Poppa's Cub: Prologue
Kyle sat on the edge of his best friend's bed.
He was watching Roger pack his life up, into boxes. He stuffed books, drawings, childhood mementos, and sealed each one up with duct tape. He would stack the full boxes into a corner of the room and stopped to take a break.
"So anyway," Roger said, "I want you to move in with me."
"I can't," Kyle replied, "I don't have a job. I don't have a car, or a driver's license." Hell, I'm seventeen, I'm not even an adult yet.
Roger cocked his eyebrow and despite all the years that they had been friends together could not name Kyle's birthday. He growled at Kyle.
"Well why don't you?"
Kyle shrugged. He was a heavy-set, double-chinned youngster who hadn't come out of his shell. He hung out with Roger and a few other fantasy role-players, but didn't have many friends. He and Roger had made friends because of their mutual love for comic books, and comic book art.
"I don't know," Kyle muttered, embarrassed.
Roger grunted as he often did when he was displeased and started to pack more. He was wearing a pair of red shorts and a t-shirt. It was summer, and Kyle was wearing old dusty jeans and a t-shirt a well. It was the summer after the both of them had graduated from high school and they had their own lives in front of them.
Kyle helped Roger load up the boxes in his old battered Maverick and they shook hands.
"I'll give you a call when I get settled in my apartment, and we can hang out."
Kyle nodded and watched him drive away. He got on his bicycle and rode home. He spent the rest of the day in his room, on his bed, staring at the ceiling and trying not to think about Roger.
Three or four days later, he got the call from Roger, which he never returned. Roger called a few times, and Kyle did not return those, either.
Chapter One
In a year or so, he did some volunteer work, got his driver's license, a job, and, a studio flat over in downtown. He felt overwhelmed, surrounded, and dominated by the world. He paid his bills mechanically, got good reviews at work, and went to see his parents once a week or so. Like many youth, he was interested in girls and sex, but always felt foolish around them. He also felt uncomfortable with himself.
His apartment was on the third floor of a seedy hotel, and it overlooked the dirty, downtown of Vancouver, Washington.
In the mid-eighties, downtown was abandoned, the ghost of the old Lucky Lager beer plant loomed over. Across from his apartment were two hole-in-the-wall porno stores that he would look at from time to time as the months passed by.
On occasion, he would see a big muscular guy with a tall thin girl go in. They would go in, together, laughing, and then she would come a while later, and flag cars down. He supposed she was a hooker and pondered hiring her a time or two, but was poor, and scared of diseases.
On a late Saturday afternoon he was bored, and restless. Now, at twenty years old, he was not old enough to get into a bar, but still old enough to get into the porno theater. He'd been there a couple of times, but tonight, he felt almost driven.
The front part of the place was your standard magazine tits-and-ass display. With a few scarce dildos in the front display case. He walked a little deeper and found a small section of magazines that has pictures of nude men on it, in various poses and even a cover shot of one man sucking another. He was both fascinated and repulsed. It made his mouth run dry and his hands shake as he saw some of the covers and titles.
Lest he be seen, he took a few steps to the left, and positioned himself in front of a large display of cheaper magazines with pictures of large breasted women on them. He had to admit a certain attraction to breasts, he liked the way they moved on a big chested woman. He had even idly wondered a time or two what it would be like to have big breasts.
His attention was distracted by the clatter of a beaded curtain which he thought simply was an employee entrance of some sort. Two men came out, holding each other's hands. He swallowed again as they kissed in the magazine room and then left the theater, each man going into a different direction.
He moved back over toward the men's magazines, in an attempt to figure out what was behind the curtain, and the then saw a sign that he had missed.
'Arcade takes tokens only. 25 Cents each or five/$1.00 Tokens at Front Desk'
He heard lewd moaning sounds from this arcade and wondered what sort of games there were in there.
He walked up to the clerk, an obese little man with a thin mustache and fished out two weathered dollar bills, and asked for tokens.
The clerk eyed him and said, "Can I see some ID?"
Kyle stammered and produced his driver's license.
"Okay, kid. Don't make a mess, alright?" He said, handing Kyle eight tokens.
Kyle wondered what he meant, and was surprised by what he saw when he went through the curtain. No video games, certainly, but a back row of booths and two parallel rows of booths as well.
Each door was thin plywood and lockable from the inside. There was an eerie light caused by black lighting on the ceiling, and it made the white of his socks and tennis shoes glow.
In one corner was the beefy man who he had seen on the street a few times, and he was talking to another man. They were in some animated discussion of some sort.
To his left, from one of the booths a man came out of it. The door to that booth was about to slam shut but then opened of it's own accord as another man came out of the booth.
Curiously, Kyle looked about and found an empty booth. He slipped in, found a latch style lock on the inside, and slid it shut.
There was a small wooden bench that he sat on, and a video screen in front of him covered with Plexiglas. A single, illuminated button was there, as well as a coin slot. The whole booth smelled musky, and dingy. It was an odd, sort of familiar, and slightly exciting smell.
He put a token into the slot, and the video screen flickered to life. On it were two men kissing. He was fascinated, and scared, and then hit the button. It cycled through six different movies, four gay, one straight, and one lesbian. He was watching the lesbian one and the screen clicked off.
More tokens and the screen came back on. The lesbian one, while interesting was also boring as they were just kissing with their clothing on, so he flicked over to one of the ones with the gay men on it. They hungrily sucked each other's cocks, taking unreal sized pieces of meat down each other's throats. They made obscene noises and he felt his arousal, and was surprised when he was quite hard at watching this.
