Head 01 Hot Head (13 page)

gummy jar of peach preserves, and a container of Greek takeout he smeled and tossed. He thought about making toast, but he knew anything would taste like ash

tonight. He closed the pantry.

1:08 in the a.m.

How many guys have seen Dante now on the web? How many HotHead members have watched him spray his load over himself while I am sitting

here like a coward trying to eat spoiled food in an empty house?

Griff kept thinking about al those men tonight knowing Dante like that. Seeing his pleasure and thinking they owned some sliver of him because they’d witnessed something private, something that should be his alone. How many people would have a piece of Dante next week, or next month? That seemed logical. If Griff gave in and signed on now, he could at least share Dante with them, rather than just letting them steal part of him.

No
. Reaching above, he puled down a bottle of scotch and poured himself four fingers into a chipped glass, raised a toast to nothing and drained it, then did it again.

His celphone buzzed on his hip. Someone must have left a message for him while he was on the train. He lifted the screen to look.

Dante.

Griff poured himself another hefty scotch, and, unable to stop himself, he retrieved the message, listening to it on speakerphone as he headed down to his

room in the basement apartment. The message echoed in the empty house.

“’S’up, G!” Dante was caling from somewhere loud, a bar probably, with disco blaring. Glasses clinked and a rowdy crowd shouted at each other in the

background. Dante sounded happy too.

“Hey man, I was wondering if you wanted to come over on Saturday to help with the roof again. I hate to ask but I gotta leak in the attic. I promised Tino I’d do an eggplant parm and knots, so you’l eat good. Yo, watch…!”

The message got muffled for a second as Dante was jostled and the phone dropped to the floor with a clatter. Rustling as he retrieved it. “I swear I’l make it up to you, Griff. Y’know, I got that check from that… Russian thing and I don’t want the roof to get worse.”

Griff pushed open his bedroom door, dropping the phone on the bedside table as he turned on the reading lamp. He felt that scotch. Good. Maybe he would

be able to sleep. He kicked off his shoes and unbuttoned the tight jeans to scratch his ridged bely. His bed stil didn’t have a headboard, just a boxspring and mattress on the floor. His little TV and boom-box dated from high school. Jesus. Right then, he tried not to feel like a complete loser and failed.

On the cel speakerphone, Dante was laughing at something over the roar of the bar. A woman’s voice, nearby but low, said something inaudible. “Yeah!

Yeah. Oh, and Griffin, my dad sent you an e-mail about Sunday dinner and you’re coming. Don’t bitch, just fucking say yes back right now so my mom doesn’t

give me grief. I gotta g—” And the message ended.

1:16.

Roboticaly, Griff scooped up his laptop from the desk and opened it on the bed. He puled the black shirt off over his head and tossed it toward the closet as

his system woke up.

Sure enough there was an e-mail from Mr. Anastagio. He opened it and typed an answer with two blunt fingers:
Yes, coming to dinner Sunday. Thank you,

Mr. A.; what can I bring?

Closing the invite, he deleted a weight-loss ad, penis enlargement spam, and two schedule changes from his captain, and then he saw it.

“ARE YOU A HOT HEAD?”

Dante had forwarded the fucking website link. To him. On purpose. Ha ha.

Griff slammed his laptop shut and put it on the bedside table. Heart pounding, he turned off the lamp and put a couple books on top of his computer, like he

was trapping a snake inside it. His hands shook.

I wish I wish I wish I wish….

He pushed away to the other side of the bed and lay there in the dark watching the ceiling. He thought about the joke that Dante thought it was. Dante and he

had been naked together before. Hel, they’d banged girls together when they were stil stupid teenagers.

But Dante didn’t know that something had changed in him. He probably thought it was hilarious, that was al.

Griff concentrated on taking deep lungfuls of air because there were spots in front of his eyes in the dark room. He understood, but Dante didn’t.
That
was the problem.

Fuck him. Fuck him. How can he not know?

Griff lasted thirty-seven minutes before he broke.

