Boys In Heat, page 6
He gets a speeding ticket just outside of Santa Cruz. He’s sweet as pie to the cop. Something has ticked over inside him. All the way from Big Sur to his new hometown he thought about the two surfers, over and over. What he came to was this: why the hell shouldn’t those guys kiss? Why shouldn’t they get a bit of heat wherever they can? No one’s so rich with affection they should be picky where they get it. Who’s he to begrudge a couple of boys a slow grind up against a cherry red Bronco? Hell, life isn’t worth much without your buddies. And then, to his own surprise, he thinks about Dusty. He thinks hard about Dusty.
Santa Cruz, California
Joey has long admired Dusty, looked up to him, wanted to be exactly like him. No one else had ever let Joey be himself. No one else gave him the time of day. At times the four-year difference in age seemed an eternity, like when Dusty got his driver’s permit, or reached drinking age. These landmarks for Dusty made Joey feel he was being left behind. Yet, other times, he and Dusty couldn’t be closer. Like the time, after he’d been dumped savagely by a bitch of a wave and pushed onto slimy bottom rocks that cut his thigh open, Dusty held a towel to his wound until it stopped bleeding, gently rubbing his shoulder all the while for reassurance. Or the time, after the disastrous encounter with Miss June and her paper crease, that Joey had snuck home to find Dusty asleep on the couch, his bare chest rising rhythmically in sync, it seemed, with the breeze from the open window. After Joey wakened him by tripping over some unknown obstacle, they had talked side by side in the dark for hours, about surf mostly but, in a quiet moment, when Dusty had looked into Joey’s eyes, something stirred within Joey. He’d thought it was what they called brotherly love. Even though they weren’t brothers.
But after the sight of two surfer boys kissing at Willow Creek, Joey wonders what might have happened if they hadn’t heard his mother come into the hall on the way to the bathroom. Might that quiet, warm moment have turned into something else? Something like the moment those surfers shared under their board in the rain? If it had, he might not have minded. But only because it was Dusty.
That kind of thinking, Joey soon discovers, led to unwanted hard-ons from hell. Hard-ons he hates because they make him feel dirty and ashamed. His dreams are haunted by a visual: Dusty, eyes half-lidded, voice heavy with moans, broad chest glistening with sweat, arching his back as he cums. By day, Joey’s boner twitches in his jeans, and he laughs, and tries not to think about Dusty, and then thinks he might cry. For the week after arriving on campus for the start of his school year, even though Joey’s dreams exceed the intensity of his waking thoughts, dreams that empty his balls every night, he doesn’t seek Dusty out. But he feels obsessed. Obsessed in the clinical sense. Not just a turn of phrase. He is freaked out. Frightened by the possibility…
When Dusty finally phones, fishing for an invite, Joey lies to prevent him from coming to his dorm room. In the end, sounding disappointed, not knowing why Joey is being so cold, Dusty turns the conversation to Dean. “Dean and I don’t see each other much these days,” he says, “busy, you know. But hey, things change.” After he hangs up Joey regrets how the call has gone.
The stress of the first week is taking its toll. His composure is slipping. Joey finds himself muttering to an empty room.“Typical Joey. Joey the loser. Joey who jerks off in fucking parking lots.” The room doesn’t dignify his outburst with a response.
He doesn’t want Dusty to see that side of him; the dirty, pervy, pathetic side, the pants-around-the-ankles, humping-a-manicurist-on-a-broken-lawn-chair side, the spasm-of-scary-night-dreams side. He wants Dusty to have a higher opinion of him, to think that he’s above the sort of sordid shit typified by the Leonard Spinkles of the world. He wants Dusty to admire him the way he admires Dusty. He dreads that Dusty might divine his fantasy of an arched back, a glistening chest, a blast of cum, and decide that Joey Verona isn’t worth his time. So Joey avoids Dusty, praying to a god he doesn’t believe in that his obsession will pass.
Over the next few days, the universe conspires against him. Every TV channel seems to be showing a fag movie. Horrors unfold. He switches from The Birdcage with Robin Williams, Mork from Ork, as a gay nightclub owner (what would Mindy think!), to The Broken Hearts Club, with Joey’s childhood hero from “Superman,” Dean Cain, showing a different kind of man-steel. Then “Oprah” and her “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” special and, late at night when Joey is most vulnerable, the worst of them all, “Queer as Folk,” with a blow job or naked shower romp in every fucking scene. Joey decides not to watch any more television. His mother would be pleased. She always said television was a portal straight to Hades.
