[Joey]

I don't have to imagine fucking women. You name it, I've probably done it. The women I meet now would do anything I ask, any way I want it, and still thank me as I kick them out of the hotel room at two a.m. with a smile and no promises. You don't know what sex is till you've got a million bucks in the bank and girls lined up ten deep for just the chance at seven minutes in heaven with you, even when heaven means the VIP bathroom at some casino nightclub and you don't know her name cause you never asked. I've got enough real life experience like that to keep me warm till I'm ninety.

Except it doesn't so much, any more, is the thing. Keep me warm. Keep me hard.

Not that I have a problem getting it up. There are only two things I do really well, sweetheart, and being a trained monkey's the other one. And I guess, sure, yeah, maybe that's the problem. Maybe I've spent so long performing, so many hours with the same four guys, it's just gotten all squished, the performing and the fucking. And usually one follows the other, and certainly doing a lot of performing made it a helluva lot more likely I'd get to be fucking on a more-than-regular basis.

But then we're out there, mid-song, mid-thrust, and JC's got his eyes closed like he's coming, and Chris is screaming all growly to rev folks up, and Justin's licking his lips and smiling for the camera, and Lance is just gleaming the way he does when all the rest of us sweat like pigs. I look at them all like that and I see how it all goes together.

On the nights when we'd pile right on the buses and tumble on to the next city, it was just us, just the buildup of fifteen songs and an encore and then, boom, nothing, no girls anywhere. That's how it happened with Lance the first time, and then again, and now it's like back-to-back shows is a gold-plated invitation to let Lance do whatever he wants to me one more time. I mean, we have our own bus. What the hell'd you think was gonna happen?

If we all had just the one bus still, I can see how it might go down, whoever's ready, whoever's willing, one big game of musical bunks. Christ, it was almost like that before, all the pillow fights and movie marathons where we dozed off in a heap, except everything was still too new to boil over into actual sex. So, sure. I can imagine fucking them. I have imagined it, I admit it. I don't have a problem admitting that.

But that doesn't mean fucking like that's how I'd want it to be for real. Part of being able to have anything you want is trying everything once, so maybe it's some late-night wild orgy cause it feels good and we trust each other. It wouldn't be the end of the world for us to do that now, I don't think. It wouldn't ruin things, but it's not who I want to be for them, either. I can get that from anyone, you know. What I want from the guys, what I want to be for them -- those are the kind of fantasies I haven't had about a girl since all this started.

Like, I think maybe if there was good music in the air and we were someplace with a killer view I could get JC to eat three or four meals in a row. He orders pasta to make me happy and some Asian fusion thing that looks like something Johnny had the landscaper do, and a, like, a steak or something, something bloody like that even if it makes him wince.

And, hell, I feed it to him, maybe, arm on the back of his chair or one hand on his thigh, and I make goofy noises as I drive the fork to his mouth and he giggles. He giggles a lot, and makes a token protest or two, just, "Joey, man, but I'm full," and I kiss him and his lips are slick with butter. He tastes like a warm kitchen on a winter night and I spend more time licking his face than I do putting my hands in his pants. I hold the back of his neck with fingers tangled in his hair and blow kisses across his pretty eyelashes and he shivers and giggles some more. We go home and I fall asleep with my arms curved around his waist. I wake up and he's still there.

I think Chris could be a wild fucking lay, mean and rough and hard in all the right places. But I want him to be calm. I want him to stop worrying for ten seconds that it'll all get taken away. I take him shopping, maybe, me and him and a grocery cart with a broken wheel chasing each other down the aisles at Costco. Cause he's had his big house for how long now with all the cupboards half-full, like he's gotta clip coupons or something to make sure he can make rent and still get everybody fed.

I make him buy fresh orange juice and not the frozen cans of concentrate, cause we can afford that now, and there's a reason you got that deep-freeze in the basement, man, so we might as well get some decent fucking steaks this time so I don't gotta grill hot dogs the next time I come over to watch TV. He makes a big deal out of the register total, not all embarrassed like how Lance is, spending made money on something as trivial as food, more like he's spinning numbers in his head to calculate how many meals made of fake cheese and sugar water that money could feed little kids. Except it's Chris so it all comes out like a joke, like, "Good thing I got all those tight-ass Army recruits back at the house to feed cause that type turns on his owner if he's not kept satisfied."

When we've finally got the bags all over the floor and the dogs shut out in the yard so they don't make off with the meat, Chris actually smiles a little, standing in front of the overflowing fridge, riffing on how if we want now we could make leaning towers of Dagwood sandwiches with any of four different kinds of mustard.

I lean down and kiss his shoulder from behind, right where it peeks out of the Iverson jersey he's been wearing three days straight, and he smells like sweat and the freon chill of frozen peas. Down on the tile floor we fuck with stray plastic bags dancing around us like little ghosts, ice cream melting off the edge of the butcher block island in slow liquid drips and I paint endless grocery lists on his chest and lap them up like I'm making some kind of promise.

