CHAPTER SIXTEEN

 

“You sure you’re cool with this?” Richard asked.

Tyrone shrugged and took a sip of cold water as they sat in Richard’s living room. It was two days later and the heat wave still hadn’t broken. They hadn’t seen or heard from the cult in that time, but kept the shotgun loaded and ready in the bedroom, and Richard had been spending the nights at Adam and Steve’s place.

“Why not?” Tyrone replied. “It will be interesting to meet one of your old cracker friends and hear what you were like growing up.”

“He was never my friend. I explained that.”

His boyfriend grinned. “Maybe not, but I sure want to find out some embarrassing stories about your childhood.”

“I already told you how I popped a boner at the swimming hole.”

“There’s got to be more dirt than that, and I can’t wait until I tell the gang.”

“Actually, my years in Missouri were incredibly boring.”

“Bet you miss those boring years a bit now, huh?”

Richard planted a kiss on Tyrone’s lips. For the first time, he didn’t feel any tension. “Hell, no. Well, maybe we could skip the whole demon thing.”

Tyrone looked at him with concern. “You done with those things?”

Richard nodded and took a deep breath. “Yeah, I think so. I think I’ve finally shaken them.”

He didn’t tell Tyrone about the deal he had struck. His boyfriend would only worry. He would mate with the Taurus Demon and be his slave for a day, but after that he would be free.

The buzzer rang. Richard answered it.

“Let’s go Chillicothe Cavaliers! Hoo-ruy!!!!!” Brian’s voice came over the intercom, chanting the familiar fight song from his high school years.

“Pick the Yankees or the Mets, you’re a New Yorker now,” Richard said, buzzing him in.

When he opened the door, he got a surprise. Behind Brian stood Ron Humphreys, the Cavaliers’ star linebacker, and George Curran, the quarterback.

“What the fuck?”

It wasn’t the best way to greet a pair of unexpected guests, but it was the first thing out of Richard’s mouth.

“Hello to you too,” Ron said with a wry smile.

“What are you guys doing here?” Richard said, letting them in.

“Road trip, Woo-hoo!” George said, pumping his fist in the air. Then he gave Richard a hard slap on the back. “Brian told us how you took him to a titty bar and then fucked a couple of skanky New York hoes. Sorry about all that shit I said about you back in high school, buddy.”

“No problem,” Richard muttered.

Brian smiled at him. “Surprised?”

“You could say that.”

“It’s like a class reunion!” Brian looked around. “Hey, this is a nice pad. Publishing must be really working out for you.”

His expression darkened when they entered the living room and saw Tyrone.

“Guys, I’d like you to meet Tyrone, a friend of mine,” Richard said.

His three former schoolmates all put on poker faces.

“Nice to meet you, Tyrone,” George said. None of them offered to shake his hand.

Brian broke the ice by pulling out a twelve pack of beer from a shopping bag. “Well, hey, we’re in New York, right? Got to get used to a different type of living. Let’s all have a cold one.”

“That sounds all right by me,” Tyrone said with a tight smile.

They all sat down and Brian passed out beers. The tension eased a bit as they cracked the cans and talked. George and Ron mostly talked about what was going on back in Missouri, telling the same news that hadn’t interested Richard when he had heard it first from Brian. Richard glanced nervously at Brian, who was making a point of talking to Tyrone. He worried that his classmate would recognize Tyrone as the dealer Richard had ignored in Times Square, but he didn’t seem to.

Tyrone hadn’t been worried about that. “Black folk all look the same to them, Country,” he had said before they arrived.

In any case, Brian was making an effort. He didn’t look terribly comfortable, but the last time they’d hung out Brian had seemed so eager to fit into New York City, and if that meant having a polite conversation with a black man, that’s what he’d do.

Richard was so distracted by watching Tyrone being polite with his three Missouri classmates that he didn’t notice until too late that Ron had gotten up and was perusing his bookshelf. Despite being a jock, Ron had always been a bit of a reader too.

Richard’s entire body went cold. His throat clenched as he saw Ron thumb through the paperback novels, look curiously at a couple of new occult books Richard had purchased at Laszlo’s store, and then come across a magazine tucked in between the books.

Richard tried to speak, tried to move, but he was paralyzed.

Ron pulled out a copy of the premiere issue of Hot Young Virgins, with Richard’s willing, naked body on the cover.

“What the fuck?” Ron said.

Everyone turned to him.

Ron flipped through the magazine. “What the fuck?”

He turned to the other two Missourians and held up the magazine.“This is a fag mag! Richard’s been gay all along, and now he’s here posing naked for fag mags!”

George leapt up from where he sat next to Richard, as if Richard had some terrible disease. Brian stared at the magazine, then at his former classmates.“I didn’t know, guys. He fooled me.”

