That particular night I’d been far away from home, far down along the southern edge of Schoeneberg, what had been a safe, nice neighborhood, but which now lay empty and pocked, skirting the edges of two violent strips of Kreuzberg. Shooting down there in the closed-circuit city train during the day was always safe, with the enclosed platforms and security officers, but the mood changed at night when the city train conductors sealed the gates along the platforms and stole home to fortified neighborhoods on special staff carriages. And when the train stopped, the night buses started, and ran once every two hours. The night bus avoided picking up passengers on the worst stretches, the strips of roadway in between security gates, the one through the motor-cycle district and the red light district in Mitte where sex workers stood in glass booths suspended on poles along the street, and the Johns, shuffling about below, oogle and peep while they buy and sell drugs.

A bunch of transgirls I knew were unveiling their latest sneaker creations. It was the first time I’d seen that many pairs of shoes in once place since the shops closed eight years ago. They’d been salvaging in some of the abandoned housing sections and found used sneakers in all sizes and conditions, colors, patterns and shapes. One of them, Meldo, started cleaning them up and before long they had established a heavy trade out of the foyer of the building they squatted. Every Friday night they added new finds and bartered them for food and chemicals. I paid for it in a bathroom stall, my head thrown back and my eyes closed while a gaunt seventy-year old slurped down on me. I used my ration stamps for food and my dick for drugs and things like sneakers.

But I didn’t see any sneakers I wanted that night, so I got high with Meldo and danced under the hot lights in one corner of the foyer for a couple of hours, until my tired feet were sweating inside my boots. When I heard the night-bus rattling down the block I decided to take it because they came so infrequently, and sometimes not at all for hours. They were so loud that you had enough time to hear it coming and finish up a trick in the toilet or grab another dance, and still be out on the street before it rolled up. And that far after sunset, the streets weren’t really safe in any neighborhood without walls and security gates. Or so you heard.

It was a cold night, and my breath curled in the air as I waited in front of the bus stop. A guy came up who was about my age. He leaned his hips against the bus stop and lit hand rolled cigarette after hand rolled cigarette. He was wearing a tread vest, home-recycled tires that we were all wearing. Even before the shops closed, there were no more imports of cotton or wool, and nylon and rayon—when you could find then—were as expensive as gasoline, so people had started slicing up strips of tires and building them into outfits with curling irons and heavy thread.

The guy had on a vest fitted to his compact torso, truck tread tight against the swell of muscle. His skin was pale underneath the rubber. The back of the vest was a strip that the assembler had heated up with a curling iron, pulled fast, even, and hard, stretching the thinning material across a table. Dark chest hair curled over his pecs in fine patches I could barely make out under the lone yellow streetlight. On the bottom he wore a kilt, with strips of tread melted into strips of creamy black rubber. It reached below his knees, every other strip ending in a cravatte point. I wondered if he’d gone Scottish with the underwear, too.

I had started to shiver, and couldn’t understand how he wasn’t, with his long arms bare and chest exposed like that. I was wearing a rubber one-piece that went from my calf all the way up to a turtleneck, with long sleeves, and knee-tall leather boots I’d had for ten or twelve years, the kind of boots you couldn’t buy anymore.

We heard the sputtering of the bus driving closer. It was duo-articulated and had fifty-six tired bus with bulletproof windows and a metal mesh cage around the driver. The drivers were forbidden speak and almost never did. There used to be some who would say hello or answer a question about directions. But they were becoming ever fewer. After the last round of riots, there was a rumor that the BVG was going to replace the drivers with driving robots or automatic steering machines. But as I trudged past this one, I saw that she was all person staring straight ahead, with a cigarette smoldering in the V of her fingers near the little caged porthole on her left.

Five flatscreen display monitors, mounted up and down the passenger area, flashed news reports and public service announcements. A staid news anchor with her brown hair drawn up in a bun read statements from the chancellor and the opposition, followed by a news report about a police raid into the motorcycle district to bust up a terrorist cell. The reports always detailed police raids and acts of foreign aggression, and never said when the utilities commission would restore public power in the far eastern districts, or what, if any, shops might open on Saturday morning. For that you had to rely on word of mouth.

