Shooting Stars

The first time I met Blake Xavier-Schneider, he was 1) alive, and
2) attending the same Beverly Hills mansion party that I was.

I don't actually think that he's dead now, for the record, I just
feel like it's becoming more and more like a good guess with the
way he acts.

But at the time of the party, about a year ago, Blake was still a
newly rising star in the adult industry, on about the same
trajectory as I was really, though I could already predict that he
had it in him to stay in the game longer than I would. He lived
and breathed this stuff: It was the water to his fish. I was
always an actor, and definitely always felt like I was acting.
Even at that party, six strong mixed drinks deep and sitting in a
hot tub with some twink cuddled up beside me, when Blake slipped
into the hot tub opposite me I felt like he had caught me: like he
was going to come across the water and pull a mask off of my head
and reveal that this was not me, this party-goer fun-haver, and I
should go slink away in shame back to the most boring section of
the nearest library.

But if that was the impression that he had of me, he didn't show
it. "At last we meet, Mr Johnson," said he with a faux wicked
grin, and then laughed flamboyantly, and swam up and sat beside
me, opposite the twink. "Blake XS," he said, offering a hand.

I reached out towards his hand, very thankful that drunk as I was,
some recess of my muscle memory had held out well enough to shake
his hand successfully. Watching our hands shake legitimately felt
like some alien operation occurring outside of my body or my input
--it didn't help that the firebreathing dragon tattoo sleeve on my
right arm was pretty new at the time.

"Sorry if I'm interrupting," he said, glancing at the twink.

"The more the merrier," is what I think I said, or something like
it.

The translation of that was, "I do not know why I'm here, but with
more of you around maybe you'll talk to each other instead of me."

By that point in the night, the details of what I remembered were
pretty slapdash. I remember sitting in the hot tub with Blake, the
two of us looking up at the night sky, and I remember that at some
point he kissed me on the cheek before leaving.

All this to say, about a year later when I went on vacation to
Mexico and was interrupted from my reading of A Crown of Swords by
a call from my agent telling me that there was a shoot just down
the street from my hotel, I was a centimeter away from hanging up
on him before he managed to tell me that Blake Xavier-Schneider
was the other star, and then just like that, I was suddenly
interested.

My agent gave me the address. "The director's name is Vince," he
mentioned. "Be there in the next thirty minutes if you want to
make me look good, or at least the next hour if you want the job."
I wrote all of it down on a slip of paper from the pad that was on
the hotel bedside table.

As hotel rooms go, I was staying in a nicer place than I had
expected to be staying. Queen bed, color TV, and a legitimate
kitchenette, complete with an oven and a stovetop and all the
regular pots and pans already stocked.

I hadn't come here expecting to work--or play--so I hadn't packed
anything in the way of enemas, but I made do with a plastic water
bottle, and then I showered, dressed in my nicest tank top,
briefs, and gym shorts, and stepped out into the world, apparently
summoned five buildings down to get dicked by someone I had lowkey
had a crush on for a year. Quite the unexpected addition to my
vacation itinerary, but welcome.

So here we are.

I walk up to the address with my slip of paper in hand, and
apparently look sufficiently confused enough for someone standing
outside the door to ask, "Tony? Johnson?"

"That's me," I answer.

"Juan," he says, and we shake hands. "Director of photography."

Usually that means he'll be holding the camera, but, in this case
I really don't know what scale of thing I'm walking into.

He turns and punches a series of numbers into the keypad beside
the door. The keypad lets off a high pitched beep, and then he
holds the door open for me. As we walk inside, the air
conditioning feels sublime.

We walk down the halls, and he leads the way into our set: it
looks like its own apartment, with a bedroom, kitchen, living
room, den, and faux hallway outside. Standing around the pool
table in the den are three men, and on the pool table is an
assortment of camera equipment. I can't help but notice that Blake
isn't here.

One of the men is talking into a cell phone, and seems to have
noticed the same thing as I have. "Are you shitting me?" he's
saying. "Are you shitting me 'he's asleep'? No, no. Name a volume
of cocaine between a teaspoon and a cement mixer, we'll fucking
keep him awake. We'll fucking--"

I get the impression he's been hung up on, because he looks at the
flip phone like it's personally betrayed him, and then he throws
it against a wall.

