Inside The Mind of a Writer: My Characters Are Real

The Real Mitch

I only knew Mitch a few weeks out of my petty life but I know I will never forget him. In fact, I think of him more times without thinking than I wish I did.

One Saturday night at 2606, the leather bar in Tampa, I was stalked by a dissipated, bloated guy, probably younger than me. I tried to be polite with some non-committal small talk but each time I delicately got some distance between us, he popped up again to leer. Finally, inevitably, he went in for the kill.

“So buddy, what exactly are you waiting for?” he asked in a guttural, butchy tone.

Without hesitating, I blurted straight out: “Me.”

Well, Mitch, my sturdy little furry New York City Jew boy, was the closest “me” I think I’ll ever meet in my life.

I don’t quite remember who came on to whom on Manhunt that late Tuesday night, but there was no doubt his rough-hewn bearded face and naturally muscular, slightly stocky hairy body donned only in 501’s and a profile that emphasized, “looking for older, masculine hairy guys only – facial hair a must” caught the attention of my dick. That and the fact that, despite measurements that read “9 inches,” his screen name was “beefyhairybottom.”

I mapquested his address to a non-descript house off dingy 13th Street just a few blocks from Lauderdale’s leather hangout, the Ramrod, and drove over. Wishing to make a good first impression, I threw my tank top on my car seat and followed his instructions to walk to the rear to a small dilapidated guest house. I knocked on the splintered wooden door.

“Who is it?” shouted out a deep voice with that distinct New Yorkeese accent I knew so well, having spoken it myself most of my years.

I announced myself.

“It’s open,” he shouted back.

I walked through the foyer, if you could call the three feet that separated the door from the rest of his space a foyer, and parted the plastic shower curtains.

There he stood, naked except for a pair of leather boots, designer boots he would tell me later, a relic from his fat cat Manhattan days, holding a mini- blow torch of a butane lighter beneath the end of a glass pipe. He took a deep drag, blew the smoke out just as quickly, then reached out and carefully handed it to me. He had said nothing about partying either in his profile or in our e-mails but I grabbed onto it anyway. Our eyes – both cat eyes, green but with a flash of blue in the right light – met as I clutched the pipe tightly so not to drop it while he held the lighter beneath the bowl end and gestured for me to gently shift it back and forth.

“Suck it in but don’t hold it – the shit can crystallize in your lungs,” he cautioned, still staring into my soul. “Not a good thing.”

I dropped my shorts and stood naked, our faint six pack abs almost touching.

“Leave your boots on,” he whispered. “I like that.”

Except for the fact he was a bit taller than me at 5 foot eight and younger, I could have been staring at myself in the mirror. Buzzed cut, balding, scruffy beard, broad hairy shoulders, tight muscular arms, hairy chest and abs, thick thighs and calves, again all covered in fur, he was the idealization of manhood in my mind.

My brother.

My clone.

Even though he was Jewish and I was a Lutheran, we were both, I learned later, Slovak/Russian mutts with that hint of Mongolian in the slant of our eyes. We had the kind of bodies my so-called friends would chide me were made to lay down railroad ties until I retorted I made three times the money they did.

About the only obvious difference besides age was Mitch’s huge fat cock (versus my more conventional six and a half) and his super erratic behavior. He was jumping around and rambling on as if someone had shot a tube of Ben Gay up his beautifully furry, manly butt.

“You want another hit?” he asked.

I never searched out for the stuff but if a trick had some to share, well…

“Yea, but I want Mr. Peter to cooperate,” I replied, grabbing my semi-erect cock. “You know junk and hard dicks are alien enemies.”

“Don’t worry. I got Viagra. Want one?”

I had already taken 100 mgs, figuring I had to be up and ready to fuck the shit out of him, but accepted the generosity of this beautiful stranger and popped another. I wanted to make damn well sure I would keep “beefyhairybottom” happy.

His studio apartment was a penitentiary cell pigsty, furnished with thrift shop furniture rejects and littered with half empty Gatorade bottles and Twinky wrappers. He used the Gatorade to prepare some G for the both of us in a liquor glass – G was something new for even this seasoned boy – and after that, we moved to his air mattress, aimless music blaring from his pc perpetually set on his Manhunt inbox. I found it flattering that he had summoned me when, as he boasted later, he had gotten over 200 hits since arriving from New York just a few weeks before.

