Boys of Two Cities Read online

  For Oli, Charles, Casey, and Thorny

  Inhalt

  Chapter 1: Blown in Hollywood

  Chapter 2: Shepperton Buggery

  Chapter 3: Well Met

  Chapter 4: Life’s a Drag

  Chapter 5: Aberdare Interlude

  Chapter 6: Out in Mar Vista

  Chapter 7: Tuition in Sex

  Chapter 8: Making the Connection

  Chapter 9: Mud, Glorious Mud

  Chapter 10: California Dream Boy

  Chapter 11: The Price of Freedom

  Chapter 12: Good Gil Hunting

  Chapter 13: A Crock of Bullshit

  Chapter 14: Return of the Silver Stud

  Imprint

  About the Author

  About the Book

  More Books from the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Blown in Hollywood

  He woke to the rumble of mid-morning traffic on Ventura Freeway, muted through the triple-glazed windows of the Amarano, and the occasional closer sounds of delivery trucks out on North Pass Avenue. The hotel suite was over-warm and the single silk sheet had been flung back during the night.

  Gil Graham stretched luxuriously and drank in the young man lying on his side facing him. Mike Benson was a fine sight to wake up to, so relaxed in sleep, his gentle mouth slightly parted, fine dark eyelashes closed over the hazel-brown eyes into which Gil had gazed only a few hours earlier as they made love. The youngster had proved to be a delightful ingenue, but clearly not that inexperienced. As for himself, Gil thought he was still a good lover for a man in his early fifties.

  He reached out and carefully wiped at a gossamer of saliva that had spilled from the corner of Mike’s mouth, and the gesture hit him hard, remembering how he had sometimes done the same with Mike Smith, the lover he had met while working as a gofer on a movie in Rome all those long years ago in 1980. That Mike was much on his mind because the boy lying next to him had demanded the story while he and Gil had a late dinner at Santorini’s. Mike Benson was a trainee at RKW Studios in Burbank, where Gil had just completed the last season of the award-winning Second Sight series as producer-director. Mike craved a helping hand in getting on in Hollywood’s cutthroat movie business. He had so reminded Gil of himself when he, too, had been only twenty and lost, looking for help. And looking for companionship, he eventually found in the loving arms of Mike Smith, an English boy with dancing eyes under a mop of black hair, a laughing mouth to die for, and a drop-dead gorgeous body.

  Over the late dinner, Gil told Mike Benson how he and Mike Smith had fallen in love, and over a nightcap here in his Amarano suite, what had followed when he and his lover fell foul of the movie producer, James Rosen, and fled to London. There they had set up home, made love, found friends, and earned money working on a film being shot at Pinewood Studios. The story didn’t have a happy ending, though, because after a few months Mike seemed to lose interest in Gil and sent him packing, back to the States in the New Year of 1981.

  Gil gazed affectionately at Mike Benson’s lithe body—a little bit like old Mike’s fondly remembered torso—and the casual twitch of Mike’s semi-hard morning woody. In the end, he couldn’t resist, and reached out and gently stroked it, rubbing his thumb over the cut cock head. Gil’s, unusually for an American, was uncircumcised thanks to the accident of his having been born in Britain when his father worked there for a brief period. Mike stirred, slowly blinked his eyes open, looked up, and smiled winningly at the handsome man leaning over him. Mike took in the still-boyish face, the twinkling gray eyes, and medium-length-trimmed blond hair, just beginning to lose its shiny luster at the temples.

  Mike sighed, rolled onto his back, and groaned quietly as Gil brought him to orgasm with an experienced mouth.

  After a shower, Gil rang for a late breakfast, which arrived fifteen minutes later.

  Mike said, “Wow, I can’t believe it after last night’s meal, but I’m starving.”

  Gil smiled and helped himself to some yoghurt and a piece of fruit. He envied the younger man’s healthy appetite.

  Through a mouthful of rye toast and bacon, Mike reminded Gil that he had promised the next installment of the story. “You’d just arrived at LAX after a miserable flight from England, but you hinted that wasn’t the end…?”