In doing so, he sees me.

"Tony," I say, giving a little wave.

"Holy shit, a thing that went right today. We have AN actor,
hallelujah. Vince."

I extend my hand to shake, but he gives a dismissive wave, and I
put my hand back down.

"I had heard Blake--"

"Yeah, so had I," he interrupts. With his arms crossed, he walks
off into the living room set. He paces, head down.

After we watch him for a few laps, Juan follows after him into the
living room, and says something quietly to the director.

Vince thinks about it, and then I overhear him ask, "How long
before it gets here?"

Juan quietly gives an answer.

"Do it and we'll figure SOMETHING out," Vince agrees.

Juan nods, and pulls out a flip phone to make a call. As the
director of photography begins pacing in the living room on the
phone, the director director approaches me. "So, Tony," he says,
"tell me about yourself."

I dread this kind of question. On-camera, I can at least put on a
persona. Off camera, I don't know what he wants. I'm sure he
doesn't want to know I have a bachelor's in chemistry, or that my
book club is currently reading The Odyssey, but that I'm trying to
sneak in some other, more genre-y books for my own pleasure, while
on my time off, and was pleased to get ahold of the latest Wheel
of Time at a little bookstore in the airport that I arrived at a
few days ago.

Yeah, no. I decide not to burden him. "Sagittarius."

"Fascinating," he says, and I'm glad to learn we're on the same
page in that he doesn't actually want to know about me anyways.
"How do you feel about dogs?"

"Um." This is not the type of pointed question that I expected to
hear just now, but I honestly can't say that I have strong
feelings one way or the other, as far as dogs are concerned.

When I don't answer right away, Vince leans in closer with me.
"Look, I won't sugar coat it: would you do a few scenes with a dog
today?"

"Oh! Sure," I say.

I mean, I've done solo shoots before, just playing with toys for
the camera. Not having another actor isn't exactly what I signed
up for today, but it isn't exactly a first. Since I'm already here
anyways, I don't see a problem. "What breed?" I ask.

"Yellow lab."

"Cute!" I say, kind of reflexively before the entire context
catches up with my brain again. "What um... what would we be
doing? Me and this yellow lab. Dog."

"At this point I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel today. Scene
of it fucking you, scene of you fucking it too. Probably something
brief to go beforehand and afterwards in the way of plot if we
have time."

"Yeah," I say. As I stand there and visualize the scenes--getting
fucked by a dog, and fucking a dog in the ass--geez. Yeah, I uh. I
begin to realize that I'm a bit out of my league here. But, then
again, that's kind of how I always feel during these. If they
really want to pay me to put my cock in a dog's asshole, I mean,
I'm not going to tell them no. A gig is a gig, even if the
material isn't what you're into. "What's his name?" I ask.

"Ask Juan," Vince says with a shrug, and then moves past me to
talk to the others around the pool table about the update.

I walk out to the living room just as Juan is getting off the
phone.

"You like dogs?" he asks me, with a professionally faux-ingenuous
smile.

"I don't have any strong feelings," I say honestly.

"Jake makes a good first impression," Juan tells me. "I bet you'll
like him fine."

Juan takes a seat on the faux living room couch, and pats the spot
beside himself. "We got a while before they get here. Twenty
minutes at least. Relax a while. Tell me about yourself."

I take a seat, and have a sneaking suspicion that 'Sagittarius'
isn't going to fill twenty minutes on its own.

"Honestly I mostly read," I tell him, and wonder if this is the
first time I've admitted that truth while on a set.

"Ooh! Who do you like?"

We end up having a shockingly thorough conversation about
different fantasy and sci-fi authors before he gets a call, and
leaves the set.

Supposing we're about to start, I stand up and start doing a few
stretches. The men who had been in the den start moving their
equipment into the living room. Vince comes up beside me. "Ready?"
he asks.

"Yeah," I tell him. "Wardrobe, or?"

He looks me up and down, and sighs through his nose. "Let's just
get the main shots for now. Naked head to toe."

I nod, and start with my shirt.

