When Worlds Collide

July 1979

Dragonflies skim above the surface of Young’s Pond, then dart among the tall grasses that grow at its edge. I sit on the ground beneath the canopy of a low-growing American Elm, between the water and a narrow stretch of asphalt leading into the woods. A paperback lies propped open in my lap. Half its cover has been scissored away, as I’d originally fished it out of Woolco’s ten cent cut-out bin. Given the clue that it’s Jane E by a truncated Charlott, a clever person might be able to reckon what I’m reading.

Unrelenting sun and temperatures in the high eighties have banished the squirrels and chipmunks into cooler, shadier retreats. Cicadas huzz in the loblollies that surround the pond’s western end; their drowsy clamor makes my own eyelids droop. Bryan Park takes a siesta during these post-lunch summer hours. The man-to-man cruising action that occupies the park’s northern side won’t resume in full force for several more hours, once the sun descends beyond the ridge of pines.

But I’m here to escape, more than to get off. Every summer, my parents enroll me in whatever free enrichment programs they can find, hoping to add a few more bullet points to my college application resumé as well as to keep me out of their hair. This year, in the break between my ninth and tenth grade, it’s beginner’s Russian at the high school. Like most days, I’d finished my suggested Cyrillic exercises in the morning. And again, like most days, during our sack lunch break I’d hopped on my bike and vamoosed. It’s an ungraded course. I won’t get penalized. I doubt the teacher will note my absence.

No one expects me home for another couple of hours, so here I sit, reading a familiar favorite and sometimes dozing while I assess what trouble I might get into. This cruising area of the park’s not completely dead; every now and then a car will wind up the long drive around the pond, headed for the shady enclosure of pines beyond. The Virginia heat is too oppressive and the day too lazy for me to stir my bones, so when a driver’s head cranes in my direction as he passes, I pretend disinterest and let him continue on.

Then I see the white Cadillac turn from the residential road bordering the park. It’s a decked-out ’76 Eldorado convertible, bigger than the Queen Mary and almost as majestic. Sunlight glints from its chrome surfaces, blinding me as it draws over the bridge my way. The vehicle slows to a stop where I relax. Today, the driver has pulled closed the roof. When he rolls down the passenger side window, I feel the cool cloud of air conditioning from within. I’m jealous. Neither of my parents’ old junkers has A/C.

He’s not wearing a seatbelt—no one wears seatbelts—so he’s easily able to stick out his head, tip up his straw hat, and survey me. He sports a formal shirt and full suit of seersucker. “Good afternoon, young man.”

I nod. I know this fellow, but I’m never willing to look him in the eye. “‘lo.”

“Hot one,” he ventures. His Deep South drawl is as broad and wide as the car he drives. Again, I nod, biting down a comment that he might find it cooler were he wearing something other than a suit. I’m walking a fine line here: I don’t want to engage too much, but at the same time, I’m unwilling to deflect him away. So I toy with my book as if I hope to get back to it, but at the same time I arrange my body so that he’s got a view of my long, skinny legs spread wide in the grass. I can practically hear the man lick his chops, like he’s Wile E. Coyote envisioning roast Road Runner. “You enjoying yourself?”

I allow the comment to pass unremarked. The two of us have performed this dance before, mostly with the same result. Instead of speaking, I rise to my feet, brush dirt from the seat of my shorts, and lean against the elm. My book tumbles into the ground. As I toy with a blade of grass, I finally allow my eyes to meet his, if only for a brief instant. “Are you?”

He has to clear his throat several times before he can speak again. “I’ll be parking in the woods for a spell. If you want to get out of the heat…come find me.”

Shy once more, I nod and look at the ground while I wait for him to leave. The Eldorado’s motor hums as he pulls himself back into the driver’s seat. I watch the battleship maneuver its way past the pond and up beyond the bank of pines beyond.

When he’s out of sight, I seize the handlebars of my bike and, wheels clacking, hop astride to follow.

***

Jules Davenport is my father’s best friend. At least, as far as I can tell. The world of adult friendships mystifies me. During my grade school days I could have elaborated with uncanny precision the degrees of closeness between me and my friends; there wasn’t a year in which I didn’t have a designated absolute bestie. Even now, I can rattle off the names of the honored. Sweet Beth, with whom I shared birthday parties until third grade. Then Adam, who lived in one of the large houses fronting nearby Confederate Avenue with eight older brothers and sisters. Curly-haired Isaac, from fourth to sixth grade, until he’d become more interested in girls. Then Mark, the seminarian’s son. He’s nominally still my best friend, though I feel the closeness fading now we’re in different high schools.

Adults though. Man. Do they really even have friends? My dad has a weekly tennis partner from the university, but fumbling about the court is all they ever do together. My mom sometimes visits with our neighbor Kay from around the corner, but the moment she’s back home, she starts mocking Kay’s hippie affinity for carob and wheat germ. Adult attachments are nothing like the ride-or-die bonds kids maintain, from what I can tell.

If either of my parents have a best friend, though, it’s probably Jules. For years, a couple of nights a week, he has come around in his formal, natty suits for a cup of coffee and a sit-down at the dining room table. Jules is an antique hunter who’ll from time to time take my mother to estate sales; she’ll arrive home with amazed reports of how much he’s spent on a settee or spindly secretary. He’s a professor of genetics at the Medical College of Virginia, the clinical branch of the university where my parents teach. Both he and my dad are on the faculty senate, so they spend long hours in my dad’s home office arguing over strategies to make the lousy university president see things their way. Just hearing that Jules is heading over is my cue either to retreat to my bedroom or leave the house outright, to escape the terminal boredom of having to listen to the grownups debate campus politics.

My mom and dad have both recently turned forty, but Jules is much older. Fuck, with his graying locks and white beard, he seems impossibly ancient. Like, maybe even as crusty as fifty-eight or nine. He lives in a house perhaps a half-mile away, nominally still in our middle-class enclave but perilously close to a transitional neighborhood that used to be red-lined, its inhabitants denied bank loans and mortgages that were anything less than punishing. Because his house is stuffed to the gills with the fussy antiques he collects, so close to a dicey part of town, my dad volunteers to check it twice a day when Jules takes one of his frequent get-aways to Palm Springs, or to Provincetown, or Key West.

Our family moved here in nineteen-seventy, right in the middle of my first grade. Jules has been a constant presence in the house ever since. He’s never anything less than polite to me, with his old-school courtly manners and traditional Southern gentleman mannerisms. And yet I shy away from him whenever he appears at my home—not merely because his arrival presages a lot of boring adult talk about faculty senate affairs.

Because even in grade school, like recognizes like. And fears it.

***

So hot is the afternoon that when I’d sat by the pond, the sweat on my skin evaporated as quickly as it formed. When I slide into the Eldorado’s passenger seat, the blasting air conditioning freezes every moist inch. My clothes adhere in frigid patches. I can’t deny the cool feels good, though.

My bike leans beneath a tree within eyeshot. Jules doesn’t even turn his head when I join him. I don’t always accept these invitations. He can’t take it for granted that he’ll whistle, and I’ll come. But today’s a scorcher, and I need a break.

He’s got the Richmond public radio station playing a piano concerto at a low volume. While I cool off, he pulls from his suit coat pocket a container of white Tic Tacs and helps himself. When he holds out the plastic box, I decline with a shake of my hand. He sucks on the tiny mint for a moment, staring at the empty picnic shelter beyond that bakes in the sun.

Then he makes a decision. “Time to help you out of those clothes, I think.”

I tremble a little when his fingertips brush my waist, but lift my arms high and allow him to draw my t-shirt up my torso. My skin blossoms with gooseflesh. Not from the blast from the vents, but from Jules’ warm breath, close to my chest. His hands run up and down my ribcage; I’m so skinny that he could play the protruding bones like a xylophone. His hands fumble at my waistband, popping open the button to my shorts and tugging down the zipper. I lift my hips so he can maneuver them down my thighs. Next, his thumbs hook the elastic of my white briefs. They join my shorts in a tangle around my ankles. Naked like this, I can’t conceal my arousal. My dick is rigid, pointing to the car’s roof.

