This is a re-issue. You’ll notice a rather extensive note which accompanies it. Its also been substantially rewritten, far closer to what I meant. Yes, it’s built on a psychological concept of necessity to escape but, in this version, that’s far clearer. Why did I pick Estonia? My assumption, in terms of the story, was that no one would know that language-for that, neither do my main characters The closest I can get is when I write Bjorn and say ‘Tack’ for his help.) My hope is that you’ll give it another chance….again, it was interesting for me to write and, now that I’ve got it, and my, head screwed on and away from constant dosings of heavy duty pain suppressants, it even makes more sense to me. If there’s one more thing…for all of us who are compulsive writers, this is an example of a story that is fascinating to write-even eight months later it was interesting to edit-that you wonder how it may be received. (And yes, typical me, it’s not short, heavy on dialogue and sex, yes, I do get there. That’s an evasion so I wouldn’t have to say, to some, it will seem long.)
Author’s Note: This should have been put in when first published but….In reading this remember it was written to a psychological model about two men who are faced with a devastating personal tragedy. It’s also about the media and how they skew fact or, in many cases, regard speculation as truth which they then print. Further, it’s about how a father and son not only fall in physical and emotional love, but how they fuck over the media with the help of a vicious attorney.
Their solution is to simply and completely walk away from their privileged lives and find work, as faux Estonian refugees, in a Chicano work camp. How they make friends, adapt to a life style so far removed from their own but so welcome for it is just that, they absorb it, live it and, finally, find a way to fuse their sexuality with their new culture is the arc of the story. The old title, which I must have thought up, I don’t know, while I was in hospital hooked up to a morphine pump-one push every 12 minutes!-is in actuality only some words I’d planned on trying to work into a title but…then I lazily hit enter, forgot it, hit ‘Delaudid’ and disappeared over a hospital induced horizon carried there by continuing bumps of Morphine…not to mention what I was being given orally as well as the occasional needle in the IV to ‘calm me’. (Had I been any calmer they might have needed the coroner.) Which is why there’s a new title.
The concept of two men, actual father and son, simply agreeing they no longer exist as such, create whole new histories for themselves, live them, expand them, allow things they really want but might have avoided in their earlier biographies to exist, is a leit motif for how I believe men change as we age-I’ll be 79 soon so aging is a topic with which I’ve some familiarity. If it seems a bit improbable, much of the frame work for this was from legal issues where people have done approximately what my two men do, that is just say I’m not him, now I’m really that guy over there and walk away. Something at times we all might wish to do….I know I would.
Given this rather long explanation I hope the reader has a better view of what I had in mind. At least one hopes that. Thanks for coming back and giving it-and me-a second chance.
Petr-Johan
Things come apart in unexpected ways, everyone says that but it doesn’t stop it from being a fact. We’d been mountain climbing in South America for two months and our welcome home Surprise! was Mom hanging from the bannister on the second floor, the long, wide spiral staircase wound around the body like a shroud where she hung. Apparently, or so said the ‘incident cops’, when she launched herself she must have hit the chandelier which is why it, most of it anyway, lay shattered on the floor, broken crystals calling attention to the pile when a shaft of light hit one causing it to cast piercing shafts of light on a torso that did not need anything to distinguish it from the horror where it hung.
Fuck the media. Fuck Them, fuck them. Even though the coroner’s report said she’d been dead less than thirty six hours, they speculated that she dreaded her husband and her son coming home, for some reason, just couldn’t bear it any longer and so…Even the Sheriff called a press conference to put an end to that shit, witnesses coming out the ass had seen her, been with her, her own family said nothing further from the truth. But that didn’t make a good story, nope, so…Dad got the nastiest lawyer he could find and sued the socks off every single reporter, station, newspaper, information plateau, network that had even suggested her unhappiness had been caused by her husband and son which led her to commit suicide.
Nicky, the attorney, had an almost immediate reaction to our suits: Yep, Fuck ’em.
You have never heard such screaming about freedom of the press, public right to know, freedom of information and on and on. Nicky just sat in his office, smiled as their protests and counter claims came in then, for each one he received, he doubled the amount we were asking. They thought we’d go away, we’d be humiliated, turn tail and run. Nope. We sat in the house and waited to see how far and how long. When would the last car/van/uplink go away and finally the neighborhood was quiet.
In court at various preliminary hearings Nicky just sat and listened to the horse shit about how what they printed was based on solid psychological theory, women did not always reveal their inner demons, it was our word against theirs as to her mental state, after all, we hadn’t seen her or had much contact with her for months. True. And Nicky sat there. Defense began to run down. Couldn’t find any scholarly papers, any other cases of this sort, all they continued to argue was no one knew her mental state. And then Nicky stood up.
