I stumbled out into the dim,
predawn grey with a head full of coke and a stomach full of semen. My jaw still
ached from the punch I received in the theater. My side throbbed with a dull pain. The silver-blue
of a rising sun was on the horizon not yet clearing the silent dark of the
skyscrapers which caste long prison shadows across the few catatonic forms of
proto humans shuffling down the black spotted sidewalk. I quickly made a bee
line to 3rd and Spring to catch the MTA back to the shelter.
Paranoid my absence would be noticed.
No. Let’s go back seven
hours. I was residing at the Salvation Army in Bell, California. They held
special rooms for students and the employed, four to a room, set aside from the
three hundred army cots of snoring, festering hobos in the main dormitory and
since I was attending a cable installation class simply to stall for time and
relative comfort as comfortable as a bed bug infested warehouse would allow, I
was allotted a rickety, metal bed in one room. The staff were ignorant. Abusive
and derogatory, but ignorant. After the ten o’clock bed check and the main
lights were switched off, I slipped out the open bay doors and into the night
to feed my insidious urge. The aching in my loins; the burning lust of the sexually
deviant. Recently, I had found in my wanderings of downtown Los Angeles a 24
hour adult theater. Not one with booths, mind you, but a full on, decaying
theater from the Golden Age of cinema. I jumped a bus line, transferred to the
light rail, and made a connection to skid row Los Angeles.
My adrenaline was
pumping, not from the anticipation of sexual escapades I anxiously looked
forward to, but the fact if my absence was noticed, I would be tossed out into
the street. Fuck it, I thought. You only live once. Yolo before yolo was an
axiom.
At five to midnight, I
quickly walked down Spring Street passed watchful stares of pushers and the
addicted, vendors of vices with faces changing in neon flashes of liquor
stores, pawn shops, dive bars. Blacks howled into the night, helicopters swooped
and patrolled, sirens wailed, fires burned. I approached the seemingly vacant
box office of the theater. The marquee was lifeless and gritty from decades of
abandonment. The only sign advertising the business was a crudely painted sign
adjacent the entrance. I rapped on the cracked glass window of the box office.
From below, a huge hand slapped onto the wooden shelf on the other side of the
glass. With straining effort, and obese man of fifty or so, with greying beard
and long locks of greasy grey hair pulled himself up into my view. Wheezing
from years of a pack a day, he snatched up my five dollars and buzzed me in.
The lobby, its faded
red carpet spotted black with grime, vomit, and nameless substance stank of
mildew and bleach. There was a concessions counter, unattended and bare of
stock. Neglected for decades. The faded, red neon strip behind fluttered and
buzzed. Apart from the muted moaning of the movie issuing from the theater
proper, it was vacant and somber as a mausoleum. I parted the thick, dark
purple velvet curtains and entered the cinema.
It being already night,
I needn’t wait for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. The theater was huge. It
could easily accommodate five hundred patrons. I slid into a chair to take in
my surroundings. The chair was ratty, crimson upholstery frayed. The auditorium
stank of cleaning chemicals, vomit, and dried semen. There were ten shadowy
figures spread throughout, staring blankly at the screen, sleeping, smoking
dope, or languidly jacking off. On the creased and sullied screen, some blond
coked out bitch screamed and moaned as a middle aged gym bunny mechanically
rutted without an iota of passion, his face blank and unreadable, both
glistened in a fine film of sweat. The bleating soundtrack blasted from static
spewing speakers hidden up in the black curtained rafters. On each far wall, worn
gilded frescoes offered winged cherubs who, in the darkness, grimaced down onto
the current audience in judgement and pained dismay.
I sat there for a half
an hour, waiting. Listening to the buzzer of the entrance go off several times,
realizing full well that meant even more were entering the cinema. The first
was a lanky man in his early thirties wearing spandex bike shorts, a thin
jacket, and baseball cap. He sat in the row in front of me down on the opposite
end. In the meager yellow glow of the dimmed lights in the theater, I had an
unobstructed view as he slid his shorts off, tossing them into the chair next
to him, and began to slowly masturbate a long and thick, uncircumcised cock.
With eyes focused on the screen, with his free hand, he fished out of his
jacket pocket a glass pipe and, holding it between two fingers like a
cigarette, casually lit up and began smoking crack. His other boney hand slowly
stroking his impressive erection and blowing great plumes up into the dark,
never averting his gaze from the screen.
