Bachelor Night

July 2023

It’s late and I’m sitting on my front porch after dark.

The porch is my warm weather retreat. A massive blue spruce obscures the left side of the house; a dogwood and liberal plantings of shrubbery block the other. A dining table where I eat all my warm weather meals occupies one end; the rest is covered with comfortable chairs and loungers. Mornings, the cats bask in what sunlight streams in from the east. Summer afternoons, I’ll sprawl across one of the cushioned recliners, Kindle in hand and cool drink on a coaster, to read for long, lazy hours. Hot nights like this, long after the sun has set and the street’s traffic dwindled to only the occasional car, the nearest streetlight is over a block away, and the neighbors have long gone to sleep. Darkness covers me like a blanket. It’s one of those rare nights I’m a bachelor, and I’m looking to connect.

You look real close, says the guy on Grindr. Only 800 feet.

That’s close all right. He’s probably up the street, past the intersection a couple of blocks away and up past the wooded area to the north. There’s a city park near my home where men cruise sometimes. Late at night, they sit in the parking lot and blink their headlights at each other, hoping someone will join them in their cars. I’m sitting on my front porch, stroking. You should stop by.

The guy’s Grindr photos are pretty attractive, actually. He seems to be in his mid-thirties and sports the build of a former college athlete; his handsome face beams in a welcoming way. He looks like one of those married, closeted dads that litter my stretch of suburbia. What’d you have in mind? he asks. Would love to suck that big dick.

I live on a very dark street, I tap out, cock swelling beneath my terrycloth shorts. Drive on down, park in front of my house, then join me on the front porch. It’s a sexy scenario, right? No one can see on my front porch during the day, much less when darkness enshrouds the neighborhood. It’s better than the park. Fewer mosquitos on a screened porch, for one thing.

It’s real dark huh. I like the sound of that. Is your wife/bf/family home and are they gonna interrupt us?

I assure him, No one’s home. I just want to keep it to the porch. You coming by?

Yeah, he says. Especially with you so close. I need to suck. Address? I give it to him. Street number, street name, zip code even. All right then.

I figure I’ve got about five minutes before he’ll pull up. A man can get a lot done in five minutes. I rush inside to rinse and spit with mouthwash, then grab a cock ring and a towel. I turn off all the lights. I shut and lock the front door behind me as I step onto the porch again—no sense in not taking precautions—and I hide my keys in a lantern on the table. Then, heart pounding with excitement, I settle down on a chair and wait.

And I wait.

And wait.

Okay, so I’m being ghosted, I guess. I check back at the time stamps of our conversation. His all right then had arrived at 11:15. It’s now 11:42. Not quite a half hour, but almost. To walk from my house to the park only takes a brisk ten minutes. I mean, if he’d found someone to blink their headlights at him immediately after we’d exchanged messages and he’d decided to climb in to that guy’s Toyota instead, fine, whatever. At least he could’ve told me. At the same time, I’m unwilling simply to hang it up: the guy’s got my address. If I go indoors and to bed and he decides to come banging at the door, it’ll cause a ruckus I’d rather avoid. So I stare at my phone a little longer, feeling tired and vexed.

It’s 11:50 when he messages. I’m at the address you gave me but it’s an apartment building and it doesn’t have a porch and all the lights are on and I don’t know what apartment you’re in.

What the actual fuck, dude.

You are not at the address I gave you, I tell him. It never occurs to me to cut my losses, to be grateful that this stranger thinks I live in some strange apartment building, But I’m angry now, and I don’t think straight when my dander is up.

He replies back with an address that’s similar to mine, but isn’t mine. The street number is correct. The one-word street name is correct. Instead of an avenue, however, he’s on a lane. I live on the avenue. And the address on the lane to which he’s navigated, I see when I quickly map it on my phone, is fourteen miles away.

Now I’m fuming. Did you not notice, I ask him with what I think is commendable restraint, that instead of driving 800 feet from the park that you were driving 14 miles?

I just kind of plugged it in to the gps and drove. I feel kind of stupid now I guess.

Kind of stupid? Kind of? I mean, sure, it’s easy to type a partial address into your phone and get the wrong location. But how obtuse does one have to be not to a difference between 800 feet and 14 miles? How dense does one have to be not to question the disparity? Do I really want to get a blow job from anyone that witless? Hey, let’s just call it a night then. No hard feelings, I say, lying about the ‘no hard feelings’ part.

It’s cool. I’m already on the way. Be there in 20.

Fuck.

Once again I’m stuck sitting on a wicker divan, legs crossed at the knee, mouth in an angry moue, staring at my phone in the dark for long, silent minutes. At last, nearly a half-hour later, I see a car pull slowly in front of the house. The motor idles a moment more. My phone buzzes with a Grindr message. Should I park in front or what.

I’ve already told the fucker to park in front, over an hour ago. Just park where you are and get the fuck up here already, asshole, I type out. Before I send, however, I deleted everything but the first five words.

This is when I get the second shock of the night. The guy heaving himself up my front walk is not an athletic man in his thirties. No, he’s a guy in his fifties or sixties who’s approaching 300 pounds. Even in the dark I can tell he no longer looks a thing like whatever twenty-year-old photos he’s using.

I’m not one of those guys with hard and fast rules about the types of men I meet. I enjoy big guys. I enjoy older dudes. What I don’t like, though, are guys who misrepresent themselves so egregiously. This guy is wheezing like he’s about to have a coronary as he hauls himself up my front steps, “Whew!” he says loudly. “Sure is dark here!”

I shush him. It’s a dark street, yes. I’d like to keep it that way, without neighbors flipping on porch lamps at his braying. “You know,” I say, trying to sound reasonable. “It’s late…”

“Yeah, sorry about the mixup. Could happen to anyone, though.”

I don’t think that’s quite true, but I let it pass. “Maybe we should just…”

Now that he’s on the porch and the door’s shut behind him, he feels free to grab at my crotch. My dick’s only half-hard, but it stiffens under the pressure. “Here’s what I came for. Any chance we can turn on the lights?”

I feel nothing but contempt for the man. “If we turn on the lights,” I point out, “Everyone will be able to see us.”

“Oh. But you said you don’t have any neighbors.”

“I never said I don’t have neighbors.” It’s true that the lots on either side of mine are empty, but I gesture to the houses across the street. “It’s obvious I have neighbors.”

“All right, all right,” the man says in the placating tones of someone who recognizes a snarling dog when he sees it. “How about we go…” He nods towards the front door.

“No.” Absolutely not.

“Guess I’ll just have to do it here, then,” he says, as if that hadn’t been the deal from the start. He lowers my pants around my ankles and kneels.

I’m in a rotten mood by now and aware that I should have sent him home before he’d maneuvered his way onto the porch, but whatever. His mouth is on my cock and it seems that letting him go at it is probably the easiest way to get rid of him. I resent the fact he’ll take away the message that he can get away with catfishing guys like me, using decades-old photos of himself on his Grindr profile. But I don’t want him making a scene. Keeping him quiet with a mouthful of my dick seems the simplest answer to all my problems.

The blowjob, though, is substandard. C minus at best. There’s too much teeth. He tries to get away with wrapping his fist around the shaft and fellating only the top couple of inches, but I’m not having any of that. I sit on the divan, spread my legs, and try to enjoy the paltry amount of pleasure he’s meting out, but ugh. I hate the fact that I’m having sex with this man just to get rid of him. My anger at last takes over.

I stand up and pull my dick from his mouth, then beat it. He thinks he’s excited me. “Yeah baby,” he whispers. “I knew you’d like my wet mouth. You gonna cum for me?” I try to ignore his talk as he clings onto my thighs. “Load up my mouth.”

I consider faking it—dark as it is, I could probably get away with some grunts and groans and then pretending I’d shot all over the porch floor—but in the end I finally shoot a load. It doesn’t feel great, but it’s a release, I guess. The seed falls into my cupped hand. I wipe it off on the towel and with both hands haul the guy to his feet. His mouth dives for mine, but I jerk back and escort him to the screen door. “Thanks buddy.”

“But…that’s it? Don’t you want to fuck my ass?”

Ugh. No. “Hope you get home safe.” I steer him through the door and put his hand on the rail, so he can navigate the steps.

“I thought we could…”

Whatever he thinks, I no longer care. I shut the screen door. He turns and huffs and puffs his way down the walk. I wait until I see his lights move away, down the dark street, before I retrieve my keys and let myself into the house.

After a shower, I plop into bed. There’s a badge on my Grindr app. I open it up to see a message from the guy. Is that really all you wanted? I was hoping we could be fuckbuddies.

I allow the message to remain unanswered. I will never be fuckbuddies with this guy. Tomorrow, I’ll fire up the app once more and hit the block button. After that, I’ll think twice, on a bachelor night, before inviting anyone for a round of anonymous dark room sex on my front porch.

The Realest Real

February 2023

“Yes. Please. Like that.”

The kid skims along the twin mattress with serpentine motion, back arched, lean hips raised. Scant fuzz below his navel grazes the rumpled sheets. In this artificial twilight born of blackout shades and drapes drawn tight, his pale skin gives off its own faint luminescence, like foxfire on a summer’s evening. My outstretched fingers, long and thin, wrench apart the globes of his ass as I thrust inside. His hole is tight. So damned tight. It grips my shaft as I slide, back and forth.

“Make it swell, daddy.” I clamp down on my pelvic floor. The alteration in girth makes him groan. His head lolls back; a shaggy fringe of dark, straight hair tickles the top of his shoulders. Inside him I thrust deep. Another squeeze, to force more blood into the shaft. His chest collapses onto the bed, alarming the already creaking bedsprings. “Oh god.” The light tenor of his voice is muffled by pillows and bedclothes. “I’m gonna shoot, dad. Can I shoot? Please let me shoot, daddy.”

I reach down and swat away his greedy hand from his cock. This is dad’s job. Dad’s privilege, even. I spit in my hand and wrap it around the boy’s meat from behind. His shaved balls mount and surround my wrist as I spread the slick fluid up and down the shaft. His howls of pleasure redouble in the confines of the tiny room.

