The light broke through the busted Venetian blinds of Adrian's bedroom at around 3pm, as the winter day slowly snuffed itself out into sunset. Such were the perks of living in a western-facing apartment as a person who largely worked nights, it woke you up just in time to be late for a regular person's life. 

He scrunched his forehead together with irritation, but accepted reality as he began to feel the red creases on his face and his abdomen, left there by the $15 Dollar General sheets. He rose, chugged from the half-filled bottle of Gatorade on his nightstand, and then slapped his feet on the cold floor to make his way to the bathroom. 

While he pissed, Adrian fished his phone off the side of the bathtub and opened his calendar, drawing forth the evening's events. He had to meet an old client, Vincenzo, downtown at about 8:15. Vincenzo was always travelling between his family's home in Brazil and the suburban office where he worked, but he liked to stay in the city for the boys. They'd met at some godforsaken hotel party Adrian had been hired to work, off of Fetlife, and had been circling one another's orbits ever since. 

Grumbling and reaching for his toothbrush with one hand, Adrian deigned to open Signal to find Vincenzo had messaged him. 

A photo of a dripping, nonsensically wide cock. A few thick-thumb-typo'd sentences about stuffing Adrian's bussy hole, though Adrian knew that with Vincenzo, that only ever meant his pussy. He was a straight-acting bisexual man with a business degree and a highly conservative family. A sweet lad who liked knocking Adrian around a bit, always blushing in astonishment at himself while he did. He was on painkillers for an old soccer injury that made it nigh impossible for him to come. 

It would be a long night, full of erotic ministrations and cuddling, and the worst part was that Vincenzo was so likeable and reasonable about everything that Adrian felt he didn't have license to really be all that mean or that mad. 

"I gotta get my life together," Adrian lamented, flipping back to the calendar to further stress himself out. 

After Vincenzo there was dancing at a new bar in Roger's Park. Dungeness was an all-gender BDSM club that had replaced the old gay leather bar the queer intelligentsia of the city had cancelled for being racist. That was good, doubly so because its new, feminist, sober-friendly replacement paid an unsustainable $200 for a night of ass-shaking on all fours from within a square, steel cage with a plush floor. Adrian knew the going was good until it could not go anymore, so he had to take the job every weekend until the bar inevitably closed for its ridiculous overhead and inability to attach a sufficient markup to a $4 glass of mulled tea. 

Maybe it would be better to not have such good judgement and so much self-control. If he were stupider, Adrian wouldn't have to work so very hard. 

After Dungeness there was Allan, a security guard who worked the second shift and would meet Adrian in a car by the club for an unceremonious handjob. They might drive through the park a bit, staring into the night, or hit up the a Wendy’s drive-through after. It was a ride home that earned money rather than taking it, and so Adrian, sensible to a fault, had no choice but to accept it. 

He pulled a washcloth over his face, smoothed his eyebrows, and ran a tube of clear gloss over his lips. Adrian was 31 this year but he allowed clients to project that he was 23, 21, 27. Occasionally a desperate enough bottom would conjure him into a mature 35, which Adrian could pull off with the right sweater vest. Relating to anybody was an unbearably taxing performance. There was no reason not to make a little money off it. 

After he’d pulled on his jeans and started to warm his sleeping muscles under a cappuccino-colored henley, Adrian’s friend Tanya texted him. Like him, Tanya was an “accountant,” but she did most of her work on people’s screens. He was envious of the seeming comfort, and the endless flexibility, but Adrian knew that a career on OnlyFans and JustForFans was simply not fated for him, given how much he hated being on his phone. He was born in the wrong generation, he liked to say extravagantly. He should have lived in the heydays of pre-Code, openly gay Hollywood, or an imaginary AIDs-free 80s. 

-i need a 3rd for a cuckolding scene tonite, Tanya’s text read. My collab’s only in town for today 

Nobody who paid for videos wanted to see Adrian top, but in the right pair of slacks and with his hair pushed back, he could pass for a pathetic middle-aged straight man whose wife, played by Tanya, was getting plowed by the straight bull Colton McMain. It wasn’t Adrian’s favorite role to play – to be positioned as both a cast-aside cuckold and straight was almost too much indignity to bear – but it was so much easier than actually fucking anyone. If the job paid close to what the rest of Adrian’s night did, he’d have snatched it up eagerly. But it wouldn’t. 25% of Tanya’s final take on the video? No way. 

-sorry. He texted. Id love an easy gig like that but i have b2b clients all night. Let me know if you have anything else later this week tho. 

She gave a thumbs up. And then, I’ll ask Mark. 

Adrian cracked an Odwalla and grumbled at his cat. Fucking Mark. Top 5% on OnlyFans with half of Adrian’s charisma and truly terrible stick n’ poke tattoos. Gay for pay and neither convincing or appealingly desperate about it. And all because he had a dick! 

Adrian looked in the mirror, parting his dark hair and rubbing the puffiness from the tissue around his eyes before withdrawing his house keys from the ceramic bowl on the front table. In his pocket were condoms, lube, electrical tape, his rent check, a work phone equipped with Signal and Apple Pay, gum, a package of wasabi peanuts, and men’s sanitary wipes. He had to drop off his rent check, go to the gym, shower there, grab a bite to eat, and then haunt the bar by Vincenzo’s hotel for a bit to see if he could shake somebody down for a drink, a smoke, or another quick, paying handjob. It was going to be a miserably long night. 

$100,000 in student loans from his philosophy program. Adrian had to remind himself of that. It was a leaden collar around his neck, an embarrassing brand of adolescent shame. Why did he ever think he was going to become a philosopher? Why did he ever believe that a life of languid thinking in bed and taking men’s cocks in his ass would be remotely glamorous? 

A gig was a gig, and all life pursuits lost their splendor when repeated often enough or if turned obligatory. Adrian wished he could switch his brain to airplane mode and let his body carry itself through all these dull tasks and positions without him. 

On the way down the stairs, one more text came in from Tanya.

-i do have an interesting one for you. Sunday night, ru free? 

-Maybe. what is it? Adrian replied. 

-a hypnotherapist guy oddly enoug, she said. no sex only roleplay stuff. 

-And he wants t boys?

-I showed him your pictures, she replied. hes definitely in. 

-have you done it before ?

-yeah, she replied. you just sit on the bed and listen to what he says. it’s like taking a nap. 

-really, Adrian asked. That’s all? 

-its kinda cringe at first but its relaxing, Tanya said, and then: $600

-To just take a nap for an hour?

-Tanya texted, Deadass. 

In the stairwell, a corroded pipe seeped brown liquid onto the floor. A curled-up McDonald’s burger wrapper stared up at Adrian from the corner where it had been sitting for over a week. The meat still clinging to it was beginning to smell. If Adrian could hustle up a little more money he could be out of this life sooner, and could buy himself a nice studio with a slightly better view. If he found more gigs like this one, he wouldn’t have to take so many shitty handjobs and clammy, needy clients in order to reach his goals. No, there was no use in getting too worked up about it. But you had to take your chances when the going was good. 

-Im in, he told her. Give me the address. Adrian wasn’t much of an on-camera guy, and by no means an actor, but it wasn’t much of a stretch for him to pretend to be asleep. He was already sleeping his way through his life, his existence a series of tiresome exchanges on beds. On this one, perhaps he’d at least be able to find a moment’s peace.