When I got the opportunity to travel for my work I took it as I Iove driving and at first it was a bit of an adventure but after two days on the road in a row the motels feel meaningless, the car like a cell, drive all day every day. So I always decided to take the adventures offered to me, go forth boldly, I told myself. But no matter how much courage you have, no matter how much drive, life has a funny way of slowing things down and putting things in perspective.
At least that’s what I tried to tell myself when my car’s engine seized up in the middle of farm country and I had to pull to the side of the road. There was this feeling of anger and disappointment. Had it been preventable? Was it a mistake on my mechanic’s part or myself? When did I take it to the mechanic last? How many miles had it been? Was I pushing the car too much? I popped the hood, got out, walked in front, opened it and stood there staring at mechanical parts and wires. I knew the concept of how a car worked, even did an oil change or two with my father, but this was real work, greasy and dirty work. I was dressed for the office.
My first call was to work to tell them I broke down. My second call was to the company representatives I was supposed to meet that day to offer insurance policies. After that it was the long, annoying call to my car service agency who took some notes then transferred me to a towing agency. I was surprised when I got a young man’s voice on the phone, a young man who had that ring of sincerity. I told him where I had broken down and gave him a description of my car and myself. Then I waited. I tried to do work, tried to think of things I needed to do, but there was so little to contemplate because I knew if I just adjusted my schedule a little there would be little inconvenience.
The tow truck pulled in behind me and I looked up into the rear view mirror. Great, I thought, the rough world of blue collar workers. I prepped myself for a heavy set, beer guzzling, old, and white man to waddle up to my car, bark a few orders, then take over as he towed my car back. I’d have to sit in the cab and pretend like I didn’t exist just so he wouldn’t suspect me of being the gay deviant I am. So when I looked in the side mirror and saw none of those things I was surprised. He was handsome and young, with a head full of hair that bounced easily then settled into place with barely a stray. I looked up through the window to him. He had a handsome face, chestnut colored eyes. He motioned for me to lower the window so I did.
He asked me what had happened and I told him. We went through a few tests together, nothing got it to start, so he told me to wait in the cab while he did what he needed to do to tow it. I collected my bag and my suitcase and did just that. The cab was clean and new, barely smelled of anything, maybe leather. There’s hope yet, I told myself, maybe I’m not stuck in the backwoods just yet. He moved back and forth from the cab to outside as needed and in five minutes later we were on the road again, this time pulling my car. And there was this kind of silence between us.
At first I felt like an alien, so constructed in my suit and tie, so put together. Please have mercy on this soft salesman, I thought, I’m in a strange land and I don’t know anybody. My sins are my own, I promise I won’t even look at anyone sexually. I won’t have sex with anyone. It’ll be like I was never here. I said all of those things to myself and yet, well, I kept looking at him. Because he was beautiful. At first it was little glances, just to check out his boots, his jumpsuit, but then it was the little things like the name tag: Spike, and the bracelets of leather cord and fine chain with these little charms. He wore three necklaces, a cross, a pentagram, and a class ring. He had tattoos on his hands, his forearms, and his neck. He had blemished his skin and yet I wanted to know where else they were. Did he have them on his muscled chest? Did he have them on his thighs? Maybe one of those whimsical joke ones on his ass. I bit my lip and tried to think of something else and yet there was nothing else and before I could stop myself I just started talking. I told him about myself, about my schedule and my business, I told him about my apartment in the city and how I like to have cookouts on my deck next to my hot tub.
That was the final straw. I thought I saw he had gotten bored, or at least tired of pretending to be interested and he had this half annoyed look on his face so I just shut up. Why did I have to say anything about the hot tub, the deck, the apartment? I should have kept my mouth shut and my stomach started to twist as I sat there. He was going to overcharge me on principle alone, but now that I had told him how about my life he knew, or could guess how much money I have and he’d really have me. I’d have to pay him anything just to get out of there. Just shut up, I told myself.
“How much farther is it?” I kicked myself on the insides for opening my mouth.
“Am I boring you mister?”
“What, oh no, it’s just, I’m nervous about how this will effect work and when I get nervous I talk a lot and when I talk a lot I say the wrong thing.”
“It’s just up the road here,” he said.
“Great,” I said, now just- “Do they let you work on cars with all of those bracelets and necklaces?”
