Chapter 1

Bobby was on next. He gulped air and let it out slowly three times. It was a ritual that seemed to ease his performance anxieties. The stage ones, anyway. Even after three years as a stripper, he still got the jitters before going on. He tugged the thin elastic cords of his g-string and hefted the weighty pouch, just to be sure everything was in place, on line, and A-One.

It was.

Bobby had plenty to worry about. Mainly between his legs. Primarily his balls. Since they were too large for standard pouches, special dance cups had to be custom made and fitted to contain them. His balls were billed "the largest organically grown nuts east of the Mississippi". A footnote explained organic as "unenhanced by vacuum pump or silicone/saline injections". Not for vanity, but fact. Besides, it paid to advertize.

On the placard out front (the big color one with him in gold mesh pouch and thigh-high lame boots) his full billing ran, "Bouncin' Bobby with the Bulgin' Basket". He dreamed it up early one morning in Vegas, sipping chartreuses in Caesar's lounge. Earlier that night as he peeled out off the silver tights and packed himself into the black and white striped Limbo shorts for the umpteenth time, he knew it was time to quit backing and start fronting for a change. He'd been a showboy, one of six backing Lola Falana, for nearly a year. He liked Lola alright, Vegas too for that matter, but needed something more. Just for himself. It was time to face the music and dance. Center stage.

Bulgin' Bobby was born Robert L. Greco in Madison, Wisconsin nearly twenty three years back, way back, before MTV, cocaine candy, and AIDS. From the time he could walk, he wanted to dance. His dad was a professor of french poetry at the U of W with expertise in lays and his mom was a mezzo in choir and gave solo Lieder recitals for charity twice a year. So, having a premier danseur aspirant as a son was fine with them. He got plenty of encouragement from them both. But there was a hitch.

He thought about it as he flicked the elastic band at his waist. Absent-mindedly, he rearranged his meat so his half-hard dick sat dead center between the cresting hillocks of his balls. Silhouette through the flimsy translucent yellow fabric, his outsized equipment looked cartoonish, a sketch on an obscene pack of matches, captioned, "Dream of being a professional artist? Draw These Genitals!"

But Bobby was outlandish and illusory everywhere: from his perfect face to his perfect body to his perfect dick, down to his great big perfect balls. He was, by nature, too blond, too blue-eyed, too muscular and, unnaturally, too well hung: a Tom of Finland Dolf Lundgren regenerated by a sex fiend.

He took three more breaths and sighed softly. He was nervous as usual and unusually mad. Thinking about his youth always ticked him off. He tried an Ann-Margaret trick to free the tension by shaking his limp arms at his sides while jiggling his splayed fingers. It did nothing for his nerves but plenty to his crotch. His basket quivered like an erotic jello mold.

As his tethered testicles wobbled and quaked, an old anger stirred his senses. Since "The Nutcracker" (ironic name) matinee he'd seen as a little kid of five, Robert wanted a career in classical ballet. Along with parental encouragement, he had the grace, talent and discipline to realize his dream. He was bright enough to learn the difficult technique and quick enough to catch on to the style. But from lesson one to lesson last, all he heard from every teacher and adviser was the same old shit.

The most vivid memory was of Andre Pillage, his last classical dancing coach. It was after class on a day when the steampipe burst, the studio mirrors sweated ice, and a record blizzard crippled even the main roads. Robert was just six days short of his sixteenth birthday. He thought the teacher wanted to see him after class to tell him he'd get to dance the Bluebird in recital as a birthday gift. He'd been begging for it since his fifteenth. But the private meeting wasn't about Tchaikowski.

Monsieur Pillage was a living cliche. In class he was a titan, on the street, merely a mincing old faggot with plucked eyebrows and an exaggerated french accent. But even at sixty, he could leap with the ease of a leaf on a breeze.

As he spoke to Robert, he sweated a lot and daubed his brow and upper lip with a Hermes scarf that, alternating with a dozen others, always sat draped unknotted over his shoulders. He tried to keep eye contact with the youth, but often, despite his better judgement, his gaze ran down to the massive mound and loitered there as he babbled.