“I love you, dad.” As he convulses, his eyes open to look into mine. “I love you so much.” I nod at him, unblinking, connected by our locked stare. His face softens, overcome with emotion. “Oh god. I love you. I love you.” It doesn’t take long before he’s contorting at my grip. A few twists of the wrist, a few vigorous strokes, and he’s spraying his load. Anchored by my dick deep in his butt and my hand at the base of his spine, he buckles and thrashes as shot after shot of warm, sticky stuff cascades into my scooped fingers. The kid is loud. It’s a good thing no one else is home, or they’d be battering down the bedroom door.

At long last, he subsides. It seems a shame to wipe his semen onto the sheets, and more of a pity to let it go to waste. So I pull out and slap the goo onto my engorged cock. The sound echos with a wet smack. Then I shove it back in. He knows what I’m doing; his hips shove back to meet me as I drill his hole. I fuck like I’m holding a grudge, like I want to punish instead of praise. I fuck like I don’t care what bruises I raise upon either of us. It’s not long before I, too, fill his little room with a roar.

Afterward, we’re both drowsing in the dark, me on my back, him cuddled up and nuzzling my armpit, when he looks at his watch. “I’ve got class in a half hour.”

“I know,” I mumble. Three days we’ve met, now, during our lunchtimes. I’m well aware of his midday schedule.

“Mind if I shower?” He bounds up from the bed with sudden feline vitality, making me feel every single minute of the—god—four decades exactly that lie between us. All I have the energy to do is wave my hands and shoo him toward the little bathroom at one end of his untidy quarters. There’s a full-length mirror on the inside of the bathroom door; the kid doesn’t seem to know that from my angle on the bed, I can see everything he does inside. I watch as he cups, then slaps his round little butt so that the flesh jiggles. I see the mighty grin on his face when he probes his hole and discovers how wet are his fingertips, when he brings them away. I admire his slender body as he opens the shower stall and turns on the water.

While he waits for the hot water to arrive, he inspects his upper lip in the mirror over the sink, a scenario reflected once again for me upon the door, as he grooms the micro-mustache that grows there. Baby’s first facial hair. It’s really no more than the most featherweight trimming of dark peach fuzz, perilously clinging to the ridge above his lip, barely visible beyond arm’s length. I find endearing the care he takes in smoothing it down, though, after the wrangling our mouths have enjoyed. Pleased with what he sees, he backs away from the mirror and bounces on the balls of his feet, arms outstretched, bobbing and swaying as—left-right, left-right, left-right-left—he punches at the air. For a silent minute he boxes with an invisible opponent, eyes on himself in the sink mirror, his little cock springing up and down. Finally he grins in the glass, chucks himself softly on the chin, and disappears behind the shower door.

This is how I hope to remember the kid: lively and unselfconscious, happy with what he sees in himself.

In the bathroom, the sounds of water cease; there’s a near-silence once the kid turns off the overhead fan. That’s my cue to haul myself up to a sitting position and fumble for my clothing. I’m pulling on a sock when he he tackles me, his skin still damp, the sopping towel falling from his narrow waist onto the jumble of athletic footwear at the bed’s foot. “Don’t go,” he teases, butting his wet hair against my shoulder.

He’s so cute, this boy. I plant a kiss on the top of his head, and am rewarded by his shy smile. He crosses his skinny legs and leans into me. “Don’t go.”

“I have to go. You have to go.” I wrap my arms around him. “You’ve got class in…” I check my watch. “Twenty minutes.”

“I can be late.”

“You’re going,” I insist, returning to the sock that hangs halfway up my foot. “I’ve got to get back to my dad.”

I’ve met the kid three lunches in a row, now, ever since he hit me up on Grindr the day after my dad entered rehab. I consider it something of a miracle my dad’s in the rehab facility at all, when I consider the tantrums he threw at St. Mary’s. For two solid days, my father ranted and raved and cursed at the world, insisting to his doctors that he would never go to rehab and that instead, I would run through physical therapy exercises with him. I would shook my head and informed the same professionals that no, I would not. In the hospital, he made himself so unpleasant that I took to withdrawing from the room whenever I could, and lingering as long as possible in the cafeteria for my meals.

Logical appeals didn’t seem to sway him. The prospect of 24/7 medical supervision, or physical therapy close at hand, the proximity of the rehab facility to St. Mary’s in case of an emergency or another stroke—none of that matters. What seems to change his mind, over the long weekend, is when the hospitalist begins comparing a visit to a rehab hospital like a mini-vacation or a spa stay. He’d have his own room, larger than what he occupied on St. Mary’s neurology floor. He wouldn’t be hooked up to any machines. When he wasn’t in therapy, he could relax in his room and watch TV or listen to music or read or use his tablet. (“You mean I’d have to sit in a lounge around a single TV with a bunch of crazy old sick people,” my dad complained, ignoring the fact he was one of those crabby old sick people. “No,” said the hospitalist, baffled. “Why would you think that?”)

What turned the tide completely was when the doctor added, “The food there is much better than here.”

For some reason, my dad enjoys the hospital food. No, he fucking loves it. He thinks it’s top-notch, lip-smackin’, gourmet shit. Never mind that when I, a pretty great home cook, had whipped up many a delectable dinner for him back in 2020 during his radiation therapy, he’d turned up his nose at my hearty stews and delicious dinners. Pour some Campbell’s chicken noodle in a cup, give him a slice of institutional meatloaf with a watery gravy, throw some succotash on the plate, top it off with a sealed plastic tub of vanilla pudding and serve it on a tray with plastic utensil, though, and the man is in hog heaven. The St. Mary’s meals make my stomach turn, but when my dad hears that the rehab hospital’s meals—three a day plus snacks, delivered to his bed hot from the kitchen—are even better, well. He meekly, perhaps even avidly, accedes to a transfer the next day.

And I have to admit, the rehab is experience is incredibly more relaxing. The facility itself is a one-level sprawl shaded by old oaks that’s older, but cheerful and easy to navigate. My dad’s private room is bigger than my living room and kitchen combined, back home. The staff is uniformly upbeat, friendly, and professional. I commit to memory every single one of their names, so I can use it when thanking them. We spend the first afternoon engaging in an activity that my father will talk about with fond relish for weeks after: filling out a week’s worth of menu requests. For an hour and a half I read out the menu choices for each upcoming meal while my dad considers big-picture questions like, what juice would he prefer with his breakfast on Thursday, tomato, orange, grapefruit, or apple? What should accompany his chicken cutlet, that night, macaroni and cheese? Or mashed potatoes? He smacks his lips over each culinary decision while the nurses bring him applesauce.

He is living like a king.

It’s the second day of his tenure that I snort a little, sitting at his bedside. “What’s your on phone?” my dad asks.

“Your hot nurse is on Grindr,” I tell him. Said hot nurse is a mere 35 feet away.

“What’s Grindr?”

We’ve discussed Grindr before, but my dad’s brain has little retention for anything that isn’t interesting to him. “It’s an app gay men use for sexual partners. You fire it up and see who’s nearby.”

He peers at me. “Which hot nurse? Laura? Or the one who takes me to the bathroom?”

“Molly,” I remind him. “Why would Laura and Molly, both women, be on an app for gay men? No, it’s Lance, the blue-eyed one who runs the gym.”

“He’s hot?” My dad seems baffled at the idea.

“With those shoulders and pecs?” I whistle. “Good lord, yes.”

“You and I have very different definitions of hot,” he grumbles.

I flip through the photos. “His profile says he’s into cruising, edging, and group.”

“Hedging!” My dad snorts with derision. “Absolutely not. Find someone who’s more decisive.”

I peer over the top of my phone, trying to decide whether or not he’s shitting me. A message pops up. It is not, sadly, from the nurse with the pecs and shoulders. Looking, sir?

I don’t interact with blank profiles. It’s an exercise in diminishing returns. Mr. Looking, however, immediately provides a photo, taken in the full-length mirror on his bathroom door. He’s a young guy of 19 or 20, slender, his chicken legs speckled with sparse, wiry fur, his chest smooth, his face nearly covered by a mop of shoulder-length, dark, lank hair. Even though he’s nude in the shot, even though he’s turned sideways in the shot to show off the surprising roundness of his butt and the silhouette of his hanging dick, there’s something in the serious intent of his expression that makes him seem, well, shy. It’s a quality I find irresistible. He’s only five hundred feet away.

I’m looking for either lunchtimes or after 6, if you can host, I tell the kid.

Lunchtimes are great! he replies. My folks are home after 5:30 nights but you can come over today at lunch if you want.

I look over at my dad, who is holding his tablet up to his nose so that he can watch a noisy YouTube video of trains slowly traversing a crossing, somewhere in Nebraska. I definitely want. Send me an address.

A block and a half from the rehab hospital, the kid and I sit side by side on his twin bed, the room dark and quiet. His personal space is a contrast to the bright tidiness of the rooms I had to pass through to get here. His family living room looks blandly stylish, like an Ashley Furniture showcase. The kid’s bedroom, though, is plainly the space of someone who’s never had to look after himself. It’s not squalid. It doesn’t stink. Shoes lie in an unsorted pile at the foot of his bed, though, kicked off and tossed to lie where they tumble. The closet lies open; it’s difficult to tell where the hamper of dirty clothing ends and the piles of possibly clean garments begin. The walls are painted a deep blue and covered with posters, half with anime with which I’m unfamiliar, half with promotional posters for old Final Fantasy games. It’s definitely the quarters of an adolescent, or post-adolescent, boy.

He’s nervous, now that I’m here. Trembling, even. I’m aware I should be making the first move. Young men reach out to me because they assume a certain level of sexual mastery—they want a masculine dad type as a guide, one who know what to do and say, every step of the way. Normally, that’s a role I willingly play. With this skinny kid that I’ve just met, though, I’m less certain. He’s an attractive boy. I mean, that mop of messy hair is something that gets me every time, right in the gut and groin. Those pretty eyes, those big wide eyes, those serious eyes, as they stare sidelong my way. Shit. From the photo he sent I have an idea what lies beneath that oversized tee, beneath those baggy skater shorts. If he were sent to central casting right as he is now, he’d be starring as the sensitive and artistic best friend of some female college freshman no doubt played by a former Disney star. Or—and it unsettles me as I consider it—throw a hoodie over his head and paint circles beneath his eyes, as the tortured loner prodded into a school shooting.