I guess if you want something kept private, might be a good idea not to put it on video tape, discs, your cell phone, nothing that has moving pictures, color and sound. In the slew of witnesses he handed to the court that he considered to put on the stand as well as to defense there were names, everything from the neighbors to her doctors, to the Vet, the dentist to her relatives, our relatives but when it came time, he only called one witness; The Vet. After the videos were shown, the transcripts read, the prescription for opioids given to her under another name, signed by the Vet, he sat down. Oh, and on the large screen in the court room, the Vet taking her ‘doggy style’ with a collar around her neck on an examining table took on a vastly upscaled idea of what ‘treating the whole animal’ might be.
As you might imagine, suddenly the defense lawyers learned a new phrase, “settle out of court”. Nicky had a word for that; “Nope”. But this time he offered them some explanation that they probably knew but no attorney would admit to. In plain English he said, “I get a percentage of every penny these men collect. I took this case on contingency because I knew this day would come, you’d be here willing to kiss my ass to try and limit the damages so…go back and tell your clients what a horrible job you’ve done, the ass crack you and they are in, that we won’t budge, it’s every penny or on to the next court. They can appeal this to the Supreme Court and we’ll still win”.
Nicky said he would have paid money to see how those turkeys explained the part about the crack their ass was in. We’d refused any settlement, seemed perfectly willing to carry it on so….all they could do was try and offer what they called a “generous settlement” and Nicky said…..well, you know what Nicky said.
The most confounding thing was…they knew we did not need the money; Dad was wealthy so win or lose we came away in a position to not give a shit. Nicky suggested, based on the annoyance of reporters and others, we have “Nope” made into a sign and hung on the door.
Dad gave one interview…to the child of a friend who had just started her job as a sub, sub, sub field reporter for a very small local station. As he said, she was so nervous he almost had to hold the microphone for her. Simply put, and this must have made the defendants groan, he doubted if we’d keep any of it, probably find a group that watch dogged the media and give it to them. Later I accused him of sucker punching her station knowing full well he’d used her to scare the bejeezus out of the media. He just leaned back, lit a cigar, looked at me, winked and said, “What would Nicky say?” I smirked, suppressed a laugh, thought of Nicky and hauled out a decanter of a flavor we favored. Couldn’t resist it….:Yep’. He winked at me, tossed me some cancer and kitchen matches-he felt if you were going to smoke cigars, better to get a layer of Sulphur in your lungs first-while we sat in his office and enjoyed a modest victory.
We are sitting in our home, watching television, having an occasional beer, working out in the gym Dad built, swimming in our pool-aware that sometimes cameras on drones flew over us to get the picture of, depending on how you decided to play it, the man and boy who forced his wife and mother to suicide or the grieving father and son who came home to find her swinging in the foyer, dead as Marley’s ghost. (To restore the ‘normal’ look of the place, the chandelier was replaced.) To stop the possible pictures taken from a drone from being shown, we always used the pool in the nude; Just to mess with their minds and legal departments, a couple of times as we hauled out of the pool, we arranged ourselves on the coping. A prurient minded person might have thought we were sucking each other off but put that on the air or in a magazine…..wouldn’t have happy consequences, Nope it wouldn’t. Even if they tried to put them on porno sites, we’d find them-and we did find one-and put them out of business. Our own form of “Nope”.
While Nicky sat in his office pitching cards in a hat, or so he said, and waited for the next salvo of offers to come…and go….Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day passed while twelve entities looked at suits totalling almost fifty million dollars, plus paying our legal fees, tried every way they knew how to get the cocksucker off their desks, get it settled and get on with it. Apparently they’d noticed that since their failure in court, their business had fallen off while Nicky had to put in an automatic call center to handle the requests for his services. I guess we all knew we’d win, it was just when.
About the first of June Dad said, one way or another, whenever this was over, he’d had with this house, this lot, this block, this town, we were leaving. On one of his rare trips to anything beside the market or errands such as getting our teeth cleaned, he came home with ten duffel bags which, he said, would contain our lives. Each of us took five and, since we had the time, went through everything in the house. In then end, each of us almost filled three a piece. It didn’t stop there. He got his brother, one of the few people to whom he’d even speak, to buy the largest SUV he could, one you could almost live in. He kept it at his place so whoever still had the balls to try and watch us never saw it.
As we sat around, Dad and I decided that we had had it with being us, no point in being what we’d been, even if we lost the case and, if you asked Nicky if we would his answer was, “Nope”, Dad had been very successful, money was not an issue so…he wondered if I’d mind stop being his son and become his buddy, his partner on the road.
Almost someone he’d met in a bar, got tight with and now…was setting off to see whatever. No more Dad and Son, we could each pick a new name, make up our histories, that would be who we were. In the vanished world he would always be Dad, I would be his son…so…whatever else was okay with me, I was over 21, removed from the sort of father/son relationship I might have had. And “might have” is the operative phrase. We told Nicky about this and, to our surprise, said it was the smartest thing we could do. He’d help get our identities-he’d keep the ‘old us’ in his office in a file in a safe as he pursued the suits but we were off to do…whatever. Just, he said, give him a ring now and then. Sure, we said, had to, we’d miss hearing “Nope”.
