Reaper's Lullaby

Gus: Chemsex

"The feeling of being used...I guess it's Better then being forgotten."
- Joan L Trejo

Friday came, and Gus met the man who had promised him the thousand dollars once more at the same spot on the sidewalk. The late afternoon sun was blinding, and the day was hot. The smog and dust seemed to choke the city, smothering it. Days like this made Skid Row a suffocating hell, the heat turning the stench of the place into a solid, seething, slug-like mass that slowly made its way up and down the street.

Gus's mouth was dry. He was nervous. No, more than nervous. He was scared. After what had happened in his tent that night he wasn't going to take any chances, and he carried a small pocket knife concealed in his sock. Adam had taught him where to stab someone in the neck, and he repeated the instructions to himself to calm down.

The man took him all over the city in his luxurious, sleek car. It seemed to Gus like his new friend was attempting to make him look nicer, as if he wasn't just a street kid but someone important. He even got a pedicure and a manicure, something he had never experienced and never imagined that he would. The man also made him get a haircut, which he was grateful for. The night he'd been raped they had cut his hair, and he hadn't bothered asking Ida to clean it up for him with her scissors, choosing instead to ignore it like he ignored every single reminder of the event. If he ignored it, he didn't have to remember it. It was the next best thing to it never having happened at all.

The man was on his cell phone almost constantly, stopping only to bark instructions at the stylists or cashiers. When he hung it up for a second in the car, Gus seized his chance, asking,

"What am I really doing tonight?"

The man looked at him sharply. "Whatever anyone asks you to do. If you do that, I make money and so do you."

"Sex?" Gus asked.

The man simply repeated himself. "Whatever anyone asks you to do."

Gus closed his eyes and thought of Adam. If Adam was here, what would he say? Gus pictured him, heard his voice in his head.

"Gus, it's just a party. It's like what you do anytime you make money. Only it's more people. Relax. Relax. Here, take this. It'll help."

Gus pictured Adam softly running his fingers up and down the inside of Gus's forearm, awakening the veins and searching for a target. Then, gently, gently pushing the needle in and pressing down on the plunger. A flood of tingling, warm light.

"Just be yourself," Adam whispered in his ear.

"I don't want to be me," Gus said.

"Huh?"

The man's voice shook Gus out of his daydream.

He laughed, staring out the window at a palm tree blowing in the hot wind. "Sorry, just thinkin' out loud."

————————

The house was a typical representation of the L.A. elite: a magnificent white palace made of sugar and cocaine, and it throbbed in shades of neon as it strained against its own walls, stretched and bloated with music and people and excitement.

Gus was in awe.

The crowd was alive with its own heartbeat that matched the manic beat of the trance music that filled every room. Everywhere he looked, Gus saw people in various states of undress, and yet the underwear they were wearing seemed like costumes. Men and men, women and women, women and men all laughed and flirted, kissed and fucked right out in the open for anyone to see.