Copyright © 2011 by Mykola Dementiuk
Published by Synergy Press/Sally Miller
Lambda Literary Award First Place 2009, 2012
Times Square Queer | Columbia Alumni Association
MYKOLA DEMENTIUK’S superb storytelling shines throughout this tale of a young adolescent boy growing up in New York City. The boy, at fourteen, has his life centered around the East River Park rather than Times Square like in Mykola’s other writings.
On the surface the story appears to be about teenage sexual experimentation, but underneath is revealed a boy’s thoughts and desires, yearnings and fantasies, questions and musings, with a dark underpinning. Read along as the boy makes an exciting discovery in the park and follow his sexual adventures. You may finish wondering about his past and his future. Mykola’s courage in writing about such topics as teenage sexuality, cross-generational relationships, and cross-dressing in today’s world should be admired. The discourse on femininity/masculinity/gay/straight is very interesting to follow, whether you agree or not. Perhaps it will bring questions to your mind.
BABY DOLL
A Sissy of the Lower East Side
HIS REAL FASCINATION was with words, all sorts of words. Yet the object described by the word rarely had as much hold on him as did the word itself, the letters and syllables which controlled the definition. Sometimes he played with a single word for hours, twisting it in his head, reciting and feeling its curves with his mouth and tongue. Spelling it forwards, backwards, shifting the letters about and creating other words, nonsensical words which made him wonder what object could be created to be assigned to that word. Eventually the word he started with, again spelled correctly, had even less meaning and definition and now seemed totally ill-suited for the object it supposedly defined.
The words and objects of the feminine were always the most fascinating and played with. Not so much the physiological variants describing breasts, buttocks, or vagina – tits, ass, cunt – those were even more nonsensical and perverted than any he could contort. Gazongas, jugs, twat. What idiot made those up? But the feminine words rarely heard in daily conversation – brassiere, panty, girdle – these words were out of bounds for his gender. Since he had no right to bring them up, much less join in the conversation when they were uttered, he had only his fantasies of what they could look like, how they could smell, and most of all, how they could feel sliding on or off a body.
It’s absurd, but how often in a lifetime will a male have need of the word brassiere? How many times will he utter the word skirt, or slip, or chemise, or nightie, or panty? Words of the feminine are like the secret unknowable words claimed only by the cognoscenti, ancient holy words that summon Death when uttered by the uninitiated, by the unworthy, the un-female.
Though he knew the words, played with and muttered them when he imagined (and longed for) the objects, or stared greedily at the glimpse of one – a swatch of a bra under an upraised arm, a panty-line in tight-curved pants, a girdle in a store window – he had still not entered the realm of actually touching them on a female body. He was only fourteen, and had been suffering the burdensome and explosive ache of male virility and teenage virginity.
The ache probably would have resolved itself in the way it always had: an attraction to a girl, a hand clasp, a kiss, a grope, an entry. But in the all-boys school he attended the only females were the middle-aged teachers and administrative secretaries. They were as unapproachable and unattainable as the knowledge they professed to teach and know but which somehow never sank in or seemed to have any relevance as to why it should sink in.
It wasn’t long before he started cutting classes, wandering the streets, masturbating in public restrooms, and spending entire days exploring the East River Park. Yet if he longed so much to make contact with a girl, he was definitely in the wrong place. He would have done better in some of the nearby parks close to the all-girls’ schools, where they chattered and gossiped on park benches, their skirts high on their legs, their blouses tight on their chests, their budding femininity like the welcome warmth of a spring day compared to his desolate wintry longing.
He prowled the solitary park lanes, back and forth, up and down, idling, staring at the river, every now and then spying on a couple entwined on a park bench, but rarely coming upon a girl alone or a group of girls together. Once he did follow a woman walking a small dog from the park entrance at the Houston Street ramp to the 10th Street exit, almost twelve blocks, the little dog yelping and tugging on its leash the whole way. But he didn’t dare follow the woman out of the park, even though he was certain the woman smiled down at him from the highway overpass.
All he saw was the arc of her panty line disappearing under the curve of her tight rounded buttocks. He bustled to the closest restroom and ejaculated before he had even freed his erection from his pants. Only later, wiping himself off, did he realize he could have gone after the woman, that her smile was a definite invitation to follow, but by the time he returned to the ramp and looked across the highway, there was no sight of her. For days afterwards he lingered around Houston Street, hoping she’d return. Then he’d rush to 10th Street, fantasizing she was crossing the ramp there, then back to Houston Street where she had crossed over that first time. He constantly studied the windows of the housing project on the other side of the highway overlooking the park, thinking, hoping, praying he could spy her half-dressed image in a window. But either her shades were down or she lived elsewhere, and he never saw her again.
Yet was it really the woman he longed for, or the idea of female clothes on her body? Touching the clothes, stroking them, disrobing them, one by one, article by article: blouse, bra, stirrup pants, stretch tights, tiny panties.… What then?… For days he masturbated to the image of her tan-colored pants – in them she had appeared nude, cinching her waist and ass and thighs in a hold as he couldn’t imagine. What would it be like to be clutched in such a constricting clasp so as to be almost frozen and immovable?
Yet she had no problem moving, in her stirrup pants, on heels that tightened and firmed the supporting leg flesh, puffing her ass, arching her belly, pants holding in a blouse that squeezed her breasts, round, high … inviting? What could create that look? Clothes alone? Outside the park the unattainable images of beautiful girls in beautiful clothes seemed like a taunt, an insult, almost a threat; but in the park, in imagination and memory and longing, the possibility of clothes was real and certain. If clothes make the man, they can undo or redo the boy.…
At first he couldn’t believe they were an actual pair of panties, but they were the color – pink, what else? – and the size – almost palm size – of a real pair. Except for the soiled hardness at the crotch they were satiny and enticing, but too new-looking to be lying discarded on the grass. Another swatch of nearby pink 5 caught his eye, and he was almost afraid to believe it, like some kind of miracle or gift from the Universe: a bra, a pink bra to match the pink panty!
Where was the girl that went with them? Also lying somewhere about? He looked at the two articles of clothing, his penis stiff, and snatched up the panty. He shuddered at the feel of satin – the first time he had ever touched panty-satin – almost blinded by the sensation spinning up his arm and through his body. Like a thief suppressing his greedy enjoyment and victory for later, he quickly shoved the panty in his pocket. But the bra he lingered over, stealthily walking around it, examining it from each angle, gingerly nudging it with his foot as if scared something might jump at him from under the crushed satiny cups.… What? A mouse? A spider? A tit?… He snatched up the bra.
He clutched the underclothes in his fists, one in each pocket, pulsing his fingers in and out of the material, and walked quickly to the nearby restroom. It wasn’t so much that the bra and panties reminded him of a woman, a girl, a female, but of things feminine, that is, of stereotypes of the feminine: of softness and gentleness, of lolling about on satin sheets, caressing oneself in powders and creams, in bubble-baths and perfumes, of being taken care of and loved, and all because of one’s natural birthright of having been born female.…
Where did these skewed images of the feminine come from? A mother who nightly cleaned Wall Street offices? A drunken father who catered to 3rd Avenue addict/prostitutes, then came home to beat his wife? Teachers and nuns in a grade school who periodically ejected him as unfit for class participation? Too many television shows with beautiful actresses playing roles they could never be in real life?
