Derelict
Steve Berman
Bravey Boy stood where strawberries once grew. He nudged the earth with the toe of his worn sneakers, disturbing browned weeds and cigarette butts. October in Philadelphia could be fickle. He had left his tenement building wearing a jacket, but as the sky darkened the air turned warmer, so he unzipped, letting the sweat cool on a bare chest the color of dark coffee.
Some years back, a garden had filled the lot where he stood. Nothing grand, a site large enough to bring the community together to plant a few greens and build a place for the kids to play safely. Then six months back, the mayor chanted safe streets to every news camera, newspaper, and council meeting. The cops descended on the street corners, forcing the dealers to move on. They had found the garden an earthly delight, where they could lounge during the day and sell at night. Parents had boycotted the garden, keeping inside at all hours, and the lot quickly fell into despair. When some other crime crisis drew the mayor’s attention, the cops turned their attention elsewhere and the dealers reclaimed the street corners.
So an entire city block was abandoned, except for dying brush and a sickly couple of trees along the rusty fence.
Then the men and the boys came, looking for sex—another addiction.
Bravey heard the normal sounds of the night: hip-hop music banging as a car floated by, someone somewhere yelling, a bloody fight between feral dogs. A breeze blew, carrying a deep, musky odor, a touch of old sweat on an unwashed body. Bravey closed his eyes and shook his head even as he breathed in deeply. Please, he thought. Not him, not tonight.
A muttered “Yo, my brotha” came from behind. The smell intensified. He turned around to see Demonte shuffling up to him.
He hadn’t seen Demonte in more than a week. The boy didn’t look so good. His left eye was swollen half-shut, blood crusted one nostril, and the blatino’s strut had more limp than swagger. Yet he swung his arm around Bravey as if nothing were wrong.
“What’s up?” Bravey kept his tone steady and cool, though in his head he urged Demonte to move on, get lost. If Lashon saw them standing there….
Demonte shrugged. “Same shit.” His breath smelled sickly-sweet, of flavored cheap wine. He reached over to tug lightly at Bravey’s jacket, revealing more smooth, toned chest. “Heh, what have we here?” Fingers scuttled over one nipple.
“Don’t.” Bravey slapped Demonte’s hand away.
“Oh, I’m not good enough a lay for you?” Demonte plucked at his grungy ’76ers jersey. “Didn’t complain on your first fuck, ’ese.”
Bravey Boy could not stop staring at Demonte, admiring every bit of muscle on display, aching to touch the skin under a cotton tank top and baggy pants.
When he got up the nerve one night to follow Demonte, a winding route through sinister back streets of the neighborhood, they ended up at the derelict garden. An old man seated on a bench muttered a greeting. When Bravey looked down, he saw the man’s hands busy below his belt, stroking his cock. That almost sent Bravey running. But Demonte had walked by without breaking stride, so he did, too.
It took a while to navigate the garden; in the dark it seemed the size of a park. He glimpsed men standing, or sitting, or strutting about. Their stares made him tremble.
He found Demonte leaning against the thin trunk of a sorry-looking willow. One of the brother’s hands lifted up his T-shirt, obscuring half the marijuana leaf drawing covering the front, and scratched at his flat belly, offering a peek of the waistband of his boxers.
Demonte nodded at Bravey, who forced himself to walk over to the object of his obsession.
“Yo. Didn’t know they let little boys in here.”
If the guy hadn’t been grinning, Bravey might have been hurt, instead of slightly stung. He stepped back.
“Don’t leave. Come closer.” Demonte reached out to the younger boy’s belt loops, and pulled Bravey closer. The boy’s hands reached for Demonte’s chest. The heat from solid muscle coursed through Bravey’s fingers, making him sweat, and yearn.
“So, what do you want to do?”
Bravey’s face burned. “I-I don’t know.” His mouth was dry. Words came out in a hoarse whisper.
Demonte laughed and grabbed one of Bravey’s wrists, leading him toward a clump of scrawny bush. Demonte’s boxers slid to show a hint of asscrack. Bravey swallowed hard, turned on by the speed of what was happening, more excited than he ever thought possible.
Behind the cover of vegetation, Demonte pushed him roughly to the ground. Bravey tensed, worried he had been played, that he was going to have the shit beat out of him. One dead faggot. In this neighborhood, who would ever care?
But instead of fists pounding Bravey’s face, Demonte’s hands were quickly, deftly, zipping down his jeans.