No, don’t think about that. Fuckin’ Gen Z’ers. So difficult to work with, what with their puritanical views of sex. Even during the worst years of the AIDS crisis I’d never seen anyone as afraid of sex as these young whippersnappers. I’d lay a hand on him now, but he’s vibrating like a fawn that’s spotted a hunter, eyes wide, unsure which way to bolt. Fuck. Maybe this was a mistake.

His long, naked toes wriggle against the loop pile of his bedroom rug. I clear my throat and place a consoling palm in the middle of the kid’s back. “Look,” is all I say.

Then he lunges. His fingers encircle my skull; with hunger, he pulls my face to his and engulfs me in a kiss. His mouth tastes sweet, like bubble gum. Once he’s pulled me atop him, once he feels my weight pressing down upon his slender frame, he sighs happily as we kiss. His hands dive beneath my tee while his legs curl around my hips, locking me close.

All right then. Way to go, Gen Z.

We knock each other about to find comfortable positions on the narrow mattress. Piece by piece, our clothing arcs through the air and lands upon the mountain of sneakers on the floor. My beard abrades his skin, drawing satisfying gasps. His lips search for far-flung parts of my body while I poke and prod his soft flesh. “Please,” he breathes, when I clutch and squeeze one of his pert little buttocks. That breathing turns to rasps when I sit him squarely on my face.

I’m about to plunge inside him for the first time when he puts a hand on my chest to stop me. For a moment we remain still, captured in what must look like some advanced couples yoga posed with a name like The Wheelbarrow or The Farmer and His Plow. He looks up the slant of his body into my eyes, above him. “Let me say I love you, when you fuck me?” My lips part, surprised. “You don’t have to say it back,” he says in haste, afraid he’s gone too far. “I’m not gonna be a freak about it or anything. I won’t stalk you. I just…I just…”

My voice is level as I finish his sentence for him. “You just need to be able to say it to someone.”

He nods, almost ashamed I can read his mind. “Is it okay?” For answer, I keep my eyes upon his while I spit once more into my hand and rub it onto his already-slick hole. Then, slowly, gently, sweetly, I slide myself inside him, inch by inch. The kid’s lips part. His eyes become lidded once more. “I love you, dad,” he says in a tentative whisper, when I reach bottom.

“I didn’t hear you, son.”

He understands the permission I’m giving him. “I love you, sir.” Now his voice is louder, more confident. “I love you. I love you so much.”

I nod, understanding. It’s very okay. They’re words I need to hear.

This raggedy college kid couldn’t have chosen better. Not because I know how to lift those bony legs into the air and spread them wide as my eyes bore into his. Not because years of instinct tell me where to touch, where to kiss, the exact moment I need to reach down and brush the hair from his face, nor because I know when and how to speak, and when—as now—to stay silent. No, he’s selected well because this week, this trip, I am in need of kindness, no matter how cosmetic.

I have been so lonely, these last two weeks. I’m a bottomless well, echoing, dry, its stones on the verge of collapse. All my energy I’ve poured into hospital visits and doctor consultations and making certain my dad has what he needs, into getting his home ready for his eventual return. A couple of random one-time sexual encounters don’t balance the terrible desolation I feel, the unhappiness that keeps me awake at night.

It doesn’t help that all through this ordeal, from home to hospital to rehab, my father hasn’t once acknowledged all I’m doing. He takes my back-breaking efforts for granted. That alone is fine—he can, and should, assume I’ll be there when he needs. But fuck, would it ever be nice to hear a thank you from his lips. Thank you for helping me through this mess. Thank you for taking notes. Thank you for remembering and explaining my complex medical history to every new caregiver we encounter. Thank you for checking my wrinkly balls for yeast because I’m too shy to let a female nurse do it.

Loneliness has stretched me thin and made me unrecognizable, even to myself. An attractive boy saying he loves me during our most intimate moments is a temporary anodyne I welcome.

Day after day, lunch after lunch, he always smiles as I grow closer to letting loose inside him. His head on the pillow, his eyes looking up into mine. The sweat on our faces, stinging my eyes and gluing together our foreheads. He is so hungry as his legs pull me against him and his lips purse for more kisses. “I love you,” he tells me. I should say something in reply. I owe him that. Once I open my mouth, though, he shakes his head. “Nah. Don’t.”

“But you need to know…” I want to tell him how much it means, to feel a little less lonely. I want him to know how beautiful he is, and how much I enjoy our lunches together. I want to say…

“I know.” He prunes short my sentence with another kiss. “I wish it was real, though. I wish you didn’t have to go back home. I wish you could stay and…”

Whatever else he wishes I cut short with a thrust. His sweet-talk excites me. “Does this feel real?” I ask, jaw set.

He grunts from the impact. “Yes. Fuck, yes.”

“It is real.”

“Yeah.” Once again, he begins to smile. His eyes puddle with satisfaction “It’s the realest real.”

“Then enjoy it. Dad's orders.” I lean down to cover his mouth with my own.

We lock into a clinch that neither of us releases until I’ve emptied myself deep inside. Throughout, he whispers three words, over and over. They soothe me. They lull me into a post-coital drowsiness, into which we curl beneath his sheet, big and little spoon. My beard nuzzles his shoulder. “Just because something is temporary doesn’t mean it’s not real,” I whisper.

His ribcage rumbles, content. When he turns his head to look at me over his shoulder, his long hair flops into my face. “I love you, daddy,” he says, one final time, as he drifts into a brief nap. Soon, we both must return to our lives. For now, we have each other.

My fingers riffle through his long locks. Stroke his head. I pull him close. Dream on, I think with affection as I watch him slumber. Dream on, kid. Then I wrap my arms around his chest to protect him, as I lie awake before colossal shadows.

Room 208

February 2023

Since my arrival in Virginia, I’ve been averaging about five hours a night of slumber. I know because I wear my watch as a sleep tracker. Mornings, my ears ringing from birds screeching before the light of dawn, I’ll blearily look at the tally of my nighttime hours, then groan. I’m used to much more rest than this. Back home, it’s eight hours or I’m a grumpy boy.

When I visit Richmond for non-emergencies, I stay at a hotel rather than my dad’s. He doesn’t understand why I pay good money for a room than sleep for free at his house. A modicum of comfort is worth the cost, I tell him. Since I’m here indefinitely, though, the price of an extended hotel stay would be prohibitive. Plus after my dad comes home from the hospital—he’ll have to come home eventually, right?—I know he’d be more comfortable with me close at hand. So here I lie in my little sister’s old room, where the only clear space is occupied by my open suitcase on the floor—there’s no closet or drawers I can use, and no room for anything, anywhere else.

Part of my sleeping problem is the bed. It’s a twin mattress, half a century old; it was my birthday gift when I was eight. It might have suited my smaller self. Now, my feet hang off the bottom. It’s lumpy. Over the decades, the springs have collapsed. They now droop down on one side, so I have to bolster myself against the wall to avoid rolling onto the floor. Then there’s the room itself, five feet wide by eight feet long. It’s too hot at night, and too cold in the morning; the only twin blankets and sheets my father has are threadbare and older than I.

I’ve been spending my days at the hospital, arriving after breakfast and lingering until past dinner. By the time I get back to my dad’s, it’s dark and I have his cats to feed. His house is in bad shape, so I’ve been tackling bite-sized projects as I can. But exhausted as I am by day’s end, after I turn off the light and wedge myself into a fetal position on a mattress older than either the song “American Pie” or the TV show All in the Family, god help me, all I can do, long past midnight, is toss and turn. My lower back aches in ways handfuls of ibuprofen can’t mend. My eyes won’t close. I masturbate, hoping it might exhaust me, but beating the meat doesn’t do the trick.

Self-pity eventually wears me down, but it never lasts. I’m awake with the birds, bleary, unhappy, worn thin.

This can’t go on forever.

Today has been particularly grueling. Ever since he’s been admitted to the hospital, my dad has been unusually caustic with everyone within earshot, including myself. It’s a change from his usual, laid-back self; I’ve never known my father to say an unkind word to anyone, much less treat someone trying to do their job with contempt and disrespect. But today he’s been argumentative with the nursing and technical staff and even the doctors themselves.

It’s mostly the fault of the cardiologist who visited in the morning. After pronouncing my dad’s heart in good condition, the specialist declared he didn’t need to see any more of him. What the cardiologist meant was that my dad’s two strokes had contributing factors other than his heart. My father decided that I don’t need to see you again means he’s being released.

All day, when the hospital staff visit to perform more tests or to check his vitals, he demands to go home. When friends phone, he tells them he’s being discharged, above my protests. When the hospitalist—the doctor in charge of his case, who receives reports from specialists and makes any final decision—arrives around dinnertime and strongly recommends my dad enter a rehab facility for an unspecified period immediately after the hospital stay, my dad throws an actual tantrum. He screams at the top of his lungs that ‘his doctor’ said he would be discharged. He raves at length about ‘the comforts of home.’ At one point, he looks like he’s searching for something to throw.

After the hospitalist departs, I launch into action. I give my father a hissed, angry lecture about how he is never to speak to another member of the hospital staff in such a manner ever again. He’s behaving like a child. No, in fact, children behave much better than he. I remind him that I’ve been forsaking the comforts of my home in order to see him back to health, so the very least he can do is cooperate, participate in his own recovery, and listen more than he speaks.

I’m so angry that I’m sure sparks are flying from my skin. Once I’m done with my scold, I cool off in the lounge down the hallway, where I call my next-door neighbor back home. She’s a physical therapist who gives me a detailed list of all the ways rehab is more productive than any therapy my dad might do at home.

When I return, list in hand, calmer and ready to discuss with him the prospect of rehab, my father nastily accuses me of sneaking out of the room to conspire with the doctor—to send him away for good, he snaps.

I need a fucking break.

So I’ve rented a hotel room. Just for a night. Just so I can sleep on a mattress that’s not tilting like the Titanic, post-iceberg, or doesn’t feel as if it’s been stuffed with garden trowels. I don’t care that I’m going to be spending less than twelve hours there. I need to sleep. No, I need a good night’s sleep, on a real bed, between sheets with a thread count higher than twenty-five. I want a thermostat that I can control, set at a temperature I choose. I want a room that’s dark and hermetically sealed against the sound of squawking birds at four-thirty in the morning. Going a little out of pocket for a night’s comfort is an indulgence I’ll allow myself. I deserve it.

