It was like a vacation driving down to Miami with Red. He was a horny fucker, for sure, and I must have given him a dozen blow jobs over the couple of days it took us to drive from Albany. The farther south we went, the warmer it got. The snow was gone by the time we hit Maryland, and I could shuck my jacket by South Carolina. Somewhere around Palm Beach I stripped off all my clothes and sprawled on the front seat next to Red, letting the warm air rush all over me.
We met at a truck stop where I used to hang out. He was a burly, copper-haired driver for a big transport company, and I guess you could call him my first boyfriend, though he was nearly forty and married, and I only saw him every other weekend when his rig stopped in Albany on a regular route between Chicago and Boston.
“Man, you are one sexy bastard, Sean,” Red said. We were barreling down the turnpike when we came to the exit ramp for I-595. I was giving him one last blow job before he had to drop his load when the ramp curved steeply and I heard him say, “Jesus Christ on a stick!” and then the truck smashed through the guardrail and went plummeting into space.
He was wearing his seat belt, company policy, so he stayed in the cab as it crashed to the ground thirty feet below. I went sailing out the window, and I remember thinking this must be what it felt like to fly. I landed in the crotch of a tree, perched above the burning truck, and I felt warmer than I ever had in my life. I thought for a while I’d died and gone to hell, where I’d always known I was going, and then I must have passed out and toppled out of the tree.
*
I always had an appetite for warmth. Growing up in a small town in upstate New York, I never could get warm enough, except for a few weeks in the summer. My dad left when I was about five, and for the next few years my mom struggled on her own to raise me and my sister. She kept an eagle eye on the thermostat all winter long. Then when she got married again, my stepfather used to knock me around if I so much as looked cross-eyed at turning the heat up.
I started making my own money when I was fourteen, cleaning up at a construction site. One of the carpenters felt sorry for me and showed me how to hang drywall, nailing the big sheets to the aluminum studs, then taping over the seams and sanding them down. In return, I gave him a blow job once a week or so, something he said his wife would never do.
By the time I was seventeen, I was making good money hanging drywall, then spending it getting drunk on Saturday night. Then I’d drive out to the highway rest stop and give blow jobs in the men’s room until two or three in the morning.
When I was nineteen, somebody sent my mom a picture of my dad and told her he was dead. Looking back now, I can tell it was AIDS, but then all we knew was that he’d wasted away. “He was so handsome once,” she said to me, just before she tore the picture up in little pieces. “You look just like him, Sean.”
I figured it was time to stop screwing around and get my life in order, so I got married, to a fat waitress named Donna I’d known in high school, and we moved down to Albany to get ourselves a fresh start. I picked up drywall work pretty fast, and she got a job waitressing at a bar called Your Place. It was probably the only bar in town where I never had a drink.
The beer warmed me up. I’d work all day, and by the time the foreman let us call it quits, I’d be chilled down to my bones. A couple of beers later, I’d start to feel warm again. Donna was good for that, too; I could squeeze up against her, my skinny chest, arms, and legs up tight against her cushiony flesh, and sleep. We even had sex, now and then, and though I could do it, I didn’t much like it. Back then, I thought that’s the way it was; the sex you were supposed to have was lousy, and only the sex you weren’t was any good.
The first time I was arrested at a rest stop I managed to keep it a secret from her, but she found out about the second time because a bastard cop came to our house and told her. He said she had to protect herself against disease, and she made us both get tested and then made me promise not to go out there again.
It took me a couple of weeks til I found my way to a truck stop at the edge of town, a place the big rigs pulled over for a breather before the long haul to Boston, or going the other way, down to New York. There was always a supply of horny truckers waiting out a mandatory rest period.
It was around then that Donna got pregnant. She’d gone off the pill without telling me, and it made me so mad I drank two six-packs of Genesee Cream Ale and then worked my way down the line of trucks, giving one blow job after another, letting the guys do pretty much anything they wanted. One guy took me into the shower at the rest stop, stripped us both down and then peed all over me. I didn’t care a bit.
Then I figured I owed it to the kid to sober up and be the kind of dad I never had. For the rest of Donna’s pregnancy I hardly drank at all, and only fooled around with Red, because like I said, he was kind of like my boyfriend by then. Hell, I was only twenty-two, and I could see the walls closing in around me for the rest of my life. Sucking his dick and getting plowed up the ass by him was about the only good thing I had going.
Donna gave birth to a little boy, and she wanted to call him Richard. I said okay, only if we called him Ricky—not Dick. I had enough problems without thinking of blow jobs every time I called the kid to dinner.