"Row-bair, mon Row-bair, you are, sans doubt, a mare-velous danceur. Extraordinary vraiment. Wiz a natural, inherent feel for the grand manneur. But, well, we've 'ad say-vay-rahl objections to... Allors, that ees, surely you are aware that... Row-bair, ees extremely difficile to put zees delicately, but... eh bien, frankly, you're a little too come se dire..."well endowed" to be wearing the cos-toom of ze danceur.

"Zat ees, well, your... zhenital mound ees, how you say, deestracting at best and, at worst, frankly ees off-en-seave. Several of our young ballerinas... et, oui, zair parents too have expressed zair... Mon Dieu, le mot en anglaise... yez, re-poog-nahnce! Surely you're aware zat la petite Karen Ann, a very fine danseuse, non?, has taken to her bed and ees bass-ee-cool-ee vegetating somewhere between consciousness and catatonia since zat awe-fool day she meesed her jete an'... quite accidentally, non?... grabbed hold of your... pouch... to keep from falling on her enchanting face.

Madame Kandinsky, hair muzzair, 'as even threatened to sue my poor lee-tel school, for... come se dire..."obscene aggravation" and "permissive and blatant lewdness" on za part of ze Ecole Pierrot. J'espoir mos' sincerely she weel accep' ze... Dieu! Parole!... yes, ze "out-of-court settlement off-fair".

"Ah, mon Row-bair, I know zis condition of yours ees not your fault. I am... trust me... fool- lee aware zat your... deformity: Please, my mizair-ab-leh english!... ees hereditary and hopefully... no, no, I mean hopelessly... irreparable. I'm so... sad for you, so sad, mais vraiment, surely you can see how, excuse me., preposterous you look! How vool-gair and provocatif! How dees-grahs-foo-lee tantalizing! Much, much too scandalously lewd and... tempting! Frankly, you are ze mos' coarse and disgustingly flagrantly lee-bee-dee-noose young man I've ever seen! Zat... excuse me... lah-see-vee- ooze protrusion in your tights ees... tiens!... simply oo-tair-lee por-no-gra-feek!

"Zare! I've said eet! Believe me, Row-bair, eet breaks my hear' to be so brutal wiz you. I know you're moze sair-ee-ooze abows a career in ze dance and zair's no doubt you have fine... potential. Except for zis one... excuse me... ee-nor-moose day-fec'! To be philosophical, I believe your poet, Shock-spair would call zis your "tragic flaw".

If ze poetry mend your wounded soul, eh bien, heed 'ees words! Accep' za ray-all-ee-tay. Learn to leave wiz eet. Life goes on like a magique carousel! Up and down ze horses pump! Up and down! Up and down! Up and down! Yes... mais... where was I, Row-bair, ah oui!... we all must accept our ride on zis dee-zee whirl! We mus' accept our... handicaps. Row-bair, try to be brave! Like Marie Antoinette at ze guillotine! So brave, proud, firm... firm... firm wiz head held high! Oui, like ze cannon wiz zeh big balls aimed up and ready to go boom boom! In time, mon cher, you will aim your cannon high and shoot to ze skies. I should like to be zair watching when you do! For you weel, my big brave Row-bair!"

Absentmindedly tucking some stray pubes back in his g-string, Bobby fumed and muttered a "fuck you" under his breath. "Damn you, Pillage, I'll aim my cannon high all right! I'll shoot my big balls so you'll hear the report all the way back in Madison!" He cupped his heaving pouch and shouted, "I'll fuckin' 'deal weez eet' alright!"

Out front, Whopper Wally's music hammered out too loud for anyone to hear Bobby's oath.

The stinky little auditorium was jam packed. SRO and tighter than sardines. On Fridays, the last show was always a sellout, but with Wally and Bobby on the same bill, tickets were harder to find than roosters' balls. Scalpers quadrupled their investments. And regulars in-the-know had purchased their tickets two weeks in advance. Every horny, sticky-dicked voyeur in Big Apple Gaydom sat or stood jammed thigh to thigh in the hot, little hellhole.

