“Wait until you see him, Luke,” Nathan blurts, oblivious to my discomfort. “Baby face, gorgeous green eyes…he looks like he stepped right out of a 1940s film or something. A Norman Rockwell painting come to life. He’s from Kansas, or Iowa, or something, and he’s just moved to Los Angeles and wants to give this whole content creator thing a shot. Emailed to see if I can give him any pointers. Emailed! Can you believe that? Kids his age usually just drop into my DMs with a couple of sentences, but he sent a whole email introducing himself with a photo and everything.”
My brain snags on—“Kids his age?” I repeat. “What do you mean, ‘kids his age’? How old is this guy?”
“Twenty-four. With the body of Adonis and the face of an angel, seriously. You’re gonna love him?—”
“I’m not following here, Nate,” I grumble as I watch Aggie try to wriggle under the ottoman to retrieve the toy she pushed beneath it. “What does any of this have to do with me?”
“I want you to be his first collab.”
“Youwhat?!” I choke out, jumping up and inadvertently pushing the ottoman a few inches, which frees Aggie’s toy. She snatches it up and prances around proudly, as if she’d done thework herself. “Twenty-four,Nate, fuck…this guy was practically in diapers when I was graduating high school!”
“I want you to be his first collab,” Nathan repeats slowly, ignoring my protests. “And I want to film it. Just think—this could be that new angle you’ve been looking for.”
I scrub a hand through the longer hair on the top of my head, mussing it into a chaotic mess before closing my eyes and pinching the bridge of my nose.Twenty-four? Totally green?The ideadoesactually hold some appeal. I’ve been looking for ways to freshen up my videos, but this sounds like a lot of extra work. I’m not interested in showing some new kid the ropes just so he can replace me in a year or two. And I do just fine finding collabs by networking at parties here in WeHo or sliding into DMs on social media. I like to find my scene partners based on attraction and chemistry, not follower count. With over a million followers of my own on most platforms, and thousands of paid subscribers on my Fanboy page, I’m rarely turned down. I’ve got a few regulars I cycle through, but Nate knows I’ve never worked with someone that much younger than me. I hate to admit it, but the fact that he’s bringing this up at all has my curiosity piqued.
“Luke?” Nathan’s concern is evident in his voice. “You there, buddy?”
I clear my throat. “Yeah. Yeah, sorry. I’m here.”
“So? What do you think?”
I think I should stick to my usual type. I think I should find my own scene partners. I think I haven’t heard Aggie make a sound in over a minute, and that’s probably a bad sign. I think I have a long night ahead of me, scrubbing my carpets and my couch. I think I’m about to make another impulsive decision I’ll regret later.
I sigh, rubbing at the stress headache I can feel coming on. “Send me his info.”
Two hours later, I finally have a clean house. I’ve taken Agatha for a short walk and thrown together a simple salad with grilled chicken for a late dinner, and I’m finally ready to settle in and check out this kid Nate is so excited about. Opening my text thread with my friend, I take too big a bite of my salad before tapping the Instagram link to @smileyriley.
My first thought is that the handle suits him. I’m met with a profile picture of the brightest grin I think I’ve ever seen. His teeth are blindingly white, his canines are a little too sharp, and his mouth is wide in a way that looks like smiling is its natural state. My own lips have tilted up as I chew before I even realize it. The kid’s grin is contagious for sure. His bio reads:Riley Cunningham, 24, Oklahoma, OK! Looking for a little bit of sunshine and someone to call me a good boy.
Jesus, this kidisthe epitome of a good Southern boy. He’s got the expected thirst traps—gym selfies and sleepy shirtless-in-bed selfies—but he’s also got photos someone else took of him riding a horse, taking a big bite out of a slice of watermelon, posing at what looks like a music festival wearing a wife beater, someveryshort denim shorts, cowboy boots, and hot pink sunglasses, and a carousel of photos with his friends at a pool party. The last photo in that set features a beaming Riley blinking against the sun from atop a giant unicorn float, his chestnut hair bleached from long summer days and curling dark at the nape of his neck, where it’s still wet. His smooth, tanned torso was obviously sculpted by hours in the gym. He’s wearinga cowboy hat in the pool, of course, and it’s tilted off to one side of his head as if it’s hanging on for dear life. I kind of hate myself for how cute I find the whole aesthetic.
