six months ago it was early morning and some of the company were outside the station. we were sitting around drinking our coffee, watching the steam rise as we warmed our hands on the cups. the sun had made an appearance shortly before, the morning fog was evaporating, and nobody was doing much talking. still waking up. jim broke the silence. “anybody know anything about the new guy?” nobody could say for sure. “his name’s steve something. i think he used to work out of merrittown.” “merrittown east or merrittown west?” “hell, i don’t know. ask him when he gets here.” doc dobbins looked curious. “wouldn’t be steve wilmot, would it?” “yeah,” skip concurred, after a moment’s thought. “i think that’s it.” doc looked concerned. “shit.” “what?” skip asked. “nothing.” that got skip riled up. “goddamn it, doc, don’t say something and then clam up.” doc shrugged. “it might be a different guy.” skip wouldn’t let go. “well, even if it’s a goddamn different guy, what do you know?” doc seemed reluctant to continue, but his impulse to spill what he knew won out. “not much. i may have heard about him from larry schiffer. larry used to work at merrittown back around ‘84. said they had this guy steve who was real wild. careless. reckless on site. got a shitload of commendations, though.” jim was confused. “why the hell’s he coming here? get his ass canned?” “don’t know,” doc said. “larry said wilmot’s worked half-a-dozen stations. i don’t think he stays anywhere long.” skip drained his coffee. “well, that’s all we fuckin’ need,” he grunted. “some fuckin’ showoff.” doc smiled. “and there is that other thing,” he added. “what other thing?” doc grinned broadly. “oh, i think i’ll let that one be a surprise.” “goddamn it, doc,” skip said disgustedly. “what is it?” but doc wasn’t saying. by the time a couple other of the guys had joined us, we were standing up and stretching, getting ready to go inside and check our gear. then, far off at first, we could hear it coming. over the quiet of the morning it wasn’t too difficult. it was the roar of a sports car, made up half of revving engine and half of broken muffler. it growled on the morning like a bad temper. we all stopped what we were doing and waited for it to appear. it rounded the corner of davies street way too fast. “damn! ’74 camaro!” jesse whistled. “and looking like shit.” the car was bright yellow. in most places, anyway. the paint was peeling in spots and there were scrapes down the side where the driver had gone beyond cutting it close. the front bumper was deeply dented in several places. everyone’s attention was on the camaro as the driver quickly braked and swerved into the parking lot, scraping his way over the curb. he pulled into the last space. as the camaro spit out a black cloud of exhaust, the door flew open and we got our first look at the notorious steve wilmot. the first thing he did was pause and light a cigarette. then he walked toward us like someone who knew that he had everyone’s attention. even that early in the morning he was wearing sunglasses. thick dirty-blond hair and a mustache showed above and below them. he wore a brown leather bomber jacket over a rugby shirt, with dirty jeans, and beatup cowboy boots. at first glance he looked every bit the hot shot we had expected. as he approached, doc greeted him. “’morning, stranger.” steve broke into a grin. “is this here engine house 27?” “yep,” doc assented. steve took off his sunglasses and shoved them in his front pocket. “steve wilmot. i’m supposed to be joining you gentleman today.” doc held out his hand. steve looked at it first, and then shook it. “this is the place,” doc said. “captain taylor’s inside.” but steve did not seem inclined to report right away. he stood there smoking his cigarette as we eyed him and he eyed all of us. i think that in that first minute he sized us up and pegged us all as a bunch of country halfwits beneath his attention. as it turned out, that was most of his evaluation, but not all of it. “nice car,” jesse offered. steve didn’t turn to look at the camaro, still leaking dribbles of exhaust out of the tailpipe. “it’s a falling apart piece of shit,” he said. “but it still kicks ass on the open highway.” there was not much we could reply to that. suddenly impatient, he dropped his cigarette. more than one of us noticed that he didn’t grind it out with his bootheel. it lay there on the asphalt, glowing and smoking. “guess i better drop in and see the big daddy,” he said. “i do not like to keep my men waiting.” a few jaws dropped slightly at that. and then, as he was going into the building, he had to walk in front of me. after he had gotten just past, he turned and, in front of everybody, looked straight at me and winked. “and you, cutie,” he said. “i will hunt you down later.” after the door closed behind steve, i heard one of the guys behind me say, “oh, christ. another faggot.” i suppose that statistically it wasn’t that odd. i mean, if you figure one in ten. there