Freedom (Pt 1)

Hi yinz. Here's part one of a longer story that I'll serialize over the next couple weeks. It's a little different than my typical work - more of a slow burn with lots of feelings. Still, I hope you dig it. 

I’d been living behind the abandoned parking lot for a few weeks the day the guy in the expensive car pulled in. I watched from my tent as it cruised slowly through the weed-choked lot. I thought he was trying to avoid the chasms in the old blacktop, but then I realized he was looking for our tents. Even still, I didn’t imagine he was looking for me.  

Our tents were set back a good ten feet into the woods behind the lot, but we weren’t that hard to spot. Still, it was a good location that felt safe, and I was lucky to be there. There were a couple busy intersections nearby where you could spange, a bagel store down the street with a nice Dumpster, and a corner store that sold seventy-five cent  samosas and cheap beer.

The driver got out and walked tentatively toward where the lot became a stand of trees. He was dressed casually and expensively in a pair of designer jeans, white fitted t-shirt and sandals. Handsome guy, well-built, with a really nice haircut. The kind of guy I’m always falling for.

My friends get on me about it: I fall in love with my johns. But I hadn’t done sex work in almost a year, since I’d lived in Tucson.

He looked nice enough, though. Not that I wanted to let my guard down – plenty of people looked nice. But it was the way he stopped right before the curb, as if respectful of our living space.

“Hello?” he called out. I hesitated. After Tucson I’d told myself never again. And it was pretty obvious what he was there for. But still, could he really be there for me? Maybe he was looking for a long-lost brother, or child. Maybe I’m his lost child, I thought, but shook it out of my head: that kind of thinking would only get me into trouble.

Then Bettina came out of her tent, coughing. “What?” she said in her gruff way. She’d been taking a nap after working on her yurt all night.  

“Um...” the man said, still poised at the curb. Maybe he wasn’t being respectful, I thought. Maybe he was afraid, or didn’t want the stink of us on him. But no sooner had I thought that than he stepped forward and held his hand out to Bettina. She looked him up and down.

“I’m looking for...” was all I caught him saying to her. She didn’t take his hand. I heard him say “yay tall” as he lifted his hand up to his chin, then “blue hair” and other stuff I didn’t catch, but by now it was pretty obvious.

Bettina was stonewalling him, though. So I had a decision to make. I could stay in my tent and let Bettina scare him off. Chill till rush hour then head to the highway with my sign, collect some coin then grab a 40 and see who was at the warehouse on the boulevard. My usual thing.

But here was this shiny person looking for me and how could I ever consider ignoring that? And how the fuck had he even found me?

So I came out of my tent. Zipped it up. And when I turned to them he was staring right at me.  

“Carson, this rich guy is looking for you,” Bettina said.

“I heard,” I said. My ankles crackled as I walked over to them. The guy didn’t say anything and his eyes were wide. Bettina looked at me, looked at him, and all but rolled her eyes.

He was enamored with me – that was the word my ex, Chris, would have used. He’d taught me about tricking. “It’s the dream,” he would’ve said. “Get on that rollercoaster. Ride it till it’s played out. Get in the front fucking car and put your hands up...”

Of course, Chris had taught me a lot of toxic shit, too, and I’d had enough trouble riding the John Coaster in the past. Somehow I always wound up tied to the tracks.  

The late-afternoon sunlight shone on the man’s face and made him seem solid or stable, like something I remembered from my childhood but couldn’t quite place. A feeling.

“What’s up?” I said. He opened his mouth to say something but it got stuck in his throat. Now I had to chuckle. Bettina shook her head and walked away. I came closer to him. “Were you looking for me?”

“Yeah,” he said, and smiled, and took a breath. “I...uh...sorry if I’m imposing.” I shrugged. “Because I, uh, I saw you the other day. On the corner, off the 101?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I see a lot of people. Did you give me some money?”  

“I didn’t,” he said.

“Did you want to now?” I said, and I was trying to be this hard-ass but I couldn’t help but smile at him cause he was so cute. “That’s why you came here? You felt guilty? Wanted to make amends?”

“No, I...well, or yeah. I mean, I was wondering if you wanted to spend some time with me. Get something to eat.” He looked at me levelly when he said that. You could almost believe he meant it.  

“Like at a fancy restaurant?” I said. He looked down at his shoes, then up at me. He knew I was fucking with him, and he was letting me, and it made my heart ache, a little.

“Would you want to go to a fancy restaurant?” he said in a soft voice.  

“Not particularly,” I said.  

“There’s a bar a couple blocks from here; the food is good,” he said. I rolled my eyes. A cloud went across the sun and dimmed everything.

“I’m not hungry,” I said. “If you want to fuck me, we should just do that.” I looked up at him. He stared at me.

“Okay,” he said, very frankly. Which was a surprise, but it told me something about him. And he was gorgeous, I now noticed. Handsome, muscular: well preserved for a guy probably in his early forties. So I went back to my tent and ignored my racing heart as I got my bag together. Then I followed him to his expensive car, and got in.

His car smelled like a department store, and once we were on the road I realized how quiet it was – like being in a bubble, completely cut off.  

“So, to my place?” he said, looking sheepish.

“I’m actually really hungry,” I said. He looked confused. “I lied,” I said. 

