Rainbow Milk

by Paul Mendez

  The orchestral opening chords of Anita Baker’s “Sweet Love” announced themselves. His parents’ wedding reception was held in the assembly hall of a local secondary school for which one of the elders was a caretaker, so they were able to get a discount, and it was there that his mother and Graham enjoyed their first dance, as a married couple, to “Sweet Love.”

  Jesse, sitting, pulled down the waistband of Rufus’s trunks. He weighed the heavy balls in his hand. He kissed and sniffed Rufus all around, looking in his eyes as if they were making an unspoken vow. He felt as if he could fall in love, and didn’t know whether it was real or the cocaine working. Rufus looked so calm and serene, his eyes and skin so clear, his lips so full and pink. There was so much of him. Jesse felt an inner upsurge of desire, to open, to explore, to devour. Rufus’s balls and pubes smelled of that sweet male tang unique to the crotch. What if they could live like man and wife? What would other people think? What would other people’s opinions matter, if they were in love? He could feel his eye sockets pulling. He had never seen so clearly.

  Rufus sat down and put his arm round Jesse as he pinched off the end of the joint and sparked up, hovering his hand over it out of habit, as he was used to smoking outdoors in dark, hidden places where the wind was his enemy. It was a slow burner that hung heavily from his lip, and the smoke he inhaled was opaque. Rufus crossed one leg over the other, and Jesse rested a hand on his thigh.

  “Are you warm enough?” Rufus asked, opening his body.

  “Yes,” said Jesse, but he leaned back into him anyway. Rufus’s chest hair tickled his nostrils.

  “Do you have anything to do tomorrow?” asked Rufus.

  “No,” said Jesse. The innocent pop of “When I Think of You” by Janet Jackson. He wanted him so much. To draw his finger down from the top of his spine all the way down then under and over and up until he found his lips. To kiss the soft skin inside his collarbone. To nibble his heavy pink earlobe. To watch the hairs grow from his chin and the little pulse in his neck flutter. To hover his nose over his open mouth, smelling his beery breath. To stare into his eyes until he had to stop, until his whole world changed with the batting of his eyelids. To feel his muscles: the traps of his shoulders all the way down the thickness of his forearms. To nestle in his chest and belly and wet them with his happy tears. To suck on his nipples as if they would draw milk. To be warm and cared for. To lift one great leg up, then the other, making his knee joints click. To sniff him all about like a dog. To get under the covers and live there. To feel him moving around in his throat. He rolled the lit end of the spliff along the inner rim of the ashtray and handed it to Rufus, and waited to hear the crackling of the end burning over his head as he combed his fingers through golden pubic hair and picked out his belly button fluff. Rufus had a hand in Jesse’s hair, massaging down to his scalp.

  Jesse slid forwards off the sofa, careful not to disturb the table, and knelt between Rufus’s legs as he sat back smoking the spliff. He hoped he wasn’t making too much noise, slurping and making fart sounds. He made Rufus grunt, stretch out his legs and tip back his head, looking up at Rufus as he grew in his mouth, watching his eyes move in and out of focus, only coming up when he could see that Rufus needed to use the ashtray. Rufus leaned forward over Jesse’s back to tamp the spliff, before wiping Jesse’s mouth dry with one hand and holding the spliff in front of Jesse to let him take a couple of long tokes, white ribbons and rings of smoke dancing around his face. He admired Rufus’s body, his paunchy belly, his spread pectorals, his hard nipples, the fine covering of blond hair. He went down again until he had to be stopped. “I don’t want to come yet,” Rufus said, as he cupped Jesse by the head in his huge warm hands, and lifted him; Jesse forgot the table was behind, almost upending it, and everything on it, including the beers, with his arse. There was a moment of terror before they both laughed and fell into a wet kiss.

  “You’re not getting cold, are you?” said Rufus.

  “No,” said Jesse. He was restless, and the sweat glands in his armpits tingled. He hadn’t eaten.

  “Do you want some water? More beer?”

  Rufus was speaking to him in an undertone, like they were a couple.

