Big Sky Country

Gabriel–even Jay Jones insisted that Gabe call himself Gabriel now–didn’t know why Jay insisted that he come to this concert. He wasn’t a concert sort of person–or at least wasn’t until Jay took on the crusade of refining him. Even then Jay didn’t usually want them to be seen at the same concert. Gabriel was the actor’s hidden boy toy, although not jealously so; Jay wasn’t shy about sharing Gabe with other men who could advantage Jay. Gabriel particularly didn’t like Latin music. But then, as the studio executive, Julio Martinez, came down the aisle, necessitating that Gabriel stand at his seat to let him pass in the row, and then sat down in the seat beside Gabriel and gave him a knowing little smile, Gabriel reminded himself that he did know why he was here. Jay must need something from Martinez, Gabriel thought.

“Here” was the Hollywood Bowl amphitheater on a warm and star-encrusted–both in the heavens and in the theater–August 18th, 1955, night. The venue was the third day of the Festival of the Americas, organized by the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein as musical director. It was Latin night, and the Los Angeles Orchestra was playing Latin music under the baton of Mexican conductor and composer, Carlos Chavez. It had been four months since Gabriel had flown away from Lubbock, Texas, not realizing he was being spirited away permanently by Jay Jones, four months during which he had lived in secret in a cottage at the back of Jones’s Beverly Hills estate, coming and going through the rear alley. And it had been four months in which Jay Jones had trained him to serve Jay Jones–both underneath Jay Jones and with other men to the benefit of Jones’s career.

Gabriel was in the section that could be called the “better” seats in the amphitheater. That was because of the man who had just entered and sat down beside him–Julio Martinez, the movie studio’s connection with Mexico, who handled everything needed in the way of support south of the border. Martinez was in the “better” seating section because he was one of the sponsors of this particular concert. Jay Jones was here tonight, but he made sure he was never seen in public with Gabriel. He was in the “best” seating section, escorting for the evening the stage and movie star, Mary Martin, who had just completed a two-week run in Skin of Our Teeth at L.A.’s Blackstone Theater. Gabriel was here, in this seat, because of Martinez. That he was at the concert at all was because Martinez had told Jay Jones about a movie to be filmed in Mexico that Jones wanted to star in, and Martinez had told Jones what he wanted to ensure Jones got the part. One of the things he wanted was to fuck Jones’s boy toy of the moment. That was Gabriel. Hollywood men like Martinez got a thrill out of knowing they were sharing a young man with a heartthrob box office actor like Jones.

Gabriel had been given to Martinez for the evening and night. Jay Jones had told him bluntly that he was Martinez’s for the night to do whatever the man wanted to do with him–and Gabriel was to leave the man happy. Jay had come to the cottage behind his house, on the other side of the swimming pool and tennis courts, and had picked out what Gabriel was to wear–silky white jock strap and long-sleeved shirt, a tuxedo-cut ivory-white suit, and a red bow tie. Then Gabriel had been sent off to the Hollywood Bowl in a taxi and been told that Martinez would see that he was returned by noon the next day.

“Tell whoever he has drive you to approach through the alley and return by the back gate,” Jones said. “Call me from the cottage when you’re back. I’ll want a full report.”

Gabriel had retorted, “And photographs and semen samples?”

“Don’t be smart,” Jones had said. “You knew you would have to lay down for me and my friends in exchange for your board and keep and movie opportunities.”

Gabriel knew that when Jay told him to call on the phone, he meant he wasn’t to come to the main house. He only came to the main house late on a night that Jones wasn’t entertaining and then the only room Gabriel saw was Jones’s bedroom, which opened via a French door onto the back terrace. When Jones wanted to fuck him in the afternoon, he came to the cottage.

When the lights went down in the Hollywood Bowl, and the applause had died from Carlos Chavez’s entrance and bow at the podium, and the music started, Martinez turned to Gabriel, acknowledging his presence for the first time since he sat down, put a hand on Gabriel’s knee, and whispered in his ear, “You look smashing this evening, young man. We have a reception dinner to go to for Chavez afterward, during which you can mingle, and then I’ll take you to bed for the night. I’ve looked forward to this.”

None of this was a surprise to Gabriel. Jay Jones had made clear that he hadn’t brought Gabriel to Los Angeles to keep him to himself. In the four months they’d been here, Gabriel had been given eye-candy extra roles in a couple of beach movies but Jones had made clear that, in exchange for being kept well, Gabriel would be what Jones called, with a laugh, his “Hollywood Ho,” to be used as a party favor to further Jones’s interests.

