Inside the Mind of A Writer: My Characters Are Real
Mitch Reborn
I told you about my brief but powerful relationship with a meth head named Mitch. Years later, I gave Mitch a rebirth as a secondary character – by the same name – in my novella “Buy Guys,” available on Amazon.com. “Buy Guys” is the story of two Jersey drifters, Pete and Blaze, who go down to Fort Lauderdale to lead free and breezy lives as male hustlers; the title “Buy Guys” refers to the fictional website on which they post their escort ad. But Blaze, the wilder of the duo, has a more sinister scheme in mind: to extort a drug smuggling ring operating through the funeral home he worked at while back in Jersey that uses South Florida as its base. In this scene, Blaze is out serving a client while Pete checks out La Bella’s, modeled after an actual restaurant-bar in Lauderdale where wealthy old men pair off with younger guys looking for a “daddy” to support them. It is here where he encounters just such an unlikely pairing that he and Blaze had seen on the beach …
Pete was there for twenty minutes, nursing his screwdriver, and was about to check his phone a second time to make sure he hadn’t missed a message from Blaze when he saw them. Or, more like, they saw him. That dynamic duo from Sebastian, the tall old guy and his younger fuzzy companion. The old man stared at him expressionless but Fuzzy gave Pete a smirky grin and gestured to join them in their booth.
What the fuck thought Pete as he smiled broadly, nodded, and walked over.
“So where’s your partner in crime? We haven’t seen the two of you on the beach in a while,” said Fuzzy in strong New Yorkese. He looked older close-up, probably pushing forty. Balding, he had the rough, tough face of a boxer, with a big ethnic nose and a dark, neatly trimmed beard.
“Blaze’s coming a bit later. He had something he had to do but I thought he’d be here by now.”
“I’m Mitch,” said Fuzzy, shaking Pete’s hand, “and this is Randall.” Mitch’s palm was sweaty.
Randall looked late sixties, maybe seventy, blotchy complexion, thin bloodless lips, dead gray eyes, short steely gray hair slicked down and parted down the middle, and a large mole smack in the middle of his forehead. Unlike Mitch who wore an open purple polo shirt with plenty of dark chest hair peeking out, Randall was dressed all formal like, green sports jacket, white dress shirt and a gold tie.
“You haven’t eaten yet, have you?” asked Randall in a low, polished voice.
“No, again I was waiting for…”
“Well, have dinner with us. When your friend, what’s his name again?”
“Blaze.”
“Yes, when Blaze gets here, he can always catch up.”
Mitch, who kept fidgeting in his seat and tapping his fingers on the table like a drummer, held up his empty water glass, then looked at Randall’s. ”Mind if I drink yours till that damn waiter comes with more? I’m dyin’ here.”
Randall nodded.
“So what part of Jersey you from?” said Mitch all smiles again after guzzling down half the glass. There was sweat on his forehead.
“Bergen County. But how did you guess?”
“Hey I’m grew up in Marine Park, Brooklyn. But our high school wrestling team competed tri-state and I had a lot of buddies from Jersey. You can take the guy out of New York or Jersey but you can’t take the New York or Jersey out of the guy.”
“You and Blaze seem to be newcomers to Sebastian,” said Randall. “The two of you been here in Fort Lauderdale long?”
“Just over a month. We decided to say goodbye to the cold and lead the good life down here.”
“Doing what?” said Randall matter-of-factly. “I mean, did you have jobs lined up before you left?”
“No, not exactly.” said Pete, a bit defensive.
“Quit grilling the guy, Ran,” said Mitch, a tinge annoyed. “You think everyone has a family business like you to just fall into?”
“Family business?” said Pete.
“Yes, I’m a fourth generation mortician. My family owns a chain of over twenty funeral homes across the Northeast and a few down South.”
“Actually, my buddy worked for a Forest Rest Funeral Home back in Fair Lawn.”
“That’s one of ours,” said Randall, reaching for a roll.
“In other words, Pete,” cracked Mitch, “modest Randall here is trying to tell you he’s loaded.”
“You didn’t complain when I renewed the lease on your Cooper convertible, did you?”
“Let me see if I can find that fucken waiter,” grumbled Mitch who bolted up out of the booth.
Randall sat back and took a sip of his martini. “Such an impatient boy.”
“You don’t by chance have a home of your family’s down here that could use two young able bodied men, huh?” laughed Pete.
For a second Pete wondered if Randall, with his connection with Blaze’s old place and knowing what Blaze had told him about the drug smuggling shit really going on, might be more than just a retired body snatcher. But the thought went out of his head as quickly as it had come in.
“Well, we do have a home in West Palm Beach, but I don’t have a clue what’s going on there. I’ve been out of the active side of the business for almost ten years now, leading the good life as you call it.”
Pete smiled politely, glancing down at his phone. It was almost eight. And nothing from Blaze.
“You know, I do have a suggestion how you can make some money very quickly, in fact, tonight that is, if you’re up for it.”
Didn’t Mitch give him enough to earn the Cooper, thought Pete.
