For most people, it's the guy next door. For me it was the guy across the hall. I'd just moved into an elegant apartment building since, finally, at twenty five, I was beginning to make it big as a model. I'd landed a three year contract with a top-notch perfume company and for once had plenty of money to spend. Life was good and as soon as I set eyes on Erik, I knew it could only get better. Or so I thought. I kept bumping into him in the corridor. He was either rushing out or rushing in, and was usually fumbling in his pockets for his door key or something. He was always immaculately dressed in Armani suits or very expensive casual, so I wondered if he might not be a model himself. He certainly threw a lot of parties and had a regular flow of friends coming and going, day in day out. Particularly at night.

Once I peeped in through the open door and he was surrounded by some pretty attractive people. I noticed that everyone was vying for his attention. Men and women. I also noticed he was very much aware of the homoerotic forcefield he generated. He was tall, stunningly handsome, like a young Kevin Costner, and he had a body you immediately wanted to undress. But what really attracted me initially was that there was also something rather childlike and vulnerable about him. He seemed to have an insatiable appetite for attention and affection, and he had very lonely eyes.

The day I finally plucked up courage to speak to him, he was busy running his hand along the top of the door frame, obviously looking for a key. Of course in the heat of my desire to meet him I asked the obvious, "What are you looking for?"

He turned as if seeing me for the first time, looked me up and down appreciatively, and said, "Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place." I opened my mouth to say something, hopefully more intelligent, but by now we were standing so close that I swallowed his lips by accident. The kiss was a real Alfred Hitchcock showstopper and lasted quite some time. We were just about to make further explorations when the sound of the elevator reminded us where we were. Before we broke apart I heard his voice filter through my collar, "If I come back later, will you let me kiss you all over?"

I looked him straight in the eye and said, "All over. And then some." He walked down the corridor to the elevator and I unlocked the door of my apartment. I was trembling. Everything had happened so quickly, and so naturally. Once inside I threw water over my flushed face and touched my burning lips. I fixed myself a stiff drink to compensate for the stiff feeling between my legs. Later I took a cool shower and slipped into my best pajamas hoping he wouldn't be too long. I was hardly a teenager, but my heart was beating as if I'd just been on my first date. He was what I'd always been looking for. I fell asleep waiting for him. It must have been well after three in the morning when he brazenly rang my door bell. By then I was fast asleep and thought it was my alarm clock going off. I opened the door with a bang which turned to a whimper as soon as I saw him standing there. He was holding a bottle of champagne in one hand and a gift wrapped package in the other. Once again he looked childlike and vulnerable and so much in need of attention and affection. He also looked hellish sexy. I felt a stirring in my loins and invited him in.

"I brought you a house-warming present." he said without even the hint of an apology. Clearly for him it might just as well have been three in the afternoon. I learned later that he had absolutely no conception of time.

"Thank you," I said, taking the parcel and leaving him with the bottle. He opened the champagne while I opened my gift. It was a beautiful set of grey silk sheets and pillowcases from one of the best New York stores.

"Put them on the bed," he said. "I want us to sleep in them together." I did as I was told. It was much too late at night to argue and he'd either been drinking or was pretty high on something. He gave me a glass of champagne and said solemnly that we both had to spit some on the sheets for good luck. It was like a wedding nuptial. I dutifully spat in the direction of the bed and he kissed me. It must have been the wettest kiss I'd had. And the most erotic. His mouth was full of champagne. I'd read about that kind of thing, but nobody had ever actually done it to me before. He made a meal of my mouth and undressed me by degrees, feeding me with more champagne as he did so. Then he gave my chest and other more intimate parts of my anatomy a champagne shower and licked me dry, or rather wet, with his tongue.

Soon he was veritably boring a hole in my navel. My muscles and my skin began to ripple uncontrollably like a horse's mane and my dick reared up ecstatically to meet his mouth. He sucked me with long consistent gulps. Each gulp was stronger and tighter and harder and more determined in its heavenly, slow hypnotic persistence towards its goal. I came like a cannon. Then heaven was revealed to me once again as he undressed before me. I stood as one mesmerized. He was so beautiful. His dick stood proud and tall like the mast of a ship. He held out his hand to me and we slipped naked between the silk sheets as if we were stepping into a dream or some warm Mediterranean waters. Later, as I felt his hard, thick dick enter me and grind its way to my soft sexual center, I knew full well I wasn't dreaming, although I did have the sensation I was floating on water as we fucked like two waves hitting a single shore. I remember hearing a full orchestra playing a great waltz, and then I fell asleep. He was still inside me.

