A Mutual Friend Page 7

I nearly jumped a mile when someone behind me said, “You were at the rumble.”

  Twisting around, I was pleased to see I faced a very suave, dishy guy, a sort of Dr. McDreamy. He had that blow-dried hair, romantic watery eyes as though he rode his Harley without goggles, and the full-on leather chaps to prove it. Smiling lazily, he regarded me with bedroom eyes.

  “I was,” I admitted, hoping he had not seen me fighting for the wrong party.

  He took a few steps closer. “I saw you humping our new exorcist.”

  Jay-zus. This guy had my number, all right. What was I going to say? No? I tried to look abashed, which wasn’t difficult. Practically toeing an imaginary line on the floor, I confessed, “Yes, I was. Something just overcame me. I apologized to him later.”

  “You’re a Dom, then.”

  “Yes. I suppose that’s what people would call me. Not that I’ve had a chance to act it out.”

  “You coming to Lock’s party?”

  I nodded. “I am. That’s why I’m waiting for the shower.”

  He tossed his head in the direction of the shower. “Antonio’s in there. Naked and hot, buddy. If he’s your sort, why don’t you just go in there and grab him? There’s no lock on the bathroom door.”

  Who was this guy? It was hard to tell if he was flirting with me or getting off on the idea of me molesting the demonologist again. I held out my hand. “King Statesboro.”

  “Ah, like the ‘Statesboro Blues.’ The Allman Brothers. It’s on our jukebox.” He shook my hand heartily. “Mayo Snodgrass.”

  We looked at each other as though we’d pounce any second. It emboldened me to ask, “Do you think, I mean, will there be any single guys at the party? Or are you all partnered up?”

  “Oh, there’ll be plenty of single guys. Lock makes sure of that. Not everyone will be a Bent Zealot. That’d get kind of tiresome.” Regarding me as though he wanted to lick my face, Mayo added, “I’m single. Terminally single.”

  I wondered what was wrong with him. Such a handsome devil, and single? “Oh. Well. That’s good to know,” I said lamely. “Maybe I’ll see you at Lock’s tonight.”

  The suave guy even wriggled his eyebrows. “You bet. Meantime, steam’s coming out from under that bathroom door. Perfect time for you to make your move.”

  Strange thing, a guy urging me to assault another. Well, I may be a Dom, but I was never the gropey sort. Which is what had shocked me about my behavior at the rumble. Still, since Anton had encouraged me by wriggling his sexy ass against my hard-on, the thought had never left my mind. I stole into the back hallway and found the door where, indeed, steam was wisping through the cracks.

  I opened the door and shut it loudly enough that Anton could hear. I quickly tore my T-shirt from my frame and kicked off my hiking boots.

  “Who’s there?” Man, what a sexy accent.

  “Just me, Anton,” I called lightly. “Another guy is waiting to use the shower, so I thought I’d hurry you up.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m almost done.”

  Was it my imagination, or could I see through the frosted shower door a giant dick standing out at a right angle to his body? Was that his arm, or . . . I whipped off my boxer briefs at just the moment Anton reached to shut the water off. And in a flash, I was standing next to him in the stall. Our erections practically slapped each other.

  Grinning, I reached to turn the water back on. “Not fair. I need to get clean too.” I handed him the wet bar of soap from the dish in the tiled wall. It was pretty obvious what I was asking for. My swarthy stallion just stood there, seemingly in shock. He took the soap without looking at it. His breathing was steaming up the door.

  I turned around in the spray, wetting myself all over. Smiling at him, I enclosed his hand with mine. “Come on. Soap me. You can do that. Haven’t you ever showered with a man?”

  Actually, I hadn’t. My homosexual activities were strictly limited to the sleeping cab of my truck, or even the front seat if I didn’t care who saw.

  Anton finally spoke, and he was gruff. “Of course I have, plenty of times. My ex is Father Noel Moloney who works with the Zealots down on the rez.”

  “Oo, you were doing it with a priest? Doesn’t get much sexier than—“

  Grabbing my shoulder, Anton twirled me to face the spray. Without any preliminaries, he socked that bar of soap in between my ass cheeks. My hands slapped up against the tiles. Was this how a sub was supposed to act? Wasn’t I supposed to be doing that to him? Washing his asshole, even sliding the bar up his anus? Thoroughly laving and lathering his ballsac, pulling on it, yanking it, maybe even slapping it? Instead, that’s what he was doing to me.

