My Turn

Once again, on this vacation, I’m sitting at a meal in front of an empty plate, across the table from a man who stares off into the distance and slowly chews a bite of gingerbread pig. No, chewing would indicate an end goal of actually swallowing. That’s an outcome unlikely to come to fruition anytime in the near future. Masticating, perhaps. What a cow does with its cud for endless hours, standing in a hot summer field as its tail flicks away flies from its shanks. Cows have tails, do they? Is that horses? Of course they do. Oxtail soup is a thing, right?

I’ve been to the breakfast buffet twice already; my stomach bulges happily from a double helping of chilaquiles. Although my small party has occupied our table for a good forty minutes, my friend Eeyore has only picked at his plate. Years ago, Eeyore had surgery for one of those bariatric bands, to help him lose weight. Ever since, he’s been an exceptionally slow eater. Excruciating, long meals had been the first things I’d considered, when originally he’d proposed accompanying us on this Puerto Vallarta trip; I still have vivid memories of Eeyore in Provincetown, years ago, and the restaurant visits that lasted so long that lunch bled into dinnertime, and dinner past my bedtime.

But hey. Eeyore is an old friend. He’s not primarily my friend—I don’t have his phone number and we don’t text or talk outside our circle. I’ve know him for three decades and more, though, starting back in Michigan. He’d relocated to NYC in the early 2000s for a more exciting life, predating my own move by several years. Now, in two weeks, he’ll be moving back to Michigan again. This vacation is Eeyore’s last hurrah, and I’m not about to ruin it by grousing about the glacial ages he spends eating.

And isn’t the leisure part and parcel with a vacation? I’m supposed to be enjoying this weather, the atmosphere, the long and unhurried hours with no itinerary and no obligations.

“So,” I say, waving away the waiter as he threatens to refill my orange juice glass. “How’s that roommate of yours?”

Eeyore sniffs his pig before taking another considered bite. “Hell if I know.” This week, the Mexican resort has been taken over by a charter group—hundreds of gay men occupy every floor. Rather than pay double the rate for a single room, Eeyore has opted to be matched with an unknown roommate. He's barely seen the guy since our first afternoon. All Eeyore has told me about the guy is that he’s from Chicago. “I can tell he’s been using the shower, but I sure haven’t seen him.”

“Well, at least someone is having fun,” I say, suppressing a deep sigh.

Eeyore doesn’t have an answer to that, so I raise my phone and swipe through the apps. Some guy on Grindr from the hotel has been nagging me to meet with him. He mails from Montreal, and while the photos he’s sent me are decent enough, he gives off a creepy vibe. I saw you at the mojito bar last night, his current message reads. It’s a sequel to previous installments he’s texted, including Hey wasn’t that you at the south end of the pool yesterday morning and I think I passed you in the lobby last night but you didn’t look my way.

The combined effect of all these near-miss messages makes me grind my teeth. If you see me, why the fuck don’t you just say hello???? I stab out with my thumbs. I pause, reconsider, then append a few more question marks for added emphasis. In the end, I think better of sending, delete the message, and ignore the text.

I’m about to shut off the phone and return to staring out at the horizon when a Scruff notification drops down from the top of my screen. Is your offer still on the table? I recognize the guy. We’d talked the night before. I was hoping to get a taste of the natural Mister Steed. He’s followed it up with a devil emoji.

Definitely still on the table, I tap back.

How natural are you?

Haven’t showered since yesterday morning.

This information pleases him, judging by the row of emojis sweating, wearing sunglasses, and sticking out their tongues. My hubby has gone into town for shopping and a massage. He’ll be away for a few hours. Can you come soon?

I look up to see Eeyore beginning to pick at his cold scrambled eggs. Our other table companion, his plate also long empty, stares at his own tiny screen. Yeah, I type back. Give me a room number. The Scruff stranger obliges.

My chair shudders across the tile as I rise and place my napkin on my plate. “I’m, uh, heading up to the room,” I say, placing my hands on my stomach in what I hope is the universal sign language for I need to poop and I'm more comfortable doing so in the privacy of my own room. “I’ll meet you guys…” Eeyore still has an hour or more to go with his food, I’m guessing. “...Anon.”

The fib elicits only grunts. I dash away to the elevator and head to my assignation.

I can tell by your profile that you’re a giving top. The kind of man who gets off on pleasuring others. The message had popped up on Scruff the night before. I’m susceptible enough to flattery that of course I agreed with every word. I am a giving top. I do enjoy pleasing others. It’s a form of rhetoric, though, that the sender might easily turn into a selfish come-on: if I enjoy pleasing a hole so much, how about I please his? It’s why I’m pleasantly surprised by the follow-up. You please so many others. Isn’t it your turn to be taken care of, once in a while? Don’t you deserve it?

I agree, nodding my head at the phone. Yes, I deserve it. Yes, I please so many others. I'm practically a saint! Maybe it is my turn to be selfish. What did you have in mind? I ask the stranger. His profile arouses me: he’s got handsome good looks and a fit, firm body that he shows off in multiple mirror selfies. His strong chin is accented by a full, dark beard. His eyes are full of humor and intelligence. It’s the kind of profile that I bet shows up on the app’s Most Woofed feature, on the regular.

How about when the time is right, you come up to my room, lay back, lift those legs in the air, and let me lick out that hole for a good long time. I’ll take care of you the way you take care of so many other lucky bottoms. Oh, I’ll take care of your cock, too. I’d be honored to worship that monster. But please. Let me honor that hole of yours first.

Upon seeing the offer, I swallow hard. I don’t get many offers to have my butt munched. The last time had been earlier in the year, when on one of my visits to Virginia a man had ended up eating it for hours in my hotel room—but before that, it hadn’t had a good rimming in an eon.

While I’m considering the best way to accept while not seeming too needy, he messages me again. Tops don’t do all the preparation bottoms usually do. If you bring me that hole natural, I’ll be a real happy boy. What do you think?

I know exactly what he’s asking, of course. Ordinarily, I won't let anyone near my hole unless it's thoroughly scrubbed and given at least a two-knuckle rinse. Poop smells during sex ruin the mood for me. I’d hate knowing I was the source of any bad odor.

But I’m of an age in which I rely on multiple psyllium capsules a day to keep my colon moving. Most of the time, my natural hole isn’t in too different a state from my hole out of the shower. I’m not worried about causing a nasty situation. Yeah, I type out. Let me know when. My hole and I will be ready.

“Damn,” he says, upon opening the door to my knock. He beckons me in. “You’re a tall drink of water.”

I laugh. I’m used to the reaction. “And you’re a handsome devil.”

He has the courtesy to blush a little. “Look who’s talking.” Then, standing on tiptoe, he takes my head between his hands and pulls me down for a kiss. His beard smells of vanilla and amber; a faded mint lingers on his tongue. For a long moment we stand there, just behind the closed door, arms locked about the other, faces mashed, eyes half-closed. “You’re a hell of a good kisser, too.” There’s a grin on his face: he likes not only what he’s seeing, but what he’s so far getting. His fingers wrap around my hand and squeeze while he stands once more on his toes to kiss me. “Come,” he says, tugging me toward the bed. “Let’s see what I can do for you.”

I shiver, and not just from the air conditioning blasting on my bare neck. It’s midday, but he’s drawn the blinds; though the room is dim as dusk, I can still tell it’s an untidy mess, though. On the sofa, someone’s thrown both clothing and electronics. The dresser top is crowded with shopping bags. Someone likes his souvenirs. There’s an open container of THC gummies, sugary and gem-colored, on the desk. The bed is a pristine oasis in the mess. Its white spread has been smoothed down; the pillows have been arrayed in a comfortable position. My host has laid out a black beach towel in the bed’s center, and now he guides me in its direction.

“You ready for someone to focus on you?” he whispers, his fingers slipping from mine.

My eyes don’t move from his as we speak. “Definitely.”

“Give you the attention you need?” He sits me on the bed and urges me to scoot back my butt onto the towel. I manage to get it done without messing up his careful arrangement. “The attention you deserve?”

I’m covered with what prickles like acres of gooseflesh. “Yes,” I whisper, watching him kneel on the bed’s edge and crawl up between my legs. “Please.”

His warm hands slide beneath my tee and press me down. The bearded man’s lips approach mine. As much as I want to taste those kisses again, he teases me by staying near enough that I can feel his breath on my facial hair, but not so close that our lips can meet. Not with his weight pushing me down into the feather pillows. “I am going to worship you,” he promises.

In that moment, I believe him.

He removes my shirt gently, as if helping a sleepy child to his bed. While I shiver in the room’s air conditioning, he coaxes up my hips and shimmies down my shorts and underwear. The former he folds and places in a neat square at the bed’s edge. The latter he crumples into a ball, to study and consider. “Are these yesterday’s?” he wants to know.

I nod. My plans had been to change my trunks when I showered before lunch.

My answer pleases him. With my tacit permission, he buries his nose and mouth into the still-warm cotton and inhales. My scent affects him like the strongest poppers; I can see his pupils dilate with pleasure as the musk hits home. Suddenly, there’s urgency between us. Breathing heavily, he throws my trunks onto the bed as if they’ve angered him; he crosses his arms and yanks his own polo from his hairy chest and yanks the basketball shorts from his waist. Beneath them, he’s wearing a red Nasty Pig jock. The head of his cock, fat and angry, protrudes over its band.

Once again he grabs my shorts and buries his face in them, like a pig at the trough. Maybe those deep huffs he’s taking vacuum out the scent, because several times he searches for new spots to huff. I can see a precum bead at the tip of his cock; when he tosses my trunks onto the floor and begins crawling his way back between my legs, the sticky droplet smears across the hair on his belly. “Let me do this for you,” he begs, as he pries apart my knees. Now he’s the one saying, “Please.”

I nod, giving him my approval. I find my hips being lifted into the air; his hands simultaneously support my weight and pry open my cheeks. I hold onto my ankles for balance. I’m totally exposed: only with klieg lights and a live studio audience could my hole be any more on display.

