During the next month David Fortune earned a staggering sum of money by simply knuckling down and applying himself. However, his cash profits couldn't begin to top those of his glamorous lady pimp. Valerie Hudson sent out discreet invitations announcing his daily exhibitions in her apartment, appealing to the old and the young, the gay and the straight, the lame and the halt. How avidly they soaked up this vicarious delight, and what a thrilling matinee to see this succulent Ivy-League Christian being tossed so repeatedly to the lions of lust. To add to their regalement, the boy seemed genuinely eager for these ravishments of fang and brawn.
For many weeks David found these arduous new demands on his time and hormones a very flattering phenomena. He'd never realized that vanity could have such an intoxicating influence on him. And yet, it became as habit-forming as a drug when Valerie told him of the waiting-lists building up for him and the need to have more phones installed in her office simply because he was such a smash. She also assured him he was still the only call-boy in her stable who operated on a full-time basis. Man, what a status-symbol!
In addition to slipping potent THC-doses in his cocktails, Valerie also introduced the boy to sniffing poppers just before-and sometimes even during-a date. This turned him into an eruptive frenzy of desire… "Damn!.. It makes me want to eat everybody in sight, even before they get their clothes off!"
"I'm hip!" she replied, remembering the wild audience-reaction in her living-room whenever he was on the stuff.
But despite all these mounting excitements, David still remained infatuated with Valerie and bitterly regretted there was so little time for them to be alone together. It was also frustrating that whenever they did have a stray moment or two, she'd insist that he save all his primary energies for his clients; although she added that she still loved him madly and thought only of him when coupling with her own customers at night.
As the holidays approached David felt this would be a great time for them to take off a few days and see no one but each other.
"Oh David, you must be kidding! This is our busiest time of the year… everybody wants to make out in December…"
"Oh hell, and I thought Christmas was for families and kids and relatives, and all that."
"Honey, if you're alone in a big city, Christmas is for sex, sex and more sex, until all the tinsel's torn down and you're no longer reminded that you don't have a lover or a wife or a sweetheart at a time when it counts the most!"
David was disappointed. He had taken it for granted that business would slow down during the holidays and that he would thus get a slight respite from his chores. Not that he loved his work any less, but now and then a bit of fatigue did seem to becloud the issues. As the new year dawned, he began to look thin and drawn. Valerie bought him an expensive sun-lamp and insisted that he use it daily. She rubbed scented lotions all over his body, and soon he looked a great deal healthier than he felt. When Linda noticed his bronzed complexion reflected from the lights of their Christmas-tree, she cheerily asked him where he got his nice barber-shop tan. He said: "In the barbershop." And for some strange reason she blushed and said, "Of course… How silly of me. Where else?"
David knew that Valerie took speed and amphetamine pills, and pleaded with her to let him have some so he'd get off his daily launching-pad a little faster. But she adamantly refused. "Oh no, baby. Lady-hookers can drop as many meth as they want and still do a gangbangin' business. But call-boys gotta stay away from it, because it shrinks their legal tender right down to a nubbin. Oh, it gets them real hot from the neck up, but that is not the name of the game, my dear."
To console him, Valerie presented David with his first taste of opium, in capsule-form; mainly because he'd be facing a rather special challenge that afternoon and she wanted to be sure he was ready for it.
"David, did you know that many of my men-clients pay enormous sums of money to see me making love to another girl?"
"Well hell, I don't blame them," he said. "If the other girl's as cute as you, I'd probably pay to see that too."
"Then you do see the logic in it," she went on. "Oversexed heterosexual men getting hot to see girls sucking each other."
"Oh sure… sounds wild. But what are you getting at? Will I be working with two girls today?"
She laughed. "Oh David, really! And I thought you were getting the point. There'll be a new woman-client here for you today…"
"All by herself? Not in a group?" he could hardly believe his ears.
"Yes, she's coming alone, dear, but wait a minute. Like those men-customers I was telling you about, she, too, is a voyeur. In fact, the only way she can be aroused is to watch two handsome young men having sex."
"Oh," said David.
"… and doing it as if they were absolutely oblivious to her presence. She'll be staring at you like mad-she always brings a dildo with her-but you boys must only have eyes for each other."
"Wow," said David.
