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The sign on the portable corridor coming off the JetBlue flight read, Welcome to Austin, Live Music Capital of the World.

It cheered me up after the long, long wait in airports stretching from New York to Long Beach in California, not to mention the turbulent three-hour flight here. I took it as a good sign. I believed in signs. I've always looked for them and found them, good or bad. This was good. I loved music, loved live music in particular, and I was about to throw myself right into the music scene working for my brother.

To me, it was like a personalised welcome mat after being shuttled around the country due to inclement weather. I felt lucky that I'd made it. Seventy-two passengers had agreed to fly all over the place to finally land in Austin and we felt we knew each other well enough to exchange numbers and promises of cocktails.

For several horrible hours, we'd circled first one New York airport, then another and after a detour to New Jersey, had been left on the tarmac in Newark. Waiting. We couldn't get to an arrival gate due to overcrowding. In an incident, which made all the TV headlines, the flight attendants had run out of food and had rationed us to two peanuts per person and half a cup of water each.

JetBlue rallied, saving the day. One of their planes heading to Florida turned around and rescued us. A group of seasoned flight attendants boarded our plane like the sexiest cavalry you ever saw, stampeding down the aisle carrying food, drink and bringing abundant good cheer. Among them was my brother's husband, former boxer and now-flight attendant, Tito Calderon.

He picked me out right away and came straight over to me.

"This is a funny old way to meet," he said. "You doing okay, Kevin?"

To tell you the truth, like everybody else, I'd started to panic quite a long time ago. Especially when I saw the news of our unfolding melodrama on the screen in front of me, which of course magnified our predicament.

"I'm fine, Tito." I tried to act macho. Tito was hot. Hotter than hot. He radiated the kind of sexual chemistry that ought to be forbidden in real life. It should be left on the screen for guys whose names end in Clooney or Damon. I wondered how my brother coped with the attention magnetism like Tito's must bring.

Satisfied I was okay, Tito gave me a couple of bottles of iced water, several snack bags and moved on to help a breast-feeding mother handle her squalling baby.

I glimpsed his wedding ring. It made me feel good, for my brother's sake that he wasn't the kind of guy who took off his ring when he was a travelling man. I caught Tito's gaze and we smiled at each other. He took charge of the screaming baby, handing a bottle to one our frazzled, original flight attendants.

"Can you warm this for me, please? Thirty seconds ought to do it."

She looked as if she wanted to squeeze the contents all over his face. Instead, she snatched it and thundered her way back to the galley.

I could hear her surly words. "Excuse me. Excuse me, please."

The new JetBlue crew made instant TV headlines as they escorted us from the plane to one of their waiting buses across the snow-dusted tarmac. Tito acted like he was used to having cameras on him and I wondered just how bad I looked.

Once he was sure I was safely on the bus headed back to New York, he gave me a quick hug. I detected very faint aftershave. Holy frickin' heck. My dick got hard. Was that bad when it was your brother's husband?

"See you back in Austin," he said. "I'll be home tonight."

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Honolulu, Hawaii. Monday, July 7, 1941

He looked so nervous. He licked his lips, his glance shifting from me to the sparse furnishings and back again. I knew he wanted me. He'd been waiting for hours. Now he was here, it was as if he felt too big when the room was so small. He kept his shoulders stooped when there was no need. My cubicle was half of a divided room, the other half partitioned by thin wood and curtains. Outside, I could hear the noises made by the rowdy men still waiting in line, competing with the hucksters of Chinatown trying to hawk everything from jewellery to photos with hula girls.

Curfew was coming.

The sense of urgency gave an edge to the restless laughter. The smell of charbroiled pork wafted up to us from the Chinese café opposite my room on River Street. I stepped towards Howard, his heated gaze stayed on me.

I was nervous too. I could feel his tension, but also his excitement. I heard the radio go on from somewhere downstairs. Glenn Miller performed Three Little Fishes.

"It's all right, Howard," I said, drawing down the blind a little more. "You're with me now."

He jumped when I said his name. I'd only been trying to relax him. I was pleased at least that it appeared to be his real name. The darkened room hid a lot of things, except the strong smell of disinfectant. I'd tried to disguise it with waterlilies I'd picked after my morning swim at the Natatorium. All I could smell now was pork. There was nothing I could do about that. He put his glass down on the small chest of drawers beside the bed. I was worried it would leave a ring mark, but was more worried about him. His cock looked hard in his pants. I didn't want him to leave unsatisfied. Howard licked his lips again.

I ran my hand down the front of his white duck pants. I was relieved he had such a nice big one.

As I got to my knees, I looked up at him. "Oh, Howard, this is such a surprise."

