To the Max

by Julie Lynn Hayes

  He tilted his head and smiled at me again. I was totally undone and had to work hard not to let drool spill over my lips. “Why don’t you move a little closer? I don’t bite,” he said softly, “at least not right away….”

  Until that moment I had been unaware that I had jammed myself up against the passenger door. What the hell was the matter with me, anyway? I relaxed my grip on the door handle and moved over, inching my way, waiting for him to tell me when I had moved far enough—which didn’t happen—and I only stopped because my hip was in such close communication with his hip that if I moved over any more, I’d be sitting in his lap. That thought alone was enough to make my cock twitch in anticipation. “Better?”

  “Better,” he echoed, taking his right hand and laying it lightly on top of my left leg, his slender fingers softly stroking the material.

  Knowing what I did about my lupine tendencies and fully understanding my need to permanently mate, I decided that I had to be bolder with this man, if he were indeed to be my one and only, my intended life partner. “Tell me something… Richard,” I began, gathering my courage, which alone was unusual for me. In any given situation, I am usually the one most likely to be found opening his big mouth.

  “Yes, Max?” he encouraged, his fingertips making delicate patterns on my leg, nearly distracting me from what I was about to say. Hearing his voice say my name didn’t help either.

  “I was just wondering… why me?” I looked up at his profile, never taking my eyes from him, studying him as if I were memorizing every detail of his features for future identification, although by now I could describe every square inch of his flawless face without looking. “Out of all the guys in that place, why did you choose me?” I had to know the answer, as if something very crucial was hanging on his answer. I didn’t want to be merely a flavor of the night or learn that someone had bet him that he couldn’t bed anyone he chose and that I was merely the random object of a gambling wager.

  “Honestly?” he said, considering the question for just a second. “Because I think you’re pretty.”

  I hadn’t expected that, and I felt a hot blush totally suffuse my cheeks. I had never been called that before, not that I was lacking in that department or that I had never been told I was good-looking, ’cause I had, but pretty? That was a new one for me. On his tongue, it sounded good.

  “And,” he continued, “because I see something special in you. You seem different from the others. I don’t know how to explain it any better than that. Is that good?” He raised his eyebrows, his eyes meeting mine inquiringly.

  I nodded, taking his hand in mine and twining our fingers together. He raised our joined hands to his lips and kissed my fingers softly before placing them back in their original place. Damn, was that the sound of my heart exploding or what?

  “I forgot to ask, d’joo drive?” he asked in that way Midwesterners have of making “did you” into one word, adding a J for good measure.

  “Uh huh,” I replied, adding, “I have a ’76 Monte.”

  “Nice.”

  “Gift from my mother,” I explained, not wishing to represent myself as something I wasn’t. Namely wealthy.

  “You gotta love mothers,” he said softly. “They do love to spoil their sons, don’t they? Even the gay ones.” He paused for just a split second. “I’ll make sure you get back to your Monte tomorrow. If that’s okay with you, that is.” It was more of a statement than a question, but I had no difficulty in reading between the lines. Nor in accepting his unspoken offer.

  “It’s locked,” I stated.

  “Good.”

  He glanced toward me, and our eyes locked in mutual admiration. Slowly, deliberately, his hand slid down between my legs, against my crotch… how could he not help but feel how hard I was for him? I caught my breath as another wave of desire radiated through me.

  Caught up in my own emotions, I hadn’t been paying a great deal of attention to where we actually were, so it was with some surprise that I glanced out the window and realized we were just approaching the outskirts of Granite City, which meant we weren’t all that far from crossing back over into Missouri. I had never actually spent any time in the town, and the only thing I really knew about it was that the biggest employer there was Granite City Steel.

  “Wanna get a nightcap before we go back to my place?” he asked softly.

  I said yes while my tongue simply melted inside of my mouth.

