Bloodsport: Excerpt from Demons of Eminence

Joshua Escobar

As the pandemic began, I switched to being a travel nurse. Like all healthcare workers, I received the vaccine early but only after a hoe trip to LA. It was almost unbearable without it. Honestly, when they first had us working on the sick and unvaccinated rigged up to shitty ventilators from the ‘80s, I was like, no way. I barely had it in me to argue with the families of patients about why the vaccine would not help after they got COVID. I wasn’t built for any line of work. It was a good time to leave upstate New York. My job came with a mess of corporate pressures and the union corralling everyone, for better or worse, to get behind real and staged negotiations. I started applying to places in San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles. The day after I put my application online I heard back from a clinic in a city called San Bernardino, two hours east of LA. I didn’t know anyone there, only a friend of a friend who I met outside a party called Chacal Cumbia at a rundown disco in Silver Lake. And he ended up being the only person I lost during the pandemic. He was not killed by the virus, but by his younger brother, probably, or some of his brother’s friends.

Rey, he was the definition of a loser. I glorify him, as many of us did. He even earned the name “Sheep King,” because he looked not like Jesus but the party cousin of the Virgin of Guadalupe. When I drive home, I go by the aqueduct off the 10 near the 215 junction in Colton. There has to be a few people that live down there. I see some of them, or their belongings, every day. In the distance you recognize them among the vegetation and debris by the color of their skin and hair above their shirts. Or it might just be clothes caught in a broken chair. I like to imagine Rey living down there, his ever-slim body even more lank, hair mottled at the ends, with burrs. His fate in the industrialized suburbs of southern California suits him—dead or vanished, most likely forever gone. Maybe he got lucky. The rest of us go on with our overrated jobs and souped-up virtual existence. Rey would have wanted to die without fanfare in a county field. He would be happy with maybe a shoutout at a circuit party when everyone was on coke and molly and rowdy in the dark room. This work-a-day life is an evil we will never overcome. A community college student ended up in the ICU with MPOX, COVID, chlamydia, and an infected nose piercing. It is for queers like them that I write all this.

Weeks after Rey disappeared, a family member of an ICU patient brought him up. The family member had recognized me from one of Subcomandante Rey’s parties. He told me to check on Rey, who had seemed unhinged and then went quiet. On social media everyone was encouraging everyone to kill their local promoter. Teenagers donned oversized shirts of Che, who needs to be canceled. Beyoncé’s song “Thique” has a riff sampled from a house or disco song that Rey would have been able to place. People who happened to get Elena’s number would ask about the next party. It was nice talking to her when I got off work. My colleagues lived in garages or hotel rooms. Every day they woke up, worked, and then rested. Around my people it almost feels like I could scrap this whole nursing thing and join a cumdump gang. It takes no effort to sort through work failures and regrets, the rage of patients, the lack of staff, the prod of administration whose emails I fixate on like a rat-drug cheese. I relive that night at Filth when Rey held me as he talked to hot bears downing chili dogs and I nearly passed out on a microdose of GHB. Rey dwells in that haze of pleasure. Most of us will remember him as a latino daddy with an OnlyFans and a red pinup-girl hat.

Ragers are what I live for. In a world of a million pleasures they’re the only thing that always makes me happy. Whenever I come across a wrecked twunk or fem latino seeking treatment, I feel an extraordinary sense of purpose. It is erotic. It is paternal. It is bizarre, like others might ask, Where did you get so messed up, at Target, at the Ontario Mills, in the parking lot of a megachurch? They cannot imagine what happens at a gay rager. When they end up at my work, I’m happy to know that they found theirs in the shopping centers, the gang hype, the warehouses, celebrity culture. Family life is only a backdrop, something foreign to the dreams of guys I’ve known and loved. They hold their kids close as an anchor for themselves against real urges and feelings. Passing a bachelor—even a leathered-up whore like myself—makes them sad. My coworkers asked me for my perspective when a local teacher got fired for his OnlyFans. I said something professional. I trust no one at work, except Pallavi. The dude actually earned a living, and the real scandal is the school loses a willing, hot teacher who got more ass than the hags who ratted on him, as well as the lawyers that annihilated him. That is unless one of those lawyers is an alpha fag. I doubt it. Corporate homos do not live in the Inland Empire.