All the attention, the people yelling at us, our own feelings, had changed us, I was his partner, his buddy, a lopsided form of younger brother, fighting with our backs to each other. Not just having our backs but being back to back. Another thing, in a very long period of nothing to do, we both got to be experts on the computer and finding whatever we wanted, interested us…and one of the things was a way to get new names, social security numbers, passports, in effect walk in one door as John Doe and out the other as Sam Jones. Given the time, and some legal advice from Nicky who continued to say it increasingly seemed like a good idea to him, we sat in our home prepared to walk away dragging the duffel bags, letting the animals follow us, mount up in the SUV….actually, pull the car in a large parking structure and drive out in the SUV and just go.
One Saturday Nicky paid a surprise visit and you could tell he, himself, was just as surprised. As a rule he looked as if he spat on GQ but on that day he was wearing decrepit Chuck Taylors, torn jean shorts and a long sleeve shirt that might have been in court a few decades past; He’d been painting the interior of his garage. He was also laughing so hard he was having trouble driving; When he got it into park his ‘Vette was mostly diagonally on the driveway with the nose in the bushes.
We watched him try and compose himself, he’d almost get there but….another fit of guffaws overtook him….after almost half an hour of this we figured whatever he wanted to tell us needed to be goosed out of him so we picked him up and threw him in the pool. It was almost summer so it was clean, pleasantly cool….
Good sports that we are, we hauled him out, stripped him, wrapped him in a large beach towel then laid him in the sun to dry out and spill it. And it was worth hearing. As he put it, these jackasses were, subtly, trying to ‘make it worth my time’ to see if I can’t get the two of you unstuck to accept some sort of settlement, fuck his legal expenses, they’d pay those but they were afraid-with no reason-that we’d go back into court, claim they were legally malingering and up the ante. As Nicky said that never occurred to any of us but….it wasn’t a bad idea. At that we all rolled, well, Dad and I lost our balance and went into the pool.
We ended that when Nicky said, “Fuck, might as well get some tan.” threw off the towel and leaned back enjoying our pool and, as he added, a chance to get his dick and balls tanned as well, no tan line. We joined him. Nothing like three brown cocks cooking in the sun. Privately I hoped one of the drones, now almost non- existent, would fly over….I have no idea what that would have added to the amount we were asking, but the thought, “A lot” went through my mind, particularly as I felt certain Nicky would find a really huge ‘NOPE’ to accompany his being photographed al fresco also al nudo. Not that he didn’t have the body for it, it was just the morality of his personal space being violated.
Privately I wanted this to be over for my own reasons. Before the hoorah had completely died down, I was asleep in my bed when a drone equipped with a million watt bulb, or so it seemed, parked outside my window. Scared the shit out of me and, naked, I ran into Dad’s room, threw myself in his bed really traumatized; He was beyond livid. Being the more sensible person, the adult in him I suppose, when the thing pulled up at his window they got not only the look at a finely built naked man, but one aiming a twelve gauge, double barrel shot gun which he discharged right through the window. Not even bothering to dress, he called the cops who showed up and were, rightly, livid at what was a clear invasion of privacy. I guess whoever owned and operated it was arrested, the District Attorney (No friend of the media) filing charges on our behalf. This was possibly where I, first, then Dad, began to retreat from ourselves.
Fine, for a personality change, but that still left me with a form, I suppose, of PTSD that was only exacerbated by the jolly band of cars from stations, uplinks and more drones although after news of the demise of that one hit the air-and many station played it with a really funny commentary-that sort of intrusion died down, not completely, but mostly. I think Dad realized I had been seriously traumatized that night, personality change, fear… and so…why not? just kept me sleeping with him. All this forced us to be closer than otherwise might have happened. For no reason we now did lots of things together, showered together, worked out together, cooked together and….and after what might have been an embarrassing moment when he opened a door I hadn’t expected to be opened, we started to jack off together. Why not? His motive and his desire to protect me led him to keep me physically close, no matter what we did. He would never have conceded any sort of fear, there was none, but a deep concern for both of us, our general safety, the publicity, all of it was beyond what he could endure. I accused him of getting pissed off as he was missing golf; He tried to smile, but…nope.
Just to really annoy the media, we spent a lot of the day in little or no clothing, just enough to get the paper or walk to the mail box to claim the mail. Peggy, our dog was our one expedition out of doors; She needed walking so we took her for a jog…very early in the morning. One trash magazine published a series of pictures of us, photoshopped, in which we were made to seem beyond a stud in so far as what was in our jocks. That one was funny, even Nicky laughed….and filed a suit against them for…whatever. As he said, I can make it misrepresentation of the facts but do you want to deny what’s up front that counts? He went with slander in the end and dropped that folder in with the others, numbering, now, 13.
One pow wow he laid out all the suits, how much we were asking, not to mention his fee (well into the millions) plus what their individual crimes against us had been. Some were really significant, generally the national ones, but the local ones covered it more as a local story, which it was, no way around that, but it was when the affiliates began being goosed by the networks to get more ‘depth’ i.e. dirt, that they got crasser on a local level. Nicky’s idea was to start picking off the small fry leaving the larger ones to continue to hang out and dry but now…knowing that there was some movement on our part. Small, yes, but in their desperation-one network was looking at twenty million-any movement was seen as positive and led them to hope, maybe we were more amenable to a settlement. Nope.