But I turn my head away from Jules as he leans in from the driver’s seat to press his lips against my pale skin. If he asks—which he won’t—I’ll tell him I’m keeping an eye out for intruders.

The truth is that I don’t want to witness what he’s doing to me. I don’t want him at all to refer to my home or my family, to acknowledge in any way our years of acquaintance. From sheer willpower and need, between my comforting home life and this seedy realm of intrigue and danger, I like to pretend I’ve erected a wall of unbreakable diamond. One word, one stray smile from Jules might shatter it into thousands of glittering, lethal shards.

***

I might never have wondered about Jules’ sexuality at all, except that when I’m eleven or twelve, over dinner my mother makes an announcement: “Jules Davenport is definitely not a homosexual.” She looks around the table to ascertain that the information has sunk in. “He is a confirmed bachelor.”

Her use of his full name makes a curious proclamation all the more consequential. Why did she say such a thing? I can’t remember. Quavering on the cusp of self-discovery myself, I would never, ever have questioned Jules’ private life. Had my little sister asked? Doubtful. Perhaps my mother simply spoken the thought aloud to quell her own doubts about the man who spent so many evenings at this very table.

Regardless, I don’t take her words at face value. If anything, drawing attention to what she declares Jules isn’t makes me question why anyone would assume Jules is. Would it be because until her recent passing, he lived with his elderly mother? Because of his soft-spoken mannerisms, his formal suits, his Truman Capote drawl? Have people been speculating that he’s light in the loafers due to his unmarried state, his trips to the Keys, his preciseness of speech, the ostentation of his clothing and automobile? He’s never had a wife or even a lady friend. Is it because he prefers the company of men?

Or is it Jules’ home, which even my dad has described as fastidious and feminine? I’ve only seen inside the house once, but it’s so fussy and heavily strewn with doilies that I recoiled, frightened at this glimpse into what I am certain will be my own inevitable future: the domicile of an elderly homosexual with no one in his life and nothing to do but collect monstrosities of mahogany. Already by my late middle school years, I’m policing myself for any manifestations of what makes Jules suspicious to others and eradicating them before they become a habit. Or worse, a problem.

My parents are as broad-minded as anyone. More than most, in fact. But not even my progressive parents would admit to knowing anything as vile and pitiable as a homosexual.

***

Among the pickup trucks, cheap Datsuns, and beat-up gas guzzlers that the local cruisers drive here, the Eldorado stands out. The first time I’d spied it, I knew immediately to whom it belonged. I don’t always make time to climb inside with him. I’m wary about Jules coming to expect my attention. This afternoon, though, I’m unlikely to get many offers. Certainly not one with better air conditioning.

So I endure the touch of his hands on my bare skin, freckled though they are with liver spots. Despite the lingering clinical scent to his seersucker, I rest my forearms across his shoulders when his mouth goes searching for its prize. And though his hair is gray and stiff from whatever potion he uses to slick it down, I run my fingers across it and pull him down upon me, because my aggression always elicits a vibration of pure pleasure from the very back of his throat.

But I keep my gaze out the window, my head lolled back against the seat rest. I only tolerate what’s happening to me.

Tolerate. What bullshit. My erection betrays more than tolerance. So does my quickening pulse, the prickling at my skin, the way my hips automatically move as his mouth slides up and down my cock. I’ve happily submitted to worse from fellows a fraction as polite. I’ve given my body to infinitely uglier men. For the sake of a couple of bills, I’ve spread my legs to brutes who smell like day-old urine, and I’ve done it without a second thought.

Yet I treat Jules as if he’s Lon Chaney’s Quasimodo. I know it’s wrong.

I am growing up queer in a time when queerness is outlawed, in a place where no one dares admit any sexual expression that’s not hetero. Pride in being gay is absolutely unimaginable. Even with another of my kind, I am utterly alone. There are no school clubs for me, no discussion groups to join, no public consensus on the proper ways to behave or the correct words to describe myself. In a wilderness where none of us may embrace our identities, I’ll find nether mentors nor guides. I’m constantly starting from scratch. Developing my own ethic. Hewing my own moral compass out of raw materials. This secret life of mine is the ultimate DIY.

I’ve never yet heard the phrase pity fuck, but I’ve arrived at the concept on my own. Yet I see no harm in allowing someone undesirable a chance at my body, on occasion. Giving myself strikes me as a kind thing to do. Perhaps in my old age, someone will return the favor. These periodic trysts with Jules aren’t charity, though. Pretending that Jules is too loathsome to deserve me does him a disservice.

No, what we share in these moments, stolen beneath a canopy of pine, is greater than youth condescending to age. Worlds collide whenever I allow Jules to remove my clothing—and that frightens me. Our proximity is a taboo; we cross a line whenever I climb into his car. In the Eldorado’s cool, liminal space between fantasy and reality, we can make real the carnal dreams no one suspects behind our everyday facades.

Every time I’m here, though, I’m aware that beneath this convertible roof, the impenetrable wall of diamond I’ve erected between my two existences becomes soap bubble thin. I am afraid to stir or even to move, lest it pop.

My breathing becomes ragged. My right hand clutches at the window ledge; my left pulls the back of Jules’ head onto me as I plunge myself to the back of his throat. He gags, but quickly recovers to gobble my copious spurts, swallowing each with a satisfied gargle. When I subside, the air conditioning once again chills my clammy skin. Jules sits up, draws a handkerchief from his suit pocket, and dabs at his forehead. He tries to wipe away at me, but I hastily retrieve my tee from the floor and swab myself off with that.

Please don’t talk to me, I silently pray as I pull up my shorts. Please, no questions. Please just let me go. Two planetary bodies may temporarily have veered close, but it’s time for them to resume their separate orbits.

I want to bolt out and slam the door behind me, but I have been instilled with the manners of a junior Southern gentleman. So I pause, hands folded in my lap. “Thanks,” I murmur, staring straight ahead.

He’s equally diffident, though he laughs slightly with embarrassment as he continues sponging away at himself with the handkerchief. Perhaps struggling with similar feelings, he to looks elsewhere. “And I thank you,” is his grave reply.

Finally, I can clamber from the car and reclaim my bike from beneath the nearby tree. When I pedal down the road in the direction of the pond, Jane E stuffed in my back pocket, my legs seem a little shaky. Moments later, I hear the Eldorado’s engine purring close.

When I look over my shoulder to gauge how much of the road it occupies, for a split second my eyes connect with Jules’. Almost immediately, we look away.

But when he passes, I can see him nod into the rear view mirror, once, with deliberation.

Like has recognized like.

***

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A Man Called Mother

Summer 1978

By dusk, he’s perched upon his chosen picnic table top, boots planted on the bench. The seat of his jeans scrapes across splintered wood speckled with faded forest green paint. Wide-spread knees support his elbows as he digs through a pack of smokes. He’s a denim-and-plaid loner who sports a big brass oval of a belt buckle at his waist, a Marlboro cowboy without his horse. A snap of a Bic lighter precedes a flash of flame; moments later, the persimmon kiss of a cigarette tip traces a perfect parabola in the darkness as it rises from calves to his lips, then back again.

Nearby, beneath the pine boards of the park shelter and around its perimeter, simmers a bacchanal of sexual pleasure. At the foot of the same picnic table, one man kneels before another, bobbing above a fistful of dick. Similar clusters have formed around the clearing. Pairs and trios relish each other in the heat of the August night. Other figures wend between the scattered tables, seeking solace from the shadows who loiter against the walls. Some men bide their time, unwilling to settle for the first pair of groping hands or hungry mouth; from figures that barely can be distinguished from the darkness, they choose their target and, like a spider in its web, wait for his approach. A handful haunt this quiet space beneath the wooded pines like restless spirits, flitting in nervous circles from soul to soul in search of someone to lay them to rest.

