Derelict on HotGuySecret
31
Speak to the moon 1. Mischievous boy. 2. Full-throated lover. 3. Old man pared away bit by bit sliced into nothing by mother sun and daughter earth, whose growing belly slowly devours him. 4. Skeleton grinning inside the mothers womb his tomb – and from beyond the sky his heaven. They bear him, mother daughter. He is there god. Father son lover.
He was almost too skinny the last time I saw him, his arms and legs long and lean, stiff tufts of hair sticking up from the top of his head, his chest flat, his belly ridged. Ridged and rigid. He’s been working on an oreig lately. Gone for months at a time, when he came home he spent his first weekend with the wife and kids. Then he wanted me – fast and hard, angry and mean. When he was in me, it felt like a fist punching me from inside.
My father was a weak man. His neck was lined, both front and back. He was a slack-off artist. He liked to booze and smoke dope. He laughed too much or alot alot of people liked him or seemed to he had his pals. His face was crude, long and narrow, flat slabs of dead meat for cheeks, a mouth that turned downwards when you were with him alone and was always moist. His chest was smooth, as were his arms which, tho not heavily muscled, nevertheless must have felt thick and hard and very large to small hands.
We partied together a coupla times. I remember how, the first time we really got into it, after we’d smoked a little weed and he’d had himself a coupla beers, he started getting soppy on me. First he’s telling me how glad he was that we was hanging out together. Everything about him was slurred and happily heavily he threw his arms around me and pretty soon he’s telling me he loved me, he really meant it, he always had, right from that very first time he’d held baby me in his arms. Just like he was holding me now. Almost.
I shoved him off me
We was standing in the kitchen, near the sink. He gave me a little cock-eyed grin and asked me if I was happy. I said I was and he laughed and said he was too and we stood like that awhile, then we was holding each other, swaying a little giggling a little even. Just when we was sposed to break apart we’d both hug each other titer instead, then we started rubbing our hands all over each others backs. His was broad and hard a thing of muscle and bone swelling rounding against me my own back rippling bending back to fill the space he’d created and pulled me into. I’d been waiting so long. We both had. I felt his heat, his skin, I could hear his breath catch. I closed my eyes and felt us rocking rocking together together rocking in each others arms. My head tipped back his mouth moved across my throat, the lips soft the skin around them scratchy it felt electric I shivered my hands climbed up his back found the bones the cords of his neck where the small fine hairs grew like spring moss . . .
Yes, it happened just like that.
Yes, it happened just like that.
32
Blue fire, icicles sheet my windows – I cant see out. Intensity rhythms, Light ripply, Ripples. The stars crunchy in a foil sky. Or the sun shivering in vistas blank-blue. What holy infinity did you expect? Comets and crickets, snowflakes amazing crisply and long clear crystals of driblets froze. Rows of feral fangs, parents people glaring from between. Enormous spikes ready to shatter. Let the clouds fly. Blue bowl capping my head, phosphoresence piercing my eyes my brain splits wide. Behind the sky the darkness. Behind the darkness the light that binds.
Mars squares the moon, freezing flight. I feel my anus move about against the seat cushion. I feel the stretchy skin sac holding my balls in slightly moist slightly sticky, dangling outside my body, shifting rolling, hello there! hello! you can see my nuts peeking out from between my thighs. I feel my toes, sweaty – flex them. Theres a dull ache forming in the middle of my back. Cum on cummer! I start pumping my hips to hurry
You know its over when a mans cum no longer has any magical properties. Its just cum. Youve had him, pumped him dry, its done. Now slippery slick, if you hold it on your fingertips sticky, already drying, sperm immobilized. Wanting to cum, cumming, and calling it love – thats for the young, be young. But then cum just becomes cum. It becomes the dream, the solace of passangerless stars, of mathematics, of astrology. Its the dream of desire, until you cum. Then its just cum, drying on your palm like a scab.