When I check in, the imperious, effeminate clerk looks at my out-of-state license, then gives my rumpled clothing the once-over before inquiring, in a vaguely Teutonic accent, “Long drive?” It’s a shady comment, as the hotel is only ten minutes from the hospital, but I smile blandly and accept the twin room cards he passes over. To the elevator I stumble, then up to my third-floor room. Inside, in the living room portion of the suite, the TV immediately blinks on. A message welcomes me by name and hopes I enjoy my stay, triggered by either the door or the first-time presence of my room key nearby. I fumble for the remote and switch it off, toss my knapsack onto the sofa, and drag my weary feet to the king-sized bed in the room beyond.

Oh god. This bed is perfect. It’s clean. It’s flat. The pillows aren’t the thickness of pancakes. I fall back onto it with my arms outstretched, breathing a sigh of relief. The room itself smells like nothing. Not like the litter box for my dad’s cats, which for some reason sits directly outside the door of my sister’s bedroom. Not the staleness of a house sealed against outside air like an ancient pharaoh’s tomb. Just simple, air-conditioned neutrality, with only a phantom of disinfectant haunting the darkened bathroom. I arch my back and stretch, eyes closed, blissful, happy for the little luxuries of corporate impersonality.

Then I flick on my phone and open Grindr. Out of curiosity, I tell myself. Despite my weariness, though, I feel something stirring within. Seeking a hookup hadn’t been on my agenda for tonight—but I am what I am, and tonight I have a clean hotel room all to myself. There’s no harm in looking. I’m not surprised, when I check out the app’s grid, to see the desk clerk from downstairs staring back at me. I’d been pretty sure I’d clocked him, checking in. However, his profile very prominently proclaims, NO MEN OVER 40 EVER!! To which I roll my eyes, as that clerk will be hitting forty himself in a couple of years, and that kind of sexual karma has a way of hitting hard. More of immediate interest is the fellow to the left, only 15 feet away. The photo is of a torso, dark and blurry. I’m a little surprised when my phone vibrates and a number appears in the profile’s corner. He’s messaging me.

Looks like you’re real close, he says. You at the Fairfield?

Sure am, I reply.

Looking for…?

I think. I hadn’t really been looking at all. Honestly, though, would I still be looking at this screen, pondering how to reply, if I weren’t interested? But ugh. I’m so tired. Mentally, I’m wiped. Do I really have the sexual wherewithal to spare for a random stranger? What is it I want, here?

I take a moment, then decide to be candid. My thumbs busily type back, I need to suck some cock. I want someone who needs his dick serviced for as long as it takes. I want to be fed. That’s exactly all I’m fit for, this evening. I don’t want to have to plan some elaborate scenario for a guy who needs me to be his daddy, or his controlling but understanding top man. I don’t have the perception or patience to navigate the tricky stepping stones across a river of consensual non-consent.

I just want to suck. I want a cock in my face and saliva enough to keep it wet and happy. I want a job to do, and a hard dick ready to make me go through with it. I don’t care what the guy looks like, or what he’s packing. My hands tremble as I wait for the guy’s reply.

Now? He asks.

Now, I say.

Again, I have to wait for a reply. Finally it comes. Room 208.

I don’t need more invitation than that. I bound up, spry and alert, as if I’ve already had that fantastic night’s sleep. All my aches and pains evaporate. I shove my room key into my shorts pocket, give my pits a quick sniff—they’ll do—and sprint out the door, down the hall, and to the elevator. Once I’m outside the stranger’s room, I check Grindr to ensure he hasn’t changed his mind. Then I knock.

When the door opens, I’m a little taken aback to face a good-looking Black man wearing nothing but a pair of gray sweatpants. He’s neither tall nor young; I’d guess him to be in his late thirties and barely five-foot-five. I stare at the bare torso that had been dark and blurry in his Grindr photo—well, at least now I understand why it had been so dark. However, I’m baffled why he’s settling for a shot that more resembles a blurry smudge than the lean and sexy man before me. He’s holding his left arm akimbo; I instantly spy a wedding ring glinting above his hip. His right arm is raised high to hold the door open, giving me a moment to blink at his surprisingly hairy armpit, the inky, tight coils that cover his chest, then finally the light beard on his face. His dome is completely shaved.

He’s checking me out as well, looking me up and down, not missing the obvious protrusion beneath the cotton fleece of my shorts. After a moment he grins, drops his arm, and steps aside. “Come on in.”

His room is identical to mine, though in the sitting area, his TV softly plays a repeat of a sitcom I don’t watch. We’re not here for television, though; he leads me to the bed at the suite’s far end. Bedside, he makes a leap into the air, sleek as any cat, to land on the mattress with a bounce on his butt. His lean legs open.

I seize one of his bare feet as I move between them onto the mattress. My other fingers dance up his thigh; before I can lay claim to my prize, though, he takes my right hand between both of his, then presses the palm to his abdomen. Without a word, he slides it upward, toward one of his broad and flat nipples. I squeeze it gently, then harder, judging his reaction by the satisfied slits of his lids. He nods as I move close; when my lips meet the raised circle, darker even than the skin surrounding it, a sigh escapes his lips.

While I gnaw gently at his nipple, I can feel him lifting his hips to lower his sweats. He cups my head to keep my mouth attached to his tit, but his other hand wraps my fingers around his hard cock. It’s firecracker hot to the touch. His clutch tightens around mine, showing me how firmly to squeeze.

I keep up the pressure while he disattatches me from his nipple. Hands on either side of my face, he looks me in the eye. “You a good cocksucker?” His voice is little more than an animal’s growl.

“Yes, sir.” The ferocity of his stare is everything to me. Those dark pools of carnality hypnotize me. My only immediate concern, in this moment, is a need to please the naked stranger. To prove to him that I’m worthy of the pulsing inches in my grasp.

“You want this?”

It’s a rhetorical question. We both know it. I swallow hard to clear my throat, so anxious I am to speak. “Yeah. I want that dick. Please.”

Still he holds my skull between his palms while his eyes bore into mine. “Suck it.” He spits the syllables at me like buckshot. “Suck it good.”

There’s a moment’s mad scramble as he kicks off the sweats from around his ankles and I, still holding onto his meat, press my chest into the mattress between his legs. This is my one chance really to examine what his piece looks like: I study what’s about to occupy my attention for the next few minutes. To memory I commit the image of that thick five and a half inches and the heavy, shaved balls hanging below them. I admire the dark sheath, smooth at the base and wrinkled where he’s pulled back the foreskin. The pinker, tapering head that’s smaller around than the shaft. I don’t care that his dick isn’t as big as my own. Screw that. It belongs to this good-looking stranger, and I’ve volunteered to satisfy. That dick could be a mere three inches and ugly as sin, and I’d still worship it like the prize-winning fuckstick it deserves to be.

His legs spread as I dive down. He’s groaning the moment he feels my hot breath on his balls. I feel warmth both on the back of my head and circling my neck; his hands are pressing me onto that thick, pulsing saber until my lips hit the base. “Fuck yeah,” he says, as I buckle and suppress my gag reflex. “That’s what I need.”

I grunt, eyes watering, as he drives himself deep into my throat. With that kind of determination to penetrate my gullet, it’s a good thing he’s not super long, and even better that his head is smaller in diameter than the rest. It tickles my tonsils as the column of flesh beyond attempts to force open my gorge. His hands push me more deeply onto his concrete firmness and hold me there as he grinds and thrusts.

When at long last he releases his grip and allows me to come up for air, I gasp and open my eyes, staring up at him through my tears with blind adoration. I feel his fingers run through my beard, against the grain, messing it up before he smooths it down again. “Suck that dick,” he orders.

My eyes close once more and I go to work. My thumb and forefinger angle the fat tool to match the trajectory of my lips as they glide back and forth along his length, lingering at both the tip and the base. The rest of my fingers cradle the man’s fat nuts and stroke the smooth skin. I’m glad I memorized the fat cock before I set to work; I can relax and let my mouth and tongue flick and linger over spots I hope he enjoys: the valley between his balls where sac meets shaft, the crevice from which leaks a constant supply of his precum, the tender spots covered by foreskin.

He doles out my reward—all the reward I need—in grunts and groans. Every time he lets out some new feral whimper of pleasure, my own cock hardens. I grind myself against the bed’s corner, feeling my shorts grow even more damp as I self-lubricate. It’s his pleasure that’s my priority. Not my own. I revel in his gasps, in the rumblings deep in his chest, at the air whistling through his nostrils when I do something he particularly likes. My jaw is sore and I’ve lost all sense of time—all consciousness of anything beyond the inches pistoning my stretched lips and aching throat. But this is what I wanted. I’m happy to lose myself in the bliss of service.

It’s a shock when, after how long I don’t know, his palms pry me from his fat dick and pivot my focus to his face. Into my eyes he stares, his pupils flared to their widest. “Sexy white daddy,” he whispers. I don’t know how sexy I can look, in that moment, mesmerized by his tool as I am, slobber all over my beard, lips puffy and wanting more. “Sexy white daddy, suckin’ my dick. You like it?”

“I love it.” I reply without hesitation. Pride and desire battle for precedence in my scratchy voice. “I love your big dick, sir.”

“Damn right you do.” I wish he would let me get back to my work, but he continues searching my eyes. For what, I don’t know. Then, without warning, he pulls me to him and covers my lips with his own. The kiss is shocking in its passion; I haven’t been kissed like this in far too long. His tongue invades my mouth as if he’s trying to root out my very soul; his arms hold me close to his chest as his palm cups the back of my skull. I’m helpless as he turns us over and introduces my back to the mattress. Still he kisses me, his cock driving into my stomach as his hands tug at my waistband. When the kiss ends, I open my lids to see him staring at me again. He rubs his nose against mine. “You’re a pretty man.”

Before I can thank him for the compliment, he’s sat up to complete the job he started. The man rips off my shorts. My phone flops out of my pocket, but he picks it up from the hotel carpet, folds my shorn clothing, and places both it and the device atop the desk at the bed’s foot.

