I peel off my sweaty T-shirt, stuff it into the messenger bag that’s still slung over my right shoulder, and plop onto the bench to watch the sun crouch down behind the Beresford, the twin-towered San Remo, and the other buildings of the Upper West Side. Then I slink along the dirt paths of the Ramble, around its oaks, maples, and glacial rocks, and stop near a footbridge spanning a brook. The minutes slip by, taking the last bit of natural light with them.
A clear night here turns strangers into silhouettes. But on a cloudy night, like tonight, the eternal lights of New York City are captured and then refracted in an orange glow that peeks under tree tops and reveals glimpses: shiny Adidas pants with racer stripes hugging boy hips; a nipple ring glimmering in the light down of a defined chest; a knit cap above a square jaw.
Two guys stare each other down like gunslingers about to draw. I hear footsteps. I glance behind me, see tousled hair and lips forming a soundless coo.
Punks are so hot, the guy I’m looking at says in a voice as serpentine as his fingers sliding through my bleach-blond dreadlocks. His hand doesn’t stop at my shoulders, where my hair ends, but meanders around my messenger bag and then traces down my lateral muscles. I suck in summer air, arch my back. He slips his fingers inside my spiked belt and combat pants, snapping the band of the neon yellow spandex shorts beneath.
He leans in closer, till his chest hair tickles my back. I smell sandalwood and sweat. I turn toward him.
Like what you see? he asks.
He steps into a shard of that orange glow: stubbly cheeks, the indent of tight abs above his profiled hips. He’s Middle Eastern, maybe Latino. It’s too hard to tell out here. He wears jeans and, like me, no shirt.
I nod.
I reach down, feel along the zipper of his jeans. The bulge beneath pushes back. It’s never hard for me to get laid out here. I mean, I might gorge on a pint of Ben and Jerry’s for breakfast but I burn it off before noon and don’t have an ounce of fat on my body, and all the biking has hardened my calves, my thighs, my ass. But still, this guy—Snake Boy, that’s what I’ll call him on account of his voice and fingers—he’s so fucking hot.
We step off the path, back up against the bark of an oak, and I’m rubbing his rounded biceps. They’re so slick with sweat that my hands glide. I lean in and exhale heat into his ear and massage it with my tongue. He moans and says, I love your pink nipples. He clenches down on one of them, shakes it around in his teeth.
I unzip his jeans and he tugs down my combat pants, which land on the ground with a metallic thunk ’cause of the spiked belt. His cock bounces out and mine is still sheathed beneath the spandex until he reaches in and swings it around, my cock head brushing against the fabric for two seconds of too much sensation before it’s free. And there’s that feeling of being naked outdoors, my hips so sensitized to the slight swirl of breeze.
Snake Boy licks my neck, looks up into my eyes, and maybe it’s the darkness but his black lashes look like eyeliner.
Here, he says, breathe. He holds a small bottle to my nose. When I inhale, the pungent chemicals burn my nostrils, everything melts, and I’m just a flushed face and a beating heart. And a stiff cock. Which he slides a hand up and down. I’m jerking him off too. With my other hand, I probe the spot right behind his balls. I’m sucking his tongue and the whole world is reduced to me and him. We’re pulsing flesh, a single heartbeat.
Suddenly everything turns bright white as if the sun has risen to its zenith. But it’s nine o’clock at night. When my eyes flash open, I see that the light emanates from what must be an electric cop car, the kind with a silent engine. I yank my pants up as fast as I can. Too late, way too fucking late. My hands shake. Red and blue lights flash behind the white. Snake Boy grabs my hand and says Run, and he runs and I stumble and then run. Next thing, sirens scream and hard-shelled feet clomp the earth behind us and our hands break apart so we can run faster—through brush, I feel stings, know my calves just got shredded, but it doesn’t even hurt; up over this steep knoll and slipping, tumbling down the other side; into more brush, Snake Boy’s still right in front of me. We’re long-stepping rock to rock along a narrow stream and then running on the other side. We duck down into a gully. Angry voices, radio static, the crunch of foliage. These sounds get louder. And recede. My arteries throb, my chest heaves, and Snake Boy has his hands on his knees as he draws in ragged breaths. We stay crouched for fifteen minutes until he says he knows a place where they won’t find us.
