la la land

rebel without a (fair use) c(l)ause
“Hey, now you pay attention to something here. These kids ain't the same anymore. And you know what's behind it all? Rock 'n' roll. That music is turning the kids into a bunch of sex hungry, beer drinking, road racing werewolves.”
- from Roadracers


It is a peculiar predilection of the Angelino - minions to the automotive deity that they are - to desire to travel 20 minutes or less from their particular starting point at any time.

So Dre found himself grimacing frequently while breathing superheated hydrocarbons and creeping along the 101 en route to Tarzana of all places, at 6:30 in the morning. At least he had coffee, his mind riffling through various cogitations while half-listening to the morning talk show on the Air America affiliate. Something about why Hollywood liberals were more annoying than Hollywood conservatives. He kept eyeing his phone, lying on the passenger’s seat, hoping Leticia would call him back. He hadn’t been to her apartment in months and wasn’t sure he could remember how to get there. His cousin had called him the previous evening, asking him to come to the peep show by the airport where she worked.

“Are you in trouble?” he had asked her.

“No, but I’ve got to talk to you about something. You’re the only one who would understand.”

Dre’s first thought was that Lettie wanted him to accompany her to the Free Clinic for some reason related to the hazards of sex work. She generally swore to him that she wasn’t doing escort work anymore but he knew it was just too easy, the money too good, to give it up completely. However, they never discussed the vocation directly, as the accompanying issues – the scorn of their family, the risks involved, the mutual ambiguities inherent in their particular relationship – precluded any honest discussion.

And it was a matter of equal subterfuge to remain familial friends, when what lay underneath was so much more complicated.


After exiting the freeway, Dre pulled into the nearest gas station and called his cousin. Her machine picked up, some ridiculous porno music playing.

“Lettie, wake the fuck up you lazy bitch!” he yelled into the phone. His harangue was rewarded by the sound of her receiver falling from the cradle onto something soft, like a mattress. Then: breathing into the mouthpiece, a slight cough, and the husky homegirl inflection of his favorite cousin.

“Dre?”

“Girl, I’m sitting at the Mobil on Reseda, wondering how to get to your damn place and you’re not even awake yet? I’m kicking your ass when I get there.”

“Chill, ese. I’m on Sherman Way, just go east and then turn left. I’m in the Aloha apartments, number 37.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yeah, of course.” It took a minute for her to absorb the implication of his question, then he heard the mattress creak as she sat up, her voice also rising in pitch. “I told you asshole, I’m not working!”

“Let, stop yelling at me, Jesus!”

“Hey, can you get me donuts?” Her tone had dialed down to a wheedling sweetness.

Dre sighed and rolled his eyes, holding the phone away from his ear and scowling at it.

“Anything else you need while I’m out, La Reina?”

“Coffee, please.”

Dre hung up, chuckling at how Lettie always remembered her manners a little too late. He noticed a donut shop in the strip mall adjacent to the gas station and eased into a parking space. Standing in line, he experienced a moment of only-in-LA surrealism when he observed the Korean cashier conversing in Spanish with a Mexican customer.

”Dre, Catherine’s got another job for me.”
“I thought you didn’t want to do girl-on-girl movies.”
“She says I’m the only one she can trust. And she can get me better jobs.”
“Isn’t that what you have an agent for?”
“It’s all about connections in this business, you know that. I’m sick of stupid-ass photo shoots and doing the webcam.”
“You’re doing the webcam? Lettie, somebody’s going to catch you - it’s not like our family doesn’t have any porno addicts!”
“You mean other than you?”

Reaching the apartment, she answered his summons by opening the door and immediately retreating to the bedroom. He walked back and sat down on the side of her rumpled bed, addressing the angular lump in the covers.

“What time are we supposed to be at the shoot?”

“In an hour.”

“Where is it?”

“Sun Valley.”

“Jesus Christ, that’s not anywhere near here!”

“Just take Sherman Way – you don’t even have to get on the freeway.”

“Well get your ass up and let’s get going.”

Leticia emerged from the covers and even half asleep she was beautiful. Not in a Salma Hayek (who was actually biracial) way either – not that she wasn’t curvy in her own right – but there was something essentially Latina about her that made her sexy in a fashion which went beyond mere exoticism. Dre knew anyone who wasn’t Mexican wouldn’t see it, but the layers of history assembled themselves upon her to make her the perfect culmination of mestizaje: haughty and earthy. She gave him a slight smile through tangles of dark brown hair.

“Can you go turn on the shower for me, please?”

“Do it yourself, Lettie.”

She frowned at him, then brazenly displayed her body as she walked into the bathroom.

“Who kept you up last night?”

She turned and stared at him, shocked. But he could tell. She was always filled with unshakeable confidence after good sex.

“It’s none of your business anymore, Dre.”

He sat in the living room with his eyes closed, waiting for her to finish. Every time he was tempted to move from the spot he was in, he thought of his girl, and how she trusted him. Not that he deserved any trust of any kind, but he appreciated it. She filled him with a kind of strange wonder: that he was finally capable of some facet of normality, and above that, actually desired it.


Dre managed, while specifically bending the speed limit a few times, if not out and out breaking it, to reach the house in Sun Valley in under 20 minutes. Lettie complained only once about having to listen to Aubergine on the way there – her musical tastes were strictly limited to gangsta rap and Latin pop.

They climbed a set of wide concrete stairs from the street to the front door, Dre obligingly toting Lettie’s wardrobe bag, and were greeted by the sight of Catherine and Darshan sitting on the top step, smoking and looking bored. Catherine immediately jumped up and pulled Leticia into the house, completely ignoring Dre. Darshan gave him a wan smile and patted the abandoned space next to him.

“Haven’t seen you in an avatar’s age.”

“Dude, what’s up?” Dre said by way of greeting, taking his hand.

“You know me, just a footsoldier in Catherine’s army.”

“Well maybe if she didn’t insist on going by Catherine she might stop having delusions of grandeur.”

Darshan chuckled, then inhaled on his cigarette. Dre noticed that out here, in the suburbs, everything appeared muffled somehow, even the sunlight that illuminated a thoroughly depressing street of tract homes with no landscaping. There were only two design choices, he noted, and both of them were basically the same.

“Why do they pick houses like these to film in?” he asked Darshan. “There’s too many windows.”

“Because you can throw money at the homeowners’ association to look the only way when it comes to certain. . .activities. Or, promise them a piece of the action, so to speak.”

“So what are you shooting today?”

“Not me – we were finally able to hire someone to do it for us. Most of it, anyway.”