  I’ve thought a lot about people who can keep two personalities in their brains at once. Switches, they were called in the world of BDSM. Anton came from a world of kneeling, prayer, and penitence. Yet here he could freely maul another man in a shower while he erotically rubbed his own stiffy against the guy’s hip. Anton had a soft side and a hard side, and he seemed to be able to flip them at will.

  In a world full of fanatics and zealots, a man can’t afford to be one himself.

  I leaned against the wall as Anton reamed me thoroughly with the bar. When he got to my balls, I heard myself sighing,

  “Ah—ah—ah—ah—”

  Or was it more like panting? If he touched my cock I would come, and that would be mortifying, so I spun to face him, grabbing his shoulders. Water from the spray dripped off my nose and chin, turning speech into an embarrassing exercise. “Anton. You’ve got to go slow. It’s been awhile since I—ah!”

  Anton didn’t go slowly. Kicking my feet apart with his, he whacked the soap bar back and forth against my hardened ballsac. He definitely had an evil side to him, this ex-priest. Was that why he’d retired? Lust zoomed from my sac down my thighs, weakening me so I had to grip onto the slimy soap dish for support. His free hand fisted my hard-on.

  He snarled, “You’re a greenhorn, King. You don’t know a thing about other men. You think you’re a Dom and you’re too weak with desire to even touch me. Look. I rub your gland”—and he shivered the soap against my perineum, just fluttering it against the edges of my asshole—“and you lose your entire mind.”

  “If you think I’m a newbie,” I sputtered, spitting water like the Elephant Man cornered in a bathroom, “you’d better think agai—aigh!”

  I could’ve swore Anton had a gritted, lopsided grin as I blasted my load against his hip. I mean, I shot five, seven streams of hot spunk against his naked body. The soap dish actually did begin to detach from the wall as I gripped it with the strength of ten men. My dick had never felt so alive, so potent, so long and thick as when Anton jacked it in his experienced palm.

  He was right. I was a newbie, a greenhorn, a “vanilla” in his world of gay sex.

  “There, there,” he soothed, his fist slowing. I gasped helplessly like a beached whale. He thumbed the underside of my glans, coaxing a fresh spurt of spunk. This guy has done it with a priest. Wait, he was a priest. A priest is masturbating my penis.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” I gasped. I didn’t comprehend the meaning of my words until later. I was trying to blaspheme against what was already a pretty profane situation. I looked down at my dick, pulsating in his talented fist. “Holy mother and Mary. Anton. Stop. I’m going to pass out.”

  Kinder now, he backed off. “Too much for you, eh? Those truck stop boys won’t do it for you anymore after you’ve had me.”

  Encircling his wrist with my fist, I urged him off my twitching cock. “Okay, okay. I give. You’re better than them, Anton. Much better. I’ve never—“ Did I want to admit how inexperienced I was? Did I really want to give him the upper hand? “I’ve never been jacked like that.”

  Maybe to make up for my submissiveness, I grabbed Anton by the back of the neck and pulled his face to me. Tilting my head with the complete intention of laying a soulful, mind-shattering kiss on him, I opened my mouth. I could even feel the heat of his luscious, well-forme
d lips nearing mine.

  Then he pulled away. He pulled away!

  His beautiful accent was commanding, even contemptuous. “No kissing, King. We are not lovers.”

  He couldn’t even bear to be submissive to a lousy kiss!

  He got out of the shower. I was left to stand idiotically, mind blank, stunned.

  I saw through the foggy door that he was at the sink, his glorious ass curvy and bare, shaving the parts of his face he wanted shaved. Dazed, I finally picked up that damned soap bar and reamed my armpits with it, jaw slack. I desperately wanted to see if he had a hard-on, but after re-creating his amazing Van Dyke goatee, he quickly stepped into clean clothes and left.

  Really? That’s how it’s going to be?

  Back in the clubhouse, awkwardness reigned. I didn’t see Anton, and Turk and Lock were gone, no doubt preparing for their party. Several other Zealots gave me healthy side-eye, perhaps remembering me from the rumble. I had to get these guys on my side, because they didn’t even know the worst about me.