And among the whispers, the whimpers and the sharp intakes of breath, the murmurs of approval and the hushed laughter of men coming to their senses after climax, among the feverish hurricane of courtships and love affairs commenced and abandoned in the space of mere quarter hours, the man atop the table is the tranquil eye at its center.

The men here call him Mother.

Mother. Not because he’s effeminate. Far from it. Not with that ranch hand stance, the deep drawl, the skin of leather. Not with the thicket of mustache perched on his upper lip, meticulously groomed. Mother, not because he’s passive, nor because there’s a Father around who’s the real boss. Here, after hours in the woods of Bryan Park, long after the groundskeepers have ejected the last rowdy rednecks and swept the premises for stragglers, Mother’s word is law. Every man who parks his car in the adjoining neighborhood, who casually strolls the streets as if out for a nighttime walk, then ducks up the embankment to creep across a carpet of pine needles into the park’s forbidden cruising area, knows to abide by Mother’s rules.

He’s not Dictator, though. Not King, nor Chief. Mother, because among this band of outlaws who assemble for their quick trysts, he knows gentle persuasion works best. An appeal to a man’s better nature is a more effective motivator than barking directions. Men don’t mistake Mother’s gentle entreaties as anything less than dominance, though; what we do in these shadows is against every state statute. As criminals, we all fear authority more than we should. So when Mother ousts someone disobeying or flouting our shared conventions, after park hours, they stay ejected. There’s no appeal.

I’d learned Mother’s rules from the start, a couple of years prior, after the notion of park cruising had entered my mind when my mom had read aloud to my father an item from the paper about men being arrested here for public indecency. Instead of receiving the information as a caution, I’d immediately biked over to the park I’d previously only thought of as the gathering place for the annual neighborhood cookout, and scoured every restroom for graffiti that might indicate where the action took place.

It had been less than 48 hours later that I’d made my first appearance at the park’s northernmost shelter, by the light of a half moon. Mother had observed me for several minutes to ascertain that I knew what I was getting myself into before beckoning me to take a seat at his feet. I’d made the mistake of grabbing for him, in a clumsy way, thinking he wanted sex.

Mother has never so much as unzipped his Levis, though, not in all the time I’ve known him. He watches only, observing the trespassing pack around him. He is the guardian who keeps an eye to the east, where the sole road connects this section of the park to the neighborhood beyond, so that he can warn us of a patrol car’s approach. He may stroll around his domain to witness the couplings taking place, but I never see him partake.

That night, he had swatted away my hand and blown twin columns of smoke from both nostrils. “Child,” he began. Normally it was a particularity of address that annoyed me, but in his good-natured rumble it failed to make me bristle. “I’ve seen enough to convince me you know what you’re getting yourself into. But if you intend to come back, there are some things you should keep in mind.”

Apparently the very way I’d entered the park had attracted his displeasure. “We never, ever use the road,” he told me, pointing at the paved stretch running by Youngs Pond and up into these woods, that only minutes before I’d biked along. “Now, there’s no chain across it, like at the park’s main entrance, but that road is still closed after dark. Most people might think nothing of it, but someone with sharp eyes and a suspicious mind,” he said, waving his cigarette at the long row of dimly-lit houses facing Bryan Park Drive, “might see a boy riding his bike into the park. They watch, but they never see him ride out again. And they begin to think. And wonder. They start to worry. They might even worry enough to call out the pigs. That’s what we’re trying to avoid here. Bad things happen when the police come down on us. Capiche?”

I don’t know the last word, but I can glean meaning from context. I nod, and apologize.

“Now, the other night we had the boys in blue up here. Some folks ended up behind bars. All the regulars, the smart ones who know the rules, got away clean—because we help each other. Not a damn thing I can do about dumbasses who’ve got to get in another thirty seconds of fun—thirty seconds they could’ve used getting to safety. You planning on being a smart boy or a fuckin’ dumbass?” When I reply that I prefer the former, he nods with approval. “That’s what we like to hear.”

As men drift by, some shirtless, some with their pants around their knees, Mother lays out his other rules. He doesn’t abide any hustling. Over the following months and years of adolescence in which Bryan Park is a vital part of my life, Mother doesn’t bat an eye at the sex work I do everywhere else. That’s my own business. Within the park bounds, though, I don’t dare. In Mother’s philosophy, transactional sex invites a predatory element into this sacred space. If a man chooses to slip me a few dollars after excellent service, it can be considered a gratuity. Were I ask for it, or worse, demand a payout, I’d be violating one of Mother’s highest precepts.

Mother forbids certain items. The noise from transistor radios might attract attention from the local residents. Same with flashlights, even on the darkest nights. Glass bottles are a distinct danger to our community, though many of the rougher men try to sneak in booze anyway. A beer bottle could be too easily left on a table and knocked off in the dark, only to shatter on the floor and cause an accident. If someone sliced an artery in the woods, no one would have any way of phoning an ambulance or getting someone to a hospital. And the last thing any congregation of homosexuals needs is for their enemies to discover a dead body in one of their haunts.

Cigarettes are fine, and Mother turns a blind eye to the occasional joint, but any harder substances compound our crimes. There’s no fighting allowed. If two men become riled—jealous over a swain favoring one over the other, Mother or one of the regulars steps in to defuse tensions before they rise too high.

Up here, in the dark, in the woods, we are the lawless. We offend one penal code with our intrusion; another by congregating, a third with every proposition, and add to the increasing tally with every casual act of sodomy. Outlaws we may be, but as Mother reminds us, we can still be gentlemen. We cultivate rules for a reason: when we cannot rely upon enforcers of law to protect us, we must defend each other. We may not know each other’s professions or names—not our real names, anyway—nor might we even recognize each other in full light of day. But in the most essential and ephemeral of senses, when together, we form a community.

We call the man Mother, because in this space, no matter our ages or incomes or the color of our skins, sharing a mother makes the rest of us brothers. For a short time.

In my earliest weeks at the park, in my unofficial status as the newest and most tender of meat, I often find myself at the center of a scuffle. Two strangers, each desiring my exclusive company, might attempt a tug-of-war with my arms, or react with raised hackles when I prefer one over the other. I quickly become adept at silently defusing these potential scuffles, either by uniting the men in their attentions and servicing them both, or by placating one with whispered promises to return after I venture into a corner with another. Mother notices, and rewards me with nod or a subtle thumbs-up. 

Weeks into my tenure, once I’ve proven myself, during one of my unoccupied moments he again pats the picnic table and beckons me to sit. Once I’m in position, he places an avuncular arm around me and murmurs in my ear, “How about you stop by my place this Saturday for tea? I’ll read your cards.”

With genuine enthusiasm, I agree. It’s a sign that I’ve been accepted into the tribe.

This is what I half-expect, upon being invited to afternoon tea at Mother’s home: lace doilies, scones, and pale liquid, steaming hot, poured into Mother’s best china. Mother’s home, though, set in a blue-collar corner of Lakeside not far from the park, isn’t exactly the picture-perfect setting for a high tea. From a distance, it looks like a kid’s card house constructed from flat slabs of pitted aluminum siding, precariously perched atop a foundation of cinder blocks, overgrown with honeysuckle.

So what I actually encounter is amber brown beverage both brewed in, and served from, a glass jug that’s been sitting in the back porch sun all morning with a number of Lipton’s tea bags. While my scrawny backside attempts to find a spot on his sofa between the broken springs, I watch as he pours packet after packet of sugar, no doubt collected from fast food joints, into the concoction and stirs in a splash of lemon juice from a bottle. “Let it cool a little,” he advises, after pouring it over ice.