I had done it. I had said the one thing I was thinking. I was sunk. But he let out a laugh, ruffled his hair, then looked to me.
“Is that why you’ve been staring at me?”
There it was. I had been staring at him, that’s why I kept talking, because if I talked that meant eye contact, the social practice of building a relationship with another person. It was how I did my business, to notice the way others interact and mirror back, even change up, that interaction to get what I wanted from them, sell insurance. I had this whole theory about it, social function, introduction, handshake, small talk, a joke, eye contact, and if the person seemed okay with it, especially if the other person started first, touching each other, those little gestures of a hand on the shoulder and forearm. I did none of those things. I had been staring at him, consuming him with my eyes.
“Yes,” I said coyly.
“See something you like?”
His question hit me square in the chest. I sputtered and ran through the options of answers but I couldn’t think of one fast enough. What kind of answer did he want?
“I know it’s weird but I’m kind of a collector of things. It’s not necessarily something I believe so much as people I’ve known. But don’t worry, I don’t work on cars. I mean I know how but I’m more of the retriever guy. Do this, get that, fetch a car, I’m more of a people person.”
“Oh,” I replied.
And I felt like at that moment I was sitting next to my doppelganger, a person just like me but with a different life. He had the tattoos I always wanted. He had the ability to work on cars. He was beautiful and yet when people saw him they knew who and what he was. When they saw me they saw a tool. I had carefully tailored my image and yet there was nothing unique about me, my construction was to look like someone else. I wanted to tell him right then but I saw the sign for garage and fell silent. For once I had nothing to say as he pulled into the lot, drove to the office and told me to wait inside. I got out with my bags and carried them in to find the craggily old man I had expected to get my car. He looked me over, then sat and picked up some papers.
“So uhm,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“No I was just, I mean, I um, well, I think it’s Spike there, he just dropped me off and well, I came in here and I don’t know if I’m supposed to talk with you or wait for him, and well, I have to get back on the road. You see I’m an insurance-“
“You’ll have to wait for Spike,” he said, “I’m going on a smoke break.”
He got up and walked out of the room. “And fuck you very much,” I mumbled to myself as I looked around at the walls and noted the photographs of a sponsored baseball team as well as pictures of family, cutouts of cartoons from newspapers, and one trophy fish missing an eye. I was about to laugh to myself when Spike came in through the door with a clipboard in his hand. He told me that they’d have to look it over first and run some tests, then they’d give me the options.
“But the thing is, and I’m truly sorry for this, but we have a bunch of work that needs to be done today and well, you’ll probably have to stay the night.”
“What?”
“At a motel, is there one you prefer?”
“I don’t know the motels in the area, but something mid-level like a Cloud Nine or something, I don’t have a lot of money but I’m not sleeping with the fleas.”
“No, I understand,” he said.
“Now your car service company said something about a loaner car, but we ain’t got much like that. I mean we have a few cars we loan to people but well, it’s just for people to use locally. We don’t want to chase anybody down.”
“No, I can understand that,” I replied.
“Okay, well, unless you plan on driving around I guess I can take you to the hotel,” he said. “Just let me get changed into some street clothes.”
“Sure,” I replied.
The rest of the journey was in silence, air conditioned silence in a two year old Cadillac. I no longer looked at him. I just sat there contemplating where I had gone wrong and I started to think about the mini-bar. I could wreck a mini-bar right about then. I’d start with the clears then move to the browns and- it was happening again. No work, nothing to do, so my answer was to drink. I shook off the notion and before I could stop myself I was talking again.
“Where do people go around here? Are there any bars?”
“I didn’t think you’d be the bar type, well not local bars.”
“I know. I should be drinking a martini and laughing about the stock market but-“
“No, I just meant, well, you seem like a stay at home guy,” he said.
“No, well, actually, I’m a stay at work kind of guy. Because when I go home, when I’m alone, well, I drink, and things have been going really well for me recently. I don’t want to fall down that rabbit hole. So maybe if I go out-“
“Do you have any other clothes?”
I looked over myself. My shoes wouldn’t survive a hay covered floor like I imagined the bars there had. My tie would get too many looks. And when I rolled my eyes when I asked about the wine and the bartender told me they have two kinds, red and white, well that would get me beat up.
