Object of Desire by William J. Mann Read Free Book Online Page A

age, as Randall would say, with big shoulders packed into a tight white T-shirt. Randall liked older men. He said their receding hairlines were more than compensated for by the expanding bulk of their bank accounts. Whether this guy in the tight T-shirt had money or not, I couldn’t tell. He wasn’t part of the mob pressing in around me, waving their Hamiltons and Jacksons as I gyrated on my box to Kim Wilde’s “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” Instead, he was leaning against the far wall, sipping a Rolling Rock, watching, but not watching me. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
    â€œHey, Benny,” I said, leaning down, grabbing the barback by the shoulder as he loaded empties onto his tray, “go get Carlos to take over for me for a while.”
    Benny yanked himself away from my grip. He was still pissed at me for breaking up with him a couple of weeks ago. “Carlos isn’t ready yet,” he said icily.
    I knew what that meant. Carlos wasn’t yet high enough to get up on the box. Carlos, a good Catholic boy from Mexico, had to do a couple lines of coke before finding the courage to take off his clothes and dance. So much for hoping I might get a reprieve to hop off my box and introduce myself to Mr. Tight Tee. It was probably just as well. That one was far too put together for me. He wasn’t like these guys up front, slobbering all over a skinny kid just because he’d taken his clothes off. No doubt Mr. Tight Tee was here to meet a friend, a friend with a real job, a real life. A friend who was somebody.
    â€œCome on, hot stuff, give it to us,” someone shouted from the crowd. Kim Wilde was mixing into the Pet Shop Boys’ “It’s a Sin,” and I shook my ass and tightened my abs to prove just how sinful it really was. A large black man with very cold fingers was stuffing several dollars into my thong. By the end of the night, I’d probably bring home about three hundred in tips.
    It still boggled my mind to think that guys would pay money to see me naked. Me, the kid Scott Wood had never even noticed in eighth grade, the pimply kid in the back row all through high school who had endured hundreds of paper airplanes bouncing off his head. I didn’t exist then, except to be a failure. But here, in West Hollywood, I was a star.
    I glanced up, over the heads of the crowd, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror on the wall. The pulsing red and gold lights distorted my features, but still I could make out the contours of my body. A skinny little blond, barely any muscle, a stick figure in a bright yellow thong. In school I’d always been embarrassed by how thin I was, forever trying to lift weights to build muscle but always giving up after about a week and a half. In gym class I’d been mortified by my twig of a body. But when Edgar, the club manager, was considering whether to hire me, he’d asked me to strip to my underwear, and I’d noticed the tight smile that had slowly stretched across his face. “Perfect,” he’d purred, running his hands over my torso. “Not a hair anywhere. You look seventeen.”
    But in fact I had just turned the ripe old age of twenty. Randall threw me a party for the occasion, my first since I was fourteen. I was in great spirits that night, filled with ambitious plans. I had come to L.A. to be an actor, and nothing was going to discourage me. “This time next year,” I’d announced at my birthday party, “I’ll be a regular on a TV series.” A few of my friends had laughed skeptically. “You just wait and see,” I’d told them. “I’m trying out for a part on Punky Brewster! ”
    I didn’t get the Punky job, and neither did I land parts on Who’s the Boss? or The Facts of Life, all of which I auditioned for. But I hadn’t given up yet. Randall thought working as a go-go boy might hurt my chances of getting on TV, but Randall