A Beat, a Bong, and a Bang
By
Anar Green
Published by Ali Bahar at Smashwords
Copyright © 2010 Ali Bahar
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
*****
Chapter One
The Stern Monochrome
Costa
I think the pod people make perfect employees: They fit in, they're obedient, and they're certainly team players! They're quiet and do what they're told, and they never make a fuss. They have an innate suspicion of anyone who doesn't fit in. They can sniff out malcontents—preferably right at the job interview!
Which explains why they all look at me like that!...OK so I stand out a bit....OK, more than a bit. Fuck 'em, though!
Thankfully, they're all so comatose that an attack is not imminent: the coffee hasn't kicked-in yet. They're pumped full of so much caffeine that you could run the subway car on it. Or the car on them. Either right over them (preferably!) or they'd make good fuel—Soylent Green-type, all mashed up.
If I'd taken half that a few hours ago, it'd all be illegal. Now, though, with the right juice, and at the right time, going to their ordained slots, they're fine, upstanding citizens. Well, barely standing! The lucky few get to have a seat, dozing off while leaning precariously against the neighboring drone who's trying to block out random thoughts by burying his face in a freesheet of soft sells sprinkled with softer news. The rest reach for a hook to hang from. If only...! Hmm, meat! It's a cattle car! Off to the production line. "Mooo!" screams the subway train. All you need is a cowcatcher in the front!
Five days to go. I can't even bear the thought, let alone deal with it somehow. It might as well be a decade. Five days of dealing with the day, with work, with the drones. Getting up to go to work is bad enough, but then you gotta get to work. Every morning I gotta walk into this morgue. Well it's either that or a Turkish bath; I can't figure out which! It looks like a scrubbed-clean, antiseptic cross between both. Stop, start. Stop, start.
Above, there is smog, concrete, asphalt, parking lots, gray, and a cancerous sprawl of paved-over earth. Monster-roads connect up the plastic suburbs so the drones can drive back and forth in their wheeled living-rooms—go to work, go to the mall, watch TV. Nothing ever changes. There's no place to hang out; nowhere to stop-and-do-nothing. It's all owned by MegaBuy mall, or sponsored by MegaTheft Corporation. It's all been drawn and quartered; and assorted gashes left over for the populace to drive to in search of their nature. It looks like a city, but feels like a Victorian sphincter turned into an American parking lot.
Ideal for some, I guess. But for me, it has nothing but a steady place to be bossed-around in, and a few gadgets as carrot. There is nothing to do but just work, shop...rinse and repeat; it's a stern, monochrome existence.
The pod people make perfect shoppers: they can shop till...well they never drop! They're happy with just family-friendly this'n'that: insipid, bland, nutritious and safe to the touch—with no small parts for kids under three! It's a helmeted existence. It is dull. It is tedious. It is the mall parking lot, the nine-to-five, the big box store, the commute. It is an insurance office in a strip mall! It is Monday. It is what happens if plastic could petrify.
But then, there is the night!
*****
Chapter Two
Factory
It's raining from somewhere beneath the ceiling, through the array of lasers sheeted above luminescent fingers, and falling onto dreads, beads and Technicolor fur on thousands of bodies moving to the liquid beats of discrete logic.
It was strangely quiet as Ian was walking up the stairs: just the dissolved chatter of a thousand voices in a cavernous space. The repetitive bass he was hearing outside had ceased. Were it not for all the people calmly hanging out by the entrance, he would have suspected an incursion by the forces of order. He had wondered for the briefest moment.
But now, the side-rooms' beats are within earshot. He stands at the top of the wide staircase, looking at the massive hall: thousands of sweaty, grinning, panting, smiling people, dressed in kindergarten colors, standing with eyes opened wide or shaded with tints of rose or other florid pastels. With the confidence of experience, of knowing people here, of having been around, he stands by himself and scans the crowd. He has taken just enough to be in a smooth, mellow mood as he enters the slumber party for him and a few thousands of his playmates. With requisite nostalgia he observes the huggy newbs no longer unsure of stepping onto the dance floor.
