Having been duped by a Baltimore car chopping gang and dominated by the gang's leader, young Rick Hernandez is left holding the bag on a police raid and enters a no-win probation period. He must stay away from the gang, but the gang leader isn't going to let that happen. Additionally, the boyfriend of Rick's mother wants more from Rick than from Rick's mother. But all Rick wants to do in life is fix cars. Dreaming of leaving Baltimore and all its pressures, Rick falls in with a cinematographer, Douglas Groton, who wants Rick to star in a gay male pornographic film, Journey to Mirage. This film takes fantasies Groton makes Rick weave during sexual encounters and films them as progressively intense sex scenes for the movie while the film crew travels across country from Baltimore to the Mirage Gay Male Art Film Festival held just to the west of Phoenix, Arizona. The filming of Rick's fantasies becomes increasingly intense and threatening during stops in central Virginia, Asheville, New Orleans, Dallas, and Amarillo, and Rick fears for his safety and future when Groton starts introducing another "star" into the photo shoots. At the urging of a member of the film crew, Rick begins to pull away from the mirage of the goal to become a movie star by way of a win for Journey to Mirage at the film festival and to redirect his interests back to auto mechanics. But pulling away leads to even more dangerous sexual adventures in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, which put Rick back on the road to Phoenix when the movie wins the festival grand prize and Rick becomes a box office draw. Only fate and the love of a man who is trying to save Rick from himself has a chance of stopping the relentless pull of the mirage of filmed sex in Rick's life.