Chapter Twenty - Distraction
When I first opened the door I thought it was B. J. back for his vodka; but it wasn't. The resemblance was spooky, but just that. It wasn't B. J.
“Hey, I'm D. J. Carteret. Remember from Christmas?”
I wanted to answer “How could I forget?” but I just said yes.
“Can I come in?”
“Of course. Please.” It was eight in the morning; Jared was still sleeping; and I was planning to leave for White Post soon.
“I'm not sure how to start this,” D. J. said. He took his coat off and sat down. It was hard not to stare; he was such a close copy of B. J.
“You want some tea? It's all I have.”
“No thanks, I gotta get to work.” D. J. took a deep breath. “Ok, here goes. B. J.'s a mess. I'm worried about him. He's living with me and he won't talk. I mean he'll talk, but only about football. He won't tell me what's wrong. His Christmas 'announcement' was supposed to be about something else, right?”
“If he doesn't want to tell you ...”
“He was going to announce the two of you are lovers, right? I pretty much figured that out.” He paused to gauge my reaction. “I'm not being critical … I'm just looking for confirmation.”
“I really think you should ask him, D. J. I'm not being cute; I just don't want to put words in his mouth.”
He chuckled. “You are cute, though. You're cute as fuck. I don't blame B. J. for … for anything. I just don't know what direction to push him. And he needs a push. He's always been scared shitless of A. J. and T. J.” I didn't say anything, which made D. J. uncomfortable. “I guess I should apologize for Christmas. My brothers are assholes and they do it to please our Daddy. All I can say is I'm sorry.” He paused again. “This isn't getting us anywhere, is it?”
The bedroom door creaked open and Jared came out in his underwear heading for the bathroom. He almost made it.
“Jared?” D. J. called out.
“Oh, my God!” Jared said. “Wait! Let me get dressed.”
But he didn't wait. “I'm sorry, Racer. I guess I wasted your time. I'll just keep trying with B. J. Thanks for your time.” And he was gone as quickly as he arrived.
Jared came out of the bedroom fully dressed. “D. J.?”
“He's gone,” I explained. “You know him?”
“He's the first guy I ever did anything with. And what we did wasn't much, but it scared the shit out of both of us. We thought we were the only queers in the world.” Jared chuckled at the memory. “I guess he's still terrified. Not like you ...” He kissed me. “Not at all like you. If I didn't have to go to work right now ...” He gently massaged the front of my pants.
“Stop,” I told him. “We both have to work.”
“I want to go to work with a hard on and think about you all day.” He put his coat on and squeezed his package, making his cock bulge lewdly. “Later. I promise.”
It wasn't even nine o'clock and I felt horny. The drive to White Post gave me time to calm down. D. J. and Jared? Where and when? And poor old Beej … what did D. J. mean saying he's a mess?
Fortunately the monumental tail fins of a '59 Cadillac sucked up my attention as I buffed the newly applied paint and the reaffixed the top chrome and tail light housing. The old red plastic lenses were fogged, but we hadn't received new replacements yet. I hated putting used parts that showed their age back on a like-new car, but the owner wanted to show the car next week and didn't care that it wasn't 100%.
“He's rented it to a TV company for filming. They'll take it as is or they'll CGI it to be what they want,” Bossman Jeb said.
He didn't like me calling him Bossman Jeb. “That's what the colored boys call me,” he said. I told him the 'colored boys' and I did the same work so I should call him the same respectful name. He snorted his disagreement, but he didn't say any more about it.
“Racer, Tommy Lynne wants you to stop by. You have time today?”
“Yes, sir, Bossman Jeb. The usual charges?” He nodded and I was on my way.
“It's the Miata,” Tommy Lynne said. “Something got on the hood and I tried to clean it off, but … it looks real bad now.”
