Muscle Men, page 16
Then he was up, toweling himself off, leaving me nestled in an indentation in the foam mattress. I watched him wipe down his glorious Spartan figure, scooping around his sagging semihard dick and balls.
He said nothing to me as I dressed—then, when I headed for the door, reminded me to read the next Sitchin book before I saw him again.
I panicked, mildly, when Jordan didn’t show up to the next class, but he called me later that night and commanded me to come over. We watched a documentary on Sumerian lexicography while he fucked me as if I were a rag doll sitting in his lap. After that, we fucked every time I came over, sometimes after strenuous workouts and serious pot smoking, sometimes after rigorous arguments about science and theology—and serious pot smoking. By the end of the semester, we went at each other almost every day, though he was nonchalant about the fucking. It was seemingly not sexual for him—more like an exchange, two men philosophizing and ruminating on the nature of this planet’s dire destiny and then each of us making the other cum. Pretty simple.
I started role-playing a greater interest in his beliefs. I wanted to please him, make him feel like he was making progress with me even though he really wasn’t. I still thought he was insane. I thought it was all insane. But by December, I had become so absorbed in his infectious cleverness, his enormous strength, his amazing body—and, most of all, his ability to induce, time after time, addictive full-bodied orgasms—that suddenly I found myself arguing the greatness of Sumerian astronomical calculations, sounding like a chapter in one of Sitchin’s books. I wasn’t sure if it was just a really bad high from the weed, or if I wasn’t really role-playing anymore. But that night, after my apparent impassioned enlightenment, Jordan fucked me with heightened passion and even kissed me for the first time; he did things to my willing, wiry body that transformed every other sexual encounter between us into a warm-up exercise. And then he disappeared for the last two weeks of the semester, two bright icy weeks in December, where every day glistened.
I approached Dr. Henderson on the last day of class and asked if he knew what was going on with Jordan. He had missed the last two classes and it seemed he hadn’t turned in his final project, a story that had to be more than twenty pages long.
“I’m surprised you don’t know,” Dr. Henderson said. “You two seemed like you got close. You were like a team each workshop, skewering everyone’s stories.”
I shook my head. “I’ve tried calling him. I’ve gone to his house, but no one’s there.”
“He wasn’t a student at the university,” the professor said after some hesitation. “He withdrew the first week of the semester, but because of some computer glitch he was still on my roster. I appreciated his contributions to our class, however eccentric they were. Not sure why he kept coming, though.”
I blinked once, holding my eyelids down an extra second, trying to process the information. “Well, then, where did he go?”
“The reason I found out he wasn’t a student is because the police arrested him two weeks ago on outstanding warrants from when he lived in Florida. I’m sure he’s locked up down there by now.”
My heart plummeted through the building’s six floors. I wanted to curl up and shrivel away. Then I wanted to dropkick a fucking desk out the window, use whatever martial arts skills I had gleaned from Jordan’s months of training to hurt something, hurt anything, hurt myself. “What for?” I asked the professor, masking my volcanic rage.
Dr. Henderson’s not-quite-handlebar mustache hid the hint of a smirk under rosy cheeks. “No idea. But I’m going to take a wild and crazy guess and say drugs.”
The last few class stragglers shuffled out around me. My final project was clenched in my fist, a twenty-five-page story bound in a folder. It was titled Escape to the 12th Planet, an encapsulation of how Jordan White saves me from my doomed mundane Earth, my lonely rational world of bitter empiricism and sexual isolation, and suddenly I wished it were all true.
THE GIMP, THE VIG AND THE RING
Michael Bracken
I lifted Jimmy the Gimp by the lapels of his shirt and pushed him back against the brick wall. “You don’t have the money,” I said, “you know what I got to do.”
“Give me a break,” the little guy squealed. “I never been late before.”
“I need the vig.” The vig. The vigorish. The weekly interest due on the money Jimmy had borrowed to bet on a horse that suffered a coronary three strides from the starting gate.