Or perhaps each of us is born with an innate hatred of the other gender, a hatred that in some, borders on jealousy and regret that one has been cheated in being born different, being born male, or being born female, and striving to correct that ‘error’ of the commonplace with exaggerations of one’s unique difference. Dykes bullying like males, queens softening into females, and each in a ‘new’ gender role as grotesquely facile as the one they’ve rejected.…
The boy couldn’t wait to try on his new garments. The restroom was cold, its brown wall and floor tiles doing little to instill a sense of warmth or comfort. The name – comfort station – was a misnomer, as there was no comfort here. It was strictly utilitarian: you entered to pee, to shit, to wash your hands, and you left. Even the toilet stalls were doorless – why have privacy for a natural bodily function everyone had to do? – the toilet bowls open and exposed, and though he had never been interrupted while taking a shit, it was always a hurried roosting lest someone did enter.
Even his chronic masturbations at the upright urinals, sometimes six or seven times a day (not counting his evening ones at home) were also hurried for fear of interruption, but he was always left alone. On rainy days he stayed in the restroom for hours at a time until the boring sameness of the urinals and stall and his own repetitive jerk-off images drove him back out into the desolate park.
There was nothing, or anyone, to be afraid would interrupt him, but public places are just that, public. Just as he had often unobtrusively watched lovers on benches, so he, too, often felt himself being watched and observed, and would turn to catch someone, usually a man, eyeing him from across the baseball fields or on a pathway leading from the river promenade.
Thus it was a nervous and hurried disrobing. He wanted the garments on him since he had first spotted them, disbelieving his good fortune at their unexpected appearance in the dirt. But the enigma of the girl who had worn them intrigued him: did she run off naked in the night, pursued by someone equally naked, like satyrs and nymphs gadding about in forests and woods, free and uncaring of who saw or condemned or even joined in?
Perhaps he should have explored further, perhaps she had discarded a garter belt nearby, or dark nylons, a skirt, a blouse … but he shook his head, his breathing deepening, forcing him to slow down, relax, take it easy … put them on one at a time … the bra first.… He held it to his face, the bra surging into his mouth, his nose and eyes into each curved cup, imaging he smelled flesh, stiff nipples, soft tits, hungry lust and passion aching to be touched, clasped, caressed, licked, sucked, fucked.…
How did he naturally seem to know the complicated logic of putting on a bra? It seemed like the most natural thing in the world, at least for a girl.… He had once seen his mother do it, and wanting to do the same, he tugged a spare bra around his chest. She pulled it away, chiding him that when a boy puts on a girl’s clothes his mother will die.… Mother was another elusive word he played with, a word filled with so many meaningful definitions and conjectures, so many threatening ones, so many forgiving ones, so many worthless and meaningless ones too.…
He held the panties to his face, his eyes and mouth an expression of fear and lust, his penis more stiff than he had ever been able to rouse himself. With the first touch of the satiny material on his legs the panties seemed to rise up his flesh on their own, shimmering up his thighs and into the crook of his ass. Only his erection proved a hindrance, the panty straining to cover, to clutch, to smother the unfamiliar protrusion.… Then he heard the footstep and saw the man. His face went white and his eyes widened in fear. One arm automatically crossed his chest as the other tried to shield his crotch.
With one more step the man was on him, tugging the boy’s cock out of the panty, groping the flat brassiere cups, and the boy’s ejaculation was immediate: sudden, shuddering, devastating. For the first time in his life he had been sexually touched by another. The satisfaction of that touching was unlike anything he had ever experienced in touching himself. Strange hands on his penis and body, especially dressed as he was, and his destiny opened up to immediate fulfillment, his eruption like a last and final release of his solitary boyhood – an oozing, lubricating liquid that spilled not only out of his penis and scrotum but from every pore and sensate fiber of his body and soul. There was no buckling or shooting, only a desperate clutching of the man, holding his shoulders and wrapping his legs around the man’s as he was lifted off the ground and pounded against the bathroom stall wall. There was no penetration, yet the boy felt himself fucked as hard and deep as any girl.
The rain kept him out of the park the next day – which it had never done before – and the following day as well, though it didn’t keep him from wearing his panties and bra and trying to imagine what else could have happened had he remained with the man and not fled like the coward he now felt himself to be. Of course he had seen the man before – another solitary constant in the constantly solitary park – and had paid him no mind as the man circled after him down the park lanes, smiling, gesturing toward the restrooms. He had even once unexpectedly turned and asked for a cigarette, which the man eagerly offered and told him to keep the almost-full pack.
Because it was pleasant to be pursued like that, followed like a girl, having someone trying to pick you up, it was even more pleasant to tease the pursuer, to bend over and tie a shoelace as he hovered behind you, to lean and stretch against the river railing as he gaped before you, to flit away if he got too close.
He often fantasized what it would be like to be touched as a girl by a man – to be groped, kissed, felt, sucked … fucked. Because it had to be a girl/guy type of thing: one fem, the other butch; one top, one bottom; one dressed as a girl, one dressed (or undressed) as a guy. His fantasies were very specific as to the role-playing that would go on: it would be a strictly a heterosexual lovemaking, and what difference did it make if the two partners were of the same gender?
He had never had sex with a girl, and he could only imagine how it could happen with a man. And what could have happened and how were exactly the fantasies he now masturbated to: the man atop him, behind him, inside him. Suddenly he began to realize that the longing and craving for female clothing was more then just a fetish or a substitute for a lost or unattainable female, but a desire to be that female and have someone admire him, desire him, love him, as he appeared in that clothing. Even if he had a closetful of female attire it wouldn’t be enough to simply wear the clothes if there were no one to dress up and undress for. Masturbation was futile and meaningless if it was solitary and not mutual with another’s.
But why the eternally-maligned complexity of transvestitism and not the accepted ease of homosexuality? There were openly gay boys in his freshman class who would have befriended him, who would have supported and accepted him in his difference and coming out, but he was repelled by their open sameness, their clique-like conformity, by their flaunting of their difference as if gay were better. It wasn’t that their brashness and openness was as boring and obnoxious as the gang-cliques of thieves and muggers who infested the school corridors and stairs and who bullied, beat, and robbed students going to and from class. He wouldn’t have joined either.
Transvestism is not endemic of gayness, wherein the ideal is male, oneself or another, but more of a female phenomenon intrinsic to the culture’s glorification of the feminine. Or at least how a culture views and creates feminine stereotypes which most females can’t even aspire to.
The transvestite doesn’t want to be a housewife. She doesn’t want to look like Alice Kramden or Edith Bunker waiting for Ralph or Archie to get home. She wants to be Christie Brinkley and Claudia Schieffer plastered on magazine covers with Billy Joel singing of love for his Uptown Girl and David Copperfield never even once thinking of pulling a disappearing act.