This particular model had a long sloping hood and an oddly protruding front bumper, the result of a governmental attempt to specify precisely how effective bumpers should be. Personally, I thought it was an ugly car, but Tommy Lynne liked it and he was paying the bills. As he said, there was a discoloration in the center of the hood.
“I'll see if reapplying the wax makes the color uniform. Otherwise, it's gonna be a paint job, Tommy Lynne,” I told him. The small size of the car meant I could reach every part of the hood without much effort. There was no excuse for doing it nude. I wondered how that would affect my tip.
“The car means a lot to me,” he said.
“Like the Chevy? The Mazda has a story?”
“They all do. You want to hear?” He assumed I did and continued. “I was a kid, about your age. I made a little money in the market one summer and blew it on this Mazda, which was considered a pretty hot car at the time. It was something to go back to school in, anyway. I was at Cough Drop U.”
“Cough Drop U?” I asked.
“A student joke. The University of Richmond. The gentleman who invented Robitussin gave the money for the whole place. Anyway, they had a football team, of course. The Spiders. What would a southern school be without a football team? The backfield were normal students; but the linemen were monster hulks all on scholarship.
“Robitussin doesn't actually make cough drops, you know … but Cough Elixir U didn't sound as funny.” He paused as if he wasn't sure about telling me the rest of the story; or maybe he was just enjoying it as a private memory. Eventually he continued.
“So one day, out of nowhere, this monster gotta-be-a-football-player says, 'Nice car.' I told him thanks and stood aside while he looked at the dashboard and the drivers seat. 'Nice,' he repeated and walked on. 'Do you know who that is?' my nerd friend asked. It was the Spider's nose tackle, I can't remember his name now. Jim Something, I think. A week later I saw him and he said the same thing. 'Nice car.' I asked him if he wanted a ride in it, figuring I'd take him across campus where the field house was. He kind of filled up the whole car. It was amazing. We were rubbing shoulders sitting in separate bucket seats. We got to the field house and I stopped to let him out. Instead he said, 'How 'bout letting me drive?' So a minute later we're off campus heading west. And in ten minutes we're riding up the James River on 621. He's pushing the car and saying 'nice' a lot. Then he starts this stuff about being a poor kid on a scholarship and getting his brains blasted to bits playing nose tackle while rich kids run around him and get all the glory while all he gets is a fat nose, a fat lip, a fat head. 'And if I get injured, they'll can my scholarship and then what? It isn't fair, man; it just isn't fair.'
“I thought he was gonna cry of something. He sounded really pathetic. Then he says 'You're one of those rich kids, aren't you? With a car like this.' And he looks at me like he's really pissed off and it's all my fault. He's nuts and I'm scared. He pulled off the road. “Get out,' he demanded. He got out, too. 'Come here,' he demanded. 'Turn around.' I felt him doing something odd. It took me a while to realize he was trying to pull my pants down. Finally he said, 'Fuck it,' and basically ripped them off me. He was still fumbling around. I didn't know what he was doing until I felt a pain, a huge pain in my ass. 'Shut up and take it,' he said. And he spread me on the hood of the car and fucked me. And it hurt. Way more than I expected.
“By that point in my life I knew more or less that I was gay, but my only sexual experiences had been blow jobs. Getting fucked like that was pretty traumatic. That was Wednesday. Saturday morning, before the game, he did it again. I don't know why I let him. Doing it still hurt. On the hood. Out in the country. This time he wasn't as rough and I knew better than to complain. I just took it and it was over pretty quickly.
“By the third week of this, he was being fairly gentle and I was liking it. I tried to talk to him about it, but he just said, 'Shut up.' He'd never talk about what we did. Just 'Let's go for a ride' and he'd fuck me. Two or three times a week. Another guy explained to me about lube and I kept some it the car. From that point on, with the lube, the fucking got to be really nice and once I came on the hood and he actually laughed. He was almost friendly. Then in November he suffered a season-ending injury and I never saw him again.”
