He knew he had a good audience that night. When he wasn't wearing anything but the g-string J.D. had just given him, the white cowboy boots, and the white hat, he slowly twirled his way to a raised platform covered in red velvet that had been set up on the stage ahead of time. As Bessie Smith continued to sing in the background, Treston set the batons on the floor and climbed up on the platform. With his back to the audience, he went down on all fours, spread his legs as wide as he could, and arched his back. While he pointed his ass in the air, he reached down to a long thin plastic contraption filled with ping-pong balls hidden behind the platform. He lifted it up, reached around, and shoved one end of the plastic contraption up his ass. And when Bessie sang, "Like I feel today," and the men in the audience screamed out Treston's name, he pulled the trigger and the ping-pong balls starting shooting over their heads.
Learning how to shoot ping-pong balls this way had been even more difficult than learning to throw a baton and strip at the same time. In fact, he'd almost given up completely at one point after the embarrassing trip to the emergency room to have one removed. He would never forget the way the poor young doctor had looked at him that night. And when the doctor put on the rubber gloves and Treston lifted his legs and spread them, Treston couldn't look him in the eye. Not to mention the fact that Treston didn't have health insurance, and retrieving a ping-pong ball from someone's anal canal was not inexpensive. If he'd known it would cost him almost a thousand dollars to have it extracted he never would have inserted it in the first place. He was still paying twenty bucks a month for his mistake.
He finally figured out the only safe way to shoot ping-pong balls out of his ass was to buy a long thin ping-pong ball shooter on the Internet-there were several different kinds-and re-create the illusion of the women who shoot ping-pong balls out of their vaginas in Thailand. The customers didn't seem to mind his minor exaggeration. He kept ten filled ping-pong ball shooters behind the red velvet platform and each time he pulled an empty one out and inserted one that was filled, the men in the front row pounded their fists on the stage and screamed, "Deeper, deeper." What some men found so amusing about watching him stuff things up there passed him by. But he knew how to work the crowd and give those men what they wanted.
When the ping-pong ball show was over that night and he went backstage to change his clothes, the phone rang again and he stopped short in front of his locker. This time it was his cell phone, not the phone they kept backstage for the nightclub. Lyon was there changing his clothes. They exchanged a glance and Treston smiled as he reached into his bag for the phone. He was certain it was Harlan. No one else would call him that time of night. But when he glanced at the screen and saw it was one of those annoying marketing calls from somewhere in Oregon he'd been getting for a while, he kicked the bench, started to cry, and deleted every single photo he had taken of Harlan Rocks with his phone. He even removed the photo of Harlan wearing nothing but a bath towel. It had been his favorite because it was the only photo he had where Harlan hadn't been wearing dark sunglasses.
Lyon walked over to him and put his arms around him. He patted Treston on the back and said, "He's a fucking gonif, like J.D. said. You're too good for him. Trust me, buddy. I'm straight and I can tell you that some guys are fucking assholes. You need to get yourself a nice older gay guy with a few bucks who'll take good care of you and treat you right, because you're not going to be able to get by shooting ping-pong balls out of your pretty little ass forever."
Treston continued to sob. He rested his cheek on Lyon's shoulder and said, "Oh, you are so right. I'm done with men. I don't care if I never fall in love again."
Chapter Six
For weeks after that, Treston went without intimate emotional contact with another man. After he stopped expecting Harlan to phone him, he realized he had to make a few changes in his life-otherwise he would continue to repeat the same mistakes until it was too late. So he stopped dating men, flirting with men, and connecting with men altogether. The only physical contact he had with men happened at work. This was all about money and survival and Treston didn't consider it a threat to his emotional well-being or his future. He'd learned how to separate sex and love early in life, which in his line of work had always been extremely important. And in some ways it helped brace him for the changes he knew he had to make.