“Shit,” he says, moving back to stand by the bed. “You a big boy.” He seems surprised that I surpass him in the cock department; I’m definitely surprised when he lifts a foot to press against me. The heel connects to my dick’s base, while the sole digs against my shaft. His long toes wriggle against my head, eliciting a snarl of pleasure. “You like that, huh.” I can only nod. He rewards me with another firm shove of his foot against my meat, then stands upright and strides around.

I’m horizontal across the mattress, at this point. From next to the air conditioning unit, he grabs my arms and drags me until my shoulders lie at the bedding’s sharp edge. My head dangles over the edge. I see his plan, now; after he points his hard dick down, my mouth is ready for the re-entry of his cock down my throat. He begins slowly, at first, elbows raised and out and his fingers interlaced at the back of his neck. Then he picks up the pace, leans down and braces himself against the bed to give himself more traction. I aid my own violation by grabbing his ass from below and pulling him into me. I want to be used like this. Use is my purpose, tonight.

He fucks my mouth like pussy, sometimes with such force that I feel sure my chin might bruise. The violence is worth it. All I care about is providing the wettest, softest, most accepting hole for his beautiful uncut dick. I’m sprawled across this stranger’s bed wearing nothing but a t-shirt and sneakers, my dick straining to the ceiling and leaking on my belly, but I don’t give a damn about what it might want in the moment. I can and will take care of myself later. My eyes water so freely that I have to keep my eyes clamped shut out of fear my contacts might float away. Saliva spills from the corners of my lips and runs up my face. My mustache keeps some of it from entering my nostrils, but not all. I scarcely notice my own discomfort, though. So long as the man keeps ramrodding my throat, using my mouth—so long as he’s relishing the sensation of my tongue sliding and clinging to the top side of his beautiful, magical tool—I’ll lie there and provide this man the pleasure he needs.

The pleasure he deserves.

I can tell he’s close when he changes position. Instead of balancing himself on the mattress with his palms, he grabs the sides of my skull to hold it still while plunging in and out. It’s enough to make me choke, but I defer my distress. Now’s not the time to distract him. He plugs my throat once. Twice. A third time. Than a few rabbit-like thrusts. His palms cover my ears, muffling his stream of curses, but I both hear and feel his body-rumbling groan as he unleashes glob after glob of semen into my throat. It burns when he withdraws, slowly, leaving a trail of his cock slime on the roof of my mouth. I get a brief taste of its strong, brackish saltiness before my throat begins to react from the abuse it’s endured these last several minutes. Much as I try to subdue my choking, he’s left the passage raw. I keep it as quiet as possible, but I need a moment to recuperate.

I try to wave him away, but he’s solicitous in his response. Though I’m taller and bigger by far, I find myself scooped up in his arms, then a pillow thrust beneath my head. He curls himself to become my big spoon and pulls me closer. That beautiful dick, now soft and still wet from my mouth, presses against the base of my spine. Soft lips pepper kisses on my neck; one arm holds me tightly while the other squeezes my dick to see if it’s still hard—it is—before roaming over my chest and belly. “That was so gooooood,” he whispers in my ear. “Thank you, baby.”

I sigh and smile, content. His tenderness is an unexpected bonus and I feel selfish for accepting it, but for a while, he shows no signs of stopping. I shiver as his hand travels from hip to shoulder, from beard to nipples, from the mountains of my buttocks to the bristly forest of my head. He hums with contentment as he grinds into me. It doesn’t take long, though, for his motions to slow, then cease altogether. His grip slackens. His breathing becomes slower.

The stranger has fallen asleep.

The only sounds in his dark room are the hum of the air conditioner and the quiet canned laughter on the TV in the other room. It’s with reluctance that I disentangle myself from his grasp. I’m not needed any longer. Across the mattress I slide, careful not to wake the man with any sudden or loud movements. I tug my shorts over my sneakers and shove my phone back into my pocket. With a last glance back at the sleeper, I pad quietly from room 208 with my hands plunged deep in my pockets to conceal the erection that’s been plaguing me for the last—whoa—hour.

Not until I’m back in my own room upstairs do I unleash the beast and pleasure myself. From time to time I’ll wrinkle my lips upward to take deep whiffs of the man’s scent from my mustache; the musk of him is as potent as any poppers. My orgasm, when it arrives, wracks my body and leaves it feeling spent. Covered with sweat and juices, only some of which is my own, I lie in the cool air and allow my lids to sink.

Now, finally, I can sleep.

Traveling Man

February 2023

A block and a half from my dad’s house, on the very street where I grew up, a man waits on his knees almost naked, clad only in a well-worn jock.

For decades, my dad and his next-door neighbors boasted the longest occupancy of anyone in the neighborhood. The elderly sisters who lived in the house adjacent to his, both professors at the HBCU down the street, passed away a decade ago, though, leaving my dad the area’s oldest and most enduring resident. Both he and I still refer to the houses by the names of the owners we knew when we moved there in 1971. I recite them as I walk down the block. The Alexanders lived here, the Duffys beyond, the Beckstoffers further down. It’s been an unusually warm early February, with temperatures in the seventies. With every step, with every bounce of my half-aroused dick in my shorts, I look through the windows of the homes I used to know well. The people living within seem like happy, ordinary families. They’re just not families I know, anymore.

I’m in Virginia on an emergency visit. The day of my birthday, I’d called my father before going out for the evening. He’d sounded strange, weak—disoriented and as if unsure of where or who he was. He’d been on a heavy four-day course of steroids, he gradually told me, prescribed by his physician prior to a couple of hormone-suppressing injections that were to lead up to his second round of radiation therapy for a return of his prostate cancer. He sounded out of it, and never once acknowledged my birthday. He’d been so unable to choose words or complete his sentences that my alarm bells began ringing. I asked him if he could manage for the evening by himself or whether he needed me to call someone. Eventually, he assured me he’d go to bed and lie down, and that he’d call if he needed me.

The next morning, he’d phoned. “I need help,” is all he’d said. I’d packed a week’s worth of things and had been on the road to Virginia within the hour. I’d found him weak, almost unable to stand; during my six-hour drive, he’d revisited his primary care physician, who’d suggested he was dehydrated.

When he wasn’t any better after two days of bed rest and many tumblers of water, I suggested we take him to an urgent care facility for a second opinion. The caregivers there had wanted him to visit an emergency room immediately, to rule out a stroke. After a thirteen-hour stint in St. Mary’s ER, during which various doctors kept saying they didn’t think his symptoms indicated any kind of neurological event, after a very late night MRI, a doctor arrived with results that indicated my dad had suffered two strokes a week before, both in the posterior region. St. Mary’s admitted him at two a.m. the following morning, and here I’ve been, stuck in Virginia for the indefinite future.

Enough of the hospital. My butt has been numbed by hospital chairs for days. If I’m not at the hospital, I’m thinking about the hospital, or about what I’ll have to do for my dad after he gets out of the hospital. I’ve been ungrudging with my care for a week, now. It’s time to be selfish. And right now, all I want to think about is my dick.

I pause to cross the street. One thing about my old neighborhood that’s changed since my childhood: it sure harbors a lot more homosexuals than it used to. The guy I’m heading to visit is a mere eight hundred feet away, but he’s not even the closest man hunting for sex on the apps. There’s HUNGTOP9 somewhere within a five-hundred-foot radius of my dad’s home, and a couple that only plays together who are looking for young and hung, that’s even closer. On Sniffies, I see a dozen shadowy outlines of cocks on avenues where I learned to ride my bike, or photos of pert, upturned asses splayed along streets I’d walk to my piano lessons. I don’t know how long this—what’s the gay counterpart to gentrification?—has been going on, but I’m entirely in favor.

There’s a vibration against my side. My pulse quickens as I read the message on my phone. Bedroom’s at the top of the stairs. I’m ass up for you, Sir. I’m already half-erect in these terrycloth shorts; I’m going to have to spend the rest of the short walk with my hands thrust in my pockets, if I get any harder. Before I darken the screen, another message pops up, punctuated by a devil emoji Just saw your message about the ball gag.

My what, now? I break stride, confused for a split-second. Oh, I think. He’s joking. The dude is pretending I’d sent him such a text, so that when I show up and find him kneeling on the mattress, legs spread, I won’t be surprised to see him chomping on the ball gag he rarely gets to bring out. The sexual prop that makes him feel extra slutty. Okay. I can play along.

Good thing I definitely sent that, I tap back, one hundred percent sure we’re both on the same page when it comes to playfulness.

My erection—by now at three-quarters mast—is protruding enough to be seen by any cars passing on my dad’s sleepy boulevard, but my phone is vibrating again. I shove my right hand in my pocket and use my fingers to tamp it down, while with the left I navigate my messages. Now that I know what a kinky fucker you are we can have some real fun, it reads. Then, immediately after, I’ve set up a scenario you might like. You’ll see when you get here.

So far, I’m pleased with this guy. We’ve never discussed anything kinky. Not as far as I remember. Back in 2020, when I was down here for my dad’s radiation treatments at the pandemic’s scariest period, we’d exchanged a couple of mild messages about how it would’ve been nice to connect, if either of us had been hooking up. Which we weren’t. Periodically since, we’ve exchanged a couple of hellos. But today is the first time we’d both agreed we were mutually horny and available. At the same time, though, I’m intrigued. I like scenarios. Judging by the way it’s attempting to escape the temporary prison of my fingers, my dick seems to like the prospect of a scenario, too.

I look both ways and cross the final street. His house is a two-story colonial on the corner. The yard’s neatly kept, the gardens prepped for spring. Heart thumping, I tread the walkway. When my feet hit the stoop, I see the front door slightly ajar. One key sits in the lock; several others dangle on a ring beneath.

I grin. So this is his big scenario. It’s not the first time I’ve encountered men craving a home intruder fantasy. When I pull open the door and step over the threshold, for a moment I’m apprehensive—there’s a big difference between an intruder role-play fantasy versus walking into the wrong home and being mistaken for an actual burglar by a gun-wielding homeowner.