I’m not and never have been a fan of sweet tea served in the Southern style, but it’s a blistering day and tiny sips help alleviate the July heat. While Mother fusses with the jug and places a glass coaster upon the trunk acting as a coffee table, I look around the bare bones of his room. The sofa seems like a curbside find. The television, a black and white model jury rigged with a white wire hanger for an antenna, alternates between rolling snow and a weekend fishing program. Nothing about the furnishings is outright impoverished. Despite the hovering cloud of tobacco smoke, nothing is filthy. But Mother’s home definitely strikes me as the sort of bare-bones set-up of someone struggling to make ends meet—like birds that weave detritus into their nests, it’s a domicile crafted out of makeshift odds and ends.

While I watch him fuss with a packet of Nabisco Cameo cookies, I wonder why I’m even here. Tea, sure. I’d half-expected that to be an excuse for seduction. I wouldn’t mind being bedded today. Mother’s not an unattractive man. So far, I’ve not picked up on any sexual intent in his chit-chat.

“Now,” he finally says, plopping down on the sofa near me. He regards me with speculation over the rim of his glass. “Tell me about you.”

All I can do is stammer and stare. I hate talking about myself, particularly to strangers and in such an open-ended way. I add three years to both my age and my school grade in my inarticulate accounting, to which Mother nods and conceals his amusement with an index finger firmly tamping down his mustache. My baby face gives me away and, if anything, makes me look even younger than I happen to be. I’m so paranoid of exposure that every word from my mouth is a lie. I lie about the neighborhood where I live, the grade I’m in, the school I attend.

It’s not until he changes the subject to my secret life that I hew more closely to truth. When he inquires where I’ve cruised, I enumerate a lengthy list of toilets around town that I’ve discovered on my own—the public library downtown with its peepholes, the glory holes on the university campus where my parents teach. I brag about having walked The Block after dark and loitering in the Hotel Jefferson men’s rooms on weekends. I talk about how I’d begun my sexual career as a lookout in the cruisiest restrooms, observing the action while obstructing potentially hostile intruders, and I take pains to make the experience sound more distant in the past than it actually is.

I’m so voluble on the subject that it’s a few minutes before I notice I’m the only one speaking. Yet I continue, equally as anxious to show off my sexual credentials as I am to hide anything I consider truly personal. Though aware how close I come to braggadocio, I can’t stop. I’m a baby-faced adolescent painting himself as a jaded old roué, desperate for an approval I never knew I so badly needed. I’m a fluffy golden retriever overeager to run with the grizzled wolf pack. Yet I keep talking, though I know I should shut up.

Mother sits at the opposite end of the sofa, wiping condensation from his glass and taking the occasional sip, until at last I run out of words. My jaw hangs low for a moment, then snaps shut. “Well, all right, then,” he comments, amused. “How’s that tea?”

I flush red and try to wash away my embarrassment with a swig of Mother’s evil brew. I’ve just learned a lesson in not overselling myself. Desperate to change subject, I look around the room for any inspiration for a new topic. My eyes alight on a photograph on a shelf over the TV—perhaps the only truly personal touch in the room. It’s a black and white print on glossy stock, edges scalloped, that leans against an empty frame, as if Mother never quite got around to encasing it behind glass. I can barely make out two small figures, children maybe, on a beach. “Who’s that?” I ask, pointing.

Mother’s face falls slack. He stares at the shelf, then back at me, seeming to see neither. Then he stands. “Let’s look at your cards,” he says.

I’m not the only one who wants to keep his personal life private, it seems.

Tarot cards aren’t new to me. It’s the nineteen-seventies. Everyone has an indulgence that’s a little hippie-woo-woo. My mom is heavily into yoga, which in this period isn’t valued so much as a form of exercise or wellness as it is as a key to spiritual transcendence; she’s also convinced she has the power of extra-sensory perception, which she leverages, with little success, to spy upon her partners’ cards in rubbers of bridge. Her best friend, Kay, is heavily into numerology and attends EST workshops. Kay’s kids, whom I have babysat on occasion, devour books about aliens. All my school friends, when they’re not playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, are obsessed with the goings-on in the Bermuda Triangle. I have a stylized used Rider-Waite tarot deck myself, gifted me as an afterthought by one of my dad’s students. She’d used to babysit us when I was younger, but she’d abandoned the cards for palmistry, shortly before I outgrew the need for her.

Never before, though, have I known anyone to handle the tarot with such authority. As we sit at the rickety dining table in mismatched chairs, I watch as Mother withdraws his deck from within the recesses of a carved teak box. He juggles the cards together a few times before handing them to me. “Shuffle,” he instructs.

I obey, gratified in a minor way by the eyebrow he quirks when I riffle the deck in what approaches a professional manner, a skill honed by countless after-school rounds of gin rummy with my mother. Then, at his instruction, I cut the deck into rough thirds, restock them, and begin the process again until he’s satisfied. Once I’m done, he takes back the deck and places the top three cards into a triangle with a fourth at the center. “Past, present, future,” he explains, tapping the cards around the perimeter. He turns them face up.

And he begins to read. I no longer remember these three cards once I’ve left the monastic quiet of his apartment. What I recall, however, is the expert way in which he conjures stories and meaning from the colorful medieval images. Details that my eye would miss, he draws attention to and explicates. My dad’s student, the babysitter, always had to pore over a tiny booklet for interpretations of any given card, and even those brief explanations seemed flat and uninteresting, divorced from the cards themselves. Mother’s means of interpretation is personal. He spins a story from the characters on the cards, making the world they inhabit feel occupied and alive.

“This last card is you,” he says, pointing at the triangle’s center before flipping it over. “Two of pentacles. Huh.” He’s resting both forearms on the table, leaning forward to look me in the eye. “I suspect this is a card that’ll be following you around all your life. See how this li’l bastard's got the two coins in his hand? He’s juggling.” His long forefinger darts out to trace the path of a band connecting the globes. “And this? It’s the infinity sign. He’ll be at it a long time. But see how he dances? This ain’t a burden for him. Change comes—change always comes, you know. It’s always on the horizon. Storms brew—see how those distant ships are in danger? Storms rock the ocean, the sun rises and sets, seasons change. Shit happens, some good, some bad. But look at you. You’ve got everything under control. You keep on juggling. You won’t be dropping those balls anytime soon. That’s just how you do. You see it, right?”

The previous three cards didn't seem relevant, but somehow this image, the two of pentacles, hits home. I’ve always been the kid who keeps dancing, balls aloft and in motion, no matter what happens. I balance my academic responsibilities and my extracurriculars with the secret life that’s often my only joy. I keep in equilibrium my public and private worlds, good boy and bad boy, sinner and saint. On the card, those coins look large and heavy. The juggler keeps on juggling, though, even against a background of storm.

“That mean anything to you?”

I look up from the cards and meet Mother’s eyes, then nod. Though I’m not a true believer in divination, I recognize the truth of that one card. I suspect Mother is a juggler, too.

And though Mother will never know it, that one card will follow me around, the rest of my life.

Though I continue to haunt Bryan Park at night for the next three years, I never learn much more about Mother than a few rumors—how he’d had an influential job at the Federal Reserve until he’d been busted in a park vice raid, years before. How his name and photo had been printed in the Times Dispatch, publicly branded as a sexual deviant. How he’d lost his wife and two children in the aftermath and circled bottom until finding work as a florist’s assistant.

I never know if any of it is true. By the time I graduate from college and return home in 1985, even sleepy Richmond cowers under the long shadow cast by the AIDS crisis. Like so many of the tribe that once danced beneath the stars, Mother is gone. Packs of outlaws no longer congregate in the park, after dark. Those that do, leave in their wake fields of litter—emptied glass bottles of cheap booze, the charred remains of joints, the kind of harder drug paraphernalia that would have been forbidden only a handful of years before. The neighbors become vigilant; the police patrol more often. 

