Acts of the Apostle

So I was fucking around with Jesse some, but I didn’t tell Paul.

I suppose he would say I should have told him, but I thought about all the things he had told me about having sex with men. I know he didn’t think I listened, but you know I did, I really did. And I thought about all the questions he would ask me when I was fucking some other guy.

And I thought about Jesse and if that stuff fit.

First thing was ‘age appropriate,’ which means I didn’t get off on it much, but Paul had no right to complain there after all the yelling about older guys. He must of told me a hundred thousand times, so – age appropriate.

Second he wasn’t using me just to get off.

Well, maybe a little, because I know he’s not gay, but it felt equal. Even though I was the one who got him off most of the time, he did whack me off pretty good sometimes. Now he lets me fuck him once in a while. He won’t suck or kiss me, except he does kiss a little when we fuck face to face and I’m in him, but he thinks it’s too nasty.

Actually, it was a rush because I got his cherry, which I never did with anybody before. About forty guys think they got mine, though I can’t pull that off anymore, so come to think of it, maybe I didn’t get his, maybe he just pretended. But I don’t think so!

Anyway, it was an equal to equal thing, like Paul was always telling me it needs to be.

Next, Jesse is a nice person who treated me OK, he could be a little prick sometimes but he wasn’t too bad mostly. He never made fun of me for being a homo, he’d joke sometimes but it was just goofing, not mean. He never tried to hurt me or say things to me like some guys did.

Next thing, we do a lot of healthy things instead of just sex and drugs and partying. We didn’t do any drugs in fact. We didn’t even do pot together. We play basketball and now tennis a lot and do board games and models but he laughs at me when I want to do my coloring or pottery. But that’s one of the things Paul told me I had to look for.

And then the last thing, I just feel good about doing it. It wasn’t as much fun as some of the guys I’ve taken up my ass, he isn’t strong and big and hairy, so that part like I said wasn’t so good. But I think he is the first young person I could remember that I felt safe with. Not like he’d protect me, but like I didn’t need protecting.

So after I thought all through it, I decided it was OK. I started seeing him after school most days and most days we’d get off.

And I decided Paul didn’t need to know about that.

That spring we went camping often. The camper was a real treat, and though my schedule meant we couldn’t take Jesse along most of the time, it was a very good thing for Will and I to spend time out in nature. It really did have a calming effect.

We had some very long talks, he loosened up when we were out in the middle of the forest, or at some seacoast park; and midweek most campgrounds were not crowded. We spent many hours, talking or just experiencing the serenity together, bonding after a fashion in a place where he had much less distraction, less access to sex. I was never sure though, if there was an interested male within a mile, I thought he’d probably find him.

In April we went further up north, we were wearing windbreakers and wide-brimmed hats, walking through a Redwood forest, a fine mist falling about us, not a cold day though. We were in a surreal space, surrounded by mist and fog and old trees, so high you couldn’t see the tops; we couldn’t see more than fifty feet, could not hear another sound except a slow stream burbling a little somewhere in the fog. He leaned against me, clinging, and tears rolled slowly down his face.

“What’s up, Will?”

“Nothin’. I’m just happy here with you.”

———————

 

I’d learned that when things seemed best, I could expect an eruption and trouble to quickly follow. I got back with my psychologist friend – who said that is a common pattern with disturbed kids, they don’t feel comfortable when their environment is not chaotic – and I decided to get him into therapy.

Easier said than done. We had to find someone nearby, who would be comfortable with this kid and wouldn’t overreact to his sex life or the peculiarities of, for example, our sleeping arrangements.

But with some networking we found a child psychiatrist in Palm Springs (yes, it cost an arm and a leg), and I went to meet with him. He wasn’t willing to take Will on as a solo act though, he felt it would work much better if we did ‘family’ therapy together. And he pointed out that it was unlikely that Will would open up for quite a while in individual therapy. And he was clear he wasn’t going to be alone in a room with Will.

So I told him we were going to go to talk with a shrink once a week, the two of us, and he didn’t really make a fuss, I was surprised.

What I discovered was, going to therapy hurts.