Every trespass against hot men is noted in the hearts of all men. Society can retaliate against this or that debt-ridden fool, but it will never go after toxic hotness because hotness is the bedrock of modern straight life. Everyone, even genderqueer, reckons with this sooner or later, even if they don’t go for hot guys. Any guy with enough muscle can attract a following. They can abuse in one town and find community in another. Yearning and horniness, gross in any workplace, are filtered through a cybergeography of gaydom, a stream of semi-naked and naked men, not crushes, not friends, but followers and fans. Hovering over these thirst traps allows a gay to expand, to evolve like everything else in this cold, expensive universe. There is nothing like a crowd of guys waiting to climb each other on a rooftop, on the overgrown trails of the bluffs near where I used to live, guys standing there kind of dancing as what is about to happen starts to gel. Then it is like watching one of those neon signs on a timer, the different parts illuminating before and after, until everyone scatters into apartments, suburbs, families, bathhouses, cages, the hills.

The guys I vibe with are not hot so much as horny. The bridges we make, the veggies we guzzle, the freak accidents that we see on TV—a horny homo was behind it. Bet. If you want to feel something real, you have to get dirty. Like, it’s a November morning in a minor city, the two guys from yesterday fuck in the trailer—you can’t remember their names or the location of the trailer park, which was freshly paved and lit like snack bars. Blackout. A mature gay would dominate you just as likely as leave you butt naked on the side of the road. This tension is scripted into pre-digital pornos. The interview ends with the candidate getting roasted. The paint job goes unpaid. A spacious garage with no one around. The delivery takes longer and longer. Horny sweaty guys, seemingly without mystery, loitering like certain touristy states—Nevada, Florida—hypnotize me as much as do morning commuters. Dancers are doomed to dance with the rest of us. Pharmacists have taken over with their meek-ass hands. Beautiful men terrify me. It feels divine when they arrive in a harness, when they’re straight up about it. Until the very, very end of life, gays don’t rot. We’re cats in all the mayhem. I don’t know, as I said, whether following so many gym dudes constitutes anything real. I kind of feel that those horny ones are down, rowdy like Mexicans in a traffic jam. They are attractive because their coldness continues with me, a dude who is just willing. Sucias on my feed promote clubs and parties I’ve never heard of. Lawyers, architects, designers, bartenders, most have corporate gigs. Or you never really know what they do, mystery teams churning through city after city.

I don’t get marriage. Orgies are the only real recourse for the pettiness and pressure that legacy institutions inflict. Romance is real but its mysteries are, no offense, for poets who can’t get any. No meaning attaches to sex between guys. For the record, I keep falling for unavailable mofos. One is married. One is a lone wolf. One is my neighbor. And I’m not their type. Standing in the bathroom I yearn for them. When we actually fuck, I make them feel invincible. I like that they’re a little mean to me. As a nurse, I can tell you this is what we all want. Each time we rage, something gets inscribed. I walk around before going out solo and I always meet people. You were on Christopher Street coming the opposite way. I kept myself from tripping. We froze when we met. I rubbed your chest. You pulled my hips between yours. I felt your chod. You put your hand on my throat, and the other you wrapped the back of my jock around your fist. My tongue was in your mouth. It languished like a singer running out of steam. You grabbed my ass and took your dick out. You rubbed it against my belly, and then pushed my head down. When you had enough, you put it away. Then raised me, inspected my face, and waited until I made eye contact.

Half my closet is the kink Rey gave me before he left. It would have gone to Elena, but she doesn’t have a dick. I have not worn any of it yet. It feels sweet like revenge to go out dressed like a whore. Most of my exes are probably having better luck. Scrubs take up the other half of my closet. I painted my bedroom when I moved in with Elena and aggressively installed Norwegian rails for my clothes. The rest of my flat is straight IKEA. I hardly ever inhabit it. Although I partied throughout grad school, I was still scrummaging socials for gay ragers, even in places I haven’t been to yet, like Roma Norte and Fire Island. Booty shorts and smiling a lot at the club have gotten me far. When I cannot think, I slip myself some extra vet medication. My friends in college would be all over this. We were not actually friends, we just did drugs together. I wish I had passions other than medicine, something more creative. I could see myself on Gaga’s team or at Prada, or even as a curator. From what I can tell, though, this profession suits many of us who were never close to our families or down for God.

Perhaps that explains why I had no patience for the wounded, angsty dads or the senile sorority types grappling with blame and bills. The waterfall of gin I downed each weekend was to lose these ghosts. For a baby gay, the heart is the ultimate cockblocker. The hairy latinos, the bear daddies, the alphas I do get with, I get with because we go to the same sex parties. There is a riff in a Beyoncé song that’s divine, one I imagine carries every other raver through the day. We were all toxic in real life. I needed to operate in a way that leads me to complaining less, to not ruminate over what was messed up. I’m a nerd empathetic to whatever I dive into. I think this was why work was killing me.