  “Let’s find someplace interesting, then,” he said, and I could hear a definite note of amusement in his voice, even as I wondered to myself what he could possibly have in mind. Knowing Richard as I do now, I would have recognized that as his “shit-disturber” voice, and my common sense would have kicked in and told him “no.” But this is hindsight speaking now, as well as experience. Then I was simply naive, and would have gone with him anywhere he wanted to go. Love is truly Cupid painted blind, is it not? I’m not complaining, mind you. Well, not too much. And when all is said and done, life with Richard, although many things, is truly not dull. When he’s around, that is.

  Okay, back to what I was saying….

  He must have spotted this place before he’d even spoken, ’cause suddenly we were turning into the parking lot of a small bar with a brightly lit sign that embraced us with all the warmth of a pair of open arms: Friends Come Inn. “Have you been here before?” I asked.

  “Nope,” was his laconic reply as he parked well away from the others, squeezing my hand reassuringly and dazzling me with the brilliance of his smile. “Virgin territory. Let’s check it out.”

  If I had been thinking more clearly, the high ratio of pickup trucks to cars in the parking lot should have been some sort of a sign—one that said abandon all hope and get the hell out of here now—but I wasn’t, and I didn’t notice a thing as we walked together up to the innocuous front entrance. The windows were crowded with neon advertisements for the various breweries, prominent among them being Anheuser-Busch—Busch, Bud, Michelob—as well as Schlitz, Falstaff, Miller, and Stag. A hand-lettered sign announced live music Wednesday through Saturday, as well as dancing.

  “Our lucky night,” Richard said softly as he held the door for me.

  That was strictly a matter of opinion.

  The interior of Friends Come Inn was dimly lit, smoke layering the air in foggy strata that assaulted my sensitive nostrils, but this was to be expected; after all, it seemed to come with the territory. And I knew we didn’t intend to stay long, so I knew I could live with it. Looking around, I decided that the interior decorator had obviously been a Southern émigré, as the main motif appeared to be the Confederate flag, incarnations of which were to be found in the strangest places—I wouldn’t have been surprised to find one adorning the men’s room—along with mounted deer heads and framed pictures of Southern Comfort. And mounted on a wooden plaque was the ugliest fish I think I’ve ever seen, its mouth wired open in a look of permanent surprise. We stood there for a moment, acclimating ourselves to the environment, such as it was, scoping it all out.

  Apparently the band was on a break, several guitars and a drum set sat abandoned on the small raised area that passed for a stage, meekly waiting for the next set to begin, and in the meantime the jukebox was holding court in their stead. There were a few couples on the dance floor, but most of the tables, with their Confederate-flagged tablecloths, were empty. Two women sat huddled together conspiratorially; they were obviously on the prowl for male meat, judging both by the length of their skirts (or lack thereof) and the way their eyes lit up when anything with a penis came within a one mile radius, while what looked like a committee meeting of the Rednecks of America assembled at two small tables pushed together to make one big table, which was littered with empty pitchers and glasses. It was in close proximity to the pool table, which seemed to be the other major source of entertainment in this place. I was not really interested in these other people, however, and I paid them no real attention. I had my head shoved too far up Richard’s
ass to notice much of anything, I’m afraid.

  We picked out a table away from the others but fairly close to the jukebox, taking seats at adjacent sides of a table for four. “After we order our drinks, we can check out the selection on the juke,” Richard said, leaning in to me intimately. “I’d like to get you out on the dance floor and wrap my arms around you.”

  I don’t believe any response I had to make would have been considered all that intelligible, but luckily, at that moment, the waitress approached, a peroxide blonde in a faux cowgirl outfit, a garish yellow scarf tied about her neck, and a Western-style shirt unbuttoned far enough to reveal her major assets—both of them—as she leaned over our table, her eyes fastened on Richard’s semi-bared chest. “Evenin’!” she greeted, “How y’all doin’ tonight?”

  “We’re doing very well,” Richard replied, sending a private wink my way that sent shivers through my spine. “How does your wine selection look this evening?”

