A Cuddly Toy Page 5

  Again, he became shy. “You know. Being the way they are, there is basically more for me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, a few chicks hang around them. They enjoy the manly atmosphere of gelatin shots and all that. But with me . . . being the only straight guy . . . I could score a lot heavier, if you catch my meaning. If you get my drift.”

  With a heart-thudding shock, suddenly I did get his drift.

  Without moving my head, I eyeballed the scene around me. Suddenly it was evident the hot guy with the enormous package was wearing a cock harness. The roly-poly guy was obviously in a relationship with the square he’d brought, and they had an adopted kid. And the assless guy was squeezing the much juicier ass of someone wearing a PROSPECT patch.

  “Are you fucking shitting me?” I whispered.

  “I shit you not,” said Galileo happily. Turning around, he pointed. “There’s my brother Ogden. Isn’t he twenty times handsomer than me? He’s my real bro. You’re my emotional bro. I’m really glad you bro’d me back, Fremont.”

  All the blood drained from my face. If I would’ve been holding some donuts, they would’ve fallen to the sand. It was all I could do to stagger to the first church door I could find and fumble with the doorknob.

  A gay . . . motorcycle club?

  Who the fuck had ever heard of such a thing? And I was plunked down right in the center of them?

  I went through all seven stages of grief as I tried to turn the slippery doorknob. Anger and bargaining came swiftly. Of course, it’s not a sex club. They don’t sit around their clubhouse with their big dicks swaying in the breeze, touching each other. They have partners. They’re just like any other group. They’re partnered up. I have nothing to fear.

  But that quickly led to depression and loneliness. Wishing I was part of something bigger like that. Working at U-238, I mostly traveled alone. Sometimes I was allowed an assistant, and that was always fun. Looking for silicon in South Africa with a couple other geologists from my company had been a blast. But mostly I was a lone explorer. Now, without a wife, I was even lonelier.

  By the time I stumbled into the church, I had moved into acceptance and hope. It’s not like they’re going to turn me. They’re nice guys, helping the Indians. So what if they sometimes like to suck on long, delectable dicks?

  And I ran right into the longest, most delectable dick of all.

  I don’t know what I was thinking. As my wife would say, “You just weren’t thinking!”

  The door off the hallway I’d thought led to the church actually opened into a small room, I guess the sort of room where priests kept their vestments, spare candelabra, linens, golden vessels, that sort of thing. But Father Moloney in the flesh himself was in there. Shirtless. Reaching up to a rack to grab a button-down shirt.

  His cutoff jeans were unbuttoned, and though clothed in some tight boxer briefs, his fat penis stood out in such sharp relief in the harsh light coming through a high little window, his bulging dickhead was apparent a mile away.

  He turned to me and . . . smiled.

  “Oh, Fremont,” he said casually, as though we’d just bumped into each other on the subway. “I’m glad you came. I really want you to see how the community works on a daily basis. The giving, the concern is just unbelievable. I think it’ll move you, if you give it half a chance.”

  My knees were so weak they knocked together, and I knew they wanted to collapse. I yearned to kneel at this Father’s feet and inhale that long member down my throat.

  Sweet Nefertiti. Even the priests around here were mouth-wateringly good . . .

  He was pretty tanned, for a guy always wearing a cassock. And jacked, for a guy who hung around praying and swaying censers all day long. His long Irish-black hair was tied at the nape of his neck like a founding father, his nipples sitting high and tight on a set of bouncy pecs. Vaguely Asian drawings were inked on his pec, his right bicep. That satiny line of hair down the center of his abs arrowed right to his juicy dong. It seemed to be sleepily erect, just to the point of slightly pulling at his briefs, allowing for a sneak peek at the steamy, forbidden depths of his crotch.

  Of course, I was going insane.

  And he must’ve seen me ogling him. He must’ve been used to it, because he smoothed it over wonderfully.

  “I want you to think about what I said yesterday.” He pulled on the button-down, flipping his ponytail outside it. “To be uncertain like you are isn’t to lose faith. Sometimes you have to perform in the valley of doubt. That’s where you find you’re behaving the most genuinely, the truest to yourself. There, you’ll be invoking your authentic intuition, your basic yearnings.”