“Nothing I can wear,” I said.
“Well, I’ll loan you some,” he said, “you’re about my size.”
“Actually, could we go somewhere and I could buy some?”
“No problem,” he replied.
He pulled into one of those chain dollar stores and we went inside together. He showed me where the jeans were then we walked around the store and I got other things like junk food and even a paperback novel and playing cards. We were walking around when he stopped in the pets section and went over to the bowls. He squatted down and picked one up.
“Do you need a new bowl for your dog?” I asked.
“No, I’m thinking of adopting a new one,” he said, “pick out some chew toys you think a puppy might like. I’ll pay for them.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” I said, “company card.”
“Great,” he replied, “get a couple then.”
“This one looks cute,” I said taking one, a stuffed giraffe, from the metal rod, “and this one, and I like this one.”
“Nice,” he replied before taking his cell phone from his pocket. He sent a quick text message then returned his attention to me and crossed his arms in playful thought. “Do you know what you need if we’re going to the bar tonight?”
“We?”
“You need some boots, not expensive ones, and since I know how you feel about wearing other people’s clothes we should get some here.”
“Okay,” I said, and we walked to the boots section where he picked out a pair for me. It felt weird following him around because I kept thinking about what other people thought. These were the type of people I had left behind. These were the people I had grown up with. They didn’t like me. And I didn’t like them. But being with Spike somehow made it okay. He had this charm about him that I thought would ease all contact between me and them.
I paid for everything and after I loaded the trunk he got a response text message from someone. He laughed a little and looked to me as I got in the passenger seat. “You won’t believe it,” he said, “I’ve got to pick up a dog crate for someone. We’ll have to put it in the back seat.”
“Right now?”
“Do you mind?”
“No,” I said, “it’s fine.”
And yet I felt this nervousness as it felt like he was dragging me along through this town, farther and deeper into it than I would like, that I felt comfortable seeing. He drove to the opposite side of town, down a dirt road and into the forest a little to a cabin. The title of every horror movie about cabins and featuring cabins in the title flashed through my brain, and yet he got out and seemed so casual. I looked around from the cage with the baying hound to the window where a candle burned. This was just like where I grew up. The front door opened and a young man stepped out, shirtless and barefoot, the jeans barely clung to his bare hips, no underwear. His hair hadn’t been cut in years so it almost reached his shoulders in this shaggy half combed disorder. He laughed and held out his arms for a hug as he walked to Spike. They hugged, I heard flesh slap flesh for a moment before they stepped to me and I was introduced. His name was Luke and they had been best friends for a long time, “since before our peckers had hair,” as Luke put it. He led us to where the cage was, said he had just cleaned it and dried it, which it looked like he had, then I watched as they carried it to the car. I just stood there with my hands in my pockets. They had looked at each other, shrugged, then they did it. And I just stood there.
When I got back into the car I felt a bit of a dolt, you know one of those funny sounds The Three Stooges make when they are hit on their heads, well I felt like that as they loaded it in the backseat. I could tell there was effort involved. But when he got back into the car he didn’t say anything just drove on and took me to my motel. When we pulled in front of the management office he pulled out his cell phone and looked at a message and laughed before telling me to go rent a room and he’d get my stuff. He started to type as I left him.
The hotel was the kind of place that had once been the five star local, the type of place that existed for large families to stay for the weekend while visiting the lake. It was the type of place where people partied in the 70s with rails of coke and lots of polaroid pictures of naked antics. And now the old timers worked hard to keep it running as best they could, the slow gathering of dirt and cracks were overlooked by their poor sight and sense of nostalgia. The desk attendant was an old, bald man who chewed on an unlit cigar and talked out of the corner of his mouth. He rented me a room easy enough but nothing was run through right away, they took an impression. How the hell did they get away with this? I might not see the charges for days, I stopped myself short of business advice, handed the guy my card, took the key, went outside and moved the car.
The room was on the second floor, there was a wooden staircase on both sides of the front of the hotel, my room was on the second floor near the middle. I was grateful that Spike helped me carry everything up and inside. Just over the threshold I stopped to look around, the whole room was larger than my first apartment. There was a lounge area, a dining area with bar, a small kitchen, a bathroom, and two bedroom doors. The bedrooms themselves were actually separate from the hotel room. Who would have thought some backwoods place would have spacious accommodations. In the city a place like this would be a couple thousand dollars, especially with all of the space, but here, yeah, it was a little worn around the corners but it was still nice to have.