A few minutes later, a fit,
college type character quickly marched down the sloping aisle towards the front
row. He seemed so out of place, as if he’d be more comfortable in some frat
house drinking beer with his football buddies on the UCLA campus. Well-groomed
and dressed, he swaggered past me followed by a short, rotund and dumpy man
with a balding head and thick glasses. The college guy plopped into a seat as
immediately the dumpy man kneeled down between the youth’s legs. I made out a
silhouette of a pudgy hand pass something to the college guy. As the pudgy man
unzipped the front of the youths khaki pants and slurped and bobbed on his stiffening
prize, the youth lit up a crack pipe and began smoking. The wisps of smoke
swirling between me and the twelve foot erection sliding in and out of a
glistening vagina the length of a station wagon. As I sat mired in voyeuristic
fascination, ever so often the pudgy man would place more dope in the boy’s
palm and it eagerly smoked up.
Feeling the cold burn
in my loins, it was time to satiate my own sordid addiction. Behind me, at the
entrance, there was a darkened, modest area without seats. It was there, I
fully was aware common to all porno theaters of the world, were ill acts
against cultural norms were carried out in anonymous fervor. As I approached, I
already saw a tall, brawny man of white hair leaning against the wall as a
black youth was down on his knees sucking on the white man’s stunted
erection. An even older codger, stooped
and ashen with time, stood next to them furiously beating his meat as he
watched. Two others lurked in the corner, obscured in shadows, the cherry of a
glass pipe ignited on and off like a siren of a brothel. At arm’s length, I
posted against the wall on the opposite side of the two getting it on.
Immediately, a hand squeezed my flaccid cock. I glanced over to see a smiling
and perspiring fat man. I pushed his hand away. No one at the moment deserving
of my attention. Then, the main door buzzed and a twenty-something Mexican man
swaggered through the curtains. Stocky with a shaved head and black goatee, he
wore the striped shirt and baggy khakis uniform of urban Latino youths. Now,
that was more like it.
I scoped out where he
sat. The back row. Sidled two seats over from him. My ass wasn’t in the chair
two seconds before he whipped out his hard and nasty. I slid next to him,
grasping his full erection in my sweating palm. I leaned over, pulled the
foreskin back, and began sucking and swirling my mouth up and down the shaft.
His hand caressed my back as he squirmed and breathed heavily through flaring
nostrils. Eventually, the head of his penis puffed-up and I felt the acrid
taste of his semen spurting in my mouth. I leaned over and spat the matter with
a loud plop onto the bare concrete floor. He stood and shoved his still erect
penis back into his pants. He towered over me, unmoving.
“I need some money,
homes.” He stated.
“Money?” I repeated,
sitting back whipping saliva off my lips.
“Yeah, man, gimme some
money.”
“I don’t have any money
on me…”
He roughly grabbed me
by the shirt and pulled me up into a standing position. Then began aggressively
digging through the front pockets of my jeans. My hand was gripping my back
pocket that held my wallet.
Finding nothing, his
face scowled. “You need to come up with some fucking money, man. You think what
you just did was free?”
“Well…yeah.” I said.
His face leaned into
mine. The stench of alcohol on his breath. “I’m keeping my eye on you. You find
some fucking cash or I’m kicking your ass. You try to leave, I’ll follow you
out and kick your fucking ass.” With that, he pushed me aside and strode into
the lobby towards the mensroom.
“Damn. You gunna let
him treat you like that?”
I glanced over to the
opposite side and sitting on a folded metal chair at the second entrance of the
theater was a tall black man in his early thirties. He sat hunched over, elbows
on knees, fingers touching in steeple.
He stated, “How can you
do that? Just walk up to someone and start sucking their dick?”
I nonchalantly
approached him. Not bad looking. “Well, I’m not giving that fucker anything.”
And then asked half incredulously, “Is this your first time in one of these
places?”
His name was Thomas and
a couple of hours prior he’d been released from County Jail which was a couple
of blocks away from the theater. With nowhere to go, and this place being
opened all night, seemed a logical place to lay low until morning before moving
on. Seemed legit to me. He offered me a seat and I removed another metal chair
from the lobby.
He glanced at the
screen, then down toward the college guy still smoking, still getting sucked.
“They don’t mind folks doing dope here, huh?”
“Obviously not.” I
replied.
“Or doing that gay
shit.”
I smiled, “You don’t
like getting your dicked sucked?”
“Not from a dude.” He
said.
“Fair enough.”
“Hey,” He began. “You
do coke?”
I grinned. Bad ideas
are seldom boring. “Yeah.” I said.
He reached into his
shirt and pulled out a small, plastic ziploc of cocaine. “Cool. Do some shit
with me. Been locked up so long, I’m bored of being alone.”
