Chapter 6 – Chapter 6

When I walked into the apartment early Saturday afternoon, Art was sitting at the table again, but he was eating his breakfast. He was wearing a robe over pajama bottoms. No overflowing ashtray, no mauled newspaper. No lights beaming on the Christmas tree, though. I'll admit there was more than a glint of concern in his eyes, which gave me a twinge of guilt. But he was none the worse for wear. I had been gone overnight on a Friday and had come back to him. He was trustful—and simple enough—to believe I'd come back to him the next Saturday morning too. I had, of course, but this level of trust in him gave me a little concern.

Which was ironic, as I was the one causing the concern.

"You missed the excitement of last night."

I gave him a hard look. I hadn't missed any excitement last night. Lenny had given me just about more excitement than I could handle. But I could see that Art wasn't being sarcastic.

"What excitement?"

"One of the customers—that young college kid who followed Lenny around like a puppy dog. Right at closing I found him in the break room at the back of the club."

"Did you have to roust him out?"

"No. He was dead. He'd OD'd. On heroin, the medical examiner thought likely. Back there in the break room sometime during the evening. He was naked and everything, his body just lying on that bench back there, stiff as a board."

"God, the cops and everything came?" My mind was racing. Lenny. Did he know? Had he known all that time he was sounding and fucking me last night. And offering me poppers? And with the hypo needle next to us. And the one next to him this morning?

"Yeah, they did. And they want to talk to as many of the people in the audience we can identify and Lenny too. They didn't show much interest in talking with Thaddeus, though. I told him that I'd never seen Thaddeus away from the piano. The guy must have a cast-iron bladder or bag or something."

"Me?" I asked, still in shock and not listening to much else Art was saying.

"They don't know about you. And there's no reason they need to unless someone else mentions you. I thought with what you'd been doing before and all and then you and Lenny—"

"Thanks, but I've never been picked up," I said. "I hadn't been out on the street all that long." I had gasped inwardly at his reference to Lenny and me. So, he knew it was Lenny who was shagging me the nights I didn't come home . . . to Art's home. And he hadn't mentioned it. Well, if he wasn't going to mention it, neither was I.

Art smiled a little smile like my statement that I had worked the street for long made him happy. Although, considering what else I was doing, that seemed an empty satisfaction. Of course Art was grabbing at whatever illusions made life easier for him—just as I was. I watched him rise from the table and go over and switch the Christmas tree lights on.

"But it's fine with me if they never hear about me," I added.

I didn't know the blond from Adam, so I didn't have too much grief to spare on him. But Lenny. Now I was scared of—and for—Lenny. I wouldn't go with him again.

"You hungry?" Art asked.

"Yes, but I'll fix something."

"Need to take a shower?"

I hesitated, knowing I'd just had one at Lenny's place. "Yeah, that would be nice. But you look like you haven't had yours yet yourself. Maybe we could do it together."

I fucked myself on his cock, with him standing against a wall of the shower and me draped on his front, fists locked behind his neck and hanging off him, my feet leveraging off the wall out wide from his waist, and pumping my channel on his cock.

We had to stop at the bodega for a couple more boxes of the Magnums on our way to work that afternoon—and more beer. And the rest of the week went just fine. I could feel myself in the groove and the panic of being in a groove like this dissipating with each day.

I'd had a scare and a brush with something I couldn't control. But now I was in control. If the cops didn't get at me and wear me down, I'd just bypass Lenny from now on. Let him spiral down by himself if that's where he was headed.

* * * *

Late, late Friday night, New Year's Eve, the two of us facing each other, both straddling the padded bench in his living room, our foreheads touching, sweating, each of us watching our own cock and that of the other, the two almost touching, as we each sounded ourselves. Lenny was way ahead of me in wand thickness. His looked like a baseball bat.

"Here, let me," he whispered. He took hold of my cock and pulled the wand out. Then he pulled the much thicker wand out of his cock and pressed the end of it at my piss slit.

"No, Lenny, I don't think . . . it's much too thick."

"This will help you."

"Oh, god, no Lenny. I don't."

But the needle was already piercing a vein in my arm. "Just a little. Just enough to relax you, to loosen you up. To help you take this. I want to see this in my little whore."

"No, Lenny, no . . ." The drug was already working on me. The room was swirling around me. I leaned back on my elbows on the bench and watched that seven inches of baseball bat beginning to be inserted into my urethra. I felt the thickness of it and yet again I didn't. I was floating and laughing. No cares at all as, inch by inch, the wand disappeared into my cock slit.

"Nice. Fucking time." There was an edge of excitement in his voice.

Lenny was standing, still straddling the bench and lifting my pelvis up to him with hands gripping my waist. My torso was arched back toward the surface of the bench, my weight on my shoulder blades, and my arms dangling uselessly down the sides of the bench. I was looking at a smiling, almost leering, Lenny up the line of my arched torso, beyond my erect and throbbing cock with three inches of wand showing—but now not even that. I could feel myself drawing the wand inside me. Maybe only two inches showing now. How long had it been? Six, seven inches? Oh, shit, oh, jesuzzz. Not more than one inch now. My cock hungrily swallowing it. Lenny in double, triple now. Smiling, his cock penetrating deep, deeper. Pumping me, pumping, pumping, pumping. I'm laughing, crying out to him how wonderful I feel, how I want him to fuck me forever.

Lenny's fingers gripping the last half inch of the wand as he fucks me. Drawing it almost all the way out. Pushing it back in. Twirling it. Out, in, twirl. Out, in, twirl.

"My little whore," I hear him say.

Out, and I watch my cum splash all over his belly . . . his bellies . . . there are multiple of them.

I feel him come too, in a flood, the flood of all time. I'm laughing.

"To the bedroom," the three Lenny's say, in unison and harmony.

Fucking, fucking, fucking. All Friday night long fucking me. Fucking me from one year into the next. Lights flashing on and off, all colors, all night long. The bedroom window wall melting and the bed floating out over the city. Fireworks going off across the city. Fireworks going off in Lenny's bedroom—on Lenny's bed. And then . . . nothing.

The mother of all headaches when I woke up Saturday morning—the next year. In Lenny's bed. No saxophone music to wake me this morning. I rolled over, placed my feet on the floor, waited for a few minutes to gather my strength and intent, and then shakily stood and gingerly padded to the bathroom to take a shower.

No shower today, though, not here. Lenny was curled up on the floor of the bathroom, a syringe beside him, dead as a doornail.

I couldn't pull on my clothes and get out of there fast enough. I literally ran the ten blocks to Art's apartment and busted through the door. Art was sitting at the table.

"God, Art, I need you. Take me to the bedroom and fuck my brains out. God, I need you."

Not asking any questions, not then, not later, Art did just as I asked.

No connection was ever made. I couldn't be happier to be settling down with Art and working with him at the club. There was a little twinge of regret when he pulled the Christmas tree down, but I no longer needed the lights on the tree. Now, content, I felt the light of Art inside me.

The sleeping bag and a dwindling pile of my "stuff" from my earlier life are still sitting there next to the radiator, symbols of a choice I still can make.

I'm happy with the choice I've made, though. I didn't get a winter coat until the next winter. You don't need a winter coat in bed. We did, though, have to find a cheaper and higher volume supplier of Magnums than the bodega near the House of Blues.