A large house, no matter the comforts, can get small when occupied by two men who have nothing to do, have never had the freedom to mourn what was a real tragedy and endlessly be together. Jacking off together was neither fun nor boring, just another activity. To upscale it, or at least make it different, one day Dad took my dick and shucked it so, given the lead, I took his, did the same and continued on until the foam flew. If nothing else it was a change so we kept on doing it; Why not? Forced to live in what was a two man frat house, jerking each other was almost a normal thing to have happen.
One night I had a nightmare. What? Why? But I was screaming, clutching him. It must have something as my cock had never been so hard, so drooling precum. Men know men and, this was his son, what I needed was diversion. That took the form of his giving me a blow job. When I was conscious I remember groaning in lust as well as desire, holding his hair in my hands, almost demanding he chew on me. Then, when it was over, all was silent. I slipped to the floor, in the dark, blew him. This was the first time but, we both found, something we liked. I suppose it replaced the ‘normal’ sex we would have had under other circumstances, was really only the next step after mutual masturbation. In not too many days, we’d found laying on the bed, naked as usual, a cock in each mouth, slobbering on the sheets, finally the explosion of cum….not only did it grow us closer as two men but, in subtle ways, a bit farther from being a conventional father and son.
I wondered if Nicky would render one of his famous ‘Nopes’ to what we’d done? Knowing him. as we’d come to, no answer other than ‘Nope’ would have been possible.
One thing that had kept us sane, apart from practising how to say “Nope” was that for all my life, I’d genuinely loved my Dad. Other men, and I know them, had fine fathers, did all the things a father does but mine….mine found the difference between the father as just a father, the father who wants to be his son’s buddy-invariably a mistake-and what he did which was let me come to him, let me set the pace for our relationship while he, subtly, introduced things that were interesting-privately we’d agreed while still doing it, the mountain climbing thing wasn’t the best idea. We were friends, the closest sort, the friend you go to when no one else will or could understand; Maybe they don’t either but they are there, available and could walk away leaving your secrets, your problems, your concerns in tact and all yours. He had counsel but was smart and wise enough not to give it as such. His method was to walk me into what he wanted me know but make it a discovery for me, not a lecture from him. Maybe that’s why I first kissed him and fully expected to be kissed back-Odd that this followed more open sexual acts but…this simply proved I loved him emotionally as well as physically and that was how he loved me.
Two days later, when Nicky sent some papers out having to do with our possible changes, I walked into his office, stuck out my hand and said, “Hi, I’m Jon, no ‘h’ I believe I know you…you’re”
He looked back at me, understood immediately, shook my hand saying, “Adam, Jon with no H, pleased to meet you. Want to come in? Have a beer?”
“Yeah, Adam, I’d like that.” Then, as we were both standing still shaking hands, drew him to me, kissed him, put his head on my shoulder, heard him quietly say, “Good to have you here, Jon, I’ve been looking for you.” Took my head in his hands, looked at me, smiled, kissed me then turned to the bar. “I forget, what’s your pleasure?”
“What’re you pouring, bit early for the hard stuff.”
“Beer? Wine? Ale?”
“Got some German beer? Got a taste for that in the service, stationed in Am Main.”
“Hey, Air Force? Me too. You got lucky, I was at Thule…still get cold just looking at an ice cube.” We both laughed. “Good times…after it’s over. Glad I volunteered, right out of college, U. of Arizona.”
“Right on, Pac 12, UCLA. Bout that kraut beer?”
“Spatenbrou? Got a couple of bottles…Stein or…”
“Nah, bottle’s fine.”
He got the beer, opened them, each took a swig….Looked at each other….
“It works, doesn’t it.”
I held him and cried because it did work, we were gone, those people waiting for nothing to happen soon….they can sit there.
The dog and the cats followed us into the car hoping for a ride, something they always enjoyed. What they couldn’t see was the men they were with, although they looked just like usual, were changed. First thing, new car. Well, an old Jeep. The animals weren’t sure about that but…they stuck with us. Got a pair of used work boots, used clothes, just something that you saw on every guy and if asked what they’d been wearing, no real answer. This is part of why eyewitness statements can be an iffy thing.
The man, I guess he used to be someone’s uncle, was stunned, didn’t understand, tried to understand….leaving him on the drive way with virtually no explanation, and the animals, we drove away. Wonder how long he stood there?
Just to fuck with them, we’d left the old place wide open, doors unlocked, look in the windows and-I loved this-an uneaten breakfast on a table in the kitchen. Adam should have decorated sets for films. Details that, later, would confound people, he staged it perfectly. One sheet with just a trace of shit floating in a toilet. Two drops of blood and a razor with two more drops on a sink in my bathroom. The duffel bags, filled, padlocked. Beds unmade, lights on-that was his trick to get it noticed, the lights didn’t go out at night and, during the day, didn’t get turned off.