Spike set everything on the bed then sat and scratched behind his ear. I wasn’t sure if he was going to stay or go as I thought he had done everything I needed and yet I liked having him there so I didn’t mind if he stayed. He laughed and sent another message before looking up to me.
“Go get a shower,” he said, “we’re going out.”
“We’ll be irresistible,” I said.
“Every woman will want to dance with us and every guy will be jealous of us,” he said.
I went into the bathroom and closed the door, stripped, then got into the shower. The warm water relaxed my muscles, the sound of the spray made me forget the sounds of the world. There was no work, there were no clients, this was how life was supposed to be lived, well part of life. I cleaned myself thoroughly, and by the time I stepped out and picked up a towel I felt like a tube, as if everything could pass through me.
When I stepped out of the bathroom I was surprised to see that not only was Spike still sitting there but that he had turned on many of the lights, got himself a drink, and turned on the television. There were signs of life and it was a nice feeling even if he was a bit messy. I cleaned up after him then went to my suitcase and opened it. For a moment I remembered that I thought I had set the zipper towards the wall and away from the chair but this way I had to stand so that, so that Spike could see me in my towel. I smirked at the thought and laughed it off as wishful thinking.
So I kept my butt towards him and just like I had done all of my life I went through the skilled art of keeping my towel wrapped around my waist while pulling on a pair of underwear. It’s a tricky thing to do, especially so you don’t trip over yourself. I did it with ease and even kept the towel wrapped around my waist as I pulled out the new pair of jeans. That was trickier and I actually did almost fall over, the towel landed on the ground and I hopped around a little. It was a funny sight. You might have seen it online. Anyway, I got them up and finished dressing, even down to the cowboy boots and flannel shirt, looked to Spike who sat doing something on his phone.
“Are we going?” I asked.
“In a minute,” he said.
I waited that minute and then we left the room. We walked for a few feet and were descending to the landing between floors when he spoke up. I was surprised and a little embarrassed by the topic.
“So you still wear tighty whities? I would have thought it was silk boxers.”
“Not for me,” I replied.
“I’m not sure if I could handle being all held like that, but I guess when you’ve got a, you know, that it helps keep the little fella from banging around.”
“Little?”
“I saw what I saw. That towel wasn’t doing much for you.”
“Hey, I’m a grower not a shower,” I said.
When we got to the car I stopped but he kept walking. I was partially insulted by making the joke in public but I wasn’t offended so I stood confused. He got about five feet away and turned to me then motioned for me to follow and started to walk away again. I ran a little to catch up and tried to walk in stride with him.
“Aren’t we taking the car?”
“Naw, this is the only bar in town, right next to the hotel so if people get too drunk they can just screw there. That’s how my mom and dad met. I was conceived in that very room.”
I saw what he was doing, making fun of the way I seemed to react to everyone in town. And yet there was this kind of humor to it because I imagined it was hard for him too. Was I the person who escaped? Did he want to be me at some time in this life or like me? Was I his failed dream? Just go with the flow, I told myself. And I walked along with him. We arrived at this large country bar and grill that had two sides, one for fighting and one for fucking, no really, it was one for dining and one for drinking. We ended up at the bar.
One shot of bourbon and one beer each just to start the night. The bar was crowded with people at the pool table, at the bar, at half of the tables. All of them were eating so I knew it had to be the food. A jukebox in the corner played loud Honky Tonk music, and I started to notice most of the people were in their fifties and sixties, dressed in their finest duds and reliving their youth.
“So who you looking to take back to your room tonight?” he asked.
“What?” I asked, then it kind of caught up to me, “everyone here is over forty.”
“Aren’t you over forty?” he asked.
“Watch it, you know what I mean, they’re in their fifties… sixties?”
“It’s senior citizen night,” he said.
“Senior citizen night at a country bar, now I’ve seen everything,” I replied.
“Senior citizen night at the Tiger Fish Lake Country Club,” he corrected.
“Country club?” I asked but he didn’t respond and paused for a moment. It was another of my ill assumptions, one of my judgements.