Catherine was an anomaly in the adult entertainment industry: a successful independent. For years she and Darshan had run her media empire out of the garage of their Simi Valley home: website, videos, magazines, calendars, and various porn-related accessories. Catherine wasn’t yet up to the level of a true legend, like Jenna Jameson, but not for lack of trying. She made plenty of public appearances, braving inappropriate behavior from drooling fanboys at strip clubs and video stores, promoting herself tirelessly. But Darshan looked ten years older than he was, to Dre’s reckoning.

“You look tired,” was all he said.

“Busy summer,” Darshan replied. “No rest for the wicked.”

“Yeah, but where does that leave you?” Dre cracked, and Darshan made a sort of strangled sound, not quite a snicker.

The women appeared out front again, and Catherine lit a cigarette. She leaned against one of the pillars which framed the front stoop and smoked nervously. Her elegantly-boned face was pinched with a certain pique, her deep blue eyes shadowed. She pulled at the ends of her dark red hair, examining them for breakage. Her willowy frame, offset by breast enhancements at least two sizes larger than her body type would normally accommodate, looked almost frozen in place.

“Are we ready, honey?” Darshan asked her, in a mild tone.

“Andy is still setting up, he said give him ten minutes.”

“So you guys want to go out to dinner after we’re done? There’s a good Italian place down by the freeway.”

Dre saw Catherine roll her eyes at Darshan’s suggestion.

“Sure,” Dre answered, looking over at Lettie.

“Yeah okay, it’s my day off,” she said.

“So have you talked to Gordon and Dex lately?” Darshan asked Dre.

“Not since they went to make the record, no.”

“Isn’t that amazing, that they got signed and all that?” Lettie gushed.

“Yes, “Catherine said, dryly, “amazing.”

“Good for them,” Darshan said, “I knew they were gonna blow up.” But although his words were encouraging, his expression was not.

“Lettie, let’s go see if Andy is ready,” Catherine suddenly snapped, tossing her cigarette into the dirt. Leticia followed her into the house like a well-trained lapdog.

Dre spoke very quietly to Darshan as the two of them moved into the foyer.

“Are you okay?” he asked him.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

“It’s just that. . .” Dre sighed and ran a hand through his hair, “I gotta be honest, man, you don’t look so good.”

“You haven’t seen me in a while, is all. I’ve always looked this way.”

“You mean tall, dark and menacing?” Catherine quipped, turning to join the conversation.

“But that’s how you like me,” he said, putting his arms around her and Dre could not help but think that their co-dependency was entirely revealed in that one tableau: Darshan enfolding Catherine in his arms while she strained not to be completely engulfed.


Catherine proclaimed that she needed to “prepare” and grabbed Darshan’s arm, steering him towards the master bedroom upstairs. They didn’t bother closing the door all the way and Dre observed him giving her an injection of some kind underneath her left buttock, then a quickie on the counter of the bathroom sink. Like most pornography Dre was familiar with, it was depressing to watch Darshan attempt tenderness when all Catherine wanted was something to put her in the mood. She wrapped her almost translucent legs around his hips, and the visual effect of her white feet on his brown ass was interesting, Dre mused. Now there was a specifically untapped market for the porno industry: biracial coupling that extended beyond the typical black guy-white girl or black guy-Asian girl pairings. It was the type of curiosity that he had to suppress whenever he had sex with his girlfriend, wondering how they looked together on camera and wanting to film their escapades so he could see for himself.


Leticia, on the other hand, secured Dre his first video camera specifically for that purpose.


Darshan rubbed his beard against Catherine’s neck and murmured into her ear. Dre couldn’t catch it all but when he said something about my little princess Dre’s stomach bubbled queasily. As she dug her nails into his shoulders and hissed at him to hurry up, their voyeur turned away, opening the door of the bedroom across the way. Lettie was struggling to stuff herself into a leather bustier which she was to wear underneath a more normal-looking summer dress.

“Ah, it must be nice to be a star and have your Indian valet shoot you up with junk and fuck you first, you know, just to loosen things up.”

“She’s diabetic, you dumbass.” Lettie replied, cinching the laces of the undergarment.

“Yeah right, and I’m carrying the Ebola virus.”

“Just shut up, okay? I need this job!”

“She’s ruining his life,” Dre said quietly, looking out of one of the four windows the bedroom contained. The backyard looked as equally depressing as the front: nothing but dirt and concrete. The view from the second floor revealed an entire landscape of ubiquitous tract homes: pale stucco, fake tile roofs, an abundance of windows and dirt surrounding them like dried-up moats. “Just like you want to, but I won’t let you.”

”You haven’t been over in a while.”
“I’m with somebody now.”
“You could just visit, you know.”
“What are we, twelve? Those days are long gone and you know it.”
“So all of a sudden I’m not good enough to talk to?”
“You know that’s not it, mija.”
“You know what? I’m gonna laugh my ass off at you when you show up at my place after she dumps you. She’s going to, because you’re a loser and you’ve never been anything else. I’ll laugh and you’ll beg me to fuck you. But maybe I won’t next time. Because you’re so fucking pathetic. And you love it when I tell you that, don’t you?”
Leticia stood up and knocked her chair against the wall, muttering Spanglish obscenities, gathering her things and striding away, towards the employees area of the peep show. Dre listened to the thump of house music (what he liked to refer to as “the Eurotrash mating call”) for a few minutes and cursed himself for getting an erection.

“Look chingado, Dar loves her and wants to help her succeed. She’s lucky, most of us don’t have anybody like that.”

“She’s sucking everything good out of him. You know Gordo wanted him in Nebulae, but no, Catherine insisted that his job was taking care of her. Being a glorified chauffeur and bodyguard. She’s a selfish fucking bitch!”

“Shut up!” Leticia screamed at him.

“Everything okay in there?” Darshan called out from across the hall.

“Yeah, Dre’s just being an ass, as usual.”

“Okay then.”

Dre sighed, suddenly defeated, and left the room. Going downstairs and wandering into the living room he stopped short because the guy setting up the equipment. . .was someone he knew.

Dre froze, the voice of his mind chanting shit shit shit then he ran back up the stairs quickly and noiselessly as he could, bolting into the bedroom where Leticia was putting the final touches on her makeup.

“Did you meet that guy downstairs?” he asked, breathlessly.

“Andy? Yeah.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“No.”

“Did he recognize you?”

“No, why would he?”

“Let, that’s Andrew Monihan. We went to school together. He used to come to every Chingon gig. Don’t you remember him?”