We’d be there, he’d dredge up a little shit – hardly anything it seemed to me given all the shit he had dumped on him over the years – and he’d be good and make some progress in the session, seem to get some insight or just say things he had not been able to articulate before. Then right afterward he’d throw some kind of a fit, yelling at me over something insignificant, getting loaded, disappearing for a night, breaking something, usually one of his clay sculptures.

I pointed this out in session, and he denied it, but the doc told him point blank that it was probably true, and understandable and OK if he could just find a different way to channel it, break something that didn’t matter, work out the pain and energy. He sulked and said it was all bullshit.

The doc said to me on the phone that this was a predictable behavior for disturbed kids. They didn’t recognize the pain but it was there and therapy brought it out. If he’d been ten or eleven, I’d have probably have had to put him into a restraint hold, but this ‘boy’ was bigger and probably stronger than me.

I scheduled a gym workout for right after each of our sessions, as soon as we could get back, and he went fast and furious most times, ending up so drained I had to help him out of the car and into bed.

The teddy bear was in bed with us pretty often, I thought that was good.

In fact all his workouts had definitely had an impact on his body; he’d had another growth spurt too. He was now about pushing six feet tall and one eighty-five or so, and all muscle.

He was looking almost twentyish now. He wasn’t fashion model good looking; but he looked athletic and his body was taught, his features, fine and strong. A lot of heads turned when he went by.

One thing was missing – he did not project a sense of mature sexuality; he still came across as a wild child, exaggerated yet immature in his sexuality. You could have mistaken it for femininity, but it really wasn’t, it was childlike.

I thought that this growth might help. The real chicken hawks were going to start to pass him by, and if he was getting involved with older men, at least they were men looking for men, albeit young ones. I don’t think he saw the difference, didn’t realize he was losing his boyish nature at least in some ways.

The flip side, it was funny to see him and little Jesse together, playing like colts. Whenever he was with Jesse he seemed so very much more like sixteen or even younger, though the physical contrast was comical; he had at least eight inches and fifty pounds on Jesse. Jesse was quite the little scrapper, more naturally aggressive than Will and I came to see he was the leader in their duo, size notwithstanding.

All through the spring he made a lot of progress, in therapy, in school, at the gym, with his art, with having a friend. Not that there weren’t problems, moments of acting out. But it was the best and longest time we’d had without a crisis.

His school told me there was a new law that allowed him to take a test and get a “Certificate of Proficiency” that would be legally accepted as a high school diploma, much better than a GED. He would not have to go to school, or he could go to college with it. Or reenter high school. They said given his advances and intelligence it was an option to consider.

In retrospect it was probably a mistake, I should have really tried to delay his maturation, kept him a kid as long as possible to give him more time to heal, but hindsight is twenty-twenty. At the time we thought it would be a good thing for him. But he was not ready.

I was pretty bored a lot of the time though Paul was always finding something to keep me busy. I figured the least I could do was keep house for him; I had plenty of spare time, so I did the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and shopping. Sometimes I’d bring the bag boy home with me, though.

I was glad not to be using drugs so much, and I was having less sex but seemed to be enjoying it more. And I was getting to like Jesse a lot.

So then at continuation they told me I should take the High School Proficiency Test. The nearest Junior College was in Palm Desert, but there were some UC Extension courses in Yucca Valley, and I found out I could take some courses on base, through the education center there, so I took the test and passed it and I didn’t have to go to school anymore. I kept up my art classes though.

Once I took the test though, I sort of thought what I really wanted to do was go to high school with Jesse. But I figured that was stupid, I wasn’t a kid anymore, and I wouldn’t fit in there.

Me and Jesse weren’t having much sex anymore, he got tired of it and said he was into girls, but he did like to get fucked or blown once in a while. I could feel him slipping away though.

I needed a car so I could go to school in Yucca Valley, so Paul called up my parents and we went out and got me a car, not so cool, it was a ‘71 Maverick, but it was wheels, and I was free.