He turns to the printed word for solace. He goes to the library to read the newspaper his parents won’t allow in the house. The headline story is about Brokeback Mountain and cowboy love. Fucking queer New York Times. So he heads to the periodicals section, and finds the one magazine surely fag-free, Californian Shooter. As he flicks the pages, photos of burly moustachioed lumberjack types with guns propped against their solid thighs—a bleeding buck with gaping mouth and velvety antlers sprawled before them—flash before his eyes. He goes to the bathroom. A mistake. In thick black ink, right over the urinal, someone has written FOR HOT ORAL BE HERE 3PM WEEKDAYS, illustrating his text with a cartoon of a big dick being polished by a square-jawed guy with alarmingly full lips. Joey can’t help but think the cock-sucker has a striking resemblance to himself. He leaves the library in disgust. Something about books and queers. Where there’s one you find the other. “Okay, Lord, I surrender,” he says to himself. “You win. Show me what you want me to do. Send me a sign.”
Dusty knocks on his door the very next night. Damn. Double damn. He has a six-pack in his hands and a wide, uncomplicated grin on his face. There’s nothing Joey can do. He has to let him in. Dusty hops straight onto the bed. Bounces up and down like a kid. Damn. Triple Damn.
Pretty soon, after three beers each—the empty bottles left to clink against each other in the sink, like spent torpedoes—the same sense of ease they shared with each other once, back home, reasserts itself. They talk surf. They talk about Joey’s mother’s bad taste in Christian rock. They laugh about the time she found incense in Joey’s room and thought it was crack.
“Honey,” she’d said, a tremor of terror in her voice, “is this cracked cocaine?” Like it was in the vein of cracked pepper or something. An illicit condiment.
They reminisce about perfect waves on perfect summer days. Dusty tries to explain his grad study program in biochemistry but Joey doesn’t really care. Dusty notices Joey isn’t following his account and says, “Don’t sweat it, Joey, it’s boring crap,” and throws an arm around his neck in a mock headlock.
The beer is having its effect. So much so that Joey finds himself wondering what Dusty looks like under his clothes. He’d seen him, when they were in the surf, the broad shoulders, the strong chest with perfectly round nipples, the ridged abs, the muscled arms, the firm back, the solid legs. But now Joey wonders about what the boardshorts had hidden. What would it be like to see another man’s privates up close? Would it gross him out or would he like the sight too much? Liking it at all would be something. All this is hypothetical anyway. Joey thinks Dusty is just as likely to take out his penis as he is to don a top hat and sing show tunes. It isn’t going to happen.
The night wears on and their closeness grows. The alcohol is acting on Joey like Prozac. He hasn’t a care in the world. When the old visuals of Dusty pop back into his head, he doesn’t try to shoo them away. He lets them be. And when his hard-on rises, he does the same. Lets it happen. Sits with the ache, even enjoying the sensation of his manhood straining against his jeans. He doesn’t care at all that another man is the object of his yearning. He’s too drunk to care. The tight aching in his pants is enough to erase any anxiety. After all…it is Dusty. Soon Joey wonders if he should make a move, put his hand on Dusty’s leg. If he doesn’t object, move the hand farther up. See what happens.
Then Dusty says he’s got to get going. Has he read my mind? Joey wonders, but Dusty tells him he has early morning obligations, and it’s getting late.
Joey closes the door with a mixture of disappointment and relief. No release from this urge, this itch, but at least he’s saved his straightness. The way things are going his straightness is seriously endangered. Like the Californian wood slug, like the condor. He undresses, flops into bed, turns out the light, lies there, lies there as his heart beats, lies there and fights the onslaught of images: Dusty standing tall before him, his cock revealed and erect, his chest heaving, groaning again.
He lies there, wills his own dick to go soft, thinks of unsexy things, potato salad, body odor, Christian rock, Miss June and her soiled crease. It doesn’t work. His dick is raging. He contemplates jerking off. Now that he’s doing his own laundry, he can shoot onto his sheets. He tweaks his nipple. Too hard. He yelps. The stress is getting to him.