Reality is never a problem for the transvestite: she wants it both ways, and gets it. Reality is transcended by the denial that reality has meaning, that creation cannot be played with, manipulated, altered, rejected, and a new reality created. This new reality is a woman unique and unlike any other, capable of softness and hardness … evolution reaching its apex in the form of a woman with a penis.…
He returned to the rainy park, his bra and panties a permanent comforting part of him now, and walked the length of the park and back before he spotted the umbrella-covered stranger coming out a clump of bushes by the comfort station where they had first touched. A teenage boy was quickly walking away from the same bushes and disappeared up the promenade.
He paused behind a tree, afraid, jealous (had the two been together?) and tried to focus on the stranger. But on rainy days the park takes on a misty stillness of vague quiet and disguise that is hesitant and wary, the steady rain and fog-like aura almost a primeval brewing of something new and unexpected lurking at the end of the ever-connecting and re-circling paths and walkways.
From his safety behind the tree the image of the stranger was like a tease pulling and drawing him to come closer, to come nearer, to come together and experiment with the safety of danger so as to discover and comprehend the real mysteries of the park and himself forever.
The boy stepped from behind the tree and the stranger looked at him in pleasant surprise. The boy waited. He wanted it to be like before, easy, instant. He wanted to be encircled by the man’s arm, to melt in his touch, to come in his hand.…
The man approached and stood before the boy, smiling, shutting his umbrella which was doing little to protect him from the wet mist. The boy knew that if they were naked together the tips of their hard dicks would touch and flit against each other. He shut his eyes at the image, certain he was feeling a dick touch his own, and orgasmed in his panties and pants…
Can penile ejaculation be called that when the penis is clasped and clutched and curled against itself in a pair of panties, when the ejaculation is restricted and contained in a seeping of trapped liquid that is not shot or spurted but eased out in a flurry of shudders and shivers that almost destroys one’s conscious awareness? If the myth of female orgasms being entire-bodied and long-lasting were true, and orgasm not merely confined to a single organ expending itself in an instant, then what male would not choose to be female and shut up his dick in himself to experience that?
The boy fell onto the stranger’s raised thigh, their arms around each other, blocking even further the release of his already entrapped and bubbled semen. Being held by another only heightened the pleasure and peace that swept over him. Melting in a torrent of release, he was comforted by another’s presence and assistance in his freedom, the man’s arms around him like a safety belt, a life buoy. He swooned deeper, thoughtless, swaying aimlessly into the unknown experience of life and sex and love.
He felt a tongue in his ear and opened his eyes to the man’s stubbled neck, the man’s mouth dipping to lick and kiss and suck. The stubble tore into the corners of his lips but he sucked greedily, his tongue flitting, his teeth biting, gnawing. His legs once more girded and encircled the man’s as he clutched his shoulders, felt himself lifted off the ground, and was dry-humped against the tree by the buckling, shuddering, groaning man.
For a moment they stood still, then eased themselves off each other, their breaths gasping; the boy got back on his feet, the man’s hands pushed under the boy’s jacket and shirt, pawing his bra and chest.
I’ve been looking for you, he said, and kissed the boy’s cheek.
The boy shrugged. The rain, he said, as the man pecked quick kisses around his face.
I brought you something, the man said softly, breaking from the boy and retrieving a slim frayed box, its corners crushed, from inside his raincoat.
The boy looked curiously at the white-ribboned pink parcel, his eyes widening at the swirled curlicued logo on the box: Michelle’s - The Finest in Ladies’ Apparel. A line drawing of a woman’s bowed head was etched in gold under the lettering, her long hair draped down one side of her face, her lips puffed and tinged with a smile, one eye demurely shut as if in shyness and embarrassment. The boy just as shyly lowered his own head and bit his lower lip.
Michelle’s - The Finest in Ladies’ Apparel. The words burned into his eyes and skull because how many times had he passed, and circled around to walk by again, the small Avenue A shop? How many times had he leered at the window mannequins: girdled, bra-ed, nyloned, baby-dolled, crotchless-pantied, nipple-cutout-brassiered? How many times had he dreamed of an approaching Valentine’s Day when the mannequins stood all in red – red negligees, red nighties, red-hearted panties and teddies?
How many times had he jealously watched women entering and leaving the shop, stalked after them and tried to build up the courage to snatch their Michelle’s bags, or prayed they’d at least turn and call, Yoo hoo! Could you please come up and help me with my tight girdle and bra? It’s so difficult getting them over my tush and titties.…
He took the small parcel and mumbled thanks.
Go on, said the man, open it. He lifted his umbrella and raised it over their heads. The fine foggy mist hung almost motionless about them.
The boy looked at the man, uncertain, hesitant, then slowly unwound the bowed white streamlet of ribbon. Loose threads dangled from the old-looking ribbon; it seemed as if the parcel had been carried in the man's pocket for days. He pocketed the ribbon, then lifted the top cover of the pink box. A sheaf of frail white tissue paper – sort of brownish – shielded something black and lacy within and the boy was afraid. He lifted the edge of the paper and saw another slim ribbon, this one red and interlacing the collar of a black negligee and tied in a bow at the neck.
The man flicked over the other edge of tissue paper and said, Take it out. The boy daintily unfolded the black baby-doll nightie and held it out at the shoulders. It was short, probably waist-length, and he shivered at the thought of it pleasantly tickling his back and sides and hovering over his stiff dick. He bit his lower lip again, looking dreamily at the nightie, then held it to his chest as the man reached under it and groped at his crotch. Again his orgasm was sudden and instantaneous.
I can’t take it, he said slowly, regaining his breath. He handed the nightie back. I’ve nowhere to wear it.
The man smiled. You can wear it in my place.
The boy looked at him, and at the nightie. Your place? he asked softly.
I live right across the highway, the man said, pointing at the brown project high-rise. I’ve seen you from my window countless times.
The boy blushed and looked up at the brown building. He recalled the woman and dog he had followed. Was he peering up at the man’s windows, seeking a sex object, as the man was peering down, seeking one, too?
They left the park together, the boy clutching his nightie present and walking at the man’s side under his umbrella. They walked without touching, the boy saddened by not being held and caressed, desperate for the man’s arm on his shoulder as he thought lovers should be, and his own arm around the man’s waist or the crook of his elbow as if showing the world the two belonged together, were a part of each other, were inseparable from the other. They walked very quickly.
Whatever failures or betrayals he would stumble into and suffer in his later life, the next few days turned into the realization of everything the boy ever dreamed of and longed for and never expected to have fulfilled. Each morning’s arrival at the man’s apartment was a frenzy of arousal and kisses and anticipation of what new articles of female attire awaited him – the man had a closetful of clothes, all girlish, many wrinkled, on and off hangers, much used and worn by someone in the past (that was clear), but the boy never asked by whom or when.
