for C. M. Murchison

"Hey, nigga. Wassup?!"

Marcus George pursed his lips, catching every bit of his stillborn shout except for the brisk snort which shot from his nose into the mouth of the cordless phone. It could be only one man. His best friend. Louis Waters.

"Hey, Louis. How's my favorite fifty-somethin' homie?" He put a half-dried dish back in the sink.

"You know that weak-ass punk wit' the Day-Glo hair you've been peepin' at the Hole? Well, listen, nigga, I hear he's been dissin' you."

"Again, Louis, in English."

"Shit, nigga. Light-en up! Ooh, that's right. Yo' problem is you too light as it is!"

"Ha. Ha. Ha. So funny," Marcus said as he toweled his hands.

"Just tryin' to keep it real."

"Un-huh. You keepin' it real all right. Mighty real." Marcus walked out of the kitchen to sit down on the stool on the other side of the still-wet counter. This was going to take some time. Everything with Louis did.

"Now can I finish tellin' you what I heard?" Louis insisted.

Marcus shifted uneasily on his stool as a dull ache began pressing behind his right eye. It had been a long day already and he wanted to delay the inevitable bad news — Louis was too happy for it to be any other kind — until the vague pain rolled to the back of his head. So he decided to torment the messenger until he was ready to hear the sad tidings.

"Hey, I'm gettin' old, my brotha. Can you remind me where we first met?" he asked.

"Don't you start."

"Answer me, nigga." Marcus could hear the strain in his own voice.

There was silence on the other end.

"Fine, Mr.-Keepin'-It-Real," he continued, "I'll tell you. Columbia. That's the university, blood, not the country. You remember?"

"Nigga, please," Louis groaned. "Get off of this mid-life crisis shit. I done passed mid-life long ago. Not as long ago as some people though. Some people who's fifty-six going on dust!"

"Tell me — is that diploma for yo' doctorate from Harvard still hangin' above yo' head in that office of yours over at the University of California at Berkeley? Y'know them both some mighty big schools I hear."

"Ah, shut up, Marcus."

"An' I heard the President of the U-nited States done gone an' made you a consultant to some governmental oversight committee. Lordy, chil', to climb that high y'musta whitened more than just yo' collar."

"Fuck you, Aunt Jemima," Louis laughed. "Standford's answer to John Maynard Keynes may think he's pretty smart, but I ain't the nigga puttin' on watermelon-colored Izods an' prancin' 'round the house when the curtains are closed."

"I'm hangin' up now. Bye." The hardwood floor gave up a sharp echoing screech as Marcus pushed the stool from the counter and stood.

"Wait-wait, Marcus G. C'mon."

"C'mon what?" Marcus snapped.

"The little punk at the Manhole."

"Yeah, which one?"

"Don't which one me, girl. I know you know who."

"Spit?" Marcus asked as he sat back down.

"See I told you you knew who it was."

"And?" Marcus began to drum his fingers lightly against the countertop. He knew it was time for Brother Louis to spread the Bad Word; his eye had felt much better after he'd said the boy's name.

"Well, blood, it looks like carrot top went and tried to tear Bernie a new one."

"What?" The drumming grew quicker, louder.

"You know. Bernie? The only other brotha in that honkeytonk."

"Yes, Louis, I'm well acquainted with Bernie." He stilled his hand. "We profiled his software startup in my class."

"Well, kiss my big black ass…."

"Wait. Wasn't that how you met Bernie?"

"Ooh-whee. Ain't you hysterical tonight, Chicken George. Yes'm, Chicken George loves his mens young — and hung — and…."

"Louis," Marcus interrupted. He had to get the conversation back on track. Ever since their brief fling at Columbia as undergrads in the Sixties, he'd learned that Louis was brilliant, in many ways, but easily distracted by every dazzling new flare of his synapses.

"What?"

"What'd Spit do to Bernie?"

"That spindly little muthafucka. Y'know, I have to deal wit' white folks' children all week long. Why, if my ex-bitch Kelvin wasn't rulin' the Pendulum on Fridays like she was the fuckin' Queen of Nubia, I'd be there instead of hangin' out wit' you and Bernie at their shitty little clubhouse. All I have to say is thank God for all those fine brothas at Rimshot. Lord, I live for Saturday night in Oaktown…."

"Louis," Mac coughed out his name. He tried to distract him back to their conversation. "Why's Spit a 'spindly little muthafucka?'"

"Y'can't tell by lookin'? Nigga, you need to start wearin' those granny glasses of yours when we go out."

"Louis!" Marcus slapped his hand down hard on the formica.

"Fine. You ain't gonna like this. But Mad Jack's fuckin' that friend of your beloved Spit. Y'know, he's one of those Ridiculous Faeries named Scalawag or some such shit. Should be Skunkweed. Tell me somethin': why is that white folks get all obsessed 'bout purity and then forget to bathe?!"

"Louis, you were talking about Mad Jack."

"I ain't forgot!" Louis shouted. "Y'know, his taste in white boys's 'bout as bad as yours."

"Yours in black boys ain't much better, my sista."

"Nigga, don't start wit' me."

"I wouldn't have to if you'd ever finished telling a goddamned story!"

"Okay, okay. Chill, Marcus G. Gettin' all riled up like that can't be good for a man of yo' age."

Marcus played his trump card and refused to speak.

"Fine. Be all high and mighty wit' me, Dr. George. Here's the 411. Your Spit told that Skankyrag that he'd run into Bernie at the MacExpo over at the Moscone Center. It seems Spit dresses up windows on the web and was wanderin' around pickin' up fashion tips when he collided wit' Bernie and his entourage. Well, like a few other boys at the Hole, Spit had it bad for our Bernie and wanted a taste of his cane — both of them, if y'know what I mean. They even set up one of those play dates you both are always goin' on about."

Marcus flinched; he wasn't jealous of Bernie. Envious, yes. Bernie could make bloody art of even the flattest white ass. But jealousy wasn't possible when they were the only two black leathermen in the bar. (Louis liked the look of leather and nothing more.) No, what stung was the realization that he might be as much of an object to this boy as this boy was to him.

"But that all changed when Spit saw Bernie in his workclothes. And y'know Bernie. He's definitely the creative type — for Silicon Valley."

Louis paused to chuckle knowingly. Marcus knew better than to ask why and kept silent.

"Nothin' too nerdy from what I hear. Bernie had on that black shirt of his wit' those big golden Chinese dragons breathin' fiery red curlicues all over the fabric and some khaki pants. Now who else do I know that has a bad jones for khaki?"

Marcus snorted another long breath into the receiver.

"You ain't makin' this much fun, baby."

"Neither are you."

"Awwh," Louis cooed into the phone. "Well, here's the good part for me and the bad part for you. Seems khaki makes Mr. Spit see red. I can't give you his exact words. Y'know how those grungy-ass boys like to mumble. And these are second-hand mumblings courtesy of Mad Jack's boy. But it goes somethin' like no self-respectin' black man and, certainly, no badass muthafuckin' nigga top, would ever wear Dockers."

"He said that," Marcus sputtered.

"So I heard. Why? The word of a black man ain't good enough for you?!"

"Just the word of a particular black man…."

"What?!"

"Louis, I've known you for almost forty years…."

"So?!"

"And I know you're prone to embellish…."

"Prone! Baby, when I'm prone I do a helluva lot more than embellish."

"I know," Marcus laughed.

"Don't sweet-talk me."

"You know what I'm sayin'."

"No. But I know what you mean."

"Louis," Marcus interrupted.

"Don't 'Louis' me, bitch."

"Louis,…."

"No, no, it's too late to apologize. You wanna know the real deal, Marcus Robeson George. Fine. Here it is. Mad Jack said it sounded somethin' like 'Men worth doin' don't do Dockers.' You happy. As for my embellishments, Uncle Tom's gonna have to ask his Little Evil herself if they's true or ain't they."

"Louis,…."

"Don't interrupt me no more, nigga. You still ain't heard the worst of it."

"It gets worse?"

"Fool, you know it always does."

"Oh, God."

"That's right, baby. Start prayin' now. Cuz your Spit did — for a fact — walk right past Bernie like he didn't see him. Like a three-hundred pound badass muthafuckin' nigga wouldn't stand out at a computer expo! And then he flaked on their playdate. Mad Jack told me so and I asked Bernie and he said it was true. The boy was a no-show. Had no idea why, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna clean up that muthafuckin' punk's shit and tell Bernie the few weak-ass words Mad Jack told me. You like that damn boy so much you can do it."

