Inside The Mind Of A Writer: Plotting “The Czar of Wilton Drive”

For me, coming up with ideas for a new book are like making old fashion percolated coffee. I let my ideas simmer for a while, sometimes months, even years. Then suddenly my ideas have percolated enough in my head and l’m ready to sit down at my laptop.

I’m not one of these formula writers who churn out a book every three months, mostly to pay the bills. God bless ’em but l like to think my books are unique and that means writing for myself first.

Besides having an image of my main characters fixed in my mind, l’ve already outlined my plot, scene by scene in a more cinegraphic approach, right to the last fade-out. Sure, things may and often do change as l get into my writing – l write my books chronologically so that l am living my story as it happens – but l must know the endpoint for my characters and their story before l commit one word to paper.

Okay, to my blank laptop screen.

I’ve lived – and played – in Fort Lauderdale since 2002 and a few years ago wanted to write a book that focused on its dark side as a gay guy who had seen and experienced much of it. I had, at the time, written my memoirs as a hirsute gay man and the dozen or so iconic furry men l had known in my life, thirty years in NYC, mostly in the now gone West Village leather/levi scene, and the last decade in sunny Lauderdale, and l wanted to use it somehow in my book.

But how?

That’s when l came up with the idea of bringing generations together through a gay nephew and his gay uncle who had been incognito for most of the nephew’s life. In my original beginnings of a draft l had the nephew growing up on Long Island and, questioning his sexuality, coming down to Fort Lauderdale for college and to distance himself from his well-meaning but overbearing parents. That was exactly what l did when, after graduating from a commuter college in Jersey while living at home and anxious to live my life as newly “out” young gay man, l fled to Los Angeles to complete my master’s degree at the University of Southern California. In reality, USC was a G rated cover story for what became an X-rated flick – my life as a unencumbered gay man in Hollywierd.

In my original draft, Uncle just happens to be one of Nephew’s professors. In a highly charged scene, the two connect in torrid sex right on the table of the faculty room. The nephew soon after moves into a secluded gay resort the uncle owns where they continue their affair.

Then suddenly Uncle dies mysteriously, the resort is ransacked by his employees, and nephew finds his memoirs on a USB drive.

If you’ve already raised your eyebrows, you know such a story almost glorifying incest would never see the light of day with gay publishers who, perhaps a bit overly sensitive and paranoid about the str8 world that thinks we’re weird, view incest along with child molestation and forced rape as absolute story no-no’s. l soon chucked that storyline.

But that didn’t mean l had to also discard the nephew/uncle angle. What l did instead was distance them time-wise and geographically and have the uncle already dead at the beginning of my story.

I chose Staten Island, the forgotten borough of NYC and so atypical of the rest of City with its suburban and even rural neighborhoods, as the place to start my story, and had my nephew character named Jonathan growing but in the same 1920’s vintage home G, my partner, and l owned with our dogs. Jon himself was modeled after a tall, skinny, furry, twenty something guy l had tricked with in Lauderdale. I liked not just his look but also his cocky attitude and used both in developing my character.

Uncle Charlie, the black sheep of the family who had moved to Lauderdale some years back and, while working as a college prof, bank rolled two bars that would become enormously successful in the burgeoning Lauderdale gay scene was, well, me, kinda, except for the black sheep and bar ownerships, that is. My memoirs of my life as a gay man in NYC and later Lauderdale, were integrated into the book with only minor editing.

The glue l used to bring my two characters together was death, or more specifically Uncle Charlie’s will. When “Czar” opens, twenty something Jon, living with his grandfather, Charles’ brother, who ostracized him from the family decades before when he discovered he was gay, learns the uncle he hardly knew has left him his entire estate.

Quitting his nowhere job at a fast food joint, Jon flies down to Lauderdale to take possession of Uncle Charlie’s beachfront condo and the two gay bars he owns, one of which is the town’s leather bar. And it is in the beachfront condo that Jon stumbles upon Charlie’s memoirs, stowed away on his laptop, and becomes fascinated by the life he had led and increasingly suspicious about the story that he had died of a heart attack.