The music starts. The next DJ, who has just come on, begins slowly. A few screams come in response. Everyone starts dancing. It slowly builds, and the screams get more frequent. It builds up. Deeper, more bassy. It had sat, dormant, with the size of its massive, black monoliths as the only indication of its latent might. A grumble, a growl, rumblings of distant drumbeats—from somewhere at the base of the volcano, approaching. A bull's blasts of air as it kicks the dirt, about to charge.
And it suddenly comes to a halt! Applause and a few screams splice themselves into the momentary silence. But it comes alive again, this time more resolutely. A beat. A tone. One beneath, and another overlaid. And it picks up! Faster. Harder. More screams, and more screams. Hands reach up in excitement, held high and punching the air as the dancers jump up and down, looking in the direction of the stage. It shifts into a fresh rhythm, and more and more scream out in pleasure, encouraging the DJ to continue. Beats anything that daylight has to offer! thinks Ian as he watches the whole spectacle unfold. He dances with a big smile on his face as he takes-in the music.
On a stage, in the distance, there is a tank of glittering water with spheres of glowing lights floating in it. A few people are swimming, wearing only garlands of sunflowers. Behind them, the DJ rhythmically moves and leans over the table while fiddling with various knobs, and flipping through crates of wax and plastic. It holds central place—presiding over the ceremony, it seems. It is the throne, crowned by an array of colored lights and lasers emanating deep into the main hall.
Somehow, he has to find Costa and the others amongst all this. He decides to explore the side-rooms before tackling the main hall's amorphous expanse. He takes the nearest corridor, and walks past tables selling clothes, jewelery, toys and trinkets sure to enhance the night's experience—or at least to piss off the guardians of taste and propriety. The said keepers built this, now abandoned, museum to house their fossils: their pantheon of dead, past greats, beyond reproach and beyond relevance. Tonight is the most life it has ever known!
Mellow, more fluid beats come from a dim, blue room. Ian does not expect to find them there: it is too early, and they don't normally hang out there anyway. Well, certainly not Costa! he thinks. But he walks in, partly due to a hope that he might see someone who would know where they might be, and partly because he has a need to walk and explore.
The whole place has the feel of an under-water dome, with shimmering light rippling over the glass from the distant surface above. Sound fills the space, enveloping the dark, nebulous masses slithering about the place. Ian walks through the transparent gel, surrounded by the scent of herb, and twinkles of cherries offered from lips to lips. Some people spend the whole night here, coming as soon as others start gathering. Ian looks for luminous strips telling, or knowing, of Costa.
Not found, he floats away from the lost city, into the next corridor. Harder beats, coming from another room, attract his attention. As he walks towards it, he sees a tall silhouette dancing near its doorway, with arms spearing out as if semaphoring another ship, or homing an aircraft into its bay. Ian smiles. Costa begins to jump and scream. Feet now together, fists clenched and raised high above his head, he starts punching the air in approval, and screams in delight. His head is bent, looking through the floor as if he need not see the instigator of his bliss; as if in trustful submission; as if he already knows, and knew of the experience that was awaiting him: that he would be elevated, and that he would fall prostrate.
Ian walks up and taps him on the shoulder. Costa stops, turns his head, grins and nods.
"You know, I think base jacks up my high!"
"You been freebasing?" Costa's eyebrows are knotted, partly incredulous, and partly trying not to be judgemental.
"No. Base! The music." Ian mimics, with one hand, the pounding of subwoofers' cones.
"What about it?" Costa synchs to the topic.
"I think base jacks up my high!"
"Then you've picked the wrong type of music!"
"No, I've picked the right type of music; just right!" Ian glances at the rest of the crowd, and pauses for a response. When he gets none, he resumes. "I never pick the wrong type of music. All my bleeding's done right on the edge!" He smiles. "You're the one who listens to music your dad listens to!"
"No—"
"What was that? Guitar, base 'n' drums 'n' groupies?"
"I don't listen to music my dad listens to. But if there's something good, I don't reject it on that count, either." As he leans close to Ian's ear, Costa is keeping an eye on a girl. "You're the one who dances to music your mom dances to." He rolls his eyes and adds, "Or used to, anyway."