were about twenty guys in the station, so at least two of them should have been gay. there was me—one—and now there was steve—two. i could understand that the other guys, who were mostly locals, would look upon it—even in a medium-sized city in pennsylvania in 1988—as practically a queer invasion. but i don’t know why even i found it so strange that there should have been another one besides me. except that i—having grown up in an even smaller place in the middle of the state—was still unaccustomed to being around gay men outside of the bars. i think that most of my sense of removal came from being a firefighter. not exactly a profession known for homosexuality. but it was the only occupation that had ever really appealed to me, and i had been determined to make the grade and be accepted as someone who knew his job and was part of the team. i had been working at it for over fifteen years, all of them with this same company, at this same station. the other guys at the station may or may not have known about my personal life. i know that the one or two that i thought were my friends (if only in a work context) were aware of it, but they seemed not to care, and they were cool enough not to spread it around to the others. and if the others didn’t know, it was because i didn’t bring it up. i didn’t think it had anything to do with anything, and i preferred to keep my private life private. this could not be said about steve in any way. he did not have any even remotely gay mannerisms. if you saw him, with his square-jawed rugged handsomeness, you would think that there was a house in suburbia somewhere with a wife and kids and all that. but listen to him talk for half-an-hour and it never failed that he would say something that would let you know that steve liked men. steve was obviously gay to anyone around him because he had absolutely no censoring mechanism on his speech or on his behavior. if you would be sitting out with him in public somewhere it would be more than obvious that he was checking out the guys that walked past. and then when he said “damn! that’s one hot looking fuck!”, well, any suspicions turned into certainties fairly quickly. the other men in the company could have put up with this. some of them would have laughed at him and some of them would have been pissed off, but i think that they would have mostly ignored it had it not been for steve’s other problem. which was that steve’s don’t-give-a-fuck attitude carried over to his work. i don’t think he ever had the ability to stop and consider his actions and their consequences. i don’t think it was a matter of courage which made him so willing to take chances on the job. i think he was someone who lived by his impulses and followed them immediately, no matter where they led. we would be in a building and everyone would be trying to do their job in the most efficient and safest way possible for the good of the team, and there would be steve, rushing ahead of everyone else, hacking through doors, jumping into smoke and fire when we were still trying to assess the best course of action. he really did put the rest of us—and the job at hand—at risk when he went off on his own mission, so it wasn’t professional. not at all. but somehow every time we brought the matter up and he had to be dragged in for a thorough bawling-out by the captain, he managed to explain his way out of it. we figured that he was either a damn smooth talker, or he bulldozed his way through the captain’s arguments the same way he ran roughshod over everything else in his path. so he built up resentment and dislike from the others—and me, i guess—not because he was gay, but because he was a liability on the job. which is all by way of explaining that—after he had been there a few months—one of the guys referred to him as “dangerboy” and the name stuck. they would even call him that to his face. “hey, dangerboy, get your ass in gear.” steve didn’t mind. he was probably even a little proud of it. “kenny, just suck my fuckin’ dick.” which only goes to show, i guess, how he was. he did not give a fuck. about anything. because of all this it’s no surprise that—in spite of his remark to me that first morning—we never did get together in any personal way. and he and i never really connected to each other because we were both gay. temperamentally and professionally, i was in the camp of the others. i had more in common with them and their interests than i did with him. i even found him something of an embarrassment. and he seemed to have contempt for me. why, i don’t know. we did run into each other occasionally when we weren’t at work. sometimes i would go to the bars in philadelphia on the weekend, and every now and then i would see him out there too, although we did not tend to hang out in the same kind of places. i was more likely to go to a quiet bar whose clientele was a little more congenial and conservative. places where there was likely to be conversation. not that i didn’t