Monday, June 6, 2005

**Brian's POV**

"Ladies and Gentleman, we are now beginning our descent into New York City. The captain has turned on the ‘Fasten Seatbelt' sign, and we ask that you please turn off all electronic devices and return your tray tables into their upright and locked position..."

"Hurry up," the trick I was fucking in the tiny airplane bathroom panted.

"I'm beginning my final descent," I said as I slammed into the guy, who was gripping the sink, in front of me.

Just as the trick came very noisily, there was a knock on the bathroom door. "We need you to return to your seat!" the stewardess - or flight attendant, whatever the P.C. term is these days - yelled.

After a few more thrusts, I filled the condom with a groan. "We'll be right out!" I answered as I pulled out of the trick and tossed the rubber into the trash. I then pulled up and zipped my dark-washed Diesel jeans and shoved the guy out of the way to wash my hands.

"That was amazing," the trick said as he cleaned himself up with a paper towel. "Definitely one of my top five fucks."

I roll my eyes. "Uh-huh."

"So, how long are you gonna be in town?" the guy asked as I dried my hands.

"A couple weeks," I answered, throwing the paper towels away.

"Well, how about I give you my card-" the trick said as I unlocked the door. Without a backwards glance, I walked back to my First Class seat and buckled up.

********************

I climbed out of the cab a little after twelve and pulled my large rolling suitcase out of the trunk. Asking myself for the hundredth time today just what the fuck I was doing, I walked over to the five-story building, which was located in the upper east side of Manhattan. After having a quick smoke on the sidewalk, I walked over to a call box next to the front door and hit the call button. A few moments later, a male voice asked for my name.

"Brian Kinney," I answered.

After a few seconds the man came back on and said, "Come to the third floor, Mr. Kinney." The door unlocked automatically, and once inside I walked over to the elevator and hit the up arrow. The car arrived a few seconds later, and I got in and hit the button for the third floor.

I chuckled as the elevator took me up to the floor. The Oak Ridge Boys' "Elvira" was quietly playing out of the speaker above my head. That Omm Poppa Mow Mow part always makes me wonder just what the fuck those Boys were smoking and/or drinking when they wrote that song. Sober people don't write shit like that.

The elevator doors opened when I reached the third floor. I walked over to a reception desk a few feet away, where a blonde woman around my age was expecting me. I couldn't help but notice that the woman, who was wearing a red button-up shirt and a pair of black dress pants with an employee badge clipped to her breast pocket, was very pretty. If I was straight, I'd probably fuck her.

"My name is Vanessa, and I'm the Resident Technician for this unit; basically, the ‘floor mom,'" she informed me as we shook hands. "Come with me, I'll show you to your room." She led me through a door and down a hallway, where we stopped at an open door.

My name and the name of a "Melanie Marcus" were written on a dry-erase board on the outside of the door. What the...

"Here we are," Vanessa said as I stepped into the room behind her, which contained two twin beds, a small table with two chairs, and two dressers. A petite brunette woman with a pixie haircut was lying on one of the beds on her stomach, reading a magazine. The woman looked up when we walked in.

"Who the fuck is she?" I asked Vanessa as I froze inside the doorway.

"This is your roommate, Melanie." Said woman looked back down and continued to read her magazine without saying hi or anything.

Bitch alert.

"I thought I'd be rooming with a guy," I said to Vanessa. Just from looking at her though, I could tell this Melanie was a raging bull.

Vanessa took my suitcase from me and hauled it onto the empty bed, which was covered in a navy blue comforter. "We have a full group and an uneven number of men and women in this term, and we thought that since you both said that you were gay on your applications that there wouldn't be any... um, temptations between you. I'm sure you'll get along just fine."

Yep, a dyke. My gaydar is never wrong, even with a snatch.

"Ugh, they stuck me with a fag..." Melanie grumbled, her top lip curled.

"I won't be sticking anything near you, Sweetheart, trust me," I informed her as Vanessa unzipped my suitcase.

"It's our policy to inspect the personal items of our patients during admission," Vanessa said as she took a pair of vinyl gloves out of the back pocket of her pants. "Melanie, would you mind stepping out for a few minutes?"

"Oh, don't worry, you're not bothering me," she answered, not budging.

"Alright then," Vanessa said as she first pulled my four-pack of Bic lighters and two cartons of Natural American Spirit cigarettes out of the top zippered portion of my suitcase. "Brian, I'm just making sure that you didn't bring in any prohibited items into the building. You can keep your cigarettes, but things such as drugs, alcohol, pornography, or any sexual paraphernalia are not allowed." She then opened up both cigarette cartons and looked inside to make sure I wasn't hiding anything in them.

