Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2010 09:58:38 -0600
From: michaelpete@hushmail.com
Subject: Career Choice 2

Please be advised that, in the following story and its subsequent chapters,
one will find depictions of graphic sexual activities between minors and
minors and adults. The story is fiction but based on real characters,
events, places and situations. There is no relationship between the names
used and that of any real person. Send comments to
michaelpete@hushmail.com.

CAREER CHOICE

PART 2

	In a panic, Brandon rushed back to the apartment to gather up the
remainder of his hidden cash and stuff it along with as much clothing would
fit into his emptied book bag. The moment he'd seen the ambulance crew put
the stretcher over instead of under Millie's mother, he knew there'd be
huge problems for everyone around the situation that brought on her
death. He had to find Millie and a place for them to hide until they knew
what was going to happen.

	As he walked quickly toward the back door of the Showdown, one of
several bar girls who gathered there asked, "Brandon, where are you going?"

	He ignored her and headed out to the street. He had two goals, to
find Millie, then Freddy so he could get him to Junior's room. With no idea
where Millie might be, he walked to the boulevard and took a jeepney toward
Millie's shanty.

	On the way, he tried to put events into context. His mother was in
police custody. They'd probably charge her with killing Alie. Brian Owings
would hire a lawyer and she'd eventually be freed when witnesses told the
judge what really happened. However, that, of necessity, would include
Brandon being labeled a call boy and Millie a child prostitute. Something
like that would definitely get into the newspapers. They'd both be put into
children's homes or worse, a government juvenile center.

	However, all that would take time. Perhaps he'd been wrong to take
off so quickly. Nothing could happen to him before the next morning,
probably not for days. Millie, though, was another matter. She was almost
certainly with a man, ignorant of the evening's events. Unless she ran into
someone aware of what happened, she wouldn't know anything was wrong until
her mother didn't show up after midnight, or the police or a social worker
got to her.

	She'd probably be locked up in the local police station where the
cops would rape her. Even if that didn't happen, without a mother, the
social workers would put her into a home. He had to find her and hide her.

	He had to push his way through a group of garrulous men with San
Miguel Beer bottles in their hands to get into the path to Millie's
house. One ruffled his hair and remarked, "Hey, it's Millie's little
lover." Laughter followed Brandon around the turn leading to Millie's
shanty. As he feared, no one answered his knocks. He tried to sit but was
forced to stand by the intermittent flow of others heading to their or an
acquaintance' shack. Still, he waited in hopes she'd be coming home early.

	After a while, with no more people walking through, Brandon was
able to sit on the dirt path. The stress of worry was probably what put him
to sleep. An insect bite awakened him. Brandon pushed the illumination
button on his watch, almost eleven. There was no light on in the
shanty. Just to be sure, he went and rapped repeatedly on the door. No
answer.

	He took a jeepney back to the strip in hopes of spotting Freddy or
one of the other call boys. There were none to be seen. Not surprisingly,
all the bars but the Showdown were still open, disco music blaring out
their open doors. Sure it was safe to do so, he decided to get a good
night's sleep in his own bed and search for Millie early in the morning.

	The moment he walked into the back, three bar girls dressed in
street clothes surrounded him. "Your mother says we should take you to our
house."

	"Why?"

	There was a brief silence. "The police want to talk to you. They
know what you and Millie were doing. They were here a while ago and went
upstairs looking for you."

	"They got Millie?"

	"We don't know. We just need to get you outta here now, so come
on."

	Terrified of being caught by the police and locked up, maybe for
years, he went along to a simple one story house in Mabalacat, only a few
blocks from where Freddy lived. This time, even in a bed, he hardly
slept. Where was Millie? Would she find out what had happened before being
caught? He needed to get to Freddy's early in the morning.

	The girls tried to stop him but finally accepted his promise to be
back within an hour or two. "I gotta see a friend of mine lives near
here. I'll come right back. You got my backpack."

	Freddy was awake, worried what was going to happen to all of
them. "The cops got Millie. They knew her and one of `em saw her at some
hotel with some guy. Your mother was screamin' all about her and you just
being kids doing sex with foreigners. Lotsa people heard her. Junior's
gonna buy a newspaper and tell me what's in it. They're gonna be watching
for all of us. You just better get outta here. They got pictures of you, in
your house or at school?"

	Brandon thought. The only pictures were single and group photos
taken at school, and the ones the tourists had taken of him and Freddy. If
they got them, he was dead meat.

	He told Freddy where he was and went back to the bar girls'
house. They had the morning newpaper. It was all over the front
page. `Murdered Woman Sold 11 Year Old Daughter To Foreigners For Sex.'
The story, spread over three pages, included statements of police, the two
barangay tanods, witnesses and a social worker who was going to do whatever
was necessary to see that this sort of thing never happened again in
Angeles. She had been involved in a similar case several months before. The
part about his mother was relatively brief. She was treated more like a
victim infuriated by the callous prostitution of her young son by Millie's
mother. The word `murder' was only in the headline. It did mention that his
mother had recently been in a rehabilitation clinic due to a heroin
addiction and that she was a manager at the Showdown Bar. There was a
comment by the social worker that Millie's mother too had been a junkie and
that drugs may have been being used by Millie to help her bear the torture
of nightly rapes by foreigners. A small time local politician was quoted as
saying this situation was another reason to shut down the American bases.

      Millie was under the protective care of the Department of Social
Welfare and Development and would be receiving therapy from psychologists
knowledgeable the treatment of young children exposed to `the horrors
inflicted on her by her foreign rapists, traumatic experiences that will
haunt her for the rest of her life.'

	Brandon read the articles several times hoping to find something
that would help him find a way to free Millie from her captors. In tears,
he commiserated with the girls at what he saw as outright lies in the
article. "She don't need no psychologists. Ain't nothin' wrong with her,
and nobody raped her, well, not all that much." He was thinking about his
Australian customer.

	During lunch, another of the bar girls arrived with instructions
from Layla to take Brandon to an address in Manila where her grandmother
lived with her eldest son. Brandon wanted to stick around, hoping to find a
way to rescue Millie.

	"Brandon, they got Millie locked up. You won't be able to get
anywhere near her for a long time. Anyhow, nobody knows where they're gonna
take her, probably to Manila to some government place down there. We hear
something, we'll get word to you."

	In the end, they convinced him to go. After waiting until dark,
with Brandon's long hair tucked up inside a baseball cap and sunglasses
over his eyes, they hired a tricycle to take him and one of the girls named
Lisa south to San Fernando. There, they took a bus to Bulacan then a
jeepney to Manila. Once inside the huge metropolis of Metro Manila, they
had another taxi take them to Layla's mother's address in the enormous slum
of Tondo, a residential industrial area with possibly the highest
population density in the world, housed in tens of thousands of old, often
dilapidated, one and two story wood frame houses. Layla's grandmother lived
right in the middle.

      Since it was after one in the morning, Lisa asked the cabbie to take
them to the nearest hotel. It turned out to be a few rungs down from the
seediest hotel in Angeles but situated only two blocks from the great
grandmother's apartment. A sleepy middle-aged woman grinned at them as they
paid the forty Pesos. When asked for a room with individual beds, the woman
frowned. "We don't got none like that." The queen size bed smelled of mold
and something else Brandon couldn't identify. Nonetheless, he did get a few
hours of sleep before the sun coming through the window of their second
story room hit him in the eyes.

	Lisa knocked on the door of the house at the address on the paper
she carried. There was a shout from behind the door then the sound of a
small child crying. The door was opened by a woman wearing an apron and
carrying a broom.

	"Mrs.Ladao?" asked Lisa.

	"She's upstairs," answered the woman with a thumb over her
shoulder.

	There were steps at the end of about fifteen feet of hallway. They
climbed them to another door at the top. It took several knocks for an
older woman to answer.

	"Yes?" she asked looking them both over.

	"Mrs. Ladao, your granddaughter Layla sent you this letter." She
handed her an envelope. Brandon's great-grandmother asked them to wait a
minute while she got her glasses. She was reading it as she slowly walked
back to them. Twice, she looked up at Brandon who tried to smile but
couldn't muster more than slight cheek movement. The woman seemed to
re-read the letter then asked, "You're Layla's son?"

	"Yes." He was sure he should have said more but had no idea what it
should be.

	"Well, come on in, you two. Have you eaten yet? You must have been
travelling all night to get here at this hour."

	"Yes, ma'am" answered Lisa with a glance toward Brandon.

	A sparsely furnished but very clean and orderly living and dining
room with a kitchen off to one side greeted them. Two doors toward the
front opened onto bedrooms. A third door to one side was closed. The wood
floor looked as though it had been polished multiple times a week for many
years.

      Mrs. Ladao sat them at a varnished wood table. She stared at
Brandon. "You do look like your mother, except for your eyes. I don't know
where you got them from. Your father got Spanish blood in him or
something?"

      "He was an American, miss."

      "I'm your great grandmother, son, call me grandma."

      Teresa Ladao, at sixty-six, no taller than her short granddaughter,
with sad eyes but a kind mouth, born and raised in the northern Luzon
mountain town of Bontoc, had come to Manila two years before due to the
better facilities there to treat her breast cancer. Several of her seven
children and a few of her grandchildren, not including Layla, had been
contributing to make it possible. Her unmarried eldest son, Diosdado, was
working in a Chinese-run shipping company to pay living expenses as well as
to add to the pot.

	By the time he got home after six, Lisa had left and the elder
Ladao had learned little more from her great-grandson than how he was doing
in school and that he had a bicycle. After spending much of the day sitting
on the two front steps and watching Tondo life go by, Brandon was parked in
front of the television watching the six o'clock news to be sure he wasn't
on it.

	Teresa showed her son the letter. It didn't make him happy. He'd
read the earlier letter from Layla admitting she'd had a drug problem that
she felt she had beaten. Based on that and her location, he'd assumed she'd
been involved in the sex trade. As an ardent, church-going Catholic, that
bothered him considerably. A look at her bi-racial son convinced him that
was the case.

	Without saying a word to Brandon, he took his mother aside and
spoke to her too quietly for Brandon to hear, though the tone was
definitely not encouraging. His words were followed by a more soothing
sound from his mother. They went back and forth like that for a few
minutes. In the end, he walked off to his room and slammed the door.

	Teresa Ladao sat at the table and called Brandon over. "Sit down,
son."

	Brandon felt doom in his gut.

	She continued to be soothing. "Diosdado, he's your grandfather, is
upset right now but he's going to be fine and the two of you are going to
get along fine. Just give him time. You're a smart boy. Just be quiet
around him for a while and we'll get all this straightened out."

      If you're wondering, dear reader, about Brandon's great-grandmother
calling Brandon's great uncle his grandfather, there's a local reason. In
the Philippines, the brothers and sisters of one's grandparents are also
called grandfather and grandmother, a cultural closeness not found in the
West.

	Brandon's grandmother asked, "Now, you been going to church?"

	Brandon shook his head.

	"Well, dear, that's what I thought. Maybe it would be a good
idea. You need to get back in school. There's a good Catholic school not
far from here at St. Bonifacio's. Why don't you and I go over there
tomorrow and talk to the sisters. I'm sure they'll want to help you
out. What do you think about that?"

	"Yes, grandma." He did want to get back in school, between worries
about Millie, had thought about it a lot on the journey to Manila. Maybe
this would all be good. He'd no longer be a call boy. He could get back to
being a student. His grandmother seemed like a nice lady, solid, someone
who would make sure he got what he needed to do well. But, he did want to
know about the problem with his uncle so he would know what he was going to
have to deal with. He asked.

	"Well, son, I suppose it's no secret what your mother was doing in
Angeles. Diosdado is a very good man and it upsets him that his
granddaughter would get into that sort of thing. But, he knows none of that
is your fault, so just be patient with him and soon enough everything's
gonna be fine."

	Sadly, that wasn't to be the case. The first thing Diosdado Ladao
did when he reached his shipping office the next morning was to call the
company agent in Angeles. The man was well aware of the events of two days
before. He read Diosdado the entire story from the newspaper and told him
what else he'd heard.

	"She a relative?" asked the agent.

	"Not really."

	Being a responsible man, he resisted the temptation to leave work
and go home until the appropriate time. However, those nine hours didn't
calm him a bit.

	While he was making his call, Teresa Ladao, with Brandon in tow,
was at the St. Bonifacio school speaking to the head nun. The school
principal was sympathetic but told them that the school was already greatly
overcrowded. She promised to discuss Brandon's case with the head priest
but didn't feel optimistic.

	His great grandmother reassured him, "Don't you worry
yourself. We'll get you into school somehow, somewhere."

	The moment Diosdado walked into their apartment, he spoke clearly
in front of his mother and Brandon. "This boy is a fugitive. If we keep him
here, we are committing a crime and can be arrested. I'm going to take him
to the police and turn him in. They aren't going to hurt him but he must go
back to Angeles. He was involved in serious criminal behavior."

	"Oh, son, calm down. He's just eleven years old. What could he have
been doing that was so bad?"

	"Mother, the same sinful business as his mother. And you can be
sure he'll do the same thing here. Once a boy gets into that sort of thing,
it's just like the heroin that Layla was, probably is, using. We cannot
have him here!"

	"Son, I'm sorry but we're not turning away our own flesh and
blood. Brandon is my grandson."

	"Great grandson. He's only got a small portion of Filipino blood,
our blood running in his veins. His father and grandfather were both
Americans, lechers. He's the result of your daughter's and granddaughter's
sins. Look at him, mother. He's more American than Filipino and full of the
sinfulness of the Americans. I'm sure he has no idea who his father was. I
can't have him under the same roof as you. He's going to..."

	"Diosdado, stop talking like that. I repeat, he is my great
grandson and I will not turn him out. Whatever happened is not his fault."

	"Mother he's a prostitute, selling his body to foreigners. He's not
a child any more. He's a whore like his mother."

	Brandon, unable to control his growing fury, stood up and shouted
at his uncle, "My mother's not a whore. You don't know nothing. She's a
club manager. My father is Jack Brandenburgh and I know him good." In
English, he declared, "See, I can talk English like an American `cause he
taught me."

	Diosdado, who spoke English better than anyone else in his family,
turned to his mother. "The fact is that he is wanted by the police in
Angeles and if he stays here, we'll go to jail when they catch him."

	"Son, calm yourself. You heard him. And they aren't going to catch
him here. Nobody's looking for him here. He'd didn't kill anyone, or rob a
bank. Now, you need to be a good grandfather and help him become a fine
young man like you."

	"Mother, he's a whore!"

	"No, he's a little boy, my great grandson, and you are going to
love him just like a grandfather is supposed to."

	There was no diffusing the anger in her son. Once again, he went
off to his room and closed the door, though a little softer than the night
before.

	Brandon slept fully clothed under a light sheet on a small mattress
in the front room. By the time he awakened to what was happening some time
after midnight, his feet were tied together and some kind of fabric tightly
covered his mouth. Strong arms pinned and lifted him, then quickly carried
him to the apartment door and down the stairs. He tried to kick and wiggle
but was powerless in the man's grasp. It was too dark to see but he was
sure it was Diosdado.

	At the front door, he got one arm free and grabbed at the door
frame. A hand struck him hard on the side of the head, dazing him enough
that, for a few moments, he lost track of what was going on.

	When he regained full consciousness, he renewed his struggle. This
time there was a sharp blow to his middle, taking his breath away.

	"Careful, boy, you are not going to defile my mother or my home. I
will hit you until you are dead if I have to." The words, though spoken
barely above a whisper, rang loud in Brandon's ears.

	Brandon stopped fighting his captor but not in surrender. He was
trying to figure a way to free himself from his crazy uncle. He was being
carried vertically in front of the man's body. Where were his balls? Would
a backward kick make contact?

	Breathing was difficult with the cloth over his mouth and the small
opening at his nose. He concentrated on pulling air into his lungs. Where
was he taking him? Yes, to the police. He couldn't allow that. Just as he
was about to try the backward kick, he realized for the first time that his
feet were tightly tied together, crossed in such a way the he wasn't going
to able to move them very far. He decided to fake his uncle out.

	Brandon began jerking as though unable to breathe. That was
followed by grunts then gradually going limp. Finally, he dropped his
head. For a moment, his act was ignored but a few steps later, the man
stopped, laid him on the sidewalk and released the gag. As he stood,
Brandon took a deep breath, looked for a belt line and kicked as hard as he
could. He missed his target, catching his uncle on the thighs. The reaction
was a hard kick to his rear end, then another.

	Brandon screamed out, "Help, help, help!"

	His uncle dropped down on top of him with the towel he'd used as a
gag and pushed it over his face.

	From off to one side, a man's voice shouted, "Hey, get off him!"

	Brandon heard the footsteps of more than one person.

	His uncle stood, stepped back and ran off.

	Two men rushed up to Brandon who was starting to feel the pain of
the two blows to his rear and legs.

	One man stooped down beside him "Son of a bitch! Kid's tied
up. What happened, boy?"

	Another cried out, "Get that man! He's a kidnapper!"

	Brandon's legs were freed. Again, "What happened?"

	"Man grabbed me."

	"You know `im? What's his name?"

	"No, I don't know `im." He was already thinking of the need to get
back into the apartment to get the knapsack with his money inside.

	His rescuers wanted to take him to police. "Please, just let me go
home."

	"Where you live, boy. We'll take you home." Brandon smelled the
beer on his breath.

	In the end, they unexpectedly let him go with warnings to be
careful. A couple followed him for two blocks then stopped and turned
back. It was then that he realized he had no idea where he was or in which
direction to seek his grandmother's house. He decided to walk up one street
then down the next in hope that he'd recognize it. Failing that, in the
morning, he could ask where the St. Bonifacio's Church was. The nuns there
seemed to know his grandmother. They could give him an address and point
him in the right direction.

	At least he was walking on flat concrete. Had he been on the rough
dirt side-streets of Angeles, his soft bare feet wouldn't have been able to
take the punishment.

	He wandered around for over an hour. Other than a few distinctive
store fronts, all the streets looked the same. He lost track of which
direction he'd come from. In Balibago, if a person walked a few blocks in
any direction, he'd obviously be out of the town center. Here, it looked
pure city as far as he could see. There were a few people about but he had
no idea what to ask them except about the church and school so he did. A
drunk pointed him down a long street that led to eventually to a wider
street with stores on both sides. Hardly any traffic went by, no jeepneys.

      There was some money in one of his pockets. He felt it. The bills
were all hundreds. There had to at least five in there. If he could find
one, he could hail a taxi but where would he tell him to go? He looked for
a place to sit down and wait for the dawn. Two blocks down the street, he
spotted a walkway between two stores and went in. It was too dark to
see. He tripped over something soft and fell into more. They were
legs. Someone grumbled. The voice sounded young. Brandon stood and strained
to see. As his eyes accustomed to the extreme darkness, he saw the forms of
small bodies pressed together. The heavy breathing told him they were all
asleep.

      Feeling safe among other boys, he walked a bit farther and sat
against the wall. Almost immediately, cockroaches ran up the masonry, one
over his shoulder and onto the side of his face. He jumped up, brushing
wildly at his left side. Before sitting down again, he kicked at the ground
around him and slapped at the wall, Satisfied he'd chased all the bugs
away, he sat back down.

      A loneliness fell over him as he felt the concrete greet his rear
end. He'd always slept in a bed, even if in a hotel with a customer. There
were no sheets, no softness below, but worst of all, there was no one
nearby who cared about him, no one who would protect him if he needed
it. The security of people and places he knew was gone. He yearned for
Millie but she was a lost, as insecure as he. Even if he could find his
great grandmother's house the next day, was there any future, any hope
there? The thousands of pesos in his backpack could help him survive but
even if he was able to recover them, they'd eventually run out and, anyway,
he'd still be alone.

      Sleep finally came amid trepidation and hope the nearby boys could
direct him to the church.

      What awakened him were soft kicks at his legs. The sun must have been
barely coming up as the boys standing about him were not much more than
shadows. They varied in size from about his age on the left to a pair who
had to be well into their teens.

      "Who the fuck are you, kid?" asked the voice of someone just entering
adolescence.

      "Uh, Brandon. I gotta go to St. Bonifacio."

      "You gotta give us those neat clothes you're wearin'," said one of
the teens. "Goat needs `em."

      Fear hit Brandon in the gut. Freddy had told him about bad kids like
this. He'd had his clothes taken away by just such a group. How could he
have been so stupid to stay in this place. Then he did something even more
thoughtless.

      "I got some money. I can..." He knew it was wrong as he spoke.

      The first blow to his head came from behind. Two or three kicks
followed. Hands were all over him. When he tried to get away, fists
pummeled his face and head. More hands. His pants came off, then his
underwear, shirt and undershirt. Still standing around him, two of the boys
put his clothes on. One of teens had his money and was counting it.

      "Shit! He's got six hundred here. Check his other pockets."

      When they found none, two of them knelt beside him and asked gruffly,
"Where you get this money, kid? Tell us or we'll beat the shit outta you
`til you do."

      "Nah, stupid" said another, "Look at his hair. He's some rich kid got
lost. Nobody comes around here with his kind a money. Fuck him. Let's go."

      "Yeah," said one of the teens. "That's a good idea. Let's fuck him."

      "Don't be stupid," growled another. "Cops are probably looking all
over for `im. Let's get outta here."

      And they were gone.

      Brandon, feeling the bruises on his face, sat up, stark naked,
lost. It was all too much. He curled up and cried.

      The sound of two people walking by brought on an awareness of his
nudity. Sobbing, wiping tears and dripping mucus, he looked around for
something to cover himself. His face hurt. Three men in work clothes
carrying lunch pails continued to converse, one waving his arms, as they
walked around him. It was though he was merely a sleeping dog or a pile of
debris they needed to avoid. None of them looked directly at him.

      There was trash paper everywhere, but none of it was large enough to
wrap around himself. Hands over his crotch, he walked warily toward the
street, his eyes searching the concrete for something with some size to
it. There was some crumpled newspaper. He opened it up. There was human
excrement inside.

      Two more men came by. The second one frowned at him but didn't slow
or say anything. A single younger man came through. Brandon pleaded,
"Mister, please. Some boys stole my clothes." The man didn't even
hesitate. Brandon sat against the wall, cursed his uncle and fought tears
as he tried to think what he could do. Another group of men, this time
eight or more, turned into the walkway.

      Brandon stood and started speaking through tears before they got to
him. "Please help. Some boys stole my clothes and I need to get to
St. Bonifacio church. Please!"

      The first few just pushed past him but one handed him a
newspaper. "Sorry. It's all I got and I gotta get to work."

      "Where's St. Bonifacio?"

      The man pointed to his right as he continued on. "About six blocks up
that way."

      Try as he could to make a skirt out of the newspaper, it kept falling
apart. More men walked by, none taking any notice of his struggles. It was
as though he wasn't there. Were naked boys a common sight here in Manila?
Desperate, he wondered what might happen if he just held the newsprint over
his front and ran toward the church. Six blocks was a long way. Surely a
policeman or a tanod would notice and grab him. He wondered what his face
looked like. His right eye and cheek hurt badly.

      It occurred to him that some sort of factory or large employer had to
be at the far end of the walkway. Thirty or forty men had gone by and more
were coming. Holding the newspaper over his crotch, he followed the next
group. No one seemed to mind.

      At the end of the walkway, he found himself on a street lined with a
few stores but mostly large buildings that the passing men were
entering. He was shooed away from the first doors he tried to enter but the
man at the third listened to his story. "All right, come in and let me see
what I can find you. They know you at the church?"

      "No, just my grandmother. We were there yesterday at the school."

      The man came up with rags but none were large enough to do any
good. Finally, he pulled a torn burlap sack out of the trash. With a large
pair of scissors he dug out of a drawer, he cut holes in the sack for his
head and arms. "Ain't much, but it'll get you to St. Bonifacio's. Least you
ain't naked."

      With directions from the kind man, Brandon walked swiftly up the
street. Again, no one seemed to take note of him even though he was sure
there'd have at least been comments were he to walk around Balibago or
Angeles as he was.

      The sight of the steeple three blocks away quickened his step. He had
to walk around a large block to find a door he could knock on. The church
itself was closed. No one answered. The school was across the street but he
didn't want to be seen by others. There was another door forty yards up the
street. It pushed open. A woman jumped up from behind a desk and rushed to
push him back outside.

      "You know the rules. Come back after three!"

      "They stole my clothes. Please."