One weekend I talked Jesse into going into L. A. with me. His folks thought he’d be at Paul’s but we didn’t lie, told them he’d be sleeping over with me. And that was true. I left a note for Paul.

Kent liked Jesse, and I guess I was getting too old for him, he liked smaller kids. Jesse was a little bigger than when I first met him, but not much. We partied and we told Jesse it was his turn to sleep with Kent, and he did, but Kent paid him for it. I could hear them in there grunting away. Kent said the best thing was Jesse had red pubes, it was a turn on.

I figured Paul was going to be mad, but he told me that I could always come back to him so I gave him a chance and went back.

He was patient until I told him Jesse was with me. I didn’t tell him about Kent fucking Jesse or anything, though. I’m not a rat, besides he would just have gotten mad at me.

So he went and talked to Jesse, but Jesse was cool he wouldn’t rat me out and we kept things quiet, but Paul said if that ever happened again he’d have to tell Jesse’s dad about it.

A few days later I talked to Paul and I asked him why a straight guy would get fucked, or why he would like it.

He told me the body parts were all the same, did it feel good physically when a guy fucked me? 

Fuck yeah.

So he said the only difference was attitude, and if you got past that, a straight guy would enjoy the physical sensations the same. But I think he started to wonder why I asked that question and he asked me did I have any particular straight guy in mind when I asked?  I dodged it.

So I thought about all that and Jesse wasn’t too cool with me anyway, he thought Kent was kinda sick, and I figured he meant I was kinda sick. And I wasn’t liking school all that much, and I thought about it and decided it was time to leave.

I kept my promise, I didn’t run away, I left Paul a note and told him I figured it was time for me to finish growing up and not to worry about me, and I’d call him. I tossed out my coloring books.

Then I went over to Jesse’s and I told him what I was going to do, and gave him the model we made. I asked him if I could fuck him goodbye. It was great, I fucked him for two hours, he kissed me as much as I wanted and told me I was jerk, called me David and said he’d miss me. Then I packed up some stuff in my car and took off for San Francisco. That place was fun.

L. A. sucks.

It is just amazing to me how many times I could fail to see the obvious. But once the uproar died down, the missing persons report made, filed, and forgotten by the police, his folks notified, I realized there was nothing to be done.

Don’t get me wrong, I was deathly afraid of what he would do, knew he wasn’t going to make a good life for himself. My heart was so heavy. I expected any day to hear from a hospital – or a morgue. But in the end he was too big and too grown up and too disturbed to let me parent him. He was making his way in the world and life as best he knew how, and it was his life to make, to win, to lose.

I was lonely. I missed him.

I stayed in touch with Eleanor and the Colonel. They took it heavily too, but they were resigned to it by this time, had thrown in the towel years before, really. Not that they had given up caring, just given up feeling they could do anything about it.

He took the teddy bear with him.

Over the next six months he sent me a couple of postcards, one phone call when I was home though he said he’d called a number of times but no one answered. He didn’t say where he was, just said he wasn’t in L. A. He said he had a job, but wouldn’t talk about it, I figured he was hustling again. Was not obviously drugged up when we talked but his voice was very remote, very disconnected. He sounded dead. I reminded him he could come home, that I would always love him.

At the seven month mark, a letter arrived in the mail from the Police department in Redwood City, California saying his car had been towed and was impounded for expired plates, illegal parking and abandonment. The car was registered in my name, as he was under eighteen, but I learned that it had been seriously damaged, nearly totaled, and told them to sell it for salvage and paid the back storage charges. They told me it appeared abandoned; there had been no personal effects in the car.

If it was bad for me, it was crushing for the Colonel. He retreated from me, buried himself in work.

It wasn’t a problem logically to understand. The facts were unpleasant, but there was no reason to feel guilty. Had Will come with us, the result would likely have been the same, and arguably worse. But emotionally it was more than he could bear. He had failed his duty to his son, and duty really was what made him a man in the first place.

I wanted to talk with him, support him, and have him support me. In fact, I was almost as crushed. I knew if we talked it out, it would help.

We had done the right thing, the only thing we could do. We were powerless, we loved him, we tried. All those things matter, all those things should have carried us through. If only we could have talked about it.