That night I entered into a vortex of love, passion and humiliation. The love was at first sight. The passion grew at a steady pace over the next six months until it scaled heady, hallucinating heights. And the humiliation was to find out I would always have to share him with someone else. He was a male escort.

I woke next day with the sun streaming through my window. Erik was still asleep, so I was able to look at his sculptured body at my leisure. He obviously hit the gym with some regularity. I was looking forward to his "hitting" me with some regularity too. I made him a big breakfast and waited for him to stir. Of course the first signs came from between his legs. I was tempted to get some cream before my coffee, but had to run back to the kitchen as I smelt the toast burning. When I returned he was already on his feet getting ready to take a shower.

Suddenly I felt shy. I hardly knew him, and here we were in this intimate situation. He was strangely serious and said he had something to tell me. He began with the sheets and at the end of it all I was as white, or rather grey, as one of them. You see he told me the full honest truth. He was a hooker, a whore, a male prostitute, nicely disguised in the ads as "male escort." He said he'd taken one look at me and wanted me for real. He'd been out on a midnight call and refused to do more than jerk some old guy off because he wanted to "save himself" for me. He told me he'd bought the sheets on an impulse right after meeting me because he wanted them to be "our sheets". He wanted to make love to me in my bed because he'd screwed half of New York in his bed. In short, he'd never felt this about anyone and wanted to settle down and "go straight".

I looked at him shocked, and for a moment, the ground beneath me seemed to break apart, and I felt I was going to be swallowed up in the crack of the earth that had opened between us. Five minutes before I'd felt so close to him. Now I was angry, outraged, and shocked that I'd made love to a male prostitute. My head was a mad whirl and my voice teetered on short cords as I asked him, "Why didn't you tell me straight off? You didn't even use a rubber when you fucked me." He began to cry.

I gave him one of the paper napkins on the tray. He sniffed and said, "It's just a passing rainstorm. Don't take any notice." In spite of myself, I put my arm around him and told him to have some breakfast. After all, I was crazy about him too. Looking back I realize that "crazy" was the operative word. I must have known what I was getting myself into. He made a living out of being a male escort. If he gave all that up, I'd be his only means of support. I'd become nothing more than a "special client". Maybe his one and only client but nonetheless our relationship would be built on extremely sandy ground.

But that morning, looking at him weeping his heart out, I felt entire rocks of my puritan past begin to crumble and splinter like crags falling into the sea. I knew, or thought I knew, that I loved him and couldn't live without him. Between sobs he finished breakfast, and as I wiped away his tears and cleared up the crumbs, I began to plan our future. For his clients I knew he was just a horny stud, an object of desire, a "trick," but for me he was also my baby brother, and I wanted to take care of him. So I bit off more than I could chew, as my mother would have said. Actually, Erik's problems could all be traced back to his bitch of a mother and a horrendous childhood, but I won't go into that here. Suffice to say he was suffering from low self-esteem and was, therefore, very self destructive. And that's putting it mildly.

I immediately made it my mission to save him from himself, but our relationship was doomed from the start. He was heavily into drugs, drank a lot, and was pathologically promiscuous. But I was in love and as we all know, there are none so blind that will not see. I wrapped his warm, vulnerable, sobbing body tightly around me like a borrowed blanket knowing that one day I might have to give it back and return to the cold. He, in turn, wound his long legs round me like a button loop clasps a button and we made long passionate, desperate love. It was at once a battle for supremacy. I wanted to fuck the ass off him and punish him for his past treachery and he wanted to "fuck me into next week," as he put it, so we could forget the past.

We still hardly knew each other, so we tried to communicate everything with our bodies and with our souls. We watched our love making in the wall mirrors that lined both sides of the bed. As I fucked his butt, I could feel the position and life of every hair and the animation of every cell. We rose and fell in perfect unison, our muscles quivering to a soundless pitch. Just before we climaxed, all animation stopped. I looked in the mirror and saw a handsome, virile and vibrant gay guy about to spill his seed into the spitting image of himself. It was as if a dancer had been photographed as he attained mid-leap and had been halted in perfect suspension and balance between two points. Waiting for the inevitable. Waiting for the two points to merge into one. I saw Erik was looking too. Suddenly he shuddered, and I felt him release all possession of his body as if he was surrendering his old self to me. I pumped the honey and butter of a new life into him and a new and fluid beginning.