ON THE peach fuzz of two o’clock, Griff roled off his bed, leaving the lights off, and moved around his basement room like a burglar, his pale feet gripping the carpet. Without even thinking, he locked his bedroom door and puled down the blinds before he went back to the green comforter on the bed. He knew he was

alone in the house, but his heart was hammering, his hands jittered, and the idea of someone walking in and seeing anything made him want to vomit.

The scotch had made his mouth wet and his limbs loose. He kept his black jeans on, unbuttoned, when he climbed back onto his duvet and opened his laptop

with blunt fingers. The e-mail was stil sitting on top: “ARE YOU A HOT HEAD?”

I wish.

Griff roled over so he could stretch out on the bed. His hands shaking and sweaty, he clicked the link, which opened a webpage warning him away if he was

under eighteen. Then, once he was through, he was looking at a brick-red screen peppered with dumb porno language about hotness and hardness, but he didn’t

even notice it.

What he saw was Dante: raven eyes, Roman nose, wine-stain mouth. Everything he wanted. They had posted a digital snap of him smiling at something just

off screen, bare-chested under the red suspenders of his bunker pants, his chiseled face cocked like he knew a secret.

“NEW: FULL MONTE!” the caption read.
Monte?! Who picked that?
“Tonight’s STROKE OF MIDNIGHT!”

He’ll never know.

Jesus
. He took a breath and held it for a moment as he clicked on his best friend. Doing that swept him to another page ilustrated with a sulen Hispanic wearing a NYPD jacket—as in,
just
the jacket over his tattooed torso, next to a registration form asking for info so Griff could become a member for a week, a month, or a year.

A week seemed plenty awful. Griff entered his real credit card with a fake name and accepted the transaction. Done. An animated bar informed him that the

site was “STREAMING HOTNESS.” Dante was his for the asking.

So this is what damnation feels like.

The clip roled as soon as a part of it had downloaded. First the disclaimer shit and then the orange HotHead logo got the animated bonfire treatment. The

screen went black and a Slavic voice rumbled, “Welcome to HotHead-dot-com,” before the picture faded up.

Griff recognized the voice as Alek’s. Sure enough, this was the bald Russian he’d saved at the Stone Bone a couple weeks back. As he was watching, lights

came up on a stylish sitting area.

There Dante sat, smiling from a wide, black leather armchair in front of a gray-green wal. A picture hung over his head: a bunch of purple and red splashed

on a canvas. “Pretend Art,” Mrs. Anastagio caled that stuff. The room looked fake-expensive, impersonal, and very clean—like a hotel for hipsters.

At first, Dante was looking down at the floor and rubbing his hands on the smooth leather of the chair’s arms, impatient. He was wearing his turnout gear with the jacket open, a white long-sleeved undershirt under the suspenders.

“You ready?” Alek’s off-screen voice spoke from behind the camera as he stepped closer to Dante.

Dante looked right at the camera with those jet eyes. “I’m about to bust, man.” He rubbed his bely, and he wasn’t lying. Under the heavy fabric, the meaty

ridge was visible pressed against his inner thigh. “Can I touch it yet?”

“Impatient.” Unseen, Alek chuckled, and somehow even his laugh had an accent. “I have a few questions first. Just some stuff to introduce you to the members. I have a feeling you’re gonna be popular.”

“Like maybe your members wil like my member, huh?” Dante sat back, tilted his head, and squinted right at the camera. The stubble exaggerated his dimples

and the cleft in his chin. “Awesome, man.”

In his dark bedroom, Griff felt himself smiling like an idiot for no reason, like he was opening a present. He had butterflies in his stomach. His raked his eyes over his friend’s handsome features affectionately, charmed by his cockiness even here.

This was sort of hypnotic, watching his friend while hiding behind his computer. He turned up the volume on his laptop until he could hear Dante breathing, the sounds his tongue made licking his lips.