Spain became a gloomy place for a long time. I began to think of the prospect of leaving the Corps, of broaching the topic of retirement. After twenty-one years I was thinking about a change. I thought about living again in Boston being close to my family.

I thought about leaving my husband.

I got a call from Eleanor, it had been almost eight months since he left, he was seventeen now, and he had asked if they could buy him a ticket to Spain so he could visit. She was skeptical, didn’t want to send him the money because she figured he’d not buy a ticket, and asked if she could send it to me instead.

I agreed readily. If he came to see me we could go buy a ticket and I’d put him on the plane myself.

He didn’t call for a month, then he was pissed off that I wouldn’t just send him the money, I decided on honesty, told him we wanted to trust him but couldn’t see that it was a smart thing to do. Trust requires judgment, has to be earned. I said I’d be happy to meet him at the airport or he could come to my place and we’d go to LAX together. That’s when he told me he was in San Francisco.

“Why don’t you come down here, or if you won’t flake out on me, I could come up there to see you, I’d like to see you again, Will.” I meant that.

“Yeah, well.”  He didn’t sound interested. “It would just be better if you could send the money, that’s all.”

“Will, I can’t do that, I already explained why.”

“FORGET IT, just fuckin’ keep the damn money!” and he hung up.

Eleanor said to hang on to the money, she thought I’d hear from him again. I did, about a week later.

“So when are you gonna come up here and give me my money?” 

The words were harsh but the tone was changed; it was a little boy talking. He was pleading with me.

I met him five days later. He asked me to pick him up on a street corner in downtown, and he was there, waiting in the rain. When he got in the car I thought I was prepared for anything, but I was wrong.

I took one look at him, and drove to a nearby diner. He sat at a booth across from me, hands dirty, nails broken. His clothes, always impeccable, were soiled, torn, and stank, as did he. His eyes were sunken, his skin sallow, and he could not sit still, didn’t want food but looked so emaciated I demanded he order something. He must have lost thirty pounds since I’d last seen him. He wouldn’t look in my eyes.

At first I thought I’d be gentle, but then I decided to be compassionate and honest instead.

“You look like shit, Will. You look like you need a lot of help.”

I expected anger, I expected FUCK YOU! and a walkout.

He stared at his hands, silent, picked up his coffee, hand shaking badly. He surprised me. “Yeah, I do.”  He said it matter of factly then he looked up at me and grinned.

“But I always need a lot of help and there ain’t no one can help me.”

—

Thing with Will is, you never know how it’s going to go, you have to learn to just flow it. He let me clean him up a little, took him to my hotel and showered and shaved (he still didn’t need it much, though) and I got him some clean clothes, and he crashed for almost two days solid.

He wouldn’t tell me about his life, but it wasn’t too hard to guess, I took him to the Haight-Ashbury free clinic; it was obvious he was a regular there, they gave him antibiotics, told him he needed to go in the hospital, but he said no fucking way.

Instead we went to the Passport Office, then the airport and I put him on a flight for Spain. I told him I loved him, hoped he’d stay with his folks long enough to get his life together.

There’s not much point in telling about San Francisco, is there? 

I mean you can figure out I was pretty much tricking for nothing, man they give it away there, though being young I got a lot of dick. That was nice. But nobody there seemed to be into keeping me, so I was pretty much sleeping with guys for a place to sleep.

I learned a lot about whoring, though. I’d gotten money before, but I never went out looking for it, and I found out a lot of stuff I hadn’t known. I was really lucky I didn’t get my ass in a major jam, but some of the guys who were doing it were OK, they clued me in on some shit, and I wasn’t totally stupid, I listened sometimes.

I had been up on Polk Street for three days, with a few tricks, but it wasn’t much fun, to be honest. Most of the guys just wanted a quick blow job or whatever, and they wanted to do it in the car, and weren’t paying all that much. Nobody wanted to take me home, fuck me right, kiss me, or anything. And San Francisco was expensive.