“Who are you looking for dudes or ladies?”
Dudes or ladies, was he trying to be subtle and ask my sexuality? It was cute and I really wanted to say something. I really wanted to tell him dudes and yet that fear of him suddenly turning on me, I pushed the thoughts from my mind and decided to have a little fun with him, test him.
“All these old people around I might just end up taking you back to my room and shagging the hell out of you,” I said.
“Get enough beers in me and we might just do that,” he replied. "But not with your little dick. I'd need a man hung like a horse, then I might consider it."
My eyes bulged at the thought of him taking dick. There was no way. Was there? Straight or gay we decided to drink and the more we drank and the more of his friends started dropping by and soon I was paying for a few guys. But when the women got involved it got to be more fun. I wasn’t just this closet homosexual. I was one of the guys, drinking, and laughing. That’s when I was asked to dance by one of the women. I refused at first but eventually she dragged me and the rest of them up there. So we did it. We drank and laughed and told dirty jokes.
Line dancing was a lot of fun, and I made small talk with a few of the cowboys and their wives, even passed out my business card when they asked. It was a party and we left there with this bond between us, this kind of rubber band feeling that we didn’t want to be too far away from each other, even when we took turns pissing in the back alley, it was casual. We made it back to the room and moved to the couch. We sat next to each other, both half drunk. We looked into each other’s eyes and that’s when I felt his hand at my neck. I knew his arm was back there but I didn’t expect his hand to gently touch my neck. He ran his finger up the back of my head and felt the way it bristled. Down was smooth but up, I could feel it and he could feel it, the way the hairs moved between his fingers it tickled both of us. And I knew. I knew he was going to kiss me. I wanted it so bad. He started to move and I closed my eyes.
The hand on the back of my neck, he pulled me into his lips and he kissed me. I tried to kiss back but eventually I gave myself over to him and that’s when I felt his right hand on my crotch. He undid my belt and unbuttoned my jeans and was about to reach into my underwear when I stopped him.
“I’m not-“
“Don’t worry about it, I saw your little pecker. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, unless you want to be embarrassed. Do you boy?”
“Please,” I begged.
He moved over me for a moment, nose to nose, then he grabbed hold of my feet and took off my boots, my jeans, ripped open my flannel shirt and pulled it from my arms until I was in an undershirt and briefs. He laughed at me and I looked up at him.
“Your skin is green,” he said, “don’t you know you’re supposed to wash flannel boy? I’m going to have to give you a spanking and then a bath before we can have too much fun.”
A spanking and a bath? But I didn’t have time to think because he took hold of my ear and pulled me from the couch, dragged me to the a full length closet mirror. He stood behind me and made me look into it. I saw us, our two bodies intertwined and he looked over my shoulder at the both of us as he grabbed my little pecker and my balls. He bit my shoulder with a kiss.
“What are you?” he asked.
“I’m a boy,” I said.
“What kind of boy?”
“I’m a naughty boy,” I said.
“And what do naughty boys get?”
His hands went to my ass and he grabbed both cheeks. I jumped a little and so did my dick. It was poking out from my body and it looked tiny in the reflection, barely noticeable, until he took hold of it, separated the shaft from my balls and tucked it along my left thigh. With his other hand he spanked me on my left cheek and bit my neck again.
“What are you boy and what do you deserve?”
“I’m a naughty boy and I deserve to be spanked,” I said.
He was quick after that confession to pull me by the hand to the bed where he placed a boot on the frame and held his knee in the air. Actually over the knee, I thought, but it was too late because he put me over it with ease and soon I was looking down at the floor, cut in half with just his thigh holding me in the air. I let my hands fall down past my head as all of the blood rushed to it. Just the feeling against my stomach hurt but when he brought down that first hand it caught me by surprise. There was this sharp pain but it didn’t linger and for a moment I almost laughed it off until he spanked me the second time, then the third time, and he lit into me with a flurry of spanks.
There I was over this younger man’s knee in the air, my feet and hands unable to touch the ground, dressed only in briefs, blood rushed to my head, hands, and butt cheeks. That pain began to build and throb, little nerves went out through me and back to my butt. It was humiliating and embarrassing, but it was just what I had wanted. And for a moment I felt relief, but that was only to pulled my underwear up between my cheeks so that he could get at the reddening flesh. He spanked all over each cheek, from the top of the mound to the creases between my thighs.