  “Beer please,” he said, against himself.

  Jesse followed Rufus into the kitchen. There could be nothing in a room so impudent as a naked middle-aged white male arse, shapely and comely, meaty and bouncy. There it was! Graham, without the almost-transparent underwear. Jesse pressed him up against the sink from behind, his dick so hard it was almost numb, Rufus grinding against him. He was about to give his first fuck and lose his virginity, and it was for this that he wished he had been disfellowshipped. He wanted to treat Rufus like other boys treated girls.

  “I wanna fuck you right ’ere in the kitchen,” Jesse told him as he reached round to tweak his nipples, making him moan and whimper.

  “No. Let’s go next door,” Rufus laughed, pushing Jesse’s hands away.

  The lamplit bedroom was filled by the bed. Jesse paced around in the doorway sipping his beer, watching Rufus fold down the duvet, lay a towel, then climb across it on all fours to access a drawer in the bedside table, from which he produced a tube of lube and a small brown bottle with a skull-and-crossbones label, like the one being passed around at the Coleherne.

  “What’s that?” said Jesse, climbing onto the bed and reaching over to put his glass on the bedside table.

  “The poppers?” Rufus asked. “Have you never done poppers before?”

  “No,” said Jesse, as he climbed on top of him and pushed his tongue in his mouth. Rufus was twice his size, and Jesse could sense he had the potential to crush him if he chose to. He closed a hand around Rufus’s throat and licked the gap between his two front teeth. Rufus pulled himself up and took the poppers bottle down from the table, unscrewed the cap, covered a nostril with a thumb and inhaled the gas up the other, swapped round, then invited Jesse to do the same, and said “Not too hard,” as Jesse felt a drop of fluid shoot up his nose and start to burn, but he was okay. Whatever poppers were went straight to his head, made him dizzy and his heart thump. They melted onto the bed top and tail and gargled each other’s dicks as if it was normal, then Rufus lifted a leg over Jesse’s head and twisted his body until he was on his front. Jesse took his time with that first taste, slightly peppery on the end of his tongue, then mushed his face in. Rufus took another sniff of the poppers, closed the bottle and lifted himself up onto all fours, reaching back between his legs to pass the bottle to Jesse, and he carefully opened the bottle, took a deep sniff up each nostril and kept his presence of mind long enough to secure the screw cap back on.

  Jesse’s head pounded like a bad hangover headache, but without pain. He contemplated the huge, wide open arse in front of him, and smashed his face into it, concentrating all his energy through his tongue. Rufus moaned like he was crying, his face squashed into a pillow; Jesse peered down Rufus’s back, slanting to his silver temples. He saw in the corner of his eye his reflection in the mirrored wardrobe doors, and it was so strange, the sight of a small black boy with long eyelashes, who didn’t look old enough to be doing what he was doing. He had to come up, to breathe, to let himself live in the moment. He liked what he saw; he loved it. This was what he wanted and had tried so hard to imagine. This was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  “Fuck me until you come,” said Rufus, as he spun round, grabbed the poppers and sniffed, sniffed, sniffed until his lips turned blue.

  Chapter 3

  Jesse and his mother were at the wool shop in West Bromwich. The floor, the shelves and lights were bright white, and the walls and floor cases were stacked high with balls of wool in every colour. He ran around them with his vroom-vroom police car, pretending they were skyscrapers in America. His mother had banned him from revving up his vroom-vroom police car in public places, warning him he would lose it. Women smiled at h
im and told his mother how beautiful and handsome he was. It was strange when a man walked in, wearing bright colours and big glasses, but he smiled and looked nice and went straight for the pastels.

