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Author's Chapter Notes:

Let's check in on Justin's adventures... Enjoy! TAG


Chapter 15 - Old Dogs.



After they left the Third Street Baptist Church, Justin followed Possum Granny on a roundabout circuit through parts of lower downtown. The woman seemed to have a very precise agenda and would hurry Justin along if he seemed to be dawdling. She let him push the shopping cart while she examined the trash bins and dumpsters along the way, picking out selected junk to add to her collection as they went. Justin focused his efforts on excavating food scraps for the mama possum.


When it started to get dark, Possum Granny turned her steps towards the river and soon led her assistant to a moldering, old, red-bricked apartment building that looked like it had seen a lot better days. Skirting the front doors, the old woman tottered around to the side of the building, heading along a narrow walkway that led to a stairway down to a basement entrance. She directed Justin to park the shopping cart next to the stair railing and then rifled around in the basket until she came up with a bicycle chain and padlock. Under Granny’s strict scrutiny, Justin secured the cart to the metal railing and covered the contents with a plastic tarp. The Possum and her progeny seemed to be happy to stay in their nest under the blankets for the night after Justin made sure there was some more leftover pizza added to tide the group over. Granny patted her possum baby goodnight and then slowly shuffled down the basement stairs with Justin holding her elbow to make sure the older woman didn’t fall.


Once the door was unlocked, though, Granny turned to Justin and made a shooing motion at him. “Thank you for your help with the babies, Fairy Godmother, but there are no fairies allowed after dark. You have to go back to your own fairy kingdom now. Go on. Off with ya already. Shoo . . .”


Behind Granny’s back, Justin could see a small but adequate studio apartment. It was messy and cluttered but at least it was a safe, dry place for his friend to live. He was glad she wasn’t one of the people who he’d seen living in tents in the vacant lots of the city. She wasn’t homeless, just a little crazy. And she was making it clear that his services weren’t needed any longer.


“Okay. Have a good night, Miss Bertha, Ma’am. Thank you for letting me play with your possum friend today and for taking me out to dinner,” Justin responded as politely as he could, because that’s the way he’d been raised and his mother would have expected nothing less. 


Granny muttered something about ‘tuna noodle casserole’ before slamming the door shut in Justin’s face. 


Unfortunately, that left Justin at a loss as to what to do and where to go next. After a whole day of wandering around the city, he was even more lost than he had been before. Granted, he’d spent his entire life up until a few months before, locked inside a small suburban house, never going anywhere, so he really wasn’t all that great when it came to directions to start with. A day of dumpster diving and panhandling, though, had left him at a complete loss as to where he was. Not only did he not have any idea how to get home to Brian, but he didn’t even know which way to head to get back to the ‘Tarlight Motel. So, after being shooed away by Possum Granny, Justin made his way to the closest street corner and then just stood there, looking up and down both cross streets, wondering where he was supposed to go next and starting to get a little nervous again.


Off to his right, the two-laned side street headed deeper into the heart of downtown Pittsburgh. There were lots of towering buildings and brightly lit streets in that direction, but very few people. To his left, the street dead ended only two blocks away, and beyond that he could see a big highway with lots of noisy cars speeding past. Behind him the larger four-lane street headed up a big hill but the buildings there were mostly industrial sites, warehouses and other large, empty-looking edifices. Which left the only halfway enticing direction being the street in front of him which ran parallel to the highway and led downhill into what looked like a more populated area of the city. So that’s where Justin decided he should go next. 


This section of town seemed fairly busy, especially seeing as it was only a Wednesday night. There were a lot more younger people around. They were going in and out of the coffee shops, cafes, and convenience stores that lined the blocks in the area. They all seemed happy and carefree and it made Justin feel a little lighter just watching the groups of younger people hanging out and enjoying themselves. He spent quite a while just people watching and wandering around to look in the windows of the brightly lit shops. 


After about fifteen minutes of this, Justin thought he saw a boy he recognized from his class at Allegheny Community College. Justin shouted out to Bowie, but the street was noisy and the other boy seemed like he was too far away to hear. So Justin decided to follow him, hoping that, perhaps, this acquaintance might be able to help him find his way home finally. 