"Your partner will be here at three. You'll engage in a sixty-nine session with him as if you love it. He says he hates it, but you'd never believe it to watch him work. You two will keep at it until she brings herself to a climax. After that you're off the hook. How about it, David-are you willing?"
"Yes," David nodded on-cue, thoughts of sugarplum Hazel-Harry-types flitting through his mind.
"Is your pill working?"
"I'm feeling very warm and… kinda thirsty."
"It's working," she said.
The boy's name was Richard, and they had a half-hour to get acquainted before their customer showed up. They remained fully dressed while chatting, never touching one another and discussing every facet of their trade except sex and desire. Richard was a tall dark curly-haired lad of twenty-six, his manner masculine, conformist and cool. Married, father of two, and also a Peninsula commuter.
"I work the late shift out at Ampex," he said. "And I do this modelling stuff two or three afternoons a week, and man, how it has beefed up our income. Got our house all paid for, bought a new freezer, and now I'm buying savings bonds. It's wild, man… and so damned easy! My wife thinks I go bowlin'. I told her all this extra money's an allowance I get from this rich uncle back East. She believes me because she loves me. And shit, I'm doin' all this just for her, know what I mean?"
"Sure," said David.
"How about you?" said Richard. "Married?"
"Oh yes."
Richard gave him a friendly grin. "It's the only way to fly, right?"
David nodded, returning his smile, finding Richard a quite likeable, average guy. "It can be very pleasant."
"Oh, but man… I mean to tell you I was nothing 'til I got married and made a home for myself. You gotta have roots in this dog-eat-bitch world…"
In another minute they were both talking about their kids, showing off the snapshots they each carried in their wallets. "How about those babies?" said Richard, his eyes going proud and misty. "Kinda makes it all worth while, doesn't it?"
"You can say that again," David said in all sincerity, feeling the pathos build.
Then it was five minutes before game-time and Richard said they'd better start peeling off their clothes, as this woman was supposed to walk in and find them on the bed already sucking each other.
"Ever go down on a guy before?" Richard asked matter-of-factly.
"Uh… no, not quite," said David.
"Well, I'll tell you something, I prefer handling men-clients, because that way I stay true to my wife, know what I mean? Don't really break any vows as long as I'm not gettin' hot with another girl. 'Cause the thing of it is, I actually hate having sex with a guy, but that way it works out great, because then I don't feel like I'm being unfaithful, dig?"
"Oh yeah, I'm hip," said David, his empathy for this boy growing.
They were naked now and coolly examined each other's equipment. "Jeez!" said Richard. "You're built big, huh?"
"You too," signified David.
"So, what the hell…" Richard shrugged philosophically, "two meal-tickets, right?"
"Right."
"And you really never sucked one before?"
"Nope."
"Well man, I'll give you a tip, just to start you off. Pretend it's a great big nipple on a beautiful girl and you can't get enough of her… see what I mean?"
Their wide-eyed client arrived, silent and intense and detached. The boys rolled out their tongues and went to work, and with a gasp, David knew at once that Richard frantically loved his avocation, whether he knew it or not.
As for David, he only gagged for a little while. And then thought about it later, wonderingly. Dickered with the idea, interactively. But then grew much too diversely busy with all sexes to know exactly what he felt about any of them. Yet, he had to admit that Richard had a nice one, symmetrically speaking, and that it had felt warm and companionable in his mouth. Probably the closest he'd ever come to blowin' a French Horn for a living.
As the days banged by, David began to wonder if he'd ever again enjoy the luxury of solitude. But apparently it was true, as Valerie so often said: "In San Francisco Nearly Everybody Reads The Gash Gazette." Yet, now and then he'd like to find time to read a book, see a movie, or have enough vitality in the evenings to play with his children. However, the monotonous quietude of suburbia was the perfect opiate to soothe his deflated-and often drug-deadened-nights.
"Another hard day at work?" Linda asked one evening.
"Yes," he nodded somnolently, "hard…"
"Well, that's what we're here for," she comforted him, "to contribute. But really, David, you could have told me about this new assignment of yours."
David gave a start, jolted from his lethargy. "What do you mean, dear?"
"Daddy and I had lunch in town today."
"Oh?" What the hell did that mean? Montclair had given him three months, and this was barely two.