“Dude, we didn’t go to the same high school, remember?”

Dre has been chosen to be bussed to the magnet school over in Mid-Wilshire as a freshman when his test scores indicated that he was gifted in specific areas, such as writing, and had a serious interest in music at the time. It was there that he had discovered his true vocation, along with his friend Andrew, in the film program.

“What name did you give him?”

“My porno name, duh!” Eva Luna, as Dre found it suitable after he was assigned Isabel Allende’s novel in literature class.

“Do not, I repeat, do not let on that we are related, okay?”

Leticia rolled her eyes, but nodded, then dug in her bag for hair-styling supplies.

Dre entered the bedroom across the hall without knocking.

“Dar, why didn’t you tell me you hired Andrew Monihan?!” he demanded.

Catherine, in the midst of dressing, threw him a disgusted look.

“Dre, the next time you barge into any room I’m in without knocking, I will kick your goddamn spic ass!”

“You can’t raise your foot off the ground more than an inch without falling over, Cathy.”

“Whoa, hey now,” Darshan interjected, holding his hands up. Dre noticed he hadn’t even had time to button his jeans correctly after his earlier activities. “Let’s you and I have a chat, Dre.” He steered him out of the room and ducked back in to calm his diva with a few murmured sweet nothings. Reemerging, he grabbed Dre by the forearm and led him off across the landing and down the hall on the other side; to what looked to be some kind of media room, with a plasma screen mounted on the far wall and a large sectional taking up most of the floor space. Darshan leaned up against one of the couches while Dre paced in front of him.

“Do you understand what kind of clusterfuck it would be if somebody, anybody found out that I was taking my cousin around to porn shoots? Can you possibly comprehend?!”

Dre exclaimed, making a concerted effort to keep his tone out of the realm of hysterical shouting.

“I’m sorry, I should have told you about Andy when you first got here. But I didn’t want you to leave. I asked Lettie to make sure you were the one who brought her here today.”

“Why?”

“I need to talk to you. But later. Right now you can just hang out up here until they’re done.”

“No, I guess it’s okay. He didn’t recognize Lettie, so. . .”

“Last month Catherine and I were at Spaceland and he came right up to me, remembered me from Chingon. Then he saw her, and the next thing I know he’s asking me if I need a cameraman.”

“I thought you didn’t trust anybody to shoot her but you.”

“I don’t. I don’t really trust him, but I’m fried. We’re trying to get three videos done in the next two months and I need some help.”

“She’s gonna run you into the fucking ground, dude.”

“Look Dre, please, don’t start in with that, okay? I know how you feel about her but I really need everybody to get through this day without a meltdown so that we can talk. And Catherine likes working with Lettie, she knows she won’t be upstaged.”

Dre looked at his friend, noticing the dark shadows underneath his eyes, framed by hooded lids, achieving a kind of perpetual sleepy-eyed expression, and decided that yes, he had always looked that way. Yet there was something different about him since the last time they’d seen each other, over a year ago. Something bad. But there was nothing to be done but shrug and sigh. Darshan clapped him on the shoulder with an enormous long-fingered hand and smiled, just slightly.

“Just like old times, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Your fly is all screwed up, dude,” Dre said in response, then walked out of the room rather than acknowledge a history that he was attempting to bury so deep within the recesses of his memory as to completely eradicate it.


Returning downstairs, Dre took a breath, rounded the corner, and allowed the recognition factor to kick in.

“Oh my God, Dre! What the fuck are you doing here?!”

“Hey Andy, what’s up?”

Dre had met Andrew in film class and they became fast friends, bonding over their love of grindhouse and other cinematic oddities. The jocks used to refer to him as “Bozo” because he was the kind of redhead whose hair was actually orange. Dre noted, with an internal smirking, that Andrew never did achieve the growth spurt he kept claiming he was on the brink of, and was at least half a foot shorter even now, in their late 20s.

“Dude, Dar didn’t tell me you were working for him too!”

“Oh well, it’s not quite like that. My. . .uh. . girlfriend, she does shoots with Catherine sometimes.”

“Eva is your girlfriend? You lucky son of a bitch!”

Dre cleared his throat nervously and looked around, desperate to change the subject.

“Hey so, this gear is nice, did Dar get it for you?”

“Check it dude,” Andrew bragged, holding out the camera. It was a Panasonic AG-DVC15.

“Shut up!” Dre said, cradling it carefully between his palms. .

“Sweet, eh?”

“Oh baby, you ain’t kiddin.’ They pay you that much to buy stuff like this?”

“It should be illegal, I tell ya!”

“Hell, the entire economy of the Valley would collapse like a house of cards during the Santa Anas if it were.”

“Nice metaphor, hombre. You always were the poetic one.”

“Yeah well. . .” he grimaced and looked out a nearby window. The sky was that type of limitless blue which depressed him.

“Hey, so – how did Dar end up with someone like Catherine Shea? I mean, they don’t look like they go together, you know what I mean?”

Dre shot Andy an annoyed look. “Why, because she’s white and he’s brown?”

“No dude, it’s just – well, they just don’t, is all.”

“Remember when the Pussycat Lounge used to be on Hollywood Boulevard? She danced there for a while and one night Dar whaled on some guy who was trying to pull her off the catwalk, and the rest is infamy.”

Andy cackled in response and moved a few light stands around.

“Like a fairy tale, eh? But you know, I could never understand what he was doing in Chingon either, I mean, because all of you were Mexican –“

Dre rolled his eyes and muttered ignorant guero under his breath. “Uh no, Dex is Basque.”

“What is that? He looks Mexican.”

“It’s like a combination of French and Spanish, I guess. Or something. Anyway, Dar was in Chingon because he was the best bass player we knew.”

“So I guess you guys are sorry now about breaking up the band – Dex and Gordon are doing really well.”

“Dude, I’m a filmmaker. Playing in a band was just a hobby to me.”

“Yeah so, what have you been doing? I’ve been working on any indie I can find, but I got tired of starving, you know? Dar is nothing if not generous, I mean, I’m surprised you’re not working for him.”

“What, so when I finally make a legit movie then someone can dig up my past and post it on IMDb? No thanks!”

Andy walked around in a circle, taking readings with a light meter. “Hey, do you think you can help me block off some of these windows? There’s too much natural light in here.”

They spent the next 20 minutes preparing the room for filming, their discussion halted. Darshan came downstairs, looking at his watch.

“Andy, are you ready to go? The girls are getting bored.”

“Yeah boss, Dre helped me fix everything up. How did you film stuff before with so many windows?”

