Bears, page 7
Jake looked down. Tears sprung to Emile’s eyes. Was it because he was maybe choking a bit on Jake? Or did Phil’s forced entry hurt?
It was the euphoria. For Emile, it was the pure embracing and acceptance of this forbidden pleasure. There was a white man in either end of him. But he wasn’t their play toy. He wasn’t their bitch. And he sure wasn’t their S-word. He was their desire. He was the center of their world. These were two men who were in love with each other, had spent their lives together (Morgan had bragged about that fact often enough), and right now, all they could think about—all they wanted—was him.
He wrapped his arms snuggly around Jake’s wide frame, just able to bring his fingers together at the spot where Jake’s two mammal-like ass mounds met, and pressed his face as far into Jake’s pubic tufts as it would go. At the same time, he arched his back to the extreme, allowing in the hurt, the pain, and the wonderfully extreme stimulation they brought with them.
Jake watched mesmerized as his lover built up momentum for the penetration. Emile’s entrance was becoming more accommodating with each complete in-and-out thrust. The contrast of the smooth black ass flesh engulfing the swollen creamy white penis was a sight to behold, and Jake detected continual flashes of Emile’s bright pink innards creating a ring around the edges where the two bodies met, for on each removal of Phil’s cock, Emile’s now hyper-relaxed rectum gave in slightly to the outward pull.
It was hard for the two white men to tell, but Emile was actually squealing a stream of ecstasy. His hands grabbed chunks of Jake’s hairy ass flesh and he simply suckled on Jake’s cock like it was a pacifier rather than trying to ride up and down on it.
“Oh god! That’s g-g-g-gooood!” Jake stammered. “Emile, you’re gonna make it happen!”
He grabbed the top of Emile’s head to politely push him away. But he met resistance. Emile clung to him aggressively. Jake swelled inside the suction, and then blew directly against the back of Emile’s throat, spasms shooting through him as Emile’s mouth tightened even more as his throat muscles tried futilely to contract in order to swallow.
Emile’s upturned eyes watched the hulking man unload inside him. Jake’s face flushed, his bearded jaw clenched. Hands that had tried to gently push Emile’s head away instead gripped it. Then it was done, and Jake’s great cock slipped down Emile’s willing throat. Jake shuddered violently, his big man tits shaking, sweat dripping off his nipples. When he finally opened his eyes, he looked down at Emile with silent thanks. Then weak dizziness overtook him. He was spent.
Jake pulled out of Emile’s mouth, swaying on the cushion. He hurriedly but carefully got his monstrous physique down to a lower altitude and sat on the sofa, dropping his head back in exhaustion. Emile reached up and stroked his beard with the tips of his fingers.
Jake took the hand and kissed the fingertips. “Thank you.”
“I want you to ride it,” Phil’s gruff voice broke the tender moment.
Behind Emile, Phil dropped his ass onto the heels of his feet, bringing Emile’s ass with him. Stretching his torso, Phil leaned back, his chest and stomach muscles rippling.
“Come on, baby. Up and down on it.”
Emile’s upper body rose as he got into the same position as Phil, only, instead of his ass landing on his heels, it landed against Phil’s waist. Upper body erect and back still arched so his bubble butt would swell for Phil to enjoy, Emile used his powerful thighs to ride the thickness inside of him, pulling almost all the way off with clenched buttocks before swiftly thumping back down and letting his cheeks go lax so his crack would part.
Phil reached around and grabbed Emile’s nipples, twisting and yanking on them. Emile stuck his chest out to receive the attention. Tits and ass protruding in opposite directions to receive the pleasure, he wondered if he wasn’t striking too feminine a pose. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was a how alive his erogenous zones were.
“Damn!” Phil grunted, veins popping out on his forehead. “You better cum if you want to, because you’re getting me there.”
Emile didn’t hesitate. He grabbed hold of his long shaft and stroked furiously. The dry friction—and the intense pressure against his insides—did the trick in seconds.
“Aaaahhh!” he shrieked as his huge mushroom head swelled like it was going to burst. Watery streams of white shot over the sofa, finding a landing field in the hairy plains of Jake’s nearby stomach. Emile’s ass muscles clamped down on Phil’s dick.