He kicked his good shoe and his corrective shoe with the built-up sole against the brick wall, scuffing the heels. “I ain’t got the money, but I can get it.”
“How?”
“My momma’s engagement ring. I can hock my momma’s engagement ring.”
“She’s not going to like that.”
“She won’t know nothin’. She’s got the Alzheimer’s. I’ll tell her she lost it.”
I liked Jimmy—everybody liked Jimmy—but I had a job to do. I lowered him to the pavement and followed him to the thirdfloor walk-up he shared with his mother. The hallway outside smelled of curry, cat piss and vomit. I waited while he went inside. I killed time by thinking about Chuck and wondering what he had planned for our dinner. I was relieved when Jimmy slipped out of the apartment a few minutes later and opened his fist to reveal the diamond solitaire his father had given his mother many years earlier.
We walked down the block to Salvatore’s and the old man behind the counter gave Jimmy a fair price for the ring. Jimmy shoved the pawnshop ticket in his wallet and the cash in my hands. It was more than enough to cover the week’s vig.
“Give it all to Big Tony,” he said. “I want to bet the trifecta.”
“You sure you want to do that?”
After Jimmy nodded, I folded the stack of Hamiltons in half and slipped them into my inside jacket pocket next to my iPhone. Then we went our separate ways.
I made two more stops that afternoon—at a convent and at a bakery—before I returned to Big Tony’s office at the used-book store. I gave my boss all the money I had collected and added a hundred of my own to cover Chuck’s vig. I told him what to do with the extra Jimmy the Gimp had given me.
Big Tony separated Jimmy’s betting money from the collected vig and pushed it to the side of his desk. “Gimp’s already called. Thinks he has inside information on a trifecta.”
“You take the bet?”
“Damn right I took the bet.”
If my boss had ever had a heart it had long ago turned to stone. Maybe the last decent thing he’d ever done was give me a job when no one else wanted anything to do with me. I’d been a big, dumb jock, just smart enough to play defensive tackle in high school and junior college, but caught with steroids in my possession after a couple of Big Twelve coaches started eyeballing me. Even though I repeatedly tested negative, nobody believed I’d been set up, and I left college without finishing the season or my degree.
Soon after that Big Tony had me running errands. Before long I was collecting his debts. Less than a year later I was wearing custom-tailored suits and had moved from my parents’ basement to my own two-bedroom apartment in a rent-controlled building. I went from juco dropout to somebody respected around the neighborhood, all because I became Big Tony’s debt collector, and that respect allowed me to live a lifestyle not usually viewed favorably by my business associates.
When I asked if Big Tony had anything else for me, he dismissed me with a wave of his hand.
“I need a new racket,” I said as I threw my custom-tailored jacket over the back of the black leather recliner.
Chuck stuck his head out of the kitchen. He’d gotten his hair styled earlier that day, and the stylist had touched up his blond highlights. He asked, “What happened?”
I unclipped my tie and threw it over the jacket. “I shook down a nun with a gambling habit.”
Chuck snickered. “What’s a nun’s gambling habit look like? I’ll bet it’s black with a white wimple.”
“Should you be betting?”
“I guess not.” Chastised, my lover ducked back into the kitchen.
I had met Chuck on the job, collecting vig from him on a weekly basis until we each realized what the other kept in his closet, hidden from the rest of the world. We became closer than we should have considering my job and his debt-load, but he had a passion for muscle men—real muscle men, not oiled-up steroid junkies—and I liked a man that didn’t mind a few bruises when my lovemaking got rough. Soon enough he moved into my apartment, and I paid Chuck’s vig as long as he avoided the ponies and attended Gamblers Anonymous. I realized I’d been snippy with him, so I stepped into the kitchen, leaned down to kiss his cheek, and apologized.
I told him I’d had a rough day.
“Mine was no cakewalk,” Chuck said as he continued tossing the salad. Chuck was no small man, but even brushing up against six feet he was still three inches shorter than me and several dozen pounds lighter. He waved one hand toward the kitchen door. “Go. Freshen up. Everything will be on the table in a few minutes.”
