You are told to respect the worst in this world.
From the day you were born, you were always going to be a time bomb.
“Burn the Rich”, The Blow Monkeys

“Fucking entitlement bastards!” Dirk shouts over the truck’s rumble, baring teeth in working class snarl. He jams a finger into the rearview, smudging the galaxy of San Diego with fingertip oil. “Those richies think they own the fucking world.” Covers his mouth with the back of his hand, bites down hard on his finger to starve off the flare of laughter. “They don’t even own the key to the prison.”

I nod and rock in my seat, needing to take a whiz. I clutch my cock and squeeze, corral the piss inside. Used beer bloats my bladder, ready to hose Dirk down—my prize for instigating this evening. I grit my teeth and focus on the gray asphalt unrolling before the dusty headlights, carving our way up the mountain.

Dirk bullets ahead, gunning for taillights. The barren stench of highway floods the cab, diluting our fraternal reek. We race a black SUV, then inch ahead. My partner tilts his head back, hocks up a loogie, catapults it against tinted windows; yellow slick slides west. We peel away from horn blare.

“They trap themselves. Bars on the windows, gates on the doors, cameras recording every time they fuck or take out the trash. Make their lives reality tv so they can feel safe and alive.” Dirk snorts over the steering wheel, spraying the dash with glittering diamonds. “Poor schmucks.”

He pounds out a staccato rhythm on the steering wheel, marking time, racing the clock. It felt like we’d left Lost Angeles a lifetime ago, but the night still ruled; broken constellations litter the sky, an orange moon squats on the horizon.

“You know what they think of us?” Dirk drops a heavy hand on my cock and gropes me until I’m as hard as he is. I press into his palm, my dirty jeans the only barrier between his skin and mine. Piss threatens to swamp his heated flesh, but abates when he gives my hard-on a series of swift jerks. “White trash faggots. Better off dead. They got laws to protect themselves against shits like us.” My cock inches above the waistband of my jeans, and he flicks his thumb over my drooling cock head. I bite my lip to stop myself from pissing or coming. “You know why?”

I arch into his hand, silently begging him to grab hold and get me off; he smacks me down and presses hard on my stomach. I crunch forward as a spurt escapes, hot liquid pools on my stomach and dampens my jeans. Shit. I stamp my foot hard against the floorboard and reel it back in. My teeth swim in acrid brine. “I’ve got to take a fucking slash.”

Dirk grabs the shuddering wheel with both hands, skids around a slow car; squall of breaks and burning tires in our wake. “When they see us living outside their walls, no rules, no possessions, no dead-end jobs, fucking whatever we want—then they see what they aren’t.” He threads around sparse traffic, the wind funnels through the cab with deafening thunder. “Their whole life a tv show that happens to someone else. They don’t fucking want the reminder, so they rub us out. Kill all cock-sucking queer-ass nomadic faggots!”

He leans forward, eclipsing the fading city lights in the rearview, fills the oblong world with violent browns and scruffy jaw line, kisses his doppelganger with nicotined smile. “Kiss them laws goodbye, mother fuckers.” He rips the mirror off with a howl and tosses it out the back window. It disappears in the payload of sloshing bottles, the din of their miniature tsunamis screaming for release.

I light a cigarette to cut the pain and hunger, cross my legs vice-tight. My partner sucker-punches my arm, my biceps flare with aftershock. I hit him back, harder than he hit me, drawing a rude laugh. He raises two fingers—V for Victory—wanting a smoke. I fumble the damp butt of my cig between his chapped lips. He inhales hard, burning the cherry neon red, plumes smoke out the side of his mouth. I watch it curl and dance in the crush of air, then weave into the hot night. I light a replacement for myself.

Dirk smokes, momentarily placated, just like when he picked me up somewhere outside of Columbus, hitching to LA. “Gonna be a movie star,” I told him, green as grass. He’d talked me out of it by Nebraska, introduced me to the religion of the road: nipping gas from parked cars, smokes and beers from understaffed convenience stores, clothes from Laundromat dryers. The world was ours for the taking—I was his for the having.