Donna started to get real distant after Ricky was born. She went back to Your Place, working nights, and I had to stay home and look after Ricky. She wouldn’t get home till two or three in the morning, and I’d be shivering under the covers, but she wouldn’t let me cuddle up against her.
I was working at this big mall, and somebody had screwed up the drawings for the steel, so one end of it was still open, even though we were working inside trying to fix up the interior. We enclosed the open storefront in plastic and brought in salamanders, these little space heaters, so it was warm enough for us to work, but still, I’d be freezing by the end of the day.
Then one Saturday when I met up with Red, he dropped a bombshell on me. We were sitting back in the little sleeping compartment behind his cab, after sex. He was smoking a cigarette and I was drinking a can of beer, both of us naked, my cold feet pressed up against his shins to try and get warm. “They’re giving me a new route,” he said. “Chicago to Miami.”
His wife and kids lived in Chicago, so he had to keep that as his base. But whatever customers he had in Boston had gone out of business and the company was shifting him around. “I come back from Boston this time, I head straight down to Miami,” he said.
“Aw, hell,” I said. “I’m never gonna see you again.”
“Come to Miami,” he said. “I’ll pick you up next week when I pass back through. We can fuck our way down the entire eastern seaboard.”
“And what do I do when I get there?”
“Exactly what you do here. Put up drywall and suck my dick.”
“What about my wife? I’ve got a kid, too, you know.”
He shrugged. “You do what you gotta do,” he said.
And just like that, I thought, “I’ll move to Miami.” It was February, and ass-chilling cold in Albany. I could finally warm up down there, run around in shorts and T-shirts all winter and still feel good.
I decided I was done with women, too. There was no doubt in my mind by then that I was a faggot, and I had no business living with or sleeping with a woman. That night, I picked up Ricky from the neighbor who was watching him, and after he went to sleep I stayed up waiting for Donna to come home from Your Place.
“You’re up late,” she said, when she came in the front door, a frosty breeze following her that made me shiver. I had my hands wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate, wearing long johns and a flannel nightshirt, and I still wasn’t warm.
“Wanted to talk to you,” I said.
She started pulling off her layers. “You could roast a chicken in here,” she said.
“I’ve been thinking, and I want to move on,” I said. “Get a divorce. Move down south.”
“You won’t get an argument from me,” she said. “I’ve already got me a real man to replace you.”
Maybe she was expecting to get my dander up, start some kind of battle over who got to claim her, but if she was, she was disappointed. “Guy from Your Place?”
“Jerry. The night bartender. He’s been saving up, gonna buy the place when Ethel gets ready to retire and sell it off.”
“Good for you,” I said.
“And I won’t have to worry about him sucking dick at rest stops, either,” she said.
“You never know.”
She slapped my face then, and I suppose I deserved it.
By the time Red pulled back into the truck stop the next Saturday, I’d sold my truck and given away everything I couldn’t pack into a single suitcase. “You be careful not to end up like your dad,” was all Donna said when I left the house the last time.
As the cab pulled away, it finally dawned on me that my father’d been a faggot too, and that’s why he’d left my mother. Poor Ricky, I thought. Only a year old, and his dad was already bailing on him. But maybe this bartender Jerry would be a better influence on him. I might have gotten out of his life just in time.
*
The company Red drove for had a strict policy against picking up hitchhikers, so I left the hospital with nothing but a set of clothes, a pocketknife that had survived the truck fire, and bus fare to the homeless shelter. Instead of getting off there, though, I stayed on across the causeway to South Beach, where I’d heard all the faggots hung out.
It was just nightfall, the lights on Lincoln Road coming on. I walked past the funky stores and fancy restaurants until I came to a gay bar I’d seen advertised in a newspaper I’d read at the hospital. I pulled off my shirt and slung it over my shoulder, letting the pants, which were too big on me anyway, ride down to my hips.
I leaned up against the wall outside the bar, and I hadn’t been there more than fifteen minutes when this guy came up to me. Maybe thirty, thirty-five, fat as a Thanksgiving turkey, wearing one of them short-sleeve shirts with the little horse and rider on his chest, and a Rolex on his wrist.
What kind of asshole wears a Rolex to a bar where he wants to get laid? That’s just asking for trouble, in my opinion. “What’s a good-looking guy like you doing hanging out here?” he said. “The action’s all inside.”
I put on my best innocent look. “I was a little nervous about going inside,” I said.
“Come on in with me,” he said, putting his arm around my bare shoulder. “I’ll take care of you.”
I followed him inside, where he bought me a series of drinks, and I started to feel that pleasant sense of freedom that alcohol had always brought me. The music was fast and loud, a sexy Latin beat that made me horny. I put my finger in my mouth and got it all juicy, then pressed it against the crotch of his khaki pants so there was a wet spot there. Against all the soft rolls of fat I could feel him getting hard. I licked my lips and made a five-zero out of my hands.