“We both knew you came to me as a prostitute,” he’d said, and Gabriel couldn’t gainsay that.

* * * *

The after-concert dinner party was more of a cocktails and assorted lumps of food standup mingle, in a ballroom of a Mexican-owned hotel near the movie studio lot in the southern quarter of Los Angeles. The party, which Julio Martinez was paying a big chunk of, and which meant he schmoozed and mingled in large gaggles of Spanish speakers far away from Gabriel, was to honor the conductor, Carlos Chavez, and assorted other Mexican personages in town. There was a smattering of movie folk from the studio, brought in by Martinez, and Gabriel knew some of these and had worked for a few who just knew him as an extra actor, used for young beefcake scenes and somehow hooked up with someone big at the studio who they weren’t supposed to know about. A few of the men associated with movies who were at the party knew Gabriel biblically. It was a town bathed in sexuality, a large measure of which was homosexual, or bisexual at least, and hedonist. Narcissism ruled here. The attention getter of the evening was Delores del Rio in person and twittering all across the room of the death earlier that month of Carmen Miranda who otherwise surely would have been here.

Initially, Gabriel became trapped speaking with these people, as his Spanish was nearly nonexistent, but they invariably wanted to pump him to reveal how he had gotten invited to the party, and their guesses were coming too close, albeit falsely, to Martinez being his sugar daddy. There didn’t seem to be any surprise that Martinez would be some young man’s sugar daddy, so they seemed to have him pegged. Unfortunately, as they were quizzing Gabriel about relationships, they pretty much had him pegged as well. And speaking of pumping, more than one man followed him around with hopes of pumping him sexually and there were women tracing him with their eyes as well, dreaming of being pumped by him.

As he knew neither Martinez nor Jones would be thrilled for it to be known that he was here to hook up with Martinez, Gabriel found himself filtering into the clutches of people who were chattering in Spanish. They didn’t seem to mind that he stood at the fringe of their groups and smiled and nodded his head occasionally. He was nice eye candy for the women and for more than a few of the men, Hollywood being largely a gay or bisexual, even if not acknowledged, town in the mid-1950s.

Since he couldn’t talk and needed a crutch to make it seem like he was too busy with something else to chat, he spent a good deal of time picking cocktail glasses and cubes of food off passing plates. It was while he was doing this that he caught the first glimpse of someone who reminded him of Adrian Ames–the young man he’d fooled around with on the sports teams in Lafayette–the young man who had gone to Lubbock and tempted Gabriel to join him there but who hadn’t been there when Gabriel had final found his way to Lubbock.

The super of the apartment building in Lubbock had said that Adrian had gone to Los Angeles to break into movies. He’d made it clear, with a smirk, though, that it had been male porn movies he was breaking into.

Gabriel turned from the group he had been huddled with and pretending he was part of and walked the room, taking close looks at the waiters, in black tuxes, with serving trays. He was still looking when he felt the tug on his arm.

“So, it is you.” Gabriel recognized the voice and found himself trembling a bit as he turned and looked at Adrian. “I’d had indications you had come out to L.A. Did you hear I was out here and follow me?” The voice sounded hopeful. This wasn’t the Adrian Gabriel remembered. That Adrian had been too cocky to let his voice reveal even a hint of hope like this. Nevertheless it, indeed, was Adrian Ames,

“I didn’t find you in Lubbock,” Gabriel said.

“I know. I heard from friends there that someone from Louisiana came looking for me. I hoped it was you. You heard I’d come out here to do movies?”

“I got into movies right there near Lubbock,” Gabriel said. “Jay Jones is doing a movie at a big ranch near there. I hitched a ride out here with him in his studio’s airplane. I’ve got some work at the studio near here. Not much. You still doing… porn?”

“A bit,” Adrian said. He said it with reservation, though, and looked away from Gabriel.

“Don’t feel self-conscious about it,” Gabriel said, with a little laugh. “I do more work out here on my back than with my brains or brawn.”

Adrian looked relieved. “Yes, I came out here to do porn movies. But I found I can make more money as an escort.”

“So, you’re not a party waiter full time?”

“It’s complicated. I came here as a waiter. But I’ll be leaving with someone. You do what you have to do in this town. And you…?”

“I’ll be leaving with someone too,” Gabriel answered.

