It starts with a kiss: one tender, soft kiss. We’re parked out by the Henderson’s old place; you know, by that house out on AA that has the billboard in the front yard, big enough for the cars traveling south on the interstate to see. ASK JESUS TO MAKE HELEN WELL. Only nobody knows who Helen is, or was.

Coal and I’ve just got off of work. We closed down the Dixie Queen together. It’s summer: hot and boring. Just out of school, nothing going on, nothing much to look forward to but a cold beer. We drive to my house and I grab a couple six-packs of Bud from the fridge and motor down to AA where we can watch the lights of the interstate as cars drive past on their way somewhere else.

There’s a bit of a breeze, and us just shooting the shit together in his beat-up rusted tan Camaro. Coal and I always have gotten along well in school, but never talked much other than locker room lies. Then this old sappy song comes on the radio...

“...God, I miss the girl...”

and he’s babbling like a baby. Crying and saying how he doesn’t understand how Deb could hurt him like she did. Deb is his girlfriend.

“Shit, Coal. I’m sorry, man. Don’t cry, shit.”

And I take him in my arms. It’s okay; he’s hurting. I take him in my arms, and squeeze. He lets me. I squeeze his strong body to mine, hoping I can make him stop hurting. Before I know I’m doing it, my hands take his sweet face and pull it to mine. I kiss a tear that’s slowly weeping down his cheek, then his eye. I gently run my tongue over his lips, then between his bright white teeth, surprised at my sudden aroused state. It’s like my chest is supporting a great weight, like the witches in old New England who were tortured by being laid down and having stone after stone placed on them. Only it feels good. Real good and I’m hard. I’m touching Coal and I’m hard.

He looks into my eyes. He kisses back. We kiss: one tender, soft kiss. My life is suddenly very different.

“Gravity, motherfucker! Gravity!” he yells as he bounces up from the bed on his strong legs and taps his palms on the ceiling. “Gravity.”

We’re so looped. A double feature at the Zucker Drive-In, two-tabs-of-blotter-acid-each-and-a-bottle-of-spiced-rum looped. Coal had said he wanted to fuck me in a hotel, and I’d wanted him to, so we drove to Tipp City and while he hid in the car, giggling like an idiot, I got us a room.

“Come on, Vic...come on! Gravity!”

I’m watching him from the other bed as he does his trampoline jumps, his fat cock bouncing up and slapping his brown tanned belly with every descent, his large heavy balls making thumping noises against his thighs. My vision is blurred; whether his leaps are slowed-down or speeded-up I can’t tell; he’s just a white blur of light and motion with a hard-on.

A hard-on I want to eat. I picture it on a bed of lettuce with a slice of Wonder and a couple fluorescent pickles.

It’s a week since the kiss. He kissed me back, but then said he had to get home and drove like a bastard out of hell to get me back to my place, dropping me off and speeding away without a word about what had happened. I ran in the house, into the bathroom and jerked off, coming on the mirror above the sink after just five quick jerks of my fist.

Nothing was said until earlier today at work when he showed me the acid and asked if I wanted to see the monster pictures at the Zucker.

“Gravity!!!” and he’s suddenly flying across the room at me, knocking me off the bed with a loud thump under his full weight. His hand grips my cock through my boxers and starts pumping, keeping time with his other hand wrapped around his own.

I’m laughing, uncontrolled and hard, the effect of the drug or the rum or him. My head bends down to the plate of cock, but first I flick away the pickles. I lick the bead of come off his piss slit, then wedge the head into my mouth. Not knowing what to do with the slice of Wonder and lettuce, I fling them across the room sending trails of color with them. His cockhead seems to be larger than my mouth, but somehow I manage to make it fit.

