Mike and Danny: Stuff Happens
Note that these stories, including this one, are not an endorsement of unsafe sex. They take place many years before the appearance of AIDS and before it was standard practice to use condoms to reduce the risk of infection from sexually transmitted diseases. Remember always: that was then, this is now. Sex is precious, and so are life and health.
Chapter 2
Kirk
It was Sunday morning. Kirk had been up at dawn, after sleeping the night on the sofa. This new guy, Virgil, had got his old bed in the back bedroom. What the fuck, he was welcome to it. Kirk hadn't come to stay long anyway.
He'd had a square meal, a long hot shower, and he'd laid out some clean clothes before slipping naked into the sleeping bag Danny had unrolled for him. It had been in his mind when he arrived to be gone by sunrise, so there'd still be some day left when he got to Don's ranch.
Waking the next morning, everyone still asleep, Kirk had got dressed and stepped outside under a crystal clear sky, a scattering of stars still visible above. The weather had changed, and the ground was thick with new frost. The moon, nearly round like a big old over-ripe melon, hung in the western sky almost touching the horizon.
He stood by his truck as the barn and the other farm buildings materialized in the new light. But instead of getting in, he shoved his hands in his front pockets and walked around the place, stopping to take a piss in the dead weeds behind the garage, his urine steaming in the crisp air. Swinging his cock in little circles, like he'd done since he was a boy, his piss fell in a pattern of swirls and splashes in the crust of snow on the ground.
Out on the highway, the all-night diner at the B&E truck stop would be open for a cup of hot coffee, and he could fill his thermos for the road, but as he pulled his dick into his fly again, he kept walking instead of turning back to the pickup.
There wasn't much about the past he actually missed, but the summer he spent here fresh from Utah, hitchhiking all the way—that had been something to remember. The crazy-assed trip in Danny's car, fun crazy and scared-to-death crazy. Crazy good times, skinny dipping at night in the sand pit down by the river, riding double on a motorcycle and passing every car and truck on the highway, and crazy first-time sex. And of course crazy Frank, that crazy fucker.
He walked a ways down the lane that led to the edge of Mike's cornfields lying dark and empty now in the dawn light. He stood for a long time, ignoring the cold that crept along the back of his neck and the seams of his jeans, down to the soles of his boots.
And there'd been Rich—who was christknows where now. Rich, who was good for some crazy times himself, but who finally pissed Kirk off once too often. Yeah, he missed the guy sometimes. But Rich never understood him. Couldn't get it into his head that Kirk was a loner and wouldn't change. Wouldn't ever buddy up for long because—and this was the plain fact of the matter—he was all himself and nobody else.
The sun was just below the horizon now. He could hear crows calling from the trees over by the river. Sound traveled so far out here on a cold, still morning.
He walked to the barn and looked around inside for a while, still not ready to leave, checking an empty stall where Mike used to keep a horse named Ranger and hearing the wing-snap of pigeons flying around in the hayloft. Light filtered in through a flyspecked window, and he finally sat down on a bale of hay. As his legs fell open, he could feel the cold air leaking through the denim to his balls.
It almost seemed to him that before he left this time there was something he wanted to take with him. Some memory, some feeling. But he'd been barely more than a boy when he lived here. Barely knew his ass from a hole in the ground. He was a man now who'd seen plenty of the world and done plenty. Being here was just wasting time in the past. And the past was dead and gone.
He didn't know how long he'd been in the barn, but when he stepped back outside, he saw that the lights were now on in the house. Someone was up, probably Mike.
He'd be an asshole if he just drove off without saying goodbye. So he went back, walking into the kitchen, where the warmth and the smell of coffee made him forget himself for a moment. Mike was throwing a slab of bacon in a big cast-iron fry pan on the stove.
"Tell me honestly," Mike said, cracking eggs into a big bowl of pancake mix. "Can Don cook good enough to keep a man from starving?"
Kirk had to laugh. "No, he can't."
"Then you better fill up before you go. It might be your last real meal."
Dammit, there was Mike again. Trying to be a nice guy. You couldn't love him, but you couldn't hate him either. Kirk took off his jacket and hung it on the rack by the door. And he let Mike pour him a cup of his strong coffee.
Virgil had appeared about then from the back bedroom, rubbing sleep from his eyes. And they'd sat across from each other at the table, eating pancakes almost as fast as Mike made them.
To his credit, Virgil was not a talker, just concentrated on his food. They hadn't exchanged more than a few words the night before, passing each other on the way into the john as everyone was getting ready for bed.
"You got a nice ass," Kirk had said to him. "Anybody every tell you that?"
Virgil had looked a little surprised and shook his head. "Can't say that they have."
Glancing over at him, from time to time, Kirk realized he was looking at someone who could have been himself, the kid who'd fetched up at Mike's doorstep a half dozen years ago or more. Still wet behind the ears. Confused, lost, scared shitless, and acting like he wasn't. Unattached, like an empty beer can in the back of a moving pickup, skidding and rattling and clattering around with the bumps in the road and the wind.