Scrape the scab open. Lift the flap, dig around in it, see whats underneath. Theres roads there, and houses. Theres a smell of rising bread, and the soil is red and pulpy and sweet
33
He killed himself in anger. Someone had finally forced him to look at face acknowledge admit who he was, what he was, and what he had done. When I saw him, sitting like an old wrinkled boneless dummy propped up in that filthy overstuffed green armchair, I saw by the set of his face and his eyes that he already knew. I had surprised him, I had wounded him – mortally, as it turned out. But I had not ‘revealed’ him. What a stoopid thing, his eyes told me disgustedly, for me to have ever expected.
Then more things happened
* * *
He was refusing to go to prison, for one thing. We couldve made that happen. We couldve. But he was past sixty by then, and tho he would never have submitted to being a bottom there he couldnt exactly hold a tops position either. He did it with a gun. He allowed that one penetration. It killed him. And that was his last laugh. Bastard.
Some might say he only let death fuck him. But he’d only say noo he fucked himself. Even death couldnt do that. That was the laugh.
They found him slumped in that same fat ugly chair only now with a big brown stain on it and his mouth yawning open I always see it attracting real flies. He had a pair of raggedy old underwear pulled halfway down his legs and driedup cum all over his shirt. Apparently he’d jacked off before he did it.
Or somebody else had. After.
34
Well Steve finally called. About time/its been over a month. We met at the abandoned house. I’d been worried that he’d not been in a good place, that thats why I hadnt heard from him in so long. But he was . . . well he was ok, actually. He acted the same as he always does when things are going ok for him. He held me a little, quick squeezes but for real when we met up that was nice. He gave husky whisper to his latest set of worries – and to his latest set of needs. “Your the only one I can always count on, Simon. You know that doncha? Nothins thicker than blood,” even tho I could think of at least one thing that was. We even kissed a little, that hardly ever happens. And that was it/then he pounded me/and we both rememberd
The wind slapped me in the face as I stepped outside. It was a snappy day. One of those days when dead leaves are everywhere, flying up from under your feet catching in your clothes, blowing scratchy and dry against your ear your cheek your throat.
So tonite I walked all the way over to his house. I’m not quite sure why even its not what youd call a short walk. I just felt like it I had to. By the time I got there it was past eleven. I walked up one side of the street down the other. It was cool and dark. There was bats flying around the streetlights. I stopped right in front of his house. I stood there a kind of scary waiting crawling thru my bones I dont know what I was expecting. What I should have been expecting I spose. The kids was probly in bed. Someone was moving around in the kitchen – Shara? Most likely. Steve I figured was in the living room watching tv, kicked back in his easy chair with a beer in his hand, or maybe something smokier. I stood outside his house, right there at the end of the sidewalk, tipping forward tipping back on my heels, for as long as I dared. If anyone had seen me I dont know what I wouldve said. If Steve’d come out he wouldve made it all right. But he wouldve known then and that wouldnt of been good. He dont need to have any more power over me than he already thinks he has. Hell as far as need goes he needed me as much as I needed him. I mean, if it werent for Shara I’d probly . . . If it werent for Shara I wonder if he’d ask me to live with him? To help out with the kids for instance. Makes sense, I’m pretty good with them – and I’m good for them no doubt. I’m good protection. Cuz if I wasnt in the picture Steve might do . . . well alot of things . . . alot of bad things . . . And he knew it too.nbsp; It was one of his fears.
I wonder if I could use that as leverage? Threaten to withdraw myself from the scene, unless – For love of his kids, knowing what might happen if I wasnt around, for the sake of them he might do . . . how much exactly? How tite was he and Shara really? How bad would he feel if she wasnt around no more – and how far would he go to keep me in the picture after? I have to admit I sometimes thought about . . .