"After three. Now go away!"

       "I just want to find my grandmother's house but I don't know where
it is. I'm not from here. Please."

      The woman frowned, looked harder at him then asked. "What's your
name?"

      "Brandon, Brandon Ladao. My grandmother brought me here yesterday
about going to school `cause I'm not from here."

      "What's your grandmother's name?"

      Brandon choked up as he realized he didn't remember his grandmother's
first name. Tears welled. "Mrs. Ladao. Please. I just need to get to her
and I don't know..." Fearing being sent away, fearing another encounter
with hardened stowaways, he had to stop talking to keep from crying.

      "Wait." she said and closed the door.

      Brandon wiped away tears, his fears temporarily relieved.

      Minutes later, the door opened, a hand appearing bearing shorts and a
striped T-shirt.

      "Can I change inside?"

      The woman couldn't hear the request behind the quickly closed door.

      He stepped into the shorts, immediately recognizing them to be two
sizes too large, with no belt loops to tie together, but happy to have his
private parts covered. The shirt was small, barely reaching his navel, more
like Millie's halter top than a boy's T-shirt.

      Brandon knocked on the door. After three times, he knew there'd be no
reply.

      He looked toward the school across the street and tried to remember
from which direction they'd come the morning before. Trying to forget his
hunger, holding up the baggy shorts with one hand, ignoring the discomfort
of walking barefoot on unnoticed sharp debris, Brandon tried to retrace his
way back to the relative safety and comfort of his grandmother's
apartment. If his uncle hadn't tossed it out, he'd have his knapsack with
clothes, shoes, and most important of all, several thousand pesos.

      The streets didn't seem familiar. He tried to remember how long
they'd walked, where the sun had been, how many turns they'd made, any
memorable sights. He wished he'd paid more attention.

      By midday, he hadn't found anything that looked even remotely like
the street that he'd sat and watched the previous day from the stoop of his
grandmother's house. Worse, at that point, he couldn't figure out which way
the church had been. His empty stomach was pressing him for relief but not
as much as his thirst. There were a multitude of stores and street vendors
with drinks of all descriptions, People sitting and standing around were
munching on everything from rice to chips and sipping all sorts of drinks
out of bottles, cups, cans, and plastic bags with straws.

      Twice he asked men if they could share sodas but was ignored by one
and told to `fuck off' by another. He tried a boy about his age. "Buy your
own, kid!" was the reply. Finally, a woman watering the flowers in pots
outside her windows let him drain the watering can. She nodded at his
"Thank you, miss."

      He almost asked her for food but lost his nerve. Still, he tried to
remember where she lived in case hunger overcame the embarrassment of
begging.

      He'd already seen other ragged boys begging and one about his age
stealing. The kid had walked briskly into a store, grabbed something and
run out. It bothered him that he might be reduced to such a degree of
necessity.

      There were also boys of all ages in the street selling everything
from fruit to cigarettes to jeepney, car and truck drivers and their
passengers. He wondered how much they made. Were he able to recover his
knapsack and his money, he could buy goods and hit the streets. The problem
with that would be, as he had already experienced, thieves. That in mind,
he rejected growing temptations to speak to any of the even younger street
boys for fear there'd be a repeat of what had happened early that morning.

      That was when he noticed that many of the stowaways had very short
haircuts or were almost bald. He remembered the boy that morning remarking
about his hair as though long hair was something different, possibly to be
concerned about. Obviously, as with the street boys in Angeles, whenever
these kids were grabbed up by the tanods or police, they were taken to
police stations or juvenile lockups where, supposedly to prevent lice
infections, their hair was cut off. Manila was apparently the same.

      Hours went by. The sun drifted below the roof lines. Tears competed
with anger, hunger with pride.

      As traffic increased, he sat against a corner clothing store and
watched three boys selling cigarettes, candy and fruit to vehicles stopped
at a red light. Yes, he could do that in a pinch, if he had money to get
started.

      Hunger gnawed at him. Somehow, he absolutely had to get some
food. Getting back to Angeles was one solution. He could hide out with
Freddy or Junior. It would be unpleasant but there'd be food and a safe
place to sleep, most important, there'd be the security of a known
environment, and friends. But, with no money and looking like a stowaway,
there didn't seem to be much of a chance anyone would let him ride a bus or
jeepney. Riding free off the back, being constantly chased away, didn't
seem possible for so great a journey, especially increasingly weak due to
an empty stomach. He tried to calculate the time it would take to walk. If,
including stops, a bus went about ten, no twenty times faster than he could
on foot, it would require sixty hours, easily three days. He'd need to
sleep. Four day, walking without food and little water. When he got close
to Angeles, he'd have to travel by night to keep from being spotted by the
police, or anyone who knew or recognized him. Surely, his school photo had
been in the newspaper. Such a journey wasn't going to be possible without
food.

      A thought struck him. If there were men taking boys to hotels in
Angeles, there had to be far more doing so in the much larger city of
Manila. The question was where. How could he find out?

      There it was. His uncle's prediction could be coming true. He was
going back to being a call boy. Fuck him! Call boys had clothes, good food
and the cash to pay for a decent place to sleep.

      First, absolutely first, he had to eat something, a handful of rice,
a piece of bread, at that point, anything.

      Two boys about ten and eleven, both smaller than Brandon, were
begging from men and women returning home from work, both boys walking
slightly ahead of each potential giver, their faces in pitiful expressions,
eyebrows arched, heads cocked, filthy hands out. Repeated rejections didn't
seem to faze them but it was easy to see why. For every ten or fifteen
persons approached, a coin was given. The younger boy was having slightly
more success than the older. Brandon noticed that he was able to put on a
more pathetic expression. Could he do that?

      He stood, seeking the nerve to give it a try. Pride made that first
step seem impossible. Just about that time, the older beggar stopped and
grabbed his partner by the arm, counted the coins in his hand then his
own. Apparently, it was enough. They walked down the street side by side,
disappearing into the crowd.

      Again, Brandon tried to force himself forward. He looked up at a man
coming his way, "Please, I haven't eaten all day." There wasn't time for
more. The man was gone. He had to walk with the next one. "Please, I
haven't eaten all day. Please. I'm not from here." He received a smirk.

      Perhaps a woman. "Please, I haven't eaten all day. I'm lost. Please."
She shook her head and picked up her step.

      Four more rejections brought Brandon to the limit of his pride. He
turned back to the wall, trying to keep tears at bay. It didn't work. He
slid down to the sidewalk and sat dejectedly. His head rolled back and
banged against the masonry. Tears dripped down his nose. An unseen man
leaned over in full stride and dropped a peso, a whole peso, in front of
him. Brandon watched it fall in disbelief, then stared at it for a moment
before snatching it off the concrete.

      He turned quickly to thank the anonymous donor but had no idea who
among the passersby it could have been. No one looked back.

      He stood slowly, trying to decide whether to buy something
immediately or try for more. Five Pesos would buy him a meal. He looked up
at the people.

      It took the better part of half an hour but he managed to collect
four more pesos. Hunger took control. He walked to a street vendor and
bought a plastic bag of warm rice with a little meat and vegetables and
another with a colored liquid and a straw. It tasted great. The pain in his
stomach didn't disappear but was dramatically reduced.

      Once fed, he went back to begging, collecting another three pesos and
twenty-five centavos with which he bought two sweet rolls. His stomach
ceased bothering him.

      It was dark. He was on a main thoroughfare. He walked a few blocks in
the direction of the brighter lights in hopes of finding boys who might
somehow tell him where to find `men looking for a boy to give them a blow
job or sit on their cocks' as he expressed it to himself. Foreigners paying
a hundred pesos would be nice but he was ready to negotiate with a
Filipino, even the crude, often dirty workmen on that street, to get what
he could. The problem was how to find where that sort of thing was going
on. He looked at the men passing him. None showed any interest.

      Asking the street boys he'd seen was sure to be dangerous. The ones
who'd stolen his clothes earlier had walked away from the opportunity to
rape him only because of fear police might be coming. But that didn't make
any sense. They could have forced him to go somewhere with them. Maybe
they'd have fed him after making use of his body. Sex for food? Was that
okay, safe?

      He mentally slapped himself. Foolishness. Those boys were
dangerous. Look what they'd done to his face. Had they the chance, they'd
have raped him and walked off, giving nothing in return for their fun.

      But what about the smaller ones, kids his age, the two who'd
unknowingly taught him how to beg? Could he find them, or others like them?
He picked up his pace, looking on both sides of the commercial street. He
spotted one group sitting in front of a food store and crossed over,
dodging jeepneys as he went. As he neared the curb, he noticed all four had
glue bags. One, wearing only an oversized T-shirt, sat with his knees up
displaying his bare, filth-stained crotch for all to see. Brandon walked
on, glad he had those shorts no matter he had to hold them up whenever he
stood or walked.

       Three more stowaways sat on a curb, young teens, also huffing out of
paper bags.

      Within an hour, there were no more stowaways awake on the
street. Twenty or thirty were curled up with each other in groups of three,
four, and five, some under newspaper or cardboard, most tight against the
walls of closed stores except for one threesome lying across the sidewalk
under a bright storefront. Once again, one had only a T-shirt, the end of
his prepubescence clearly visible. No one seemed concerned about naked boys
in Manila. Did that augur a lack of interest in boys for sex?

      Nonetheless, it figured that sleeping in the open was apparently the
best way to get a safe night's sleep.

      In front of a small appliance store there were three boxes that might
have held a large stereo or a small washing machine. Sleeping inside one of
them might be warm and even safer than being exposed on the sidewalk. He
opened up the first. There was a boy inside. The others were also
occupied. Looking around and seeing nothing more inviting, Brandon gently
pried two of the boxes apart and slid in between, gradually falling asleep,
his mind grappling with different ways he might safely learn how a boy
could hustle his body without it being ravaged for asking.

      Dreams were of being chased naked and terrified down the streets of
Tondo, constantly on the verge of being caught though that never seemed to
happen.

      He was awakened by the movement of the box on his right. Dawn was
stretching out across the building tops. A barely adolescent boy, his brown
skin darkened by splotches of filth, stood up inside his box and
stretched. The moment he spotted Brandon, he asked angrily. "Who the fuck
is this?" Another slightly larger, equally unclean boy stood, looked down
and kicked Brandon through the side of his box. "Son of a bitch, who said
you could sleep here? You better have somethin' for us!"

      Afraid of another beating, Brandon answered timidly, "I'm sorry. I
don't got nothin' but, I can beg somethin'."

      The first boy shook his head, fell deliberately over with his tall
box, the only practical way of getting out of it, and hopped upright. He
kicked Brandon in the leg. "Don't come around us no more."

      The bigger boy, about thirteen or fourteen, stood over Brandon and
said harshly, "Look at his hair. Where you come from, kid?"

      "Angeles. My uncle threw me out, here, I mean."

      "What the fuck are you talkin' about?" asked the first and made an
unintelligible remark to the boy beside him.

      "My mother got locked up so they sent me here but my uncle threw me
out. I didn't mean to do nothin' wrong. I'm sorry. I won't do it no more."

      The two older boys conferred in whispers then, the larger of the two
nodding at his battered face. "What happened to your face?"

      Brandon didn't want to answer that for fear of admitting how
defenseless he was.

      "Some kids beat your ass?" asked the other.

      No answer.

      "Okay, you get to stay with us but you gotta get money for us and we
won't let nobody hurt you. My name's Boy. I'm the boss. He's Rafael and
that's Don Don. He ain't nothin'." He was pointing at the third box where
something or someone was moving around inside.

      Under the circumstances, it sounded like a good option. He nodded
agreement. Begging wasn't all that difficult and these kids knew how to
stay fed and safe.

      The third boy, much smaller than the others, was trying to get out of
his box. He needed help or his box would fall over. It fell. "Boy!" he
cried out as he went down.

	The two laughed at his misfortune. The biggest boy, pointing his
thumb toward the smallest, said to Brandon, "You gotta beg with him so
let's go."

	They walked back in the direction he'd come from the night
before. Boy, the biggest, slim and wiry with a hard face, small eyes and a
number of missing teeth, wore torn jeans and two formerly white button-up
shirts, one considerably larger than the other. Rafael, with squinty though
not slanted eyes and crooked teeth, had relatively clean blue slacks and
another of the same formerly white shirts. Don Don, frail looking with a
sad, long face, frequently scratching himself between the legs and under
his arms, was covered to his knees and wrists with a much too large, dirty
green and brown striped jersey. While the two others had worn, barely
serviceable flip flops, the nine year old was barefoot. Rafael's two inches
of hair stuck out like a worn toothbrush. Don Don's, about the same length,
not as rigid but equally disheveled, fell over his ears and forehead. Boy's
was a couple of inches longer and in a haphazard array of scraggly knots
that bounced about as he walked. Boy claimed proudly that he had been
homeless since he was eight, so knew "everything about the streets so just
do what I tell you and you'll be okay."

	Brandon and Don Don were put to begging on either side of the broad
street at a red light controlled intersection. They went up and down the
lines of halted traffic, mostly jeepneys, with sad faces and hands that
indicated they were hungry. The coins tended to be small but Brandon alone
netted fourteen pesos and forty centavos in a little more than two hours.

	Some of what he and his new younger associate collected went for a
breakfast of rice and eggs but the rest went for brown paper bags and glue
purchased out of a gallon can from the same woman who'd sold them their
rice and eggs.

	The four retired to a narrow walkway where Boy dealt out small
portions of glue from the jar Rafael carried in his pants pocket. Brandon
didn't ask for a bag. No one complained.

	As the three breathed deeply out of the crumpled bags over their
mouths, passersby stepped around them, apparently immune to such behavior.

	Don Don began to point silently upward at something. Rafael seemed
to relax, sliding down the wall until he was nearly flat on the
concrete. Boy, holding the bag toward Brandon, turned to him with a blank
look and said, "Good stuff, wanna blow?"  When there wasn't an immediate
reply, he pulled it back over his face and sucked in more fumes. Rafael was
half humming, half vocalizing some tune in his head, an occasional partial
word accenting the monotonous sound. Don Don smiled at Brandon and pointed
up. Brandon looked. There was a window with drying laundry eight or ten
feet above them. When he looked back at Don Don, the little boy pointed at
himself them pulled up his shirt. There was nothing underneath but bare
flesh, dirty and encrusted with scabs, particularly his dick and balls, the
latter swollen from scratching with dirty fingers.

	Boy began talking about his uncle whom he planned to murder one day
but not why. "Son of a bitch gonna die with his guts all over the floor. I
saw a guy go like that. Somebody cut him and it all came out. Really
hurt. Sat there looking at it and dying."

	Rafael said, "It was a fucking movie."

	"Unh uh, I saw it. Really hurt. Son of a bitch gonna die."

	Rafael laughed. Don Don's attention was on the clothes above.

	Brandon thought it might be a good time to ask about where call
boys could be found. All three of his companions were high enough that they
probably wouldn't remember the subject had been brought up. He tried to
frame it within a general topic.

	"In Angeles the stowaways don't beg that much. They sell stuff and
clean out the bars. Some of them do sex. They do that here too?"

	Rafael laughed again. "Sex?" He laughed some more. "Son of a bitch!
Brandon wants to do sex." More laughter. "Suck mine and I'll give you ten
centavos."

	Boy joined in. "You gotta do me first."

	Brandon defended, "I don't do that. I was just saying that some
kids in Angeles..."

	"Shit, but you said it. How come you said it if you don't wanna?"
asked Rafael cockily, his words slow and slurred.

	"All right, forget it. I just think we can make more money doin'
something like sellin' stuff." He hoped they'd sniff more glue, get the
subject out of their minds.

	To Brandon's relief, Boy asked, "Like what?"

	Rafael answered triumphantly, "Blow jobs!" and laughed some more.

	Brandon desperately tried to change the subject, "In Angeles, some
kids sell holy cards on the buses, you know, like pictures of the Blessed
Mother or that heart thing with the thorns. We can buy `em cheap and say
they were blessed by somebody like a priest. That's what they do and they
get a Peso each."

	Boy mumbled something unintelligible and took a huff out of his
bag. Rafael shook his head and muttered "Blow jobs."

	Moments later, the two bigger boys appeared to be asleep.

	Brandon got up to leave, escape. Don Don had another idea. "Let me
get on your shoulders. I can get those clothes." He pointed at the laundry
drying just outside the open window above.

	Brandon agreed, more concerned the little boy would alert the
others to his leaving than helping out the near-naked nine year old. He
squatted with his hands against the wood slat wall while Don Don clambered
onto his shoulders with dirt encrusted feet. As Brandon rose, Don Don
raised himself. "Higher," insisted the boy. I can almost get `em."

	From behind him, Boy said, "Get down, Don Don. Brandon, you get on
me." He sounded completely sober.

	Brandon mentally kicked himself for not just running out of the
walkway when he had the chance, but followed orders. Boy had a hard time
standing. "Shit, you're heavy. Get off."

	Don Don was less of a load and went up easily. The few inches of
additional height did the trick. One by one, down came three T-shirts, two
pairs of underpants, two pairs of colored socks and a pair of pants, all
too large for any of them.

	They had to let Don Don try on the pants before he'd believe they
were too big for him. Boy took them a few blocks away to another group of
street youth who, after loud negotiations and threats, gave them a total of
seventeen pesos for the clothing. Brandon sensed that Boy had something on
at least two of the older teens when they agreed to the price even though a
couple of their comrades wanted to just take everything without
paying. There was anger and frustration on the faces of the teens and calm
on Boy's.

	"You see," bragged Boy as they walked away, "nobody messes with
me. I got friends."

	Brandon resisted the desire to ask what he meant by that but, at
least Boy appeared a good option as a protector. His hope, however, that
Boy and Rafael had forgotten the morning's discussion was to be dashed.

	Nothing came up until he and Don Don had begged through the evening
rush hour, all had filled up on a dinner of rice and some nasty kind of
fried fish, the three had sniffed their glue bags dry and spoken and acted
out absurdities that Brandon this time didn't interrupt followed by a half
hour of an intoxicant induced nap. Carrying broken corrugated cardboard
boxes for warmth, they found a sleeping spot under a creaky wooden stairway
just down a walkway from the street where they'd begged.

	Rafael turned to Brandon and said, "Give me a blow job so I can get
to sleep faster."

	Brandon insisted, "I don't do stuff like that."

	"Sure you do. How else you gonna know about shit like what you said
about boys making money sucking cock?"

	"I heard kids talkin' is all."

	Rafael laughed at him. Boy was less kind. "Don't lie, bitch! You
know how to do it. You done it plenty. You probably got fucked too. I'll
bet if I fucked you right now you'd love it. Wanna get fucked or just give
me and Rafael blow jobs?"

	Brandon's fear wasn't being fucked by the two relatively small
cocks or even giving blow jobs. Blowing four inch cocks, even taking them
up his ass, was a small price to pay for the protection and knowhow these
two were providing. What frightened him was the specter of their having the
same filthy, disease ravaged groins that he'd seen on Don Don. All he could
think to say in protest was, "You just said I had to beg." Then, in
semi-resignation, "Anyhow, you're all dirty. I'd get sick and then what?"

	"Don't worry bitch," said Rafael as he opened up and pushed down
his trousers, "see, we washed `em off while you was beggin'. Me first."

	"Do him!" ordered Boy with a push in the back."

	Enough light came through the stairway that Brandon could see,
stretching from well below his belly button down to his balls, a circular
clean area in Rafael's otherwise filthy body. Somewhat larger than
marble-sized testicles hung down between his legs under a soft cock shorter
but fatter than Freddy's. Brandon sighed and leaned over. Rafael lay back,
his hands under his head, his eyes closed. Don Don leaned over as well, to
watch.

	It took several minutes of oral manipulation to bring the thirteen
year old to full erection then quite a lot of hard, fast sucking for him to
squirt a few drops of semi-sweet pre-cum into Brandon's mouth.

	Rafael was content. "Shit, he's better'n Don Don. Little bastard
takes all night. Okay, now do it to Boy."

	Boy didn't require any initial workup. His pants were off and he
was fully hard when Brandon turned to do him. Though there wasn't yet any
sign of pubic hair, he was considerably larger than Rafael, approaching in
dick size some of his smaller Filipino customers back in Angeles. "Suck on
my balls first. I washed them too."

	Brandon had sucked on considerably larger, hairy testicles. This
smooth pair fit perfectly inside his mouth. Boy opened his legs and pressed
Brandon's head into himself. Brandon used his tongue to move the orbs
around in his mouth then sucked gently. There was no use in trying to hide
his skill. It was time to just get this over.

	Moments later, Boy pulled Brandon's head up to take in his four and
a half inches, then, after a few smooth passes, abruptly changed his mind,
"I gotta fuck you. Get off your pants, fast!"

	As though he'd been told to do nothing more than smile, Brandon
left Boy's cock well covered with saliva, quickly slid down his oversized
shorts, rolled over, dripped more saliva into his hand and lubed up his
hole. Boy was on top of him the moment Brandon pulled his hand out of his
crack. "Put me inside," he ordered.

	Brandon reached back and guided the cock head to his anus and
lifted his ass. Boy slid in, right to his balls.

	Out of the corner of his eye, Brandon could see Don Don beating off
his diseased little penis. He turned away from the nasty sight but came
face to groin with Rafael playing with his still inflated cock on that
side.

	Boy had done this before. He fucked slowly, occasionally rocking
from side to side, just pushing the head in and out of Brandon's hole then
thrusting full inside several times before repeating the process. He was
long enough to reach Brandon's prostate causing a hard-on to rub against
the cardboard below.

	At one point, Boy commented, "You got one big hole, Brandon. Bet a
lot of men been in here, huh?"

	Brandon didn't reply.

	Boy took his time. Brandon didn't mind. It felt fairly good though
it would have been much better if they'd been on top of a mattress.

	After a while, Boy began fucking harder, slamming in, pushing
Brandon up to the wall. He had to put his hands out to keep from hitting
his head.

	Right about then, Brandon heard footsteps coming their way from the
street. He looked up as three young men walked cavalierly by. One
whistled. Another grunted rhythmically in time to Boy's thrusts. But, they
didn't slow to watch.

	Boy didn't miss a beat until the throbbing began. He pushed in as
far as he could go and held himself there for several minutes. Finally, he
told Don Don to "cover us up. I'm gonna stay like this all night."

	He rolled them onto their sides, his arms around Brandon's middle
and chest, adjusted himself to stay inside, then gave Don Don a further
order. "Fold my pants and put `em under my head."

	A little later, he whispered into Brandon's ear, "We're gonna do
this a lot."

	Boy tried mightily to stay stuck inside Brandon but as sleep
overcame him, he fell backward, his dick softened and out he came. Brandon
found his shorts, put them on and joined the others in dreamland where
Millie appeared, but out of reach. Brandon found himself on the Balibago
strip, Millie a half block away. She didn't see him or hear him call
out. When he ran toward her, even without running herself, she always
seemed to maintain the same distance. Then she went into a hotel. In the
doorway were two of his mother's bar girls, both waving fingers and
forbidding him to enter.

	Brandon awakened with a start. He was in a dark walkway between Don
Don and Boy. Was this the dream or had the other been reality. It took him
a few seconds to grasp the unpleasant reality. It took a while to fall back
asleep, Millie's untouchable mental image holding him near tears.

	Over the next few days, Brandon refined his begging technique,
briefly tried then rejected glue, figured out that stroking Rafael's
perineum sped up the blood to his penis, and learned more about survival on
the streets including where a kid could safely take a shit and that pissing
was a matter of where one was at the time even if on a curb begging. Don
Don peed once with one hand holding up his T-shirt, the other out to a
passing jeepney. Some places smelled more of urine than others indicating
street people's favored spots, many of which had ignored signs with "Bawal
umihi ditto" (Pissing prohibited here). There were a lot of street people
of all genders and ages.

      He also gleaned a little of his new companions' backgrounds. Boy
wouldn't tell much more than his mother had switched spouses and his uncle
blamed him. Rafael just hated anyone giving him orders. He'd been on the
street for seven months this time after three spent in a juvenile detention
center, his second stay there after running away earlier, the first after a
year long stint from age nine.

	Don Don refused to discuss his past or even where he came
from. Rafael said casually, "We just know he showed up a year ago and Boy
took him over. He's a good fuck and sucks good too, but you're better."

      Boy cut their begging early on the fifth evening. They were going to,
as he put it, "get to sleep in an empty house some friends took over."