The bus was almost empty, but I knew it would fill up. I took a seat several rows behind the first articulated joint, so I could watch the front of the bus turn corners out my window before I felt it; as a kid it had always reminded me of a clumsy snake, an L-shaped worm, and it was one of those things I tried to hold on to, from before.

Whatever drugs Meldo had given me pounded through the base of my neck and my lips tasted chalky. Drugs were always homemade, and it was better not thinking about what was going in the mix.

The man from the bus stop took a seat across the aisle from me, in the same row. He hadn’t given me a second look at the bus shelter, even though we were both dressed for fucking. He sat with his back straight and eyes forward. I was fantasizing about him looking over at me, and then he did and I thought I was imagining it. The bus jolted to a halt and several more riders straggled on and filled up the seats around me as the bus threaded its way north. It folded itself across the bridge, and the lights dimmed. Blue emergency lights pulsed on the floor, and the driver announced, in thick Berlinerisch, “The bus approaches the River Strip, please mind the windows.” Everybody turned their heads and looked out into the dark. It was where a motorcycle gang might attack, because they had the bus pinned up against the river on one side. It happened maybe once a month and the BVG had regulations that the drivers had to cut the internal and external lights along the River. She started whipping the bus down the Strip as fast as she could, with all fifty-six tires squealing.

From out of nowhere buzzed the chainsaw chorus of motorcycle engines. I pulled the stop cord. All around me passengers were reaching up to give that same warning signal. I looked over the man from the bus stop. He gave me a thin smile and tugged the metal string.

Over the speakers, the bus driver said, “Everyone move to the right side of the vehicle. They’ll be coming up on the left. Clear the windows.” I cast my eyes over at the man again, and he was already sliding out of his seat. He took a step across the aisle and sat down next to me. I pressed my thigh against his, and he pressed back. The rubber of his kilt squeaked against my leg, and I reached toward the hemline, and curled my fingers underneath. His knee was hairy, and his skin cold. The bus accelerated, and we rocked from right to left as it built up more and more speed.

“Can you hear them yet?” he said. I shook my head.

“Sometimes a motorcycle isn’t as loud as you think it should be,” I said. “Have you ever been in a chase before?” He nodded. Then we heard them and saw several eyeball headlights floating out in the darkness. The buzz revved louder as the bikes closed in.

“It’s exciting,” he said as he pressed his knee against mine and laid his palm flat on my stomach, radiating warm through my one piece and making my dick come alive. There was a loud crack as a bullet glanced off the bus frame, then another from a bullet nicking the bulletproof window. My heart beat faster, washing blood into my head until I felt it pounding in my ears and down, into my dick.

My fingers dug into one of the tread sections of his kilt and found the nooks and crannies where I could feel right through to his skin. It was a tractor tread, with wide grooves that felt warmer than the peaks. He nosed his foot in between my boots, spreading apart my knees and wrapping his leg around my calf. He slid his palm down my stomach and rested it on my lap, squeezing me through the tight outfit. My dick was growing, stretching the stiff rubber. More bullets bounced off the bus, and then one of the tires burst. The vehicle sagged to the right, and a frantic scream erupted several rows ahead of us. The speakers crackled again, and the bus driver said, “Remain calm. Put your heads down and remain calm.”

