BRIAN KINNEY
"You're Brian Kinney, for fuck sake!"
Michael's words last night were like a bucket of cold water thrown over my head.
I couldn't have been more shocked if he'd hauled off and smacked me across the
face.
Finally, in the end, even Michael had bought the myth.
***************************
It's no mistake that I was voted Advertiser of the Year. 'Advertiser of the
Century' would be more like it. I have been advertising, marketing, selling, and
hyping one product almost all my life: Brian Kinney. And everybody's bought it.
Somebody once said, 'Find a need and fill it.' There was need for a sex god in
Pittsburgh, and I've filled that need.
I was born good looking, but I've managed to convince everyone that I am
gorgeous. I keep my body lean and toned, but I don't work out for long hours to
build up an incredible torso - I carry myself like the perfect male specimen,
and they buy it. There are flaws in my body - my legs are a bit thin, I have a
few minor bumps and scars, but no one sees them. I've learned how to dress, how
to speak, how to hold myself aloof from humanity; I've learned how to stare down
my nose disdainfully at the mediocre masses beneath me, and the masses love it.
I'm great at fucking, I learned that from fabulous sex partners when I was very
young. And now I've convinced everyone that nobody is better than me. And yet
usually when I allow a man to come home with me, I make him do all the work, and
he not only loves it, but by the time he leaves, he's convinced he's had the
best fuck of his life.
Men sigh and stare at me longingly when I walk by; that's not an accident. You
don't attract by throwing out lures and convincing guys that you want them. You
act like you don't want them, it drives them crazy with desire. Everybody wants
what they can't have. Everybody wants the best. Brian Kinney is the best. In
Pittsburgh anyway. Brian Kinney is magic.
The secret of magic is this: Hold the crowd away from you, don't let them get
too close. If people get too close, they might be able to see through you.
Always I have kept people away from me, pushed away at arm's length. A few
people have gotten close - Deb, to a certain degree; Lindsay; and now this
amazing teenager. . . But Michael's the only one who's been inside me. The only
one.
Michael's been inside me half my life. The few others who have touched me, who
have affected my life in small ways, it's been easy to keep them away. They let
me. But Michael's never let me. Michael's been my lifeline since I was fourteen
years old. This is not the first time Michael has saved my life, though I've
never told him. There were a few times when I was much younger that I thought
about checking out. When nothing in my life mattered enough to continue
breathing in and out. Each time Michael was there, either sixth-sensing my need
or needing me himself. He thinks this is the first time I've played with death.
I've never told him about the others. Never will.
Death does not scare me. Not my own, anyway. And if you manage to hold yourself
aloof from humanity, nobody else's death scares you either. Dad's didn't. It
angered me, though. Much as I hated that man, I was angry that he was taken
away. I wasn't through with him yet. I don't know what that means, but it's true
anyway.
The thought of Gus dying scares me. Somehow I let Lindsay talk me into having
this baby, and who knew I would give a shit about him? Now I am scared of his
death. As Justin once told me, I was surprised to discover that I cared about
someone besides myself. A little jizz in a cup and suddenly I’m holding a
living, breathing, beautiful lump of my own flesh and blood in my arms, and I'm
scared for him.
And Justin. Christ, how did I let him get so close to me? I've had plenty of
great fucks in a lifetime of thousands of men; men more beautiful, more sensual,
more exciting than the blond teenage virgin I picked up one night out of sheer
boredom. It amused me to introduce this innocent boy to the joys of manhood.
Except, of course, that he was not really a boy. As Michael said, Justin was a
man in a boy's body. He was inexperienced but I didn't really seduce him. In
retrospect, you might say that Justin Taylor seduced ME. In spite of everything,
that makes me smile.
***************************
With a few well-chosen words, I finally convinced Michael that I wasn't going to
scarf again. He was really scared, fear made him angry, you seldom see Michael
Novotny truly angry. Then we talked for a while, though I really wanted to be
alone to think. But he needed to talk about David, and I tried to listen. It's
hard for me not to let my own feelings about David get in the way of really
listening to Michael. Michael loves David. Or thinks he does, which amounts to
the same thing. Regardless of my own feelings about 'love,' it's true that most
of the population believes in love and fucks up their lives over it. Michael is
doing the same thing, but I know enough by now to stand back and let him go at
it.
I don't believe that David is good enough for Mikey. He underestimates Michael,
he doesn't appreciate Michael's intelligence and sensitivity. I don't think he
sees the real Michael, instead he wants to make him over into something he's
not. Michael has not told me this; it's hints I pick up when I see them
together, the way David pats Michael's head or his butt, like he's a cute puppy,
the clothes David buys him, and the way David tries to pull Michael away from
me. David sees me as a threat, but his biggest danger is not me, myself; his
biggest danger is trying to come between us. Michael and I are bonded for life,
nothing can change that.