We watched our reflections ebb and flow in the mirror as I let the very apple, core and seed of life itself sweep hotly out of me like molten lava. We lay fused together for another perfectly suspended moment and smiled with our entire selves in friendship and warmth and forgiveness. And in deep respect and love. We basked in the sweet shared knowledge that we had plumbed the depths and sailed the heights of that very earthly secret of our innermost selves. Meanwhile, our bodies were blissfully aware of a universal transcendence as the last sexual spasm ended, and we were united in body and spirit. We silently acknowledged, in the loving glances we exchanged, that we now knew where paradise was and how to find it.

For us there was no doubt. It was here on 85th Street in my apartment and between his grey silk sheets. I told him I wanted him to stay with me forever, and he, of course, promised undying fidelity. The first big mistake I made was getting him to move out of his place and into mine. "No sense in paying two rents" I said. "After all, from now on you've made your bed, so now you have to lay in it, so to speak." His apartment was furnished, so all we basically had to do was carry his oceans of clothes across the hall and of course his beloved computer and video equipment, etc. This entailed unravelling a lot of wires since all his treasured possessions seemed to be connected to something else. He needed all his playthings, since a lot of the time I was out of town, and a lot of the time he was lonely.

"Forever" lasted for precisely six months. It wasn't exactly his fault. He was able to be faithful to me when I was there right beside him or he knew I was coming home soon but he couldn't stand the long absences. They killed him. And us.

He consoled himself the only way he knew how, which meant going back to some of his old habits. At times like these he had no thought for the consequences, which usually took the form of one of my jealous rages. However, one look at those lonely, soulful eyes and that divine body, not to mention his tremendous dick, and I turned from lead to marshmallow. After all, to paraphrase a famous proverb, " You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think."

And, of course, most of the time Erik thought with his dick. Still, when he came to meet me at the airport or something, and I saw him coming towards me with the grace of a gazelle in search of a stream, I could only love him. Love him and desire him. I couldn't wait to get him back to my apartment and unwrap him while he unwrapped the gifts I'd brought him. For me his body was a rich pasture which I constantly wanted to harvest. And he was always in urgent need of my seed. Each time I paid labial homage to his lush gorgeous nipples they hardened and expanded like ripe fruit. Fruit I quickly unpeeled and laid bare.

We never made love according to the book. We wrote our own books. Most of our fertile imagination had its roots in myths and fairy tales. And also in porno fantasies. I'd start off one fantasy as a farmer and, after tilling his slim washboard furrows and pectoral curves, would irrigate them with my hot tongue. Before long I'd become aware of the rich mellow glow of the skin on his newly glistening body, and the smell of new mown hay as my nostrils met the golden sheaves of his pubes. As I nestled my nose in his love nest, I would start thinking of the breakfast show on tv and end up giving out instructions for him to slide himself slowly down me like fresh melted butter and toast himself against me. Then I would coddle his eggs and make bacon out of his dick. That one got us both real hot.

Another good one was when we played clockmakers. He became the wall clock and I was the hands. I wound him up at the back, and he chimed the beats by seconds as we fucked. He had the pendulum, I had the weights. Then we alternated until we ran out of time. On another fuck feast I was a feudal lord in search of new territory. He rolled over like a submissive puppy and said, "I want you to mount me. I want to see how nicely you can sit on my saddle." Then he raised his cute butt to reveal the pink walls of a lava crater that undulated and sent steams of promise to my erupting dick. At such times as these, I went on automatic pilot and fantasy became fact as I wedged my way in there. He let out little hisses and gasps which soon turned into gigantic groans. He shivered and shuddered and devoured my dick with his hungry ass until I wanted to shoot my load right through him and hit the ceiling with it. Then he suddenly stopped in mid-motion as if overcome or stunned by the force of a fun feast too overpowering to withstand any longer.