Louis paused to cluck his tongue and sigh fiercely, as if this mean mistreating had happened to him and wearied his already burdened soul.

"So?! What you gonna do now, big bad Marc Daddy? Especially when your Spit finds out 'bout your dirty little counter-revolutionary fetish. Shit, nigga. Bernie's got nothin' on you!"

Marcus grimaced. What predictable, old fools they'd become; in twenty years, they'd gone from classmates to roommates to lovers to best friends who happened now to be two of the most respected economists in the country. And every Friday night they carried on over the phone like tonight. No different than two righteous sisters who sit next to each other every Sunday, stiff as gravestones, and then rush home to call each other and let the shit fly as they catalogue the trespasses — fashionwise and otherwise — of the congregation.

Without asking, Marcus knew that Louis was in his home office, probably wearing some new FUBU sweatpants getup and swiveling in his state-of-the-art desk chair under the watchful eye of the framed D'Angelo poster. And that his wide nose had to be nearly flat because his wider mouth was grinning like mad into the empty air spinning around his head. Why? He knew that too. Because Louis could "see" that Marcus was perched on a stool at his kitchen counter, wearing his latest purchases from the J. Crew catalog, contorting his face with that odd combination of grimacing, blushing, and rolling of the eyes he did every time Louis nailed his black ass, like now, to the floor.

"Do I have a cap?" Louis shouted into the phone.

Marcus, startled, yelled back, "What?!"

"Huh?"

"You said you had a cap."

"No, girl, Bernie asked if I had a cap. Then I asked her, 'Why? Do Miss Daisy need me to drive her to the Piggly-Wiggly?' A cap. Please. I only wear hats. And who the fuck sent me these links?! Like I'd ever shop there. Might as well go down and buy my leather at the GAP."

"Louis."

There was no answer. Just mumbling and clicking. Marcus' clairvoyance hadn't been so precise tonight after all. Louis had been doing more than just spinning and grinning in his chair; he'd been online, reading his email, and probably browsing chat rooms, all while trying to carry on this old-fashioned conversation by phone.

"Louis!"

"What?!"

"You goin' to the Hole tonight?"

"Huh-low, girl. Why do think I'm emailin' Bernie what not to wear tonight?"

"Good," Marcus said. He began to repeat the word absentmindedly as he wrestled with himself. He knew, down to the squeaking joints between his bent knees, that he wanted this boy bad. And he knew that Spit — always eyeing every man in the bar with his studied-yet-disconcerting gaze of nonchalant defiance until he'd catch Marcus matching his cold look and quickly turn away — wanted Marcus down to his bright blue boy balls. But before Marcus would even let that self-styled punk suck his dick, let alone ride it, and certainly before he'd ever let them kiss, he'd have to insist on some intensive remedial tutoring. There was a flash of images. His fattening cock thumped around in his madras boxers and plain-front khakis. Then he heard Louis. He was interrupting him, calling him back.

"What you goin' on 'bout?"

"I said," he stalled until he'd fully returned, "a professor's work is never done, is it Dr. Waters?"

"No way, baby. It may be summer but I was rippin' an' runnin' all day at Berkeley. Then the Bay Bridge was backed up to the muthafuckin' toll plaza and…."

"It was a rhetorical question, Louis."

"Oh. Well, forgive me, Dr. George. I forgot how serene life could be at Stanford."

"Don't start, Louis."

"Me? Whaddabout you? What you gonna do 'bout Spit?"

"I was coming to that before you interrupted…."

"Well, I ain't interruptin' you now. Get to it, nigga."

"Jesus, Louis."

"Don't you start blasphemin', boy. What would your granddaddy say 'bout that?!"

Marcus laughed as he caught a glimpse of the Reverend George gripping the pulpit, his glasses catching the light from the stained glass windows and reflecting the eternal twirl of the overhead fans, his clean-shaven face, as smooth and dark as Great Aunt Regina's homemade molasses pie, subtly reddening. This was going to be some fiery sermon. And, before the image faded, he was sure he heard him say, "What dark times these are, my brothers and sisters, when from out of the mouth of babes come curses against Our Lord Jesus. Can I have an amen?"

"Amen," Marcus murmured out of habit. Louis laughed now. Marcus caught himself and added, "What I'd intended to say was that I guess I'll have to teach our young Mister Spit just how mean a muthafucka a nigga in Dockers can be."

Louis harrumphed. "I wanna see that day."

"You will, baby. Starting tonight."

"The Manhole after eleven?"

"Sounds good. Oh, and tell Bernie to stay away." Louis tried to blurt out something and Marcus stopped him. "Just tonight. I'll explain later. I'm gonna need your help."

"You always do, Marcus G. You always do. Peace." Louis hung up.

Marcus pushed END and laid the phone, face-down, on the kitchen counter. Then he sighed.

White men. What was it with them? Lord, if that wasn't the question of the ages. He felt his ancestors sigh now. And what must they think of him? Especially his recently passed-over mama. Her baby boy reddened with shame. But he was fifty-six, dammit. Time to be honest about who he was and what he wanted. Wanted since he was a small boy sitting in the hard pews of Baltimore's Olivet Baptist Church, under the harder eye of the Reverend Isaiah George, Sunday after Sunday.

Men. He liked men. That was it. Known it since he was a little boy, fooling around with his two copper-skinned and red-headed cousins, James and LeRoy. End of sermon. Okay, he especially liked white men. The end. But wasn't no one's fool. Not at all. He'd known like every other black man, woman, and child in that congregation, cooling themselves with printed fans from Brewster & Sons, Funeral Home-the company name, address, and phone on one side; a portrait of Our Lord Jesus on the other-what evil-spirited sons of bitches white men could be; it wasn't like he got it up for Bull Connor or George Wallace. Now that was going beyond the pale. No, it was simply that from a young, young child he'd taken the good words to heart and fallen in love with that kind face he'd seen everywhere he turned.

What a friend we have in Jesus.

He was fifty-six and had never told a living soul that, not even — especially not — Louis. But the ancestors knew. And now his mother was one of them. But how did he go from loving his sweet Lord Jesus with all his heart — his first and still greatest love — to wanting to thrash the living daylights out of an immature brat named Spit?

It hadn't been planned. That much was certain. Desire might have laws like economics, though nowadays he suspected the fixity of either, but Heaven help the fool who tried to predict its up- and downturns.

It was just something unconscious that, despite all his anguished prayers to be washed clean, stuck to him and, with time, became conscious. A conscious choice. A conscious pleasure. A conscious delight.

One day, he was sitting in his grandparents' parlor, listening to Mahalia Jackson testifying from out of the speakers of Reverend George's phonograph and wishing, innocently, to sit beside his Lord in the upper room. Next day, he was lying alone in his own upstairs bedroom, thinking impure thoughts about fierce and gentle young men like James Dean and the Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy. Later, Louis would often wonder aloud why Marcus never chose to lay down his burden and follow The King. But Elvis knew too much of the world. It was the other-worldly ones. The ones too innocent or weak to belong to this world. These were the men he dreamed would one day take a closer walk with him.

How he longed to watch over them, to cover them with the shadow of his mighty wing, to lift them up before they dashed even their foot against a stone. How he'd bawled when they'd died.

And it wasn't, he argued with Louis time and time again, because he believed they were special or better. It just surprised him when white boys died. By his twenties, all he'd heard about, all he'd cried over, was black boys dying. Boys from school, boys from down the street, and boys in faraway places like Mississippi. He'd come home from little Joe Goode's funeral or read about Emmett Till's lynching and get mad and then go mad, wanting to bust up everything in sight. But there was just too much pain around it to get sad. He'd just get that look his father did if he and his brothers and sisters ever asked him about what is was like to fight in World War II.

Hey, daddy, daddy, did you ride in a boat? Hey, daddy, daddy, did you fly in a plane? Hey, daddy, daddy, did you kill anybody? Hey, daddy, daddy, did they give you a parade?

But these white boys, why did they die? They were the children of The Man. Or so it seemed. Yet, they were so different from other white folks. Like they didn't belong any more among them than he, some days, felt he did among black folks. They just seemed so unprepared for this world and its cruel, cruel ways. Much like he had been when that old man had wrinkled up his already shriveled face — he looked like a bitter old white raisin — and shouted at him a word he'd never heard. And he'd run all the way home to ask his mama what it meant. And, she, smiling to hold back tears, had taken him aside to explain the Devil's ways. But these boys, it was obvious no one had ever bothered to take them aside.

Of course, losing so many friends throughout the Eighties and Nineties, the death of any boys, even white boys, stopped surprising him. Until he heard about Matthew Shepard. Until he saw him. He was so ashamed of how upset he got. After all he'd been through, after all he'd witnessed.