Having played the leather scene most of my gay life, l wanted to use my book to bring home the reality that the scene is on life support as more and more members of my generation, the Baby Boomers, are hanging up their jock straps. Uncle Charlie is determined to hold onto a strict leather dress code for his bar, the Gearshaft, modelled after Lauderdale’s Ramrod, in an era where such a tradition is almost impossible to maintain and still stay in business. The excerpt l ran on September 15 of the Celebration of Life that Charlie’s leather buddies hold in his memory tells the sad tale of the aging of Leather America.

And while some readers criticized the use of drugs in my book, l could not write a story of the contemporary Lauderdale gay scene without incorporating the current meth scourge which, like it or not, has taken hold of our sub-culture.

In an example of art imitating life, l learned much later, long after my book had been published, that the twenty something kid l had used as the model for Jon had, indeed, been a hard core meth addict.

As l’ve said before, “Czar” is more a docudrama than a piece of fiction. Its characters are men l’ve known, its story largely one l’ve lived.

“The Czar of Wilton Drive” is published by Kokoro Press and available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Next: Plotting “Not In It For The Love.”

Inside The Mind of A Writer: “Buy Guys”

Like “The Czar of Wilton Drive,” “Buy Guys,” my novella available on amazon.com,  begins elsewhere (Jersey) but is swallowed up like my characters in Fort Lauderdale.

Blaze and Pete are two young, gay handsome drifters with nothing to lose who leave dreary Jersey for the sun and sex of Florida’s Fort Lauderdale. Their mission is simple: to make a free and easy living as male prostitutes; Buy Guys is the name of a fictional escort site on which they advertise their talents. For a while things seem to go their way until Blaze and Pete’s past sins come back to haunt and eventually threaten to destroy them.

In this excerpt, our two guys have just arrived in Lauderdale after days on Interstate 95…

It took them another two days and the weather got better the further south they went. Then suddenly when they hit Palm Beach County, they actually began to sweat. It was as if they had crossed an imaginary line.

The original plan was to spend a few days in a cheap motel until they could check the papers or Craig’s List for a room or studio. But after exiting 95 at Oakland Park Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale and aiming the Bronco east, they stumbled onto Cary’s Cosmos on Birch Road, just two blocks in from Sebastian Beach which, according to the “Gay Fort Lauderdale” guide on the net, was the town’s man sandbox. “Rent by the Day, Week or Month, Free Wifi” read the yellowed sign outside the faded blue and white stucco two story building with a fenced-in pool street-side. Rent by the week was great, but free wifi was a must for their game. Odd, thought Pete, that a place that looked, well, worn around the edges, should be right in the middle of a street lined with well-kept guesthouses and smart townhouses and huge, beach-front luxury hotels just a few blocks away. But Blaze was his usual smug self, acting like they had reservations and the place was the Hilton and had been just waiting for them to arrive.

The sun was wide, hot and high but the only one by the pool was a slim, small guy with a full head of gray hair and white penciled beard in a purple bikini who eyed the two of them like some coquette at a New Year’s party.

And there, behind the counter in the front office, was Cary himself to check them in. The little ID badge pinned to his baggy tank top didn’t make it hard to figure that out. A good six foot three, he resembled a breezy California surfer thirty years past his prime, with long blondish gray hair parted down the middle, a tanned moon face, and tank and baggy shorts that did a poor job at camouflaging his sagging tits and bloated belly.

Behind him on the wall was a huge fading color poster of some wild haired shirtless pretty boy blonde, complete with the obligatory smooth swimmers build, modeling a pair of Ralph Lauren shorts. The Polo logo stood out like Blaze’s morning woody.

“So how long?” he gruffed, a cigarette hanging from his lips, his eyes glued to a newspaper lying on the counter.

“A week for now,” said Pete, looking at Money Bags Blaze to step up to the plate.

“A hundred and twenty five for the week, payable in advance—cash only.”

Blaze opened his wallet and counted out the twenties.

“Plus a hundred dollar deposit,’ added Cary.

“For what?” said Blaze, obviously pissed.

“Just in case you punch holes in the walls or try to yank out the toilet or walk away with the microwave and frige.”

Blaze pulled out five more bills as Pete grabbed the keys.