But just as I was getting lulled by his sweet stillness, he started all the poetry in motion again as if he'd decided to surrender his crown completely to my invading dick. He opened wide his throne and renewed moaning until his whole throbbing body was a total convulsion of abdication. Determined to prolong the agony, I withdrew my trusty steed. I aimed my cannon point blank at the spot where it would batter down his anal bulwark and lay it to waste. I returned to the fray several times and laid fast and furious siege to his bulging battlements. And as I butted away with my battering ram, he bellowed like a demented bull. That night we ran the whole gamut and still could have come up for more. Energy produces energy and sexual energy is even more potent. Every little death has a vital new life waiting right there behind it, to fill in the breach so to speak. So, as you can see, sex between us was real good and quite varied. In fact there was never a dull moment. Even if we did tend to mix our metaphors somewhat. Still, as my dear mother would have said, but perhaps not in that particular context, it was all "grist to the mill." And we sure as hell ground a lot of flour, often reducing each other to pulp at times in the painful love dance of courting and slaughtering, of assault and entering, of penetration and death. He was insatiable.

But then again, so was I. Sometimes I would awake in the middle of the night dimly aware of his lips burning a trail of familiarity up the inside of my leg, drawing a line in slick saliva towards my pirouetting penis. Sucking the starch from the hairs of my skin before he sucked the juice from my dick. Invariably, my dreams were transformed over night from aspiration to perspiration. And quite often to glorious desperation, as we clung together hovering at the outer limits of hell until we tumbled deliriously into the lap of heaven.

Of course, it was practically impossible to live and survive all that intensity. Something had to give. And eventually it did. My contract with the perfume company took me away more and more. I was on their bottles, on the billboards, in newspapers and magazines, on tv but rarely between Erik's grey sheets. One day I came home, and the shit hit the fan. I heard him talking on the phone in mellow, luring tones. He hung up as soon as I walked in the door. The room reeked with sex. The smell of some stud's sperm seemed to seep from the walls. It was certainly all over our silk sheets. Erik sat naked in the middle of them with a glazed expression in his eyes and a silly grin on his face. He was obviously high on something. I didn't want to know what. I didn't want to know who. I was just tired and disgusted, and disappointed. He looked at me as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, although something else obviously had. He was gay and garrulous.

"The phone man was here to fix the connection with my computer, darling. He was here all day keeping me so busy with everything, and I had to keep him happy. You see, at first, he didn't want to give me an extra long cord, so I had to be very persuasive. Then, of course, I wanted my outlets changed. It took him the whole afternoon, otherwise he'd only have been here ten minutes. He had to call the company three times to explain he'd been delayed as my wiring badly needed overhauling. My wire didn't reach into the bedroom. You see, I need my wires in here. Now I'm all fixed up. I'm back in shape. You wouldn't want to spoil my day by complaining, would you darling? Can't you see how happy I am?" This was the first time I'd ever heard him speaking like the whore he was.

"Stop calling me darling," I said, opening the windows to let some precious fresh air in. "How many guys have you gone to bed with since we've been together?"

"I don't keep track anymore, but I guess you can say that I've kept myself pretty well supplied."

"Is that all they are to you, supplies? To replete your whore's storehouse. Like meat?"

"That's right, darling. Just like meat.That's why they're called studs, darling. Stallions. Slabs of hunky horse meat. And they all want somewhere to put it. And I have to get my depth charge every so often, otherwise the battery will run down. After all, you leave me here all alone. I have to do something, darling. One can't go to heaven on one ski."

"What does that mean exactly? "

"I don't know but I read it somewhere and I like it." He looked at me with his old familiar puppy dog expression begging for forgiveness. This time it didn't work. I started putting my things together. I had a job in Chicago. "They didn't mean anything to me, darling. They were just a drop in the bucket."

"That's where I should have dropped you," I said cruelly and walked out the door.

I was away for over three weeks. When I got back, he wasn't home. The place was a pigsty, the grey silk sheets crumpled up in a corner, unwashed. A feeling of nausea swept over me as I packed my bags. I still loved him, but I knew he wasn't there for me anymore. What money I had in my wallet I put on the bedside table. I'd send him a check later. I couldn't confront him now.

The door opened. He waltzed in with an elderly man in tow. He was drunk. They both stared at me. Once again there was the old familiar stillness between us. But something was missing. That special spark that had always connected us. I think he felt it, too. He gave me a nervous kiss and said sadly, "It ain't over till it's over, darling." But for me it was definitely over. I moved out and moved on.