	To get there, Boy taught Brandon how to hang onto the back of a
jeepney where the driver couldn't see him in his rear view mirror. It was
the same method Brandon had observed street kids use in Angeles and
Balibago.

	The house was a wooden shack, pegged onto the back of an aged
industrial building, half of it hanging out over a putrid drainage
canal. To get there, they trudged in near darkness past three similar,
candle-lit shanties full of ragged children along a path cut into the steep
canal bank and up a wobbly ladder like staircase. Inside was a room with an
old cracked Formica topped kitchen table with aluminum legs on three sides,
the fourth held up unevenly by an empty crate. The chairs were a
combination of the real thing, a turned over five gallon paint can and
another crate. A pair of cheap blankets suspended from plastic clothesline
separated a space on the right side.

       The `friends' were a quartet of middle to older teens all wearing
coveralls and sporting similar arm tattoos of a space satellite flying past
the moon. All four slapped hands with Boy, acknowledged Rafael, ignored Don
Don and looked over Brandon. There was secretive discussion, again with
looks toward Brandon, then more light hand slaps.

	Boy came to Brandon and said matter of factly, "You sleep with them
tonight."

	Brandon was more angry than surprised. He'd surmised what was going
on when he saw the way the teens had looked at him. "How much for me, or do
you get it all?"

	With venom in his voice, Boy growled, "What you get is fucked so
get the fuck in there and do what they say." He pushed Brandon in the
direction of the room the four had disappeared into.

	"Fuck fuck, suck suck," said Rafael gleefully.

	There was no escape. This was going to happen one way or
another. Brandon obeyed.

	The four were undressing as he entered. Three candles lit the plank
walls and a queen size mattress on the plank floor. As clothes came off,
Brandon watched to see the condition of the genitals he was going to have
to deal with. These young men did not live on the streets. All were clean
and well nourished. The next to tallest was by far the most muscled but had
the smallest penis.

	"Come on, kid. Strip and let's do it," said the tallest, a lanky
boy of eighteen or nineteen with a sneer accented by long hair that fell
down and curled in toward the sides of his mouth.

	The youngest, only slightly larger than Boy, stiff already, fell
backward onto the mattress and ordered, "Come here and suck on this." He
stretched out the word `suck' either for effect or because he was fighting
a stutter.

	"Get naked first, kid. I wanna see what I'm gonna fuck." That was
muscles speaking.

	Brandon took off everything. The older boy shouted at the blankets,
"Hey Boy! Get the fuck in here. You gotta wash this kid. I don't want no
fuckin' scabs all over me."

	Brandon looked at himself. He hadn't realized how dirty he'd
become.

	"Shit, Benny," complained the teen on the mattress. "Let him do me
first."

	"Fuck that. I want his ass clean."

	Boy angrily pushed a blanket aside, grabbed Brandon by the arm and
yanked him into the main room and across it to a large plastic drum of
water beside a hole in the floor. There was a plastic bowl and a bar of
soap on a horizontal two by four that ran the length of the room about four
feet above the floor. "Wash yourself!" he ordered.

	"Fuck that!" said Benny standing naked in front of the blanket,"
You do it, and fast."

	 Brandon raised his arms and looked at Don Don who was wearing one
of his rare smiles. Rafael folded his arms and mumbled, "Wash wash."

      Boy, furious at that point, whispered through his teeth, "I ain't
washin' your dick or your ass so you fuckin' do that while I do up top."

	Brandon was tempted to keep his arms raised but, well aware that
he'd be alone and vulnerable with Boy the next day, cooperated. Washing was
over in minutes. Brandon felt fresh but knew that was about to be spoiled.

	Benny ordered, "Go do Jose." Then to Boy, "I oughta make you do
him."

	The youngest, apparently Jose, was still lying on the mattress,
massaging a hard on and playing with his balls. His eyes were on Brandon's
mouth as the boy crawled between his spread out legs. Jose's mouth opened
along with Brandon's then became an oval as his cock entered a warmer
place.

      Within seconds of taking in Jose's newly adolescent penis, someone
raised his hips from behind. Brandon rubbed his lips into the sparse pubic
hair and waited for a rough penetration. A greasy finger was pressed
against his hole and shoved inside. A fingernail scraped the wall of his
rectum.

	The boy under him pushed his face upward. "Up and down, kid."

	Brandon obeyed as the finger stretched his hole upward. "Fuck!"
muttered the youth behind him in a wondrous rather than an angry
tone. "Kid's got a big hole."

	The finger came out. Brandon tried to concentrate on sucking. A
hard cock was pushed against his anus. It moved around a bit then rammed
its way inside hard and fast, barely reaching his prostate. Had to be
muscles.

	In the other room, if that was what it could be called with
blankets being the only separation, Brandon heard Boy tell Don Don to wash
himself and Don Don say he didn't `feel like it'. The sound of water
falling on the floor indicated who won that argument.

	Jose squirmed as Brandon sucked, up and down as ordered, sucking
hard on the head each time he reached it then dropping full down to the
ring of soft black hairs. The boy pushed down gently on the back of
Brandon's head to speed him up. His cock hardened, expanding sideways like
a cobra's hood. His hands dropped to the mattress. His legs closed under
Brandon then opened again. A young person's sperm fired out. Brandon took
in the entire shaft and swallowed. The not yet unpleasant taste matched the
not completely changed voice. The sucked relaxed. The fucker was banging in
hard, excess lubricant mixed with sweat spreading, causing a wet sound with
each impact.

	The spent young teen was replaced by the tallest. His cock was
longer, just short of six inches, slightly curved up and back toward its
owner, just as stiff as the previous one, just as demanding. The new client
pushed his cock vertical and pulled Brandon's face down on it. Brandon knew
well how to take that much in right down to his bushier base. This boy,
however, wanted to go slower than his predecessor and said so. "Easy kid,
go slow, all the way to the top each time, then down and wait, then up
again, like that."

	Brandon did as requested though sucking hard and using his
tongue. He guessed this boy reached orgasm quickly but wanted to prolong
his pleasure. That wasn't Brandon's goal.

	Muscles finally shot his load into Brandon, pumped a few times to
empty his balls than sat down, exhausted.

	That was what the boy under Brandon was waiting for. He pushed
Brandon's head off his cock and said, "Don't move."

	The teen lay full on top of Brandon and slid forward until his cock
reached Brandon's hole. Entry was slow but complete. The fucking was as
slow as the sucking he'd required. The longer cock massaged Brandon's
insides creating, as usual, a reaction in front though this time on a more
comfortable surface.

	The last boy wanted to get some action and tried to slide in for a
blow job. "Get the fuck outta there until I'm done," said the teen on top
in a low, almost pained but authoritative voice. He accented a quiet `son
of a bitch' with two hard thrusts into rectal space.

	Brandon heard the same impatient teen ask outside the blanket wall,
"Don't that kid suck too?" Brandon wondered who he was talking about.

	Boy relieved his curiosity with, "Go suck him, Don Don."

	"Shit, make him put his pants on first," said the teen. "I don't
want any of that shit on me."

	"He don't have none," answered Boy.

	"Shit! Then what's that shit all over him?"

	"He don't got no pants."

	"Shit, then make him do me like this."

	Brandon assumed that meant he'd be standing.

      The fucking went on long enough for Brandon to hear Don Don choking
and spitting and Rafael laughing. He hoped this was to be his last sexual
task for the evening unless, of course, Boy and Rafael wanted some of the
same.

	He was wrong. All seven of them slept on or about the mattress. At
different times during the night, Brandon was awakened by someone, he
wasn't always sure who, sticking a hard on between his legs and inside. He
did recognize Boy and Rafael when they climbed on him. He fell asleep while
Rafael was pumping away fruitlessly with his three and a half incher.

	Just as the sun was coming up, muscles fucked him again causing a
great need to take a crap. Having no idea where else to do it, Brandon
rushed to the hole in the floor and squirted his live liquid load through
it. He used water from the barrel to clean himself up.

	A teenaged girl brought them a breakfast of rice spiced with small
pieces of fried chicken she'd prepared in another of the shanties. Benny
handed her some bills and patted her ass as she departed. Brandon wondered
why they were fucking a boy and not girls.

	When he asked Boy about it as they headed for the jeepneys, the
reply was, "How the fuck am I supposed to know that?"

	That gruff tone inhibited Brandon's further pursuit into how much
cash they'd taken in for the night's debauchery. He got some idea later
that morning when, in a surprise more, Boy bought Don Don a pair of used
shorts and medicine for the scabies that covered half his body.

	They still had to beg during evening rush hour. Boy gave the two of
them seven pesos each to buy dinner. While they were eating, Don Don told
of seeing Rafael running out of a restaurant down the street with something
in his hand and two people racing after him. "They probably got chicken or
somethin' nice and I'll bet he still has money from last night."

	"Do you know how much he got for us?"

	"Nah, but he never give me any."

	"He bought you pants and that medicine."

	"That's just so I'll get better and he can fuck me again. I ain't
using it."

	A doubt popped into Brandon's mind. He sought a diplomatic way to
ask then, realizing that was impossible, tried to beat around the
bush. "How long since they were doin' stuff to you?"

	"Fucking?"

	The bush was gone. "Uh, uh huh."

	"I don't know. Since I started itching bad."

	"And they never got any of that stuff, what you got on you?"

	"Uh uh. Boy got some a that medicine like he got me and they was
puttin' it on and washin' a lot and just made me blow `em. That wasn't as
bad.

      "It don't hurt you none when they fuck you, like those big kids?"

	"Some," lied Brandon then redirected the conversation away from
himself, "You suck other kids for him before?"

	"Sure, lots of times. Those guys last night? I done them lots. Jose
and Francisco fucked me a couple times. It hurt really bad, worse than Boy
and he fucks hard. It didn't hurt you none last night? They did it a lot,
more'n me."

	"No, but I did it some before is why it didn't hurt that much." He
almost admitted to having had much larger dicks inside him but, again, was
afraid it might get back to Boy.

	"It always hurt me. I cried a lot but they didn't care, son a
bitches. It's better itching all the time than that."

      "So why do you stay with them?"

	Don Don shrugged his shoulders, said nothing. Still, it was the
most Don Don had spoken to him at one time, or anyone else when he was
around.

	A feeling of affinity for the boy along with a desire to protect
him had been growing in Brandon. He'd considered talking with him about the
two of them escaping to some other part of the city, maybe finding an area
where boys did what he'd been doing in Angeles. Two concerns kept him from
bringing it up. First, he had no idea where to go, then, he wasn't sure
anything he said wouldn't go straight back to Boy. Don Don had been with
the two a lot longer than him.

	That night, sleeping off the glue took until dawn. They'd bought
twice as much as usual with the intention of saving some in Rafael's
mayonnaise jar for the next day. Twice during the night, Brandon was on the
verge of walking away but his fear of the unknown and his growing feelings
toward Don Don held him back, though more the former than the latter.

	As with most nights, his thoughts went to Millie. Where was she?
Was she right there in Manila, perhaps nearby? He imagined the possibility
that she might ride down the street inside some closed up vehicle and see
him begging but unable to call out to him.

	The next morning, rather than beg, Boy had Brandon and Don Don
distract two sales persons by chasing each other down the aisle of a small
grocery store a couple of miles by jeepney from their regular haunts while
he and Rafael filled their cupped jerseys with cans of tuna fish and
condiments, high value for weight items. A woman grabbed Don Don but
Brandon threw a plastic bottle of bleach at her and both were able to
escape.

	They sold their booty house-to-house a block off the street where
they hustled jeepney passengers netting over eighty pesos by Brandon's
rough count. Boy never gave up amounts collected. The two smaller boys were
still required to beg that evening and Brandon had to take off his shorts
that night.

	The next night, they joined a pair of teens to break, enter and rob
a low-end hardware store using Don Don's small body to squeeze through an
opening they'd broken in a metal grate over a side door. There was a dog
inside but it easily succumbed to chicken bones tossed its way. All six
carried arms or T-shirts full of hand tools that were sold on the street
the following morning only six blocks from where they'd been stolen.

	That night, the two teen thieves enjoyed Brandon's warmer parts for
an unknown fee.

	In the morning, Boy figured out Don Don wasn't using his medicine
when he inspected under his T-shirt. While Boy was cursing, kicking and
slapping Don Don, making the small boy cry out in pain, Rafael made a
laughing remark about the failure of Boy's pimping business. Brandon did
some figuring on his own and didn't like the results. While the teens he'd
been required to service so far had been relatively benign, future clients
might be more like the nasty Aussie who virtually raped him back in
Balibago. Boy wouldn't care one way or the other. Rafael would probably
enjoy watching.

	It was time to learn more about the Manila area and the
possibilities for a call boy to make a decent living, get into clothes he
didn't have to tie together with string, perhaps even get back into
school. There had to be an area where sex tourists congregated. Though he'd
been over much of the Tondo area, he'd seen nothing in the way of a map or
tourist guide displayed anywhere. There were a couple of cheap tourist
agencies selling inexpensive trips to Philippine locations and hustling
visa services supposedly guaranteed to get locals into the U.S. The problem
was that either or both Boy and Rafael kept an eye on him most of the
time. There were opportunities during their time begging when the two older
boys left the area to do who knew what or where but never long enough to
get to and from one of the agencies and still earn enough that Boy wouldn't
suspect something.

	Then, in the midst of Brandon's attempts to figure out a viable
escape plan, Boy, unpredictable as usual, came up with a new plan of his
own, one that actually dovetailed with Brandon's, though Boy surely
wouldn't have been very happy had he realized it.

      Moments after they were settled in next to each other that night,
Boy, as though it was the result of a group discussion during which all had
come to an agreement, matter-of-factly laid out, mostly to Brandon, what
they were going to do the following day. "Tomorrow, we're goin' to my
cousin's house in Monumento. You can wash yourself there, get real clean,
and Don Don, and us too, and then we're gonna take you two to this movie
theater where kids give blow jobs in the balcony for ten pesos each. You
and Don Don do four each and then come out. That's eighty pesos. And you
won't have to beg none."

      Brandon got the feeling some appreciation was expected for this
brilliant new strategy but instead was immediately immersed in thoughts
about what kind of men there would be, was there a potential for rough
treatment, could he earn more by turning around, would there be a way to
hide additional earnings, perhaps create an escape fund, and finally, what
Don Don might be thinking about it. The nine year old wasn't averse to
sex. He generally beat off when Boy and Rafael were using Brandon but
obviously didn't relish being used himself.

	Rafael interrupted his thoughts with a demand for a blow
job. Brandon was surprised when Boy didn't poke in from behind.

	Since they'd spent what cash they'd had on glue the night before,
there was still begging required in order to eat in the morning.

      To get to Boy's cousin's house, they had to hitch rides on three
different jeepneys when paying passengers on two alerted the drivers about
their unpaid stowaways.

	The house was actually a shack behind a market. The cousin's
parents were inside the market where they labored as maintenance
workers. The twelve year old cousin, a skinny, homely undeveloped girl,
griped about the extra water she had to carry in order for the four of them
to bathe, so Boy ordered Brandon and Don Don to help out. For her part,
Susan, the cousin, got to watch them all naked. She covertly told Boy to
tell Brandon to get his dick hard which he did. Seeing that, she couldn't
help asking to be allowed to touch it. Rafael raised a hard on too. "I seen
yours before," she said to him cattily. Boy halted the situation there,
disappointing Brandon who was hoping to be invited to bed. Susan's
unfortunate face was not nearly as important as her soft crevice down
below.

	Susan did help Don Don clean up the mess under his arms, on his
legs and in his crotch, the latter causing an unnoticed hard on. She even
gave him one of her T-shirts and a pair of underpants that belonged to her
younger brother who was in school at the time.

	She loaned Brandon a pair of better-fitting shorts and a clean
orange jersey, both of which Boy promised on his heart to bring back within
two days. Brandon doubted he had any intention of complying.

	The Venus Theater was, and still is as best I know, an old
neighborhood movie house situated across from a small poorly kept park. It
played older films suitable to the working class district population in
which it was located, mostly adventure and violence flicks such as Shaft, a
70's black crime thriller, advertised on the marquis. It was Friday after
five. People were heading home. Jeepneys on the next street east were full.

	Boy, sitting with the others on one of the two out of five park
benches still with full wood seats, gave instructions. "Just go stand in
front. If some guy looks at you, stick your finger in your mouth. If he
wants a blow job, he'll pay your way in. Then do him and stand near the
stairs at the top, and wait for anybody else wants one. After you done
four, come out and we'll go eat. Don't buy none'a the candy inside,
understand?"

	"What if a cop or a tanod comes and says we can't stay there?"

	"I don't know. Then just walk away for a couple minutes until he's
gone and go back."

	The ticket booth was inside the entry area to the right so the
seller couldn't see them on the sidewalk. Don Don was scratching his
crotch. Brandon told him, "They see you doin' that, nobody's gonna wanna
take you inside and Boy's gonna be mad."

	Don Don stopped for a minute or two before scratching again. "It
itches bad."

	They didn't have to wait for long. The man, thirty-something in a
cheap suit, didn't wait for Brandon to raise his finger to his mouth,
nodded with his head to go inside. Brandon waited just beyond the entry
doors as the man paid for the two of them. He followed him up to the nearly
empty balcony then to a wall seat in the back. Without a word, pants were
opened and a semi-hard on plopped out. The man sat down. Brandon held his
upturned open hand over the seat's arm. The man raised back up and dug a
ten peso bill out of his pocket. Brandon took it, leaned over from the
adjoining seat and went down on him. It was a moderate sized cock but
quickly became as hard as the wood arm under his chest. Brandon expected
orgasm at any moment and prepared himself to snap his head off when he felt
it coming. The man stiffened and lightly caressed Brandon's hair. He
slightly raised and lowered his hips. His cock bloated. Brandon backed
off. The man aimed his cock at the back of the seat in front of him and
splattered his thick white sperm all over. It smelled bad.

	Then, as Brandon backed toward the aisle, the man pulled a wad of
paper towels or tissue out of his inside jacket pocket and surprised
Brandon by wiping up the mess he'd created.

	Walking across the front of the balcony toward the stairs, Brandon
saw Don Don waiting for a man to dig his dick out from his open fly. The
little boy frowned at him as he passed.

	Standing on the side at the top of the stairs, Brandon could make
out at the end of the front row at least one other head bobbing up and down
in someone's lap. It was the better part of half an hour before another
client trudged up. Don Don was waiting beside him. Another boy, a middle
teenager, obviously gay, sat on the front rail of the balcony, his back to
the side wall, watching the film.

	That next man wanted Don Don then had Don Don come get Brandon. "I
told him he can't cum in my mouth but you'll do it if he gives you more
money."

	It was another five but cheap for the foul taste Brandon had to
endure.

	Over the next two hours, Brandon went through six customers, two
paying the extra five, neither of those with ejaculate as foul tasting as
the first. One wanted to fuck but Brandon insisted on a condom which he
didn't have, so settled for the fifteen peso blow job.

	During that time, two other boys, one Brandon's age, another a bit
older, came up with customers. The one sat on his man's cock and did push
ups off the seat's arms for about ten minutes. They seemed to know the
older boy though there was no chatting. Although there was no sign of
animosity, neither was there the slightest sign of a desire to communicate
with Brandon and Don Don.

	The gay teenager, though, was friendlier. At one point while
Brandon was parked at the top of the stairs, he commented then inquired,
"You're new. Who told you about us?"

	"Some kid."

	"I'm Junior. What's your name?" He held out a limp hand.

	"Brandon." He accepted the hand.

	"You're a new face. lots of `em are gonna want you."

	That conversation was cut short by a new customer.

	His nine year old partner only managed to find three customers,
each worth only the ten for a no frills BJ so Brandon gave him ten. "Just
say we each did four like he told us."

	Don Don frowned and shrugged his shoulders.

	"Or just give him thirty and I'll say I did five," said Brandon
worried the boy would be loyal to his master.

	"Nah. I'll say four."

	Brandon had already hidden the additional twenty he'd earned inside
folded over hem of his T-shirt under the beltline of his shorts. He wasn't
sure what he would be able to do with it but expected it would be handy
eventually.

	Boy acted content with the eighty he was handed. "Tomorrow, there's
gonna be more guys goin' in there so we can make more.

	Brandon almost challenged the `we' but instead commented, "And
probably more kids."

	"Ain't none of them gonna be as good as you. Any of `em wanna fuck?
You oughta do that. It's more, maybe twenty, twenty-five."

	"Uh uh," he lied. "Anyhow, they gotta use a condom and I don't got
any."

	"Shit, you ain't got no sickness up your ass. Anyhow, fuck `em!"

	"It ain't for them, it's for me. Some'a them might have something
and if I get sick, then what?"

	Boy had to mull that over. "How much they cost?"

	"I don't know." Another lie.

	"Bullshit. You know. How much?"

	"In Angeles about a peso but I don't know how much here." He knew
it was a stupid answer. He wished he'd had more time to think when he was
talking to Boy.

	"So you buy a couple. You got money now, don't you?"

	He thought first then, realizing, as Boy certainly did, that Boy
would have done the same skimming had he been in his slippers, replied, "A
little."

	"So buy some."

	Boy got so high that evening, he couldn't muster an erection then
fell asleep while trying to penetrate Brandon's loose hole. Rafael, went
for a blow job but couldn't get off.

	Don Don cried once he was high, alternately pining for and cursing
his mother. He hadn't done that before. Brandon held him wordlessly until
he fell asleep, all the while wishing it was Millie he held in his arms. It
occurred to him that, in a small way, Don Don was becoming the friend he'd
lost back in Balibago then chastised himself for thinking a boy could ever
take the place of a girl he'd hoped one day to marry.

	In the morning, Brandon again attempted to get Don Don to tell him
why he was on the street. Again, he didn't want to talk about it.

	Boy told the two to go beg for a while but both protested that he'd
said it wouldn't be necessary any more. He gave in but insisted, "You gotta
make more today."

	After eating, while Rafael and Boy stole some cakes from a store,
Brandon went into a pharmacy and asked for five condoms claiming they were
for his brother. The woman clerk called a man in the rear. When told why,
he shook his head and waved his hand. "Isn't any law," was all he said.

	They got to the Venus at eleven fifteen. It didn't open until
twelve thirty so Boy broke down and bought each of them two fried bananas,
turon in the local lingo, from a street vendor. Rafael suggested with his
callous laugh, "Practice on that," and feigned fucking himself with one.

	Two men, the gay teen and three boys were already waiting to buy
tickets when the man opened the accordion gate. With the exception of the
queen, they were all there to see the movie. Several more kids of varying
ages followed in short order. Half an hour or so later, two boys about
twelve approached slowly, eyeing Brandon and Don Don. They stopped a few
yards away and leaned against the theater wall, speaking quietly to each
other, occasionally glancing at what they must have considered to be
interlopers.

	They stared harder when a man nudged Brandon toward the entry as he
walked past. Brandon looked over at the park to see if Boy was there for
protection should the other two tried to chase them off. He wasn't.

	He asked the man, "Bring my friend in with us too. Those other kids
are going to hurt him. Please." He was ready to offer taking the man's cum
into his mouth for free but didn't have to.

	Though he didn't seem pleased at the idea, he bought both tickets
but, on the way up, said, "I'm just paying you."

	Brandon wasn't sure if that meant the man expected two mouths on
his dick. However, once Brandon got started on him there in the front row,
he said nothing more until he'd snatched his cock out of Brandon's mouth
and squirted into a handkerchief. As he paid, he asked, "You gonna be here
tomorrow?"

 	"Probably."

	"You take it in the back?"

	"Thirty, but I got the rubber."

	"Thirty? All the boys here do it for twenty."

	Brandon had been through negotiations before and realized how
desirable he was. "It's thirty for me."

	The man smiled. "Pro, huh? And you got the rubber."

	Brandon smiled back.

	"Around two?"

	The two other boys came up, the arms of an older man around their
shoulders. The trio retired to a back row. The one went right to the man's
crotch while the other leaned over from the next seat and made oral love,
his head revolving in a continuous circle. Brandon hated kissing. Most men
had bad breath. They had to pay well for him to perform lips to lips.

	His next client was an overweight individual who had to sit at the
top of the stairway between the seats in order that his short penis was
available for servicing. Brandon had to suck for the better part of twenty
minutes to earn that fifteen pesos.