Between parties Rey would talk me through being a cumdump. At first it bugged him that I brought it up so much. He tried not to show it because he could tell I really needed it. One time we cleared out an Arby’s talking about dos romano. He said that I was the only one keeping myself from what I want. Another time he said not to think about life when I was hungover. He told me he did crazier things at my age. Over all, Rey was lazy and what he knew about positions came from the night-army of men he had hooked up with. From Elena I found out that he was pee-shy. After a few drinks he was down for anything. When it comes to kinky stuff, I find that dudes are a little dicey. A number have taken advantage when I let my guard down. It is like when one wall goes down, they all do. I am not trying to have kids or anything. Plus I care about my hole. My friends meme’d my hole as a mini-boss from Dragon Quest VIII. Fisting is not for me. It is just not. The only thing I have against fisting are the people who are into it. They get this glow when they talk about it, like their ass just jump-started. They swear like it is the greatest thing, and they broadcast it to everyone in earshot. The more horrified everyone looks, the happier they seem. No sex act is better than another. Although if you want to make a bottom come, just lie him on his back. This move has a name that I don’t care for. I rename it the cumdump. I was probably the biggest hoe in my early twenties, but by gay standards I’d barely medal. Real cumdumps, guys who put tally marks on their back, over a beer will laugh and admit to a 70-in-a-day or -weekend. They were gold. If I placed, I would wear my bronze medal as a wristlet and cheer on gold and silver. Silver medal would be a jacked Mexican with wavy hair that curled unevenly like dried leaves and an overall badger vibe. He makes his fortune as an underwear model. While a thousand controversies would block many of us from his career, he carries it. A true hero. He would have gotten gold, but he did not officially enter the competition. Gold would go to the small trans otter with no boundaries and legit excited about any sex act, as much as the glory that comes with it. Balloons, rope, Frisbees, and the like. They would raise their arms, toned with minor bruises and small patches of hair that the show-lights darken. They are known for popularizing strap-ons in the fading San Francisco circuit scene.

No one will resolve the chaos of working here at Colton Hills Hospital any time soon. And no one knows what will. My ambitions landed me here, then I got stuck like the boulders on the hills. With the help of some molly and random hookups, I’ll jot down most of the story when I have moments of peace on my twelve-hour shift. My heroes are hoes to be forgotten, just like me. As you read on, the people will merge together like freeways. As for their downfall, you most likely understand by now that Subcomandante Rey got obliterated. When he learned that his brother Aidan was coming for revenge he muttered in that chilango accent he picked up after two months in Tepito, “Who the fuck cares?” Art-making is a slut-adjacent field. I give it away, this sliver of what goes on inside my head, what wraps around my heart.

Sometimes a yoga nurse in the ICU will come over and vent to me. She complains without meaning to about my milieux: the angsty suicidal teens, gay tweekers, burly cholos, wronged Chicano/Chicana kids who roll around screaming, “Mama, I didn’t do anything. Mama.” She, the yoga nurse, identifies with my coded drug use and gives me the blow-by-blow of the guys she flirts with and would fuck under different circumstances. She helps pump purer forms of drugs they almost died to have, to satisfy their kingmaker urge to party. Rather than play it safe, they end up here where a bunch of us tend to their bodies and, by extension, their fantasies, in a way their parents or communities will never recognize. I totally get why so many motorcyclists end up here. For the ones who don’t make it here, or want to understand when they’ll end up here, the beat goes on, like deep inside. We all self-mythologize. Each day is a series of stimuli and hallucinations that religion and art try to make meaningful. Some devote themselves to their family or their employers. Others live as crusty circuit queens, like Subcomandante Rey and myself included.

Descriptions of Rey:

Online Handle: Subcomandante_Rey, 6’2”, weight 180, gaunt face, lanky, age 54, wavy brown hair, brown eyes, small teeth, big nose, hung, no ass.

Description of Rey as a Real Father:

Military dad (I forget what branch but it was not the ARMY), partnered for eleven years, married for three, widowed; adult son overdosed near a bridge in Portland; Sonia, his ex-wife, passed in the night, after their son, and was fond of Rey. Rey had been to more countries as a porn star than school functions for his kid. His cousins and him were on speaking terms until his son passed.