"Hey, my mom never danced to this. And she'd freak out if she ever saw this shit!" He grins, glancing around the room from the side of his eyes, with his face slightly turned away from Costa. "Which is how it should be!" Then he picks again at the father figure. "And your dad should think this a godless abomination!"
"My dad never would, and you know that!"
"Yeah, I know. But your dad's a bit of an oddball that way." He squints one eye, presses his lips into an arch, puts on a tweed coat and holds up a decidedly orthodox pipe in one hand. "Can't quite figure out that chap." Then he throws a sidelong glance at Costa, "Or his son, for that matter." Costa can't hear him, but discerns enough from the performance to smile in return.
"You wish you had a dad like mine."
"You wish you had a mom like mine." Ian chuckles, and tugs on his T-shirt to drag him closer to the doorway.
"I do! I wish I had a mom like yours. Like really had her."
Ian grins in response, and attempts another accent. "You have the lustful thoughts for my mom."
"A hot babe's a hot babe. And your mom's one hot momma!" Costa says. "You can tell when a babe should still be on the market."
"Well she is on the market, just not for you."
"I thought she liked...well, doesn't she like...like artsy, bohemian types? She is kind of artsy, isn't she?"
"Yeah, she does have those pretensions. She's got all these herbal teas and fair-trade crap. But I've seen her with only...you know," he looks at Costa knowingly, "like, mature, sophisticated fucks!"
"She likes her pubes with a touch of gray."
"An air of distinction," Ian says.
"A graceful sag to the ball-sac!" Costa opens a palm as if weighing a bag of coins.
Ian chuckles. "You need to carry a paintbrush and a beret, my man!"
"Ah the get-ups you have to put on, just to eat some pussy!" Costa says. Ian cringes and laughs as Costa pretends neither sophistry nor artifice: "How about a big cock? That don't work no more?"
Ian plays along, "What, you got one?"
"No, but I know this guy; says he can fix you."
"Can he do anything about your cheerful personality?"
"I asked him. He says, 'One step at a time!'...He's a cocksmith, not a miracle-worker!"
"Well at least he's a licensed professional." Then, with a most impeccable objectivity, completely devoid of any consideration of his self, Ian advises: "You need a big cock and a big personality!"
"Well that explains you and Erin!" Costa raises an eyebrow. "But I think the big cock might be easier."
"Right, right." Ian feigns contemplation. "What you need is...you see, the heat's gotta go up in that ass by a good couple of degrees. Once it all gets nice and red, then we're ready."
"What, my ass or their ass?" Costa turns to him inquisitively.
"Theirs."
"Mine's all puffed and red, already. I've been walking around with flared nostrils for months now!"
Ian mimes a few consolatory nods.
"Well I think the odds are always better with older women. They're finally horny—"
"Yeah!" Costa nods calmly.
"And they can appreciate proper drilling. None of this," Ian puts on a whiny voice, "'Well do you respect me?'"
"Of course not!" Costa answers her. "I barely respect myself! Here I am huffing and puffing away, like an ape bent over another one. Half the time I'm just trying to block out what it all looks like!"
"Yes! I've always thought doggy style should start with a proper sniffing!"
"Well, no comment!" Costa glances back deep into the room.
"You see, you just have to get them when they're alone. All it is, is they're afraid of what people think. So you just gotta get them when they think no one's gonna find out."
"Well maybe you can move back in with your mom; I'll drop by when you're not home."
"No, Erin wouldn't be too pleased." Ian returns to his promiscuity primer. "And you gotta develop a reputation as a no-teller; if you develop a reputation as a snitch, then you're dead. Everyone's gonna find out, and it'll all dry up for you tout de suite!"
"Oh, so that's what they mean by 'Mum's the word'!" Costa says. Ian smiles with an incredulous glance back at Costa, and chooses silence.
At one end of the room, the DJ's table rests directly on the floor, not raised above the dancers'. Around it are gathered the disciples aspiring to, one day, rise out of the bedroom, and metamorphose into gods. It's a cloaked huddle of baggy clothes and backpacks watching intently his workings of knobs, slabs and platters, Capped and visored, they give the impression of wearing hoods—though none is! No one is dancing; heads bowed, they seem absorbed, concentrating on that lit by the single light extending over the whole scene.
