Second You Sin by Scott Sherman

him so.
    “Thanks.” He blushed. “It’s Ansel . He’s been real y good to me. Took me in, dried me out. He’s been incredible.”
    “Real y?” I remembered how scared he sounded on the phone. “I thought, I don’t know, I thought you two were having trouble or something.”
    “What? No. He’s the greatest. It started with him as business, you know? He was a client. But one night, we got to talking, and we real y connected.
    Then, I dropped out of the scene for a while.” He looked away. “I went to Florida with a videographer for FratPackBoysOnline. You know it?”
    I nodded. FratPackBoysOnline was an online
    “amateur” video site that featured “col ege boys.” Supposedly, customers got twenty-four-hour access to a fraternity house’s hidden cameras, where the
    “students,” many of whom appeared to be in their thirties and semi-retarded, were frequently observed showering and having sex but, mysteriously, never doing anything that real students do, like attending classes, watching online porn themselves, or playing video games.
    “At that point, I was doing meth pretty much twenty-fourseven,” Rueben continued. “This video guy, he tel s me he’l hook me up steady if I move into the FratPack, right? I was partying and doing group scenes al the time anyway, so I figured what the hel ?
    “What’s the worst that could happen? Maybe someone would find my videos online and send them to my dad, and the old fuck would die of shock, right?” He smiled with one side of his mouth while the other half trembled as if he was about to cry.
    “Maybe I’d send them to him.” The half smile was gone now and his doe-like green eyes watered up.
    I took his hand.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
    “Please.” Rueben blinked back the tears. “Please.
    I’m a big boy. I knew what I was doing. Stupid.” He shook his head. “ Anyway . . . some porn, I wouldn’t mind doing, you know what I mean? If Johnny Hazzard wants to do a scene with me, baby, I’m there. I was a goddamn prostitute, Kevin. It’s not like sex work scares me.”
    I noticed his use of the word “was.”
    This despite his mention of Johnny Hazzard, who I had to agree I’d do onscreen or off, too.
    Rueben may have been a big drug addict, but he had good taste.
    I was fondly recal ing Johnny’s, literal y, seminal work in the genius productions of Miss Chi Chi LaRue when I realized I had stopped listening to Rueben.
    Focus, Kevin, focus.

    “ . . . not too bad,” Rueben was saying when I tuned back in. “But FratPack was a meat grinder.
    Boys coming and going, some ODing, some getting sick. Everyone treated like shit and encouraged to do as many drugs as possible so we wouldn’t ask why we weren’t getting paid. Pathetic.
    “So, one night I go out in Miami with some of the other ‘models’ and there’s Ansel . With his usual entourage of the rich and beautiful, right? Meanwhile, I’m looking like a truck rol ed over me and probably smel ing worse.”
    I knew Rueben run over by a truck would stil look better than half the boys working the runway, but I didn’t say anything.
    “I’m thinking I better get out of there, because I didn’t want Ansel to see me like this, right? But there’s this other part of me thinking I did want him to see me, because maybe I could hit him up for some cash, you know? Maybe I could score some better-quality shit.”
    Rueben shook his head again. A tear rol ed down his cheek. I squeezed his hand.
    “While I’m making up my mind, one of Ansel ’s assistants sees me. He knows Ansel ’s type, so he points me out to him. Ansel comes over and soon we’re talking like always, right? He says, ‘Hey, let’s get out of here, you can show me a good time.’
    “I hesitate for a minute, because I’m wondering what I’d tel the guys I came with, when Ansel takes a couple of hundreds out of his pocket and presses them into my hand. ‘A real good time,’ he tel s me.
    ‘But we have