Description of Rey as a Sex Worker:

Hung latin top. Scaly skin on his face, vague reds and greens, messy head of hair cut to the skin on one side, fat white tongue too short to leave his mouth, soft red lips, confident in foreplay, closes his eyes as slow and rhythmically as he opens them, butt as flat as church doors, big dick nightmarishly veiny, pulses sweetly with a bead of pre-cum, torso bulky and tattered like a TV from Goodwill, often cast as a drifter, a stupid worker, a hustler who comes to life at the point of mutual arousal. Some Working Names: Construction Worker 7, Stunt Thug, Richie, Guy at the Pump, Juan Rico, King Esteban IV, Soft Top 98, Bricklayer, Guy in Madrid, Big Javi, Nestor, Barcelona Daddy, Hung-ass Hector, Mexican Prisoner, Officer, the Last Zaddy, Don Noe, Junior, Subcomandante Rey.

Rey lived in a two-bedroom from the ‘60s with a red stucco interior and dusty tile arches in the front. He had two acres dwarfed by warehouses bucking up against the back of the property. As at his neighbors, the house stood far back from the street, with an overgrown front yard that doubled as storage. The old red sagebrush attracted rats and hummingbirds. In a corner, roses overlapped like replacement pipes. His mom left the house to him and his brother, Aidan, after she passed decades ago. Weeks after Rey disappeared, Elena and I met up there, knowing Aidan would be long gone too. I found her on the back patio, sitting on the bench next to Rey’s favorite spot, looking to the side, like an angel whose single job is to wait beautifully. His ashtray was emptied by the wind, with the pre-rolls blown along the wall and into the crack under the stucco. The TV was always on because Rey couldn’t sleep without industry people talking to his inner demons. So much for turning his life around. That was a few months ago. The ease with which he vacated his responsibilities in life implicated not only Elena and me, who were closest to him, but anyone pursuing a normal work-a-day existence. Rey died without fuss, and proudly because of pain.

It is January in southern California. It is sunny every day with the promise of eventual gloom and rain. The sunlight is soft and lacks heat. The sun is distracted, like any true SoCal gay. This is an essential trait if you want to make it through a job or relationship or a commute. For New Year’s the hospital got us Apple Watches. I think they want to track us. After New Year’s we see more drunk driving cases, more comatose teenagers, more firework amputations. After it rains, the hills turn green for a couple days and mud flows over the back roads I take to work. The hills situate themselves in bumpy clusters and fitfully dip and recede like gays waiting to order at a crowded bar. Romantics compare the hills to the Egyptian Pyramids because you can see them throughout the valley. I guess this makes sense in that you spend your life circling them. They would definitely require a different kind of sacrifice than what we give to our careers.

In January at my apartment complex, the end of the holiday season is marked by kids playing outside with their new toys in their new clothes. Unless they’re in front of their own house, the boys and girls separate. The boys are volatile. They speak really fast, argue for no more than a few seconds, and trick themselves into being scared of loud, mysterious noises. In the corner of my eye, in my work fatigue, I can’t tell the difference between a hedge and a maundering pack of boys. The girls act their age. The youngest sprints, stops, looks back for approval. If the older girls say nothing, the youngest sprints ahead again in her chanclitas. A pair of twins drive miniature jeeps through the inlets and courtyards at five miles per hour, the sound of their battery engines passing through walls. I also hear the kids unloading Nerf guns at each other. Others play in the pool. I can’t tell if it’s the boys playing or girls or if they are all playing together, unless one of them snaps out of their jolly mood and speaks. Young couples walk by in new activewear. This season seems to be all about coral colors and bagginess, as if any outing might include a dog park or the beach. They go to the gym, or they don’t go to the gym. They shop at Costco and Target, or they don’t shop at Costco and Target. Sometimes they get Starbucks or watch TV. Straight people would seem so simple if it weren’t for their music and food. Gays don’t eat. And the music at circuit parties is no good. Near my apartment, at least everyone is nice and they play a lot of reggaeton and banda. Ozuna, if not Grupo Firme, reigns. Some mom runs a plate of carne asada or some champurrado out as I head to work. Toys school the children in physicality and dominance. Songs build on that energy when we want to love, get wasted, or when we need a second chance, an escape, a blank check. Music lets us drift from the duties we’ve trapped ourselves in. We play Cardi B and Nicki Minaj all the time at the ICU, especially when bathing comatose patients. Without it, we’d be hardcore. Down the street, they are expanding the intersection. I hear them at night, even when they’re not working. Ghost construction sounds, street sweepers. I mean to say that in the Inland Empire the landscape changes with construction rather than with seasons.