"So, what you looking at, Costa baby? Cossy baby. Cossy honey. Cossy dearest."
Had it come from anyone else, Costa would have cringed. But he dismissed the effusion as a transient side-effect of Ian's mood. Ian is comfortable with him, and he is quietly pleased. He thinks back to their early encounters: the cold distance typically meted out to introverts. It's as if they sense it: no matter how open the smile, and how perfect the act, they seem to detect a being behind the face, behind the mask. They know when you might not belong with the same ease. It's like dogs sensing fear.
Ian doesn't wait for the answer: the music has shifted into his beat. Faggy, funky, and with a mock-serious face to match, he pumps his bent-back, closed palms alternately into the air like pistons, and swings his hips with a nostalgia that is only satirically accepted in this particular room.
Then he shifts a few decades, along with the music. It sounds like the palpitations of a sinking ship's colossal engines, in its throes, as it reaches the bottom of the ocean. In general-issue dreads and pantaloons, and a heretically-tight top, fit for a club, he moves to the harder beats in an array of piercings and tattoos worthy of initiation into the most primitive of tribes, or the most modern of primitives. A carefree swinging of the arms, a weaving of the fingers, and kicks and shuffles blended by persistence into a vision resolutely not of any dad's comprehension.
Inspired by the music, and the promise of the night, he exhibits, with deft irony, his comfort with both styles. His joy is primaeval: the instinctive pleasure of moving to the beat that moves you. He stands out from the rest of the crowd, as if they were standing still, as if someone threw a stone onto the surface of still water. Heads turned as expected, and more joined-in as a bonus. He has led the way.
But, as quickly as it started, he withdraws from the show, and moves back closer to Costa to hear his response.
"It's the white top?"
"Yeah. With the pant-skirts." They both keep looking away from her direction, pretending eyes wandering elsewhere. She is wearing a white baby-tee. With a hint of a synthetics' shine, the sleeves rise tightly from her wrists, up to her shoulders, and then down to wrap over, and disappear under, her breasts. Her bare midriff stretches from beneath her breasts to the gray of a skirt hanging tightly from her waist and clung to her hips as the apex of a pyramid covering to below her ankles. She dances with her feet sliding to and fro, moving in one direction and then back, as her hands weave. A spotlight near her betrays occasional glimpses of her flowing pants-legs.
"I'd love to just reach under those!" Ian says, pretending to look around the room.
"I like her whole style," Costa needs to add.
"What, you only fuck 'em if they dress like you?"
"The closer, the better!" The retort was more bluster than sartorial narcissism, so Costa re-avows his principles: "Style matters."
"I prefer C cups myself."
"No, perkies are nice."
"Oh yes, the A cups. They're made for the missionary, I would say."
"Well if you like your fucks religious."
"All my fucks are religious,” says Ian. “Each and every one of them is a religious experience."
"That's not what I've heard."
"Yes but those people are just vicious rumormongers who won't know a good fuck if they had one!"
Costa pauses, and then says, "I could suck on A cups forever, though."
""They're not big-enough for my taste, but they're very playable." Ian looks in the distance as if imagining. "Very tantalizing."
"Titillating!" Costa says without a blink. Ian maintains a firm grip on his lips, and turns his face away for good measure. Then, after only the briefest battle, he turns back from the front, dragging his armor behind him, and blurts, "Shut the fuck up!" They both crack up.
Moments later Ian returns to his beloved. "What you'd really want, though, is the Cs. They fill your hands just right." He looks, in the room as well as in the corridor, for an inspiring pair within eyesight. The perpetual search for the Cs of his dreams. The Cs that make eyes linger.
"Yes, it's a perfect fit. I've even considered hand-reduction surgery. For that full-palm feeling." Costa gestures, but ensuring nothing reminiscent of grabby hands paired on a chest, and only fleeting glances in the direction of the girl.
"Yes, the full-palm feeling. That's what you'd want: that real sucking-at-the-teats feel." Ian mimics a hungry baby, but his cries sound more like a kitten's.
"You know my hands have felt empty ever since the weaning!" Costa says, with wistfulness as sincere as Ian's suckling.
"Maybe you need a bigger cock. Talk to your guy."
