Truth, Pride, Victory, Love

by David Connor

  Instead of uttering another word, Cal tugged my waistband again. He pulled it down over my hard-on and then hooked it under my nuts. The clipper’s hum startled me when he turned them back on. “I don’t much know how a hairless dick’s gonna make you swim faster, but… thorough, or just the top part?”

  I almost came. “As much as you can, I guess.”

  He pulled my underpants all the way down so they rested atop my gym shoes with my pants. His tongue made a wet circle all around his mouth. He wiped it with his hand, then on his pants.

  “Hold it down.”

  “What?” The damned shears were too loud.

  “Move your big white dick.”

  “Oh.” I pointed it down toward my drawers and held it there with my palm. It hurt a little, and it got even harder, which was agony and ecstasy all at once.

  “Don’t come on me.” Cal laughed.

  “Shut up.”

  “You know you want me.”

  “Yup.”

  Once again, he let me have the last word. It was like a lousy tennis match. One or two volleys and the other guy quit. He kept going with the clippers, though, and once the main bush was gone, he had to touch me in all sorts of sensitive, private places to get at my balls and all the hairiness in the crevices on either side. His hand came to rest on top of mine, the one that held on to my hard-on. It was oh-so close, and no one but me had touched my cock for a very long time.

  “Move.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your hand is in the way.” He shoved it aside and then took hold of my erection like the handle of a cast-iron skillet, moving it left and right, like I did at the stove when making an omelet. Cal’s long, rough finger brushed against me underneath when he lifted my sac. “There’s hair there too.”

  “There’s hair everywhere,” I said.

  His finger found some more in a spot that made me shudder. The blade caught me again, because I’d moved and he wasn’t expecting it. “Ow.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Stop.” I stepped back.

  “Did it hurt that bad?”

  “Yes.” But that wasn’t the problem. “I’m going to come.”

  “So?”

  “So….” I turned my back. “You told me not to.”

  “I don’t care.”

  There it was again. “I do,” I said.

  “Why? You want me to come too? In your mouth?”

  I spun around to face him. More than anything I’d ever wanted, yeah, I wanted that. “Quit fucking around, Cal,” I said. When I reached toward my ankles to pull up my underwear, he stopped me.

  “Wait.” He was on his knees. If he really wanted to blow me, all he had to do was put my fucking dick in his mouth, for fuck’s sake! It was right there, twitching, oozing, and waiting.

  “Wait for what?” I asked shortly.

  “I want to suck you off.”

  “Then do it already!” I snapped.

  “All right,” he said. “Jesus. I never… did it before is all.”

  He never had. He’d touched it. He’d stroked it. But it was never in his mouth. Once he told me I could put it in his ass, because I’d bitched about reciprocation. “No way am I giving you head. That’s gay.”

  “Then let me fuck your ass like a pussy.” We were so damned clueless, including the fact that back then I thought sliding between the cheeks was gay fucking. I had no idea it actually went up inside.

  “Oh. Okay,” I said, still looking at myself all naked, hard, and hairless. “Me neither. Never did…. Never had it done.”

  “Getting head feels good,” Cal said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” He took my stiff dick in his really big hand.

  “Whip yours out.”

  “Should I? You really want to see it?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”

  Cal didn’t stand. He just pulled his pants down a little, still on his knees, looking up at me from the floor. I hadn’t forgotten how beautiful his cock was, but I hadn’t quite remembered the extent of it either. It was long, thick, and dark, jutting from a mass of ebony coils, with a deep pink slit all shiny with moisture. He only spared me a moment to look, and then it was gone.

  “That’s jacked up,” I said. “Keep it out.”

  Cal just grinned.

  “I’m going to come,” I told him again. I was close to that point where it would be impossible to stop even if I’d wanted to.

  “Slow it down,” he said.

  “How?”

  “Reed! Telephone!” I hadn’t even heard it ring.

  “Fuck!”

  “Who is it?” Cal asked.