The dashboard lights flicker in self-contained storm, then burn out. We’re washed in iridescence borrowed from the moon and headlights. He smiles wickedly, taking this as a validating omen. I watch his machinating mouth, wanting to stick my cock between those teeth and fill him with piss, let it spill over his lips and silence him for ten seconds. Instead I lean over and kiss him, sample his stale odors, the void of his stomach, the fever of his madness. He latches onto me and kisses back hard. The truck careens up the barren highway, crossing dotted while lines, the dry August moon our only witness.

He breaks the kiss with a high pitched laugh. “Fucking dressed in GAP, shopping at Walmart with their faced glazed by fake bargains. Claiming patriotic consumerism when all the money goes to China. They got their Prozac and vodka and shrinks and Big Macs to get them through the days, killing themselves because their lives have no purpose.” He screams out the window, “Wake up you mother fuckers! You’re alive!”

Dirk grabs his cock through his stained jeans. He’s been tenting for hours, but now he’s splitting the denim. He shifts in his seat and spreads his legs. “They’re out there dreaming about McDonalds and SUVs. About iPods and ice cream. About fat tities and wet pussy. About everything the tv told them they’re supposed to want.” He machine-gun laughs, the harsh sound adding a boil to my blood. “Whimpering in their sleep because they can’t afford to have it all and nothing they own gives their life meaning.”

The truck veers across the highway as Dirk unsnaps his jeans and unleashes his cock. He wets his hand with spit and slicks his sweaty meat until it glistens in the dark; my eyes devour what my mouth can’t taste. “We’ll liberate those assholes, right Twist?” He gives his pud a shake to make it agree with him—his true acolyte and inspiration. Dirk hoods his cock, drawing the foreskin into a tight pucker, then pulls back slow, filling the truck with his pungent tang. He slaps his dick against the steering wheel, leaving a glistening string. “They’ll see what their shitty little things mean when they disappear in ten seconds.”

He smacks me in the arm, tagging the same spot he’d scored before. I crush my legs together as a trick of pee leaks out, running down the inseam of my jeans. He holds up two fingers again, looking for another cig. I light one and slip it between his lips, inhaling the thick odor of his pits and cock, watch him stroke himself off, teasing me with the proximity of his off-limits prick. I make a daring foray and lick the side of his face, tasting the salty scar that I only touched while he was asleep. He elbows me off of him.

“Can’t you see it? A world where people matter more than what car they drive. Where they can talk about more than the fucking weather. Where they appreciate life. Values, fucker. We’ll give them priorities.”

Dirk drags me down over him, keeping my head just north of his cock. I stretch my tongue out to graze the juicy piss-slit, and lap at his dick. I drag my head lower against his grip and lip the mushroom head of his cock. He lowers me onto his flesh and I inhale him down to the metal buttons and damp pubes. Dirk holds my head in place and shoves up, drilling into the back of my throat, triggering the gag. My breath cuts off as his cock lodges in my trachea. He pins me down, throat embracing him in quakes of empty swallows; my vision swims with collapsing stars.

He hauls me off of him by my hair and pushes me to my side of the truck. I lean against the door, coughing and trying to suck air back into my depleted body. A jet of warm piss slicks my crotch and I crush my legs together to dam it in. I fold my arms over my chest and pout like a wounded child. Dirk waves me away, impatience sharpening his movements.

His silence slips like a noose, tightening around my throat. I chew my lip, shred thin skin, taste my own dead flesh. I screw my eyes tight as tears blur the road, ready to get it over with.

“We’re here.”

We swerve off the highway heading into Pine Valley, nearly capsizing us with his tight cornering. The truck plunges down dark country roads, the tickle of dry grass stinging my eyes and aching throat. A tinderbox, they called it.

He swings us onto a rutted dirt road, climbing into the mountains. Our bodies bounce around the cab, the old springs squealing like pigs fucking. The tires spit out rocks and debris, pluming dust in a red cloud behind us; bugs kamikaze the windshield in streaks of black and green.

My idea, this, thrown out in a desperate bid to please him. Hours ago we’d been watching the Weather Channel on a flickering motel tv, drunk on stolen beer. The screen filled with images of San Diego in flames, decades back. Home owners running to save their lives, cherished belongings and pets clutched in their arms, praising god and allah. It was everything Dirk had spouted in the month I’d known him. I pointed to the televised carnage and told him we should burn down the city, make them appreciate what was real.