Frank caught me just as I was getting in. I was out past curfew. He followed me up to my apt and proceeded basicly to rape me again. I think almost anything wouldve served as an excuse. He slapped me around some first – well, he slapped my face once, hard tho, then walloped me but good on the behind for quite a long time. When he had me whimpering he threw me on the bed and fucked me. He didnt say much, he knew he didnt have to. Oneday hed told me that he could use his dick either to give me pleasure, or for punishment – my choice. My choice! huh. He was lying naked on the bed when he said this, back propped up against the headboard, knees drawn up and spread wide. I’d just finished giving him a massage. We was both lit up on code that nite, I dont remember much about it really but it came back to me this part with him lying back on the bed that way and explaining as if bestowing some erratic erotic revelation upon me that he was but a guardian. He was but a guardian, and if I understood and accepted what he meant by that he could also be my guardian. His body he said, his body that I had just worshipped with my hands everywhere then my tongue licking kissing desiring was guardian to . . . this/he cupped one hand around his cock and the other around his balls. This he said is what I had come here to serve – the source of all you he said. Root stalk flower seed beyond life beyond light. It must be approached with humility. This was my purpose it must be pleasured it must be serviced it must be mollified. If roused by displeasure it became the punishing god, the god of fear of pain of domination of force. No open orifice was safe. All I needed to do was learn how to behave.
All I needed to do was learn how to behave.
35
One of my cats is insistently in heat. While on the bushes, on the trees, mounds and rounded lines of fluffy, sparkling snow lie, rendering the material the corporeal a vagueness a dreaminess, everything an approximation only of itself hidden. The edges of rooftops are fuzzed, yards are full of tiniest frozen jires, no earthly thing yet mars there surface white with cloddishness, O!
Where then would the kittens go?
A luminous band of light encircles my head. A bomb went off somewhere in town today. Franks out now with a bunch of other x-cops, theyve gone on the prowl. On the hunt, on the trail, snuffing it out like a pack of Dawgs. Dawgs hunting Dawgs, what a world oh what a world.
I wonder will he be randy when he gets back? Yes and uh duh yes. I’ll get punishment if things didnt go well. Something akin to rape, something that turns into rape the moment I’m not afraid. Fear, huh, what a coping mechanism. But it dont matter anyways, he believes what he wants then its true. Behind it all its just a feeling with him. Its just moods.
Frank broke up with his latest chirp a couple of weeks ago. I think she was a chicky-dick. She had square muscular shoulders for one thing and a ‘throaty’ voice, plus he’s visited me nine times since s/hes been gone. Nine times! And it wasnt punishment every time. Of course, the way he puts it he just likes to get off. The way he ‘puts’ it he needs to get off. I’m learning he’s teaching me how to respect his desire, how to bend myself to it in whatever form or manner it takes. How to be compliant. How to be his compliment. It takes work. Its not easy to be his compliment. Its not a gift/its a discipline. Thats what he believes. He likes to make it/me hard – yknow, just to convince me –
36
Franks a christian. Not that he ever thinks about it. God, Jesus, Mary-Jo, he just takes it all for granted. But he dont like the fact that I’m not a believer. I reminded him that he’d told me once his dick was my god. He didnt know what to say to that I’m not even sure he rememberd saying it at all we was pretty fuckerd up that nite. Anyways he got pissy. He changed the subject. His wife – yes he’d been married once upon a time – had pulled a knife on him. She’d also started abusing there daughter, which tore and enflamed his heart with paternal grief and even romantic rage his princess was in trouble nooo! He confessed he’d put a guy in the hospital once with a single whack of his rock-like fist actually it was more like a boast why I got an erection just listening to him tell the tale. Whosoever dared touch his child her delicate features her of course blonde hair tho all she ever was to me was just a beautiful figment of Franks imagination. Mother forced her to take showers so hot they left her skin tender and red. Stood her in a corner with a dirty sock stuffed in her mouth because she would not shut her yap yap yap. What triggered it, he guessed duh, was when he brought his latest girlfriend home to live with them. She was sposed to be girlfriend to both of them but that was more promise than fulfilled. I figured his wife could see what was up soon enuf alright alright. And thats just the sort of thing can make somebody lose there brains. I figured the knife she pulled on him was just her reply to the one he’d been digging and twisting into her for a long long time. Sitting there having to watch them turn onto each other in a way neither of them ever quite managed to do with her, maybe just with there eyes at first then with little whispered words and phrases that held a special meaning for just them. Something along those lines. So she gets annoyed, starts taking it out on the kid. Then he uses that as an excuse to turn even more to the girlfriend, both of them fighting against her now for the sake of the child, the child there princess now digging the knife in deeper and knowing all the while exactly what they was doing . . .