“Fuck it!”
He jumps out of bed and turns on the lamp, finds Dusty’s number, the number he was afraid to call when he arrived at the university, and dials.
“Who the fuck’s this?”
“Joey.”
“Joe… What’s up? It’s late. I just left you.”
“Can you come back to my room?”
“Why?” He sounds reluctant, but Joey doesn’t care.
“I need you for something.”
“Can it wait till morning, bro? I’m already undressed for bed.”
“I don’t think so. No. I need you to come now.”
“Okay. But you better be dying or something, Joey….”
Joey hangs up. Freaks out. Moves to call back. Hangs up again. Catches sight of himself in the mirror. He’s lean. Years of surfing have been good for him. His shoulders are strong and his stomach is tight, flat. He checks out his dick. Zara said it was big. But what does she know? Before their sex in the lawn chair, she was a virgin. He flexes his bicep. A decent bulge. All that paddling. He calms down. He plans. When Dusty walks in, he’ll get right to it. No fucking around. Straight to the point. See what happens.
Dusty’s wearing Adidas track pants and a black duffle coat. His square jaw ignites Joey’s desire, that and the solid way he’s put together. Dusty shuts the door, smiles at Joey. Joey melts. That smile. He steps toward Dusty, determined to make his move.
Dusty senses something. “What’s going on?” Joey doesn’t answer. He reaches out instead, unbuttons Dusty’s coat. Dusty isn’t wearing a shirt. His chest is bare. Smooth and perfect. The nipples erect from the cool air.
Dusty is confused, clearly wondering what the hell is going on. When Joey puts his mouth to Dusty’s nipple, comprehension dawns. He steps back, says, “Joe…what the fuck…?” Joey takes the nipple in his mouth again, gives it a nibble, cups Dusty’s balls and squeezes gently, all so fast, so smoothly, that Dusty doesn’t have time to react before pleasure makes him moan. Joey takes that moan as a signal and, to his own amazement, drops to his knees, pinches Dusty’s saliva-soaked nipple with one hand, pulls down the track pants with the other. Dusty isn’t wearing underwear. His dick bobs before Joey’s eyes. Without hesitating, spit filling his mouth, he takes in the cock he’s dreamt about in his wet dreams, continues to twist Dusty’s nipple. Dusty lets out a crazy moan. As if he’s never felt so good before.
“Ohh, Joe….”
This feels so natural, thinks Joey. Not strange, not wicked, as normal as breathing. As American as apple pie. Joey imagines Dusty a puppet under his control, a sense of power that ignites his adventurous streak. He presses a finger against Dusty’s hole. He read in Playboy, in Leonard’s basement, that this was meant to feel good. To Joey’s surprise, his finger is drawn inside the mysterious pucker. Dusty bends his legs, positions himself so that Joey’s finger is bumping his prostate, a sensation that thrills both young men. Dusty moans, long moans, he’s loving what he’s getting.
Joey doesn’t really know what he’s doing but he keeps the suction on Dusty’s penis as best he can, sliding his lips up and down the shaft, taking it in as far as he can so that the head is bumping the back of his throat. Dusty shudders and holds on tighter to Joey’s hair. Joey moves his finger in and out of Dusty’s flower, taking care to massage the ridged bump in the way Playboy suggested, the way that leads to stronger orgasms.
Before long Joey can feel Dusty’s dick expand to its limit. Then, almost out of nowhere, Dusty grasps Joey’s hair and starts thrusting deep into his mouth. After just a few strokes Dusty shudders and blasts cum down Joey’s throat, crying so loudly that everyone in the dorm must hear it. Joey swallows every drop. He keeps licking and nibbling until Dusty has to push him away.
When it’s over Dusty falls back onto the bed. Joey catches his breath and then gets up and looks at that body, that face, those eyes half-lidded, that solid chest glimmering with sweat, that mouth emptied of moans. Pants around his ankles. Joey’s heart fills with joy. When Dusty’s breathing returns to normal he opens his eyes. He fires another one of those smiles at Joey.
“Shit, bro, I’m going to have to pound you good and hard for that,” he says.
MISS VEL’S PLACE
Jonathan Asche
The house was so far out in the country that the road to it wasn’t even paved, or marked. Nevertheless, it was well traveled, especially on Friday and Saturday nights.
