Boys In Heat, page 13
“There wouldn’t be any inner life to that,” said Mr. Mack, taking him seriously. “That’s a different kind of storytelling.”
“Okay,” said Sammy. Theory meant little to him. “Well, call me again when you want, okay?”
“You bet.” As soon as Sammy was out the door, Mr. Mack sat back at his desk and turned on the computer, groping for an opening, a setting of the scene, physical and emotional, and then began writing: Mr. Mack kept his apartment dark and sat with his back to the one window that didn’t have a shade so, particularly on a bright day like this… No, no point in taking that much time for the setup, move it along…. He picked another point in the story and began typing…stopped again and thought and began again: My girlfriend was out of town, visiting her folks, so this was my chance. I’d seen this particular posting before and I was really curious to try what I’d been fantasizing about for a long time. Mr. Mack settled in, spinning out the story as it came to him, reporting and inventing, imposing sense and form on sensation and desire.
THE KEY-MAKER’S WIFE
Ted Cornwell
This truck’s been through worse shit before, and there’s more to come,” Serge says after one particularly alarming pothole. Brian turns a sickly shade of pale. Serge jams Soul Asylum into the dashboard tape deck, but the sound is barely audible above the Precambrian roar of his pickup. Brian focuses on a clump of trees ahead, trying to quell his nausea.
Serge resumes his story. He’s been explaining that he was named after a great-uncle, who had not been named Sergeant, but who’d risen to that rank in the army before perishing in Vietnam. So this is the derivation of Sergeant Ramos. Brian would have found it fascinating and alluring if only he weren’t concentrating so hard on the effort not to barf. Ever since he was a child, Brian has suffered from motion sickness. Why he’d agreed to go hurtling down some redneck highway toward a fishing hole in the Chesapeake Bay now seems a great mystery to him. Baltimore recedes in the rearview mirror like a scolding aunt whose advice should have been heeded.
Serge continues. His mother now thinks the name is a curse. She worries that with the war in Iraq, the government will start a draft again, and Serge will be sent to an inhospitable post on the front lines of a doomed war, just like his great-uncle before him.
“It’s true, I guess. Guys like you and me could get shipped off to Iraq if this thing lasts much longer,” Serge says, rather generously. At twenty-two, Serge is still plausible cannon fodder. Brian is thirty-eight. He imagines there is a long line of hardier and more youthful candidates for conscription standing between him and the war. Haphazardly, Brian thinks about explaining that he could opt out anyway, just by saying, “I’m gay.” The draft board would have to go knocking on other doors. But that’s a detail about himself that he hasn’t explicitly mentioned to Serge.
Serge and Brian have only been acquainted for two months, ever since Brian decamped from Washington to take advantage of the lower rents in Baltimore. Brian refrains from using the word unemployed to describe his circumstances. He has recently departed, under what he likes to think of as mutually agreeable circumstances (he would have quit anyway), from a junior legal position in the congressional relations department of the National Organization for Scientific Progress. The job had gone swimmingly for two years, until NOSP, with an eye toward increasing its influence among Washington’s current power brokers, hired a creationist as general counsel. This led to a housecleaning in which Brian, who had once worked in Congressman Barney Frank’s office, found himself standing near the exits like an exposed dust ball.
Now, with two similarly situated castaways, Brian is a founding member of a liberal think tank, the Greater Good. This entails working out of his living room on a laptop computer, printing up glossy business cards, and issuing the occasional “white paper” or press release, while he and his colleagues bandy about ideas for where they might find some money. Without much in the way of appointments, conferences, or meetings that require his attention, Brian has had time to explore downtown Baltimore, where he discovered Sergeant.
Shirtless and sweaty, Serge stood by a portable hardware store on a street corner, his eyes behind a protective shield, ready to make keys for worker bees on their way to the commuter trains that travel back and forth between Baltimore and Washington. Brian, a subtle stalker, became a regular customer, often pretending he was in a hurry to catch the train to D.C. He had spare keys made of spare keys, and spares made of keys he had found in junk drawers. He offered to get keys made for friends. He often bought new key chains. But as their acquaintance grew, he eventually allowed that he was only working “part-time,” and began to idle away many an afternoon in small talk with his friend the key-maker.