go to the discos every once in a while. or even sometimes to the type of places that steve frequented. he wasn’t a leather person and he wasn’t a hardcore person, but he did seem to prefer cruise bars that were on the seedy side. places where the main goal was to get sex. and the type of guy he liked—the type he always seemed to be dragging out the door of the bar—didn’t look to me as if they were exactly upper class. and he liked italians. not that those two are necessarily related. but when i put all this information together, i figured out that his ideal type was a dark and rough-looking working-class guy named mario who was ready and willing to receive some quick and dirty sex. you might think that i’m sounding a little judgmental about steve, but this is what i knew about him. and i think that any opinions i had as to him and his behavior tended to be borne out by experience. one time after last call i was leaving a cruise bar in one of the more rundown parts of philly. i had about four blocks to walk to my car. going past an alley i heard a loud metallic banging and some guy moaning like he was being beaten up. my profession makes me a little more likely to investigate things like that, so i cautiously moved down the alley to see if somebody needed my help. it was nothing like that. at all. what i found was some guy leaning up against the dumpster, holding the front rim of it with his hands. and the banging sound was the back of the dumpster hitting the brick wall every time he took it up the ass from the guy behind him, who was violently pounding away. and the guy doing all the moaning and groaning every time he got it shoved up his ass was steve. he didn’t care how much noise he was making, or the fact that someone might call the cops. he probably preferred it that way. not the kind of person i wanted to be associated with. like i say, i got along a lot better with the straight guys at work. several of them knew that i was gay, but it didn’t matter to them, or, anyway, they never said anything about it. i got along really well with one guy in particular. his name was buddy. our connection was that we both owned harleys. i had bought mine without knowing a whole lot about the mechanics of one, but fortunately for me that was buddy’s main joy in life. he would come over to my trailer and help me whenever i had problems with mine. most of the time when we were talking, we were talking about motorcycle stuff and the issue of my being gay did not really come up in conversation. buddy himself had been divorced about fifteen years. his wife had—for all intents—abandoned him while he was in vietnam, so the divorce itself was basically a formality after he returned home in ’72. he would have re-enlisted in the marines at the point, he told me, but he had “got tired of all the racket.” even though he hadn’t gone back, he still looked like a marine with his crewcut and stocky muscular build and his “semper fi” tattoo. like i said, he and i got along pretty well. so when i was having a little get-together at my place after work on a friday night in late summer, i asked buddy first. it wasn’t going to be much. all i had to do was fill a couple of stainless-steel washtubs with ice and beer and order half-a-dozen pizzas. i invited buddy and three or four of the other guys. but not steve. we didn’t do much that night, just sit around and bullshit and talk about work and sports and cars. usual guy stuff. even if i was gay, i still found it possible to do the guy thing. i was glad to be able to fit in with them fairly comfortably we drank some beer, played some poker, and then one by one they took off to go home. when it got to be about midnight, there was only buddy and me left lounging out in my front yard, which was basically the empty area between the trailer and the surrounding trees. we were sitting there, the only lights being those i had hooked up to the corner of my trailer to draw the bugs over that way while we sat further off. i was in the rocker i had owned for years and buddy was stretched out in a worn redwood recliner i had picked up somewhere. it didn’t have any cushions or anything, but it could be comfortable to stretch out on late at night when all you wanted was to drink beer and stare off into the darkness. we had gotten to the point where we were just sitting around, downing our beers, and talking or not talking as we felt like it. i liked that. there had been a lull in the conversation for over ten minutes. the only sound was the crickets. which was how we could easily hear a car approaching long before we could see it. my trailer was about half-a-mile off the main highway. late at night you could hear someone driving up and see their headlights flashing over the horizon well in advance of their arrival. “who the hell is that?” i wondered aloud. “probably nelson,” buddy chuckled. “he probably got all the way home before he figured out that he left his gear here.” it wasn’t nelson. as the