Milked

Loren | when your world crashes.

I thought hard about what happened as the oxy wore off. I tried to remember as much as a could, but I must have experienced a true blackout, because I could only remember the beginning of my time with Creepy Vanilla Mint Guy, and the arrival of Shane. The way Shane had looked at me.

I remembered Creepy Vanilla Mint Guy telling me what had talked that morning. We most certainly had not.

I had my suspicions, so I Googled myself. Though I often looked at the comment sections of Pornhub, I rarely Googled myself, afraid of what I might find. That fear was perfectly justified right then, because what do you know: I found a Twitter account for Logan Smash with lots of followers. Recoiling, and not ready to see what this Logan Smash was saying on Twitter, I called Devin on my cell. He answered right away. "What's up, Loren?"

"When you said you were getting a raise that one time, what was it for?"

"Vaughn doesn't want me to tell you."

I already knew the answer, but still I said, "Fuck Vaughn. Fucking tell me."

"Okay, okay. Sheesh. He said that if I maintained a Logan Smash Twitter account, he would pay me more."

I squeezed my cell in my hand. "What the fuck, Devin!"

"What? It's not like you wanted to do it."

"I didn't not want to do it because I didn't want to put in the fucking work. I didn't want to do it because I don't want Logan Smash to be on Twitter!"

"Calm down, Loren. Everyone loves Logan Smash being on Twitter."

Still on my computer, I started scrolling through Logan Smash's tweets. That morning, Devin had tweeted, "I'm so hard. If you retweet this, I might just use you to get myself off."

There were over two-hundred retweets, and one of them said, "Loren, I think I've decoded your latest message ." Devin had even responded by saying, "I bet you have! Secret messages for you, babe."

"Are you really encouraging people on here?" I asked Devin.

"Vaughn says that a little bit of interaction with the fans maintains subscriptions."

"Jesus Christ, Devin, one of these guys is a legit maniac. It's the stalker who sends me those weird letters. You can't just lead him on like that!"

"Whoops," Devin said, innocent-like, conveying he in no way understood the severity of the situation. "I might have exchanged some private messages with some people, too."

I felt like crying. Likely discomforted by my silence, Devin said, "What's the worst that could happen?"

I hung up then, because the worst already had happened.

I wanted to go to Shane, to tell him I hated myself and I'd made a horrible mistake and I felt sick and I wanted him back, that he was perfect and I would do whatever it took to deserve him.

It took bravery, but I got an uber to his house, still high and probably still looking high, which made driving another tremendously stupid decision to add to my never-ending list of bad decisions. The sun would be setting soon, and the approaching night was making me feel more upset than I already was, like the sun was taking any cheer left in the world with it.

When Shane opened his door, I could see Meg behind him.

"What are you doing here?" he said, and his tone was harsher than I'd ever heard it.

"Look, I'm sorry about what happened back there. I was high, and—"

"Yeah, you get high a lot. Remember last time you were high, when you told me you feel the same way about me that I felt about you?"

"I do feel the same," I said quietly, and the words seemed to lack confidence, even though I knew they were true. Really, I lacked confidence.

"You don't know what you feel, Loren. You stop feeling. That's what you told Meg you do. You drop out with pills. And when you don't take pills, you go to a pretend place in your mind. You stop feeling so you don't have to suffer. But you've been doing it so long, you're incapable of feeling. That's why you do the things you do, even though you don't need to. You torture yourself, again and again, and among the many reasons I can't comprehend, there is one I know: you don't fucking feel."

I could feel my throat constricting. "Shane, please..."

"There's an article about you in the school newspaper. It even has your picture in it. Now everyone knows about Logan Smash. But that's really what you wanted, isn't it? I know how vain you are. You have such a low sense of self-worth that you need to fill it up with vanity."

I felt like crying, because no, that wasn't what I wanted at all. My worst fear had been realized: I had been outed as a gay porn star. Scary Jock Guy was probably the culprit.

But, as bad as that was, my worries about where I stood with Shane were greater. Things could be complete shit, but as long as I had him, I had something to look forward to in life.

"I think you should leave," he said. "And don't come back."

"Are you being serious right now?"

He swallowed, and though he tried to stand erect and confident, I could tell he was shaking by looking at his hands and listening to his voice as he said, "Yeah. I've thought a lot about this, and I've realized that I'm better than this. I don't deserve to sleep with a guy who eats other men's assholes for money." It looked like it hurt him to say it, like he was on the verge of tears.

But it hurt me worse.

I knew, because there was a sound effect, perceptible only to me but perceptible nonetheless. Like large object zooming toward me, its sound getting louder and higher, preparing me for the imminent collision, like a countdown. Three, two, one, life as I knew it was now over.

I said, "Fine." And I said it like the badass I tried to be. 

A few minutes later, after the same uber had turned around and picked me up to take me back to my apartment Shane called. I ignored it. I didn't care about him, didn't care about his words, didn't care about him being better than me and me being the scum of the earth who eats other men's assholes for money.

But when I got home, I cried.

I cried like a fucking girl.

Sure, Shane hadn't been the hugest fan of my career choice, not since he fell in love with me, anyways. But that was because he didn't want to share me. It wasn't because he thought it was immoral or disgusting. But the way he'd just insulted me made me think it was, and it fucking hurt to have my biggest supporter suddenly turn on me like that.

And it fucking hurt to think that maybe I'd just lost somebody who could have given me Happiness. That maybe I'd had Happiness all along, and I hadn't realized until now when it was gone.

Stop crying. Life as you knew it is over, but you're fucking fine. You didn't like your life anyway. You haven't liked it for a while. Something needed to change, and it did. Now you're on your way to a better life.

A better life.

My phone started vibrating then, and I looked onto its screen to see Vaughn's name. "Yes?" I tried to sound like I hadn't just been sobbing.

"Hey kid. Look, I know your most recent shoot wasn't that long ago, but fans are begging for your stepdad to fuck you again, and Bjorn Anderson is only in town until next weekend. Think you have the stamina for another weekend of fun?"

A better life.

"Fuck it all. Why not."