Most of the day, after the morning and afternoon rush of commuters, business at Serge’s hardware hut was slow. Serge spent time outside his stand, reading the sports pages and chatting with passersby, basking amiably among the pedestrians and panhandlers and gadflies who stopped to visit. The sight of him, one leg propped up on the bench, goggles hanging loose around his neck, leavened Brian’s afternoons. Serge smiled knowingly whenever he greeted his people, now including Brian, who relished glimpses of sweat on Serge’s chest, punctuated by the glitter of tiny flecks of brass from the key-cutter.
Soon enough, Serge noticed Brian admiring his chest and stomach on a particularly steamy August day. When Serge raised his arms to stretch, his thigh-length jeans slipped down so that his devil horns and the top of his bush showed. He did not flinch. He seemed unconcerned that the only thing preventing a full frontal nudity display—in bright daylight for all of downtown Baltimore to see—was his tight, round butt, barely holding up his jeans from the back. Brian, light-headed, gazed at Serge and mentioned something about wanting to have washboard abs like his.
“My wife likes it too,” Serge said, rubbing his hand over his damp, shirtless torso. Ah, yes, his wife. Serge had mentioned her before, often in a similar context, suggesting a boundary not to be crossed. Brian imagined her as a stout woman, holding a rolling pin. Look, but don’t touch was the message. Brian got the hint, but he had little else to do with his time, so he kept showing up, two or three days a week, to hang out drinking coffee on the plaza benches near Serge’s hardware stand, ready to make small talk. He was an optimist at heart.
By the time Serge asked Brian if he liked fishing, the answer that leapt from Brian’s mouth seemed as honest as it was preposterous.
“I love fishing,” Brian said, with a Liza-like enthusiasm that caught Serge off guard. Brian neglected to mention that he hadn’t actually been fishing since eighth grade, when his family had moved east from Michigan; the old days of fishing for perch and walleye at a cabin in the Upper Peninsula had receded into a mothballed closet of childhood memories.
Serge laughed. “We should go sometime. I like fishing in the bay, about an hour’s drive from here. There’s a good place for sea bass. The water’s not so polluted if you go north of the city a bit.”
“Yes, that would be fun. I’d like to go.”
“I’m going Saturday. You wanna come?”
That’s how Brian ended up in Serge’s pickup, with a chorus of empty beer cans rattling in the back of the cab. Brian feels the floor panel vibrating beneath his feet, and hopes his seat is not about to fall through to the rushing pavement below.
At the shore, they walk along a thin path through rocks and bramble. The Chesapeake laps at the rocks to their left as they hike inland from the lot where Serge has parked. The flotsam washed ashore consists mostly of beer cans (some of which Serge stops to examine, before tossing aside—he’s a collector), fast-food wrappers, and several used condoms. Brian hopes it isn’t too obvious that his rod and reel are brand new, and finds himself scanning his equipment to make sure he hasn’t forgotten to cut off price tags. Serge leads the way, in a blue tank top and his usual midlength jeans. The few hairs on the back of his calves are black and short and sexy. The farther they walk the less debris they see, and the more Brian’s nausea from the truck ride subsides. They pass one lone fisherman, out on a jetty. Serge occasionally points out a landmark—the rock where he fell into the bay and nearly got swept away by the current, the place where he saw two raccoons fighting each other, a trail that leads to caves where teenagers died of asphyxiation several years ago. Each tale unveils an unmarked danger, a sign that civilization is being left behind. Eventually, Serge stops.
“Sergeant’s Bay,” he announces, sweeping his hand over a clearing in the shoreline, a crescent-shaped cove with a pebble beach punctuated by much larger stones.
