Bennington's Place

by Gabriel Garçonnière

  “Hi there. Bennington. From a few minutes ago,” he said with a quick wave and in practically a whisper.

  He was shy. I liked that.

  “I think I remember,” I teased, “and it can talk.”

  “Sorry about that. I’m a bit shy and it’s sort of useless to try to talk over the music in there.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” I said.

  “Are you leaving?”

  “No, not at all. My evening’s just begun.” I hoped.

  “Wanna sit down?”

  “Well we could, but I’m afraid all the benches are wet.”

  “Oh yeah. From the rain.”

  Now I wasn’t so sure that Bennington was the one I wanted to have coffee with, but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he did admit he was shy, so I knew he was probably a bit nervous. He was quite adorable and even if the conversation was lacking, I could just sit and admire his good looks and dream of what he looked like naked. He was as big as a pro-football player in stature. He had enormous feet and long beefy legs. His torso was at least twice as wide as me alone with huge muscular shoulders towering above; he was well over six feet tall, if not close to seven. I was afraid to ask.

  His chest was probably four times his waist size, with huge pecs framed nicely beneath his tight polo. He had the most beautiful baby face complexion, except for a small scar that extended just a few inches from his hair line down across his forehead in a zig-zag pattern like a crack in the sidewalk. It was barely noticeable, except for when the reflection from the pool caught his face, but the scar actually gave his face great character.

  I tried not to stare at it for too long, but something inside me wanted to reach out and trace the crooked line with my fingers, any excuse to touch his gorgeous skin. And his boxy sandy blond crew cut framed his face nicely. The size of his physique probably made him seem a bit clumsy or monstrous to others. Despite being shy, he had every right to be proud. He might have been a giant, but he was remarkably good-looking.

  “We could go for coffee,” I suggested.

  “I’d like that,” Bennington said.

  I’d like to say that I can remember our coffee talk verbatim, but it was three in the morning. I spent most of our chat lost in the gleaming white of his perfect teeth and vampire-like canines; Bennington waved a hand in front of my face a few times to snap me out of it. I don’t think we talked much at all actually, and Bennington seemed to be okay with that. He sat quietly and sipped a mocha concocted of about three types of chocolate, six flavor shots, soy milk and half and half. I looked at my boring black coffee with sugar and expected him to turn into Mr. Hyde when he took a drink of his. When I asked him a question, hoping to entice him to carry the conversation a while, he would just politely answer the question in a few short sentences and then wait for me to continue own with my own answer to that question or another. He seemed content being quiet and aloof.

  “So, what do you do?” I asked.

  “In bed?” He replied with a laugh.

  “Sure if you want to tell me,” I said, pleased to see this joking side of him but desperately anxious for the details I knew he wouldn’t provide. He turned blood red, not expecting my reply to his joke.

  “I’m a fisherman,” he said instead.

  “Like Bill Dance?”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. What kind of fishing?” I refrained from cracking jokes about the size of his pole.

  “It’s a bit hard to explain, and hey, it’s getting late,” he said checking his watch and looking away from me.

  I was afraid I had offended him. Being shy, his only defense was to excuse himself and leave. It was quite charming. I didn’t want to let him go. Alas, after a jarring night at the club I seemed to always turn into a harsh quick-tongued bitter serpent queen who thinks he knows it all and has no patience or remorse for other’s feelings. A sensitive and unassuming muscled fisherman would be the last person on Earth attracted to me at a time like this.

  “Maybe we can talk again soon, during the day even, on more informal terms? I really would like to know more about the fishing,” I managed to say when what I really wanted to say was something like, “Will you take off your shirt and let me play with your nipples?”

  He was already standing and reached to shake my hand and dismiss me for wasting his time, but he must have seen a hint of sincerity deep in my blood shot eyes. I reached for his hand and we shook, and then held hands for just a second longer.

  “I’d like that,” he whispered.

  A week had passed before I decided to call Bennington, figuring out that he was probably too bashful to take initiative to call me. I asked him about making plans for the upcoming weekend, but he had to work and instead asked me to come along with him. He had a cabin to himself on the lake for the weekend. Now, the closest I had probably ever come to nature was when I let some guy blow me out behind the shrubs on the club’s patio one night, but spending the weekend with a hot muscular man alone in a cabin on a lake seemed just too hard to resist.

  “I hope the sex is better than the conversation,” a friend joked on the phone when I told him where I was going.

  “I asked him what he enjoyed, like hobbies and stuff, and all he could think of was vanilla ice cream,” I said.

  “What eight year old boy doesn’t?”

  It was at least a twenty mile drive into the country. I was surprised that I actually remembered where the lake even was. My parents had dragged us kids there for many a Memorial Day or Fourth of July, and the drive out there seemed much the same. It was a well-shaded two lane road with miles of greenery and the occasional road kill. I rolled down all four windows in an attempt to relieve myself from the scorching hot summer sun peeking through the trees, and I prayed that this cabin had air-conditioning. Spending a sweaty night with a brawny jock had always been a fantastic fantasy, but didn’t seem as tantalizing right now. Beads of sweat encompassed my forehead and I could feel my shirt clinging to my back. My appearance would be a total mess by the time I arrived, but I somehow knew Bennington wouldn’t mind.

