Studs: Gay Erotic Fiction by Emanuel Xavier Richard Labonté Page B

very far. Fading away, I stare at the people on the train, weeding them until I only see the Asian boys, wishing earnestly the cute ones would stare back. And sometimes they do.
    I used to have a ton of books at the apartment. They were a beer-rippled bridge to the past, proof I had gone to college: literary biographies, lives on paper about lives on paper. Pages that faded to white on the train. One day I came home from work and all of my books were gone. It was two days before payday and Sung had sold them so we would have money for dinner.
    Another bump.
    Sung does one, too .
    I can tell from the way he’s grinding his teeth that the coke has settled in the back of his throat, erosive and grainy. He gets up to get another drink. No. We’re at another bar. Not sure I recognize this place. Everyone a frozen neon blur, and the music has really long pauses, like valleys, dark Columbian jungles gripping crashed planes, vine-wrapped skulls knocking against each other in the breeze, providing impetus for a renewal of beats. The song returns. I blink and everyone speeds up to normal. Sung returns with two drinks. Sliding one to me he asks, “You all right?”
    I nod and wag the cigarette between my lips at him. He smiles and gives me a light. Smoking the last of a butt from the ashtray (another cigarette I abandoned?), he looks through the cloudy remnants, past me; I know he’s gauging his internal clock. Time for another bump? He’s trying to hold out for as long as possible, make the bag last all night. To fuck with him I do another huge bump, snorting it loudly, flagrantly, off my wrist. He only laughs and nods; cutting a presumptuous line on the table, he snorts blow through a rolled-up bill. I can’t make out the denomination, though the dandruff-flaked president does wink at me, conspiratorially. I look around. Everyone is alive .
     
    The next thing I know, we’re outside a club in midtown, the Next Bardo. This was where we met. A knot of Asian boys in a variety of Armani Exchange knockoffs tightens by the door. It must be after midnight if there’s a line to get in. Sung has left me smoking on the corner to see if he can get some old man to pay his cover. He’ll go in with the guy, ditch him and then come back out, licking the stamp on the back of his hand to press it to mine, hoping that the resulting blurry, manufactured contusion will be close enough to the real thing to fool the astute Japanese girl working the door, sulking in a tattered boa. This is the plan and it’s not working. Sung approaches every other old guy. The old men here are as cagey as they are desperate and intuit some kind of scam, waving him away. I’m bored and unsure of how we even got here. If we took a cab then half of our money for tonight is gone, wasted. Right now, I hate Sung. Taking these men by the arm, speaking in pleasing broken English when, having attended university in Australia, his diction is better than mine. Once he’s escorting these old men, there’s no reason to believe Sung will come back for me. He will leave me here.
    Finally, a portly man consents to pay his cover. They go inside. I don’t want to wait for disappointment so I walk away.
    If the inconvenience of emotion is this present and rising then it must be time for another bump. Taking the train downtown, I go to another bar. Not Boy Bar. If Sung comes looking for me I don’t want to be an easy find. I’m at a straight bar on Avenue B when I run into Lonnie. He laughs and feigns surprise when really his is a life where all surprise has long ago been drained away by rampant disenchantment and out-and-out lies. I mean, nothing surprises a drug dealer. But I get it and smile back. He’s out of cigarettes and, ordering both of us drinks, hands me a ten, asking me to buy him a pack. Taking the bill I turn and pause, he smirks. We both know I’m going to do this and he’s going to give me a bump.
    In a bathroom stall we both smoke and take turns doing bumps