The first day together he donned the black teddy over his bra and panty and was amazed at the pliant simplicity of his body as his legs were lifted and pushed back to his shoulders, the panties flicked aside, the man grunting and prodding. He had anticipated torrents of pain and hurt, yet clad in his meager clothes as a girl he no longer thought in terms of anguish or agony but of desire and wanting to please.
The art of clothing and self-adornment is often the art of alluring and enticing, of pleasing and satisfying. But the art of clothing is also the art of disguise, a flirtation with danger. A fashion magazine he looked at in the man’s apartment showed a spread of models looking like just-fucked whores: models on street corners in lipstick-smeared poses, their nylons and garter and minis askew, their bustiers twisted on torsos with one bra-cup lower than the other as though just clawed and slathered, models faking it at a thousand dollars an hour to look like ten-dollar backseat-fuckers or two-bucks-a-blowjob addict-skanks. The gist of the photo spread: just because you look like one doesn’t mean you are one.
The boy pored over the spread countless times. Not only did he want to look like a whore, but also be a whore; and the man let him, their conception of what a female’s role actually was, a whore, in tune with each other’s.…
With the now-available closetful of clothes, skirts and blouses, garter belts and nylons, lipsticks and makeup kits (he quickly learned the purpose and proper use of the powders, creams, and rouges), plus two blonde wigs, one shoulder-length, the other a short bob reaching just to the neck, the transformation of the boy into a girl, into a teenage slut, was as delightfully arousing to the eyes as it was satisfying to his soul … and the man’s cock. Each morning the boy couldn’t wait to turn into something even more delightful than he had been able to delight in the previous day, running through the clothes like on a shopping spree at Michelle’s.
But the man was getting bored.… Though at first he was bemused and curious at the boy’s ready and willing alteration into a girl, it wasn’t exactly what he’d been after. The boy, no matter his underclothes, had seemed different, more boyish than the sissyfied pansy-teenage boys it was so easy to pick up and bring to his place. Yet if he wanted to fuck a girl he could’ve had that, too.
Teenagers were easy to seduce: in their uncertainty, fear, and confusion about themselves, their body changes, their emotional mood swings, their ignorance of their sudden sexuality, all one had to do was praise them. That’s all, just praise them, affirm their beauty or handsomeness. Hell, they were getting enough criticism from everyone else – parents, teachers, peers – that would haunt and taunt them for a lifetime. If you just simply praised them and put them on pedestals as being unique and one-of-a-kind you could fuck a kid a day and never run out of kids to fuck.
But it was boys he had always been after: boys in jeans and T-shirts, boys in baseball caps and sneakers, boys in BVD’s and out of them. Even if some of the boys he brought to his place wanted to dress up as girls, they would eventually have to get undressed and be boys again, but after two weeks of lipsticks and perfumes, panties, bras and garters, he’d had enough of this boy, or, this girl.…
It sooner or later happens in a relationship that one of the partners begins to question the sincerity and honesty of the other, as if the mere fact that sudden doubts now exist confirms the validity of one’s suspicions that the other is not all he or she first appeared to be. You can see it in the eyes, a hint of coldness where there was once warm pleasure, or in the lips, a tightening in the corners of the mouth where there was once a smile, or you can see it in the entire body or character demeanor – a crossing of the arms over the chest or unconcern of what the other’s day was like. But for whatever reason, it’s evident that the other partner in the relationship no longer wants to be in a relationship, especially one with you.
Unfortunately, it’s also at this time, when talking it out should be the first step in allaying one’s suspicion or discomfort, that a silence descends to where nothing is discussed. Hence nothing is revealed or discovered or soothed over until the suspiciousness blossoms into paranoia. This becomes evidence and proof that something was wrong from the start, therefore the relationship has no point in surviving. I knew it! one exults in a certainty of accusations, but can never fully explain, knew what?
The boy sensed the changes in the man: the unexplained angers, the sarcastic criticisms, the impatience as he dressed or undressed.
Why do you have to stash your dick between your legs!? he flared one day, enraged by the smooth ovate bulge in the boy’s pantied crotch. What the hell were you born with a dick for anyway?
He made the boy keep his dick out of his legs, stiffened in his panties, rising up his belly, a bulge in the front of his skirts, which of course destroyed the illusion of femaleness the boy was trying to create, to fashion, to mimic, to experience, to live. More and more the man kept him from what he had lured him with and lavished on him from the start, pouncing on him as soon as he arrived in the morning, taking him male to male, fumbling through jeans and shorts, and prohibiting him from wearing panties or bra once in the apartment. Though it took skirts and nighties and bras and lipstick to seduce the boy, he still was more interested in what stiffened under the skirts than what the charade of femininity pretended there wasn’t.
They’ll always be here tomorrow, he’d smirk, and shut the mirrored closet where the clothes were kept.
Yet each day there seemed to be even less and less time to preen and dress and pretend because he’d still have to undress, wash the perfumes and rouges off, and make it home in time to pretend he’d been to school all day and had lots of homework to do. So it was in the mornings that the man took himself out on the boy, and only fully spent and fully satisfied would he let the boy begin his preening, by eleven or twelve o’clock, which proved less and less satisfying for either of them.
Because the allurement of getting dressed, for a woman or a transvestite, is a vital step in self-arousal and transformation, each article of clothing, each dab of makeup, each stroke of eyeliner and lipstick and hint of perfume is as arousing and exciting as a theater-full of men screaming at a stripper to take it off. That’s another secret difference between the sexes: whereas men are aroused by seeing a woman undress, a woman’s arousal begins with dressing up.
Still, no matter the recent frustrations of the man’s lack of interest in admiring the boy as a girl, there was an evident difference in the boy no matter what gender clothes he wore: a greater sense of certainty and assurance in his manner, something even harder and sterner in his demeanor. Whether it was the female clothing (taunting the gender he had been born into) or the daily outlet for his raging teenage libido (the two definitely stirred up and aided and complemented by each other) in the previous weeks he had matured into a seriousness beyond his teenage years, a maturity that, alas, was just another mimic of someone he looked up to, believed in, lusted after, loved.
It’s the problem with all cross-generational relationships where one partner is decades older than the other: the younger will always strive to make up for the gap of years, taking on a seriousness and maturity that isn’t theirs, as if a decade or two can be leapt over and ignored and the natural process of emotional growth (or emotional stagnation and regression) can simply be picked up and put on like another article of pretty clothes. The young person and his older lover will never be on equal terms of competition: the potential for cunning abuse and betrayal is always inevitably there.
IT HAD BEEN TWO WEEKS since the boy last walked in the park, two weeks since he last masturbated – he now had someone to do it for him – and two weeks since he stopped thinking of himself in solitary terms as alone and now viewed himself as a lover, an important part of someone’s life, if only for six or seven hours a day.
It was his empty evenings that enraged him. The idea that he had to stay home, in front of a book, doing sham homework assignments, or before a TV watching sham love scenes (he could’ve done better), while the man’s apartment, his dress-up clothes, and the possibility of a body atop and inside him were only a few blocks away, the idea of its unattainable nearness always smacked him into explosive tantrums that only masturbation could have allayed.