What Michael really needed from me last night was a dose of reality. But I
couldn't tell him what I really wanted to; I couldn't say, Michael, don't go so
far away with that man who doesn't appreciate you. Because really, what
incentive has he got to stay here with me? We'll never be lovers. We might have
sex sometime, we've come close so often. But I'll never be the lover he wants
and needs. I can't be, and I don't want to be, either. Cold of me to say that,
but who is Brian Kinney except a cold, unfeeling, insensitive man?
Lindsay's always trying to convince me that I'm sensitive. Or convince herself
perhaps, because she wants to believe it. I'm not, though. Things don't touch
me, don't hurt me, the way they hurt normal people. My father beat any feelings
of sensitivity out of me many years ago. Now I feel nothing, nothing can touch
me. Or anyway, that's been the case for most of my life. Until Gus. Until Gus
was born. And amazingly, until Justin came along. Sometimes I see myself as
Goliath, and Justin as little David with the slingshot. That should make me
smile, but it doesn't. Goliath didn't want to be knocked to the ground.
After Michael left, I poured a shot of scotch, just a small one, there were
still plenty of drugs and alcohol swirling through my veins. I carried it with
me to the bedroom while I changed from jeans to my black silk robe and then took
a piss. My cock was sore and my balls ached. When Michael had pulled me to the
floor, my cock landed first, with the rest of me landing on top of it. I
wondered if it would be bruised, if a blue shadow would have bloomed on the
shaft when I woke up this morning, but there wasn't; no mark to betray my
injury.
Walking back to the living room to sprawl on the sofa, I picked up the silk
scarf as I passed by the chair. The chair I'd been standing on, to reach the
high ceiling beam and tie one end of the scarf around it, one end around my
neck. I held the scarf in my hand as I sipped scotch, one thumb rubbing the
smooth silk in the same way that Gus rubs the satin binding of his blanket. It's
soothing. Soporific.
I needed time to reflect on the scarfing incident and my reasons for it. I'm not
a great believer in introspection - I went through enough of that self-doubt and
self-questioning shit in college. I remember staying up once till four in the
morning, arguing existentialism with a bearded nineteen-year-old mystic in a
coffee shop just off campus. 'L'existance precede l'essence.' Jean-Paul Sartre.
In French class we’d called him Jean-Paul Fartre, joking that he was full of hot
air. I bought his philosophy though: You're born, and anything after that, you
create for yourself. I created the Brian Kinney myth, didn't I?
Okay, so why was I scarfing, why was I flirting with death, when Michael found
me? The obvious answers were too easy. I'd told Michael it would be cool to go
out in a blaze of glory, like James Dean. He will always be remembered as young
and beautiful. The end of my youth was merely days away; if I died while still
young, I'd be remembered for the Brian Kinney myth. And yet…and yet…although
true enough, I knew that was not the real reason. Or not the whole reason.
Another obvious answer was that my days as top man on the gay totem pole, even
in mediocre Pittsburgh, were going to end. Maybe not tomorrow, but eventually.
Eventually men would walk past me without a second glance. Eventually someone
would ask, "Brian who?" I would become passe, obsolete, a Liberty Avenue legend
whose name people would invoke with nostalgia.
All these things were true, and yet. . . there was something less tangible going
on beneath the surface. God knows I didn't want to think about it. Didn't want
to discover some new unpalatable truth about myself. Yet it was there, knocking
on the door of my subconscious, waiting for me to unlock the door and let it in.
The telephone rang. I was going to ignore it, but few people call so late, what
if it was an emergency with Gus? After the first two rings, I found myself
jumping up and rushing to the desk to pick up the phone. It was Justin. He tried
to be offhand, just calling to see if everything was okay, he said. He'd missed
me at the party. I growled at him as usual, scoffed at him as usual. Then I
relented slightly and, before hanging up, I said I hoped he would have a good
time at his prom on Friday. I could hear the catch in his voice as he thanked me
and said goodbye. I could hear him NOT saying, again, that he wished I would be
there with him. And because he didn't say it, I found myself thinking about the
prom.