"He told me about this new research-job you've been doing in the field, some sort of big insurance survey. He says it should prove invaluable to the company. Oh, David, he's really so fond of you, if only you'd give him more of a chance to show it…"
David sighed his relief. And realized it was best that Montclair should volunteer this bit of propaganda. If he wasn't showing up at the office every day, it was preferable that the boss himself should relay the phony reason, rather than wait and let Linda hear it from someone else. In six weeks he'd be faced with the Big Choice. Which would he choose, duty and conformity, or desire and liberation? Right now he wanted to maintain the whole paradox-curriculum just as it was: his home and friend-Linda by night, and the writhing tumult of Valerie's bedroom by day. Was there any chance he might be able to blend the two indefinitely?
"Yes, honey, your Dad really bent over backwards to give me this opportunity," he was saying now, "because it's a very big survey."
"Hush-hush?" she inquired.
David nodded and sank deeper into the divan. "Between you and me and the katydids…"
"And your clients," she said, "mustn't forget them-although they really make me very cross, the way they've been getting you so fagged out lately."
He gave her a lazy grin. "Well, that's how it is when you deal in services."
"Ummm!" she agreed, and continued knitting. A small, definitive garment. But David was too fagged-out to notice.
And now his split-weeks flew by in a haze of integrated sperm and self-experimentation. David was inundated by a bevy of leather fetishists, sado-masochists and transvestites, as well as a surprising number of attractive young women who required his stout insertions in the good old-fashioned way. At times it felt as if he were operating a new kind of out-patient clinic, servicing many young, pretty career-girls and coeds who were too busy to hunt and didn't want to be talked about. He also tidied up the glands of an unending flow of teenagers, both boys and girls. Since they were under-age, where else could these youngsters make acceptable contacts? They couldn't go to bars, nor could they explain to parents if they cruised the streets late at night. After school in the late afternoon proved an ideal time for them.
David learned a great deal more about the ancient rites of sodomy through these importunate tots, discovering that it could be even more blessed to give than to receive. However, the girls at this age were by far the wildest, deepening his carnal education beyond belief. It was warming to know how many weeks they'd saved up their allowances, for him. Just think what he'd saved up for at their age: model airplanes!
Although there were many days when he saw only one client at a time, the group entanglements still abounded. The most popular request by far came from husbands who wanted urgently to see him mounting their wives. In such cases David served as effectively as a marriage-counsellor, particularly when the husband's interest had been on the wane. Somehow it sparked a whole new viewpoint of desire to see a strange young man pumping so zealously at something the husband had been taking for granted. The wives would naturally put on a tremendous performance, as if to say to her mate: Look what a wild ride I'm giving this young stud… see what you've been missing?
As January neared to a close, David's high-flying morale began to sag, to say nothing of certain parts of his overworked anatomy. It was a mortifying blow to his pride when he started getting complaints from his vast clientele. Some of these irate voluptuaries even accused him of false advertising: "Your ad in The Gash Gazette says you're 'well-endowed', which is true; but dammit, lately you can't keep a hard-on to save your soul!" Another elderly enthusiast hit this grievance right on the head: "What good's a big hunk of meat if you can't get it up?"
Still another admirer asked David if he were trying to kill himself, adding that Valerie never worked her other boys full-time because she knew they wouldn't last. David insisted that Valerie had more faith in him, although privately he began to think his lovely benefactress was trying to use him up fast, finding this an unsettling and sadistic idea. He was the only boy she'd ever permitted to work out of her apartment, which, until now, had seemed like a shining triumph. Was there something else behind that gesture… a motive he hadn't counted on, simply because he was so new at these games?
Many of his steady clients sympathized with his earnest efforts and tried to set him straight, advising him that a good stud should only handle one or two Johns a day, if he wanted to go on performing at his peak; adding that it was the cruelest of all frustrations to play with something as potentially exciting as a long plump prick that remained soft. They told him a girl could handle a whole crowd of tricks each day, since her success relied on the erections of her customers rather than her own. But? stud's whole career was built around the stiffening capabilities of his prick, so he had to cool it- lesson number one.
Although David appreciated their kind advice, the complaints increased and became a most shattering attack on his ego. "Play with it," he'd urge them, "that baby'll come up before you know it!.. just be patient…"
"At these prices?" they'd wail, and one could hardly blame them, in the going market.