Louis couldn't understand what was wrong with him. "What you gettin' so upset about?" he'd said the night his friend, only a few months into his year abroad as a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, had called him — a small voice, breaking with emotion. "You seen plenty a white boys die. Hell, every boyfriend you ever had is dead." But Marcus just kept crying into the phone. "Why you surprised, Marcus G.," he'd said sharply, frustrated that Marcus was worked up again over another white man, frustrated that he couldn't put his arms around the old fool. "This is how faggots died before AIDS and that's how they gonna die after they find a cure. Of course, by then, there won't be a nigga or a fag left alive on this earth." Louis prided himself on being a realist. It had made him a world-class economist.

Marcus couldn't answer him. It had begun as just one more in a growing processional of gray days in London until he'd received an email from a former student and followed the links back to a growing string of articles. He read of Matthew's long night and finally saw his blurred little face, and he was a boy again crying for these white boys, so like Our Lord Jesus, who kept coming down from heaven and getting the holy crap beat out of them and sent right back.

If he'd been a black man, he heard Louis say long after they'd hung up and from deep within his own aching head, you wouldn't have shed a tear. If he'd been a black man — and if he'd been a black and same-gender-loving man and fool enough to be in Wyoming after sundown — then Louis was right because he would have expected such a violent death, probably one that was even worse. Hadn't some cracker morons just tied a brother to the back of their rusted old Ford pickup and dragged him across the great state of Texas till his days-dead body fell apart? And for what? Because they were bored on a Saturday night.

But these boys, these innocent-and-pure-and-good-looking white boys. The kind of boys he imagined white women would pray to have for son-in-laws, for sons. It just shocked him every time how fragile they were, how easily they died. Far too gentle for this world. And, God, that Matthew, that delicate, doe-eyed boy, he didn't have a prayer.

It was Good Friday all over again and no chance of any angel coming to roll death's stone away. That boy was gone and that was it. So Marcus kept crying through the night until he had to leave for his first class.

Days later, he thought he saw Matthew Shepard. The murdered boy was sitting across the lecture hall as a colleague catalogued, with painful dispassion, the First World's many sins of omission committed in Russia's forced conversion to a free-market system. He was staring earnestly at him. Marcus strained to refocus his eyes. The boy wasn't Matthew Shephard after al l — he was bald and dressed like an imagined centerfold in W.A.R. — and his look was far from earnest. He wasn't sure the skinhead was outraged or aroused by his presence until he winked.

After the lecture and over pints, Marcus decided, as he got many long, lingering looks at his small childlike mouth and wide upturned nose and large, watery brown eyes, that his appearance was less that of a footsoldier for the Aryan Nation and more that of a beatific and, upon speaking his name — Andrew, mischievous cancer patient. This doctoral candidate at the School of Economics was short and slight, but hardly frail — in mind or, as Marcus would learn forty-five minutes later in the hallway of Andrew's flat, in body.

It wasn't until a proper fortnight had passed, on their fifth date, as their tongues rolled languidly in each others mouths and Marcus slowly pushed Andrew's suspenders off his shoulders and Andrew gently released each button from Marcus's fly, that the good doctor was finally introduced to the English Vice by his sweet-faced boy who said, upon freeing the last bit of metal from the cotton's embrace, "You know what I'd really like now…."

Marcus pulled his mouth away from where it had been sucking on Andrew's neck.

"You want me to spank you until you cry?" he said uncertainly.

"Yes."

All Marcus could think of was the terror of waiting for his granddad to return from the backyard with a switch or his dad to finish unloosening his belt. "I'm gonna beat the black offa ya," they'd said their separate times, echoes of the other in so many ways. Then they'd kept their promise. It hadn't happened often, but enough — enough that he wouldn't have wished it even on his worst enemy.

"Like with a switch?"

"Oh, yes." Andrew nearly bounced up and down on the couch and clapped his hands. "But you're not ready for that…yet."

"Yet?!"

Marcus' eyes grew wider and whiter. He'd obviously given Andrew the wrong impression. The roughest sex he'd ever had was in his last and longest relationship with Steve. Maybe once or twice, when Steve had been healthier and their love-making more spontaneous, more vigorous, Marcus had slapped him on the backside right before he came. But he always felt embarrassed. He thought he must have looked like a little boy playing rodeo cowboy, bursting out of the chute on a bucking bull. And Steve had usually put in his two quiet cents about Marcus' improvisation and turned away when it was time for their perfunctory post-coital cuddle. And now this angelic-looking boy wanted to be spanked until he cried — and, Lord knows, what else after that.

Then again, that boy had a fine behind — mighty fine. Each cheek could and had fit perfectly in the palm of his hand. Looking back now, he realized how brilliant a mind reader Andrew had been that night. Certainly as brilliant as he would prove to be a teacher. For, by the time Marcus' thoughts had returned from their wanderings, the boy was naked and stretched over his lap. And with that — and a coy request of "Please, sir, spank me very hard" — Marcus began two semesters of serious study at Andrew Marlowe's Homeschool for Sadists.

The pupil took to spanking quite well. When he called Louis next, half-hoping the realist would try to talk him out of this newest madness, and told him how he'd slapped a white boy's ass till it was red like two cherry tomatoes and his own hand ached and he'd loved every moment of it, all his best friend had said was "'bout time" before spending the next thirty minutes telling Marcus about this "fierce muthafucka" he'd met at the Pendulum named Kelvin who was riding his "sweet, black ass" to glory almost every other night.

Without his best friend's discouragement, Marcus advanced quickly from hand to paddle to hairbrush. It was the leap from spanking to striking, from kinky tourist to earnest pervert, that proved to be the true test not only of his newly learned education but of his newfound faith — in Andrew, in himself, in the soundness of their desires and their minds.

They were well into another round of Headmaster and cheeky boy. Andrew was being especially insolent — driven by the pride of how beautiful his gift of a red silk cravat looked against Marcus's throat and how much Marcus, despite his initial protests that it made him look like David Niven in a minstrel show, glowed as his boy had wound it around his neck and tucked it within his shirt. The Headmaster now inquired of the boy the nature of his latest offense. The bold pupil inched as close as he could to his stern inquisitor and spat out a snide comment, drizzling the Headmaster's skin and beard with flecks of spittle. There was only one proper response to such an affront and it was delivered to the rude upstart with the back of the elder's hand.

But the blow, though not unwanted nor unexpected, had been too strong. Andrew snapped back onto the bed and bounced twice before falling to the floor below. When he could get his head above the mattress, Andrew saw Marcus standing stock still with a near-cartoonish look of horror on his face. When Marcus saw Andrew, his hand holding up what must be his broken jaw, he collapsed to his knees with a hideous cracking thud, crying and swearing he would never harm him again.

After two weeks of Andrew's persistent coaxing that his jaw was not broken — though it did hurt and that was how he liked it — and that he loved rough sex-much rougher than anything they'd done so far — and that he fancied Marcus for a natura l — to which Marcus replied, "You mean natural savage," and Andrew had added, with a lusty smile, "Ah, I knew you were the answer to my prayers" — the Headmaster and boy were giving it another go. The wayward student, naked and bent over his just-inspected bed, was pleading with his disciplinarian to administer his punishment with more force.

"Please, Sir, strike me harder." The ends of the deerskin flogger collapsed in a messy pile on the boy's ass. "Please, Sir, harder." The fluttering tips landed with a more distinct sound of gravity this time. "Hit me, you dumb nigger."

Marcus felt the wind go out of him, as if he'd been punched squarely in the gut. The flogger hung limp from his right hand.

"What did you call me, Andy."

"Sir," he shouted as forcefully as he could, to brace himself for what he was about, he hoped, to receive, and to remind Marcus their games were far from concluded. "I called you 'a dumb nigger,' Sir. And if you're not as dumb as you are dark, you'll thrash me for the piece of skinhead shite I am."

Shite. What the hell kind of word was that, Marcus thought. It just sounded wrong. Charmingly and ridiculously wrong. So, Marcus did what he'd done the first time he'd heard that word and figured out what it meant. He laughed and his swift-rising anger evaporated. "Nice try, Andy."

"Then let me have my punishment, Sir."

Marcus threw the flogger over his shoulder and let it fall across Andrew's back. The boy barely flinched.

"What in bloody hell was that? You call that a thrashing?"

"That's enough, Marlowe," said Marcus, struggling to regain his character.