  My lumbar was starting to murder me. I must’ve been walking with a crip, because Mayo Snodgrass approached me and asked me if I wanted a ride to the party.

  Well, he didn’t say it exactly like that. First, he said, “Get any?”

  I pretended not to know what he meant. “Man, my back’s killing me. Know anyone got any Oxy?”

  “Sure do. We race car drivers stick together. At the party there’ll be a couple guys holding. I meant did you get any from that demon chaser? You’ve got that completely fucked and sucked look.”

  Actually, I was proud. I had to admit, “Yeah. He really blew my load.” I realized this was ambiguous, that it could be taken as Anton had gotten on his knees and blown me, quite literally. I didn’t care how Mayo Snodgrass took it. He was just gleeful as hell.

  “Oo,” he said, looking from side to side as though someone were listening in. “Juicy, juicy. Come with me to the party. I’ll make sure you drink plenty of milk, to refill the ol’ tank.”

  I guessed that was race car driving lingo. I left The Happy Hour with Mayo, heading toward his ‘67 Yenko Camaro. I glimpsed Anton in the alleyway where we’d parked his new Softail Fat Bob. He was casually chatting with Ormond and Harte, maybe about the amazing torque of his Milwaukee-Eight big twin engine. Anton gave me a quick glance with no emotion betrayed whatsoever before flashing his brilliant grin at the couple. Motherfucker.

  As we followed the ribbon of highway up through the desolate, plum-colored Mojave Mountains, I let Mayo tell me about himself. Apparently, he was a player, having only had one real lover in his life. Since losing this unnamed guy, he refused to really hook up with anyone, making the scene with Rubees, rich urban bikers, not the lot lizards I’d done it with.

  “But don’t you feel you’re missing out on a great experience in life?” I asked. “You’re surrounded by couples doing couple things. You have to go alone to weddings.”

  Mayo shrugged as he jammed it seventy-five up the mountain road. “Who cares? I’d rather be alone than be controlled by some other asshole. Ninety-five percent of these couples, I see one guy trying to be top dog.”

  “Well, yeah,” I said, “because one of them is usually the Dom.”

  “More than that. Not that anyone here takes it to the limit, you know, forcing the other guy to wear collars in public—well, maybe Anson puts collars on Ormond, because Ormond likes it. And an electro butt plug.”

  That was oddly specific intel about butt plugs, which can’t normally be seen.

  Mayo continued. “They drag it out into public life, into psychological life, like telling the other guy which brand of cereal to buy, how to decorate the bedroom, which career to pursue. No one’s telling me any of that shit!”

  “Then wouldn’t you be the Dom?”

  “I don’t see it that way, because I wouldn’t want to tell the other guy what to do, either. We’re equal partners. Each guy can make his own choice. Course, I’ve never met anyone like this, so I’m single.”

  I thought about how Anton had literally shoved me around—me! A guy who’d always considered myself independent and bossy—then had rudely thrown me under the bus when I tried to kiss him with affection. What the fuck was up with that? If I’d wanted to be jacked off in a fucking shower, I’d of submitted to some bruiser at a truck stop. There were a lot of those inked macho men cruising the scene, too. Some of them real truck drivers. Some husbands, some fathers, men just wanting a taste of another man’s cock.

  “That demon chaser just showed me the exit when I tried to kiss him,” I admitted to Mayo.

  “After or before he sucked you off?”

  “Well, after, of course. Before, he never would’ve gotten that far.”

  “See, that’s control. He wants to prove, to who I’m never really sure, that he’s the only one who has control. He can’t stand any sign of intimacy, probably from being a handsy priest all those years, and he already got a belly full of your spunk. What more does he want?”

  What more, indeed? Mayo was completely right. He’d been around the circuit. He was familiar with types like Anton.

  We came roaring into Rough and Ready, a midcentury suburb started by miners looking in the wrong place for copper. The party was already so swinging that we had to park about three blocks away. I took this opportunity to ask Mayo about heroin.

  He snorted. “We didn’t get our usual shipment, and now I hear those buddies of yours, the Death Squad, are running around bragging about having some Black Tar for sale.”

  I nearly stopped in my tracks but forced myself to keep walking casually. “Who? Which Death Squadder? Reason I ask, I think I’ll need to graduate to the hard stuff for this back pain.”