  “How the fuck do I know? Probably Caryn. Who is it?” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

  “Reed!” My father answered instead of my mom. If ever there was a way to stop a dude from coming, my father’s angry voice was it. “Stop screeching through drywall and get down here and see.”

  I pulled up my pants. “Maybe later,” I said.

  “Maybe.” Cal sat back on his heels. He took his dick out, and I was pretty sure his later was going to be now. By the time I got off the phone, he’d be finished, and the moment would have passed. Though I wanted to stay and watch him, I knew damned well if I didn’t head down the stairs, my father—or worse yet, my mother—was going to come up them looking for me.

  “Oh!” That was her reaction to my new look when I got to the kitchen, where the phone was. The cordless handsets were always hit-or-miss. The batteries were constantly near dead, often cutting a call partway through. Whenever we wanted to make sure we could talk awhile, we used the base with the cord on the wall.

  “Who is it?” I asked my mother, yanking at the hem of my T-shirt to cover what was left of my hard-on.

  “Mathias?” She posed it as a question.

  “Mathias?” So did I, only with a lot more surprise in my tone.

  “I think that’s what he said. I like your hair.”

  I caught sight of one side in the glass on the toaster oven door. It needed work and was no way near worthy of “I like your hair.” Her initial “Oh!” was definitely more fitting. But Mama was always kind, so I thanked her before taking the phone. “Hello?”

  “Reed. Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “How you doing?”

  “Good.” I took a beat. “Well, I mean. You?”

  “Fine.”

  I realized it was my turn, but I’d run out of follow-ups.

  “So, I’m coming down that way tomorrow,” Mathias said.

  “Down this way?” I asked. “For what?”

  “Just kicks.”

  “Dude… we don’t have those here. You should remember that from when we were little.”

  Mathias chuckled. “We never got a chance to hang around. I thought maybe we could.”

  “Oh.”

  “Unless you don’t want to.”

  “No. Yeah. I mean, no… it’s cool.” I slouched like a baller as if it was no big deal, but as soon as I realized Mathias couldn’t see me, I stood up all straight and tense again. “I can do something.”

  “Sweet. I’ll drive down midmorning. You want to meet up somewhere, or should I come to your house?”

  “Umm….” He apparently had a car. I didn’t. Maybe I could borrow Julius’s, but maybe I couldn’t. “Come out to the house, maybe?”

  “Neat. I’d like that. I’ll bring my trombone. We can jam.”

  “Oh. Well… I don’t have one anymore.”

  “Oh yeah. You said you quit the band, huh? Still a geek here. Guess you’re too cool now.”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  We both went quiet after that. The clock on the microwave went from 8:36 to 8:37 during the silence. If we couldn’t do any better in person than we were doing on the phone, the next day was going to be boring as hell.

  “Well, okay, then,” Mathias finally said. “I’ll call you when I get back in Dover, and you can guide me in. I think
I remember how to get there, but I don’t know where you live.”

  “Poplar Hill,” I told him. “Up over the hill. White house. Black shutters. There’s a turkey on the front door for Thanksgiving and lots of leaves in the yard, ’cause I keep putting off the raking.”

  “Got it. You want my cell in case something comes up?”

  “No. I mean… nothing will. If something comes up with you, call me here.”

  “Will do.”

  “How’d you get my number… by the way?”

  “Caryn gave it to me. I had hers from NYSSMA. We talk sometimes.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool.” Or was it? If they talked, he knew she wasn’t my girlfriend, so why had he asked me earlier if she was? “Well… I better go. My mom wants me to do the dishes.” She looked at me. I shrugged. “See you tomorrow, Mathias.”

  “Matty. I’m Matty now. That’s what everyone calls me at AMP.”

  “We’ll see.” I didn’t like the name Matty. I’d call him whatever I wanted to. Fortunately, he chuckled again. It seemed I made him laugh, even when I wasn’t trying to be funny.

  “Mathias works, then,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”

  “All right. Bye.” I missed the base a couple times, but finally got the phone back in its cradle.

