Chapter 1

Your name is James. You’re dead. You died on the 128th dawn after your 30th birthday. Eight hours before you stopped breathing, you were still entangled with two businessmen and a politician. Yes, having sex—though that was just part of your escort service. Because, at first, you had to pretend to be gentler and wittier than the best boyfriend any of these three had ever had. Of course, this facade of civility shattered the moment you unbuttoned your pants. Because what they really wanted was for you to act like a true whore in bed. So, you miserable bastard, you spent the last hours of your life still selling your body—your stiff cock, your stretched elastic asshole, your wet, gaping mouth.

If your ex-boyfriend, who had just broken up with you not long ago, found out about this final act of self-degradation, he’d probably wish you’d come back to life just so he could kill you again. Maybe you should tell him that, to forget the misery of being a male prostitute, you recklessly drowned yourself in drugs that left you perpetually dazed—even continuing to inject testosterone. Maybe all of this could prove to that damn man you loved, who wasn’t even by your side in your final moment, that you were still driven by life’s hardships and pain. But then again, if you hadn’t abused those substances so recklessly, you wouldn’t be lying cold in the morgue now. So, your boyfriend—no, your ex-boyfriend—would still want you alive just so he could kill you again.

You crawled sluggishly onto the large bed, your Herculean body crouching like a blind dog, your taut waist collapsing into a conquered ravine, your ass raised high, the round cheeks flushed red from slaps. Your asshole had been fucked by all three men in turn—none wore condoms, and sticky semen still lingered in your intestines. Your muscular arms spasmed as you curled them, burying your head between them, letting out unconscious whimpers. At the time, you thought, Next week, I really need to get an HIV test.

Later, the most energetic of the businessmen tried to climb back onto the bed to fuck your mouth again, only to find your pupils unnaturally sluggish and drifting, your face flushed with an unnatural heat, and a stream of nosebleed gushing out. You looked like someone who’d swallowed lava and was about to die. For the first time in your life, you scared a client limp. The three of them scrambled into their pants while calling an ambulance. Meanwhile, you—your chest smeared with blood and cum stains, your cock still ridiculously hard, your asshole smeared with semen carrying three men’s DNA—if your ex-boyfriend had seen you like this, you’d have wished for immediate death followed by cremation. But rest assured, by the time your identical twin brother and your ex-boyfriend rushed to see your body beneath the white sheet, the nurses had already cleaned you up. So, you can be glad you didn’t descend into hell carrying your “patron’s” semen. You died alone, your corpse free of any “souvenirs.”

Oh, and your cause of death? “Sudden cardiac arrest.” Fuck your sudden cardiac arrest.

After you died, the gay adult film company you worked for issued an obituary on behalf of your family. You made headlines in LGBT magazines and charity websites that day. Every gay adult film blogger you knew—and many you didn’t—posted tributes to you. Countless social commentators, familiar and unfamiliar, speculated subjectively about your sudden death. Colleagues and fans, inside and outside the industry, all took to social media to wish you peace. These people were pretending—pretending they all cared about you. The cruelest irony? You probably never imagined that the moment you garnered the most attention was when you left the world in such a bizarre state. Your death forged your absurd life into a single, inglorious focal point.

Your real name and your “stage name,” once used to distinguish the real you from the glamorized version, now merged into one, appearing together in headlines. They announced to the world that you were dead—both the you who once enjoyed an intimate relationship with your ex-boyfriend in reality and the you who existed as a fantasy for others to lust over.

But you couldn’t care less about this posthumous notoriety.

Your identical twin brother—the married, heterosexual brother who had sex with his wife three times a week and lived an ordinary, happy life—rushed over from another city, red-eyed, after receiving the call confirming your death.

Your ex-boyfriend Anthony—the one who, just three days earlier, had rejected your plea to reconcile, the one four years younger than you but who had lived with you for six whole years—forced himself to stay calm after your brother’s call, driving to the hospital just to see you one last time.

