Shooting Matt

Randy and Kent say good-bye after a great weekend. This chapter is mostly story. I hope you enjoy.

Helpful, even negative, comments are not only welcomed but craved.

Thanks as always to LarryInSeattle for trying to keep me in hand.

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I'm rapidly cycling between happy and bummed. I'm happy because Kent is pressed against my back, morning wood nestled in the crack of my ass. He has one arm over my waist and his hand is wrapped around my own erection, in more of a isn't-this-nice fashion than an I-wanna-fuck-your-brains-out fashion. I'm happy because I love the feel of him lying next to me, love his hand on my cock, love the feel of his dick against my ass. It may be old school but I just love having him with me.

I'm not saying I love him. It's too soon, there's too much still to learn about each other. I think, maybe, I'm starting to fall in love with him but I don't want to think about that now. That's not why I'm bummed. I'm bummed because he needs to head back to Pittsburgh tonight. His four-day, ten-hour, week starts tomorrow. He hasn't said if he'll be back. I haven't asked him. Even that's not what's bumming me the fuck out; it's the thought of being alone again.

The house is almost done. Having Kent's help has been amazing. All that's left is a second coat of paint in the master bedroom. Pretentious damn word for a room that's, at best, ten sq-ft larger than the other bedrooms, and is only attached to a half-bath. All that's left is a second coat of paint in my bedroom. That's better. Christ.

How alone I'm going to feel is bad enough but the real problem is that 'aloneness' makes me question everything else. Am I really starting to fall for this guy or am I just lonely? Am I in love with the idea of being in love again? If I am, does that mean I can't really be in love?

It doesn't just bum me out. It pisses me off. I had the exact same fucking thoughts when I was dating Mary Beth. I would have had them about Leon if I had been with him longer; maybe I did and was too fucked up to know it. I don't think I was open to the idea of really being able to love another man back then. I liked having sex with them but could only love a woman. Fucking ridiculous, even for a kid, that's just fucking ridiculous.

Maybe I'm just crazy? Old men with magic powers? Visions? What the fuck? Maybe my drug days, such as they were, fried my brains. I didn't drop a lot of acid but I dropped some. What if I was in a loony bin somewhere, with drool hanging off my lip as they get ready to shoot a few hundred more volts through my brain pan. Bzzztttt. Bzzzzttt. I don't think they do lobotomies anymore but what the fuck? If I'm really off the deep end, bat shit, loony mother fucking toons, maybe I already had the lobotomy. I've heard some delusion are amazingly fucking detailed but could I have really constructed all this in my head? Libraries? A kid? I junkie wife? Movie after movie, song after song, book after book? If I did, well fuck, I'm a goddamn genius. Unbuckle the straps boys, daddy needs to get to Stockholm. Fuck that, Stockholm and Oslo, all the goddamn Nobel prizes are mine this year, bitches.

"Randy, you okay?"

I'd not noticed Kent waking; I was so lost inside my own head. What do I tell him? Do I tell him all the crazy thoughts running through my head? What do I tell him? God, I hate this shit. Wasn't it easier being alone in my little house, with every day the same as the one before and the one before that, and before that? Wasn't that easier than trying to feel my way through all this shit, constantly afraid I'll fuck it up, say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing? Fuck me.

"I don't want you to go," I offer. That's true.

"Mmm, I know. Got to, though. Gotta work." He nuzzles the back of my neck.

"I know and I need to stay here and water the grass and get the house on the market and turn in my notice. I get it."

I start to get out of bed. I feel like I need to get away, get my fucking head together, before I do something stupid. So, what do I do? Something stupid. Instead of getting out of bed, I roll to face Kent. He's rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He yawns, stretches, his dick pressing against my leg.

"It's not just that, that's part of it. It's..."

And boom, I'm off and running. Every crazy fucking thing I've been lying here thinking spills outta my mouth, including, "Could a delusional man, make up a delusion about a movie,

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

, about a dude who ends up getting a lobotomy, a delusion that includes the cast, the fact it's based on a book, that the book was written by Ken Kesey, who also wrote a book called,

Sometimes a Great Notion

, that was really good but not as good as the other, and Kesey was not only famous for the books but for being in a book,

The Electric Kool

-

Aid Acid Test

, one of the first examples of "New" journalism by Tom Wolfe, who also wrote,

The Right Stuff

, that was a kick ass movie and and and and. That was too much shit for one man's delusion, isn't it?"