  “But . . . “ I fumbled like a jackass. “My basic yearnings . . . “

  He grinned crookedly as he buttoned the last button that covered his lovely schlong from view. And it was not my imagination that he smoothed the shirt over his erection, pretending to tuck it into the jeans.

  “Your basic yearnings,” he quipped, in that tormenting Irish cadence, “are your most authentic self.”

  A priest.

  I wanted to suck the dick of an Irish priest.

  What kind of masochist was I?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  NOEL

  I knew Fremont was looking at my penis.

  It surprised me, shocked me really, and a priest on an Indian rez isn’t easily shocked. Fremont Zuckerman, the good boy Jewish mining expert from a staid community back east, was gay?

  No, that couldn’t be it. He was just looking, probably as shocked as I was to find a half-naked pastor changing clothes.

  I quickly covered up my surprise, literally and figuratively. Instead of grabbing a clean T-shirt from the rack, I grabbed a button-down shirt guaranteed to make me sweat my ass off under my cassock all damned day. But it covered me up, my chest that now felt agonizingly naked, nipples puckering as though someone blew on them, cock tightening, swelling.

  And of course, I started yammering about basic yearnings.

  I was pretty good at this discourse. What decent priest isn’t? And I’d secreted myself away in a corner of the world where my shameful desires wouldn’t run the risk of being acted upon. How many chances did I have to go into Phoenix, to the Male Box or the Library? Zero. I worked seven days a week and thank God I did, or I might even act upon the occasional impulse to take my bike down to Love’s Travel Stop in Quartzsite, where I might be recognized even in street clothes sticking my penis through a glory hole.

  It was an exercise in temptation, living this life, and so far, I’d been triumphant. Just because I’d dreamed of Fremont Zuckerman’s arrival didn’t mean he was destined for me. The dream was clearly a harbinger of the work he was meant to do on the rez, that was all. That alone was reason enough to cherish him.

  “The blueprint of man,” I sermonized before dropping my cassock over my head, “is basically incomplete for a reason. God wanted a reality of uncertainty with all of its interwoven chaos. Within that framework, man can sow his oats, experiment . . . discover as you do. Find your own path.”

  I had to remove the band from my hair in order to finger-comb it, and was it my imagination that Fremont allowed his eyes to linger on my long tresses for longer than was appropriate? My own wild oats were getting the better of me. He was a straight vanilla man of science. He had no interest in my long wavy hair—my one downfall, my ultimate vanity.

  “Yeah, well,” Fremont said bitterly, “my own path has led me to the Colorado River rez, where I’ve just been authorized to look more deeply into things.”

  I admit, I made a big show of the finger-combing bit. I followed Fremont’s eyes. He was either dumbfounded, confused, or extremely horny. I went with “confused.” I wrapped the elastic band around my ponytail. “I’m glad to hear that. So you’ll be around awhile?”

  He cleared his throat and looked at a chalice. “Looks that way. I, ah, I’m looking for a place to put an office trailer. I can’t keep going to a hotel in Quartzsi
te.”

  Fastening the cincture around my waist, I was flooded with excitation at this news. Then I shamed myself. I was excited not for the project Fremont was meant to execute, but for myself. “An office trailer?”

  “Yes, just some single-wide thing, nothing big. A place for some sampling equipment and a bed.”

  I chuckled. “That’s all you need? You’re truly a simple man.”

  “Then we have something in common.”

  I laughed, because I really wasn’t that simple. Back in the day, I had surrounded myself with glamor, grit, and bling. Sure, I dealt meth and drank like an acquitted convict, but I did it in style. My Irish brogue, my gaunt height, and my biting, caustic tongue had earned me street cred as a man who made everyone around him his bitch. My crew protected my flank while I pretty much ran roughshod over everyone around me. Hitting rock bottom was necessary before I’d had a desperate vision, not unlike the one about the arrival of Fremont Zuckerman, detailing how I could redeem myself. Going to seminary seemed an utter about-face doomed to failure, but it really wasn’t all that different. People still listened to me, and they usually obeyed.

