My Little Polish Snowman

Ordinarily, when a guy throws enough red flags in my path, I slam on the brakes. I’m sleazy, but I’m not stupid. Tell me about your arrest record, brag about those multiple restraining orders against you, get clingy and declare you’re in love with me and want to relocate after we’ve only exchanged a few sentences . . . I’m out of there.

Now, anyway. It took a lot of dumb decisions in my youth to figure out those super-obvious things. I had to get learn the hard way that ex-cons are often locked up for a reason, had to flop miserably at long-distance dating to realize it’s not for me, and as for the clingy stalkers . . . well, I’m still trying to figure out how to shake those. But I’m getting better. Nothing’s more effective as a learning technique than reaching into that fire and learning first-hand that it burns.

That’s why, twenty years ago, I wasn’t smart enough to avoid people like Jay. When I think about Jay, I picture a short Polish guy with a pencil mustache built like a kid’s snowman. One round ball for his little head, one round ball for his chest, and one big round ball for his belly and legs. I’m definitely being unfair to the guy. He was more muscle than lard. It’s undeniable, however, that he was a squat little ball of a guy, no more than five-foot-three or four, sporting a military brush cut and a pencil baby fuzz mustache on his upper lip.

I met him on AOL, back in the day when AOL was a happening place and if you were doing anything online, you and your 2400-baud modem were there. (That “You’ve got mail!” voice still haunts me.) He sent me a digital photograph of himself in his old Army uniform—which was an unusual thing to send, because this was before every cell phone had its own camera. If you had a cell phone, that is. Most people didn’t. This was a time even before cheap web cams; he’d scanned the shot using some kind of device attached to a dot matrix printer that read the photo line by line and saved it as a pixelated image.

I was pretty impressed at his technical derring-do. Those primitive scanners took hours and hours to produce digital photos. There was very little one could do with one’s computer while it was chugging away . . . save for kick back and listen to the Victrola whilst looking at rotogravures of Teddy Roosevelt. Yes, I am old. You don’t have to tell me. Jay’s photo, in the end, resembled a mass of bleeding grays with a round little snowman in the foreground. It looked like a freshly-printed Victorian engraving left out in the rain.

But I was young, and I was horny, and he didn’t live so far away, so I started seeing him.

Jay was cheating on his partner. They were one of those annoying pairs who, in bars and public gatherings of the gays, would hold hands and talk about how wonderful their love was and how they believed in the sanctity of monogamy and how amazing it had been when they had been handfasted in a meadow by some kind of hippie-dippie minister. Yes, I actually saw the whole nauseating act in public several times, after I started fucking Jay. A friend of mine at the time was big into the gay country line dancing scene. I know, I know—about half of you are asking Why?! It was big in Detroit at the time. No, I don’t know how that happened, either. Anyway, I would accompany my friend to a bar called Diamond Jim’s about once a month so that he could spin around in his shiny cowboy boots to “Achey Breaky Heart” while I checked out the butts on the other guys. It was a win-win for everyone involved, basically.

Eventually Jay and his partner would walk in. Diamond Jim’s was their hangout. Jay would avert his eyes at the sight of me, cling more tightly to his boyfriend’s hand, and lay his head on the boyfriend’s shoulder. They were happy. No, they were a picture of bliss. Contentment was their lot. They only had eyes for each other. Then Monday would roll around and I’d be fucking Jay all over the lovebirds’ nest, giving him the nasty sex he wasn’t getting from the boyfriend and making him squeal like a stuck pig.

(Later on I fucked the boyfriend, too. But that was years after Jay. And it’s a whole ‘nudder story.)

And hoo boy, the sex was naaaaasty. That alone was the reason I kept coming back, over and over, for about three years. I held a dual teaching and administrative position then, and had vague enough duties and little enough supervision that all I had to do on a day with no classes was mutter something along the lines of, “I have to go over to the medical campus for the morning,” and then basically take off a few hours to go fuck someone. I’d drive to Jay’s place in the suburbs, walk in his back door, and find him totally naked save for a harness, ass in the air, his greasy rosebud twitching around and clamping onto the handgrip of a cordless drill. Or I’d find that he’d stripped, blindfolded himself, tied his hands with a length of rope and thrown it around the clothes washer in a way that rendered him effectively helpless.

