Boys of Life (7 page)

□ PAUL RUSSELL

real world. I hadn't known that before—I could be in some spaceship or an underground cavern for all I know about what goes on outside.

About a month ago there was a thunderstorm. I could hear the thunder, but ot course I couldn't see any Lightning. It must've been a pretty violent episode, because the thunder was sharp and exploding right out of nowhere, not those low rolls from a distance but breaking out right on top of you. Then afterward everything got quiet and the place filled up with that clean, clear smell you tzet after lightning.

ne, they say it is. It was just barely there, but it was definite—I couldn't get enough of it. And then a little later the smell of ram. again faint and hardly there—but after a while you live off little changes like that. I think I lived off that storm tor days.

Seeing those trees was even better, though. It wasn't just the trees I was seeing, it was a whole memory opening up. and I'm still thinking about it even now: how when 1 was six years old and first went to school, I hated it. I hated the ugly green walls, and the green-and-white tile floor, and the ammonia smell—sort ot the way I came to hate the Nu-Way Laundromat when I was a little older.

Every morning at recess I wouldn't play games with the other kid>—I'd hightail it straight for the SWingsetS. They were these big sturdv playground kind with long heavy chains and plastK scat bottoms that curved around your butt— all except tor the middle swing, which still had a wooden scat from the old days. That was the one 1 always took. I'd concentrate on making that swing go as high BS it'd go, till if

• high enough, almost level with the top bat, I could just batch Barton's Ridge, a few miles away. It made my heatt teel sick to think how tat the distance was between me And it. I'd swing higher and

higher, trying to Imagine I was over there on the other side ot that

tidge—till one ot the te&chen would call tot me to stop ai fl and

,Uc have a turn.

But I never would. I'd keep swinging higher and think it I

I hard enough I could wish myself oufl of that playground and the ridge Into the distance where I'd be s.»te. where nobod) could

thai tune I'd be Swinging s ( . t.ist .md furiOUS none ot the

: nist have tO let me the

h.ilt how I catch hell when I iv< down, but even though

en 1 i urn- down I couldn • my

•it n> me

BOYSOFLIFE D

Pd He hack on thai iwing, and let them tr. me it they could.

Which they finally gave up trying to do.

The last time I evei saw thai playground with those swtngsets and the soot) brick school building I'd always hated bo much was from the window oi Carlos's \'W bus the morning we left. I'd gotten out to where they were camped as early as 1 could—1 didn't want to miss them.

The Mm wasn't even up, and there was this cold mist. They weren't

criy raring to go, it turned out—they'd all gone and gotten drunk after I left, and it was the kind oi hangover you could just see in their races. Carlos especially. He was looking about ten years older than usual, and in addition he was wearing this black headband.

"What's that?" I touched his forehead. "Playing Indian chief?"

But he pulled hack. "Don't touch," he said in this sharp voi<

"Oh, excuse me," I said, chalking it up to his hangover.

"Just don't ever touch the headband, oka\

M it keep your head from railing apart.'" 1 asked him.

"Something like that," he sort o>\ mumbled.

It was one ot those things that, after you've made up your mind to do something, sort ot gives you a warning signal like maybe you shouldn't do it after all. But I decided Carlos and I were both just jumpy that morning, tor obvious reasons, so I let it

Like I said, we drove past the school, and then out along the road

where I lived, and pretty soon we were driving past the trailer. 1 could

see my mom's car parked in front, and I wondered what they were .ill

doin^ in there. Prohahly snll sleeping—hut even it they weren't, it was

early tor anybody to miss me.

Carlos didn't say anything when we drove h\ the trailer, though he must've noticed me Staring at it out the window as we passed. Maybe he didn't rememher it from hein^ there just once, hut I think he prohahly did. Carlos didn't tor^et things.

