So You Want to Be in Movies

"So, my agent said it was for some sort of commercials for the Halloween season."

"Yes, that's right. It's for commercial use to be released a few weeks before Halloween, yes."

I needed the work. The plays on Broadway were shutting down almost as fast as they opened. It was just bad luck, a bunch of new plays that weren't piquing the audience's interest and some tired old revivals. There was more creative work being done off Broadway and in some clubs. I liked doing those, but they didn't pay too well. I was barely getting by.

"I've looked at a bunch of résumés that were sent to me by the New York agents, and yours was one of the standouts. Good enough for us to pay your way down here."

"Yes, I was surprised to get a call from here. New York isn't exactly—"

"New York has a freer environment overall. It's where our best talent comes from."

I didn't want to argue myself out of a possible gig, so I didn't pursue that point. The pay would be good. Real, real good for the number of hours it should entail. And commercials. They were great exposure for guys trying to break into movies. Which was what I was trying to do. Me and thousands of other young, good-looking guys, I'd found. But I had talent. I'd been in two Broadway plays, one with a small speaking part. If either one had lasted more than two weeks, I would have been sitting pretty. And I was doing OK in Off Broadway and in the private clubs. Of course, the sooner I could get out of the private clubs, the better.

We were sitting in the out-door section of a café above the Virginia Beach boardwalk, and I was dividing my time between listening to the Holland guy and watching a volleyball game going on between muscle studs in their tiny Speedos below us. These obviously were guys more there to be seen than to play volleyball.

Andrew Holland was quite a looker too. He was the film producer who had paid my way down here. I was looking past him at the table down at the volleyball players and there wasn't much difference between him and them other than age—and I wasn't at all sure I didn't give him the edge on desirability.

He was the mature Paul Newman type—with watery blue eyes, good facials, and silver gray hair, which, on him, as was the case occasionally, made him look younger than a guy should be with a full head of gray hair. He had a nice smile, and I liked that he was keeping this interview balanced—selling me on his project as much as testing me for suitability for the gig. He had a smooth and easy delivery. A perfect salesman type, but one of million-dollar projects, not used Edsels. He also, from what I could see, was as cut—especially for his age—as any of the young guys at the volleyball net. He was wearing a silver-gray-colored sports coat, but under that was a form-fitting black polo shirt. It all went perfectly well with the watery blue eyes, open smile, and perfectly cut gray hair.

The only incongruity I noticed, and I had no idea how to even ask about it, was that he was wearing close-fitting black-leather gloves. It didn't seem to limit the dexterity of his hands, though. There had been no hesitation or awkwardness in picking up his beer glass. He seemed completely at home in the gloves. But I kept looking at those gloves as he talked.

I had no idea how I had gotten there. I was bound, naked, in a spread X, on my back, on a bondage table, my mouth gagged with a ball gag. A man in a devil's mask and black cape, but otherwise naked except for black-leather gloves and a studded chest harness, was standing next to the table, hovering over me, slowly stroking my cock. His build was mature and I could see the gray hair above the devil's mask, but his body was trim and well-muscled. He was hard, and what he was swinging was nothing to laugh at. I was already hard too and was raising my pelvis to the jacking, curling my trapped fingers and toes, and pulling hard at the bonds. Wanting to be free, but not for escape anymore. No, I wanted to do more in the sexual encounter. His stroking, going off beat now and then to make me shudder, was driving me crazy. Relentlessly stroking me, sending me high above the clouds. I came, but he didn't stop stroking. He slowed down from the crescendo he'd reached, but he didn't stop. It was painful at first, and I begged in muffled sounds through the gag for relief, but he didn't stop, bringing me hard again and then to another ejaculation. Pulling on my cock with that gloved hand. No sense of the passage of time, knowing only that he had been at it for a long time. Starting for a third time . . .

He was mounting the bondage table, straddling my chest. He freed me of the ball gag, cupped my head in his hands, and presented his hard cock for sucking. The pubic hair nesting his cock was black with streaks of gray. Curly; smelt of musk. My chance to participate more in the sexual encounter.

". . . specialty films, really."

My attention came back to the present. Holland was leaning over the table, deeper into a sales pitch. It wasn't a pitch he needed to give me. He had me at the fee quote—and the anticipation that it would be shown on TV. Commercials. Advertising I didn't have to pay for, one way or the other. And in New York, payment in the entertainment world didn't always come in the form of cash. If he wanted me to get up from this table and go with him to nail down the audition, I was prepared to go. I can't say I didn't want to go.

In the New York world, he'd said.

"Why Virginia Beach, down in Virginia?" I asked, not even aware of why I asked, but needing to get back into the conversation, needing not to reveal that I had been off into a disturbing fantasy. I was trying to keep my eyes off the tight-fitting black gloves. I thought that it would make him mad for me to draw attention them. But he was expressive when he talked. They were waving in front of my face. There was no way I could avoid looking at them.

"The Navy mostly—and production costs. Lots of naval presence here, and it's actually cheaper to bring whoever we need down from New York or out from Los Angeles than to pay the New York or California production prices."

Los Angeles. I ached to be in Los Angeles. In movies.

"The Navy? You do training films?"

"Yes, we do a lot of training films. Navy guys are naturals for that. That's sort of what this film is about too. Demonstrating how the technique we're showing is done."