I had to sleep in the park the previous night, and I was kinda dirty and my backpack had got stolen. So I was kind of drowsy, and it was raining a little bit so I was hanging out in the doorway to a closed store, it was late and wet and cold. So I wasn’t really paying attention and this guy sort of snuck up on me.

“Hey you’re new here, kid.”

I was startled and I turned really quick. He wasn’t very old, maybe a few years older than me, but big, about six-two and heavy. Not fat, not buffed out, but big. He had his hair cut kinda strange, but when I learned his name I saw it fit. Black hair, brown eyes, he was lookin’ at me and I wasn’t comfortable the way he did it.

“Yeah, so what?”  I was pretty suspicious about what this guy wanted, he looked dangerous.

“What’s your name? I’m Wulfie.”

“Cool, I’m Will.” We shook, hip style because he wasn’t’ much older than me. I said cool but I wasn’t so sure he was cool.

“So you ain’t too used to tricking, huh?”  He shook out a cigarette and offered me one. I shook my head no, I didn’t want to owe him anything. I didn’t answer.

“I said you ain’t been doing this much up until now, right?” I just looked at him, he laughed “You don’t got to be afraid of me, kid. I’m just hustling too, you’re not much competition for me though. You’re pretty but that don’t go too far if you make mistakes.”

“What do you mean, mistakes?”

“I mean, going the wrong places with the wrong guys for the wrong money.”

“Huh?”

“Let’s get some coffee, kid, I’ll pay for it if you don’t got money.”

“Well, uh – “

“Oh, hey, don’t worry, you won’t miss any tricks here, it’s dead tonight, nobody be around here unless you want somebody dangerous to pick you up. Might see a psycho, but no good ones tonight. It’s too late and it’s too wet. I was just heading home myself when I saw you.”

I was pretty confused, but then I decided to go with him and see if he knew something I needed to know. So we went to Denny’s and had coffee.

“So what’s your story, kid? Run away from home? Looking for love?”

“What’s yours, nosy?” I decided not to take any shit off him.

He laughed. “Yeh, serve me right. Let me start again.”

“I figure you are about sixteen, queer and horny, and daddy tossed you out.” He looked up. “I could be wrong, but it’s something like that. And you figure you need money and you can just kill two birds with one stone, get laid and paid all nice and neat.”

“Sometimes it works that way, but it’s not as nice as you’re thinking, Will. I been doing this since I was fourteen, and I like to look out for new boys, help ‘em keep out of trouble. Because new kids never know how much trouble they can get into out here.”

“So that’s all, I’m just killing time and trying to help out a bit, ‘cause I don’t want you to get what I got.”

 “OK, so what happened to you”

“Psychos. You gotta watch out for them. Nice as hell and then they get a chance and hurt you bad.”

“I know all about that.” I was thinking of Greg and his van.

“Oh, yeah?  Maybe you met one, but you sure didn’t know what you was doing out there tonight, man you looked like a cherry ready to pluck and let me tell you, never even TALK to them leather daddies like you were. They’ll rip you a new asshole. Let me tell you about my big mistake, then you judge.”

“I had only been hustling for a couple months like you, I didn’t know shit about it.”

“There were a couple of pros who were buddies, a blonde guy named Alan and Trey, a black guy, that were kind of looking out for me, they were sweet guys. I was fourteen they were maybe seventeen. I still wasn't real good at picking out the psychos. One of them got Trey later, he got killed by one.” He looked right in my eyes.

“Well, one night neither of them were around and I got picked up by this guy dressed in all leather. They had both warned me about that type but I was a little smart ass, I figured that I could handle myself. I was so fucken smart. Just like you.”

I started to say something, but he interrupted. “Never mind,” he waved me to shut up, “maybe you are smart and then maybe you ain’t and maybe you should listen and figure out for yourself what you need to know.”

So I did. I shut up and listened. I was listening real good, I started to believe him.

“When I told him that I wasn't into doing anything that was gonna hurt he just laughed, says the leather is just like a costume for when he goes out. Stupid me, I believed him.”

“We go back to his place and everything starts out all nice and sweet, he got me a drink, kisses me, turns out the lights and put on some music. When we end up in bed, he asks me can he tie me to the bed.”