Camelot has fallen. Without Mother and his disciples, what was an idyllic Bedford Falls becomes a Pottersville of sleaze and vagrancy.

Those storms on the horizon, those roiling waters and the ships that flounder upon them, have arrived. As predicted, change has flooded in. So many of my companions have already been swept away in the waters, and those who remain cling onto the wreckage for dear life.

Amidst it all, I dance. I keep the balls in motion. I juggle on, and on.

Mentors arise from the most unexpected places. I’ve discovered mine on library bookshelves, in classrooms, in casual conversations in crowded bars. As a kid, I encountered one as a stranger on the other side of a men’s room glory hole, who offered tips on the culture and etiquette of cruising via a series of penned notes on squares of toilet tissue. Another later taught me the confidence of placing value in what I’d been giving away for free.

And then there was the mentor I met on the cusp between eras, a guardian who nightly sat atop a park picnic table with an eye to the horizon, watching for danger. A kind, quiet man who reminded his band of outlaws that they must remain civilized and treat each other with compassion. Not tyrant, not bully, not drill master. That lost generation called that man Mother.

No Guilt

The man’s fingers slip beneath the elastic of my waistband. Hairy knuckles graze my skin. I gasp at the touch. “Don’t freak out.” His voice is low. Reassuring. Gentle, even. “I’m gonna pull down these sweats, real slow. I just want to look at that big daddy hog you’re hiding under there. Okay?”

I hesitate, then nod my head. “Yeah,” I stammer out. “Sure. Whatever.”

Our eyes meet. Lock. Bore into each other. “I’m gonna take real good care of you, buddy. You’ll see.”

I take a deep, deep breath and release it with a convincing shudder. “Do it,” I order.

My new friend is a compact bulldog of a man. Big, broad forehead under a thatch of wavy dark hair. Beneath a thin layer of beard, a brutish jaw. Stubby, thick hands that help me raise my hips so he can slowly, gingerly lower my joggers to a tangle around my ankles. He’s got the thick build of a former jock. I wouldn’t exactly say he’s the body builder that he’s advertised himself as, but in the muscle tee with the sleeves ripped from the seams, he’s able to show off some impressive work on his shoulders and arms. “You ready?” he asks, now that I’m down to my trunks. I can feel his breath on my belly.

I take a long time to respond. “This is real new to me, bro,” is what I finally say.

“I know. I know.” The man sounds sincere in his concern, even as his fingers outline the distinct bulge my dick is making beneath a layer of black cotton. “I am gonna take real good care of this dick, though. You’re gonna go home to wifey afterwards and wonder why it took you so long to let a dude like me slobber over that big thing.”

There’s plenty of room in the back seat of his BMW X7 with the New York plates. Its rear windows have a dark tint; no one can see in, even with my back against the door and my head on the glass. I look around, though, feigning discomfort. “You sure this place is safe?”

“It’s real quiet. Nobody’s gonna come by.” I wonder how many times he’s done this before. Constricted though my ankles might be, his big barrel chest spreads my knees spread wide. His sprawl looks uncomfortable: he’s got his right knee on the back floor and his left leg hooked over the seat. “You don’t even gotta touch me. C’mon.” Now he’s whispering. Urgent. He rubs his cheek on my erection, hidden beneath the fabric. “Let a man make you feel good, for the first time.”

My heart’s thudding in its cage; my breath is already labored. The sexual tension is thick between us. For a moment, I even forget I’m not what I’m pretending to be. I take one last look around, seeing nothing outside but empty parking lot and a wall of spruce. “Yeah,” I say. “Okay. Do it.”

He pauses for a moment, making certain I won’t change my mind. “It’s only pleasure. There’s no guilt in accepting pleasure. Remember that.” Both his hands tug down my shorts so that my erection flies free and flops against my own skin with a slap. One of his meaty paws wraps around it—seizes it, makes it his prize. When he squeezes, the portion of dick above his knuckles reddens to a deep scarlet. Once again, he stares into my eyes. “Going in, buddy,” he warns me.

I let out a loud and honest groan as his mouth engulfs me.

It’s on Sniffies that he messaged me, earlier that week. Hey buddy, says his initial message. Gonna take a wild guess based on your pic and profile…up until now you’ve been 100% straight, married with kids. Never had a muscular cocksucker like me to take care of you. Think you’re ready to change that?

On the Sniffies map I can see he’s only a couple of miles away, somewhere along the interstate. He’s got a blank, anonymous profile. While I usually don’t respond to those, my curiosity is piqued. What in the world about my profile, posted on a gay cruising site, would make him think I’m one hundred percent straight? The only photo I’ve attached is of my erect dick, shot from above, hanging heavily between my thighs. I’ve stated my age and basic stats, but that’s about it.

He’s messaging again. You probably stroke thinking about getting your first head from a masculine man, don’t you.

I could correct him, certainly. Should I?

I am willing to bet good money that you’re toying with trying a guy’s mouth for the first time in your life. Am I right? If I am, I volunteer. I guarantee you won’t find a better mouth for your first experience.

So far, I’ve not tapped out a fucking word. I haven’t had to. This stranger is presenting me with his hopes, his yearnings, his deepest fantasies, elaborately wrapped and fastened with an especially lurid bow. My choices are to discard his overtures because I dislike blank profiles, or to take his gift for what it is.

I choose the latter. Wow, I reply. I can’t believe how close to the mark you came. Do I know you?

No. But I know your type. I’ve helped a lot of straight bros take that first step. Will you let me help you?

It’s at this point that I have to take a break and start preparing dinner. I boil some shells and stuff them with spinach and cheese. It’s a while before they’re sauced and baking in the oven, but eventually I return to the Sniffies page to discover he’s sent me a couple of photos. One of his face, with that bearded jaw, blunt as a cudgel, and those oversized, anxious eyes. Another of his body, a gym selfie, vascular arm curled and flexed in a mirror, amidst a field of weight benches and exercise machines. He’s the kind of ugly that somehow veers into hot, and my dick responds by swelling at the sight. Come on, he’s written. I know it’s scary but I promise it will be oh. So. Good.

I’ve played the straight guy before, with The Landscaper. I can do it again. Let’s talk, I write back.

“Does that feel good?” he asks. His fist slides up and down over my spit-slick shaft with a grip so firm it’s maddening, as he nurses my nuts with his tongue and his hot breath. “Looks like you’re enjoying it.”

My reply emerges as a whimper. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, don’t worry, I’m gonna take care of you, bro.” Once again his mouth opens to encompass my girth. My head bangs against the glass as he goes all the way down. When he comes up for air once more, he clears his throat and rasps, “Damn, you are huge. Want me to keep going?” When I struggle for words, he stares up at me again. “You can say you like it.”

“I love it,” is what falls from my lips. Sincere. Genuine. “You’ve got a fucking incredible mouth.”

He likes the praise. I can tell by the way he deep-throats my length. His throat opens up to accommodate the topmost inches both without gagging and without abusing the head. His saliva drips down the shaft to my nuts, where the the droplets trickle and chill my skin. “Better than the wife?” he asks, before plunging down again. I cry out. All the blood in my body seems to have flown into my engorged dick, which looks so fat, so bloated, so wet and red, whenever it emerges on his upstroke. “Better than the wife?” he repeats, this time refusing to continue until I answer.

I’m panting now. “So much better. No fucking comparison.”

“I told you, bud.” Now he’s combining the fist and the torrid interior of his throat. I lock my fingers around the back of his head; his thick dark hair rubs against my palms like a Brillo pad. “Yeah. You really must like it.”

“Don’t stop,” I beg.

But he does. “You’re gonna come down my throat, bud. You’re gonna blow your first load with a dude.”