“Female?”

“No, a man. A studio executive, Julio Martinez.”

“So, you do still swing that way? And you play at the top out here.”

“Yes. I went on–and up–from where you started me.”

“Ah. Well, I’d like to see you… I’d like… sometime…”

“I think I’d like that too,” Gabriel said. “I’d like to go with someone near my age and just for the hell of it–with neither of us doing it for more than the sheer pleasure of doing it.”

Oh god how he’d like that. Adrian was still a hunk. And he knew he was hung. And he was young and virile and vigorous. Jay Jones was good, but, god, was Gabriel ready for variety. That’s why he hadn’t balked at going with Julio Martinez, even though Martinez was nearly as old as Jones and had a bit of a pot belly on him.

“Sounds heavenly, Do you have a place we can…?” Adrian was almost apologetic. He had been so dominant with Gabriel at the time that it was almost embarrassing for him to almost grovel now.

“No, that wouldn’t be possible,” Gabriel said.

“You got a daddy, do you mean?” Adrian asked. “This studio guy, Martinez?”

“No. Someone else.” God how he’d like to reveal that his sugar daddy was Jay Jones. But he didn’t want to rub it in with Adrian and he was well aware that continuing with Jones necessitated keeping his secret–even from an old friend like Adrian. “Let’s just say that I can’t have anyone back to my place. And you?”

“I could figure something out. Here, I have a card. I’ll write the number on the back. Don’t call the number on the face of the card.”

Apollo Entertainment, it said on the side opposite of the one Adrian scrawled his telephone number on. “Your escort service?” Gabriel asked.

“You do what you have to do out here,” Adrian answered. “You’re really looking good, Gabe. If the time comes that you need… well, you know… you might try these guys.”

“I’m not sure how long I’m out here for,” Gabriel said. That surprised even him. He hadn’t thought about it, but he had thought it was a direct turnaround flight when he’d come out here to begin with, and he’d just let himself drift into doing what others wanted. It was the submissive in him, he guessed. But now that he thought about it, he realized that he hadn’t thought of it as a permanent arrangement. He still thought about Frank Doyle and Sunshine Ranch. But he had made no effort to contact Frank. Why was that, he wondered. Wasn’t it embarrassment that he’d just flown away with Jay Jones? That Jones had reduced me to being a boy toy for the actor and his friends? That he had just left Frank in the dust? He hadn’t intended to do any of that.

And here, he was thinking about Frank when he had the man standing in front of him who he’d left Louisiana to find in the first place.

“But, yeah, I’d like to hook up with you. I’ll call you soon and we’ll set something up.”

Adrian’s answering smile was worth the plane trip to the West Coast.

Not long later, Gabriel had occasion to feel sorry for Adrian in terms of the dreams of Hollywood stardom he had revealed to Gabriel when they were both young and had aspiration back in Louisiana. Gabriel had gone to one of the more remote men’s rooms in the venue and, as he was saddling up to a urinal and unzipping himself, he heard them in one of the cubicles at the end of the row. Turning his head, he could see the soles of the shoes of someone who obviously was on his knees, facing the toilet. The faint sounds Gabriel heard were the unmistakable, to him who was well familiar with them, sounds of a man being given a blow job, complete with directions and guttural sounds of pleasure.

The familiar sounds and the image of the circumstance caused Gabriel to go hard at the urinal, and he had to wait to be able to piss. As he was doing so, the door to the cubicle opened, and Adrian came out. He was wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. He saw Gabriel at the urinal, gave him an embarrassed look, shrugged, and, without saying anything, left the men’s room.

Gabriel had managed to bring his shaft under control and was finishing urinating when a man, squat, fat, and bald, came out of the cubicle. He was readjusting his trousers and smiled when he saw Gabriel at the urinals. Gabriel recognized him as a sweaty and dumpy fifty-year-old subproducer on minor films at a major studio. He’d been at parties Gabriel had attended before and had leered at the young man there and made suggestive comments that Gabriel had never felt lowered enough to respond to. And Adrian, who had once been Gabriel’s master, had just given this toad a blow job in a men’s room toilet cubicle.

Seeing his chance, the man bellied into a urinal next to Gabriel, and pulled his shaft out. Gabriel noted that the man’s cock was actually his best feature. Giving Gabriel a little smile, he reached over to touch Gabriel’s cock. The young man shuddered, turned away and zipped himself up, and left the men’s room.