  “Breakout” by Swing Out Sister came on the store radio. “I love this song!” Jesse rejoiced, and all the women, and the man, turned around and laughed. His mother was being taught how to knit by Sister McCarthy. His mother liked yellow, green and orange, colours that would work for a boy or a girl, and white, for a big shawl. She wondered if a vivid magenta that matched her nail varnish might work for a cardigan pattern for herself that she’d found in Prima magazine, and she held a packet of gold triangular buttons up against it that a shop assistant said matched her earrings. The same shop assistant held open for Jesse a bag of Opal Fruits, his favourite sweets, and he took a purple one, his favourite flavour, but then she said, Tek a couple if ya want, bab!, so he put his vroom-vroom police car in his pocket and dug out all the purple ones. Them mar favourite, too! beamed the shop assistant, who had lovely thick red hair like the lead singer from T’Pau and a green jumper with bobbles on. Doe tek all of ’em! said his mother. He’s alright! said the shop assistant, kindly. What d’ya say, then? said his mother. Thank you, Jesse said, angelically. Aww, he’s ever so ’andsome, int ’e, said the shop assistant. His mother had just told him that he might be getting a new little brother or sister, so he would have to be polite and show them a good example even though they weren’t born yet. He was so excited. He hoped it would be a brother. He liked the boys at school, one in particular, a boy called Lee who went into the Wendy house with him and closed the door; they hugged and touched each other between the legs. The nice man paid for his balls of wool in baby pink, pale yellow, pale green, light grey and a bright electric blue, and smiled and waved at Jesse as he left.

  Jesse revved up his vroom-vroom police car, hoping his mother wouldn’t notice, as she stopped sharp and dropped her basket. It clattered on the floor and the balls of wool rolled out. The vroom-vroom police car crashed into one of the floor cases. It all went quiet apart from the music, for a second, before the gasps started. The bright red spots between his mother’s feet stood out on the white tiles. She started to cry and clutch her stomach. The red-haired shop assistant ran over to put her hand on his mother’s shoulder, then led her into the back, asking if she was pregnant; she nodded and burst into a wail. Jesse was left standing alone, chewing three purple Opal Fruits all at once until he felt pain in his temples. He thought he should leave his vroom-vroom police car exactly where it was. An ambulance took them to the hospital, where he was sent to play in a little nursery with other children whose brothers and sisters or parents were sick.

  * * *

  —

  Deep inside Rufus, Jesse heard “Breakout” for the first time since. Your dick is so big your dick is so big your dick is so big…Rufus was in front of him digging his fists into the mattress, moaning, arse bouncing, craning his neck over his shoulder, watching himself in the mirrored doors, telling him, Come in your daddy. Come in your daddy. It felt so good. There was so much to fuck. Jesse held on to Rufus’s waist, positioned himself at the right angle, got into a stride and hit top form just as Rufus let go of all the tension in his body. Jesse could’ve passed out from the height of his orgasm. Rufus slithered off him, spun round and made Jesse squirm as he cleaned everything off.

  Flat on his back while he caught his breath, Jesse relit the spliff in the ashtray, thinking about how his mother always used to laugh at Yazz for being so tall, thin and light-skinned. “The Only Way Is Up” was Number One in the charts when his twin half-sisters were born—Ruth and Esther, from the Bible, like Jesse, though she hadn’t known that at the time. Rufus came back from the toilet.

  “So what are you doing tomorrow?” he said, again, as he collapsed back on the bed, front first, then twisting his body and pulling himself up to the bedhead. It satisfied Jesse to see how much he had made Rufus sweat. He too was soaking wet and his stomach muscles were visible.

  “Nothing,” said Jesse, watching the smoke rise on the still air. “How about you?”

  Rufus looked as if he had something on his mind.

  “Nothing,” he said. He was lying on his back with one foot crossed over the other. “Nothing.”

  “You alright?”

  “Yes, yes. Well, as a matter of fact, no. Something, er, something happened at work,” he said, pulling himself further up his pillow and headboard. His jaw was rocking around unnaturally. “I—do you know what—I absolutely by mistake left with a piece of jewellery I’d been trying on and forgot to take off before I left, I mean, it happens. My assistant arrived stupidly early the next morning to—to—to do the inventory and, obviously, just, doing her fucking job reported the thing missing of course, I took it off here, and, forgot—to take it back to work with me, stupidly, so, yes I can see that, to all intents and purposes it looked like it had gone missing under my…watch, er, almost literally!”