My sole spectator, though, seems enraptured by the sight of me. “That’s beautiful,” he murmurs, taking deep breaths. Thought I’m still confident in my lack of outright foulness, I know there must be other odors in which he’s reveling. The complex aroma of my balls after a day in the Puerto Vallarta heat. The sweat that’s accumulated and dried in the crease of my thighs. Perhaps even the nutty redolence of my cock, where the skin had been covering the head. He’s relishing them all. “You’re fucking beautiful,” he continues. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

“What do you…?” My question dies in my throat before it’s born, because he’s diving in to my hole with an open mouth. My legs flail; I buckle with such surprise that my bearded friend nearly drops me. While he continues to gnaw at my pucker, I struggle to regain balance. It’s just that his mouth on my ass feels so damned good. He uses the same tricks I employ on my hapless bottoms, rubbing his thick beard over the flesh, blowing a column of cool air on wet skin, biting the cheeks, rasping his teeth over what’s tender. He’s got me wide open and where he wants me. Although he props a pillow just below where I’m balanced on my upper spine, it’s not necessary—I’m holding onto my ankles for dear life, pulling myself open for him. I’m the eager accomplice to my own violation.

Maybe it’s too on-the-nose to say he has a shit-eating grin on his face when he comes up for air, but that’s the phrase that comes to mind. “Perfect,” he tells me. “I love this hole.”

He’s barely begun, and already I’m reduced to whimpers. “Just…do what you want. Please.”

“Naw, I’m serious, dude.” He addresses me with the gravity of a college lecturer, though what comes out of his mouth is far from intellectual. “You probably don’t hear it much. But this hole—is perfect. Not nasty. Just perfect in its natural state. I’m not tasting soap, or disinfectant. I get to taste you. The real you. Fuck, that’s hot.”

I can’t help it. My dick swells larger and flops to the other side of my belly.

He notices, and grabs for it. “Lookit this fat dong. Pussy pleaser.” He pulls it down between my legs until it flattens my balls on other side. “Fuck, lookit this thing. I bet it tastes good, too.”

When he engulfs it to the base, I howl. He’s yanking it to such an uncomfortable angle that the pain mingles with the pleasure his mouth and tongue bring me. It hurts, but I don’t want him to stop. As he sucks, his finger works into my hole. Another snakes in beside it. I’m already so wet from his oral assault that they both slide deep, without resistance.

Shuddering from the multiple sensations shorting every nerve, I clamp my eyes closed. It’s too much for me to take—but take it I do. I don’t get much choice. He throats my hog without gagging, though I can feel muscle and tendon opening and closing around my rigid inches with increasing vigor. When at last he comes up for air, spit flies from his lips to land on my belly. “Damn, fucker,” he rasps. “That’s almost too big to worship.”

I can only respond in wordless grunts and gibberish; there’s too much information flowing through my nervous system for my brain to process. He drives both fingers into my hole with a savage thrust, as if punishing me for challenging his oral skills.

“Don’t worry,” he assures me with a smirk. “It’ll get more attention in a minute.”

Back to my hole his mouth travels. He hauls my hips into the air with the flats of his hands, once more spreading me wide as he hunches over to devour me. Though I keep hold of my ankles, still I buck and thrash with every new sensation. Every now and again he’ll tweak something to give me a little extra pleasure: a tug of the nuts, or a pinch of my nipples, still sore from my encounter with the Dumb Jock. He’ll reach tenderly to lay his hand against my face, or else he’ll cover my skull with his palm and outstretched fingers and shove it into the pillows. It all feels good. Even if I were to protest—and I don’t—it would only come out as whimpers and sighs.

After long minutes he’s back on my cock, again pulling it painfully down at an angle it wouldn’t ordinarily enjoy. The rough treatment only makes it harder, though. I holler when he shoves fingers in my hole again, ramming that sweet spot deep inside until it's aflame. His not caring about my comfort only gives me more pleasure. I’m near tears, but I’m also harder than I’ve been in weeks. 

“You know what would be really hot,” he speculates, wrapping his fingers around my slick, spit-soaked flesh. I grunt. “Getting some toy inside you. Ever had a guy work a fat dildo up that hole? It wouldn’t make you any less of a top. It would just give you a little bit back of that good love you give bottom boys like me.” He fingers drive home once more, making me gasp. “Think you’d like that sometime?”

In this moment, in my awkward geometry of resting on my shoulder blades with my ass propped high and my legs waggling like antennae, with my slobber running from my mouth and his dripping off my cock and out of my asshole, with my functioning brain switched off and my responses on autopilot—in this moment, he could suggest mating me with a miniature donkey and I’d think it a fucking fantastic idea. He takes my wordless consent as an invitation to widen my gape and shoves another finger in there.

It’s this that sends me over the edge, the impact of his probing fingertips ramming against my prostate as my wet hole accepts more of him. When he feels my cock begin to buckle and contract, he dives down to wrap his lips around the base, his throat opening to accommodate my girth. My orgasm is as painful as it is loud, as blinding as it is explosive. At one point I jolt to consciousness to witness my scarlet cock spraying a thick rope of seed onto his forehead and cheek and across his black beard. Then I’m sightless again, overtaken by another wave of the climax.

Even after, when it’s over and my butt meets the mattress at last, lava still flows through my veins. My dick is afire. Wet. Sore. Mistreated, but happy for the abuse. I feel the stranger’s furry chest pressing against my side as he lifts my left arm above my head and laps at my armpit. “Mmmm,” he sighs, smelling of my load. “You taste good here, too.”

“That was—“

With a finger on my lips, he silences my sad attempt to assign words to what’s happened between us. It smells of my ass. Not dirty. Masculine. Natural. “I didn’t say I was done making you feel good, top man,” he teases. “Roll the fuck over.”

At his push, I tumble onto my stomach. He lifts my hips and shoves a pillow beneath them, then wrenches apart my knees.

“I’m still feeling selfish, fucker.” I feel hot breath against my sore hole. My skin tingles at he touch of his beard. “Buckle up, 'cause now I'm really gonna make out with that pucker.”

Once again I sigh, and allow myself to drift away on a wave of sensation. I please so many others, after all. It’s my turn to be taken care of.

Dumb Jock

After a long Sunday morning basking in the Jalisco sun, yesterday’s stresses are starting to melt away.

Saturday had been long and uncomfortable, beginning with the ride a neighbor had provided to JFK. He’d weaved through New York City traffic at top speed like a cabbie on meth, before ejecting me and my carry-on onto the pavement in front of the Jet Blue terminal. Then had been the five-and-a-half hour flight, with customers packed like sardines. Next, the chaos of the Puerto Vallarta airport as for another two hours I wended my way through immigration and customs. The airport shuttle to the resort over the Zona Romántica’s cobbles had agitated every bone in my body and shaken loose my teeth. At the hotel, I’d been met with a queue for check-in that had lasted over an hour. I’d ended the day sore, tired, and crabby, convinced my week-long vacation was sure to be a bust.

Today, though, I’m feeling better. I’m settled upon a lounge chair with a view of the many shirtless men congregating around the pool. The Pacific laps at the beach below, its horizon level with my bare toes. I’ve got the diaries of Alan Rickman on my Kindle, and dark shades to cover my eyes. Late in the morning, the bartender has provided me with a drink concocted of seemingly incompatible elements—rosé wine, tequila, a squirt of 7-Up, and some liqueur I can’t identify among them, all of it laced with booze-soaked berries. Though the recipe turns my stomach to think about, the result is undeniably fizzy and, damn it, delicious.

This morning, life is good.

I crush the last of the tart blueberries between my teeth, drain the ice of its dregs, and set the glass down on a table. My feet search blindly for their sandals. It’s lunchtime.

I smile and nod at other men as I wind my way around the pool. Whitney is playing over the sound system, but she’s drowned out by 2 Unlimited blasting at the pool’s deep end. The resort’s director of activities has submerged several stationary bikes beneath the surface for an underwater spin class. Half a dozen game types churn their legs while doggedly listening to him bark orders over a looping soundtrack of “Get Ready for This.”

Too intense for me. I wander into one of the resort’s restaurants, where the lunch buffet is already in full swing. I toss a few tortilla chips on my plate, cover them with a liberal helping of roasted poblanos in crema, help myself to some short ribs simmered in a spicy red sauce, and find myself a table.

I’ve settled down with a napkin on my lap when I see him. He’s twenty feet away, watching me with large blue eyes. A barrel-chested brute of a man, sitting by himself, tablet propped in front of him. He’s got a head big and smooth as a melon. A salt-and-pepper mustache droops over his lips. Beefy thighs scissor restlessly beneath the table; his feet, larger and thicker than my own, have slipped from their flip-flops. From muscular shoulders hangs a tank top, black, emblazoned with the words: DUMB JOCK. Honestly—he looks like he fits the description. One of his nipples peeks around the cotton’s edge.

By the time I’m enough over the surprise of his eyes locked on mine, he’s already returned to his book. Soon enough, though, he peeks up again. From across the tables and chairs, our glances entwine. I smile. He nods back, face sober, then focuses once more on his reading.

That’s all right, I tell myself. The week is just starting.

All afternoon, out on the beach, I’ve been watching a trio of genial hounds,. Sometimes the three come together and chase after gulls in the surf; at other points, they separate to nap in the sun. There’s one dog in particular who’s super-friendly. I’ve watched the fawn-colored terrier pad his way across the sand to unsuspecting tourists in their lounge chairs, to hop up between some surprised, suntanning tourist’s legs, then curl up for a nap. Or he’ll pant and wag his tail and demand petting and praise. I don’t know to whom the dog belongs, if anyone. It’s possible he’s living off the generosity of hotel visitors. The staff have a name for him, though, and don’t seem to object when he sits near the outdoors luncheon barbecue, tail still awag, patiently waiting for scraps to be tossed his way.

Later that night, there’s a show across the street in the hotel’s conference center. I’ve been watching for fifteen minutes, but I’m not feeling it—the crowd is larger than I’m comfortable with, the noise a little crazy. So I excuse myself to my friends and step outside, where I’m alone. Or nearly alone, anyway. “Well, hello,” I say, to the handsome lad waiting outdoors.

It’s the dog from the beach, his behind planted on the brick pavement, liquid eyes squeezed in my direction. It’s as if he’s been waiting for me.