Michael and I had double-dated at our own senior prom. For me it had been an
incredibly boring and insipid evening; I only went because Mikey insisted. The
couples milling around, laughing at inane jokes, dancing awkwardly together -
what did that have to do with me? I belonged on Liberty Avenue, shooting pool,
disco dancing, getting high, getting fucked. I had argued with Michael for days
about going, and yet in the end, there I was with him, wearing an ill-fitting
tux, dancing with a girl in blue satin who kept pushing her tits hard against my
chest, who kept smiling coyly at me, her eyes promising a prize I had no
intention of claiming.
I'd gone to the prom only because Michael wanted me to. And now Justin wanted me
to go to his own prom. But as his date. I have to admit, it took my breath away
when the kid invited me. I tried to joke about it, but I was shocked at his
audacity. I've always admired Justin's courage, but the thought of taking a guy
as your date to the high school prom was astonishing to me. When I told Lindsay,
she tried to turn it into some kind of weird compliment from Justin to me. Maybe
it was. Maybe it was, after all. Of course I had no intention of going, of
making a laughing-stock of myself, an old fart of thirty in the middle of a
roomful of teenagers. And a gay man at that, parading around a decorated
ballroom with his little blond fucktoy.
Except.
Except that Justin had ceased being my little fucktoy a long time ago. When,
exactly? I didn't know. He'd been in my peripheral vision for weeks after I
picked him up the first time, he'd been hanging around the edges of my
subconscious for a while before I became aware that I'd started looking for him
at Woody's, at Babylon. Brian Kinney glancing around a bar room, hoping to see a
head of shiny golden hair! Seeking out a pair of blue eyes so beautiful that. .
. that. . .
The first time I was aware of Justin as a real person was the night I brought
him home from his parents' house and sat down to eat at the table he'd so
formally set with candles and flowers. I'd been unable to leave him at that
house with his cruel father, although God knows I didn't want a teenager living
in my loft, cramping my style.
(That was exactly what I'd tried to tell him by bringing home Hotlanta the night
before. I remember standing there staring at Justin while the trick slipped to
his knees and took my cock in his mouth. I looked at Justin and let my eyes tell
him that he meant nothing to me, nothing. I knew he would run away. I was glad
he ran away. The irony was that I threw out Hotlanta just a few minutes later. I
lost my hard-on, and suddenly I wanted to be alone. I'd spent time cleaning up
the mess in the kitchen, angry, so angry. But not angry at Justin. Only at
myself, for letting the brat stay with me in the first place.)
That dinner was the first time we really talked. He told me about school, about
his dream of becoming an artist, and I ate the food he'd cooked especially for
me, drank wine with him, watched him across the candlelit table, watched the way
he exposed his emotions so openly. He trusted me with his dreams. Trusted me.
God, I remember the struggle it had been for me in that moment not to jump up
and run out of the loft, screaming bloody murder. 'Don't fucking trust me," I
wanted to scream at him.
When my loft was robbed a few weeks later, I went off on him. What's funny is
that I really don't lose my temper like that very often. And while it was his
fault for being careless with the alarm, I immediately realized that there'd
been lots of times I'd forgotten to set the fucking alarm myself. I didn't admit
that to Lindsay, when she tried to excuse Justin's mistake. But I admitted it to
myself, and when Justin's little girlfriend came looking for me, and told me
Justin had run away to New York, I knew I had to go after him. Of course I'd put
up a front with the others, had gone through a long drawn-out routine of denial,
telling Deb I was not responsible for the kid and refusing to go after him. If
only they'd all left me alone, I could have caught the red-eye to New York and
found him by myself, without the ridiculous Lavender Posse piling into my jeep
and making a pilgrimage to the city.
I'd been relieved to find Justin unharmed, but at the same time furious as hell
at the way he'd played me. He knew I'd come looking for him, he'd gotten himself
an expensive suite at the Hilton, and he was just waiting for me to come to his
rescue. He admitted it. I pushed my way into the suite, sure I would find him
with another man; instead I found a dozen half-eaten room service dishes and one
very scared kid full of bravado and bluster. I'd been ready to blast him to hell
and back, but I couldn't do it. I don't know why, but I couldn't.
Deb had taken me aside and suggested having 'little Sunshine' move into
Michael's old room, and that seemed like a good solution to the problem, so I
told Justin we'd find him a place to live and ordered him to pack up his gear.
His answer was to peel off his bathrobe and try to seduce me with his naked
body. I wasn't interested, not really, but then I thought: I'll punish-fuck him.
Teach him to think twice before he tries to seduce me. It started out rough, I
threw him on the bed and held him down. Trouble was, he liked it. He returned my
blistering hot kisses and met my furious passion with his own, till I totally
forgot that I was supposed to be teaching him a lesson.