In an aisle seat, stage left, a good-looking young guy named Matty writhed and squirmed as he got off on Wally's show. But it was Bobby he was there for, and Bobby for whom he saved his cream. He'd heard a lot about the dancer and his dangles secondhand. Tonight he'd judge for himself. If he could only concentrate a little better.

"I shouldn't've worn these goddamn jeans," he whimpered to himself, digging his denim ass into the tattered seat, "Too motherfuckin' tight! My meat's so mashed 'n hot it feels like it's fryin'!"

Next to him, a well-tailored man eyed the gross genital heap writhing, and unwittingly smacked his chops. He wondered whether the plump package was real or artificial, maybe a Ruby Star grapefruit. Some guys would do anything to attract attention. But second and third takes decided him that too much genital detail showed through the thick denim to be anything but the real stuff.

His sweaty palms wiped themselves on the insides of his neatly pleated blue serge pants and fell open just below the triangular tent below his belt. Back at work, in front of the terminal all day, hot and bothered, he got a half dozen hard-ons thinking about how hot it might be to strip off his underwear and go Calvinless to the Rialto. Later, he unpeeled the crusty briefs in the executive men's room and stashed them in his briefcase under the day's spreadsheets. It was a kick strolling down Madison bouncing bare-assed under his three piece suit.

But now, sitting in soppy sweat and precum juices, the thrill was gone. His fat dickhead dug hard against his rough cold fly. Oscar and Little Oscar were both starting to hurt. If he'd thought just how horny these blatant show-offs always got him, he'd have realized he needed the comforting bondage and drainage of a soft cotton sap. Had he subconsciously wanted to suffer this torment? No. Oscar was no masochist. Besides, not even the most dedicated pain-lover would wish this on himself! His lacerated headslit slid open-mouthed along the rough steel ribs and burned its tender lining. Shit, he thought, it was definitely a bad idea.

But across the aisle, stanchioned on one of the side bleachers, Old Man Maintz definitely thought otherwise.

Mainz was a regular. A major backer and nightly devotee of The Royale Rialto All Male Revue. He'd been to all the shows since they started in the early Seventies, back when male strippers and he himself were young. Well, male stripping anyway. He'd seen each change of cast so many times he knew every dancing dickhead by heart. And every set of bounding balls by his hard.

First and foremost, Mainz was a ball man. He liked 'em big. He liked 'em small. He liked 'em anyway at all. To him they were nice hairy or shaved and looked choice hanging loose and low or packed up firm and tight. So long as a set of two (or even one alone) swung suspended and on view, the old guy was happy as a pig in shit.

Since the pro balls on stage were so well known, he spent a lot of his theatre time checking out the nuts in the house. Like a cat on the prowl for a fresh mouse, Mainz enjoyed the hunt as much as the catch. Even partial views of a virgin bags got him off. The Rialto Revue got its audiences so hot they commonly played openly with themselves. Sometimes, blatantly. So Mainz seldom went home without a vivid ball recall or two to stroke himself to dreamland. Tonight alone, and this early on, he'd snagged three memorable sets.

The first hung loose in the back row. Big, black and shiny, they'd been pulled out and over some beige chinos that set them off like onyx on alabaster. They were attached to an African- American in a punk-cut, a singer in a local rap group in Bed-Stuy. He'd been christened Leander Ellington Jones, but called himself Amahl Ben-Akmar as a teen when he was a political activist. Now he preferred Jivin' Jay. He was toying with H. H. H. Hamhock for the future.

Five minutes after he'd settled in, Jivin' hauled out his heavy balls and spread them out to air. As a performer, like Bobby, he knew the value of publicity. As a seasoned exhibitionist, he knew he had the stuff to show and compete with the studs on stage.

Before Jay's sac could scarcely cool, a cute curly-haired blond yuppie or preppie, some kinda White, crawled between his splayed legs and set to feasting on his healthy meatballs. He just leaned back and grooved on the lapping. Made him feel nice. Happy enough to hum a hip-hop lappy-lap rap out loud to help the kid with his rhythm.