  “Wine?” She wrinkled her nose in thought, a difficult feat at best. “I think we have red and white, but we honestly don’t get a lotta call for that. Mostly beer.”

  Richard and I exchanged glances. I didn’t like the way that sounded, but he merely looked bemused. “Care to try the red?” he asked.

  I agreed, albeit reluctantly.

  “Two glasses of red it is, then,” he said.

  “Your poison,” she said cheerily, leaning over so far I thought she was going to offer to breastfeed Richard with her triple D’s, and my jealous tendencies began to awaken. The wolf inside wanted to put the hussy in her place, but I placated the beast when I realized that Richard was merely being charming, not flirtatious. He paid no attention to her huge mammaries and stood, motioning with his head toward the jukebox.

  “C’mon. Let’s see what’s hot tonight,” he joked, and I wasted no time in joining him there while the waitress flounced off, unappeased. My attention was diverted to her for a moment; I watched as she sashayed her way to the men’s table. They were all dressed according to some sort of Western type of dress code: red flannel shirts, blue jeans, dark boots, and Stetson hats. That was when I felt my first pang of apprehension. One of the men pulled the girl down on his lap, and she squealed and pretended to be offended, but it was all obviously a well-rehearsed act. She laughed and pummeled him playfully with her balled fists until he grinned and let her up. Leaning over to him, (obviously standing up straight was not her forte, perhaps because of the imbalance inherent in her upper body) she whispered something in his ear, and I thought he glanced our way, but I tried not to be overly paranoid as I turned my attention to the playlist before us.

  Which did nothing to still my apprehensions. Most of the titles on the antiquated music machine were unrecognizable to me, as were the artists performing them, but Richard found a few that were acceptable, plinking the change into the machine and pushing the letter-number combinations. We returned to our table, waiting for the previous selections to run their course, Still in that getting-to-know-you stage where every sensation was magnified a thousandfold and sweet anticipation was playing havoc with my blood pressure. He scooted his chair closer to mine, leaned over, and whispered in my ear, “I’d like to dance a little bit, drink a little bit; then I’d like to take you back to my place and wrap myself around your sweet little body and tongue you all night long….” even as he laid one hand over my knee.

  Oh God, that voice was doing things to me, and I wanted nothing more than to make a sandwich of our lips right then and there, but luckily the arrival of the waitress with our wine kept me from making any such public move. I saw with some trepidation that the wine had been decanted into two tumblers, rather than proper wine glasses, and the so-called red wine was more of a sickly pink color, but I forebore from making any snide comments. Yet. When Richard pulled some bills from his pocket to pay for these pale imitations of the vintner’s art, she stopped him. “Naw, that’s okay. The two gals over there done picked up yer tab.” She indicated with a nod of her head the two women in the very short skirts, who at her revelation of their identity nodded at us in a friendly manner and raised their own glasses in a silent toast.

  “That was very kind of them. Tell them thank you,” Richard said, easily returning his cash to his pocket, not being one to turn down a free drink at any time.

  “They wanna know if you two wanna join them,” Busty continued, once again leaning over the table so far in Richard’s direction that he had a direct view down into her cleavage.

  “No thanks,” Richard replied, smiling. “We’re good. But tell them thank you for the offer.”

  Busty looked around and then leaned in even more confidentially, her bust falling all over Richard’s arm. “Between you and me, I’m sure you can get laid,” she whispered.

  Richard never batted an eye. “I’m sure I can,” he returned evenly, continuing to smile at her in a friendly manner, even as his gentle hand caressed my knee underneath the table. My God, did the room just get very hot very suddenly?

  “Okay, your loss,” she said, tossing her peroxide head as she walked away shrugging, her hips pistoning as she moved like a hula dancer with the palsy. When she reached the ladies-who-would-be-laid, she turned back and cast an odd look at us, obviously relaying to them the disappointing news. They all looked at us then, and I thought I heard a giggle. The hairs on the back of my neck were beginning to stand up uneasily. I didn’t like the way things were going, not at all. But the rest of me was oblivious.

