Dante - Daryl Banner Page 0,4

sigh.

A panicked look crosses his face. “Did I offend you? Wait. Why are you shutting everything off?”

I turn off the camera and eye him. “Boy, I am not a fucking sex dungeon.”

“Wait, wait, wait.”

“I’m a photographer. An artist. This is like my office. Those dildos that made your stomach drop straight out your ass? Those nipple clamps—y’know, the ones that bite …? They are my equipment. Props, I call them, because that is precisely what they are. Not toys. They’re a business expense I deduct from my yearly taxes, you get me?” I’m on fire. I’m hot. I can’t believe I fell for this innocent boy crap. “I am not a dungeon-owning horn dog who exists to satisfy some twink’s bondage fantasies.”

“I … I …” He frowns. “Wait a second. Am I the twink?”

I flick off the last light, then step back and gesture toward the door. “You know the way out.”

He stares at me unblinkingly with lips parted.

Even now, as mad as I am, I can’t escape the hypnotic tunnel those eyes of his cast me down. I already feel the sting of my own words, wondering if I should cave and take them all back.

He looks like he might shit a brick. Or cry. Or pass out. “I didn’t mean …” And his voice is small, and his chest, shrunken, as if there’s now a vacuum of space in his guts where his stomach used to be. “I’m sorry. I really, truly am. I was just curious, because … okay, I’ll be honest …”

“Oh, now you’ll be honest?”

“I saw a photo you did.” I watch his Adam’s apple dance with another hard, guilty swallow. “Of this guy … this muscular, tight-bodied guy … and he was tied up by his wrists and ankles to the four posts of a bed. He was wearing a wrestling singlet. Royal blue with white trim. And the big blue ear guards over his ears, white chinstrap, messy brown hair, head slightly turned … anguish in his face.”

The room stills at his description.

Or maybe it’s my throbbing heart that stills.

Or my breathing, which was only a second ago furious and jagged.

I know the photo he’s describing.

“Submission Hold,” I recite. “Or: Grappling Lesson with the Boy.”

He snaps out of wherever describing that photo took him, eyes meeting mine. “Is that what it was called? The photo? You know it? Oh.” He smacks his own forehead, blushing. “Of course you know it. It’s yours. That photo …” He shakes his head, his hand dropping off his face as he turns to gaze at the sling, as if picturing that wrestler caught in its binds, spread-eagle, struggling to pry himself free. “It defined something in me. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but … it made me feel something I … I couldn’t quite name. Something missing inside me. Just one look at that photo and … and there I was, strapped to that bed, helpless … and in heaven. I’ve never been a wrestler, ever, my whole life, never even had an interest in it. But …” He shuts his eyes as something takes him over. “I woke up that day, that day I saw your photo.”

I bring my eyes down his body, studying him in a whole new way—and not with animalistic lust. I’m seeing myself ten years ago, exploring the big, unknowable gay scene, finding my place, seeking a friendly face, desperate to belong somewhere—before learning, of course, that trying to belong somewhere is one of life’s greatest fallacies.

My life has never been about finding a place.

It’s about making my own.

“I just … I needed to come and meet you. See the source.” He holds the tip end of a leather strap as tenderly as a boyfriend’s hand, then lets it go. “I wanted to feel the way that wrestler felt in that … in that brilliant photo. You really do great work.”

Despite having had my mind made up about this guy just a second ago, I find myself annoyingly moved by his compliment. My “thank you” comes in the form of a subtle untightening of my jaw.

But it doesn’t change the fact that I’m still not what he’s looking for.

And that unfortunate fact is what tightens my jaw right back up. “Sorry, but taking part in some kid’s sexual awakening isn’t on my business card.”

The use of the word “kid” proves to be a clear sore spot. “I am not some kid,” he insists, squinting indignantly at me. “I’m nineteen years