Some Keaton Backstory (part 2)

When he was younger, Keaton worked as the bodyguard of a gay Dutch billionaire who staffed his entire office with gay men. He did that for a pretty fucked up reason: he reckoned that a bunch of gay guys would be naturally vicious and, therefore, more productive as they tried to step on each other to get up the corporate ladder.

Yeah, I know. It sounds totally insane. But Keaton wouldn’t make something like that up.

Ok, so there had to be someone sane in the middle of all the craziness. That person turned out to be the boss’ chief assistant, a Dutch dude named Dirk. Dirk had started out like one of the young barracudas, but he was smart: instead of maneuvering himself into the boss’ bed so he could get promoted, he made himself into the one dude the boss couldn’t do without. (If this were Game of Thrones, Dirk was the boss’ Hand lol.) So Dirk was above all the cat fights. It was Dirk who explained things to Keaton, and it was Dirk who became Keaton’s one friend while he was working for their billionaire boss.

Dirk’s advice was for Keaton to stay above the gay drama and never get involved in the shit going on between the other dudes working for the company. That wasn’t too hard. Being the only straight dude for miles already separated Keaton from everyone else. The last thing he wanted to know about was which gay dude was sleeping with which and why. He also didn’t know anything about business and wasn’t interested in learning. He just wanted to do his job, which had nothing to do with the crazy politics in an office full of gay dudes.

It got crazier. Although Keaton was straight and unavailable, he was the dude the boss was most interested in. Look, even if the boss was gay, he was still a dude, and we know that dudes can get seriously stuck on the chick they can’t get. I reckon it’s the same with the dude you can’t get if you’re gay.

The most weirdass part was that, outside of Dirk, Keaton was also the only dude the boss really trusted. He wasn’t part of the fucked up office games, and so the boss figured Keaton was a good objective observer. So he kept asking Keaton’s opinion about shit, from which tie he should wear to which dudes he should promote.

Y’all can imagine how much Keaton loved that when all he wanted to do was what he’d signed on for: showing up in a dark suit and boots, looking threatening, carrying a gun under his arm, and maybe shoving a few people out of the way so the boss could get to his limo. And, yeah, being a badass cowboy the boss could show off to his other super rich friends.

(The Dutch all thought Keaton was a cowboy. He wasn’t. He didn’t start working as a cowboy until he left Holland. But the cowboy thing was good for business, so he went along with it.)

There were definite advantages to the job (beyond having an entire office building of gay guys scared shitless of him lol.) He got to travel all over the world, which was pretty awesome, especially for a dude his age. He also picked up a new language: his Dutch got real good real fast (in addition to the fluent Spanish he learned back home.) He liked his boss and had some respect for him. The boss was keeping his promise to keep his hands off, and, although there wasn’t much need for rough stuff, there was enough to make the job interesting. Keaton was certainly the kind of bodyguard you could feel safe with. Nobody even got close enough to the boss to harm him during the time Keaton was working for him.

So it was crazy, exciting, and, from the way Keaton tells it, pretty fun.

That’s until this Spanish dude came to work at the company.

Y’all probably know enough about Keaton to know he’d usually rather die than say that he could tell a dude was good-looking. He made an exception in this Spanish dude’s case. As he put it: “he was better looking than you, bubba.”

So you can imagine lol.

This dude knew it, too. And he was smart and ambitious enough to use it to his advantage.

It didn’t take long for him to get the boss to notice him, and then he played the boss like Brad Paisley plays a guitar. He had a game of advancing and retreating that had the boss tied up in knots by the end of a few weeks. It was way too slick and premeditated for Keaton, who was sure the dude was trouble. But the dude had gotten the boss so hot and bothered that the boss wasn’t listening to the straight objective observer he usually trusted. There’s no talking to a man when he gets like that. We’ve all been there: when you’re thinking with your dick, you sure as heck ain’t thinking clearly.

So eventually the morning came when the boss called Keaton into his bedroom to give him the schedule for the day…and there was the dude in the boss’ bed. (Keaton never got used to how gross it was to see two dudes in bed together.) The dude got a big promotion before that day was over.

Y’all can imagine what the other guys in the office thought of this dude. They hated him like he was fuckin poison. That would happen even in an office with straight people; Keaton said it was a hundred times meaner with only gay guys involved. They kept starting rumors about the dude so they’d get back to the boss. Shit like the dude had AIDS or was secretly straight and had a wife and kids stashed in some windmill somewhere. Most of those never got past Dirk. The boss refused to believe the ones that did.

The other guys in the office hated the Spanish dude because he was getting ahead and they weren’t. There was one person in the office who didn’t like the dude for a different reason, and that was Dirk. Dirk was worried about the boss…and agreed with Keaton’s gut feeling that the dude was trouble.

Then they found out they were right.