“I’m heading back to the hotel,” I tell him. He immediately stands, turns as if he’s going to cross the street, and looks over his shoulder, waiting for me to follow. “No, not across traffic,” I say, automatically worried over a dog that’s not mine. The rush of automobiles in front of the hotel can be crazy; the staff have repeatedly warned guests that it’s much safer to take an underground walkway that wends its way beneath the avenue above to the hotel’s lowest level. It’s not the shortest distance between two points by a long shot, but I don’t want to be responsible for a strange animal getting struck by a car. “There’s a…you know.”

The dog seems to understand what I mean, even though I haven’t moved a muscle. He’s already changed direction, down the sloping sidewalk to the stairway zig-zagging beneath the street.

“Well, heck. Wait for me,” I exclaim, trying to catch up.

The dog stays close by my side the entire walk back, as if I’ve always been his human. He knows this route. “All right,” I tell him, when he looks over his shoulder as I fish my phone from my shorts. “I’m coming.”

There’s a message on Scruff. I recognize the face instantly. It’s Dumb Jock, staring at me from his profile with the mild resentment of someone posing for a prison mugshot. His two other shots are equally sober. I think I saw you at lunch today, he’s written.

“Hang on again,” I tell the dog, because I am the kind of person who talks to animals as if they comprehend. He automatically sits, tail still in motion. Yeah, I saw you too. What’s up?

You doing anything? I’m alone in my room.

I had planned to head back to my own room and relax a little, but the unexpected opportunity gives me pause. I look at the dog, who regards me with such loving eyes that I begin wondering if I might be able to smuggle him back to the U.S. at week’s end. I can come right up.

Dumb Jock sends me a room number that I commit to memory. “Let’s go,” I tell the dog.

He’s already ahead of me, though, showing me the path beyond the brick steps beyond the hotel’s loading dock. I catch up, and amiably we walk down the last slope to an open area at the resort’s lowest level. The central elevators sit only a dozen feet to the right; in an open-air corridor that leads to the pools and the ocean beyond, staff members are setting up tables and draping them with cloths to make an ofrienda for the Day of the Dead, two days hence.

“Well, this is where I leave you,” I tell the dog. He responds by panting, weaving a path around my legs, then bounding past the ofrienda for the beach. Such a good boy. I already miss him.

I haven’t even finished knocking when Dumb Jock answers his door. The first thing I notice about him isn’t that he’s still wearing the same tank top I’d seen him in earlier that day. Not a stitch of anything else. Also, that he’s a good two inches taller than I. Ordinarily, I hate that. I’m used to being the tallest in any room. Stupid as it is, I’m always slighted when someone’s genetics have the effrontery to overtake my own.

But Dumb Jock looks at me with the same liquid eyes as my canine companion of a few minutes before. I swear that if he had one, his tail would be wagging. “Hey.” His bass is as low as I’d imagined, but also much softer.

I say nothing. Instead, I place a hand on his chest and push him backward, so that he stumbles over the threshold. The door swings shut behind us. Against the wall I push this stranger, tilting my head upward. He takes the bait, covering my lips with his own. Our mouths open; our bodies press tight against the other. His arms circle around my waist. I snake an arm behind his head and cup his smooth dome, pulling him into me. From deep in his chest, a groan travels, rumbling the flesh where we connect.

We’ve never spoken before. I haven’t even learned the Dumb Jock’s name. But from the way he melts into me as I kiss him deeply, I know the man. From his pleased huff he makes as I push him against the wall once more, and the way those big eyes open to drink me in, I take his measure. He’s a man too often forced into the dominant role because of his size. He’s a man whom others expect to take charge, when instead he wants to be taken care of. With that shirt he’s wearing, he’s proclaiming far and wide what he wants: to be treated like a dumb jock, a piece of meat. All brawn, all flesh—no intellect.

In the dark corridor leading from door to bed, I grab his wrists and pin them next to his shoulders. I stare him in the eyes. “So. What were you reading at lunch today?”

The question catches him off guard. He has to clear his throat and switch on his thoughts again. When he shares the name of Adrian Tchaikovsky, the British science fiction writer, I nod, recognizing it. We stare at each other in the dim light for a moment.

“Some pretty big words in that book. Especially for a…dumb jock,” I say, my voice level.

He sags in my grip. Gratitude shines in his gaze. I can see his brain flicker off once more as I kiss him again.

He skims the t-shirt from my torso and lets it fall to the floor. When I kick off my flip-flops, they tumble into the bathroom behind us. He’s already naked from the waist down; his rigid cock pokes against me as he attempts to slide down my shorts and trunks together without breaking our deep kiss. I have to pull away in order to strip off that tank top he’s wearing. By the time I lead him from the little hall to the bed beyond, our clothing is strewn on the floor, as tangled together as we are when we hit the mattress.

Once he’s on his back, I establish my dominance by raising my right fingers to my mouth. Inside their curl I nestle as much spit as I can produce. Dumb Jock’s legs are already spread wide when my fingers move to his hole. I can see his toes curl when the payload reaches its target. “Fuck,” he breathes.

“Oh, we will.” I promise. Then, after a pause, “Eventually.”

Naked, his body is impressive. He’s not ripped, but a lot of gym time has gone into sculpting the mounds here, the ropy coils there, the man-tits that had tented the tank I’d first seen him in. Compared to him, I’m a slob. But I’m the slob who’s making him feel good, with my fingers stretching and clawing at the sensitive spot between his cheeks. The lids of his eyes hang heavy, as if he’s falling asleep. Yet throughout my manipulations, he writhes and moans with pleasure, never more awake, never more alive.

“You’re a pretty boy, aren’t you,” I tell him. Some last shred of modesty prevents him from agreeing, but I nod and give him permission. “Say it. You’re a pretty boy.”

“I’m a pretty boy, sir,” he whispers. As reward, my index and middle finger dive deep into his moist hole, eliciting a jolt of electricity that sends him into a fit of shuddering. I can almost feel the residual crackle from his skin. “I’m just a fuckin’ pretty boy.”

“A dumb jock.”

“I’m a dumb jock, sir. A fuckin’ stupid jock.”

“Made for cock.”

Those weighted lids widen. “Made for your cock.”

“Maybe,” I say, pleased. “But you don’t even know me. I’m just some stranger you saw in a foreign country, one day. You don’t even know my name.” I can tell he’s struggling, trying to figure out if he should ask, but I go on. “You’re made for cock. You don’t care if it’s some dude you don’t know. You’re just a stupid jock who needs something thick and hard filling that hole. Right?”

He nods, desperate to share his agreement. In this moment, this quiet moment, long after the sun has set over the ocean just outside his window, when the pool area is dormant and the hotel itself silent, I’m saying the things he wants to hear and he loves me for it. I watch his lips struggle to find a reply good enough, smart enough.

I don’t give him the opportunity. Though he’s taller and bigger than I, when I grab an ankle and pivot it around, he instantly flips onto his abdomen as if made of tissue paper and popsicle sticks. He spreads his legs and sets his ass high, like a good boy. When I grab the hairy cheeks, he gasps, seizes a pillow, and hangs on for dear life. I dive in.

For long minutes I assault his hole with my mouth. He pleads with me in wordless syllables when my lips and tongue work their wet magic on the pink flesh; he protests when I rasp my mustache and beard across the slick surface. From time to time, I’ll give his cheeks a light bite, or I might scrape my teeth across their expanse and occasionally harvest a hair between them. He participates in his own use by wresting his cheeks apart with his own paws, to give me as much access as he can.

“How’s that feel?” I ask. Not because I don’t already know the answer—because I want to hear him say it.

“Oh god,” is all he can muster.

“What’s that?”

“I love it,” he huffs. “I fucking love it, sir.”

Between his tree trunk thighs I kneel. My erect cock points at its destination. “Still didn’t hear you.”

“I fucking love it, sir!”

My hands plant themselves on either side of his rib cage; now my knees are on either side of his hipbones. The head of my dick plants its sticky kiss at the base of his spine. “You ready to be fucked, dumb jock?”

The musclebound bottom buries his face in the pillow. “Yes sir.”

My mouth hovers next to his ear, now. “Nah,” I tell him. “You’re not going to take it like that, eyes closed, face covered.” He turns his head and peers at me through slits. “Sit on it.”

“Yes sir!”

We switch positions. He arranges the pillows to support me, then carefully lays me in them as if I’m something precious. I use my thumbs to point my cock straight in the air. “Look at it, first,” I order. “Look at what you’re gonna be taking.”

Now he’s kneeling over me. He’s trembling to spear himself onto my meat, but he obeys and looks down.

“No. Get real close.” He slides back and brings himself to eye level with it. I swat him away when he tries to grab for it. “What do you see?”

“It’s beautiful.” He’s close enough that I can feel the heat of his breath, just below the head. “Fuck. It’s so big. I knew you’d be big.”

“Big enough for a big ol’ dick-hungry stupid jock like you?” He nods, entranced. I’m turned on by the steadiness of his gaze. My erection swells; it deepens an even darker shade of red. Another drop of precum oozes out. I like showing off for this pretty boy. “Lick it. Just the tip.”

“Yes sir.” His tongue flicks out and catches the dewdrop balanced on the slit. He laps it down with the deep thirst of a dog at his bowl on an August scorcher. “Thank you, sir.”

“Now.” I give him a nod, and make a show of applying more spit to my inches. “You may sit on it.”

It takes only a moment for him to reposition himself so that he’s poised over the invading inches, and even less time for him to take it to the balls. His hole is wet and loose enough that I slide into his warm depths without resistance.

“There you go,” I say, soft and low. His head is raised to the ceiling, his eyes closed, once again. “Look at me.” He’s too lost in his pleasure to heed. This time I reach up and squeeze both nipples. Ever since one of them peeked out at me, during lunch that afternoon, I’ve been planning exactly what I intend to do to those pink, prominent nipples, each like a fat eraser tip. I know at that size, they’re well-worked. Abused, even. I pinch them tight between my thumb and index finger, commanding attention. “Look at me,” I repeat.

He obeys.

Once again, I feel every muscle in his body tense and release, tense and release so rapidly that they express as quivering. The electricity sets those sleepy eyes alight. I twist and squeeze the plugs of flesh between my fingers, knowing how good it must feel to have them savaged. “Look at me while I’m inside you,” I tell him.

With a rush of motion, he leans down to kiss me. The hollows of his eyes are moist with tears. “Thank you,” he says, as I grind into his hole. “Thank you, sir. It feels so good. Thank you.”