As I'm sitting on the couch and getting my socks off, the 'front
door' opens, and a yellow lab comes running into the room, with
Juan pulled behind on the leash. As soon as he can, Juan unclips
the dog's leash, and the dog trots around excitedly from room to
room, sniffing around and wagging at everyone.

He comes up to me briefly, gives me a sniff as I say hi, and then
trots off to go sniff around the bedroom.

"Jake," Juan reminds me, standing beside me.

"Jake!" I call to him.

He turns, stands at attention, and then bounds right for me. I
kneel down and rub his shoulders. He leans into me, wagging.
Friendly guy. I like him.

"Ready?" I hear Vince call. Looking up, I realize that the cameras
have been positioned, and everyone besides me is standing out of
view of them: Front and center in the living room in front of the
couch is just me and the yellow lab.

"What uh," I begin, and then glance down at the wagging dog.
"Ready, but what do I do?"

"Hands and knees," Vince says, and I hear him add the word
'brainiac' under his breath. "Rolling?"

"Rolling."

"Action!"

With the word Action, my head space is transported to some other
realm, and I am a porno actor with a job to do. I stop petting the
dog, and get on my hands and knees as instructed. Jake turns to me
and sniffs me up and down, and I try--somewhat unsuccessfully--not
to giggle at his wet doggy nose prodding me all over. Eventually
he's sniffing at my ass, and begins licking me back there. He
isn't at it for long before I feel his weight come down on top of
me, his pointed claws digging pretty painfully into my flesh, and
then just like that he's humping his furry mass of muscles and
canine hair against my backside; I feel his tip prodding, but he
doesn't get it in, and after a few tries he gets off of me, and
goes and stands around by the cameras.

I look to Vince.

"Keep trying," he says, giving a 'go on' motion with his hand.

I look back to the dog, and he seems to get the idea too. Once
again he hops onto me and rests his chest on top of my back, locks
his paws around my hips, and starts to hump. He gives it a few
tries again before again getting off of me and standing nearby.

"Lower," Juan calls.

"What?" I ask.

Juan sighs, and, gesturing in my direction, asks Vince, "May I?"

Vince gives him the go ahead. One of the other men on set gets the
dog's attention for a moment, and Juan walks into the shot. He
puts his hand on my lower back, and pushes down until my stature
on my hands and knees is considerably lower. "Like that," he says.
"You're also going to want to angle yourself like... there, like
that."

"Do you... have personal experience with this?"

"I was the DP on Whores Let The Dogs In two through eight. Not
exactly what I thought my expertise in life would be in but yes,
we did figure some things out."

I nod, and keep the position that Juan has put me in. He backs out
of the shot again, and gives a signal to the man who has Jake held
back out of shot. With the signal given, the man lets Jake go: the
yellow lab runs straight up to me, hops onto me, and in one try is
mounting me and fucking my asshole. I cry out with the sudden
feeling of it, his dog cock getting inside of me, and I stay there
in position and bear it as this yellow lab fucks me, pistoning his
dog cock back and forth inside of my colon, all the way until his
completion. It's something kind of new, but also kind of not; it's
different and familiar; it's weird, basically, but I don't have a
bad time. Afterwards me and the yellow lab are stuck ass to ass,
as Juan had warned me about during our conversation: dogs have a
part of their penis called the knot that swells up during sex, and
holds them together with their partner afterwards, to make sure
that the semen stays inside of the partner long enough to make
puppies. I don't predict that will be happening for us tonight,
but Jake's knot holds us together afterwards nonetheless, and who
am I to speak against the optimism of that.

When he finally does slide out of me, he licks my fucked hole for
a bit and then lies down on his side, lifts a leg, and begins
licking himself. After a long while of that, his interesting red
dog penis goes back inside of himself.

"Cut!" Vince yells.

I crawl up onto the couch and sprawl back, head lolled back facing
the ceiling, arms out to either side on the back of the couch.

As I am recovering, I feel an energetic muzzle and tongue licking
my asshole again. I flinch and spread my legs apart a bit more,
then after the reflex wears off, I relax again and let it happen.
"Hey Jake," I say. "Yeah, hi there. I'm not gonna be your
girlfriend, but I appreciate it."

Opening my eyes to a squint, I see him wagging at that as he
continues to lick.