Costa ignores him. "My whole life's been in post-traumatic stress!" His eyes act out the mania of his own lost battles.
Ian ignores him. "Well it's better than breast reduction. What's with that?"
"It's a crime against humanity," Costa says.
"Oh that just chills my spine. Like, why do people do that!" Ian cringes. "Besides," he continues, "you'd want those large sizes, for that real back-to-the-crib feeling."
"Ahhh! A tiny hand clutching a giant areola." Costa spreads out his fingers, and holds his open palms on each side of his face as if pressing against a soft wall, and looks up.
"Mommy! Mommy!" Ian looks up at the face that loves him unquestioningly, and makes crying sounds—clearly succeeding at weaning the kitten out of his act.
"I want back in! I want back in!" Costa pleads, to a matron dressed in either linen or leather, before adding, "You can use her nipple ring for teething!" Leather, it seems. Ian chuckles, feeling equally-exiled from Eden. In pencil-thin mustaches, and a cut-off doll's head hung from his slipped suspenders, he starts shaking his hips while making the baby sounds. It is part dance, part suckling and part tantrum. Costa enjoys the theater.
After a few spins, he is back. "In real life, though," he emphasizes, "as opposed to in...the professional journals," Ian raises his hand, turning the palm up in a gesture as if he is illustrating a subtle point, "they don't, uh, stand up to their full potential!" He is looking away as if detached from the subject of his analysis, with an air of authority of one who naturally expects that his listeners would be in rapt attention. Costa smiled in response, which then widened into a toothy smile, and then unhinges into a silent laugh as Ian continues: "Their theoretical possibilities are endless. But, in actual practice, they don't hold their own."
"Then you leave the bra on," Costa suggests helpfully.
"No, no, my good man. That'll work for Ds; indeed, it is recommended—I believe it's in the scriptures. For Cs, however...well, a soft bra would do."
Costa nods in approval.
"Otherwise, a hard, tight-fitting bra might push them out of..."
"Out of shape!" interjects Ian's grasshopper.
"Well, perfection."
"Yes. It's gotta be thin and flimsy enough to show the weight..." Costa weighs his bag of coins again, "of all that milk!" He turns to Ian and grins.
Ian laughs out loud, clapping his hands.
After a pause, Costa says, "Bs are highly under-rated, though."
"Oh yes!" Ian says, putting on the air of an academic. "Indeed they are."
Costa murmurs, "I could've said udder-rated!" Ian hears only the first part of the sentence, and decides that it would be safer if he ignored the rest.
"They strike a happy medium."
"They have the greatest variety of shapes," Costa says.
"There're all kinds: nice little perky ones—"
"Large, almost-C ones."
"Nice 'n' round ones; with inny nipples."
"Or the ones that curve up." Costa illustrates with an arc, upwards, by an index finger.
"Outies."
"Bazookas!"
Ian smiles in response. Costa continues. "I like it when they fit just perfectly in your mouth."
"Yes, like a cone. They fit right in."
"Custom-made."
"It's like taking the whole cone of ice-cream right in your mouth, and licking it!" Grins of recognition.
Inspiration strikes Ian. "The best ones are these half-moon, semi-circular ones. When you look at them from the front, they just have a perfect arc underneath." He draws the curve of his fantasies in the warm air of a room filled with breasts which, given an opportunity, he would be as picky about as a banker in garters.
"No, the best are when they curve up, with the nipples pointing up."
"Oh yes! Just begging for it."
"Just begging to be sucked!" They both smile, looking in the distance.
"Shape definitely matters!" Costa says when he comes to, affirming another dictum.
Ian puts on the pipe again. "Yes, yes, it is a dilemma, isn't it! On the one hand, you want size and massive-e-tude, but on the other hand, you want a nice shape."
Giving up the debate, Costa returns to the promise held by that top. "Well, she's got nice ones."
"Go for her, man!"
"No, I've been trying to attract her attention, but...." He purses his lips.
"How? By standing here?"
"Pretty much!"
"Interesting strategy! Is it working?"
"So far, no success! But I think it's just 'cause the room's too dark!"
"So you're gonna wait until she goes into the halls?"
