Tricks

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

Arliss returned to the dressing room, feeling a little disoriented and worn-out. All that mingling, smiling, being groped, laughing at jokes he didn’t think were funny, and pretending to seriously consider come-ons from guys old enough to be his father had exhausted him. Dancing always did that. It was as though having all that attention focused on him drained the life out of him. For most of the guys working at Tricks, the opposite seemed to be true.

Antonio had finished for the night, although the way he was dressed, Arliss would have thought the guy was ready to strut out and do another set. The Puerto Rican wore painted-on skinny jeans, combat boots, and a torn camouflage tank top that showed off his olive complexion, ripped muscles, and tattoos. He was sitting in one of the folding chairs that faced the bank of mirrors and looked up when Arliss came in. He regarded Arliss in the mirror.

“You look exhausted, dude.”

“Is it that obvious?” Arliss struggled out of the black thong, kicked it into a corner, and stood naked, lighting up a cigarette. Nudity back here was no big deal. In fact it was so common, street clothes often stood out more.

“Yeah, my friend…it’s that obvious. You want a little pick-me-up?” Antonio opened an eyeglass case in which he had secreted a little glass pipe, darkened to black in places with crystal meth residue. He held the pipe out to Arliss, along with a lighter. “Miss Tina will make it all better.” He chuckled.

Arliss frowned. “You know I don’t do that s**t. And besides, Emmett will have your ass if he sees you with that back here. Put it away!”

Antonio smirked, and Arliss couldn’t deny how badass sexy the expression looked on his face. Antonio closed the case and stuffed it into his messenger bag. “Don’t be such a prude. You’re about the only one of us doesn’t enjoy a little tina on occasion.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve seen how bad it can be when that s**t goes south.” Arliss had a sudden vision of a dirty, darkened apartment and three naked guys, one of them lying on the floor, white as alabaster, eyes rolled back in his head while a trickle of blood seeped from his nose. He shivered, purging the image quickly from his mind. He reached for his bottle of Stoli and took a swig from it.

“You think that s**t’s any better, man?” Antonio pointed to the vodka.

“I don’t know. Maybe, if I’m lucky, it will take longer to kill me.”

“Nice.”

Arliss looked around the cramped space he had called his second home for the last six months. Jesse was getting ready to go out on stage, doing his goth schtick tonight, his face made up in clown white, black lips, and his eyes ringed like a raccoon. Right now he had on just a black leather jockstrap, but he would add a cape lined in red satin before he made his entrance. He was doing push-ups under the assumption this last-minute pump would make his pitiful muscles appear larger. Good luck with that.

Emmett was seated next to Milton (aka the Cobra), an African American dancer with a shaved head and skin the color of dark chocolate. The two had their heads pressed together and were whispering intently. Arliss was too tired to wonder what, or who, they were talking about. Milton had been there the longest and was Emmett’s main confidant.

Arliss shook his head. He knew most of the dancers, once they were done here, would head out into the hot summer night, looking to burn off some of the nervous energy they had built up by performing. The more leather inclined would head to places like Touché, farther north, and the younger ones would stay closer, at bars like Sidetrack or Roscoe’s.

Once upon a time, Arliss would have been right there with them, drinking and f*****g the night away, awakening the next morning in a stranger’s bed while one, two, or more guys snored nearby. It had been fun for a while, but like everything else, the routine just got old. One-night stands, backroom s*x, and getting completely shitfaced had quickly lost their charm. Without any emotional connection, the s*x became boring if Arliss wanted to be honest—no different than snarfing down a cheeseburger or taking a dump.

He finished up his smoke, dressed in a pair of cargo shorts, Bon Temps football T-shirt, and flip-flops. He wadded up his tips and stuffed them into one of his pockets. Antonio noticed.

“I’m tellin’ you, you gotta be more careful with them tips. You gonna get robbed some night. Don’t you know there are guys out there just waiting for idiots like you to take a shortcut down an alley?”

“I know. I know.” Arliss grinned.

“You wanna come out with me? Gonna grab a cab and head on up to Uptown. There’s some guys having a little party. Half a dozen, last I heard, and a good ratio of tops to bottoms.” Antonio grinned and winked. “I’m sure you’d be more than welcome.”

Arliss knew exactly what the party would involve—PnP, or party and play. Everyone would be using tina and each other, that is, if the drug didn’t make their d***s limp. Dark, dirty rooms, TV pumping out porn, and a steady stream of guys culled from online sites like Manhunt and Adam4Adam would be the main attractions of this “social gathering.” And the party would go on well into the next day, maybe even the next night if there was enough of the drug to go around.

Arliss had seen enough of such scenes. Even at twenty-one, he was sick of them.

“Thanks, Tony. Maybe another time.”

“Got a date?” Antonio laughed and licked his lips. “Some hot daddy takin’ you out?”

Arliss just shook his head. “Something like that. See you next week. Try and get some rest.”

“Right. Rest. What’s that?”

Arliss took a quick look around the dressing room and then headed out through the stage door into the night. The door opened into an alley, and immediately Arliss was hit with the sweet, rank smell of the garbage in the dumpster next to the door and the odors of exhaust coming from heavy Friday night traffic in the neighborhood. A rat scurried along the brick surface of the alley. Arliss watched it acrobatically scale the dumpster and dive into a rodent version of Old Country Buffet.

What was he going to do with his night? He stood, looking up at the sky. The city lights lent it an almost sickly orange hue, blocking out the stars. In spite of feeling a bit exhausted from dancing and mingling with the crowd, he knew it wouldn’t work for him to go home and sleep. And he couldn’t deny that all the vodka he had drunk left him a little buzzed and horny. He considered briefly and just as quickly tossed out the idea of heading to the bathhouse a little farther north. He pictured the listless guys, towels around their waists, endlessly cruising the bathhouse’s mazelike corridors, each plywood door opening into a closet-sized room where dim light revealed a man lying on a single bed, facedown, ass up, and waiting. Again, the kind of anonymous s*x he’d find there was fast losing its charm. What am I? Arliss wondered. Already jaded at twenty-one? That’s sad, dude.

He emerged from the alley onto Broadway and encountered throngs of people crowding the street, many of them young gay guys like himself, full of optimism here at the beginning of the weekend, drifting from bar to bar in hopes of finding that elusive something or someone that would make them happy.

Arliss wasn’t so sure happiness existed. He was certain, however, that he wasn’t going to find it at the bathhouse, or the bars, or even in his own apartment, where he’d be up all night, like it or not, listening to his roommates as they brought various tricks home, had noisy s*x with them, and then headed out for more.

It was hot. Brutally hot, as only Chicago in summer could be. It sometimes even surprised Arliss, who had grown up in central Florida. The humidity even now, late at night, was thick enough to feel like a wad of damp cotton surrounding him.

And the heat made Arliss think there was only one place he wanted to be: by Lake Michigan. Only a few blocks east along Belmont lay the cool, calm water of the lake, and Arliss knew he could be alone there, or what passed for alone in this teeming city, maybe catch a breeze as he sat along the concrete wall that ran along the lakefront. He could wade into the chilly water if he had a mind to, come down from the night’s exhilaration, let the exotic dancer mask dissolve into fishy, relentlessly surging water.

Arliss lit another cigarette and headed east. A crescent moon guided his path.