Page 10 of A Long Con

I looked aside at my painting of the blue lion. Did it tell me Hobie was gay? Was Hobie gay? Was Royal testing me? Why would a motorcycle club have one gay guy? Was he the token gay guy? Trying to set aside all these pre-conceived perceptions, I envisioned Hobie in his black leather vest waddling across the street, his thighs swishing together. His clown-like face displayed at least three chins. His voice was like a flower floating across a field. Lilting, rising and falling, laden with emotion. “Sure. Sometimes gay men have come across as pink, if being gay is their main identity in life.”

“Ha!” Royal smacked his hands together.

What the fuck? Had I failed the test? “He’s not gay?”

Royal pointed at me like an emcee. “He is gay! But here’s the great part, brah! The entire fucking Bent Zealots MC is gay!”

I staggered back a couple of steps. An entire gay motorcycle club? Had I ever heard of such a thing before? And the President lived just a few doors down from me? Why weren’t we at that party? “Wait.” I pointed at Royal with a shaking hand. “You—”

Royal pointed at himself, looking around at an imaginary audience. “Me? No. No. I’m not even a member.” He held his arms out, like he was demonstrating a ballet skirt. “See? I’m not wearing the cut.”

“The . . . cut?”

“The leather vest with the patches. No, I’m just an associate of theirs. We do business together.”

I frowned. To be honest, I was more disappointed that Royal wasn’t gay than the idea he’d do business with them. “You fence stolen goods for them.”

He shrugged, making a “so what” face. “That’s the way of the world, brah. I used to wrestle for the WWE. I had a clean win over The Viper at WrestleMania 33. The title was on the line and I came in as intercontinental champ and bussed him up.” He lifted his chin at my toy wrestlers and ring from Mexico. “You know a bit.”

My jaw dropped. Sure, I had wrestling action figures. Sure, I liked to play with them, have them clash in the air over the ring and drop to the mat. But honestly, I didn’t even really know what WrestleMania was. I just didn’t move in those circles in New York. Some fellow artists would follow the Giants and the Jets and even get excited and jerk a can of beer around when someone gained a lot of yardage. We ice skated at Prospect Park, swam in Astoria Park Pool in summer, whooped it up at the local bar around a TV showing a Mets game, and I had even been known to lift some weights in the living room—while smoking a hybrid Sour Tsunami, of course.

I said, “A bit. So, why’d you stop such a lucrative career and become a small-time dealer?”

Royal didn’t seem fazed by my insults. He had a self-confident—shall I say—aura about him. I was never that self-assured. The only time I breezed through anything without doubts was when painting. I painted like I was ice-skating—everything just flowed from one movement to the next, like a downpour rolling through a glacial valley. Impossible to stop until it died out, or someone told me dinner was ready.

“I had a traumatic brain injury.”

Again, my jaw hung low. “No. That’s too much. Fucking hell, brah!” I backhanded his bare arm.

He finally laughed. It was a sight to see, dimples creasing his hairy cheeks, nostrils of his perfectly pointed nose flaring, like an angel had pressed her fingers there. “Brahs in brain injuries! Yeah, I got beat up crip. Dropped from a fucking fifty-foot wire while being lowered into the ring. Bounced everywhere. They gave me CPR while the announcer told everyone it wasn’t staged. I heard later that the entire audience went radio silent.”

“Holy mother.” My mouth was a permanent O. “Were you dangling like this? Like a fucking spider?” I imitated a televangelist. I was surprised when Royal got behind me.

“No, this is where the cable was supposed to be hooked on.” He wrapped one bare arm around my waist and cinched the other under my arm. I basically could only move my legs now. I found it was pleasant to be cloaked in his strength like that. He may have only been a small-time crook now, but he was powerful as a granite mountain. Being straight, I guess he felt free to tilt his pelvis against my ass, the better to render me infirm.

With my arms above my head, I allowed my fingers to dangle in his curly gingerbread hair. He’d never notice. His scent of the great outdoors enveloped me. He was thisclose to pressing me up against my Cubist paintings of boxes and hallways, paintings that had probably only now dried after fifteen years.

One shove of his hips and my stiffening cock brushed up against the wall. Electric arrows of lust darted to my innards, thrilled my balls, raised the hairs on my thighs. “Then bam, I was suddenly bouncing off the ropes, brah. The moke had never hooked me on properly.” Royal let me go and I had to slap my hands against the paint to brace myself. Yes, the paint was dry.

What kind of cruel game was he playing? Here he was talking about a brain injury, and I only cared about my dick. Wasn’t that my usual M.O.? The bear daddy this afternoon, had I cared about his mother’s boudoir, his high cholesterol, his last trip to a Furry convention? No, I did not. Yet I had to face this ripped man with his heart pounding in a bicep vein, and deny myself his treat because he wasn’t gay? We do wrong because we make the choice to do so.

I hoped I wasn’t panting as I faced him, leaning against the wall for support. “And how did this affect your brain?”

He looked modestly at his fingernails. “It’s weird, brah. I have no fear. My amygdalae—”

“I’ve heard of that.”

“—became calcified. They’re in charge of the human fear response. I started to bodyguard, but I’d grab anyone who looked suspicious and throw them up against the wall. A guy would pull a gun and I’d calmly go disarm him.”

“But that’s good, not bad, right? In that line of work?”

Royal shrugged. “Not when I was so calm I gave him time to shoot my client. One time, outside of Culiacán, we all got stuck in quicksand. I was the only one to get out because I didn’t panic and sink. Boy, did I get into a scrap about that.” He chuckled to himself. “That was probably the last straw that got me shit-canned.”

Who was this gorgeous, drop-dead hunk of masculinity? A scar bisected one of his eyebrows. I wondered if he’d gotten it in the ring, falling from fifty feet above. Why do I care? But I did.

I heard my voice speak before I could stop it. “Well. I’m gay, so suck me.”

Oh, bugger me. Did I just say that aloud?