The pain had this kind of ebb and flow. It would concentrate in one area for a moment, my mind would be thinking of just that one spot and then it would move and go somewhere else, usually back to my butt. He paused again, then set me down. There were tears in my eyes and I hoped that the little game was over, at least for a little while, but he just rolled up his sleeves and secured them before hauling me back over his knee. This time my little undies were dragged down over my thighs and hung for a moment at my ankles until I kicked them off because the pain, the feeling of humiliation. I began to kick and scream as he beat my ass, not just cry, I sobbed and heaved over his knee. No dignity, no feeling of self, he stood me back up and looked me in the eye.
“That’s how we do it around here city boy,” he said.
“I’m not a city boy,” I muttered.
He took hold of my dick, “You may have been born in the woods but you’re a city boy. I saw it right away. You’re soft, ain’t nothing wrong with that, but you’re not weak. Oh no, soft things don’t break as easily as hard things do.”
“You don’t think less of me?”
He wiped the tears from my cheeks, then pointed to the corner. I looked for my briefs to see where they had gone and he was quick to slap me on the ass and tell me to focus on my punishment. He walked me to the corner with a hand on my shoulder and placed me there. Two walls meet, it’s a corner, and there I was buck naked with this country boy, this younger man, who had just spanked me and brought me to tears. I shuttered and cried some more and when that feeling seemed to be gone, when I felt like it was over and he might just move on to something else, that’s when he took me by the ear and pulled me to the bed and across his lap.
My hard dick on his thigh, one leg on either side, my cheeks parted as my dick was trapped there in view and easy access. He lit me up again, a burst of spanking and I cried. With every fiber of my being I cried and cried until the pain somehow became tolerable and I just stopped, that’s when he told me to get down on the floor and take off his boots. I slid to the floor and took off each boot.
“Smell ‘em,” he said.
I did. I smelled his feet. And when he told me to take his socks off I did that too. I licked them, I massaged them. It didn’t matter when they were cleaned last. I did it. I licked his feet. He took off his jeans and I went back at them. Slowly he pulled me up his body to his crotch where his hard dick stood firm and through the little hole in his boxers. It was twice the size of mine. I started to move for it but he pushed me away. I tried again. He pushed me away. We looked each other in the eyes and I knew this was his little game for me.
“Does puppy want a bone?” he asked.
“Yes sir,” I said.
He slapped me playfully across the face.
“That’s not how puppy’s speak. Only bad puppies pretend to be boys. You want my bone. Are you a bad puppy and I do I need to spank you or are you going to speak for me?”
I barked. It was a little yap, but I did it, then I did it again. I barked and climbed with him farther onto the bed where he pulled me to his dick. My lips to his balls but I didn’t open them, no he wanted obedience. Not until he said lick, then I did it. I licked, I sucked, I fondled. He started to play with my hole, a dry finger at first, but he licked it and slowly each time shoved a little more into me until I knew how close he was and that soon he’d want the real thing. He pulled me aside and to the mattress before he got behind me and to my surprise ate out my ass. He didn’t just lick. He didn’t just spit. He ate. His tongue penetrated me. I wanted it so bad I reached back and pulled my cheeks apart. He opened me so by the time he got up to his knees and stuck his dick against me I was ready for him. He pushed inside to the balls, left it there for a moment as he kissed me over the shoulder. He pulled it out, pulled away, but then he was on me again and in me.
My little dick rubbed between my thighs, slapped against my belly as he held onto me and he fucked me into the bed face first. His hands pushed down on the small of my back and my knees went wide. He thrust into me with power and determination, his hard dick was like steel, his hands felt like claws as he scratched up my back. He had me. My parted cherry red ass, I reached to feel his balls, feel his thighs. He stuck it in deep. I felt it. That spasm as he filled my insides. He took hold of my head and my shoulder and rolled me onto my back with his dick still inside me. I looked up into his eyes and he put his hands down on either side of my head. He leaned down slowly. His lips brushed mine.
“What are you?”
Boy? Puppy? Did he want a quick thank you sir or a bark? There was one good, honest answer that came from my heart.
“I’m yours,” I replied.