“Yeeeee-aaaaaahhh!” Phil made the word two syllables as the pressure in his tight balls was released, gushing up into Emile’s works.
The two men rose to meet each other, the inward curve of Emile’s back connecting perfectly with the outward bulge of Phil’s stomach. Emile turned to look over his shoulder, and Phil met him for a deep kiss. They both stank of sweat. White and black sweat. Two great smells that became great together.
“Come on, baby. Bend over so I can get out. You’re like a fucking vise now,” Phil requested.
Emile dropped to his elbows, relieving the pressure somewhat. Phil placed his hands on Emile’s asscheeks, pushing his thumbs into the anal area to help with the vacating of his softening shaft. Emile was incredibly aware of his rectum closing up, and also aware of how incredibly loose it had become.
All three men sat on the sofa, Emile in the middle next to Jake, Phil on the other end. No one spoke for a moment, but both white men reached a hand out, each taking one of Emile’s until they were linked like a chain. Unaware they were going to do it, they all shut their eyes and soon drifted off to sleep.
There was no telling how long they had been out when they were all jarred awake by Morgan’s frantic whine. “Tell me you did not do it on my sofa!”
JUSTIN GOLD AND THE THREE BEARS: AN EROTIC FAIRY TALE
Michael Lassell
Once upon a time in the City of the Angels, there lived a young gym bunny named Justin. Justin Gold, in fact, or Just Golden, as he was sometimes called by his two best girlfriends in the entire world. And they were inseparable, darling, absolute sisters—and Absolut sisters, too, truth be told, as they were known to tipple that tap on far too frequent occasions, and their names were Bryant (aka Bryant Gumbo, for she was a bayou woman) and Carlos, or Carlotta—with a long O…as in “Oh, will you look at the dick on that one!” which was her favorite expression, and her nickname, of course, was Harlotta, because how could it not be?
Now Justin was, truth be told, one of the very best looking standard-issue homos ever to turn heads in Boystown, USA. He was the usual five foot ten and weighed one fifty-five, which goes without saying. He had greenish, hazel-y eyes that couldn’t quite make up their mind what color to be. He had a body Michelangelo would have given a pope’s ransom in lire to lure into his lair, and a face that was sculpted, too. After all, Justin’s father was one of the leading plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills, which is why Justin’s other nickname was Goldenlox, but he always resented that, tinged as it was by just a hint of anti-Semitism. Besides, he preferred circumcised penises—so there!
Happily for Justin, who was nothing if not a slave of erotic fashion, he had the look of hairlessness without being exactly hairless, thus liberating him from the nasty-smelling habit of depilation or the potentially hazardous practice of shaving body parts lower than his angular chin (Carlotta routinely sliced nicks into her large flat nipples trying to rid her skinny chest of a patch of coarse black hair as thick as the rain forest of whatever tropical country she was pretending to come from this month). No, Justin was one of the seemingly hairless, who was in fact covered, like the face of Madonna—the singer, not the mother of God—with a coat of the finest blond fur ever to grow out of human skin. At sunset along Venice Beach, this muscular body in search of satisfaction radiated a burnished glow all its own.
Justin was a piece, and he was keeping the inventory on the open shelves. He kept his trim in top form at a festive gay gym the girlfriends always called the Double-A Ranch (for the “Attitude Asylum,” of which they were the primary purveyors) and maintained a perfect tan line by wearing the same wisp of a Lycra Speedo from one end of the season to the other (he had half a dozen, all the same color, lest someone think he cared).
Justin’s one quirk, his one idiosyncrasy, as it were, the one clue to a personality he allowed himself, was that he wore his hair far longer than normal in those days, half a foot down his muscular but not overdeveloped, still boyish back. And it was, of course, blond both summer and winter (and nearly naturally so in all seasons). This was not, of course, an authentic attempt to strike out into individuality; it was the outward show of a quasi-romantic fantasy he had developed while still in his teens, nearly a decade ago, when the Doors’ albums were rereleased, and Justin decided he not only resembled Jim Morrison, but that they were, together, the two most beautiful men on earth, except possibly for his new husband, the one who kept getting away.
“Well, now what do we do?” asked Justin, his manicured fingers splayed across his hips at the top of his Speedos, the weak sunshine of a late Russian River summer glinting off his Ray-Bans.