  Before I had a chance to say anything, Richard had taken my hand in his and was leading me toward the dance floor. There were only three other couples, close together on the small parquet floor set just in front of the stage. Maybe I should add that they were all three het couples. I think one of the men was dead drunk, and if his partner hadn’t been supporting him, he would have fallen flat onto his inebriated face. Of the others, one pair was seriously involved in playing doctor, giving one another a moving physical there on the dance floor, while the other two were staring star-struck into one another’s eyes. Richard chose a spot apart from them all, more in the safety of the shadows than anything else, just as one of his selections began to play. He took my hand in his, draped his arm about my waist, and everything else receded as we began to move together to the soft refrains of the ballad.

  He leaned in to me as we danced, as we searched for and found our natural rhythm there on the dance floor. “So, is Max short for Maximillian?” he asked.

  “Uh huh,” I replied, “but only my mother ever uses my full name, and usually only when she’s mad at me.”

  “Well, I go by Richard, never Dick, myself,” he said, “although people try to pin that one on me. I just don’t respond.” He pulled me even closer as we talked, our thighs touching one another in mutual accord. He and I are almost the same height—Richard is only an inch or two taller—which meant that other areas were touching as well, and definitely not in an unpleasant manner. I wasn’t complaining, anyway. Without warning, he swooped in and claimed my lips with his, and without hesitation I parted mine, granting him the entrance he sought with his tongue.

  Looking back, I can’t help but ask myself what the hell we must have been thinking—or not thinking—that night. Here we were, in a small Illinois steel town, in a fucking redneck bar, for crying out loud, surrounded by rednecks, obviously, and we were practically slapping them in the face with our sexuality, playing tonsil hockey right out in the open, at a time when being gay wasn’t exactly acceptable to a lot of people. Not that I ever tried to hide it, but I was generally discreet in front of the flaming straights, at least. Not like this. Richard had seriously messed with my guidance system to the point where I didn’t know if I was coming or going. All I could see, think, or feel was him….

  Until I looked up to see one of the rednecks, apparently the leader of the group, the one that had been fooling around with Busty, tapping Richard on the shoulder, a look of utter disgust upon his face. “We all think you two should jus
t leave quietly,” he said with a strong Midwestern twang that verged on being Southern. “We don’t like your kind in here.” From the corner of one eye, I could see the other couples stop dancing to watch, beginning to edge away from us.

  “Our kind?” Richard echoed his words in a deceptively soft voice, but he never stopped dancing, nor did he remove his arm from my waist, merely rotated our positions so that he could face the intruder. “What do you mean by our kind? Do you mean non-mouthbreathers? Presbyterians, maybe? Or simply members of an order higher than phylum?”

  Richard’s words were obviously way over this poor schmuck’s head, but he was not about to admit that, naturally. So he struck straight at the heart of the manner, succinctly and tersely. “Queers.” He snorted in derision. “We… don’t… like… fuckin’… queers.”

  “For the record,” Richard said, his gaze meeting the other man’s without faltering, “we are dancing, not fucking. Fucking involves the insertion of one person’s penis into some portion of another person for the purpose of either procreation or recreation, which is clearly not the case here. At least not here and now. As far as what might happen in another hour or two, that I cannot say.”

  The other man looked like he’d just had his beloved Confederate flag rammed up his ass, flagpole and all, which if you stop to think about it, is rather amusing as well as ironic. I just love irony, subtle or otherwise. Not to mention watching homophobes get what’s coming to them. But, once again, I digress.

  Billybob was looking at Richard as if he had suddenly grown a second head, or penis, maybe. And the point that my date was trying to make was completely lost on him. “Look, we think that you and your girlfriend here should go quietly,” he continued, “without makin’ a scene. They have places for your kind. Why dontcha go there?”