car got closer, i could hear the revved-up whine of the engine and i knew that it was the ’74 bright yellow camaro that belonged to only one person. steve. i didn’t say anything, but buddy recognized it too and said “oh, shit.” no matter what he had said about it that first day, steve loved that car. not enough to take good care of it, but enough. maybe it took him back to his high school days, when it was the hot studmobile to own. it fit his flashy personality. and the way he drove it up the highway, topping ninety-five most times, made it the perfect match for his temperament. he was doing at least fifty over the dirt road that led out to my place. after topping the last rise, he skidded to a stop, raising a cloud of dust and dried leaves. the door burst open and there he was, almost falling over as he emerged. he practically staggered over to where we sat. although it was starting to get a little cool at night, he was shirtless, wearing only his jeans and the beat-to-pieces red cowboy boots that he wore whenever he went out cruising. as he came toward us out of the darkness, i thought that— if you didn’t know him—you would have thought he was damn sexy with his dark blond hair, mustache, and hairy chest. but if you knew him, you knew he would be o.k. for a quick fuck, and that would ever be all. i had no use for him. he loped up with a big grin on his face. “now, somebody told me there was a party out here tonight. i don’t see no party. all i see is you two sad sacks looking like you ain't got no friends left in the world but your beers.” “hey,” i grunted. buddy didn’t say anything. he just took another drink. steve ambled over and pulled a heineken out of the mostly-melted ice. he popped the top off and downed half of it in a gulp. “damn, that’s good,” he said. “i was on my way home from a little trip down the road and i said to myself, ‘you know, steve, you don’t have no beer at home. maybe you should stop in and see your good friend billy. i heard he was having a party. i’m sure my invitation got lost in the mail somehow. he won’t mind if i drop in for a second.’” i couldn’t say anything to this. i didn’t think it did any good to talk to steve most of the time anyway. he never listened. but you had to say something. “where you been?” i asked, unwillingly. “down to pottersville. there was this stud i met at the roadhouse last week and we made a date to get together tonight. but, you know me. wham bam thank you man. anyway, he blew his nuts before i had half a chance to get going. he could suck a mean cock, though, i’ll say that for him. i thought he was going to eat me alive.” out of the corner of my eye, i saw buddy shift in the recliner. this was the sort of talk he didn’t like to hear. me neither, for that matter. but once steve got started you couldn’t stop him. “still, i don’t suppose you can expect much out of these country boys. they don’t get it often enough to know how to do it right. they think that just getting a dick in your mouth is the end. fuck. i know men in philly who won’t even suck your dick who give me a better time than that.” now i had heard him say things like this a little before, but i don’t think that buddy hadn’t ever been exposed to the full force of steve’s outrageousness. i think this was a calculated effort to provoke a reaction. i knew it for sure when steve directed his next remarks directly at buddy. “what do you think, buddy? do you think that sucking dick is the best thing there is? or do you think that taking it up the ass is better?” i looked over at buddy. he wasn’t answering. he was staring at steve, but he wasn’t responding in any fashion. steve snorted and took another drink. “hell, why am i even asking you. you don’t know anything about sucking dick, do you? fine upstanding ex-ex-marine. pride of the country.” he swiveled toward me. “now, bill here,” he drawled, “bill here knows what it’s like to have a dick in his mouth, don’t you, bill? and i bet he’s taken it up the ass more times than he cares to remember. what’s your opinion, bill? what’s more fun—suckin’ or fuckin’?” “jesus, steve,” i muttered. “it’s late. why don’t you go home?” “go home? i haven’t been here five minutes and already you’re telling me to go home? now what kind of hospitality is that. well, maybe i would go home if i had a nice place like this one here. maybe i would go home if i had some cheap-ass trailer out in the boonies with little yellow curtains and some fuckin’ birdbath out front. hell, yeah. or maybe i’ll just move in here with you, brother, how’s that? we could set up quite a little love nest here. ‘course, you’d have to take that fuckin’ stick out of your butt every night so i could give you what you so obviously and desperately need. a good hard cock up your ass.” then i realized that—not only was steve a little tipsy—he was more than a little drugged. i’m not sure what it was—probably speed. that would have been his style. but whatever the reason, i saw that he was in an