He figured we had, easy, 48 hours before much notice would be paid and, who knew?, how long before the media heard about it, added two and two and got snapped in the ass. Nicky had quietly got quite a stash, all used bills, no hundreds, together for us to ‘live on’ and so we did.
Leaning back in chairs outside a bar in a desert, we read about the ‘mystery’ disappearance of the two men who had ‘figured in the suicide of the wife and mother of the son.’ At first they were careful, none of the suits had been settled so all they said was we seemed to be gone. This time it was the cops who first used the word “suspicious” although they, too, were careful not to emphasize anything. What they could-and did-say was that the two men who lived in that home were not there. Their vehicle was gone, the family pets were gone….the crime scene specialists had ‘swept’ the interior and found….nothing. Their only reason to use the word “suspicious” was that the occupants had not told anyone they were going.
That ship sank when they found the uncle person who told them that, yeah, we’d been by, dropped off the dog and the cats, not said where we were going, just drove away. BUT the last time he saw us, no one was with us, we seemed okay…his brother was a queer duck who did things that others wouldn’t. And came to regret the ‘queer duck’ comment as it was seized on and printed as a headline in one or two sleazy tabloids.
Watching this ‘story’ ‘develop’ with ‘further details as they become available’ Adam and I found work as field hands, stoop labor, speaking broken English; One of the sets of papers we’d acquired showed us to be immigrants from Estonia, valid green cards, just poor English. Thanks to the pool at the home belonging to those other people who once lived there, we were both nut brown, no tan line, shaggy headed, just poor folk trying to make a living. One thing, Nicky paid for it so it wasn’t traceable, we had a satellite phone that could not be followed as a regular cell or smart or android might have been; This didn’t ping of towers, this went up to satellites and back to wherever. Sitting on our haunches after work outside the casita we were just able to pay for, we’d call Nicky who almost couldn’t stop laughing. Yep, he couldn’t.
It was in that casita, in a hammock that Adam and I first fucked. We’d done everything but, so….one night when we had a good coating of sweat, I rolled over pushed open my hole and told him to push in, I was horny and I guess he was as well. Big boss was pissed off when we told him we’d take the next day off.
In the sun naked getting coated with dirt which almost turned to mud as we sweat, I fucked him. No sense of romance, we loved each other the sex was just the feel good part of it. That weekend, when we got paid, went into the closest town and each got our initials tatted on our shoulders. No hearts, no banners, just JA. Looked at some other designs, he got a Mexican eagle with a snake, I got a chicano worker with big balls. Saw some of our worker buddies and, playing it careful, found out where they went for cheap liquor and cheaper fun. The tats turned it-no gringo, no white man would have those, no.
No women allowed in the field, not on this place so it was guys or nothing. German, the one they all seemed to allow to be leader, took a shine to Adam, found he would let him fuck him if…. he got him hot with a blow job first. I admired German’s single gold tooth as he smiled his acceptance. As for me, the young stallion? He knew guys who would pay me if I’d spread my legs….sure, how much? They all did it but I was young and strong and my back had not yet broken from the work. I was El Chingon, the badass, the big one. They gave us new names, couldn’t pronounce the Estonian ones, I was Cojon, short for cojones, balls and Adam found himself not only with a sort of partner in German but called Cali, short for Caliente, hot, horny.
We never looked in a mirror, why would we?, but had we done so, we’d have seen two men, two very hard working men, getting leather skin, tattooed, long, strong muscles used to doing very hard work. No white man would do it, but we, los indios trabajadores, would. As German said, the new niggers and laughed while his hand lashed an imaginary arc through the air holding a whip….we feigned pain, rolled on the ground, screamed, laughed, drew him down…and double fucked him. In the dirt in the field, by a line of as yet unpicked strawberries.
Time to move on, our Jeep, old but in good condition, was a sort of bus for some of our ‘manos (Hermanos, brothers). On to the next field, the next crop, the next set of nights where my prowess as a stallion and as deep ass grew. German and his brother, Juan were both our friends, our partners in the all male moveable brothel and pimps if we were close to a bigger place. They dressed us in tight pants, the sort of muscle shirt that looks like a T shirt with most of it missing, juarches, they wore the same, and we’d work the streets of wherever. Fucking or getting fucked against a wall, on a table, on the floor sometimes even in a bed. In one place Adam was called pistole, as it was noticed he had a long hard dick; He did too. Couple of times a bunch of men paid to watch us fuck each other. Not the kind of sex show you hear about across the border, just two guys, dropping their pants, not removing them, on a table fucking. The longer the better and because whoever was doing the fucking also loved the man he was doing, time in and desire got extra pesos….I could get paid to let some guy eat me out after Pistol had seeded me.