“Now we relax,” said Carlotta, taking another pull on his thermos of screwdrivers and grinding his pelvis into his beach towel, the better to show off his assets to what he hoped would be an admiring crowd, though, in truth, the riverbank was not exactly crawling with prize specimens.
“I don’t see why we had to come way up here,” Justin whined. “It’s so cold. My tan is going to fade. And the men are so ugly.”
“Darlin’,” said Bryant, squeezing the juice of two lemons and a grapefruit into his thinning wannabe-blond hair, “I do believe I heard something about being so bored, so b-o-r-e-d, that one of us was gonna die, just simply die, if we did not get out of, now what was it?—‘This poor excuse for a third-rate nowhere’?”
“I was upset,” said Justin, shaking his mane of hair like a colt flicking flies with its tail.
“You had your tits twisted in an iron mangle,” said Carlotta, almost forgetting she was supposed to be Spanish. “We are here to relax, to recover from our tragic love affairs, to teach the shallow men of the south a lesson by our absence, to get real and do that Iron Man bonding thing. Did anyone bring a drum?”
“I thought that was Iron John,” interrupted Bryant, for some reason thinking he was still capable of thought.
“Excuse me? I believe that it is I who is talking,” said Carlotta de Ville, “and, besides, who ever had a john who ironed? You’re lucky if they wash—before or after. But what I was trying to say, when I was so rudely interrupted, was that physical beauty is not the only thing in the world, you know.”
“That sounded just like you meant that,” chimed in Bryant, and it was clear that Ms. Carlotta On-a-Tear was intending a snappy retort of the usual kind, but something—somebody’s thing—caught the corner of her practiced eye:
“Oh! Will you look at the dick on that one!” she squealed, and it rolled off her amply developed tongue as if she’d never said it before in her lifetime.
“Harlotta,” said Justin, exaggerating the long O (as in loathsome), “I did not come all the way up here to listen to you rave about the poxy appendage of an overweight, hair-suit refugee from the Spike.”
“Well then you should have stayed home, honey,” cooed Bryant, applying his Coty lip gloss with extra sunscreen, even though it could not have been more than a 3-factor day—it was worse than Santa Monica under an inversion layer, with rain more likely than sun.
“I am going for a walk,” said Justin, indignantly, grabbing a towel a shade lighter than his lemon yellow bathing suit. “I’ll leave you two queens to ogle the lemmings.”
“Catch a live one, honey,” called Bryant after him. “You need to calm down.”
Justin was miffed as he walked away from the river and into the trees. He threw his towel over his shoulder as casually as he could muster (think Cindy Crawford at the Paris shows back in the ’80s), and kept walking—deeper and deeper into the woods—until he realized he had no idea where he was. And that’s when it began to rain. And not just drizzle-drizzle-happy-little-fern rain, but big old drops of cold wet Northern California driving rain. With thunder and lightning, and a chilling wind.
“Fuck!” said Justin, which is as specific as his rage ever got, and he put his towel over his head like an old Mexican woman crossing the border and sat down on the thick branch of a tree that had fallen across the last remnant of path he could see.
“Okay, you asshole,” he said to no one in particular, possibly to God, “now what?”
“Hi,” came the voice from behind him.
Justin spun around.
The stranger was, Justin noticed immediately, short and thick: five-six, loose in the middle, wearing ripped and faded jeans, a black muscle-T and motorcycle boots. Nice beachwear, Justin thought with a roll of his greenish, hazel-y not-quite-one-or-the-other eyes. The man had a shaved head, a neat black beard, a trio of silver rings piercing the top of one ear, and a tiny fourth ring through the eyebrow on the other side of his head. The silver glistened against his dark brown skin, as did the snaps on the many leather bands he wore around his wrists.
“I’m Teddy,” he said, smiling, which, despite his quasi-dangerous looks, was a not unappealing smile, particularly as the smile seemed to make Teddy’s huge dark eyes twinkle, giving away his age as about the same as Justin’s, which immediately relaxed the visitor, young people taking some magical if unaccountable comfort in the youth of others.
“Thank god,” said Justin. “Can you get me out of here?”