I think what it was: Carlos was s L ,ired to death. Ot course, he never let on to that, not even years later when I'd ask him. We'd shruu and say he wasn't particularly worried that morning, because the tirst

mt he ever saw me in th.it laundromat, he knew it was fate. And

if it brought him down, it it got him in trouble—well, thai

the fate too. He wasn't going to turn aside from an\ oi it.

Which strangely enough I always took to he some kind ot compliment to me, though I don't really know why.

"So where're we going?" I asked, because it occurred to me th.it that was one hiy question I'd total. the night bei

□ PAULRUSSELL

But now that we were passing Barton's Ridge, it seemed like maybe the time to find out.

"Ever been to New York City?"

He must have known I hadn't.

"Do you live in a skyscraper?" I asked. You'll laugh, but I really did think everybody in New York lived in skyscrapers because there wasn't anything else.

"I live in a slum," he said. He let that sink in, and then he said, "Which you'll love, I guarantee."

"A slum," I said. "Is it dangerous?"

"No more dangerous than you are," he told me.

"So—pretty dangerous," I joked.

"Pretty fucking dangerous," he agreed.

There's really only one other thing I need to tell about that first day. After we finally stopped for the night—we'd driven about two hundred miles away from Owen to somewhere in Pennsylvania—Carlos and I took a blanket and a bottle of scotch and walked about a mile from camp, up along a ridge to where some high voltage power lines cut across. There was this mowed space underneath, and there on that mowed space under the power lines was where 1 had the first real sex of my life.

It came as a total shock to me, because I really had no idea. Carlos spread out the blanket and we drank down about half that bottle o( scutch in ni) time, me because I was dying tor a drink and also excited as hell .it the blow job I knew Carlos was going to give me, and Carlos

because that blow job wasn't all he wanted to do to me and he must've been nervous to see what would happen if he tried everything he wanted

Those power lines were humming, this eerie sound that sort oi

came and went the way cicadas do in summer.

I got drunk in no tune. Carloi lav then- on that blanket, propped ■ .it me. Foi BOmC reason 1 lumped up and started

stnj^mo this Bruo n song from ofl the radio, "Thundei

- to 1 c-t <»tf nervous energy from being cooped up in the

led I was pla tar, and I stomped around

: then pretended I had a mike in my hand and 1 was pumping

out ' ti, oh, oh, oh I hundei Road," 1

me with this faraway dreamy look. I took anoth I thru I was really lnt(i li

All ( ados must've decided something he itood up

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and put his arms around me and held me so tight I thought he was going to crush me. He kissed me and kept holding me with his arms around me so the kiss went on and on—I couldn't get my breath even

it I'd wanted to. But after a while even Carlos had to breathe, SO he pulled hack and looked me Straight in the eve m\A started to unhutton my shirt one button at a time.

It made me dizzy to look at him like that, though it was also probably the scotch. Even it I'd wanted to, I couldn't have moved because of the way his hand was reaching inside my ^hirr and nibbing my skin just barely with his fingertips and touching my nipples —which was something nobody'd ever done to me before. It got me excited like crazy. My dick was so hard in my pants it hurt.

I thought for sure once he had my ^hirr off me he was going to open up my jeans and go down on me. But he didn't. He kissed me again, this time really slow and romantic the way you see guys kiss LiirK, and all the time he kept running his hands over my bare back and slipping them down my pants along my butt.

Then finally he did go down on me, but only after crouching in front of me and rubbing his face against the front of my leans where my dick was pressing up hard against them; unzipping my jeans really slow, teasing me with it so I was going torallv wild; then when he had my dick out in the open just barely touching it with his tongue. Which made me even wilder. When he went down on me completely ir was almost a relief from all that excitement.

I remember reaching my hands down to feel his lips and the base of my dick where it disappeared into his mouth. I was suddenly feeling totally peaceful. I had the weirdest feeling I was traveling somewhere, even though I knew I was standing completely ^till there in that stretch of field. But I felt like I was gom^ somewhere, .ill this was raking me someplace I didn't know—I'd never seen it before, but that was okay, that was just fine. And the hum of those power lines up above our heads with all that electricirv zinging along tor miles and miles m who knew where, and here we were right in the middle of it.