I had just finished in the bathroom when Chuck called me to the dinner table. He’d made Caesar salad, linguini with clams and garlic butter sauce, and a loaf of garlic bread. He opened a bottle of white wine and poured us each a glass.
Then, over dinner, he told me about his day selling advertising space for a morning newspaper that was hemorrhaging money and threatening layoffs, and I told him about my day collecting Big Tony’s debts. I told him about the mechanic who charged customers for work he didn’t do just to cover the weekly vig on his off-the-books business loan, about the baker who complained every week about not having enough dough even though the joke hadn’t been funny the first time I’d heard it, about the nun who paid the vig on her gambling debts by skimming from the donation plates, and about Jimmy the Gimp.
Everybody knew Jimmy the Gimp was harmless, and Chuck asked, “You didn’t hurt him, did you?”
I shook my head. I’d never actually hurt any of the people whose money I collected, though my size and a persistent, though entirely fictitious, rumor that I’d once used a welsher’s head for batting practice certainly put the fear of God into many of them.
“Stealing from his mother is pretty low,” Chuck said. “Maybe you should get him into GA. I’ll be his sponsor.”
“I don’t think he’s ready,” I replied. “He hasn’t sunk low enough yet.”
Chuck understood how low one had to sink before joining GA. The reason Chuck had moved in with me and had joined Gamblers Anonymous—beyond our mutual attraction—is that he had lost his car and had found all of his things, what hadn’t already been picked over by the Dumpster divers and street people, on the curb when he returned home from work one evening. In addition to Chuck, I’d convinced two of Big Tony’s other clients to give up the lifestyle, one because he’d fathered a son and the other because his wife needed chemotherapy. Big Tony wasn’t pleased with my charity work, but the impact on his bottom line was negligible.
After dinner, Chuck cleared the table and filled the dishwasher while I changed into cross-training shoes, gray sweats, a wife-beater, and black weightlifting gloves. Then he changed into running shoes, shorts, and a pink T-shirt he’d received for participating in a Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. I grabbed some bottled water and we took the elevator to the basement.
The dank space had been divided into six storage areas that were little more than waist-high walls built of one-by-twos, with chicken wire the rest of the way to the ceiling. The storage spaces weren’t secure by any means but half the building’s residents each paid an extra two hundred a month just to have use of one of them.
Chuck had helped me convert mine to a workout room, complete with a weight bench, free weights, exercise mat, treadmill, heavy bag and a speed bag. He usually accompanied me when I worked out, not because he would be of any help if I dropped the weights, but because seeing me pump iron turned him on and he was always primed to finish the workout in the privacy of our bedroom.
A single bare bulb dangling from the ceiling illuminated our storage area and a small fan in the corner helped circulate the smell of damp basement and sweaty men. We turned both on.
Chuck joined me for stretching exercises. After we limbered up, he jogged on the treadmill while I worked with the free weights. I’m not a bodybuilder. I have no interest in building show muscle, oiling up, and posing near naked before a theater full of Charles Atlas wannabes, horny groupies of all genders and steroid pushers. I maintain my size and strength for my job, relying on my imposing physique more than anything else to intimidate.
My workouts consisted of heavy days and light days, and that night was a heavy day. I put 300 pounds on the barbell and bench-pressed three sets of five reps; squatted three sets of five reps with 400 pounds on the barbell; power cleaned five sets of 250 pounds; and finished with ten 100-pound curls for each arm. My wife-beater was soaked with sweat but I was barely breathing heavy when I finished with the weights.
After draining one of the bottled waters without a pause, I pulled on twelve-ounce boxing gloves and worked the speed bag with a steady rat-a-tat-tat. When Chuck finished his jog, I switched to the heavy bag, and he leaned into it while I pummeled it from the opposite side.