“Well, I could,” said Teddy, toying with him a bit, as the rain fell heavily around them. “Or we could stay here.”
“I can’t stay here,” said Justin. “I’m lost and I’m getting… wet.”
“So what’s wrong with that?” asked Teddy.
“I don’t like being all wet and dirty,” said Justin.
And that’s when a bolt of lightning hit the top of a nearby redwood, which crashed to the ground in a cacophony of splintering timber and ripped vegetation that frightened even Teddy.
“Far out,” he said. “Come on.”
And he turned his back and started stomping through the underbrush, a ring of keys he had attached to the middle loop of his jeans tinkle-clanking through the forest as they bounced from one firm buttcheek to the other.
“Where are we going?” asked Justin, who was not at all certain he was on his way out of the woods.
“I’m sharing a place not too far from here,” said Teddy, “with a couple of friends from the city.”
And so they trekked, Justin’s hair now a wet mop clinging to his face and shoulders and back. Which should have been unattractive. But it wasn’t.
“There’s no heat,” said Teddy, as they walked into the house, “but I can make a fire, if you want.”
“Oh, please!” said Justin who stood in the middle of the grungiest cabin he had ever seen or imagined. He was shivering—with cold, with fright, with revulsion—and perhaps a little not entirely distasteful apprehension.
“You look cold,” said Teddy taking a step a little closer than Justin quite liked. “Why don’t you take a nice hot bath while I make the fire?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” Justin lied. He could feel Teddy’s hot breath on his neck and collarbone, and, to tell the truth, the warmth of it felt good.
“I think you should take a bath,” said Teddy, and Justin could feel his neck soften under the stranger’s insistence. Is that gooseflesh I’m feeling? Justin wondered. He agreed he could stand a cleaning up.
“Where are your roommates?” Justin asked as Teddy showed him toward the bathroom.
“Oh, they’ll be back,” said Teddy, smiling, and off he went to the woodshed to get some logs for the fire.
The bathroom was a pigsty, Justin thought. He couldn’t believe that three men—doubtlessly all of them queer as Castro Street—could be so messy. The tub was a disaster.
“There is no way I am putting my body in that,” Justin sneered and turned on the shower. At first the water came out freezing cold, so he turned the tap to the left. Then it came out scalding hot, so he turned the tap to the right. And when he had the temperature just right, he peeled off his wet bathing suit and draped his soaking towel over an ancient metal rack, thinking he’d never get the rust stains out of the yellow Lycra.
But when he stepped into the shower, his cares began to fade. The hot water felt like a caress on his skin. He picked up a cake of soap, pulled the thick, dark hairs off of it, and began to lather his body, surprised by how aroused he was becoming. He stroked his pretty little prick, and it felt good as it began to rise, very good indeed, but he was new here, there was no lock on the bathroom door, and god knew how many fat little men would be stomping into the cabin any minute.
He looked to the chaos of plastic bottles in the rack at the far end of the bathtub for shampoo. The first one he picked up was for Extra-Dry Hair. He sniffed and put it back. The second was for Extra-Oily. “Pul-eeeze!” Justin said aloud. Finally he found one that said FOR NORMAL HAIR ONLY. Well, he thought, this should be just about right. And he soaped up his hair.
An hour later, Justin emerged from the bathroom. He had managed to find a blow-dryer that actually worked. His hair was clean and smelled like sweet herbs in spring (at least that’s what the bottle said the scent was). He had found a towel that was neither too wet nor too dry, too stiff nor too limp, too thick nor too thin, and had wrapped it around himself like a sarong. He just hoped no one had used it too recently.
There was a fire now in the old stone fireplace, but Teddy was nowhere to be seen. Nor was anyone else. The fire cast a glow around the room that made him shiver. Such filth, Justin thought, half expecting a flock of bats to come squealing out of the corners. It’s like a cave in here.
He sat down tentatively on a wooden chair by the fireplace, but the chair was too hard. He walked over to the couch and sat down, but he sank so far into its downy embrace, his legs went flying over his head, a not unfamiliar posture, certainly, but not appropriate to the moment, he thought. He struggled up, rewound the now loosened terrycloth sarong, and walked over to the kitchen area, pulling open the refrigerator. There was nothing inside but a bottle of ketchup, something that might once have been tuna fish, and a six-pack of Dos Equis.