Oh and also, "Is the fact I'm fucking lonely mean I'm only fantasizing that I might be falling in love with you?"

Yup, I said all that shit, and more. And, to top it off, I blurted out that I thought I might be falling in love with him.

How, he managed to not laugh in my face is beyond me. Why, he didn't run for his life, is a mystery. You already know the answer to the remaining who, when, where and what questions of "Old" journalism.

He let me babble until the babble done died.

"Are you usually this, uh, wound up?" He asks after a long silence. He's brushing the hair back from my forehead as he speaks, which is an unbelievably comforting gesture.

"Yeah, some of the time, anyway." I try to take an honest stock of myself. "Not most of the time but, yeah, at times."

"Well, that could certainly cause things to be interesting, 'at times'." He smiles as he adds the last and I smile back.

Just like that, I feel better.

"I've gotten closer to you, faster than I could ever have imagined," he adds, his smile fading a little. "I don't know where that will lead me, lead us, maybe to 'love'. I don't know but I'd like to find out? Does that scare you?"

"Yes," I whisper, "but not as much as not finding out does."

"Can I come back next weekend, after my shifts are over?"

"I'd like that. I'd like that a lot. Was I an idiot for not asking you to in the first place?"

"Probably, yeah," he sighs. "I'm pretty adorable, you know. And I'm very handy with a paint roller and trim brush."

"Yes, to all of that. Kent, do you think I'm crazy? I'm serious."

"I know you're serious, you're always serious, and no I don't think you're crazy. I have a difficult time working out in my head how it is you seem so together and capable but inside there's all this turmoil and doubt." He rolls away and props his head on his hand. "We all do, have doubts and worries I mean, but you seem a little more fixated on it. I wonder sometimes if that's unhealthy for you." He rolls all the way onto his back and stares at the ceiling. "I was like that, always worrying over things in my head, trying to see if I'd missed something, worried everything had to be perfect. I worried Brad would leave me for someone else. I worried he didn't think I was smart enough. I worried he had too much money and I was too poor. I worried about how I could tell him I hated the condo. I worried he'd crash his bike, get hit by a drunk driver, get shot by some homophobe whack job." He turns to look at me. "What I never worried about, surprisingly, is that he'd get cancer and die on me. I'd wasted all that time worrying about the wrong things. I still worry. I imagine that's human nature but I don't worry as much. I'll never know what it is, about this gigantic, indifferent universe, that I should worry about."

I plop onto my back beside him. "Fuck," is all I can muster.

"I haven't cooked for you," Kent says, sitting up on the side of the bed. "You like pancakes?"

"Yeah, I'm not sure I have baking powder though."

"I'll check. Give me a few minutes. Lie back and picture a beautiful alpine lake or something, anything but plane crashes, asteroids, or a super volcano under Yellowstone. Okay?"

"I'll try." I hold out a hand. "Want me to suck your dick first?"

"Yes, but no. I'm hungry."

"Yeah? So, am I. That's the point," I leer at him.

He shakes his head and leaves. I note, with a measure of optimism, that he doesn't pull on his sweats before he leaves. I collapse back onto the bed and put my hands over my face. What the fuck was that? I smack myself in the head and roll to the side of the bed. I refuse to start down this track. Kent made it clear he didn't think I was a total dumb ass nut job. I am

not

going to second guess this. I am

not

going to replay every fucking gesture and syllable.

I make my way to the kitchen. Kent is reaching for the apron that hangs on the inside of the panty door. I approve. Spattered oil on your belly, or worse on your junk, is a bad bad thing. Bad.

He looks up when I walk in and frowns. One advantage of a small house is he doesn't have time to think of a response before I'm spinning him around and pushing his ass up against the counter top. His dick is only half-hard.

I squat and take his cock in my mouth. There's the acrid taste of pee on the tip of my tongue. That's no surprise. He'd stop to piss on the way to the kitchen. It's only a taste. After the first bob of my head all I taste is his dick, which is perfectly alright with me. It's easy to take all his dick when it's only half-hard. It doesn't take long to get him all hard.

I take my time. This isn't a quick under the stall blow job. This is an at-home all-the-time-in-the-world blow job between lovers. Is it possible to suck a dick languidly? Beats me. I wouldn't say it lacked vitality but it was slow. Kent's hands roam over my head, face, neck, shoulders as I worship his manhood with my mouth.

