The Illusion of Life

I'm a Goner

As a child, Toddy never really dreamed about the man he would become. No one ever asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up because it was inevitable. A businessman, an inventor. A drunk.

Now he is on his knees, out the back of a rundown bar he'd have been too proud to go near when he was still a businessman, a billionaire, a hero. His pants are soaked with something that could be piss or the dregs of beer that might as well be piss. He thinks maybe this was the inevitable. From the day he first chugged whiskey like it was the medicine he needed to make his father proud, this was where he was heading.

The fingers tangled in his hair are pushing him closer and he leans into the pressure, takes this man's dick deeper. There's a hint of stale sweat and dollar store deodorant somewhere beneath the sex and piss and cigarette ash.

"Mmm, fuck yeah, take it, bitch." Fucking him deeper, harder, forcing him to stifle the urge to gag that he tells himself is still a reflex and nothing to do with the smell and the taste and the booze that rolls around in an otherwise empty stomach.

They've barely started. These are the first words out of this guy's mouth not punctuated by the awkward pauses as they negotiate prices and rules. Hardly five minutes ago the guy could've been any average joe out for a beer after a hard day at work.

Kind of handsome, Toddy thinks. He rarely lets himself think it these days. He doesn't do people. He closes his eyes and buries his face in anonymous cock and never learns their names or memorises their faces. But this guy is young and rugged and a little muscly, and it would be easy for a guy like this to get laid without paying. Sometimes Toddy wonders what their stories are. Mostly he just takes it and thinks of the booze.

The man tugs at Toddy's hair until his scalp burns. Always the quiet ones, he thinks. The ones who dance around the words when they ask him, who shuffle with their money like they're not sure how to pay him. The ones who stare at him but never look him in the eye.

"You like that, fag? You like it, huh?"

Toddy prefers it like this.

He focuses on the beat of music in the background. Too quiet to place the song, but it's easier if he focuses on that instead of the heavy breathing and the words he hasn't heard since Ty (or since the stranger who fucked him hours earlier). One, two, three, one, two, three. Maybe it'll be over before the song is. The dick in his mouth punctuates the offbeat.

The emergency exit swings open and for a moment Toddy's sucking cock to the sound of Sinatra. The bartender leans against the old stone wall, back inches from the dumpster, distant streetlight casting an ugly yellow glow across his back. He lights up a smoke and watches the way Toddy's lips work around the stranger's cock. Toddy watches the way he watches. Their eyes meet for a moment, but the bartender says nothing. The cigarette hangs limp from his fingers, burning ash, now forgotten. His free hand pops open the button on his jeans.

The john laughs. "Fuck man, enjoy the free show."

Toddy closes his eyes and goes back to sucking dick because he has no shame now. He is someone's porno. Someone's quick, cheap cigarette break jerkoff session. He should charge extra.

The john fucks him till his jaw aches. His lungs burn with the need to take a proper breath and his knees have long gone numb. He calls Toddy a whore and a fag and talks like a twelve year old boy in a locker room who's just learned the meaning of dirty talk. It'd be funny if Toddy was still drunk enough.

He kneels and takes it until the john comes down his throat without warning. It tastes like shit, like the guy lives off fast-food and beer. Everything tastes like shit these days. From the first morning drink of liquor, to the last guy who comes in his mouth at night.

He brushes his teeth with disposable toothbrushes in motel bathrooms and pulls pubic hair from his teeth every night but the taste never really goes away. He tastes vodka and whiskey and sherry that might as well be bleach and it all tastes faintly of come and bile. He drinks enough that it doesn't matter.

The john pulls away and kicks him in the stomach, like he's a stray dog that won't stop following him. "Get out of here, you fucking fag," he says.

The bartender's still watching. Cigarette dangling from his lips, his pants fixed up like he never opened them. He's still leaning against the wall, relaxed, like this is any other day.

Toddy should ask for the rest of his cash but he's reading something dark in the john's eyes. Something about the tightness in the way his shoulders move as he tucks his cock away and buckles his belt.

It's a good skill to have, for a hooker, he thinks, knowing who's seconds away from beating the shit out of you. He sticks his hand in his pocket and fingers the worn dollar bills. Half is enough for a drink. No motel, no shower, nothing tonight but a street corner and a bottle of New York's cheapest.

"I said get the fuck out of here," the john says. The bartender says nothing.

Toddy stumbles to his feet and ignores the way his legs tingle with pins and needles and shake with the cold. He doesn't look at the bartender or the john or at anything except his worn out loafers and the stains on his pants.

He wipes away come with the back of his wrist and tells his legs to take him where he needs to be. Less than ten minutes to the nearest liquor shop and he walks away with a bottle of brandy and ten cents to his name.

He sits on the sidewalk, the concrete burning his ass through clothes that are too thin for this kind of weather. He drinks until he's warm and numb and ready to do it all again.