These two were the people you loved most. Once, the flame of your life clung to their breath. Yet neither of them ever touched your other side—the dark, hidden depths of you. Not the well-known mess of being an adult actor or a high-end escort, but the pitiful, self-destructive spiral you willingly embraced.

They never got the chance to help you. Or at least, to let you leave behind a suicide note—to scream that it was you, yourself, who killed you.

Maybe, in the last second before your soul left your body, you saw your young ex-boyfriend collapse in tears, your towering twin brother sighing with tears in his eyes, and the two dogs your ex-boyfriend had adopted, still lost in sleep. But sadly, you couldn’t open your arms to embrace them. You were dead.

Let’s go back to the damn start of that year. Do you remember how you spent your birthday?

That morning, you woke up to an email from a wealthy patron in the fashion industry, inviting you to a “date.” You hesitated for all of three seconds before agreeing. It had been a month since your fight and breakup with your ex-boyfriend, and you’d returned to your old profession—only now, there was no fiercely jealous man to rage over it. You remember him saying you were like a tattered public-domain book in a library, free for anyone to flip through.

Next, you went to the gym. According to your weekly plan, that day was chest and thighs. After your shower, you saw a birthday message from your ex-boyfriend—the one who “never wanted to reconcile and refused to speak to you.” You suppressed the flutter in your chest. That’s right—you didn’t reply immediately. You wanted to prove that even as a male prostitute, you weren’t at anyone’s beck and call. But that message became an immovable boulder pressing on your heart, impossible to ignore. Then, you celebrated your shared birthday with your twin brother at a fast-food joint, splitting an overly sweet apple pie with three cheap birthday candles stuck in it. If that even counted as a celebration.

After parting ways, you got into your patron’s car, pretending to chat cheerfully the whole ride. Once in the hotel room, you politely asked if he wanted to start now. Then you went to the bathroom, douched again, swallowed a few pills to “get in the mood,” and clutched a small brown bottle of Rush in your palm. Soon, a knock came—your patron tossed in a bag. You tore it open to find a black leather collar with a silver bell, two black iron nipple clamps, and a black rubber butt plug with a tapered end, its base attached to a faux leather dog tail. You looked in the mirror at your flushed face, then efficiently assembled the “equipment” on your body. You didn’t even have time to feel shame.

When you opened the door again, your short, flabby but filthy-rich patron reached out, clipped a chain to the triangular hook on your collar, and led you to the bed. Thank god he was just a kink enthusiast, not a sadist. Under your service, he came twice—once in your mouth (he made you swallow), the other time smeared across your artificially tanned ass. He said he wanted to fuck you again but couldn’t get hard anymore. So, you jerked your slick cock with one hand while fingering your loose asshole with the other, finally cumming for the first time that day.

Afterward, you stammered a request for your patron to take you to dinner—anywhere would do. Only then did the man who’d just ridden your body realize today was your “memorable” 30th birthday. You knew he must’ve thought you pathetic—what kind of wretched loser celebrates a milestone birthday by selling their ass as a prostitute?

That was your 30th birthday. Even as you tried to dilute the bitterness of whoring yourself out, telling yourself, I just wanted it to be an ordinary day.

Later, you went home, got drunk alone, then called your ex-boyfriend—the one with emerald-green eyes. He didn’t answer. So you left a voicemail: “Anthony, I love you. I just wanted to tell you—I still love you.”

Five minutes later, your ex replied with a text: James, goodnight.

The you who had just turned 30 and the you now lying cold and lifeless on a steel bed were no different. The only difference was that while you were still breathing, your ex-boyfriend and twin brother felt no pain—because you “existed.” But when you truly “died,” the part of you that lived in their lives was torn away, replaced by a whirlwind of grief and emptiness.

On your 30th birthday, when your ex-boyfriend heard your voice in that voicemail, he couldn’t help but kiss his phone lightly. If you knew that little secret, wouldn’t you be fucking smug?

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