Sometimes I don't do anything but hold still and enjoy the feel of his dick in my mouth, the way it flattens my cheeks, how his balls feel against my chin, the soft underside, the bulge of the crown that's stretching my throat. Glorious.

I grab his ass and pull him in tighter and deeper, ignoring the complaints coming from my legs. My mouth is happy. My cock is happy. My brain is happy. My legs are not happy. It pains me to admit I'm getting too old for all this squatting. I decide I need to add more leg work to my gym routine.

Kent's hands move back to my head. His grip is tighter. His hips begin to move. Up until now, he's been content to lean against the counter and let me do the work. No longer. I relax and turn my mouth and throat into a warm, wet, soft tunnel for his dick. My fingers squeeze his ass. I turn my eyes up. His lower lip is between his teeth. His eyes are closed. I watch his face twist, feel his cock swell and his fingers squeeze as he cums. I don't taste much, his cock is so far down my throat. That's a pity. I like the taste of cum.

I feel his body shudder under my hands and he begins to pant slightly.

I sit back on my heels.

"I told you I was gonna miss you," I whisper, then lean forward and kiss the base of his dick.

"Yeah, you did. You're not the only one," he pants. "You're out of baking powder by the way."

"Yeah? Thought so." I start to chuckle. "Besides, we're out of eggs anyway."

***

"You're going to make me fat," Kent complains as he pushes his plate back. Washing it'll be just a formality; he's wiped it clean.

We're at the local waffle place. Kent skipped the pancakes and polished off a huge order of Belgian waffles with strawberries, whipped cream, and syrup. And eggs, two over easy. And hash browns. I'm impressed.

"If we didn't have the damn room to paint I'd take you to the gym. Have you ever boxed?"

"No, a couple years of Tae Kwon Do, but no boxing."

"Why'd you stop?"

"Busy."

"Were you any good? Was that why you dropped out? Because you weren't very good?"

"Huh? No. I was pretty good. I think. Blue belt, 4

th

Gup."

"Why not get back into it?"

He shrugs. "Uh, I seem to find myself with a lot on my plate recently."

"Your plate looks empty to me."

"Hilarious," he snorts, clearly not amused at my bon mot. "I think those may have been the best waffles I've ever eaten."

"Thanks, sugar," Wilma, our waitress, tells him with a smile. Calling her a 'server' would piss her off. Her smile fades and she gives him a hard look. "But I'm still chargin' ya for 'em." The smile returns brighter than ever.

"I got it, Wilma," I tell her and reach for the check.

"Fuck painting," I tell Kent as I climb into the Ranger. "Let's go to the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame."

"You sure?"

"Yep, fuck yeah. I've never been. Let's do it."

Kent looks at me askance. "You've never been? I heard that was the best thing, maybe only thing, about Cleveland worth doing."

He's hit a sore spot but doesn't know it. I love my home town. It's gotten its teeth kicked in for a couple of decades but like a punchy, beat-to-shit boxer with guts, it stays on its feet. I let it go. Besides, showing him is better than berating him.

"Just never made it." The Ranger turns over without too much of a fuss. "I'm pretty much stuck around the house until the sod takes root. I'll have plenty of time for painting."

***

We had a perfect afternoon.

We both agreed that if neither of us could really remember an artist, they probably didn't belong in the Hall of Fame. Worse, some we clearly remember shouldn't have been in the Hall of Fame. It's my opinion, humble as it may be in the grand scheme of things, that they need to induct fewer new members. Slow that shit up. When the doors opened twenty-five plus years ago there was the whole history of rock to choose from but they've dealt with the backlog. Time to slow up, be more selective. Not to be a dick, but just because every garage band in the late seventies did a cover of "Smoke on the Water" strikes me as insufficient evidence of greatness.

Oh, and please, please, please, all you Deep Purple fans spare me the condemnation. It's not like I don't crank up a few of their tunes but Hall of Fame? Really?

We took our time. At some point, we ended up holding hands. I don't know if he took mine or I took his or the two just happened to find each other.

We discovered we had, let us say, our own tastes. I prefer straight forward rock-n-roll, something with a snarl or something to say. Kent leans more toward the, not necessarily softer, but more nuance, smoother, production numbers. And more techno. He was, and I can overlook this, a big fan of eighties British emo pop. He was pissed to discover The Cure were not inductees.

He'd never heard of a Polish Boy. Seriously? Is Pittsburgh not part of the US? He assured me Pittsburgh was part of the US and bet me no one else outside of Cleveland had heard of one either. I suppose it's like how, for the most part, only Canadians know what poutine is.

