Big load of drugs and alcohol warnings for this 'en

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He's a nervous wreck on the bathroom floor, wondering how long he's going to have to wait before the people outside finish doing whatever the fuck it is that they're doing. He thought it was sex, at first, but the grunts and groans hadn't lasted all that long and they've been at whatever the fuck it is they're at for a good twenty minutes since. At least four pairs of feet are visible under the door, the noises out of their mouths rarely dissolving into anything that could be called words but the blabber an insistent part of the furniture. Drugs, perhaps. Probably. Everyone likes drugs.

The floor tips dangerously underneath him and Freddy tries to remember if he's taken anything tonight. Today. Fuck, he has no idea what time it is. There's a graze on his knee pressing up underneath his jeans and it hurts when his leg moves, but he's not making his leg move.

There had been a guy. Tall, good looking in a bland sort of way. He had taken Freddy aside and tried to kiss him, which is weird because they almost never want to kiss him. Hadn't known what to do with it, gone missing.

Gone missing is run away, if you think about it. Someone bangs on the door to the stall. "You ok in there?"

"Yeah!" Freddy replies, and it comes out as three drawn out syllables. He's totally fucking fucked.

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"You alright there, baby?"

Freddy blinks, back on the main floor and sat up at the same table as Sport, who has a hand on his knee but it's discrete, tucked away under the table where no one else can see.

No hands on the stock, don't get high on your own supply. Only they don't deal.

But Sport does. Freddy thinks, with a bracing clarity that he wishes he could posses when he's sober. Sex and drugs, the guy just needs to get into music and then he's got the rock and roll covered.

The band plays on behind them, veering wildly between the more danceable psychadelica and disco tunes. He sort of wants to dance.

"So, tell us about yourself." Someone prompts Freddy. He can barely see their faces over the expanse of the table.

Sport leans in, to give him a hint. He's not supposed to talk about himself at all. "Tell 'em the commode story"

Aside from 'I got trapped in a bathroom by a bunch of people fucking and they may not actually have been people and they probably weren't fucking' Freddy doesn't have a commode story to tell.

Aside from 'me and some guys went to a porn theatre together and I followed one of them out to listen to him jack it from the other side of the bathroom door' Freddy doesn't have a commode story.

Aside from 'the streets ran brown with shit' Freddy doesn't have a commode story.

So he opens his mouth and he tells the commode story.

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"Panic hits me like a bucket of water."

Good line

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Iris's hand feels small and fragile in his as she drags him to the dance floor, laughing. "Let's give them a show."

Freddy shakes his head, trying to pull away. "Sport says you're not supposed to."

"Fuck Sport." And she's close, and it's awful, her hands guiding his to her waist. The music is irrelevant, their bodies moving to a tempo of their own devising, of whatever substance is keeping them both awake. Could have been days, or hours, he doesn't know. People cheer at them, crowing like they are the jesters in the town square.

He leans in, to tell her how easy it would be for them to leave, how no one would notice they were gone for at least half an hour. By that point they could be across town at the bus station, picking out someplace new to start a life. Somewhere different from this, better than here.

She reads him wrong. Iris matches him, leaning forward to press her lips to his. It's awful and amazing and Freddy wants to die.

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Nice Guy is here with a real big smile on his face that wavers whenever Freddy gets too close. He's new to this operation, some of the older guys are peering down their nose at him like he don't deserve too be here. Freddy doesn't understand the politics of it all, he just knows that he's causing some sort of problem.

And his brain won't shut up about it, once he latches on. So he goes over to sort shit out.

"Hey, Nice Guy." Does it sound like he's flirting? It definitely sounds like he's flirting. He's grinning like he's flirting too. All wrong.

Nice Guy jumps when he sees him. He looks wrong, dressed up for the night with an open necked shirt and a pair of trousers that look like they came off a suit. He's still got his medallion, the rings on his thick fingers shining in the modulated light. Strange fucking thing, that Freddy knows what he looks like naked.

"What are you doing here?" Nice Guy hisses.

Freddy shrugs. "It's a party. I'm invited."

"What, you know the birthday girl or somethin'?"

"I'm her best friend." Freddy smiles and doesn't mean it. It's true and he hates it.

Nice Guy doesn't let up his squinting, distrustful and worm like. "Yeah, I bet you are. That was you all up on her on the dance floor, right?"

Silence is all he can give. He doesn't have to answer these questions.

"Eddie, Sammy wants a word with you." A huge figure of a man hustles into Freddy's view. Big, broad shoulders enough to leave him weak at the knees, if he were that kind of boy, and he absolutely is.