Eventually he backs off, and then goes to see Juan. I can see him
whining about something, but Juan, Vince, and the other men are
locked in some type of heated discussion.

Eventually the dog's whining is enough to break Juan from the
conversation, and he turns to see what the yellow lab wants. With
some brief back and forth, it is determined that the dog needs to
be let outside. Juan confers briefly with Vince, nods, and then
approaches me.

"How was it?" Juan asks, to break the ice again.

"No complaints," I tell him. I'd never exactly considered
bottoming for a dog before, but the experience was nothing to
sneeze at. That yellow lab was a humping machine, and the time
spent being tied together ass to ass was new to say the least,
probably nothing I'll be forgetting any time soon.

"Jake has to go outside," Juan tells me. "If you could go walk him
until he pisses and shits, we'd be ready for our next shot after
that."

I look over to the yellow lab, whose red canine penis was recently
fucking my asshole, but who now is laying beside the faux front
door, looking at me and Juan to help him because he can't turn a
doorknob.

What the hell. "Yeah," I tell Juan, "I'm sure I could let him
out."

Juan goes to retrieve the leash, and soon enough, I am dressed
again, poop bags are in my pocket, and the leash is in my hand.

"Don't go too far, but, take as much time as he needs, I suppose,"
Juan advises.

I nod, and proceed out of the faux apartment's front door with the
yellow lab taking the lead. He shows me the way to the actual
front door, and then right in front of the studio, he lowers
himself down to take a leak. One job taken care of. I stand there
as he goes. For like, a while.

When he's finished, he pulls me onwards. At the edge of the
studio's lawn I pause, but Jake pulls forward insistently. I lock
my stance and remain where I am, steadfast. I'm not trying to get
too off track, here: my job is at this studio. Jake still tries to
pull forward for a while, and then stops, and turns to me. He
looks at me with big eyes.

I look him back. Again, not very long ago, this dog was fucking me
in the ass--I can very much still feel it; the sensation of being
penetrated sometimes has a way of lingering in the body, it's
difficult to explain, but even as I look at him a leash's length
away, it also feels as though he still has me bent over, and is
doing the deed with my behind. So yes, just a few minutes ago he
was fucking me, and now he looks at me with adorable eyes, asking
if we could just but go down the sidewalk a ways. Jesus, how could
anyone say no? I don't normally go for when guys from work try to
act overly friendly with me outside of the shoots, but this
actually does feel like the least I could do, now that he's made a
point of making those eyes at me because I won't walk him--him, a
dog, an animal that is supposed to get walked.

I let up on the leash, and he faces forward and walks happily
onward, tail wagging as he trots, leading me along.

We go two more blocks before he stops, sniffs around, and then
takes a squat. When I see the size of what he's dropped, all of my
concerns about whether he can handle my size feel in hindsight
comical. I pick up his shit as he kicks up the grass nearby, and
then the two of us return to the studio, with me dropping the bag
of shit into the garbage can outside.

By the door, Juan is waiting for us. He lets us in, and the three
of us return to the faux apartment set. Inside, I find that the
cameras are set up around the bed in the bedroom, and everyone is
standing around waiting.

"Ready?" Vince asks.

"Ready," I say with a nod.

"Is it ready?" Vince also asks.

Realizing he means the dog, I look to Jake and shrug. "He did his
business, I don't really know if more prep work is needed."

"Good enough for me. Get on the bed with it. Do it in the ass
whatever way works, take at least ten minutes."

I nod, and begin disrobing once more. When I hop up onto the bed,
Jake hops up with me--I take it he's done this before. Using some
lube on the bedside table, I apply it to my fingertips and massage
the lube against the outside of his hole for a minute, which he
gives me no complaints over, no signs that he would rather I
didn't. He lies passive. Then after I've been massaging him for a
while, getting the pooch warmed up--again, not a thing I thought
through all the way when I agreed to this, but here we are--there
is a moment where he shuffles his position on the bed closer to me
and backs his ass against my fingers, and by holding my hand in
place, one of my fingers slips into the slick, smooth flesh of his
warm, lubed hole, and suddenly he's more than passive, he's all
wags. He's definitely done this before. He has all of the pleased
yet casual anticipation of someone for whom it is not their first
time taking anal, and for whom there is something or other
enjoyable that is gotten out of it. His tail wags even more
against the back of my hand as I start to work him. Once he seems
plenty ready, I lube my own tool and then I do as Vince asked, and
stick my cock into a yellow lab's asshole. It feels pretty much
like a dude's. Pretty much exactly like a dude's, as far as the
insides are concerned. It is not difficult to close my eyes and
treat this like it's normal, pretend like I'm topping any other
random actor who I had gotten paired up with, this one just
happens to have fur, and four legs instead of two, and a neat tail
right over the hole.