He said he didnt know why he was telling me all this. I did. He was trying to make himself human to me. In his version of the story, he was the hero, the salvation, the star. Its a story that he’s told before. I can tell.
His wife and the daughter now live in another town another state and then another state away. He and the girlfriend split up rite after, he was done with her he said. I’m guessing he enjoyed that too, dumping her without giving her any good reason why the big shit.
He wanted me on my knees that nite while he lounged back in a big ol comfy chair, actually one I’d bought for guys just like him. Ooo pretty chair, pretty legs. At first I thought he seemed almost bored, but after awhile he started sighing then grunting and moaning so I think he was pretty into it, he was bucking his hips when he came and he came hard enuf.
I swallowed his cum. But when I spit his cock out I knew this wasnt no god, this wasnt no god this was a dick, a mans dick, and that was enuf as far as it went but as far as it went was all it went. He was just a man. Just a man, and as a man he was kind of an ass he was an ass because he was a jerk he took pleasure in being a jerk thats what made him an ass. The big jerk.
Good body tho. I decided I could work with that, for awhile anyways. Just to see.
37
Soft the flaking, bits of ice chipped out of the sky. I sigh. The windowframe is brittle under my touch. I trace its rough rim with my fingertip. I chip at its painted surface vaguely that is peeling. My cats are an irritation in the corner of my eye here there sitting staring waiting for what sitting there staring into space. A small sculpture of a cat sits at the end of a shelf on the wall. Its made of some stone-like substance. Someone made something like stone that is not stone, then shaped or formed or cut it into a cat. Its frozen. It pierces time. The carpet is green. The window is black. Flakes of ice are floating down from the sky.
The pressury slippery-slop his lips on mine. One cat stares the other one nips – ow! ow! ow! Dan Dan the Garbage Man comes knocking on my door – no I decide, not that old trick. I give him a kiss and send him back to his garbage. A plaguey breeze blows tonight. Dirty tasting, bitter tho better than that acrid one, the one that burns. Water still tastes delicious, around here at least, as long as you filter and boil it first. No no no – snow is falling, little islands of ice are dropping down from the sky. I saw a bird fall out of the sky once. Not that long ago. Medium sized, some brackish browny color maybe stained by something in the air, something in the clouds. It came plummeeting down/turned into a mangled oozing mass maybe thirty feet away from where I stood how heavily it fell. Only its body tho. Death is faster than gravity/faster than flight. Whatever else might have happened happened up there.
Then it hits me like duh. Tainted water! I mean, to get rid of Shara. I wouldnt have to involve Steve at all then. Well its a possibility at least. Definitely worth thinking about –
Bang bang bang. Gunfire? No, damn thats Frank knocking on my door. Probly wanting to know who that guy was earlier. I tell him. I end up telling him everything. About how I met Dan one day when he was out collecting garbage, how many times we been together since, everything what I done to him and what he done to me. I have to I cant lie, not because its Frank I’m telling it to but because I’ve never understood the concept. Lie, whats that mean? He looks vaguely angry. Or rather his anger isnt vague at all only my interest in it now is. Brazenly he reaches out and gropes my crotch. He wants to check my dick as if it was some kind of truth barometer. “Hey!” I shout and step back from him, then slam the door in his face. And I cant believe it. I cant believe I did that. Neither can he. I can hear him standing there other side of the door, not saying a word. Breathing hard and grunting softly. He doesnt do anything tho why I dont know maybe he still cant believe it maybe he cant trust himself. Maybe he’ll come back and do something later I dont know. All I know is after a few seconds listening I hear his own door slamming shut. Multiple times. Bang bang bang bang. Its our first big fight.
So what – who cares.
Seeping up thru the floorboards the sound of an electric bass pulses, guitars jangle, cymbles rattle, the blare of bugles disrupts drums.
But snow is falling. Chips of ice are disconnecting themselves from the sky, little gravities played at by the wind. The world is upside down/I’m floating in the sky. Everything feels clean and, because it rhymes, mean. Serene.