“Well, back then I didn’t know the hustler’s code but you don’t get that excuse, young Will. You better remember this one: always be able to leave, ‘cause you never know when someone’s gonna turn on you.”

“Since I had never had that done before, didn’t know no better, I told him yes. Once he got me tied to the bed and couldn’t get away, he totally changed. He got very rough. He did everything possible, including have his friends come over and work me over.”

“Sunday night he drops me off at the door to a hospital emergency room and drove away. Me, I had six broken fingers, two fractures in one arm, one in the other, a cracked vertebrae, a fractured jaw, a broken wrist and about forty cuts and burns. I ended up in the hospital for three fucken weeks.”

“So I got to be a real careful about who picks me up, and you better wise up too. Wanna see some scars?” 

He leaned back, rolled up his arm, and showed me a surgery scar on his forearm.

So I just rolled up my sleeve and showed him mine.

He laughed real good. That’s when I figured we’d be buddies. He let me crash at his place that night, and we had pretty good sex too. Too bad he was so young.

Still, he was right that San Francisco was not a good place to whore. Way too much competition and dangerous tricks.

It was good to have a friend, but he disappeared from time to time, and I hadn’t seen him for about a month.

I thought Haight-Ash would be cool, and I did find a lot of guys to hang out with and drugs, but the big days there where you could always find a place to crash were over. The cops would come along and roust you out if you slept in the parks or whatever. So I was not in such good shape when I got together with Paul.

When he got off the plane I was frightened by his appearance, but did what a mother will do. I tried to clean him up and fatten him up, figuring his sad state was the result of lack of food. But within a few days I began to think it was something more.

And there was the matter of his eyes, which were empty.

And of course, that was part of it. But his appetite was poor, and he began to get weaker rather than stronger.

At the end of the second week, we took him to the base hospital. He had hepatitis past the acute phase. They kept him two weeks in the convalescent ward. He was very weak, when they discharged him to us. The only treatment, they told us, was rest, and recovery could take weeks or months.

The Colonel could not bring himself to display any real emotions to him. I don’t know whether it was a matter of being afraid to invest in him again, or fear of rejection, or continued discomfort with his difficult son, or fear it might provoke more misbehavior.

Three weeks later he was much stronger, and had put on a bit of weight.

He disappeared then, left no note.

I knew as soon as I was feeling better I needed to get out of there, my folks – well, I don’t know if Mom maybe did want me this time, but I wasn’t a kid, and I’d never make my dad happy, so I had to leave.

I whored a little along the beaches in Spain, learned some more Spanish, Yo quiero chupar tu pinga. Means I want to blow you.

I stayed in a couple different towns, Estepona, Fuengirola, Malaga, Nerja. Malaga was the biggest and the best in terms of my business, but Nerja was small and more like a little fishing village, which meant not much business but I liked it anyway.

The beaches were soft and sandy and warm and white. When I got there, it was still winter so it was rainy and cold once in a while, but the Mediterranean is warm and the weather was usually pretty good. Even in the winter they had a lot of tourists there, from Germany mostly but all over.

I had gained back some weight, didn’t look so bad, so I got to practice my deutsch a little. Deutsch is German for German.

Lek mine shwantz. Means suck my dick. I can’t spell it right though. German is hard to spell. I learned like fourteen different words for sausage; wonder why? Get a clue. Every goddam German used a new name for it.

It helps that I don’t look like a homo, not nelly or anything, but mostly with the customers, the cops don’t care, and some of the johns want you to be a pretty little femboy, but shit, that ain’t me. Gotta work with what you got.

The hills behind the beaches were great, I liked to sit on the beach and read a book, and watch those clear blue warm waves wash up until afternoons. Then I’d turn around and look up at the hills while the sun went down, all red behind me and turning the hills all pink and yellow. And the towns looked really cool, the streets winding and the roads paved in stones and these little whitewashed stucco houses built up along the sides of the hills and cliffs. So at sundown they were like a movie screen for the sunset.

