Son

Before Scruffy, there was Joey.

I always seem to encounter certain archetypes in my life. When I moved away from home after college and lost That Intellectual Acquaintance Who’s A Bit Of An Asshole, for example, I quickly picked up another cut from roughly the same cloth—a little bit overweight, bearded, and sardonic to the point at which I couldn’t figure out whether I liked him or not. I’ve always had a Witty Older Female Friend, and though the faces may change, there’s usually an Intense Student With Serious Artistic Aspirations hanging around and asking for advice. Life likes to spice things up from time to time by trotting out one of the Hopeless Straight Woman Who Moons Over Me From Afar, or the Evil Antagonist Determined To Ruin My Reputation. My life has often felt like a giant repertory company, a commedia dell’arte populated with an ever-changing cast playing pretty much the same perpetual roles.

And Joey, like Scruffy, was for a time the Boy Who Loved To Take Daddy’s Loads.

I met Joey several years ago on Manhunt, in the middle of winter. I’d noticed his profile often before, because he viewed me basically every time I came online. I never thought he’d be interested in meeting, for some reason. On a very bleak January day, however, he messaged me and said, Wassup? I’m sitting here in my empty office and could sure use some company. Wanna come over?

I happened to want to, very much. It sounded very grand, going to the office of a kid in his early twenties; I didn’t know quite what to expect. As it turned out, Joey worked part-time in an optometrist’s clinic, doing the books on Wednesdays, when the office was closed. He met me at the door of the medical office building and let me in to the darkened lobby, with its displays of the latest magazines and literature about Lasik surgery. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” he said, immediately charming me. “I kinda just had to meet you though.”

Joey was a beautiful boy. His eyes were an odd, arresting silvery pale shade—Meg Foster or Kirstie Alley eyes—that took my breath away when I saw them smiling bashfully up at me. His hair was thick and wavy. He face had a square shape that was softened by apple-like cheeks and actual dimples at the corners of his mouth. The kid was fucking adorable, and when he lifted his head to meet my lips, I knew right off that there wasn’t a better kisser.

That day he took me into the back, to one of the exam rooms, where he undressed me, lowered the padded patient chair to a reclining position, and straddled my dick. We fucked all over that office. In the break room. In the office, with him bent over the desk where he’d been working. In the lobby, on the largest of the comfortable sofas. It was almost dark when I finally left him, and it had started snowing. I recall feeling badly that the poor kid was going to have to spend an extra three or four unpaid hours making up the billings to which he hadn’t attended while I’d been dicking him every which way, but them’s the breaks.

I had Joey over to my place after that, three or four times. The sex was always amazingly good. We connected on the same level; he responded to my needs by putting his own plainly on display. He loved to kiss through the entire act. He didn’t care much about his own dick, but every time I took care of him, he was grateful, spent, and fulfilled. In short, he meant a lot to me in the time we saw each other. When he started dating a guy, however, I saw less of him, and then nothing at all. Scruffy took over the role of Boy Who Loved To Take Daddy’s Loads.

I’d heard from Joey a few times since, of course. He kept me posted as first his boyfriend moved in with them, and then when they stopped seeing each other completely. I knew that in recent months he’d scraped together the funds to purchase his first house, and I sent him a little gift on the day he closed. He’d come on to me a few times, naturally, but it always seemed to be at midnight or very late at night, when I wasn’t available simply to take a jaunt out of the house to his place. You need to get at me early in the day, I'd chide. I'd see you then.

Saturday morning he caught me online and messaged me with, Is it early? Am I going to get you to come baptize my new house with your spunk?

And who can really resist a come-on like that?

Joey’s new place is in one of those areas of town traditionally occupied by blue-collar families, in a neighborhood filled with what are kindly called starter homes—tiny little bungalows with miniature floorplans and even smaller bathrooms. I was greeted at the front door not only by Joey, but by two of his three cats as well. “Fuck,” he said, shoving me up against the freshly-painted wall. “It’s been way too long, daddy.”

From many people, the word daddy would make me snort. From Joey, it only stiffened my dick, which was already half-hard and hanging down the left leg of my camo cargos at the sight of him. I hadn’t forgotten how beautiful he was, but the impact of that beauty hit me like a speeding truck. Gone were his wavy locks, replaced by the shortest of buzz cuts. His square jaw was covered with a beard that was as closely-cropped as his head. With all the short fuzz over his face, jaw, and dome, he looked like an especially hunky monkey. Joey wore no clothes save for a pair of 2(x)ist black briefs that I suspected he'd put on to impress me. Save for a few wisps in the middle of his chest and the slightest of trails from his navel to his waistband, he’d never had much body hair above the waist. Below it, I knew he could boast a furry butt and a pair of the hairiest legs I've seen.

And those eyes, those silver eyes, caught me off-guard and took my breath away. “How about you give me a tour?” I said, knowing I wouldn’t get another chance if I didn’t take it then.

He was proud as a puppy who’d just learned to fetch, as he showed me around the tiny little house. The tour ended, of course, in his bedroom. “What do you think, sir?” he asked, obviously hoping for my approval.

“I think you’ve done really well for yourself here, son,” I told him.

