Chapter Fifty
The arrival of the rugs gave Saturday a promising start. Sarah Felsen and her lookalike cousin David arrived at eight, much earlier than I had expected. I hurried to get dressed so they could see the bedroom.
“Refo, it's ...” Sarah was impressed with the barn.
“Fuckin' huge,” David filled in.
“Ok, we start by pulling the bed away from the wall. Give me a had here, David.” Sarah and David both wore tennis shirts and their boobs moved almost in tandem. If David's man-boobs had been any bigger he could have used Sarah's brassiere to good effect. There was nothing effeminate about him; and he really wasn't too much overweight; but he had a bushel of man-boobs sloshing around inside that t-shirt. It was fascinating to watch and I think he caught me watching a couple of times. I couldn't help it – his nipples were very pointed.; but at least he said nothing.
In short order, two of the rugs flanked the bed and a third lay at its foot. Sarah was right. The golden tones of the rugs did look like they belonged in the room.
“Now, Refo, the sun is going to hit this one every morning, so you want to rotate them around. You know, let them fade evenly.”
“Uh, yeah. I didn't know that.” I had been distracted by how much the cousins resembled each other. Thanks to the magic of makeup, their shared face went better on Sarah but the body looked much better on David even with his boobs. Standing in place and wearing a tight t-shirt, he appeared merely to have pronounced nipples. You didn't get the full effect until he moved. Small boobs coupled with the compact waist and pelvis of a man was an attention-holding presentation, unexpectedly attractive when combined with a simmering masculinity that David radiated. I tried not to stare.
“The bigger rug is going to be a problem, though. It will unbalance the room.”
“Um, I actually thought the big one could go in Frank's office.”
“Oh, my GOD!” Sarah exclaimed when she saw the office. “This room is so perfect. Who was your architect?”
“Frank did it, but he's not an architect.”
“Well, he should be. This is … it's perfect.” She repeated the word. “The windows are ...” She admired the northwestern view and ran her fingers over the wood. “Where did he get this wood? David, feel this … I've got to meet Frank.”
They put the big rug down and left after Sarah had extracted an invitation back. So, once they were gone, I was pretty pleased with myself and hoped Frank would share my pleasure. I spent an hour taking Merle out and looking back into the bedroom and the office. I liked the rugs better every time I looked at them. No doubt Sarah would eventually find a way to tell me she could have got them for a much better price, but I didn't care. They were worth what I paid.
I fed Merle and hit the road. Two hours later Marvin met me inside the fences of Pigs in Blankets. Yes, the name was definitely pronounced Marvin and her partner Lex had once been misnamed Alexandra by her parents. Marvin and Lex were unquestionably lesbians but they didn't make a big deal of it. I couldn't tell if they were partners in just a business sense or if they were a couple; either way they were used to working together.
“I expected to see the pigs all wrapped up.” That was a lame opener, but I hoped they would see some humor in it.
“We're the pigs in blankets, not the hogs,” Marvin said.
“Marvin and I have always been a little plump,” Lex explained. “And one day our college roommate caught us together in bed. 'You look so cute,' she said. 'Like little piggies in a blanket.' So the name was invented.”
“Yeah, it was the only uncritical thing that bitch ever said.” Marvin smarted at the recollection.
“Marvin never liked Sam much. Sam Felsen… that was the roommate,” Lex explained.
“She was a LUG,” Marvin sneered. “So smug ...”
“LUG means Lesbian Until Graduation,” Lex needlessly explained. “So you're pretty cute for a gay guy.” She caught me off guard with that remark.
“Sam for Samantha? I work with a Sarah Felsen, who is a handful. Maybe they're related.”
Marvin and Lex looked at each other. “Did she go to UNC?”
“Undergraduate, she did.” They looked at each other again.
“So enough about our sex lives, you want to hear about hogs. What I had in mind was an image campaign like Krol's ads with the chickens.” Marvin firmly turned the conversation to business.
“How big is your volume? Krol's produces chickens by the million.”
“It wouldn't be just us. It would be for all the farms in our cooperative. Collectively we slaughter about ten thousand hogs a year. And since the fuckin' Chinese bought Smithfield we can't ride on that trademark.”
“Marv, you shouldn't call them that.”
“There's over a billion-three of them. I'd say fucking is their main occupation. That and ruining a good hog. Have you tried that ham lately?” She aimed the last question at me.
“It's a little salty for me,” I ventured.