evil mood and he was intent on jumping over the line and then stomping it into the ground in his own little war dance. there was no stopping him. at this point he had—as he intended—crossed buddy’s line. buddy said, under his breath but loud enough for us both to hear, “fuckin’ fag.” steve pretended to be annoyed. “’fuckin’ fag’? jesus, buddy, what’s that? ain’t we all fine upstanding het boys here? well, maybe you are. certainly not me. i love dick. love it, love it, love it. how about you, billy boy? what side do you want to be on tonight? you want to pretend to be all normal and straight like our good friend buddy here? or do you want to admit that you go down to philly and chase dick too?” there was a wicked look on steve’s face. “you do know bill here’s a fag, don’t you?” he slyly tossed in buddy’s direction. buddy gave a quick involuntary glance at me. “i know that.” “so what’s the difference. he’s a fag. i’m a fag. you’re all nice to him and treat me like shit. what’s the difference?” buddy considered for a moment, and then spoke, although i think he would have done anything to avoid this conversation at all. “’cause he doesn’t piss me off. he knows how to behave himself.” steve snorted. “bill’s a candyass closet case who hasn’t got the nuts to stand up for himself. but don’t let him fool you. he sucks as much dick as i do.” “steve, shut up,” i spat out. he turned and ripped into me in a low but threatening tone. “listen, fucker. don’t you start. you act like you’re all high and mighty in the bars but i know who you are and what you do. people talk. i’ve heard about your business men and your investment bankers and all the other downtown fucks you like to hang around with. i know that you’re a fuckin’ size queen who likes to go down on big blond white dicks. but guess what. there’s a lot more dick in this world that isn’t clean and nice and all dressed up in a three-piece suit. those are the real fuckin’ dudes. and those are the ones that i like. and you’d do ‘em too, only you don’t have the fuckin’ balls to go for it.” i was furious. i don’t know how buddy was reacting because i was glaring at steve with all the hate i could muster. then as he stood there before me, i saw the viciousness in his face change into a smirk. he kept his eyes on mine. his hands moved down to his crotch. right there in front of buddy and me, steve unbuttoned his jeans and pulled his dick out. “now, this,” he said, coldly and deliberately, “is the cock of a real man.” i couldn’t help but look. although i had seen steve’s dick in the showers it hadn’t looked like this. then i figured out why, as he undid his jeans the rest of the way and pushed them down below his crotch. his cock and balls were tied with a leather strip. his cock was still puffy and half-full of blood from being hard earlier. it hung fat soft and red. it was even redder where the foreskin hung down. it looked like someone had been chewing on it. “you like this dick?” he said. he took it in his hand and shook it. “i know our friend over there is too dumb to know a good piece of meat when he sees it. but you know, don’t you. you know i got a good cock, right?” i wasn’t appreciating any of this. especially in front of buddy, who i considered to be more of my friend than steve ever would have been. “goddamn it, steve. put your fuckin’ dick away.” he held onto it and waved it in front of us. “you want to suck this, billy boy? come on, be a man, suck some cock.” he turned toward buddy and shook it. “how about you, buddy? you ever wanted a dick in that pretty mouth of yours? come on and try it. you aren’t going to get one any better than this.” buddy wasn’t looking at steve’s cock. no surprise there. but he wasn’t avoiding looking at steve. he was observing him, not with the look of disgust that i had expected, but with something else. steve gave an impatient “huh?”, then laughed and pulled his pants back up. “fuck both of you. dumb pussies. i gotta pee.” with that he walked off into the trees nearby where a few seconds later we could hear him singing “hot stuff”, and the sound of liquid hitting the grass. the first thing i did was apologize to buddy. “i am so sorry, man. i didn’t ask him here. i didn’t know he was going to come and start doing stuff like this.” buddy looked in my direction, but i could tell that the wheels were spinning in his head as he pondered some idea. then he focused in on me and said in a consoling tone, “hey, man. don’t worry about it. i know he’s not your friend.” then a frown took possession of his face. “but somebody,” he continued, “has got to teach that fag a lesson.” that worried me. what did he mean? we heard the splashing stop as buddy finished the chorus. he was coming back. buddy straightened up in his chair. he looked over at me. “how about it?” “what?” i asked. “how about we teach him a lesson.” what could i say. i don’t know that i cared enough about steve to defend him. he irritated me as much as anybody else. but what did