  Mayo put a not-unfriendly hand on my shoulder. “Don’t deal with those alt-right goons. I’ll fix your poor pillbilly soul up with some Oxy at the party. Trust me. Don’t talk to those fascists.”

  Since I really did want more Oxy, I kept my trap shut.

  The party was a solid three-fourths men. I know, you’re surprised there were even one-fourth women. But they were called lambs, sweetbutts, bitches. They all had hairstyles popular thirty years ago, Joan Jett-type shags that looked like wigs but probably weren’t. One mama arrived wearing a lid with cat’s ears. Another had somehow rigged her exhaust pipe to spew pink exhaust. Another rode a tricycle that—get this—had a twink as the passenger.

  The Bent Zealots, aside from Lily Silverberry, were in no way effeminate, so these women confused me. Mayo explained.

  “These sweetbutts, see, they know we’re gay. Some of them say it makes them feel bolder, that they can be themselves around us because they’re not competing. Others say it makes them rise to the challenge, the idea they can convert us—a couple have succeeded. I’ve done it with Kenna, the head lamb. Just once, though. Then it’s back to dick for me.”

  A guy was showing off doing a burnout in the street at about 7000 rpms, ruining his rear tire. A similar suspicious amount of smoke rose from the backyard of Lock’s house. I met the famous Kenna right off the bat when we made our way inside. She latched onto me, resting my arm on the soft shelf of her bosom as she steered me away from Mayo.

  Kenna said, “What’s your poison, sweetie? Beer? We’ve got a keg of Bud, or our mixologist Dipstick is preparing drinks out back by the bonfire.” She didn’t mention wine, which was actually my favorite. Eliza and I liked to make a fire and sit around it at night sipping cabernet. We’d seat our dad in his favorite easy chair. It was almost like we were the cozily married couple, our dad the kid. Eliza had just texted me that Dad had wandered down the street again when she was stuck in the can with the runs. It was becoming more and more imperative that we either add a permanent second person to the three-bedroom house, or I somehow find a local job.

  “Whiskey,” I told Dipstick, a greying, curly-headed guy.

  “Shut up, Dipstick,” Kenna snapped at the guy with one earring. “I know what you’re thinking. I haven’t even gotten
a chance to ask him about his status.”

  Dipstick held up an innocent hand. “I said nothing! I was just thinking how unusual he came here with Mayo when he’s paired up with that Spanish priest, or whatever he is.”

  “Mayo!” cried Kenna. “That doesn’t mean a thing! We all know May would go fuck a doorknob.”

  They were fighting over me as though I were not standing right there. Besides, did a guy necessarily have to fuck a doorknob to want to be with me?

  Kenna carried on. “And what hot priest? Where, where?”

  My stomach played handball against the curb at the mention of Anton. We had left things on such a strange, twisted note. Interpersonal communication was not my strong suit. Look at it. Truck drivers spend almost all of their lives alone. There’s plenty of time to muse about how others done us wrong. When we have a shot at responding to another human in real time, in a mature, adult manner, we’ve already blown it in advance, in our heads. I didn’t need to get all tweaked at Anton for ghosting me in the shower. I could’ve just laughed it off and snapped a towel at his ass or something. Instead, I acted like a baby. A baby with his head up his butt.

  Dipstick nodded. “There. Can’t you picture him with a dog collar on? Hot. Buddy, you want another whiskey?”

  What the fuck? I looked at the glass in my hand, and it was indeed almost empty. Since I didn’t want to look at Anton, a swarthy beauty already attracting the glances of married men, I held out my glass for more. That was when someone pressed a pill bottle into my palm.

  Although I could’ve reasoned out what the bottle contained, I dumbly looked at it. Of course it was someone’s spare bottle and didn’t really contain Sildenafil, as the label claimed. It was OxyContin, and the breezy Mayo Snodgrass was standing close to me, his body heat slamming me like a WWE professional.

  Suddenly, I was in Mayo’s orbit. I took three Oxy with a couple gulps of whiskey as Anton’s final sentences echoed in my head. No kisses, King. We are not lovers. I returned Mayo’s dreamy grin.

  Maybe I should’ve eaten something. I definitely should’ve eaten some of the mouthwatering catfish or corn on the cob Dust Bunny and Bond were grilling up. Nothing seemed to faze Mayo. His expression never changed from serene bliss as he shooed Kenna away from me.