It was the euphoria. For Emile, it was the pure embracing and acceptance of this forbidden pleasure. There was a white man in either end of him. But he wasn’t their play toy. He wasn’t their bitch. And he sure wasn’t their S-word. He was their desire. He was the center of their world. These were two men who were in love with each other, had spent their lives together (Morgan had bragged about that fact often enough), and right now, all they could think about—all they wanted—was him.
He wrapped his arms snuggly around Jake’s wide frame, just able to bring his fingers together at the spot where Jake’s two mammal-like ass mounds met, and pressed his face as far into Jake’s pubic tufts as it would go. At the same time, he arched his back to the extreme, allowing in the hurt, the pain, and the wonderfully extreme stimulation they brought with them.
Jake watched mesmerized as his lover built up momentum for the penetration. Emile’s entrance was becoming more accommodating with each complete in-and-out thrust. The contrast of the smooth black ass flesh engulfing the swollen creamy white penis was a sight to behold, and Jake detected continual flashes of Emile’s bright pink innards creating a ring around the edges where the two bodies met, for on each removal of Phil’s cock, Emile’s now hyper-relaxed rectum gave in slightly to the outward pull.
It was hard for the two white men to tell, but Emile was actually squealing a stream of ecstasy. His hands grabbed chunks of Jake’s hairy ass flesh and he simply suckled on Jake’s cock like it was a pacifier rather than trying to ride up and down on it.
“Oh god! That’s g-g-g-gooood!” Jake stammered. “Emile, you’re gonna make it happen!”
He grabbed the top of Emile’s head to politely push him away. But he met resistance. Emile clung to him aggressively. Jake swelled inside the suction, and then blew directly against the back of Emile’s throat, spasms shooting through him as Emile’s mouth tightened even more as his throat muscles tried futilely to contract in order to swallow.
Emile’s upturned eyes watched the hulking man unload inside him. Jake’s face flushed, his bearded jaw clenched. Hands that had tried to gently push Emile’s head away instead gripped it. Then it was done, and Jake’s great cock slipped down Emile’s willing throat. Jake shuddered violently, his big man tits shaking, sweat dripping off his nipples. When he finally opened his eyes, he looked down at Emile with silent thanks. Then weak dizziness overtook him. He was spent.
Jake pulled out of Emile’s mouth, swaying on the cushion. He hurriedly but carefully got his monstrous physique down to a lower altitude and sat on the sofa, dropping his head back in exhaustion. Emile reached up and stroked his beard with the tips of his fingers.
Jake took the hand and kissed the fingertips. “Thank you.”
“I want you to ride it,” Phil’s gruff voice broke the tender moment.
Behind Emile, Phil dropped his ass onto the heels of his feet, bringing Emile’s ass with him. Stretching his torso, Phil leaned back, his chest and stomach muscles rippling.
“Come on, baby. Up and down on it.”
Emile’s upper body rose as he got into the same position as Phil, only, instead of his ass landing on his heels, it landed against Phil’s waist. Upper body erect and back still arched so his bubble butt would swell for Phil to enjoy, Emile used his powerful thighs to ride the thickness inside of him, pulling almost all the way off with clenched buttocks before swiftly thumping back down and letting his cheeks go lax so his crack would part.
Phil reached around and grabbed Emile’s nipples, twisting and yanking on them. Emile stuck his chest out to receive the attention. Tits and ass protruding in opposite directions to receive the pleasure, he wondered if he wasn’t striking too feminine a pose. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was a how alive his erogenous zones were.
“Damn!” Phil grunted, veins popping out on his forehead. “You better cum if you want to, because you’re getting me there.”
Emile didn’t hesitate. He grabbed hold of his long shaft and stroked furiously. The dry friction—and the intense pressure against his insides—did the trick in seconds.
“Aaaahhh!” he shrieked as his huge mushroom head swelled like it was going to burst. Watery streams of white shot over the sofa, finding a landing field in the hairy plains of Jake’s nearby stomach. Emile’s ass muscles clamped down on Phil’s dick.
“Yeeeee-aaaaaahhh!” Phil made the word two syllables as the pressure in his tight balls was released, gushing up into Emile’s works.