But he had promised the man he wouldn’t jerk-off at night, keeping himself ready and eager and filled for the morning. Only once had he reneged on his vow and desperately tugged himself into a shuddering release that instantly soothed and lulled him to sleep with his dick clutched in his scum-slathered fist.
On Friday evening he went out, as he had done the previous weekend evenings. He circled the man’s apartment and stared longingly at the lightened windows. He had been warned never to come up when he wasn’t expected and never to call: whatever he needed could wait till the morning. His suggestion that maybe they could talk on the phone was ridiculed and shrugged off. Yet isn’t that what girlfriends did with their boyfriends? the boy thought. Talked and talked and talked.…
But what was there to talk about? Did the boy and the man really have all that much to say to each other beyond the man’s nervousness if anyone knew about their friendship? No, it’s a secret, the boy swore, though he wished it weren’t. He didn’t care if the whole world knew.
How enviously he looked at couples on the street, how they held onto each other by the shoulder, around the waist, or hand clutching hand, how they laughed, smiled, walked, talked, belonged to each other. He always pictured it would be like that: someone treating him as gently and attentively as he assumed couples treated each other. What he saw as he watched them pass is that they seemed to want to be with each other, to spend time with each other, to belong to each other, as if merely being together was more important than anything else they could be doing.…
Other couples were so unlike his relationship with the man. Beyond the frantic morning lust and the mutual blowjobs before he finally left in the afternoon, he felt himself a nuisance in the man’s day. There was to be no radio playing, no TV watching, no high-heel clicking around the apartment, and no fashion shows of How does this look? Besides the sex there was nothing else. Once his body was used there was no further use for him.
That Friday, after staring at the lighted windows, if only he had turned in the other direction he’d have missed the man coming out of the corner store, opening a pack of cigarettes and shaking one out, coming up to a kid waiting outside the store.
So that’s why I’m not allowed up at night, the boy realized, not because the man was busy with his work, as he claimed, but that he was busy with someone else, a replacement, a rival. The boy glared at the other kid: older than him, taller, more solidly built, his chest muscular and molded in his T-shirt under an open leather jacket, his jeans tight and puffed at one side of the crotch, everything about him masculine and virile. The man smiled and held out the pack to the waiting teen, and they continued around the corner to the apartment building entrance.
The boy didn’t need to get closer. Through his wet disappointed eyes he saw them enter the building. He was surprised only at his stiff erection, the thought of the two of them together (while he sat aside, watching and masturbating) more arousing than anything he’d imagined before. The force of his untouched ejaculation was like a release of sudden hate and rage and frustration that came over him.
The first response to betrayal is disbelief. The betrayed person, whose trust has been spat out and vomited like useless waste down the toilet, creates all sorts of scenarios that the betrayal is not what it seems, that the interpretation of his own eyes and feelings is incorrect, and that there is a plausible, sensible explanation for what is happening. One attempts to rewrite the act of betrayal in favor of the betrayer, refusing to admit that trust and love and unity no longer exist and, on the betrayer’s side, have probably ceased to exist long before his actions have been revealed or discovered. What is this self-debasing need to explain and justify a soul-murder?
Because betrayal is murder, as vicious and unforgivable as the taking of someone’s life: a betrayed person walks for years in a time-warp of ignorance and unfeeling, lost in his pain and confusion of what happened, why it happened, where he went wrong. A betrayed person always reacts to betrayal as if it’s his fault, endlessly rebuking himself that he should and could have done better, acted differently, been someone other than who he was and is. To be betrayed is to question your very right to existence, because how can you ever trust and love again when your deepest loves and beliefs, in yourself, in the other, have been so shabbily scorned and discarded? To be betrayed is to be killed, and in worse ways than mere death.
I’m not so pretty, the boy first thought, then remembered the other kid’s physicality. I’m not so handsome. He recalled how he had attracted the man who two weeks earlier told him, you’re the best of both worlds.
He walked uncertainly up the street the next morning, not even looking at his reflection in the store windows as he usually did – smirking at what he saw in the window compared to what he would become in the next few hours. It had been a fitful night. Each time he awoke he remembered the other kid, the smile he had smiled at the man, like the taunting leer of a dethroning usurper. He felt weak (having masturbated himself back to sleep each time he stirred), sluggish, uncertain, the adult-like confidence he had assumed shattered in a moment of adult reality. But he wasn’t an adult. Neither was he a girl. Was he a boy, a male? He felt himself to be nothing. And he felt only the man could once again reaffirm his identity and reality.…
The man opened the door, scanning the hallway over the boy’s head, then let him in as he did every morning. (Was the other kid still in bed? the boy wondered.) As usual, the man was clad only in a bath-towel around his waist, and the bulge at the front of his crotch was evidence he was expecting the boy. Because what he liked most was to keep the boy clothed as much as possible while he showed himself off and pressed and rubbed his naked body against the boy’s. His satisfaction always came first. He never cared if the boy ejaculated or not, merely jerking him off sometimes at the end as an afterthought to satisfy and placate the boy.
This morning was no different: he flicked aside his towel, pushed the boy to his knees, and grunted in what seemed like victory as he slid his penis into the boy’s avid open mouth. The boy’s eyes glistened in love. He wanted to cry because it was love he felt for the man, love and trust that he was still a part of him, that he had not been betrayed and cheated on. If the man accepted and needed him like this, he had definitely misinterpreted what he witnessed the night before: they were probably just neighbors, their apartments close to each other, acting friendly when they met on the street.…
Then he saw it, out of the corner of his eye, a little silver-blue packet sticking out of the top of a garbage sack, shining obscenely between a crushed milk carton, a greasy sandwich-meat package, and a crumbled empty pack of cigarettes.
TROJ
COND
the packet read, torn in an even sharp line at the letters J and D.
TROJAN CONDOMS. The boy knew instantly and grimaced. The other kid had probably demanded they be worn, concerned for his safety, his health, his life, whereas the boy had never given a thought to the man’s hacking cough and visible weight loss in the weeks since he first met him. He hadn’t worried about the numerous medicine bottles and syringes in the bathroom medicine chest, on the kitchen table and the bedroom dresser-top.
Nor had he considered the possibility that the threat of contagion and disease might be real and not something the government made up to keep you from enjoying sex.
The man grabbed the boy’s head and rammed himself even deeper, grunting and buckling and ejaculating down the boy’s throat. The man clutched him for a moment, shuddered a final time, then slowly eased himself out as the boy’s lips clamped shut behind him. The boy darted to the bathroom – he had been warned about dripping scummy saliva onto the kitchen floor or sink – and fell to the toilet bowl.
As usual it was unflushed, the acrid stench of fresh urine biting into his nostrils and eyes as he gagged and spat out the scum and spit. Another dry heave tore up from the pit of his stomach, but his eyes widened and focused into the bowl: at the bottom of the urine, almost like a squiggly limpid tadpole, a used condom stirred in the disturbance of his spitting and rose to the top of the bowl, showing off its filmy contents, then sank back down again.