Winter was coming and most of the men wanted to go back across the border into Baja California. It was sometime then that four of us rented a cheap motel room for the weekend. The luxury of a shower, clean hair…mostly clean sheets-no bed bugs, German checked the room first. A man showed up with a wooden box that was a hand held electrical crank as well as a tool box filled with tattoo equipment. German told us he would ink us so we were protected from the ICE people.. On the back of our necks, a design, usually a cross or a snake but it was on a mat of green meaning we had green cards. As they went through the fields looking for those without documents, seeing the green made them pass you by as the ‘big boss’ the Chicano who put together these traveling bands of workers, had guaranteed that the men with green necks, were okay, were legal, he had our cards if they wanted to see them….
I wanted something else. In my broken Chicano I showed the inkster my thumb, pulled out my cock….he looked, ah, si…turned my thumb into a cock putting the balls on the ball of my palm. Hands down, you didn’t know what it was, couldn’t tell but once you knew…couldn’t miss it. When we played the card games, or practiced casually playing a dangerous sort of mumbly peg-two guys stood opposite each other then tried to stick your knife as close to the others foot as possible-(In another version, you lay on the ground, legs spread, and whoever was standing tried to get as close to your balls, best was slicing the fabric of your pants.) I made it a point to show the thumb that looked like a dick. German roared with laughter, said we should come with him he was going further, South of Mexico City…Out to what he called The Peninsula. All he’d say was that white men wanted Chicano male holes….According to him, it paid a lot of money….And, looking at my thumb, if I wanted cheap and vulgar, that paid more. I wondered what I’d get if my rod had ink on it?
One thing, privacy was hard to get; Nothing had doors, you were constantly by or very near other guys… To call Nicky, we had to be exceptionally careful; These were men who were your brothers, would fight to the death for you (we’d seen some examples) but…if they felt you were against them, betrayed them-and the satellite phone would have been clear proof of that-then what happened to you would not be good. That we were not Mexican gave us a little leeway, we didn’t know the customs but were very careful. We did need to call in once in a while (Nicky was the one who told the cops and the fucking media that, yeah, we were alive and well. He knew where were, was in touch with us…Were we close to settling? Nope.) and to do that, I’d get on top of Adam, cover as much of his upper torso as possible while giving him a slow fuck as he spoke to Nicky who, not surprisingly, was convulsed with laughter. I once whispered over Adam’s shoulder, that he should come to the field, we’d show him how to pick hair out of an ass….he laughed and, again, I wondered if…..
His legal word continued to be “Nope” and, now with our disappearance, some of those we’d sued began to see a way out; If enough time passed and we couldn’t be found, maybe we should be declared dead. Nicky said the uncle had been quietly contacted about doing just that but he’d laughed them off. Fine, but he’d called Nicky who would only say that we weren’t dead and that to prevent him from inadvertently saying anything, all he needed to know was that we were very much alive. Where we were, the uncle was asked, what we were doing he didn’t know….he wouldn’t have believed or, if he even thought there was a scintilla of truth, would have genuinely been shocked.
Time to go. German was leaving for the peninsula and, again, begged us to come with him; With our big cocks and balls, our strength, our very tan Chicano/Estonian, we’d be very popular, make enough to maybe not have to work next year. That last day, we both embraced him, told him we’d see him in February then watched the bus leave for the border.
There was always work, the bosses told us that our size, our strength…they’d like to put us in charge of a group….maybe a little different. They danced around it finally made us understand-our broken Chicano overlaid with wholly fictitious Estonian made it hard for them to communicate while, of course, we heard their conversations in English so were fully prepared for what they wanted.
The group they wanted us to oversee were men who had been stolen from a prison outside, Juarez and were tough mother fuckers, you had to have a whip and a gun. that’s what they expected. It was a challenge, take this or we’re going to wonder…..you don’t look like the other men, yes, you work hard but your language…no history, these men were suspicious not only of us but of everything. If we couldn’t see the real soft underbelly of the illegalities, then it wasn’t a hard guess. In his soft, broken spanish-we had gotten pretty proficient, more than the men around us realized and, of course, any conversations in English…..which was how on a few occasions, we’d been able to do things for our ‘manos that kept them out of shit.
Adam said, sure, we’d take it, so long as there were no people to tell us what to do. I knew where he was going and it was both ruthless and clever. They were made to understand that back in Estonia, we’d been in the Army, he’d been a commandant of a barracks of prisoners….hard to make them behave, maybe he’d used ‘methods’ and that got him into trouble. He and I escaped the country or we’d have been put in prison. They smiled. No one asked about his “methods” but heads slowly nodded, oh, si, methods….we would be good at the job.
One thing only, ‘manos, we were tired, needed some days to lay out by a pool somewhere, practice our ‘methods’. Absolutely, they had a place, formerly a nice motel near Palm Springs, all the big bosses used it and now…he looked at my thumb…the green on our necks…we were almost big bosses. Go there, my friends, relax, make the other cabrons let you fuck them…free drinks, free food, free drugs, free rooms, free whores-they sniggered knowing what we had done with our dongs .There would be a man there, tell him when we were ready to go.