Tall, dark and handsome turns to face Freddy and he's sharply familiar. The sad pinch of his brow, the slight hunch to his shoulders. They each take a second to place the other and it's fucking painful watching the panic crossing Nice Guys face.

He'd said his boyfriend was locked up, Freddy dimly remembers. And Sport said some guys were getting out tonight. It all comes together.

"Orange?" Vic Vega's mouth quirks in amusement. "I didn't know you worked for the Poles."

"How the fuck do you know him?" Nice Guy snarls. "You only been out since Friday."

So it ain't Friday anymore. Good to know.

Vic Vega cocks and eyebrow. "Used to work at that comic shop on sixty fourth. You remember Brown?"

Nice Guy does remember Brown. Interesting. He's a hang over from the Cabots.

Which ain't none of Freddy's business, and yet...

"Thought you guys were working for other employers." He says, casually.

"Maybe I was. Maybe I saw an opportunity not to spend the rest of my life behind bars." Vic replies before Nice Guy can aduquately elbow his gut into silence.

"Leave it, Vic. He's just a fucking whore."

At this point all the attention should be on Freddy, but Vic turns to Nice Guy, all his edges sharpening in silhouette. "How would you know a thing like that?"

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"Daddy, daddy...please!"

"I know baby, I know. I'm sorry, not tonight."

"But I wanna...I wanna..."

They're in a back room and Freddy is shoving his jeans down his legs. He's got a rager burrowed into his skull like a bullet. Sex. Now. The only option.

Sport takes a step back, looking him over apologetically. "You gotta go find some other guy out there to help you out. You're here to work, Freddy."

"They're all fucking cowards." Freddy spits. "Don't wanna look like fags in front of their friends."

Hands steady themselves on his shoulders and then they steady him. "I know, baby. I know. You just gotta be better, you gotta work for it. You gotta make 'em forget what pussy tastes like. Think about how good that's gonna feel, when you've got some chump who don't even think he's a faggot giving it to you."

Freddy's dick jerks and he tries to grind forward against Sport. That sounds incredible. He wants-

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Someone pushes a glass of water in his hands and he thinks he might puke it straight back up again but instinct takes over and has him glugging the whole thing before he can breathe. He needs more, so much more.

Things take shape in front of his eyes, like the bucket and the nice girl who's sorting him out, helping him see straight. She keeps asking if he needs to go to the doctor, like he's never whited out before.

"Water." He rasps. More comes.

More and more. Freddy keeps drinking till he can feel the pricking in his fingers and the banging in his head. He keeps drinking till he can smell the combined force of all that sex and sweat and booze and vomit and human excess. He gags and nothing comes up.

He needs to go home.

Sport waves him out with casual indifference and Freddy makes for the front door alone. The dreamy blue of just before sunset is dripping through the streets. Four in the morning on a Sunday, way past any curfew his parents ever set for him. He is gloriously, wondrously alone and he could go fucking anywhere. Walk the streets, head to the bus station, the Bronx. Hit up the sea front and wait for the first ferry out to Ellis Island or the Statue of Liberty.

It's hard to see either from ninety second street.

He fumbles his way out onto the main drag and by force of habit more than choice, straight into a nudey cinema. The film that's showing is too good for the kind of clientele these places attract, all in black and white and with meditation on the human condition thrown in amongst shots of a guy threatening to nail his girlfriend and never quite making it due to misplaced Catholic guilt. When the sex hits, it's not shot to be erotic so much as raw, real. Freddy's never seen anything that looks so much like his experience of sex.

Then he stays for the next feature and the screen goes blurry and mottled and all he has to work with are the vague shape of some tits and a poor imitation of what it sounds like when a woman gets fucked.

Not that Freddy has a fucking clue what a woman sounds like when she gets fucked. It's no longer horrifying, exciting or boring. The pictures just show him some small part of life, and if his body doesn't engage today then it'll engage some other time.

Outside the streets are bright and bustling with people on their way to work, even on a Sunday. That happens in a place with so many Jews, they don't keep the same sabbath.

Freddy stumbles up to the nearest taxi rank, thinking about how bad he needs to piss and how little he cares if he wets himself all over the back of some schmucks car. He doesn't bother checking if they head up North, any pussy who won't go to ninety second's too chicken to be driving in this city anyway.

He's about to bark out an address when the driver draws in a gasp like he's been stung. "Freddy?"

Of course it's fucking Larry. Freddy falls back against the seat, laughing. "Hey man, how you been?"

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