The food was cheap if you ate in the local tapas and it was so good! I never thought I’d like grilled sardines, but man I could get into them. And the rest of the seafood was flopping fresh; just about everything they served was fresh, nothing from packages. I could do without the goat cheese, though. But the salads were fresh, everything tasted great and it was cheap.

Once in a while, when I was flush or a trick wanted to go, I’d take a day off whoring and hike around the hills, looking at the olive and fruit orchards and goats and the kids who weren’t whoring, at least right then. Long walks in the hills were great, the roads and orchards were lined with little stone walls, the views were dreamy and quiet. It made me think of the trips with Paul in the state parks when we were camping.

It was a good place, I got relaxed there, I got over the hepatitis pretty quick.

It wasn’t America, for sure. But that was good, America sucked.

If you had to you could sleep on the beach, but I had money and there were some really cheap places that weren’t too shitty to imagine living in. It was way better than a park in fucking San Francisco, I’ll tell you that. I never had to sleep on the beach after that first week. I couldn’t afford places with a view or private bathroom but shit, I didn’t care about that, I just wanted a place to flop, a place I could sit and be alone once in a while.

And sitting on the beach every day was kind of necessary for my business, because when you work the tourist trade you usually don’t get regulars. Regulars are the best for anybody who whores, they pay pretty good and take a lot less effort. They also tend to give you gifts and food and shit you don’t ever get from one-timers. Of course, you gotta look good, you can’t look streety for that kind of gig, if you look cheap and dirty that’s a turn on for some of them but even they don’t want you around once they get off.

Lots of them just wanted a quickie or one night, but some of them wanted to hook up for a week while they were there. That was the ideal thing, you didn’t have to go out looking for a whole week, sometimes two, you could relax, they’d feed you the whole time, take you places maybe. You got to clean up in big hotel bathrooms and use their shampoo and shit. And once they figured out I knew how to act, they’d take me to restaurants and gay bars and dance clubs. The only thing, they weren’t into drugs much, too clean those Germans.

The German tourists liked what I had to sell. Being American went over big with them; they were fascinated with my cock because I was cut. A teenaged American boy was some kind of fantasy for a lot of them. One of them told me he thought they were working out their guilt about Jews by sucking cut cocks, but I think he was kidding. I wondered if I should lie, tell them I was Jewish, if they’d pay more for it. I got the right hair and eyes for it, but my nose isn’t big.

So I’d look young as possible and wear American clothes and sewed an American flag to my backpack. I’d sit out all day in the sun, once I got a tan worked up and wouldn’t burn, just sit there in swim trunks and wait for business. At first I wore those little bikini bottom things that the Europeans wore, and they liked it but after a while I found it was best to avoid European swimwear. My advantage was looking American, so I did that. Levis were good, too. Cutoffs or not, they worked, and I’d see some guys just get hard looking at me in wet Levis.

I could pull down $25 or $50 every day I whored, and that was pretty good money in Spain, let me tell you. And I didn’t have to do a bunch of guys each day, I just did if I wanted more money or more sex. If I got a week long tourist it was $150 or more for the week, and no work, just more sex which was fine with me.

I didn’t get much competition, mostly little Spanish boys, up to about fourteen, not many guys my age and no other Americans. I got paid best of all the whores, well, of the teenaged ones, sometimes they’d pay the little boys a lot.

The little boys, the thing that freaked me out was their mothers would make the deals with the tourists for the young ones. I was pretty surprised about that. But I guess they didn’t think it was such a big deal, and they needed the money. And one of the little boys told me – well, I think this is what he said, my Spanish wasn’t that good – that his mom made sure they weren’t bad guys, and that he got paid enough, so maybe that was OK. Still pretty weird.

I’d have been worried if there were a lot of Spanish guys my age, I’d learned that hustlers in a lot of places would beat you up for being higher paid, try to cut you up, scar your face, ruin your looks to cut your prices, get you fewer tricks, or just run you off. Or for fun. I saw that in San Francisco a little. And later Italy.