The boy stood up and wiped his face. He wanted to leave, he wanted to walk the streets, he wanted to go sit in the park. Alone.
But the man came into the bathroom, naked, his limp penis glistening in slow-drying saliva and scum. He looked at the boy, glanced into the bowl, took a puff of his cigarette, then reached over and flushed. You can get dressed now, he said firmly, clutching the boy’s shoulder and leading him out of the bathroom.
In the living room the man sat at his desk and papers – medical insurance forms, the boy understood – while the boy went to the bedroom where he kept his clothes and makeup in a closet. Why did the man have so many small-sized girl-fitting clothes? He had never asked but now wondered whether it was to entice boys like him. Had the baby-doll nightie the man presented him with the first time been used to entice others?… The closet door was open, and his short blonde wig lay on a nightstand by the unmade bed, his black baby doll nightie at the foot of the bed.
The man came in and stood in the doorway, watching. I was thinking about you last night, he smirked, and bobbed his slightly stiffening penis.
The boy blushed, glancing at the crisp dry semen stains on the baby-doll.
C’mon, get dressed, the man said, and turned away, leaving him alone.
The boy sighed and took off his clothes, but without the enthusiasm or anticipation of arousal he usually felt while undressing to put on his female clothes. It was as if the girl’s clothes were a real person, lovingly caressing and soothing him and wanting to be as close to him as he wanted to be in them. But the clothes felt tainted now, mussed and pawed in the closet, some off their hangers and strewn carelessly about as if someone were searching for something, unlike the patient and careful way he always folded and hung them up.
He did find his pink panties and put them on – tucking his penis into and between his legs whether the man liked it or not – found his bra and donned that, too, inserting two water-filled party balloons into the bra cups as a mimic of realistic pliant breasts, the tied knot-ends resembling stiffened nipples.
Only once had the balloons burst open and that was when he first got the idea of water balloons as breasts. The man had put him into the shower and viciously bit into one, breaking it all over the boy’s blouse and skirt and laughing hysterically as he gurgled, Baby hungwy! Baby want mommie tittie! then bit into the other balloon which also burst open into his laughing face. Getting soaked didn’t matter as the man turned on the shower, spun the boy around, and fucked him fully clothed under the steaming water jets.…
Continuing his dressing ritual he sprayed his stomach, crotch and arms with some cheap perfume and pulled on his favorite top, a tight bright-red sleeveless turtleneck with the words Baby Doll emblazoned in yellow over the front. The shirt completely clutched and hugged and outlined his self-made breasts as realistically as any young girl’s, if a young girl could develop such bulbous roundness at her age. He wished he could find the daring T-shirt he had seen a brazen woman wearing on the street a few weeks ago: SUCK ME * FUCK ME
GET THE FUCK OUT!
That said it all, didn’t it?
He tweaked the knot-nipples and positioned them to stand out even firmer, then picked up his blonde wig off the night table. Had the other kid worn it to bed? With the scum-stained nightie? Had they laughed when the man told the kid about him? The boy’s face flushed angrily as he stretched the wig over his head, imagining the outline of the other kid on the unmade bed.
Why hadn’t he ever stayed over at night as the man often asked him to? Just tell your parents you’re sleeping at a friend’s, the man said, but what friend’s name could he have used? He tried to imagine what sleep would be like in the arms of a lover. Like married people, the man hinted. But he never did it, and lost out to another, a replacement who did stay the night, who slept held and protected, who made love in the morning (in a condom) and only left sloppy seconds for him to suck on and lick. Fuck me, suck me, then I’ll be leaving.…
The boy looked in the mirror, blinked his wet eyes, and spread a tawny sheen of liquid makeup over his face, smoothing the tan fluid into the pores and crevices around his nostril, eyes and lips. Instantly the familiarity of disguise swooned over him, and the tension and anxiety he’d been suffering since the night before abated somewhat at the vision of his altering image in the mirror. While his makeup dried, he pulled on the nylon thigh-highs, the rubber thigh-bands circling like fingers, clutching and holding the nylon hose up and around him.
It was one of things he most savored about female attire: its smallness, its tightness, its clutching restrictiveness: panties, bra, nylons, all squeezing around his body like a preserving hold to guarantee that the femininity would not come loose and fall undone. What did a female look like undressed, unmolded by garments, her breasts upheld, her torso unclutched? He couldn’t know, as he couldn’t see or undo it on himself.…
The rest of his makeup went on easily, by a practiced hand now: eyebrow pencil, eyeliner, mascara, eyelashes, and a few strokes of powder to highlight his cheeks. His favorite, which he always saved for last, breathing deeply the aroma, was his cherry red lipstick that matched the color of the Baby Doll T-shirt. He stepped into a short and tight gray skirt, the hem barely covering the tops of his thigh-highs, then stepped into a pair of toeless high-heels – a few seemingly stray straps held the delicate-looking shoes together. He’d bought them himself for five dollars at a sidewalk shoe sale on 14th Street and still hadn’t mastered the proper balance in them. To finish off his outfit he buckled a wide black belt around his waist, then glanced in the mirror. Extremely rapeable and fuckable, the man once told him. He ran his tongue over his red lips and lifted a can of Aqua Net hairspray to puff up the sides of his wig just as the man burst into the room.
Where’s my cigarettes?! he shouted, still undressed, a freshly lit cigarette between the fingers of one hand, his other clutching an almost empty cigarette pack. Where’s my goddamned cigarettes?! he angrily repeated. I’ve only two left!
The boy grimaced, his face flushing even darker and redder than his ruddy makeup made him seem. I forgot, he whispered faintly, not even remembering if he had passed the corner store that morning or not.
What?! the man erupted, angrily nudging the boy’s shoulder. What do you mean you forgot? Didn’t I give you money yesterday?
The boy nodded. Each afternoon when he left for the day, the man left him a quarter on the kitchen table, as if payment for their time together, to put in with the dollar lunch money his mother gave him each school morning (and the man gave him on the weekends), to get a pack of cigarettes when he came up the next day.
I’m sorry, he said quietly.
Don’t be sorry, the man shrugged. Just go and get them.
The boy frowned, disappointed he’d have to undress.
The man smirked. What’s wrong with going out like that? You’re dressed just like you always wanted to be, aren’t you?
The boy’s eyes widened, his red mouth drooping open. The idea of going out dressed and all alone scared yet thrilled him more than he had ever been scared or thrilled before.
The man picked up the boy’s jeans and rifled through the pockets till he found a wrinkled dollar bill wrapped around a quarter. C’mon, go, he said, shoving the money at him. Get me more cigarettes.
I … I can’t go out like this! the boy stammered.
The man snorted. Why not? Afraid someone might see you? Don’t you think people already know what you are? Even without those little girlie clothes?
They looked at each other. Was it true? the boy wondered. Was his difference so evident on him, no matter what his clothes were? As a ‘boy’ did they recognize a fag? As a ‘girl’ would they see a boy?