  He laughed maniacally at his own joke.

  “So what’s happ’nin’?” Jesse asked, just as he noticed his own jaw moving from side to side.

  “Well, er, not good, er, head office have, er, suspended me. Pending further inquiries.”

  “But did you try to steal it?” said Jesse, realising he would rather continue rocking his jaw than try to stop it.

  “Of course not!”

  “So why’nt ya just tek it back to work wi’ya?”

  “You see I can’t. I can’t, because I’m not allowed on the premises. You could go down to the store! The CCTV cameras are on all day, obviously, but…no part of the store is ever under constant surveillance.” He shifted himself to sit up on his knees, facing Jesse, and worked it all out in his head as he spoke. “You’ll go down to the store. I’ll tell you when the camera won’t be looking and you can just pop it back and leave! Easy! Stuff’s gone missing and then turned up in plain sight plenty of times.”

  “Okay…” said Jesse, unsurely. “What about the security guard’n that?”

  “Oh, don’t worry about S—, he’s a friend of mine. I—I’ll—I’ll pay you, obviously,” he said, as an afterthought. “A hundred quid on completion of the job? Another line? Spliff?”

  * * *

  —

  He got back to the hostel just after eleven on Sunday. Blaise was in bed straining to read a short French paperback in natural light. They wished each other a cursory good morning, but next to no sound came from Jesse’s throat.

  “You are fine?” asked Blaise. His cynical features masked a more modest personality; Jesse saw that Blaise was new in London too, and friendless, though that conversation would have to wait.

  “Yeh, thanks,” he said, and managed a quick smile that discouraged further talk. Shattered and cold, he stripped off regardless and climbed into bed. He had breezed through the hostel door, past the weekend receptionist, straight up the stairs two at a time and into his room. His dick felt like the next-day muscles of a new gym goer who does too much too soon.

  Rufus had awoken him from what was at most a couple of hours’ sleep, and told him he had to go. Already showered and dressed and wearing glasses, he offered neither breakfast nor coffee. Before Jesse had fallen asleep, it had felt—in certain moments, especially in the five minutes after a line, above all in the thirty seconds after a hit of poppers—as if he and Rufus would be forever inseparable, but as Jesse left the flat Rufus shut the door immediately behind him. It had taken Jesse a disconcerting moment, as normal people walked past down the Old Brompton Road, to realise the street door only opened via a button on the adjacent wall; he felt like a rodent in a humane trap. There hadn’t been a right moment to ask for Rufus’s number, though Jesse at least knew where he lived.

  Two black women had come out of McDonald’s as he walked by, looked him up and down and stopped laughing. His jeans were too tight to be wearing on the Lord’s big S
unday, and it might even have been apparent to their horror that he was without underwear. Their eyes withered him as if they had seen everything he had done. The bright morning, even if it wasn’t sunny, pursued him like paparazzi. He hadn’t seen himself in a mirror, or washed his face. His nose felt like a prosthesis. There was some tightness to his cheek, which he feared might be cum, so he licked his hand and rubbed it, and dried it with the sleeve of his bomber jacket. In bed at the hostel, he could still feel Rufus in his throat and around his dick, and smell the sweat from his balls and crack that clung in his nostrils and kept him intoxicated, even while his sinuses were so congested. His hands smelled horribly of lube, but once in bed he felt too exhausted to go to the bathroom and wash them.

  Rufus might have said something like, That was absolutely fucking mind-blowing, really the deepest, most intense fuck I’ve ever had in my life, but we can’t see each other again. I’m not looking for a relationship. Or, You’ve shut me up for six months, at least. Honestly, I can barely even walk you to the door, and anyway, it’s time to go back to the real world. Maybe we can see each other again. Let me take your number, and if and when the right time comes, I’ll call you. Even, See you around at the Coleherne. Instead, he sat in silence, with an open binder full of papers and a laptop, muttering a clipped goodbye as Jesse left.