Jez: A Reason To Stay
(Commentary from 2006) As NaNoWrimo 2005 came to a close, I didn't reach the word-goal, nor did I finish my story "DatChildren". I don't foresee myself finishing it within the year, so I'm taking some of the chapters out and converting them into short stories within the DatChildren world with a few edits. The Jez intro chapter is here because it's one of the more self-contained parts, and I loved how it turned out even by itself. I'm hoping it'll be well-received. Jez's story is also one of the better candidates I considered for a comic version. If you're an artist who's free and interested to collaborate on a comic based on this story, do PM or contact me. Thanks for reading.
Jez: A Reason To Stay
In the small hours while he was sleeping, something rang inside Jez's head. Grudgingly, he squirmed under the sheets and flipped a switch for the bedside lamp. When he turned onto his back, he winced and tugged his brushtail out of an uncomfortable bend. The internal vibrations continued inside his head, jogging his senses, pushing him to answer.
He sat himself up and moved his legs over the bed's edge. A pair of semi-human hindpaws dropped onto the carpet, crushing a pawprint into the fibres. He rubbed into the auburn fur of his face, kneading the sleep off, then folded his head of crimson hair back. A dark-furred ear twitched, making a few silver studs and a golden ring pierced through it glitter with the yellow light of the room. A handpaw slipped under the covers and adjusted something between his legs.
Jez's sight slid across his face, towards a small thing on the bedside table. It looked like an overdesigned cigar box, enhanced by the hotel with gold trim and marbled exterior. To Jez, it seemed to give a childlike 'hi' every time the aqua-blue OLEDs blinked in synch with the ringing in his head. It mildly annoyed him that it is also the standard model for most hotels.
He squinted as he grabbed a snake-like plug from the box and dragged out a loose line of insulated cable. He brought it to his wrist, where he attached it somewhere under the dense, chocolate fur into an open nerveport. The mental equivalent of whirrs and phone-crackling played in the back of his brain.
"Man, I know it's way early over there, but I gotta make this call right now. You've got an appointment, Jay-Jay." said a young voice, with the slightest hint of a midwestern accent.
"Says who?" asked Jez, hormonally uninterested in getting an answer.
"Says this digicheck for 500K I'm looking at right now. You can jack into my eyes and see I'm not fooling."
Jez paused, raising a handpaw to rub his forehead, at once covering his eyes. "Where is it gonna be?"
"I'll brain-mail you the address and time, soon. You just be there."
"Not why I asked. Eff-why-eye, Bones, I can't walk very well since the last shoot..."
"Okay... I know, I know. There'll be a cab waiting for you just outside the Pacific Oriental in the morning."
"Thanks, Bones."
"Ditto.
And don't worry, Jay-Jay, this one ain't as rough as the last."
*****
He stepped out of the cab - and out of the three-hour trip from the airport in a sitting position - into something familiar. After giving the driver a plastic credit-slip and saying thank-you in his limited understanding of siamese, he turned and walked down a pedestrian, stone-paved road into one of the prefab studios. He glanced into a gap in the palm leaves to see another crew working a similar craft at a neighbouring set, which seemed to hold a romantic island theme.
Tilting his head slightly, and smiling, Jez wondered if they will have any trouble getting the polysilicate sand out of their privates.
Bareskins have it easier the rest of the time, though, compared to actors like him.
Jez came to understand that nothing must look like Thailand or any particular nation in the world's prefab studios, which Jez knew was an idea they imported from old Bollywood. There was both a sense of hotel-room cleanliness and a universal appeal to these places. It was an irrelevant fact that this was Jez's first time in such a country famous for the freedoms of the body, since he had not seen much of it on the way here. He had spent the time in the cab in suspended cycles, sleeping through all the sights and sounds; he and his body needed the rest. Bones handled the paperwork every time after he was done doing his thing, and he was often able to see the place on his own.
If he wanted to, that is. It takes meeting someone very interesting to make him stick anywhere.
He came to a large, white box the size of a warehouse, and let himself in through a door. He looked over the interior and saw a humble little set-up in the middle of a jungle of lighting fixtures, cables, autoperceptive cameras and the persistent movement of crew members. The space where he will do what he does always looks bigger in optiNet transmissions.