Lying there, slowly stroking his dark carpet of chest hair as he pulled incessantly on his fat, spongy dong, I felt myself slowing climbing that same staircase Mitch apparently had ascended hours before, to the top of Mount Perpetual Pleasure. There, hard dicks, the gold standard for so much of the less than satisfying sex I had had of late, were incidental.

Throughout all our carousing and stroking and kissing and licking one another’s armpits and sweaty matted bodies, Mitch continued to babble on almost incoherently, not so much because of the junk streaming through his veins but, as he admitted, because he suffered attention affective disorder and didn’t take his meds for fear they would fuck up his high. Yet despite his ungrammatical soundbites, I learned a lot that first night about my clone.

That he was 42, had grown up in Westchester – read comfortable – a graduate of NYU, with a CPA’s license he had never used, how his parents were snowbirds with a place in West Palm, and how he had avoided working at a real job like the plague while somehow living the highlife in a beautiful Chelsea duplex. He proudly pointed to the framed page hanging on his wall from New York magazine circa 1989 crowning him one of New York’s sexiest men (“I know had a lot more hair then, but I still look good, huh?”) and gloated how he had gone from one successful business venture to the next, his last selling designer sunglasses on line netting him an incredible $25,000 a month which, when he wasn’t smoking it away, he lost on the poker tables of Atlantic City. Bottom line: he had come down to South Florida with $300 to his name to be near mommy and daddy and their wallets, and where he could live cheap, as exemplified by his $500 a month apartment, the size of my walk-in closet, that, despite the hole in the wall, he prided himself in finding.

As far as men went, he liked them about his height (“tall guys are goofy looking – most of the porn stars are short like us, anyway”), hairy, with facial hair, and in-shape bods. It was as if he were reciting my own private wet dream. He tapped my hard earned six pack, then his own. “It has less to do with the gym than with genes, believe me,” he concluded smugly.

As predicted, Mr. Peter was rather shy that night, though I did succeed in fucking Mitch for awhile before my hard-on succumbed to the stuff. But it almost didn’t matter. We rolled around in our mutual sweat, mouthing our pretty but pretty useless genitals when we weren’t yanking on them like two adolescent boys exploring their puberty dicks.

Then came my moment of inspiration.

“You ever get fisted?” I asked, eyeing his toy box to the side of the bed with its eclectic collection of dildos and not wanting to disappoint that hairy, manly butt of his.

“Once, back in New York, but the guy was too rough, didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Well,” I boasted, holding up my right hand, “a cast of this hand is in the Fist Fuckers Hall of Fame.”

With that, as he lay there facing me, I gently entered him, and we were both elevated to a new level of Endless Ecstasy. In the past, I had found fisting a guy as exciting as doing my laundry but it was different with Mitch. As he groaned and gyrated on the bed and I slowly went ever deeper, we became one.

Brothers in spirit, brothers in flesh.

In the end, what I thought would be a 47 minute quickie turned out to be an all-nighter. With the heavy shades drawn on his single window, it was hard to tell morning had arrived, whether we liked it or not. My sole focus now was to get off, but with all the shit I had smoked and slugged down, it seemed a miracle to get my dick up enough to finally squirt, stroking the heavy fur on Mitch’s chest and abs as my erotica while he faded into blissful oblivion.

Sweaty and smeared with Elbow Grease, my boots still on, I stood up and slipped on my shorts.

“You are one beautiful man,” I said, scanning him slowly from head to toe, never expecting to see him again. He smiled faintly, turned over and fell almost instantly to sleep as I walked out.

Two nights later as I canvassed the websites to see if anybody loved me, Mitch beckoned me again on Manhunt with a

“Why don’t you come over?” I taught college and had an 8 a.m. class and Mitch mentioned he was starting his temporary Census job that same day but I followed his call like Odysseus and his men were wooed by the Sirens. Was it the drugs or was it Mitch seducing me?

Who knew?

Who cared?

He was out of Elbow Grease and we spent the next hour rambling from all-night drug stores to a 24/7 porn shop on Dixie Highway which only had some small canisters left.

Lighting up in the car, we began another trip to Arousaland and it was that night that Mitch – or was it the G? – confessed he hadn’t enjoyed being with a man as much as he had with me in a very long time.

This time neither of us came.

As we walked out from his place to my car together an eternity later, he gestured to his new little compact Cooper sitting in the front lot that his parents had leased for their 42 year old only child. By 42, I was a vice president with quarter of a million in the bank and two houses.