The two men rose to meet each other, the inward curve of Emile’s back connecting perfectly with the outward bulge of Phil’s stomach. Emile turned to look over his shoulder, and Phil met him for a deep kiss. They both stank of sweat. White and black sweat. Two great smells that became great together.
“Come on, baby. Bend over so I can get out. You’re like a fucking vise now,” Phil requested.
Emile dropped to his elbows, relieving the pressure somewhat. Phil placed his hands on Emile’s asscheeks, pushing his thumbs into the anal area to help with the vacating of his softening shaft. Emile was incredibly aware of his rectum closing up, and also aware of how incredibly loose it had become.
All three men sat on the sofa, Emile in the middle next to Jake, Phil on the other end. No one spoke for a moment, but both white men reached a hand out, each taking one of Emile’s until they were linked like a chain. Unaware they were going to do it, they all shut their eyes and soon drifted off to sleep.
There was no telling how long they had been out when they were all jarred awake by Morgan’s frantic whine. “Tell me you did not do it on my sofa!”
JUSTIN GOLD AND THE THREE BEARS: AN EROTIC FAIRY TALE
Michael Lassell
Once upon a time in the City of the Angels, there lived a young gym bunny named Justin. Justin Gold, in fact, or Just Golden, as he was sometimes called by his two best girlfriends in the entire world. And they were inseparable, darling, absolute sisters—and Absolut sisters, too, truth be told, as they were known to tipple that tap on far too frequent occasions, and their names were Bryant (aka Bryant Gumbo, for she was a bayou woman) and Carlos, or Carlotta—with a long O…as in “Oh, will you look at the dick on that one!” which was her favorite expression, and her nickname, of course, was Harlotta, because how could it not be?
Now Justin was, truth be told, one of the very best looking standard-issue homos ever to turn heads in Boystown, USA. He was the usual five foot ten and weighed one fifty-five, which goes without saying. He had greenish, hazel-y eyes that couldn’t quite make up their mind what color to be. He had a body Michelangelo would have given a pope’s ransom in lire to lure into his lair, and a face that was sculpted, too. After all, Justin’s father was one of the leading plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills, which is why Justin’s other nickname was Goldenlox, but he always resented that, tinged as it was by just a hint of anti-Semitism. Besides, he preferred circumcised penises—so there!
Happily for Justin, who was nothing if not a slave of erotic fashion, he had the look of hairlessness without being exactly hairless, thus liberating him from the nasty-smelling habit of depilation or the potentially hazardous practice of shaving body parts lower than his angular chin (Carlotta routinely sliced nicks into her large flat nipples trying to rid her skinny chest of a patch of coarse black hair as thick as the rain forest of whatever tropical country she was pretending to come from this month). No, Justin was one of the seemingly hairless, who was in fact covered, like the face of Madonna—the singer, not the mother of God—with a coat of the finest blond fur ever to grow out of human skin. At sunset along Venice Beach, this muscular body in search of satisfaction radiated a burnished glow all its own.
Justin was a piece, and he was keeping the inventory on the open shelves. He kept his trim in top form at a festive gay gym the girlfriends always called the Double-A Ranch (for the “Attitude Asylum,” of which they were the primary purveyors) and maintained a perfect tan line by wearing the same wisp of a Lycra Speedo from one end of the season to the other (he had half a dozen, all the same color, lest someone think he cared).
Justin’s one quirk, his one idiosyncrasy, as it were, the one clue to a personality he allowed himself, was that he wore his hair far longer than normal in those days, half a foot down his muscular but not overdeveloped, still boyish back. And it was, of course, blond both summer and winter (and nearly naturally so in all seasons). This was not, of course, an authentic attempt to strike out into individuality; it was the outward show of a quasi-romantic fantasy he had developed while still in his teens, nearly a decade ago, when the Doors’ albums were rereleased, and Justin decided he not only resembled Jim Morrison, but that they were, together, the two most beautiful men on earth, except possibly for his new husband, the one who kept getting away.
“Well, now what do we do?” asked Justin, his manicured fingers splayed across his hips at the top of his Speedos, the weak sunshine of a late Russian River summer glinting off his Ray-Bans.