I haven’t let go of his fat nipples. They’re so long, they might wrap around my fingertips. I’m certainly tugging them as if I intend to pry them from his tits, and he’s only responded with adoration for the abuse. “Good boy,” I tell him, when he shudders and jerks to a particularly brutal squeeze. I wish I had a handy pair of alligator clips to tame those things. “Do mine,” I urge.

My own nipples are flat; they don’t get the attention they need or deserve. But I love them bitten, and chewed on, and squeezed. “Yes, sir.”

“Harder.” I can tell he’s afraid to let loose, even though I’m applying twenty times the force to his. “Come on, son. Hurt them.”

We’re staring into each other’s eyes once more, unblinking, intense. He obeys, crushing my nipples between his thick fingers, trying to gauge where the threshold lies for me between pure pleasure and the beginnings of pain.

So far, though, I’m only experiencing intense gratification. He’s doing exactly what I asked: hurting me, though in a way I need and want. “God, yes,” I hiss. “Good boy.”

“Thank you, sir.” He doubles down on the ill-treatment of my nipples, only inspiring me to dig my nails into his.

This is how we fuck—eyes locked, fingers affixed to each other’s chests, causing each other suffering to increase our pleasure. Sometimes I’m the one doing the thrusting while his muscles quake with sensation; sometimes he rides while I bask upon waves of pure sensation. From time to time, we kiss. I welcome those moments of sweetness as much as I love the pain he’s steadily applying at my command.

I don’t protest, though, when he lets loose of my nipples and grabs his own cock. “I’m close,” he says, beating furiously. Perhaps it’s the combination of sensation and torment that’s brought him to the edge; he certainly hasn’t been touching himself before.

“Do it,” I tell him. “Spray it on me.”

Scarcely are the words out of my mouth than he lets loose. I’m showered in what feels like dozens of individual tiny droplets of semen from chin to groin. His hole contracts and loosens around my cock, seeming to take me even more deeply. “Yes,” I tell him. Then, “Please. Just like that.”

Something about the slackness of his hole turns me on, in those moments immediately after he shoots. The feel of his fingers pinching and massaging my nipples yet again amplifies my need. “Please come in me,” he begs, shaking his head as if in disbelief. “Please, sir.”

I don’t need much begging. He holds still as I rabbit-thrust inside him, rapidly using his innermost ring as my personal fleshlight. My own orgasm swiftly follows, setting my cock so on fire. I can’t tell when my ejaculation begins or ends. All I know, as the haze fades, is that I have to lay my hands atop his to urge him from mauling my nipples any further. If I’m able to wear a shirt for the rest of the week without wincing, it’ll be a miracle.

He’s still regarding me when I come to. “That was amazing, sir.” There’s a big, broad, beautiful curve upward to his lips. I’m taken aback to think that until now, I’ve never seen this stranger smile.

“Thank you,” I tell him. “I really needed that.”

He smiles as we disentangle ourselves and mop each other with a hand towel from the bathroom, and as we sort through the clothes scattered across the corridor floor. He’s smiling still, once we’ve dressed and stand by the door. His arms lie on my shoulder, extended, gently crossed, as he gives me a deep kiss. “You’re an amazing top.”

“I’m all right.” My drawl is intended to signify that I know, and that I thank him for the compliment.

“You bred the fuck out of me.” He grins now, exposing even white teeth. Then, “Thank you. Good night. I hope I see you again this week.”

I nod and return his final kiss before making my exit. “Enjoy your book,” I say as farewell, then add, with an affection he’s earned, “Dumb jock.”

No Guilt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I could correct him, certainly. Should I?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My reply emerges as a whimper. “Yeah.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t stop,” I beg.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There’s no guilt…”

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

“That’s right. No regrets.”

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

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

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

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

Babyface: Part 2

 (This entry is a continuation of Babyface: Part 1.)

Autumn 1985

My friend Rand finds me outside and around the corner, a couple of minutes later. “Hey, where’d you go?” he asks, before noticing I'm planted on the pavement. My head had been between my knees when I’d heard the approach of his footsteps. His tone changes from plaintive to worried. “You okay? What’s going on?”

Encountering Jim had sent me into a fight-or-flight dilemma. I’d chosen to fly straight out of Beezie’s Records, the door’s mocking Tibetan bells jangling like laughter in my ears. The sight of him activated memories of my incarceration in his closet—my rage and hysteria, the helpless desperation of being trapped and not knowing when or even if I’d be discovered. Four years later, despite the sunshine and the bustle of a city street, I’m once more imprisoned within the crawl space’s tight boundaries. I’m exhausted and hopeless after hours of yelling and tears. The sheer weight of so much darkness seems to break every rib in its cage. Now, as then, I’m rasping for breath. Jim had birthed nightmares that plagued me for weeks and months, and that will continue to haunt me for years to come. He’d done it with a smile and a laugh. He’d gotten away with it.

A hand grasps my shoulder. I startle. Ignoring the traffic roaring by on the busy thoroughfare, Rand squats over the filthy pavement and searches my face. “Are you sick?”

“What? No.” I’m so accustomed to blending my personal life into the background that my panic attack, quiet and still as it is, feels like histrionics. I pull myself together and slip behind the bland facade from which my real self peers out at the world. “Did you get your album? You know, the Allman Brothers?”

Through his thick lenses, Rand blinks at my non sequitur, then holds up empty hands. “No. I turned around and you’d up and disappeared.”

I’m still breathing heavily. I decide to play into it. “Dusty old places like that make my asthma act up.” I don’t have asthma. “Just needed some fresh air, is all.” I’m hoping Rand will leave me alone. All I really want right now is solitude, but my fictional infirmity has made him reluctant to leave. “I’m good. For real. You don’t need to hang around.”

It takes a liberal handful of slick reassurances to urge my friend back to his feet. “Only if you’re sure…”

“I’m heading straight home.” My lies dull the metallic tang panic has left on my tongue. “I’m fine.” I’m well enough to climb to my feet. “You should get to the office. Elisabeth’s usually around this time of day.”

Rand seems to be assessing my fitness, so I bounce on my toes with an energy I don’t feel. Elisabeth is the teaching assistant with whom he’s enamored; the prospect of alone time with her is too tempting to resist. It’s with reluctance, though, that he deems me worthy to be left on my own. “Only if you’re sure.”

I wave him off with smiles and promises. I’m fortunate at this stage in my life, adrift as I feel after college, to have been accepted by his small, academic tribe. Despite my differences, despite holding myself at arm’s-length and never quite letting anyone in, Rand and the other graduate students have embraced me. Grateful as I am for his friendship, right now I need space.

At last, his long legs carry him back in the direction of campus. I should follow. Every instinct informs me the wise thing to do now would be to head home and never return to this third-rate used record store.

Yet there’s no mental scab I’ve ever refrained from picking. My lifelong response to adversity and confrontation is to remain stone-faced before it, unraveling only in my privacy. In fleeing Beezie’s, I have ceded victory to the enemy; nothing irritates me more than the thought that Jim might now be gloating at his victory.

I’ve faced much bigger fears since that day at the tag-end of high school when a man-child left me kicking and yelling inside a locked closet. I’m not a friendless kid any longer. I’m not a kid at all. Heart pounding and face red, I brush myself off, stalk back around the corner, and push through the record shop door.

The bells clank as I enter. Jim still sits behind the counter, looking at Style Weekly. “Oh.” He gives me only the briefest of glances and pulls up the sleeves of his cardigan. “Forget something, did you?”

My mouth opens, ready with a retort. Then I hesitate. I recognize that threadbare cardigan falling from his shoulders. I recognize the plaid shirt billowing beneath it. Earlier I’d registered how oversized they appeared on Jim’s scrawny frame. Jim’s not the type for cable knits, though, nor is L. L. Bean flannel his style. That shabby attire had once belonged to Earl.

Speechless and staring at Jim, I remember Earl lounging in a leather easy chair with that sweater buttoned around his middle, scribbling upon a card a new name, address, and time of assignation. Earl in that very cardigan, padding around his kitchen in slippered feet, making me a late-night grilled cheese, and himself a cup of decaf. The sweater had been new, four or five years ago. Now it looks ratty. Dirty.

With a horrible certainty, I realize something’s happened to Earl.

It’s only been a little more than three years since the gay cancer burrowed its way into my awareness. It feels like a lifetime. Barely a year has passed since scientists announced the scourge’s cause: it wasn’t poppers gone bad, as so many men I’d known had speculated, but a rogue virus. HIV, transmitted through bodily fluids. Rock Hudson had died of it, right at the beginning of the current semester. Although I’ve been hearing on the TV news in recent weeks that scientists have finally developed a test to discover infection in the bloodstream, no such thing has yet reached the public. Not widely. Not here.

In years past, the many expertises gay men cultivated were better suited to the worlds of espionage, or anthropology, or semiotics: how covertly to spy upon a man who’s piqued our interest, to evaluate his body language, to read messages coded in colored bandanas arranged in a back pocket. We arranged rendezvouses in clandestine places without being seen, became adept at distinguishing our own kind from enforcers of the law attempting to entrap us. We all have some proficiency in recognizing each other without word, sound, or often a gesture.

To survive this plague age, we scramble to assimilate new skills. We’re required to be sexual actuaries, to gauge each new encounter with an eye to risks far beyond the familiar. Does our quarry look like a local? Is he a regular good old boy who shops at the Army Navy Store, or does his clothing insinuate trips to a big metropolitan area where the virus spreads unchecked? We all like a good looking man, but is the one we want too good looking? Too in demand, attracting too many questionable partners? Does he cruise like a local, in fits and starts, not too fast or slow? A line had been drawn in 1981 between one era and another. On a summer night in the park four years ago, my outlaw brothers and I would all have been debauched beneath a full moon. To do so now indicates depravity of a type precarious to consider.

We’ve raced, too, to become diagnosticians. Without the benefit of any education, without even really knowing what to look for, we assess every potential partner for disease. We reject a man whose skin is too flushed or too warm to the touch. Our eyes search for lesions, though I have no clear concept of what a lesion might look like. If a man of a certain pallor walks my way, I might swerve to avoid crossing paths. Anything out of the ordinary is frightening and not worth the gamble.

