MEXICAN GOOD LOOKS

Joel A. Nichols

Ladies and Gentlemen, especially Gentlemen, welcome to the Las Vegas Distrito Federal Exposition Center, a joint venture between the federal district of Sunny Las Vegas, the WynnYooBell Family of Resort Casinos and, most importantly, you, our honored guests! Tonight at the Expo main stage, it’s a sixty-gallon salute to the heritage and history of this place, this great place called the West.

You probably know that we’re the largest bullfighting ring and animal exposition north of Mexico City, and we have quite the lineup tonight. Jalisco’s hot hot hot Jacinto Monmouth is in the ring tonight! And the dazzling delights of Delfino de Moraz and his brave assistants. But first, to welcome you, the Cabaret de Calaca and their mysterious, dangerous Skeleton Ballet….

Backstage, Felipe dodged a big-wheeled cart carrying two of the white tigers back to their pens. One of the tiger tamers told him to watch out, and the big male with thin black stripes roared from inside the cage. Felipe darted down the corridor, passing several French clowns getting ready for the concessions, juggling shrink-wrapped fruit and ice-cream bars. Felipe was working the toro embolado sideshow and had to make sure that the cotton balls they’d be tying to the bulls’ horns were completely soaked through with lighter fluid, but wrapped in such a way that they’d burn slowly and consistently. He had had to run back to one of the storerooms in the lower-level stables to get another can of fluid, and he came running back into the hold just as the stage manager was giving the matadors their ninety-second cue.

Felipe tipped up the can and finished soaking the last two handfuls of cotton, then wrapped them into tight balls. He passed them to another hand, who affixed them to the metal candle-holders fitted over the last bull’s horns. “Showtime,” said one of the matadors, Gabriel Zunca, as he strutted out into the arena. The crowd shrieked at the sight of his hard body and flashy suit. Gabriel Zunca was also the national spokesman for Zembrano Soda Water, and everyone loved his sexy commercials.

Felipe and the other hands gathered in front of the relay screens that broadcast the arena into the backstage holds.

The onstage hands cut the ropes holding the first bull and ignited the cotton wads at the same time. The bull went wild, snorting and shaking its head as sparks flew from Felipe’s expert wraps. Gabriel Zunca strutted around the perimeter of the ring, posing the long lines of his body in elegant arches and preening stretches. Luckily the relay screens muted out the audience; at this point in the show, people were weeping for Zunca to look at them. Eventually, toward the end of the show, he would rip buttons from his outfit and toss them toward the stands. The Expo was so massive, with the arena floor ringed by cameras and microphones and tunnels in and out to the holds, that they rarely even reached the first rows. But these crowds didn’t care. You could buy the replica buttons in the shops and carts outside, anyway.

Felipe thought Gabriel Zunca was full of shit, and hated passing by his dressing room because there was always some young and beautiful woman crying in the hallway. It was always the same story—he was pushy, and rough, and Felipe had also heard some stories from some of the other hands who had gone off with him hoping for a taste of his legendary cock. He had smacked the face of one, uninvited, and then mercilessly fucked his mouth and throat and hadn’t asked to come at all and just let it fly. Felipe had thought he was handsome, before he had started this job, but was glad he’d never given Gabriel Zunca a try.

“Prick,” he muttered under his breath as even the stagehands gathered around his closed-circuit feet hooted and clapped when Zunca dodged the two flaming horns and thousands of kilos of terrified bull with an especially dramatic set of flourishes. As a youth, Zunca had famously studied flamenco in the Nuevo Maghreb. One of the managers shot him a look and another made a note in her tablet. Felipe straightened up and pretended to watch the relay screen. He was lucky to have a job in this show, and couldn’t afford to risk it.

The Gabriel Zunca show went on and on, through several styles of bullfights. Finally, the last, the comicos, were on, and Zunca was having great fun abusing the hands dressed as clowns while they taunted and dodged the bulls. That was Felipe’s dream, to be picked as a clown, because it would put him in the performance union and his wages would almost double. And it wasn’t a bad first step. When his friends would tease him about coming west, to join the Expo, he would always say, “With these Mexican good looks, I’m guaranteed to be a star.” And it was true that he was still turning heads, after four years working the Expo. He looked good in tight jeans with his long legs and a firm but still round ass. But so far he hadn’t ever won a performing role. He practiced all the time, stage skills, dancing, but he never got a callback.