"Yeah, she found my Pocket Rocket in a pair of my rolled-up socks," Melanie said, her eyes still on her magazine. "But, I got a lady-wood when she frisked me, so it's cool."

I made a just bit into a lemon face and watched as Vanessa started taking out my clothes, shaking out and refolding each item. "Although you're not here for drug or alcohol treatment, we have a very strict drug policy in our facility and require all new patients to take a drug test on the first day, along with any time we suspect that there may be drug usage. I'll have you give me a urine sample when we're done here.

“Uh-oh," Vanessa said when a little yellow bottle of amyl nitrite, a.k.a. what us gay men refer to as “poppers”, fell out of the pocket of a pair of my jeans and onto the bed. "That's a no-no."

I shrugged and tried to look innocent. "They help me sleep."

Vanessa picked up the bottle and looked at me with a bitch please face, and put the bottle into her pants pocket. "Yeah, and Melanie's vibrator was for a neck injury."

I looked over at Melanie, who was biting her lip and trying not to laugh.

After going through the rest of my suitcase and not finding any other "no-no's," Vanessa patted me down - producing no kind of wood there - and found a single extra-large condom in my back pocket.

"Let me guess: balloon animals?" Vanessa asked, putting the condom in her pocket with the poppers. I hope the rest of the staff here has a sense of humor like her, because they will certainly need one with me.

I gave Vanessa my piss sample a bit later, which tested positive for MDMA, or what is commonly known as “ecstasy’. I confessed that I took a couple pills the night before, and she said that it usually stays in your system for a day or so and that she would re-test me in a couple of days. If I failed the test again, they would throw me out of the program. I was sure that my well-exercised kidneys and liver would have it filtered out by then. I also had to give her my cell phone, which patients are only allowed to use for a few hours in the evenings. If we needed to call someone during the day, we would have to use the phone in the Common Room on our floor.

Once my checking-in process was over, I had about an hour to wander around before our first group meeting. Another rule of the facility was that once we entered the front doors, we were not allowed to leave the property unless we had a family emergency, or we wouldn’t be allowed back in. Fine by me- I knew that I could survive two weeks, even with my lesbo roommate.

Vanessa informed me that they had around-the-clock video monitoring all over the building, inside and out, except for in the patient rooms and bathrooms, so they would know immediately if someone tried to sneak in or out in the middle of the night. The people in our program were only allowed to go on the first floor and on the roof, where the only allowable smoking area was. We were also banned from going into any other patient room on our floor or any other resident floors- to prevent any funny business, I guessed.

One perk to staying in that facility was that there was a gym on the first floor, which we could use at any time. I rode the elevator down and peeked inside to look at what kind of equipment they had, and found a tall, tan brunette guy - just my type - running on a treadmill.

Damn, he had a fine ass...

Another perk to the place was the food. When researching different facilities, I paid attention to the types of food they served. The man on the phone assured me that they provided healthy meals and snacks (not typical hospital garbage... yuck) as well as fresh-ground coffee. I ultimately chose that facility over a couple of others because they were the only one that said they would stock guava juice for me, which I refused to live without. The kitchen and dining area were also on the first floor of the building, so I went in to grab a snack.

As I walked through the dining area, which had the look of a café, I saw several people sitting at a few tables together with their attention on a flaming queen, who was standing on a chair and dramatically reciting a monologue that I immediately recognized as being from Julius Caesar, since I had to read it once in high school then again in college. For the hell of it, I stopped to watch the rest of his performance.

"...my heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, and I must pause till it come back to me." To signal that he was done, the queen took a bow, which was followed by a round of applause.

"Bravo!" a woman with overly-highlighted hair yelled as she and a redheaded woman with obviously fake tits helped the queen off his "stage."

"Thank you, everyone, thank you," the man trilled, blowing kisses to his audience.

I was heading over to the snack area, puzzled by the random one-man show, when I ran into - I mean literally ran into - a gorgeous blonde guy who was looking down at the screen on his cell phone, which he dropped on the floor during our collision.

"Whoa, watch out," I said to the young man, automatically grabbing onto his shoulders to steady him. The two questions rolling through my head while we stared at each other were 1) where did this sexy creature with the beautiful blue eyes come from and 2) why the fuck does he get to have a cell phone when I had mine taken away?

"I'm sorry," the blonde, who was probably about six inches shorter than me, said as he pulled away and walked over to where his phone had skid to a stop.

"It's okay," I said as I shamelessly stared at his perky ass while he bent at the waist to pick up his phone. He quickly stood back up after someone wolf-whistled from across the room.

"Woo, the buns are fresh around here!" the monologue queen yelled.

The blonde smiled timidly and turned to leave. I watched as he strut his ass out of the dining area.