“See, you auteurs are all alike – you want stuff to look perfect. This is porn, guys, it’s supposed to look shitty.”

“Nothing has to look shitty, Dar. It’s all a matter of perspective,” Dre countered.

Darshan gave him a skeptical look, pushing him away from the living room.

“Come with me,” he murmured.

Darshan led him to the wall between the living room and the family room, where the fireplace was located. Above the mantle was a large mirror. Darshan went around to the backside of the wall and ran his fingers along the edge. Dre heard a click and a section of the wall swung open, revealing a room slightly larger than an average walk-in closet.

“Wait in here,” he whispered. He turned the light on and shut the door behind Dre. Once illuminated, the room was revealed to have been inside the faux fireplace.

“I’ll be damned,” Dre murmured to himself.

He watched through the mirror as Darshan escorted Catherine and Leticia into the room. Andy had turned on the camera and was watching the monitor he had rigged up to shadow the shoot. Lettie sat down on the edge of the bed and adjusted her clothing. Darshan and Catherine were talking in low voices and he put his arms around her, cradling her against his chest. She pushed him away after a few seconds and went over to Andy, beginning to lecture him about what side to photograph her from. Darshan kneeled before Lettie and they spoke briefly. She nodded obediently and he squeezed her hand. Then he left the room and a moment later, joined Dre in the surveillance room.

“What the fuck is this all about?” Dre asked him.

“If I’m not filming, Catherine doesn’t want me to be on set, she says it throws off her concentration.”

“But you don’t trust him.”

“I don’t trust anybody, dude. Except – possibly - you.”

“Yeah, you can trust me alright because I hate that bitch.”

“Dre, knock it off!”

“Look Dar, I’m a grown-up now, okay? You can’t talk to me the way you used to.”

Darshan swept his hair back behind his head with his hands and sighed.

“I’m sorry. Like I said, I’m fried. But please, can you refrain from saying nasty things about Catherine for at least five minutes?”

“I’ll try.”

“You want a beer?” Darshan offered, opening a mini fridge against the back wall of the room.

“Dude, it’s not even noon yet.”

“When did you start worrying about the appropriate time to drink?”

“I’d like to be normal for once, you know, just to see what it’s like.”

“Whatever,” his friend replied, opening a bottle of beer and taking a few sips.
“So what did you want to discuss?”

“Later. Look, they’re going to talk dirty to each other, then make out, then the clothes come off and they chow down. Ooh, doesn’t Lettie look hot?”

“Shut up, Dar.”

But they watched, and listened, when Darshan turned on the intercom.


They took a break for lunch and sent Andy to McDonalds.’ Catherine and Leticia ate their food upstairs in the master bedroom while Darshan paced on the back patio, smoking and talking on his cell phone.

“No asshole, you don’t understand – I’m the only one who represents Catherine Shea – so if you get a call from someone other than Dar Balraj, then that person is not authorized to make any decisions regarding appearances. You got punked, man, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Now if you want to wait a month when she actually has time. . .what? Well shit, it’s no skin off my fuckin’ nose, believe me.”

“It’s pretty stressful for him, eh?”

Dre hadn’t noticed Andy had joined him in the breakfast nook.

“Yeah, well it’s pretty much all them, you know? That’s a lot for anyone to deal with.”

“I don’t understand why he doesn’t hire some people to help.”

“Because he’s a control freak. Catherine is the only thing in the world that matters to him and he’s obsessed with doing everything for her. He probably carries her around the house on his back so she doesn’t have to walk.”

Andrew snickered and took a bite of a Big Mac.

“Well, there’s always the chance of a successor.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Sometimes we need to hitch our wagon to a star, my friend.”

“I can think of better people than Catherine Shea.”

“I’m sure you can. ..like Eva, for example.”

“Dude, she is not my meal ticket.”

“I’m not implying anything of the sort. Still, though, you kind of have to take an interest in her career, right, make sure she’s well-protected, all that?”

“She can take care of herself.”

“Well dude, I wouldn’t be able to handle it, myself. So how did you hook up?”

“We’ve known each other a long time.”

Their conversation was then drowned out by Darshan venting his wrath towards some other hapless recipient.

“Dude, watch yourself,” Dre warned. “You do not want to cross Dar because he will fuck you up.”

“You sure he’s not just all bark no bite?”

“Not when it comes to Catherine. Do you hear me?”

“Yeah yeah sure.” Dre stared at him while they ate, remembering earlier times utterly devoid of nostalgia.

“Hey, we’re ready for close-ups, right?” Darshan asked, standing by the screen door.

“Yeah boss, all the long shots are done.”

“Okay, then you can take off, Andy. I’ll give you your money before you go.”

“Are you sure? I mean, I can help you with the lights and stuff if you want.”

”It’s okay, if I need help Dre is here. But I won’t, because I know what I’m doing.”

His phone rang again and he moved towards the other side of the patio, a new tirade begun.

“Seriously though, has he got a big dick or what? I mean, he looks like a homeless person.” Andrew said, apropos of their earlier conversational tangent.

“I think you need to stop worrying about that and just be grateful for the job.”

“There’s a fuckin’ bear on the state flag. Take that to heart, amigo.”

Dre crossed his arms against his chest and stared Andrew down.

“If you’re any example it should be a weasel,” he retorted, deadpan.


Dre tried to take a nap in the afternoon as Darshan filmed the close-ups and money shots. It took him a while to blot out Darshan’s enthusiastic sell it, baby and the moaning. There was nothing worse than listening to girls fake it in an altogether fake manner. After about an hour in which he thrashed around on the couch upstairs, wishing he had anything to listen to but overly-dramatic moaning and sighing, he heard his name being called from downstairs. Darshan met him halfway on the stairs.

“Hey, do me a favor – Catherine’s not too good at munching, can you –“

Dre gave him a look of unmitigated disgust.

“I’m going to pretend I don’t speak English right now.”

“Dude, seriously. I just need one good cum shot of Lettie and we’re done.”

“Have her fake it then!”

“That’s the thing about Lettie – she’s not very good at faking, have you noticed?”

“We are not discussing this.”

“C’mon Dre, you goddamn hardass, just take one for the team already!” Catherine cajoled him from the living room.

“Honey, don’t make matters worse,” Darshan warned.

“Fuck off, Dar, it’s my goddamn movie!”