	Don Don waited alone by the stairs from below. Another boy, not
much older than he passed by with a middle aged man who looked Don Don over
but continued on to a seat at the far end of the front row. Moments later,
he sent his boy for Don Don but apparently wanted something Don Don wasn't
willing to do.

	"He wanted me to kiss that kid he had for five but I said no. I
don't like that."

	Don Don finally gave his first blow job of the day to a kid who
couldn't have been a day over sixteen.  When he was about to climax, he
grabbed Don Don's head, preventing him from escaping the stream of sperm
that fired into his gullet. Don Don was furious. Brandon was able to shut
him up after only "Son of..." was shouted. Everyone looked, including faces
from below. Brandon pulled him back from the railing and confronted the
teen who thought it was quite funny.

	"You owe him five more for that. It's what everybody pays."

	The youth stood, leaned over to him, whispered disdainfully, "Fuck
him, and you," and strutted off the balcony.

	The pair with the man in the back also seemed to think it was
funny. One waved at them with his finger tips.

	The next time Brandon looked for those two, they were gone. He
scanned the balcony but spotted no sign of them. A man he hadn't seen come
up passed and walked down the stairs. Fifteen minutes later, as Brandon was
sucking a young man in a seat halfway up an aisle, the same man walked
toward the rear. Occupied with trying to convert formless mass flesh into
something hard enough to suck, there was no way to see where the man went.

	The customer who'd wanted to fuck him the day before
appeared. Brandon pulled a condom out of his pocket and said, "Thirty."

	"Only got twenty, kid."

	"Wanna get sucked?"

	With a grin, "Okay, thirty. Where you wanna do it?"

	"In the back."

	"I mean up here, in the balcony."

	"In the back."

	They both smiled.

	The next decision, with Brandon out of his shorts, the man with his
pants around his ankles, cock stiff and dripping with boy saliva, was how
to do it, facing each other, or front to back. They tried Brandon shoving
his feet into the sides of the seat and lowering himself. After wetting his
hole with more saliva, Brandon sat, bounced gently a few times and wiggled
side to side until the head slipped inside him. The rest was aided by
gravity.

	The man wanted to kiss. Brandon allowed a lip peck then dropped his
head to the man's shoulder. After a few back and forth moves, Brandon
lifted himself to the head then went down, up and down, until the man said,
"Wait a minute or this is gonna be over much too soon."

	His speech wasn't that of a street cleaner or factory
worker. Brandon waited for further instructions. Eventually, "Okay, again,
but slow. You are very good."

	They stopped three more times but then, it was too late. He
clutched Brandon to him and unloaded up inside his colon.

	"What days are you here?" asked the man before he left. "Yesterday
was the first time I've seen you."

	"I don't know but lots. Are there people here every day or just
weekends?"

	"Not much during the week I don't think. A friend who comes here
has a special boy Wednesdays. He says there's only a couple when he's here,
sometimes none. The Premier's the same. Mostly weekends."

	"What's the Premier?"

	"Another theater up near Monumento. You new around here?"

	"Kind of, yeah. What's it like in the Premier?"

	"I don't know. I just come here, on weekends. You going to be here
next Friday?"

	"I suppose so. What time?"

	They settled on six thirty. Brandon wanted to ask more but the man
said he had to go. They could talk more the next weekend, "maybe go out for
something to eat".

	Brandon wasn't sure Boy would allow that.

	Apparently they'd been watched. Another man, quite a bit older with
grey hair and a thick white mustache requested the same action but with a
heavy European accent. A sudden excitement engulfed Brandon. "You speak
English," he asked in that tongue.

	"Very little," he replied. "German?"

	"But you understand Filipino. Right?"

	"Little. Fuck, suck, little."

	He understood thirty and didn't protest. Once Brandon had gotten
his large cock hard with his mouth, He rolled on a condom and wet it
thoroughly with his spit. The German held up his left hand and produced a
tube of KY with the other. Brandon was relieved. Spit on a rubber wasn't
nearly as effective as it was on bare flesh. The well- greased organ
slipped in easily.

	The man indicated that Brandon should wait for a moment, then
lifted him with strong arms, waited, lowered him, and, eyes closed tightly,
repeated it several times. After a dozen or so slow lifts, he said, "Mas
mabilis" `faster' in Filipino. Brandon, his hands on the arms of the seat,
raised and lowered himself as fast as he could, tired quickly, then stopped
and took a breath.

      The man smiled. "You," he pushed Brandon up until his arms were stiff
and indicated that he should stay like that. Immediately, he began pumping
from below, hard and fast, a look of concentration on his face. It took
several minutes but Brandon felt the bloating just before the man pulled
him back down while his cock throbbed inside.

      Two customers later, there was another foreigner. This one did speak
English. He asked as though Brandon had only limited understanding, "You
learn English in school very well."

      "No, I speak it just like you. My father's an American." He felt
emotion rising in his chest. Was he about to be rescued?"

      "Jesus, then what the hell are you doing in here?"

      "He's gone, and, and my mother's in jail."

      "She got busted? What happened?"

      "They said she killed this woman, but..." Tears began falling. He
struggled to continue. "But, she just fell, Alie fell. My mother didn't
push her or nothin'. I need to go home..." He began to sob uncontrollably.

      "Look, kid, you need to go to the embassy. I'd take you but it's
Saturday and they're closed until Monday. Don't cry. They'll help you. Just
go on Monday."

      Brandon felt help slipping away. "No, you don't understand, if I go
there, they just give me to the police and..." He knew he'd made it worse.

      "Look kid, I can't help you. You gotta talk to the embassy. If you're
in trouble too, well, I can't help you."

      "Please, let me tell you what happened. I didn't do nothin'."

      "Look kid, I don't mean nothing bad, but, well, I gotta go." With
that, he all but jumped up and walked quickly to the stairs and out.

      Don Don went to him, looked up at the falling tears. "He hurt you?"

      "No, yes, fuckin' Americans!" The last two words were in English.

      It took a while for him to calm down and accept the entreaties of a
middle aged man in sport shirt and slacks to come with him to the back.

      "You can fuck again? I'll give you forty if you can do it once more
and we can go inside here in a few minutes." They were outside the
projection booth.

      The man who, moments later, came out of the small room was the same
one Brandon had seen going up and down earlier. Brandon's customer had a
brief discussion with him, actually the projectionist, handed over some
cash and motioned for Brandon to follow him into the projection
booth. Inside, Brandon had to strip and lay across a clothes covered milk
crate while the customer made short, fast thrusts for about five minutes
before dispensing protein.

      The alarm clock by the projector portal read six fifteen when they
wiped up with paper napkins his customer carried. The hunger that had been
building in him was becoming intolerable. He'd made a hundred and thirty
pesos and knew there was more if he stuck around. As the gay teen had told
him, he was a `new face' and would be wanted by most of those who
patronized the balcony.

	The two bananas eaten midday were long gone but there was food on
the first floor. He needed nourishment. He broke Boy's rule and bought two
bags of potato chips. One was for Don Don who'd had a reasonable amount of
success considering he'd only suck.

	At the time there were eight different boys including two teens
servicing customers in the balcony. The gay teen had set up shop at the top
of the aisle closer to the stairs and been fucked enough times that Brandon
lost count. They spoke briefly several times. During one brief discussion,
the boy displayed a pocket full of rubbers. "Trouble is, most of them wanna
go in naked."

	"Isn't that dangerous?"

	"It's just a shot." He was speaking of the antibiotic injection
required to combat the clap.

	When Brandon and Don Don called it quits at eight fifteen, neither
Boy nor Rafael were anywhere to be seen. With well over two hundred Pesos
between them, the temptation to run was strong.

	"He'll find us," protested Don Don, "no matter where we go. I left
once and he found me the same day and he beat me up, bad, Rafael too. I'm
gonna wait for him. You go if you want. I ain't gonna say nothin'."

	They waited in the park. Brandon cursed the American who wouldn't
listen to him. He should have helped, the son of a bitch!

	Boy arrived half an hour later and, with a knowing smile, accepted
the hundred fifty Pesos Brandon gave him, sixty-five short of what he and
Don Don had earned. Brandon had promised his partner that half what they
had was his. He didn't seem to care one way or another. "What am I gonna do
with money?"

	That night was like many others. Both Boy and Rafael had their way
with Brandon's body. There was another frustrating dream about Millie.

	By noon Sunday, Brandon and Don Don were back in the Venus, Brandon
already in demand. At around two, the first of two foreigners was in the
balcony. Shortly thereafter, out of Brandon's low line of view at the time,
the other brought up a boy he'd found outside. The first produced a
flashlight then wandered about, lighting up crotches being
serviced. Reactions surprised Brandon. Only two men protested. One reached
up, grabbed the flashlight, still in the man's hand and turned it off.

	The gay teen told Brandon, "He comes here a lot. Most everybody
knows him. They call him Crazy John."

	"How come they don't throw him out?"

	"I don't know, they just don't. Only ones get mad are the
foreigners."

	"Lot of foreigners come here?"

	"Some, like that American guy with those two. He comes here a lot,
usually on Saturday."

	"He American?"

	It wasn't that Brandon hadn't ever seen a brown skinned American,
this one was short and had a head full of curly hair. And, from the
reactions of the boys, he spoke at least some Filipino.

	Brandon felt a new surge of hope. Maybe this man would listen. Two
boys were kneeling at his feet taking turns sucking his cock. A few minutes
later, one of the kids was spitting on the floor. After the boys left him,
the man sat back and watched the movie.

	Planning to stay calm and get his message over, Brandon went to sit
beside him.

	"I'm finished. Maybe next time," said the man in hushed, American
accented Tagalog, a friendly arm briefly over Brandon's shoulder.

	Brandon moved close and whispered in American English. "You live
here?"

	Turning sharply toward Brandon, he answered, "Yeah. You speak
pretty good English. Where'd you learn it, in school?"

	"Unh uh. My father's an American but he's gone and..." Emotion
brought on by a combination of hope and worry that this was to be another
disaster overcame his ability to speak.

	The man appeared concerned. He put one hand on Brandon's knee and
the other on his shoulder, looked to his left and back. "Whoa, take it
easy, son. What in the world are you doing here?"

	Tears rolled down his cheeks. "My mother's in jail. They made me
come and stay with my great-grandmother but my uncle threw me out." Again,
that wasn't how he wanted to explain himself. Anger added to his mental
confusion.

	The man hugged Brandon's head to his chest. He too seemed unable to
speak. Finally, with Brandon sobbing, he said quietly, "Why not come with
me and let's see what I can do? You can stay with me for a few days."

	The man wanted to help, save him. The idea was uplifting but
terrifying. "There's a boy..., I'm...he'll find me."

	"A boy up here?" He looked around.

	"No, yes, no, he's outside and I gotta give him money but I still
got some." He knew he wasn't making any sense. He stamped his foot in fury
at himself. Taking deep breaths, he sat up straight in an attempt to get
control. After wiping tears from his face, Brandon started again. "There's,
no, when my uncle threw me out, he was hitting me and these men made him go
away but I couldn't find my grandmother's house and these boys took all my
clothes and I didn't have no food and this other kid gave, well, after this
man gave me, no, well, this boy and his friend, they let me stay with them
if I'd beg a couple times each day and he didn't let nobody else hurt me
and gave me some clothes." He filled his lungs again. He didn't want to say
anything that might make the man think poorly of him.  Had the man see him
sucking on anyone? "And, well, I gotta do things for him and he found out
about here, and..." He was in the Venus balcony. Of course the man knew he
was sucking cock. "I..." The crying made speech difficult. He just couldn't
hold on to enough air to get out the words as he wanted. "I just wanna go
back home and be with my mother. She, she didn't do nothin'. Alie just fell
down. It wasn't her fault."

	The man said, "Look, my name's Ray. Now, calm down. Take it
easy. No rush here. Let me ask you a couple of questions. Just answer yes
or no or move your head."

	Brandon nodded.

	"Is there somebody outside waiting for you to come out?"

	"Yes." He sobbed harder.

	"And he'll hurt you if he thinks you're running away or leaving
him?"

	"Yes, and Don Don."

	"Don Don? Who's Don Don?"

	"He's up here." Brandon turned and looked. Don Don was close,
moving gradually toward them, watching intently. Brandon waved him to
them. Don Don didn't move. "Don Don, it's okay. Come here."

	Don Don took a few short steps but stayed out of reach.

	Brandon, sobbing, said to Ray, "That's Don Don. He's only, only
nine."

	"And he's with you? Why?" Ray sounded confused.

	"Boy makes him do things, make money for him, like me."

	"He speaks English too?"

	"No. But, but it's like me, he's afraid Boy'll find us and hurt us,
bad. Can we," A horrible thought struck him. "You don't live around here?"

	"No. I live in Malate, another part of the city. You know Malate?"

	Brandon shook his head and sucked in air, beginning to gain
control.

	Don Don reached out and tugged Brandon toward him. "What happened?"

	Brandon told him. Don Don backed off. "I ain't going nowhere with
him. Boy'll kill me, and you too. Let's go."

	Brandon turned back to the American. "Can you take us with you, in
a car?"

	"Oh boy, I came by jeepney. What's the problem? How big is this
kid?"

	"If we go in a jeepney, he can follow us. He'll know where we go."

	Don Don was close to panic. "Brandon, let's go, now!"

	Brandon stood and went after Don Don who was headed for the
stairs. Brandon grabbed his shirt at the top. "He lives far away from
here. If he takes us in a car, Boy can't follow. We'll be safe, free. You
won't have to do this any more. You can get well, no more
scratching. Wait. Only if we can go in a car."

	There were tears in Don Don's eyes. He slumped against the wall and
slid to the floor, his arms hugging his knees.

	Ray came up behind Brandon. Several men and boys were watching the
drama.

	Ray asked, "What's the problem?"

	"He's scared, really scared that Boy'll find him and beat him up
like last time."

	"All right," said Ray, "I can get a taxi and meet you in
front. We'll be gone before anyone can hurt you."

	Brandon said to Don Don in English, "You hear that, he..., shit!"
He switched to Tagalog, "He'll get a taxi. It'll be right in front. We go
out the door and get in and leave. We'll be far away. Boy will never find
us."

      Don Don didn't raise his head.

	Ray cautioned Brandon, "Please don't promise too much. I'm only
here for a while. I have to go away soon, maybe a week, it's work."

	"A week is okay. I can find something. Maybe I can go home, take
Don Don with me. I have friends there." He didn't dare mention that the
police were looking for him. He knelt in front of Don Don. "Come with
us. You'll be safe. We'll be in a house far from here."

	The gay teen knelt beside them. "I know this guy. He's okay. He'll
take care of you, don't worry. Listen to Brandon."

	Nothing could calm Don Don's crying.

	Ray asked, "Do I get a taxi?"

	"Yes, please, yes. I'll talk to him."

	Ray headed down the stairs. Don Don almost gurgled, "I'm scared."

	The gay teen tried to soothe him, "Don't cry. You'll be
fine. Listen to Brandon. He loves you. You're his little brother."

	The youth voiced what Brandon didn't completely understand. He did
care about Don Don like a little brother. "Come with me. I'll take care of
you. I promise. Nobody's gonna hurt you. I won't let them."

	"Yeah, you're gonna beat up Boy?"

	"If I have to, somehow. I promise."

	The teen queen said, "I'll go downstairs and watch for the
taxi. You better wait until I call you."

	Brandon felt as though he should say something for the unexpected
support but the boy was gone.

	Brandon sat down beside Don Don. "Don't worry. We're gonna be
okay." He had to tug him up and lead him down by the hand when the taxi
came. At the door, panic set in.

	"I can't, he'll see us." He tried to push Brandon back toward the
stairs.

	"The taxi is here. He knows it's for us. It's too late. We gotta
go!"

      Don Don resisted. Brandon scanned the park across from them. There
were a number of people sitting or standing around, someone selling food
out of a cart, but no Boy, no Rafael. Ray was waving them on from the back
of the cab. "They're not there. Boy's not there. Let's go, hurry."

      He pushed Don Don out the door. They both ran and jumped through the
open door.

      Ray said to the driver, "Let's go!"

      Don Don cowered on the floor. Brandon hugged the rear seat. Neither
moved for several minutes until Ray said, "It's okay now. We're almost out
of Tondo. Brandon sat up and looked. There was nothing familiar about their
surroundings. Don Don remained on the floor.

      They rode for twenty minutes eventually along Manila Bay. They passed
an overhead sign indicating the airport was ahead. As they passed the entry
to the airport, Ray directed the cabbie to the left for another few minutes
then into a residential area.

      "Okay, we're here," he said in accented but understandable
Tagalog. He paid the driver. Once the car was gone, he said in English to
Brandon, "We're gonna walk a few blocks and take another taxi to my
house. I did that just in case they got the tag number and were able to
locate the cabbie. Explain that to your friend."

      Don Don, whose eyes were still wet, didn't seem reassured. Brandon
put his arm over the little boy's shoulders. "We're gonna be okay. And
tonight, we're gonna sleep in a bed." He suddenly worried how Don Don was
going to deal with not having glue to help him sleep. He'd been sniffing it
daily for the better part of a year or more. From all he'd heard in Angeles
and experienced there in Manila, the stuff was addictive. He told Ray.

      "I never did, but this kid sniffed glue every day, couple times a
day. You think he's gonna be okay?"

      "Jesus, kid, you should've told me that before. A year? He's an
addict. I haven't any idea what to do for him. He's gonna need a hospital
or something. Christ!"

      They walked in silence. Brandon wondered if he'd been wrong to bring
Don Don along but was immediately angry at himself for having the
thought. Of course he had to. Without him to screw and blow them, Boy and
Rafael would again turn to Don Don. Worse, his escape would certainly have
been blamed on Don Don. The beatings would have been vicious. If he was to
go, he had an obligation to take Don Don along.

      In the second taxi, Ray said, "I'll call a friend. I think he knows
something about withdrawal from glue, or we can go to Manila Doctor's
Hospital. I imagine they deal with a lot of stuff like that. I just wish
you'd told me ahead of time."

      "If I told you, would you still have taken us?"

      "Probably not today. I'd have checked out what he needed first so I'd
be prepared. But, I'd probably have taken you in a day or two." He smiled
and ruffled Brandon's hair. "I'm kinda proud of you for sticking by your
friend. I was sort of a street kid once so I know, well, a little what it's
like."

      "You lived on the street?"

      "Not really but I was out there a lot and knew kids who did live on
the street. I used to do what you were doing."

      "What?"

      He grinned. "Make men happy."

      "I don't believe you. Where? Not here. They don't do that in the
states."

      "They used to, probably still do in some places. I used to but let's
talk about that later. We gotta stop and buy some food. We can stop at
McDonald's if you want, and grab some take out."

      That sounded great. But what if Don Don didn't like hamburgers. He
asked.

      Don Don reacted, "What are, what?"

      They went to a turo turo and had rice with meat and vegetables. Turo
turos are generally small places with a large pan of steamed rice and a
long, glassed in display of various vegetable and meat accompaniments,
called ulam, for the rice. Turo means `point'. Customers point out what
they want and are charged accordingly.

      Don Don scratched a lot while he stuffed himself. Brandon explained
why. Ray sighed and said, "Well, I do know something about that."

      They stopped at a shopping center. With the boys waiting in the car,
Ray went inside and bought clothes for both, then stopped in a Mercury
Drugstore and bought an anti-scabies lotion. While he was inside, Brandon
said to Don Don, "See, we're gonna be okay. We stay with this guy for a
while until he goes away and then I'll get us someplace else nice. I can
make money, don't worry."

      His plan was, via this man who seemed to know a lot about call boys,
to learn where foreigners picked up boys in Manila and make enough to rent
a room, feed and clothe them and find a way to go back to school. The only
problem was going to be Don Don's glue problem.

      Don Don said nothing but didn't protest or express doubt that any of
what he'd heard was possible.

      Ray Hoolihan's `house' was a studio apartment on the second floor of
a small apartelle in Malate, just south of Ermita, at that time Manila's
famous red light district. Don Don loved the television but was told he had
to take a shower before sitting on any of the furniture.

      The nine year old couldn't handle more than moderately hot
water. After having him stand in the shower and soak for a while, something
he quickly grew to enjoy, Ray gently began washing away the looser scabs of
the skin infection that plagued Don Don. The boy didn't enjoy that a bit,
but, though he cringed a lot, allowed the procedure, making no attempts to
stop Ray even when cleaning up his penis and testicles. The lotion, which
fortunately didn't immediately sting or irritate, went on neck to
toes. When it did begin to sting, Don Don just gritted his teeth.

      "Don't worry, it'll stop hurting in a few minutes." He ruffled Don
Don's damp hair. "You're a tough little kid, aren't you?"

      Don Don waved his hands at his crotch as though the little air that
generated would ease the discomfort.

      When Brandon asked him how long it had been since he wore a full set
of clothes, Don Don whispered, "Just when they took me so those older kids
could do what you had to do."

      Though Brandon worried about it, Don Don showed no signs of missing
the glue he'd been sniffing every night.

      Ray did get a hold of a boy lover friend who was a medical doctor. He
didn't know much about glue withdrawal but recommended a drug clinic
director in, of all places, Tondo.

      Brandon gave Ray a run down of what little he knew about Don Don. Ray
commented, "He's probably a runaway afraid of being caught. He says he's
nine but he may not know. Looking at him, he could be eight easy."

      Sleeping was communal on the apartment's single large bed. Don Don
located himself on the far side of Brandon, away from their benefactor. For
a while, he lay tight against the wall, his back to Brandon, possibly
hiding his face. Was he crying, suffering glue withdrawal symptoms? Then,
he quietly rolled over, and moved against Brandon, laid one arm over him
and his head into Brandon's shoulder.

      He fell asleep that way.

      When called after breakfast, the Tondo Drug Clinic director wanted
the boy brought to the clinic.

      Ray told him, "He's got a problem with gang members up your way. I
don't think he'll go."

      The clinic director recommended the Manila Doctor's Hospital in
Ermita, the very place Ray had planned to contact if all else failed.

      Don Don was reluctant but agreed to go when promised there'd be no
shots.

      The young doctor who attended them seemed knowledgeable regarding
both of Don Don's problems. His English was quite good as was and is the
case with most educated Filipinos. He recommended a different lotion than
was being used for the scabies and a carefully prescribed use of
epinephrine along with a lot of support for the glue withdrawal. "The
epinephrine raises blood pressure, gives a sort of high that can partially
offset the need for glue but you have to follow my instructions very
carefully. He's only nine, just weighs fifty-eight pounds and isn't in the
best of shape after eating who knows what for who knows how long. If he's
been on glue as long as he says, you should start having problems today and
it'll get worse over the next week. A month of symptoms isn't uncommon and
you'll have to accept the fact that he may run off to find a supply. You
might consider a lock-down home for that period. I understand you care and
want to help him but it's going to be very difficult."

      He sat with Don Don and gave him a child's version of what he was
going to go through along with reasons to put up with it. "You really need
to stop but it is going to be difficult. You are going to feel very
bad. You are going to want to sniff very much. I know you may not want to
do what I'm going to suggest but think about it anyway. There are places
where you can stay while you are getting better. They'll help you feel
better but you won't be able to go anywhere for a while, a month or so."

      No explanation could convince Don Don to accept any kind of
institution even for a few weeks. Promises of taking him the moment he was
deemed ready were meaningless to him.

      Ray told Brandon, "I think this kid's been in a home or someplace
where they treated him badly. Maybe he ran away from one of them and that's
why he won't tell you anything about his past."

      Feeling overwhelmed by the gravity of Don Don's problems, Ray bought
a large pizza for lunch and sat down at the apartment to discuss the
situation with both boys.

      With Brandon translating, he told Don Don, "You have a serious
problem that we aren't going to be able to cure here at my house. It takes
a month or more and I have to leave on a job in another week or so."

      The moment he heard the translation, Don Don said, "I didn't sniff it
all that much, not as much as Boy or Rafael. I can stop. Just give me the
medicine and I won't sniff any more."

       Brandon contradicted him. "I saw you, twice almost every day. And
Ray says the medicine isn't going to help all that much. Anyway, he's gotta
go in a week and I'm gonna have to work so we can eat."

      Ray asked what was being said. He was frustrated by what he was
told. "Brandon, I don't think this is gonna work. And, what are your plans
when I'm not here. You can't stay. I just pay a week at a time and there's
no way they'd ever let two kids stay here alone, especially one that looks
like him. Anybody can see he's a street kid."