“I’m a little pissed at them, though,” he whined, “I really wanted a convertible. After all, this is South Florida.”

“You don’t sound very grateful,” I said.

“Hey,” replied Mitch not at all defensive. “They made me the egocentric fuck I am today. It was always Mitchy you’re so handsome, Mitchy, you’re so great, Mitchy, you’re so smart. So why shouldn’t they get their Mitchy, their little boy, a convertible, huh?”

The cynical former New Yorker slash former public relations exec in me knew it would happen sooner or later if I continued these liaisons with a meth-head, beautiful as he was to me. Sure enough, a week later, early on a Saturday afternoon, after inviting me on line to his lair, Mitch followed my, “yea, why not,” with, “I’m out of stuff. Got any $$ so I get some for us?”

Usually, the “I’m not going to fall for this shit” side of me would have responded, “thanks but no thanks.” But, hell, I had gotten high twice on his dime so, I rationalized, I owed him, right? I left the hundred bucks in twenties in my mailbox while he went to meet his dealer in Miami and I took a nap. Our plan was to rendezvous around 9. When I didn’t hear from him by ten I figured I had been taken but decided to call him anyway.

“Sorry, he wasn’t ready with the shit,” Mitch explained, all apologetic. “I’ll be over at your place by 11. Promise.”

Now, call me paranoid, but I wasn’t exactly comfortable about letting a confirmed druggie know where I lived but I had been getting increasingly claustrophobic about his place. Besides, he didn’t want me to use Crisco when I fist fucked him on his air mattress since he claimed it smelled up his humble abode. My house, with central air, eliminated that logistical problem.

Mitch made good on his promise and we spent the night and most of the next day in Druggie Heaven. And the Crisco helped me go in deeper, so that by the end of that night Mitch had become a full-fledged fistee graduate.

While I instructed my lawn man that morning about some new palm tree plantings, Mitch catnapped. But I noticed that when all the stuff we had been taking wore off, my usually very animated and boisterous stud, my butch Chatty Cathy doll with a knot in his cord, became very quiet and subdued, almost shy.

“My generation needs drugs to have sex,” he explained. His observation made me feel old and superior all in the same moment. And when later he was leaving and asked if I wanted to keep what crystal was left – “after all, you paid for it,” – and I told him no, he was surprised.

“You mean you don’t need all this shit?”

“No,” I repeated, very matter of factly.

“You know something,” he said, grinning. “I admire you.”

I didn’t hear from Mitch again for over a week and figured that was that. Maybe he was disappointed that his hypnotic hold on me had not quite succeeded as he had hoped. Translation: transform me into a crackhead fuckbuddy just like him. Then, one o’clock one night, out of the blue, he called, explaining he had taken advantage of a freebie in Key West, courtesy of a couple he had known from his NYC days who had fought most of the weekend but kept him amply supplied in stuff. He wanted to see me, said he missed me, and could I come over now?

His hair was a mess. Apparently he had tried to buzz cut himself but with no second mirror the back of his head still had uneven blotches of hair, making him look like a cross between a slightly deranged, homeless guy and an inmate of a Nazi concentration camp. I pulled out his Oster and evened things out. Even then, just touching his head, my dick sprung to attention.

So how’s the Census job working out?” I asked.

“Oh, I gave that up – too much bullshit for too little dough. I’m on Rentboy.com now,” and he proceeded to pull up his ad.

“Italian Stallion?” I asked as I scanned it. “OK, but why are using Larry? That sounds so Brooklyn Jew. Why not Vito or Tony or Joey or something?”

“The name Larry worked for me back in New York,” he gloated. Then he opened his bureau and, reaching for his wallet, flashed a seemingly endless sea of bills.

“I could make a lot more back in NYC but there’s also a lot more competition. And hell, eight hundred bucks for one night ain’t bad, huh?”

We lit up again.

“You know,” he continued to ponder in one of his rare, less erratic moments, “I bet we could sell ourselves as a tag team and make some serious dough. There’s a lot of lonely guys out there looking for a dynamic duo like us. Hell, we could pass ourselves off as brothers. Shit, now that would be some gimmick.”

All I kept thinking was how I would make the Guinness Book of Records for the oldest guy to have the balls to attempt to sell his bod on Rentboy.

“Yea, but aren’t most of these guys looking to get fucked? I mean, how can you perform if you’re …?”