"No, Sir, it's not. You're black. As pitch. As night. And that means once upon a time your kind came from out of the fuckin' shadows of darkest Africa. Land of the bloodiest savages…"

"Stop baitin' me, boy. I said that's enough."

"But there was nothing bloody or savage in that horsetail of yours flicking flies off my back. Some angry black man you turned out to be…"

"Listen here, boy." Listen to me, Marcus thought. I sound so unconvincing. This is so stupid. I can't do this.

"Well, c'mon, nigger. Beat me. I can take it. I'm not like all your other white boys. I'm not fuckin' likely to go and die on you!"

And that was all Marcus remembered Andrew saying. The rest — dropping the flogger, snatching up the riding crop, gripping Andrew by the scruff of his neck and pushing his head down onto the mattress, walloping his bouncing ass and squirming thighs with the crop — it all felt far-removed from his own body and out-of-focus, like a half-remembered dream that vanishes slowly upon awakening. The sounds of his own shouts and the boy's screams and the thick whistle of the descending leather warbled about his ears and faded as if heard from under a great body of angry water.

He awoke to find himself sitting on the floor, cradling Andrew in his arms, both of them sobbing. He felt surprised and relieved and excited. Through Andrew's clever taunting and willing sacrifice, the dam round Marcus' deepest anger and lust had been breached. He had raged until he'd run dry. And both men were still alive.
Alive. Both of them. Very alive.

At that moment, the scales dropped from his eyes. He was born anew. Marcus had found a new calling. His own way to serve his sweet, sweet Lord. He would make strong the meek, blessed though they might be.

And he had.

In the few years since he had met Andrew at the lecture in Damascus Hall, since he'd tearfully matriculated from Marlowe's Homeschool with an open invitation to return each summer for further post-graduate work, Marcus had left his healing mark on the pale hides of boys on either side of the Atlantic. And now, he had come to a new twist in that road. He was going to make straight, so to speak, the crooked. Take the rod to a spoiled child. But he had to hurry, he thought as he lifted his ass, sore from the unforgiving flatness of the stool's oak seat, and stood. He had only an hour to dress — how would the boy know he was there to minister unto him without his collar? — and find parking.

Marcus strode through the leather flaps hanging in the doorway and knew immediately by the smells of the dimly lit place that he'd entered a sex pig's garden of earthly delights. It had that unmistakable musk: the aroma of freshly polished leather mingled with the strong funk of ripe, unwashed denim, and was sharpened by the pungency of cigar smoke (for this was a bar of smoking as well as sexual outlaws) and sweetened with the odor of beer-scented sweat and piss from an overcrowded room of horndogs on the prowl. He could be in no place other than San Francisco's infamous Manhole.

The eyes of those in the know, the alerted ones, fixed on the hulking presence standing beside the pooltable. Like Kemet, the name ancient Egyptians gave to their land, he was known to the denizens of this bar, to the whole South of Market demimonde, simply as "The Black:" the Black Marc Daddy; the Black Knight; the Black Man.

And what a man he was: a linebacker in leathers; 6'3'' tall and 250 pounds solid. He wore his biker's cap pushed forward, the brim shading his eyes, small, clear, and intense like a predatory bird's, and pointing the viewer's gaze down to his long and strong nose, his high cheekbones, and his well-trimmed beard which was going white, making his thick lips look fuller and his broad jaw stronger and his sepia skin darker. He'd wrapped a gleaming black leather jacket around what he could of his wide shoulders and arms, but it looked more like a picture frame for his chest. And there were few men in the crowd staring at him at that very moment who wouldn't have admitted he was built like the proverbial brick house, and letting it all, maybe not hang, but certainly bulge out in his tight white tee and, as their eyes happily dropped, well-faded Levis.

Unaware that he was the object of such especially keen interest tonight, The Black Knight ignored the men watching him and looked out over their heads as he scanned the bar for the one he'd come for. There, he thought. Annie Lennox wailed out overhead that she needed a man; Marcus agreed. He walked until he stood a few feet from a group of boys hanging around the pinball machine, until he too was illumined by its strobing glow, never noticing how certain men had quietly stepped to either side of him and pulled the soon-to-be-clued-in along with them.

In the center of the boys jerked and gyrated Spit. He was a few inches shorter than Marcus and a good hundred pounds lighter. Or as Louis liked to say, "he's built like a beanpole and almost as smart and, Lord, nearly forty years younger than you, Methusaleh."

Marcus had to admit, as he observed him for the first time without interruption, that he looked pretty scrawny. His gray-green T-shirt — in the seconds his body came to rest, Marcus was able to read that it said "Extra Fancy" — had been worn down to that state of fuzzy translucence which occurs in cotton just before it disintegrates and it clung all the tighter to his concave chest and spindly arms. His battered camouflage pants were held up by an orange extension cord that he'd coiled several times around his hips and cinched in one enormous square knot. The makeshift belt was close in color to the shade of his tightly buzzed hair — the only easy-to-spot indication, in Marcus' eyes, that he was a fag; that and the fact he was in this bar.

And he did look younger, decades — Fuck you, Louis! — younger. His skin was smooth and still refusing to be pulled out like taffy in gravity's sticky hands. It didn't hurt that it had never seen the sun; it was paler than any undead's. And his long, squarish head made his nose all the smaller, turned-up, and boyish. Then there were his eyes — large, almond-shaped, and heavy-lidded in the classic stoner fashion. Louis had said they made him look like a cartoon character and called him "Dopey Dick" until he learned his name was Spit and had done just that with his mouthful of beer. To Marcus, they gave Spit an endearing appearance, like that of a sleepy child found wandering in hallway late at night, lost between the bathroom and his bed.

This moment would have been perfect, Marcus thought, as he grabbed Spit's jangling arm and yanked it toward him, if the boy had been a flick or two away from the machine's all-time score. But he refused to look at the blinking and buzzing box; that would have been a fortuitousness so poetic that it could only ever occur in fiction. Still, it did have some very sweet seconds.

Before the silver ball had spun past the flippers and vanished, Spit had tried to throw a punch at the "fuckin' asshole" who'd pissed on his wild times with Bo and Luke Duke in Hazzard County; opened his eyes wide enough to see who it was; majorly blanched and swerved his fist to avoid the Black Knight and stumbled into his arms. The Black Knight had then promptly spun the punk around, pinned him in a full nelson, bent him forward until his bony ass was grinding up against Marcus' swelling crotch, and force-marched him deeper into the bar through the waiting path of silent men.

When they arrived, fifty-six seconds later, in front of the john, Marcus released Spit long enough for him to stand up before slamming him into swinging door and pushing him into the center of a small dark room made all the bleaker by its black walls and a single red light bulb. Half-dressed bodies tugged at their pants and scrambled for the door. Even Ol' Kris Kringle, a naked bear with a flowing beard like his namesake who sat each night in the furthest toilet until his hoary pride and glory was as yellow as an Easter egg from California's multi-vitamin-enriched piss, hurriedly closed his door out of respect.

God, Marcus wondered, who doesn't Louis talk to.

He jerked Spit down onto his knees before the trough. He was shivering, just barely. "Boy, you've been eyeing me for months," he growled, lowering his voice to a deep, bone-rattling bass. "Well, tonight is your lucky night. I've decided to find out if you're worthy. So c'mon, snowflake, pull it out. If you can soak yourself before I'm done emptying this," he pulled his own dick out and enjoyed Spit's eyes growing slightly whiter, "then I'll give you the last shakes of dew from my big…black…lily."

Marcus lifted his dick and pissed; the stream battered the metal sides of the trough and echoed off the walls. He could hear Kringle whimpering in his stall. When he'd nearly drained himself, he turned and saw that Spit had his camos down around his thighs and was sitting in a growing puddle. He aimed his weakening stream at the boy's chest and said, "Open your mouth." Spit closed his eyes as if he'd fallen into deep prayer. "Boy, did I tell you to do that?! Stick out that bitter tongue of yours." And with that, Marcus dropped a small necklace's worth of amber pearls on his curling tongue.

Marcus glanced down past Spit's mouth. His tongue wasn't all that jutted out eagerly from the boy. He had one of those long, thin dicks, made all the longer and thinner because it was now hard enough to twitch and bounce on its own.

"You just may do, punk," Marcus said as he rearranged his dick within his jeans and turned for the door. Spit scrambled to get up. Marcus had to bite his lips to keep himself from laughing at the ridiculous sloshing sound. And this must have looked like a terrifying grimace to Spit when The Black Knight spun around and pointed, his hand shaking with fury, at the ground and shouted, "Stay," for the punk crumpled to the ground. "You'll leave when I'm gone."

