White

Pittsburgh turned out to be rather a lonely town for Jeremy. He sighed, looking out the window of his Shadyside apartment onto Ellsworth Avenue. Dreary as it always was, this early November day – and would remain so, until sometime in the middle of April. The weather would tease them in early April with a few crisp, cool days where the sun shone on brown-green grass, tempting them with hints of spring. But then it’d cloud over and be dreary until Mother’s Day.

Jeremy hadn’t thought about the pool of available men. When he lived in Manhattan, someone was always available if he woke up one morning, in the mood – morning, afternoon, evening, late at night. You named it, someone would come over and take care of business. But here in Pittsburgh, he actually had to work at it. Men didn’t just come over to play around. They went out for a drink first – not coffee, after all, since Pittsburgh wasn’t Seattle.

Jeremy sighed again. He didn’t feel like going out to Woody’s or Pegasus in the hopes of meeting some steelworker from Ambridge. So he put on his hooded jacket (it was raining, but of course) and headed to Liberty Avenue. And once inside the store, he asked the rail-thin, purple-haired, nose-ringed twinkish attendant where he could find the toys. Right over there, he said, dipping his hips to the right and pursing his lips.

He looked at the various models. Which one would work best for him? When in New York, he usually went after the Italian boys from New Jersey. But there were no New Jersey Italian boys in this store’s collection. There were the Ryan White, Jeff Stryker, Zeb Atlas models – and then Jeremy saw it. Raymond Dragon, his favorite New York escort. Well, he wasn’t really an escort, but hey – he’d been over to Jeremy’s apartment half a dozen times over the years.

So he bought the Raymond Dragon model, took it home, lay down on his bed, put a DVD in the machine, and got his fill of Ray. When he was done, he looked out the window, dreary as ever. And then he got sleepy and ended up dreaming about walking down Fifth Avenue on a cool, crisp, and sunny November day.