“No, no, it’s okay – let me try again, Dar, I can do it this time, I promise,” Leticia pleaded, sitting up on the bed. She was naked and Dre shut his eyes once again. But his overall curiosity won out, and he saw Darshan lean forward and whisper into her ear, then she smiled. Leticia fingered herself and writhed under him as he stood on the bed, feet on either side of her, and filmed her looking downwards. Then he carefully moved to his knees, and was practically on top of her. But his patience was rewarded when she let out a genuine cry of release.

“Nice,” Darshan told her, and Dre wondered just how much of the other’s interest in his cousin was purely benevolent.


Dre and Darshan broke down the equipment and stored it in one of the downstairs closets. As Dre was stripping the bed, stuffing the sheets into a laundry bag, Darshan glanced out one of the front windows and exclaimed, “Oh fuck me sideways!”

“Don’t look at me,” Catherine remarked, as she brushed out Leticia’s hair.

“What?” Dre asked, moving over to where his friend stood.

“It’s that goddamn process server again,” Darshan answered, but he seemed to direct his comment to Catherine.

“The same guy?” she asked.

“Looks like it. Didn’t we slash his tires?”

“I thought we did.”

“Who’s trying to subpoena you?” Dre asked him, wondering if this development was part of what was making Darshan look like death warmed over.

“This chick we used last year, she’s trying to sue me now, claiming she was a minor and I coerced her, blah blah bullshit.”

“But if you’ve got proof –“

“Dude, I made her take me down to the Hall of Records in Norwalk and get an official stamped copy of her birth certificate, but how the hell am I gonna defend myself against coercion?”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Continue to avoid the little prick for as long as I can.” He opened his phone and selected a preprogrammed number.

“Hey, Marty? Yeah, it’s Dar. Look man, there’s someone loitering across the street right now, and we’re getting ready to wrap. What the hell am I giving all that money to the Neighborhood Watch program if no one is doing their job? Yes, get someone over here already, okay? Thank you!”

“Goddamn suburban assholes,” he muttered, covering his face with his hands.

“That girl will never work again, I’ll tell you that,” Catherine intoned. “Everyone knows you try to fuck us over and that’s it. You might as well leave the state.”

The four waited and watched until a man in badly-matched leisure attire came by and yelled at the process server, resulting in his ultimate departure, as the other followed down the street in his car.

“Let’s wait about ten minutes, just in case this guy decides to get cute and hide around the corner.” Darshan said, looking around the living room for anything forgotten.

“So does this guy follow you around all the time?” Leticia asked Catherine.

“Mainly he camps out in front of our house and tries to catch Dar, but he’s too obvious about it.”

“You can’t play a player!” Darshan chimed in, a false cheer coloring his words.

“I thought you were over being infatuated with your criminal past,” Dre sniped.

“Oh you know,” he chided, winding a stray extension cord around his arm, “you never let go of being an outlaw.” Then he winked at Dre, who looked away, suddenly feeling he was caught, again, in a trap that was so seductive he spent most of his waking hours convincing himself he would die if he seriously considered falling into it. And yet, here he was: aiding and abetting pursuits which filled him with ambiguous dread.


Over spaghetti bolognaise and beer, Dre and Darshan held an elliptical conversation. The girls drank Appletinis, picked at antipasto, and gossiped about mutual acquaintances in their field.

“So what’s your big rush this summer?” Dre asked, as he watched Darshan move his food around on his plate rather than eat it.

“In September I’m taking Catherine to Goa.”

“What?!”

“Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you,” Catherine remarked to Leticia. “We’re going for a month.”

“You’re taking her. . .to India.” Dre said with stunned amazement.

“You’re going to India?” Leticia exclaimed. “That’s wild!”

“Yeah, Kholi – that’s Dar’s cousin, the one who has a video store in Highland Park – he says the smell alone takes a week to get used to.”

“The big cities are like that,” Darshan observed, finally taking an actual bite of his meal. “But we’ll be on the Goa coast.”

“So what is it your family thinks you do, Dar?” Dre asked him, warming to a particularly mischievous tack.

“I’m a web designer.” At Dre’s incredulous laughter he replied, “Hey, I ain’t lying!”

“Lying by omission is still lying,” Dre quipped.

Darshan grimaced, then leaned in close, his voice suddenly hushed. “I figure if I ask Catherine to marry me in front of my family, she won’t turn me down this time.”

“Even if I liked her I still wouldn’t think that was a good idea.” Dre whispered in response.

“Where does your family live, Dar?” Leticia asked.

“In Panaji,” he replied. “It’s the capital.”

“Are you going to Bombay?” she then asked Catherine.

“Mumbai,” Darshan corrected gently. “We’re spending a day there, because you can’t fly directly to Goa from anywhere.”

“I wanted to take the train so I could see the countryside, but Dar says I wouldn’t like that.”

“Trust me, traveling by train in India is not glamorous, and not even comfortable, usually.”

“What an adventure!” Leticia enthused.

“Oh you ain’t kiddin.’” Dre murmured, then winced when Darshan kicked him under the table.


Dre and Leticia waited in Dre’s car while the other couple went to the convenience store next to the restaurant. When Dre saw Darshan emerge with a case of beer he grew uneasy. They got of the car and went over to Catherine’s Mercedes coupe.

“So what, there’s a party at your place?”

“No, just us.” Darshan answered, placing the beer in the trunk.

“Dude, I can’t stay all night, I have class and work tomorrow.”

“C’mon Dre,” Leticia pleaded, putting her hands on his shoulders. “I never get to hang out with anyone anymore.” She gave him a slight pout, her eyes wide and blinking. Recalling his earlier fatalism, he relented, free-falling apprehension causing his pulse to accelerate.

You’re already in trouble, what’s one more thing?

He looked over at a bag Catherine had placed in the trunk before getting into the car. It held an almost complete assortment of products by Hostess, but was comprised mostly of Twinkies, Snowballs, and Cinnamon Streusel cakes.

“Who did you say was a diabetic, again?” he asked Leticia, who just rolled her eyes and walked back to his car.

“So are you happy now, Princess?” he asked her, as they followed Darshan and Catherine back to their house in Simi Valley. “Are you getting what you want today?”

“Yes,” she answered quietly, and there was a trace of smugness in her tone, as if she knew better than to sound too triumphant.

“If I do anything, it’s not for you, just remember that.”

“Okay,” she replied, and he could tell by the look on her face that she didn’t believe him. Or chose not to believe that Dre was capable of caring for anyone but her. She had acted this way their entire lives and he reckoned there was no good reason for her to change, not as long as he kept coming along to rescue her. Then, a flash, in his mind, of the person he believed was attempting to rescue him, and the realization that she was probably completely incapable of doing just that.