I thought he'd flaunt that little tryst to the guys when we met up with them and
started for home, but he didn't. He was subdued and embarrassed about running
away, and luckily the guys didn't give him a hard time. In fact, he behaved so
well that I took pity on him, perched uncomfortably between Ted and Emmett in
the backseat of the jeep, and I asked Michael to drive the rest of the way so I
could get in back and let Justin sit on my lap. He was dead-tired and went right
to sleep, and slept almost all the way home.
Things kind of escalated after that. I was always clear with Justin that he
would never be my boyfriend, and I’ve continued my normal pattern of constant
casual sex. It's just that, my sex partners happen to include Justin more and
more often. I really enjoy fucking him. I have made sure that he knows I’m doing
dozens of other guys, but I keep finding myself in bed with Justin time and time
again.
Worse, he keeps sucking me into his life. I’ve never given a shit about anybody
(except Michael), then suddenly I’m eating pasta at Deb’s with a boring senator,
just because this kid begged me to come. When I try to wise him up, warn him to
be more suspicious of peoples’ motives, he slips his arm around me, rubs his
cheek on my shoulder, and declares that he’ll be fine, as long as he’s got me to
protect him. Me! So then: Do I push him away, do I growl that he sure as fuck
does NOT have me to protect him? No. No, I hug him tighter to my chest. Christ.
I reached the breaking point with Justin a couple weeks ago. Everybody was
starting to assume we were a couple, so I determined again to push him away, to
annihilate him, to hurt him so much he would finally leave me alone. I picked up
a trick at the King of Babylon contest , I was going to flaunt the trick, a
really hot young stud, in Justin’s face, in front of all the guys.
Then suddenly the drag queen announced a new stripper, and it was Justin! He
looked right at me from the stage, and I knew immediately what he was doing.
What he was trying to do. Make me jealous. What a joke, what a fucking joke, I
thought. So I grabbed the trick and gave him a big kiss. The trick pushed me
away. He pushed away BRIAN KINNEY so he could watch a skinny pale blond boy in a
cowboy hat dancing around in his underwear.
Fine, I thought; fuck you, I thought, and I turned to watch the brat strut
around on stage while the crowd went wild. I couldn’t understand it at first;
Justin’s a hot kid, but he’s not tanned, he’s not muscular, he’s not the
porn-star type like the other contestants. Then I saw what the crowd was seeing.
Not a phony oiled muscle hunk, but a real boy, a real man, exuding honest sex
appeal; a real man you could touch, and kiss, and take home to fuck all night.
Afterwards I pretended to think the contest had been rigged, I desperately
needed to put Justin in his place. But Justin surprised me. Again. He spit in my
eye by stealing my trick right out from under my nose. In a daze, I watched them
walk away. I blinked, and tried to push them out of my thoughts; turned around
and ordered a double Absolut. I pretended not to notice the bartender smirking.
I tossed back the drink and stood glaring at the empty glass. Then a thought
occurred to me: Did the boys go to Babylon’s back room? Impossible. Justin had
never gone there. I was a hundred percent sure about that.
Anger and dread dragged me down the stairs. My seemingly casual gaze found
nobody familiar on the first level. My feet kept moving downward. When I reached
the bottom I glanced quickly around, relieved, and I remember that I sighed.
Then I heard something behind me. A familiar soft moan. I twisted my head around
and saw two figures huddled in the shadow under the stairs. It couldn’t be, I
kept repeating inside my head, but still I moved closer and closer. It was them.
Justin and the other boy. Justin was fucking him. And they were loving it. I had
never let Justin fuck me, and I didn’t think that he’d fucked anyone else either
(except Daphne, which hardly counts). But this was not Justin’s first time. No,
it wasn’t.
That night had been a watershed experience for me. I felt lost and alone. I’ve
always cherished being alone, and suddenly my independence left me feeling like
a hollow empty shell. For another half hour I put up a front for the others, all
the time wanting to get the fuck out of Babylon. Debbie came searching for me,
to help bail Vic out of jail, and I couldn’t even help my old friend. First
chance I got after that, I slipped out the back door and drove home alone. I
killed a half bottle of scotch before falling asleep. Next morning I was going
to skip breakfast at the diner, but I knew I had to face the guys sometime, and
I planned to just brazen it out.
When Justin came in, I could hardly make myself look at him. Pride should have
carried me through, but it didn’t. The best I could do was pretend to read the
newspaper, pretend a disinterest even I wasn’t buying. Justin saw through me. He
had his chance to turn the knife in my wounded pride and I wouldn’t even blame
him. But he didn’t do it. He joked a little with the guys, but he let me know,
crystal clear and with a big smile, that he was still around if I wanted him.