Where Rey lives is pretty different. He lives in Bloomington, which is county land. People live on acres of dirt, with pepper trees and coyote brush and random industrial gadgets and gizmos thrown into the mix. He lives on the very border of Rialto and watches suburban dads washing their cars across the street. If his death was covered by CNN, they would tweet, “He was a poor yet popular Latino ex-star who moved generations.” His first OnlyFans was painful to watch. He looked like a smoked-out homie. He groaned super close to the camera without changing his facial expression. Then he thrust the camera into his pubes, which you could almost taste, before shooting a watery load on his (insert your favorite cartoon)-themed duvet. Elena, an art school dropout, offered to help for 60 percent of all earnings. Rey agreed since up until then he had made $12.

The wind favored his disappearance.

After it became clear that he was gone gone, memes of the Sheep King flooded my socials. They praised him for the free drugs. For the after parties. For his Bluetooth headset. For being canceled after donning a crown of thorns. All of them, the girl queens and the boy queens, their cool cousins and crazy exes and novios, and all of their friends, they are all in the house of worship now, now that the Lort goneth. The girl queens are talking about their next quince rave, about the kink they try to get their men to wear, and scream at the mention of Kim Petras. The boy queens, handsomer than athletes and more beautiful than actors, talk about going to DC, Portland, PV, Fire Island, and Miami, and their work. They are jittery from their zero-calorie diets and coke.

“Hella messed up.”

“Dumb bitch.”

“I fucking knew it.”

“No mames.”

“That joto was unsustainable.”

“No wonder his ass dead.”

“That’s what’s up.”

“Cheap as hell.”

“Shit like this happens to you when you hit 40.”

Rey went to the kitchen again. His flops dragged on the bulbous bronze color tile made for the outdoors. Ferns over the sink blocked much of the sun coming through a small window. Another window, which illuminated his days, was covered with a sticker-version of stained glass. Rey stood in the noxious orange glow. Behind him, the original cabinets appeared grey because of their laminate coat. He could hear kids playing down the road. He fixed his kaftan and poured another glass of water from the sink. He took a sip and could hear himself gulp, which these years had a soft click to it. Some water spilled from the side of his mouth, down his chest, and stopped at his waist, at his trunks, a $90 pair that one of his regulars got him for his birthday. The kaftan was a gift to himself, purchased on a sober Monday or Tuesday from an online company that featured his favorite cumdump on TV. Rey had the girliest of crushes on him. Elena was coming over to film for the first time. Rey had the experience and body to make it a decent shoot. Recent decades for him were marked by friendships diminishing, jobs falling through, getting exposed to STIs, and no contact other than what the apps afforded him. He knew that if he was famous again, everything would fall into place. He told his bartender and regular hookups about the shoot. He even told the teen who worked the fried chicken counter at Stater Brothers. Car doors slammed closed outside. Rey went to the front window to see who it was. The sunlight, which he kind of feared, illuminated his left, from his brow to his thigh. It was just some high schoolers. They were as groomed and starved as the jack of clubs. He climbed down slowly from the couch, which he had rushed to in order to get a good view. His head throbbed for a moment. A little later, as he was sleeping to the local news, he awoke to Elena in the living room. Some of her gear was already set up. He woke the second she turned on her light cannon. It still had the tags from her art school. It lit up his living room like a bomb. Rey, a veteran, got all kinds of excited.

“There you are, sunshine,” Elena said. She took a read of the light from her phone. She moved closer to the couch, where it happened to be darker, and took another read.

“When did you get here?” Rey asked. He coughed a little at first, and then like he was stabbed. “I’m okay.”

“I got in a few minutes ago,” Elena said.

“Lies,” Rey said. He drank some water.

Elena continued adjusting the cannon, focusing on the angle.

Some days it took a lot for Rey to ground himself. It had been twelve or thirteen years since his son took his own life. The years after sapped his skinny face and humor, leaving him gaunt and quiet. He was out of work when it happened. Customers further distanced themselves, so Rey stopped talking about it. Whenever he brought it up, he got little or no response, except from Rudy, a young ripped 5’ 2” Guatemalan who lived in Coyoacán and San Diego. Rudy said he’d visit Rey next time he came up to Cali.