My attention was arrested by the volleyball game down on the beach. It had been disbanded. There were still two studly looking guys down there, though. One was backed up against a light pole at the edge of the sand, his arms drawn above his head and his fists clutching the stem of the pole above him. The other guy was leaning close in to him with a hand on his waist, speaking low and seemingly intensely to the other guy. I was projecting the kiss—and was both titillated and surprised at the image occurring right out here on the open public beach. But they just stood there for a while and then both turned and walked off. They walked close together, though, the one guy's arm around the waist of the other guy, holding him in close to the hip and giving the impression of having full control. Climbing the steps, walking to the entrance to the ocean-side lobby of the hotel next to where we were sitting. The two guys turned their eyes to each other. The face I could see was of the guy being led. There were mixed signals there, I thought. He turned back toward the ocean front at the door, almost as if he was going to pull back, walk away. There were two hands on his waist now, though, turning him back to the Hotel entrance, gently pushing him inside.

I was bound wrists and ankles, standing facing and bound to a Saint Andrew's cross inside a room painted all in black. I was looking at a full-length mirror mounted on the wall across the room, so I could watch it all. I could see a mound of black material through the bottom of the legs of the cross that my legs were spread and bound to. The material spilled out around the edges of the cross limbs. It was moving, undulating, in a rhythm that I could feel all the way through my naked body. My cock had been pulled between my legs and was being sucked by an expert mouth—a mouth and throat that could take me deep and hold me inside, throbbing. Keep me gasping for breath. A hand laced my balls between its leather-covered fingers, pulling them out from my body and squeezing and rolling them. I got the full effect of my facial expressions through the V of the top of the cross—my mouth open and slack, my eyes slitted in combined pain and ecstasy. Breathing heavy, panting. I could clearly hear my own moans. My cock was free except that the hand worrying my balls had moved a gloved finger to encase the root of the staff. My entrance was being rimmed and flicked with a tongue. The tongue was pressing inside. The finger encircling the base of my cock tightened its squeeze. My balls were being rolled and pulled.

I could hear a voice murmuring weakly, "Fuck me. Please fuck me now." I only belatedly realized that it was my own voice.

And the answering laugh. I could not get the raspy answering laugh out of my mind.

When I had come, the figure rose behind me, and the mask of a devil face, topped with silver-gray hair, appeared over my shoulder. A black-gloved hand cupped my chin and pulled my head back, as I felt another gloved hand cupping my buttocks and then helping to guide the cap of a hard cock at the rim of my hole. A long cock slid and slid and slid up into me. I felt the sliver studs of the chest harness rubbing on my back. I cried out my welcome—"Yes, yes, YES!"—and began moving my hips against the building plowing of the cock inside me, pulling at my bindings, wanting some form of control and way to signal that I didn't need to be held captive to want this. A freeing that no form of begging was granting me.

"Excuse me. Exactly what sort of commercials are these?" I asked as I once more became aware of the film producer sitting across from me, leaning into me, smiling his mature Paul Newman smile, and, now, with a gloved hand on my thigh under the table, squeezing my thigh gently—in a rhythm that was reminiscent of the rhythm of the stroking in my St. Andrew's cross fantasy.

"Not commercials, exactly. Commercial films. Ones that make very good money and that could give you exposure for larger roles in larger films."

"I'm not sure I—"

I was getting the drift of this. Exposure. Exposure indeed. But I couldn't form words to respond before he broke in, pressing the sell. I didn't even know what I wanted to say. The feel of that gloved hand on my thigh was robbing my brain of thought.

"It was Jake Plaugher who put us on to your agent. Jake Plaugher is a friend of ours. He's made some films with his. I believe he is a special friend of yours too. Is that not so?"

Jake Plaugher. I tensed. He was saying that he knew what I let Jake Plaugher do to me. It wasn't just that this man wanted me to go with him to audition on my back for a film gig.

His voice was low, almost singsong in texture, drawing me in. "In and out, in and out—the slide of the cock—coupled with the helpless pull at the bindings. That's such a visual image, isn't it? Just like these gloves are. You haven't asked about the gloves. I wear them to provide a visual image of what might be, what is to come, what can be yours if you give yourself to me. And I'm a visual man." Holland's mature Paul Newman smile was mesmerizing, but something in the smile was changing. "And the image of giving over all control to another . . . to a real expert in the sensual . . . a man who can give you what you need . . ."

He didn't finish that sentence. I had interjected a strangled moan, surfaced not only from the images he had spun but also from the black-gloved hand he had moved to my basket. I only then was aware that I had slid down on my chair, my tailbone at the front edge, to permit the hand, which had been slowly working its way up my thigh, to reach my crotch. I had raised one of my feet to his chair, resting it beside his rump, and he was gripping my ankle in his other gloved hand, holding it there, tightly, in thrall, for a brief moment. No matter how brief the moment, though, I felt the sense of the imprisonment, of the control he was asserting.

"Come," Holland said, rising, and putting out his gloved hand. "The studio isn't far from here. We can have you back on a plane to New York this evening. We've arranged for Jake Plaugher to meet you at JFK upon your return and to put you up for the night. I understand Jake has unusual ways to put you up. We can be just as inventive as Jake is, though—in fact, you might decide you are too exhausted to accept Jake's offer. But it will be an exhaustion that leaves you humming. And, who knows, maybe you won't want to return to New York at all."

Hearing his raspy laugh—a shudderingly familiar laugh—at his own joke, I looked up into his face. Was this the face of the man I had sat down at the table with?

"Come be a part of our Halloween special. Come. I can fulfill your darkest fantasies—and immortalize them on film. You do have dark fantasies, don't you?"

He knew. I could almost believe now that he had invoked them.

Seeing him now, the expression on his face, the change that had come into it, I wondered. The man in my fantasies. Was he wearing a mask at all in those fantasies—or was this the face of that man?

Trembling, I rose, and put my hand—and the next several hours of my time and freedom; only that, if I was lucky—in his black-leather gloved hand as he turned me with the other hand on my waist and guided me out of the café and into the backseat of a chauffeured black limousine.