  Still, I felt compelled to say, “So you’re looking for a place to plant a trailer, so you can continue raping our land? I can convince the tribal council of that, no problem.” Sarcasm was not usually my forte, but Fremont and I were relating on a different level already. I wasn’t his priest, for obvious and not so obvious reasons. We were more equitable, more like business partners, and it was okay to be sarcastic with a business partner.

  “No, no! I’m going to be investigating contamination in buildings, in cattle, as well.”

  “In people?”

  He paused. “Well, that’s not my scope of work. I’m not a medical guy.”

  “But we have a medical guy on board, Dr. Moog, a cardiologist. Perfect! I’ll introduce you right now. You make a deal with Moog that you’ll investigate this Navajo neuropathy, this cancer in people, and I’ll convince the council to let you stick your trailer somewhere.” Suddenly it sounded perverse, “stick your trailer somewhere.”

  “All right.” Fremont smiled. “Introduce me to this Moog, and these council guys, if you would.”

  “Where were you thinking of putting it? Out by the Salomé Range?” I reached for the doorknob and paused because he was.

  “Well. I was thinking maybe closer to, ah, to you. That way I’d have access to all the people I need to be talking to. Instead of being some weird rock guy in the middle of nowhere analyzing soil content. That might look even more suspicious and put me out of favor with the people.”

  Listen to him, “the people.” He was far and away from being accepted by “the people” because he didn’t know them. After two years I was still treated with suspicion in some quarters, mainly by the old-timers, the medicine men like Bloodgood Senior who purified their bodies with sweat baths, the “flying shaman” whose souls leave the body to swirl in the spirit world, collecting healing powers to restore the bodies of patients.

  They were still skeptical of me, but some of them were here today, so I led Fremont out of the church, first introducing him to Dr. Moog. Moog was an odd guy, to be sure. He was mad as a box of frogs, but he was supposed to be a brilliant surgeon. I’d seen him intubate a Diné who was choking to death on a piece of fish, using a drinking straw. Or was it a cocaine straw? Moog might’ve been a wanker, but he was on top of his game. Hard to tell sometimes with all his ink and facial piercings. He was a former druggie like myself and some others.

  The two men chatted, and Turk Blackburn, secretary of the club, drew me aside. “You really want this asshole putting a trailer on the rez? Sounds like he’s a rumbly company man who’s gonna throw everyone under the bus when he gets what he wants.”

  “Well, you let Bloodgood and Ahiga make those decisions,” I said, referring to the council chief currently squinting cynically at Fremont.

  Turk gave the group some side-eye. “Aren’t Jews known for being, you know, sort of devious in matters of finance? Anything to make a buck?”

  I’d never been angry with Turk before. He was a genteel, fun-loving and thoughtful man who ran many programs for the poor and downtrodden up in Rough and Ready. But I was about to start getting angry. “If you mean he’d sell the eye out of your head, I think you’re wrong. That’s just my opinion, and you’re right, I haven’t known Fremont long. But cuntiballs, Turk, for a guy who’s Prez of a gay 1% club, do I detect prejudice?”

  Turk folded his arms. “Being cautious, Father, and trying to protect the people I feel are my other minority club.”

  I nodded. I had to give Turk credit. He’d patched out of The Bare Bones MC with their gracious consent when he felt he might encounter more bigotry in a basically straight, traditional club like that. So he’d started his own club out here, no small feat in itself. I should probably be a bit more cautious myself. Why was I just falling for every word this muppet tried to hand me?

  “I get you, Turk.” I saw that Bloodgood was already insinuating himself into the conversation between the doctor and the geologist. Science once against met up with the gentler disciplines. In between flying around like a shaman and attending the council, Bloodgood worked at an art gallery in Poston. He was as gentle, heartfelt, and mellow as they came. “But you know it’s part of my job description to go easy on people.”

  “Is it?” he asked, and I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. “Excuse me.”