  “We have company coming?” my mother asked.

  “Huh?”

  She handed me a dishtowel. “Tomorrow?”

  “Oh. Yeah. Remember that boy that peed his pants?”

  She looked at me. “No.”

  “Back in fourth grade.”

  “Reed….”

  “I told you about him.”

  She rinsed a plate and passed it over. “When?”

  “Like, seven years ago.”

  “You’ve told me a lot of things since. I can’t remember them all.”

  “Oh.” I forgot for a moment Mathias wetting himself probably wasn’t a defining moment in anyone’s life but his—and maybe mine. “Well, he was in my class a few days, and then he moved.”

  “In fourth grade?”

  “Yes. We ran into each other today.”

  “So, you’re friends?”

  “Friends? No. Not friends.” I said it with disgust. We were opponents, adversaries, foes, nothing more.

  “Then why is he coming?” That was a damned good question.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh. How’d you do today?”

  That one I could answer. “Shattered my old record. Lost all but two races.”

  “Way to go—and next time you’ll know exactly how to beat them.” Her wet hand caressed my cheek. It made me smile.

  “So I guess he’s fixin’ to come down this way and wanted to maybe get together and do something.”

  “After you rake the lawn,” my father said from his eavesdropping chair in the living room.

  “I know, Dad.”

  “I mean it, Reed.”

  Though pretty good inside the house, I didn’t always do my outside chores in a timely manner. “We’ll do it before Mathias gets here.” My brother Devon was supposed to help.

  “And maybe you’ll become friends,” my mother said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Become friends with who?”

  “Oh. Cal.” I turned toward the stairs. Somehow, I had forgotten all about him.

  4

  CAL WAS gone when I woke up the next morning. The first time I woke up, I should say, when I had to pee. The second time was when Devon came to the bedroom door at six thirty.

  “Dude! It’s six thirty!” He’d slept downstairs on the floor in the basement to “protect” Beth, because Julius was on night shift for a week. Beth had convinced him he was needed, figuring Cal and I wouldn’t want him underfoot. I wondered if she knew something.

  Devon may as well have slept right where he usually did, though. Things were awkward all evening between Cal and me. We’d both fallen asleep before ten, after struggling with inane conversation about the Jets, Super Smash Bros for Nintendo, and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. At least we had varied interests. A couple of times, Cal had gotten his refurbished Dell laptop out. He’d been working at a modular-home-building factory in town since the day he’d turned sixteen and always had some disposable income. I’d hoped he was going to find some gay porn we could mess around to. He never did.

  “Fuck! You don’t have Wi-Fi.”

  “Oh. No. No, we don’t.”

  He’d managed to get on the neighbors’ network, but still, all he had me do was quiz him on history for a big test he had on Monday. That was as exciting as it got.

  I was babysitting Devon that Sunday. Not so much babysitting as keeping an eye on him. My mother and father both worked on Sunday. Mama had Thursday and Friday off. Dad’s pass days were Monday and Tuesday. If I had one wish, it would have been for them to have more days off together. I’d heard them getting ready to head off that morning while I was in the john. I heard more than that, actually. Beth had gotten up too, to have a serious talk. She was pregnant again. Mama and Dad didn’t yell, like I’d wanted to. They mostly just listened as my sister pointed out she and my future hunk-in-law had both finished high school and were now doing well at community college.

  “We’re working too. Julius has two jobs.”

  “Jobs are fine. What about a career?” my father had asked. “What do you want to be?”

  I thought back to Mrs. Smeckler’s bulletin board and wondered what my sister and Julius would have cut out to put up on it. I never got an answer.

  I’d peed and gone back to bed after that, where I’d tossed and turned, wondering what it would be like to have another screaming infant in the house just when the first one started to calm the fuck down. I’d shooed my brother away when he’d showed up pounding on the door. I needed at least another hour to sleep, or maybe to tend to my morning wood, which I’d been teasing all night with my hand and thoughts of Cal’s nighttime erection—a nice blanket tent—still fresh in my mind. Instead of yanking it, though, I’d fallen back to sleep. Next time I’d looked at the clock it was ten forty.