Unfortunately, Bowie seemed like he was in a hurry to get wherever he’d been heading and was trotting along at a pretty good pace. Justin tried to run to catch up with him but with his bare feet on the rough sidewalks, it was pretty difficult. Then he got cut off when the light changed, preventing him from crossing the street while the traffic streamed past. When the light finally changed, Justin could just barely see Bowie ducking around the corner onto another side street about three blocks away. By the time Justin made it to that corner, the boy he’d been tailing was nowhere in sight.


Unwilling to give up, though, Justin headed down the side street, pausing briefly to look in the windows of the businesses along the way. He felt sure, if he could only find Bowie, the other student would know how to get him home. So, with a stubbornness based in necessity, Justin determined he would check out every single open store along this street until he found his friend.


Closer to the main street, the open shops were mostly cafes, coffee shops, and trendier bars. A little further along there were a few ethnic restaurants. Justin stuck his head in each one, asking anyone who greeted him if they knew Bowie, without any luck. Undeterred, he continued going from shop to shop, business to business, criss-crossing the street as needed to make sure he didn’t miss anywhere that the boy he was looking for might be hiding. The further he got from the main drag, however, the seedier the businesses started to become. Within a couple blocks the trendy cafes had given way to all-night markets, tattoo parlors, head shops, and bars where all the windows were blacked out. Nevertheless, Justin continued to go inside each at least long enough to look around for the boy he was seeking.


Finally, when he opened the door to the last bar on the right-hand side of the next block, Justin was met with a blast of loud, pounding music that reminded him of some of the dance places Brian liked to take him. In fact, right as he came in, they were playing a song he remembered fondly from when the two of them had visited Zoobabies when he and Brian had been on their trip. Justin loved that song. So, while the bouncer was busy talking with another patron who’d come inside at roughly the same time as Justin, he slipped in and began to look around the club.


Now, this was more like it. This was the kind of place his Brian talked about going to all the time. There was loud music and bright lights and people standing around a bar with drinks in their hands. Justin, himself, was still a little intimidated by dancing places, unless, of course, Brian was there with him, but it at least seemed more familiar to him than many of the other places he’d been to in the past couple of days. Maybe the people here would even know his Brian; hadn’t Brian told him that he used to go out dancing or drinking almost every night of the week back in the days before he’d met Justin? He thought he could at least ask around a bit and see, right? With that thought in mind, Justin made his way further into the club, looking around himself and trying to figure out who he should ask about Brian. 


Before too long, though, Justin realized that this club was a little different than the few that Brian had taken him to before. First of all, the people standing around drinking their drinks seemed kinda older than the guys he was used to seeing in the clubs Brian frequented. None of them seemed to be dancing either, they were all just sitting at little tables or standing around the periphery of the room and looking at a sort of stage set up in the middle of the room. Also, the people dancing up on the stage seemed to be all women; something he wasn’t used to seeing at the bars he’d visited with his boyfriend, where all the dancing people seemed to be boys. The women were very pretty, though, with long hair and sparkly, high-heeled shoes, but without much clothing on. And all of them appeared to have very, very large bosoms. 


The girls were all dancing around poles that were set up along the stage and were doing some very acrobatic stuff with those poles. Justin really admired the fun dancing moves the girls were doing, although he wasn’t sure he liked seeing that much of the women’s bosoms. Most of the men watching the dancing from their tables seemed to enjoy it though, and several of them were waving money at the women, just like he’d seen people do with the go-go boys at the dancing clubs Brian liked to go to. As he watched, he noticed one girl who took a run at her pole, leaping up and catching at it with her hands, and then doing this swirl around the pole with her legs wrapped around it so that, when she slid downward, the pole rubbed against her lady parts. That looked really, kinda fun. 


Fun enough that Justin thought he’d like to try it.


When the music changed and all the large-bosomed women stopped dancing long enough to collect some more dollar bills from the watching men, Justin was thrilled to note that the next song was one of his all-time favorites. It was Beyonce’s ‘Crazy In Love’! Justin adored that song. He’d watched the video for it on VH1 so many times back when he lived with his mother that he knew the entire routine by heart. So, of course, he couldn’t resist. He decided to join in on the fun and show off his dance moves. Maybe he could even add in some of the pole tricks he’d seen the girls do and really make it special?