  Since Turk was butting into the ever-growing crowd around Fremont that now included Booth Haven, a very weedy biker named Twinkletoes who had some kind of palsied limbs, and the Taliwood brothers, I butted in too. I wasn’t shocked to see Turk handing Haven a plastic baggie of weed, but Fremont seemed to be. His mouth was an O, and he lifted his hand as if to protest.

  I circled his wrist with my fingers, slowly lowering it. I murmured, “It’s okay. I know we’re a church as well as a rez, but we don’t allow alcohol here. For obvious reasons.” Alcohol didn’t sit well with Native Americans. “You gotta give them something, some outlet, something to numb the pain.”

  Fremont’s eyes sparkled. “Did I look offended? I was going to ask if he had any to spare.”

  Turk and Haven laughed like jackasses. I didn’t realize they’d overheard us, and apparently neither did Fremont. Soon we were all laughing, including Joe Bloodgood, who said,

  “Hey. That stuff doesn’t grow on trees, my man. Leave some for the old timers.”

  Galileo Taliwood seemed bewildered. He often was, though. A queer bird who appeared to be a muppet, there was substance and courage at his core. “I don’t understand. Doesn’t cannabis grow on trees? I had a foster home so crowded one time, I had to sleep out in the garden alongside big pots of . . . well, pot.”

  “Oh, Galileo,” Ogden said sadly. A few beads of turquoise were woven into his hair to protect him against lightning. They had both been battered around by the system, unwanted apples, red on the outside, white on the inside. A Navajo’s clan is of his mother, and those boys didn’t even know who their mother was.

  Twinkletoes said, “Come on, friend. Do you like lamb? Some people don’t.”

  Bloodgood grunted. “Bilagáanas don’t.”

  “I do!” said Fremont. “I stayed high up in the Andes once at a copper mine. Lamb was the only meat, and I have to have meat. It became an acquired taste for me, almost an addiction.” He slapped his abs, taut under his threadbare T-shirt. I wasn’t sure if he was aware, but several appreciative men eyeballed him. Straight men never notice when they’re standing smack in a den of wolves.

  “Yes,” I said, “let’s get some lamb tacos. Judging from the crowd, looks like they’re done.”

  His own personal plate in hand, I let Twinkletoes lead the way, but I stayed closely on Fremont’s rear—riding tail gunner, as bikers had it. We made small talk above the twang of Duane Allman’s guitar coming from a truck’s speakers.

  “You’ve got a good scene going here,” said Fre
mont. “I almost envy you. It’s like you found your niche. Where were you assigned before?”

  I ignored the last question. God could have stopped our sinning, I always thought. Then we would’ve all been upright and virtuous like Him. Hell is truly the place of agony that comes of great sin, and I have been there. “Serving the natives is truly my niche,” I agreed affably. “Have you served the tribes you’ve worked with, like in the Andes?”

  Was it also my niche to rile everyone I came into contact with? I was supposed to soothe, to please, to lift people up. Now Fremont huffed with irritation.

  “Not my job, Father. Mining companies plunder the earth, remember? Oh, man, my mouth is actually watering.”

  Indeed, a crowd of about thirty were already lined up at the serving table where someone had laid out accompaniments. Bowls of sliced radishes and limes, salsa, and chopped onions gleamed like gems against the handwoven tablecloth. A fat-bellied chuckwalla thrashed its tail underfoot, waiting for pickings to drop. Women and children, some in wheelchairs, were queued up first, of course, but Harte Saxonberg waved a spatula at Fremont.

  Harte was a strapping redhead who owned a rock shop in Rough and Ready. It struck me that these two men might have something in common. He might succeed where I had blundered.

  “Hey you,” shouted Harte. “Heavy metal man.”

  I liked that. Heavy metal man. I would learn later that uranium is literally a heavy metal, alongside lead and mercury. I elbowed Fremont.

  “He means you.”

  Fremont’s eyes popped wide. “Oh. Yes?”

  Harte looked down at a plate he held. We had to stand on tiptoe to see around a few people, but he held a plate of three soft tacos, halfway filled with aromatic lamb. “Here. Visitors always served first around these parts.”