Spit gave him a look of wide- and watery-eyed soulfulness, like the accusing gazes of those old, abandoned dogs in the newspaper ads the SPCA runs each week. And it might have tugged more at Marcus' heart than his cock if this bratty punk had been a whipped dog, his whipped dog.

All in good time, Marcus said to himself. If you follow the divinings of that stiff dick of yours, maybe a week. Maybe two.

"What?" he replied out loud to Spit's silent question. "You think I was gonna take you to the backroom or maybe just fuck you upfront on the pool table. Give you somethin' finally worth braggin' about. Like hell. Here."

He threw his card on the floor. "You'll get to this address next Friday at 10 p.m. Not a minute before. Not a minute after. I expect to see your skinny ass there or don't even think of showin' it again in this bar." He paused to look at the punk's ghostly white knees, splitting the already-wide rips in his pants. "Hey, boy." Spit bobbed his head. "If I was you, I'd get that card outta all that piss before the ink runs." Marcus turned for the last time and, as he pushed against the door, he heard Spit splashing about furiously in his own urine.

The Black Knight appeared in the doorway. The room was silent. A statuesque man with a bald head the shape and color and sheen of those ornamental oak balls at the bottom of a banister, distinguished by a prominent nose that seemed to be balanced on a thread-thin goatee, and wearing a fluorescent orange jersey, two sizes too large, stepped out of the crowd, raised his long arms over his head, and clapped his hands. Louis had spoken. Every other man, all save Spit's very confused friends, joined in. The DJ began to play — most likely, Marcus imagined, with a little bit of prior encouragement from his forever bold soul sister Louis — Tina Turner's cover of "Under My Thumb." The Black Knight smiled and, uncharacteristically, bowed. "That's for you, Bernie," he shouted over the music as he parted the crowd, passed Louis who was nodding his head and saying "Well, all right now. Well, all right," and headed for the door.

Marcus hit the OPEN button and the carousel rolled out. He pushed the tip of his thick finger in the tight hole of the CD and lifted it out and up to its case. Then again. Until he'd picked it clean. No Patti or Aretha or Lauren tonight. And no — which one is this? (he had to squint hard without his reading glasses) — Parliament — oh, that's where that went — either. He'd take the boy aboard the Mothership if, and when, he proved himself worthy. Tonight, Marcus had planned a trial by a different fire. This had to be a very heavy scene. So he filled each slot with Nat King Cole and pushed CLOSE and then SHUFFLE and ALL DISCS and then PLAY.

First came that syrupy staple of late Big Band, two dozen strings gliding and sliding their way through the song's intro. Nelson Riddle was at it again. It was as ridiculous as it was unneeded. Like draping a sling with pink taffeta bunting. Then came those warm-as-brandy notes out of the King's mouth and, as his voice had done the first time Marcus heard him sing "When I Fall in Love" forty years earlier, it turned him into gooseflesh.

He turned and walked across the room to turn off the overhead light. The man in the mirrors that paneled the opposite wall smiled back at him. He was tall; he was dark; and he was very handsome in his skin-tight pink Izod that he'd tucked into a brand-new pair of Dockers. What he couldn't see, because of the couch, were the Bass Wejun loafers. He looked down, drawn by the glints from the mint-condition pennies tucked into each tongue, and then back up and across at himself once more.

"Damn, I look fine tonight," he said before flinching. The doorbell had rung out and startled him. He looked around the room at the various clockfaces: 10 p.m. in the kitchen; somewhere between 10 p.m. and 10:05 p.m. on the wall in the living room; and 9:59:54 p.m. on the high-tech gizmo Louis had bought him that sat gathering dust on the shelf above his CDs.

"Good boy."

Marcus took a deep breath and walked cooly over to the front door and flicked the overhead light off.

"Prepare to meet your Black Knight, Spit," he said to himself. And from somewhere deep within his head, Louis answered with, "More like Black Night over Kennebunkport." He almost told the door to "shut the fuck up" when he heard the opening strains of "Orange Colored Sky." "Now that's what I call serendipity-doo-dah," he said out loud. He unlocked and then opened the door, expecting to see a shock of orange hair.

Instead, he got a shock. Spit had dyed his hair daffodil yellow in honor, Marcus rapidly guessed, of their first "date." And they both were wearing pink shirts! Spit's was a fairly clean tee with "Subtonix" written in bleeding blue letters across the chest. Marcus puzzled over the words, but whatever the odd look on his own face it was nothing compared to Spit's. The boy stood frozen with his bloodshot eyes open wide enough that Marcus could finally tell they were green.

"Um, I'm sorry, bro'," stammered the punk. "I think I got the wrong house."

"Who told you to speak, boy?" The preppy reached out and grabbed the multiple piercings of the punk's left ear between his thumb and forefinger and pulled him inside. He then pushed him toward the couch and, when he'd turned around after locking the door, saw that the back of the punk's shirt read "rip your heart out."

"With pleasure, Spit," Marcus said softly as he walked up behind him. "With pleasure."

Spit halted when he hit the wall of pink muscle. Marcus was once again in front of him.

"On your knees, boy. Now."

Spit collapsed onto the carpet.

"Hands behind your back. That's it. Let'em rest on that little bitty white ass of yours."

Spit looked up earnestly and almost smiled."So, boy, you here for my dick…?"

"Yes, Sir."

Marcus grabbed Spit's jaw in his hand and squeezed his thin pink lips together with his free hand.

"Don't interrupt your elders, boy. It's rude. You hear?"

Spit nodded his head. Marcus kept both his hands in place.

"I said, you here for my dick or did you come lookin' for Shaka Zulu's mighty spear?"

He let go of the boy's mouth and waited for his answer. The boy, in turn, looked at Marcus' face quizzically, searching his unmoving scowl for even a clue on how to answer.

"Well, boy? We both know you here for black dick. Am I right?"

Spit started to nod, then stopped.

"What's wrong, snowflake? From what I hear, you usually got lots to say. I just want to know if you here for my black dick or you just come 'round for some of that gargantuan gangsta manhood the homeboys are always clutchin'?"

Spit blinked nervously and his skin turned — amazingly, Marcus concluded — a shade paler.

"Did I lose you? Use too big a word? 'Gargantuan'? It means big. Like all us bucks is s'pose to be. And my black dick is big alright," he said as he rubbed his crotch until he could grab his cock throught the khakis. "Sho' nuff. But I don't know if it's big enough, or black enough, for you, young Master Spit? Cuz Lord knows it's gonna have to be a whole lotta both in a getup like this. I mean, look at me. Look at me, boy! How much of a badass muthafuckin' nigga top do you think I can be in these goddamned Dockers?!"

Spit could have only looked more comical, Marcus thought, if the little beads of sweat sliding down onto the forehead of his beet-red and bug-eyed face had slipped together, just like in one of those Busby Berkeley dance routines, to form the word "BUSTED."

"I know you got a tongue in there, boy. I seen it lap up my piss last week."

"I'm sorry, Sir," the boy finally blurted.

"Yes, you are. But I'm not the one you gotta apologize to. Am I? Besides, that doesn't answer my question, does it? I wanna know why you here. Is it to see me or do you just wanna peep my Clarence Thomas?"

Marcus watched the space between the boy's eyebrows furrow.

"Don't stare at me like you don't know what I'm talkin' 'bout? You just come to get it on with my long dong. Take a ride back to the plantation on my big black donkey dick. That's right. You know what I'm talkin' 'bout, punk."

Marcus slammed the butt of his palm into the punk's chest and pushed. Spit almost rolled over backwards. When he'd righted himself, his nose and mouth were an inch from the fly of the Dockers.

"Yeah, that's it, boy. Take a whiff. Smell it. It's all packed away in there for you. You know what I'm talkin' 'bout. Thirteen fuckin' inches of black meat. Thirteen. That is the devil's number. And black is his color. That is your dream, boy, ain't it? To have the devil dick you down. Ain't it, snowflake? Cuz I'd hate to see that dream deferred on a count of pair of a preppy pants that are only a shade darker than you."

"No, Sir. Shit. I mean, I…I don't know, Sir." Spit choked out the words and hung his head. Marcus was certain the punk was about to cry.

"Good boy," Marcus said softly, as he patted his bristly head. "You may be worth fuckin' after all."

The boy looked up. Relieved. Eager. Ready.

"Don't get your ass in the air yet, Spitrag. I said you 'may be worth fuckin'.' I'm still not sure. But if you do everything — everything! — I tell you to do tonight. Then next time, I'll take you back to my bedroom, throw your heels up to Jesus, and fuck you bowlegged and stupid. And that's sayin' a lot, isn't it, boy?"