The day he moved to the DF, he started doing a pushup every day and then one more and one more until it burned too bad. Now, every morning he would drop out of his narrow bed and pump through almost two hundred pushups, and then, his body burning and his shoulder numb, he would roll over and do a hundred leg lifts. This exhausted him every day at first, but then kept him strong enough to work shift after shift.

As the bulls came offstage, Felipe leaned over the edge of the paddock and stuck it with a tranquilizer right in the neck. Immediately it slowed and stopped snorting. Then Felipe wrangled each wounded bull into a wooden frame and tied it around the neck and each leg. Another set of hands would lead it back down to the stables where it could be stitched up, loaded with antibiotics, or, sometimes, euthanized. They only killed one bull a night, on purpose, and it was always the last. Finally, it fell to Felipe and the other hands to winch its bloody body onto a handcart and then roll it away. One guy could drive a live bull, but a dead one took at least six or eight.

While Felipe was holding on to the side of the cart, helping nudge its great bulk down the hall, he saw the next performers filing in. Billy and Luke Berry, the original all-American cowboys, strutted into the hold, surrounded by handlers and other staff. One stagehand was leading in their glossy horses, and another was unpacking a crate with their six-shooters, lassos, and other props. They didn’t have that many: the real attraction in this act was the Berry Brothers themselves, both tall and handsome and broad-shouldered, expertly clad in flannel shirts and jeans that looked authentically cowboy from the stands, but were even more authentically haute couture up close: jeans so tight and subtly hand-distressed they looked painted on, each crease and fold sitting perfect on their lithe bodies. Billy Berry was the older one, with sandy-brown hair and a brown cowboy hat. Luke was as blond as you could get in the Estados Unidos Norteamericanos, owing no doubt to some amounts of French or German blood seeping in from the long border the country shared with Nouvelle France, all the way from Louisiana to the Saint Lawrence Seaway along the eastern edge of the Estados Unidos Norteamericanos. They spoke Spanish just like in an old Western, coarsely, proficiently, and confidently. Luke’s accent was stronger than Billy’s.

Both Berrys wore big silver belt buckles that changed from show to show, commercial to commercial. Tonight Luke’s was a shiny miniature in the shape of the Republic of Texas, rearing its bullhorn geography tantalizingly above his tight crotch. Billy’s was an old-style sheriff’s badge. Even preoccupied with the dead bull, Felipe’s eyes were drawn to these two.

And so were the crowd’s! The arena roared as the Berry Brothers took the stage, women and men swooning, grabbing their own belt buckles as the Berrys’ flashed in the spotlights. On the way to the loading dock, where they’d dump the dead bull for pickup, the whole arena shook as the crowd stamped its feet.

The next night was Felipe’s night off, but he always checked the boards in the mornings to see if any supply shifts were opening up. In this town, somebody was always calling out sick or disappearing and the work at the Expo didn’t stop. He saw that there was a gopher slot open during his normal hours, and logged in to claim it. Gophering would have him trucking from the offstage holds to the booths, and to the costumers and the prop closets. He’d get to see all the acts up close and be like a fly on the wall while he was working, and as long as he looked busy he could go anywhere.

He wanted to make sure a supervisor from his normal shift saw him, because it looked good, so partway through his gopher shift he headed to the holds where men were loading bulls out. He delivered a couple of fake messages to one of the stage managers, and then sauntered down the narrow hallway outside the dressing room. Felipe hoped to catch a glimpse of the Berrys, but when he walked past, their dressing room door was closed. He kept walking, looping back around through a long, bright hallway under the stands. He stopped halfway down, and ducked through the steel lattice underneath that section of bleachers. High above, the shifting of the audience on the metal benches was squeaky thunder. Felipe stepped farther in, and then leaned against one of the steel struts and lit a cigarette. Smoking on duty, even a supply shift, was a risk, but this hallway was perfect for getting away with something, and Felipe knew it.

He stood there, breathing deeply and thinking, and suddenly he heard a man’s voice in the hallway. Felipe put out his cigarette and then ducked.

“What do you mean you were just talking to him? I saw you!”

“But it wasn’t—”

“Your pants were undone! And it was all over his chin!”

“Seriously, dude, it really wasn’t what it looked like.”

The voices had moved down the hallway to where Felipe had ducked under the bleachers. As they moved into his view, he saw that it was the Berry Brothers.