Jon and Adam now had a choice and it was si o no and had to be made quickly. Our conversation where the ‘special’ group of men were offered to us took place outside Sacramento, the resort, or whatever it was, near Palm Springs. IF we didn’t show up, no question, we’d be looked for. IF we showed up it signalled that we were going to take the job that required ‘methods’. Counting the night outside the place where we’d had our meeting until we probably had to show up or get looked for….maybe 4 days to show up. Tops. Maybe. Nothing was said about when or where but not to eventually show us…..they, too, had ‘methods’. All ended with hermano abrazzos, good feelings, hopes we would relax, enjoy…..maybe take a man or two, they could be provided, and practice our methods. In the desert…where sounds can be confuse with Coyotes screaming….we all laughed. Si, in the desert, maybe in an arroyo, after a sudden rain. They smiled….perhaps they’d never thought of that. A bottle for everyone as the sun set on a picked field and mi Papi and I fiddled our balls…..
Nicky made reservations at a fine hotel under the Jon/Adam names. Leaving the Jeep in a parking structure at the garage, we took a taxi first to a mall where we got some clothes that got us into the hotel without comment then, after another call to Nicky, eventually a visit to a Lincoln dealer where he’d prepaid for a car. The deal was the dealer kept it until we needed it, be that in a few days or several months. Must have puzzled him but, for a full asking price cash sale, it was okay with him.
Again, the hotel was prepaid with substantial credit available and, if they wondered, well? fuck ’em. The only jolt we had came from the room service waiter that evening. By then we’d peeled down to shorts and tanks so when he came in, he could see our necks. Clearly Chicano, you could see him almost ask…Gringos could not get that tat because they asked for it. He didn’t notice my thumb but we both wondered if he’d go someplace, make a call and ask some questions and give some names? Sex that night, mainly because we were and our surroundings were clean, was particularly pleasant. Sleeping with Adam, something I couldn’t do while we worked, made me teary with happiness; I must have blown him two maybe three times between lights out and sun up; He woke up exhausted but paid me back with a fucking that I hadn’t had in some months. Breakfast was delayed while I asked, and got, a repeat performance.
A different room service waiter, this one a typical California college kid working to make tuition, came with breakfast and…the newspaper. I had my back to Adam….
“Holy shit, Jon, we’re out of here, now, grab some food…got your chicano garb? Go, now.” In the service elevator he showed me the paper. No picture but a long article recapping the suicide then the two missing men now believed to be somewhere in Sacramento, there’d been one confirmed sighting. Further, it was said that the attorney who represented the men had not returned their call for confirmation.
Doing what we’d learned to do, we found a public park where we squatted down looking like mostly like the other men who hung out there. If nothing else, we’d learned to blend in only thing was our hair was bleached white other than that, maybe chicano and those Mexican tattoos…Away from perceived danger we read the paper, thought, read it again and….
“Fuck, we can go back to the hotel. It’s not the waiter, we know his kind, this is the best job he’s ever had….it’s the shit eating car dealer, has to be. Probably remembers the first story and now Nicky pays him….well, we’ll never get the car but we can go back fuck and eat breakfast, ‘mano? you up for that?” He laughed. “Better call Nicky and have him tell the car dealer ‘Nope’ and return the money pronto.”
That evening we cornered the room service waiter from the previous evening; Let him see the Verde, the snakes, the tats, made him understand we were ‘manos to him…gave him a big tip and…he believed us. Just like that, we had our own information gathering system. I gave Adam a long, sweet blow job….got him hard and wet and oh so ready to stick me like a pig on a spit…we both slept well.
It was pretty obvious that the job we were offered wasn’t one we could accept. Adam said, morally, it wasn’t a problem, the poor bastards were probably better off in a forced labor camp then in jail in Juarez but…anything goes wrong and the gringos, meaning us, who run the joint are going to do Federal time for human trafficking. The guys who offered us the jobs didn’t know where we were, didn’t know our names-other than what they knew from the slang names we carried so…forget them. One further thing, we asked Jose, our waiter buddy, about the ‘resort’ near Palm Springs, the group of men brought from Juarez. We could see the fear, sudden, real.
What he told us was that these men were prisoners of the drug cartels in Mexico, sometimes, he’d heard, they were brought to California when it was believed they’d said things to someone, things that were not to be told. Saying he didn’t know but he’d heard, some of these men came here and….Pues, Senors….He made the sign of a dagger being pulled across the throat. He bowed his head saying that we, Senors, must be very dangerous men ourselves he hoped, he prayed, he fell to his knees…we would not….say….to anyone what he might have said. Please.
I suppose what Jose told us what about what we thought it would be. Gently gathering Jose up, Adam held him, told him he was safe, we would see to that then….gave him a large Manila envelope filled with cash. Sealed. Told not to open it until he had some privacy. Later we wondered what he would think when he found we were gone but he now had ten thousand dollars in rumpled bills….?
The Jeep was still ours…getting money was no problem-just have Nicky get a stack of cash then Fedex it and….what did we want to do next? We both eliminated going home, Nope.