Jez took in a breath, composed himself, before he made his way towards the activity. Even after a half-dozen years, the fear still manifests itself, though it has now been reduced to a mere shudder and a systemic flush of skin hidden by his pelt. A few of them notice him, one feline and the other something between a tiger and a raccoon, and gave him a smile and a wave. They were the only one or two people who were in transgenic frames, like him, on set. People he'd known since his early days, whom he'd taken along for the ride into the mad success of this optiNet venture.
A thin, pale man in a black T-shirt and a shabby iMinerva cap caught up with him. "Hello! Hey! You're Jez, right?"
Jez turned. "Yeah?"
It took a while before Jez snapped a finger and the man stopped looking over him in fascination.
"Oh! Uh, sorry, I was... uhm, you were great in the one about those soldiers in World War... erm..."
Jez smiled a small vulpine smile. "That's cute. Tell you what: you tell me who I should talk to here, and I'll ask my agent to send you one of my Gold Series neurosim-prints. Signed."
The man turned around, searched with lit-up eyes, and shouted. "AMY! WHOOO-HOO! AMY! HERE!" A woman turned, stretched her head to see over moving crew members, and walked towards them.
"Amy's in charge of things."
"What's your name?"
"Matt. Matthew Beauvoir."
"Nice name. Hope you like what you're getting, Matt."
Jez walked up to Matt and patted him on the side of his face. 'Very good jaw structure' he thought.
"Yeah, Matt? What is it? Oh, there you are Mr. Marin."
She made a gesture at Matthew and he went away, shooed.
"Jez. Just Jez. Please."
"Okay."
Amy was a woman of fair complexion, with shoulder-length and heavy black hair, and medium height, with almond-shaped and almond-coloured eyes behind round, green-tinted spectacles. Jez watched as she tapped a stylus on the display of her digital wrist-top computer, a third-generation Chryon 32-T, and spoke what seemed to Jez was Cantonese, into a bud that grew out of her wireless earpiece. After a while, she lifted her head and addressed Jez along with a closed-lip smile.
"Jez... great to see you, and in good shape, too."
Jez smirked, and nodded. "I'm paid, just like everyone here."
"Yes, but you're still one of our selling points."
Her head turned as she received something in her earpiece. She said something that sounded harsh into the microphone bud, again in a foreign language. She sighed, combed her hair behind an ear, and tapped some more on her wristcomp. She glanced back at Jez.
"Oh, yeah, I have to fill you in on some things that's changed since your last optiNet session with Mr. Landon."
The bright screen spilled pearl-white glow on her face, as she flicked through some digital pages on her Chryon.
"Well-ah... you're still gonna play... a conflicted young fox, discovering his homosexuality for the first time... after being caught out by the large wolf-guy... yeah, and later the lupine 'teaches' him some things about passion... it's all in a high-school setting..."
"Nothing different so far. Amy."
"Hmm, well, we're changing it into a locker-room scene instead of the shower. No water-stuff anymore, but you guys improvise pretty good. They also thought the public-danger-element's a pretty exciting thing."
Jez nodded, though he was looking forward to something wet.
"And... we figured you can keep your piercings on. Nobody seeing this'd really mind. You've also just got more places for ad-libbing."
"Y'know, I already said this to the writers and the director, but this is a little more drama than I'm usually asked for."
Amy made a face, turned to look behind her, and back at Jez.
"Your agent, Johns..."
"Jones."
"Jones, he said you were looking to expand your range."
Jez scratched his head.
"Yeah, I did, but he never takes me seriously."
"This time he did."
His handpaw drew down from his head, and Jez placed his sight upon it. He curled his fingers, and straightened them. It seemed so natural, so much a part of him that there was no sign of him ever having any body other than this.
"Jones'll be here in a while, but you can go ahead and change right there. That's your room." She pointed to a fair-sized camper block set against the studio wall.
Jez smiled, flirtatiously, as if it was as easy as flicking a light switch.
"Let's get to it, then."
*****
The acting bit first; Jez stares upon the bulge, and the wolf confronts him. The speaking bit; some of the crew already begin to stand uneasily. The laying-down bit; Jez gives a flattering thigh shot. No one remembers the early bits, except for the moment and suggestion of nudity.
They make love like a hotel muzzle, impassioned, a flesh romance.
A few interweaves of genitals, heaving chests, and protest marches in old, old Asia. Jez was neither cut nor uncut, and that fetched him very high appearance fees, sometimes.