Soon the boy grew plagued with such demoralizing pangs of inadequacy that he found himself indulging in even lewder practices in order to compensate for his deflated virility, bestowing feverish anal kisses as copiously as if they were handshakes, as well as honing up his crafty flair for cunnilingus. But, alas, even in mid-lick, he knew that mere lip-service would not be enough.
How he tossed and turned in his fresh-smelling Hillsborough bed at night, itemizing all his abortive encounters during the day. God, he'd been so ambitious!.. and he was getting ahead, he could feel it! He'd been so well-liked, everybody asking for him, and smiling so contentedly whenever they saw him, naked. Christ, he'd had the whole world in his arms just by taking off his pants. Public Acceptance! That's what he'd had. Oh man, he'd been at the top, scaled the heights… tongues hangin' out for him all over town. And now? He had tried so devoutly to belong to this world of the flesh, and it had been a while before he was convinced it was right for him. But now the bitterest of all ironies: It was rejecting him!
One day David's wounded vanity received its final blow, adding some righteous rage to his single-minded obsession for Valerie Hudson. During this particular interlude an indefatigable housewife, determined to render him rigid, had been mouthing his penis so long, she'd begun to wheeze asthmatically. Then she gave up the ghost and let him flap there.
"Help me up!" she squawked. David had been standing above her, muscular legs asprawl, hoping this Greek-God stance might spring him to action. It didn't. He helped her up. She gave him a piece of her mind. "I've licked your pony 'til I'm blue in the face, and it still won't gallop!"
David had adopted a rather pithy stock-answer for this: "We live in such a climate of Fear and Impotency that it touches everything we do! Nobody's safe… can't you feel it? Then, seeing that she was bleakly unmoved, he automatically wet his hand and started to jag it for her.
"Oh leave yourself alone!" she said. "There's nothing wrong with you that six months on a health-farm wouldn't cure." Then she glared at him rather curiously. "No wonder Valerie stopped showing you off like a prize heifer."
David dropped his lank rod and stared stupidly at her. "How do you mean, 'showing me off'?"
"Oh for heaven's sake, stop trying to act so innocent!" said the still-thirsty matron.
"But I'm serious!" David insisted. "I don't know what you're talking about."
The woman eyed him shrewdly for a few seconds, and then fully believed him. "Oh, that monstrous bitch!.. Don't tell me she's kept you in the dark about all this?" Why, she must have made a fortune on you, dear boy…" A moment later she had spilled out the whole story to him. He'd done six and seven shows a day in her two-way mirror.
"That mirror?" said David, going a little livid as he pointed at it.
"Yes, dear, let me show you." Since Valerie was not at home that day, she led him around to the other side of the wall and undraped his landlady's glistening secret. "When you were in top form she must have made as much as a thousand dollars a day on you. And you mean to say she didn't split a penny of that with you?"
Numbly, David stared through the glass into the bedroom, thinking of all his lusty entanglements of the past weeks that played to a sold-out house. "Not a penny," he muttered.
"Oooh, make her pay for that, baby!" said his customer. "Don't let her get away with it! But now I must dash back to the bank-I've a board of directors' meeting at four and I'm late already…"
"Wait!" said David; and although refunds were against the policy of the house, David gave this helpful tribune her money back before sending her on her way. And then marched back to his opulent work-room, where he proceeded to pace and roar and fume… Oooooh! That lyin' little sonofabichin' whore with her cute sexy lisp and her silver-blonde cunt and her Goddamned thumb! A blood sucker, that's what she was!.. stringing him along like the rube that he was, getting him so hooked on her he couldn't see straight or even consider saying no to whatever she wanted him to do… getting people to pay to see him in action, and then taking a third of his take as well! She must have thought he was a prize asshole to let that go on all these weeks… and dammit she was right! An ass-lickin' asshole, that's what he'd been… thinking what a glowing honor it was to be employed full time, when all it meant was that she'd wanted to make a fast killing on him. Damn her, she must have known he'd eventually poop out, and no doubt was already planning to replace him with a fresher, hornier victim.