“By the way, who’s the dude?” said Pete gesturing to the poster.

“Me,” said Cary, his eyes still on the newspaper.

More pages obviously torn from magazines sporting a more youthful Cary hung in cheap frames on the walls of their room. Gucci, Abercrombie & Fitch, Ralph Lauren. Apparently he had modeled for the best of them.

In another life.

Blaze decided to stay in the room and work on their Buy Guys web ad. “The sooner we get some money comin’ in, the better.”

Pete, on the other hand, couldn’t resist the beckoning of the sun and the pool.

“Go ‘head,” said Blaze opening his bags. “I’ll let you know when I’m done so you can tell me what you think.”

The old guy in the bikini was still out there sunning himself, ass up on the lounge, when Pete emerged, barefoot, wearing just his Levis that hung nicely around his waist so that the very top of his ass crack showed. Hey, you never know, he thought to himself as the old man caught his eye and smiled.

“I’m Fred,” said the guy.

“Pete.”

“So, Pete, on vacation?”

“Actually me and my buddy, we decided it was time to leave the cold North and find jobs down here. Maybe construction, or bartending, who knows?”

“Where up North?” said Fred, coyfully playing with his sunglasses.

“Jersey.”

“Small world. I’m from Smithtown, Long Island. Been here for two weeks but going back tomorrow.”

“And so what do you do in Smithtown, Fred?”

“Oh, I’m a tax accountant. Been vacationing down here at Cary’s place for about ten years now, he’s cheap and right by the beach. I come down when things are quiet business-wise, but I’m not quite ready to take the plunge, you know, move down here permanently. So many Long Islanders work in the City, I get to prepare city income taxes, state income taxes, plus the federal. Lucrative, you know?”

“Sure,” said Pete who didn’t remember the last time he filed taxes. Fred reminded Pete of Jimmy who lived a few blocks from where he grew up and who spoke slow and deliberate as if we wanted to make sure he got every word exactly right.

“Down here with no state or local taxes, all you got are the feds, so I lose out right from the get-go.”

“I see what you mean,” said Pete, rubbing his hairy chest. “So, since you’ve been coming here for a while, what’s with all these pictures?”

“You mean Cary’s ads when he was a hot shot model? Well, I guess we egomaniacs never get enough of ourselves.”

What the fuck was he talking about, thought Pete. All he saw was an old man. Okay, he wasn’t fat and sloppy like most guys his age, but he had a leathery tan and stretch marks peeking out from the edge of his bikini. He figured him sixty, maybe older.

“Cary was one of New York’s hottest male models in the seventies and eighties,” Fred said like he was reciting a Wikipedia biog, “every designer wanted him and he was the sometime boyfriend of half of them and—well, I’m not talking out of school, Cary would tell you himself after a couple of martinis—he made the money and drank and snorted it away just as fast till a new crop of pretty boys took his place in the limelight and all he had left was enough to buy this place. That was just before I started coming down. He was hoping to make a killing when the boom hit, and a few developers actually talked to him about buying up the property and knocking this place down to build some upscale high rise condo-hotel complex. Then came the bust and well, here we are.”

Suddenly the sun went in.

“Time to take my mid-day nap,” said Fred rising up. Then he giggled like a schoolgirl. “Wanna join me?”

It was the entrée Pete had been waiting for. Maybe he and Blaze wouldn’t need that Buy Guys ad up to start making some dough. He stood up from the chair and instinctively rubbed his crotch.

“Sure, if you don’t mind not getting any sleep.”

”You have to admit,” said Fred as he closed the door of room 23 behind them and pulled the window drapes shut. “I get the best of them.”

“Whatya mean?” said Pete, unzipping his Levis and dropping them to the floor. He had no underwear on.

“I mean, when you’re hot like me, you only expect to get the best and well, look, you certainly got the goods,” said Fred, who walked over and began stroking Pete’s chest as he felt his furry butt from behind.

“I know guys like you love bare backing,” he went on, placing Pete’s hand on his crotch, “and I got a big one.”

“I’m a top,” said Pete, pulling away. “I don’t get fucked.”

“Oh, Okay,” said Fred with a condescending smile, “you can suck my dick then. As long as you swallow too.”