The stinky brown shag carpet burns as we twist and bend over and around each other, but I don’t care. I am too enthralled with the taste of his body, the pinpricks of sensation along my skin, his deep musky scent, like the locker room at our old school, but better. I have already come once, in his mouth. But he hasn’t stopped stroking me with his lips. I have my middle finger up his ass and he is fucking hard into my throat, his knees on either side of my head, balls flapping heavily against my eyes with each thrust. His ass swallows my finger, then two. I think of my arm up inside him and then he’s pulsating, his cock expanding, contracting, pumping. My mind flashes greens, then blues, then bright white-silver. I think, Gravity, Coal, gravity. His fat cock finally shoots, and I know I love him. He pushes farther into me, down my throat. His come tastes like the pepperoni sausage we put on the mini-pizzas at the Queen, and I pull his thick red dick out with my hand and squeeze and it sprays my mouth and lips and tongue as I mouth “I Love You I Love You” and his ass squeezes my fingers tight and he screams, “Vic Oh Vic Oh!”

For two weeks we meet every day. As best friends. As lovers. We explore each other’s bodies, we talk, get high. I can’t believe it, but I feel as if somebody really, finally, knows me. Nobody at work suspects the truth that two of Piqua’s recently graduated have joined the ranks of the faggot brotherhood. That the king jock from Piqua High, Coal, goes down on cock: mine.

We meet before work, after work, and on nights when we close the Queen alone, we suck and fondle and paw between customers. I let him fuck me. When he shot deep inside me the first time I heard him say it. He said, “I love you, Vic.” Soft and sweet as anyone could possibly say it. He didn’t know it, but I cried as his cock plowed hard into my ass before exploding again within minutes of the first.

He says that he wants to go away; get out of Ohio. Maybe Chicago. That we’re good together. Who cares about what people would think? He doesn’t. I don’t anymore.

And then it ends. No kiss. No tender soft kiss, just cold, flat words through the phone wires. He calls me on the phone and severs my life force just as if he took his favorite hunting knife and slit deep into my throat.

“Why not, man? What happened? What the fuck happened?!”

“It’s just over, Vic. Forget it!”

“Forget it? Coal, shit...I love you! I thought...”

“Shut up, you do not! Stop sounding like a fag, Vic! It’s over!”

He hangs up.

It’s over, just like that. I pull my cock out and roughly, angrily, grind as I think about what he’s said. I wrap the phone cord tightly around my balls until they look like they’ll burst; I start to cry. He said Deb was pregnant and wouldn’t have an abortion. Somehow his dad found out and now Coal is getting married. Married! I feel like my life just ended. I want his soft lips on mine again. I thought...

I imagine his blade forcing its way into my throat and the pain it causes. I see Deb’s face smiling as he kills me, my blood flowing freely, draining.

I come all over my sneakers just as the alarm sounds, not even realizing what the alarm means. I rub the spunk from my hands on my jeans and wander out the front door staring at the sky’s dark green color. My dick is hanging out and I don’t care. I walk out to the cornfield in a daze.

I am peeing on the old weathered scarecrow my dad and I put up when I was nine when I first hear it. Thunder? The wind whips the stream of pee on me and I fall down yanking my jeans off, not concerned with anyone seeing, just wanting to be free of them. I pull off my t-shirt and rub my hands over my chest and belly, yanking on my nipples as if I can pull them off. Nobody’s around. There’s never anyone around. I hate it here! I hate...it sounds like a train is headed right at me and a smile forms on my tear-stained face. It’s a fucking tornado! Huge and black covering the entire horizon. Electricity sparkles around me and my body hair stands at attention. I watch it pick up Aunt Felice’s house and devour it, then the barn across the field. I am awestruck and my cock juts out strong and stiff. Running isn’t even an option. I raise my arms to the sky and think of what happened the past couple weeks with Coal. I picture his bright teeth when he smiled at me. My Coal, my love. Over. I have nothing; feel nothing. I ask Jesus to make me well—Fuck Helen! I am lifted from the ground violently; arms spread skyward like a rocket launching, my eardrums bursting from the overwhelming roar, and I fly into my new destiny.

Gravity, motherfucker, gravity.

 

© 2003 Greg Wharton - Contributor's Bio