He was panting for it. “You got a place we can go?” I yelled into his ear.
He grabbed my arm like he was afraid if he let go he’d never get blown again, and I followed him out of the bar and into the parking garage just behind. The dude drove one of those big Land Rovers, and I regretted that I couldn’t just knock him on the head and leave him naked and quivering in some dark corner of the garage.
We climbed into the front seat and he started fumbling with his zipper. I’d worked enough of them in my life to know what to do, so I took over. When I was finished, he was panting for air, thin lines of sweat dripping down his cheeks. “Damn, you’re good,” he said.
“Worth every penny of the fifty bucks,” I said.
“Fifty bucks!” he said. “What do you mean!”
I reached over and caressed his limp dick, then grabbed hold and squeezed. “I mean you owe me fifty bucks.”
The dude was strong for a fat fuck. He grabbed my arm and twisted, and I yelped in pain. “Wrong move, dude,” I said. I flipped open my knife, and with a quick movement I’d slit his fancy blue shirt from neck to waist. “Next move you make is to your wallet.”
“Take it,” he said, pulling it out and thrusting it at me. “Here, take the watch, too. Just don’t cut me.”
I’d only expected the fifty bucks I’d asked for, but I wasn’t in any position to turn down a gift. I opened the wallet and pulled out the cash, then shoved it back at him. I kept the watch, though.
I scrambled out of his car. “I got your license plate, bud, so don’t even think about calling the cops. I’ll find out where you live, where you work. You don’t want to mess with me.”
“No, sir,” he said, and he backed that car out so fast you’d think he was in training for the Indy 500. I liked the way he called me sir.
It scared me, too. I’d come to Miami to live out in the open, to give up the kind of soul-draining truck stop sex I’d been having in Albany. But here I was blowing a guy in his car. This wasn’t the way I’d intended to start my new life. I started walking around, keeping to the shadowy side streets, thinking about what I could do.
After ten or fifteen blocks, my head cleared and the adrenaline rush dissipated, and I realized that I needed to get a real job. In quick succession, I found a pawn shop, where I got a few hundred bucks for the Rolex, and then a bus stop.
Back across the causeway, I rented myself a room for a week in a run-down fifties motel on Biscayne Boulevard. The next day was Sunday, and I went through the classified ads, looking for construction work. Monday morning I made the rounds, following the line of cranes down Biscayne Boulevard. Every place I got the same story, though. No Spanish, no job.
“Got to be able to speak to the rest of the crew,” one foreman told me. “They got jobs up in Lauderdale, everybody speaks English. Try up there.”
The last place I went, I walked out of the trailer in disgust, then stood behind it to smoke a cigarette. “Damn!” I said out loud. “Who does a faggot have to blow to get a job in this town?”
The superintendent, Cuban guy who’d been nice enough but had nothing for me, stuck his head out the window above my head. “I hear you right?” he said.
I looked up at him and licked my lips. “You heard me right, brother,” I said.
He ducked back inside, and then a moment later appeared again, this time holding a sheaf of papers in his hand. “Fill these out and give them to the girl out front,” he said. “Be here tomorrow morning, seven thirty.” After I took the papers he said, “You better know how to hang drywall, too.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
The next couple of days, I felt him watching me. His name was Alberto, though the guys all called him Señor Berto. I did my best to work hard, keep my nose to the grindstone and all that. We were building out some office space in a new high-rise, a warren of small cubicles framed out with studs. The electricians were working one bay ahead of us, running their wires through the walls, and then our crew would come in and drywall. The painters were right on our asses, and there wasn’t much time to fool around.
Friday afternoon, Señor Berto asked me to stick around for a few minutes after the rest of the guys took off, and I knew what was coming.
But that’s the way it is in this world. You take your breaks where you can get them, and you pay what you have to. When the rest of the guys left, I found Berto on his cell phone, standing in the lobby of the building, in front of this marble desk where I guessed the receptionist was going to sit. He waved at me and I stood there, my eyes zeroed in on his crotch.
He saw me looking there, and his dick began to stiffen against the denim. Finally he finished his call, and I moved over and put my hand on his crotch. It was warm down there, and I figured I’d drop to my knees right there, blow him, and then get on with my weekend.
Instead he motioned me to follow him to the men’s room, where he leaned up against the vanity, no sinks installed yet, and unzipped his pants.