A warm wetness engulfed Bravey’s dick, the greatest sensation ever. He squirmed in the dirt, biting his lip not to cry out and let everyone in the garden know what was happening to him.
Cool night air replaced the warm wet. Bravey looked up to see Demonte tugging his pants down. A thick cock pushed out of a forest of black hair, leaking a strand of pre-cum that caught the moonlight and turned silver before breaking.
“Have to get it wet,” Demonte said, directing Bravey’s spit-slick dick toward his furred crack. He grunted a few times, eyes closed, as the tip went in, and then sat down, forcing the boy deep inside him.
Bravey’s first time being sucked was intense, but this first-time fucking was a thousand times hotter, tighter, more demanding. He instinctively pushed up as Demonte rode him hard and slapped his chest. Neither of them lasted long and when it was over, they lay in a heap, sweaty and sticky, and quiet, listening to each other gasp for breath.
Demonte didn’t date or even fuck the same guy regularly. That had been made clear in the awkward aftermath, as they parted.
Still, that didn’t stop Bravey Boy from finding his way back to the garden on nights to come, hoping he might change Demonte’s mind. But he was dissed, ignored, and ended up jerking himself off in the dark, listening to others get laid.
He told himself he was done with the garden, but two nights later he was lying on the bad mattress in his room and could not stop thinking about what happened there. He closed his eyes, but couldn’t fall asleep. So he threw on shorts and a tight T-shirt and snuck past his snoring grandma, cursing with every step but knowing he had to go back.
He didn’t find Demonte, but an older guy, in his thirties, with muscles that only came from construction work, approached him. He wanted to kiss the man, discover if the guy’s goatee would tickle his face, but the man made it clear he only wanted to suck Bravey off. He let him.
So it went. His craving was satisfied too quickly after every trip to the garden. He needed something more, but he couldn’t define it, describe it, imagine it—until one day he bumped into Lashon while on break from bagging groceries.
Lashon. The new stock boy.
Because of the rain, Bravey chose not to step outside. Instead, he headed for the chips aisle, meaning to get a snack. That’s when he saw the boy with the linebacker’s build, humming as he carefully arranged bags of salty pork rinds. Bravey knew he was wasting precious time; he only had fifteen minutes of freedom from ringing up sales of cold raw chicken and boxes of mac and cheese. But he couldn’t break away. He was mesmerized, drawn to the boy’s sweet, high voice, as he shifted from humming to singing—not some rap song, but an old R&B tune; he couldn’t remember the name, but his grandmother listened to it on the radio.
The stock boy caught Bravey’s stare, smiled, nodded hello, but kept working.
They hung out after work, sipping sodas, chatting, every day for a week. Suddenly, Bravey was excited about coming to work. Seeing Lashon, talking with him, brought Bravey alive. He wanted to sing, he wanted to dance, he moved to new rhythms in his head.
But at night, before he could find sleep, he worried. He replayed every moment spent with Lashon over and over in his head, trying to figure out if this look or that gesture or some word said by the fine boy meant that Lashon liked him. More than liked. Did he ache, too? Not knowing drove Bravey crazy.
One day soon after, distracted by desire, he fought with his manager, and was told to go home early. Lashon saw him leaving in a huff and ran out, risking his own job, to ask what happened. Bravey didn’t even remember exactly what he said, but then Lashon was hugging him, out in the parking lot in front of everyone. Not just a light squeeze and a fast slap on the back: He held Bravey tightly for seconds that seemed to become hours, and softly sang in his ear, If I have to sleep on your doorstep, all night and day…just to keep you from walkin’ away. Let your friends laugh, even this I can stand… ’cause I wanna keep you any way I can.
On the walk home, Bravey no longer saw the dilapidated buildings or the trash on the street or the dealers and the drunks lounging lazily to pass the day. Occasionally he shut his eyes, the better to recall the feel of Lashon holding him, the smell of Lashon close to him, and the soft whisper of Lashon in his ear.
Nervous as all hell—maybe he had misread the boy—he called Lashon that night. Asked to meet him, told him how to get to the old garden.
But Demonte didn’t seem ready to leave. He stepped close to Bravey Boy, and their bodies brushed. Bravey felt the heat rising off the brotha’s body, carrying with it the stink of a dump in July.
Demonte smirked.
“I know you remember it.” He reached down and cupped Bravey’s crotch, expertly rubbing the tip of the shaft with his thumb. Bravey was aroused. “See, this remembers me, too.”