So, as the chorus began to belt it’s way out, Justin jumped up on the stage and inserted himself in line between two of the large-bosomed women, joining them as they strutted down the stage. When they were all about halfway down the runway, Justin stopped, turned to the side and began to shimmy, making his butt wiggle forward and back just like Beyonce did on the video, while raising his hands above his head and shaking his head. When the music began to swell, he ran his hands up and down his front in a sexy move that matched the singer’s video moves perfectly. Then, getting creative during the bridge, Justin backed up to the pole in the very center of the stage and rubbed his bottom up and down the metal with a few extra shakes added in for fun. And, when the chorus swelled into the iconic lyrics, ‘Got me looking so crazy right now’, Justin opted to try out the previous woman’s trick and ran at his pole, spinning around it while throwing his feet out and spiraling down the pole till his rear end hit the ground. It really was as fun as it had looked too. 


He was just about to pick himself up off the ground so he could try another spiraling trick when two large men with bulgey muscles came running down the length of the stage and grabbed him. With one humongous man on each side of the boy, they were able to pick Justin up off the ground and physically carry him off the stage, holding him up high enough that not even his tip toes could reach the ground. Justin noticed several of the women with the large bosoms were smiling and laughing at him as the bulgey men carried him away. That didn’t seem very nice, he thought. He’d only wanted to dance with them and try out the pole spiraling thing. But the bulgey men didn’t stop until they’d carried Justin all the way out through the front door of the club and deposited him on the sidewalk in front of the building. 


It was only then, once they were outside and the deafeningly loud music wasn’t blasting in his ears, that Justin realized the bulgey men had been yelling things at him. There was also another man, not quite so bulgey or muscled, who’d followed them out. This little man was yelling at him too. He didn’t think the things they were yelling were very nice, either.


“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, moron? You can just come into my club and get up on the fucking stage!” the little man growled at him.


“I’m sorry. I just wanted to dance . . .” Justin started to explain but was immediately cut off. 


“This is a fucking strip club, asswipe. See the sign there?” The little man pointed to the neon lights in the front window of the building. “See where it says, ‘Girls, Girls, Girls!’. Now, does it say boys anywhere on that fucking sign? Does it?” 


Justin read all the signs and didn’t see anything mentioned about boys at all so he shook his head and shrugged.


“No. It doesn’t. Because my customers want to see female strippers. They want to see tits. They want to see pussy. They don’t want to see anything with a dick, especially not some some reject like you getting up in their faces and shaking his loser ass at them. This ain’t that kind of bar. Got it?”


“Sorry,” Justin apologized again. “I just came in because I wanted to ask if you knew my Brian and then I heard that song and it’s my favorite of all time and the pole spiraling looked like fun and I wanted to try it . . . I’m sorry that I don’t have bosoms. I didn’t know you had to have bosoms to dance in your place. And I don’t have a pussy cat either, I’m afraid, although it seems strange you’d let cats and women dance at your club but not boys. I’ve never been to a dancing place without boys. All the dancing places Brian takes me to always have boys too. I didn’t know about the bosoms or the cats but I’m really, really sorry . . .”


The little man rolled his eyes and shook his head at Justin. “Get lost, kid, and don’t let me see you back here again!” the little man yelled over his shoulder, already heading back inside with his bulgey companions flanking him, dismissing Justin without even listening to his full apology.


“. . . I didn’t even know cats liked to go to dancing places,” Justin continued to mumble even after the two Bulgey Men took up their positions on either side of the front door and stared him down. “I’m just saying, it seems silly to let pussy cats dance but not boys.”


But since the Bulgey Men didn’t bother to respond, Justin simply sighed and turned around, intending to continue on with his mission of looking for his friend Bowie.


He didn’t get very far, though, before he was met with another distraction. Just as he was approaching the corner, intending to cross the street to the next block, he was startled by a huge, brown blur of energy rushing up to him from the side and knocking him to the ground. He didn’t get hurt and was more surprised than anything. But when he realized it was his old friend, Boss, the doberman puppy, he smiled and began to pet the dog. Boss was so enthusiastic about finding Justin again, that he’d forgotten that he was kinda massive; that much zeal coming at you from a dog that weighed upwards of eighty pounds was a little overwhelming. But Justin immediately forgave the puppy who was devotedly licking him all over his face and whimpering with happiness at finding the boy who’d befriended him. 


“Hello, Boss. Yes, hello. I’m glad to see you too,” Justin responded, laughing at all the excited doggy kisses and the way the big puppy was wiggling his short, stubby tail so hard it was wagging his whole body almost in half. “I missed you too, Boss.”