Four days later, having been refinanced by Nicky, we drove into the San Fernando Valley, home of the male porn industry. It was my idea, I’d liked doing the sex shows with Adam, could see no reason not to do them for a lot more money and, we’d done the research, doing them bareback….big bucks. We didn’t need it but there was no point in selling cheap for that reason. Nope.
First thing was to get a portfolio of photos emphasizing our sexual being and only one or two head shots probably to prove we didn’t have two of them. Just to see the variety, we had three different guys do sets and found….there was a difference. One of them either didn’t take us or himself seriously as what he produced we could have had Nicky take the pictures.
One guy wasn’t really into male porn, he did it but…it was just a way to make money. They were okay pictures but ….However the third guy ONLY did men and, more specifically, only did men for porn. Our casualness about fucking each other-in live action as well as still photos-made him our guy. The portfolio he produced for each of us ran the gamut from Old Masters to sleaze. He even called a couple of the studios saying he had a real father and son-we didn’t tell him, it was an assumption on his part-would do anything, bareback, whipping…whatever; We were asked to drop by anytime, later that day if possible. To make sure we were welcome he selected one picture of each of us and faxed it over….Yep, we were welcome…but not when they first saw us.
Say what you will for solid comfort the loose fitting pants and tunics we wore working were as comfortable as anything. Plus, worn over nothing, it only took two tugs to be naked. Another problem, for them, not us, was that our bodies were work hardened, not gym sleek and muscled up. Three studios looked, sort of liked and ultimately passed. Said their clientele didn’t want blue collar, or green neck in our case, unless they were toned and could wear a tool belt naked and looked like construction workers who lived in a gym. At the last one I asked if they’d like to see us fuck, an offer which stunned them, but they, too, said no. Back to our (new) buddy the photographer whose name was Pete Smith. I am not making that up, just like the guy who made all the specialties for MGM fifty years earlier, Pete Smith.
We sat around his really well equipped studio, fucked each other then, wondering, fucked him. Well, Adam fucked him while I gave him one of my famous, in the barrio, blow jobs. He seemed appreciative but still couldn’t figure out why no one wanted us. Sure, Adam wasn’t young but, my God, he was hung and strong and could take it in the ass. I was young and strong and hung and, also, could take it in the ass. And we both did so easily, almost enjoying it. As Pete said, like a father and son playing ball in the back yard….
Adam said….what they didn’t like was that we weren’t a product of a gym but real work. Fuck, what did they think went on out in those fields? We could give them an education…and Pete began to look at us. “We’re going to run an ad in Craig’s List. I’m going to recruit working Chicano studs who like fucking and sucking…we may get nothing but…”
Three days later “Hernamo Pictures” was born. The ad produced hundreds of enquiries, some sent photos but what Pete said was…that many people interested in doing it, means there is an even large audience for watching them doing it. How to find out? Make a picture. We culled through the applicants and found six that looked just like the men we’d worked with, physically strong, not necessarily handsome but well endowed, men the viewer could identify with, not one even suggested they knew where a gym was and, of course, Adam and I ended the piece, with our six guys sitting around a table stroking their cocks, while we fucked bareback just as we had, pants pushed down, tops off; Our first disc went to Nicky to see if he’d say, “Nope”?
I learned, because I wanted to, how to speak with a Chicano accent, wore the too long shorts, grew the pencil moustache as well as the almost shaved head. Working in the fields had prepared me for the culture into which I fit and wanted to part of. Got my ears pierced, tats, did work out at a gym but differently, what they wanted was size, which was strength, not the definition that the Gringo studios wanted. Adam, because of his age, was usually referred to as ‘Papi’ and a specialty we offered, was getting fucked by him for the first time. Squealing like Mexican pigs, they’d stick their asses up while he spit in them then told them that, “Cholo, you ain’t gonna be no virgin in about two minutes” then stuck ’em. All on film.
Our trademark was a line drawing, slightly abstracted, of Adam and me fucking on a table. We actually did make one more with us doing it that way but this time, we’d both changed, we looked different, fucked different and the audience for it, about fifty guys, all called out what they wanted, made comments, offered to eat the cum….big seller.
Pancho, one of my favorite guys to just fuck because I liked to and I were headed for the studio to lay down some action when Pete came out holding the L.A. Times. “Never thought I’d see this story…remember the guys who sued all the media for slander or whatever after some woman committed suicide? It settled.” Well, without saying or indicating it, that got my attention.
“Yeah, si, recuerdo…big bucks, no? They pick up mucho?”
“I’ll say. The courts, Jesus their lawyer must have been good, forced the guys to be paid, said the media people had stalled…Over a hundred million. Wonder what they’ll do with it?”
“Uhm, si I get me a new tat, that big eagle like Pablocito? Car…’ey tell big Papi I bet he want to know, he follows shit like that…Pancho, ahora! mi cojones son caliente, ‘mano…”
While Pancho and I were doing it doggy style, Papi came in holding the paper. “‘Ey, Cojon, Vide?” And winked. Fuck, he turned around, there on his back that great eagle tat like Pablocito just bigger. I guess he figured he could afford it.
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