Spit replied by biting his lower lip — to keep from grinning or letting out a whoop, Marcus guessed.

"I'm talkin' to you, boy. You better answer or get the fuck outta here."

"Sir?"

"I said it'd be hard to fuck you even more stupid than you've already been, wouldn't it boy?" Marcus bent down, put his hands in pits under the punk's arms, and lifted him to his feet.

"Yes, Sir," Spit said from within his shirt as Marcus pulled it over his head.

"And you've been sayin' some pretty stupid shit lately, haven't you, boy?" Marcus gripped the boy by each butt cheek — well, all right, Spit…you've got some cushion for the pushin' after all — and knelt. He untied the boy's boots and pulled off one and then the other. Then he peeled off and tossed the socks over his shoulder.

"Yes, Sir."

"And why is it, boy," Marcus said, pressing his palm up and into the crotch of Spit's pants as if he were about to lift him over his head and spin him around, "that all the smug ones who think their shit don't stink cuz it's made outta solid gold — like you, boy — end up bein' the dumbest…." Marcus had heard the faint crackling sound of the fabric when it had touched his hand and now he could smell it. Spit, you romantic little wanker. You haven't taken these off since we met. "And the stankiest."

Thank you, Jesus, Marcus thought as he unbuttoned the boy's pants, you made him leave that extension cord at home. As you know, I wrote student evaluations all day and, the way my joints are burnin', I'd never've gotten that knot and these buttons undone.

And then he dramatically punctuated his last spoken sentence by yanking Spit's pants to the ground.

"Goin' commando, are we?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Did you think you'd get lucky or you just eschew underwear cuz it chafes with your punk aesthetic?"

"Sir?"
"Oh, right. Big words. You's stupid. I forgot." He paused to get to his feet. "I'll keep it simple — simple like them sweet little ol' darkies in a Stephen Foster song." He threw his hands up to frame his face and grinned. "Oh, doodah day!" Then the hands and grin just as suddenly dropped away. "But mind you, boy, I'm only gonna do this once. Cuz there ain't nothin' simple 'bout me — or my friends."

"Yes, Sir. I'm sorry, Sir."

The naked punk snapped to attention, his dick giving Marcus a floppy salute. Marcus sighed. Either this boy was a recovering military brat or he'd watched way too much porno.

"Yes, boy," he said as he inspected him with a brief downward and then upward glance, "you sure as shit are. And you gonna pay dearly for it. But, if you do right by me tonight, Spit, then there'll come a day when you will eschew a helluva lot more than just underwear."

Marcus tapped his chest.

"Now, it's your turn. Boy, don't look at me like that. You can't be that dumb. Get over here and undress me. But you gotta use that filthy mouth of yours and get my clothes wet this time."

Spit hurried over and got a mouthful of the pink cotton and began to suck with the blind, silent fury of a leech. He sniffed loudly and gulped down more of the shirt. As if following a scent, he wriggled along Marcus' chest until he found the fat stub of a happy and hard nipple. Then he grew still again.

"Since you such an expert on niggas…." Somehow, through his nipple that was sweetly crushed between the boy's lips, Marcus felt Spit cringe. "Especially nigga tops, you must think I like this shirt so cuz it looks just like a juicy slice of watermelon."

"No, Sir."

He thwacked the boy on his yellow head and pushed him back into his chest.

"Did I tell you to talk, boy? You here to worship. So get to it."

Spit had released his bite on Marcus' nipple to go and suckle, with a series of nips of his teeth and jabs from his tongue, at the other. "That's good." The abandoned tit throbbed and stung as the wet cotton weighed down on it and grew hard and cold. "Oh, that's real good, boy."

Marcus paused to wince and then exhale in one loud, shaky breath.

"Like I was sayin', you probably think I like the color pink cuz all us muthafucka nigga tops like watermelon. Well, you'd be wrong again. A good, sweet slice of watermelon is red. Like your ass is gonna be when I'm done slappin' the shit out of it next time. Oh, yeah, bite down on it, boy!"

He cupped the back of Spit's head and tried to shove all of his stinging pec into the punk's mouth.

"No, no, no," he sighed. "I like the color pink cuz it reminds me of assholes. Not a full grown one like you. But this one."

Marcus laid his hand on the crack of Spit's ass. He pushed his middle finger deep between the warm and full flesh of his cheeks and rubbed the tip slowly around the soft ridges that puckered his hole.

"You know the pink I'm talkin' 'bout. Like the inside of your hole. Once I've gotten a few fingers in it and push my big pink tongue all up inside it. Once it's really opened up. Like it's ready to blossom. Like it's almost ripe. That's when I stick my big black dick in — fast and hard." He shoved his finger in, up to the knuckle.

Spit lost his grip in all his squirming and when he bit down again, he had the stiff knot of fabric that was the green alligator between his teeth. He shook his head back and forth and nearly tore it from the shirt as Marcus flexed his finger deep inside the boy.

Marcus chuckled as he watched and then whispered toward the bobbing head, "That's what I'm gonna do to you next week, boy, if you do right by me tonight." He felt little warm, wet pricks around his left knee. The head of Spit's dick was slapping up against it and leaving behind a trail.

"You sure got a thang for Izods, doncha, boy?" Marcus gently kneed the boy's cock and Spit detached, his lips raw and red, and looked up. "It's time for you to go south," the preppy said to the punk before he pulled his own shirt off. The punk licked at the retreating Izod, following the hem into the preppy's sweaty armpit and up along his bicep until it was out of reach.

Marcus tossed the shirt on the floor and pushed Spit back down along his chest and stomach. Spit lived up to his name and went wild, like he was trying to lick the kink out of each and every hair. Then his mouth reached the edge of the Dockers.

"Don't stop till you've reached the floor."

When Spit had tugged the last wet argyle sock off, the boy looked up and Marcus locked eyes with him. The preppy grabbed his own balls and started tugging on them.

"Get up here and start kissin' these pants. And don't give me any of those little dry-mouth baby bird pecks. I want you to kiss them like you drownin' and you gotta breathe oxygen through your lips, through your tongue, and the only air that's fit to breathe is trapped in every fiber of this pair of Dockers. You hear?"

Marcus' body relaxed, his hand gave way, as he felt the pressure from Spit's mouth, his nose, his whole face, mashing themselves against his cock and balls.

"My, my, my, Spit, you got quite a mouth on you. Now I want you to run that tongue of yours all over my crotch. Get it up there against the zipper. That's right. Now find my dick. That's it. Use your nose. Smell. Now suck it through the fabric. That's right. Take the cotton in your mouth, boy."

"I'll help you with the belt." He unfastened it. Spit alternated tugging on the brass buckle and tonguing the interlocking strands of dusky brown leather.

"Shit, boy, you gonna lick the weave right outta my belt. Save some of that spit for what's behind zipper number one." And Marcus undid his fly and let the Dockers fall. Spit chewed and yanked on the cuffs of the pants like an undisciplined puppy. Once he'd dragged them out onto the floor, he leapt back up onto his knees and lunged for the waistband of the Madras boxers. He gripped it in his teeth and pulled.

Marcus began to laugh, and, when Spit dropped the shorts onto the floor and lifted his head, he laughed even harder. The little pup looked like he'd been kicked. For where Spit had expected to see a strapping black man buck naked, there stood Marcus with his legs straddling the floor and his arms akimbo and his fists resting on his hips. It was a pose that did just as it was intended to do and drew all Spit's attention to the jock which stood between a boy and a dick. A jock whose pouch was a garish patchwork of paisley tie tips that Marcus had spent several late nights handsewing.

"You like? Cuz you should. I got somethin' special in here for you, boy. Somethin' long and smooth and colorful."

Spit's heavy, fleshy eyelids fluttered with interest and moved back so the boy's eyes could see better what Marcus' hand was freeing from the overstuffed pouch. He lifted his whole, huge hand over the edge of the waistband and let it drop. It unfurled down to his knees.

It was long, yellow, and made of silk. It was floridly awash with turquoise and pink paramecia. Marcus had remembered their first date as well.

"It ain't no amber wave, but you still ain't convinced me you much of man yet neither. C'mon. Show me I ain't a fool to wanna fuck you. Take it, golden boy. Take it all in your mouth. That's it. Eat up."

As Nat King Cole plaintively sang "Nature Boy," Marcus looked down on his own poor boy, licking and chewing and devouring and choking on the paisley tie, like a wild, starved animal. Marcus pulled away and the tie unraveled out of Spit's mouth. He crawled after it and tongued his way to the edge of the waistband.