“Okay," he said. "That’s fine." We drove to the bar which was unassuming, inside and out. A happy-hour crowd was forming and people were looking at us kind of hard, which I figured was because he was obviously older and richer than me.  

“My name’s Luke,” he said, and I told him mine. We ordered drinks and food and I watched him, his firm golden throat as he ate and drank, Adam’s apple rising and falling. I thought: he’s beautiful enough to be a movie star. Then I realized the people around us weren’t really looking at me, they were looking at him, and I thought: he is a movie star. But I knew better not to say anything.

Still, being in the presence of someone famous was a trip. There was a cynical way to look at it, and my mind went there: the rich movie star, slumming, buying some authenticity for the night. But the glow of his celebrity was intoxicating and resisting it was impossible. I took a gulp of beer and it warmed my stomach.

“How did you find me?” I asked, and bit into my perfectly juicy cheeseburger.  

“I went back to that intersection. Twice, actually. Yesterday I didn’t see anybody. But today there was a guy with a dog.”

“Daniel,” I said. Luke nodded.

“He told me where,” he said, and took a bite of his salad.

“You must find me really attractive,” I said.

“I do,” he said, nodding.

“Do you pick up a lot of guys off the street?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. I laughed: he kept surprising me. “Not all the time,” he said. “It can be sort of...tricky.”

“Are you married?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “Open relationship. My husband is out of town, though.”

“Cool,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, and smiled, and went to take another bite but stopped short of putting it in his mouth and said “How’s a thousand bucks sound? For the night?”

I swallowed my bite of burger and pretended to think about it. I heard Chris’s voice in my head: upsell. But I dismissed it.  

“Sounds great,” I said. The thing was, I wanted to have sex with him. And this was part of the problem. I like sex, and I’m attracted to all types of people, men and women, all ages. But at that point I hadn’t had sex in months – not since I’d hitched to LA. So I felt giddy with anticipation and anxiety as we drove out of the city and into nicer and nicer neighborhoods. Chris’s voice was in my head was saying I was doing it again, and it would be like it was with Doctor Daddy in Tucson, crying in his foyer with five minutes before his wife got home, him threatening to call the cops on me before I managed to gather some pride and leave.  

There were other thoughts, too. Like he could kill me, or beat me up. He’d tracked me down – isn’t that what serial killers did? But the car kept going, winding up into the canyon, along streets that seemed empty but really had mansions tucked away behind gates on private drives. Until he turned on to one and punched a code into a box. My stomach rumbled, from anxiety or maybe just the cheeseburger. We drove up a dark, wooded road until we reached a house that seemed to hang like a glass box over the canyon. Luke lifted the parking break and turned off the car. I heard a coyote howl.

“Home,” he said, and smiled, and his smile was so sweet that I wondered how I could’ve ever been afraid. I leaned into him and let him kiss me. He shuddered a little when his lips met mine – his need, his desire, was obvious, and it was the type of thing that I couldn’t help but respond to. Which made me want to pull away and run off into the canyon. But I was working, now, and so I thought of what Chris would say: Stuff your heart with steel wool.  

He was a good kisser and his mouth tasted like mint. As I ran my tongue over his perfect teeth I wondered what he thought of my crooked teeth and missing molars. Did it turn him on? Should I judge him for it? But then I touched his warm neck and it didn’t matter, because he was beautiful and he thought I was beautiful. Which was what always got me in trouble: the illusion that sex put you on equal footing. Maybe it did, but only briefly, and then the reality of that gap would rise tomorrow like the sun, harsh and unavoidable.  

He took me inside and I set my bag next to the door. He kissed me again, embracing me this time. I felt his body under his clothes and couldn’t believe how well formed it was, but I guess you had to be perfect if you were going to subject yourself to the gaze of millions. The reality of that hit me; how difficult it would be. Even if it made you rich. Especially if it made you rich.

“Do you want to take a bath?” he said.

“Do you want me to take a bath?” I said.

“I don’t care. I took one earlier. I just thought you might enjoy it. And I have to send off a couple emails before I settle in for the night, anyway...”

“Okay,” I said, thinking: he’s being coy. He thinks I’m dirty but doesn’t want to admit it. But I let him show me to the bathroom and it was, of course, huge and opulent with marble floors and a sunken tub. And when he left and I closed and locked the door the feeling of privacy hit me and almost made me want to cry, it felt so good. “Take as much time as you need,” he’d said, and had put some dreamy, ambient music on speakers that must have been hidden in the walls.  

I filled the tub with water as hot as I could get it. Then I stripped off my clothes and checked myself out in his full-length mirror. Maybe it was the ego trip from being pursued by a movie star, but I looked good. I mean, kinda thin, but I’d always had a nice body, and I’d been helping Bettina build her yurt so my muscles were rounded, especially in my shoulders.

I took a shit because I wanted to be prepared. Then I melted into that hot water for a good hour. I almost fell asleep. Then when I realized how long I'd been in there I jumped out and threw on a robe that was hanging next to the door. I hesitated before I came out. Would he be mad I'd been in there so long? What if he was outside the bathroom with a gun, or a knife, or a syringe? But when I went out and found the living room he was just sitting there on the couch. He smiled when he saw me and closed his laptop.

“Was it good?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Is it okay that I wore this?”

“Sure,” he said, and stood up. He was so tall and built. “I mean, I’m just gonna take it off you, anyway,”  

(Read Pt 2 here)