It was a Thursday afternoon when Ford drove down that road and parked in the gravel lot beside the shabby, two-story farmhouse. Brent, who sat in front of him in Algebra II his junior year, told Ford about going here, and how everyone was real nice, but he said if Ford went he should go sometime during the week. They sent away high school kids on Fridays and Saturdays on account some of the customers were afraid they might run into their own sons. The idea of his father coming to such a place gave Ford the shivers.
Ford rang the front doorbell six times, but no one answered. He tried the door, and it was locked. He went around to the back door, thinking maybe that’s where he was supposed to go, that a place like this probably didn’t want people using the front entrance, even if the house was way out in Bumfuck.
There was no bell on the back door so Ford knocked. When no one answered, Ford knocked harder. He was pounding the door with his fist hard enough to rattle the glass in the windows when someone yelled, “Ain’t no one there.”
There was a rust-stained house trailer in the yard behind the house, about to be swallowed whole by the kudzu vines creeping up the gully behind it. A young black man in his early twenties stood in the trailer’s doorway, grinning, wearing nothing but a pair of red basketball shorts. The waistband fell a few inches below the man’s waist, showing off cut muscle and the fact that he wore no underwear. He stepped onto the crumbling cement blocks that served as steps to the trailer’s front door, and Ford thought he saw the guy’s dick jiggling freely beneath the loose fabric of his shorts.
“Place’ll be closed another week,” the man said, and Ford jerked his gaze back to his face. “Miss Vel took some of her girls down to the coast. Said all those workmen helping rebuild after that hurricane last month would be a fuckin’ gol’ mine.” The man laughed heartily. “Guess you could call it a business trip.”
The news was disappointing, but Ford felt a flush of relief. “I’ll come back week after next, then,” he said, climbing off the house’s back porch.
“Don’t have to run off just yet.” The man was standing in the middle of the yard now, hands on his hips. It was early October, but fall was slow in coming. The sun turned the man’s brown skin bronze where it hit the ridges of his firm muscles, the heat making him shine with sweat. “Got no whores around for you, but you can get a beer for your trouble, maybe even have a smoke if you like.” The man winked, letting Ford know he wasn’t talking tobacco.
“I don’t know,” Ford said, taking a couple of steps backward.
“C’mon, I won’t bite,” the man said, his bright white teeth gleaming.
Ford’s eyes fell below the man’s waist again, and he saw the head of the man’s cock pressing against the fabric of his shorts. Ford barely realized the words were leaving his mouth when he said, “Sure, okay.”
Inside, the trailer was cramped and Ford, who everyone said should’ve gone out for basketball if only he had been better coordinated, had to duck his head to keep from scraping the ceiling. There were dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and the place smelled of bacon grease and pot smoke, but otherwise it was relatively neat, or at least not filthy as Ford had expected it to be, judging from how trashy the trailer looked on the outside.
The man introduced himself. “Orlando. Most folks just call me Lando,” he said. “I take care of things for Miss Vel, from fixing toilets to tossing out drunks.”
They weren’t alone in the trailer. Sitting cross-legged on the living room sofa was a white guy with curly blond hair, about Ford’s age, wearing nothing but cutoffs and a slack-jawed expression as he watched some D-grade action movie on TV. He barely acknowledged Ford’s presence. Ford recognized him from school.
“That there’s Del, Miss Vel’s boy—a man, now, I s’pose, but—” Lando shrugged and opened the refrigerator, which had been spray-painted gold. He pulled out two sixteen-ounce cans of beer and handed Ford one. “He’s a man where it counts, at least. That’ll be five dollars.”
Ford hadn’t expected to pay for Lando’s hospitality, but didn’t protest. He was curious what Lando meant about Del being a man “where it counts.” Ford had never really talked to Del in school, because Del was in the Special Ed class, and had dropped out in the ninth grade after being arrested, though what for Ford was never quite sure. Depending whom you asked, he was either caught jacking off in public or was busted for blowing guys at a rest stop off Highway 49. Either way, Ford could understand why Del wouldn’t want to show his face at school ever again. The guy was already cruelly teased for having a whore for a mother and being in the retard class; a sex scandal on top of that was too much to live down.