And what was even more infuriating, David still thought about this girl sexually, even though she'd kept him too busy making money for her to have either the time or energy to crawl in bed with her. It was his hunger for her and her way of life that had gotten him into this. He'd wanted to have her and to be like her, and now he couldn't be sure which he'd wanted most. Her juicy-hot body and her outrageous, amoral lifestyle-he'd wanted both, in one big undulating bundle of hedonism. As a result, only one of these desires had materialized: he'd succeeded in becoming the whore she was, but hadn't possessed her body in weeks.
He sensed that she was waiting for him to call it a day, to cash in his nuts and crap out. Oh no, brother, she wouldn't take the initiative and throw him out, not while he still had a few trickling dollars' worth of earning power left between his legs. Sponge him dry, the sex-starved square, and then toss him back to Suburbia!
David agonized and brooded all night long, wakefully gnashing his teeth as he wondered how he could pay that bitch back for all her scheming treachery. But the next morning he arose with a cool and clear-headed plan of attack, deciding, first of all, that he wouldn't confront Valerie with the truth. No, he'd let her think he was still willing to be led to whatever slaughter she had in mind for him. In the meantime, if his plan worked, it would provide him with two just desserts in the very same hour: sweet retribution, plus one last toss in the hay with the Queen of the Big-Time Hookers…
One early afternoon while Valerie was out shopping, David went through her desk, hunting for the alphabetized list of clients he knew she kept there. He found it and studied it carefully. The names had been segregated as to the preferences and perversions of each. Upon locating the Voyeur section, David proceeded to copy down ten names and addresses-five straight men and five gay men. Then, as an afterthought, he decided to add on five lesbians. Fifteen drooling voyeurs, all hungry to see a show. Painstakingly, David wrote out the fifteen personalized invitations. But before mailing them, he went out and had fifteen duplicate keys made to Valerie's apartment, preferring that these hand-picked guests did not make their entrance through her secret switchboard office. This surprise Peekerama was to be a "walk-right-in-just-as-you-are" party, with the promise of something for everybody to be found in the hostess's overworked two-way mirror.
After mailing the invitations, David waited until he was certain they'd been received. Then he telephoned each client and frankly explained the sort of vendetta he had in mind. Since most of them had assumed that he and Valerie had shared in his performance-profits, they felt his plan would be a well-deserved feat of justice, and were overjoyed with the prospect of seeing the impudent Valerie Hudson with her candid panties down. "She's always been too damned high-falutin' for a chippy anyway," said Betsy the bulldike, "so she's had this coming for years!"
To insure sufficient energy for his final blast in the sheets with Valerie, David told both her and Linda that he had a touch of Hongkong flu, and remained at home for two days, resting. Although Linda was happy to see him doubling up on vitamins and wheatgerm, she vaguely wondered who had prescribed all those eggmalteds for his virus.
"Your resistance is low and you've lost weight, dear," she said. "You should really stay home for a week."
"No. Two days should get me back on my feet," he told her; and absently noticed that she seemed to be putting on as much weight as he'd lost. The power of contentment finally reaching her waistline, he decided.
On the third day David awoke with an erection for the first time in weeks and he said a small prayer of thanks, realizing that his battle-plans had been perfectly timed. His vengeful matinee was all set for two that afternoon. While Linda was off somewhere being a social butterfly-thank God she kept so busy! — David telephoned Valerie to tell her he'd never felt better in his life and wanted the chance to prove this to her in person. "How about it, Val?… Wanna help me get my rhythm back?"
Valerie had been quite prepared to drop David and find some hardier talent, for she was now growing eager to lower that final boom on old Wilbur Montclair himself. However, David had been rather a pet, so she decided to give in to his last request and make it one for the road. A little tenderness at the end of these experiments always made it easier to unload a swabbed-out stud. A pity, she thought, for he had been a tasty one while the bloom was still on his foliage. But wow!.. What a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, she thought, already tabulating how much she might be able to extort from the Montclairs.
"All right, doll," she told him on the phone, "well have a sentimental tumble, just you and I. You think you're up to it?"
"Ummm… Up, baby… Up!" He held it up firmly in his hand and heard her appreciative giggles as he hung up the receiver.
As he drove to the city David tried to figure out which he'd most enjoy, the taste of her hot quivering flesh in his mouth again, or the seven hundred and fifty bucks he planned to recoup from the performance.