But the layout of his home is just as he said, with carpeted stairs on the left and a sound of stirring beyond the top step. I set the keys onto the glass-topped table, just inside the door, which I shut behind me. He’s left a trail to follow, too. Not breadcrumbs, but pieces of clothing strewn in a path, beginning with shoes and socks, his tie, then a shirt, and ending with a pair of dress trousers tossed in a heap by the bedroom door.

Now that I’ve entered the stranger’s house, I allow my dick to leap free; it’s tenting my shorts at the sight of the man on his bed, face down, ass up, sprawled with his legs wide and a pillow tucked under his head. It’s a super-casual pose that I deduce is supposed to connote, Oh golly, I was so tired from work that I had to shuck off all my clothes except this jockstrap I happened to be wearing and then I just collapsed here on the bed for a quick nap in this super-awkward position that exposes my butthole.

It’s a good scenario, all right.

“Well, lookee here,” I say aloud, halfway between a whisper and a snarl. My hands rub together in greedy expectation. “Thought this big ol’ house was empty. You made a mistake, mister, leavin’ those keys in the door so some stranger could come walkin’ right in.” Whenever I’m in Virginia, my Southern drawl tends to creep back; in this situation, it floods loose, loud and confident, making me sound like a bit player from Smokey and the Bandit. I kick off my sneakers. My shorts drop to the floor. “Guess I’ll be takin’ whatever I want.”

My words have the desired effect. The man’s hole gapes and twitches.“What do you want?” he says in a low tone, playing along. The homeowner is a handsome older man. I knew that from the photos on Scruff. He’s one of those fellows for whom photos don’t really do justice, though; the serious mug shot he’s posted on the app doesn’t show the heft of his muscles, nor the ass made round and full by countless squats over the years. Of course, I say he’s older, but I’m his senior by half a decade. He’s the one with the silver hair, though. He’s the one with his ass in the air.

I slap it, causing him to groan with pleasure. “Maybe this is what I want. For starters. Then that pretty mouth of yours.”

It’s not until I’m kneeling on the floor and shoving my face between his cheeks that I remember: didn’t the dude imply he’d be wearing a ball gag? Because I certainly didn’t see one. I’m gnawing at his hole while mentally reviewing my view from just moments before. Jock: yup. Other garments: nope. Ball gag: nuh-uh. Well, I’m not here to fuss about little details. Obviously I’m giving the guy what he wants, judging by the sighs and unsubtle gyrations of his hips. I use my fingernails to scratch ten pink trails down the surface of his ass cheeks, then dig in to pry them further apart.

The man’s hole tastes good. Clean. Ready. When I slide in a thumb, there’s no resistance; his ass is going to spread so easily. I like a loose gape. “Lookit you,” I say with contempt. “You some kind of cocksucker or something? You sure like that fine hole fingered.” Instinctively the man’s broad shoulder push themselves into the mattress. His ass rises; the small of his back curves in a submissive arch. My cock is engorged, by this point. It’s leaking precum like crazy. I could probably just shove it right on in and glide to the base without a drop of extra lube, but I’m enjoying putting this man in his place, first. “I asked you a question, faggot.”

“Fuck that hole, sir,” he says into the pillow. His voice sounds strained and anxious, as if he’s gone without filling for far too long. “If you need to fuck it, fuck it.”

“Dunno if I need to fuck it.” Since moving away, my vowels have rarely sounded so honeyed. I suck on two of my fingers, while I let the tip of my cock brush against the extremities of his cheeks. He tries to move back, to feel its kiss once more, but I’m too much of a tease to allow such a thing. “Looks like pussy.” I shove both fingers inside the loose hole. “Sure feels like pussy.” I twist in my digits until I hit the knuckles. “Maybe it fucks like pussy.”

“Please.” He snuffles the syllable into the pillow. It sounds again, but this time as a long, agonized supplication. “Please.”

The last sibilant hasn’t even crossed his lips than he rears his head and lets out a mighty roar. I’ve plunged inside, lubed with nothing more than spit and brazen desire. His hole feels good—hot and welcoming, the cozy refuge I’ve craved all week. I’ve got some aggression to work out, too, after long days of dealing with medical staff and one unusually crabby old man. This ass is what I’ve chosen to make suffer.

Not that he’s in pain, mind you. With grunts and growls he meets my assault, lifting his hips higher and spreading his own cheeks open so I might plunder him even more deeply. When he swings his head from side to side, trying to clear either his brain or his vision, or both, sweat flies in every direction. He’s like a wet dog shaking bathwater from his fur. I give his meaty ass another slap, and let loose with profanities that I know will excite him further.

“I should fuckin’ tie you up and call every thievin’ motherfucker I know to come dump a load in this slutty, wet hole. Feels so damn good.” Another slap, and he plants his face in the pillow once more with a grunt. “You’d probably like that too, huh, cocksucker?” When he doesn’t answer, I pull out all the way and wait, my scarlet inches wet and throbbing. “I asked you a question, son.”

“Yes sir,” he aspirates. He’s barely able to weave vowels to the consonants. “Whore me out. You own this hole.”

“Fuuuuuck.” I extend to word as long as it’ll go. “Damn right I do. You want more?”

“Yes sir. Please don’t stop, sir.”

I immerse myself inside him as far as I’ll go, and make myself swell. “You mean, like that?”

“Yes sir. Just like that.”

“Then what do I do? I dunno what you gay boys like,” I snarl.

“Go in and out. Just…please fuck me, sir.” His deep voice strains with desperation. “Use it. Breed this fag ass. Whore it out to your buddies.”

“In and out, huh? Hungry-ass li’l pig,” I growl, as I get back into the rhythm I’d established before. “Takin’ strange dick from any motherfucker who sees that open door. Damn, that’s sick.”

“Yes sir.” His breathing is becoming more labored.

“You’re a nasty boy, huh.”

“Yes sir, a real nasty boy.”

“Cum-guzzlin’, fuck-takin’, butt-hungry white-collar businessman with a hankerin’ for redneck meat…” I don’t even have time to reflect on how the verb to hanker never, ever makes an appearance in my vocabulary; his body begins to shake and spasm. I see his hand grab for his dick. With a mighty roar, he directs it in my direction, between his legs, so that it points back between his legs to the floor. Semen jets from the flared tip and lands on the wood with an audible splat. Another jet. Still another. It’s icing my black footie socks and oozing between the floorboards by the time he’s finished.

But just because he’s done doesn’t mean I am. “Shiiiiiiiit,” I drawl. “Must’ve really like my big ol’ dick. Fuckin’ cocksucker.” I grab a hip with one hand, and wrap the elastic of his jock around the back of the other, pulling him toward me. He’s compliant fuckmeat, now, and keeps his hole loose and open for me as I finish inside. “Get that pussy open for me, yeah, like that,” I growl. “Like that. Just like that. Just like…”

My own climax is deafening, when it arrives. I haven’t even so much as jerked off, this last week. My load floods his cunt. Over the roar of fire in my veins, I hear him grunt with surprise. Maybe it’s at the molten warmth of my load. Maybe it’s at the sheer volume of my wordless cries. He’s leaking now, so much that my nuts are soaked. “Now that’s the way you do it,” I say as my convulsions subside. I slap his ass before I pull out.

Now I’m sitting on a chair at the bedroom’s edge, a bit off-balance in my post-coital haze. A quick getaway is what I expect to make—since I’m a home intruder and all—but while I’m groping for my clothing, the man I’ve been fucking flips around to face me. Actually, it’s more as if he slides from the mattress and oozes onto the floor, like a boneless sludge, to assume a kneeling posture before me. “Holy fuck,” he pants.

I crack a grin as I put one leg through my shorts, then the other. “No kidding,” I say in my regular voice, now that the spell is broken.

He slumps against the bed frame and runs his hands through his short gray hair. “Holy fuck,” he says once more, shaking off the perspiration he’s collected. “You didn’t want the ball gag, though?”

I mean, he’d been the one suggesting he should wear the damn thing, then chose not to. “You tell me.” I shrug.

He watches as I pull back on my t-shirt. “So, I’ve gotta ask. You always travel with a collection of paddles?”

“What?” I say, taken aback. The question is so bizarre that I automatically laugh. I try to make a joke out of it. “No, not always.”

“How about that tens machine?” I know what a tens machine is. I’ve been around the block a few times, you know. But I can’t imagine why in the world he thinks I have one. I just stare, while he begins rattling off a list of gear. “I mean, it’s kind of crazy to think you pack a suitcase with those and the sounds, and a whole set of restraints. What kind of portable gloryhole do you have? Did you make it? Or buy one online?”

There’s more, but as he peppers me with questions, I’m felling unsettled feeling. It’s not dissimilar from looking at an illustration of a rabbit and then discovering that someone else is viewing the same thing and thinks it’s a duck—or that stupid controversy a few years back when people were arguing whether a single dress was black and blue, when it was obviously gold and white. I’ve been so certain that my view of the encounter had been one thing. Suddenly I’m being challenged to think that it’s perhaps something else.

The realization is not comfortable.

It’s not helped when I clear my throat and attempt to distance myself from his line of questioning with, “Oh, I put your keys on that table next to the front door.”

“Keys?” He sounds as flabbergasted by my non-sequitur as I’d been by his interrogation.

“Your house keys,” I say. Maybe the sexual haze hasn’t quite cleared from his brain. “I put them on the glass table?”

“Where’d you get my keys?”

“They were in your door?” I’m thinking, the whole home intruder scenario you set up? Remember?

But he looks blank. “Oh, did I leave my keys in the door? Really?”

“Wait.” He’s totally taken me aback. “You said you’d set up a hot scenario for me. Wasn’t it…?”

He tilts his head, not understanding. “I left clothes for you to follow. Didn’t you see them?”

I stand, laughing. This encounter has navigated a hairpin curve from hot to bizarre in a record timeline. “I’ll see you later,” I say, ruffling the guy’s hair and making a swift beeline for the stairs.

“Hit me up again sometime,” he calls to my back. “We’re so close.”

All the short walk home I can’t get one thought out of my head. This guy thought I was someone else. He’d mixed me up with another Scruff dude he’d been texting, some hot dom in leather who travels with a trunk full of gear and a portable glory hole. Here I’d arrived in Richmond with no more than a cock ring, a dirty mind, and a grin on my bearded face, while he’d been fantasizing about a rough ol’ top who’d show up with spiked paddles and electrical hookups and a freakin’ ball gag. I mean, I guess he’d seemed satisfied, but was he sitting at home right now thinking to himself, That guy was pretty tame for a sick fuck with a Saint Andrew's cross and a collection of dildos shaped like horse dicks?