"Un-unh," Marcus said as he pressed him palm against Spit's forehead. "That's all you gonna see tonight. I said you gotta earn the right. And you still gotta a ways to go. A long ways."

He pulled away again and the tie hung soggily, clinging now and then to Marcus' leg as he grabbed the pants and the shirt off the floor. He dropped them in front of a very confused looking Spit.

"Here. Take 'em and lay 'em out on the floor. Like they's a body on the floor. Like a body makin' snow angels in my carpet."

Spit hesitated and then scooted out of the way before Marcus' hand could box his ear. He laid the shirt down first, smoothing out the wet and wrinkling patches. Then he delicately placed the waistband of the Dockers at the edge of the shirt and stretched out the crumpled and tangled legs. He glanced up to determine his success in Marcus' expression.

"Now lay on 'em," Marcus said after their eyes met.

Spit continued to stare.

"You heard me. Lay down on them. That's right. Like you gonna fuck that body makin' snow angels in my carpet. Get that hard dick of yours right smack-dab in the middle of them Dockers."

He did. Promptly.

"I'm gonna go easy on you, boy. Since you like leather so damned much, here." Marcus placed one of the loafers under Spit's face, then pushed it and the boy down onto the shoe with his foot.

"Go on. Kiss it. That' it. Get all of it wet." He gave Spit's butt a little tap with his foot. "And get these to bouncing. That's right. Fuck those Dockers. Fuck'em like they're the sweetest hole you ever gonna get."

Spit stuck out his tongue and poked at the tip of the shoe, like he was uncertain it was really leather or the same quality of leather that covered the round, steel toes in those motorcycle boots which Marcus had heard he lived to polish. Marcus pressed the boy's tongue, mouth, nose, forehead deep into the loafer. "I said, 'Get it wet.'"

Spit lapped the sides, the vamp, the tongue of the shoe with broad, wet strokes. Marcus watched his head bop in time to the steady bounce of his ass. He watched the muscles clench and release in his neck and along his shoulders and down his back and around the dimples in his butt cheeks. He watched his jaw widen to get all of his tongue inside the shoe or bulge as he chewed on the leather. He watched how tightly he pressed his eyes together, like he was squinting to see the stitching in the shoe or hold in all the pleasure he was getting from banging a pair of khaki pants.

God, this is actually gettin' me hard, Marcus thought.

He freed his dick from the tightening knot of ties and looked at it. It was big. An honest eight inches. But it wasn't black. He'd never seen a black dick that actually was the color black. And he'd seen some pretty dark dick back in the day.

He turned his cock in his hand and, as it stiffened, a familiar question from childhood returned. Can't white folk see colors as clearly as black folk? He used to look around him — hell, he still looked around him — and he'd seen an amazing palette of browns — every shade imaginable. But never once had he met a black person who was black. Not even his colleagues from Africa. Maybe as dark as that light-swallowing brown in those little tiny cups of coffee he'd drunk in Egypt or that amazing inky blue on the Cape Town horizon at midnight with a full moon overhead. But never negro, niger, black.

"A thick bar of fine dark chocolate or a heavy block of polished mahogany." That's how he'd once described his dick. It was a rather pornographic wish-you-were-here-baby letter to his then-lover Joel, away for the summer on a research grant. And Louis, of course, had read it before Marcus could mail it.

"Why if it isn't Mrs. See herself," Louis had said as he propped himself against the doorwell, waiving the letter overhead.

"What you goin' on about now, Louis?"

"Fine chocolate, my ass."

"Well, yes, if I remember correctly it is."

"Don't try to sweet-talk me, Mr. Hershey-Bar-between-his-legs."

"Jesus Christ, Louis! Give me that. You weren't supposed to read that."

"Then don't put it where I can find it."

"Louis!"

Louis stopped rustling the papers and brought them down as if he were going to read them once more — out loud.

"Mahogany," he harrumphed as his eyes glanced over the page and back up to Marcus. "Don't flatter yourself, Miss Ross. It ain't nothin' but an ol' chewed-on switch of black willow that's got a dab of cheap-ass chocolate puddin' stuck to the end of it."

"Well, you always seemed happy enough to eat it. Two or three times a night."

"Not no more. If I had to put it in my mouth right now…"

"Which you ain't."

"Got that right. Cuz it would taste real sweet at first. But when I pulled it out, all I'd taste is the bitter. In fact, I can still taste it."

"Well, that's your own damn fault. Cuz you were the fool who kicked me to the curb for Mr. Black Power."

"Don't start…."

"Listen to him," a voice echoed inside Marcus. He looked down and his dick was looking pretty hangdog. "Keep your eyes on the prize, son." And below his cock, there it was. Spit's bright-white butt. Looking a lot like a pack of Hostess® Sno Balls® — damn, I shoulda eaten somethin' for dinner, nerves or no nerves — all shiny from the light hitting the untorn plastic. Shaking in their rack as a tremblor gets ready to roll through the convenience store, dropping everyone and everything to the floor. Yes, there it was. Spit's ass. Rounder, smaller, and sweeter than his scrawny frame and baggy clothes had led Marcus to imagine. Rump-a-pump-pumpin' those goddamned Dockers. Hard and fast.

Too hard and too fast.

"Hey." He held his foot so Spit's ass hit it on the upthrust and then foot and ass went down together and stayed down. "You drillin' for oil?"

The boy was breathing too quick to answer immediately. Eventually, he got out a

"No, Sir."

"That's right. Now I wanna see some passion. I wanna see a lot less pound and a lot more ground." Spit lay still. "You know, grind those skinny hips of yours." He traced a circle on Spit's ass with the ball of his foot. Then he pressed his foot deeper into the muscle and dragged it and the boy around in a long ellipse. "That's better. And more pushin' too." He shoved his foot into the crack of Spit's ass and pushed, his toes sliding down as Spit slipped forward along the resisting fabric until Marcus was almost standing on the boy's balls.

"And make some noise, boy. Hell, if you was a real wasp, I'd hear your wings hummin' while you're stingin' me." He rubbed his toes around the back of the punk's surprisingly unpierced ballsac until he got a moan. "That's a start. Remember, this ain't no chore. You s'pose to be givin' those Dockers the fuck of their bland life."

Spit rolled the weight of his body over the Dockers and his dick slowly. First side-to-side and then up and down. Then again. Memorizing the moves of Marcus's foot. He lifted his hips high enough so that only the bottoms of his balls rested on the pants. Then he dropped on them in one crushing thrust and groaned from the back of his throat. He started to rub against the floor with continued and varied bucks and grinds of his hips. The sounds he made grew higher in pitch and more urgent in tone.

"Never in all my born days did I think I'd see a scrawny-assed, nigga-lovin', faggot punk makin' sweet love to a pair of khaki pants. I guess you can take the boy out of Connecticut but you can't take Connecticut out of the boy. Ain't that right, Chad Myers?"

Spit's head bolted up while his hips kept bucking and grinding. He tried to turn toward Marcus but Marcus had his foot down on Spit's neck so fast that the raised tooling on the shoe dug into the side of his face.

"Who said you could look at my dick, Chad? Remember, you earnin' that right tonight."

Marcus spat loudly, twice, into his hand and rubbed his slaver up and down his cock. He spat again and wetted his dick so that even Spit could hear it — over Nat's graceful crooning of "The Very Thought of You" — sloshing as it slid back and forth in his hand.

"Chad. Good ol' Chad Myers of Darien, Connecticut. Pleased to meet you, son. That's right, Spit. Never underestimate us old folks. Mad Jack smokes a lot of weed, but he always remembers what Scalawag tells him. And then Jack told Louis and Louis told me and I told Bernie. You remember Bernie, Chad, don't you?"

Spit had stopped fucking and lay eerily still. He was shuddering like he was cold, like he was crying. Marcus pushed down harder on his neck.

"Boy, did I tell you you could stop fuckin' your daddy's Dockers? If you ever wanna get near a black dick again, especially this one, you'll rip those pants in half with the golden shrimp fork the Good Lord gave you? You hear me?"

Spit mumbled something into the leather toe as he rubbed his head against the shoe.

"Wha'd you say, boy?" He lifted his foot high enough so Spit could raise his face and open his mouth to groan, "Yes, Sir."

"What, boy?"

"Yes, Sir!"

"Then get to it."

Marcus hacked in the palm of drying, burning hand.