He sets down his tackle box, takes off his tank top, and prepares his bait. He’s got a jar of pork scraps, and he affixes a piece of meat to a hook, which in turn is attached to what appears to be a metallic replica of a fish head. When he casts his line out, it forms a smooth arc of filament and settles into the water almost silently. Brian’s bait is a rubber frog studded with treble hooks behind a leader with a line of shiny, glimmering spoons meant to attract freshwater bass. Serge says he’s never seen anyone fish using that kind of lure in the Chesapeake Bay. Brian is surprised to find his own casting is as graceful and smooth as he remembered from his childhood trips in Michigan. Even Serge seems impressed with the distance Brian gets. The lure lands with a soft plop, and Serge watches as Brian slowly reels it in and casts it out again. Brian, a fidgety person by nature, is not acclimated to the sit-and-wait style of fishing. He prefers to cast out and reel in, again and again, somewhat comforted by the thought that his floating lure isn’t likely to draw any fish up from the Chesapeake’s depths. While casting comes naturally to him, he’d hate to have to clean a fish.
Brian eventually takes off his shoes and socks and wades a few feet into the cool water. Serge looks at his pink feet refracted beneath the surface. Brian keeps his shirt on, sure that he’d look pudgy and pale next to Serge’s lithe, brown body.
Fearing the sunlight, Brian wears a floppy hat that shields much of his face. Serge laughs at it. “You look like Mary Poppins,” he says.
“Katharine Hepburn, I like to think,” Brian says, but Serge’s laugh is tentative. He may be unfamiliar with the reference.
They are silent for a while. Serge keeps a close eye on the tip of his rod. When Brian tires of casting, he sits on a rock next to Serge and drags figure eights in the water with his little frog, scaring away schools of panicked minnows. Occasionally he glances at the more vigilant Serge. His eyes have started to wander too. A few boats and cormorants punctuate the bay.
Suddenly, Serge takes off his shoes and steps gingerly into the water. For a moment, it seems he’s preparing to strip off his jeans, but instead he leaves them on and slides into the water, dunking his head. Then he climbs back onto the rock, water dripping off his pants and the moist coils of his hair.
“Sometimes, I go swimming naked. Only late in the afternoon, when the boats are mostly gone,” he says.
Don’t let me stop you, Brian thinks. They smile at each other and Serge looks away.
“I told my wife about that. She says I’m crazy. I could get arrested or somebody could steal my things. But there’s nobody around. Nobody cares anyway.”
Just when Brian thought they were getting somewhere, she pops up again, wielding her rolling pin. Brian sits back against the rock, admiring the way the cool water has glazed and tightened Serge’s skin, especially around his nipples. Brian’s mouth waters.
“Fishing is slow in August. It’s better in June, early July,” Serge muses. “Maybe the fish go deeper when it’s this hot. Maybe that’s why the boats are all out so far.”
He stands and wedges his fishing rod into a crevice in the rock that’s sturdy enough to hold even if a fish does happen to take his bait.
“Let me show you something,” he says, sitting up to put on his shoes. Brian follows suit. They jump from the rocks back to shore and scamper up a dry gully. Eventually, maybe a hundred yards up from the shore, they come to an area where thick slabs of concrete, ruins from some abandoned outpost of industry, break up the forest, creating their own small clearings. The two men climb up onto one of the big slabs, with sunlight piercing through the canopy of trees like stage lighting.
“This is my place. If I’m tired of fishing I come here and just sit in the sun sometimes,” Serge explains. “I’ve never seen anyone else up here. Never even any garbage. It’s weird that way. The kids don’t come this far into the woods, I guess.”
And it’s true. The landscape seems undiscovered, frontierlike. Some of the slabs are threaded by vines. It has the feel of a lost empire in a rain forest. Serge leans back against the concrete, absorbing the sun and warmth. This time, even Brian takes off his shirt, if only to use it as a pillow behind his head. Serge pays no mind to Brian’s body, at first. But Brian can’t help watching as Serge hooks one thumb into the top of his jeans.
“You like me. I can tell,” Serge says suddenly.
“Everyone likes you,” Brian says, by way of defense.
“You like me a lot. I can tell. It doesn’t matter. I don’t mind.”
Ah, Sherlock Holmes, how did you guess? Brian thinks.
But he can’t think of anything to say. The next move is unclear to him. There’s no use in denying and little benefit in admitting how he feels. He looks out toward the bay, visible as specks of rhinestone through the branches and leaves. “You are very, very beautiful and very nice too. It would be difficult not to like you,” Brian says.
Serge sits up, and Brian senses that perhaps that old border guard, his wife, is about to be summoned into duty. But instead Serge says, “I’m going to do what I normally do.”