No, please, you go, the boy sobbed.
The man smiled and held out his arms. Like this? he asked, and looked himself up and down, his penis slightly jerking. You’re at least dressed. He draped an arm around the boy’s shoulder, reaching for his ballooned left breast, and led him out of the bedroom. The boy tottered only once on his high-heels for it was easier to walk with someone holding and directing you.
C’mon, said the man and bent over, kissing the boy’s mouth and slightly smearing his lipstick. You’ll be back in no time, he smirked, groping under the boy’s skirt, his lips tightening in anger as he felt the boy’s smooth tucked-back crotch. He glared.
And when you get back, he promised, his voice hard and stern, I’ll give you a deep hard fucking. The kind that makes you scream. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? To get fucked like a girl? With all your clothes on?
The boy shook his head. No, please, he begged. I can’t go out like this.
The man unbolted the front door locks. Listen, you little fucking whore! he said, grabbing the boy by his throat. You better go right this minute or you won’t be coming back here! You hear me?
The boy nodded. The man swung the door open and shoved him into the hall, the boy’s left heel snagging on a hall tile, but he caught himself on the stair railing to keep from falling over and heard the door slam shut behind him.
God, no! the boy thought. What am I doing here?! He sobbed as he heard the door locks snap shut. Oh, God! What am I supposed to do?…
Go out or you won’t be let back in.…
But he had to get back in. He had to get his clothes back: his jeans, his shirt, his jacket. And he had to get out of these clothes, these heels, these nylons, these water-filled breasts. But if he knocked and banged and pounded and begged, would the man let him back in? Without cigarettes? Why had he forgotten them? So he had to go out. Walk to the corner. Enter the store. Open his mouth.
Walk out. Come back. Oh, my fucking God!
But it was still early. A Saturday morning. Only about nine or so. Not that many people out on a Saturday morning. It was a quiet street anyway, with only the entrance to the building between the highway and the corner store. He’d probably not even pass anyone till he got to the store. He sighed and shut his eyes. In all the images he’d seen of himself in the mirror he was certain he looked like a girl, but did he really? Was what he saw the same as what others would see?
Did clothes always evince a gender? Did makeup? Did a tucked-back penis? If they did, he had succeeded but gone too far in the self-creation of himself as a girl. More then just a mimic of one, suddenly he turned even more real than any attire or even a gender reassignment operation could have evoked: he was a female under a man’s rule. As a female he was treated as such by the man, that is, treated like garbage.
Abuse was something he had not expected in playing a girl. His images were softness and perfumes, of being desired and wanted, but a female’s daily reality of abjection and abuse was a certainty whenever she put herself under the sway of a man. It was the same with him: dressed as a girl he would have to act as one, that is, obey a man, if only to survive and live.…
He sighed, swallowed painfully – his throat hurt where the man had clutched him – and wove his jaw back and forth. He stared at the shut door, then tugged up his nylon thigh-highs and smoothed his skirt over them. He hoped the nylon tops didn’t show too provocatively under the short skirt hem. He adjusted and aligned his bosom, regretting the nipple-knots which stood out so stiffly: that only proved a girl was horny and wanted to get fucked, didn’t it? He glanced again at the shut door, grimaced, and went down the stairs, his heels clicking in the empty hall and against each stair like the fear clicking in his empty heart.
Just get the cigarettes, he mumbled over and over.… Just get the cigarettes.…
Once he got the cigarettes and made it back for his clothes, he’d never take them off again.…
Keep walking, was his constant thought. Keep walking. Keep walking. Keep walking.
Don’t even look at that man. God, but my tits are jiggling, up and down, up and down. He’s looking at them. That’s all he’s looking at. Can a fourteen-year-old girl have tits this big? Do I look fourteen? I am fourteen! Jailbait. Rapeable and fuckable. By who? Just keep walking. God, what if a tit breaks?
He’s looking at my legs. Don’t trip. What if my dick falls out? What if it shows under my skirt? But the skirt’s not that short. It’s not that tight to show a bulge. But it’s rising up. Rising up my thigh, over my nylons, oh God, my thighs are showing!
He’s looking! Is my panty showing? Pull the skirt down! Quick, before he rapes me, before he fucks me!
He’s still looking. He has a hard-on. I can see it. Do I have a hard-on? I can’t even feel it.
He’s looking all over me, all over my body, but not once at my face or eyes. What does he see in my body that he’d want to do to it? I’m only fourteen. And he’s too old. Older than the man in the apartment.
He’s staring at my nipples. Keep walking. Keep walking. No, please, I don’t want to get fucked. I made it all up. It’s all in my head. I don’t really look like this. My nipples aren’t really that stiff. Please don’t rape me. Walk walk walk walk.
Now he’s looking at me from behind. Is my skirt all the way down? Are my nylon tops still showing?
He sure gave me a strange look. What was he thinking?
Did he suspect I was too good to be true? Did he hope this would be his lucky day?
Keep walking. Keep walking. Don’t even turn around. That’s one down. And it wasn’t bad at all. I even got horny, that’s for sure. But what if he follows me? What if he’s still there when I come back? And follows me into the building? Feels me up? Squeezes my tits, gropes my pussy? I’m rapeable and fuckable, and look it, too.
Oh, my God, keep walking! Don’t even look across the street.
It’s him! The kid from last night! So what that he’s stopped? So what he’s staring? He can’t recognize me. He doesn’t know me. Does he recognize my wig? My blonde hair? So what that he’s whistling at me? I deserve to be whistled at. I am pretty! Like a girl. Rapeable and fuckable. Oh, God, stop jiggling!
But if I walk slower he’ll think I want to get picked up. He’ll think I want to get fucked. I do want to get fucked. But where is he going? To the apartment. To get fucked? No, I want to get fucked! Hurry up!
Keep walking. Yellow bodega sign. Like the yellow “Baby Doll” on my jiggling bouncing chest. Up and down. Jiggle, jiggle. Oh, Jesus! He’s following me!
Keep walking. Keep walking. Get fucked. Hard and deep. Like a girl. Almost there. Just get the cigarettes. A few more feet. He’s right behind me.
I shouldn’t have smiled! Oh, Christ! Just open the door. Just get the cigarettes.
An elderly but heavily made-up Puerto Rican woman stared incredulously as he shut the door and approached the counter covered with boxes of candy bars. His feet and ankles ached, his back and shoulders were sore, his strangely stiffening penis was straining to push out from between his legs. The woman glared, appraising him warily – his nervousness, his unsteadiness on his heels, his strange round bosom (it was too round), suspended on his chest but stemming from nothing, simply puffed and bloated, silicone-like, definitely phony. She sneered in disgust.
What?! she snapped, before he could open his mouth.
He winced, certain his voice would betray him. A pack of Marlboros, he softly lisped.
A pack of Marlboros! the old woman sniggered, her voice high-pitched, also lisping, one hand on her hip, the other held limp-wristed at her chest. She despised his kind.