Brian turned on him. “You lied to me, you prissy, little, lavender bitch!”

Suddenly, Richard grew angry. “Damn right I lied to you, because I knew this would be the reaction. Yeah, I’m gay, and I’m glad Ron found that magazine because I’m sick of hiding it. I’m gay and Tyrone is my boyfriend.”

Brian looked like he was going to puke. “You let a nigger fuck you?”

Tyrone’s hands balled into fists. “Yeah, and I let him fuck me, honkey.”

“You don’t use that word here,” Richard told Brian. “Get out and go back to that redneck patch of Missouri where you belong. New York doesn’t want you.”

Brian’s face twisted in rage. “You fucking faggot!”

Brian leapt across the living room and swung at him. Richard, saw it coming in time to dodge, and instead of being hit a knockout blow to the jaw he took it on the shoulder. The force was enough to throw him back down onto the couch.

“Fucking cracker!” Tyrone shouted, and punched Brian in the side of the head. Brian stumbled away, only to be replaced by the two football players.

And then it was an all-out melee. George picked up Richard and slammed him against the wall, but Richard managed to head-butt him and make him back off. Tyrone and Ron were trading punches as Brian dove in to help the linebacker.

Before Richard could see any more, George was on him again. Richard managed to land a good one to his stomach, but then he was getting the worst of it. George threw a right hook that connected with his temple and sent him reeling, followed by a jab that almost took Richard off his feet.

Richard dove for him, trying to knock George over, but barely budged him. He grabbed the football player by the middle and shoved him back, gritting his teeth as George landed blow after blow against his ribs.

Richard’s weight finally did force George back, and they both tripped over the coffee table and landed with a crash of splintering wood. Richard landed on top, but he was too stunned to manage more than a couple of weak punches to the guy’s face before George flipped him over and whaled him several good ones.

Half unconscious, Richard could do nothing except curl into a ball and take it. After what seemed like ages the punches finally stopped.

Tyrone lay on the floor nearby, moaning with pain. The three Missouri teens stood glaring at them. Richard was gratified to see blood flowing from Brian’s nose.

Brian strode over to the bookshelf and grabbed the issue of Hot Young Virgins. He waved it over his head. “I’m going to mail this back to the guys in Chillicothe. Within a week, the whole county will know what a fairy you are. Your family will never be able to show their faces around town again.”

Laughing, the three young men headed for the door.

The sound of their footsteps receding down the hall galvanized Richard into action. Ignoring the pain lancing through his body, he ran to his bedroom.

His shotgun lay on the shelf of his closet. He checked it was loaded, flicked off the safety, and strode back out into the living room.

Tyrone was just picking himself off the floor. “Richard, no!”

Richard ignored him and hurried down the hallway, snarling at the locked door to the summoning room, and through the open front door into the outside hall.

Brian, Ron, and George were just heading down the stairs. They didn’t even see him until he was almost upon them.

“Holy shit!” George shouted.

Richard raised the shotgun and aimed for Brian’s face. The three teenagers froze, their hands raised in the air, sputtering pleas for mercy.

Richard put his finger on the trigger…

… and felt a steady hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t.”

Richard turned his head, but did not lower his gun.

Tyrone stood behind him. His battered face, one eye already swelling shut, looked calm and grave.

“Don’t. Much as I’d like to see this cracker’s head splattered like a watermelon all over the wall, don’t do it. You do it and you’ll go to jail for sure. I probably will too. And he don’t deserve to die. He didn’t do nothing worth killing for.”

Richard turned back to Brian. His former classmate must have thought Richard was going to pull the trigger because his eyes grew wide. Ron and George did nothing to help, only stood there frozen.

The sharp smell of urine filled the stairwell, along with the sound of liquid pattering on the tile steps. Everyone looked down. Brian had wet his pants. The front of his trousers were dark with the stain, and a line ran down one leg to where a steady stream ran out of his pants leg and all over his shoe to create a widening pool on the floor.

“Aw, shit,” Tyrone chuckled. “That almost makes it even.”

He grabbed the magazine from Brian’s hand. “Richard here mentioned you go to Columbia University. If any word of this gets back to his folks or anyone in his hometown, or if you go to the pigs, I’ll get a gang of horny gay motherfuckers from the hood to come and gang bang your lily-white ass right in front of the class.”

Brian’s eyes went even wider. Richard figured if he hadn’t wet his pants at having a shotgun pointed at him, he sure would have at that little speech. He swiveled the gun to point at Ron and George.

“Go back to Missouri. Now. Tell anyone and Brian here gets it.”

They nodded eagerly. “Anything you say, Richard. Anything.”