Demonte’s touch made Bravey gasp. Unsteady, he leaned in to Demonte, his head touching the other boy’s forehead, damp and feverish. Bravey lifted an arm and laid it on a bare shoulder.
“Please,” he muttered.
“Please what?” Demonte said, aping Bravey’s voice. He slid his other hand under Bravey’s jacket.
He didn’t know what to say. He no longer wanted whatever quick fix Demonte once offered. Yet the cravings could not be denied. But when he heard whistling and saw a figure walking toward them through the darkness, the desire threatening to overtake him turned to sick fear and shame. He pushed with both arms, separating their bodies.
It wasn’t Lashon—just a man dressed in bad overalls, who looked them over with goggle eyes. “Any you boys want to party?” He held up a paper bag with the tip of a dark amber bottle showing.
Demonte turned back to Bravey. His voice was low, dangerous. “Come on, one more time. You can ride me good. Hard.” He slid his baggy pants down, revealing a trail of wiry hair. “Let you bust a nut in me.”
The man piped in with a desperate pant. “Let me watch that shit, at least.”
“Get the fuck outta here,” Bravey said. “Both of you.”
Demonte’s face fell, a scared boy, no longer a cocky kid. The man next to them wavered, unsteady, obviously drunk.
“There’s me.” He gulped at whatever was in the bag.
“Yeah, yeah.” Demonte grabbed the man’s arm. “Too bad, papi.”
Bravey watched them walk away. In the moonlight, Demonte’s feet seemed never to touch the ground as he led the man deep into the garden. Bravey exhaled, releasing tension, then paced back and forth, worried—sure—that Lashon wouldn’t show.
And then his stock boy was by his side.
Bravey hugged Lashon tightly, then eased into him, relaxing in the other boy’s arms.
“This is some strange place,” Lashon said, shaking his head. “Two guys came up to me lookin’ to hook up. Freaks.”
Bravey saw the look of disgust on Lashon’s face and knew he had been wrong to ask Lashon to come to the garden. What had he been thinking? Wanting? A fast grope or quick blow job or sloppy fuck? No, not with this boy. A smile from him would be enough.
Lashon must think me a ho, Bravey thought. “Yeah, you shouldn’t be here,” he said.
But his friend only chuckled. “Like you should? Shit, look at this.” Lashon motioned at Bravey’s clothes. “You acting all sexy for me?” He laughed. “Trying to make me think you like me or somethin’?”
“No,” Bravey lied, looking away. He could no longer meet the other boy’s eyes. He backed up a few feet, and then turned to walk away, cursing himself for thinking something good could ever happen here.
“Wait up. Why you leavin’?” Lashon started after Bravey.
Bravey shrugged, not sure what to say. The two boys passed an overturned barbeque grill, the metal long since turned to a rusted hulk. Not far away, a man lay on the ground.
“Damn,” Lashon said, and nudged the guy with his foot. The man didn’t respond.
Bravey saw a paper bag wrapped around a bottle, leaning against the barbeque—it was the man who left with Demonte. The guy’s pants were undone but not pulled down. He stank like sour milk and rotten meat. Demonte was nowhere to be seen.
“He’s just drunk,” Bravey said out loud, more to himself, because he wasn’t so sure.
“This is some park,” Lashon muttered.
“I’m sorry I asked you to come here.”
“I’m not.” Lashon’s fingers cupped Bravey’s chin.
“No?” Bravey didn’t dare smile, afraid he’d heard wrong.
“Unless that’s all you want.” He pointed at the man on the ground. “What everyone else ’round here wants. I’m not trash and won’t be treated like it.”
Bravey shook his head. “It’s cool. I mean, I want….”
Lashon chuckled. “Wanna go get somethin’ to eat?”
Bravey nodded, buttoning up his jacket, suddenly embarrassed at how much skin showed.
“Cool.” They headed back to the edge of the garden, walking so close they rubbed shoulders or bumped lightly against one another. Lashon pulled out car keys and flicked them playfully into the air. Bravey meant to catch them but only succeeded in knocking them to the ground.
“S’all right.” Lashon bent to pick them up. “Damn,” he said then, lifting something small and red from the ground near his foot.
Bravey looked at the strawberry. Small, and a bit misshapen. Lashon smiled and lifted it to Bravey’s lips. The tiny berry was Elsewhere, sweet and strong, lifting him away.
“How does it taste?”
Bravey Boy leaned in and showed Lashon.