  “No,” Gil murmured thoughtfully. “No, not the end of my Mike after all. I’ll have to tell it as a tale of two cities, since I got all the details from Mike after the event. Of course, at the time I had no clue what he was going through, what had driven him to dump me, and what he did later. Back then, though, I tried hard to hate him…I suppose in order to get over him. But it didn’t work. I got myself into quite a bit of a mess for a while…”

  ~ ~ ~

  The barely six-mile drive from LAX took over half an hour in the evening traffic of a chill January. A new year. What would 1981 hold? He couldn’t think. Gil’s father refused to take I-405, claiming that it would be worse than Lincoln and Culver Boulevard. Gil wasn’t sure. Highway 1 was cluttered with stop lights and stalled vehicles. He felt utterly unreal, to be back home, smothered in smog after London’s much cleaner air. He also felt incomplete without Mike at his side.

  His father did his best to get him to open up, and Gil did his best to warble on about Rome, the thrill of movies, the wonder of London, and why he had ended up there—a very much edited version of the truth. He didn’t think his parents would take it very well that Janice Prosser, the putative girl friend he had made at college, would no longer interest him. There was only one thing in his life, and it lay cruelly abandoned back in Aberdare Gardens, Swiss Cottage, London, England, Europe. A fairy-tale land, far, far away.

  “You enjoyed your stay in England, though?”

  Gil suddenly remembered that his father knew some of the place quite well.

  “It was interesting…different.”

  “But glad to be back, huh?”

  Gil nodded.

  “How long do you think before you land a job?”

  “I’ll start looking this week. Give me a day or two to readjust.”

  “Ah, yes, the jet lag. Never a pleasant thing.”

  His father finally made a left off Washington onto much quieter McLaughlin Avenue. They lived in a pleasant house farther along McLaughlin, the other side of busy Venice Boulevard. The wide tree-lined avenue had 1970s one- and one-and-a-half-story homes on the east side and somewhat soulless looking later two-story condo-style houses on the west. Gil’s sense of other worldliness swelled uncontrollably as the car pulled up at the sidewalk outside their house, with its dormer widows overlooking the rear and sides.

  “I’ll put it in the garage later,” his father said. He got out and helped Gil take his meager luggage from the trunk. The front door under its token porch opened to reveal his mother, anxiously waiting to greet her son back from his travels. He loved his parents, who had given him everything, but it crossed his mind that he would have to find a place of his own as soon as he could.

  The first few weeks passed in a dream. It seemed weird to be back in his old bedroom looking out over the backyard—garden, as Mike would have called it. To the left he could see the familiar sight of the small swimming pool they shared with next door and farther down the almost as large pond in which his father kept a collection of prize koi carp. The bedroom walls were still plastered with his old favorite movie posters and high school yearbook photos. He’d looked at the faces, shining with hope for the future, and wondered whether to call one or two of the guys he thought of as friends. But he didn’t. It would take time before any of them became real again. He picked up a cheaply framed photo of him with Janice seated under a tree in the college grounds. She was supposed to be his girl, whom his mother had already urged him to go visit
. She lived a few blocks away on East Boulevard. He stared at the two happy faces. All fake.

  One mid-February afternoon, determined to get out for a bit, he walked down to Washington Boulevard and waited at the stop for the Culver City Bus Line 1. Ten minutes later, one came along and he swung up onto it and rode it all the way to Venice, where he got off on Pacific Avenue.

  The winter weather was fine. Overhead, a pale blue sky stretched cloudless to the horizon, looking burned at the edges as it merged with the Santa Monica haze to the north. He wandered aimlessly, eventually onto the Boardwalk, still busy despite the month, with its parade of tourists photographing the street vendors, jugglers, muscle boys, and break dancers. A cold wind blowing in off the Pacific meant that there was less flesh on view than would be the case in the spring and summer.

  Gil found an unoccupied bench and sat down, gazing out between the clustering palms at the gray sea. The clattering of the fronds in the breeze held a melancholy tune to his misery.

  “Hi. Excuse me, I’m sorry, but could you help me with this, please?”

  He looked up to see a girl standing beside the bench holding out a capped bottle of soda.