“Hold it,” said Pete. “We haven’t talked price yet.”

Fred fell into a corner chair.

“Are you saying you expect me to pay you?”

Pete said nothing and just glared back at him.

“Hey, I never had to pay for it and, sure as hell, I ain’t paying for it now,” said Fred, dropping the glib smile. “I got guys younger than you begging for this Daddy dick. Hell, you should be paying me. Besides, I take it back. You ain’t that hot.”

“Just because you old fucks pop a Viagra doesn’t make you a stud,” said Pete as he pulled up his Levis. “I think you’ve fallen for your own hype.”

He slammed the door behind him so hard he could hear one of Cary’s pictures fall off the wall.

“Strike one,” mumbled Pete as he walked into their room.

Blaze was sitting on the bed with the laptop. He didn’t look happy.

“First, fabulous Cary’s wifi keeps going in and out, then the god damn site says you can’t talk about actually offering sex …”

“Hey Blaze, even you know prostitution is illegal. You got to beat around the bush.”

“Okay, but now I can’t close the deal ’cause they want to be paid by credit card and my Visa card is maxed out.”

“Don’t look at me, my credit’s in the sewer.”

Blaze closed the lid of the laptop and hid it under some clothes in the drawer just to be safe.

“Listen, I remember us passing a CVS on AIA when we were checking out the beach. Let’s walk up there, I’ll buy one of those prepaid jobs and we can see what Sebastian is all about at the same time.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“By the way, how was the pool?”

“Peachy, just peachy.”

Author’s Notes: Blaze and Pete are modeled after the handsome men with not much going for themselves except for their looks that I’ve encountered and even slept with over the years. Fred is a mirror image of a seventy year old egotistical friend of mine who left his wife of forty years to play the gay blade in Lauderdale.

As for me, I researched my book by becoming a male hustler at my very advanced age on rentboy.com for one month. Though I couldn’t pay my bills on the money I made, four guys that month put the stack of twenties on the bureau for an hour with their furry daddy which is how I marketed myself to stand out against the sea of smooth pretty boys. When buddies of mine asked how I could “keep it up,” my response was simple: “The guy wants you bad enough he ‘ll pay for you. That’s the turn-on.”

Next: Plotting My Books

Inside The Mind Of a Writer: “The Czar of Wilton Drive”

“This is one of those reads that just takes you along and dominates you as you read and you do not have to think about anything but getting lost in the story.”

Amos Lassen Reviews

While a good portion of it takes place in New York City, my novel “The Czar of Wilton Drive,” available on Amazon Barnes and Noble, is pure Lauderdale. I know. I lived most of it.

“Czar” is the story of Jonathan Antonucci, a 21 year old, barely out-the-closet gay man from suburban New York who overnight finds himself a multi-millionaire, thanks to a bequest by his late gay great uncle. Uncle Charlie has unexpectedly died of a heart attack, leaving him the sole owner of several of the most successful bars on Wilton Drive in Wilton Manors, Fort Lauderdale’s gay ghetto; hence the title.

Flying down to Lauderdale to claim his bequest, Jon encounters Uncle Charlie’s dubious friends and business associates, and is immediately submerged in Lauderdale’s scene of unbridled sex and heavy drugs. He also discovers his great uncle’s memoirs which reveal truths not only about Jon’s own past but also what may have really happened to his uncle.

In this excerpt from the book, Jon goes to attend a Celebration of Life for his late uncle hosted at the home of his attorney, Edward Applebee; Charlie in his will had requested that everyone dress in leather. Up to this point Jon has had a sweaty session with one of Uncle Charlie’s fuck buddies, Marcos, and has been introduced to the leather scene his uncle so loved by humpy Gil, the manager of the Gearshaft, the leather bar Jon inherited, who outfits him for tonight …

Eddie Applebee had said to be at his home off Victoria Park Road around seven but Jon decided not to leave the beach condo til 7:30. After all, while the Celebration of Life was for Uncle Charlie, Jon knew he was the real guest of honor, and he wanted to make sure everyone knew that too when he walked in. No more was he Jonathan Antonucci, Perkins waiter. He was Jonathan Antonucci, Czar of Wilton Drive.
Every oversize Spanish tiled ranch house on the block looked like it was worth at least a million bucks as Jon pulled up to Applebee’s and parked his BMW on the street. Applebee’s circular driveway was already loaded and there were cars, two Lexuses and a Landrover, on the lawn.