Luke was moving away from Billy, and Billy was trying to grab his arm. “I’m sorry, Jed,” Billy said.

“Sorry? I thought nothing was going on.” Felipe cocked his head, confused. Jed?

Billy looked sheepish. He leaned in to kiss Luke, but Luke pushed him away. “Fuck, no, fuck off, Adam. You’re fired!”

“You can’t fire me because I fucked a stagehand, Jed. You’re not in charge.”

“No, but management can, and they will when I tell them. That’s definitely not in your goddamn contract, Adam, and it’s not fit for the Berry image.” Luke and Jed shook his head in disgust and then strode down the hall. Billy and Adam turned and walked the other way, back toward their dressing room.

Felipe was ashamed at how naive he’d been. Of course Luke and Billy Berry were characters; they’d been in this Expo show for years, and these two should have been older if they’d been the actual Berry Brothers. Had there ever been real Berry Brothers, he wondered?

Felipe crawled out from under the bleachers, cautiously moving around the steel struts and into the hallway. He set off back toward the dressing rooms, so he could check the page screen and get his shift back on track. Behind him, a voice said, “Hey! I thought I heard someone!” Felipe turned to see that it was Luke Berry.

He stopped dead in his tracks. “Um, Mr. Berry, I was taking a short break, I didn’t mean—”

“To overhear that? Fuck. Did you think we were really brothers? Fuck!” He leaned in and looked at his nametag. “Felipe, hi, I’m Jed. I play Luke Berry and you just saw some bullshit. Sorry about that.”

“I’m sorry about being here for something so…personal.”

Jed waved his hand. “Adam’s dick should have been personal, too.”

“You, um, love him?” said Felipe.

Jed sighed. “No. Yes. We had a good thing, this job, this life. And if someone else had walked in on him, nothing. We’d be fired. As it is, they’re looking to recast Luke and Billy so they look more relatable, more handsome, more Mexican. More like you, actually.”

Felipe smiled. Jed kept talking. “Are you in the performer’s guild, Felipe?”

Felipe shook his head. “Stagehand. Gopher tonight, on a supply shift.”

“But you want to perform? That’s why you came to Vegas DF?”

Felipe nodded. Jed put one hand on his flashing silver belt buckle and reached the other hand out to Felipe. “Then come with me.”

Jed took Felipe home with him that night. He lived in a sumptuous suite in the Romanesque Towers, a section of the Expo complex known for its high living. Most of it was tourist rooms, but the tops of every massive tower were beehives of luxury residences. The Berrys had a floor and elevator stop all their own, and it opened onto an infinite lap pool with transparent sides and a large water feature that flowed down into the living room area, a pit with a river-rock fireplace and ultramodern linear furniture upholstered in glossy cowhide. Jed’s room—Luke’s room, he had admonished Felipe when they were in the apartment—had a mechanical bull, a rawhide bar, and a canopy bed that fell away to a wall of tinted windows that showed the strip from above, the neon pulsing.

Luke Berry pushed Felipe Sandoval onto his bed. There was a rough denim quilt atop a firm mattress, and the posts looked rough but were smooth to the touch. A leather canopy blocked out part of the skyline view from the bed.

He pulled apart Felipe’s shirt, the pearl buttons snapping open with quiet clicks. He ran his hands over Felipe’s hard pecs. Felipe’s shoulders strained and bulged as Luke touched him all over, running the back of his hand down the silky trail below Felipe’s belly button. Then Luke pressed his hand up against Felipe’s cock, feeling its uncurling bulk beneath his jeans. Felipe sat up, to help Luke pull off his own shirt. Then Luke undid his big belt buckle and Felipe immediately reached for his zipper and the button of his jeans. He undid them, but Luke picked him up under the shoulders and moved him closer to the window, setting him down on an armchair. Felipe tried to sit up, and Luke pushed his chest back down and then planted himself on the floor in front of him. He yanked down Felipe’s jeans and white briefs, tangling them around his boots, and started kissing and licking Felipe’s foreskin.

He kissed his belly and continued running his fingers over Felipe’s chest. He pinched his nipples and Felipe groaned. Then he tangled his fingertips in Felipe’s thick bush and sucked his dickhead into his mouth. Luke’s mouth was soft and wet and his tongue whipped around Felipe’s cockhead while his fingers squeezed his heavy nuts.