The three scrambled down the staircase. Tyrone and Richard made their painful way back up to the apartment.

Once they closed the door they fell into each other’s arms and wept.

They still hurt three hours later as they sat slumped and silent on the couch. They’d finished off all the beer but that only eased their cuts and bruises a little. The pain on the inside would take a lot longer to heal. At least nothing was broken except the coffee table.

Richard almost didn’t answer the phone when it rang. It kept ringing, though, with an insistency that echoed through the line as if to express the feelings of the person on the other end. At last, Richard picked it up.

He heard sobbing on the other end of the line.

“Hello?” he asked.

“Hello, Richard? It’s Peter.”

“Peter! What’s the matter?”

“Can I come over?”

“Sure, man.” Richard gave him the address.

Peter showed up with a suitcase, two black eyes, a split lip, and a bandage over one eyebrow.

“What happened?” they asked at the same time when they got a look at each other.

As Tyrone went down to the corner store to fetch some aspirin and more beer, Richard explained what had happened to them, leaving out the part about the gun. Once Tyrone returned, Peter gratefully knocked back a beer, popped an aspirin, and told them what happened to him.

“I had another session with Mitch last night. This time it was just me and those guys. They were taking angel dust this time and totally freaked out on me. This time they beat me up for real. The whole way through, Mitch was laughing and snapping pictures, saying what great photos they were. He kept egging them on. Then he kicked me out without paying me.”

Tyrone let out a low whistle. “That son of a bitch.”

Peter went on. “That wasn’t even the worst of it. I went back to where I’m staying. I don’t think I mentioned it but I was staying with a guy I met my first night in town. An older guy. He let me stay at his place if I… you know. When he saw how I looked he kicked me out. He said, ‘I want a beautiful boy, not some used up slab of mincemeat like you.’”

Peter put his face in his hands and started to cry. Richard moved beside him and put an arm around his shoulders.

“I have no place to go,” Peter sobbed.

“You can stay with some friends of mine until you get on your feet,” Richard said. “I’m staying there too at the moment.”

“No, I’ll find some place. You got your boyfriend and everything. I’ll find some place.”

“Some place worse than the one you lost,” Tyrone said. “You’re staying with Adam and Steve. Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna get jealous. I’m too beat up to sleep with him for a couple of nights anyway.”

Peter looked up, his eyes red and brimming. “You sure it’s OK?”

“We have to stick together,” Richard said. “Because no one else is going to stand up for us. We’ll feel better in the morning, and then you and I are going to look for day jobs. This modeling thing is just going to chew us up and spit us out. We can’t go on this way.”

Peter shook his head. “I was so stupid to come here. I should have stayed in Rochester.”

“Hell no, you weren’t stupid,” Tyrone said, sitting down next to Peter. “Just unlucky and too quick to trust. We’ll introduce you to some real folks, gay folks who care about each other.”

Peter perked up a little. “Really?”

“Really,” Richard said.

Tyrone and Richard hugged Peter from either side. All three hissed in pain at the contact and pulled away.

Tyrone chuckled. “Don’t we make quite a sight. The Three Fucked-Up Queers. One for all and all for one.”

They all smiled at that.

Peter sighed. “I guess you’re right. I should get a day job. Blueboy didn’t want me, and no other magazine is going to want me until I heal up, and maybe not even then.”

Suddenly, Richard had an idea. “Maybe we could get another modeling gig.”

The other two looked at him curiously.

“What do you mean?” Peter asked.

“This could be our most important gig yet, but you’ll have to be strong. We all will.”

***

The next day, on the other side of town, Richard pressed the buzzer to the front door of Blueboy magazine. He and his friends still ached all over, and they didn’t look much better than they had the night before. After a minute, Aaron Guillard’s voice came over the line.

“Who is it?”

“Richard Miller, Peter Dawson, and Tyrone Jackson.”

“Who?”

Richard rolled his eyes.

“You had two appointments with this motherfucker and he don’t even remember your name?” Tyrone whispered.

“We’re models, and we’d like to try out,” Richard said, trying to keep his voice polite.

“The cattle call was a few days ago.”

“Two of us have experience. We’d like to leave our portfolios.”

“Wait, Richard Miller? Didn’t you try out already?”

“I did, but I really need to talk to you. All three of us do. I think we might have a story Blueboy would be interested in publishing.”

Aaron’s sigh was audible over the intercom. “I’m quite busy, Richard.”

“Please? It will only take a second.”

“Oh, all right. “A minute later Aaron opened the door.

“Listen, I told you—” Aaron stopped mid-sentence and stared at the three men for a second, his jaw slack. “What happened?”

