Scott Sherman - Third You Die

“Okay,” I admitted, “maybe I’ve had some weird flukes in that area. But this is New York. It’s bound to happen.”

“Oh yeah?” Freddy asked. “Who else does any of this shit happen to?”

“Tony deals with murders all the time.”

“He’s a homicide detective,” Freddy said. “People call him when there’s a victim; he doesn’t run into one on every other corner like they’re a Starbucks or something.”

He had me on that one. Not that I’d admit it.

“Can I come over or what?”

“Sure,” Freddy said. “What could be more fun than a movie marathon featuring a probably-dead legend o’ porn? We can put on some Amy Winehouse and moon over pictures of a young Patrick Swayze while we’re at it.”

“Could you stop being so morbid?”

“I don’t know. Maybe if you pick up some ice cream on your way over. I just ran out.”

“No problem. You want I should pick up some dinner, too?”

“Ice cream and dinner?” Freddy asked. “No, darling, the ice cream will be dinner. That way, it counts as one course. What are you trying to do, make me fat?”

“Uhhh,” Freddy moaned as we watched Brent’s movies on his ridiculously large sixty-five-inch screen while lying on his bed. Freddy lived in a studio apartment, and there was no couch, sofa, or other chairs. Given his usual definition of “hosting,” there was no reason for such traditional seating. You were either on your way in, out, or in his bed. Why else would he have you over?

“Oh my god, that’s good,” Freddy groaned. We were watching a particularly sexy scene in a movie called School Gayz. Brent played a prospective fraternity member being rushed by the world’s hottest pledge master. At the moment, Brent was being asked to prove his loyalty to Alpha Gamma Rimya by seeing just how far up his butt he could accept his co-star’s tongue. It didn’t seem like a particularly tough hazing, but who was I to judge?

“So sweet. So fucking smooth and good. I gotta have it,” Freddy pleaded.

On screen, Brent groaned. “Gimme more, sir,” he begged.

Freddy ran a hand over my chest. “Yeah, baby, like he said. ‘Gimme more,’ ” he rasped hungrily, his breath hot against my cheek. “I want more.”

“Get it your own damn self,” I told him. He was talking about the ice cream I’d brought over. He’d gotten through the first two bowls before the opening credits of the first movie we’d watched were complete. We were now on the third.

The horrible thing about Freddy was that he could eat crap like this and his body somehow managed to turn it into muscle. Whereas I just look at it and need to double my cardio.

“I can’t,” he whined. “You’ve killed me. Filled me to the gills with this stuff and now I’m too stuffed to move. You’re going to have to feed me in bed for the rest of my life, as I get fatter and fatter until they have to lift me out of here with a crane. Come to think of it, you may want to get me a bedpan, too. This could get messy.”

“Okay, that’s just gross. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll get you another bowl if you fast-forward to the next part with dialogue.”

“Are you retarded?” Freddy asked incredulously, as I got up to fetch his bowl of frozen crack. “You tell me you want to come over to watch porn, and then you ask me to skip the sex scenes? Isn’t this like watching an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie for the acting?”

“No,” I said from the kitchen, fifteen feet away. “I didn’t say I wanted to watch porn. I said I wanted to get a better sense of Brent through his movies. I’ve already seen him have sex with a fireman, an adoptive uncle, his baseball coach, and a rugby team. Turns out he has a pretty good-sized cock for such a little guy, he’s admirably versatile, and, given proper inspiration, he can come twice within fifteen minutes. Not much more to learn on that front.”

I didn’t add the obvious-that Brent was ridiculously hot. He moved with the grace of a dancer. He had a sexual intensity that singed the screen. His body was flawless. His skin was smooth and almost hairless. He had a quality that made you believe that if you touched the TV, you’d feel real skin. He seemed more alive, more vital, than anyone else on the set. I wasn’t much for tattoos, but he had a two-inch silver star on his right shoulder and a ring of matching, smaller stars around his left ankle that really worked for him.

“You haven’t seen the part where he blows himself, yet,” Freddy said, watching me with greedy eyes as I returned with another bowl of Rocky Road. “Folds himself in half like he’s hinged at the hip.”

“Sounds like a cinematic classic,” I said, climbing back into bed. “How Spielberg didn’t work that into one of the Indiana Jones movies, I’ll never know. Still, it’s not going to help me figure out where Brent is, is it?”

“It might,” Freddy mumbled through a mouthful of frozen delight. “It proves he could be hiding in a very small space.”

I took advantage of Freddy’s involvement with his dessert-excuse me, dinner-to snatch the remote from him.

“Hey!” Freddy shouted. “That’s my job.”

I ignored him and fast-forwarded. I sped through a scene in which the school’s star quarterback uses skills he probably didn’t learn on the football field to persuade his professor to change his D grade to an A minus, and another where the crowded action at the campus library’s restroom made me wonder where these boys got any studying done.

Finally, I came to another scene with Brent. After the bacchanalian excess of the previous footage, this encounter was almost romantically sedate. Brent and another freshman were seated across from each other on twin cots in a dorm room. The walls were covered with posters of muscle cars, bikinied pinups, and popular bands. There was an Xbox, stereo, and bong on the desk, but, curiously, not a book in sight. Further testimony that the library was rarely put to its intended use.

The boys were complaining about the various indignities being forced upon them.

“Did he make you, you know, touch it?” Brent asked his co-star.

“Yeah,” the handsome, shaggy-haired actor answered. He was bigger than Brent, probably about five eleven. More muscular, too. Rounded, plump muscles, like a wrestler’s. Despite his size and weight advantage, though, he seemed submissive to the younger Brent.

He ducked his head and looked at Brent through dangling bangs. “He did.”

Brent leaned in, placing his elbows on his spread knees. “And..?”

Shaggy shook the hair out of his eyes and regarded Brent with a quizzical shrug. “And… what?”

Brent bit his lower lip thoughtfully. “And… did you… like it?” He idly let his right hand drift halfway up his thigh.

Shaggy’s chest rose and fell more rapidly as he started to breath heavier. “Kind of. It was all right.” He dropped his hand to his crotch and squeezed.

“Oh, yeah?” Brent scooted forward on his cot, till his knees touched the other boy’s. Shaggy was almost panting now.

“Watch this,” Freddy said.

The boys touched nowhere other than at the knees, unless you counted the heavy eye contact, a come-fuck-me stare from Brent so intense you wouldn’t be surprised if Shaggy spontaneously combusted. They stayed there almost a full minute, silent and motionless, until you wondered why the director was still holding the shot.

Then you knew. Under Brent’s unwavering gaze, an expanding, twitchingly jerky elongation grew and snaked down Shaggy’s leg. Shaggy was wearing a pair of thin cotton drawstring pants, almost like hospital PJs but white.

Seeing Shaggy’s dick stretch and grow was like watching one of those stop-motion shots of a flower blooming, but in real time. Soon, Shaggy’s casual confession was betrayed by the untouched but massively throbbing hard-on that now pointed upward, trapped in his pants but with enough room to rise upward and point accusingly at his chin. Shaggy looked at his own lap in surprise-how did that get there? — and Brent’s eyes followed.