      They brought up and pressed the benefits of the drug rehab clinic
that the doctor recommended. Brandon promised to find a way to visit him
and be there when he was released but Don Don wasn't having any of it.

      That led to a discussion with Brandon about his plans for survival
when Ray left. Brandon told of his success as a call boy in Angeles and
plans to go back to school.

      Ray said, "I don't know how it is in Angeles but Manila's a snake
pit. I don't see the tourists here paying you a hundred for anything. Fifty
is about tops with these guys. Worse, a lot of them will cheat you, some
will hurt you. Then you have your fellow Filipino scumballs in Ermita like
the barangay tanods. You're gonna find yourself paying off half of what you
make and being robbed by older boys who sit around waiting for kids like
you to come back after going out with a customer. A lot of these foreigners
carry the clap and worse. Okay, you insist on condoms but they come off or
the guy takes `em off behind you. You get sick and then what?"

      "Brandon, you're a babe in the woods for these guys. They'll eat you
alive. Oh yes, and then there's the cops. You know what vagancha is, MYRC?"

      "Yeah, vagrancy when you don't got no money. Rafael and Don Don were
in MYRC a year ago." MYRC was the infamous Manila Youth Reception Center,
now re-named but not much better.

      "That's a place you never want to go to but if the cops grab you for
anything, and I mean anything, and that's where you go first, sometimes for
months on end, no, always for months. Some kids stay in there for
years. Then, without a family to take you back, who knows where you'll end
up, but, I guarantee you, you won't like it."

      "Aren't there people here who get men for the boys?"

      "Like your pimp in Angeles? Jesus, Brandon, anybody like that here
will take most of what you earn and if you don't produce, beat the shit out
of you. Why do you think I go to the Venus? It's not `cause it costs less
which it does; it's `cause I don't have to be around the shit here in
Ermita. You were better off with that kid who ran you in Tondo than you'll
ever be in Ermita."

      Brandon felt suddenly very vulnerable to the world around him. He had
no other plans, no other skill he felt he could use to make a living, and
take care of Don Don. Tears weren't far away.

	"All right, I'm sorry for beating up your plans but you have to be
realistic. Are you sure you can't go back to Angeles? I could take the both
of you up there."

	"I don't think so. The police wanted me, something about my
father."

	"Your father? Brandon, I get the feeling there's a lot you haven't
told me. Let's start from the beginning. What happened in Angeles and
where's your father? You've got to tell me everything."

	So he did. The story poured our, sometimes disjointed, requiring
Ray to stop him with questions, pulling together pieces until he had what
seemed to be the entire series of events.

	"I know some reporters who'd love to get hold of this story but
don't worry, I'm not gonna say anything."

	He stood, walked across the room and back then looked at
Brandon. "Why don't you let me check and see what your mother's situation
is. Maybe she's out?"

	He made calls, first to the Manila Associated Press office for the
name of someone in Angeles, then to a reporter there. The Angeles
journalist remembered the story but wasn't aware of its current status. He
promised to check it out. Ray could call back the next day at the same
hour.

	The remainder of the morning and afternoon was spent playing
checkers, which Don Don sort of understood, watching TV, bathing Don Don
anew, applying the prescribed lotion with its strange smell, and going out
to dinner in a small Filipino restaurant that both served good food and
wasn't going to be a problem for a foreigner and two local boys, one
dressed conservatively in a grey and blue sport shirt and brown slacks but
with call boy good looks and the other, even well dressed, still looking
malnourished and uncared for, and who, unfortunately, was becoming
increasingly irritable.

	After dinner, Brandon questioned Ray about friends he might have
who could provide a place for the two boys to stay until he returned, or at
least until Don Don had passed through his withdrawal.

	"Brandon, you've got to understand something. I'm probably the only
person in the country, well, the only one you or I are going to be able to
find, who is gonna even discuss taking a kid in Don Don's condition. Look
at him."

	Don Don, even with his first dose of epinephrine, was changing
channels and muttering at the television.

	"He's going to be worse tomorrow. I don't think we can do anything
for him. He needs to go to that clinic, whether he wants to or not."

	"He'll just run away."

	"He won't be able to."

	"No, from us if we try to take him, and even if we don't say
nothin' until we're there. He'll know and he'll run. I know you're right. I
already thought about it. I just don't know what to do. Can't we give him
more medicine?"

	"No, the doctor said too much will do more harm than the glue. The
only thing we can do in the few days we'll both be with him is just be with
him, talk to him, do things with him, try to keep his spirits up.

	"What are you going to do if your mother is free and you can go
back to Angeles? You can't take him with you like that. Nobody's going to
put up with it. He's got to go to the clinic."

	Once in bed, again apart from Ray, Don Don whispered into Brandon's
ear, "Suck me. I washed it off."

	Though he couldn't see his face, the sound of panic was in his
words. As he slid below the covers, Don Don was pushing down his
underpants. Brandon felt for his penis. It was soft but relatively smooth
compared to the scab encrusted thing it had been a couple of days
before. The smell of the lotion was strong. Brandon took the limp cock
between his fingers and gently massaged it. There was no response. He put
his tongue to the tip, tasting. Pure flesh. He put his mouth around it. Don
Don embraced his head, pulling it tightly to his groin. Brandon sucked,
fondled and moved it around with his tongue. Still no thickening.

	Don Don pumped slowly into Brandon's mouth, pulling and pushing in
short strokes to prevent the lame organ from coming out. Gradually, it
produced a moderate, then full erection. Brandon went to work, timing his
moves with Don Don's. There was stiffening, rigidity, then a body-wide
relaxation, again and again. Don Don stretched and squeezed but nothing
seemed to work. Brandon was tiring but determined to provide the orgasm he
felt his friend needed. He changed position, sucking from above, allowing
Don Don to fuck his face. Sweat covered the nine year old's body. Even his
hair was damp. In a desperate last attempt, he thrust like a jack hammer,
fast as he was able, his breath coming hard, the flimsy muscles in his legs
defined. His cock inflated, hardened, fired. Don Don let out a near silent
squeal as his cock throbbed in Brandon's mouth.

	Worried the two would catch a cold, Ray changed the wet sheets for
dry. He had Brandon put more lotion over the infected groin. Don Don fell
asleep face down, alone.

	The Angeles journalist had bad news. Layla Brandenburg had been
transferred to Manila. She was charged with negligent homicide and child
neglect and was under investigation by the Americans as well as local
authorities for drug trafficking. Jack Brandenburg was locked up in San
Francisco charged with multiple counts of drug trafficking. He'd been
extradited two weeks before. There'd been a child neglect charge against
him too but the drug charge was deemed more important. His son, Brandon,
was wanted as a material witness in and for being involved in a child
prostitution case though he wasn't sure if he was accused of being a child
prostitute or just part of a ring providing small children for pedophiles,
mostly U.S, military personnel from the Clark Air Force Base and Olongopo
Naval Station. The head of the ring was allegedly Alie Ladao, the dead
woman, who had been killed accidently when Mrs. Brandenburg assaulted her
after learning about her son's involvement in the woman's child
prostitution ring. Her eleven year old daughter was in a special home for
abused children undergoing therapy to help her deal with years of sexual
abuse and was expected to testify in the case if it ever got to court. The
Americans had launched an extensive investigation of their military
personnel's involvement and wanted both the Ladao girl and Brandenburg boy
to testify against the men when they were identified. Supposedly there were
a large number of other children involved but none had yet been identified.

	Brandon was devastated by the news. Millie and his mother were
gone. He was wanted and would surely be locked up if found. Angeles was no
longer an option. If the investigation came to Manila, being a call boy
would be too dangerous. He might as well go back with Boy and Rafael.

	There were no tears this time. He was too empty for that.

	Ray said, "I'm sorry, really. I know this is hard for you. Take
your time. Don't go making any decisions today or this week. Let me look
around too. You know, not all children's homes are complete disasters. You
could use a different name. Maybe get through high school. But, like I
said, take your time. You can stay here until I leave. We can help Don Don
together. With luck, I'll only be gone for a month and a half. We can stay
in touch."

	Brandon closed the door on a home. "I was in a home once, never
gonna do that again. It's better back in Tondo with Boy and Rafael."

	"And school? Christ, Brandon, you've got the brains to go to
college, become something special. Kids like you get scholarships. I could
help a little, and I've got friends."

	"I'm not going to a home."

	"Look, I've got to go work. You think things over and we'll talk
when I get back."

	"What kind of work do you do?"

	"I'm a photojournalist. I take pictures of people doing, oh,
important stuff."

	"What are you going to take pictures of now?"

	"It's a demonstration, against Marcos."

	"Can't we go with you?"

	"With Don Don like he is? Sorry. You just stay here and take care
of him. Remember his medicine at twelve. I should be back by four or
five. If I can't, I'll call, no, forget that. Don't answer the telephone,
understand? Don't touch it. I'm trusting you. And don't go outside, all
right?"

	Don Don was difficult much of the day. Brandon tried to teach him
how to play poker. It was the only card game he'd even remotely
understood. Don Don couldn't concentrate enough to finish a hand. Next he
found some paper and pens. Brandon drew jeepneys and armored military
vehicles. Don Don did great long houses with stick people in the windows.

      The epinephrine did calm him somewhat for a couple of hours as usual
but then, he became more agitated than ever. Brandon offered to suck him
off. He couldn't get a hard on.

      "My head hurts. I need to go out. I wish I was back with Boy."

      "No you don't. He'll beat you up. You know it and now that you're
clean, he'll fuck you and you'll wanna come back here. Just a couple of
weeks and you'll feel okay. Don't give up. Look how we're living now. Isn't
this better that sleeping on the sidewalk?"

      Don Don ran to the door and kicked it. "But it hurts!" he screamed.

      "What hurts?" asked Brandon as he embraced him.

      "Everything. Why can't I just have a little?" he moaned as he
collapsed on the floor. "I just want a little."

      Brandon spoke, soothed, held, and prodded, encouraging him to
struggle, try to think of something else.

      They were watching television together, Don Don between Brandon's
legs, leaning back against him, holding one of his hands, when Ray got home
after six carrying a large pizza and a half gallon of orange drink. The
doctor had advised against colas. Don Don got his final daily dose of
epinephrine and a warm shower. Brandon was under the water with him, gently
washing. "We're gonna be okay," was his message. Seated on the floor with
Don Don standing, Brandon sucked him off right there in the shower. It
worked

      After applying the lotion, they put Don Don quickly to bed. Brandon
lay tight beside him, both with one arm over the other, until he was
asleep.

      It was early and he had questions for Ray.

      "Tell me what you did when you were a call boy."

      "Jesus, same thing you did, just different place, different time,
different conditions."

      "How much did you charge to suck and fuck?"

      "Humph. I don't really remember but I know it varied. Some men paid
more than others. In pesos, maybe a hundred was average for sucking and
twice that to get fucked. What do you charge?"

      "In Angeles, it was suck fifty and fuck a hundred but here they don't
pay as much. I got fucked in the theater for thirty but they weren't all
that big. Foreigners are bigger, dicks, I mean, well, all of them. They're
taller and all."

      Brandon continued. "Did any of `em hurt you, make you do stuff you
didn't wanna?"

      "Mmmm, yeah a few but I was a tough little kid. I fought `em, but it
was different back then. There's a lot of weird guys out there now. Kids
have been hurt bad, killed."

      "I never heard of any kids getting killed. Worst I ever had was this
one Australian guy with a big dick forced me when I said he was too
big. But soon as he came, he took it out and I was a little sore but not
that bad. I think I did it again the next day. When did a kid get killed?"

      "Well, not here I suppose but there've been a few in the states but
they weren't call boys. They were kidnapped. Best of my knowledge, there's
not any call boys your age left over there, well, some, but a hell of a lot
less than when I was a kid. Why do you think all those guys are coming all
the way over here?"

      "So, kids getting hurt here is bullshit?"

      "No, no, I didn't say that. There've been kids, call boys,
raped. This one guy was at a hotel on Roxas Boulevard raped a bunch of
them. That's what he liked, raping boys. Son of a bitch is a child
psychiatrist."

      "Didn't anybody tell the cops?"

      "Apparently not, at least not here. And there's others. This one guy
stayed over a bar owned by an American gave gonorrhea to a bunch of boys."

      Brandon laughed. "I lived on top of a bar owned by my father. What's
gono...what you said?"

      "Nasty stuff. It's an infection that causes painful pissing, yellow
crap coming out of your dick. If it's not treated, it can cause problems
all over your body, kill you eventually but, at least, it's easy to get rid
of, a couple shots of antibiotics usually does it."

      Brandon remembered the gay teen's comment about a shot curing
whatever a condomless dick could deliver.

      "I knew of one case," continued Ray. "You might've heard that when
you get pink eye, you know, where your eye gets to itching really bad,
hurts, you put piss in it, it gets better, right?"

      Brandon winced. "No. We just wash it good and we're not supposed to
touch it. It's easy to catch or give it to somebody else. Piss?"

      "Right, it works fast and lots of people use it, especially street
people, kids. Well, this one stowaway was going out with tourists and he
went with this guy I told you, got fucked by him. Then, few days later, he
got pink eye. His friends all told him to put piss on it and he did. Worked
great but a couple days later, his eyes were all puffed up, blood and puss
coming out of them. He was blind, couldn't see a thing. So his buddies took
him to emergency at the Manila Doctor's Hospital and he got lucky. The doc
who saw him had been there for a couple of years and was a lot like the doc
seeing Don Don, knew a lot about street diseases. The doc asked the kids a
lot of questions trying to get `em to tell him everything so he could
figure out what happened. One kid finally admitted to the doc that his
buddy was sometimes a call boy and, right away, the doc knew what was
wrong. The kid had gonorrhea in his eyes. A tourist who'd fucked him had
had gonorrhea so the kid got it. The stuff was in the piss he'd used to
cure his pink eye. The doc gave the kid shots for two, three days and bang,
he got better. They got good docs at Manila Doctor's."

      "So, how can you tell if a guy has one of those things? Anyway, I
make `em use rubbers. Don't that protect me?"

      "Long as they stay on and the man doesn't take it off."

      "You said that before but I never had nobody take it off. I can
tell. It feels different'n skin. Anyhow, lots a times I help `em put it in
with my hand so I can feel if it's there."

      "That's fine unless the guy is a bad guy and does what that child
psychiatrist does and just forces you."

      "I'd scream and people are gonna hear."

      "This one kid I talked to said he tied him up and gagged him but it's
the only time I heard that. He might have been lying too. I don't know why
they didn't scream but it might have been because if they did, they'd
probably be the ones locked up. Money talks in Manila. The doc could pay
off the cops, might have a couple times for all I know."

      Brandon frowned. "Nothing like that ever happened to you?"

      "Sort of, but like I said, I was a tough little brat." He
chuckled. "There was this one guy in Jersey, outside the city where I
lived, he took me over there and tried shit I didn't like but I got away,
naked when I hit the hallway of the motel. Had to get dressed while I was
running."

      They exchanged stories for another hour before both fell
asleep. However, nothing Ray said changed Brandon's plans to make money
with his body. As he drifted off, he was working on a way to regularly get
safely back into the Venus.

      The next few days were difficult. Don Don fussed, cried, agitated,
begged to be allowed a few breaths of glue. When he had time, Ray took them
out for walks, mostly along the extensive seawall by Manila Bay although
there were a couple of times when Don Don wouldn't approach the apartment
door for fear that Boy was waiting outside in the hallway to beat him
bloody and rape him. Nighttime fears, hallucinations that Boy was coming,
or even was there in the apartment, convinced the doctor, after several
difficult nights, to prescribe a liquid sleep aid. It was effective enough
that Ray and Brandon were able to get through the night without getting up
to calm Don Don's terrors.

      It was his fear of Boy, not only because of the expected beatings but
a return to the forced, painful fucking of his tight anus that Brandon
believed kept Don Don from running away in search of the glue. The security
he felt in his new living situation overrode his cravings and great
discomfort.

      Brandon continued to give Don Don the blow job he requested to help
him get to sleep. One night, after servicing his friend, Brandon turned to
Ray and offered, "I can do it for you too if you want." When Ray hesitated,
he continued, "You don't have to pay me nothin'. You already did." He gave
him an arm over the shoulder hug.

      Ray returned it more like a bear hug and whispered into his ear, "If
you want, I'd love it. Want me to do you? I'd love that too."

      The two rolled into a sixty-nine position like the experienced pros
they were and had been. Each managed to drag out each other's ecstasy and
come within half minute of each other. Brandon swallowed all Ray had to
offer.

      Ray pulled Brandon back face to face. "I'd love to kiss you right now
but I hate the taste of my own cum."

      "That's okay. I don't like kissing all that much."

      Two days later, as they walked by the seawall on a particularly sunny
day, the narrow beach crowded with bathers, Brandon stopped and said to Don
Don, "Let's go swimming. We don't got bathing suits but half the kids are
naked so we can too. Wanna?"

      "I don't know how to swim."

      "It don't matter. Look. The water ain't all that deep. You can go way
out and it's still just up to your dick."

      Ray said, "I heard you say swim. You wanna swim?"

      Don Don was game. They found a stairway to the beach, shed their
shorts, shirts, underwear and sneakers and left them with Ray as they
dashed bare ass into the water. For a while they splashed each other but
Don Don wouldn't do more than stand. Brandon, who'd been in a hotel pool
often enough to lose his fear of water, threw himself on top of the small
waves passing by.

      "Come on, Don Don. Jump like this!" He dove again.

      Don Don took a lot of coaxing before he'd sit on the bottom much less
jump on top of one of the slight wave swells.  From nowhere, two other boys
about their age came crashing past and knocked Don Don face down in the
water. Don Don shot back up, spitting and angry. Brandon had to rush over
to stop him from getting in trouble.

      "Hey, it was an accident. We didn't mean nothin'," said the older of
the two with a laugh.

      Don Don splashed water at him. A water battle ensued that all four
quickly began to enjoy. They all played together for the better part of an
hour walking out until the water was up to Don Don's and the smaller of the
other pair's shoulders.

      Back on the beach, Brandon and Don Don lay on the rough sand to dry
off in the sun. Ray, the photographer, pulled out a small camera and took a
few discreet photos from his place on top of the seawall, six feet above
the beach.

      A foreigner walked by, slowly, and winked at Brandon. Brandon winked
back. The man squatted along side of him. "Ikau lumangoy?" (You swim?) he
asked in fractured Tagalog.

      Brandon immediately recognized that he was being hit on and reverted
to his call boy persona and answered in Tagalog. "Oo, lumango kami." (Yes,
we were swimming) "Gusto mo lumangoy?" (You like to swim?) He was seeing
how much of his language was understood.

      It wasn't much. "You go hotels?" asked the white man in English.

      Brandon was tempted to leave Don Don with Ray and see where this
would lead but, in deference to Ray's obvious desire that he not do any
such thing, he answered, "How much you pay?"

      "Maybe twenty-five, more if we do better."

      Brandon lifted himself up on his elbows and asked in call boy
English. "I suck you, how much?"

      "Thirty, uh, forty. We go?" he returned in English.

      "No today, tomorrow you come here. Okay?" Why was he talking like
that?

      "Why not today?"

      "No can today. Tomorrow, okay?" Brandon realized the call boy talk
was defensive. There he was beside the American Embassy. What if someone
who'd read about the Balibago situation figured out he was raised by an
American and connect the dots?

      They agreed, Brandon already trying to figure out how he could escape
long enough to meet this man the following day.

      When Ray, with a smile, asked, "How much did he offer you?"

      "Forty for a blow job."

      "Brash son of a bitch. So what'd you tell him, your lover was on the
wall behind you with a gun?"

      Brandon smiled and lied, "I said I don't do that and I was going...,"
The lie bothered him. "I told him to come back tomorrow. Can I do it? I'll
be careful. You're going away Monday. I gotta do something."

      Ray shook his head. "It's up to you. What're you gonna do with Don
Don?"

      "He was with me in the Venus. He can come with us. I'll give him
part."

      Ray sighed. "Maybe you are as tough as I was. Where are you planning
to stay while I'm gone?"

      "There was this older kid in the Venus, the one who told us when you
came in the taxi, I'm gonna talk to him. Anyhow, we can stay on the street
for a couple of nights. I know how to find a safe place."

      "The kid's name is Junior and he is a good kid. He wouldn't say, but
I think maybe he lives with somebody, another gay. Tell you what, why I
don't go to the Venus tomorrow night, talk to him, see if that kid Boy's
been around looking for you two."

      Brandon put his arm around Ray's waist.

      The next day, with Ray off working, Brandon and Don Don were at the
seawall by two, around the time they'd been there the day before.  The
foreigner wasn't there so they stripped, paid a woman vendor three pesos to
watch their clothes including Don Don's sneakers which had another
twenty-five pesos hidden inside, and ran into the water to play.

      Don Don had been difficult all morning but cheered up at the thought
of enjoying Manila Bay again. Brandon hadn't yet told him about the man he
expected.

      Brandon had nearly given up on his potential customer when he
appeared on the seawall. As he worked on what to say to Don Don, he
pretended not to have seen the man. What he came up with was, "Don Don,
that's the man was talking to me yesterday. Maybe I can make money with
guys like him while Ray's out of the country."

      Don Don looked and frowned. "I ain't gonna do nothing."

      "You don't have to. What if he wants to suck you? It's money."

      "Okay, but that's all."

      The man, an American who easily agreed to Don Don's presence, had
them walk a half block behind him to a small hotel on Padre Faura Street,
two blocks off the main strip on Del Pilar Street. The moment they entered,
he rushed them up the stairs, past a bored youth inside an open room with a
small desk, to the second floor and into a small, sparsely furnished but
air conditioned room.

      As he'd said at the seawall, Brandon reminded the man that, "Don Don
no suck. You suck Don Don ten pesos, okay?"

      "And what do you do? Suck thirty?"

      "You say suck forty."

      "Thirty. I said thirty."

      Brandon shook his head with a smile and a waving finger, "Uh uh. You
say suck thirty, forty and I say forty. Suck forty."

      "Business man, huh. Okay, but very good suck." He was undressing as
he spoke.

      Brandon held out his hand. The American went back to his pants to dig
out payment.

      Don Don watched close up as Brandon gave the man a head whirling blow
job that had him holding on to the bed posts. When all the man's sperm had
been swallowed, Brandon asked, "You suck friend now?"

      "Ohh. Not today. I am, you are a good sucker. I see you tomorrow
again? Maybe we do something for more money."

      Brandon raised his fuck price. "Fuck sixty."

      "Fuck fifty. The other boys only charge fifty."

      "Me very good fuck, sixty. Tomorrow hotel?"

      Brandon had a customer. He handed over his earnings, less the ten he
gave Don Don, to Ray. "Rent."

      It was handed back. "I don't take money from someone I'm beginning to
love very much. You gonna see this guy again?"

      "You jealous?" asked Brandon with a sneaky grin.

      "Damn right I'm jealous. You gonna make it up to me tonight?"

      "Aren't you going to the Venus?"

      "Not for sex. For my boy." He gave Brandon a hug, then one to Don Don
whose worried eyes relaxed with the act.

      Ray left them in the apartment at six thirty and was back by eight
thirty.

      "Junior was glad to hear you were all right," Ray told Brandon. "And,
he says a lot of the men were asking what happened to you. A couple saw Don
Don's scene by the stairs and now everybody knows you were running away
from something but they don't know what. Junior tells `em all he doesn't
know anything proving to me again what a good kid he is.

      "Now I know what you wanna ask, did he have any ideas where you could
stay. First, you can't stay with him but he had two suggestions."

      Brandon interrupted. "Did he see anybody looking for us outside, like
Boy or Rafael?"

      "All he knew about that was that a couple of times somebody asked
boys waiting out front about a long haired kid your age with another
smaller kid. Those kids just said what they knew, that you'd gone away with
a foreigner and that none of us had been back. Last time was Sunday but
that doesn't mean they aren't watching. You, and apparently Don Don before
you, were doing all their money making for them. Unless they found some
other kid to do it, they might still be looking every once in a while in
case you come back."

      "So what else did Junior say?"

      "He said there's a cheap short time hotel where some of the men take
boys from the Venus and this other theater and the street. They rent rooms
to kids if they pay and don't have any glue. They check and if they smell
it, they throw the kids out."

