“Cocaine?” he offered.
“No, darling, I never touch the stuff, but Ben will have some.” Cocaine!!! I had never done coke before in my life!
“Thanks,” I stammered. The client, who bore a striking resemblance to Mahatma Gandhi, offered me an enormous platter and a straw. There must have been ten grams on it.
“Help yourself, I’m going to freshen up,” said the old man. He went into the bathroom. I reached for the straw.
“Are you crazy?” whispered Shakira, grabbing the straw from my hand. Saying this, she opened up her purse, took out a jiffy bag and poured in the whole plate. “We can sell it to a friend of mine,” she laughed, “I’ll give you half the cash.” She rubbed some onto her teeth as the bathroom door opened.
“What happened to the coke?” gasped Mahatma.
“Poor Ben . . . he has a dreadful habit . . . shall we start with you licking my pussy, and has anybody ever told you look remarkably like Omar Sharif?”
Shakira was a star and I adored her. Every Friday lunch we would eat at the most expensive restaurants in London and I gladly worshipped at her shrine.
“Darling, you simply can’t go to Rio with Andy. He’s frightening looking.” She leaned over and whispered conspiratorially in my ear. “When he was a baby, the midwife delivered him with fire tongs after he got stuck mid-birth and now he has a head the shape of a monkey nut, very E.T.”
“Shakira,” I gasped, “that can’t be true.”
“Fine. See for your self,” she pouted. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Waiter, more champagne.” The waiter jumped to attention and I suddenly realized Shakira, who was wearing no panties, had been flashing the waiters. No wonder we always got amazing service!
Shakira hadn’t been lying. Andy did look like E.T., but who said I couldn’t enjoy a fabulous holiday in South America with an extraterrestrial.
I met Andy at Heathrow Airport and we caught the Varig flight to Brazil. During the entire twelve-hour flight I marveled at Andy’s resemblance to the Steven Spielberg puppet. Quite remarkable. He told me on the flight that he had started off in hotel management but had fallen upon escorting quite by accident and had eventually opened his own agency.
We were to stay at the Rio Othon Palace Hotel on Copacabana Beach. Skinhead Michael and his client Pat, the paraplegic, would be also at the same hotel. Pat had broken his neck showing off in the surf years before and could now move only his head around. Despite his affliction he turned out to be an incredibly sweet guy. He had taken Skinhead Michael to Rio for three weeks and I was blown away by how Michael cared for him. Michael was his nurse, friend and sexual playmate. For kicks Michael would pick up stunning Brazilian hookers and they would have sex with Michael in front of Pat.
If Michael could be such a saint, I figured I could put up with “Phone Home” for two weeks. Wrong. In no time I had a blazing row with Andy. The months of resentment for putting up with his crap, “Can you be Swedish? Can you pretend you had a sex change? Can you shag a granny trannie?” came boiling out. The four of us had been out drinking Mojitos at a steak restaurant on Ipanema Beach. I had met the Brazilian Ambassador to England in Rio, and I had been having dinner with him every night. I was developing a taste for rich food and even richer men. Andy was pissed off I wasn’t spending more time with him, but he had such an unpleasant personality and I wasn’t getting any younger. I was twenty-four for God’s sake!
In addition to drinking we had been taking Pat’s Valium, so we were all pretty fucked up. Pat and Michael went to bed early because Michael had to rub him with aloe balm. Michael and I had gotten drunk on the beach that day and we had left Pat in the sun by mistake. He was a crispy cripple and Michael felt terrible . . . me too. Left alone, I looked at Andy through a blur of Valium and rum and for the second time that day wished I was sharing a room with anybody but him.
“Andy, I have something to tell you,” I huffed. “I’m leaving the agency. I’m going to put my own advert in and work for myself.”
Andy went thermonuclear. How dare I betray him like this? He was the reason I was the most successful escort in London. Without him, I would be nothing! He told me I was the most ungrateful son of a bitch on the planet despite the fact I was making him a fortune.
“Let me tell you something, you’re just some skinny blonde, and you’re ten a penny! I can buy and sell you a million times over!” he yelled loud enough for guests at the neighboring tables to hear.
