A Very Stan and Gus Christmas
by Jessica Freely
It was a wet Christmas Eve. Gus, newly eighteen and newly dropped out of high school, trudged through half-frozen slush toward the piece of shit flophouse motel room he and Stan were currently calling home. It was dark already, his back hurt from unloading trucks for five bucks an hour under the table, and the slush seeped in through the holes in his sneakers, but he had forty bucks in his pocket and warm blowjob waiting for him when he got in.
And that wasn’t all. This morning, when Stan had rolled over to bid him a bleary goodbye, he’d told Gus to come straight home after work. “Well, not straight,” Stan had elaborated. “I’d never ask that of you. Just get your ass home. I’ve got a big surprise.”
Every day with Stan was a big surprise. Just last month, Gus was certain they’d be evicted, but at the very last minute, Stan had somehow come up with the two-hundred bucks rent they owed their landlord. Gus still had no idea how he’d pulled it off, but he suspected criminal activity. With a mixture of excitement and dread that he was becoming very familiar with, Gus wondered what Stan was up to now. He hastened his stride as the neon sign for the Shady Doze Holiday Motel hove into view.
Stan met him on the balcony outside their room; Number 609, sixty-nine with a snowball, Stan called it. “Hey, Tons o’ Fun, what the fuck took you so long? I’ve been waiting all day,” he greeted Gus. To emphasize the urgency of the situation, he grabbed Gus and started humping his thigh. “You are going to cream when you see this. I know Christmas ain’t until tomorrow, but fuck it. Who can wait that long? Come on!”
Stan dragged Gus to their room and opened the door with a flourish. “Merry Christmas!”
Gus stood in the doorway of their room, unable to believe his eyes. In the corner beside the television set stood an enormous, cotton candy pink Christmas tree, and beneath it, boxes, one piled on top of another, all wrapped in silver and pink foil wrapping paper, embossed with reindeer, no less. “Fucking-A,” said Gus.
Stan nodded in supreme satisfaction. “Yeah. See? Just because my mom is a hippie bitch who doesn’t believe in celebrating the birth of Jesus doesn’t mean I don’t know how to fucking do Christmas. Now don’t go getting all weirded out because you didn’t get me nothing, or because you did and it’s some kind of pathetic, gift of the Rabbi type of thing where you sold your beard hair to buy me a cock ring or something. Not to worry. You’ve been working so hard, baby. I know you don’t have time to go to the mall, and I already know what I like, so I did the shopping for both of us.”
Gus felt numb as he walked into the room and sank down on the side of the bed, staring at what appeared to be Celine Dion’s Christmas tree, somehow magically transported to their seedy little motel room. “Stan…”
“I know, I know, you’re dying to start opening stuff. Here, start with this one.”
Stan handed him a box that was nearly as big as he was. With trepidation, Gus tore the silver foil wrapping off of it, to reveal… “An electric guitar?” No, surely he was mistaken. That was just the box Stan had used to wrap the gift in.
“Go on, open it! Open it!” Stan looked like he was about to pee his pants.
Gus pried the stapled cardboard flap up and pulled out, oh Sweet Jesus, an actual electric guitar. It wasn’t no Strat or nothing, but it was a thing of beauty just the same: gleaming black, with white detailing. “But, Stan…”
“Wait, there’s more, there’s more. Here, open this one!” Stan shoved a thicker, squatter box at him.
With a sinking feeling, Gus unwrapped it. An amp. Of course. “Stan…”
“And check this out.” Stan grabbed a much smaller package and tore the wrapping off like a terrier going after a rat. It was a tambourine. He lifted it up, shook it, and the bells rang. He swiveled his hips and gyrated about the room, tapping and shaking. His jeans were baggy, his T-shirt too small. The jeans rode down and the shirt rode up, baring his midriff. Mesmerized, Gus watched his belly undulate. God.
“We can form a band,” said Stan. “There’s this guy next door? He plays drums. How does this sound for a name? Post Apocalyptic Scenario.”
They’d need a base player. For a moment, watching Stan dance, the motel room faded away and Gus heard the roar of the crowd, smelled the beer and the sweat and the electric charge from the equipment. He felt the heat of the lights as he rocked out and made that sweet baby wail. What should he name it? Hieronymus, he decided. The guitar was definitely a Hieronymus.
He was broken out of his daydream by Stan crawling into his lap and pushing him down onto the bed. Gus fell back and turned his face from side to side, letting Stan’s long, soft blond hair trail across his face. Stan hovered over him, braced on his arms. “Isn’t this the best Christmas ever?”