  I stopped at a gas station to freshen up a bit, if that was possible to do in a public gas station toilet. I asked the attendant how much farther I had to go, and was thankful to hear I was only about two miles away. I surfed the aisles of the station for something that I could pick up as a gift or contribution to the weekend although Bennington had told me not to worry about bringing anything.

  Fishing hooks? He probably had those. A life jacket? I wasn’t planning on getting in the water. Potted meat? What’s potted meat? Roses? Bennington probably wasn’t a flower kind of guy, nor would he probably have a vase to put them in. Condoms? There were already some in my overnight bag. A glimpse into the store’s cooler told me exactly what to buy. Vanilla ice cream.

  “You going fishing?” The boy behind the counter asked in some backwoods hillbilly jargon that made me question if banjos should be playing in the background.

  “Can that be done with a box of ice cream?”

  “Never tried before.”

  “What do people use to fish up here?”

  “Worms. Crickets. Potted meat.”

  “The ice cream will do for now,” I said.

  Bubba placed the box of ice cream in a brown paper bag, and I threw in two white plastic spoons from the convenience counter. I rushed back to the car before junior’s estranged brother might appear out of the brush wielding a loud chain saw.

  A few minutes later I was pulling onto the dirt road leading to the cabin. The tall trees gave way to a remote grassy field that sloped downward to a large lake splitting the coppice of trees in half in the distance. It revealed the perfect horizon where the warm sun would soon be setting. Bennington told me to look for his dark blue SUV with a license plate reading ELTRCFSH, confirming that I had found the right location. I parked next to it.

  The cabin was in much better shape than I had expected. Rather than looking like a smoke house from Lit
tle House on the Prairie, it actually resembled one of those pine lodges you would expect to see on the cover of a touristy mountain magazine. It had a cozy porch across the front with a swing, two picture windows on the front and one on each side, and a red shingled roof with a brick chimney. I turned off the ignition and remained behind the steering wheel for a few moments, admiring this landscape painted before me. The last time I had ever seen something so picturesque was almost certainly on the wall in a museum.

  Down the hill, a bit of movement caught my eye. I gazed into the distance to see a smooth tan torso sticking out of the lake. It was Bennington. His arms were huge, as big as his chest. If his skin had been green, he would have been the Incredible Hulk. His hair was wet and slicked back and I could see the hint of dirt from the water washed over his face and body. My imagination went wild about the part of him I could not see submerged beneath the water, bringing to mind catalog after catalog I had saved from Undergear or International Male.

  A ring of silver encircled him in the water. At first, I thought it was just the reflection of the sun, but sudden splashes of water around him told me that the circle was actually fish. There were tons of fish floating on the surface of the water around him, either dead or somehow stunned. Either the fish too were attracted to Bennington and in awe of his masculine splendor, or I had made a date with Swampthing. I watched as Bennington stared down at the water, pushing his way through the crowd of fish and gently picking up each one and examining it with the careful touch of a doctor or scientist. I blinked hard, wondering if my eyes were deceiving me, trying to get this peculiar site out of my head.

  Bennington turned to wade back toward the bank and caught sight of me in my car up the slope. A huge grin came across his face, polished white shining through patches of mud on his tan face. My eyes were still fixated on his body, having forgotten all about the odd sea of floating fish. I watched as his legs slowly emerged from the lake; he was wearing thigh high black rubber boots and blue jeans which clung to his massive legs like sandwich wrap. He held a finger up in the air to me, telling me to wait a minute, and then knelt back down to the edge of the lake. He cupped water in his hands and splashed his face, chest, and back to wash away the remnants of algae and dirt. The back of his neck and shoulders glowed red from a sunburn. He looked as though his work, and the sun, had exhausted him.

  Bennington climbed the hill and approached the side of the cabin where I saw a pipe with a shower head jutting out of the wood. With the pull of a chain, fresh cold water sprayed over his body. His shoulders flinched just a bit from the shock of the ice cold water. His face was raised to the shower head as the water spilled over his body, his eyes closed; his large hands glided over his chest and sides to rub away the gritty film left by the lake water. What Harlequin Romance had I died and become part of?

  Like a bashful child sneaking into a room when he thinks no one is looking, I stepped out of my car and leaned hard against the door to get it to shut without making a noise. I kept my eyes on Bennington as he finished his quick sexy shower. He pulled the chain again to stop the water and then walked over to me, still dripping wet. In my head, I lusted for his confidence.

  I was nothing more than a jester in his court now. He had been a timid little mouse on my home turf at The Castle, on the patio, and in the coffee house. Now, I was in his element, this forest, this lake, this cabin, where he was at home and more at ease. This was his place. I somehow knew that Bennington was not the type of person that would mock me for coming out here though, for being miles away from the nearest shopping mall or hair salon. Despite the day dreams of the sex we had yet to have, and the view of this gorgeous man now walking toward me, there was a part of me deep inside that was at peace here outside this cabin, beside this lake in the middle of nowhere. This summer so rocked!