A pack of Marlboros! she mimicked again.
The boy’s entire body slumped. He knew she knew his pretense was over. Nothing mattered but to get back to the apartment and put on his clothes and run away forever. Did he think he could feel like a woman? A real woman? One with a real cunt and tits? He heard the door open behind him.
How old are you? the woman snapped.
Eighteen, he lied, knowing he looked nowhere near the legal age to purchase cigarettes – he’d never had this problem as a boy.
Eighteen, huh? the woman grunted. And how old are those tits, half an hour?
She reached over the counter and almost grabbed the boy’s left breast but he tottered back and fell against someone behind him – a hand on his waist, another clutching his wrist. His penis fell free of his panty. He looked up at the kid from the street.
Gotcha! the kid smiled, showing off his even white teeth.
They stared at each other, the kid’s eyes narrowing, puzzling. The kid steadied the boy up as he tugged down the front of his skirt, his penis a stiff bulge. Behind them the front door opened again.
Get outta here, you fairies! the old woman erupted, waving her arms. I don’t want no maricon diseases in my store!
Yo! the kid snapped back, angrily. You talkin’ to me? Don’t go around dissing anyone, mama!
Hey! a voice behind him shouted. Quit it!
The kid and the boy instantly recognized the man’s voice. They quickly broke from each other and the kid let go of the boy’s waist.
She started it, the kid tried to explain.
Quiet, said the man, and went to the boy. He held out his hand and the boy gave him the dollar bill and quarter he had clutched all along. The kid stared at them in surprise.
Oh, shit, I get it! he finally mumbled.
The boy glared at him.
A package of Marlboros, the man told the woman, setting the money on the counter. And make it snappy.
The kid darted to a soda case. And a Coke, he said, taking out a can.
The man scowled. Okay, he finally said, but get me one too, a Diet Coke, and reached into his pocket for more money.
And me! the boy wanted to say, me too, I want a Coke! But he kept quiet, hoping one of them asked, like they should with a girl. They didn’t, and he lowered his head, disappointed, knowing no matter what he looked like he was not the center of their attentions.
He turned around, away from the counter, and in a quick instant, as if with a well-practiced hand, reached under his skirt and flicked his stiff penis back into the panty, sighing in pleasure as it soothed and rose up his belly. He wasn’t the man’s favorite, he knew that now, but perhaps the kid’s?… He blushed at the thought.…
They left the store, the man and kid smoking and sipping sodas, the boy walking contritely between them. Should he put his arm in theirs, one on each of their elbows?
So you know each other? the man asked, looking at the two of them. The kid sipped his soda and suddenly gulped.
This is Blondie? he asked incredulously. With her clothes in the closet?
He looked the boy up and down, leering at his breasts, his knees, the slight bulge at the front of his skirt. Wow! Not bad, not bad at all!
The man scowled. Who did you think she was? A real girl? His eyes narrowed and he looked angrily at the kid. And why would you be interested in a girl?
I knew what she was, a fake, the kid protested, and blushed, hiding his face behind the can of Coke. I could tell right away.
Sure you could, the man said. Looks even better than the real thing, eh? He reached for the boy’s tit.
Can we just go?! the boy snapped, pushing the man’s hand off.
The man shrugged and looked at his watch. Shit! It’s getting late. He looked up and down the street. Listen, he said to the kid. I got an appointment. I’ll see you … and her … later, okay?
What?! the boy erupted. What do mean later? I need my clothes back now!
You’ll get them, don’t worry, the man waved him off. He’ll take care of you, he gestured toward the kid.
Yeah, don’t worry about a thing. The kid put an arm around the boy’s shoulder.
The boy tried to shake him off but the kid held him hard and steady. He winked at the man. Give us the keys to your place, he suggested.
The man scowled. I won’t be that long. Why don’t you wait for me in the park, next to the men’s room?
I’m not going to no park! the boy snapped, succeeding in shaking the kid’s arm off.
The kid looked at him as if waiting for him to stamp his high-heeled foot, which he almost did, but he knew it was expected and simply crossed his arms over his chest, careful not to clutch them too tightly.
Yeah, the park! the kid suddenly beamed at the boy. Hey! he said, and tweaked the boy’s bare upper arm. We could probably even make some money there!
Huh? the boy stared at him.
Yeah, it’s Saturday, the kid explained. They got all these baseball games on Saturday. And those Puerto Rican guys get so drunk they wouldn’t know what they were fucking. Hell, we could be millionaires by tonight. What d’ya say? and he tweaked the boy again.
No! the boy squealed. You’re crazy! I’m not going to no park! I’m not going to fuck no drunken PR’s! I want my clothes back!
The man slapped him, not hard, but hard enough to shut him up. He grabbed the boy under the jaw. You’re going to the park, he said sternly. You’re gonna do what you’re told. You’re gonna screw whoever has the money. Understood?
The boy barely nodded, ready to do anything to get the man’s cinching fingers off his throat. The man shoved him at the kid.
I’ll meet you in a few hours, he said to the kid. Get whatever you can for … the whore. He turned and walked away.
The boy sniffled and the kid again put his arm around him. Don’t worry, the kid said, gently tugging down one side of the boy’s wig that had shifted from the man’s slap. It won’t be so bad. If they wanna fuck you they’ll have to wear condoms, okay? Blowjobs are fine; you don’t need condoms for that.
The boy kept quiet. He didn’t say a thing about his not having any condoms. His eyes welled with tears, but he held them in, not wanting to smear his makeup. He didn’t know what he looked like anymore: queer, whore, boy, girl, did it matter?
The kid leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. I’ll let you suck me off first, he smiled, to see how much we can get away with. With the way you look, I’m sure we can get ten dollars a blowjob. Do you have any money?
The boy shook his head. The kid shrugged. Too bad, because we gotta get you some fingernails. Fingernails and nail polish. Guys go crazy for that. Long red fingernails around their cocks, shit, that’s probably even worth an extra five dollars right there. But we’ll start with ten, okay?
The boy sighed and looked at the kid. Ten dollars a blowjob. Like a whore, he thought, the word spinning backwards and forwards and in and out of his mind. Whore whore whore. The word had never been a part of his feminine vocabulary but now it would be. He sighed and put his arm around the kid’s waist, tottering against him toward the already crowded Saturday morning park. It wasn’t all that hard to walk in heels.
But first a blowjob. Then more blowjobs. Ten dollars a blowjob. Wow! Ten fucking dollars! He looked at the kid. This is how he always knew it should be: a couple together, in love, a part of each other.
Jesus Christ! Ten dollars a blowjob! And he’d been giving it out for free.
Like a silly stupid teenage girl. Free? Ha! What a laugh! Paying a dollar a day in cigarette money! What a rip-off! But no more. It was time he got treated and pampered the way he should be.
Like a real girl. Hell, at ten dollars a blowjob they could get nail polish and fingernails right after the first one and start making some real money. He looked dreamily at the kid, and wondered what his name was.…
C’mon, Baby Doll, the kid said. Cheer up..…
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