Through my suit, the guy was kneading the thickened head of my dick. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a motorcycle lightening past the bus. I ducked my head into the guy’s lap, and pressed my cheek against one of the smooth strips of his kilt. It was cool and sleek against my face, and, reaching underneath the hem again, I grabbed onto the back of his knees so hard my knuckles hurt. He wriggled his hand out from between my folded body and draped himself over me, resting his arm across my back and reaching towards my ass with his fingers. I didn’t have a panel back there—it was part of my guard when I was tricking, and it felt good as he traced all the contours of the rubber fitting over my cheeks and the backs of my thighs, looking for a zipper or button. He spread his knees apart, and I felt his cock jutting into my face through a patch of tread. I walked my fingers along his hairy thigh. He had gone Scottish in the underwear, I realized as I reached his tight, smooth ball sack. I reached underneath, gathered his eggs in my hand and squeezed. He moaned and grasped at my ass rougher. He’d found my hole, and was pressing it hard through the thick layer of rubber. I could tell that if I had had a panel back there, he would have been two or three fingers deep already. He was that kind of guy.

He had big balls that I could barely fit in one handful. A bullet hit the bus window across from us, and took a chunk out of the bulletproof coating. The noise was like a handful of marbles against the window, sounding as if tens or even a hundred little pellets had hit an aluminum pane. I tugged on his balls and he groaned. With his left hand, he grabbed a wedge of kilt and adjusted the direction of his dick so it curved down toward my mouth. The bus swerved right and skidded along several guardrails, then tipped back. We started to slide out of our seats and he held on to me, flattening his palm against the ass of my suit, flexing his fingers so they dug through the rubber until I could barely tell that it wasn’t my skin. I tensed my muscle at the points of his grip and slid my hand around his calf. One of treads kneaded my arm, pulling hairs. I slid my head toward his belly, which was taught under the tight black vest. Faint sweat slicked his stomach. The bus didn’t lose speed as it careened back into the middle of the lane and I slipped his meaty cockhead into my mouth.

He held my ass tighter, searching again for my hole with his thumb. I brushed my tongue over his dick, tickling it hard. It filled my mouth and I bent back my head to give it more room. I rocked my neck back and forth, working my lower lip along the bottom curve of his glans, then took as much of it in as I could and held on. He slid his hand down my thigh and over my leg to my cock, which tented out the front of my suit, the grainy black stretching along its curve. When he grabbed me, the rubber closed around my dick, swaddling it in heat. I throbbed in his grip and swallowed more of him, massaging its length with my lips. As I squeezed and sucked, I oozed precum. My cock slid slippery between the pads of his thumbs as it coated the inside of my suit.

The air next to the bus zipped as a motorcycle dopplered toward us and faded away. Then another, making a last ditch effort. Several more bullets peppered the tires and back windows as the bus sped toward Alexanderplatz Gate, which was part of the fortifications of Prenzlauer Berg and Wedding. I buried his cock in my throat and felt the heat and weight of his kilt resting on my chin and neck. The bus shook as it rumbled over the seams at the far side of the bridge and he came in a salty gush.

I was wiping my lip when the interior lights snapped back on and the bus driver announced what we’d realized: that we’d outrun them and made it through the gate. As I straightened in my seat, my dick was squashed against my stomach, slick with precum and constricted by my outfit. I adjusted it and a bolt of pleasure flashed through my cock and balls and thighs, pricking my skin. I pushed it against my leg and laid my palm on its heat. The guy pulled the cord for his stop and stood up. His dick jutted half hard through the tread pattern, and he tried to bend his hips awkwardly so no one would see. I got up and followed him off the bus, not bothering to cover my bulge. I was ready for my turn.

 

© 2007 Joel A. Nichols

Joel A. Nichols was born and raised in Vermont. Stories of his have recently appeared in Fast Balls, G is for Games, Sex by the Book: Gay Men's Tales of Lit and Lust and previously in Full Body Contact, Just the Sex, Dorm Porn 2, C is for Co-eds, and others. New stories are also scheduled for Ultimate Gay Erotica 2008, Best Gay Love Stories: Summer Flings, Distant Horizons: Queer Science Fiction, and others. He won second place in the Brown Foundation Short Fiction Prize 2005 and was a Fulbright Fellow in Berlin. Joel studied German at Wesleyan University and Creative Writing at Temple University. He lives in Philadelphia.
Visit Joel A. Nichols at: www.joelanichols.com