So, I took him to my favorite, out of the way, locals only, Polish restaurant and introduced him to the glory that is a Polish Boy. (No, it's not a type of butt plug.) He looked at the plate of kielbasa, fries, coleslaw, and barbeque sauce with a decided lack of enthusiasm. He liked everything but the coleslaw, loved the kielbasa. He simply could not fathom why it had to be all jumbled together.

Dessert? Paczki. He'd never had a paczek (that's the singular for paczki to you poor bastards who've never had one) either. That he had zero complaints about. Thank God, the waitress had left before he took a bite and called it a "jelly donut". That shit would get you tossed out on your ass. Paczki, he opined, were worth coming back to Cleveland for.

I gave him a long hard look over that comment. He looked confused, then blushed, and was fumbling over his words so badly I let him off the hook and told him I knew what he meant and wasn't offended.

We'd had beer with the Polish Boy, coffee with the paczki. We were too full to move, or just too reluctant to end the afternoon. I asked him to make me a playlist of the twenty songs he thought I'd over looked in the categories of music he liked. I'd do the same for him.

I made up my mind as I was driving back to my place that when he came up next weekend it would be all about us. Fuck the house and sod the fucking sod (sorry, had to go there, too easy). I'll put together one of those "36 Hours in fill-in-the-city" tours and show him what I consider to be the best things about Cleveland. It worries me I've lived in such a box for the past decade and a half that what I consider the best of Cleveland may be gone.

When we got home, without discussing it, we brushed our teeth, undressed and stretched out on the bed. This was after, of course, moving the fucking sprinklers.

We both knew he had to leave soon but we acted as if we had all the time in the world. To me it felt as if we spent an afternoon kissing, a day nuzzling each other's necks, nipple and pits, a week getting each other hard with our mouths, and a month with my cock inside him. We kept our lust on a short leash, kept control. Each touch, each movement was slow and deliberate. Yet, spontaneous. It wasn't like we had a check list; Kiss x 10, tug a nipple x 10, move to ... Nothing like that, we followed were our lips, noses, fingers, and cocks lead us; we just didn't plunge after them willy-nilly.

When I came, I was behind him, side by side, a position that allowed me to stroke his cock while I fucked him. Like our love making, my orgasm was slow, deliberate and unbearably intense. I willed it to move faster. My body was exploding in slow motion. It was agony and bliss and I needed it to be over. My body wrapped itself around Kent and squeezed. I was trying to use his body to keep mine from flying apart. I bit the back of his shoulder. Hard. I didn't mean to, bite it hard I mean. Bite it? Yes, that I meant to do. That hard? No, but bite it that hard I did, as my body shuddered and shook from an orgasm that was trapped deep inside my chest, my belly, behind my balls. My body expanded ten-fold, stilled and imploded. Everything inside me collapsed into a knot behind my balls and exploded out the head of my cock.

I screamed. I don't mean I moaned or groaned or hollered "oh fuck". I mean I screamed, or would have if I had not been biting the back of Kent's shoulder.

He clutched at the arm I had wrapped around him. Holding on to me as if he too feared I'd blow away. He pressed himself against me and held me, as best he could with his back pressed against my belly, until my body and my brain put themselves back into some sort of working order.

I let my head fall back on my pillow. When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw, was the livid bite mark on the back of his shoulder. It was a perfect, fiery-red dental impression. The center was already turning dark purple.

"Oh, baby," I cried, leaning closer to kiss his shoulder. "I'm so sorry. So, fucking sorry."

"Is it bleeding?"

"No, but it's going to be a helluva bruise," I whispered

"Well, if it's not bleeding, I'm still ahead in the 'injuries to lovers race', so relax." He rolled onto his back. "Besides, it'll give me something tangible to remember you by, when I'm jerking off the rest of the week."

"You might get some looks in the locker room."

"Nope, I wear scrubs to work. I only need to change if a patient vomits or bleeds on me."

"Maybe you should start," I suggested. "Might be a turn on, letting everyone know you're having wild sex." I kissed him again. "Nope, never mind, I don't want anyone getting any ideas."

I leaned over his body. It was much easier to kiss him in that position. My hand found his dick. It was a little awkward. I had to use my left hand and I'm not a switch hitter, at least not when it comes to jerking off. Jerking off, I'm a dedicated right-hander.