      "And there's men who'll take kids home for the night but just the
night. They gotta go in the morning. And you know what they have to do for
that, no money but he thinks you shouldn't come back to the Venus. Instead,
there's another theater up near Monumento by the LRT just like the Venus
but it's a whole different group of men and boys so nobody there is going
to know you. And something else, Junior thinks you might be on the run from
more than that kid Boy and he thinks, and I agree, it would be a good idea
to change how you look by getting a haircut."

      Brandon frowned. His shoulder length hair had been there for as long
as he could remember. It was part of his persona, aside from his penis, his
favorite body part.  Millie and most of his Angeles customers found it very
attractive. However, it was very distinctive, even rare. Ray was right
about it being a liability, possibly his greatest. Other boys wore theirs
in various styles down to their necks but not flowing over their
shoulders. The only pictures of him the police might have would be group
photos from his school in which he stood out due to his locks. Much as it
pained him, he needed to visit a barber shop, the long term consolation
being that it would eventually grow back.

      Worried his new customer wouldn't recognize him without the locks,
Brandon put off the shears until Monday morning after Ray left for the
airport.

      He didn't have to swallow Ray's cum that night. Ray wanted to try
something else. "You mind if I go in the other way tonight. Just if you
want to."

      Ray had his own pre-lubricated condoms. The fucking was gentle and
long. Neither wanted to wake up the recovering addict in the bed beside
them. Ray was touching, massaging the place inside Brandon that would give
him the most pleasure. He masturbated him in time to his thrusts, slowly
bringing them both to the same place almost simultaneously.

      The next morning, Don Don was particularly cheerful. Brandon sneaked
a smell of his breath but found no hint of glue. Ray had to go off and
work. The two boys left at the same time, Brandon carrying the eleven
o'clock dose of medicine for Don Don, and headed for huge, four section
Luneta Park a few blocks away. Each had twenty-five pesos for lunch and
whatever else they'd cared to do. Brandon had learned about the park from
the boys he been playing with in Manila Bay the previous day. After looking
over the fifty yard wide concrete relief map of the Philippine Islands,
they walked back to the skating rink the stowaways had mentioned. There,
Brandon almost immediately spied a blond haired man in a multiple colored
shirt watching him and Don Don. The automatic call boy smile followed. The
man approached.

      Before the probable tourist got to them, Don Don said, "I ain't
talking to him. Just you." It was getting to be the time for his dose of
epinephrine and he was agitated.

      The first words out of the man's mouth ID'd him as Australian. "Hi
there, mates."

      Brandon acknowleged the greeting with a nod. Don Don ignored him.

      "You live in park?" asked the man.

      Brandon gave him a no comprehension look.

      The Aussie put his hands along side his head to indicate sleep and
pointed to the ground as he repeated his question.

      Brandon thought fast. "Ermita" was the most applicable place that
came to mind.

	"Family? Mother, father?"

	"No mother father."

	"Stowaway?" He knew the word so he'd been around for a while.

	Brandon shook his head hoping the man would surmise he was a call
boy.

	"You need place sleep?" Sleep, he'd learned from Ray was the term
the call boys used for sex. If a person asked a call boy where his friend
was and he answered `sleeping', that meant he was having sex with a
customer. There was no doubt that's what this man had in mind though
Brandon immediately was thinking about Monday night when he'd be without a
bed. It was Saturday. Would the man wait for him until Monday?

	Brandon squeezed out a bit more English to make his pitch. "Today,
tomorrow no can. Monday can. Tuesday can."

	"Now?"

	"Today no can. Sleep friend. Tomorrow sleep friend. Monday can."

	The Aussie pursed his lips but kept on smiling. "Many friends?"

	Brandon smiled back. "Many friends. Where Monday?"

	They settled on Monday afternoon. Brandon stretched his luck and
requested skating at the park rink. The Aussie thought it was a great idea.

	After a lunch of barbecued pork on a stick and fried rice at the
Luneta deaf food stand run by a totally deaf staff, Brandon and Don Don,
who was into his two hours of relaxation from the dose of epinephrine, went
early to the seawall. The same woman took her three pesos to watch over
their clothes. There was no money to hide as they'd used it for lunch.

	For two hours, they played with others in the shallow surf, sunned
themselves and talked to four other also naked street kids about the best
places to sleep. What Brandon learned was a confirmation of what he'd
observed in Tondo. Unless you can find a well hidden place only you know
about, it's best to sleep in the open where people can see anyone robbing
you. It provided no guarantee of safety because many of the worst older and
even younger stowaways will rob a kid right in front of a crowd.

      The bottom line as they saw it was a depressing realization that they
had no protection at all. If some stowaway or street person didn't rob
them, a barangay tanod, if they had nothing to offer him not to, could lock
them up and turn them over to the police who would turn them over to
MYRC. Two of the boys had just been released after four months there, a
release prompted by overcrowding rather than anything to do with why they'd
been put in there in the first place. Both had `BOY' tattooed on their
asses. "They say you gotta be a member of a gang or you don't get no food
and they make you do shit for `em."

      "Like what?" asked Brandon suspecting correctly what the answer would
be..

      "Like what you do for tourists except they don't give you nothin'."

      That made locating secure sleeping situations imperative.

	At the agreed upon two thirty, Brandon and Don Don walked into the
Padre Faura Hotel. The young desk clerk sent them up to the man's room. He
was lying on the bed in his skivvies reading an old copy of National
Geographic.

	"Hey, you're early," he said with a smile.

	Brandon almost disagreed but shouldn't have understood the English
so took off his shoes instead.

	The American grinned, "Fuck fifty, right?"

	Brandon stopped undressing, shook his head and held out his
hand. "Fuck sixty."

	His customer had a novel way for him to earn the sixty pesos. Once
again, with Don Don watching intently, and emotionlessly, Brandon sat down
on the man's well lubricated, rubber covered cock. Once firmly against the
man's pubic bone, he revolved his ass and moved it forward and back as he
waited for the instructions. What the man wanted was new. Brandon was told
to get on his back then raise his ass as high into the air as he could. The
man stood and pushed his cock downward, poking the head into Brandon's
exposed and partially open hole, then pushing it full inside.

	Brandon winced. Bad angle.

	With Brandon's hips in his hands, the man raised up on his toes. He
pushed and pulled Brandon toward and away, his cock sliding in and out,
seemingly effortlessly, though it was anything but for Brandon.

	"Wait, wait," he insisted. "Hurt too much." He motioned with his
hand for the man to move lower, decreasing the uncomfortable angle of
entry. He complied but very little.

      The fucking was painful, worse as he sped up and pulled harder.

      Don Don stood up and said loudly, "Putang ina mo!" (Your mother's a
whore, the Filipino of son of a bitch) then walked around the bed and
kicked the man in the back of the leg. The man didn't appear to notice. He
was in the middle of climax. The sudden inaction stalled Don Don's
fury. The little boy stood, victoriously, hands on his hips, and stared
hard at the abusive tourist.

	Brandon jerked himself loose. The man's cock bounced into the air,
a blob of white sperm bloating the end of the condom. Without a word,
Brandon went into the bathroom and wiped his ass clean with toilet
paper. Don Don brought his clothes and sneakers.

	From the doorway as Brandon was dressing, the American said, "Hey,
didn't hurt all that much."

	"Yes it did," reacted Brandon without enough thought.

	The man's eyebrows went up.

	"Yeah, I speak English, asshole." It had been his father's favorite
cussword. "I'm gonna tell all the other kids not to go with you."

	"You sound American. What're you doing here?"

	"Fuck you."

	"Hey, look, I'm sorry. The other kid I did that with didn't
complain. So how come you're here?"

	"Fuck you. You're a liar. I told you to stop and you didn't
stop. That's rape. I oughta tell the cops about you."

	"What for? You said you'd fuck for sixty and I gave you sixty. And
you said it first. You solicited me."

	Brandon wasn't sure what `solicited' meant. "Okay, give my friend
ten pesos."

	"So that's what this is, blackmail."

	Brandon did know that word. "No. You hurt me. You're not supposed
to hurt anybody in sex."

	"Shit! Here." He pulled a ten peso note off a small wad of bills.

	Don Don, his face in a threatening grimace, snatched it out of his
hand when it was extended toward him.

	There was no more conversation.

	As he walked toward Ray's apartelle, Brandon thought over what had
just occurred. It was a rough fuck but he barely felt it a mere ten minutes
later and he'd made sixty pesos. If he could find just two tourists a day,
even assholes like this one, and just got fifty each, he and Don Don could
survive, sleep in some cheap hotel. What would help was someone to share
the cost with him, perhaps another call boy.

	He broached the subject with Ray.

	"Look, son, I know you're against it, but you really oughta
consider one of the better homes. I talked to some local journalists this
afternoon. Tomorrow, I've got to cover a demo but there'll be time to go
check out a couple of places they said were okay. Maybe one's not so bad
and I'll go with you so they'll have to treat you right `cause they'll know
a foreign journalist is interested and I'll be checking up on you."

	Brandon was absolutely determined not to go into an institution no
matter what his friend found out but, "Okay, but if it's no good then I
still gotta figure out where I can stay. I got sixty off this one tourist
this afternoon and there was this other one but I said I couldn't. But,
what if I can make a hundred a day. We can eat for fifty easy so I got
fifty for a hotel or something."

	"Brandon, you're dreaming. Call boys might make a hundred every
once in a while but not every day."

	"I made more than that in Angeles."

	"Yeah, in Angeles with some woman arranging customers, and a
shitload fewer thieves and crooked, Christ, everything. You can do it on
weekends at a theater but there's almost no business during the
week. You'll be lucky to get one ten peso customer. And, like I been
telling you, here in Manila, especially Ermita, you're gonna get robbed and
have to pay off until you're broke. As you know, if you're sleeping on the
streets, they'll steal the clothes you're wearing."

	Brandon didn't want to hear any more of what he considered negative
thinking. He was certain he could do this. Sure, there'd be problems but
he'd learn how to avoid them, deal with them. He could work a theater on
weekends and the seawall and Luneta Park during the week. He had a proven
ass that could take multiple dicks per day. He smiled to himself at the
thought. He had a pro ass.

	Don Don was his big problem. Again that evening, he became very
difficult. There were hallucinations that Boy was in the hallway waiting
for him to go to sleep. Ray and Brandon took him to the door but he put his
back against it, refusing to let them open it up. The epinephrine cooled
him off somewhat but the sleep medicine didn't allow his penis to harden
when Brandon attempted the nightly blow job. In the end, he finally fell
asleep in Brandon's arms, whimpering about being fucked by someone who
didn't sound like Boy but possibly an adult.

	When he awakened, Brandon asked him if someone other than Boy and
Rafael had ever fucked him. "That kid went with us to steal in the hardware
store? He did it before and it really hurt bad. Boy made me let him do it
couple times and he didn't give me nothin'."

	"So why didn't you ever run away?"

	"I told you that too. I didn't know any place to go. I can't read
or nothin' so how can I go anywhere?"

	It had never occurred to Brandon to ask any of the Tondo group if
they'd ever been to school. Every kid he'd ever known in Angeles had at
least some primary education. He told Ray.

	"You didn't know that? Ever watch him with my newspaper? He just
looked at pictures. A lot of the kids on the street can't read including
some of the call boys I've met. Junior's probably the only kid in the Venus
with more than a second or third grade education and all he did was
graduate from grade school."

	"Then I gotta teach him how to read."

	"Not in the shape he's in now. I doubt he can concentrate for more
than a few seconds at a time."

	At the seawall, Brandon spotted another man giving him the more
than once over. He showed interest. The man, a German tourist, made his
offer. Brandon went to his hotel nearby on the broad boulevard along the
seawall and earned another painful sixty pesos though not for any crudeness
on the man's part. He just had a very thick cock. He'd shown it to Brandon
ahead of time so he knew what he was in for. But, once again, the
discomfort was gone shortly after the act. Brandon accepted another date, a
sleepover with the man for Wednesday evening. He was going to be paid to
sleep in a nice hotel.

	When they met in Luneta Park, Brandon flashed the sixty pesos. Ray
shook his head. "I suppose you're not interested in what I learned about
the two homes."

	Brandon then shook his head.

	"You wouldn't have liked either of them anyhow. They were both
pretty crappy."

	They spent the last evening of their last day together in Luneta
Park, first, at the skating rink on rented skates, then at dinner in the
open air deaf stand restaurant right there in the park. Ray told them,
"This is our last meal together until I get back. I've got to be at the
airport at six. I'm gonna give you a hundred each and leave two hundred
more with the guy at the desk in my hotel. He knows I'm coming back so he
probably won't steal it. This sort of thing usually takes about six or
seven weeks but I can't say exactly how long it's gonna be. I'd stay here
with you but, like I told you before, I signed a contract so I have to
honor it."

	"How come you can't tell me what you're gonna take pictures of?"

	"It's nothing, all right, a movie, I take the pictures you see
outside the movie theaters."

	"You get to meet the stars like Chuck Norris?"

	"Yeah, but, believe me, they're nothing special, most of `em. Some
are nice people, some are real assholes."

	Brandon pressed for names and got a few but hardly exciting
stories. He began to worry Ray was actually going to see a special boy but
said nothing.

	That night, once Don Don had drifted off, Ray pulled Brandon to
him. "I'm really gonna miss you. You don't know how much I wish I could
stay but I go bad on one contract like this and that'll be the end of
it. I'll never get another one and news photography is fun but doesn't pay
very much."

	Brandon said, "You'll get some boys where you're going, won't you?"

	"Probably not but who knows. Anyhow, you'll be the one I'm gonna be
thinking about and, when I get back, I promise I'll stick around for a
while, get you into school somewhere, Don Don too."

	Brandon began to doubt his misgivings. Maybe there wasn't another
boy. Maybe he was special to this American. He put his arms around Ray's
thick middle and nestled his head into his shoulder.

	In addition to the two hundred peso emergency cash, Ray left an
ample supply of Don Don's medicine and lotion plus two sets of clothes with
the hotel man. They'd have to arrange washing or do it themselves but, at
least, they could walk around in clean clothing, avoiding notice by
barangay tanods and police.

	Don Don worried that Ray's departure was going to leave them
vulnerable. As they walked toward the park, he asked, "Where we gonna sleep
tonight?"

	"Maybe with that Australian. But, even if he doesn't let us stay
with him, we'll have enough for a room at that hotel Ray said. I just gotta
find it but I got the address. Don't worry, we'll be okay."



	It was midday before Brandon found himself the object of someone's
desire. He was relatively small for a foreigner, about the size of a
typical Filipino. He took them to a small hotel just up the street from the
one where the American had painfully screwed him at such a weird
angle. This man, a Brit, turned out to be more interested in Brandon's
little friend. Don Don, an hour into his two hours of chemical relief,
agreed to be blown for twenty pesos. When the man doubled, then tripled it
for a fuck, Don Don turned him down flat, but not as bellicosely as he
might have later on in the day. He was still on his mild epinephrine high.

      Brandon, tiring of not being able to communicate clearly with his
customers and wanting to adequately protect Don Don, broke out of his call
boy English. "He's been raped a couple of times. He don't do that no more."

	The Englishman stared at him for a moment then, "My, aren't you a
bundle of surprises? May I assume you're an American?"

	He wasn't going to admit very much, not when he was being sought by
the police and the Americans. "No, I'm Filipino. I grew up around Americans
is all."

	"So why didn't you say so in the first place? Why the play acting
you didn't speak English?"

	Brandon regretted dropping that play acting. "Please don't say
nothing to nobody else. This way I know sometimes if they're planning
somethin' bad." The excuse sounded lame to him. He hoped it wouldn't to his
customer.

	"So, tell me what happened to your little friend?"

	"He don't like me to talk about it."

	"So he understands English too? I don't think so," he smiled
haughtily.

	"No, but I promised so I don't."

	"So, do you do what he doesn't?"

	"Uh huh, but it's sixty pesos."

	"That's a bit steep for me. Tell you what." He folded his arms
across his chest. "I'll keep your little secret, you let me have you for
forty. How's that sound?"

	Brandon took the man's surprisingly long but not so thick cock for
forty Pesos.

	When they were done, his customer admitted, "Don't worry. I don't
know any of the boy lovers around here and don't particularly want to. Are
you free later on in the week? I'm here until Sunday."

	"Thursday. And we can sleep over that night if you want."

	"Sounds like we're looking for a bed. You live on the street?"

	"Sometimes."

	"Where are you sleeping tonight?"

	"A tourist."

	"And tomorrow?"

	"Don't know yet, maybe a hotel."

	"So what's a hotel cost you?"

	"Twenty," he lied sensing where the conversation was going."

	"So, what if I let you sleep here and just give you forty again for
your services?"

	It sounded good but he worried there might be more cash out there
for sleepovers than what was being offered. "I don't know. Let me tell you
tomorrow. I usually get a hundred to stay overnight."

	"You must be very good, kissing and all that."

	He'd done it before for the right price. He nodded.

	A meeting was set in Luneta Park for a five o'clock dinner at the
same restaurant where they'd had their parting meal with Ray.

	After they'd left, Don Don wanted to know what the long
conversation had been about. I think we're gonna sleep at his hotel
Thursday night.

	They hit the seawall for a swim and a hoped for meeting with
another call boy. Brandon wanted more information on the overall situation,
verification of Ray's warnings, and to begin his search for a potential
roommate if that was going to be a possibility. There were a number of
stowaways but no one who had the look of a call boy.

	The Aussie was right on time and took the pair to dinner at a turo
turo followed by chocolate shakes he carried out of McDonald's.

	His sexual desires weren't unusual, some mutual cock sucking then a
penetration he tried to maintain into a second orgasm twenty minutes
later. Don Don was strangely calm though he did hold on to Brandon's arm as
they waited out the man's not-to-be consumated lust. The Aussie cuddled up
behind Brandon. Don Don backed into Brandon's arms and quickly fell asleep
without his accustomed blow job. The man fell away but the boys stayed
tightly together.

	The Aussie insisted on using his morning hard on. The condom was
still on, full of the previous nights discharge. Brandon conditioned
acquiescence on a fresh rubber. During their post-sex shower, mutual
washing was requested.

	Brandon covered Don Don with his last prescribed lotion
application. The Aussie was somewhat concerned that what the nine year old
was being treated for might be contagious. Brandon explained that the
scabies was virtually cured, and that this was the next to last treatment.

	Flush with cash, Brandon bought them a McDonald's breakfast of Egg
McMuffins and orange juice. After stopping by Ray's hotel for Don Don's
medicine and a small supply of lotion, it was off to a barber shop, whose
address Ray had given him, for the ordeal of losing hair unshorn for nearly
two years. Unwilling to remove it all, he requested a short page
boy. Fifteen minutes later, the kid in the mirror was hardly
recognizable. He hoped it would protect him from the American authorities
seeking him.

	From the barbershop, they headed for the seawall but were lured
into the Robinson's Shopping Center by the glitzy product displays. An hour
or so into window shopping everything from shoes to shirts, guns to
guitars, they found themselves in the large food court. As they walked from
one fast food outlet to another, Brandon saw a man watching them from the
level above. He raised his head at him. The man raised his hand a couple of
inches in a surreptitious greeting then looked toward the escalators and
back down. Brandon took Don Don by the arm and met what he felt sure was
business except this man wanted to use the mall's men's room for a "quick
twenty pesos".

	"Ten minutes," he promised.

	Inside, they waited for two men to leave then went inside the last
toilet stall. The man, from his speech another Australian, lifted Brandon
up on the toilet seat, loosed his belt, opened his pants, slid them and his
briefs to knee level, leaned over and gave a competent blow job that lasted
exactly ten minutes but didn't provide fruition. He'd glanced repeatedly at
his watch to be sure of the timing.

	"Ten minutes," he said while handing over a twenty peso note. "Your
friend?"

	Don Don earned twenty too.

	And that was Brandon's introduction to Robinson's, a place that was
going to be very unkind to him.

      A drug store near the entry reminded him he had planned to buy
condoms and a small tube of lubricant. The woman behind the counter flatly
refused to sell "adult items to a child."

	Asking on the street, they located another pharmacy. The older man
just shook his head at Brandon's story of buying for his older
brother. "What kind you want?"

	Brandon's confused look drew a follow up, "What brand? Lubricated?"

	Brandon shrugged his shoulders. The man lay three different kinds
on the counter and, with raised eyebrows, held his hands to either side.

	Brandon chose the middle priced brand.

	"Your brother want some grease too?

	"How much is that?"

	He bought a small tube for twenty-one pesos with plans to charge
unprepared customers for the additional expenses.

	Moments later, as they walked along Padre Faura Street past Mabini,
one of the two main drags of tourist Ermita, they saw a boy about twelve
wearing a new button-up shirt and jeans but worn down flip flops approach a
foreigner. "I sleep you, Joe" they heard him say. The man frowned, pushed
the boy aside and went on his way.

	Curious, Brandon stopped at the corner and watched the boy turn
down Del Pilar Street, home of most of the girlie bars, and approach two
more men. Though he couldn't hear him, it appeared the boy used the same
line on both. The second, however, spoke to him. Seconds later, both came
back up toward Brandon and Don Don, the boy deliberately avoiding Brandon's
gaze as they turned right on Padre Faura for a block, then off to the left.

	That block of Del Pilar between them and the next cross street down
was almost entirely girlie bars on both sides, as red-light as the mostly
densely red-light area of Balibago. It was still a few hours before the
sound of garish disco music would be roaring out of doors opened when
customers came and went. Passersby were few and mostly Filipino. A family
of beggars, mother and three small ragged shoeless children, sat in a
doorway, likely waiting for the influx of tourists. A shoeshine boy of
about twelve sat on the curb half a block below them, re-organizing his box
of brushes, cans of polish and rags. Two more stood talking in the open-air
restaurant at the next corner. An adolescent carrying a shallow wood box
full of a couple dozen cigarette packs chased a slowing jeepney with one
rider waiting to jump off the back and another reaching out with a coin to
buy a singe cigarette.

	In the small multi-level concrete plaza at the corner, three
preteen street boys sat on a low wall surrounding a tree. A chunky middle
aged woman leaned against a tree preening a small girl's hair.

	Brandon, tempted to try approaching single men with the `I sleep
you, Joe' line, vividly recalled Ray's warning about this area and walked
down Del Pilar, hands in pockets protecting his money, warily eyeing the
trio on the wall until he realized they were paying him no attention. The
one, laughing, poked the boy beside him causing a brief wrestling
match. The third boy pushed his buddies in the direction of the alley,
Santa Monica Street, between the plaza and the open-air restaurant just as
Brandon and Don Don were crossing into the same narrow street. Brandon
stopped at the corner but, as before, they were engrossed in playing with
one another as they alternately walked and trotted toward the seawall,
Brandon's destination.

	When Brandon and Don Don reached the beach, the three were
stripping off their clothes as they ran along the waterline toward the
rocks. Our boys had rice and fried chicken feet for lunch then left their
clothes with the same woman who'd watched them before and headed into the
water.

	As they waded and floated, the trio from the plaza, chasing one
another in the shallow water, passed them. Don Don, watching them, said, "I
think that one kid was in the detention center before, the big one."

	Sure enough, the next time they passed, the biggest of the three, a
homely hard- bodied lad just pubing, looked back and smiled. "Shit, it's
Don Don. Hey, Don Don. When you get out?"

	"Before you. You was still there when they put me in that home."

	A debate followed with the other boy's two friends calling him
`stupid' and his name, `Nanding'.

	The other two were Toti and Melvin, the latter Nanding's younger
brother though he didn't look anything like him and was far better
looking. Don Don introduced Brandon.

	"He's got eyes like Johnny, don't he?" suggested Melvin, little
dick in hand.

	Don Don was about to say something but stopped and looked at
Brandon for leadership. "Who's Johnny?" asked Brandon more to keep Don Don
from saying anything about his English.

	Toti answered, "A kid we know. He'll be at Raymond's later
maybe. Where you come from? I ain't never seen you around here before."

	"Tondo but I'm staying around here now."

      Before the inquiries could go any further, Melvin suggested, "Let's
play tag. Don Don's it."

      The three dashed off splashing water in all directions. Don Don
smacked Brandon on the back. "Uh uh, he is," he cried as he too moved away.