His main feed has style, I’ll give him that. The photos are artistic, but still real. I feel like I can get a pretty good sense of who he is from a quick scroll, which explains the almost ten thousand followers. I’ve spent the last decade using social media to market my paid content, and I’ve always enjoyed dabbling in photography, which brought in most of my current following on the less explicit platforms. Riley would have no problem promoting a Fanboy page on here, if he chose to go that route. His content is original and appealing, and it doesn’t look like he’s using his page to even try and gain a following—he’s just living his life and sharing it, and I can see why people are drawn to that.
Flipping to his videos tab, the most recent one opens immediately. The sound is terrible, the crackle of wind in the speakers overpowering the pop music in the background, and the video was obviously taken off the back of a boat on a lake. The camera is focused on Riley, who’s wakesurfing on a boogie board a few feet behind the boat. My eyebrows raise, impressed, as I watch him do a couple of tricks while the girl taking the video shrieks“wooooo, go Ry!”He shoots the camera that big, beautiful smile and wipes out in a fit of laughter as the video ends.
There are a few more videos that all seem to be from the same day, tagged at Grand Lake. Other than his bio and a few suggestive photo captions, there’s nothing overtly queer about the page aesthetic. He’s very straight-presenting at first glance, and he clearly lives right in the middle of a red state, so it’s possible he’s not out to everyone he knows. But it’s also possible he’s looking to get into porn via the “gay for pay” route, and that’s something I havezerointerest in messing with. I pridemyself on authenticity in my work, and there’s nothing less authentic than a straight guy pretending to be gay for a bigger paycheck.
I bite my lip and scroll back to the photo of him on the unicorn floatie, picking at what’s left of my salad as I study the image again. I pinch the screen and zoom in on his smile. He seems too sincere to be going gay for pay. So what’s his deal? Why porn? Why now?
I scrub a hand across my jaw and lean back in my chair, crossing my arms and staring down at the photo of Riley grinning back up at me. I should say no to this. He’s too young, too green. He hasn’t done a single collab yet, so I can’t even watch another video to see how he looks on camera. There’s no telling if we would even have any chemistry together. He’s way too young for me, and this isn’t the flavor of midlife crisis I need to be trying out. I should tell Nate thanks for thinking of me, but I’m not interested.
But Iaminterested, and isn’t that just the kicker.
Squeezing my eyes shut to block out his pretty face, I make one last-ditch effort at talking myself out of this before I open my text thread with Nate and type, “Okay, fine. But I want to meet him first.”
Looks like I’m about to make impulsive decision number four.
2
RILEY
My palms are sweating. I don’t think I’ve been this nervous about something since I came out to my parents when I was fourteen. And I’m not sure if the nausea I’m feeling is anxiety or the lead foot of this driver in stop-and-go LA traffic.
Moving to the West Coast from the South has been quite an eye-opening experience so far. Navigating my way around a big city after spending my whole life in a small town has been a learning curve. I opted to order an Uber because I didn’t want to take the chance that I’d miss an exit on the freeway with no way to turn around and find myself taking an hour-long detour. No way am I leaving a meeting this huge up to chance. Although now that the driver has hit the gas to propel us forward just a few feet before slamming on the brakes again, I’m second-guessing my decision not to drive myself.
I’ve been secretly wanting to try my hand at sex work, which I wouldneverbe able to do back home. Travelling the world, having sex with tons of hot boys in their prime like the guys I follow on social media, sounds like a literal dream job. I’ve got enough money to live on for a year out here with no job at all, but my grandmother always said, “Idle hands are the devil’sworkshop,” and I think I’d get too restless withoutsomethingto focus my time and energy on.
But where on earth did I find the balls to email Nathan St. James to ask for advice about getting noticed on Fanboy? I’ve obviously had a user account for years; it’s the most popular creator-controlled gay porn site on the web, and I’m a semi-closeted gay man who grew up in the buckle of the Bible Belt. I survived many lonely nights on Fanboy creators’ videos, but Nathan’s especially. His content is so different from everyone else’s in that he’s never actually in front of the camera. His page is full of photos and videos he’s taken of performers, so for the price of one subscription, you get access to all kinds of different content with different people. It’s a unique business model, but he’ssotalented that creators are clamoring to work with him. There’s something about the way he films the performers that just makes them glow, and his cinematography adds a layer of authenticity and intimacy to his videos. Even the obviously staged videos feel natural, and not like cheesy 90s Skinemax. If I’m going to give this whole porn thing a shot,that’sthe type of content I want to be making.
