Scott Sherman - Third You Die

“I was born a rebel. Never did a goddamn thing I was told to do. Even if it was what I wanted, too, I’d do the opposite just to piss people off.

“But my brother, Colin, was a daddy’s boy. Followed orders like a good little soldier. Did everything my father told him to, including enlisting in the army on his eighteenth birthday. Just like dear old Dad.”

Lucas lifted his face to me. It was pale and stricken, a mask of tragedy. “He was killed in Iraq within a month of his deployment there. His convoy ran over an IED.” Fat tears ran down Lucas’s face but he made no sound. He wiped at them like you wave away flies at a campsite-as if they were pests you expected, accepted, and learned to live with. He was quiet for a minute before saying “And that, as they say, was that.”

He reached for his can of beer and grimaced when he found it empty and crushed. I thought he might get up for another but instead he just scrunched the corpse he held into a smaller and smaller ball.

“I loved that kid. So much. Despite our differences, we were always thick as thieves. I don’t know, but maybe if I wasn’t such a fucking hardass, if I’d listened more, I’d have gone overseas, too. Joined the army like my father always told me to. Maybe I would have been there with Colin. I could have protected him. Saved him. If only I’d followed orders like a good boy.”

Holy Freudian minefield, Batman. I suddenly had a pretty good idea of how Lucas developed his desire to be submissive. Somewhere in his unconscious, he was making up for past sins. He was finally listening.

I wondered earlier if Lucas realized he was living like a prisoner. I bet he couldn’t have articulated it, but some part of him knew that’s exactly what he was doing. It led him here, to the most glamorous solitary confinement in the city. Part of him thought he deserved to be punished for his crimes that led to his brother’s death.

I wanted to give him a hug. I wanted to carry him out of there and get him on the couch of the best therapist I could find. This boy I thought might have hurt Brent was turning out to be the biggest victim yet. The lostest of the Lost Boys.

“When he died, there was a hole in my heart I was sure could never be filled. For a year, I felt empty inside. I’d come to New York to be a real actor, you know. Only, I didn’t have the talent. And I knew it. But I had the looks.

“So, it turned out, did a couple of other thousand guys. Before Colin… died, I’d been approached about doing porn. I always turned it down. I had… hope I’d make it as a legitimate actor.

“Once he was gone, though, the world was a lot less optimistic. The next time a sleazy guy offered me his card, I called. A month later, I made my first film for SwordFight.

“I liked it. I liked the attention, the sex. I started to feel alive again. When some of my co-stars taught me their tricks, I took their advice.

“I also took their pills. Then, their needles. Turns out I couldn’t fill the hole in my heart, but I could numb it out real good.

“And then, I came across the most dangerous drug of them all. Love.”

“Brent,” I said.

“You got it,” he said. “The boy I was meant to love. The boy who’d been made for me.”

Lucas’s eyes strayed to a framed photo on the grand piano across the room. I hadn’t noticed it before. Strange, because I should have-it was one of the only personal items in the whole place. And the only one that obviously belonged to Lucas.

He looked as adorable in the photo as he did in every other. Younger than in the other pictures I’d seen, but unmistakably Brent. I was surprised Lucas had it out like that. I couldn’t believe his sugar daddy appreciated having a picture of his boy toy’s ex around.

Unless that was part of the appeal. Having not just your own live-in porn star, but one who was connected to another. Acquisition by association.

Brent stood in front of a typical suburban home. It could have been anywhere. The sun settled against his yellow-blond hair like the heavens were kissing him with light. Even though he squinted against the glare, you could see the affection in his eyes for the person taking the picture.

Lucas saw me catch what he was looking at.

“Did you take that picture?” I asked.

Lucas nodded. I suspected it would have been hard for him to talk at that moment.

“That’s what makes it so special, then. You can see how much he loved you.” As the words left my lips, though, I realized something wasn’t adding up. What was it?

I had some part of the story wrong. Okay, maybe Brent had been sleeping with Lucas on the sly. But love? That deep a connection? When had that developed? Over the year Brent had known Lucas, he was either trying to avoid him or dating Charlie. Unless someone was lying to me, the timeline didn’t make any sense.

Lucas nodded again, this time accompanied by the sound of a man trying to swallow the unwanted lump in his throat. From across the room, I could smell his sweat, which had turned sour.

But who was lying? And why? Someone must have misled me, because I had no doubt that the boy in that photo not only loved but adored the man who took that picture. There was an innocence about it, too. This was a love that contained no shame nor concealed any secrets. From a boy I’d been led to believe either feared Lucas or was having an illicit affair with him. It made no sense.

“I’ve seen hundreds of photos of him,” I said, “but I don’t think I’ve ever seen Brent more beautiful than he looks there.”

Lucas looked at me and, for the first time since I met him, he laughed. But it was a shrill laugh, tinged with a high keen that made me think of breaking glass.

He stood up so suddenly it startled me. He picked up the picture, kissed it, then handed it to me.

“See what I mean?” he said. “Why I believed God sent Brent to me? Why, during one of the worst periods of my life, a time in which I was becoming addicted to four different drugs without even realizing it, I became so obsessed with him?”

I studied the photo he handed me. Yeah, I thought. I can. I’d fall in love with someone who looked at me like that, too.

Then, I peered closer and felt a weird dizziness. Like a kind of double vision as a few details I hadn’t seen before emerged like tiny ripples on a puddle from a single drop of rain. A mole on the left cheek. Bigger ears than I remembered. Darker eyes. Differences so small I’d never have noticed them if I hadn’t been wondering why Lucas felt the need for me take a closer look.

“I assumed…,” I began.

“That’s not Brent,” Lucas said. “That’s my brother. That was Colin.”

“Well, you know what they say,” Freddy mumbled through a mouthful of marble cake. “Incest is best.”

“It wasn’t like that,” I insisted.

I’d called Freddy the minute I’d left Lucas’s gilded cage. On the way out, the guard who’d opened the elevator, Matthew Smith, winked at me. “Have fun up there?” he asked.

Something made me think he knew the score between Lucas and his benefactor. I suspected he might have seen a film or two of Lucas’s, too. There was a knowingness in his inflection that you only achieve when you’ve seen a person perform fellatio. It brings people together like that.

Luckily, his goofy smile and foppish hair made his remark more playful than pervy.

I couldn’t help flirting back. “The only way it could have been better,” I answered, “was if you’d joined us.”

Matthew widened his eyes in mock shock and swept back the loose lock of hair that flopped to his forehead. “I don’t know if that place could have stood the three of us in there,” he teased.