One evening I accompany home a handsome fellow who seems like a safe bet. As he removes his clothes in the light of a table lamp, I can spy bluish bruises covering his body. When he moves close, arousal growing, he's accompanied by a faint, sickly-sweet scent, like a newborn's diaper. I vault from the stranger’s bed and away from his apartment as if my life is threatened.

All our snap judgments are based on faulty understanding. We’re medical imposters, forced into emergency-room rotations before we've cracked our first textbook. Real physicians are scrambling to stay abreast with the newfound virus and its ferocity. How can any layman hope to keep pace?

Not that I stop trying. My nights are often sleepless. I lie awake in my bed, staring blind into the dark, obsessing over every potential omen of my inevitable decline. As I try not to rouse my parents, my fingers travel every inch of my body—not for pleasure, as once they were accustomed, but to check for lumps, for inflammations and flaws. I’ve learned where my lymph nodes lie and prod them until they ache. I trace my hairline, certain the most minute shift might spell my doom. Somewhere I’ve picked up the term ‘night sweats,’ but haven’t learned enough to distinguish them from the ordinary perspiration of a warm Virginia night. A divot on my shin I know is from repeatedly banging into my bed frame worries me daily. I pick and poke at it until it’s tender and redder, reinforcing my worst suspicions.

It’s with my clinician’s eyes that now I appraise Jim. He’d always been a scrawny little shit. The wrists protruding from the cardigan are thinner than I remember, though. Too thin. He’s a scarecrow in those oversized clothes, a bundle of sticks about to clatter into a heap. His color is sallow; around his eyes the skin seems to have sunk and blued; red veins spiderweb the whites. His hair has thinned. He’s trained long strands over a sparse patch.

Jim looks older. Jim looks old, and he should be only, what? In his mid-thirties?

Perhaps sensing my judgment, he narrows his eyes and snaps, “The fuck you looking at?”

Once again, my instincts tell me to flee in the face of hostility, of danger, of probable contagion. I stand my ground, however. “That’s Earl’s sweater, isn't it.”

My soft-spoken observation deflates him. He crosses his arms and stares to the side, refusing to meet my gaze. If we’d been in a standoff, it’s over, with both sides limping away in concession. “So you don’t know. Of course not. You went away. No one thought they’d ever see you again. You never even checked in with him. Why would you, even after everything he did for you?”

I’d gone away to school, I wanted to point out. I keep my mouth shut throughout his provocations.

“She didn’t even let me have a suitcase to pack my clothes.” Jim’s speaking in low tones I must strain to hear. “I had to grab paper grocery bags and the laundry basket. Some of his stuff was in it. Fucking grocery bags. Do you know how long I’d been with him?”

He’s glaring at me, but I’m not the enemy any longer. “A long time.”

“Fifteen years. Fifteen fucking years of putting up with his—“ He presses his knuckles against his lips. His hand’s trembling suppresses whatever might follow. He doesn’t speak again until he’s under control. This time, words spray forth in a concentrated stream, like water from a hose end compressed by a thumb. “A person goes from a kid to an old man in fifteen fucking years. You know? All that…I shouldn’t have called the ambulance when it got bad, but I was…that’s when everything got…real, after the hospital. And she came. From fucking Charleston. He hated Charleston. Hated them. That’s why he was up here. What did they ever do for him? I didn’t even have a suitcase of my own! She wouldn’t let me take my TV. My plants. I had to scream bloody murder to get my checkbook out of the office, and that was my checkbook with my name on it.”

The record shop spins around me. I’m so light-headed that I stagger against one of the waist-high record bins for support. Jim’s grievances, building for years, have at last found an audience, though in a long-standing adversary. He spits his stream of consciousness in rapid fire, sometimes ranting, sometimes trying to wheedle me to his side. As a linear story, it makes no sense. But in its impressionistic way, it’s little different from what I’ve heard whispered by others: a tale of unexpected illness, of long-estranged family whisking away the afflicted, of a survivor being evicted from a home not in his own name. Real as any of our relationships might feel in 1985, in the face of an vindictive family and their lawyers, years of togetherness flicker into ash and smoke, like tissue to a flame.

Jim hasn’t mentioned what might have taken Earl down. He doesn’t have to. One doesn’t name the bogeyman when he crawls out of the cupboard. I have so many questions, though. How long was Earl ill? When did all this happen? What's become of Earl's business? Most important, perhaps most essential: is Earl alive or dead? Because Jim hasn’t said, either way.

I don’t ask these questions, though, because they paralyze me with fear. I don’t ask these questions because, on a very basic level, I’m convinced I might not be able to cope with the answers. Never does it occur to me that some finality might comfort me years down the road. I don’t yet realize how quickly a life's hanging threads accumulate and form knots that neither time nor care can untangle.

Earl wouldn’t be the first of my lovers to die from the virus. That would have been David, the red-headed junior who’d wooed me as a freshman in college, whom I had been too frightened to meet. After his graduation, he’d moved to New York City. I’d read about his death in the alumni magazine this last July. There have been rumors of others. A former customer as a teen—a retired college professor of literature, who liked reading aloud to me from Sterne while I sat naked on his lap, had been rushed to the hospital, accepted no visitors, and then never heard of again. Another man, a habitué of Bryan Park, married, the only person I knew who took vacations to San Francisco for the sex he could find there—vanished, presumed dead. No one knew his real name, to hunt for an obituary. Christ, I used to think Earl so worldly for all his trips to Manhattan, to Key West, to the West Coast.

“Fifteen years of watching little sluts like you roll across his mattress, that’s all I got out of him. And a fucking sweater. You thought you were special? You weren’t. You think going off to some fancy college makes you better than any other whore? It doesn’t.” Outside the shop, through the glass, shadows loom. We both glance at a gaggle of students checking out the posters in the front window. Jim lowers his voice. “So don’t come in here acting the little duchess to me, because…” The door opens. The kids who enter are younger than either of us. The boys are dressed in uniforms of jeans and polo shirts with the collars popped, the girls in flouncy Madonna skirts. Jim rolls his eyes at the sight and finishes his speech before addressing them. “…Because we both know where your precious Earl found you. We’re mostly classic rock and some jazz, guys,” he snipes at the kids, as if he believes they can’t appreciate either. “Good luck finding the stuff you probably like, though.”

Even as I navigate through this thicket of new fears, I recognize how tiring it surely is, being Jim: always to assume the worst of the world, to resent everyone in it for not supplying what he feels he's owed. It must take all his energy, gnawing at grudges. “I’m sorry,” I tell him, meaning it. If I were a more generous person I might try to convey my sincerity with a hand on his, or a hug. But this is the man who had locked me into a closet and left me to suffocate, inspiring years of claustrophobia and nightly torment. Even now, he's calling me a whore. This stiff acknowledgement is the best I can muster.

As I turn to go, he cranes his neck close and issues his benediction in a savage whisper. “It was in him. So it could be in you, too. Don’t think you’re immune.” His glance sweeps over the VCU kids, who are looking through the racks while chattering loudly. “They could crack you open and find it swarming inside. Think about that.”

This time I make my exit slowly, dignity battered, but intact. I never return to Beezie’s—nor do I ever again see or hear anything about Jim. Twice in my life he is the source of long-lasting misery: once four years before, then today. It’s because of him that from now on, when I perform my nightly exploration for lumps and bruises, I can't shake the vision of being rotten within. With a scalpel, doctors could slice me in one smooth motion from stem to stern and discover disease bursting from my seams. In the months to come, as I should be taking my first few tentative steps to building a career, I will not be able to shake this vision of myself as overflowing with foulness and death. Any day now, any moment, what lies dormant might surface upon my skin: I'll bear its mark, and none of my accomplishments will matter. All my studying, my teaching—I wonder when the day will arrive that proves my work was for nothing. Next month? Next week? Tomorrow morning?

This is my life, both now and for the unforeseeable future. I’m all of twenty-one years old and already I divide my life into four distinct acts. The curtain rises on my dewy innocence; Act Two covers the too-brief teen years reveling in both the discovery of sex and the independence I gain in selling it. In Act Three, my college tenure, the tone grows somber as with the eyes of a Cassandra I watch storm clouds gather, yet find no one I can warn.

This day, this encounter, commences what I can only conceive of as the last and longest expanse of the drama. Beyond the horizon it stretches, into the indefinite future, both its and my own conclusion well out of sight. Upon this stage, without benefit of a script, my outlaw brothers and I find ourselves inducted into an army of the dead and the dying. We know the enemy, though it cannot be seen. Our arms are inadequate, our shields shabby.

Over the fallen we march onward. Though to what fresh battle, no one yet knows.

Poison Pen

It’s one of those ugly blots on a Monday morning, waking up to find hate comments on my blog. Everything readers submit gets shunted into a folder to await my review. Most I can approve immediately. The obvious spam, I flag and delete. Then there are those special, occasional missives that fall into their own special category: nuggets of poison intended to put me in my place. They’re dispatches straight from the black center of the sender's personal misery, lobbed in my direction, the correspondent's self-loathing barely camouflaged.

I know you and everyone else think you’re hot shit (LOL), reads this one. I haven’t even had my breakfast yet, and already my stomach hurts. But you’re nothing but a fucking old creeper that chases after young tail so you can shove that nasty probably diseased senior citizen dick up inside it as fast as you can. It’s fucking pathetic and sure I bet some of the ugly boys are desperate enough to give in to you chasing them constantly but the rest of them know how disgusting you really are. Act your age already and give it up, creeper!!

I don’t recommend it as a start to your productive day.

But it’s not enough to deter me from meeting someone new, that afternoon. In fact, maybe it's the reason I give in. All I know is that several hours later, I'm nudging my dick’s knob against the puckering indentation of a boy a third my age, who's just moved into his dorm room. The long fingers of my one hand clasp both his ankles and pull his upstretched legs slightly to one side. They’re skinny, those legs, and covered with a thick dark fur utterly absent from the rest of his skinny body, save for perhaps a fringe on the perimeter of his hole, where I’m rubbing the ooze of my precum. Little monkey legs, I think, every time I notice how hairy they are. Mine were that furry in my teens, before years of office attire socks abraded them smooth.