During the day when he wasn't sleeping he would sit in front of his computer and look for ways to make his dismal situation better. He read about employment opportunities on Craigslist, getting college degrees from online universities, and reading websites authored by life coaches. This intense online reading was how he became cyber-friends with Cooper Boon, the man who had recused him on that dark day when Harlan had left him wandering naked at Lake Mead. After Treston had returned the sweatsuit to the ranger's station, Cooper Boon had tried to get in touch with him a few times. But Treston had no interest in getting involved with anyone, not even the man who had rescued him. But when Cooper insisted on getting to know him better, Treston persuaded him to join Facebook and he said they could keep in touch this way for a while. So they wound up reading mundane status updates and communicating through private messages three or four times a week. Cooper seemed to understand and he didn't push Treston too hard. He told Treston he didn't mind at all and he liked the idea of getting to know him better through social media. He also laughed and said they were doing it the opposite way most men did it nowadays.
Cooper Boon's laid-back attitude and his patience both impressed and terrified Treston in a way he couldn't quite figure out. On the one hand it made him feel hopeful there were a few decent men left in the world. Cooper didn't seem to want to use him, and he didn't have ulterior motives. When Treston explained his past to Cooper without going into explicit detail, Cooper said it didn't bother him in the least that he was a stripper or that he'd been with a lot of other men. On the other hand, Treston was cautious, as if Cooper were too good to be true. Treston had reached the point in life where he'd stopped trusting his own instincts. Harlan Rocks had taught him more than he'd ever wanted to know about men. He realized now he wasn't getting any younger and it might be wiser for him to look for an older, established man who would take good care of him, instead of looking for love and passion.
On his way to work one quiet Thursday night in the early spring, he spotted one of those long black SUV limousines in front of Chickey's club. Although it wasn't unusual to see long black limos like this in Vegas, they didn't usually pull up to Chickey's place on a weeknight.
As he approached the entrance, before he made the turn to head down the side alley where he usually entered through the stage door, he heard a couple of men arguing. He stopped walking and glanced at the bouncer who stood at the entrance on Thursday nights, a big burly guy everyone called Mickey J. When Mickey J. saw Treston, he shrugged and smiled. It was evident Mickey J. was enjoying the argument between the two men.
Treston hadn't had much entertainment in his life since Harlan had left, so he turned toward the entrance to see what the guys were arguing about. As he approached the back of a tall man wearing a formal tuxedo, he heard the handsome young blond man standing in front of him say, "Get your fucking hands off me. I'm going home. I will never forgive you for what you did."
Than man in the tuxedo seemed nonplussed; he didn't raise his voice or make any exaggerated gestures with his hands. "I'll make it up to you, sweetheart. I swear, whatever I did, I'm sorry I did it." He gestured to the limo and reached for the young blond guy's arms. "Just get into the car and calm down. You're making a scene."
A taxi pulled up behind the limo and the young blond man jerked his arm away from the man in the tuxedo. "Here's my cab. Fuck you, Chad. You think because you're so rich and famous you can get away with anything. Well, you're not getting away with that shit with me."
Mickey J. folded his arms across his chest and smiled.
The blond man pushed the man in the tuxedo out of his way and ran to the taxi.
When the man in the tuxedo turned to follow him, Treston placed his palm to his throat and gaped at him. The guy in the tuxedo was the Chad Pratt, famous movie star-turned-entrepreneur and professional poker player/gambler, now worth billions of dollars. While Chad been working his way up the Hollywood social ladder, he'd been in the closet and he'd married and divorced two famous women. From what Treston had read in tabloid magazines, the first wife had been one of those snotty bleached blondes, famous for one hit sitcom, and the other had been a slut with dark hair who had stolen him away from the snotty bleached blonde. After Chad Pratt divorced the dark-haired actress, he started investing money in Vegas casinos and all those ticky-tacky subdivisions that now surrounded Vegas. He'd also become a professional poker player and when he gambled on anything, he rarely lost. He'd come out of the closet and told the world he was openly gay in his early forties. Although he didn't look a day over thirty-five, Treston figured Chad had to be in his late forties now. He was known around Vegas as "The Shark," because he went through young men and money like other men went through six-packs.