I had just finished the Granny Smith apple and bag of pretzels I had selected when Vanessa came into the room and asked for her "kids" to come with her to begin our first group therapy session. The monologue queen, the chick with highlights, the redhead with the fake tits, a balding, overweight guy, and I all got up to go to the therapy room.

We all walked down the hall with Vanessa in uncomfortable silence.

"Relax guys, you're not going to your execution," Vanessa said, which made us all chuckle. We all followed her into a large room, which had several chairs arranged in a circle around a round coffee table with a box of tissues on it. I imagine that they went through lots of those there, and not just when the guys secretly jerked off in the bathrooms.

Vanessa asked for us to keep four chairs together open for our counselors, and she left the room. After letting everyone else take a seat, I took the last chair available. Highlights Chick was on my left, and going clockwise after her sat Monologue Queen, Fake Tits, the four empty chairs, then my dyke roommate, a douchey-looking guy with a goatee, the guy with the hot ass from the gym, a nerdy-looking guy with black-framed glasses, and the balding guy from the dining room. Lastly, a sandy-haired guy was sitting on my right.  

We all sat in the room for a couple of minutes as Highlights Chick, Fake Tits, and Monologue Queen whispered and giggled with each other. Finally, the door opened and a middle-aged man with lightening blonde hair and glasses walked in, followed by a middle-aged woman with short blonde hair and a redheaded guy around my age. The last person to come into the room was the sexy blonde that I ran into in the dining room, who took the last empty chair across from me, between the older blonde man and Melanie. All four of them carried in clip boards.

The blonde gave me a small smile as the older man began to speak.

"Good afternoon, everyone. It looks like we're all here, so let's go ahead and get started. All of you are here because the answers that you gave on your treatment questionnaire that you mailed in with your application strongly indicated that you have some form of sexual addiction. We here at the East Side Treatment Center hope that today is the start of your recovery, and that you will learn how to make sex a healthy, normal part of your life in your fourteen-day stay with us. We also treat all types of other addictions in in-patient and out-patient programs, such as substance abuse, gambling and shopping addictions, and other behavioral addictions, so the ten of you in this room are certainly not the only people that are currently seeking treatment in our facility. If you haven't already, you may see other patients outside of this group in the common areas.

"We start off each new treatment term by going around the circle and introducing ourselves. I am Dr. Victor Grassi, but everyone here calls me ‘Dr. Vic.' I'm the director of the sexual addiction program, and I was the one who started the program back in '98. I earned my PhD in Counseling Psychology at Columbia in ’76, and I've worked in addiction treatment ever since. And just to let you know, I am a fifty-four year old gay man, and I've been with my partner Rodney for about two years now." He then looked at the blonde, who was staring down at the paper on his clip board, and asked, "Justin, would you like to go next?"

"Sure," the man said as he looked around at each person in the room. "Hi, everybody, my name is Justin Taylor. I'm twenty-two years old, and I only recently became a full-time counselor here. I just earned my Masters in Counseling from NYU, and I'll begin working on my PhD in Counseling Psychology in the fall. I always hoped to become an addiction counselor, and I performed my internship here under Dr. Vic last year. After only a few days, I knew that this was what I wanted to do with my life. So, the two of you who will be assigned to me during the next two weeks will be my first patients on my own."

"But don't worry," Dr. Vic said, reaching over to pat Justin on his knee. "Justin has already shown that he is an excellent counselor, so you're all in good hands with him."

I know where I want him to put his hands...

"Thanks, Doc. Oh, by the way, I'm also gay... and single," Justin added.

Yes, Blondie, I see you eyeballing me...

Next, the redheaded guy went. "My name is Eric Thompson," and blah blah blah.

I tuned him out as I stared straight ahead at Justin, who seemed to be looking at everyone but me after his little admission, which didn't surprise me at all. He was way too fucking pretty and his ass was way too fucking perfect for him not to be gay. It would have been such a waste if he had been straight. Also, he was probably too busy with his studies to have a boyfriend. But shit, he was still a kid, really, and too young to settle into one of those mock-hetero unions that they called "relationships."

Next up was the older blonde lady. "Hi, my name is Connie Sullivan," and blah fucking blah.

As she rambled on about her educational and work background, Justin finally looked at me again. We locked eyes for a few seconds, and I couldn't help but lick my lips, which caused him to look away again.

Damn, what I would do with him... I really should have gone up to the roof for a smoke before the meeting started.

After Connie was done talking, Dr. Vic said, "Okay, now that you all know a little about us, we'd like to hear a few things about each of you. Just remember that you're all here because you need some help in your lives, so please feel free to speak openly in this room. Tell us your first name, how old you are, where you're from, what you do for a living, and anything about your addiction that you would like to share."

He looked at the dyke and asked her to start.