He grinned then, giving me his full attention. It didn't take long to liberate him from his pants. His cock leaked as I lightly ran my thumb over the tip. I squeezed. Outside, I could hear new music...from the saloon across the street. When the bar music kicked up, it meant it was time for the four-drink dose of Island Gin. The lethal, imitation brew was handed out to US servicemen every hour as they stood in line. It kept them buzzed, kept them spending, kept them in line.

There were lines for food, lines for booze, lines for sex...

Howard jumped when I leant closer to his thighs and went to work. He didn't smell clean, but I didn't care. I had three minutes and this boy was read to pop. I fondled his balls, licked his shaft and he gasped when I smothered that huge cock head with my whole mouth.

"Oh God!" he yelled.

Somebody from the cubicle next door also used the Lord's name in vain. I milked Howard for all he was worth. His knees trembled and I released him, swallowing his load.

"Thank you, Terry," he said, a tear in his eye. "You're a nice man."

I held him back until the man from the cubicle next door shuffled down the stairs and out to Hotel Street. Milaina, the housekeeper, knocked softly at my door. She made herself scarce as we approached. I let Howard out.

"I'll be back," he said. "Next pay day. You'll see, Terry." He mouthed thank you again.

I handed him his glass. Not that he needed his horrible gin, he was pretty liquored up still, but damn it, he'd paid for it.

I didn't respond in case anyone was listening. By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, the guys still waiting to come up were none the wiser that Howard, the Marine, had just spent his three bucks on a male whore.

And for me, my first trick ever wasn't bad. It wasn't bad at all.

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Full by A.J.Llewellyn

It started with me stuffing my face with somebody else's birthday cake, and ended with my finding a mysterious business card that sent me on a bizarre, life-altering journey with just one word-”Full.

Yeah, I know. Weird, right?

Full.

I'd been the one delegated to pick up my sister Cyan's birthday cake that fateful Friday night. What did they think they were doing asking the fat guy to pick up a cake and head clear across the San Fernando Valley in peak-hour traffic? What did they think would happen?

It started with just one rose.

I'd lifted the lid just to check on Cyan's creamy, two hundred dollar creation from Sweet Lady Jane bakery. I'd been so good up until now. As I waited on the 101 freeway- turned-parking-lot near the 405 interchange, I got antsy. It was hot. Fall was always hotter in Los Angeles than the actual summer.

On the radio, local blowhards John and Ken were discussing the outrage of a pizzeria in the Los Angeles suburb of Maywood that only accepted pesos for pizza. Whilst they gnashed their teeth over this and the whole illegal immigration issue, all I could think of was how much I'd like a pizza right now. Since I didn't have one, cake seemed like a pretty good substitute.

I really did open the box just to check on that expensive cake. Honest. The delicious scent of rose-infused icing tickled my nose and shot straight through to my taste buds without my permission. Just one icing rose. I could do it. I could cover up the space. At the age of thirty-two, I've been hiding my eating habits for years. What was one single rose?

Mmm...so tasty. I ate it in one gulp, my starved senses wallowing in all that butter cream. For three days I'd been on my new Weight Watchers diet and my body had no idea what had happened to it. Dare I eat a second one? I looked around. Cars on either side of me, the drivers in varying degrees of stress.

But I had a cake.

Yeah...I did dare.

That's when my problems started. The cake didn't look right. I had to even things up a little and pick a rose from the other side. Uh-oh. Now it looked like it was missing something.

On the radio, John and Ken screamed at some hapless guy from the pizzeria who could barely speak English.

"You no want to order pizza?" he kept asking. "Is nice!"

"This isn't Mexico, amigo!" the radio hosts shouted in unison.

I turned down the radio as I peered inside the box. The cake looked weird. Okay. I'd gone too far. Maybe...okay, maybe if I ate a couple of leaves that would make things look better. I checked the dashboard clock. Ten minutes to six. I had ten minutes to make it to my sister's Encino house in time for her pre-dinner drinks.

I ate a rose from the middle edge of the cake, twisting the box around on the passenger seat. I took a credit card from my wallet and used it to smooth down the icing. I began to worry about bacteria from the card. Hell, I'd welcome death by bacteria if my sister saw the cake in this condition and freaked out. She'd murder me for sure, but in a slow and painful way. She'd make me watch Zumba DVDs or something. She was an exercise freak.

Blinking, I wondered what the hell had come over me. I was on a strict eating plan of twenty-nine points a day on Weight Watchers. How many points were in a single rose? How many had I eaten? Two, three...nine?

Now, I did feel a bit guilty. It sort of looked...bare. It was like that episode of I Love Lucy...you know, the one where Lucy and Ethel wear the same dress and rip the flowers from each other's bodices live on camera.

Each time I tried to fix my problem, I made another one. I began to panic, especially when the traffic started to move. I drove with the cake perched on my knee. It got all mushed up in the box. Maybe that would be my excuse.