“And what do you have in mind?”
“Nothing very elaborate. I’d just like you to come back with us and fuck my partner here while I watch.”
So that was their game, thought Pete.
“Well, if you think I’m the man for the job.”
“Oh, I’m certain, in fact, I know Mitch would enjoy it very much. He’s told me countless times how he found the two of you, but especially you, shall we say, arousable material. Not that I keep Mitch on a short leash. I turned 71 in March and I’m a realist. But I’d rather settle for being a silent observer than have him off on his wild ways unchaperoned.”
“I assume I’ll be paid in more than just a prime ribs dinner,” said Pete.
“One thousand dollars. In cash of course. That’s more than fair for an hour’s work by a prime specimen of manhood like you, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yep,” said Pete, playing it cool. He took another sip of his screwdriver. “And what if Blaze shows or I hear from him?”
“He can always join in and I’ll double my remittance.”
“Fine by me.”
“Good, we can leave now if you like. Unless, of course, you’re hungry…”
“No, but what about Mitch. Maybe he’d like to have his dinner first?” said Pete. Mitch was still nowhere in sight.
“The only thing Mitch wants right now besides a nice butch guy like you fucking him is another hit of his beloved meth which he’s probably mainlining in the restroom or the car as we speak.”
And with that, Randall slugged down the rest of his martini, threw a twenty on the table and gestured for Pete to follow him.
The sweaty palms, the tapping fingers, the insatiable thirst. Pete should have figured it out. After all, he had been there more than a few times himself.
And Randall obviously knew his boy well. When they got to the lot, Mitch was sitting in the Acura, the ac on full blast, with a broad grin on his face, giving Pete his full attention.
Merry Fucken Christmas, Fuzzy, thought Pete to himself.
Pete followed Randall’s Acura to their place, Ran’s place, in one of those high rises right off the beach. The condo, on the twenty-first floor, was warehouse huge with a wrap-round terrace on all sides and a view of twinkling Lauderdale on one side and the infinite dark of the ocean on the other.
“Let me change into something more comfortable while you boys get better acquainted,” said Ran who disappeared into the rear of the apartment as Mitch gestured Pete to follow him to his bedroom which faced the ocean side.
The first thing Mitch reached for after stripping down to nothing was his glass pipe on the bed stand. He crouched down on his mattress.
“Want some?” he asked searching for his butane lighter.
It had been more than a year since Pete had had a hit. There wasn’t a day since then that he hadn’t wanted it and he was actually happy there was no one around he could get it from to start him down that endless road to nowhere again. But now…
“Not yet,” said Pete. ”In a little while, it’s just I want to make sure my cock is hard and happy for you.”
“How thoughtful of you,” laughed Mitch. “Now get your fucken clothes off. I wanna get high right now on all that fur.”
With the two of them naked, Pete could see how they could be taken for brothers. About the same height, both stocky and covered with dark, luxurious hair, only ten years and Mitch’s receding hairline separated them.
“I always said if I found my clone I’d tie him up and never leave the bedroom,” said Mitch having sex with Pete’s burly body with his brown eyes. “But I know damn well Ran has no rope in the place. ‘Fraid he might hang himself.”
“Where is he anyway?” asked Pete. “He’s the one who said he wanted to watch.”
“Oh, he’s probably baking in his sauna right now. Soothes his old man arthritis.”
“Sauna? He’s got his own sauna?”
“Oh, yea, in the guest room. All the comforts of home. And more. In the morning, he’ll spend fifteen or twenty minutes in his little isolation booth while I’m still snoozing to de-crick all those aging bones. Otherwise, he’d practically be in a wheel chair.”
Mitch flicked on the lighter.
“But fuck him. We don’t need an audience to have fun, do we?” He dropped the magic crystal in the pipe and held the lighter beneath the globe till it had turned to molten magic, then took a deep drag and exhaled.
“Ah,” he moaned, “after a good hit, everything else in life is a flopped TV pilot.”
“Is this you?” said Pete pointing to a cover of New York magazine. It was dated 1994, and on it was a younger Mitch with a healthy manicured mop. Across read the banner, “Meet one of New York’s sexiest guys.”
“Yea, you know, they’d run that spread every year about the sexiest men in the City and I was still at NYU and one of their scouts spotted me, so…” He rubbed his hand playfully over his balding head. “Even without all this, I still look good, don’t I?” he quipped.
“Can’t you tell?” said Pete looking down at his own stiff seven inches. He could see Mitch’s tool was one of those fat beer can cocks but with the Tina streaming through his veins, it just lay there between his legs like a newborn kitten.
Pete crawled up on the bed so the two of them were crouched on their knees almost nose to nose.
“Hey, here’s a bonus even before I test how good that tool of yours is,” said Mitch and he reached into a drawer in the bed stand, pulled out a pair of aviator sunglasses and stuck them on Pete.
Pete glanced over to the bureau mirror.
“Cool.”
“I used to sell these back in Chelsea on line for a hundred and fifty bucks apiece.”
Pete took them off and placed them gently back on the bed stand like they were a piece of fragile china.