Gus was pretty sure there was something he was supposed to be worrying about, but at the moment he couldn’t think of what it was. He nodded. He reached up, and drew Stan down, and kissed him. He was already half-hard from Stan’s dance, and his lovers hot, agile tongue in his mouth did the rest. Gus rocked his hips, poking Stan in the hip with his needy erection.
Stan chuckled, running his hand up under Gus’s sweatshirt and undershirt to pull and pinch at his nipples. Gus gasped. Stan pushed his clothes up and bit and licked his way up Gus’ belly. “Mmm. You’re yummy, tummy.” His head shot up. “Oh! That reminds me. Wait! Wait’ll you see this!”
He leaped off of Gus and burrowed beneath the tree again, skinny ass poking out. Gus was all set to just attack him right where he was, but then Stan emerged once more with another large, oddly shaped package. He shoved it onto Gus’ lap, bumping his erection painfully. “Ow! Watch it.”
Stan grinned. “Heh. Open it.”
Frustrated, Gus tore the paper. It was a basket full of food -- exotic food. A canned ham imported from Poland; port wine cheese spread; smoked oysters; jumbo cashews; Danish butter cookies… Gus’s stomach rumbled. He suddenly realized how hungry he was. He was about to snag the ham and crack it open when his eyes lit on the price tag for the whole basket, stuck to the side on a gold sticker: $120.00. Oh yeah, that’s what he was supposed to be worrying about. “Jesus, Stan, how much did you spend on all this stuff?”
Right away, Stan straightened, and got that stiff-backed stance that meant he was offended. “Don’t worry about it, Gus, I used my own money.”
And where exactly did that money come from, Gus wondered. But, one argument at a time. “But Stan, I just started this job. Rent is due at the first of the month and there’s no work for the rest of the week. I won’t have enough.”
Stan stared at him, face still but his mind going a mile a minute, Gus could tell. “You don’t work the rest of the week?”
He’d been counting on Gus’s pay for the rent, so he’d splurged. More than splurged. Anxiety combined with Gus’ low blood sugar to loosen his mouth. “Shit, Stan, how much did you spend on all of this? Five-hundred bucks? More?” Even as the words poured from his mouth, he regretted them, and knew that some of what was pissing him off about all of this was the fact that somehow, Stan kept on coming up with money for the things they needed, while Gus had been unable to get a job until just this week. But he couldn’t stop. “How many months of rent did you just flush down the toilet?”
“The toilet? Flushed down the toilet? That’s what you call this? Fuck you, man!”
“We don’t need all this stuff, Stan! Don’t worry, we can take it back.”
“Take it back? Fuck that!” Stan grabbed his coat. Uh oh. He shrugged into it and then picked up the ham and threw it at Gus so Gus had to either catch it or get hit with it. “Eat something you hypoglycemic shit head. I’ll get you your goddamned rent money.”
The door slammed, and he was gone. Gus sat there, cradling the ham, staring at the pink Christmas tree and the torn wrapping paper strewn around the floor. What? What the fuck had just happened? Something niggled at Gus’s memory. Just because my mom is a hippie bitch who doesn’t believe in celebrating the birth of Jesus. Oh, fuck. A year ago, Gus had been living with Stan and his mom. Stan’s mom was what you’d call a hands-off parent. As in keep your fucking hands off my stash, you little brat. No, she didn’t celebrate Christmas, but it wasn’t because of any religious or ethical scruples. It was because it interfered with her ability to lay on the couch getting high and watching reruns of HR Puff-n-Stuff. Gus sighed. Stan had wanted to make a big deal out of Christmas because this was the first time he could. And Gus had shit all over it.
Of course there still was the matter of the rent. What was Stan talking about when he said he’d get the rent money? It sounded like he was going to go out to the ATM or something. What was that about? Well, it was time to find out. Gus put on his coat, grabbed the bag of jumbo cashews, and went out.
Stan was nowhere in sight, but the door to the room next to theirs was open a crack. As Gus approached, it opened wider, to reveal a short guy maybe a couple of years older than him and Stan, lean and muscular, dressed in a leopard print Speedo and nothing else. “Hey, you have a fight? Christmas ain’t no time to be fighting with your loved ones, man.”
Gus stopped. He was still horny, hungry, and pissed. “What the fuck business is it of yours?”
The guy lifted his hands in the universal gesture of innocence. “Hey, man, the walls in this place are fucking thin. What can you do?”
Gus stared at him a sec. An idea came. “Are you the guy who plays the drums?”
“Yeah, man. Hey, you want to come in, smoke a bowl of human kindness? It’s cold out here. I’m fucking freezing my nads off.”