The boy is craning his neck to look at what’s happening down below. His own cock is smallish, but thick. It points at an angle to his mini-fridge, where rests his phone and a pair of over-the-ear headphones. The phone has been lighting up and vibrating this last half-hour as friends message him, but he hasn’t once been tempted to check the incoming texts. “You’re so fucking big, sir,” he whispers.

I look him in the eyes, and nod. “That’s what you want, though.” He’s a good-looking kid. In a couple of years, when the angles of his face find themselves and take shape, he’ll be outright handsome. For now, he’s a slender little snack with a thick head of curly dark hair he must constantly brush from his face, a dandelion pouf of waves that, when stuffed beneath a baseball cap, make him look like a skateboarder or a wanna-be surfer. There's a row of those baseball caps on his dorm desk. Though there are two beds and two desks in the little room, only my boy's side of the room is so far occupied. “Correct? You want dad’s big dick.”

“Yes sir.” He nods, then bites his lip. “I want it real bad. But it’s so big.”

I release his ankles and let his trembling stems plant themselves bad onto the mattress. “How about you let me chew a little more at that hole, then,” I suggest. His dick leaps at the suggestion. I don’t miss the cue. “You liked the feel of my beard against it, didn’t you?”

He’s all eagerness, as if I’ve suggested a trip to Dairy Queen for his favorite flavor Blizzard. “Can I sit on your face this time?”

“You may.”

His suggestion is no hardship. The confines of his dormitory twin bed aren’t easy to navigate, but with some squeaking of the box springs we manage to switch positions. I now lie on my back. His pillow cups my head; his hairless testicles drape themselves on either side of my nose as he settles himself down. My tongue darts up into his smooth crack as his pearly cheeks separate; his little monkey legs dig themselves beneath my shoulders. I can taste my own essence, still fresh on his tight little butt. At last he lowers himself to perch on my jaw, leaving no distance between his hole and my hungry lips.

The boy loves when I scrape my teeth over the tender flesh, never biting, but scouring. He clutches the headboard as if for dear life as he begins to buck and grind his hips. I’m happy to help, seizing his stiff little dick like a handle, and with my face pushing back against his gyrations as hard as I can. He begins to curse aloud; one obscenity is barely distinguishable from the next as they stream from his pouty little lips. My free hand helps to separate his cheeks, so I can gnaw at the prize blossoming and winking from between them. If I wanted to protest at the savaging of my mouth by his hole, I couldn’t; I’m nearly smothered by the spread of his buttocks, by the canopy of his sac, the insistent pressure of his need.

But I don’t protest. I just want this boy to have the time of his life.

After a few minutes, he wrangles himself into a more daring contortion. His hands still cling onto the top of his wooden headboard. He's barely unpacked, but he's already hung posters for video game shooters on the wall above. He unhooks his feet from beneath me, though, and plants them flat onto the board, so that it supports his entire weight. It’s not something I’d allow him to do on my own bed, skinny as he might be. Somehow the laminated wood manages to support his weight without falling apart or separating itself from the bed frame. The athletic position make him look even more like a monkey clinging to a tree trunk, but it gives him the freedom to slam his greedy hole onto my mouth with even more force, his cheeks even more widely open than before. His hair hangs heavily from his dropped head. His groans become feral.

He can do this as long as he needs. I fucking love it. I’m no hurry, despite what my poison pen correspondent of the morning suggests, to get my dick inside the kid. Don’t get my wrong. My dick wants in. It’s so aroused by the boy’s assault that it points to the ceiling, dripping sticky threads that descend, slower than a drip of molasses, to my stomach. This kid can use my face as long as he cares to, or until my jaw erodes from the repeated onslaught, whichever comes first.

The end comes both too soon and not quickly enough. With care, he detaches himself from the headboard and, with wobbly legs, straddles my body. “Let me sit on it,” he suggests. “Do you like that?”

I like that very much. I spit on my fingers and add to the slickness of my dick. He sets one furry knee to my ribcage, then the other. On impulse, he leans down to kiss me, while his fist rapidly churns around his cock. He’s breathing heavily; his eyes gaze into mine with unadulterated desire. “You sure you’re ready, son?”

I already know the answer. He nods with vigor, closing his eyes when my fingers deliver another load of spit onto his hole. “I need that big dick in me, sir. I need it so bad.” He shifts his weight, calculating the angle at which he’ll attack his goal. “I need it so bad,” he repeats, whispering this time. Thick hair falls around his face as he settles back. “Fuck!” He winces as my cock pushes in.

“Go slow,” I tell him.

But he has other ideas. Grunting, he takes the girth in three swift stages—the head, the midsection, then a quick slam all the way down to the base. I feel the walls of his ass clench down on my inches as they seize up, after the invasion. He relaxes once he realizes there’s no more to swallow. “Oh fuck, fuck, fuckety fuck,” he curses. “You’re so big.”

“And you love it,” I say. I’m giving him permission to love the hurt.

He nods, panting. “I love it. Fuck. You are so hot. Thank you.”

This is what my poison pen fails to understand about me: I don’t think I’m hot shit. I know exactly what I am: a man traveling through his sixth decade, a man of modest attractions who’s never once advertised himself as hot or VGL, who doesn’t spend his free time in the gym, who has a belly. I’ve never been a man who chases after young tail. Young tail chases me. This boy with the thick mop of hair and the tight little hole recognized me as his prize and went after me relentlessly—not the other way around. 

I’ve never hounded after anyone, especially young guys. My entire sexual career has been based upon letting others see me as I am, allowing them to make me their choice...and then rewarding them for their good taste.

Never in my life have I had to rely upon the charity of the sexually desperate. I’m no Adonis, but that's never a prerequisite for a good and giving lover. What I lack isn’t enough to stop me from making love like a sex god. I haven’t allowed the doubts of my decades to convince me I’m undeserving of pleasure, or that I shouldn’t share a student twin bed with a beautiful young man. One poison pen comment isn't going to change my convictions. I know exactly what I am: a diviner of the erotic who, with every whispered query, with every touch and gesture, dowses to find the hidden reservoir of another man’s sexual energies beneath the surface, ready to tap into the wellspring.

This boy bobbing atop my dowsing rod—this kid could have any stud he wanted. He’s chosen me. I might not be hot shit, but right now, today, for him, the look in his eyes tells me I’m the shit he needs more badly than anyone else in the world. I’m the shit his world revolves around, this very moment. I’m the shit that makes him pant and sweat and shudder. I don’t intend to let him down.

“You feel amazing.” My words of encouragement open his brown eyes. The moment’s lust has dilated his pupils. “You are so incredibly handsome, son.”

When my hand strokes his cheek, he leans into it like a young feline bunting his territory. “Not like you,” he tells me, planting his palms onto my chest. “Nothing like you.”

Now he’s found his center of gravity. I grunt wordlessly as he begins to buck on my hard cock. He settles on a motion I find irresistible, his hips sliding in a horizontal plane back and forth, causing my prick to swell as rapidly it slides in and out of his chute. He can tell I’m enjoying it. With a sadist’s zest, he ups the intensity of his attack. I’m the victim of his sweet friction, helpless to resist as he cruelly savages me with his rectum. My ramping excitement is a mere byproduct—it means nothing to him. He’s doing this for his pleasure, for his hole, for the sensations he can wring from every curve and vein and ridge in my cock. I can tell by his closed eyes and the expression of intent concentration on his face that he’s lost in his own raptures. “I’m going to shoot if you keep doing that, son,” I warn.

His lids open; his eyes focus once again. Staring at me from above, his jaw juts to the side with mockery. He grins. And he keeps on doing what he’s doing—and doing it even more vigorously.

The kid is toying with me by the time I approach orgasm, arching and thrusting to get me close, then halting to frustrate me. I recognize the fiendish pleasure he’s taking in bringing me to the edge. All it takes to thwart him is to grab his hips and thrust mine upward, deep into the warmth of his insides. We grin at each other as I take my turn to punish his tight hole. When he leans down, my open mouth engulfs his lips in a kiss. I stab inside him with a final brutal thrust that takes me over the edge.

“Is that your cum?” His lips are a mere inch from mine. He seems astonished as my dick swells and throbs, as deep as it can reach. “Fuck. I can actually feel your cum!” He reaches behind to make sure he’s got as much of me as he can take. “Oh, fuck!”

I don’t get much warning as he unknots me from his hole. My still-shooting dick falls onto my belly with a wet smack and a last gush of seed. He scoops it up with his fingers, collects more from his gaping ass, and slaps it onto his own cock. Then, with my assistance, back he sits on my dick and sinks to the bottom. Balanced on the flats of his feet and using my erection as his seat, he spreads the mixture of spit and cum over his own cock and balls.

He comes quickly, shooting as far as my nipples. I enjoy watching him thrash and quake while electricity sets his every nerve ajangle. I’m surprised, though, by how silent he remains as it happens. His lips work, as if praying; his breath intensifies, his chest heaves. But all I hear as he gushes his load over my stomach is the slightest of sighs. He’s in the habit of hiding his climaxes at home, I realize, and hasn’t shed it yet in his new digs.

I want to remember this moment forever. His pale skin, and the little pink nipples that have contracted to miniature pencil erasers. The awning of his hair above me. The traces of stickiness he leaves in it, while pushing it away from his face with cum-covered fingers. He way he rubs his nose with the back of his wrist, as he comes back to himself after his orgasm. The alarm in his eyes when I stir. “Don’t go,” he begs, pressing down on my chest.

“You want me to stay?”

For answer he lifts himself up. On the mattress’ cramped confines, he becomes little spoon to my big. His freshly-used ass presses insistently against the erection that’s only just beginning to fade. “Stay and fuck me again,” he whispers, happy for the moment to be in my embrace, but far from sated.

To this kid, I'm hot shit. That's all I need, for now.

Pool Boy

I’m horny and I’m angry. I don’t like it.

I’m horny enough that my dick’s had a mind of its own all morning. It’s the last full day of my visit with my father, and offers on Grindr and Scruff have been flooding in. I’ve put off all the men by explaining I’ve got some chores to do before I’m free. Then, while I pound nails into the fallen trim on my dad's screened porch, I fantasize about which little twink or otter I’ll be pounding later in the afternoon. While I’m insulating some of the pipes in his basement, my own pipe is tenting my shorts, ready to spurt.