My chest contracts and expands. “I want it.”

“Yeah?” When I nod, he finally agrees to end the torture of denying me his mouth. “Get ready, buddy.”

It’s a good thing I’m hard as concrete; my dick would otherwise have been mauled by his rough treatment. His fist churns around my shaft, his mouth clamps down, cushioned by his lips. I feel his beard rasp with every stroke. The fingers of his other hand stroke my balls. One of them creeps down my taint and seeks my hole, where it burrows into the warm crack.

It’s the last violation, welcome though it is, that sets me over the edge. “I’m coming,” I warn the stranger. From my depths erupts a gargled, strangled sound that seems overloud in the car’s interior. The noise inspires him to take the entire length of me into his throat. There I throb and shoot what feels like jet after jet of my seed. His finger remains in my hole; his wet hand encircles my nuts, first clamping down upon them, then as my climax subsides, massaging from them the last drops of fluid.

“Shit,” I announce to the roof, my eyes closed. “Shit.”

I can hear the smugness in his voice. “Told you. You good, buddy?”

There’s a distinct contrast to the tone of his voice—deliberately cheerful, like we’re stepping off the tennis court after a rough game—and the gentle, loving what he’s treating my deflating dick. From the console between the front seats, he’s drawn a wet wipe that he’s using to clean me off, dabbing at me with soft strokes. “Yeah,” I breathe. “Real good.”

“You took a big step.” His voice is still matter-of-fact. “Proud of you, dude.”

“Thanks,” I say. He helps me pull up my shorts and my sweats. It’s not until I’m fastened up once more that I gesture to his grown and say, “What about you?”

“Nah.” I can see the stubby erection in his gym shorts, but he doesn’t touch it. “I get my biggest pleasure from servicing straight men like you. I’m real good. Hey,” he adds, as if he’s just thought of it. “We’re gonna do this again. Right? Remember what I told you?”

He’s said a lot of things. I search about in my memory to pick out what he might mean.

“There’s no guilt…”

“There’s no guilt in accepting pleasure,” I echo, as I take a look through the glass around the parking lot, this time for real. No one’s around, so I open up the back door and step out.

“That’s right. No regrets.”

I grin, agreeing with him. “No regrets.”

“Good. We’re doing this again soon,” he says, from inside. I nod and wave, and shut the door behind me.

The insides of my trunks are as humid as a Virginia summer thunderstorm. I feel as if I’ve been assaulted and robbed of my bodily fluids. My legs are a little wobbly as I totter to my car, a good twenty feet away.

But I mean, hell. Why wouldn’t they be? I’ve just lost my man-on-man virginity, after all.

The Mechanic, Again

Yesterday was five months to the day that I last visited the local woods in my town. It’s a useless place to cruise during the long Michigan winter. Not only do I object to the extremes of cold that we get here in the upper midwest, but sex hunting in that particular location is pretty useless during the barren months.

The trees of those woods grow long and narrow and straight, with no evergreens to break the monotony of those uniform trunks rising to the sky. In the winter months, when the trees have shed their leaves, it’s possible to see from one end of the park to the other through those tall and narrow trunks. Anyone attempting to drop their pants there would risk not only frostbite, but being seen. This time of year, though, when the tips of the branches are beginning to get fuzzy with the palest shades of green, there’s less risk. Those trunks become a wall, a curtain of green beyond which a constant stage of connections and separations takes place.

I’d little intention of stopping at the woods, Tuesday. I was on my way to the supermarket on its borders, though, and to take the little detour that would drive me along its perimeter was a trivial thing. I stopped only when I saw how many cars were parked along the hidden street. Aside from the occasional lone dog-walker, the only people who really visit that park are those who are hunting for something more than a half-hour’s commune with nature.

Every spring the city sends some hardy souls into the woods to mark its trails. The volunteers find some of the long trees that have fallen over the roughest of our seasons, and drag them into place to delineate the highest and safest ground. After this week’s rain, only these paths were really solid earth—the rest had turned into a soggy marsh. After I’d locked my car doors and stepped under the canopy of budding green, I had sometimes to balance along the fallen trunks so that I didn’t squelch through the two-inch puddles. As I disappeared into the trees, I heard the car door slam from one of the vehicles parked on the street.

A man was exiting the park as I entered. Our eyes connected for a moment; his studiously swung away and kept straight ahead. I could see another man further down the path, ambling along behind. I gathered by their body language, which was as casual as it was purposeful as they strolled back to their cars with an appearance of no hurry, that they’d just sexed each other in the woods. The guy I passed was far more interesting to me than the one bringing up the rear. The latter was older, bad-complexioned, and large, and carried so much of his considerable weight in his upper chest that he gave an appearance of having so high a center of gravity that a single push would topple him over.

I kept walking.

I was aware that someone was following me into the depths of the woods. I paused and pretended to be looking at a message on my phone so I could study him. He was a shorter fellow in dark work clothes and boots; his hands were stuffed deep into his pockets as he walked past, his head down. I couldn’t see much of his face, but I could plainly tell he had long sideburns with a severe finish at the bottom. When he passed, I realized he was wearing a jacket with the name of an auto shop nearby.

And I thought to myself, Fuck, it can’t be the same guy. The last time I’d visited the park, five months to the day, I’d played with this hot little fucker in the deepest part of the woods. It was him, though. I recognized the name of the shop where he worked.

I followed behind him as he strolled down the path at the wood’s deepest part. The ground beneath was squelchy, but covered with leaves branches enough to keep my feet from sinking in. He stopped on the path, hands in his pockets just waiting.

“How’s it going?” I asked, as I slowly approached him.

“Good,” he said, looking me over. There was a spark of recognition in his eye when I approached. He looked me over, from head to foot. I was wearing a hoodie atop my dress shirt, and a pair of freshly-washed jeans. The last time I’d seen this guy, he’d been in a pair of work overalls. Today he wore a pair of navy blue utility pants and a shirt emblazoned on the front with his name and the auto shop’s identity, beneath his work windbreaker. “It’s muddy out here.”

“Yeah,” I said, “Sure is.” I looked down at his crotch. “Your fly’s open,” I said in a soft voice. It pursed open like a pair of lips, and was lined by his red shorts.

“Oh yeah,” he replied, as if he hadn’t noticed. “Let me fix that.”

My hand reached for it simultaneously with his. “Let me help.”

His palm cupped my hardening dick through my jeans as I pulled out his cock. I remembered it as being thin and small, but entirely proportional for a tiny man like himself. He hissed and sighed as I manipulated it between my warm fingers.

The mechanic had a narrow face between those sideburns. He stared up at me, his face only inches from mine. His eyes bored into my own as he studied me. The last time I’d encountered him, I’d wanted to make out, though he hadn’t. Today it seemed as if he wanted the same thing. I turned my face slightly and lowered it to his. Our lips met and locked, and exerted a slight suction between them. Our tongues touched. A moment later, and we were kissing passionately. I fumbled to release my dick from my jeans and trunks. While we continued kissing crazily, his hands grabbed my dick, and then my nuts. I felt his finger digging into the already-wet tip, then stroking the sides of my balls.

“Gotta suck that,” he said at last. He squatted down, knees pointed to either side, as he engulfed my dick in his mouth. He could only get about half of it in easily. He wanted more, though, and was willing to open his throat to get it. I kept my hands on his shoulders and the back of his head—partly to keep him steady, partly because I liked the feel of his hair between my fingers. My head moved back and forth in the directions of the path, trying to spy any moving figures that might be approaching. There were none.

We were taking a chance, sexing each other on the path like that. Usually in the woods I was more accustomed to disappearing off the paths and into the trees, but the marshy earth prevented any of that. I let the mechanic suck like a crazed man, while I moaned and fucked his mouth. “I don’t suppose you have a place to go,” I wondered at one point, hoping for something more private.