Costa turns to him. "You know, I didn't think of that. But you may have something there." Then he offers his reasoning: "She's too pretty. I'm thinking I better go for an easier one."
"Ugly girls can give you just as much hassle as beautiful girls. So you might as well go for the pretty ones."
Costa sighs.
Ian resumes. "Don't be so intimidated; just go for it. What's the worst that could happen? She'll turn you down."
"She could turn me down spectacularly."
"Yeah, well don't worry too much about that."
"I would limp back with a shriveled penis, emotionally scarred for the rest of my life," Costa says.
"Hey what else is new!"
"Drop dead!"
"I'm just saying, give it a try."
"It's easy for you to say," Costa says. "You'll just be standing here, laughing, as I limp back."
"You're building her up too much."
"You're building her up too much!" Costa tries belatedly to correct the history. "I was not even that fixated on her."
"Good. Then just go for it." Costa's silence stirs up the proverbial Ian. "You know, the cure for obsession is fucking them!"
"Well I'm trying to get to that point, first."
"Does she have a girlfriend?"
"She must! I've seen some guys hanging around her, trying to piss on her legs. But none of them seems to be Da Boyfriend."
"Try a girlfriend of hers first."
"I don't do transitions!"
"Oh you and your principles!" Ian says. "There's how things are supposed to work, and how they actually work! Cock doesn't know the right way of doing things; it just goes where it has to!...A lot like me, actually!" Costa remains unconvinced. "You're six fucks away from everybody else on the planet; you just gotta do the right transitions!" Ian delicately moves his stretched hands back and forth like he is positioning slabs of wax on a double turntable.
"I don't think that's how that one was supposed to work."
"Whatever! And, as an added bonus, people would get to fuck you who'd otherwise have no chance of fucking you. It's a good system: you spread the goodness around!"
"Yeah, like I'm really breaking hearts right now!"
"Well it's up to you."
"And didn't you say that ugly girls can give you just as much hassle?"
Ian shrugs his shoulders. "I try to collect as many contradictions as possible!” Then he looks at Costa again. “Which is why I say you should just walk up to her."
"You're just baiting for a show." Costa thinks that this is at no cost to Ian, and so Ian can just sit back and play puppet-master. "Besides, some of those picks may well turn her off of me."
"Then you gotta pick some others."
"Then it gets longer than six! And, some of those are guys."
"Well you gotta be flexible." Ian grins.
"You be flexible."
"You gotta ask, How much do I want her?"
"I don't want her that much." Costa ignores Ian's grinning. "I'm not gonna take the cock route just to get to tits."
"Some would! Some have!"
"Well you can count me out!"
Ian tries another route towards enlightenment. "You see, sex with women works through referrals; it's like a pyramid scheme! Once the word spreads, or once they see you with a girlfriend, then you become an attractive commodity."
"And the guys at the top fuck 'em all!" Costa deduces.
"They wanna know that you can provide quality semen."
"Oh women are so easy to figure out!" Costa mocks.
"It's true, though."
"Maybe I can send them some tissue as proof."
"They can try before they buy!" Ian jumps in, generously building on Costa's idea. "You know, I once went for this sales-job ad, and it turned out to be for selling vacuum cleaners by referral. This is just the same thing, except you're selling a...different pump."
"So I'm selling vacuum cleaners all of a sudden?" says Costa.
"That's how you gotta think of it; don't build it up too much in your mind."
"Should I go door-to-door?"
"Sure. Just don't let anyone see you. No one wants to sleep with a door-to-door salesman!" Ian grins. "It's like sausage: everyone eats it, but no one wants to know how it's made!"
"Interesting metaphors!"
"I am a poet, aren't I!" Ian begins to dance. Costa finds his own spot.
After a while, Ian says, "So where is everyone?"
"They're in the main room—last I saw them! Where were you?"
"I was getting my cock sucked." Ian grins.
"Nice work if you can get it!"
"Yes this tranny offered me two hundred bucks to suck my cock. But I said no."