But that didn’t’ happen in Spain, and I found out that the men were either into the young ones, or into me, but usually not both. I did have one guy pay four of us to do a daisy chain with him and that was OK, but the oldest other boy was only thirteen, and I wouldn’t do anything with the ten year old. That’s sick, I coulda smacked that guy for getting that kid into it. I should have got more money for that one anyway. I felt like busting that guy up.

It kind of made me appreciate my parents more. At least my folks never pimped me out.

Most of the Germans were really there for the beaches, or for the little ones, probably why there weren’t more guys my age around. One guy said he preferred guys like me but did the boys if there wasn’t anyone older. Anyhow, enough of them liked me.

This was actually the best whoring I ever did, all things considered, the best paid and safest anyway. And there were a few women and couples, and I thought it was pretty kinky, some of the stuff they wanted, but it paid really well. I fucked some of the women, but it was all business. I didn’t give no discounts for it, that’s for sure. Actually I never liked three ways, it’s too lonely ‘cause usually it’s two people who are into each other an there you are, like an animated dildo, you’re not really part of the party. Lonely. I like to get fucked by guys who like me, not … ah shit.

I would not let anyone tie me up, though. Wulfie taught me that lesson real well. Not that many guys suggested it, but they were willing to pay a lot. I turned down a lot of pesetas that way. I did tie some of them up, though, if that’s what they wanted.

One guy was pretty sweet, he treated me like his son, I was thinking he wanted me to go to Germany with him, but even if he did, I wasn’t into that any more. I wanted to be my own man. I didn’t mind sex, or selling it, but I am not a kid anymore. Well, I guess if he had really offered I might have done it, given that another try. I got a lot of sex but not all that much loving on the beaches.

I figured I’d kick off drugs so much for a while, so if a customer had some pot or something that was cool, and I did find one guy who traded me a bottle of reds for a couple of blowjobs, but that was about it. Saved a lot of money too. And like I said, the Germans weren’t into drugs that much.

I’ll tell you this one thing, though. Peppermint schnapps is just a fucking stupid thing to drink.

The Spanish cops didn’t care too much about me, I made sure I had my passport, my dependent ID card and I was almost eighteen anyway. As long as I kept nice clean clothes on and wasn’t loaded in town, they didn’t look twice, and one that did, well he got paid off in what I had to trade.

Funny uniforms, but uniforms are always a turn on.

When I didn’t get a tourist to fuck me I’d go to that cop, his name was Pietro, that means Peter, though maybe he lied. We did it maybe ten times. He was nice to me. It was just quickies wherever, except one time we went to my flop. But he was a pretty cool guy, married and he showed me pictures of his kids. At first I thought maybe he wanted me to do it with them, but he was just showing them off. Maybe he was telling me he wasn’t queer. I think I liked the times with him about the best of all the tricks I had there, he would hold me and kiss me and call his putita, so it sounds kind of like a nickname, and that’s how it felt, little whore. Anyway, I needed his dick and he would usually feed me or give me a few pesetas .

Actually, when I think about it, he was maybe the best one, because he was about the only freebie I did. Well, there was one of the Spanish boys who was fourteen or maybe thirteen and he wanted me to do him, and I thought he was maybe a little like I was when I was young. So I fucked him as good as I could. Not ‘cause I wanted it but because he needed it.

But it got hot and crowded, and I was bored, so I figured I’d try out the Riviera, but it was kind of a bust, they had a lot of pretty boys there and I didn’t stack up so good, wasn’t hot enough for the rich guys, and the others, well, didn’t have a pot to piss  and it was also hot and crowded. And everything was really expensive, Spain was much nicer.

So I went on to Italy, and found Rome was a bad place to be, they don’t like competition there, and they get mean about it. The cops picked me up hitching and they didn’t like that at all. All of Italy sucked, pretty much. I was lucky I didn’t get beat up more, they wanted me to move on, for sure. I headed back to Spain, not too beat up, I was lucky, but broke, and whored on the beach for a while, while I healed up.

Then I met a couple companeros who clued me in, and I whored real hard for a while, and saved up my money, and split to Amsterdam. Legal drugs. And I was eighteen.