered. The whole scene wasn’t funny, though.

It was sad.

He watched as the guy pulled the rubber from his half-erect dick and flung it to Bobby’s bamboo floor.

Hot.

Bobby and Andy did not say another word to each other as Andy dressed. There was a palpable sense of embarrassment in the room. Reclining on the bed, Bobby eyed the man, sending out a telepathic message for him to hurry up—hurry up and leave.

The guy turned to him, a questioning look on his face.

Bobby said, “Just straight down the hall. The door out is on your right.”

The guy smiled. “Thanks.”

“Sure. It was great.”

Bobby listened to the man’s footfalls as he headed down the hallway toward the front door. When he heard the door close, he got back online.