He slips off his jeans so that he is completely naked and rolls up his pants to use as a cushion behind his head, as Brian has done with his shirt. Serge leans back and closes his eyes.
“I don’t mind if you look at me,” he says.
And Brian does look, ravenously. Serge’s uncut cock is large and soft, resting in its untrimmed bed of hair. His thighs are stronger than Brian had guessed. Even Serge’s face is more beautiful, framed by curls of hair splayed against the concrete. Brian leans close and smells the traces of shampoo and gasoline in his hair, then he sits up, scanning the length of Serge’s body. Serge opens his eyes and smiles shyly, amused by Brian’s fascination, by the power of his body to captivate.
“Okay, you can touch me a little bit if you want. I guess it’s okay,” Serge says.
And touch Brian does. He touches Serge’s chest, with its few black hairs and exposed rib cage, his stomach, with its ridging of muscle, his hip bones, framing groin and pubic bush. Serge’s cock stirs, engorges, as Brian starts caressing it, ever so lightly. Serge doesn’t open his eyes. Brian props himself on one elbow, his arm grazing Serge’s hips. I’ve become Sergeant’s wife, thinks Brian. He is even tempted to say I want to have your baby, but silence seems wiser. Serge’s hand rises up and he begins to run his fingers through Brian’s hair. His cock is now totally hard, in front of Brian’s face.
“You can do whatever you want,” Serge says.
TELLING A SWITCH’S STORY
Arden Hill
Tell me you’re not lazy. Make me believe it when you’re lying in bed one leg against the wall, one on the dulled edge of the sheet held against the air and I am fucking you with both hands and have been for more than an hour, my shoulder already as sore as your thighs will be after I’ve stopped. Your breath better remind me that you’re trying hard to be good, trying harder than I have to when you ease into my mouth and tell me not to lick or pull you down my throat. You tease me with the smell of your sweat and the curve of your cock just resting on my lower lip till you let me suck you off. Don’t tell me now, because I like the way you bite your lip and whimper. I don’t want any words from you now. But tell me later, that on the bottom you can take more fingers or bear more weight than you could if I hadn’t told you to try and please me, slapped you and told you to try harder till you do.
I want to know you recognize power, because I watch you tear and build on reforming like a muscle. I watch you arch and flex, nipples rising close to my belly, trying for and reaching what you crave, what you don’t want to say because you trust me to know, and I do. I’m just making you wait for it, letting you earn your satiation. It’s in your veins, throbbing blue serpents beneath your still skin, when I’ve told you not to move. I hold you down with my eyes and nothing else because I like to see your pulse.
Tell me why you like to top me, and I will confess what the words good boy do when slipped into the ear that your tongue has made wet, that your mouth has made warm. Please, if it would please you. Tell me you understand the whisper of Whatever you want. You’re right. I do have something in mind, but I already told you. It’s repeated each time my unfilled mouth falls open. Flesh emphasizes where words fall short, even these words. I don’t want to speak specifics, I just want you to carry me to the space that’s connected to each act I’ve already consented to, like the flick of your crop against my dick or the first and second knuckles of your first and second fingers working into my ass.
Sometimes you give me a choice, Faster or harder? Other times you give me what you want and I struggle against it because resistance is a skin on pain. I like to feel it rubbing raw and you pushing into what you’ve had me spread with my own fingers. Maybe it’s a metaphor. Maybe not. What do you want it to be? Do you like to watch me? Do you want to cover my eyes again with a black bandana? When you don’t, when you let me look, I watch you. I watch looking travel between us, your eyes and mine. I don’t blink. And on my knees, wrists held apart by a joiner chained so close to my face I could bite metal like a bit, I watch your reflection in the silver curve where the clamp rests to a lock.
I like to top you more than just because you want it. I want it. I think about you shoved down on your stomach when I’m biting the pillow. Looking up, seeing how much I please you, I imagine looking down at you when you’re too submissive to speak, even to beg, and it pleases me. There is a space I know with you from knowing both the top and the bottom. We learn the middle, also, the flesh that is neither bone nor dripping want but there like the tenderness of a bruise under skin.