  “It’s stupid. I shoulda gotten the man at the store to uncap it. I never thought, they’re usually always twist-offs now.”

  Gil arched his eyebrows as he reached for the offending bottle of Sprite. She was about eighteen-nineteen, with long and thick dark hair flying about her broad forehead in the wind. Perhaps a touch of Native American in her blood. Etched cheekbones narrowed an otherwise broad face, with heavy dark eyebrows and almost black eyes. Gil noticed the swell of her breasts under the thick pull of a weighty sports jacket over a pale pink sweater.

  He positioned the crimped cap against the edge of the metal bench frame and gave the bottle a sudden sharp pull down. The cap popped off and clattered to the ground.

  “There you go,” he said pleasantly. He wanted to be alone, but she sat down beside him, offering the bottle. Gil didn’t want anything, but he was always polite, and took a tentative sip at the neck, feeling the sharp bite of the lemony sparkle.

  “I walk by here most afternoons, but I haven’t seen you before. Hi, I’m Kandy with a K.”

  “Oh. Gil. I live in Mar Vista, but I’ve been away for some months.”

  “Anywhere exciting?” She smiled brightly with even white teeth in her tanned face.

  “Uh, Rome, London.”

  “Oh, wow, that is exciting. I’ve never been farther than Santa Barbara…okay, one time to Frisco. I’d love to go to London, see Bucking-ham Palace. Did you see it?”

  Gil nodded. He was aware that she was coming on to him, or he feared it was the case. He looked at her a bit closer. Kandy was a good-looking girl. For a fleeting moment he considered showing some interest, but just then a boy skated past, black hair tousled in the air currents, round face shining with glee, and he saw Mike.

  “Did you see the Queen of England?”

  He smiled inwardly—he’d seen plenty of queens, just not that one. “Nope, she was always someplace else.”

  They both laughed. Gil was getting edgy.

  “Hey, it’s blowy out here. Do you want to grab a coffee somewhere?”

  Gil looked pointedly at his watch. “I’m sorry. I’ve just been whiling the time away before meeting up with some friends. I’d really better be going.” He stood and looked apologetically at the girl, who was bad at hiding her disappointment. “It was really nice meeting you, er…Kandy. I’ll keep an eye out for you next time.”

  “Oh, well, okay. Have a nice day.”

  Gil gave her a backward half wave and strode off northward along the Boardwalk.

  In a sense, fortune proved Gil not to be a liar. Within quarter of a mile he came up to a group of four guys about his own age. His retuned radar registered them as probably gay; something in the way they interacted, not so much their appearance, which was otherwise unremarkable. As he drew close, one of them swiveled around and gave a low whistle, a guy emboldened by being part of a gang of pals. Gil knew he should ignore it, but a slight hesitation in his stride betrayed an interest.

  “Hey! Don’t pass by,” Whistler called out and familiarly grabbed Gil by his coat sleeve.

  Gil was unsure as to what to do, but allowed Whistler to drag him into the clutch.

  “Oh, fresh meat,” another commented, salaciously eyeing Gil up and down.

  “What’s up?” Gil blurted, trying to be steady under the searchlight gaze.

  “Tommy, here,” said Whistler, “is gonna rustle up some transportation, and we’re off to West Hollywood for some fun. Wanna tag along?”

  Gil instinctively checked his wallet, which was where it was supposed to be, stacked with a few good bills. “Uh, I dunno. I’d have to phone home, tell my folks I’m gonna be late or something.”

  “You have to phone your parents?” Whistler laughed, joined by the other three.

  Gil blushed and bit down on a sharp reply. “Look, I just got back from abroad. They’d be worried if I didn’t let them know.” The non sequitur seemed to mollify the guys.

  The one identified as Tommy said, “We’ll go now, get the pick up. And you can use my folks’ phone.” He reached out and placed a proprietorial arm around Gil’s shoulders. Gil breathed in, blew the air from his lungs, and gave in. He needed to get out of himself… maybe this was the way.