"So, like I was sayin', I told Bernie and Bernie's a real whiz on the Internet. He did a little diggin'. So why'd you come west, boy? Couldn't get it on with the maintenance crew at Phillips Andover after you graduated? Didn't wanna spend another summer drivin' into Bridgeport every Saturday night? You get to college and find the negroes a little too uppity for your taste? Hunh? The brothas in New Haven too real for you? That why you on your second year-abroad from Yale? Yale, Chad. That's a good school. I'm disappointed they never taught you what 'gargantuan' means."

He spat forcefully. Like he was disgusted.

"Yeah, we black boys learned there's quite a gargantuan silver spoon shoved up your punk ass. Oh, yeah, Chad. There's an idea. Yes, indeed."

Marcus spat again.

"Bernie's fuckin' fortieth birthday is tomorrow night. Oh, God. I think my gift'll be lettin' him have a go at your two scoops of vanilla. Let him shove an even bigger…a fuckin' mandingo-sized… silver spoon up your ass. Yeah. One that's been sittin' in the freezer for a couple of hours. Yes. Oh, yes. That'd be sweet. Sweet. Ah, sweet Jesus. Too bad you can't see what I can, Chad. You should see how hard my big…black…dick is. And I got it pointed right at your back, boy. Oh, God. If you weren't rubbin' a hole in those fuckin' pants, Chad, you could see I'm gonna come. Oh, yeah. I'm comin', Chad. Oh, God, Chad. You wanna see white flight, boy. Just…wait. Oh, God. I got your white power, Chad. Here's… your… muthafuckin'… white… power,… Chad!

Marcus watched his cum splatter across Spit's back. The boy writhed and flopped atop the Dockers like he'd been scalded with acid. The groans and grunts had given way to a frantic string of whimpers.

"Oh, God!" Spit coughed out. "I'm coming. Permission to come, Sir! Oh, God…."

"Spit it out, Chad," Marcus said as forcefully as he could despite being winded. "Spit it all out."

The boy thrashed obscenely and collapsed into stillness. Marcus nodded his head approvingly as he pulled up the end of the dangling yellow tie and wiped his dick with it. He then pushed his spent manhood back into the jock.

"Not bad, Chad. Not bad at all. You catch your breath there and then it's time for you to go."

Spit raised himself up on his arms and turned to give Marcus an even better version of the dying dog stare he'd used on him in the bathroom of the Manhole.

Marcus laughed.

"You listenin' to me earlier, boy?"

"Yes, Sir."

"You ain't actin' like it. Why you gettin' all mopey and dopey on me."

"Sorry, Sir."

"Yes, we already established that. Now listen good. I told you if you did right by me tonight and did everything I told you to do I'd bring you back here next Friday and fuck you stupid. Is it next Friday already?"

"No, Sir."

"Do you wanna get fucked stupid?"

"Hell, yes — Sir!"

"Don't get cocky on me, Chad. You too ugly to fuck when you get all cocky. You hear?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Good. I want you to wrap those Dockers 'round your sticky privates like they's a diaper. You heard me, boy. Gird up those loins with your preppy diaper. And put the rest of your damn clothes on too. Well, go to it, Chad. Get dressed."

Spit stood up and straddled the soiled pants. Without a word, he started to dress. Thank God, he wears those baggy pants was all Marcus could think.

After ten minutes and two false starts, Spit was done.

"Come here," Marcus said as he stood next to the apartment's door. Spit approached, stiffly and slowly. When he was close enough, Marcus grabbed him by both arms and pulled him into a tight hug. He bent his lips toward the boy's ear and whispered, "Now, here's the hard part, Spit. You listening? Cuz I can feel your dick gettin' all eager and upright on me."

"Yes, Sir. I swear."

"Don't be swearin' till you heard what you gotta do next."

Spit nodded and the feverishly warm skin and cold metal studs and rings of his ear grazed Marcus' lips.

"First, you gotta wear your Dockers just like you got 'em on now all week to the bar. That's right. Starting tomorrow night, you gotta show up and strip down to your dirty diapers and your boots. And tomorrow's Bernie's birthday, like I said before. You remember?"

"Yes," he whispered.

"Well, you're my gift. And that means you gonna do whatever Bernie tells you to do to make things right between you two. And keep things right between us."

Marcus exhaled gently into the boy's ear before resuming with a distinct clip in his voice.

"You do all that and you'd better be back here next Friday at ten o'clock sharp. We will begin your education then in earnest. At that time, you will refer to me as Dr. George and you will be have a pen and notebook handy at all times. I will then give you a dictionary, a reading list, and the rugburn of your life. You think you can handle all that?"

"I'll try, Sir."

"Don't try, boy, just do." And Marcus pulled his mouth away from Spit's ear and placed it firmly on his lips. The boy's tongue felt even better inside Marcus' mouth than it had outside on this skin of chest.

With a little reluctance, Marcus pulled away and said, "Go on, now. Go." He unlocked and opened the door. "I'll see you tomorrow night."

"Yes, you will, Sir. Good night, Sir."

"Good night, Spit."

He closed the door and slid the lock into place and then waited. There it was. Cackling. Lots of it. But from a very deep-voiced henhouse. The louvered doors to the living room closet swung wider apart and out slipped Louis, nearly dropping his camcorder as he doubled over in laughter.

"Oh, girl," he said when he could finally breathe. "As much as I hate bein' in any closet, this," he took a deeper breath, "this was worth it. Oh, Lord — white power!" The cackling was pushed aside for some gut-busting, tears-at-the-corners-of-the-eyes guffawing.

"Fine, you go on and let it out, Sister Waters," Marcus said as he leaned back against the door. "I wanna see what you have to say in the heat of the moment come Monday night."

"Oh, mercy!" Louis said as he dabbed at his eyes. "Don't worry. I ain't stickin' my big black dick anywhere near that young Republican. But I gots just the spoon."

"Oh, I bet you do. Just remember, Mr. Spike Lee, to bring your masterpiece to the Manhole tomorrow night," Marcus said as he walked past Louis into his bedroom to get his robe.

"Nigga please, you even have to ask."

There was a loud laugh from the bedroom.

"And when the fuck am I gettin' one of those paisley jock strap thangs?" Louis shouted as he sat down on the couch. "Shit, you are one crazy ol' muthafucka, Marcus G.,…"

"And that's why you love me," Marcus said as wandered into the living room, tying his robe.

"Who said anythin' 'bout love?" Louis muttered as he raised an eyebrow and then his cellphone. And, on cue, Marcus grimaced and then switched off the CD player just as the strings slid into full stride in "Stardust."

There is no way in hell I'm lettin' you in here next Friday night, he thought as he sat down in the armchair beside the couch. Next Friday night. He was going to slap some serious sense into that boy's itty bitty booty and then get all up inside it. He closed his eyes, sat back in his chair, and watched the previews of coming attractions.

"Marcus G., what you still grinnin' 'bout?" He opened his eyes and looked over to see Louis punctuate his sentence with a flourish of rolled eyes. "That bony-assed fool left here half an hour ago."

"Nothin'."

Louis went back to whispering even more animatedly into the phone. Marcus couldn't stop smiling. He was falling for a runaway white boy from Connecticut named Spit of all things. And if this punk showed up tomorrow night wearing his Dockers diaper, he was going to be rocking and roping and slapping and strapping him all night long next Friday. Well, that's if the punk didn't run out when he saw tonight's video playing throughout the bar.

Damn, I can't wait for it to be tomorrow night, he moaned to himself. They were going to be talking about Bernie's birthday for years to come at the Manhole.

Then he sat up, slowly. Something cool was blowing on the back of his neck. He swore he heard laughter again. But Louis was sitting on the couch, gabbing away on the phone in his special, hushed, girl-sit-down-and-hear-what-I-have-to-say voice. There it was again. Laughter. Or the echo of it. Several voices. Then the unmistakable gravelly belly laugh of one, and only one, person. His mama.

Somewhere in heaven, his mama was laughing her ass off. Hopefully, with him and not at him. Well, at least, he thought, the ancestors aren't sighing anymore.

Lord, just wait till they see what happens tomorrow night.

"Hold on, hold on," he heard Louis say from far away. "What the fuck you laughin' 'bout, old man? And don't nothin' me now."

Marcus just kept looking at something in the distance, something which Louis craned his neck here and there to try and see. And he kept laughing.

"What's wrong wit' you? Don't tell me you in love wit' the Great White Dope?"

Now it was Marcus' turn to double over.

"Ah, shit, Bernie," Louis yelled into phone wedged between his ear and his shoulder. "Nigga, this is all your fault."

 

Reprinted from See Dick Deconstruct: Literotica for the Satirically Bent

©2001 Ian Philips - Contributor's Bio