  “Hi. Thanks for coming.”

  “Thanks for inviting me, Bennington.”

  “You can call me Ben.”

  “Okay, Ben.”

  You could call me whipped.

  A few awkward seconds of silence passed. Should we shake hands? He couldn’t hug me because he was still wet, although I don’t think I would have cared. I tried to look at his face instead of at his huge quarter-size nipples.

  “So, what’s with those fish? Are they dead?”

  “Not at all.”

  He motioned toward the lake and I bent to look around him. The floating fish were all gone.

  “I’m an electrofisherman.”

  “I’m sorry to say, but I have no idea what that is,” I said.

  “It’s okay. Few people do. Basically, I go around to lakes and ponds and shock the water which stuns the fish for a few minutes. They all float to the top of the water and I count them and record the numbers and the different breeds. It’s mostly for conservation efforts, but some individuals like us to take inventory of their ponds for them.”

  “You shock the water? Isn’t that dangerous?” I was singing Peter Gabriel’s Shock the Monkey in my head.

  “Well, I’m not in the water when I do it, and no, it only knocks the fish unconscious for a few minutes. So, you have to be a fast counter.”

  “And you are counting this whole lake by yourself?”

  “Not exactly. I’m just recording the different breeds here and taking estimates of males versus females.”

  “Are you sure you are gay?”

  “Yeah. Why do you ask?”

  “All this talk about fish!” I laughed.

  “It’s what I like to do,” he said, ignoring my joke.

  “And I guess I should respect that, right?” I was afraid the conversation was growing a bit serious.

  “Listen, I invited you out here because I thought you might like to see that not all gay people are wrapped up in spending their weekends at the club because they are afraid they are going to miss out on something. You miss out on enough by wasting your time there. There’s a lot more to the world besides crowded concrete dance floors and drag shows. I thought you might like an escape, that’s all. Maybe I was wrong.”

  His remarks hit me like a brick wall. Any other time I would have bit back, taking his words as an insult, and snapped at him with some rude bitchy comment. I held my tongue though. Ben was right. The getaway that I needed was right in front of my eyes, and a beautiful teacher was waiting to show me the way; but unlike the muck from the lake, the city had left its grime on me and it was as if I refused to sponge it off.

  “No! I’d really like to stay. I’m sorry if I offended you. Today, or even back when we first met. Let’s start over right now. This seems like as good a place as any to do just that,” I said.

  “Okay.” He stood silent.

  “Okay. Good,” I said with a nod of approval, staring down at the ringlet of water that had formed at his feet from dripping off his body and his jeans. The sun had quickly begun to dry his skin and hair.

  I reached down through my open car window to retrieve the brown paper bag containing the spoons and ice cream. The bag was soaked with condensation at the bottom and had begun to tear. I handed him one of the plastic spoons and ripped the bag open the rest of the way to reveal the box of ice cream. He smiled.

  I opened one end of the box and offered it to him. Like a polite young boy, he gently gripped the box but allowed me to continue to hold it as he dipped his spoon into the soft white cream for a scoop of the perfect treat to solving a hot summer day like this. He leaned against the car beside me as we passed the box back and forth, slowly devouring its milky white contents. He looked down at me and smiled, saying nothing, a look of content on his face as the misery of the sun faded from his mind.

  We threw our spoons into the empty box and it was then that he reached for me. Engulfing my body, he wrapped his huge arms around me. His kiss was sweet and cold, from the taste of vanilla still on his lips and tongue. I savored the musky smell of sweat and lake from his sticky skin. I pressed my hands against his back, still holding the empty ice cream box. A sigh of reli
ef escaped from his kiss as I held the cold box against the burn on his back and gently glided it up his backbone.

  Ben turned toward the car, his back now facing me. I moved the wet cardboard back and forth across his shoulder blades and neck, soothing the redness as it seemed to absorb every droplet of condensation and melted cream that was left. When the box was at last sticky and the same temperature as my hand, I let it fall to the ground. I leaned against his cooled back and wrapped an arm around his waist to stroke his abdomen, savoring this tender moment between us.

  “So, what do you do?” Ben asked.

  “Who? Me?”

  “Yep. You.”

  “I work in retail. Not as exciting as electrofishing, I guess.”

  “No, tell me what you really do?”

  “I just did.”

  “Not that,” he said.

  “What then? What do you mean, what do I really do?”

  “In bed.”

  “Wanna find out?” I teased.

  Without another word said, he took me by the hand and pulled me toward the cabin door. Inside, I spotted a massive brick fireplace flanked by leather furniture. There was a small kitchen and dining table in the back. Stairs to the side of the cabin led to a loft overhead where I spied the edge of a bed. Ben led me straight up the stairs. The bed was a downy pile of goose feathered pillows and flannel blankets. I felt like I was in a hunting lodge, but there was no time to admire the animal heads on the wall. I was pushed onto the bed by an animal instead.