He melted at that word, son. I watched as he sighed with happiness and as his posture softened, like clay anticipating the potter’s hands. I hooked my fingers into the waist of his briefs and pulled him in for a kiss, and then another, and another. More and more I demanded from him, until my mouth was devouring his and he relaxed in my arms and let me lay him gently on the bed.

The boy was in heat. They’re all so anxious to be fucked, the young ones. His legs reached into the air and wrapped themselves around me, pulling me into a position of mounting. I didn’t even have anything more than my sandals off at that point, but my cock was hard and dripping in my shorts. I know he could feel it, pressing against his ass, through the three layers of cotton that were our underwear and my shorts. He bucked and ground his hips to make it harder, while his mouth revealed its depths to my tongue.

Already I was sweating, and I hadn’t even begun to fuck. “Flip,” I commanded. He instantly obeyed. I pressed my mouth against the spot where I knew his hole lay, and huffed hot air against his hole. He groaned, and pressed his ass against my mouth. The black fabric began to warm and moisten as I chewed at his little pucker from without. I couldn’t stand it any more. “Do you want daddy’s dick?” I finally asked, leaping up from the bed to shuck my pants.

“I love daddy’s dick,” he replied, looking up at me with those beautiful silver eyes. “I’ve missed my daddy’s dick so fucking much,” he said. “You’ve probably found some other boy to replace me.”

I ran my hand over his newly-shorn hair. I hadn’t expected the cut to suit him so well, but it did. “No,” I told him truthfully. “I haven’t.” Because no matter if Scruffy came along to play the part after Joey and I stopped screwing regularly, Scruffy didn’t replace him. They aren’t the same person. I’ve loved them both in different ways.

But like Scruffy, Joey is all about my dick during our time together. He pushed me back into the covers and licked at my nuts. He sucked me, watching my expression as he did so, smiling to himself whenever I’d bite my lower lip or gasp with pleasure. He deep-throated me so expertly that the sensation of slipping into his gullet seemed more like a pleasure and less like a punishment. He didn’t gag or choke. One moment I’d be prodding against the back of his mouth, and then the next, I would have slipped deeper inside, to find my head and an inch more massaged and caressed by one of the tightest muscles possible. His eyes didn’t even water, or waver from mine, the entire time. “Damn, son,” I finally said, after he’d do it so many times that I felt vaguely guilty. “You’ve been practicing!”

“Not with meat as big as yours,” he said. “I really have wanted this dick.”

He was so sweet and sincere that it was my eyes that watered a little. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” he said.

“You’re being very, very good to me.”

“That’s because I want you to keep coming back,” he said. “And keep coming back after that.”

We kissed again. I maneuvered myself behind him, and began licking at his hole until I was able to get two fingers inside. Then I borrowed his lube and began applying it liberally to both his hole and my dick. I wiped my hands on a towel while I positioned myself to enter. Joey clutched his pillow in a hug, with both arms, as he smiled to himself, ready to be plowed.

I couldn’t resist running the flat of my hand over the bristles atop his head once more. I’d seen the Astrologer only the night before, and some of the melancholy of that night still lingered. “You’re a good kid,” I whispered. His chest thrummed with pleasure. “But you know what?” I added.

“What?”

“Your online profile kills me,” I told him, “when you say you’re average.” It’s true: Joey, the kid who turns heads when he walks into a room, has a sex profile that says, I'm just an average-looking guy. Don’t get your expectations too high. If Joey of the pale eyes and the dimples is average, someone is seriously throwing off the class curve. “You are far from average.”

He flushed. “You don’t have to say that.”

“You are beautiful,” I told him. I pushed my dick against his hole and began to work it inside. All I could feel was warmth and wetness, and no resistance or tension whatsoever. “The day I met you in that eye doctor’s office, I said you were the most handsome kid I'd fucked in years. You're a good person too, and you're really making something of yourself. I really wish you knew how special you are, through and through.”

His silvery eyes were half-closed when I finally got all the way inside. “Thank you,” he said, though whether for the praise or for the fuck, I wasn’t sure. “I think you’re my only fan, though.”

“I suspect you’re not looking hard enough.” I lay atop him by this point, with my arms around his chest, and our hands a tangle of fingers and palms. “Just promise me something.” When he grunted in assent, I said, “I don’t want you looking in the mirror in fifteen years’ time and thinking you’re invisible. Just promise me you’ll believe I see you as you really are. I do see you.”

His voice was little more than a sigh when he replied. “I’ve missed you, dad.”

“Promise me,” I urged.

“I promise.” He sighed and relaxed as very slowly I began to slide in and out of his slick chute. “I promise.” I let it go at that. I wanted to say this—that to protect him from the world’s cruel blows I wished I could, but that I wasn’t going to be around forever and it was important for him to know that I sincerely wished him the best life possible. I wished him the truth, and I wished him clear vision. Because it seemed to me that there were too many half-blind souls drifting through their lives and wishing for something that’s all the time within their grasps. The Astrologer. Joey. The boy in the woods months ago, asking me, So am I good enough?

I wish I could fix things. I wish I could mend people whole, and send them away with lasting smiles on their faces and a skip in their step. Changed. Forever made better. I know, though, that the most eloquent of my words, the most lasting of my caresses, can only be the merest salve to these deepest of wounds.

So instead, I only said, “I’ve missed you, too,” and kissed him gently on the brow, as I might a real son.