Gus glanced at the empty parking lot, the street beyond. He had no idea where Stan had gone, but maybe this guy did. “Sure.”
The room was sweltering hot, and retrofitted with a tiger print bedspread, zebra throw pillows, there were even some strips of leopard print fabric pinned to the drapes. “So you must be Gus. I’m Billy Pips.” He held out his hand.
Gus shook with him. “Hi.”
Pips caught Gus looking around the room. “You like my decoratin’ job? This here is my lair.” He extended one hand, fingers outspread, clawing at the air. “Rowr!”
Gus leaned back. Pips laughed. “Hey, everybody’s got their own thing, right man?”
Gus nodded, said nothing.
“Have a seat, have a seat! I’m glad I finally get to meet you.”
Gus sat down in a sagging seventies era armchair with a safari print throw draped over the back. Pips produced a ginormous bong, filled it from a stash in an old margarine container, and blazed it to life.
“Mmm,” He grunted, handing the bong to Gus. He leaned back on the bed, exhaling smoke and giving Gus an angle on his leopard-print-swathed doolies that he might have enjoyed if this guy didn’t give off such a weird fucking vibe. “It’s good. Go ahead.”
Gus hit the bong. With his jangled nerves and his empty stomach, it hit him hard. His head started to swim before he even exhaled.
“Stan really loves you, man.”
Gus stared at Pips. It suddenly dawned on him that if the walls were thin enough for him to hear them fighting, they were thin enough for him to hear them other times too. Shit. Gus tore open the bag of cashews and started stuffing his face. He didn’t offer any to Pips, which was kind of fucked up since Pips had gotten him high, but he was in no mood.
Pips laughed, shaking his finger at Gus, which did nothing for Gus’ incipient paranoia. “Fuck man, you should see your face right now.” He rolled backward, his knees drawn up, laughing and rocking back and forth on the bed. His face turned bright red and tears leaked from his eyes and he just kept on laughing. Gus, annoyed at first, began to worry that he was having some kind of fit.
“Ah! Ahaha.” At long last, Pips stopped laughing. He lay, spread-eagled on the bed for a moment then sat up, shaking his head and wiping the tears from his eyes. “Don’t worry, none, Gus. I got no problem with love in any form it cares to take.”
At another time, Gus might have been touched by the sentiment. But at the moment he was too squicked out over the idea of Pips listening to him and Stan fuck. “Look,” he said, hoping to bypass any further unnecessary conversation. “Do you have any idea where Stan might have gone?”
Pips shrugged. “That all depends.”
Gus sighed. “He talks to you, though, right? I mean, he knew you played drums…”
“Oh yeah, we talk. Stan’s a sociable guy. He’s even borrowed a couple of outfits from me. We’re buddies, Stan and me.”
“Outfits?”
“Thing I don’t get is, big fella like you, got a boy who loves you like that, out there earning for you every day, and you don’t offer him no protection. What’s up with that? ”
The chair and everything beneath it fell away from Gus, and he didn’t understand why until he realized he was standing. The cashews fell to the floor. “Earning. Where?”
“I think he mostly hangs out at the Lucky Dollar. Rough crowd. Hey, you mean you don’t know?”
But Gus didn’t answer him. He was already on his way out.
The Lucky Dollar was on Tenth and Cross, a little less than a mile from the Shady Doze Holiday Motel, and not on any convenient bus routes. Gus ran as much of the way as he could, huffing and puffing in the deepening cold of the night. It was still sleeting, the ice crystals gleaming like silvery shooting stars in the light of the occasional streetlamp.
Gus clung to the hope that Stan was selling drugs, nevertheless, his pessimistic nature directed his steps to the alley behind the Silver Dollar, where there was a little awning bordered by a cheap wooden trellis that the owner had erected in an aborted attempt to create an outdoor patio. The fact that it was in an alley kind of turned people off from actually drinking out there, but it was a convenient spot for quick sex. Gus knew because he’d lost his virginity to a sixty-five year old tranny in that very spot three years ago.
Now, he rounded the corner and, though his view of the alcove was blocked by a dumpster, he heard the unmistakable sounds of head being given. Suddenly his heart was in his mouth and he wanted nothing more than to turn around and run, all the way back to the Shady Doze. If he didn’t see it, he could pretend he didn’t know.
But his feet betrayed him, taking that last step without explicit instructions from his brain. And there at the far end of the alley was Stan, on his knees on the wet pavement, his back to Gus, going down on a guy in a Red Wings jacket. The trick grabbed Stan by the ears and pulled him down hard as he thrust up. “Go on, take it.”