“Now we relax,” said Carlotta, taking another pull on his thermos of screwdrivers and grinding his pelvis into his beach towel, the better to show off his assets to what he hoped would be an admiring crowd, though, in truth, the riverbank was not exactly crawling with prize specimens.
“I don’t see why we had to come way up here,” Justin whined. “It’s so cold. My tan is going to fade. And the men are so ugly.”
“Darlin’,” said Bryant, squeezing the juice of two lemons and a grapefruit into his thinning wannabe-blond hair, “I do believe I heard something about being so bored, so b-o-r-e-d, that one of us was gonna die, just simply die, if we did not get out of, now what was it?—‘This poor excuse for a third-rate nowhere’?”
“I was upset,” said Justin, shaking his mane of hair like a colt flicking flies with its tail.
“You had your tits twisted in an iron mangle,” said Carlotta, almost forgetting she was supposed to be Spanish. “We are here to relax, to recover from our tragic love affairs, to teach the shallow men of the south a lesson by our absence, to get real and do that Iron Man bonding thing. Did anyone bring a drum?”
“I thought that was Iron John,” interrupted Bryant, for some reason thinking he was still capable of thought.
“Excuse me? I believe that it is I who is talking,” said Carlotta de Ville, “and, besides, who ever had a john who ironed? You’re lucky if they wash—before or after. But what I was trying to say, when I was so rudely interrupted, was that physical beauty is not the only thing in the world, you know.”
“That sounded just like you meant that,” chimed in Bryant, and it was clear that Ms. Carlotta On-a-Tear was intending a snappy retort of the usual kind, but something—somebody’s thing—caught the corner of her practiced eye:
“Oh! Will you look at the dick on that one!” she squealed, and it rolled off her amply developed tongue as if she’d never said it before in her lifetime.
“Harlotta,” said Justin, exaggerating the long O (as in loathsome), “I did not come all the way up here to listen to you rave about the poxy appendage of an overweight, hair-suit refugee from the Spike.”
“Well then you should have stayed home, honey,” cooed Bryant, applying his Coty lip gloss with extra sunscreen, even though it could not have been more than a 3-factor day—it was worse than Santa Monica under an inversion layer, with rain more likely than sun.
“I am going for a walk,” said Justin, indignantly, grabbing a towel a shade lighter than his lemon yellow bathing suit. “I’ll leave you two queens to ogle the lemmings.”
“Catch a live one, honey,” called Bryant after him. “You need to calm down.”
Justin was miffed as he walked away from the river and into the trees. He threw his towel over his shoulder as casually as he could muster (think Cindy Crawford at the Paris shows back in the ’80s), and kept walking—deeper and deeper into the woods—until he realized he had no idea where he was. And that’s when it began to rain. And not just drizzle-drizzle-happy-little-fern rain, but big old drops of cold wet Northern California driving rain. With thunder and lightning, and a chilling wind.
“Fuck!” said Justin, which is as specific as his rage ever got, and he put his towel over his head like an old Mexican woman crossing the border and sat down on the thick branch of a tree that had fallen across the last remnant of path he could see.
“Okay, you asshole,” he said to no one in particular, possibly to God, “now what?”
“Hi,” came the voice from behind him.
Justin spun around.
The stranger was, Justin noticed immediately, short and thick: five-six, loose in the middle, wearing ripped and faded jeans, a black muscle-T and motorcycle boots. Nice beachwear, Justin thought with a roll of his greenish, hazel-y not-quite-one-or-the-other eyes. The man had a shaved head, a neat black beard, a trio of silver rings piercing the top of one ear, and a tiny fourth ring through the eyebrow on the other side of his head. The silver glistened against his dark brown skin, as did the snaps on the many leather bands he wore around his wrists.
“I’m Teddy,” he said, smiling, which, despite his quasi-dangerous looks, was a not unappealing smile, particularly as the smile seemed to make Teddy’s huge dark eyes twinkle, giving away his age as about the same as Justin’s, which immediately relaxed the visitor, young people taking some magical if unaccountable comfort in the youth of others.
“Thank god,” said Justin. “Can you get me out of here?”
“Well, I could,” said Teddy, toying with him a bit, as the rain fell heavily around them. “Or we could stay here.”