He stared at me like I’d fallen from space, then rolled on top and fucked me, pummeled my body into the cheap mattress, staining the sheets with our sweat and my shit. He came like a gunshot, bucking hard and collapsing like a fallen god. “You do this with me,” he growled, “And I’ll let you do this.” He grunted in pain, then golden warmth filled me, spilled down the crack of my ass onto my spunk-loaded prick. I came silently beneath him, my sphincter squeezing him out.

We’d dressed quickly and jumped in the truck, flying down the I-5, a six pack between us. In San Diego we raided the recycling bins of the people we intended to save, filling the flatbed with empty bottles, then filled them with every combustible fluid we could find: gasoline, turpentine, kerosene, nail polish remover. As night crept into the morning hours, we headed east, barreling into the charred future.

The truck jerks to a stop at the top of the hill, idles ominously. The world is filled with the rush of wind moving west, coursing through scrubby brush, nature’s debris momentarily caught in our headlights. The radio burps out static, the noise of the truck and the bottles having obscured its previous attempts at communication. I listen to the fractured words, seeking meaning in them the way the ancients formed patters from the stars. Something about salvation. Something about donation. Dirk snaps it off and the noise winks out.

“We’re gonna be heroes, man.” The words leave his mouth like round lights marking our journey. He yanks me to him, fills my mouth with his tongue, grabs my damp crotch and kneads my erection. My anger wilts as he manhandles my body. I inch across the seat onto his lap, straddle the heat of his cock. I buck against him, ready to shower him with my pale offering. He smacks the side of my head, my eyes pop open to stare into his sharp browns. “Fucking focus on this.” Dirk pushes me off and I fall across the seat, banging my lip on the door handle.

I listen to him drop out of the truck and stalk around to my side. He opens the door and I drop into his thick arms, kissing him feverishly. Dirk snags my wounded lip between his teeth, bites down hard. His eyes flare as he wets his mouth on my blood, smiles roguishly. I touch the gash with alarm and excitement. He ushers me to the back of the truck, drops the tailgate and tosses bottles at me—they fall at my feet.

Dirk takes up an armful of propellant and moves to the side of the road, drops them in the ditch. I watch him uncap one and toss gasoline onto hapless brush, whistling hollowly. He disappears in the dark, working his way down the slope. I wait until he is out of sight before I take up the bottles and follow his lead, but work in my own direction. I paint brittle bushes with shinning splashes of liquid, the reek of gas burning my eyes and throat, stare up at the infinite sky and wonder if the stars have any purpose beyond just existing to exist.

I toss the empty bottles in the ditch and return, blinking away the fumes. My partner disappears from view, loaded down with bottles. I take two more and hike away from home base, splash the fluid haphazardly, droplets catching on the harsh wind. I picture our flame riding down into the valley, razing the mountainside homes and seashore mansions, all of it going up as easily as the trailer I grew up in; fire is a democratic force of nature.

I keep returning to the truck for more, dispensing the fluid along the road’s edge while Dirk worked the interior; a blue dot on the slope. I stumble back, my head in the lonely stars, my feet floating off the ground, giddy with contact high. I hold my damp cock, keep the urine at bay, pray I can hold out one more minute.

Only one Coke bottle remains, along with the smudged rearview. I crawl into the flatbed and retrieve them, stare at myself in the rounded rectangle, focus on the sad eyes and swell of my lip beneath Dirk’s lips. Childhood memory of sitting in the dark in front of a mirror, trying to ferret out the shape of my face from past lives, a candle glowing in the background. I throw the mirror away and clutch the bottle between my legs. I uncap it and squeeze, sending a geyser of kerosene over my lap.

Dirk climbs up the slope, his clothes discarded, his pale skin luminescent with sweat and moonlight. He approaches and I hold the last bottle up, douse him with a splash of kerosene, joining us together. He takes the Coke bottle without pronouncement, his eyes far away. I pull him into a kiss, but he jerks away and knocks me back against the flatbed. I lay down and stare at the sky, listen to him walk away.