      The game didn't last very long as the three stowaways were already
worn down by previous play. The five lay face up on the beach to soak in
the early afternoon sun. Brandon learned that they slept either in one of
the temporary scrap wood lean-tos against the seawall or, during one of the
regular police crackdowns when the structures were hauled away, stayed
either in one of the side streets by Santa Monica Plaza where Brandon had
seen them or, occasionally when they could, in the back of the open-air
restaurant.

      "What's the safest place to sleep?" asked Brandon.

      "With some tourist, huh, Nanding," kidded Melvin.

      Toti said, "Not here. Some kids stole my cigarettes last week."

      "Beat him up, too," added Melvin. "I stay on Roxas or in the park, in
some bushes with my brother."

      Don Don had sat up and was looking back toward the seawall. "There's
a tourist looking at us."

      All heads arched backward. "You know him, Nanding?" asked Melvin.

      "Uh uh. He's new."

      The man nodded at them. Brandon stood and, arms folded across his
chest, turned and stared, a smile on his face. The others sat and watched.

      The next nod by the foreigner motioned the boys to him. Only Brandon
and Nanding went to the wall. The others stayed where they were. The man's
eyes were on Brandon.

	"Hungry?" he asked.

	Brandon acted as though he didn't understand. Nanding elbowed him
in the ribs and said in Filipino, "He's gonna buy us food and after we can
get sucked for money. Wanna?"

	Brandon was sure the man just wanted him but also realized that
Nanding was experienced at this sort of thing and so had much to teach. He
nodded at the man and pointed at Nanding and himself. The man agreed.

	When asked, as Brandon dressed and Nanding dashed off to the rocks
to recover his clothes, if he wanted to go along, Don Don answered that he
preferred to stay there with Toti and Melvin.

	Toti said, "We'll be on Del Pilar."

	Food was at a turo turo. The hotel was a small place two blocks off
Del Pilar near Padre Faura Street. Sex began with sucking. Nanding, who had
begun to grow, insisted on being first. Brandon wanted to negotiate for
something more profitable than a fifteen peso blow job but wasn't sure what
Nanding would think of his allowing himself to get screwed or even sucking
the man off. No problem!

    	As Brandon was lying naked on his back, his cock being inexpertly
fellated, Nanding stood behind the man and mimed sucking a big cock then
taking the same organ up his rear, the obvious question being was Brandon
interested in going that far.

	Brandon nodded at Nanding who shrugged his shoulders, raised his
hands, flipping them back and forth seeking a price to offer. Brandon
looked at the head bobbing over his groin, pursed his lips the mouthed
`forty suck sixty fuck'.

	Nanding nodded agreement, sat on the bed beside the action and
tapped on the man's shoulder. When he looked up, Nanding stuck his finger
in his mouth while pointing at the man's groin with another. Seeing
interest, he held up his hands and said, "You like fuck me?" then pointed
at Brandon.

	Brandon quickly sat up to clarify the financial end, "Suck forty,
fuck sixty."

	Negotiation was attempted but, despite the worried look on
Nanding's face, Brandon rejected any reduction in price.

	It turned out that Nanding really wanted to be fucked so Brandon
undressed the man, sucked and fondled his balls then handed over a
condom. The problem was lubricant. This tourist was unprepared or had too
much confidence in saliva. With the condom in place, Brandon took both to
the shower and soaped up pole and orifice. Nanding bent over the toilet and
was penetrated with no difficulty or apparent discomfort.

	Before it was over, the pair had re-lubed and continued on the
bathroom floor. Nanding masturbated himself as the man filled the condom
with his sperm.

	Nanding was so appreciative, he handed over ten of his sixty
pesos. They agreed when they returned to claim they'd just been paid twenty
each for being sucked. Don Don was the first to facially express
disbelief. Melvin just said, "Bullshit! I know what my brother does and he
always gets more."

	Brandon and Nanding settled things with a food purchase for the
other three.

	The small Brit was right on time for dinner and bought them fried
chicken, French fries, guacamole and pineapple pie for desert. Thursday
they could do the same and stay overnight with him. "I'm committeded for
tonight and tomorrow." Brandon assumed that meant another boy would be
sharing his bed both nights.

	At eight, customerless, they walked down Del Pilar to see if there
might be some opportunities there. Toti, hustling jeepney passengers and
passersby to buy his cigarettes, was the only familiar face.

	"You shoulda come before," he said, "Maybe five tourists were
around. Even Melvin went with one and he don't like to do nothing but get
blowed. That kid Johnny got eyes like yours was here too and he went with
one. I don't do that."

	Brandon thought maybe he made more selling smokes. "How much you
make a day selling those?"

	"Not much, ten, twenty, sometimes a little more. Trouble is I gotta
give some to the tanods and sometimes big kids steal my stuff. That's why I
gotta pay the tanods. I stay close to here and they don't let nobody bother
me."

	Didn't sound interesting especially since that meant he'd have to
sleep on the street. His body was earning him enough to eat well and sleep
more often than not inside on a bed.

      The thought was confirmed when a newly arrived Australian took them,
on Brandon's suggestion, to the Bay Hotel whose address Ray had given
them. Rather than pay thirty pesos for a small room sharing a narrow bed,
they ended up making sixty pesos and sleeping comfortably, Brandon in the
arms of the Aussie though on a decent sized bed. Ten was for Don Don to
beat the man's morning erection, a surprisingly fast, and messy,
affair. Don Don took an extra shower.

	At the hotel, there was a woman who washed clothes. They hustled
over to Ray's hotel, picked up fresh from the somewhat putout clerk and
brought the dirty laundry to the woman who said she do them all for twelve
pesos.

	By evening Wednesday, the seawall and Luneta Park had provided two
disparate customers, a suck and a fuck netting just seventy-five pesos. As
the sun was going down, Don Don, coming down from his afternoon dose of
Epinefrine, flatly refused a Filipino in the park who wanted a ten peso
blow job under the tour boat wharf. Brandon took a look at the spot,
decided it was safe and offered to service the man but he just wanted the
nine year old.

	Shortly after dark when the boys went there, Del Pilar Street was
jumping. Dozens of tourists flitted from club to club, wafts of cool air
and disco music blasting out the doors when opened. Brandon stayed in front
of one for a while, getting a look at the nearly topless dancing girls with
bits of triangular shaped cloth hanging over their breasts, exposing their
nipples whenever they leaned down. It was hardly the first time he'd seen
women's private parts. Hiding in the dressing room of the Showdown, he'd
many times seen them completely naked, even giving blow jobs.

	Melvin and Toti along with five other boys their age, two of them
shoe shiners, were around. A square faced, decent looking boy about twelve
with a full body, dressed in colorful new clothes complete with shiny
leather shoes and colored socks sat on the plaza wall with Melvin. Brandon
figured him to be another call boy. The light colored eyes told him it was
probably the one they called Johnny.

	After introductions and enough small talk to reduce suspicious
attitudes, Johnny admitted, "My mother lives in Angeles. I never knew my
father. She says she don't know who it was."

	Brandon was tempted to ask questions that would make it clear he
knew the town but opted instead for, "How come you came here?"

	"I used to live with my aunt and this guy in Parañaque but he was a
son of a bitch, always hitting me so I left last year. Where're you from?"

	How to answer that? "Tondo. I was there with my grandmother but my
uncle was beating on me so I left." He'd made it up as he went along.

	There was silence for a moment then Johnny asked, "Where you do
this before?"

	 "What?" He knew what was meant but needed time to think of an
answer.

	"Callboy."

	"I did it some in Tondo, up by Monumento."

	"Premier?"

	Brandon shifted position, trying to think of believable but safe
answer. Melvin saved him. "What's Premier?"

	"Some movie theater where kids suck guys off, cheap bastards just
wanna pay ten Pesos. I done it at first with this other kid I met in Quiapo
but then they told me about here."

	Brandon asked, "How long you been around here?"

	"Like I said, a year, about. So, you go to the Premier?"

	"Nah, just around the market but they were cheap too."

	"How much they pay for a blow job?"

	"Ten, like you said."

	"So how you know about here?"

	"This guy, he said foreigners paid more so we came here."

	Johnny looked at Don Don. "He do it too?"

	"Uh uh. He don't like it. Some guy in the park wanted him just a
little while ago, just to blow him, but he wouldn't let him. Said I was too
big"

	"Yeah, like Melvin." He bumped his shoulder against the smaller
boy's.

	"How much you make today?" asked Johnny.

	Another toughie. "Forty, you?"

	"Twenty."

	Brandon wondered if that was the truth or was it a ploy to get any
potential customer who might come by.

	One did, an older American who looked Brandon over more than the
others. Toti walked off, followed immediately by Melvin the moment he began
to try speaking to them. It turned out that Johnny had picked up quite an
English vocabulary.

	The man asked in English, the typical pick up line, "You boys
hungry?"

	Johnny jumped in, "What hotel you, Joe?"

	"You speak English? What's your name?"

	"Johnny. Speak English some." He stood. "We go you hotel?"

	The tourist turned to Brandon. "You speak English too?"

	Brandon was ready to let Johnny have the man to preserve the civil
relationship with the boys there in the plaza. "No English," he answered
shaking his head.

	Johnny was quick to take advantage. "He no like hotel with tourist,
only me. We go?"

	"Maybe he comes with you?"

	"No like. He go home now. Mother say."

	Brandon nearly laughed. Instead he tugged Don Don and they walked
off after Melvin and Toti.

	The American gave up and took Johnny.

	Toti wanted to know, "Why you let him take your tourist? He wanted
you."

	"He was talking to Johnny, not me."

	Toti shook his head. Melvin mumbled, "Johnny's a prick."

	Brandon let it go and bought all four of them fruit drinks.

	Later, as they made a twenty-five pesos deal for an empty Bay Hotel
third floor room, another boy about ten scurried past them toward the upper
floors. A foreigner came in seconds later and nodded at the clerk who then
grinned and shrugged his shoulders at Brandon.

	Don Don had been relatively calm all day, quiet. Brandon asked,
"You feeling okay?"

	"I wish you were my real brother."

	They slept in each other's arms, Brandon wishing he could be back
in Angeles, in his own bed, with a little brother like Don Don. There was
no dream involving Millie that night.

	Thursday morning after retrieving Don Don's epinephrine from the
agitated hotel clerk, they went to the Manila Doctor's Hospital for an
appointment with the young doctor.

	"How do you feel?" he asked Don Don as he looked over those parts
of his body formerly covered with scabies but now looking splotched but
smooth.

	"Not so bad."

	"Headaches, bad dreams?"

	"Not so much."

	Brandon told him about his fears that Boy was outside their door
"But that was a few days ago. The sleeping medicine helped him a lot."

	"I thought it would but I don't want you to use it any more."

	"We didn't last night and he was okay."

	"Sounds like he has a good friend."

	The doctor told them to stop using the epinephrine in a week and
come see him when they had a chance.

      In Luneta Park, walking past the grandstand in the last section next
to the bay, they met a pair of Frenchmen who called themselves in English,
James and John. The shorter one, James, spoke only in French. The other was
fairly competent with Tagalog though heavily accented. Standing at the
seawall, looking out at a pair of passing motorized outrigger boats, James
via John told Brandon that he thought he was `very beautiful'. Brandon
thanked him. John told Don Don he thought he was cute too. Would they like
to see their hotel?

	The hotel was a short-time dive in Malate. The two praised the
boy's faces and bodies, asking to see their muscles, flex them, see their
tummies, flex them. Trying to move things along, Brandon mentioned, "We
need to make some money."

	James and John exchanged smiles and a few words. John asked, "Sex?"

	John, the larger of the pair had a small penis and tried to
convince Don Don to try entry. It didn't work but, after negotiations that
began at ten pesos, Don Don did accede finally to an offer of twenty-five
for a blow job as long as the man pulled his cock out before cumming.

	James, the smaller, with a large, fat cock, expressed through John,
a great admiration of Brandon's fine rear end and his desire to get
inside. He had the required condoms, agreed to a seventy pesos fee and
allowed that entry would be by Brandon sitting on him.

	Shortly, Don Don was sucking mightily on John's little thing while
Brandon was being skewered by James' log-shaped dick.

	The pair walked away with ninety-five pesos and some French hard
candy.

	"I thought you didn't like to suck," said Brandon as the walked
toward Roxas Boulevard and the seawall.

	"I just don't like their stuff. It tastes like shit."

	"Then why'd you do it?"

	Don Don was slow to answer, finally admitting, "I wanted to make
some money too."

	"You don't have to if you don't want to. I'll give you money if you
want."

	Don Don shrugged his shoulders. "It's okay. I can do some stuff
too, just no fucking."

	Brandon grinned. "So how come you didn't do the Filipino in the
park?"

	"I just didn't like him."

      Brandon accepted that and asked, "You feel okay?" It was time for Don
Don's medicine.

	"Uh huh but give me my medicine anyway."

	They bought juice drinks from a street vendor to wash it down.

	As they were swimming nude in the bay, an older teenager approached
them. "I saw you with those two crazy Frenchies. You let `im fuck you?"

	Brandon was immediately suspicious. "They were just talking to
us. We don't do that."

	"Sure you do. I saw you with a foreigner at the Bay and you went
with some from here. Look, I got a way you can make some good money, two
hundred a night and it's easy."

	Brandon's ears perked up, sure there was a catch if not
danger. Still, "How?"

	"There's this club. They give sex shows with boys like you and
me. We do it in front of these guys and get paid a hundred each time, two
times a night, Friday and Saturday."

	"Where?"

	"I can't tell you that until you been checked and you're okay."

	"Checked? For what?"

	"By a doctor. We all gotta get checked to see if we got anything."

	"I don't got nothin', like what?"

	"Don't worry, you just gotta get checked. It ain't nothin'. I get
checked every week."

	"Whatta they do?

	"Just a little blood. Don't hurt none."

	"You mean with a needle?"

	"Yeah, but it ain't nothin'."

	Brandon pointed at Don Don. "He don't like needles."

	"It ain't for him. He's too little. You're twelve, right?"

	Brandon was becoming very interested. "Yeah."

	"Okay, you just gotta come with me to the doc and get checked. If
you don't got nothin', we do it tomorrow."

	"Whatta I gotta do?"

	"Love, baby, love. First three of us kiss and hug and feel each
other up then you suck me a little and the other kid until he cums and I
fuck you and cum all over your ass and that's it. A hundred a time and if
some of the customers wanna have you they got rooms and you get fifty for
each one. Some nights I make four hundred."

	Brandon saw his dreams coming true. Make enough money on weekends
to quit running after men during the week, well, except maybe a couple, go
back to school, live a normal life as he saw it.

	Don Don, who'd been listening, yanked on Brandon's arm and shook
his head.

	The teen saw it. "Don't worry, this is legit. Why you think we
gotta go to a doc every week? You'll see. Come on, get checked and you'll
see."

	The doctor's office was a small affair in Malate, a four block walk
from the seawall. Don Don had to wait outside on the street. The doctor had
Brandon take off his shirt, carefully felt both arms, put a stethoscope to
his chest and back, a wood tongue suppressor into his open mouth, and
checked his eyes. After that, he sat him in a chair by an examining table,
brought over a small covered pan with hypodermic needles and glass tubes,
pulled out a rubber cord, wrapped it around his arm, made Brandon cringe
when he inserted the needle and drew a syringe full of blood.

	Brandon had to wait while the teenager, with less of a physical
exam, went through the same procedure.

	Finally, the doctor had Brandon strip naked and get on his
examining table. The feeling and pressing became more extensive, intrusive
until, the doctor leaned over and sucked in his flaccid penis. The teen
grinned and rolled his eyes. Brandon lay still trying to avoid an erection
but the man was much too skilled. Within minutes, he had an orgasm.

	The doctor said with professional flair, "You'll be fine."

	Outside, the teen who gave his name as Rod said, "He likes `em
little, kids like you. He did me a couple years ago when I was fourteen and
didn't have no hair yet."

	Brandon had to tell Don Don everything that had gone on inside.

	Don Don commented derisively, "And he didn't pay you nothin',
right?"

	"Right."

	Brandon was to meet Rod the following evening at seven at Raymond's
Fastfood, the open-air restaurant at the corner of Del Pilar and Santa
Monica streets. If the tests came out okay, they'd go to the club from
there.

	The Englishman was punctual again, Since there'd been an afternoon
rain, he carried a black umbrella just like the ones Brandon had seen in
the section on England in his social studies book. There was another nice
dinner with lots of questions but evasive answers.

	"Tell me about yourself, Brandon. Where were you born?"

	"Tondo."

	"And who were these Americans with whom you grew up?"

	Brandon was prepared. "They weren't really Americans, just
Filipinos who grew up there and came back here."

	"And lived in Tondo, the largest slum in the world."

	Brandon didn't know what `slum' meant so remained silent.

	"Brandon, why would people from such an advanced country come and
live in a place like Tondo?"

	"I don't know." He wasn't prepared for that, but didn't see a
problem.

	"And neither of your parents were American."

	"No."

	"Brandon," he said in a sing songy voice, "I don't believe
you. People don't come from a nice place like the states to live in a nasty
place like Tondo. Anyhow, your English is completely without a local
accent. Are you sure you didn't grow up in the U.S.?"

	Though he realized his story was self destructing, he wasn't about
to admit his background. "I told you. It was people from the states who
taught me."

	The probing continued, sometimes subtle, occasionally by surprise,
always persistent. Finally, as they finished a desert of ice cream and
cookies, he said, "Here's what I think, my dear young man. There's someone
looking for you. You are on the run and not from home. There's much more to
it than that and it would make a great story. I hope you decide to tell it
to someone, or, better, maybe write it down. That, of course, is if you
survive. How dangerous are the people looking for you?" The surprise tactic
again.

	Brandon smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

	"Delicious! Let's go."

	They went back to his hotel for an unpressured evening of nudity
with snacks and sex. Don Don almost accepted an attempt at his anus after
the man convinced him to allow a thorough rimming. He was sitting on the
tip when he decided against it. However, he was so enamored of the witty
man he did permit a single lip to lip kiss, mouths closed, a first for him
as far as Brandon knew.

	Brandon did get the full treatment including French kissing that
went on for quite a while, a blow job just short of orgasm and keeping a
dick inside him right through three games of UNO. That final act wasn't
completed until they were in bed preparing to sleep.

	Don Don let the man cuddle him and slept that way. Brandon was
mildly jealous. It was the first night Don Don hadn't slept close to him in
weeks. Perhaps withdrawal from glue had run its course. Would their
relationship stay the same?

	Brandon, who hadn't as usual collected his money up front, was
taken aback by the hundred peso notes the Englishman handed the both of the
next morning.

	"Now you get out of here and buy yourselves a first class breakfast
and, Brandon, don't you forget to write down your story some day if you
can. I'll be watching for it."

	Their stomachs were still full from the evening and night before,
so they put off the big meal until midday, opting instead, after going to
Ray's hotel for epinephrine and the Bay to use the bathroom and change into
clean clothes, to explore further down Roxas Boulevard, the broad street
that followed the Manila Bay seawall.

	There really wasn't much to find other than a few government
buildings, apartment houses, and lots of fishermen with their outrigged
boats called bancas. Don Don asked one about a ride. Surprisingly enough,
he said okay and took them with him further south where a mechanic spent
two hours fixing something wrong with his motor while everyone snacked on
fried fish and rice balls. Both boys helped out, dirtying themselves and
their fresh clothes. On the ride back, the fisherman offered them powdered
soap to wash out the grease, so they stripped to their underwear and dipped
shorts and shirts into the passing water, then lay back and held them over
their heads in the rushing air to dry.

	Back where they started, they thanked the man and headed back up
north in their still damp clothing.

	Brandon felt so secure about the money he had in his pocket and
what he expected to earn that night that he ignored the come-on looks of a
pair of tourists as he and Don Don swam naked. He even floated on his back
and flipped his dick at them, something he regretted quickly, worried he'd
chased off needed future customers.

	At seven, Rod was waiting inside Raymond's Fastfood at a table with
two foreigners, Australians as it turned out. The teenager was speaking to
them in broken but quite functional English. He did stop briefly to tell
Brandon that the blood test had come out negative. They'd be going to the
club.

	Rod said to the Aussies, "I'm will fuck this boy tonight. You come
and watch."

	"I don't fuck babies," commented the one with a sneer. "If I come,
I'm gonna fuck you."

	"But you must pay. Tomorrow morning you can do it for less."

	"Tomorrow morning I'll have such a hangover I won't be able to get
my dick stiff enough to fuck even that big hole of yours. Christ, Charlie,
this kid's so big we could screw him together. You ought to see it. Opens
up like a manhole which, of course, is what it is."

	Brandon pretended not to understand a thing.

	Charlie, looking Brandon over said, "This little one a pro?"

	"Fuck yeah," answered Rod. "He is fucked by lots a guys like
you. He's gonna get fucked tonight too, maybe two, three times after
me. You try. Little boys got tight holes, very tight, hot."

	"I dunno, Jackie, maybe I'll give him a try. Wanna go?"

	"Since when you like the little ones?" asked Charlie with a
grin. "That one last night was bigger'n Rod here."

	"Don't knock it `til you tried it, they say. Rod, ask him if he
wants a go with me."

	"Oh, he no can now. We gotta go to club, get ready, you know,
practice. You come, go to room with him after show. He say okay, I know."

	Brandon wasn't sure at that point if he was going to have any
choice regarding who fucked him in the club. Second thoughts seeped into
his mind.

	As he left with Rod, careful not to let on he'd understood their
discussion, he asked him, "Those guys gonna be there tonight?"

	"Maybe. Most of the men will be Filipinos but some foreigners
come. That's good because they pay more."

	"And I gotta go with some of them if they want?"

	Rod looked at him suspiciously. "If you want. It's more money. I
told you that, remember?"

	In English, he said, "The foreigners got big dicks but pay more to
fuck."

	Brandon caught the trick and looked up quizzically.

	"Nothing."

	The club was inside a normal looking two story wood frame corner
house like those in Tondo. There was a single light by the front door. Rod
led the boys to a side door and knocked three then two times. The man
inside took one look at Don Don and put his hand in Rod's chest. "Who's he?
He can't come in here."

	"He's with him and he," pointing to Brandon, "is in the show."

	"He's still gotta wait outside."

	Brandon backed up. "Then I gotta go."

	"Look, kid," said the man, "You didn't say nothin' about
bringin'..."

	Rod interrupted. "Okay, it's my fault. Why can't he just wait in
here somewhere. Nobody's gonna see him."

	"You look! You saw the papers. All kinds a shit about underage
kids. They catch a seven year old in here..."

	"I'm ten!" growled Don Don.

	"Ten, so what..."

	A man in a barong, the lacy formal shirt of the Philippines, joined
them, left hand floating at his shoulder. "What's the problem? Oh!" He
looked at Brandon. "Is this your beauty, Rodrigo? My, he is! Those
eyes. You come right in here, and bring your friend. We're going to have to
hide that one, Jun."

	"I think you're crazy with both of them."

	"Oh, just be sure who comes in tonight. No newbies unless
accompanied by someone trustworthy. No new foreigners, period. God, I wish
I liked little ones. I'd eat this one right up. I might anyway. Where did
you find him, Rodrigo dear?"

	"Seawall, Bay Hotel, Miss Sally, all over." Miss Sally was the
blatantly gay queen who owned the club.

	"Well, you certainly did well this time. We're just going to have
to keep out the sex police."

	Naked rehearsal was required. The third boy was a fourteen or
fifteen named Rommel with a cock reminiscent of the youngest of the shack
quartet Boy had required Brandon to service, but without the nasty
attitude. This one was all accommodation.

	"Want me to stay still when you suck me or move around, or fuck
your mouth."

	Rod suggested, "You better fuck his mouth `cause I'm gonna be
fucking him same time."

	They went through the whole routine, improving positions, moves,
moans, doing all but the actual anal penetration. Rommel wanted additional
practice of the oral part so he could get his moves right.

	Their first show was at eight. It had been preceded by other boys,
the youngest thirteen, most fifteen and sixteen, doing striptease dances
and beating off then holding a contest to see who could suck off one
another in the shortest time. After being introduced with stage names,
Brandon as Freddy, the boys entered fully dressed in loose fitting pants,
and tight shirts, briefs, socks and leather shoes, Brandon wearing his own
since the others were too big. They were on a well lit platform, about
eighteen inches off the floor, in front of a large, darkened room with at
least thirty men seated at tables and another twenty or so against three
walls. Beers and other drinks were on the tables and in the hands of the
standees. Soft music drifted across the room from speakers hanging from the
wall to either side of the twelve foot wide stage.

