The Illusion of Life

Don't Dream

He drops one arm, fingers going to the cock beneath him, stroking, grinding his hips until the man – Scotty – starts to get hard.

Toddy feels like he is rotting from the inside. Something eating away at his pulpy, fleshy humanity; maggots squirming beneath his blemished skin. Almost normal on the surface, but crack him open and you'd recoil in disgust. He wonders if this Scotty can feel it. The way Scotty keeps looking at him, touching him, Toddy thinks maybe Scotty once knew what happiness felt like, that he's doing this because he needs to feel it again.

Scotty's hands are on his back, touching him, always touching him. Toddy knew what it was like to be touched with love once too. This is almost like that, if he lets himself close his eyes and think of Scotty. Light fingers running down his back, soft breath and a tenderness he doesn't deserve.

"I wish..." Scotty says and Toddy thinks I wish too, but only hushes him.

Scotty shouldn't wish, he thinks, he shouldn't either. He is not this man's fantasy, he is not his wish. He should pull back and look at him and see that he is not Scotty and tell him, I'm not who you want me to be, I'm just a fucking hooker. But they both already know that and they're here anyway.

As Toddy grinds, Scotty's breath goes heavy. Not like the men who groan and curse, who don't want to know they're fucking a human being. Toddy has learned to be quiet and he has learned to be loud and he no longer knows what is natural. "Shh, shh," he says to the man who could be Scotty, but really he's telling himself.

He pushes down on Scotty's cock and starts to fuck him. Scotty doesn't move and doesn't breathe.

Toddy has been living like this. Not living. An autopilot of breathe and move and drink and fuck. There's no life in it. He holds on to bottles of booze like a dying man clings to his faith. He is shaking now. Always shaking under the surface, his body holds it back but he is buzzing inside. He wants to cry like he has cried so many times before, but the tears don't come.

"I love you," he whispers into the ear of this Scotty who isn't Scotty. This man needs to hear it as much as he needs to say it. They're like children, he thinks, playing pretend. It's a sickness. The part of him that should be withering away, shrivelled and dying in a bath of alcohol and meaningless sex, is trying to pull itself back to life. Clinging to this make believe like it could ever mean more than two desperate men throwing themselves into the fire and hoping that they'll feel the burn.

This game is dangerous. The man will come soon and then he'll look at Toddy like the pitiful animal he is, or he won't look at him at all. He'll right his clothes and throw his money on the table and he will leave.

Toddy will take his money and funnel the nearest bottle of booze down his throat and hope that if he wakes up sprawled across the sidewalk he won't remember what happened tonight.

Maybe Toddy will never see this Scotty again, or maybe Scotty will find his comfort in this, want it again, and they'll dance this dance every night until Toddy can't take it. Until his veins are filled with more whiskey than blood and it's still not enough to stop him feeling. He should stop this now. Say keep your money, you need a therapist not a whore. It was never meant to be like this.

He can feel hot tears on his shoulder and Scotty is shaking. He's making horrible, choked sounds that are nothing like the ones Toddy's used to hearing. Toddy wraps his arms around the man's back and feels the ripple of his muscles as he sobs. They're not even really fucking anymore.

"Toddy." The man gasps. His name sounds different coming from him. He's heard it countless times on the lips of men now, used like a curse, like a poison, like if they say it too loud he might become human and they might have to look at him and see what they're doing.

This isn't that. This man says Toddy like he imagines Scotty would.

He thinks of countless men who could've made him feel something. The way his body has become this aching pile of limbs and emptiness.

"Scotty," he says and he doesn't care what the john will think. He can take his money and run. Maybe it would be better for both of them.

Scotty's fingers tighten around his hips and he bucks and sobs like he's breaking apart as much as Toddy is. Toddy thinks this is what feeling is like. It's burning inside. It's neurons firing telling your body you're in a kind of pain that no doctor can fix. It's the world narrowing until everything is now and there is no before and no after.

He is here with Scotty now and he remembers what it's like to feel. He plays back all the moments in the last few months, every man who's chosen to hurt him, every time he let them do it. The way he's walked around with a body always on the edge of being broken. The way he's let himself believe that it's what he needs. The way he let himself believe that's what being with Scotty would really be like.

The way this will be over soon and he'll go back to that, because it's all he knows now. All he deserves.

This needs to be over.

He pulls away, takes his hands from Scotty's back and feels the cold of drying sweat on his skin. He lets his hair fall over his eyes and doesn't look. Never look. Never look. The illusion is too fragile. He won't be able to finish if he breaks it.

"Come on." He twists his hips, fucks him harder, faster, till it almost hurts. "Make me feel it. Make me remember what you feel like. Make me miss you. Make me love you."

Scotty gasps and shakes and comes and Toddy pulls away while he's still reeling. He turns his back to him, picks his clothes up from the floor and runs the fabric through his shaking fingers.

There's silence then. Stillness. Like the world has stopped moving. Toddy feels this stranger's come dripping down his thighs and thinks it feels no different to everybody else's.