A year ago, when I was twenty-five, I first stumbled into the Ramble. Since then, I’ve made it the finale to my evening commute. The Ramble is a micro-forest in the heart of Central Park. Paths grip cliffsides, double back, and meander along slopes. The dense brush and trees provide an infinite variety of alcoves. At its southernmost point, this cock-shaped peninsula projects into Azalea Pond, a topographical totem to the men who have been coming here for over a century. And still they come: uptown boys in do-rags, downtown artists wearing paint-spattered pants, even middle-aged men from the Upper East Side. Just trees and rocks and sky and us.
And, obviously, cops. They patrol in vehicles or wear plain-clothes to try to surprise us. Queers scatter under the beams of headlights or, after a big bust, line up in handcuffs.
It’s not like I wouldn’t have run. I just got totally startled. I mean, you should’ve seen what I did to the cops last month after they fucked with me. I had just walked down the gravel path of the peninsula. At its proverbial head, this cop shined a light in my face.
Did you lose your dog? he asked me.
I saw a poodle around here somewhere, another cop said.
I turned around to leave and they got into their souped-up golf carts and followed me, the headlights blazing on my backside. My face burned, not with shame but rage. They finally swerved away and the night draped back around me.
I remembered reading about a tactic that eco-warriors had used to save national forests. They dragged fallen trees and other objects from the forest floor into the logging roads, creating blockades. The logging trucks backed out; the forest lived another day.
So I began dragging rocks, branches, and decaying tree trunks into the paths. Some queers looked over at me with raised eyebrows or walked a wide U around my mounting fortifications.
We have to bash back, I said. Fuck Giuliani. My exhortations were accompanied by the sound of long branches splashing through fallen leaves.
A queen in a leather trench coat and a shaved head stopped and smiled. Girlfriend, she said, you bangin’ on the wasps’ nest tonight, ain’t you?
I prayed no undercovers would see or hear me, but I didn’t stop. Not until I had erected three barricades along a path that was several feet wider than a car. Unplanned, the barricades went from smallest to tallest. The tallest was over eight feet (a fallen tree with an umbrella of intact branches provided the base). Behind it was the gazebo, the place the cops most love to surprise us—that’s where group scenes often happen.
Five minutes passed. Some cops in an electric car drove in to start another sweep of the area. They pulled up to the lowest of the barricades and…a crash, a scraping of rock and wood on metal.
Their lights started flashing and the vehicle remained stationary for a full minute before continuing forward. They were heading toward the next barricade.
Other queers stood in clumps, watching, waiting. Some of them snickered.
The cops hit the next barricade without seeing it, the sound of damage much louder. This time, the car didn’t move. One of them hit the sirens and must have radioed for backup, because an SUV spun down another path, headed toward the gazebo, lights flashing. The driver slammed the brakes right before the third barricade.
Within five minutes, a sea of red and blue lights pulsed along the peripherals of the Ramble as dozens of backup units arrived. I unchained my bike and pedaled out, laughing. Even if I’d fucked up everyone’s cruising for the night, I still felt freer than when I’d arrived.
I keep telling Sn
ake Boy—actually, his name’s Ahmed—Thanks man, really, thanks so much, I just totally froze back there. He smiles and rubs my arm and says he’s happy we got away. We creep through the shadows. Luckily, so many guys are wandering down paths or moaning in the woods or standing there rubbing their crotches that we should be able to blend.
We walk across an elevated footpath with metal hand railings. Then Ahmed points down into the ravine on the left, and after my eyes adjust, I see, just barely, a steep staircase gouged into the cliffside. We hop the railing and descend the steps into the darkness. At the bottom, we’re alone, obscured from almost every angle.
I pull my messenger bag over my head, set it on the moist ground. Then I slide Ahmed’s shirt up, suck one of his tight, hard nipples. He massages my scalp, says Oh baby, you’re so pretty, look at that hot ass of yours. I trace the back of his right thigh and he grins.