Sometimes I’d find him on the kitchen floor, round little legs up in the air and face contorted as he forced giant cukes and even eggplants up his hole. A couple of times I discovered him in his dog’s cage, wearing a collar and lapping water out of a bowl. Didn’t matter how I found him. Every single time I made damned sure that he ended up spread-eagled with eight inches of my unwrapped dick shoved in deep. The little fucker loved my dick. He would keep up a running commentary as I speared him with it. “Oh FUCK, that head is SCRAPING MY GUTS!” he’d yell.

For someone who lived in a quiet suburban neighborhood with neighbors not too distant on either side, and for someone who was all wuvey-dovey with his boyfriend at every opportunity, he certainly didn’t make much effort to keep from yelling these things at the top of his lungs. The ceilings would ring with “God DAMN you are BUSTING MY PUSSY WIDE OPEN!” or “Just FUCK your little boy with THAT CUNT SMASHER! FUCK ME, DADDY!” At the time I had already transformed from someone who dabbled at topping to someone who really knew and liked what he was doing. I was flushed with pride at having this little ex-Army guy screaming “JESUS CHRIST you fuck me SO MUCH BETTER THAN MY BOYFRIEND and CHRIST your COCK is SO MUCH BIGGER!” while I nailed him. And I nailed that little fucker everywhere in that house. Floors. Kitchen counters. All the furniture in the living room. The guest bedroom. Their bedroom. After I’d bred him he’d squeeze out the spunk in his ass onto the coffee table or bathroom floor and lick it up, then jack off onto my feet or my loafers and slurp them clean. I had my own little nasty whore bottom who stroked my ego and inflated my dick, and for a while it was good.

Yet I was ignoring the danger signs. Afterward, when my footwear was sparkling and my cock was spent, Jay would start talking. And talking. And talking. The dude never shut up. Mouthy as he was during sex, once he’d lapped up the last drop of cum like a good puppy, he’d start yapping and never shut up. I would have to edge toward the door inch by inch, as politely I waited for him to come to a natural break in the story so that I could make my escape. I know, I was stupid, trying to be polite. It’s lost on some people. Those breaks never fucking came, and I’d find the morning turning into noon turning in the afternoon with the two of us standing there while he battered me with his personal history.

Most of his stories had to do with affronts he endured from business establishments around town who DARED to be RUDE to him. He would launch into an endless story about a waitress in a pancake restaurant to whom he gave a perfectly ‘legitimate’ seven percent tip who tossed a snarl his way when he exited, which made him confront her about her ATTITUDE and then how he DEMANDED THE MANAGER FIRE HER ASS. Or some mechanic at the quick-lube oil change tried to RIP HIM OFF and STEAL STUFF from his GLOVE BOX while he was in the waiting room and you really have to WATCH THOSE MONKEYS OR THEY’LL RIP YOU OFF FOR EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT.

These days, I would’ve listened to one of those stories with narrowed eyes, excused myself, and erased the guy’s number from my phone. Back then, I would pretend to listen, nod, and think, I wonder if he’s got any military gear still? And if so, would he wear it when we boink?

There was one story in particular that he repeated several times about how he used to work at one of the city’s bathhouses for about, oh, two weeks. He had to keep the job from his boyfriend, who wouldn’t have approved of him picking up condoms from men’s changing rooms or mopping the cummy communal floors of the movie room. But that was okay, because they paid him under the table, in cash. But then one day he was walking by the pool and this old fart just reached out and TOUCHED HIM on the ARM. RIGHT THERE. LIKE THAT! He couldn’t BELIEVE he was being DISRESPECTED LIKE THAT so he PUNCHED THE GUY IN THE NOSE and BROKE IT. Well, he was BLEEDING A LOT, anyway. Then, could you BELIEVE IT, the manager of the bathhouse FIRED HIM ON THE SPOT when it was OBVIOUS that HE, a VETERAN, was the one being DISRESPECTED.

I would listen to this familiar tale with deep sympathy for the bathhouse, thinking to myself that yeah, managers usually don’t want their employees socking paying clients in the face and breaking their noses. Especially in a shady establishment in which married men and politicians and teachers and priests and bankers and businessmen were having illicit sex—an establishment that probably didn’t want the police roaming its halls. Right? But I’d keep my mouth shut and think to myself, My dick’s kind of hard. I wonder if I could go again.

I don’t know how I put up with Jay for three years. I wasn’t hard up for fucks; I never have been. It’s just that the sex was so loud and hot, and his ass was so round and sweet, and I loved slamming my little Polish snowman. But then came the day it all ended.