buddy have in mind? steve lurched into sight, his pants still half-unbuttoned. buddy whispered, “just play along.” steve staggered closer and grabbed another beer out of the washtub. “i think i’ll take one for the road here and leave you old ladies to sit around and talk about your knitting.” buddy said, quietly, “maybe you shouldn’t be driving in your condition.” steve laughed. “fuck you. i can drive and i can walk and i can fuck. as a matter of fact, i think i’ll go out to that rest stop over past your place and wait for some truckers to come along and put their cocks in my mouth.” now buddy was softly laughing. “yeah, why don’t you do that, big man.” steve blew up. “listen, you goddamn jarhead. fuck you. i can do anything and anybody i goddamn please. i can fuck and suck all fuckin’ night long and if that makes me a goddamn fag then i’m a fuckin’ fag. fuckin’ marine. that don’t mean shit to me. i’m more of a fuckin’ man than you’ll ever be. i can do it all and i can take it all. i can take anything any-goddamn-body can dish out. i’m not afraid of anything.” “yeah?” buddy jumped in. “are you sure?” steve looked momentarily puzzled. “what the hell are you talking about?” buddy slowly rose out of his chair. i don’t think i had ever seen him look so . . . big. “can you take anything, you fag? you think you can take anything? i don’t think you can.” steve’s bravado returned. “i can take anything you can dish out, fat boy. you don’t scare me.” buddy whispered, “let’s find out.” steve and i both watched, unmoving, as buddy unbuckled his belt. he wasn’t taking off his pants, though. he kept his eyes on steve as he pulled the belt out of the loops. then he held the buckle in his palm and slowly wrapped the strap twice around his right hand. he lowered his arm. the tip of the belt barely touched the ground. he looked at steve. “drop ‘em,” he ordered. steve weaved slightly, but—i’ll give him this—he didn’t hesitate a second. he walked over until he was a foot away from buddy, stared him straight in the eyes, and shoved his pants down. they stood there, glaring at each other. steve said, “do it, cocksucker.” buddy stood aside and steve bent over the foot of the redwood recliner. he spread his legs apart as far as he could with his jeans shoved down to his ankles. he leaned forward and put his hands on the front of the armrests. from where i was sitting, i could see it all. he had a good ass, i could tell. but i didn’t have time to register much of anything else because buddy swung his arm back and then whacked steve’s ass as hard as he could with the belt. steve’s head flipped up and he yelled. buddy didn’t wait a second, but swung his arm back again. the first attempt had given him a chance to gauge the distance. this time even though he didn’t swing any harder he got a better aim at steve’s ass. the belt hit it with a crack that could have been heard half-a-mile away. steve yelled again. after he yelled, he spat out “fuck!” and gasped for breath. buddy asked, “had enough?” steve turned his head toward buddy and snarled, “fuck you, you goddamn pig. give it your best shot.” he resettled his hands on the chair and repositioned his legs. buddy took a step back. this time he threw the weight of his whole body into it. stepping forward and turning, he swung from behind his head. i heard the air whistling around the belt as it sped toward steve’s ass. i never heard a noise like that before in my life. when it connected, steve shouted out in pain. i could see his arms trembling as they gripped the chair. as soon as he got his breath, he said, “do it again.” buddy hit him again. now i could see the red welts beginning to rise on steve’s white ass. buddy’s belt was maybe two inches wide. two-inch-wide red stripes appeared across steve’s ass. and there were metal studs riveted down the belt. i didn’t want to think what it felt like when they connected with soft flesh. “come on, fucker!” steve cried. “fuckin’ give it to me.” “shut up, fag!” buddy yelled back. and he hit steve again. and again. and again. for about five minutes, they kept at it. buddy would belt steve’s ass. steve would grunt or cry out, depending on how hard the blow had been. but he didn’t tell buddy to stop. after each blow fell, steve—trembling more each time—would grip the arms of the chair and then say “do it.” i sat there and watched. watched buddy’s arm and body move through the arc. watched buddy’s face as he concentrated. watched steve’s body tense and spasm as each blow fell. watched his hard ass take the blow. watched steve’s balls hanging low down, swaying beneath his body. watched the chair slightly sway, hearing it creak a little bit each time. i got hard. this kind of scene wasn’t really my thing. but seeing buddy do that to steve was turning me on like i never knew possible. i thought about reaching down and rubbing on my cock, but i was afraid to. it might make buddy stop. then, for the first time, buddy looked over at me. “do you want to do