It became a regular routine, every Friday afternoon, kind of like some mobbed-up thug coming by every week to extract a payoff. But in the meantime, I was earning good money, cruising the gay bars on the weekend like a regular guy. I had a lot of sex, some of it good, and never collected a penny. If I didn’t like a guy’s looks, I just moved on to the next offer.
The office project finished, and one of the guys I worked with told me about a new crew I could join—one where I didn’t have to suck dick every Friday afternoon. I said good-bye to Señor Berto and what I’d come to think of as his weekly payoff. I was becoming a regular working stiff, living a clean life in the hooker motel, even saving up some cash to help in my transformation to a productive member of society.
The summer in Miami was hot. Up to the nineties most days, enough humidity to keep your shirt stuck to your back. I didn’t mind a bit, though a lot of the guys complained. There was plenty of hunky eye candy, though I kept my zipper closed and my nose clean.
I met Frank on a Friday night in July, jammed into a tight space on the dance floor at the very Lincoln Road club where I’d picked up the Range Rover jerk a few months before. Frank wasn’t the kind of guy I usually looked twice at, maybe ten years older than me, and losing his hair. He had a trim figure, though, and the guy had some moves on him.
We were dancing to some shitty Madonna remix, and I liked the way he was totally absorbed in the music, his hips swiveling to the beat. When the song was over he caught my eye and smiled, and when he headed to the tables out on Lincoln Road I followed him.
“I’m Francisco,” he said, reaching out to shake my hand, when we were far enough from the music to speak. “But everybody calls me Frank.”
“I’m Sean.”
“But I’ll bet everybody calls you sexy.” I liked the way his eyes smiled as much as his mouth did.
“Only the guys I think are sexy, too,” I said.
We sat outside and talked. I learned he’d come to Miami as a kid, part of the Mariel exodus from Cuba, worked his way through college and dental school. I told him a few things, all true, but there was certainly a lot I didn’t mention.
Around three in the morning, he yawned. “Sorry,” he said. “Had to get up early this morning for work.”
“Me too,” I said. I rubbed my foot against his leg. “I guess I’m ready for bed.”
“For sleep,” he said. “But I’d like to see you again. Can I buy you dinner tomorrow?”
It was the first time I’d been asked out on a date. Every other guy I’d gone to bed with was one I’d met in a club, sometimes fooled around with in a men’s room or an alley. Once in a while I’d end up at somebody’s place, even brought a couple back to my room at the hooker motel, too. But Frank was the first one who’d wanted to wait to get in my pants.
That got me hard, a guy who wanted me for something more than just a quickie. “Sure,” I said. We exchanged phone numbers, and he offered to pick me up at eight.
He was just the kind of guy I’d been hoping to meet. Stable but sexy. He worked at a dental clinic in Little Havana, making good money, and he already owned his own town house in Kendall, a nice suburb south of the city. “It’s nothing fancy,” he said. “I’m helping out my folks, and putting my little sister through graduate school in social work. But I’m hoping to get into a house soon.”
We had a great dinner at a nice restaurant on Ocean Drive, and after we ate we walked along the sand. I wanted to hold his hand. Me, the biggest truck stop whore in Albany, New York. I was falling in love.
When he pulled up in front of the motel, I asked him if he’d like to come in. “I’d like that,” he said.
The next week, I met his dog, a chocolate Lab called Azucar, which he told me meant “sugar” in Spanish. I liked her immediately, and she was all over me with big slobbery kisses. “Azucar, no!” Frank said.
But I said, “I don’t mind. She’s a sweetheart.” When Frank and I went to bed, she sprawled on the floor at the foot of the bed. I thought I’d fallen into the perfect situation.
A week later, I’d moved out of the motel and in with Frank. I bought a used truck and started working with a crew in Kendall, only a couple of miles from home. Frank walked Azucar in the morning before he left for work, and then I took her out in the afternoon when I got home. She and I were perfect pals, her trailing around after me while I hung out, surfed the Internet with Frank’s computer, and fixed dinner for him and me.
Everything was going along smooth, until the super I was working for got transferred to another project, and the company brought a new guy in.
Señor Berto.
He talked to the crew for a few minutes on Monday morning, basically saying the same kind of shit supers always did, you work hard for me, I’ll take care of you. I knew what that meant. Berto expected me to start taking care of him again. But I was done with all that.
He kept giving me these looks whenever he saw me, and I’d try not to look back. But maybe there was something inside me that didn’t like the happy little suburban life I’d begun to build with Frank, and by Wednesday when he looked at me my dick started to spring to life.
I’d never told Frank about whoring around before I met him, and I’d certainly never told him how Señor Berto had given me my first break in construction in Miami, so I couldn’t tell him what I was feeling. He knew something was up, though. Thursday he said, “Is something wrong, Sean?”