I don’t know what it is that’s making me so crazy. I’ve had two nights of a stranger rimming me relentlessly in my hotel room, followed by an afternoon plowing one of the hottest muscle twinks I’ve ever had. Perhaps the novelty of being the new meat in town is going straight to my littler head. When I order lunch through a sandwich shop app and drive out to pick it up, I’m basically violating with my eyes, over my mask, the cute guy behind the counter; he responds with a smile of regret that lets me know he registers and even welcomes my notice. His shift probably isn’t over for hours, though. When I pump gas for the trip back home tomorrow morning, the mere action of shoving the nozzle into the gas tank evokes in my gut a grunt that’s purely sexual.

By mid-afternoon I’m back at my hotel room. I’ve told my dad I’m taking the rest of the day for myself, and that I’ll stop off in the morning before I make the seven-hour drive home. After a quick shower, I flop onto the hotel mattress with my phone, ready to hook up. I’ve already made my choice. For a couple of years now, I’ve always wanted to get together with this guy who lives in the Fan. We’d originally talked on BBRT on one of my previous trips, and I dig his looks—mid-thirties, lean, long wavy hair, big soulful eyes. I have a couple of types that get my immediate attention, and this dude nestles snugly into one of them.

On this trip, he’s hit me up on Sniffies, so that’s the site I use to shoot him a message. I’m in my hotel room for a couple of hours. Want to come by?

I only have to wait a couple of minutes for his reply. I sure do. I’m showered and free now if you want me to come.

I want you to come, I tell him.

He asks for the address. I send it. Leaving now. I’ll be there in 15, he assures. Can’t wait.

Mission accomplished. My dick is raging already. When I review photos of the guy’s firm little ass, I lick my chops over how it points unflinchingly at the camera, ready to be impaled. The Virginia afternoon is hot as fuck, so I’ve turned up the rattly old air conditioning unit to fill the room with its chilly blast. Meanwhile, as a few more offers trickle in on the apps, I send some polite regrets. Sorry. I’m meeting someone in a few. Maybe later?

Fifteen minutes pass. Twenty. Twenty-five. For long minutes I anticipate a nervous knock at the door. My dick has wilted some time ago. I try to tamp down my disappointment. The interstate could be busy. There might’ve been an accident. So I attempt patience, and wait some more.

After forty-five minutes, the horniness hasn’t abated, but the anger has kicked in. I’m being stood up. Every time I look at Sniffies, there’s a little blue dot on the dude’s profile to show me he’s online, but his location hasn’t changed at all. Onscreen he’s an inch away to the right—which means in real life, he’s a mile away in the Fan, not moving any closer.

Motherfucker.

When I fire up other apps, I’m annoyed to see that he’s checked me out on them since we made our assignation. In fact, I can construct an entire timeline of what’s happened since I gave him the hotel’s address. Fifteen minutes passed, then he visited my profile on BBRT at roughly the time he told me he’d be knocking on my door. Ten minutes after that, his Grindr profile looked at mine. Then, ‘just now,’ he’s looked at me on Scruff.

What kind of fuckery is this?

An hour and a half has passed since he told me he couldn’t wait. I send the guy a message on Sniffies, since that’s where we made the date. Okay. I get the message that you’re not coming over. A pity, since I’ve wanted to meet you for a while now.

As I expect, I get no reply. I’m horny, I’m furious, and I don’t like it. But I know sitting in my hotel room, stabbing at the screen with my index finger trying to find a quick replacement, will prove a recipe for regret. So I recalibrate.

My favorite barbecue joint is across town from where I’m staying. It’s worth the drive just to clear my head. My dad has accompanied me to barbecue spots across the city, but none of the chains he prefers compare, I think, to this locally-owned spot where I can order hush puppies and a side of corn pudding to accompany the generous helping of pulled pork the chef has slapped onto a rectangle of kraft paper on my tray. As I devour the spread, I flip between various apps on my phone—browsing the news headlines, looking at the subreddits I follow, and checking out the local grid on Grindr.

I’ve nearly spooned out the last of the corn pudding when I get a message on the latter. Hi Sir. It’s from a profile with no photo and very little information—a 23-year-old who’s less than a mile away, is all I know. I rarely respond to profiles that are blank or close to it. Just as I’m about to close the app, though, the kid sends a few more photos. The first is of him reclining on his bed, head tilted on his pillow. He wears a t-shirt of primary red; his hand rests just out of the camera’s view, between his legs. A good-looking kid. Clean cut. Well groomed. Whether from his natural, fair-skinned coloration or an acute case of sunburn, his nose is a bright red. The photo has a caption. Rudolph, it says.

All right. I like a little bit of self-deprecating humor.

The remaining pics are less boy-next-door than they are hungry-hole-down-the-street. There’s a shot of him bent over a bare mattress, knees spread wide and white ass in the air, taking a spit-slick Black cock. Then there’s a blurry shot of him on his knees, eyes unfocused and glazed, mouth agape, beneath a stubby dick that’s already left a spurt of jizz across his forehead. Finally, there’s a shot he’s managed to take of himself on his bed again. This one is both blurry and dark; he’s got his legs in the air and fingers probing a pink little hole.

Hey, I think this trio of photos deserves as reply. Nice pics, son.

I bet you have a big cock, Sir. I can’t help it: my dick twitches at this form of address. In lieu of a written reply, I send him a shot of my meat hanging between my legs, thick and engorged. Fuck yeah. I knew it, dad. Are you looking?

To myself I think: why not? I’m done with dinner. I’d left the hotel feeling nettled, in order to avoid fruitless hours of hunting for—and not finding—sex. And see? Here’s a pretty boy, throwing himself in my lap.

Yeah, I reply. I’m looking.

Already I’m thinking of the kid as Rudolph, though I know it was a joke and unlikely to be his name. My car’s in the shop, he tells me. Can you come get me?

You know someplace we can go? I could easily take Rudolph back to my hotel, but it’s a little bit of a haul by Richmond standards. Part of me, I admit, intends the question to see how serious this kid is. On my last pre-pandemic trip down here, I’d wasted an entire evening on some asshole without a car who’d expected to treat me like his personal Uber driver while he ran errands. When the kid responds in the affirmative, I have only one more question. How soon can you be ready? Because if it’s going to be an hour or more, I’m going to have to pass.

Now. Come get me, Sir. I want you inside me.

Now is good. I like now.

Ten minutes later and I’m pulling up to the address he’s given me—a squat Henrico bungalow boasting a rusted carport at the driveway’s end. I’ve scarcely pulled up in front than Rudolph flies out the side door. He’s shorter and smaller than I expected—no more than five-five or so—but his legs propel him down the driveway and into my front seat. Once the passenger door shuts, he points down the county road ahead. “Go straight. I’ll tell you where to turn,” is his greeting.

He sounds like he’s escaping from something. Probably still lives at home, I think to myself. I say nothing and pull away from the curb in the direction he’s indicated. It’s not until we’re away from the house and at a stop sign that I feel his hand on my leg. His fingers probe at my crotch. When I divert my attention from the road, he’s looking at me with liquid eyes, full of desire. “You’re hot, Sir.”

Under his fingers, my dick balloons. The kid’s pics hadn’t done him justice. There’s a redness to his face that I see often in the local men here, but only the very tip of his bulbous nose carries a touch of sunburn. He’s small for a twenty-three-year-old; I could almost carry him around by the scruff of the neck without much exertion. Cute. Definitely into me, from the way he keeps drinking me in. The boy exudes a puppy dog urgency as he paws at my parts and runs a hand over my chest. It’s all I can do to keep from swerving.

Eventually we reach his destination. Out here in the county, where the little ranch houses hold each other at arm’s distance, there are still stretches of undeveloped plots. At Rudolph’s prompting, I turn onto one of them, along a twisting gravel road that leads through thickets of wild saplings. Hidden beyond is a fenced-in property, overgrown with waist-high weeds. Its dirt parking lot, which could easily hold twenty or more cars, is almost completely invisible from the road. “Come on,” he tells me, letting his smooth little hands slide from mine once I turn off the ignition. “Nobody comes here.”

I swing my legs onto the dirt and click the remote to lock my car doors. The place must once have been a neighborhood pool; through the broken privacy slats in the chain link fence I can spy a rough slab of patio around a kidney-shaped outline. The pool itself has been filled with concrete long before, to prevent both liability and mosquitos. It’s eerily quiet back here. If anyone were to walk or drive down the only road in, we’d be sure to hear the crunch of gravel well in advance. I approve.

“Over here.” The kid beckons me to a large shed around one side of the property. Beyond the high grasses, there’s a padlocked chain, much distressed, linking the door’s handles. The kid retrieves an artificial rock stashed among several real stones in the weeds nearby, though, and flips it over to reveal a hidden compartment. He slides open a little door to produce a key. A few moments later and we're in the shed’s interior.

There’s not much in here. A few old empty plastic tubs that used to hold pool chemicals, but that’s not the smell that’s making my nose twitch. A pair of long-handled nets, neither of which retains any webbing. A stack of cardboard boxes lurks in a corner, slumping from gravity and damp. Two webbed folding recliners occupy most of the room’s length, set side by side. Rudolph positions me between them and pulls down on my neck. He stands on tiptoe so that my mouth can completely engulf his own.

We’re a contrast in sizes, he and I. I’m reminded of those porn sites that pair pint-sized boys with much bigger, older men. He seems to love the contrast, too. When I try to stand straight after our first, deep kiss, he jumps up and into my arms. When I catch him—barely, surprised—he wraps his legs around me. We kiss again. His mouth is hungry, wet and deep.

I can’t hold him off the ground indefinitely, so I try to let him down as gracefully as possible. “You’re so hot,” he says, reaching for my beard. “Do you like me?”

I remember the insecurity of that age. “You’re a sexy boy.” I look around the deserted shed. “You’ve brought men here before?” My question abashes him, I can tell. “You can say.”

“Yeah.” His eyes flicker from mine to the floor.

“Yes, Sir,” I correct.

“Yes, Sir.”

“So you just…pick up strange men online and lure them there, huh.” He’s wearing a pair of denim shorts faded almost to white, save at the seams, and a loose-hanging shirt made of something approximating linen. While I talk, I begin running my fingers up its placket, loosening the fastenings one by one. At some point, perhaps in his haste to escape his house, he’d mismatched the buttons to their holes. It gives him a lopsided look.