  “Holy fuck!” Though the exclamation had called for a springing action, it was another ten minutes before I finally managed to drag myself out from under the covers, my cock still as hard as the newel posts that made up my head and footboard. I stumbled down the stairs in yesterday’s sweats. Devon took one look at my boner and giggled.

  “Why didn’t you wake me up?” I asked, quite unfairly.

  “Tried once. That’s all you get.”

  At least I didn’t have to watch Shemar. He was with Julius’s mom and dad most days. God, I hated that kid. Okay, that wasn’t true. We just didn’t have a whole lot in common. Devon, despite his alleged disability, was a great conversationalist. Shemar, he was all about “Can I have a cookie?” and “Booger.” The second was partially my fault, since I was the one who’d taught him the word.

  Before hopping in the shower, I made Devon toast, because he wasn’t allowed to use anything that got hot. I thought that rule was a little bit strict, but it was one I adhered to. The kitchen was spotless, so he must have too. Poor kid had to be starving. He was watching reruns of Two and a Half Men, which was also strictly prohibited. I didn’t say a word. I was a lenient caretaker in most other ways—or maybe a lousy one.

  Bathing felt weird with no hair, like I was touching someone else’s body. That made me want to touch it more, so naturally, even though I knew I shouldn’t waste more time, my dick won the argument and I jacked off—twice. By the time I was done, my cock was sore, and so were my shoulders. Since I was an elite athlete, I decided I should baby them the rest of the day. Therefore, when we finally got outside to start raking, I mostly just stared upward at the bare trees or up and down the road, wondering when Mathias was going to get there, what direction he’d be coming from, and what he’d be driving.

  “Phew.” At one point, I took my hat off to wipe my brow from the strai
n of doing as little as possible.

  “What happened to your hair?” Devon asked.

  “Shut up. That’s what.” I touched it. “Is it jacked up?”

  A red car was coming down the street and I immediately panicked. I’d never seen a red car on Poplar Hill before. Well, I supposed I’d seen one sometime or other—burgundy, maybe—but this one was red-red, and I figured it had to be Mathias.

  “No. It looks… good.” I knew Devon was lying. Head-shaving looked so easy on TV and in movies. Natalie Portman still looked gorgeous in V for Vendetta after buzzing all hers off. Sadly, just as Mathias pulled his pricy red sports car into my cracked blacktop driveway, which was hardly worthy to touch its fancy tires, it dawned on me—I was no Natalie Portman.

  The car door opened. I saw a shoe, the kind preppy kids wore to private school, which made sense because Mathias could probably wear nothing else. He wasn’t wearing socks. It was chilly, in the midfifties, maybe. Not bad for November, but I had on socks, and my feet were still cold. His whole leg appeared, covered in khaki, then a hip and the gathered bottom of a knit rust-orange sweater. He turned. I didn’t look up fast enough, so there was the bulge I’d seen covered in way less, just as prominent in way more.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I said back. He was wearing tortoiseshell glasses, and his hair was, well, pretty much the same as the day before. The same as mine, only lighter and obviously done by someone who knew what the hell they were doing. “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Not much. You?”

  “Raking.” I held up the rake to prove it and kicked at the leaves at my feet.

  “Cool.”

  “This is my brother, Devon.” I tapped his butt with the prong-y end of the rake.

  “Nice to meet you, Devon.” Mathias held out his hand. Devon took it with the wrong one. It was adorable as hell. I looked for a reaction—the slightest hint that Mathias was shocked or disgusted that my brother was black and had Down syndrome. “So, what do you want to do?” Mathias asked. His eyes were hidden. His lenses were dark, those fancy kind that changed according to the light. If he’d offered a tell I couldn’t read it.

  “We have to finish this,” Devon said.