Now and then he opened his eyes to look back at the dirty old dude perched up on the bleachers checking him out. The old guy was cool. He stared real down 'n dirty like a wino or some other kind of bum. Bein' white didn't mean bein' right. But enough wrong ones had bucks and attitude to get Jay steamy. So the old coot was cool. Made up for the rest. Jivin' sang a "pumpity- pump hump hump hump" rap to help foster the jacking jerking the dirty trenchcoat bunched on the old dude's lap.

And Mainz bopped his dick to the beat. He played drums for Jimmy Dorsey back in the Forties and could dig a good cadence. And a good show-off even more. Especially one who knew the score, and how to play it.

Mainz glanced down the back row and, direct center, sighted and bagged nut-catch number two. An especially valuable one since the prey was quite small and just barely visible.

The two balls tight together rose like a pale quarter moon over a black polished-cotton sky. They were the only light on Sidney Longbotham, a puny, balding bank teller. Prissy even more than puny, he was agelessly middle aged, born weary and used. He wore unflattering (on him) rimless glasses on a nondescript face that passed unnoticed initially and seldom caught a second glance.

Sidney, like Oscar a couple rows ahead, had made a fatal mistake (or wise decision) before leaving work. Sidney's, however, was lots worse (much better?) than Oscar's.

He'd visited the Rialto plenty of times before, always resolved to pick up a dancer for take- home, or, if not a stripper, at least a face in the crowd. But being timid and shy, he never looked anyone in the eye long enough to make contact, never had the voice to speak even a hello, and never had the courage to act, even just to open his wallet. Sidney needed help. He knew that. Some sort of moral support. Encouragement.

Once, a few months back, he tried getting it from a bottle. But Sidney wasn't a drinker. Not even a sipper. He got totally plastered on one marguerita in the Algonquin's Blue Bar and came to a couple hours later laid out on a laundry hamper in the hotel's sub-basement. A Russian or Polish chambermaid had been seeing to him between sheet changes. He regained consciousness, rocking, pressed to her ample bosom and lulled by a Slavic Lullaby. Later, the nightmare came back: rescued by the old Gypsy woman in The Wolfman, convinced he was Larry Talbot, his hands had grown talons and dripped with blood. Her blood.

Liquor wasn't the answer for Sidney.

The Thursday before this visit, though, when the bank was closed to customers and Sidney was separating his fives, tens and twenties, he overheard two women tellers talking and giggling as they toted. About a bachelorette party one of them had given for a girlfriend the weekend before. At the words, "male stripper", Sidney lost track of the fives and had to start over.

He stopped altogether when he heard a voice say, "Ya stuck da buck in his g-string! Where'd ya get da noive? Didja see his thing? Was it stiff an' stuff? I betcha he was a fairy, huh? Was he cute? Alotta fairies ah good lookin'. Makes ya sick, like priests. Was his back hairy? I don't care whadda looka a guy is, wit a hairy back, you can keep'm. Did he take his thing off an' show his thing? Where'd ya get da noive?"

The other voice said she figured the girls might get uptight so, she said, she bought some joints on Forty-Second Street. "We all smoked like chimneys excep' Mahshah, she was a nun, ya know." By the time the stripper showed up with the engagement cake, she said, they were all so stoned they "prac'ly" ripped his clothes off--"a cop outfit yet! Real cute! Like Erik Estrada! Only shawtah teeth"--as he came in the door.

Sidney had to recount the tens four times after that. But he somehow managed to balance out. And somehow managed to muster the courage to make a lunchtime trip to the West Side for a drug dealer on Times Square. He found one without looking. Well, actually, the dealer "found" Sidney. A Puerto Rican kid in recycled Fifties peg leg pants, hawked "good smoke" beside the shattered glass cases of a shuttered movie house, right next to Sidney's favorite porno shop. The one with four cellophane wrapped magazines for ten dollars.

"You want some coke too, man? Got some nice coke." Sidney said no, he only drank Perrier. The kid said "cool" and went on to another sale.

Later, when the other tellers had left for the day, Sidney decided to smoke one of his two joints. All of it. He lit up and burned his nose in the janitor's closet and coughed with each inhale, blowing the exhale into an open carton of toilet paper.