So it’s not too long before I’m practically crawling on top of him. I’m chewing his lips. He unbuttons the top of my pants and pushes them down, and there they go again, landing with that same thunk, and even in this ravine, the warm air brushes my pelvis and my skin feels so new.
Pebbles tumble down near us. We jump like we just stepped on a live wire with bare feet. The sound of falling pebbles turns into the unmistakable even rhythm of footsteps coming down the staircase. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Pants. Up. Button. I can’t get the fucking button to—
I jerk my head up, see a mahogany-skinned man with baggy jeans so low that the fly of his boxers peeks out. His shirt is hooked over his head, bunched up along his shoulders, exposing his worked-out chest muscles.
Keep about your business, he says, reaching up and adjusting the black bandana he wears with the knot tied above his forehead, gangsta-style. I see another guy behind him who’s chubby and cute, like someone’s kid brother. He wears a football jersey that hangs to his knees.
I glance toward Ahmed and he looks down for a second and then shrugs a Sure, why not. My fingers unclench and my pants, since I never did get them buttoned, drop for the third time tonight. Just have to be more careful, I promise myself. The yellow spandex shorts glow in the semidarkness.
Then the guy with the black bandana saunters toward me and nudges Ahmed away. He reaches out to the small of my back, grabs a fistful of spandex, and tugs it up until I can feel it burrowing into my asscrack. I turn my head to get a better look at him. Up close like this, I can see the details of his tattoos: Christ on a cross, left bicep; a dragon stretching from right pec to over his shoulder. He pulls down his checkered boxers and his cock springs out, pops up once, twice. I swear, even in these shadows, I can see its ropey veins throbbing. Nobody’s speaking.
Black Bandana grabs a handful of my dreadlocks and pushes my head forward till my chest is lying against the warm rocks of the stairs and my ass is pointing into the air. He slaps his cock on my lower back several times.
You like that black dick? he says.
I hear the crinkle of plastic and turn around to see him rolling a condom down his shaft. He slaps his cock on my back again and then spreads my asscheeks and runs it up and down between them. The guy with the football jersey moves a hand around the outside of my hole and I feel the cold jelly wetness of lubrication, so much of it that it oozes down my legs.
Black Bandana smacks my ass. I gasp. My chest stays flat against the staircase. He sticks his cock near my hole and I feel rabbit-thrusts, him just toying with the idea of fucking me. I breathe deep again. He pushes for real this time, but even with all the lube, it’s too big. I cry out, forgetting about the cops, the breeze, the other guys around me, everything but that bull’s-eye of pain and him saying, Come on, nigga. Open that ass. Open. That. Ass.
I’m white as white but it’s so hot that he says that and I don’t know why it gets me off but it does. He slides his cock in slow, prying me open, and I’m clenching my asshole, trying to resist ’cause it does hurt but then his pelvis is flush against me. He’s in.
My cock lifts and lands back on the stone. I reach down to stroke it but Black Bandana grabs my arm, stops me.
He tightens his abdominals harder and then his thighs start smacking into my ass and my whole body jolts with each smack. Manhattan still hums somewhere in the background and I add my moan to its incessant drone.
Ahmed walks around us, up to the rock stair that my head hovers above. He sits there, legs on either side of me.
Come on, suck it, he says. He sticks his cock in my mouth and I slurp. He rubs the tops of his fingers along my cheek. My body keeps rocking to the cadence of Black Bandana’s thrusts. I can’t get my mouth moving to the right counter-rhythm. So Ahmed grabs the back of my head and jerks it toward him each time his hips push forward.
I roll my eyes to the left and see the guy in the football jersey jerking off.
My cock is so hard but I still can’t grab it ’cause Black Bandana keeps my right arm behind my back and I need the other to stay propped up. My knees feel like they’re bruising.
Yeah, nigga, yeah, Black Bandana says. I don’t hear anything else anymore and my ass doesn’t hurt, it’s warm ripples spreading all the way to my head and then even further outward, it’s tingles so strong my toes curl, I breathe heavy and steady, and my eyes seal tight like I’m seeing into the beyond. Ahmed keeps rubbing the back of my head and fucking my face. I hear sirens from far away and they’re getting closer but we don’t stop. I taste the pretzel salt of pre-cum. They can’t stop us. They never could.