“It's supposed to be. Think of it as a flavorful condiment. Have you had lunch? Ox,” she yelled into another room, “Set another place for lunch.” She beckoned me into the next room. Ox, counter to his name's implication, was a slightly delicate man. “Gay, in case you're wondering,” Marvin said. Ox smiled at the compliment as well as at me as he set out another place. “Butch it up, Ox. We're trying to impress Refo, here.”
Lunch was a sort of corn porridge served on biscuits with small slices of ham. The ham was the distinctively salty variety Virginia is known for. As a flavorful side dish, it went very well with the filling blandness of the porridge. Marvin and Lex ate huge portions and smiled at my more modest consumption.
“Ox used to be our foreman,” Marvin explained, “until the local mothers wouldn't let their sons anywhere near him. So we had to bring him into the house.” Ox didn't seem at all bother by the comment; in fact he winked at me.
“Jeez, Marv … Refo's gonna think ...” He feigned caution.
“That you're a predator? I think Refo can handle himself. He probably swats away guys like you like you're bottle flies.”
“Is that another reference to my suit?”
“I sent him to Richmond to buy a business suit. He comes back with this iridescent sharkskin number ...” Marvin laughed at what must have been a long-standing joke between them. “So, Mr. FitzJohn, I'm turning you over to Ox, here, to show you around and let you take some pictures.” After some closing compliments and thanks for the lunch I headed off with Ox to see the hogs.
“Hogs stink,” Ox said. “The whole county stinks, but you get used to it. And if you're careful, you don't stink – too much, anyway. My boyfriend, Monster, he doesn't see it that way but that's just him. He's nose was fucked up playing football.”
“The smell was noticeable at first but I'm kind of used to it. I worked on a chicken farm, which isn't the home of fresh air either.”
“Right. Krol's. You get to meet Butch?”
“I did. He helped me take ...”
“Cute kid, isn't he?” Ox interrupted. “I went to high school with him.” Now that was surprising. Ox looked more than a couple of years older than Butch. “Ok, here we are. You want protective garments? Or do you like pig shit? When I was foreman I just toughed it out. But now, I cover up.”
“Protection is fine. I got used to coveralls at the chicken farm.”
Once we were inside a building he called an incubator, he handed me some folded garments. “Get as naked as you're comfortable with. I warn you, you'll want to burn anything you don't take off. We got scuffs to put on your feet.”
Ox took his own advice and stripped bare before putting on the disposables. A little hairier than I usually like, but his body wasn't bad. He was business-like and didn't flaunt anything while changing so I followed suit. Clad in paper that seemed both substantial and flimsy at the same time, the two of us headed for a pen.
“These are younger hogs, they show more personality than the older guys; maybe they'll be more photogenic.” Ox squatted down and called to one of the hogs. The animal trotted over to him amiably and paused while Ox scratched his jowl. Watching the scene through the viewfinder of my camera, I got that dryness in my mouth. Ox's paper pants had torn as he bend down but were still held together by the belt made of something stronger. The hog looked like a hog, but Ox looked hot with his ass half-hanging out. I took a few shots and showed them to Ox.
“My ass is looking fatter than the hogs,” he commented. That wasn't true; his ass looked pretty fine, but I said nothing. After we took more shots of some slightly older hogs, Ox recommended against the largest.
“One mistake and they'll eat you,” he said. “The piglets are the cutest but it's late in the year. We'll have a new litters in March if you think piglets are your best subjects.”
“I don't know. They're not the prettiest animals on earth, are they?” Ox was looking over my shoulder as I cycled through the shots.
“Man, I do have a fat ass, don't I. The girls like huge meals and I usually eat with them … Gotta cut down. My boy friend Monster is giving me trouble about it.”
“Monster is full of shit.”
“You think? He's full of criticism lately. I'm thinkin' Monster is about to take off on me and he's just looking for an excuse. I need something to make him stick around. Could you uh … You really think you could make me look good?”
“You do look good, it's just a matter of figuring out how you'll look best to the camera.”
“So … you could make me look better with that impressive camera – like, right now?”
“Well, I'm here to take shots of the hogs … But, with your coloring, if you posed with those two black and white hogs ...”
Getting naked was Ox's idea, but I didn't object. I showed him the results.
“That's awesome,” he said, standing closer than I would have, as we looked at the camera's video screen. “The hogs kinda steal the show and then all of a sudden you notice me. Me being naked, I mean. You don't see it right away.” He looked at the several shots I had taken and then stepped back. “It's cute, right? But it isn't gonna matter to Monster. He'll just say I'm getting as fat as the hogs.”