something for me?” oh, god, i thought. buddy didn’t wait for an answer. “shut him up. give this cocksucker something to do.” “what?” “he’s making too much goddamn noise. put your dick in his mouth.” what was i supposed to do? i wasn’t sure whether i shouldn’t have been stopping what was going on rather than encouraging it. and i wasn’t sure whether i wanted to be doing anything like that with steve. but buddy wanted me to do it. “o.k.,” i said. i got up and walked over to the recliner. i pushed the back of it all the way down. i realized then that i would have to take my jeans off in order to get my legs on both sides of it. they were both watching me as i did that. they both saw that i was hard already. at least, i think they saw. i found i couldn’t look buddy in the face. i straddled the recliner, and moved forward until my cock was right in front of steve’s face. he looked up at me, arrogance vying with pain to show on his face. “see,” he said. “i knew you wanted me to suck your cock.” goddamn you. goddamn you son-of-a-bitch. i grabbed his hair and jerked his head up. his mouth fell open. i shoved my cock in. he started sucking. buddy held off for a minute and let him go at it. steve was getting into it. and, then, so was i. i held his hair with both hands and moved his head on my cock. i think steve forgot what else had been going on and got into cocksucking. because there was a surprised look on his face when the belt hit his ass again. his moan wrapped itself around my cock. but he kept sucking. when the belt hit his ass again he was ready. he hardly missed a stroke. and although buddy got a rhythm going, whapping steve’s ass about every ten or fifteen seconds, steve didn’t flinch as much as before. it was as if having my dick in his mouth made the beating easier to take. i was getting more and more excited. his wet mouth on my cock was beginning to really turn me on. he was slobbering away on it and sucking it like it was the best fuckin’ cock in the world. i don’t think it mattered to him whether it was mine or not. he just liked sucking cock and one was as good as any other. once or twice he tried to lift one of his hands from the chair to grab his own dick, but he couldn’t do that and keep his balance. he wanted to jerk on his cock because i could see in glimpses every now and then that he was hard. but i guess he couldn’t suck my cock, hold himself up, and take buddy’s punishment all at once. and buddy wasn’t letting up. as steve kept sucking my cock, i finally got the nerve to look up. beads of sweat were breaking out on buddy’s face. his tshirt was getting soaked too. every now and then he would glance up to see that steve was still on my cock, but his main concentration was on beating steve’s ass. i could tell that his arm was starting to get tired, but he wasn’t going to let steve win. steve was actually lifting his ass up now, waiting—begging—for the next blow to fall. sometimes he would take his mouth off my cock and plead “yeah! give it to me! beat my fuckin’ ass!” then he would go back to sucking me off. buddy was getting frustrated. this wasn’t going to be near as easy as he thought it would be. he began aiming the belt at a different part of steve. he hit him across the tops of his thighs. a couple of times he laid it hard right across steve’s back. the first time he did this, steve wasn’t expecting it and he bit down on my cock. it hurt, bad. i screamed and jerked his head off my dick. he looked up at me and spat out the word “pussy!” i grabbed his head and shoved it back down over my cock. then i held his head and fucked his face as hard as i could. i made him gag and choke. i wanted him to hurt. when i did that, buddy got his second wind and beat steve’s ass even more fiercely than before. we all went crazy. i started cursing steve and yelling at him. “yeah, suck my goddamn cock, you fuckin’ cocksucker! eat my fuckin’ cock, you son-of-a-bitch!” and then buddy started. “yeah, suck his cock! go on, fag, suck it! suck his fuckin’ dick!” no one could have heard us. we were miles from anywhere, too far from anybody. then i knew what i wanted. i looked up at buddy. “do you want some of this?” i hoarsely cried. he lowered his arm and looked at me. there was a wild expression on his face. it was replaced with hesitation, and then acceptance. “yeah, man. let me at him.” he dropped the belt and undid his jeans. he came around to the side of the chair. i pulled my cock out of steve’s mouth but stayed where i was. because i wanted to see buddy’s hardon. when he stuck it out towards steve, i could see it was of average length, but thicker by half again than mine. it was already hard. i pushed steve’s head toward it. steve took it willingly. he sucked buddy’s cock hungrily and eagerly. buddy and i weren’t yelling now, but i was still telling steve “suck his fuckin’ cock” and buddy was still going “yeah, eat my goddamn dick, you fuckin’ queer.” i was jerking on my own dick and watching steve suck