“I can’t stay here,” said Justin. “I’m lost and I’m getting… wet.”
“So what’s wrong with that?” asked Teddy.
“I don’t like being all wet and dirty,” said Justin.
And that’s when a bolt of lightning hit the top of a nearby redwood, which crashed to the ground in a cacophony of splintering timber and ripped vegetation that frightened even Teddy.
“Far out,” he said. “Come on.”
And he turned his back and started stomping through the underbrush, a ring of keys he had attached to the middle loop of his jeans tinkle-clanking through the forest as they bounced from one firm buttcheek to the other.
“Where are we going?” asked Justin, who was not at all certain he was on his way out of the woods.
“I’m sharing a place not too far from here,” said Teddy, “with a couple of friends from the city.”
And so they trekked, Justin’s hair now a wet mop clinging to his face and shoulders and back. Which should have been unattractive. But it wasn’t.
“There’s no heat,” said Teddy, as they walked into the house, “but I can make a fire, if you want.”
“Oh, please!” said Justin who stood in the middle of the grungiest cabin he had ever seen or imagined. He was shivering—with cold, with fright, with revulsion—and perhaps a little not entirely distasteful apprehension.
“You look cold,” said Teddy taking a step a little closer than Justin quite liked. “Why don’t you take a nice hot bath while I make the fire?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” Justin lied. He could feel Teddy’s hot breath on his neck and collarbone, and, to tell the truth, the warmth of it felt good.
“I think you should take a bath,” said Teddy, and Justin could feel his neck soften under the stranger’s insistence. Is that gooseflesh I’m feeling? Justin wondered. He agreed he could stand a cleaning up.
“Where are your roommates?” Justin asked as Teddy showed him toward the bathroom.
“Oh, they’ll be back,” said Teddy, smiling, and off he went to the woodshed to get some logs for the fire.
The bathroom was a pigsty, Justin thought. He couldn’t believe that three men—doubtlessly all of them queer as Castro Street—could be so messy. The tub was a disaster.
“There is no way I am putting my body in that,” Justin sneered and turned on the shower. At first the water came out freezing cold, so he turned the tap to the left. Then it came out scalding hot, so he turned the tap to the right. And when he had the temperature just right, he peeled off his wet bathing suit and draped his soaking towel over an ancient metal rack, thinking he’d never get the rust stains out of the yellow Lycra.
But when he stepped into the shower, his cares began to fade. The hot water felt like a caress on his skin. He picked up a cake of soap, pulled the thick, dark hairs off of it, and began to lather his body, surprised by how aroused he was becoming. He stroked his pretty little prick, and it felt good as it began to rise, very good indeed, but he was new here, there was no lock on the bathroom door, and god knew how many fat little men would be stomping into the cabin any minute.
He looked to the chaos of plastic bottles in the rack at the far end of the bathtub for shampoo. The first one he picked up was for Extra-Dry Hair. He sniffed and put it back. The second was for Extra-Oily. “Pul-eeeze!” Justin said aloud. Finally he found one that said FOR NORMAL HAIR ONLY. Well, he thought, this should be just about right. And he soaped up his hair.
An hour later, Justin emerged from the bathroom. He had managed to find a blow-dryer that actually worked. His hair was clean and smelled like sweet herbs in spring (at least that’s what the bottle said the scent was). He had found a towel that was neither too wet nor too dry, too stiff nor too limp, too thick nor too thin, and had wrapped it around himself like a sarong. He just hoped no one had used it too recently.
There was a fire now in the old stone fireplace, but Teddy was nowhere to be seen. Nor was anyone else. The fire cast a glow around the room that made him shiver. Such filth, Justin thought, half expecting a flock of bats to come squealing out of the corners. It’s like a cave in here.
He sat down tentatively on a wooden chair by the fireplace, but the chair was too hard. He walked over to the couch and sat down, but he sank so far into its downy embrace, his legs went flying over his head, a not unfamiliar posture, certainly, but not appropriate to the moment, he thought. He struggled up, rewound the now loosened terrycloth sarong, and walked over to the kitchen area, pulling open the refrigerator. There was nothing inside but a bottle of ketchup, something that might once have been tuna fish, and a six-pack of Dos Equis.