Felipe murmured in pleasure as Luke spit on his cock and started sucking all the way down until his nose touched Felipe’s bush. Again and again he swallowed him until Luke almost gagged, then he started working Felipe’s cock with his hand and lips, pumping it into his moist, sucking mouth-hole. He kept at it while Felipe moaned and twitched. A sheen of sweat glistened on Luke’s bicep and chest from his perfect rhythmic jerking of Felipe into his mouth. Felipe’s legs started to tense, and he pushed Luke off his dick.

“Seriously, shit, I’m gonna come if you don’t stop.”

Luke leaned back on his haunches, smiling like a devil, and still cupping Felipe’s balls. He leaned back and tugged off his shiny boots. “I don’t mind if you do,” said Luke, but Felipe was already falling to the floor next to him and reaching to pull down his pants. His dick was massive, just as you’d think Luke Berry’s would be, with a fat round head and a nest of blond bush around the thick bottom. “Nice,” said Felipe, leaning in to smell Luke’s soft skin. He felt the heat radiating from Luke’s cock to his cheek.

Felipe pushed Luke to his feet, and Luke’s smile got even bigger. After he licked the head all over, Felipe drooled thin spit all over it and then sucked it farther down his throat. It filled his mouth and he felt it squeezing his tonsils, stretching open his throat. Felipe grabbed Luke’s hard muscle-butt and pulled it even closer. Breathing through his nose, he let the big meat slide back out of his mouth and then sucked down again and again. Luke reached down and put his hand on Felipe’s neck, lightly tapping the bulge his cock made buried in his throat. Luke planted his feet and bucked back and forth. Felipe kept his hands on Luke’s meaty, round ass.

Luke pulled Felipe to his feet and led him back to the bed where they’d started. Felipe pushed him down, grinding their chests together.

“You can fuck me if you want,” Luke whispered, his lips touching Felipe’s ear. He rolled over and spread his legs. Then he reached and rummaged in his nightstand, and handed Felipe a tube of nano barrier lube. Felipe smeared it on his cock and then squirted more on his fingers to rub on Luke’s crack and hole. He went slowly and softly at first, and Luke moaned.

Felipe climbed on top of him and reached down to guide his dickhead into Luke’s hole. He found it with his thumb, and gently smacked his dick against the hole. Felipe’s cock was rigid and huge, and Luke’s ass gobbled him hungrily. Felipe started sinking into Luke softly, slowly, and then started pumping faster. He was a blur as he put his pushups to better use than wrangling a bull. But like Luke was reading his mind, he started bucking his hips. “Come on, cowboy. Fuck me,” he said, opening himself for Felipe’s whole meat. Felipe thrust faster and faster, but then slowed down so he wouldn’t come so fast.

“Come on my chest, buddy,” Luke said, and rolled over. Felipe straddled Luke’s belly, stroking himself faster and faster as Luke’s big dick smacked against his lower back. Luke was jerking himself with his arm wrapped tightly around Felipe’s hip. They ground their bodies together and both came shuddering and shaking, shooting huge ropey loads all over each other. Felipe lay down, put his lips to Luke’s, and kissed him deeply.

They lay there a long time.

Finally, Luke said, “Adam will be fired tomorrow. I can get you seen by the casting director, not even in the regular audition. Can you ride?”

Felipe sat up. “I’ve been practicing. I can ride and shoot and lasso. And I bet I can pick up the tricks, the jumps and stuff.”

Eventually they took a shower, and they came again locked together on the bench alongside one wall of Luke’s large cube shower that also looked out on the skyline. The next day, Felipe was hired to be Billy Berry, half of the most famous cowboy duo at the Expo.

He learned the tricks fast, and became especially adept at shooting an apple off the heads of clowns that dodged around fake patches of prickly pear and tall saguaros, and quickly mastered the jump and tumble over the mechanized tumbleweeds. Felipe only went back to his old room once. The managers had told him not to say good-bye to his old crew. He was supposed to consider himself Billy Berry now, as long as his contract was valid.

And whatever happened to Adam, the other Billy Berry? Or any of the other Billy Berrys who had ridden into the sunset? Felipe preferred not to know. Eventually they did recast Luke, and Felipe said a teary good-bye to Jed, and did his best to be welcoming to new Luke, a handsome Chicano who had worked in Mexican soaps. Because you never know how much time you have at the Expo.