“Yeah, well when that midwife pulled you out of your mother’s vagina with fire tongs she must have squeezed your brain too tight!” I shouted.
“What midwife? I was born at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital,” he spluttered.
Shakira, you lying cow!
Andy leaped up and stormed out of the restaurant. After he left the table I reflected on his cruel words. He was right . . . I was too skinny. I was six feet tall but still only weighed 160 pounds. Perhaps I should think about going to the gym. I knew just the place to start hitting the weights . . . Earl’s Court Gym.
Andy caught a plane back home the following day. I never spoke to him again apart from when some lunatic threw a hatchet through his office window. He called up and accused me of wielding the deadly weapon. I told him it must have been some other disgruntled employee of his. Rio was a dream without him, and Skinhead Michael and I became fast friends. I returned to London and wrote my own ad to put in the
Gay Times
:
BEN (24) HOT BLONDE BEACHBOY TYPE. BLUE EYES,
GREAT TAN LINE AND PRIVATE CENTRAL LUXURIOUS
APARTMENT . . . IF I’M NOT WHAT I SAY, YOU DON’T PAY.
I never looked back. My phone rang off the hook twenty-four hours a day. It got so bad that I had to switch the ringer off at night. Even so, Andy’s words still haunted me. I was skinny, but everybody I knew was skinny. I plucked up the courage and finally went to Earl’s Court Gym.
The guy on the desk was a fucking GOD. Sean Garret. He had a thick Liverpudlian accent and a flat top and I thought I would melt just by looking at him. He was a huge bodybuilder and totally straight. Oh dear, this reeked of trouble. Everybody in the gym fancied him, it turned out. He lived with his punk rocker girlfriend Kaz in a basement apartment on Gloucester Road. They had both just moved to London from Liverpool. I joined the gym immediately.
Much to my surprise I took to working out like a duck to water. The gym became the hub of my social life. Gyms weren’t as popular back then as they are today, but Earl’s Court Gym was state of the art. Of course, at first what kept me going back was sexy Sean Garret and his Liverpudlian charm, not to mention his humongous glutes and pecs. Escort clients would hire me and I would close my eyes, pretending I was fucking Sean instead of some old billy goat. God help the client if he was half decent looking; I would french kiss his face off, imagining I was snogging my Liverpool warrior. I jerked off constantly, thinking about Sean. When my muscles started to grow I was blown away. I would ask Sean’s advice about my body all the time. He patiently explained to me how I needed to eat a gram of protein for every pound I weighed, and he taught me to cut out the alcohol I imbibed liberally. I started buying all the bodybuilding magazines I could get my hands on:
Flex
,
Muscle & Fitness
and
Musclemag
. They were full of impossibly beautiful men wearing posing trunks. Two bodybuilders I was especially crazy over were Chris Dickerson, who had won the Mr. Olympia title in 1982, and Chris Duffy, who went on to win the Mr. America championship. I would always buy magazines if those two behemoths graced the covers.
Having been a dancer, I had a very fast metabolism, and I didn’t feel my body was growing quickly enough. I told Sean my concerns. I wanted to be Popeye, not Olive Oyl.
“I told you, mate, more protein.”
“But I’m already eating a cow a day,” I whined. Sean stared at me with his big brown eyes and said, “OK, what are you doing on Sunday?”
“Nothing,” I stammered. This wasn’t strictly true. I had a client who had flown in from America to see me—Thomas Morrison. Thomas was incredibly wealthy and was somehow related to the Vanderbilt family. He had a wife and four children, but for some reason he had fallen madly in love with me. He would send me gifts and pages and pages of handwritten love letters. He was a nice guy, but I felt nothing for him. I was in love with straight Sean.
“I’m doing nothing on Sunday,” I repeated.
“Well, Kaz, my girlfriend is out for the night, do you wanna go to a movie and play some pool in Camden?”