Code.
38
I cant even get two scabby knees to rub together. The wind tears at my windowpane with long, soft but persistent fangs. It BEATS with soft FISTS. But my mattress is soft, the covers warm and all cuddly-duddle . . .
Little dudes have dirty feet. But I dont mind washing them, so . . . Maybe I could just move in, do the housework, be their maid? I turn my head.
The fringe at the end of my throw rug, or perhaps its the fringe of my lashes, looks like the tendrils of something growing under the sea. But without the sea. That is to say, frozen in time. LOOKS like. Its a matter of perfection.
At some point we disconnected from the earth. Were set free, our mangled roots heeled our legs like mossy treetrunks splitting/walking. After that intelligence emotion will. The world the sky, everything between became, quite naturally, a mirror into which we peered.
Tainted water might still work, but I dont like the idea of being part of the seen. An accident of some sort is possible, if it could be set up ahead of time. Frank is possible – Ive wondered if I could work him somehow. Not jealousy, but a threat to one of his possessions maybe? Like maybe if I told him Shara dont think much of me, maybe if I told him she sees me as some kind of problem, something to get rid of . . . Like maybe she had plans of her own even. Hmm. Or maybe I could somehow arrange for the two of them to get together? Shara likes bad boys, my brothers proof of that. And Frank’ll go for anything walking, pretty much. If I could just somehow just move her aside/dispose of her I could really take care of him then. In a way I’d never got the chance to before.
Snow is like stopped time.
When I was a boy, my brother and I would sometimes play a game called ‘Fox and Goose’ in the snow. You could play it anytime there was snow of course, but I liked doing it at nite, especially under the light of a boy-smile moon. Thats when you could see/only just/beautiful. Everything. We’d tramp out a track that covered pretty much the entire back yard, then we’d choose who was the fox – that was Steve, and who was the goose that was me. I’d stand in a spot stomped down in the center of the yard, radiating out from which were many paths – four five six however many you wanted. The paths were here and there interconnected but all eventually reached a rim that ran in a rough circle, or rectangle really, around the edge of the yard. As the game began the goose could choose any path run in any direction he wanted. And the fox gave chase, until he caught him. And when he caught him he threw him down and jumped on him. And how I shrieked when he did too.
Or we would go sled riding, skimming down a path that ran from the lip of a gully in a nearby wood to the frozen creek below sitting on smooth round plastic discs with rope handles for steering on either side. When we was alone Steve’d sometimes sit behind me on my disc and help me steer, his arms was longer than mine stronger too wrapped over mine. When other kids was around he didnt give me a second thought tho if I ever slid off the path which I did sometimes rolling over the edge down into the scrubby underbrush of the ravine he was rite there rite away always to help me up and dust me off. Our cheeks was very cold they shone pink and very bright in the moonlight. The woods stood very still . . .
The woods stood still. Can I tell you a secret? It was like that when we kissed for the very first time. And it wasnt even both of us at first he kissed ME first. He did it after we’d gone down on a sled together we was alone that nite and he rocked us too hard trying to scare me I think he rocked us right over the edge of the path. I took a tumble down the gully I wasnt expecting it. We fell apart after he searched for me and found me he pulled me up out of the snow brushed me off all over looked me up and down to make sure I was ok, then suddenly he leans forward and he gives me this very quick kiss on the lips, sharp as a pinprick, as if he just wanted to let me and himself and both of us together know that I wasnt hurt and that everything was all right. Thats all it meant it didnt mean anything more than that really . . . But I’ve always remembered it.
Because we was friends, the two of us then. And I really was ok he hadnt done anything that hurt me just scared me a little was all and the kiss made up for that. I felt a little dizzy from my tumble but that went away soon enuf. I rubbed my eyes and looked at him. The air was very cold. Our noses was runny. We was both of us starting to shiver. Cmon, he said, and taking my hand he led me out of the woods, our sleds drug along behind us he held onto my hand the whole way home.
The whole way home. Cmon, he said. Its time to go. And off we went. Together.
PART FOUR
END