“A hundred and fifty bucks? People actually paid you that?”
“Sure,” said Mitch, taking another drag on the pipe. This time, Pete took his turn.
“Just one puff,” he said, “like I need to get any hornier.”
“We do wanna put on a good show for the old man, don’t we?”
“So how did you meet him?”
“Well, like I was saying, I was selling those sunglasses on line making twenty five G’s a month…”
“Fuck!”
“Yep, living the high life of an upscale faggot in Chelsea when it was still a solid gay ghetto. And snorting or smoking most of it away. I mean my good Jewish parents—you Jewish?”
“No, German and Irish,” said Pete.
“Well, you look like you could be, Jewish I mean,” rattled on Mitch. “As I was saying, my good Jewish parents sent me to NYU, where I got my CPA, but after practicing a couple of years I was bored out of my gore, and by that time I was on the Meth Express, looking for an easy way to make money. Online retail was getting big, so first I sold slinky lingerie and underwear, then knock-off watches, and finally hit pay dirt with the shades.”
“Okay, and… ”
“And, just before everything crashed with the bust, I was on a RSVP cruise solo out of Miami where I met Ran who was retired and already down here looking for a companion. I was just about broke and ready to move back with my folks in fucken Marine Park, but where the hell is a Manhattan meth head gonna get his candy in shit’s heaven? And all Ran really wanted was a trophy boy. He tells me he had been something of a stud till just a few years ago but, after his prostate surgery, sex for him became a spectator sport. I wasn’t joking about him not having any rope in the place. If he didn’t have me and my playmates to watch I think he would have done himself in.”
Mitch lowered himself on his stomach so his firm, hairy butt was in Pete’s sighting and Pete’s crotch in his face as he ever so lovingly began to kiss his stiff cock.
And you, handsome?”
“Me, just a drifter with shit to show for it. It was Blaze who came up with the idea of coming down here and us living off horny, rich retired old men.”
“Which is why you were at Bella’s tonight, prospecting, huh, buddy?”
“Something like that,” said Pete.
“You guys lovers?”
Pete thought a second on how to answer, but said nothing.
Suddenly, Mitch started tonguing the back of Pete’s shaft. “Curtain going up. Ran’s coming.”
A moment later, Ran emerged in an open silk bath robe and a martini in his hand. His thin, pale body fit his age and his cock, a thick one that hung halfway down his thigh, was as soft as butter. He said nothing and planted himself in a corner chair just across from the bed.
It was the best seat in the house.
Pete petted the hairy cheeks of Mitch’s butt, as Mitch sucked his cock, making sure as much of it was visible for Ran’s private viewing. Ran sat expressionless, occasionally sipping his drink, saying nothing, and not even touching himself. But his dead gray eyes never wandered a millimeter from the main event.
Mitch got up, then lay back, propped a pillow under his back and another under his head, his furry muscular legs outspread, and his furry hole a few inches off the bed, aimed in Pete’s direction.
Pete glanced around for some lube. Just then, Ran reached under his chair into a box, pulled out a small plastic bottle of K-Y and threw it on the bed just inches from Pete. Pete nodded, lathered up his cock, still happy and hard, and shoved it deep into Mitch’s butthole.
“Shit,” he murmured, moving closer till his ass cheeks hit Pete’s pubes. “Now that’s what I call a good fuck.”
Mitch reached up, pulling on Pete’s nips as Pete reached over and pulled on Mitch’s, all the while thrusting his cock back and forth in rhythm with the loud click of the Grandfather clock in the living room.
Ran remained motionless.
Mitch flipped over and Pete continued to fuck him from behind, stroking the rich fur on his cheeks as he shoved himself deep and high inside his hairy buddy, Again and again and again.
Without breaking Pete’s beat, Mitch reached over for his pipe and lighter, took another heavy drag, then, exhaling, delicately handed it up to Pete who sucked in the smoke Mitch had just let out, and took two more drags of his own.
By now, he had no doubt that the drug had taken over his body. And his mind. Here he was, fucking his twin brother who loved every inch of his big hard cock. Pete knelt down, his dick still deep inside Mitch, and began to savagely kiss him.
And when the meth had eventually done its dirty deed, and Pete could see his dick going limp, though it felt like he could fuck half the guys on Sebastian Beach at high noon, Ran again, playing stage manager, pulled out a thick black, veiny dildo from the magic box beneath his chair. Pete used it on Mitch in between shoving his own dick in Mitch’s hole.
Exhausted and showered in his own sweat and Mitch’s, Pete fell to the bed as Mitch turned over on his side.
“Your money’s on the table in the foyer,” Ron said quietly as he got up and left the room.
It was after two. Mitch had drifted into sleep but Pete, his sensitive dick limp, wanted to cum but he knew, having spent many a meth-saturated night back South of Market, that that would be mission impossible.
Just then, it hit him. His phone, which had been sitting in the back pocket of his jeans on the floor beside the bed, hadn’t made a peep the whole night.
Where the fuck was Blaze?
Next – My Characters Are Real: Shaw