Jon’s first reaction as he walked in was how old everyone was. Hell, he knew most of them were Uncle Charlie’s age, give or take, but Charlie looked so vibrant and sexy and with it in all those dirty pictures of himself on his Samsung. These guys were old, tired, overweight, bald, wrinkled, and those that had leather on were wearing their harnesses like they were brasseries. One fat fuck who resembled an albino Buddha had the balls to walk around in a leather thong, his ass cheeks each the size of a watermelon.

“I’m Freddie, Eddie’s partner,” greeted the short, boney guy with a hillbilly beard and long stringy hair like some hippy that had been buried in 1969, then dug up. He was shirtless with a red armband on his right bicep, and his rib cage pressed through his leathery abs.

“So you’re the Folsom in Applebee and Folsom.”

“Aren’t you the astute young man?” replied Freddie dryly. A moment later, Eddie, who looked like an aging football player who had stopped taking his steroids and was dressed in chaps and a leather vest that stuck out like wings came over and gave Jon a hug.

“Let me take you around. Everybody is dying to meet you.”

As they entered the huge living room that overlooked the patio, the canal, and a boatless dock, the poster side picture of Uncle Charlie sitting on an easel by the fireplace immediately caught Jon’s eye. Charlie was decked out in his leather, wearing the same kind of harness Gil had outfitted Jon with. Only, hell, even though he must have been over sixty when that picture was taken, Charlie looked like most of these guys’ younger brother.

“Guess Gil told you Charlie, always the non-conformist, wanted his wake to be festive,” quipped Eddie. “He hated suits.”

“Yep, I know,” replied Jon, and with that he stripped off his tan polo shirt and slipped it through a belt loop on his jeans. He had heeded Gil’s advice and had decided to wear the bulldog after all.

For one golden moment, all the chit-chat ceased and just about everyone in the room turned to gawk. No lascivious smiles, just expressionless stares.

“Yes,” said Eddie with an admiring gaze, “if you weren’t blood, Charlie might have kept you.”

Jon smiled smugly. He knew he almost had.

In the crowd, there were Charlie’s partners in the Climax, seventy-five year old Bill whose walker was painted black, and his forty something other half Mel who resembled an aging Anthony Perkins who Jon remembered seeing in Psycho III on TV. He later learned Mel was being kept by Bill and was a co-partner in name only to screw IRS. Then there were a few former fuck buddies from Charlie’s New York days, now retired in sunny Florida, plus two beer distributors, Charlie’s accountant, Harry, the absent minded professor type wearing a tight, light gray rubber shirt and pants with a yellow stripe down the side, and a few obvious bar-fly, fair weather friends who were there to be nice and sponge off Eddie’s smorgasbord.

All pretty boring.

Jon could tell how a few of them were itching to paw his hairy chest but, after all, even if this was an upside-down Alice in Wonderland wake, Jon guessed there had to be some respect shown for the dead.

It was then that he caught a glimpse of Gil and Marcos chatting on the outside patio. As Eddie left him to make Bill and Mel drinks, Jon used the chance to see his two hot men.

Together.

“So how’s our favorite boy?” said Marcos with that sexy smile of his, who with his tan cargo pants and orange tank looked overdressed. Gil, on the other hand, had a black mesh T on that showed his hairy pecs off well, and boots and leather shorts. Oh, those hairy humpy legs of his.

“Still a bit bewildered,” said Jon.

“Welcome to Fort Lauderdale,” replied Marcos.

“So you guys come together? You’re not a couple are you?” asked Jon, not wanting to know.

“Nay, Eddie and I are practically neighbors,” said Marcos, laughing. “I could have walked here, but Gil’s clunker’s acting up again, so I offered to give him a ride over.”

With that, he gave Gil a nod, walked up and whispered in Jon’s ear, “Remember, sweat is good for the soul,” and went back inside.