"Are you crazy? Why'd you say no?" In Costa's world, turning down a free blow job—let alone a paid one—is simply unconscionable. Sacrilegious! It's like throwing away food when there are people starving. Would he offer $200 to the white-top girl? Sure! And if enough trannies offered him $200, then he could finally afford to move out of this city—and maybe even no more dealing with the drones. As for Erin's boyfriend, well it would make even more sense: he has always viewed the held out cornucopia of Ian's sexually-open relationship with Erin to be more realizable for the girl than for the boy, even with as popular a boy as Ian. So Ian might as well cash-in on his image of the unattainable straight boy.
"It was a guy!" Ian shrugs.
Costa skips the rolling of his eyes in favor of a sidelong glance at Ian's torso, and says, "Uh, is it just me, or are we missing the irony here?"
"There's no irony; I just want a girl to blow me."
"But weren't you telling me to be flexible?"
"I never practice what I preach; it keeps me objective." The only irony seen by Ian is that guys like Costa, who are repulsed by male sex, are surprisingly less squeamish about it, given anonymity. If no one could find out, then a lot more straight men would get blown by swishing Robin Hoods. Similar to orthodox, or officiated, pairings, a lot more humping would be going on if privacy could be assured. It's the tellers who ruin it for everyone!
As for himself, Ian can have the offer of a free blow job any time; the difference this time was the money. He didn't want to lose his job: any anti-hets at the bathhouse may spread the word of his having gotten paid. The powers that be, for whom flesh blown to bits is more honorable than pleasured, for whom Nature is a transaction, would not license this bit of nature to be put up for sale. The bathhouse would fearfully jettison him back into the great sexless expanse.
"Well you could've gotten a release and some money, too."
"It's a guy. I'm not gonna have his face all over my cock."
"Don't think about it. Just close your eyes and think of a girl." Costa is relishing the prospect of turning the tables on Ian, but Ian is unfazed.
"I need to see a girl blowing me. With nice breasts and everything."
Costa synchs to Ian's lackadaisical attitude, and attempts a performance. "I don't know! He was willing to give of himself," he emphasizes, "for the pleasure of a fellow human being, and you turned him down? How could you!"
"Hey, I'm the one who's giving of himself!"
"Really? What, you're serving milk and honey? It's not like you're breast-feeding!"
"It's my own brand of milkshake!" Ian nods solemnly.
Costa ignores him, and proceeds with his own milking: "It's just such a selfless act." He turns to Ian, looks into his eyes with a dramatic pause, and recites, "Greater love had no man than this!"
Ian flicks up his eyebrows, and says, "Forgive me for I have sinned!" as he stares away at the dance floor.
Costa abandons the tragic route, and changes his tone as if snapping out of torpor. "And you know they're good: they don't call them cocksuckers for nothing, you know!"
"Should I tell Mario that?"
"I've already told him the line; he threatened to raise my rent." Then, recalling Ian's triumphant "I passed myself off as a regular cocksucker!" line, recounting how he had gotten the gay bathhouse job, Costa adds, "Besides, isn't that your line?" (At the time, Mario had demanded authenticity: "We should put them to the test next time!")
Ian flips the tables onto all fours. "Hey, weren't you the one who didn't want to take the cock route?"
"Getting sucked is different from getting banged."
"You could be the bang-er," he emphasizes.
"I don't know if you get to do substitutions: it might be a set menu."
"Well I'm gonna refer him to you," Ian says after he recovers.
"Oh, would you? Thanks man."
"Hey, that's what friends are for!"
"Do I have to write a CV or something?" says Costa with not entirely genuine curiosity.
"No, just tell him I sent you."
"Wow, friends in high places!"
"Yeah, and ready to go down."
"On their knees."
Ian's tired of the banter. "Let's go find them. I gotta walk."
"All right. We can go through the back."
They head back into the room. Costa walks boldly towards her peripheral vision, pretending to pass but aiming for a turn of her head. She looks down at the floor in front of her, gazing at her left side.
They shuffle through the thick of the partiers, towards the main room, brushing against sweaty arms, and prints of androgynous cartoon characters, fluffy clouds, stars and crescents, leaves and trees; and accessorized with colors and accents reminiscent of circuitry. A blend of florals and other fractals, tie-dyes and traced rays, stuck somewhere between a fab lab and Saturday-morning cartoons. A pixelated idyll born equally of leaves' veins and chip schematics.