“We got gay-bashed,” Richard said. “Peter here got beaten up while doing a photoshoot for Leather Library. The cops weren’t interested in pursuing the case. Tyrone and I got beaten up by an old classmate of mine and his buddies.”

“Oh my God! I’m so sorry. Are you OK?”

Richard glared at him. “No, we’re not OK. Nothing’s OK. This whole scene is messed up. Young men come here to find themselves and get exploited. They’re in just as much danger from the trolls in the bathhouses and the sharks in the photo studios as they are from the cops and the gay-bashers. They’re vulnerable. They’ve had to hide all their lives and they’re desperate for attention and acceptance, and there’s a whole army of exploiters out there ready to take advantage of that. Even if they do avoid all those dangers, they get pulled into drugs. You said yourself that it’s like one big party that is going to end one way or another. Do you know the statistics on overdosing among gay men in the city? I do. I looked it up in the library yesterday. Five times higher than the straight population. And is the city doing anything about it? No. Did the city do anything about the Everard Fire? No. Are they going to do anything about the guys who assaulted me and my friends? Hell, no!”

Aaron had gone pale. The photographer stared at Richard as he went on.

“I love your magazine. Blueboy was one of the first gay mags I ever bought in this town. It inspired me. All those happy, healthy guys looking like they’re having a great time. That’s what I came to New York hoping to find. And yeah, I found it, sometimes. But there’s another side to gay life in New York City. You know it, I know it, and now poor Peter here knows it. And I want you to show it in your magazine. I came here to be a model and that’s what I’m going to do. I want you to put the three of us on the cover and have one of your writers do an article about what happened to us, what happens to lots of gay guys who come here looking to start a new life. If you don’t want to pay us, that’s fine. You can donate it to the Everard Fire Victims Fund or any other gay charity you want. But we’re going on that cover.”

Aaron looked from Richard to Peter and to Tyrone. For a moment he was silent. Then he nodded.“All right,” he said quietly, and led them inside.

A couple of hours later they walked out, tall and proud. They stopped on the sidewalk and gave each other high-fives.

“Next month’s cover story! Damn!” Tyrone cheered.

Richard put a hand on his shoulder. “You sure you’re OK with this?”

“Hell yeah, Country. Ain’t nobody in the hood reads Blueboy, and if they do they won’t admit it. Besides, I won’t be in the hood so much anymore now that I’ll be living with you here in Manhattan. We gotta go apartment hunting this afternoon.”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Peter said, almost skipping with excitement as they walked down the street. “This morning I got a job in an office. It’s a real estate place run by a gay guy. It’s not much, just running errands and making photocopies and stuff, but it keeps me away from Mitch and his crew.”

“Cool!” Richard said, patting him on the back.

Tyrone hooked his arm around Richard’s. “Looks like things are going to work out, Country.”

As if on cue, they heard a radio playing a song called “Village People” coming through an open window. It was the title track of a record by a new band by the same name who had just released their first album that month. It was already a hit in the gay community--the community that, when it was at its best, called itself “family.”

Richard, Tyrone, and Peter started singing along as loud as they could. People glanced at them as they passed, but the three friends didn’t care how gay they looked.

Suddenly the radio cut off. The lights in the café they were passing flicked off at the same time. A neon sign for a liquor store a few yards ahead went dark as well.

Richard and his friends stopped in their tracks and looked around. They couldn’t see a single light burning. Even the traffic light on the nearby intersection was off. Everyone else on the street stopped too. People started coming out of buildings, talking among themselves and staring at all the dark storefronts.

Richard led the others to an intersection which he knew stood on a rise and offered a view of several blocks down a main street. When they got there, they found the blackout wasn’t just on a block, but at least several blocks.

Then they noticed the skyline. All the billboards, all the streetlights, all the office windows in the skyscrapers--everything was dark.

“It’s the entire city,” Richard gasped.

Before he could say more, he heard a metallic rattle behind him, followed by a crash.

They turned around and saw that the owner of the nearest shop had closed his shutters.

Another rattle crash, as a shop a few doors down closed too.

Another crash, and another. Every shop on the street was busy shutting down.

Then they saw why. A nearby electronics store didn’t get closed quickly enough. Within a minute, a crowd converged on it. People ran out carrying televisions, radios, and air conditioning units. The Korean owner squawked and struggled with the looters, but he was outnumbered fifty to one. The store got stripped right before their eyes.

“Holy crap!” Peter said. “They’ve gone crazy. What’s going on?”

Richard and Tyrone looked at each other. Richard could tell what his boyfriend was thinking and he put it into words.

“It’s the cult. This is their counterattack.”

Throughout the city rose the sound of screams and breaking glass and police sirens.

The end.

***

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