In the meantime Carlos was untying my sneakers, then he was sliding my jeans of! me, and there 1 was burr-naked -which is a pretty amazing thing, to be butt-naked like that outdoors. Even for somebody like me, who used to traipse deep in the woods sometimes and strip down totally except for my sneakers—then I'd run around tor a while like some wild Indian until I got SO excited being like that I'd jerl

Carlos pulled me down on my back on the blanket. He bent over

□ PAUL RUSSELL

me on his hands and knees and kept his mouth going on my dick, hut also on my halls and my belly button and my nipples and meantime his hands were everywhere, light as feathers that just as soon as I'd feel them somewhere they'd be gone and cropping up somewhere else to give me goosebumps. Then before I knew what was happening he grabbed both my ankles and pushed my legs up in the air over my head and went right to my asshole with his tongue.

If you'd hooked one of those power lines to me right then, it wouldn't have been any more of a shock. I'd never dreamed in a million years of one person doing something like that to somebody else, but the feeling was so incredible I came right there, groaning like some wild animal and shooting all over my chest. But Carlos just kept going, pushing farther up with his tongue, then sliding a finger up me, at first just a little ways till I tensed up around it, but then all the way in.

It hurt like fire and I grabbed his wrist to make him stop, but the way he was moving it around in there was like electricity. I started to get hard all over again, even though it still hurt, and I could feel my asshole clenching and unclenching like a fist. Somehow he'd gotten his pants down around his knees, because the next thing I knew he was pushing his dick up me. It hurt ten times more than his finger, and I remember thinking, No way, he can't be going to do this to me—hut there it was. I thought I was going to pass out it hurt so much, hut he 111 >r kept pushing it in farther and farther even though 1 didn't think

uld go any farther in and I thought I was going to explode there was BO much up there inside me already—like when you have to shit really had and you don't think you Can hold it in another second, hut

then .ill of .» sudden something just gave way and 1 remember letting out this huge yell and banging my he.id back against the ground five or six times and bellowing like 1 was .< million miles away from even

thing and he was ;>ll the way inside me. He kept it then- tor .i minute

with my .isshok- spasming around his dick, and he bent ovei and kissed me, which must have been the best kiss ot my lite because I kept ■ on th.it kiss so l wouldn I have to think about that thing stmk up m\ butt .«nd hou scared 1 was that what with everythiri

fol him to get it up me, he'd kill me it Ik- tiled to pull it out

:, [t'd be like pulling out ■■ plug and my lmh^ would just go whoosh ing <»iit

When he in [ured I m he pulled out •» little way

i ,u I in I just kind oi melted, h was like that warm

i iwallo* "t whi i s through yout stomach, only

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now it was my whole body and not just my stomach that warm feeling was spreading through, and when he moved inside me again it was

another warm wave and then another and thev just kept on coming the way water comes bursting up From a spring in the ground and spills

over on top of itselt with no vnd in sight.

We never spoke through the whole thing, which from start to finish must've lasted more than an hour.

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Now this morning I'm remembering other things, better things. 1 still feel sad, but it's clearing—-and just .\ minute ago I was thinking

about this one time when, I don't know why, I was looking through Carlos's wallet and I found his driver's license. On the back was this place to sign so you could donate your organs it you got killed in some car crash, what they called an "anatomical gift." There were these two boxes you could check: one said you'd donate all your organs hut the other box said "only the following body parts." Carlos had checked that one, and then in the space where you were supposed to list wh.it body parts he wrote, "penis, gizzard and testicles," and signed it. Then he got two people whose names I never heard of to sign as witnesses. When I asked him about it, he didn't know wh.it 1 was talking about, so I made him take out his driver's license from his wallet and 1 showed him on the back where it was written. He just looked at it and shook his head, and all he said was, "I must've been really really drunk tor that one."