The Illusion of Life

Moonlight

He has a spot now. Regulars. People who walk past and give him dirty looks because he's blatant and disgusting and ruining their neighbourhood. People who pay daily to call him fag and whore and cocksucker and all of the things that he is now.

He stands on his corner sipping brandy from the bottle and waits. People come and go but he's learned what to look for. Mostly they're looking for women. He doesn't blame them for passing him by. Standing in the half-light so they can't see how fucked up he is, the way his legs don't want to stand straight, the way his clothes are stiff with half dried filthy water, the way his lips and jaw are swollen and bruised. He probably smells like a bar mat.

Time drifts like it always does, his mind can't focus on it anymore. It could be hours or minutes, he doesn't know. He doesn't care. He measure it only by how fast the bottle goes down. He'll only start caring once the brandy is gone.

When the bottle's almost empty and no one's come by, he chugs the last dregs and throws it across the street. He never used to litter.

He sees him then. The crash of the bottle catches his attention and he turns to Toddy. Tall and brunette with heavy set shoulders and in the half-light Toddy could almost imagine...

He moves wrong. His gait is too heavy. Scotty is graceful, fluid. Scotty moves like a dancer who's never off the stage. This guy moves like there are weights in his shoes. The man looks at Toddy and smiles and it's a twisted, lecherous smirk that says I know what you are and I'm going to fuck you till you cry. Toddy thinks he looks nothing like Scotty. Toddy thinks it's the closest he'll ever get to seeing Scotty's smile again.

"How much?" the guy asks and Toddy hears the echo of Scotty's voice. It strikes something tight and cold in his chest that keeps coming back. He won't let himself examine it too closely, just pushes it down somewhere deep until he remembers that he's forgotten how to feel.

"For what?" Toddy asks.

"The works."

This is where Toddy says blowjobs only and sets the line he promised himself he'd never cross. He thinks of all the fantasies he's ever had of Scotty, lying in bed and picturing Scotty lying next to him, how it would feel to hold his hand, what his lips would taste like.

He thinks he could never deserve any of that.

"Fifty," Toddy says. It's lower than it should be because the guy is brunette and muscular and Toddy needs him to say yes.

"To fuck you?" The guy's eyes are as brown as Scotty's. He sounds surprised, he's done this before and he knows how cheap that is. Toddy wants to say I'd let you fuck me for free.

"Whatever you want," Toddy says. And he means it. He means it. He means make me choke on your dick, make me cry and bleed and piss the bed. Fuck me till I feel numb. He doesn't say it, he never says it. He knows how to make him do it without saying a word.

"Anything?"

"Whatever you want," Toddy repeats. He'll lay on the backseat of a car or the creaky, strained mattress of New York's cheapest motel and take whatever he's given, because this man could be Scotty. He'll walk away with come dripping down his thighs and wonder if it'll kill him, or if something else will first.

This is what he deserves.

The john smiles and asks, "You haven't done this before, have you?" There's an eager tinge to his voice, an edge of increasing excitement and Toddy knows the answer the guy is looking for.

"No," he says, "never." He thinks of Ty and countless faceless strangers and he doesn't think of Scotty.

"Come with me." Toddy follows him to a Mercedes, so out of place on the streets that smell of piss and garbage that it seems like something alien. He looks at the man again and notices the way his clothes are tailored and his wedding ring studded with diamonds. He wonders if he might've known this man once.

The man holds the door open and Toddy is standing, staring into a life he used to have.

"Something wrong?"

"No," Toddy says and as he steps inside he smells the leather of the seats and the aftershave that probably costs more an ounce than Toddy's charging him for this. "Nothing's wrong."

...

"So what do I call you?" the stranger asks.

He thinks of the way his name sounds on Scotty's lips, smooth and soft like it is something beautiful, like his name belongs to Scotty and only he can ever give it meaning. That is not how his name should sound.

"Toddy," he says and he thinks about Ty and getting fucked till he bleeds. The way it made his stomach hurt and the way he couldn't walk straight for hours after. He doesn't think about what it would really be like to get fucked by Scotty.

"Put your belt on, Toddy. I won't court trouble."

Toddy wonders what he is if not trouble. The smell of whiskey and sex bathed into his clothes and flesh like a flickering neon sign saying come fuck this if you're desperate. He is a beating heart and flowing blood. He is a skeleton and organs and tiny electrical impulses telling them how to move. He is a cheap warm body for people who are lonely and desperate, and he is not a human being.

He buckles his belt.

The car pulls away and Toddy stares at a fine smudge on the window until the lights of California blur into a faded watercolor. He listens to the almost inaudible beats of Tchaikovsky on the low tuned radio and remembers a time when he listened to this same music while he worked. He supposes he's listening to it while he works now.

"Nervous?" the john asks.

Toddy thinks he remembers how it felt to be nervous. He remembers his hands shaking beneath the gauntlets the first time he put them on and the way his voice would crack and only the modulator would cover it. His hands aren't shaking now. "Maybe a little," he says and it's steady, unwavering. Scotty would've known he was faking.

"Yeah, well, I can't promise to be gentle, but you'll make your wage." He reaches across the console and runs a hand up Toddy's thigh. His fingers squeeze and Toddy can feel his own heart pounding against the pressure. He wants to say don't fucking touch me but this is what he is now. He doesn't get to say no.