Mitch shrugged his usual arrogant Manhattan shrug.

“Oh, I’m a total top to my johns but I tell them that, after all, I am 42 and sometimes the Snake ain’t up for biting, and they’re content to get fingered fucked or have me shove a dildo up their ass just as long as I’m the one doin’ the shovin’ and they can feel all this fur of mine against them.”

He stroked himself, then seamlessly moved his hand ever so lightly up my abs to my chest and looked me straight in the eye. “That’s why I know we could be a winning team.”

A few days later a far more frantic Mitch called me.

“Can you do me a favor?” he pleaded. “Can you loan me $50 so I can get to my parents? They’ll give me some dough once I’m up there and I’ll pay you right back.”

“But what happened to all that money you showed me the other night?”

“Ah, those fuckin’ Indians stole it all,” referring to the poker tables at the casino the Seminole Indians ran in Hollywood, “and my last two johns were no-shows.”

Suddenly the Daddy in me crepped out.

“But Mitch, you gotta get your shit together. You’re an intelligent adult. You know that.”

“I know, I know – I will…” he replied, more to pacify me than attempt any moment of self-realization. “You’re beginning to sound like my father who keeps telling me to check out Gamblers Anonymous.”

I stuck twenty dollars in the mailbox, enough to fill the tank of his compact, and woke up to the reality that he was beyond redemption. That was about the only reason why I hadn’t fallen in love with him I kept telling myself, right?

I was just about ready to leave for L.A. Fitness the following afternoon when Mitch, unannounced, showed up in my driveway.

I told you I’d pay you back,” he said, laying the twenty dollar bill on my kitchen counter.

I never did get to the gym that day.

Memorial Day weekend was coming up, but while I looked forward to another all-nighter in High Land with Mitch, he had different plans –another escape to Key West and the battling lovers. But he was emphatic about connecting as soon as he got back and going to Sebastian, Lauderdale’s gay beach, that coming weekend.

I believed him.

That Thursday night, Mitch sent an e-mail – his last to me – on Manhunt. I had just posted some new provocative photos on my profile to show off my hard won gym body.

“Fucken awesome pics, bro.”

The following Tuesday came and went, Wednesday, Thursday. I e-mailed him on Manhunt, called his cell, even called his other cell number he used for Rentboy. No response. I passed his address twice, looking for his little car in the front lot. No car. In my gut I knew something had gone terribly wrong. Maybe he had had a confrontation with his warring friends or a drug dealer or a john. Maybe he had somehow O.D.’ed ….

Finally, that Thursday night driving home, slightly plastered courtesy of Alibi’s three dollar Long Island iced teas, I decided I would stop at his place and this time knock on his door.

A voice yelled out to me as I began to walk back to the guest house. It was the landlord or property manager, a tall, skinny, thirty something, pleasant enough looking guy with a faint goatee.

“Looking for Mitch?” he asked politely.

I nodded.

“You a friend of his?” the man asked.

“Something like that.”

“Well, sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Mitch is dead.”

“What – what happened?” I stammered, though surprised at myself that I was not entirely stunned by the news.

“I don’t know much but from what this friend of his from New York, an ex-lover I think, Todd, told me – his number was on Mitch’s cell so the cops called him – Mitch was driving back from Key West late Monday night and fell asleep at the wheel.”

Mitch had mentioned to me more than once how he had gone without sleeping or eating for days when he was on a perpetual crack/G/jerk-off binge.

Forty-two fucken years old and he was gone.

“His – his parents know?”

“Yea, they asked me to clear out his apartment and box up his belongings but there was a lot of stuff, a leather harness, leather vest, toys, drug paraphernalia, you know, I didn’t think they should see. You’re welcome to take what you like …”

I smiled my bleak thank you, turned around and drove home, happy I was dead ass drunk, happy that I had at least learned what had happened to him, happy that the super hadn’t told me what the accident had done to that beautiful body and beautiful face.

And yes, strangely at peace knowing he hadn’t just abandoned me.

A few nights later, I responded to Mitch’s last e-mail to me on Manhunt with a “thx hot man.”

That Saturday, when I went to Sebastian, I made sure to park in space #42. A month later, I became Rentboy.com’s oldest toyboy. And believe it or not, my first trick, a retired dentist in town from Palm Springs, asked if I had a twin brother to play tag team with me on his butthole.

Imagine that.