“What do you mean?” We were sitting at the kitchen table, eating a roast chicken I’d picked up at Publix. Azucar was sprawled behind my chair, locking me in place. I started to feel like Frank was doing the same thing to me, locking me in someplace I didn’t really belong.
“You’ve been in a bad mood all week.”
I shrugged. “New super at work. He’s kind of an asshole.”
“Get another job, then. You’ve got skills. You can find work anywhere.”
“Not that easy,” I said. “No Español, remember? When I came to Miami I couldn’t get a job to save my life because I couldn’t speak the lingo. Only way I keep working is to follow the same crew around, guys that know what I can do.”
“I can teach you,” he said. “We’ll have a basic conversational Spanish class right here.” He smiled. “Starting with pinga. You know what that is, don’t you.”
“Yeah, dick,” I said. And I said it so he’d know I was calling him that. “I’m going out,” I said. I backed my chair up fast, startling Azucar, but I didn’t care.
I got in my truck and started driving. I got on the highway, heading for a truck stop I’d read about on the Internet. But halfway there, my interest faltered, and I turned around and went back to Frank. He was already lying in bed, reading a dental journal, when I came in.
He had the air-conditioning cranked up to frigid, something I hated, but I didn’t say anything. Instead I stood at the foot of the bed and stripped down, watching him watch me. Then I jumped him and we had ferocious sex.
The next day I was determined to resist Berto—but at the last minute my willpower evaporated. I followed him into another unfinished men’s room, just like the first place, and blew him. “Ay, coño, I miss you, Sean,” he said. “Nobody suck like you.”
After work, I drove out to that truck stop, and this time I didn’t turn around. I blew three truckers before I finally gave up and headed back to Frank.
I started to spiral out of control. I’d hit a straight bar after work, determined just to get shitfaced and then go home, but instead I’d end up at some sleazy bookstore or truck stop or men’s room, and by the time I got back to Frank’s I’d be drunk, stinking of sex and beer.
He finally confronted me one Friday night, after I’d blown Berto, drunk a six-pack in my truck, and let two different truckers fuck me. “Why are you doing this, Sean?” He stood in the living room, waiting for me to come through the front door.
“What?”
“This.” He waved his hand at me. “You’re drunk. And I’ll bet you’ve been fooling around, too. I think you ought to move out.”
“Come on, Papi,” I said, moving toward him. “I’m sorry. Let me make it up to you.”
“Get away from me.” He turned and stalked away, going into the bedroom. Even the dog followed him as he slammed the door.
I went into the guest bathroom, stripped down, and showered. I let the hot water stream over me until I felt my back burning. Then, naked, I walked to Frank’s bedroom door.
“Please, Papi,” I said. “I promise I’ll do better.”
There was no answer. Suddenly I saw everything I’d worked for going down the drain. I was never going to have this kind of life again, living in a nice place with a guy who loved me, a good job and a dog. I was damaged, broken. I started to cry, and I slumped down against the door.
It was freezing, too, the air-conditioning cranked up to high, but I couldn’t do anything—I couldn’t even get up to put some clothes on. I started shivering while I was crying, and after a while Frank opened the door and found me there.
“Sean,” he said. He stood over me for a minute. “Come on, get up.”
I just hunched over my knees, still crying. He squatted down next to me. “Come on.” He lifted me under the arms, and I let him. He led me into the bedroom and got me under the covers. Then he left.
I must have dozed off, but I woke up when he came into the bedroom later. He slipped in next to me, and I tried to cuddle up against him. I was still chilled, and I needed his warmth to help me get back to where I hoped I could be.
But he turned his back to me and scooted off to the edge of the bed.
A wave of despair swept through me. My life sucked, and there was nothing I could do to make things better. And Frank, the fucker, wouldn’t even help me warm up. Jesus, I’d moved to Miami to stay warm, not to live inside a goddamned air-conditioning unit.
I sat up in bed and looked over at him. He’d fallen asleep, his chest rising and falling, low snores ripping out of his mouth. Suddenly I couldn’t stand to hear him, to have him there next to me. I picked up my pillow and stuffed it over his face.
He started coughing and gasping for air, struggling against me, but I’d built up muscles manhandling those big sheets of drywall. He kicked and waved his arms, desperation fueling him, but I held on. I don’t know why I did it; it wasn’t Frank’s fault that I was so fucked up. It was just another stupid thing I did, after a lifetime of stupid things.
After a while, Frank stopped struggling, and then I pulled the pillow off his head and put it back under my own. I pulled his body close to mine. There was still some warmth there, though it was fading. I held him next to me, knowing I’d probably never feel warm enough again.