	Rod started them out by pulling Rommel by the arm, staring
amorously at his lips then kissing him deeply, occasionally backing off
enough that the audience could see the tongues darting in and out from both
mouths. Brandon was acting left out. He leaned in close to Rod, hugged him,
his head pressed into the teen's shoulder. For a while, he was
ignored. Each teenager groped the other, shoving their hands between the
others' legs, raising hidden hardons, lumps in loose pants.

	Brandon then dropped to his knees and unzipped Rod's fly. His hand
disappeared inside, handling what was in there then slowly pulling it out,
making sure the spectators could see its appearance before it disappeared
inside his mouth. Rod gripped Rommel's shoulders and held his mouth
motionless over Rommel's. His one hand dropped and caressed the small head
working on his penis. He pulled away, looked down, bent over and kissed
Brandon's head.

	Brandon went for Rod's belt, struggling to open it until Rod helped
him. Rommel meanwhile was left out, looking on, feeling hurt and
jealous. Rod's pants fell to the floor. Brandon's hands slid up his
sides. He sucked him ferociously, his head moving rapidly back and forth
and around.

	Rommel got back into the act, ripping open his shirt, popping
previously loosened buttons in the process. Rod by then was moaning,
gripping Brandon's head by the sides, always making sure the audience could
see the action. Rommel kicked off his shoes and dropped his pants. Stepping
out of them, he slid down his briefs exposing his fully tumescent penis. He
dropped to the floor, reached around Brandon for his belt, found it,
released it, unbuttoned his trousers and pushed them down to Brandon's
knees on the floor.

	Rod, seeing what was about to happen, reached down, covered
Brandon's ass with his hand, shook his head and declared, "No, that's mine
first. You can have his lips."

	Brandon looked up, surprised, hurt. Rod fell to his knees and, in
an act of consolation, kissed Brandon. The two exchanged oral juices for a
couple of minutes with Romel standing impatiently behind Brandon, rubbing
his hard on. Finally, he tapped Rod on the shoulder and pointed to his
lonely cock.

	With that, Rod ripped off his shirt and went into his pants pocket
while Brandon pushed off his untied shoes, stepped out his pants and
quickly took off the remainder of his clothing. Rod turned back to the
audience holding a jar of Vaseline. He opened it, scooped out a finger full
and rubbed it onto his saliva soaked, stiff cock. Brandon looked
concerned. Rommel grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him around and
pointed to his cock. Brandon looked behind him at Rod's big tool but Rommel
pulled him back around again, pulling his head down and pushing his cock at
his face.

	Brandon opened up and began sucking slowly, his head trying to
turn, eyes darting toward the rear. Rod stepped up and poked his greased
finger between Brandon's fat ass cheeks, slid it around then pulled it out,
tugged Brandon's butt toward the audience, straightened his middle finger
and pushed it inside Brandon's rectum. Brandon spit out Rommel's dick and
tried to stand but Rommel jerked his head back down, held his cock in one
hand and Brandon's hair in the other.

	"Open up," he demanded.

	Brandon obeyed and Rod began slowly fucking Brandon with his
finger, turning his hand this way and that, raising and lowering it as
though stretching a tight sphincter, all the while pulling Brandon side to
side so all the audience could see the digital penetration. Rommel took
Brandon by the ears, gently actually, and moved his head back and
forth. Sideways to the onlookers, Rod slid his finger out, smelled it and
nodded his head approvingly.

	Moving in close, he bent his knees and lined his cock up with
Brandon's hole. From below, he pushed it between Brandon's cheeks and
slowly, while Brandon pretended an attempt at clawing away Rommel's hands,
slipped inside until his pubic hairs were all that showed between them. For
a while, Rod, eyes closed, face calm, accepted the short movements caused
by Rommel pulling and pushing Brandon's head on and off his
cock. Eventually though, he wanted longer strokes so told Rommel to "Fuck
his mouth. Keep him still."

	With that, Rommel began his own fucking motion, sliding out until
the base of the head was visible to the deathly silent observers. The
music, soft at the beginning, dropped out entirely so the sounds of sucking
and fucking could be easily heard in the quiet room.

	The plan was for Rommel to cum first, but either Rod got too
involved or Rommel lost concentration, but after five minutes of smack,
smack, smack fucking, complete with moans and loud breathing, Rod, face
contorted, had to yank himself out or the load churning in his loins would
have fired deep inside Brandon. Out came his shiny long cock and shot a
white slimy liquid all over Brandon's back. Brandon, who was supposed to
gradually enjoy the fucking hadn't been sure how to display that other than
occasionally reach back and pull Rod into him, was doing his best to bring
on Rommel's own gusher. It took a couple of minutes more with Rommel, eyes
closed, pumping and stiffening, before he was able to fill Brandon's mouth
with youthful sperm which Brandon dutifully held just inside until, to the
delight of the crowd, he could let it dribble into his hand, then stare at
it for a moment before lapping it back up and swallowing.

	The three embraced. Each teen bowing his face to Brandon's to
French kiss into Rommel's cum. Loud applause!

	Brandon smiled to himself as he left the stage, snatching up his
clothes and shoes as he left. He'd just had sex with two boys and gotten
thoroughly fucked in front of fifty leering men. What amazed him was his
complete lack of inhibition doing so. True, he hadn't been all that
conscious of their presence as he performed. Other than a few whispered
comments he really couldn't hear well enough to understand, and the
occasional cough, there'd hardly been a sound. His mind had been on what he
was supposed to do, except at the end as he was sharing his mouthful of cum
with his co-stars, he realized Rod's cock had caused his own to rise up.

	Rod, a towel around his neck, suggested, "Take a shower?"

     	As he passed to the rear of the house, Brandon saw Don Don flat on
a wooden bench, sound asleep.

	The three of them showered together. Rommel said to Brandon, "Sorry
I took so long. You were so good I had to think about something else for a
while and then Rod came too quick."

	Brandon thought he heard a touch of effeminacy in Rommel's words.

	Rod said, "We better hurry up in case we got customers."

	Each was given a room. Their next show wasn't for almost two and a
half hours. It would be a whole new group, though some men were expected to
pay twice to see it over again. The gay owner explained the rules to
Brandon. "No talk about money. We collect it and pay you later, fifty pesos
for each no matter what they do, but you have to let them fuck you if they
want, just no rough stuff. No making dates other than for here. These are
our customers, not yours. Understand?"

	"Yes, sir."

	The man sighed and clasped his hands over his chest. "Now. normally
I'm not interested in little boys like you but, my dear, you are a
beauty. I'd really like it if you came by tomorrow for lunch and you can
bring your little friend but, after, it'll just be you and me in my
apartment. God, I feel so naughty."

	As he left, another man, a heavy set Filipino, entered. "You are
really good, Freddy. Let's you and me do it all over again."

	The only distasteful part was the kissing he insisted on, but that
was quickly replaced by sucking then sitting on the man's small latex
covered cock, rocking back and forth until he came, in and out in less than
fifteen minutes. Two more also wanted repeat performances. The second was a
foreigner whose primary interest was fucking which he did, slowly and
deeply, stretching out his passion long enough that Brandon became
sleepy. The last, another Filipino, this one easily in his sixties, was
there for what turned out to be a difficult blow job. It took so long the
man finally gave it up without consummation, thanking Brandon anyway.

	The second show was a duplicate of the first. Buttons had been sown
back on shirts. Both teens came when they were supposed to, providing
sufficient cum to impress their fans. There were three more
customers. Three was the limit after each show. The first one was the
Australian Brandon had met with Rod in Raymond's Fastfood. He was there, as
he explained it, strictly to see what it would be like inside such a young
boy. "Youngest I ever been with was fourteen, two years older than you and
one hell of a lot bigger. Shit, I'm talking to myself. You don't understand
a word I say, do you?"

	Brandon smiled and lay on his belly. The man was big but
conscientious of the difference in size, though he did lose control toward
the end and banged in fairly hard. Afterward, he apologized for the
roughness, again in English he was sure Brandon didn't comprehend. Brandon
smiled again. He'd had a lot worse. His rear end felt fine.

	The other two were a not overly endowed American and a better hung
Filipino who wanted to be sucked and swallowed.

	Brandon was paid five hundred pesos. The club owner, who called
himself Miss Sally, suggested Brandon sleep there rather than leave with
all that cash in his pocket. So, he and Don Don cuddled under a blanket on
the bed where Brandon had been done. Don Don marveled at the huge haul. "I
wish I had a big hole like you."

	Brandon told him the story of how Millie widened his formerly small
opening.

	Don Don thought about that then, "Rafael didn't hurt all that much,
just Boy. You wanna fuck me?"

	"I wanna sleep. You really wanna get fucked?" It's nearly one in
the morning. Thanks to his street child capacity for deep sleep, Don Don
had been unconscious on a wood bench since shortly after they'd arrived,
oblivious to the chaos around him.

	"Fuck me. I wanna see something."

	Using saliva as a lubricant rather than the Vaseline in the jar
beside the bed, Brandon poked his three plus inches inside his small friend
and began thrusting gently.

	"Do it harder."

	He fucked, cumming in a few minutes.

	"That was okay. Now suck me."

	Don Don came quickly.

	Brandon fell asleep with his face in Don Don's pulsing crotch.

	Don Don was up and about long before anyone else. Bodies lay about
as though all had been suddenly gassed where they stood. Every raised flat
surface seemed to be occupied with a prone figure. It appeared that none of
the teen actors, teen waiters or others had gone home, if they had a home,
the night before. The one distinctive feature was the maleness of the
dormant crowd. There wasn't a single female.

	Don Don wandered out into the main room and gazed at the stage
possibly wondering what it was for. He'd slept through all the
performances.

	Brandon didn't wake up for another two hours, nudged into
consciousness by Don Don crawling in beside him. Outside, others were
stirring but not much more. To answer Don Don's request, Brandon took him
out into the main room and told him what they and the others had done. They
sat at a front table and stared at the stage, Brandon trying to imagine
what it had looked like from there. He couldn't remember anything about the
men seated just six feet away from him the night before.

	Don Don interrupted his attempt to put faces on the previous
night's closest spectators. "In front of all them people didn't you get
scared?"

	"Nah. I was just thinking about what I had to do."

	"But that kid was fucking you."

	"I don't care. I got paid."

	"I'd do it for five hundred pesos too."

	"That was just two hundred. The rest was some of them in where we
slept."

	"How many?"

	"Six."

	"You got fucked six times, no eight?"

	"No, just six. Two of them were just blow jobs."

	Don Don rested his head on his hands. "You gotta make my hole
bigger."

	Lunch with Miss Sally was, for all practical purposes,
breakfast. The owner appeared in a long flowing bathrobe, his hair wrapped
in a bath towel. He led them to his apartment, a gaudily decorated pair of
rooms with lace curtains, pink furniture, thick carpets with Greek designs
and figures, statues of male nudes and dozens of photos of young male
faces. The table on which they were served was glass on stainless steel.

	"What would you like to eat, dears?"

	When it came time for the expected sex, Miss Sally backed down but
asked, "Do you dance?"

	The blank expression provided the answer to that.

	"What if I play some music and you just move around anyway you
like, naked."

	Brandon stripped while Miss Sally put a record on her
turntable. "This is in English so you won't understand it but if you can
dance at all, this will get you going."

	It was an Aretha Franklin classic, `Think', and it worked. Brandon
began stepping up and back jerkily but little by little, he was swaying,
turning. Don Don, laughing at first, joined him. The two walked back and
forth in time to the music. Miss Sally stood and joined them, leading them
by the hand back and forth across the apartment.

	They danced long enough to wear the plump Miss Sally out.

	As they were about to leave, Miss Sally spoke to Brandon about what
he was going to do with his money.

	"I'm gonna take some of it to a hotel man where I was living. He's
taking care of my clothes and Don Don's medicine and he's got some money
too."

	"Are you sure you can trust him? How much does he have?"

	"Two hundred."

	"Why don't you leave some of your money here with me. I promise
nobody will touch it. I have plenty so I won't."

	After thinking about it, Brandon left four hundred with him. Don
Don, after they left, said, "I don't trust that guy. He talks like a girl."

	"That's `cause he's gay. They all talk that way."

	"I still don't trust him. So, when are you going to make my hole
big like yours?"

	"I don't know. We need something smooth that's little at one end
and gets bigger."

	Don Don began pointing out every round thing he came across, from
broom handles to pipes.

	The bay water felt good but then it rained, complete with thunder
and lightning. They ran up Santa Monica Street to Raymond's Fast Food and
bought sodas so the waiters wouldn't toss them out. Two tourists hit on
them, but Brandon said, "No now", to keep the door open for future needs.

	The rain died down at five. They went to the Luneta Park skating
rink for an hour, then dinner at the park restaurant. By seven, they were
at the club's side door.

	The Saturday performances on stage and in his room went pretty much
as the night before though the audience was more demonstrative. An
Australian pair at a second row table encouraged Rod to fuck harder and a
Filipino near the back fell asleep and snored. Two of Brandon's private
customers were foreigners, both of whom spoke understandable Tagalog. The
one with the bigger dong wanted to see Brandon on the outside but, wary of
word getting back to Miss Sally, he suggested it needed to be set up
through the club.

	Between shows, Rod gave Brandon the bad news. His thoughts of a
weekly job were mistaken. It was monthly. "Shit, man. I never said every
week. I don't get to do it anymore than you do."

	"Then how come you gotta have tests with that doctor every week?"

	"I didn't mean every week, just when I was gonna work here."

      Rather than argue and possibly his chances for future thousand pesos
weekends, Brandon accepted that he was going to have to seek his own
customers.

	Again, Sunday the boys had a midday meal with Miss Sally, both
dancing naked with him again, Don Don's skinny body writhing like a snake
in perfect rhythm with the music. Brandon left another four hundred behind
for safe keeping.

	Sunday afternoon with no need to hustle their bodies, Brandon
accepted Don Don's suggestion that they go to a movie. Other than the
Venus, where watching an entire film hadn't been possible, he'd been to
just one in his entire life. Kids at the seawall said there were theaters
in Quiapo. It was a single jeepney ride with no great chance of becoming
lost. They ended up going to two movies and eating street vendor food.

	It was approaching nine o'clock when they reached the Bay Hotel so
went straight to their room.

	Don Don had an idea to amplify his small rear entry. "You can put
your fingers in my hole and do like this." He held his index fingers side
by side and slowly spread them apart.

	Brandon was a bit horny so agreed to try it and fuck him afterward
ostensibly to see if it felt looser.

	Access was easy with so little flesh and muscle in the way. The
problem was fingernails. They scratched. Brandon tried turning his hands
back to back but still scratched him. The solution was, after a thorough
washing, to bite them off. That improved things. It took a lot of spit and
Don Don jerking away squealing, "Oww!", before they decided that a single
finger might be best. Brandon sought out his tiny prostate, felt a lump and
massaged it.

	"You feel that?'

	"Uh huh."

	"Feel good?"

	"Like what?"

	While gently rubbing his finger over the lump inside Don Don's ass,
Brandon grabbed his soft penis and played with it. "Feel better with me
touching this?"

	"My dick?"

      "No, yes." He stopped touching the lump and just played with his
cock. "Is it better like this or," massaging the lump, "like this."

      "Some, sort of better like this."

      Don Don's dick grew but would have anyhow from the manipulation.

      "Does that make it bigger?"

      "No, I gotta pull on your hole."

      "Then pull on it."

      Brandon, his right index inside to the knuckle, pulled upward then
pushed down then worried, "I don't think this is gonna work. You gotta keep
it bigger for a couple hours for it to work."

      "Two hours?"

      "I did it for two or three hours I think."

      "Can you get your other finger in?"

      "It might hurt."

      "I don't care. Stick it in."

      Rather than use his other hand which was occupied manipulating Don
Don's now stiff dick, he leaned over and spit on his middle finger twice,
pulled his index finger half way out and tried to push both in together.

      "Ow!" Then, "Don't stop."

      Brandon, with a hard on himself, forged ahead. Don Don squeezed his
hole. "Don't squeeze. Make it loose."

      Don Don took a breath and relaxed his sphincter. Brandon pushed. The
fingernail of the middle finger disappeared inside, pushing up the flesh in
the form of a tall O. Don Don grunted but made no effort to stop the
widening penetration. The first joint of the second finger widened the hole
even further as it went in. Brandon's middle and index fingers were now
flat, one on top of the other. He dribbled on more saliva and pushed. The
larger middle joints pressed and stretched.

      "Hurt?" asked Brandon.

      "Just a little. Are you all the way in?"

      "Not yet, half way, almost."

      "Wait a minute." After a pause, "You think it's as big as Boy's dick
yet?"

      "No, kinda like Rafael's, maybe a little bigger."

      "Keep beating me off." A moment later, "Go in more."

      Brandon moved his hand up and down, provided more saliva, tried
unsuccessfully to open up his imbedded fingers.

      Don Don grunted as the middle joints opened up his anus.

      The second joint popped inside. Brandon stopped. "How's that?"

      Briefly, "Okay. Are you all the way in?"

      "Almost."

      "Go all the way."

      More spit, more pushing, more stretching, more "Are you in yet?"

      Then, "Ow! Stop. Wait."

      "I don't think I can go in any more."

      "Is it big as Boy's?"

      "Almost, maybe. Hurt?"

      "Just a little. Show me with your fingers how big it is now."

      Brandon let go of the cock and gave an approximation.

      "That's big as Boy. Don't take you fingers out. Stay like that."

      Brandon wanted to fuck. I can't stay like this very long. We need to
get something we can stick it in you, round."

      "Just a little longer then you can fuck me and say if it's bigger. I
think it's bigger now."

      They waited, Brandon playing with Don Don's hard on, wishing he could
do something for him, moving his hand up and down to see if further
stretching would hurt. It hadn't been that difficult for him once the
initial pain had passed. Don Don remained silent, probably thinking about
earning five hundred pesos with his ass.

      When he relented, allowing Brandon to withdraw his now smelly
fingers, there was no doubt it was looser. It took twice as long for
Brandon to reach climax. Don Don, quite content with the results, rose to
his own orgasm nearly as quickly as Friday night.

	Monday morning, Don Don was still thinking about making money with
his body. "What about a soda bottle?" as they left the hotel.

	Brandon was confused.

	"It's skinny at the top and gets bigger. Can't we use one of them?"

	Realizing what he was talking about, Brandon was struck with a
better idea. "A wine bottle is better. We can get one at Miss
Sally's. She's got lots."

	Rather than stop for breakfast, they bought rice and chicken from a
street vendor and ate them on the way. No one answered either of the club's
doors. They headed back toward Robinson's Shopping Center where they spent
some of their cash on hot sweet rolls in the food court. Brandon had his
eyes open for an interested foreigner. There were several white men but
none looked his way.

	Luneta Park was next, but devoid of potential customers. They
walked up the park to the water and watched two large cargo ships head into
the docks further North.

	Don Don suggested they go back to Miss Sally's but Brandon said,
"We can't use it until we go to the hotel tonight. Anyhow, I wanna find a
tourist who'll let us sleep at his place."

	They walked down Roxas Boulevard past the U.S. Embassy to the
seawall. There were few people there, no kids, no foreigners.

	From there it was back to Robinson's. A foreigner in suit and tie
was watching them from the railing of the second level. Since he'd never
gone with or even been approached by anyone so dressed, Brandon avoided eye
contact. Eventually, the man disappeared after going down on the escalator.

	Minutes later, a well dressed boy about thirteen with carefully
brushed hair about the length of Brandon's came up to them.

	"My friend wants to meet you. He's waiting on the street. He says
he saw you Saturday night at Miss Sally's."

	Brandon thought about it. According to Rod, only known men are
allowed in for the shows. Did this man see him there, or just see him go
in?"

	"What's he want?"

	"You know."

	Brandon shrugged his shoulders.

	The boy left without saying anything more.

	Brandon worried this was a setup. Don Don agreed. They went on a
long walk around the upper level stores then headed for the entrance. They
saw neither the man nor the boy outside, so headed for the seawall. There
were more people apart from the usual vendors including a group of young
men cavorting in the water and women with small children but no street
kids. It remained that way until after three the rain came and almost
everyone left.

	By four, the sun was piercing the cloud cover. Brandon and Don Don
were in Raymond's Fastfood spending money to stay dry. Several foreigners
were there too but none seemed interested in boys. They strolled up the
drying street past the small Santa Monica park

      Don Don spotted a foreigner coming down the street on the other
side. "He looked at us."

	The young man's eyes were on the sidewalk in front of him when
Brandon looked but he decided giving the man another look might inspire
him. Once across the street and nearing one another, Brandon went brash, "I
sleep you, Joe?"

	The young man stopped looking and said, "Why not?" with an
Australian accent.

	It wasn't a very lucrative encounter. The hotel was one of the
cheapest. He sucked them both off for fifteen each. "All I can afford,
mates," he said in explanation. "Might have more next week. You don't
understand." He held up five fingers. "Five days, more money. I see you
five days."

	Brandon smiled comprehension.

	And that was it for Monday. The worst business day they'd had since
Ray's departure. They did go back to Miss Sally's. When he asked why they
wanted a wine bottle, Brandon couldn't come with anything but the
truth. Miss Sally raised his eyebrows. "With that little ass of his, dear,
the only ones who are going to be able to fuck him are cockroaches."

	At the hotel, they used saliva to lubricate the bottle top. It was
slow going just getting that much into Don Don's rear end.

	"Put on more spit, lots of it."

	Brandon pushed gently, turning the bottle back and forth, Don Don
at the halfway point halted further penetration, "Wait, wait."

	Don Don tried squatting while holding onto the lone chair in the
room and sitting down on the bottle. Every few minutes, he would raise up a
little so Brandon could apply more spit and rotate the bottle a few
times. Gradually, he was managing to get more inside. Brandon described the
mild expansion. "It's bigger than when my fingers were in there. Don't get
up any more."

	But the saliva kept drying, requiring more of the up and down
action. Without watches or a clock, they had no idea how long they'd been
doing it when Brandon declared, "If Boy fucked you right now, you wouldn't
even feel it."

	Don Don climbed up on the bed and lay on his back in hopes the
bottle would stay where it was. It didn't, coming completely out when,
asleep, he turned onto his side. In the morning, they washed the bottle and
hid it in a closet on their floor.

	Tuesday started out like Monday, not an interested tourist in
sight. Their luck changed as they sat in Santa Monica park eating fish
sandwiches prepared by a woman who was grilling a fresh catch on a charcoal
stove. The barangay tanods, whose station was right behind the park,
allowed her the privilege because she fed them for free.

	One of the tanods was sitting with them when a pair of middle-aged
Americans walked up into the park. The tanod knew them and shook their
hands. One asked him in barely understandable Tagalog if he knew the two
boys beside him.

	"No, but they are here some. I don't think they are thieves. You
take them." To Brandon, he said, "These two are okay. They come every year
and pay good. You just bring me something, okay?"

	They did pay well, seventy to fuck Brandon and forty for Don Don's
blow job. Sadly, they had other plans for the night. The boys gave the
tanod twenty. He asked, with a smile, for five more.

	Luneta Park provided nothing so they headed back to
Raymond's. Johnny and another call boy were already standing out
front. They looked Brandon's way and frowned. Within half an hour, they had
picked up two separate customers leaving Brandon and Don Don sitting on the
steps to the park. At eight thirty, the boys went to their hotel for
another session with the wine bottle. This time, they used Brandon's shirt
around Don Don's waist and under the bottle to keep it in place, further
inside him than the night before.

	Wednesday morning, after again stashing the bottle in the closet,
they gave their soiled clothing to the washer woman, paid her and changed
into their clean clothes.

	By midday, frustration drove them back to Robinson's. Within an
hour, they were being winked at by a foreigner in a `Philippines' T shirt
who nodded for them to follow him. He came down from the second level on
the escalator and headed toward the shopping center entryway. They
followed. Others, however, saw the surreptitious contact.

      Two uniformed shopping center guards surprised Brandon and Don Don
from behind. They grabbed both by the arm. Brandon jerked free and ran. One
guard ran after him. Looking back and seeing Don Don unable to get away, he
circled around shoppers and charged back, knocking the guard with Don Don
to the floor. Grabbing Don Don by the hand, he turned to run but was
confronted by another guard who was quickly joined by the one who'd been
chasing him. Both boys were gruffly handcuffed and led away.