“So this is a cum stain I'm cleaning up? You were reenacting the event?”
“Not exactly. And I cleaned up the cum. You are just dealing with the ruined wax job. I wouldn't ask you to clean up my cum, Racer.”
I checked him out. “You've got a hard on, don't you? You want me to fuck you on the car hood?”
“God, no!”
Oops, I thought. Wasn't that the whole point of his story? To get me to fuck him on the car hood the way the nose tackle had done it? Why is he saying no?
“I don't want to ruin the wax job again. But over there ... on that bench? That would be ok.” I hesitated; I didn't want to fuck him at all.. “Racer!” he prompted impatiently; he was unbuttoning his jeans.
Tommy Lynne gave me a lot of money, way more than the last time. Maybe it wasn't a lot to him, but it was to me. With what he gave me, I wouldn't have to work at all before the spring racing jobs opened up, except I liked the work at White Post. I'd stick it out there, since I had promised Bossman Jeb. But the Frenchman's words in the Tolstoy book came back to me. I'm doing it for money and there's a bunch of nasty words for people who do it for money. I reproached myself, but I couldn't promise myself I'd swear off it. I couldn't commit to my future. It was such easy money. A LOT of easy money. What's a casual fuck or two or three anyway?
I was glad it see Paul's truck in its usual spot when I got home. I barely got into the house and pulled out my phone to call Paul when I rang right in my hand. Well, what do you know? “Hello, D. J.?” I said.
“Racer, you've got to keep our conversation quiet. I told B. J. I went to see you and he's more pissed off than I've ever seen. If you talk to him, just say I apologized for Christmas. Nothing else, ok?”
“You and Jared … I figured you were gonna tell me about that.”
“That was just a mistake a long time ago. There's nothing to tell. About B. J. … you won't say anything, ok?”
“Was he a good fuck?”
“Who? B.J.? He's my brother, for God's sake.”
“No, Jared.”
“I don't know. We never got that far.”
Ok, so I at least know Jared isn't lying about what he did with D. J. Not that he would … or even need to. None of my business what the two of them got up to. A long time ago? Like they're NOT that old. How long ago could it have been? Did Jared sound sorry they hadn't got farther? He was so quick to do it with me, saying he'd never done it before. Fuck, that is. So how come he's so good at it? Is he really? That good? How would I know? I've only fucked three people and Tommy Lynne was no fun at all. B. J. loved me and that made up for his lack of skill. Jared, in theory, was just as inexperienced but he's an awesome fuck. How did he get that way? He controls when I come whether he's top OR bottom. And he makes me cum at the exact moment when I can't stand not to. How does he know? Was he that good the first time? No, he wasn't; but maybe he just didn't know what I like. He knows now though. He knows more about what I like than I do. My phone chimed again.
“Paul! Just the person I need to see! Let me take a shower and then come on over.”
Five minutes later I nearly finished my shower when there was a draft through the bathroom. I figured the door had blown open. I was wrong. The curtain moved and Paul climbed in the shower with me. His cock was erect.
“No! Get out!” I demanded.
“Come on, Racer. One more time isn't going to make you a slut.” He rubbed his butt up against me.
I got out of the shower and wrapped myself in a towel. I reached back in and turned off the hot water.
“YYY-EEEE-OWWW!”
“Get dressed,” I told him. “I'm not that easy and I'm definitely not cheap.” I could hear him frantically adjusting the water temperature. “I never heard YYY-EEEE-OWWW in a New York accent before,” I told him and heard him laugh. “Get dressed,” I repeated. “I need advice.”
“I'm suffering from hypothermia! You wouldn't believe how small my dick is right now! Want to see?”
“Get dressed, Paul.” I sighed and went to the kitchen. One thing was clear; Paul is crazy. Why would I ask a crazy man for advice? Because everyone I know is crazy? At least they weren't depressing like Ivan Ilych, alive or dead. Crazy is much better than depressing.