buddy’s fat cock off. it was really turning me on. maybe because i wished it was me instead of steve down there eating buddy’s hard meat. hell, i know that’s what i wanted. but i knew that that wasn’t part of the equation. it wouldn’t go. it would make everything fall apart if i tried. then i would be just another common cocksucking queer like steve, and that’s not the way i wanted buddy to think of me. so i stood there whacking away at my dick and watching steve suck buddy. and then, before i knew it, i was getting ready to come. and what the hell was i going to do. i didn’t have time to think or stop. i came. it shot out and fell down onto the recliner. buddy saw it, and looked a little surprised. steve didn’t know what had happened and kept sucking buddy. i staggered backwards away from the chair. buddy looked momentarily confused. at that point, i think he realized that this was maybe a little more than he had bargained for. he stepped back and left steve gasping for a cock that wasn’t there anymore. buddy stood there, his hard dick sticking out of his jeans. steve stood up then and saw me. he realized what had happened. and he started laughing. he kept laughing as i stood there with my cock still in my hand and buddy looking at me. steve gasped out, “you fuckin’ fairies. can’t you even fuckin’ wait.” buddy exploded. “goddamn you!” he shouted. he lunged at steve, throwing him off the chair and onto the ground. he jumped on top of him and started hitting his face. now i knew i had to do something. i raced over and did my best to pull buddy off of steve. it was hard to get hold of him as he kept punching steve in the face, but i managed to get on his back, wrap my arm around his neck, and pull him off steve by nearly choking him. he fell away with me and we lay there on the ground panting for air. i held on to him. around the neck. feeling his weight against me. holding him, maybe a little longer than i should have. curiously enough, it was steve that recovered first. he sat up. his face was bleeding, mostly from his nose. he’d look like hell later. but he was still laughing. “you two,” he said. “you really know how to show a girl a good time.” he rubbed his hand across his face and then looked at the blood on it. “shit!” he said. “i am not going to be pretty tomorrow.” how strange, i remember thinking. that’s the first time i ever heard him say anything even remotely campy. he kept chuckling to himself as he stood up, pulled up his jeans, and buttoned them, all the while contemplating us lying on the ground. “i think i’ll leave you two lovebirds alone down there, if you don’t mind,” he said. “i’m sure you have a lot to talk about.” and with that, he turned and walked off, whistling. we were still lying on the ground when we heard the camaro scream away. i let go of buddy then, but we didn’t get up. i became aware of us both still breathing hard, recovering. and the sound of the crickets. i saw his cock, going soft but still thick, lying outside his pants. i wanted to, you know, but i couldn’t. and then i thought, oh, god, what have i done. we lay there for a few minutes, like that, then we stood up and pulled ourselves together. buddy put his belt back on. he spoke first. “sorry about that,” he muttered. “i don’t know what came over me.” “yeah, me too,” i replied. “i think i went crazy there for a minute.” “it’s alright,” he said. “people do crazy things when they’ve been drinking too much.” we weren’t that drunk, i thought. but, whatever. “i think i better go home,” he said. “yeah, sure.” i walked back with him to his bike. he got on, wincing slightly from some pain. maybe he was too old to be carrying on like that. he put on his gloves and then paused, looking for some words in his mind. i waited. “you know, bill. i like you.” “i like you too, buddy.” he paused again. “i don’t want you to think that the things i said to him apply to you.” “what?” i was confused. “what things?” he looked at me. “calling him a ‘fag’ and a ‘queer’ and all that. i just wanted you to know that i don’t think of you that way.” i didn’t know what to make of this. “yeah, sure, buddy. i understand.” “i mean it,” he said. “you’re a good guy.” what, what, what. “o.k., buddy.” “yeah, well. i better be going.” “see ya.” “night.” he revved his bike once and rode away. i went back to the yard. there was crap everywhere. pizza boxes and beer bottles. i hadn’t realized what a mess we had made. i looked over at the redwood recliner where the whole scene with buddy and steve had taken place. in the white light from the trailer it looked so empty. it scared me for some reason. i wanted more than anything else to get in my bed and go to sleep. things would be alright then. as i walked up to the trailer i remembered how steve had described it. i tried to see it through his eyes, but i couldn’t. he shouldn’t have said what he did about it. it was the only home i had. i was the one who had to live there. i went inside and closed the door.