Dre remembered their ranch house as being spacious and dim, because Catherine had covered most of the windows in dark fabric. Literally hundreds of candles of various shapes, sizes, and colors covered nearly every surface and she lit them all with a practiced ritualistic air. Incense, too. Dre smelled cardamom and coffee grounds in the streams of smoke which slithered through the air. He assisted Darshan with putting the beer into a cooler which resided on the back patio, then covering it with a layer of ice. The four of them sat on a long couch just on the other side of the dining area. Catherine sat cross-legged in the corner and dug through the plastic sack, extracting a package of Snowballs. Dre had to resist an urge to snicker at her as she ate the junk food and smoked a cigarette at the same time. Darshan had made coffee and provided mugs for each of them, placing a bottle of Kahlua on the table.

“Don’t you get shitfaced tonight, I need to be fucked.” Catherine warned him.

“Honey, that’s what I have Levitra for,” he told her, producing a goldenrod pill and washing it down with coffee after pouring a generous measure of the liqueur into his cup.

“Even with that you’re mostly worthless,” she snarked. “You’ve never been able to keep up with me.”

“Not for lack of trying, baby.”

“Shut up! Why don’t you guys go outside or something? I’m sick of looking at you.”

Dre and Leticia exchanged wary glances, but remained quiet. Catherine then stood up, crumpling a wrapper in one hand and grabbing Leticia’s arm with the other.

“Let’s bake something, Lettie,” she said, and pulled her off the couch and towards the kitchen.

Darshan got up and opened the screen door leading to the backyard. Dre gave Darshan a cynical look out on the patio. Darshan didn’t respond at first, just sat down on a dilapidated lawn chair with a faded cushion and lit a cigarette.

“PMS,” he said, finally. “I can always tell when her period is coming because the week before Catherine doesn’t want to do anything but fuck, eat, and fight.”

Dre sighed and sat down heavily in the chair next to him.

“You know, you’ve told me for years that you love her, but dude, that’s not what love is, letting her walk all over you like a fucking doormat.”

“Oh, and you’re an expert now?”

“I’m trying! I’ve met someone who actually seems to like me for who I am, she doesn’t give a shit that I live with my parents or sing in a restaurant, or any of that. She just cares about me.”

“But would you kill for her?” Darshan raised an eyebrow mockingly at Dre.

The class discussion had to do with romantic narrative convention.
“What is an element that every romance should contain?” the instructor had asked the class.
“A hero who would die for the one he loves.” one of the women replied, and a few of the others had nodded their heads in response.
“Oh please!” Dre exclaimed.
“You’re disputing this, Troublemaker?” their teacher inquired.
“A true romantic hero would kill for someone, not die for them.”
Out of the corner of his eye Dre saw that she smirked, slightly, and that’s when he truly knew that she was the one.

“I wouldn’t kill for anybody!”

“Yes you would – you’d do anything for Lettie, I know that.”

“No! She’s turned into a monster, just like your little princess and I can’t keep doing this.”

“You know, I seem to recall a night when you and I got shitfaced on tequila and agreed that we liked women who abused us.”

“Well yeah, that’s when it was the easiest to lie to you, I was just trying to make you feel better. I mean, do you remember the shit you said that night? It was fuckin’ embarrassing, man! To think that someone who physically embodies the name we carried, a true chingon, was in actuality a whiny-ass bitch who couldn’t be more than five feet away from his girlfriend without having a panic attack? That’s just pathetic!”

“All right!” Darshan suddenly snapped, yelling. “So what, so you’re better than me, Dre? I’m not the one who was fucking his cousin!”

“I don’t think the people on the Space Station heard you.”

“You can’t just pretend that none of this happened, okay?”

“I can’t hide shit anymore, man, I’m telling you! I feel like I’m losing my fucking mind and I can’t keep pretending. I did it with Lettie, I did it with Dex, and I just can’t. I’m done.”

“Do you know what’s going to happen to Lettie if you don’t look out for her?”

“I’ve tried, okay? But she doesn’t want to listen to me!”

“Dude, do you really think this was the kind of future I wanted with Catherine? But I sucked it up because I love her and was willing to make the sacrifice. You need to take care of Lettie because all of this is pretty much your fault to begin with.”

“Oh don’t pin that on me! I was just doing what she asked me to.”

“Just like I am. But it’s bad when I do it, is that it?”

“I didn’t mean –“ Dre stopped short, confused.

“Don’t you miss those days?” Darshan asked him, looking off into space.

“What?”

“The days when we could do no wrong.”

“I know you don’t have any boundaries, and I have very few, but c’mon – how can you possibly think that any of the things we did back then were right?” Dre asked him, leaning back in his seat, pushing his hair back from his face.

“And what could be more right than making the woman you love happy?”

“I don’t love Lettie like that!”

“You say you don’t, because you think it’s wrong, but I know you too well. You two belong together, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.”

“The days of us planning to run away together are long gone, dude.”

“Hell, moving to the Valley is like going to another planet. You come out here, I’ll find a house for the two of you to rent near us, you’re set.”

“What is this all about? Why are you suddenly so interested in my life now?”

“My proposition is this: I want you to work for me. Six months out of the year you’ll make movies with Lettie and Catherine, and the other six months you can do whatever you want to. You want to make an indie movie? Do it. You’ll have access to as much money and equipment as you want.”

“How much money are we talking?”

“Could you make a movie with $100,000?”

“Shee-yit, I could make two or three movies with that kind of money!”

“It’s yours.”

“I don’t want to work in porn, not even for you. No one will take me seriously.”

“Do it under another name – nobody has to know it’s you. We can be as secretive as you want.”

“If you’re fried, why don’t you just get out altogether?”

“Catherine isn’t ready yet – she’s still hoping to win an AVN award, or something. Then she thinks she can retire.”

“So you have enough money.”

“Dude, the amount of money we have is obscene. And I’m at the top of my tax bracket, but even that is not slowing down the profit train. I could run the business for you and you do the filming, I just can’t handle it all anymore.”

Dre paused, mulling over various points in his mind. From the living room he could hear Catherine and Leticia engaged in girl talk, which was punctuated by high-pitched exclamations and giggling. They were watching some makeover program, he could hear bits and pieces of the voiceover.

This look is not working for you.

He imagined Catherine reeling Leticia in with promises of easy shoots and unlimited access to a high credit line. Lettie wanted things easy, Dre knew that, she was too spoiled to aspire to anything which required even a modicum of effort. He blamed his uncle Ricardo for that, but he only had one son, Joaquin, who was also a disappointment in the greater neighborhood of their extended family. So Lettie was the one who received most of the attention, and who caused the most grief when she suddenly individuated herself as soon as she graduated. But there was a good reason for that, of course. And not the reason one would assume, if they knew of Leticia’s present employment history.