“What would interest Monster?” I tried to keep it innocent, almost knowing what was coming.
“How about if you took pictures of me suckin' your dick? That would get his interest! That might piss him off even!”
“No … I don't think so ...”
“Aw, come on. It wouldn't be a real blow job. You wouldn't even be in the picture … not all of you … Nobody could even tell it was you. Just some anonymous dick. You don't have your name tattooed on your dick do you?”
“No, but ...”
He took that as permission. He knelt in front of me and with a smooth, practiced motion shredded my paper trousers. My dick was in his mouth before I could react. I quickly came to my senses and tried to back away but he held me firmly with his arms around my ass.
“Come on. Take some pictures!” he mumbled; it was hard to talk with his mouth full of me. He deep-throated me, but that's not hard when the cock being sucked isn't either. He pulled off of me and looked up. “I don't hear any clicking.”
There was my chance to end it. I wanted to. But, you know how it is. He actually looked appealing looking up at me and holding my cock that way. He had very sexy gray eyes. I took the shot and he took my cock back in his mouth. After some more shots he paused and asked to see the pictures.
I felt really stupid standing there in shredded pant with a hardon showing him the shots. He was critical. Annoyingly critical, I felt.
“Refo, ok, you can tell it's a blowjob, but you can't tell it's me. I mean, not really. Monster could cliam it was just a close resemblance. We need to show more of my face.” He paused and looked at the shots again. “Your dick looks pretty sweet though, doesn't it?”
There was another chance to end it, but I didn't. He knelt again and looked up at me, holding my dick in his hand and licking the tip. He licked the length of the shaft, and then he did a lot more. “Just for the camera,” he kept reassuring me. My problem was he was feeling more than good; I was sure he was just about the best cocksucker I'd ever been with.
“Ok,” I said. I was close to coming. “That's enough.” He didn't stop. He quickly deep-throated me and did something to my asshole. “I'm coming!” I announced. He held my cock so I shot in his face.
“Get the come shot!” he demanded.
I clicked away. He lapped everything up as I continued to shoot in both senses of the word. I have to tell you operating a camera is a good way to ruin an orgasm. I got no pleasure out of it. Well, ok, I did a little, but it definitely wasn't the best orgasm of my life.
He paused after cleaning my cock and his face off and I took a deep breath. “You're still hard,” he said with a smile.
“Yeah, sometimes I stay ...”
“Want to fuck me? Just for the camera, of course. We wouldn't have to ...”
“NO, I don't want to fuck you!”
I quickly dressed while he thanked me. “You'll sent me copies, right? My address is easy. It's ox at pigsinblankets dot com – all small letters. You know your cum tastes pretty sweet. If you ever want to do this again ...” I didn't let him finish; I left. “Don't forget about the pictures,” he called after me.
I almost ran out of the building. Forget? How could I forget? How fucking stupid! That's another thing I'll never forget. I said quick goodbyes to Marvin and Lex, hurried to my car, and spun the wheels in the gravel getting the hell out of there.
Ten miles later, just when I was getting my self-composure back, Frank's words came back to me. “What about fidelity, Reef?”
Fidelity, there's a fell word if there ever was one. But I really hadn't been unfaithful. The stupid blowjob hadn't been anything I went looking for. It just kind of happened. That's the truth. It was an accident. I almost had myself convinced. The trouble was it was a preventable accident. There were a couple of times I could have ended it. A better person would have ended it. And it wasn't even any fun. Ok, that no-fun part, that was unimportant, a cynical view of things; and I wasn't feeling cynical at all. I was feeling remorseful.
It served me right when the Mazda made that first sickening noise, followed by a metalic clatter and then a banging on the floorboards. Why do we still call them boards? Floorboards haven't been wood for almost a century. FUCK! my mind screamed. How can you be thinking about semantics when your car is on fire?
I pulled to the side of the road and got out as quickly as I could. Ok, no flames, but there had been sparks flying out behind me on the road. Still, I worried about fire when I had to reenter the Mazda to get my phone and camera equipment. Serves me right, I thought. Helpless frustration makes me want to cry sometimes, but I didn't. Fifty miles from home I stood on the roadside and calmly dialed Frank's number.
“The party you dialed is not available at this time. If you would like to leave a voice mail, please remain on the line.”