I watch as he licks his lips. “Yes, Sir. Is that bad?”

I neither nod, nor shake my head, reserving judgment. My hands move up, knuckles grazing his smooth stomach. “So you bring them out here. Where anything could happen.” His heart thuds so strongly that each beat stirs hairs on the back of my hand. He nods. “Yes, Sir,” I prompt again.

“Yes, Sir.”

The size difference between us is making my cock rigid. It demands to be shoved in the young man’s holes, but for now I keep it from asserting itself. The exertion of willpower hones my voice to a steel-hard edge. “You’ve been doing this a long time, I bet.”

“Yes, Sir.”

I’m at the last button. My fingers tweak it loose, so that the fabric falls to reveal his skin, opalescent in the indirect light. I turn him around and relieve him of the garment, then spin him once more so he faces me, gently as a father might get his kid ready for bed. “How long?”

“A long time.” His response is breathy, excited.

“Months?” He nods. “Years?” There’s a hesitation, but at last he nods. “I figured. A boy like you can’t do without cock, right?”

“Yes, Sir. I mean, no, Sir.” He barely aspirates the confession.

I unbutton his shorts. Slowly, deliberately, I pull down their zipper. The boy has a tiny waist. My long fingers might be able to encircle him if I tried, it almost seems. I turn him around again and draw him close, allowing myself to run my fingers over his skin before hooking my thumbs under the waistbands of both the denim and his shorts. “Then you bring them to this godforsaken place and make them do things to you.” His head falls back against my chest. His eyes are closed, his jaw slack. Down fall his shorts around his ankles; the boy’s cock, thin and short, pokes out like a flagpole. “Bad things.”

“Yeah,” he breathes.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Yes, Sir.” As my hands move over his body, his cock, his lightly hairy balls, he shivers. “Real bad things.”

I let go of him. He drifts forward, eyes still closed, his naked body twirling, slow motion, in the shed’s twilight, until he’s facing me again. “Like what?” I direct his hands to my own shorts, where my cock demands attention. “Do they make you…suck their big cocks?”

“Yes, Sir. They make me suck their cocks.” His eyes open, seeking permission. I nod, giving it.

Down on his knees he goes. My shorts have no zipper. He yanks down the elastic waist to my knees. As my eight inches flop upward, his mouth opens; his tongue darts out. His hand clasps the lower half, seizing his prize. I feel the kid’s hot breath before I plunge between those pretty lips.

My own heart thuds in its cage as the boy goes to town on my meat. I lean back so I can have a clear view of him in action. He’s no dabbler; he knows what he’s doing. I watch his own skinny dick jerk and throb unattended, nearly slapping against the shed’s concrete floor. Already he’s leaking precum.

“Cocksucker,” I spit out, letting the word swing, pendulum-like, somewhere between praise and epithet.

He opens his eyes at the word and allows my dick to slip from his mouth. “Yes, Sir.” His words are sibilant and indistinct with the spit dripping from his lips. “Just a cocksucker, Sir.”

His address makes me harder. Redder. Thicker. I grab the back of his skull and hold it while I shove my cock as far as it will go. Though he can’t quite manage the last couple of inches, his lips greedily reach for the base, trying to make a show of engulfing the whole thing. I give him credit for trying.

“Your folks know what a dirty little faggot cocksucker they’re raising?” I ask. Through a mouthful of dick, he shakes his head. “But you go back home from here with a gut full of seed to lie to mommy and daddy about where you’ve been, huh.” It’s a shot in the dark, but he nods, his eyes gazing up at me with sheer adoration. “You don’t even know my name. Getting anonymous dick in some—“ I look around at our surroundings. “—skanky-ass lean-to.” He grunts, agreeing. “You let strangers fuck you too, don’t you.”

“Yeth Thir,” he attempts to say, but I don’t let him off my dick. Not yet.

“Figured.” I curl my upper lip in a show of contempt. “Little faggot boy, going ass up for who the fuck knows who.” I grab a handful of the kid’s sandy hair and thrust my hips in and out of his mouth, feeling his saliva on my balls. “Letting strange men sodomize that boyhole.”

When I withdraw most of the way, he raises his glance to me again and grunts. “That’s what my holes are made for, Sir. Faggot holes for men like you.”

“Someone trained you right,” I comment. He digs that, responding with grunts and an instinctive arch to his back. When I pull out from between his greedy lips, he responds with a whine of outrage, like a toddler deprived of a favorite toy. “Up,” I order. Then, “Around.” Once he’s obeyed, I turn him so that his hands are planted on the webbing of one of the recliners. “Well, well. Look at that ass,” I hiss, when it’s on display. "No wonder men like me want to fuck it." Automatically he spreads his legs, widening his stance.

The boy’s butt is compact. He’s still young enough that he still carries a slight layer of baby fat, which bounces when I slap it hard. “Ow,” he says—from instinct, not actual pain.

“Come on,” I growl, slapping it again, this time harder. The sound fills our tiny space. “Don’t try to tell me that ass hasn’t been smacked before.”

“It’s yours, Si—“ I interrupt his obeisance with another hard whack. His head flies up; his eyes widen. If I thought Rudolph loved me when he was sucking my dick, that was nothing to the look of sheer veneration he’s giving me now. “Fuck.”

“Damn right I will,” I say, deliberately misinterpreting the four-letter word as permission, or invitation. My fingers probe at his exposed, pink, hairless hole. “Jesus Christ, son,” I exclaim, as if my slippery fingers have discovered something foul. “You’re already fucking lubed up!” Rudolph can’t stand any longer. He tumbles forward onto the ancient lawn chair so that his face and knees dig into the woven fabric. He’s light, but I don’t trust the chair to support both our weights, so I remain standing as I finger his pucker. “You just checked out my profile, thought to yourself, This dude looks like the kind of man who fucks little faggots like me, and shoved a bottle’s worth of lube up your shitter before I picked you up, huh?”

“Please fuck me,” he begs.

“Please fuck me, Sir.”

“Please fuck me, Sir.”

I hesitate, as if unsure. “I don’t know. There’s no telling how many men have been up this boyhole before.” I’ve got three fingers in, now. Plus the tip of the fourth. He’s wide open and obviously well-used. It’s a hole that begs to be stretched even more.

“Fuck me, Sir. Please fuck me. Sir, please fuck me.”

He repeats the words over and over while I pretend to consider my option. At long last, as he squirms his hips and repeats his litany, I spit on my fingers and spread the fluid on my enraged inches. Then I shove it in, at long last.

He seizes up almost immediately, then relaxes as I force him back down onto the lawn chair. I slide to the base with little resistance. The kid has been fucked before, and probably often. That smell I’d wondered about earlier, the one tickling my nostrils—it’s not damp or chlorine. It’s probably the scent of dried sweat and semen from all the hookups little Rudolph has lured here over his sexual career. Thinking about the boy using this abandoned shed to collect seed makes me more aggressive.

“This what you wanted?” I ask. “Is this what you want, cocksucker?” I don’t need to hear his answer. I’m being rhetorical. The chair’s aluminum frame grates across the concrete as savagely I stab into the boy’s guts.

He’s the happiest little pup around, though. “Yes, Sir!” he carols, holding onto the armrests for dear life. “Fuck it, Sir. Fuck that hole.”

“Oh, I’m fuckin’ it, all right,” I snarl.

The chair’s top half comes to rest against the shed wall; Rudolph grabs onto a support beam to raise himself up and look back at me. “You can fuck harder, Sir,” he promises. “Get in there with that rape stick, Sir.”

Little turns me on more than a boy complicit in the abuse of his own hole. I seize the kid’s neck and hold it while I savage his rectum, one searing thrust at a time. “A man could do anything to a boy like you back here,” I growl in his ear. He nods, agreeing. “No one would ever know.”

“Yes…Sir.” The words are an effort for him. I tweak his nipples hard, making him cry out. “Right there,” he sobs. “Right there. Right there. Right there. Yes.”

I know I’m hitting the perfect spot. I can feel his little button jamming against my thick cock head. Again and again I stab at it, making him cry out each time. His tiny prostate has probably never been hammered so hard.

“Oh, fuck,” he at last says. He sounds shocked, and looks down at his dick. I thrust down onto the button and hold it, while I feel his ass convulse around my thick meat. Cum shoots out of his dick. One long strand hits the shed wall. Then a second. A third flies lower, onto the beam. Then a fourth, onto the lawn chair. While I hold him still, his body shivers and thrashes as cum continues to fly from the tip. “I’ve never—“

“Shut up, cocksucker,” I growl, as I pin him against the exposed wood. “Daddy’s turn.”

I don’t drop Rudolph back at home until after dusk. By the time I reach my hotel, the sky’s dark and I’m two loads lighter. It’s close to nine-thirty by the time I’ve showered the boy’s scents from my skin and flopped down on my bed. I fire up my phone, intending to catch up on any messages I might’ve missed while I was out pounding.

Sniffies is still open on my phone’s browser. I’ve got a couple of the usual ‘Hi’ messages from anonymous profiles that I can easily disregard. A couple of interesting offers that I might’ve contemplated, if Rudolph hadn’t hit me up. And then, at the top, a message from the wavy-haired fellow from the Fan who’d stood me up earlier. It’s time-stamped from only ten minutes before, while I was washing up.

Hey, says the message. Still looking? Lost track of time when my mom called.

I mean, there’s not even an apology attached. Apparently I’m supposed to swallow whole the belief that after he told me he’d be arriving in fifteen minutes, his mother called, and that he’d then engaged in conversation with her for six and a half hours. And that during those six and a half hours—particularly during the crucial first ninety minutes or so in which I was stomping around my hotel room, certain I was being stood up—he wasn’t able to to use his phone or any other device to send me a quick message to say Hey, I’m being delayed, but I’m still intending to be there when I can. Although over the course of an hour he was able to, you know, check out my profile on three other apps.

Right. No, I’m not buying it. Once again I feel that tide of anger rising.

But you know what? It’s not worth it. I roll my eyes, shake my head, and block the guy on Sniffies. I block him on Scruff. I block him on Grindr. And finally, I block him on BBRT. I don’t need to engage with that kind of gaslighting. And besides, my loads had found a better home.