Maybe we all made some kind of promise to keep Justin safe and happy, but I never have to think about keeping him fed. He does plenty of eating on his own. Took us two weeks to realize that just cause he said he could eat didn't mean he needed to, and even then Chris and me wound up giving him half our daily allowances so he'd quit bitching about how his stomach was cramping from starvation, man, come on already.

A guy looks like Timberlake, you'd think he'd be better at the whole pick-up artist routine. And God knows he's pretty fucking sexy, and he knows it, and he works that as much as he needs to, which at this point isn't much. But as bored as I might be with all girls all the time, Justin's gone from sweetly attentive to scared shitless. One too many random gropes at meet and greets and he's stopped wanting to know their names or really even get too close.

I think I tell him boys are easier, then. Maybe we're watching some action movie, feet up on the coffee table, and he's whining that it's not the same and it's not like teen magazines have ten tips for how superstars are supposed to get cute boys to blow them and not talk.

I rub my hands together like a wicked cartoon character. "It's like this," I say, and he laughs but turns to face me, poised to take notes on an imaginary notepad. He wants this, wants to understand, wants to not be alone when the whole world loves him, and I want like hell to be the one who shows him. "It's all about eye contact," I say. "Great thing about fucking guys is there's a lot less fucking talking. Just don't look away."

Justin rolls his eyes and I grab his shoulder.

"Seriously," I say. "Top of the top ten ways to get a guy to kiss you, look at any one of those stupid-ass magazines. Just keep looking at him."

He stares at me then, eyes bobbing when he blinks, trying so hard to act like he knows what he's doing, cause he's still some kind of kid but he knows a set-up when he sees one. He finally flails out at my chest and sputters, "Then do it already, dammit!"

I laugh and rub a thumb across his cheek. "Nah, the thing is, that's if you're a girl and a guy. What you wanna do is wait for them to try to kiss you. Just try."

I look without flinching, without blinking, and after a long minute like he thinks that's the worst cock-tease I've ever had, he leans in like he's doing me a favor, liquid smooth, all grace even when he's been reeled in like a perfect catch. I dig my fingers into his shoulder and when he's close enough that I can smell the beer on his breath, I push down. Gently at first, and when he resists a little, trying to navigate what's going on, I push harder, and he goes. He gets it now, hands on my belt, on my zipper, on my dick, perfect wet little mouth swallowing me again and again and it's some kind of beginner's luck, it's some kind of fucking gift from Jesus himself that he gets things so right on the first try, that I'm undone and broken before I've ever even kissed him.

I kiss Lance, all the time. He makes it easy. It was easy to blame post-performance high the first few times and now we're kinda past needing excuses other than the right time and the right place, and sometimes not even that. I make it too easy for Lance, I think, given how he's all work-ethic guy, pull himself up by his bootstraps and shit. He generally thinks things aren't worth having if they weren't hard to get.

I wasn't hard to get at all. JC, I guess JC's damn near impossible, and so it's the easy thing for me and Lance to do, to fuck like it's all a convenience made even simpler by the fact that we actually fucking cared about each other to begin with. I fold like a cheap pair of jacks and he knows he'll never have to work for me, and it's probably too late to change all that.

But that's what I'd want, from Lance. Not to start over. But to just be done with all the fucking power plays, to spend a night together cause we want, not cause we need, certainly not cause we fucking have to cause where else are we gonna go out on some highway in the middle of nowhere.

Maybe we go to some Hollywood party, not one of his because he's too nervous playing host to really relax at those. Somebody else's, somebody fun, and we drink and I watch him across the room as he shakes hands and claps backs and says he'll call people cause he's a fucking genius when it comes to that kind of thing. He knows how to give just enough to make them want it, and he always leaves them ready to pay for more. And he looks over from the bar and I wave an empty glass and smile and he comes back with another round and whispers in my ear how he wishes we were alone. So we leave, cause why the fuck not, tomorrow's another party somewhere, and we're not a half mile down whatever curvy road goes back to the hotel before he wants me to pull over.

Out on some bluff, the Santa Anas blew through that day so the air is clear and the downtown lights shimmer like fireflies, he says, like when he was a kid at home. We make out in the front seat and I tell him I never had to fuck in a car in high school cause I was a latch-key kid like everybody else and just did it in my parents' bed before they got off work. He says if he'd known me in high school everything would've been different. And maybe I don't know what he means, maybe I'm not sure, but I hold his face in my hands and kiss him anyway, and when I lay him down in the back seat it's like he thinks I'm Marlon fucking Brando, the way he stares at me and shudders when I unbutton his shirt.

But even if it were like that. Even if he does look at me like that sometimes, never enough for me but more than I probably deserve, I know it's just part of the performance. It's like I'm another audience to win over, and I know it and he knows it and he knows I know it and he can never really love me because I'm still playing along.

I'll play along. These are my guys, day in and day out, wishing and wanting and having all of me even when I'm spent and sore with no defenses left. Because when the performances are done, when that's not enough to get women in bed, I'll still have these guys. They'll still have me, that's for sure.