“Sure, I love pool,” I lied. Pool? The nearest I had come to a pool stick was when I stuck one up a client’s ass when he was too gruesome to fuck one rainy day in Weston Super Mare. I had traveled down by train early to find the guy was an albino, so I fucked him on his pool table with a cue. I still remember his pink, grateful eyes and white, white skin against the green baize of the table. I never ate rabbit again.
I wasn’t quite sure how playing pool and watching
Blade Runner
was going to improve my physique, but hey, I would be hanging out with Sean and I could pretend he was my boyfriend, at least for the day. Sunday rolled around and Sean told me he would be at my place at noon sharp. The night before I had had dinner with Thomas Morrison then gave him a blowjob while I listened to the Muslims shout at each other in the meat shop below. I sucked his dick, imagining it was Sean’s. I nearly let him cum in my mouth.
I didn’t sleep that night, and I was up at the crack of dawn on Sunday trying on different outfits. I settled on a pair of ripped jeans which you could see my arse through and a mesh vest that showed off my nipples. I had seen Sean’s girlfriend in a very similar outfit. She was a punk rocker, and I believed naively this outfit might confuse Sean enough to let me blow him. I had arranged to meet Thomas Morrison at 9 p.m. for supper. He had whined and sulked about having to wait all day, but when I told him he could stay the night I felt him smile down the phone.
At noon, sharp, there was a knock on the door. There stood Sean wearing jeans, t-shirt and a beanie cap.
“Fucking hell, everybody’s gonna think I’m queer with you dressed like that,” he laughed. My heart sank.
“Should I change?” I asked.
“Nah . . . fuck ’em. I know I’m not a poofter and that’s all that matters, isn’t it?” he said. I suddenly realized how stupid I was. Of course I wasn’t going to have sex with Sean. He was a big, straight, Liverpudlian guy who just wanted to help me out with my bodybuilding. He handed me a plastic bag.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Present for you,” he winked. We walked into the living room where I poured the contents of the bag onto my table. Little glass bottles the size of my thumb bounced all over the surface of the coffee table followed by a dozen syringes and surgical needles.
“What are they?” I asked. Sean laughed out loud, “What the fuck do you think they are? They’re steroids!” “Steroids!” I gasped.
“Yeah, you wanna get bigger, don’t you?”
“Well, yes, but I was thinking perhaps an extra serving of Weight Gain 2000 and a bag of chicken breasts, but steroids?”
“Everybody’s doing them who’s serious about being a bodybuilder. Course if you’re not serious. . . . ” He began to scoop up the vials.
“No, no, wait . . . I mean, will I get much bigger?”
“As big as me,” he grinned. I knew nothing about steroids. Wouldn’t my hair fall out and my face end up covered in acne? More importantly, wouldn’t my dick shrink? How could I be super hooker if I had no dick? I shared my fears with Sean who threw back his head and laughed again.
“Does this look like I have no dick?” Saying this, he unzipped his pants and took out his cock. I could have passed out. Here was the man of my dreams showing me his cock above the Khal-Al meat store. And boy, this was the finest piece of meat I’d ever seen in my life. Then he very nonchalantly stuffed it back in his jeans and I realized I hadn’t breathed for ten seconds.
“What do I have to do?” I asked.
“Drop your pants,” he replied. I had a massive hard-on that wasn’t going away so long as he was in sight. Think of something gruesome, I thought. I caught sight of my closet door behind Sean. A month before I had received a strange phone call.
“Is that Ben?” asked the voice.
“Yes,” I replied.
“I’d like to hire you for the weekend. There’s no sex involved . . . I just have certain needs.”
“Certain needs?” I asked. Well, turns out one of his certain needs was being locked in a broom closet, dressed as a school girl, and gagged and blindfolded with only a bowl of Kit-e-Kat to eat once a day. For that he paid me the cost of staying at a fancy Park Lane hotel, plus I got the extra bonus of having my friends come round that weekend, and when I would tell them to hang their coats in the closet they would open the door and scream in sheer terror.
Anyway, the memory of “Felix” got rid of my hard-on right away so I dropped my jeans for Sean. He didn’t pay any attention to my dick. He was busy sucking out the contents of one of the vials into a syringe. The needle seemed enormous.