They had almost been caught plenty of times. Perhaps the most titillating situation of all arose out of her sister Flora’s Quinceanera. Lettie has worn a stunning dress even though she had not been selected as one of the damas, considered too old by then to be in the procession. She and Dre stared at one another from their respective pews in church all through the Misa de accion de gracias. Her dress was dark red, and Lettie’s mother was scandalized of course, but her father, ever indulgent, did not make her change her clothes, so she glowed in the light from the stained glass windows like banked embers. From the fires of Hell, Dre imagined.
And he loved the guilt, loved the absolute guilt of being a sinner while pretending piety. So did she. She wore her rosary when they had sex in her bed, underneath a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe, whose face portrayed an attitude of ecstatic martyrdom.
They suffered through the rest of the long, hot afternoon at the VFW. Dre had no appetite and didn’t want to dance with anyone if he couldn’t dance with Lettie; they had decided it was too risky to do so in front of their family. Dre believed Joaquin suspected something – he would sit in his room across from Lettie’s, watching the two of them intensely as they spent hours together - the primary excuse that Dre’s assistance was required because she was flunking algebra. During the crowning ceremony Dre went to use the restroom and literally tripped over Leticia as she loitered by the door.
“Hector brought his van,” she said, jangling a set of keys in her right hand.
“Let, no, we’re gonna get busted!” he exclaimed, whispering.
“Dude, this is gonna take forever, c’mon! I am going to die from boredom.”
“And Joaquin will take me out in the desert and shoot me in the head if he catches us.”
“Who’s the one with the pussy, Dre?” She shook the keys again for emphasis.
After checking the hallway to ensure no one could witness their departure, they ran out to the parking lot and found their uncle Hector’s van towards the back. He drove a converted Ford Econoline and it had every amenity, including a fairly spacious bed.
Leticia sat down, smoothing the skirt of her dress. Dre sat down beside her and they held hands.
“You look so fucking beautiful in that.”
She smiled, her dimples showing. “It is a rad dress, isn’t it?”
“Totally.” He kissed the top of her head. “Was Flora pissed when she saw you this morning?”
“No, that heifer thinks she looks perfect in that stupid dress Mami picked out. It’s disgusting!”
“Well, let her have her day. You’ll always be the most gorgeous girl in your family.”
“Aw mijo, I love you.”
He murmured in like response and hugged her. They had started to kiss when they heard voices right alongside the van. They froze, their eyes wide. Dre held up a finger to his lips. He couldn’t quite make out what was being said, but he did recognize the voice of Leticia’s brother.
Oh great, he thought, this is where I get killed.
The voices moved away after a few minutes and they heard Joaquin yelling her name from a distance. They sat perfectly still until silence descended once again. Attempting to calm down, they sat straightening their clothes when suddenly they heard someone trying the door handles of the van. They froze again, and Dre’s heart raced like a nitro-burning dragster. The doors were locked and the curtains drawn, but Dre could imagine Joaquin angrily circling the van, trying to get in.
“Lettie, if you’re getting high in there I will kick your ass!”
They knew they had the advantage unless Joaquin got crazy and decided to break a window. Eventually he gave up and they heard the crunch of his footsteps on the gravel of the parking lot as he walked back toward the building.
“So that’s what he’s been obsessed with all this time, he thinks you’re a pothead?”
“Dude, he’s the pothead, but yeah, he thinks I’ve been robbing his stash and giving it to you.”
“I’m not sure if I should be relieved.”
“You know what? We definitely need to fuck now,” she said, and he looked at her with a mix of lust and incredulity. “I mean, he already knows where I am, so let’s hurry before he brings Hector out here.”
Dre obliged, his mind half on the task at hand and half on the possibility of getting caught.
And that made it so much better.


Dre was seventeen, and the world was a very interesting place then. More interesting still when Darshan answered the ad Gordon placed in the Recycler, asking for a bass player. The members of Chingon were all the same age and looked a bit askance at the tall guy who was obviously older, but looking as though he had crawled out of an alley that morning and somehow managed to make it over to the rehearsal space in West Hollywood their drummer rented. But he could play, moreso than any of the other people answering the ad, and Gordon figured it wouldn’t hurt to have someone who looked like a badass in the lineup.

That was, until they got to know him.

Darshan was supposed to be working for his cousin who owned a video store in Highland Park; but more often than not, when Dex and Dre drove over to hang out and make his shift go faster, he’d be sitting out on the front steps on a smoke break, with customers in the store unattended.

“Dude, people are going to steal shit if you don’t watch them,” Dex would scold.

“Like I give a fuck,” he’d growl.

After work they’d sit around the local Ben Frank’s, where the waitresses were content to serve them nothing but coffee for as long as they wished. Usually Dex had enough money to buy them all a meal, because his mother kept him financially solvent though his father had kicked him out of the house for refusing to enroll in college. Their discussions generally involved all the ways in which they had upset their parents through the course of their lives, and Dar’s stories always won the prize. He’d act out his father’s lectures, complete with regional accent, which he assured them was a great deal more authentic than that guy on The Simpsons. Dre found it strange that Dar did not have any discernable accent, other than the ubiquitous SoCal nasal drawl.

“I used to have a British accent, because I went to a British boarding school. Then I got expelled, so I had a British tutor. Who got fired when my mother found us in a compromising position one night.”

“So they sent you here?” Dex asked him.

“That wasn’t their original intent, no. But it came down to either leaving the country or going to jail, and Kholi was the only one of our relatives abroad who was willing to take me.”

“Duuude, what did you do?” they exclaimed.

“A lot of things. But I got busted selling dime bags to an Interpol narc. It was good shit too, I was so pissed, because I was planning to keep half of it for myself. Man, the heroin in India? Pure. The drugs in this country totally suck, guys, take it from me.”

Dex and Dre looked at each other, both wondering what the hell did we get ourselves into? Darshan noted the look and snickered.

“Don’t worry, I’m not a junkie. Not anymore, anyway. Look, you can’t even see any tracks.” He held out his forearms for their perusal.

“And you wouldn’t if you used other places to shoot up,” Dre pointed out.

Darshan laughed, as if a certain suspicion had been confirmed.

“Yeah, you’re right. Remind me to show you sometime.”

“No thanks, dude.”

“Aw you’re no fun, Dre,” he teased, pouting.