I should have been concentrating on my fists and how they landed against the bag because someday I was actually going to get into a fight, but I kept sneaking peeks at my lover. His blue eyes were half closed and his partially erect cock tented the front of his shorts. Because I was paying too much attention to Chuck’s package, a roundhouse punch missed the bag and caught him in the upper arm.
Chuck’s eyes snapped open and he stumbled backward, releasing his hold on the heavy bag as he went. The bag swung forward and smacked into me with no noticeable effect. I asked, “You okay?”
“Sure,” he said as he rubbed his arm.
I peeled off my gloves, hooked one hand behind his head, and pulled him close. I covered his mouth with mine and gave him a deep, tongue-tangling kiss. When it ended, I said, “Let’s go upstairs.”
One of the first things I’d done after moving into the apartment was remodel the bathroom, tearing out the claw-foot bathtub and replacing it with a custom-built shower appropriate for a man my size—a man my size who liked company. Chuck and I stripped off our sweaty workout clothes, shoved them into the wicker hamper, and slipped into the shower.
He grabbed the bath mitt first, lathered it up with lavenderscented antibacterial body wash and began scrubbing my back and my chest. He worked his way down my body until he was kneeling on the tile floor in front of me, the warm water cascading over us from two separate showerheads and my erect cock bobbing in front of his face.
He used the bath mitt to scrub my heavy ball sac as he leaned forward and took the head of my cock into his mouth. He hooked his teeth behind the spongy soft glans and then bathed my cockhead with his tongue.
I reached down and took his head in my hands, holding it as I pushed my cock deep into his oral cavity. He accepted every inch—something no other man I’d been with had been able to do—before I pulled back and pressed forward again. I moved my hips slowly at first, and then with increasing speed. Soon my ball sac was slapping against Chuck’s chin and it slowly tightened up the closer I was to orgasm.
When I finally came, I came hard, firing a thick wad of hot spunk against the back of Chuck’s throat. He swallowed every drop and then licked my cock clean before I pulled him to his feet. The workout had turned me on, too, and even though I’d just come my cock only softened for a moment.
I spun Chuck around so that he was facing the tiled wall. We don’t keep any lube in the shower, so I grabbed antibacterial soap and dribbled it down his asscrack. He bent forward, shoving his ass back toward me and I pressed my cockhead against his soapy sphincter. Then I grabbed his hips and pressed forward, driving my cock into him.
Chuck braced himself against the tile wall with one hand and wrapped the fingers of his free hand around his erect cock, matching his fist pumps to my rhythm. I came first, slamming into him and holding his hips so tight I bruised them for the second time that month. Then he came, spewing spunk on the tile wall that was quickly washed away by the cascading water.
We finished our shower a bit more sedately than we began it, wrapping matching terry-cloth bathrobes around ourselves and then sitting in the living room and finishing the bottle of wine Chuck had opened at dinner.
When we finally went to bed I fell asleep with my arms wrapped around Chuck, holding him tight as if I was afraid he would escape during the night, knowing that everything was right with the world when I had him in my arms.
I woke up alone: Chuck had already gone for the day when I finally pushed myself out of bed and into the shower. He’d left half a pot of coffee made from freshly ground beans and I downed it before I dressed in a crisply pressed white shirt, clip-on tie and a suit that Chuck had picked up at the dry cleaner’s on his way home the previous day. Then I checked my iPhone, saw that I had no messages and made my way to the first pickup of the day.
Time disappeared quickly. I was thinking of lunch at the Pasta Barn, having already collected the weekly vig from four of Big Tony’s regulars, when my iPhone rang. I dug in my jacket pocket for it.
As soon as I answered, Big Tony shouted in my ear, “The son-of-a-bitch hit the trifecta and just walked out of here with ten Gs.”
“Who?”
“Jimmy the Gimp, that’s who.”
“You let him leave with all that money?”
“What was I supposed to do?” Big Tony yelled. “I got a reputation. I pay my debts just like I expect people to pay theirs. That’s what Jimmy did. I got my cut and then he gimped out of here with 10 Gs of my money.”