THE BOY IN THE MIDDLE
Thom Wolf
The boy was waiting by the east gate of the university, just as we had planned. He stood at the bus stop, slouched against a post, smoking a miniature cigar. He wore a dirty pair of jeans and a navy hooded sweater.
His profile had said he was eighteen but he looked a year or two younger. I considered driving on without stopping but as he was waiting outside an adult college I let the age thing go. He looked up as I pulled over, threw his smoke into the gutter and got in the car.
“Hi,” he said.
I looked him over carefully. His hair was dark and cut military short. He had deep-set eyes and a small stud pierced his bottom lip. His mouth was slightly uneven and sullen. Kind of cute, I thought, despite the attitude.
“Do you still want this?” I asked.
“Sure I do. I’m here aren’t I?”
Jack was waiting in the living room when I brought the boy home. He was shirtless, a can of beer resting on his hairy belly. His eyes ignited on sight of the youth and he stroked his crotch as a mark of esteem.
The boy said his name was Jared. It seemed to suit. At fifty-five, Jack and I had been together for more years than Jared had been alive. If our age concerned him, it didn’t show. From his first contact, an email containing a nude photo, Jared had actively courted us. The details in his emails were explicit, spelling out his need for older men. Much older men. I want to get fucked, he claimed; fisted, double penetrated. I thought his claims were over the top, just a tease, but the boy persisted until finally, six weeks later, he was here.
“Are you clean, boy?” Jack asked.
The boy answered like a soldier. “Yes, sir.”
“Your asshole?”
“Absolutely. Ready for anything.”
Satisfied, Jack popped the fly on his jeans, hauling out his big semihard dick. The boy got on his knees and swallowed. Jack put both hands on the back of his head and forced him down. Jared spluttered. I went to the kitchen for a beer. When I came back into the room, Jack was fully stiff and the boy’s lips slipped up and down his pole at a constant rhythm. I lingered at the edge of the scene, watching. Jack told him to open his eyes and look at him while he sucked. The boy complied and emerged almost angelic with wide brown eyes, a furrowed brow, and his wet mouth stuffed with cock. Jack’s hands remained on his head, guiding the pace.
I knelt behind the boy and slid my hands around him, unfastening his jeans. He wore cheap blue shorts that slipped from his ass with a whisper. He c
arried a little puppy fat around his rump. His skin was very white and his asscheeks were heavy, dusted with dark hair. His ass was ample in my hands. I opened him, looking into the hairy crack, at the rosy pink hole in the black. Breathing in the savory scent of his butt, I moved closer. His body shuddered when I began to rim him, swirling my tongue around the seam of his asshole, tasting fresh sweat. I slid a hand between his legs, feeling hairy, low-hanging nuts and a small cock that was still soft. I reveled in the youth of his body. It seemed unformed, underdeveloped compared with the flesh I was used to holding.
The lube was in a drawer beside the TV. I slicked up my fingers and started on his ass, sliding one into his warm tract, then quickly working three digits past his ring. Greasing his hot ass, I looked along the line of his spine toward Jack, whose eyes were half lidded as the boy slobbered on his dick. Despite my efforts I couldn’t get a fourth finger into his tight snatch, his ring refusing to yield any further, but I was tired of finger-fucking, I was ready for the real thing.
I threw my T-shirt into the room behind me and shucked my jeans over my ass. I fisted another handful of lube over my cock and maneuvred the head into the crack, nudging his sloppy hole. He took the head easily, but his body tensed when I slipped deeper inside. Jack tightened his hold on Jared’s head, forcing the boy’s face into his lap.
“Take it, you slut. This is what you wanted.”
Dick fully inserted, my hips pressed against his fat ass. I held him by the waist, routing him to my cock. We fucked the boy from both ends, stuffing his ass and mouth. I watched as tiny beads of sweat began to form on the smooth white curve of his spine. His ability to take it so passively, without complaint, urged me to go further, harder, faster, rougher. Soon, rivulets of sweat trailed down my own back, prompted by the rapid motion of my hips. His big asscheeks wobbled under the onslaught of my pelvis.
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