  An upbringing which had left Gil largely unaware of the pleasures of WeHo also left him bewildered as to exactly where he was, other than somewhere on Santa Monica Boulevard. Two of the boys appeared to be an item, while Whistler—real name Brad—and Tommy vied good-naturedly with each other for Gil’s attention. They dropped into a gay bar to “loosen up” for an hour of sundowners, although it was already well after nine by the time Tommy found a space to park his pick-up and they all piled out onto the busy sidewalk.

  Then it was on up the street a short way to a sex club. “It’s okay, this place. They let you wear your street clothes, though on some special nights, that’s not such a good idea if you don’t want to get them golden wet,” Tommy told Gil darkly.

  Gil let that pass, recalling the manager of Paradise, Damien Foot, warning Rod the cameraman in New York City about that heavy-duty joint called the Mineshaft.

  “Tonight’s an ordinary night, just the usual stuff going down. You up for this?”

  “Yeah, I suppose.” Gil hoped it would get him out of his blue mood. Maybe it was a happy accident bumping into these guys just when he did. He decided to go with the flow.

  In the gloomy interior, the place was already packed with guys of all ages, some fully clothed, others only in jocks, a few completely naked. They strolled past a row of fuck slings with guys getting fisted, something Gil had heard of but never believed was possible. Now he knew. It looked appallingly painful. The other two split up to go their own way as Brad, Tommy, and Gil elbowed through the usual voyeur crowds around the slings toward the back of the club, where a tall screen divided off a part of the space.

  As they neared, Gil could see that the screen formed one side of a long corridor, lit by a couple of low wattage lamps in the low ceiling. The other side of the passage was formed by one wall of a large box with a single door let into the side facing out into the club.

  As he watched, a man came out through the door, looking obviously satisfied. Along the corridor, Gil could make out the figures of two more guys, apparently pressing up against the wall. Between them, there were a few holes cut into the wall at about hip height.

  “Watcha up for?” Tommy asked Brad.

  “I’m going inside for a bit. You?”

  Tommy deliberated for a few seconds. “I think I’ll take the outside for a warm up. I could really go for a nice warm, slippery pair of lips and and willing throat. What about you,” he asked Gil. “Got it on for some cock tonight, or do you want to get blown?”

  Before Gil could answer, Brad smirked at Tommy. “Well don’t get your hopes up, bro. I’ll recognize your
dick if you stick it through where I am.”

  Tommy slapped his friend across the back. “Hah, but you won’t Gil’s though.”

  Brad smiled at Gil. “That’s true, I won’t.” He reached out to stroke the front of Gil’s jeans.

  Tommy snorted. “Don’t get your hopes up, either.”

  Gil still felt very unsure, but he had to admit that the atmosphere in the club was getting to him. The continual susurration of sexual activity seemed to be directing itself at somewhere other than his mental processes, and he didn’t need a guide to tell him what the holes in the wall were for, even though he had never seen anything like it. One of the guys down the passageway suddenly began slapping the wall with both hands, his bejeaned ass thrusting like crazy. A few moments later, he stood back, tucking his dripping dick back in his pants.

  “Follow Brad, if you’d prefer going inside.”

  “No, I’ll go with you. How many are inside there?”

  Tommy gave a brief laugh. “Probably jammed in like sardines. Brad’ll have a struggle to get through.” He tugged on Gil’s arm and led him down into the gloomy alley. At the end it made a right turn behind the box-room, and the second arm was much busier than the entryway. Tommy led the way to the only two free spaces between other heaving guys. If he hadn’t already slipped into a sexual heat, Gill would have found the sight laughable.

  A finger beckoned with a wiggle in the hole in front of Tommy, who wasted no time jerking his fly open and getting out his cock for a quick hand warm-up. Gil felt a bit like a first-time school kid having to strip in front of others to go in the shower, but he reached down and unbuttoned his 501s and undid the waist button to make it easier. Tommy’s long cock slid into the hole and he pushed himself flat up against the wall with a satisfied sigh as the unseen guy on the other side took him.

  Feeling self-conscious, Gil jacked himself up a bit and followed suit. Tommy’s face, two feet from his own, leered at him. “Mmm, nice one, uncut, too. Lean this way a bit. I love watching cute guys get off. I love the look in their eyes. Oooh, this one’s a greedy fucker. Ahh, yes.”