And—oh, god. How badly had I misread the whole home invasion role-play thing? Here I’d thought we both were being impish, mischievous little devils spicing up an encounter, when all along he’d only forgotten and left his keys in the door in his haste to be butt-up for some fucker who wasn’t me. Holy fuck, could I be more dim? Stupid, stupid, stupid…

I interrupt my mental self-flagellation and roll over on the uncomfortable twin mattress that’s my bed for the foreseeable future. My phone’s buzzing. That’s the hottest fuck I’ve had in years, the guy a block and a half away has texted. Thank you, sir. My hole is yours anytime you need it.

I roll back over again. All right, I think, as my anxieties ebb and my usual sexual cockiness flows in its place. Maybe I hadn’t done so badly, after all. Even without a trunk full of sex toys. After a review like that, I’m more inclined to see the guy again, sometime in the future.

Providing he understands who I am, of course.

Three Nights in Chincoteague: 1980 (Part 2)

Part 1 may be found here.

We spend the next day on Assateague Island. The adults lounge under umbrellas, sunglasses on their noses, talking over each other. My little sister and cousins have brought inflatable toys for the surf, though the rocks and rough sand puncture them mere minutes after they’ve been blown up. There’s no need for floats, though, when the kids have buckets and spades for sandcastles, and seashells to discover, and the natural pleasures of the surf. I spend the day taking long, solitary walks, letting the waves splash over my ankles and calves. From time to time, crabs buried beneath the sand will resent my trespass and nip at my toes, causing me to yelp and stumble away. We eat sandwiches for lunch, play miniature golf in Chincoteague to get out of the afternoon heat. There are no historical markers to stand over in reverence, no battlefields, no lessons to learn. It truly is our first and only real vacation as a family. Though it’s no Magic Kingdom, everything about the experience feels fresh and new. I let the sun and wind bleach away the stain of what I’d done the night before, in the thicket.

It’s dark again. After the kids get tucked into bed, the adults play bridge in Bert and Jane’s cabin. And though I know I shouldn’t, when I see that firefly light of his smoke after dark, I once more wander out the back door and sit opposite the big-nosed stranger.

He’s wearing a fancy tropical shirt, a pattern of stylized toucans and palm trees on a dark fabric, over the same baggy shorts. Tonight, he’s got the bottle in one hand, cigarette in the other. He sits with his legs spread and dangling over the cinderblock stoop, lips slick with liquor.

If I were to encounter this man back home in this condition, say in Bryan Park late at night or by the riverside, I’d steer away. I’m not naive. I know red flags when I see them. In the park, I’d have plenty of choice. I’d let someone else cope with this ugly, alcoholic mess. I’m not at home, though. I’m in sleepy, family-friendly Chincoteague, a town of salt-water taffy and themed Putt-Putt courses and tributes to the books of Marguerite Henry, everywhere one turns. It’s late at night. I’m bored. I’m horny. The ugly, alcoholic mess has given me money for a blowjob before. He might again. I’ve dealt with worse.

“You hungry for dick?” he says, staring at me.

I startle at his loud bluntness. He’s not being discreet at all. Probably no one is close enough to hear, but even in an inebriated state, he should realize the risks of asking such a question within earshot of his wife.

“Come on, son. I got what you want. Aw, you loved it last night.” He’s grabbing at his junk and giving it a firm squeeze. I didn’t love it the prior evening. I’d tolerated it for the sake of the cash. Even now, the memory of his foul seed roils my stomach. He mistakes my hesitation for negotiation. “Oh, I see.” He digs into his pocket and once more pulls out that back-breaking bifold. “That’s the way it’s gotta be, then. Fuck.”

It’s not just the sight of his open wallet that propels me to my feet—though that’s part of it. He needs to hush. “Sshh,” I warn, as I sit next to him. “Keep it down.”

His head wobbles with the effort of a drunk imagining he’s keeping it steady, as he looks into my eyes. “This is what you really want, isn’t it?” He’s folded two twenties between his ring and little fingers. Between the index and middle digits is a mostly consumed cigarette that billows smoke in my face. “How much more if you be my wife tonight?”

My pulse quickens. I keep an eye on the cash. “What do you mean?”

“Come on. How much?” I shake my head at his words, not understanding. “Be my wife. Just be real sweet to me and be my wife tonight. Okay? How much more? Twenty? Forty?”

He’s wheedling, now, but I truly don’t understand what he’s asking. Be his wife? Is he going to dress me up? Smear lipstick on my face? Will I have to wear his ring? I swallow and lick my lips, though, while he flicks the spent butt onto the ground and, as he grinds it beneath his sneaker heel, pulls another two bills from his wallet.

My reaction must be as naked as his need. He twiddles all the cash between his fingers. “Come on.” The man leans in close enough to breathe his hot, boozy breath into my ear. “Be my wife.”

“Okay.” Red flags be damned. Eighty dollars is eighty more than I had a minute ago. It’s a hundred and twenty more than I had yesterday morning. The sight of his money stupefies any parts of my brain that might whisper warnings. He’s my Pied Piper and I have no choice but to dance. I nod, breathless, my pulse racing in anticipation, and allow him to tuck the cash in my greedy palm. “Let’s go.”

Tree bark bites into my back, as he bulldozes me into it. The cotton of my tee does nothing to protect me. My head bangs against the trunk—not hard enough really to hurt, but with enough force to bring involuntary tears to my eyes. His shove knocks the wind out of me.

“You gonna be a good wife for me?” he says, looming nearer. I can’t answer; he’s clamped his palm over my mouth and jaw; the rough edge of his tobacco-strained hand is so deeply wedged against my nostrils that with every breath I rasp against years of tobacco calluses. “Yeah, you’re gonna be a good little wifey, aren’tcha. You’re gonna do what I say, because you love me.” Though it’s dark in that thicket, I can see how shot are the whites of his eyes with irregular red veins. I wonder how wide and panicked are my own. “You love me, right? I’m your husband. You gotta love me. Kiss me, baby.”

I can’t answer, but he doesn’t care. He brings his face closer and—with his hand still clamped to my mouth—plants his lips where mine should meet him. It’s this freakish act that disturbs me more than anything else that’s happened so far. I’d make out with the man if he wanted. He so obviously craves intimacy. Yet presented with its possibility, he denies himself. Four fingers separate our mouths from each other, but he passionately slobbers over them as if they’re the real thing. Once or twice I feel his tongue dart between the crevices and flick against my lips, but this is no kiss. It’s an obscene parody, and it offends me to my core.

“Good wife,” he at last whispers in my ear. “I know you like it. Now you’re gonna get what you want.” His left hand roughly unbuttons my shorts and yanks my shorts low enough for the elastic to pull tight around my thighs. He fumbles for my hole to jab a fingertip inside. He misses, poking me hard where my thigh meets my buttock. “Sweet piece of pussy,” he mumbles.

I’ve been around the block enough to assess the situation. Years of public play has taught me never to allow my little head to dominate the big one. The crude way he’d shoved me against the tree was frightening, yes, but I don’t get the sense he wants to hurt me. The big-nosed man is lost in some fantasy of his own creation that had been set in motion once I’d accepted his money. But the way he’s going about it—the mock kisses, thinking a cleft is a pussy, even the whole set-up of pretending to be his wife so he can fuck me—is so awkward and borderline comical that my instincts reassure me he’s not dangerous. He could be. Maybe he even should be. But right now, I don’t feel it.

He spins me around so that I’m facing the tree and pushes mid-spine to bend me over. Once again, the stranger covers my mouth with his stinking fingers. “Gonna make babies in you, beautiful. You want that, right? You want your husband’s babies?” With my mouth covered, I can only grunt. He spits into his free hand and sticks it down his shorts.

My pants are tangled in the vicinity of my upper thighs. When he tries to spread my legs, there’s only so far I can pull them. He doesn’t care. Once more I feel the stab of his fingers against my ass. They miss the mark by a few inches. His combined fingertips thrust and probe at the fissure where my legs meet as he growls in my ear.

“You’re gonna love my dick deep in that pussy, baby. Gonna fuck you like a man should fuck his wife. Deep and wet. Pump you full of my babies.” His breath is hot on my neck. “Pump you enough for twins.”

I feel his probing cock and I brace myself. Over the last several years I’ve had rough fucks. I’ve had hot fucks. I’ve had fucks that set my hole on fire and turned my innards to jelly, and fucks where I’ve had to lie there while I wait for it to be over. I’ve had painful fucks from dicks too big for me, and fucks where the guy wanted me to hurt. I’ve had gentle fucks, and fucks where my partner was so worried and solicitous that I had to take control. But I don’t know what the hell to anticipate from this guy. He’s been drinking. Now that I’ve sold myself for a few scraps of paper, he clearly thinks he can do whatever he wants.

What I don’t expect, however, is that he’ll miss my hole entirely and penetrate the crack between my legs. He gasps as the head of his crooked dick bursts through. “Oh, baby!” His breath singes my neck. “You’re so pretty with my dick in your pussy. I love you, baby. I love you.”

He lays his torso on mine, hugging me close. Part of me suspects he must, to keep himself upright. At least he’s liberated my mouth. When I work my jaw and moan in gratitude, he mistakes it for pleasure.

“You love it, don’t you,” he growls. His cock makes swift, rabbit-like strokes between my legs. I’ve had intercrural sex before. A few of my older partners and clients even prefer it, as it requires little preparation and usually involves less mess. But I don’t think the big-nosed man realizes he’s fucking my legs and not my hole. He seems to be relishing the sensation, either way, and I’m not about to ruin his fun. “Tell me you love it, baby.”

“I love it,” I whisper, while I hang onto the tree and squeeze tight my thighs.

“Yes, you do. You love your husband’s big fat dick. You want my babies?”

“Fill me with your babies,” I urge. “Get me pregnant.”

He grunts, pleased. “You better be ready. I’m not pulling out.”

I need this to end. Agreement seems the quickest route. “Don’t pull out.”