For the next hour or
so, Thomas and I snorted lines off our wrists with the aid of a rolled up
dollar bill and chatted of things. The coke was good. Activating all pleasure senses,
my mind was incandescently alert. Every sound, every detail in the theater was
amplified and came across crystal clear as glycerin. We talked and laughed,
swapping tales of our times spent in the Los Angeles County lockup, the pros,
the cons (mostly cons). Relating the brutality of the guards, the comradery of
the inmates, on how it seemed (to me) homosexuality ran rampant – openly
performed in cells when the lights went out for the night. (Not for me. I kept
to myself, though more than one penis was wagged in my direction. But, that is
another story…)
“That’s what my right
hand was for.” He wisecracked, holding an open palm up to me.
His fingers were long
and sinewy. Palm massive. The image of his allegedly huge dick burned in my
mind. But, I kept it cool. Shaking and the lust mounting, I excused myself to
take a piss.
Head full of coke, I
entered the mensroom and stood in front of the backed up urinal and relieved
myself. The Mexican was nowhere to be seen. I guessed he must had left. More
bark than bite, I supposed. Turning to leave, I noticed a short white guy about
twenty with a Flock of Seagulls haircut standing at one of the stalls waving a
full erection at me. He was doped to the gills, obviously, blue eyes large and
pupils dilated. He wore a white tank top and cargo shorts. Wordlessly, I
approached, smiled while stroking his erection. In ritual silence, I dropped to
my knees and began to go to work.
As I was getting into
it, a hand touched my shoulder from behind. I was expecting to see the angry
Mexican standing there, but instead it was a skinny black youth waving his
overtly long and floppy member at me. In a room reeking of shit and piss,
kneeling on a filthy tiled floor covered in grime, wadded toilet paper and
smashed cigarette butts, I took turns sucking them both as they stood and
kissed each other, probing one another’s mouths with saliva lubricated tongues.
The young black guy was first to climax. I swallowed all of it. The white guy
then roughly grabbed me by the side of the head and with furious, drug fueled
passion, face fucked me. He shoved my face into his blond pubes as his
pulsating erection deposited gobs of semen into the back of my throat. With
watering eyes and gagging gasps, I gulped it all down.
Composing myself, I
returned to sit with Thomas.
“Where you been?” He
asked. He noticed my flushed face, the wet spots of saliva soiling the front of
my shirt. “Oh. Never mind.”
I took a seat next to
Thomas and the sweet baggie (now nearly depleted) offered once again. We got
laughing jags as I spun into a routine about Hitler who was still alive and
working in a donut shop in Florida. Won’t get into it now, but believe me when
I say it’s a hilarious riot!
“What’s this fucking
shit, homie?” Snapped a voice out from the fetid shadows. It was the Mexican
thug. “You got money for blow from this nigger, but not me?”
“Dude, you need to
chill.” Thomas warned.
The thug quickly strode
up to me, yanked me from the chair and popped me across the chops so hard, I slammed
violently back against the wall. Thomas sprang up like a jack-in-the-box
(Taller than I thought!) and planted a right hook dead into the thugs left eye which
ensued a slug fest. As Thomas and the thug scuffled, I leapt up and grabbed one
of the folded chairs and slammed it across the thug’s upper back and head. He
fell over in turn allowing Thomas and I to violently stomp him.
As he writhed dodging
our kicks, we heard a raspy, “What the fucks going on in there? Stop that shit
or I call the cops!” Yelled the box office attendant.
In coke fueled rage, I
screamed crimson faced, “Get the fuck out of here!”
The Mexican, face bloody
and covered in scratches and filth, hobbled defeated and beaten out the
entrance issuing a steady stream of obscenities in his wake.
The obese attendant
snapped open the various locks to the door of the box office and wobbled with
labored breathing over to us. He smelled like a stale ashtray and his breath stank
even worse. “What the fuck was that all about?”
“That motherfucker
tried to rob me!” I stated in a coke frenzy.
He let out a deep,
wheezing sigh and turned back to the safety and seclusion of the box office, “I
say it alla time, you boys gotta be careful in here. All type a assholes will
try to take anything.”
Thomas sat back in his
chair and asked for a cigarette. I passed him one, he lit up. Noticing the
time, I thanked Thomas for the dope, the help, and mumbled something or another
I had to go in lieu of curfew. Saying goodbye, I made a dash to the mensroom to
clean up. Three men stood at the urinals beating off as a young Asian guy was
getting fucked in the stall by a hefty, middle-aged black man with bulging eyes
as yellow as urine. I cleaned up the best I could contesting the urge to suck
one last cock, feel one last piece of borrowed flesh.
I made my way weary and
in pain back to the shelter and, sneaking quickly in, fell into my cot an hour
before the lights snapped on to the symphony of hacking and coughing from three
hundred hobos. The following weekend, I packed my gear and moved to Tijuana…