Stan gagged, shook his head, pulled off of him. “Jesus, ease up, man.”
“Fuck you, faggot. You got my money, you’ll take it anyway I want to give it to you. And I want to fuck your throat, so open wide, bitch.”
“Fuck that. That deep throat shit ain’t for real. They fake that crap in the porno movies, man, where you been? Now look, I know what I’m doing and I give great head so just relax, baby, and let me do my job. You won’t be disappointed.”
“Listen whore, you don’t get to tell me what to do. You want me to go back inside and tell Owen you’re turning tricks out of his place without cutting him in on the take? That what you want?”
Gus never would have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. Stan backed off. His shoulders slumped. “No. Okay.” He stared at the pavement for a second, then looked up at the guy again. “Okay, just be quick, okay?”
Gus was about to call out and put a stop to this when the trick hauled off and punched Stan in the side of the head. Stan sprawled sideways and even as Gus ran down the alley toward them, the guy had Stan flipped on his stomach and was hauling down his jeans. “That train’s left the station, bitch. I’m riding you bareback now, and you ain’t gonna do nothing about it.”
That was when Gus collided with him at full steam. The trick went flying, hit the wall and bounced off, fell to his knees. Gus grabbed him by the hair and pasted him in the face. Blood spilled from his split lip. Gus was winding up for another one when he heard Stan moan. He kicked the asshole in the gut and turned.
Stan was on the ground half-conscious, his jeans around his knees. “Whaa--? Fuuu--!”
Gus hurriedly pulled Stan’s jeans back up over his hips, zipped him up and lifted Stan into his arms. Stan’s head lolled against his shoulder. The trick stood half bent over, breathing hard, watching them. It had gotten colder. The sleet finally turned to snow -- tiny, perfect crystals drifting down from on high.
Stan moaned again and opened his eyes. “Gus?”
“Yeah?”
They stared at one another for a long instant, and then Stan said, “Baby, put me down, and get that motherfucker’s wallet.”
#
“Three forty, three sixty, three eighty -- shit! Four hundred and twenty bucks including what he gave me to blow him!” Stan danced around Gus in circles, waving the money. Snow dusted his hair and clung to his eyelashes.
Gus sighed. Stan gave him a shrewd look, pocketed the money and fell into step beside him. “I didn’t want you to know.”
“I thought you were selling drugs or maybe working some short cons.”
Stan nodded. “Do you hate me now?”
Gus stopped walking. “What? No.”
Stan shrugged. “I’m a whore.”
Gus didn’t have an answer for that. “I feel like a total shit for letting you support me like that. I had to find out from that Pips guy.”
Stan grinned. “You met Billy?”
Gus glared at Stan. “Are you going to keep doing this?”
Stan shrugged eloquently. “I want us to be together.”
“I don’t want you to turn tricks.” Gus hesitated. “But… if I can’t stop you, then, at least let me come along so I can protect you.”
Stan stared at him. “Do you mean that?”
Gus swallowed. It would be hard to just stand by while Stan serviced some other guy. But it was better than what had happened tonight. He nodded. “I don’t want you getting hurt again. Or--“ Shit. He’d though of something else and now that he had, he had to offer, “--Or I’ll do it, instead. I’ll blow some guys. But you gotta tell me how much to ask for ‘cause I’ve got no fucking idea.”
Stan got the sappiest, most lopsided grin on his face that Gus had ever seen. His eyes shined as bright as the snow beneath the streetlight. He grabbed Gus and held him tight. Gus heard a muffled sob.
“Jesus, Stan.”
“Just shut up! That was the most beautiful thing anyone’s ever said to me. If you say one more wonderful thing, I’m not gonna be able to take it.”
Gus shut up, and let Stan cling and cry. A Chevy Avalanche drove by and the occupants hooted and hollered at them.
Stan lifted his head from Gus’s shoulder to shout after them. “Fuck you! Your truck is pregnant and Chunks of Love here is the father!” He sighed and rested his cheek against Gus’ chest again. Gus’ stomach rumbled. “Hey, let’s go home and eat.”
Gus nodded and they made their way back to the Shady Doze, while all around them the snow fell, blanketing the city and making everything, for one night anyway, beautiful.
xxx
copyright © 2008 by Jessica Freely
Thanks Bean!
Posted by: Jessica Freely | December 25, 2008 at 10:35 AM
dude that was sweet. that was the best slashy christmas ever. i love that stan is such a hyperactive freak. it's adorable.
Posted by: Bean | December 24, 2008 at 05:24 PM