Dumb Fuck: Part 1

dude i cant find ur house, flashed the text message on my phone. what does it look like?

It’s the only house on the block that has the light on, I messaged him. Then, as an afterthought, It’s the only house with a for-sale sign.

so what does it look like? he repeated.

It’s two stories, has a big front porch with a bench, a FOR SALE sign, brick front steps, roses in the garden. I hit the send button and then walked to the front bedroom to see if I might spot the guy. I saw his car sitting directly in front of the house. You’re parked right in front of it!, I punched out.

If text messages could come with something to convey tone, mine might have sounded like a dog baring his teeth. He didn’t pick up on the growl, though. i dont think so dont see anything like that, he sent back, and a second later, I heard him release the brakes. I watched in astonishment as he sailed away, down the street.

Was he playing me? I couldn’t quite tell. I’d noticed the guy a couple of times before on Manhunt, but we’d never talked until Friday night, when he sent me a brief greeting and unlocked his photos. Bobby, he said his name was. The pictures told a story, or so I thought; the first was of a slim and muscular young man lying face down on a bed, wearing nothing but a jock that framed his perfect, round, bubble butt. His hands clutched the bedframe; his feet were restrained in cuffs. It was the kind of photo that made my dick stand instantly erect.

The next couple of photos showed how handsome was his face. His eyes were so beautifully-formed they seemed almost feminine, but his features were rugged, photogenic, and movie star-like. His chest was muscular and well-made, his sculpted arms every gym-bunny’s dream. The first several photos showed him with unblemished skin, but the rest were of a man covered in tattoos—so obviously they had to be more recent. There were some subtle differences between the inked photos and their earlier counterparts. The guy’s stomach wasn’t quite as flat; he had a little bit of a paunch, even. His butt seemed a little saggier, his face less angular and sharp.

Okay, I thought to myself. The guy has gotten a little out of shape over time, and threw in a few older photos to lure guys in. I was fine with that, to an extent. It was after midnight. I’d been idly hunting for someone to play with for over two hours at that point, and Bobby seemed interested, so I’d given him directions to my house and waited for him to show.

Now, from his place to mine the directions were fairly simple. Head up one big street for two miles. Turn right. Travel four blocks. Turn right again, and find me four houses down on the right-hand side. That was it—straight line, right turn, four blocks, right turn, four houses. Easy, right?

Not for this guy. From my perch in the window I watched as he re-parked at the far end of the block, then got out of his car and walked up to a house on the other side of the street so that he could peer at the address. i thought u said I was parked in front of ur house, he messaged.

“Idiot!” I barked at no one in particular. The guy was such a dumb fuck! My instructions had been perfectly clear. God knows they’d gotten plenty of other men to my front door. I looked up and down the dark street, and sure enough, mine was the only one with a porch light burning, making it look like Las Vegas in the middle of a dark desert. “If you can’t fucking find my house,” I said, as if getting ready to text it, “then Bobby-buddy, you don’t fucking deserve to get in my bed.” But instead of texting that, I sent, You were parked directly in front of it a minute ago. Come back.

I was slightly mollified when he got back in his car, turned around, drove back down the street, turned around again, and stopped the car in front of my house. “About time,” I muttered. I put my phone in my pocket and stomped downstairs to meet him. Despite the crisp, nippy air out, I opened my front door and stood in it so that he’d see me. He couldn’t miss that, right?

I waited. And waited. And then, after what seemed like an eternity my pants leg vibrated. I fished in the pocket, withdrew the phone, and looked at the screen. It said, dude u said u were 9139 but all the #s here are eeven.

Seriously?

As I prayed that my neighbors weren’t being roused from their sleep and watching, I stepped outside. Beyond the porch light’s glare, I could see a dark figure in sweat pants and a baggy hockey shirt walking up and down the sidewalk on the street’s opposite side, visible by the light of his cell phone screen. Anyone looking out their window right then, I thought to myself, was going to think a burglar was casing their joint.

I was seriously considering turning around, walking inside, turning out the light, and turning off my phone when suddenly the guy finally saw me. “Is that you?” he called out, breaking the cardinal no-talking rule of the sleepy suburbs at one in the morning. I heard the sound of footsteps as he trotted across the street. His feet tripped on the curb; he caught himself and kept his balance only at the last minute. “Oh my fucking god,” he said, when he reached my porch steps. “Your place is so fucking hard to find!”

“No, it’s really not,” I said, not at all pleased. I was nearly ready to send him home, at that point.

“All the numbers over there are even!” he said in an accusatory tone, as if I’d tried to pull a fast one on him somehow.

“Yeah, and all the numbers over here are odd,” I pointed out. “My house is an odd number. That’s how it usually works.”

“Oh,” he said. He let out an unexpected giggle. I pulled the porch door and let him in the house, not really willing to have this argument out in the dark and the open. “I’m kinda stupid, too. I had to remember that a nine is an upside-down six, duh.”

My lips were slightly parted. I blinked a couple of times. I honestly didn’t know what to say to that. When I looked him over in the light of the living room, his clothes were so enormous and baggy that I knew underneath him, his body probably was a lot more out of shape than even his photos had let on. His Red Wings shirt was so oversized that the hem reached his knees and made his shoulders seem slumped at angles to make twin ski slopes. “At least you’re here now, I guess,” I said, without a lot of enthusiasm.

“Yeah, right?” He seemed to have regained his good spirits, now that the even-odd mystery of the ages had been cleared up. Before I invited him to, or before I could say anything, he shucked his clothes. He kicked off his shoes so that they went crashing against the fireplace screen. Down went his sweatpants. Off came the hockey shirt. He stood before me wearing nothing but the same jock that had been in some of his Manhunt photos. He hooked his thumbs beneath the elastic and snapped it, then put his hands on his hips in a pose that clearly said, here I am. Hope you like it.

And I’ll be damned if beneath all that sloppy, baggy clothing was the most perfect, muscular body I’d seen in a dog’s age. It wasn’t as good as the first couple of pre-tattoo photos in his profile—it was much, much better. The guy was a dope, but he was one beautiful, pumped-up, worked-out dope who smiled at me with perfect teeth and said, in a way that made me melt, “Gee, you’re real cute. Do you wanna fuck?”

“Yeah,” I said, almost gulping in the way that the Wile E. Coyote swallows when he sees the Roadrunner. “I wanna fuck.”

(continued tomorrow)