“Fuck yeah. Making babies in my wife. Like a real man.” He mutters these words and more to himself in a low, steady ramble. Juice from his dick, hot to the touch, has made my thighs slippery. He stabs and plunges and forces his way between them. At one point he withdraws and shoves back in with a mighty jab, this time hitting my hole and making me gasp. He thinks he’s in the wrong spot, though, and mumbles an apology before returning to the softer flesh below.

When he comes, it’s with a repeat of last night’s shudders and quakes. I can feel jets of semen splatter my legs, as well as the ground and trunk in front of us. I make pleased noises and rub my butt against him until he softens and withdraws, whereupon I fumble with my pants until they’re more or less back in place. I’m drenched with him, from head to foot.

“That was beautiful, baby,” he slurs, moving in on me with his palm cupped. “C’mon. Show me how much you liked it. Gimme a kiss.”

Our transaction was complete the moment he came. There’s no way I’m enduring that lampoon of intimacy again. I writhe out of his grasp before his hand can once more cover my mouth, and slip away through the trees back to the cabins. My shorts are soaked with the man’s sweat and semen; I can still smell the sickly scent of him all over my body, still feel his breath on my back. It’s going to be tricky, whether I’ll be able to slip into the shower and then into bed before the adults finish their rubber. One thing I know for sure, though, as I hasten back to the dark cabin: there’s no amount of money that will tempt me back into the woods with that man again.

We’re all a little worn out, our last day in Chincoteague. The cousins are so tired that they actually request a nap, come late afternoon. Bert and Jane have joined them, in their cabin. I walk into our kitchenette to find my mom and dad staring out the back window. “What’s going on?” I ask.

My mother has her arms crossed and her neck set in a disapproving posture. My dad, whose sight is poor in the best of conditions, has to press his face close to the glass to see. He’s trying to be stealthy, at least, by ducking low. Without breaking his surveillance, he says, “This fellow next door seems to be…well, under the weather.”

“He’s drunk,” my mom summarizes. “Poor sod. Can you imagine the demons he must be wrestling with?”

Outside, I hear the empty chime of a bottle being set hard on concrete. Panicked that the ugly man has attracted my parents’ notice, I pretend disinterest and deflect. “We doing dinner anytime soon?”

“His poor wife,” says my mother.

She’s the last person of whom I want to be reminded. “So…dinner?”

My dad seems unwilling to leave his spy post, but my mother looks at her watch and sighs. “Teen boys and their stomachs, I swear. I suppose it’s that time. Though if Bert calls Carter a cracker one more time, I can’t be held accountable…”

“It’s just one more dinner, one more night, then we leave in the morning,” my dad reassures. “You can make it through that.”

My mom sighs as if she’s not convinced. I’m firmly in her camp, having learned one of the prime lessons of any vacation: there always comes a point when you’d rather be home.

After we return from our final dinner out and the little kids have been put to bed, my aunt and uncle and parents gather for one last night of bridge. Through the back door, I can see the red firefly of our neighbor’s cigarette dancing in the dark. Though I’ve refrained from turning on any lights, and though I’m peeking out from behind the grimy gingham curtain over the back window, he must sense I’m there. He picks up a pebble from the ground, hauls back, and with a pitcher’s grace, nails the wood of the screen door with a loud crack.

“Stop that,” I scold in a whisper, once I’ve yanked open the doors and stepped out. “What the fuck?”

“I want you,” he says loudly. Then, acceding to my frantic gestures, he lowers his voice. “I want you, baby. C’mon. Be my wife.”

There’s no way I’m once again submitting to his messy caricature of lovemaking. Absolutely no way. I shake my head.

“You gotta. You love it. You’re my wife.”

I’m this man’s nothing. Arms crossed, and imitating my mother’s stance of imperviousness, I stand firm. “Listen. I can’t. My folks are expecting me…”

“Come on, baby.” He puckers his lips and kisses in my direction, then stumbles to his feet. “I’ll make it real sweet.” I shake my head. There’s a harder edge to his voice when he adds, “I know what’ll get those legs wide open.”

As he digs in his shorts for that wallet, I can’t help but pause. With two fingers he plucks out a twenty-dollar bill, then another. I’d resolved to walk away, but I make the mistake of hesitating. I could go through it once more. I’d be out of here tomorrow; I’d never have to see him again. I’m stock still as he pulls out a final twenty, then two tens. Eighty dollars. Eighty more dollars could numb a lot of the indignities I’d have to suffer, out there in the woods.

I’m still frozen in place when he pulls one more ten from the wallet. “You know you want this, at least,” he says, turning to spit with contempt on the ground. With a snap of his wrist, he tosses the bills into the dust at my feet, where they scatter.

I hate myself for being tempted, but it’s the disdain in his attitude that decides me. I won’t be going to the thicket with him this evening. Refusal is my clear right. I clear my throat and say, so that there’s no mistaking: “No.”

And then he slaps me.

I don’t see it coming. I’m too busy feeling virtuous to anticipate the swing of his arm, the arc of his open hand as it closes the gulf between us. He connects not with his palm, but with his stinking fingers. The slap is sharp enough a blow to make me see stars. We both stagger away from the other, mouths agape, eyes wide, nostrils flaring. With a sudden huff, the ugly man drops his ass onto the stoop. The life’s drained out of him: he seems stunned at what he’s done.

“Fuck you,” is all I say, before I retreat into the darkness, hand cupping my cheek, in the direction of the street. For the rest of the night, I sit alone on the front steps of Bert and Jane’s cabin, waiting for my parents. I’ll have to be all smiles and charm when they emerge. Pretending that nothing extraordinary has happened is the price I pay for the secret life I lead.

The next morning, while my mother oversees our departure, my job is to ferry luggage from the front steps to the trunk of our Dart. I’m impatient to leave. I miss our cats and the happy mess of our house. I miss the familiarity of my cruising spaces. I almost miss high school. I’d be happy, right now, never to go on vacation again.

And here comes Bert, manfully hauling two large suitcases to his family’s new-model car, parked next to ours. “Morning, sunshine,” he says with a false grin. “Didn’t forget to pack your makeup bag, didya?”

Now I’m really ready to go. Without a word, I turn my back on my bully and stalk back to the cabin, ignoring his jeers. If I step inside, I’ll just have another bag thrust in my hands. So I circle around to the back. My neighbor’s door is closed and the windows shut. Though there’s an empty bottle of cheap bourbon lying on their steps, at least I won’t be forced into one final confrontation. Good.

Not until I sit on the stoop for a final time do I notice bills littering the dirt. Tens and twenties, still lying where they’d been flung the night before. I look around, almost suspicious I’m being tested. Then, in a rush of motion, I’m down in the dust and pebbles, grabbing at the cash as if my life depends on it. Twenty, thirty, fifty, seventy, eighty—there should be another ten somewhere. It’s not at the foot of my steps, nor has it blown behind the metal garbage cans. My hands and knees are dirty, but I continue scrabbling for that final, elusive bill.

The back door opens. It’s my mother, hands on her slender hips, looking with disdain at the Old Crow bottle on the opposite stoop. Her disapproval gives me time to tuck a handful of grit and cash into my back pocket. “What in the world are you doing back here?” she asks, puzzled. “It’s not even nine in the morning and you’re filthy.”

“Bert…” is all I have to say to elicit a roll of the eyes and a sympathetic sigh.

“Once you’re in college, you can pick and choose when and if you see him.” She holds out her arm to summon me indoors. “If only I could be so lucky. Come on. We’re ready to go.”

But I can’t leave. In vain, I look around for that one last bill. It’s mine. Even though I didn’t earn it, even though last night I didn’t want it, there’s ten dollars to be had. I can’t abide the thought of anyone else claiming what I deserve.

Even as my eyes frantically scramble across the weedy wasteland, my feet trudge the stairs behind my mother. Every step away from that missing money is sheer torture. I have eighty unearned dollars in my hand. Eighty dollars is eighty more than I had a minute ago. It’s two hundred dollars more than I had when we arrived here. And yet I’m not satisfied.

All through my childhood and adolescence, my mother has drummed into my head that we have money enough for what we need. Enough to be grateful. They’ve somehow squeezed out a little more for this unexpected vacation. I should be happy. I should be appreciative.

Yet here I am, secretly mourning the loss of a petty sum, sweaty and sick to my stomach, my limbs trembling like I’m going through withdrawal, as I climb into our car. I could pick up ten dollars in five minutes at home. Hell, back home I’d turn up my nose at any man who assumed I was a ten-dollar trick. Why, then, do I spend our drive back to Richmond puzzling where that last bill might have fallen?

An hour ago I’d been just a kid with a side hustle, a soon-to-be senior in high school sitting on a profitable secret. The big-nosed man in the cabin next door had shown me what I really was: a junkie. I have a problem. I need more than I should. I want more than I need. I’m putting myself in the line of danger for a fistful of bills. Not just with this bozo from Raleigh: every time I climb into a strange car at night, or knock on a trick’s hotel room door, or when I disappear into the shadows along the banks of the James. I’m a slave to a flash of cash, a whiff of currency, and the promise of a sexual thrill.

“Tired out?” my mom asks from behind the steering wheel. It's a hot day and the Dart lacks air conditioning, so all the windows are open. She raises her voice to be heard over the rush of freeway wind, and looks at me in the rearview mirror. “You’ve been mighty quiet today.”

I mumble something and let my head loll, knowing I won’t be heard.

“I think he’s just tuckered out from a long vacation,” mutters my dad.

My mom isn’t so sure. “Too much vacation, if you ask me.”

Too much? It was only three nights in Chincoteague—mostly at Bert’s expense, my teenaged resentment emphasizes. Though I realize something about vacations, now, something I’d never learned from my classmates, when they returned from their amusement parks and ski trips and shopping excursions to the big city. I might be able to flee my small town. For a spell, I might be able to escape to better weather, or to different scenery, or for new sights. The one thing from which I’ll never be able to take a vacation, though, is myself.

What a fucking depressing thought.

I sit there, forehead pressed against the car’s vibrating interior and watch the pines pass by. In my private prison, I long for that lost ten-dollar bill, tossed by ocean winds, tumbling toward a flat and endless horizon.