He may have sunk low to get to–and stay in–Hollywood, but Gabriel hadn’t sunk as low as Adrian had yet. He intended never to have to.

* * * *

When it came time to leave–for Gabriel to leave, not for Julio Martinez to go–Martinez’s chauffeur came into the party room and tapped Gabriel on the shoulder. They went out through the kitchens and Gabriel entered the black Cadillac limousine, with its smoked windows, and sank to the back corner of the backseat. Then he waited and waited, as the chauffeur leaned against the front fender of the limo and smoked Lucky Strikes. More than an hour later, one of the party planners leaned out of the kitchen door and signaled that Martinez was ready to go. The limousine pulled up in front of the hotel, the chauffeur opened the rear door for the studio executive, and Gabriel sank as far back into the darkness of the car’s interior as he could, out of view from those on the sidewalk, until the Cadillac glided away from the curb.

Martinez fucked Gabriel in one of the VIP bungalows kept in a section in back of the administrative offices on the movie studio lot–or, rather, Gabriel rode Martinez there. The walrus-like Mexican movie executive was a lazy lover. His cock was of a nice size and he could keep it hard for an admirably long time–Gabriel was convinced that this movie people had access to some sort of erection drug that hadn’t made it to the market yet–but he more or less just lay there and made Gabriel do all of the work.

He also didn’t seem to be much, Gabriel thought, from the man’s initial behavior, for affection or giving attention. There was some lip work and fondling in the back of the limousine, but the ride from hotel to studio lot was a short one, and Martinez didn’t show any interest in cuddling when they got there. What he demonstrated he wanted was to fix himself a stiff drink at the bungalow’s well-stocked bar that took up much of the living room, put a record of Latin music on that had almost given Gabriel a headache when it was played live at the Hollywood Bowl earlier and wasn’t much more welcome to him now, and had Gabriel strip down to his jock strap and red bow tie and dance for him while Martinez sipped his scotch on the rocks and watched, with slitted eyes, the young man’s dance.

Then he had Gabriel kneel in front of him, unzip him, and suck him full hard, while Martinez sang in Spanish in hushed tones to the record. This brought back thoughts of Adrian sucking off the discussing subproducer in the men’s room cubicle earlier that evening, but he contented himself with the thought that Martinez was a far more presentable and powerful man.

Gabriel thought the man’s singing was actually better than the instrumental background. A love song was being played now, though, and Gabriel managed to get turned on by a combination of the hard cock stroking inside his mouth and the Spanish being sung.

They fucked on the wide bed in the bungalow’s bedroom. Martinez lay there on his back, looking a bit like a beached whale, but with a quite adequate rock-hard shaft, while Gabriel rode the cock from all four points of the compass. Jay Jones’s admonition to him to make the man happy was ringing in Gabriel’s ears. He retained the bow tie and the jock strap for the fuck, but Martinez did insert a hand under the pouch of the jock strap after Gabriel had ridden him facing his face, facing his feet, and now facing his left side, and masturbated Gabriel’s cock to an ejaculation while Gabriel rode him.

Martinez didn’t come until Gabriel had done his full circle and they were lying side by side on the bed, with Gabriel slowly jerking the heavy Mexican off and Martinez smoking a Chesterfield cigarette. Gabriel was a bit depressed, as he felt that Martinez hadn’t enjoyed the fuck much. He was distant and there was no touchy feely or lip work while Gabriel was riding him.

But Gabriel was mistaken. Martinez had just been savoring the experience.

“Do you like this bungalow?” Martinez asked after he’d come and Gabriel had rolled off his side onto his back.

“Yes, it’s very nice,” Gabriel answered.

“It’s stocked twice a week and cleaned twice a week too–on different days. That includes restocking the bar. There’s a pool area on the other side of the rank of bungalow’s behind this one.”

“Is there?” Gabriel asked. Why was the man telling him this?

“We double up in some of the bungalows, but this one is assigned at my discretion. You could have it all to yourself–and to me, of course, if you were willing to become my boy.”

Ah so, Gabriel thought. He liked the fuck after all. He’s pitching to be my sugar daddy. “You know I live at Jay Jones’s,” he said.

“Now, yes, but I thought you would be looking for a new situation.”

“A new situation?”

Martinez was showing more life and more interest now. He stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray on the nightstand, turned onto his side facing Gabriel, rolled Gabriel onto his side facing away from him, and pulled the jock strap down and off Gabriel’s legs.