Too bad the happy reunion with Boss was followed immediately by a much less happy reunion with Boss’ person. “I thought I told you to keep your damn hands off my dog,” the Demarcus Man growled as he grabbed hold of Boss’ leash and tried to pull the canine away from Justin. “He’s been useless since you screwed with him the other night and I was just now getting him back to the way he’s supposed to be - a fucking guard dog, not a damn lap dog.” 


“Boss isn’t useless. He’s a very good boy. Aren’t you, Boss?” Justin crooned as he found the itchy spot right behind the pooch’s left ear and scratched until the big puppy laid down at his feet and rolled over so that Justin could move his ministrations on to the equally itchy places on his tummy. “Yes, you are, Boss. You’re a good puppy . . .”


The Demarcus Man apparently didn’t approve of tummy pats, though. He pulled viciously on the leash, literally dragging the dog down the sidewalk on his side since Boss hadn’t managed to scramble to his feet quickly enough. Justin cringed when he heard the puppy whining in pain as the cruel prong collar pinched the skin around his neck. He scrambled to his feet but wasn’t sure how to help the dog. If he interfered, the Demarcus Man would only get more angry and hurt Boss more. But he couldn’t stand watching anyone being cruel to an animal like that. 


“Please, Mr. Demarcus, Sir. Don’t hurt him. He doesn’t understand what he’s done wrong. He was only acting like that because he was happy to see me. Yanking on him like that won’t do anything; that’s not the way to train him to do what you want,” Justin pleaded, but his efforts only resulted in Demarcus yanking on the leash harder and causing the collar to constrict more tightly with each pull.


“Shut the fuck up. I don’t need any advice from a pitiful little bootlicker like you. I can handle my animal all by myself,” Demarcus replied with another barbarous yank on the lead. 


It seemed, though, that Boss had finally had enough. Instead of straining against his lead, which would cause the pinch collar to further restrict his breathing, Boss turned and moved closer to Demarcus. As soon as he got enough slack in the collar, the dog growled and assumed an aggressive stance. The next time that the angry pimp tried to pull on the lead, Boss was ready for him and lunged in the direction of the lead, snarling. Too bad Demarcus didn’t take the warning with the seriousness it deserved. He gave one more tug at the leash. Boss responded with a flurry of savage barking and then darted in to take a huge bite out of the arm of the man who’d been hurting him. 


Demarcus immediately dropped the leash, cursed, and tried to pull away from the dog, but Boss wasn’t letting go. He growled and thrashed his muzzle back and forth, his jaws clamped down on the man’s arm as blood began to ooze. When he couldn’t get the dog to release his arm, Demarcus began to kick at the furry body, landing a couple of good blows. With another whimper, Boss finally let go and slowly retreated from the threat, a continuous, low growl coming from the bloody foam-speckled muzzle. 


“Motherfucking piece of shit mutt! What the fucking hell got into you? My fucking arm is almost broken,” Demarcus was panting and screaming out curses as he cradled his injured arm against his middle. 


Meanwhile, Boss had backed away from Demarcus until he was standing right beside Justin. The blond knelt down and put an arm across the beast’s back. He could feel the animal shaking with fear even while its angry growls made the animal sound like much more of a threat than he was. And when Demarcus made a step towards them, as if to come collect the dog, the snarling ramped up again and the dog’s mouth full of dangerously sharp teeth opened wider. Boss was not taking any more of his former owner’s mistreatment, that was sure.


“You know what? Fuck this. You fucking ruined that dog already so now he’s your problem. You can have the useless piece of shit. Now, both of you, get the fuck out of my sight or I’ll cap both your asses,” the Demarcus man ordered, his uninjured hand coming down to rest atop a suspicious-looking bulge protruding from the waistband of his jeans.


Justin wasn’t sure what it meant to be ‘capped’ but his gut was telling him that would be a very bad thing. So, like Brian always said, he decided to trust his gut and get out of there as quickly as possible. He took up Boss’ leash and backed away from the Demarcus Man. The big angry pimp stared menacingly at them until Justin and Boss were around the corner and out of sight. But Justin didn’t really breathe until they were halfway back down the block.


“Come on, Boss. Let’s get out of here before Mr. Demarcus Man puts some kind of caps on us that we don’t want,” Justin crooned to the puppy who was now happily trotting along at his side as they headed back towards the river again. 

 

 

 

Chapter End Notes:

3/10/21 - For those who like a visual, here’s what Justin’s dance would have looked like (only add a pole in there, lol): Crazy in Love. TAG

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