He'd never smoked before, not even a cigarette. But he learned how by re-reading a couple descriptive passages in old porno novels. He catalogued all his books and magazines by topic, studio, and model on three by five color-coded cards. He even typed an index for each publication and glued it to the inside back flap. He also cross-referenced subjects from one book to another. There were forty-four listings for grass (see Marijuana) with two subheaded, "smoke, how to".

Fortunately all the bank officers were gone too, off for a long weekend in The Hamptons, when Sidney lit up. Only two pot-bellied guards, stoned themselves, were left in the building. They watched, delighted, as their favorite jerk staggered and weaved his way into the street. They even helped him find the door. Twice.

He made his way to the second floor theatre, more swimming than walking. Along Forty- Fifth the usual sights took on an unreal patina. A gang of construction workers scaled girders wearing hardhats and work boots as usual but, oddly, nothing else. Except for one who had on a silver jock, and another, bare, but with a red and white target painted over his ass. Sidney was so busy shooting phantom darts, he collided with a squad of college boys in sequined headbands and diaphanous wrestling singlets.

Luckily for him they were so intent on maintaining strict triangular formation as they tumbled and jumping-jacked their way, Sidney suffered little more than a stern glower as they flipped past.

As he crossed the converging rivers of Seventh and Broadway, a couple old fisherwomen boating past, shielded their eyes. He imagined they were protecting themselves from the sun's glare flashing off his metal suit. He was right. But only about the flashing.

He coasted his lilypad to the gates of the Sacred Temple and scaled the marble stairs on his knees. It was traditional. Offering fifty drachmas and the flock of sheep with him to the Druid Priestess who guarded the Sanctum Sanctorum, he bowed and entered the shrine, dabbing his lips with Ganges water in the penile font. The mosque air was thick with the effluvium of musk and myrrh. Cymbals and timbrels rang, lyres sang, and he took his customary place of honor on the Peacock Throne between the statues of Hercules and Shiva.

Then settled in the chair (Or tub perhaps? Yes, crystal basin!) Sidney perused the hall (Or theatre? Arena?) and noted the strangeness of the voyeurs around him. Were they perhaps Nubians? Yes, Nubians. Definitely! Or Vikings. More likely Cretins with axes to grind. Whichever, he noted that at times whoever they were, they were visibly there. More often, they were not.

But the altar ahead, at least, stayed constant. Still, the images upon it seemed to transmogrify periodically. The only constant seemed to be an enormous distended dick with bloated balls that swayed and darted from the mutating Idol/High Priest who danced and whirled luridly before the assembled apostles of Baal.

Old Man Mainz petted his limp, leaky shaft with deliberate strokes, as he watched as the lewd, conspicuously drugged little man stumble in his seat and unzip his fly. He leaned forward for a better look as Sidney tugged and yanked his dainty dick free and barely exposed the tight little mound of delicate balls.

As the teller slobber-licked the open palm of his right hand and transferred the slime to his stiff baby-prick, Mainz pumped harder on his own. He leered as the little man jacked his stub pencil penis with a frenzy that made the entire back row of seats reverberate in harmony.

When, after a very short while, several thick globs of cum spurted and sputtered onto the tight hillock, Sidney's frantic stroking continued unabated. Even after a good half hour, when Mainz looked a fifth time, the jack-pace kept up, if anything, wilder and sloshier. Between looks, Mainz surmised, the little guy had let fly two or three more loads as evidenced by the juices coating the revealed bow of his balls. It now, in fact, resembled the top half of a glazed doughnut protruding from a goodie bag.

Mainz was a sucker for sweets even though, to a diabetic like himself, they were a sin. Still, he was sorely tempted. He almost rose to satisfy his fatal cravings when he forced himself to turn away and, in so doing, noticed the man bleachered below, just one row down and one seat to the right.

In their full glory sat the old guy's third nut bagging of the night. Whoppers! The kind of catch fish stories are made of.

The man had been there as long as Mainz but had passed unnoticed. He'd been sitting so still, he'd done nothing to signal attention himself. Oh, Mainz had noticed the full head of thick grey hair with envy, but that was it.