Title: Cottaging
Author: mao
Disclaimer: Velvet Goldmine characters, likenesses, and original storylines belong to Todd Haynes and all the other lovely people who put their name on this project. Whee, and thanks to them - I'm making no cash off this, and want naught more than the feedback I rarely get.
Author's Notes: This is something [rather depressing, to be honest], that popped into my head this afternoon. Sorry to say, it's really not for the faint of heart. Writing it made me cry.
Warnings: Drug use, language, mildly graphic gay sex, reflections on both gay and heterosexual sex, self-abuse.
Dedication: for Katy, though she won't see it for ages yet.
***
1983
He sits in the bar, reflecting on his agent. He's the very icon of a rock star - dressed in black leather, hair glowing white in the dim lighting, hollows under the eyeliner smudged on his lower lids. He holds a cigarette in one hand - one after another, chainsmoking, lighting each from the end of the last - and a drink in the other. The combination of the scotch and the endless cigarettes, which he pulls from a quickly wilting pack on the table, makes his voice sound rougher than usual.
He's trying to focus on what his agent has to say, but he's distracted by a man at the bar. Armani suit, slicked back hair, and glancing at him every so often. Curt isn't usually in joints this nice - he sticks to the signifigantly less classy dives down by the Village, where drinks are cheaper and men easier to find. But since his agent is paying, he's here among the suits and high-class whores in their Gucci shoes and off-rack dresses. The man in the Armani - a pinstripe, he notes - gives him a slight wink, then turns to the bartender.
Bingo.
He returns his attention to the agent.
"So you see, Curt, if we could just update your image a bit, get you a new backing band, maybe make a couple connections between you and someone popular in the tabloids or something, we could have you up there within the year," his agent is a balding, fat man with a wife and two kids, a secretary with a bun in the oven, and a prostitute in a beaded gown eyeing him from across the room. "If we started with some spandex, a new band, maybe some music with a synthesizer-"
This catches his attention and keeps it.
"No fuckin' spandex, no synthesizers, and no fuckin' way am I gettin' a new band," he growls, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth. He takes a swig of his scotch, grimaces, and glances back at the man in the Armani. He's still there, talking jovially to one of the sequined ladies but sending frequent glances to Curt in the mirror.
"I just think we need to get the popular market to relate to you again," the agent whines a bit, then pauses.
"I don't give a fuck about the popular market. You said if I wrote some decent songs, you'd see what we could do. I wrote them, and you've got them. What d'you think?" He can feel himself starting to come down, getting that feeling where he's jittery inside his skin and his teeth ache with every noise around him.
"Frankly..." the agent pauses, looks at the table. Then he speaks again, and it's the worst thing Curt could hear. "They're terrible, Curt. I think you need to go into rehab or something. You're too strung out to write well right now." Curt's silent, staring at the top of the table. He can't believe he's hearing this. Rehab? Him? But everything's ok; he's making it all work out. "Think it over; the label's prepared to pay for everything if you'll do it. I'll call tomorrow."
The agent gets up and is gone. Curt's staring at the table, trying not to think, to not feel for one long minute, to just go numb. There's really no making it all fit, no way to handle coming down and the idea of going into rehab, of being told he's washed up.
He can't handle this now. He downs the rest of his scotch, and stubs out his cigarette butt. He looks up just in time to see the Armani man glancing at him, and he tosses a wink over. The pansy smiles ever so slightly, and Curt goes into autopilot - this part he's done a thousand times before.
He waits another few minutes, smokes one casual cigarette halfway down, then stands and walks over to the bar. The Armani looks him up and down obviously, a nihilistic smirk on his face, nodding to the leather pants draped from Curt's emaciated hips. "Hello. Haven't seen you here before. Buy you a drink?"
A nod from Curt. "Beer," he orders. "I don't care, something imported." He's done this so many times, but he's trying his hardest not to rush it along and fuck it up. Focus, Curt, focus. He makes the obligatory small-talk, is careful to make those little eye movements that hold more insinuation than his words are capable of.
In bare minutes, they've euphamised to the point of being prepared. They know the price and the service, and Curt sets his empty beer bottle down, fortified but desparate to hurry up and get out. He needs to get the cash and get to the dealer, and get rid of this before the stomachache sets in and the constipation releases its hold.
The man in the Armani begins talking to another one of the painted ladies and Curt, desparate to get it all overwith, slinks off to the bathroom, swishing just a bit to keep the man in the Armani's eyes on him, and hating himself for the undulation of every step.
His leather pants are sticky around his ankles - it could be the heat of creeping Indian Summer, or it could be the various fluids being spilled and exchanged. It could be sweat, or it could be something more, but he's too distracted to know or care. He's bent over, bare ass exposed like it has been so many times, with a nameless man sodomizing it, fresh dollar bills stuffed in Curt's pockets. He presses his hands into the wall, his head lowered in defeat and legs spread around the toilet so the pansy behind him can fuck him as hard as he wants.
Which clearly, he's noticing, gritting his teeth, is quite hard.
He tries not to think of the pinstriped jacket hung neatly over the door of the tiny stall, or of the sounds of the Armani man grunting as he slams ruthlessly into Curt's ass, again and again. He tries not to think of the way his teeth are chattering inside themselves, threating to fall out, screaming, onto the floor of the stall; of the way his nose is clogging up and he's starting to feel a bit fluey about the sinuses; about how tomorrow he'll barely be able to move after this pounding.
He looks down at the dollars in his trouser pockets, thick pale green in the fold of the black leather around. He keeps his feet planted, letting the syringes and little baggies of china white and mexican clay float in his mind. Tries to remember those things, and why he is here, and not think of what he is doing.