After a little over ten minutes, I finish inside of him. He knows
as soon as I'm done, and gets himself off of my cock and spins
around to lick his asshole and my cock, first the one, then the
other. After he's done addressing both of these matters I lay with
him, wrap myself around his back, and pet him for a while.

When all of this is done, we also shoot a scene of me ordering a
pizza and him coming to the door, and also a scene of him walking
out of the bedroom, through the living room, and back out into the
faux hallway.

"That's a wrap," Vince says, when we've gotten the last shot we
need of Jake leaving the apartment. He gathers himself, me, and
Juan into a huddle. "Thank you both. We would've gotten nothing
done today without you two."

"Of course," we both say, more or less.

As the equipment is being packed up, Jake whines to me.

"He has to go out again," Juan mentions, while working some strap
on his bag.

"I got him," I say, and once more dress, grab the leash and
collar, and step outside with this stud who I have now received a
load from and blown a load back into. As he sniffs around outside,
towards the edge of the studio lawn and then beyond, I follow him
wherever he's going, confident that he knows the way around here
better than I do. Eventually he lowers himself and pees once
again. It seems different, all of the sudden: this time it seems
different that someone is allowed to just pee out here. Just go,
and be free, and not worry about it being like, a crime, it's just
what it is, pissing on some grass out in the open where some
buildings are nearby.

It's because he's a dog, I need to remind myself. But I do need to
remind myself of it, because I think, all of the sudden, that this
distinction between dog and person is still something that I know,
but maybe--maybe--no longer something that I feel as much. Having
known this dog--in the archaic sense of the word--just as I have
known many other human people, I can't help but wonder what it
really matters, what significance there really is in some of the
distinctions. It seems, all of the sudden, like there is some
obvious fundamental level on which whether someone is called a dog
or whether someone is called a human, it doesn't actually even
matter the slightest little bit. We are all corporeal. We are all
squishy on our insides. We are all feeling, and I think, at least
when we choose to show it, we are all even caring.

After the yellow lab pees--the bodily functions of a four-legged
body that I am no longer entirely unfamiliar with--he leads the
way back to the studio. I follow along after him, doing my best to
keep up.

When we get there, nobody is waiting outside. I try the door, but
no luck. It's locked. We sit outside for quite a while--probably
an hour, if not longer. By that time, I'm sitting on the doorstep,
and Jake is laying down before me, panting in the heat.

"Well," I tell him. I think about it before I say my next words--
it will be a first for me, these types of words to someone who I
did a scene with. But, yeah: I'm going for it. "Dinner at my
place?" I ask the yellow lab.

He perks his head up to me, and seems interested.

We leave the studio, stop into a corner store to buy a few things
that I suppose a dog might need or want--including a steak--, and
then we continue up to my apartment. Inside, I go to the
kitchenette, and cook him the steak that I bought him. He eats it
with more enthusiasm than I've ever seen anyone eat my cooking
with ever before. When it's done, we lie together on the carpet,
and play with the two stuffed toys that I got for him.

As we play, I look into his eyes, and at one moment, he looks
back, and all at once I am even more sure than before that there
is something different here, now. I don't think that there will be
much of a future with me and Jake. Already, even in this moment, I
have a pervasive feeling that this is a fling. He belongs to
somebody, which is something that doesn't sit with me quite the
same way it did this morning, but it is how it is. But I do have
something new to explore. Whether with Jake or with someone else,
my eyes have been opened today to a second world of people on this
planet who were always here, but now, with a sudden and unexpected
wholeheartedness, I can see them.