We were fucking in his spare bedroom. It was a fussy chamber dominated by a massive antique four-poster bed. The thing had a tester on the top that was printed with blue flowers and was dripping with lace; there were matching pillowcases trimmed so thickly with the same lace that I don’t know how anyone slept on them without scratching open his face. An old quilt in an antique ivory color covered the bed. Up around the flowery pillows were a number of old dolls of the Madame Alexander variety. We’d fucked here a couple of times and every time I’d entered it, I would think to myself, Damn, this room is faggy.

So were going at it. I had my pants dropped to the floor and my work shirt open. He was naked, his hole turned into a gape by my cock as I rammed in and out of him. I remember he was holding both his heels in the air with one hand, and beating the dusty mattress with the other as I stood at the foot of the bed, slamming in and out like a porn star. “JESUS CHRIST I need you to FUCKING RAPE ME!” he was yelling in his usual style. “MORE LUBE! MORE LUBE! GET IN ME ALL THE WAY DEEP FUCKER! I WANT YOUR DICK COMING OUT OF MY NOSTRILS!”

He reached over his head and retrieved a bottle from between the pillows. I slapped some of the water-based gunk onto my cock. I put more on his hole. He snatched the bottle back.

But he left me with a problem that is the bane of tops everywhere. Namely, the condition known as Slimy Fuck Hand. One of my hands was dry and normal. The one I’d used to slap on the lube was cold, clammy, and glistening with the stuff. Considerate bottoms have a hand towel nearby to combat the affliction. Jay was not a considerate bottom. I had to go back to work, so wiping it on my trousers (if they’d been up high enough, which they weren’t) or shirt wasn’t an option. I could’ve wiped it off on his legs or body, but that didn’t really solve anything. The next time I grabbed him there, I’d have Slimy Fuck Hand all over again.

So I did what I could to get back into the groove again. I reached out and wiped my hand dry on the bed covering. It was thoughtless, I admit. But it was necessary. If someone did the same thing in my home (even though I provide a hand towel), I wouldn’t really give a rip. My blanket is from Target. Chances are that once the boy pulls on his pants and leaves, I’m popping it the wash anyway.

However Jay wasn’t so easy going. He transformed from starving nymphomaniac to shrieking banshee in about zero-point-five seconds. “Jesus Christ was the FUCK ARE YOU DOING?” he started screaming at me, as he rose to his knees. “This is my GRANDMOTHER’S HEIRLOOM QUILT that she made with her VERY OWN HANDS when she was STILL LIVING IN THE HOMELAND YOU FUCKING FUCKWIT.” My jaw dropped as spittle flew from his mouth and his face turned beet red. “You think I can just WASH THAT WITH TIDE?! Don’t you know how VALUABLE IT IS?!”

On and on he went , foaming at the mouth and growing angrier and angrier with me. I thought about the mechanics in the garage, and about the stiffed waitress, and especially about the guy with the broken (or at least bloody) nose, and buttoned my shirt and stuffed it back into my pants. When he paused to take a breath, I finally asked him, for the first time in three years after one of his imaginary outrages, a sensible question. “If it’s so irreplaceable, why the hell are you fucking on it? Put that shit away if you don’t want it to get dirty.” Then, while he was stunned at my backtalk, I turned and walked out of the room, down the hallway, and out the front door.

He followed yelling at the top of his voice. “YEAH YOU BETTER RUN AWAY, LITTLE GIRL. LITTLE GIRL RUNNING AWAY! NEXT TIME I SEE YOU I’M GOING TO SHOW YOU WHAT I THINK OF YOU, YOU FUCKING PUNK!” And other delightful hits from his repertoire.

I never saw Jay again.

Naked, that is. I did see him out in public with the boyfriend, up until the time I moved from Detroit. I know that he came to his senses within the week and wanted to pick up where we’d left off. But he didn’t apologize for flying off the handle at me, and I wasn’t so desperate for his hole that I was willing to overlook the dangerous flaws to which I was no longer oblivious. On AOL I’d tell him no thanks, or just ignore his emails. In public I’d avoid him. He didn’t want to raise his boyfriend’s suspicions, so he wouldn’t push it when he saw me at the bar. Just like that, it was over.

There’s a lot of bottoms needing cock. Hell, forget tops and bottoms. There’s a lot of sex to be had. Your chances of getting some aren’t going to evaporate if you give up partners who are incompatible or unenjoyable or, let’s be frank, who are totally unstable.

Jay might’ve been something of an oddball, but it was from him that I learned a valuable lesson: ditch the crazy and move on to the next available ass. It’s out there waiting.