Dex raised an eyebrow at the tone of Dar’s voice. In recognition of something that already existed, and wondering if Darshan had figured them all out, during his brief tenure. Yet another reason to watch him closely, he thought, but not wanting to call Gordon’s attention to anything just yet, because his first response would be to fire him, and Dex thought that Dar was the kind of guy you couldn’t just get rid of simply because he was trouble. Guys like that tended to take things very personally.

Darshan did, however, catch Dre and Lettie once, in the bathroom of a club they were playing. He had come looking for Catherine who bitched at him that she could take a goddamn piss without him holding her hand and even over the roar of canned music and conversation he heard a familiar gasp from one of the stalls. Noted four feet instead of two. Let his girlfriend go back to the bar and looked over the door, which was easy for him, being over six feet tall. But he had merely winked at Dre’s surprised expression, caught between shame and bliss as Lettie sucked his dick. His only observation came a while later, right before Chingon went on for their second set.

“Man, you Catholics are seriously fucked up,” he commented, putting his hands on Dre’s shoulders and whispering, a strange intimacy.

“Fuck off, Dar.”

His fingers dug into Dre’s shoulders, but his hold seemed proprietary rather than threatening. The deep purring tone again, directly into this ear.

“How do you live with yourself, hmm? How do you sleep at night?”

“Get the fuck off of me!”

“I’m just curious. I’m curious about a lot of things, actually.”

He then looked over at Dex, who was arguing with Gordon about something, as usual. He turned his scrutiny to Dre, looking at Dex, and chuckled. Dre imagined Dar laughed like he thought a rapist might: menacing and lewd.

“You just can’t keep your hands off of anyone you’re not supposed to have, can you Dre?”

In order to try and shut him up, Dre pushed Darshan into the hallway and down towards the back exit. The light above the door was burnt out and no one was around at the moment.

“You want to fuck with me, Dar? Is Catherine not enough for you?”

“I’m just curious, Dre. I’m so very curious about you.”

He pushed back with all the force he could muster and managed to slam Darshan up against the wall. But what followed didn’t appear to be a surprise to his tormentor. In fact, it was more than Dex had ever given him, despite the fact Dre knew their mutual feelings for one another were specifically identical.


Darshan reached into the cooler, which was alongside his chair, and pulled out two beers, handing one to Dre. They drank, and Dre was perfectly content to stop talking for a while, but a few things nagged at him.

“I thought you couldn’t go back to India,” he finally said to his friend.

“My uncle’s in the government. He had my record expunged. It’s so clean you could eat off it now.” He lit another cigarette and moved the cooler out in front of his chair so he could prop his feet up.

“Heroin trafficking, gone, just like that?”

“Just like that,” he drawled, flicking ash onto the concrete slab. “Money fixes things in India. Little things, anyway. The big things will probably be broken forever, but who knows? I’ve seriously considered moving back.”

Dre sat up in his seat and stared at Darshan, his mouth slightly agape.

“What?!”

“Dude, I’m so fucking sick of LA I could blow away the next person who cuts me off in traffic. I’ve had it.”

“You’re forgetting something, though.” He tilted his head in the direction of the house.

“No I’m not. When I take Catherine to Goa and show her everything, show her how she can live like a queen there, she’ll come around.”

“You must be psychotic, dude. There is no way she’s going to say, ‘yeah okay, let’s move to a third-world country and play house.’”

“And you’re forgetting my enormous powers of persuasion.”

“I’ve tried to forget, but no, I still have nightmares about the times you’ve persuaded me to do things.”

Darshan chuckled. Dre thought he always sounded vaguely obscene when he laughed. Moving his eyes to his right he could see the stare of the other, eyes narrowed as he took a drag on his cigarette, the coal flaring in the near dark.

“You know what? Life’s too fucking short to be sorry for anything, okay? Yeah, we’ve done some pretty fucked-up shit in our lives, but I regret nothing.”

“You just don’t care. You never think you’re wrong.”

“Well yeah, that too.”

In the end, that was the primary reason Dre still counted Darshan as a friend. He had never known anyone else so unconcerned with societal conventions or even larger questions of right and wrong. Dre projected an aura of dangerous possibility to the world at large, but in truth, everything he knew about the erotic pull of ambivalence and even revulsion he had learned from Darshan. Dar was capable of doing anything at any time and Dre found it irresistible.

But there was no place for such hijinks in a normal life. So the choice lay before him once again.

“Let her go,” Darshan said to him, leaning forward and placing a hand on Dre’s knee. Dre felt slightly hypnotized, a familiar shameful warmth radiating from his groin downwards. “Whoever she is, she’ll be better off without you.”

Dre wanted to say tell me something I don’t know but instead he said, “And what about me?”

“You’ve got us. You’ve always had us.”


(C’mon, try it just once. Then you can say you did and move on.)


He was sweating, realizing it wasn’t that hot. Or maybe it was too hot. Sometimes one’s body could wreck havoc when in panic.

Darshan squeezed his knee gently and delivered the killing phrase.

“You can have whatever you want, Dre.”

And given Dar’s powers of persuasion in all things, influencing people and events into a mélange of polymorphous perversity, Dre knew this to be true. Darshan could resurrect the past, influence the future, alter the present. There were so many things he missed, and had denied mourning their absence, in his quest to be normal. But he had to admit in finality that he just wasn’t normal at all, nor did he want to be. And there was always a price for getting what you wanted. It just depended on the negotiation process.

He looked away, but nodded. The hand squeezed again and the fingers moved in a slow sliding motion away from his leg.

“I bet the girls are ready for some fun, hmm? How ‘bout you?”

Tempted to test the boundaries already, he composed his face into a pout generally seen on men who suffered from satyriasis.

“You’re going to waste a perfectly good boner on Catherine? You’re such a fucking pussy, man.”

“Ah - still a little perv I see – but of course we all know that’s why Gordo kicked your sweet ass out of the band.” He stuck his tongue out at his friend, then chuckled again, the sound going straight to Dre’s balls. He stood up and moved toward the sliding door, then paused to see if Dre was following.

He was.

“Unless you have more than a girlfriend, it’s going to hurt, you know.”

“You’re going to be the one hurting, after six hours of that,” he retorted, pointing to the now-visible bulge in Darshan’s crotch.

“And you’ll be the one who won’t be able to walk tomorrow. So I’d call it even.”

Darshan tossed long black hair over his shoulders and smiled. His smile was something a great deal more than merely friendly.

Partnerships were to be preferred, after all. As long as the relationship could be said to be of equal sacrifice.