“No,” he said, with what sounded like regret.

Damn. “I want to suck you, too,” I told him.

“Fuck yes,” he said, standing up immediately.

When I put my knee onto the path, I knew right away it was a mistake. I could feel the cold and damp earth muddying the denim immediately. In for a penny, in for a pound, though. I took the mechanic’s dick in my mouth and sucked it hungrily, while I let the mud do its worst. The last time I’d encountered the guy, he’d shot even before I got my mouth on him. This time, however, he was in no hurry to shoot. “I’ll keep watch,” he said, his hands in my hair. “Just suck me.”

For long moments I bobbed up and down on his dick, bringing him closer and closer. “You want my load, buddy?” he asked.

“Fuck yes,” I breathed.

“Stand up,” he ordered.

When I obeyed, he instantly put his hand on the back of my neck and pulled me down to him. Our lips met again. We made out with enthusiasm as both of us masturbated ourselves. He gasped, then growled. His hand curved into a fist that squeezed his dick until the head was cherry-red. Then his cream shot out, arcing into the air and splattering onto the earth below.

“Now give me yours,” he commanded, as he squatted down again.

His tongue flicked out to lap at the tip of my cock, where the pre-cum was flowing freely. He nibbled at my nuts, licked my taint, and finally, as I grew closer and closer, turned his tongue into a curved bowl that he inserted directly below my swollen head. It was a receptacle for the load that came pouring out, seconds later. Much of it landed on the ground, and some on his face, but enough of it pooled onto his tongue that when he pulled it back into his mouth to ingest the precious substance, it made him a happy man.

He zipped up, stood, and nodded at me. “Good to see you. Look for me.”

“All right,” was all I said, as I zipped myself. My knee, I noticed with some dismay, was thoroughly muddied, and my hand was covered with my own cum. I let him walk ahead, down the path, as I remained behind to find some tree trunk on which to wipe my seed.

He was pulling away as I finally exited the park. Once again he lifted his fingers in a salute as he passed. And just like five months ago, to the day, he was gone, leaving me with the hope I’d run across him again.

That Sprinkler Guy

In a couple of spectacularly unsuccessful entries a few weeks back I attempted to track the genesis of my acquaintance with Topher, who became my partner in crime at some point later in my adolescence. Talking about Topher was going to be my gateway to addressing my complex and involved relationship with a man named Earl, whose attentions and mentoring shaped pretty much my entire sexual career.

I’d still like to talk about Earl. It’ll take several entries to do it. However, because whenever I write entries about the sex I had thirty or more years ago I have a vocal minority of readers who feel obliged to express their displeasure about the concept of a teen having sex with adult men, I’d like to stress an important point. I’m writing about things that happened a very long time ago. I can’t change my past. Admittedly, I could pretend it didn’t happen, or not write about it and leave it shrouded in silence, to avoid offending tender sensibilities.

I choose not to do that, however. I think some experiences are worth recording and exploring in an honest manner. If you’re going to be one of those people who don’t appreciate that, I advise you to skip these particular entries.

To get to Earl, I need to first to talk about That Sprinkler Guy, who introduced us.

It would have been in 1979 that I met That Sprinkler Guy. It was not very long after the events of my A Very Bad Day entry, when I’d been caught screwing around in the park restroom by the police and taken home in shame to my father. It was still summer, but at least a month after that incident. I remember being so frightened by it all that I’d sworn off whoring around altogether—a resolution that I kept for perhaps all of two weeks. After that, my summer hornies reasserted themselves, and I accommodated them by fooling around first only in my usual restroom haunts in the Richmond public library and on the campus where my parents both taught. The next week I added the park near the carillon into my cruising. Then a couple of weeks after that, I was back to Bryan Park, the scene of my shame, and the closest cruising spot to home.

I was reluctant ever to let myself get cornered again in the restrooms there, though. I might have used them to meet guys, but rarely would I do much in there, where I couldn’t see who might be approaching. I’d ask guys to take me into the woods. Or if it was evening, we’d play in the picnic shelters that hosted all manner of couplings and group sex.

It was a lazy and slow summer morning when I met That Sprinkler Guy. I remember it being one of those gorgeous, sun-drenched Virginia summer days on which the rolling park baked in the glare and haze. It was one of those mornings when the cicadas had already started their unending huzz before breakfast was over, giving warning that by the late afternoon you’d probably hear nothing in most of the quiet Richmond neighborhoods save for the hum of air conditioning condensers and the soft rhythm of sprinklers showering thirsty lawns. I loved the heat, and the sun, though usually it discouraged all but the most hard-core sex seekers from hitting the parks.

I’d been sitting beneath a tree near the road that led to the shelters and restrooms for some time, bike propped against the trunk, as I read a paperback I’d stuck in my pocket. Then I saw a white pick-up truck turn from the neighborhood street flanking the park onto its drive, kicking up clouds of dust with its big wheels as it turned. As the trunk neared, it slowed down. That Sprinkler Guy, commercial lettering announced on its side. Commercial/Residential Sprinkler Installation. A phone number graced the bottom of the ad. I saw the curly-headed driver lean over as he approached and passed to check me out.

I knew I was in business. I let the truck continue up the road, waiting a moment before I stuck my paperback into my pocket, stood, and kicked up the stand of my bike so that I could follow. He was waiting inside, standing at the solitary urinal, a cap somehow pulled atop that head of thick, bristling black curls. That Sprinkler Guy was a stocky bulldog of a man, somewhere in his mid-thirties. The T-shirt he wore with his business’s logo bulged from his beefy arms and shoulders. With his thick lips and pug nose he wasn’t handsome, but he sure as hell was sexy. His dirty jeans hung low beneath a slight belly, unzipped to display a long, thick, slab of hard dick. He didn’t even bother to pretend he was peeing; when I pushed inside the door and looked him over from in front of the sink, he took a step back to display his meat. With a grin on his lips, he showed off how his angled foreskin slipped back and forth over the greasy knob.

I stepped up to feel its warm length in my hand. “Well damn,” he said, his mouth lop-sided and pleased. When I was close, he reached up and ran his fingers through my long blond hair. “You are a cute one, son!”

I was going to suggest we take our activity elsewhere, but he already had the same idea. He stuffed his enormous dick down his pants leg, pulled up the frayed waistband of his white briefs, fastened his pants, and caught my neck in the crook of his arm. Out of the restroom we strolled, instant buddies. My bike was already locked up, so I accepted an invitation to hop in the guy’s truck and take a little ride with him.

In those days Bryan Park was divided roughly into two sections. The back half, accessible through a separate road in the nearby neighborhood, was where cruisers lurked. Rednecks in trucks hung with Confederate flags in their back windows would take the main arched entry into the larger, front half of the park. The two groups rarely mixed. (Though I loved when they did.) That Sprinkler Guy drove from the park’s cruisy side to redneck territory, where even in the morning there were good ol’ boys and their girlfriends listening to Creedence on their radios and drinking from cans of beer wrapped in brown paper. We drove past them to an area deep within the park, closer to where we’d met in the restroom, but inaccessible through the back road. I let him walk me from the truck into the woods, which grew thick and dense upon the rolling hills. After a few minutes on a barely-distinguishable trail, we ended up in a clearing where the sun shone brightly. The park ran alongside I-95, so there was a constant whoosh of traffic as it swept by, but that faint noise was all we could hear, so isolated we were.

“Now’s the part where you strip,” he said, and crossed his arms.

I didn’t know the guy and was aware I was throwing caution to the winds, but I didn’t care. I wanted that dick. I crossed my arms and skimmed off my T-shirt, and dropped my OP shorts to the ground and stepped out of them.

“Kneel,” he said.

I obeyed, planting my knees onto the ground. There I was, nude and exposed, barely able to keep my eyes open from the bright intensity of the sunshine.