“So what do you think of Charlie’s buddies?” asked Gil, gesturing Jon to sit beside him.

“Strange. I mean what gives with that rubber suit on Harry…”

“Latex,” corrected Gil.

“And that red armband Freddie is wearing…”

“He likes to get fisted. You know what that is?”

“Yea,” replied Jon. He could thank Uncle Charlie’s memours he had been reading off his laptop for that.

“Right on, bro, I mean Boss.”

“Well, there’s still a lot you have to teach me about this scene—this leather scene.”

Gil laughed.

“You have to admit I made a big hit with your bulldog here,” said Jon, pulling on one of its rings.

“I’d say so, and by the way, that’s the exact same harness your uncle was wearing when they took that picture of him at last year’s Leather Ball.”

“You mean he wore this?”

“Yea, so I guess besides being blood you got some of his DNA on you too.”

Gil grabbed his bottle of Coors Light from the patio table and took a slug.

“Listen, why don’t we ditch this gig and go back to my place where I can educate you some more?”

Jon’s cock, stiff from the moment he saw Gil and Marcos on the patio, definitely had a mind of its own.

“With or without my leather on?”

“Keep it on,” said Gil, getting up. “Though you sure as hell don’t need it.”

Why, he didn’t know, but Jon was hoping for some reaction from the first man he had ever laid with in his life who was standing at the bar chitchatting with the Albino Buddha. But Marcos didn’t even glance their way.

So just how did Marcos and Gil know one another? From the Gear Shaft? A threesome with Charlie? Or was he right, were they they’re own twosome, despite the fact they denied it?

Jon bid Applebee a thanks and good-bye, and by the time he and Gil had gotten to the door he could see from the living room’s panoramic bay window Marcos speeding away in his silver Lexus.

“So get comfortable,” said Gil as the two of them strolled into his studio, just as messy as the day before when Gil had him try on some leather outfits. “Gotta hit the head.”

Jon lay down on the air mattress, not knowing quite what to do or what to expect. All he knew is what he wanted.

The bathroom door was wide open and from his angle, Jon was able to see Gil in the vanity mirror. Pulling his mesh T off, he admired himself for a moment, then opened a drawer, pulled out what looked like a needle and stuck it very carefully in a vein of his arm. Jon watched the sudden rush on his face. Then as he turned to come out, Jon readjusted himself on the bed. Everything was so fast, Jon had no time to react to the moment. All that came immediately to his brain was the image Uncle Charlie had painted of his parents lying on that bed with needles sticking out of their arms.

Should he get up and leave?

Should he say anything?

Instead, Jon did nothing, waiting for the next cue from Gil.

“So you wanna smoke some stuff?” asked Gil casually as he reached over for a glass pipe. “You smoke before?”

“Grass, My j-o buddy Ernie and I would smoke a reefer before we started flipping through those profiles on Growl’r.”

“Same shit,” said Gil, holding a lighter under the glass globe of the pipe. “Just gives you a better high.”

Gil took a long puff, then handed the pipe over to Jon.

“Now move the globe back and forth a few times as I hold the lighter under it, take in a long puff, hold it in just a second or two, then let it out.”

Jon breathed in, then exhaled. Within seconds, a feeling of super-sensitivity enveloped him.

“Wow.”

“I told you this stuff was better than grass.” Gil took a puff, placed the pipe down in an ashtray on a plastic patio table that served as a bed stand, then reached over and, as he pressed his lips against Jon’s, he exhaled into his mouth.

Jon fell flat on the bed, staring at the ceiling as he felt Gil’s fingers embrace every inch of him. It was as if an electric charge was pulsating through him wherever Gil touched, first stroking the hairs on his chest down to his abs, then his crotch. Then he lay on top of him and began rubbing their beards against one another in some ritual dance.

Gil was the most beautiful man he had ever seen and now he was his. Totally, completely, forever his.

Author’s Notes: In the book I attempted to illustrate the aging of the leather scene which I was a part of it at the height of its popularity in the seventies, eighties and nineties; Jon’s introduction to meth, also known by its street name, “Tina,” by Gil is indicative of the meth epidemic now going in in the gay community.

Next: An excerpt from my novella, “Buy Guys.”