Elena was backlit, staring at the uninterrupted wall in the living room. She made a heap of random shit in the corner. The fiddle fig in a midnight-blue pot reached over the couch. The textured wall had small random stains, mostly food and beer. The lack of decor reined in some of the messiness of the room. She wanted the plant to appear kind of fake, or at least match the glossy primer, so she rubbed Vaseline on it after wiping down the dust. She dragged it over. She figured it couldn’t hurt to add fresh beer to random patches in the orange carpet, enough for droplets to catch on the crown of the carpet and glimmer without soaking in just yet. Rey was surprised to see his place somewhat clean. He rubbed his stomach and reached down into his trunks. He’d spent the previous night on a Grindr date that ended up on Zoom. He was not sure how ready he would be until he saw the setup. Elena’s fussing reminded him of when he was a new father. His kid was learning how to talk, and they would spend the weekend on a carpet that contained apple sauce, pee, beer, and blocks.

“Okay,” Elena said, looking at the rubber ducks and garden hoses she’d brought. She groaned and then began arranging them into a bed of knots that came up past the ankle. She used her foot to clear places where Rey could crouch or stand. Some hoses were black with an orange and yellow stripe. Most were green, like the slime thong she brought Rey to wear. She left tags on the hoses. They looked kind of cool and she wanted to return the hoses to the hardware store. The ducks were arranged in various states of tranquility or danger. Rey picked up one.

“What the fuck are these for?” He marveled at a blacksmith ducky. Elena took it from his hand and then reset it in a slightly more menacing position. The theme, which Elena kept to herself, was If You Don’t Have an Ass, Take a Bath. Rey was hung, but she figured peeps would connect more to his druggy sense of humor and otter body. Rey gave Elena a dirty look. He bit his lip and raised his brow so that his beady eyes seemed more beady. This look had been hot when he was her age, but now he just looked swollen.

“You’re not getting naked today,” she said.

“I know, sister,” he said.

“But you are wearing this,” she said. She handed him a glittering slime thong. He put it on, dropping his shorts with no shame right in front of her. It hung from his waist like moss from a tree.

“What the fuck is this?” he asked softly.

“Your ticket to gold,” she said softly, like her stupid classmate obsessed with pirates.

He nodded, childlike.

Elena felt tightness in her chest. It was the tightness of being questioned, an overreaction, probably carried over from art school. She saw he wanted to learn. She saw how deeply this mattered to him. It was like he didn’t know what to do, like he hadn’t had several decades of industry experience. He was submitting to her. Her friends warned her about this. These guys will do anything for money. She didn’t come for imbecile energy though. She came for ass. She wanted ass energy from a grizzled porn star with no ass. And she knew she would get it. Ass has nothing to do with size, though bitches who have one barely have to try. Ass was not a construct. Ass, especially latin ass, was saturation. It was business. It was the answer and the problem. It got angry. It brayed. Elena had a fat ass, which she showed off with tight pants. Her dyed black hair fell down to it.

The uproar of kids across the street carried into the living room. The hardboiled look, the light with its translucent umbrella, made her think of Arkansas. The light cannon was more elaborate engineering-wise than some of the towns she visited as a production assistant. That gig was nice because her coworkers carried molly and acid. The only other time she had acid was in her first week of art school. Her grandpa, who was a wedding photographer, gave her a bootleg copy of Sans Soleil and a brown canvas fanny pack with belt loops for batteries and cartridges. Inside was a one-hundred-dollar bill, a folded letter on Easter-yellow card stock that said, Love you mija. There were also two tabs of acid, which she thought were random shards of unprocessed film until she saw the imprint of a skull twinkle. Once, at a shoot, her grandfather told her the first piece of news about the area where she was standing, that the Agua Mensa District had been washed away in a flood.

As he stood next to the light cannon, Rey shifted his weight.

“Try crossing your legs,” Elena said in a strangely deep tone that surprised even herself. It had goat in it. He stepped forward putting his arms out to balance himself, with one hand near Elena. He had his shades on and could barely see. She held his hand, but it was more of a high-five. “Put your foot here. The other here … like that.” She stepped back. She stepped back again, held up her DSLR, and took the first shot. It beeped. It was a sweet sound. She leaned forward and straightened her back to get a higher angle. Rey raised his chin.

“No, don’t look up at me. Look at …” She turned without moving her feet. “At the couch. Yeah. Like that. Bruh.” Elena was trying to get back to Hollywood. Around the start of the pandemic, she gave up her small studio off Lexington. A week later she met Rey. She talked to him at a rowdy party at El Michi, a Spanish-style restaurant with wide brick terraces and ivy, or it used to have ivy, the kind that leaves behind dots. They’d had no maintenance for years. The restaurant itself didn’t serve food anymore, but they flipped it as a venue for queers. Rey was decades older than most of the guys there. Elena saw plenty of friends but was drawn to this nervous, goofy ranchero that was vibing near the wall to Morrissey. Her friends asked why she would talk to that guy. In the ‘90s, weird had been cool-adjacent, she thought.