Griff had never thought of their fire gear as anything but practical, but for some reason, Dante wore it differently. The reflective stripes emphasized his lean build, and the worn chemical boots looked dirty and sexy instead of uncomfortable. Abracadabra; a grubby uniform transformed by the magic of porn.

“So your name is…?” Alek leaned closer with the camera for the answer.

“Monte. Sure. Hi.”

Dante was a terrible liar as usual, but Griff was wiling to bet that none of the other pervs watching gave a shit.

“Let’s get your vitals. Age, height, weight?” Alek zoomed in closer on Dante’s hard face and shoulders.

“Thirty,” Griff said in his dark bedroom to no one.

“Twenty-four,” said Dante in his plush leather throne. “Six feet.”

More like five foot eleven
, but Griff found the lie almost touching. It made him feel powerful in a way, like Dante was joking but only he got it.

“Weight?”

“About a buck ninety.” Dante was nervous.

“And obviously with the charming accent, you’re a New Yorker. How often do you work out? Or do you play a sport of some kind?”

Dante shook his head. “Pfft. Fucking never. I used to play basebal. But I’m too lazy. This is al natural. Good genetics.”

Alek sounded impressed. “Wow. Lucky felow.”

Griff snorted, thinking of the hours and hours Dante clocked in the gym at their station. Who would believe that you kept a six-pack sitting around? He

realized that Alek must have coached Dante on these answers, and the dumb porn name for that matter. This wasn’t real; this was fake bulshit for sad pervs

whacking off in their dim basements.
Like me
. Oh, right.

Dante was bouncing his leg. “My father is almost sixty and he has the same body.”

Not hardly
, thought Griff. Mr. Anastagio was about five foot seven and built like a barrel. No, Dante took after his mother’s brothers—tal and lean with eyes like gypsies.

Alek stepped farther back so that Dante was visible in the armchair from his head to his scuffed boots. “Wel, we’re glad you came by to share it with us here

at HotHead. I bet your girlfriend appreciates it.”

Dante bobbed his head and took the bait. “Al of my girlfriends do. But a dude’s got needs, yeah? It’s too much for some chicks. And I don’t always wanna

play nice.”

Griff tried to swalow around the lump in his throat and nudged his zipper down with his thumb, just to let his bals breathe. He knew Dante was hamming it

up for the camera, but his dick didn’t know the difference. He thought about the aley fuck he’d spied on earlier, the rawness of it.

This was why he had given in. He was getting an education in his own flesh.

No one ever has to know.

On the laptop screen, Dante ran with the multiple-girlfriends idea, licking his lower lip. His smoky eyes driled right into the lens, right past Alek, right at Griff.

“Hard to pick just one. I never met a woman who could make me want to settle down.”

“Maybe a woman is not what you need.” Alek’s voice teased at him with its light accent and throaty chuckle.

Dante squinted and half smiled at that, but he didn’t say anything. He winked at Alek over the camera.

Griff swalowed, knowing Dante was just joking like he did with everyone, flirting out of habit. “Maybe I should let ’em watch this, huh? Like a preview.”

Alek asked, “Have you ever done anything like this before?”

“Like porn? Nah! I mean, I’ve taped myself fucking chicks a couple times. But only for myself. Fooling around, ya know? But nothing professional.” Dante

carded a hand though his hair and looked up at the camera, cocky as hel. “You’re my first, man.”

Christ!
Griff turned on his side to push his black jeans down, and his ginger-gold bush was exposed in the silver glow of the laptop screen. The musk of his bals made him salivate more than he already was. Reclining like that, his junk lay plump and pink against his leg; he could feel it filing slowly, the foreskin puling back a little as it grew. In front of him, Dante was splayed across his computer like a meal.

“What do you do for fun?” Alek angled the camera down at Dante’s thick pants, panning slowly up the canvas of the turnout jacket.

“You know. Parties. Pussy. Friends. SportsCenter. Get into trouble.” Dante’s hand kneaded the mound trapped against his left thigh, but the camera kept