“You ever taken a shower before?” he wanted to know, as the logs that were his fingers deftly undid his jeans.

Of course I’d taken a shower before. I took a shower every day. Sometimes two, if I came home from the parks especially cum-covered and stinky. “Sure,” I said.

“Nice. Someone trained you right.” His dick was exposed now. Even soft it was a monster that spilled from the split in his jeans at an impressive angle. Once again he pulled back the foreskin to expose that shiny, thick head. “You ready for it, then?”

Barely had I a chance to nod before a fat stream of urine shot in my direction. I was naive enough not to know what he’d been talking about, when he’d asked if I’d taken a shower. The spray hit me squarely on my closed mouth; I barely had enough time to shut my eyes. I felt the warmth of it cascade down my chin and onto my chest, then drip down my skinny body until it tickled around the base of my dick and balls. He raised his meat so that the arc of liquid baptized the top of my head and trickled down my spine. I was so surprised that I didn’t move.

After a moment, I realized that I didn’t mind that I didn’t mind. Part of me recoiled at the notion he was pissing on me like I was some kind of urinal, true. But at the same time, it felt just like warm water, and the actual physical sensations were pretty pleasant. A twisted part of me deep inside kicked in and liked the degradation of it. This is what I deserved, it felt like; this was what I was made for. I bowed my head and submitted.

The stream of piss seemed endless. That Sprinkler Guy had a bladder like the city reservoir. When he was finally done and the last few drops of pee were dribbling from his dick onto the ground, I knelt in a puddle. Dirt was sticking to my knees and shins; my hair hung in wet strands around my head. Already the heat and the sun was drying the fluid, though, making me skin feel crusted and tight. “And now’s the part where you stand up and bend over, son,” said the man in a gruff voice.

I yelled when he entered me. He lubed, but only just. I would’ve been hard-pressed to take him under normal circumstances, large as he was. I couldn’t even contemplate it these days. The foreskin helped some—I always preferred getting fucked raw by uncut guys in my bottoming days. But it was a fuck I took with my bottom lip firmly between my clenched teeth, as I attempted not to cry and let him know how very close he was to making me cry uncle. Which was a pretty rare thing in those days.

Though honestly, I think he would’ve loved to hear me cry. That Sprinkler Guy was a pounder. When we met for the three years that followed it was always the same routine—the same place, the same procedure, followed by a very long and brutal assault on my hole that would end with him pushing me against the ground or into a tree trunk as he forced an enormous cum load into me.

Every single time I would stumble back down that path in the woods and to his truck, where he would give me a solicitous boost back into the passenger seat so he could drop me back to wherever I’d chained my bike. I’d wash up as best I could either in the park’s restroom or from one of the spigots in the picnic shelter, and let the breezes dry me on my ride home. My dick would always spring to attention when I’d see that battered pickup truck driving into the park, because I knew I was guaranteed to be put into my place.

The clearing, the sun, the piss, and the slamming. I loved them all.

The Mechanic

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Boy in the Woods

I see him first from a distance, against the sunny morning horizon—short and rounded among spear-like trunks shooting toward the sky. Back and forth his silhouette ambles. When I walk through the woods in his direction, my feet shuffling along the dirt trail and kicking up leaves and small branches still wet with dew, he grows more distinct. He has one hand shoved into a pocket. The other presses a cell phone to his ear.

He’s a young man. Twenty. Twenty-one. Something like that. Though the weather is crisp and still waiting to be warmed by the September sun, he wears baggy shorts that expose his hairless legs. He seems skinny, though it’s was tough to tell from the oversized plaid flannel shirt on his back. We’re the only two souls rambling through this out-of-the-way place where men come to meet each other. Still bowing his head as if he’s listening to someone of interest on the line’s other end, he looks me over quickly, covertly, just as I study him.

He’s not talking to anyone at all, I realize with certainty. At most he’s listening to a voice mail; there’s no response, no sign of engagement. He’s just stalling. Waiting.

Waiting for someone like me.

My brisk walk crawls to a slow. When I lean against a tree, the impact of my shoulder against its bark makes the slender sapling’s leaves shudder. My thumbs hook in the pockets of my jeans. The fingertips of my right hand drop low, across the crotch. Casually, slowly, they quest—searching for the mound of spongy flesh. When they find it, they rub across its length. Without hurry, yes, but there’s an urgency in the way they show off the length of the hardening inches beneath the denim.

As I suspect, he’s watching. The kid’s mesmerized. As he stares at my crotch, I take in his tousled blond hair, the green intensity of his hungry eyes, the sharpness of his beak-like face. He lowers the hand holding the phone, and shoves the device into his pocket. Then he looks me in the eyes for the first time, and nods.

I nod back.

He strolls over. Now his left hand is rubbing against a growing protrusion in his own pants. His right hand reaches out. His eyebrows rise, asking permission that I give with another nod, and then I feel his palm cupping me, his fingertips pressing against where the underside of my sac would be.

I jerk my head in a gesture that tells him to follow. Men meet in the central area of this heavily-wooded park, but they don’t usually play here. It’s too open, too exposed to anyone walking in. I lead him over a trail so faint it’s barely distinguishable, a mere spoor made barely visible by leaves lightly trodden by men such as ourselves. Over fallen trees and little rivulets it leads toward the deepest and most inaccessible parts of the woods. There’s a clearing there, large enough for five or six men, screened by evergreens and shadows.

I nod again when we’ve stopped. He unbuttons my jeans, and pulls down the waistband of my Gap trunks. My dick springs out. Even among the sweet-smelling evergreens and the dank, fermenting leaves, I can smell its unmistakable, freshly-washed scent. To the boy it’s irresistible. He puts both knees on the forest ground and cups his left hand around my length as he inhales, and then covers my dick with his wet mouth.

I sigh as he sucks me, and let my pants drop to the ground. My hands shift restlessly over my stomach, my hips, the sides of my balls. I run my hands through his hair and find it stiff and full of product. He looks up at me with short, sideways glances, like a baby bird. I nod again, giving him the approval he wants. Then his eyes close as he savors the sensations of sucking.

While he slurps over my increasingly sloppy dick, he unbuttons and removes his shirt, revealing a sky-blue tank top beneath. He pauses for a moment—but only a moment, no more—to lift his dirty knees and yank down his shorts and kick them off, so that he’s dressed only in his hiking boots, nubbly gray socks, and that impossibly blue tank. His dick is an uncut six inches that drools from the tip. When he settles down again, it curves up into the empty air, rock hard, and juts into his own abdomen as he moves back and forth.

It’s quiet in the woods this morning. A road lies around the park’s perimeter, but no cars make their noisy presence known along its length. We can’t even hear the distant hum of the nearest busy avenue. Just the restless trees, the irregular sounds of the forest, and the slurps of his stretched-out lips over my dick.

I could be satisfied with that perfect moment there in the woods—the silence, the boy, and the pleasure he was giving my dick, but I want more. My hand reaches down and cups him beneath the chin until I’ve pried him off my cock. I lift him to his feet. Not caring whether he’s into it or not, I press my mouth against his. His eyes remain closed, but his mouth opens to receive mine. It’s wet, and tastes sweet like my precum, and of my dick, and of distant, almost forgotten sugared coffee. His eyes only open a moment later, when I remove my mouth from his and look him in the face. Even then, they’re heavy-lidded, and addled from cock.

He’s all sensation, the boy. He’s in the moment, asking for nothing, but ready to receive anything. So I say the only words that will pass between us: “Bend over.”

He obeys.

The animal cry that cuts through the woods a few moments later, as I enter him, seems to bring the forest to a halt. Even the trees pause in their slow gyrations. For a moment, all is silence.

Then, as the cry becomes memory, the sighs and the breath of the woods resume.

Three Encounters

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