“Let’s take one with you looking at the plant. Pretend it’s a super-ripped young thing who just walked in, like you’re way turned on, plus scared.”

“Like this,” he asked. His jaw was slightly dropped.

“Yeah, but don’t cover your junk with your hand. Move it like, like, no … with your arm over your knee. The energy we are going for is Fools Wear Clothes.”

Rey dropped his shoulders, and he raised his chest.

“Nice. Relaxed. You don’t know me. You don’t know me. Douchey. Yes. Now tell me how your house got this way. Are you homeless?”

Rey swatted in her direction. “You’re fucking stupid.” The restrained laughter showed off his jawline, and how his five o’clock shadow wrapped around his mug.

He started posing without directions. He spread his legs, clutched his ass, turned to show off his scrawny back. “Did you do this in art school?” he asked. She had dropped out and defaulted on her loans. She felt she saw more in parking lots, in backyards of people she didn’t know, in gated and sunburnt infrastructure than in museums, but she learned so much from the lectures and books that talked about objects in ways she wished she could apply to Fontana or Bloomington or Rialto. She imagined Vampira buried out here, if she ever could be buried. Elena’s hometown was a movie with no good guys. Her grave will read, “One Long Bad Detour.” By taking photos against the wall, she wanted to suggest that these were taken at the kinds of parties that would attract a crust-punk zaddy. The pictures were glimpses of a rave sourced from the back of a handyman’s truck. He had a scar across his stomach longer than his ribs. Maybe you could experience the imaginary party through his body, through photos. His hair looped from its own dark pools into the open air, some of it catching the studio light. Rey arched his back and dropped his shoulders, posing his hands like a T-Rex. He puffed out his cheeks and pretended to blow bubbles. He straightened up, then became defensive again.

Rey was eleven when he first experienced something gay. He came across a copy of Michael’s Thing at a Goodwill, with his mom. It was a 4” x 6” magazine with columns on nightlife in the Castro, theater reviews, political diatribes, and ads for dancers. The pictures soaked up the writing, and all the guys were muscular. He saw sweat in the glossy black and white. He stood in the middle of the aisle looking at it, when his mom approached him. It was time to go.

“How much does it cost?”

“Two dollars,” he said.

She bought it for him, and laughed in the van as she realized what it was. She told her sisters about it when they got home and they questioned her. He’s too young. That’s sick.

One tried to rip it, and Rey pushed her. “Just because your husband steps all over you doesn’t mean you can come for me,” Rey said.

“Moan,” Elena said.

Rey coughed, then said “Uhhhh” in a high pitch.

“No. Like Madonna. Flip me off.”

He smiled, then made a serious expression. After a few more photos, Rey asked, “Are you sure I don’t look stupid and old?”

“Stupid is what we’re going for,” Elena said. She ruffled his hair. Being affectionate cost her nothing.

Rey groaned. “Everyone wants me.” Then he posed in a few theatrical action poses that Elena had to adjust so he wouldn’t look like an origami. Elena reminded Rey of himself when he was starting out. He remembered the pool parties, the happy hours, the barbecues he went to in his twenties.

“Do you need any help?” Rey asked. Elena was putting her camera away.

“Nah,” she said. “Actually, could you wrap up the hoses? I have to return those tomorrow.” As he was wrapping them up, they both grew silent. Rey was almost naked and methodically wrapping a hose around his arm. Elena stared at him, as his shades sat on top of his hat.

“Let me take another one just as you are, but act like I’m not here.”

Rey nodded, and made eye contact while maintaining his brood.

“Oh my god,” she said. “Let’s take one with you being swallowed by the hoses.”

“Ha ha, what?” Rey said. A second later, he understood. “Should I lay down?”

“Yeah, but first I want to get a couple standing.”

They went about undoing all the hoses against the couch, which they pulled forward to free a tight area where the hoses could really stretch. Elena set up her equipment again. They tried poses where Rey was in shock, dying. And then poses where he was the beast. All of this was him.

“Rey,” she said.

“Elena.” At this point they were both high.

“We have to take one outside.”

Elena made for the door, and Rey sauntered.

“Are the kids out there?”

“Yeah. They look like teens. Do it,” Elena said. She threw open the door and put a hand on his back as he half-resisted.