But I didn’t want him. I’d had my first taste of rejection and it was bitter. I
left the diner without finishing my breakfast, and I didn’t answer my phone for
a while. I worked at home for several nights, and finished a big ad campaign for
Samuel Adams beer. It was a great success. My first night out in a week was
attending the annual Pittsburgh Advertising Association dinner, where I won the
Advertiser of the Year award and fucked the presenter, a handsome hunk from New
York City. Which led to me sending my resume to his agency in the city. My ego
somewhat restored, I rejoined the group at the diner next morning.
Justin was waiting tables, I just nodded casually at him, ignoring those
incredibly expressive blue eyes of his. At the first opportunity I bragged to
the others, in Justin’s hearing, about the job I was getting in New York. It had
the desired effect, and when he called me later, I took his call, and let him
come over to help me pack for my interview in the city. I had already made up my
mind to be very clear with Justin that once I left Pittsburgh, I was never
coming back. I was prepared for his reaction, I knew he would be miserably
unhappy. I was not prepared for my reaction to his unhappiness. I had to pull
him into my arms and hold him tight. I didn’t want to let him go. Finally he
pulled away, grabbed his bag and ran out of the loft, sobbing. In the long run,
I thought that would be good. He’d get over his teenage crush, he’d find
somebody new and be happy and carefree by the time he started college in the
fall.
When the call came to tell me I didn’t get the job, Justin was with me,
researching New York apartments on the internet. Somehow I got rid of him,
inventing a deadlined project for work. I sat alone on the sofa all that night,
sipping Jim Beam and letting my failure sink in. The only one I wanted to tell
was Mikey. I was longing to tell Mikey, but I couldn’t. He was seriously
considering moving to Portland with David, and even I couldn’t interfere with
that decision. Not this time. This was Mikey’s life and future at stake, I owed
him the freedom to choose for himself.
By the night of Vic’s celebration dinner, I was in a serious downward spiral.
Even I could recognize it, but I couldn’t stop drinking. I can’t remember ever
being so wasted as I was that night. I tried to slip away, but Justin came after
me, drove me home, took care of me. Next day Lindsay came to check up on me. In
a way it’s a curse to have people care about you, though God knows I’ve done
nothing to deserve it.
My thirtieth birthday party was a cruel and unusual celebration in a funeral
home, no doubt arranged by the undertaker who’d fucked Emmett many months ago. I
broke the news to the gang that I didn’t get the job in New York, then threw
myself into an open coffin and slammed it shut. Everyone tried to laugh, but it
wasn’t funny. I wanted to stay in the coffin and let them nail down the lid.
Michael had decided to go to Portland, and he, Emmett and I shared our last
drink together at Babylon. Emmett got tearful and planned a going-away party for
Michael. And when I followed a cute young guy down the stairs, Justin stopped me
with a call on my cell phone, then held on to my arm on the stairway to invite
me to his prom. In a way that was the last straw for me. Or another last straw
in a string of last straws.
Turning thirty, passed over by a trick who wanted Justin instead of me, watching
my little boy fuck another man, rejected for the job in New York, losing Mikey
to that asshole David who was taking him half a world away, and now being
invited to a teenager’s prom. Brian Kinney had lost it. When Lindsay insisted on
taking me shopping for my birthday present, and when I spied the silk scarf, I
knew immediately what I wanted to do. Metaphorically I was at the end of my
rope, and suddenly I wanted nothing so much as to be literally at the end of a
rope, to be hanging by my long beautiful neck at the end of a silky white rope.
Melodramatic, maybe; but also supremely fitting.
If Michael had not arrived at the loft when he did last night. . . But Michael
did arrive; Michael’s harsh words woke me up from the miasmic spell I was under,
and I realized I could no longer go through with it.
So: Brian Kinney - on his way to becoming not a legend but an anachronism -
decides to make another grand gesture. But an unselfish gesture this time. For a
change. I’m going to Justin’s prom tonight.
He’ll be surprised when he sees me walk in. I think he will smile at me, this
courageous boy who has become a courageous man. I think he will stand proudly
next to the man he loves. I don’t have Justin’s courage, but I’m going to
pretend that I do. If he wants a romantic dance, I’ll dance with him; if he
wants to kiss, I’ll kiss him.
I’m going to take a shower now, and then I’ll put on the ruffled shirt I bought
today - Justin said he’d like to see me in a ruffled shirt. I want to give him
this night. After that, I don’t know what will happen. I’ve made no plans. I
refuse to look ahead any further than the prom.
12/11/01