One of them kisses a scar, and told the other it was a mark of sinful beauty.
Jez purses his lips, gives a kiss and a nervous lick, and things get even more cliché twenty minutes later. Nothing wrong, everything just right. They love this.
He is taken gently, lovingly. He is learning. He is accepting the truth of his desires, and his lover's girth.
A little under an hour passes, and their minds flash into a harsh monochrome. They pulse their emissions of the little death, in time with hard thrusts and warm heartbeats. Males appreciate every petit mort, it arrives so rare and intense. They cling to each other, tightly, as their souls empty into fluid expression. Warmth fills them both, in different ways.
Jez is spent. He lays himself over his 'teacher'. He knew many things, but for this recording, he feigns ignorance. He places a hand on his partner's tumescence, and closes his eyes, pretending to dream of love and making love.
*****
"Cut! That's great!"
A wolf-man sat up on the locker-room bench, stretching out his synthetically-athletic body, while his speckled grey fur bristled over his exquisitely moulded back. He looked back, with ice-blue eyes, upon an anthropomorphic red fox laying calm and naked next to him. He stroked a paw along a crimson-furred arm.
"You good, man?"
The fox nodded, slightly. "I'm fine, Yuri."
The wolf-man stood up and went towards his room with thoughts of a warm shower. Yuri showed pride in his well-manufactured body by not caring to cover himself up at all. Jez's eyes glanced over to him and could see the packet of Indonesian cigarettes in one of his large, grey paws. A small, slow breath escaped him as a sigh, as he watched the lupine's rump sway.
As Jez sat up, he brought his legs closer together. He grasped the edge of a towel and pulled it over himself. The towel was far too small to be useful, its only purpose being to be taken off as the vidcapture progressed. His crimson hair fell over his eyes; he combed it over his ears, and lifted his head towards the array of bright lights above him. A large, rolled-up towel traced a curve in the air and Jez followed it with his emerald green, nano-etched eyes as he stood up. In a motion, he caught it, and unravelled it around his trim and attractive waist.
Jones, or Bones, walked up to him, a stocky and tanned man with a patchy goatee dressed in a gaudy batik shirt.
"I dunno why you still ask for that. Nobody else I know in the biz makes a big deal about letting it hang, why should you?"
Jez placed a glance at Bones, with a look that showed that this wasn't the first time he heard it.
"Because I don't want to."
"You think that makes you special, Jez? You know that's not why they vidcap you, or put you up as their duocomp wallpaper... it's not 'cause you're different. It's 'cause you're good at being what they like." Jez smiled weakly, then turned to go.
He paused, and turned his head slightly to Bones, looking at him from the edge of his eye.
"I thought you said this wasn't as rough as the last one?"
"Didn't look like it was, Jay-Jay."
Jez walked before Bones answered, towards the dressing room.
When he was alone, Jez cleaned himself of every trace of emissions. He took the soiled towel, and buried his nose in it. He breathed in the sharp scent of himself... and the musk of the wolf who, for a few minutes, truly loved him.
Before he left, he threw the towel into the disposal.
*****
The plate of batter-fried squid was empty, save for some golden crumbs. Jez lifted up a glass of iced tea, gently holding a straw as he drew some of it into his thirsty throat. He licked his lips slightly and watched, from a balcony, the construction occuring along the Thai coastline. Watching the Extends, a city-fringe built over the saltwater, held up with pilings that stuck out of the surface like simplified marsh trees. Some sort of nanotech keeps the people, the cars and the money from drinking the ocean when the sea got rough; that much Jez knows.
The same nanotech allows him to eat, drink and make love.
Quiet jazz music swirled into the rattle of distant jackhammers as Jez held to thoughts on progress, on expansion, on why cities will grow and will not stop, on why it takes millions to have one's own nation. Someone pressed on his shoulder; he barely took notice, with his eyes transfixed on a bright beer-yellow crane.
A humanoid wolf, with ice-blue eyes and speckled grey fur, laid his head lower and nibbled on his neck, then lifted his head to look the same direction as Jez did. "What are you looking at, my sweet Jez?"
"A mirror."
Jez tilted his head back, lifting a paw to hold Yuri's head, and he kissed him with an animal kiss. Full with love, and full with reasons to stay.
For a small, sacred moment... he simply forgot what he was.