The warm air soaked into their bodies. It was dark outside. Across the street, a group of teenagers in outfits from the same mall sat in a garage, which was brightly lit.

“Whaaaaaa?”

“I told you he was gay.” They giggled. From that point on, they would refer to him as “Halloween.”

Rey was embarrassed. Then he heard them talking again, amongst themselves, quickly in a low rumble. Elena tied one hose around his waist and another over his shoulders to give structure to the rest, which wiggled and sagged. He stood beside the spigot, where a bed of clovers was growing. Elena took Polaroid after Polaroid.

“I need the other one,” Elena said, going back into the house. She was out of film. For a moment it was just Rey and the teenagers across the street. They just looked at each other in silence. This exchange was the first time they’d engaged each other. The kids were listening to a new song from a Long Beach ska band, Gorgeous Place.

“Do one with your hands up,” one shouted.

Elena came back out.

He did one with his hands up.

“Ha ha, thissss,” Elena said.

“This is the last one though because my brother’s coming back,” Rey said. She took a photo as some of the hoses dropped to the ground. After they put everything away again, Rey invited Elena to smoke with him out back. Her friend Peter would come pick her up. They were going to shoot an indie band in downtown Pomona.

Rey’s backyard was huge and looked even bigger seen from camping chairs set up against the wall. Rey was drinking his Indio again, a cubeta of which sat next to his chair. No need for a porch light, enough light came from the warehouse next door, which drenched the surroundings in orange semi-darkness. Even the top half of the building was illuminated by a floodlight fanning orange light in an effort to better identify vandals caught on CCTV. Every so often Rey felt the urge to hurl something at it. One day he threw a half-eaten footlong with the receipt inside. It was still in the yard. He could never hit the building, the distance was too much. A firebreak and the delivery area added to it.

“When is all this going up?” Rey asked.

“Next week probably,” Elena said. “I still have to edit. What should we call the account?”

“How about ‘Rey’s Thing?’”

“Nah,” Elena said. “Too O. G. Raunchy. What about ‘Todo Homo?’”

“Too gringo,” Rey said. “What about ‘Filthy Rey?’”

“Ooo, twisted,” she said.

Peter texted her: Give ma a kiss.

“My ride,” Elena said. She didn’t like to drive.

Rey started to snore. He stirred. “Elena, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, fool,” she said. She felt like there was too much weight to his apology. Rey fell back asleep. Elena went to the front as a car was pulling up.

“Shit,” she said. It was Aidan, Rey’s brother. He drove a blue Mazda that had glow lights on the bottom and a retractable hood over its license plate. It was considered cool in high school. She wasn’t afraid, just burnt socially. The windows were tinted, but Elena didn’t think he saw her. She texted Peter that she’d meet him across the street and snuck to the front with her metal band-box equipment. She carried it like duffle bags, and ran across the field.

Elena had known Peter since third grade, but they didn’t hit it off as friends until high school. Her high-school ex was best friends with him. Their history teacher said Peter and Ernesto had enough combined stupidity to dent the GDP. Everyone started calling each other “GDP,” God Damn Player. The economics teacher called them straight-up idiots. Senior year, Peter ran for the hottest guy in school. He made anti-Peter slogan buttons. “Down with Peter,” with a picture of a senselessly cute teddy bear. “P is not for me,” an X over his face. And, of course, “I can’t P—.” One lunch, he stood on the outdoor tables, donning an Abe Lincoln hat to say, “We know who the sun bish is. We know. We all do.” His rally got unwieldy and he got expelled, which cemented their friendship. He spray-painted propaganda for weeks afterwards. Peter was on the verge of winning.

“How’d it go,” Peter asked her. He had just cut his blonde hair into a Cleopatra bob.

“Chill,” she said. He took her curtness as a sign to drive away.

“Should we get hammered before?” Peter asked.

“Nah,” she said. But she knew they would go to Perverso, and Peter would slam one and rush to the venue “before it hit him.” The indie band was a sterile early 2000s one that was melodic and minimal singing over skeletal synth about breaking into cars, designing mechanical creatures, and philosophical drives. It was all a blur. The pictures of Rey would be lit. This is what it must feel like to have contraband, Elena thought. A couple hours later, during a break in the show, she swiped on a Slaughter’s Pizza ad that was really pushing its edgy employees. While back at his house, still in the backyard, Rey laughed at an ad for Mission Impossible 8, and then switched to a different app.

“Who the fuck knows about spies?” he asked.