The sprawl of weak-tea stars glisten, millions of light years of distance between them, spreading further apart every second. I wonder at the universe inside of me, facing the Big Bust, winding down.

A rush of urine pours out, soaking my jeans down to my boots, puddling in the seat of my jeans. I cry into the impotent sky, the biggest failure on earth, worse that coming too soon. I slip my hand around my cock, wet with propellant, sweat and piss, and jerk off, the energy of the world in my fist. I close my eyes and think of Dirk’s raw flesh burrowing its head into me, his sperm racing to their death. I bite my lip hard, drawing fresh blood, but can’t come.

I snap up, scan the empty road for signs of my missing companion, wonder if he is going to return or leave me to face the new world alone. I jump down and walk to the edge of the road, search the slope for his beefy frame, instead watch the flicker of the ersatz stars in the valley, as distant and impersonal as their inspirations above. “Dirk?” The wind carries my voice away. “You there?”

I return to the truck, drop my wet jeans in a pile, send two spit-slicked fingers into my ass. I imagine touching Dirk’s cum and piss stored in me. I pull out my fingers and suck them into my mouth, mingle my own spit with his fluids, ingesting their volatile blend. I jack-off silently, hoping he’d catch and stop me, punish me for breaking our unspoken pact.

The wind rises in an angry howl, barreling over the edge of the hill with grit and dust dervishing across the road. “Dirk?” No response.

I beat off and lick the blood from my lip, thinking of him that caused it. I picture fucking him, riding that path that had been forbidden to me, dousing him first with my cum, then piss; fucking him until we were equal. I grunt, pause, then stop; not coming.

I dig the lighter out of the truck. Strike. The wheel clicks, chafing my finger without sparking. Again and a small flame flickers, dashed out by the wind. I snap it closed, open, closed. I scan the dark for Dirk; no sign of him.

The first night he fucked me raw, sprawled across the front seat of the truck. The cab was filled with orange light from the rest stop, the threat of being discovered by another driver or a cop fueling the tension. He pushed into me sharply, tearing my fragile skin. I gripped the seat beneath me, wet eyes pressed into the fart-stained vinyl. He battled and cursed above me, forced me to tighten my legs around him, fucked me rough. I begged him to stop, prayed it wouldn’t end. He slammed down hard and exploded in a firestorm, then collapsed on top of me, crushing me deep into the seat with his sweaty body. “You belong to me, boy,” a hot threat against my ear. “Always.”

I slip into the truck and pull two cigarettes from the mangled pack, one for each of us. I stick them in my mouth, spin the wheel and make the blue flame dance. I run my fingers through the heat, pray to its power to cleanse. I light the smokes, inhale their heady toxins, feed my soul with the empty promise of fulfillment. Another deep breath and I cough, the dual smoke too harsh for my cock-pummeled throat. The cigs fall and skitter in the wind, circling each other like curious children. I chase after them, tripping forward and falling hard against dry earth, watch their red tips blink out. Darkness resumes.

A line of fire shoots up along a bush, growing until it is forced to bend in the wind. It grand jetés to a neighboring bush. A partner joins in, building into a pillar of flame, beginning their pas de deux. They race toward each other in the gasoline soaked ditch, joining in a yellow curtain. The fire swirls in the wind, twisting like tango dancers, leaping into the sky, sparks a tornado of red stars sparking their own universes.

I crawl into a stand, shout out Dirk’s name, hope he hears the urgency in my voice. The heat sears my naked flesh, burning off the sweat as it pools on my skin. The world is thunderous light, a horse stampede racing downhill toward the first vanguard of houses. I send two dry fingers into the bruised crack of my ass, touching the rawness that Dirk left behind. I slip in a third, jerking off violently, sparks showering down on me as the flames eclipse heaven. I cringe and crumble forward, exploding in a series of flashes that falls short of our creation. I collapse on the ground, panting for breath as oxygen is sucked from the air.

Fire explodes around me, a riotous conversation of ancients, trying to convey their message. I stretch on the ground and ingest the chatter of their voices, make sense of the chaos. The stars disappear in the whorl of flames, pressing down from the sky, heating my skin, bringing me home.

 

© 2006 Sean Meriwether - Contributor's Bio