The two of them stood now, leaning on a corral fence, looking out over the fields beyond Mike's barn. They'd gone out for a walk around after breakfast, talking a little and slowly getting friendly.
"What are you doing hanging around these two guys," Kirk said now, nodding back toward the house.
Virgil shrugged.
"You're pretty hard up, pal, if you don't have any place better to go."
Virgil shrugged again.
"My uncle cut your hair?" Kirk asked.
Virgil nodded.
"Jeez," Kirk said. "What else did you let him do?" He pulled a tin of Copenhagen from his shirt pocket and offered some to Virgil, who looked at it blankly.
"Like this," Kirk said and stuffed a pinch of the tobacco inside his bottom lip. "Go ahead."
Virgil took some.
"You might wanna go a little easy if it's your first time," Kirk said, noticing the size of the pinch he'd taken. "Course, that's not bad advice for just about anything," he added with a sly grin.
Virgil glanced up at him, not getting the joke. There were shreds of the tobacco on his teeth and his lip.
"Give 'er a little shove down with your tongue," he said and showed Virgil what he meant.
Virgil watched him and then tried it himself a couple times.
"There, you got it now," Kirk said. "What do you think?"
"Tastes like shit," Virgil said, making a face.
"Supposed to," Kirk said. "Puts hair on your balls."
"Already got that," Virgil said and their eyes met for a moment.
"So what are you doing here?" Kirk asked again.
Virgil's eyes slid away and he was gazing once more into the distance. "Long story," he finally said. His lip now swollen with snuff, he seemed more thoughtful, almost dazed, like he'd been slugged in a fistfight.
Kirk leaned his elbows now on the top plank of the fence, tugged his hat tighter on his head, and said, "I could tell a few of them myself."
The morning sun warmed their faces, but in the shadows along the ground there was still frost on the frozen mud. Virgil was huddled inside his big army coat, with his ratty knit cap pulled down to his ears.
"What are you doing here?" he finally said to Kirk.
Kirk leaned over the fence and let a long drool of tobacco spit slide from his lip. "Aw, it's kinda like home," he said. "You show up, they gotta take you in."
Then he explained that he was on his way to Hyannis in the Sandhills, where he worked for a rancher with a cow-calf operation, raising some new breed of beef, Charolais. Charleys, Kirk called them.
As he talked, he turned with his back to the fence, leaning on it and putting one boot heel behind him on the bottom plank, a move that would bunch up his privates under his fly. He wanted to see if Virgil would notice.
"I'm supposed to be there now," he said. The new calves were starting to come, and keeping an eye on them was a twenty-four-hour job. Sometimes a cow heeded help, or she might walk away from her calf and let it freeze to death, and there was always coyotes to worry about. Without help, one man wouldn't be sleeping more than two-three hours a night.
Ranching was hard work, right through the summer and the fall roundup. The pay wasn't much, and you sure as hell put in some long hard days, but it was better'n any other kind of work a man could do.
What he didn't talk about was how bored and lonely he'd get sometimes. Don wasn't much as company. All he seemed to understand was work and more work. He could be a fucking slave driver.
It was a relief to get out of there before the snow started to fly and get his ass someplace where he could socialize, as he liked to call it, hanging out at bars and finding another guy now and then for some mutual relief. This usually meant Texas, land of steers and queers. And the winters there weren't so goddam long.
But in spite of himself, he'd tire of that, too, and he'd get the itch to be back in the Sandhills—back in the saddle again. He'd catch himself looking for the old Gene Autry song on a jukebox, and know he wouldn't hold out where he was much longer.
Even though the song was mostly all lies. Out where a friend is a friend, it went. Maybe in the old days, but nowadays you'd look long and hard to find a man you could trust with much of anything.
Mostly it was hard asses like Don or old farts past their prime who could be outsmarted by a reasonably intelligent horse. And unless you went in for fucking animals, which he didn't, a queer cowboy's dick got mighty familiar with the inside of his hand. If he was right handed, he might try his left. That was about it for variety.
He turned and spit over the fence again. This time he advised Virgil to do the same. "You don't wanna swallow that shit. It'll rot your gut," he said. And Virgil stuck his chin over the top plank to release a mouthful of brown saliva.
"I thought you ballplayers all chewed tobacco," Kirk said.
"Not this one."
Virgil leaned with his chest against the fence now, still facing into the morning sun, his hands buried in his pockets. His sneakers crunched in the frozen remains of a winter snowdrift that lay along the fence at their feet.
Kirk studied him, his clean-shaven face pale and his ears turning red in the cold. He was trying to figure out the expression that kept gathering around Virgil's eyes. It wasn't just their color—a kind of spooked gray-blue. He'd seen the look before, on men who'd been mostly strangers, men in bars, hitchhikers, drifters, in the service and out, some queer, some not.
It was the look of a kind of homelessness. Some revealed just a glimpse of it after enough beers. Some, like Scooter at the rest stop, couldn't look any other way if their life depended on it. They gave off a cold chill you wanted to get away from.
Go suffer somewhere else, you wanted to say. Unless, of course, there was a blowjob to be gotten first. And there was a lot he could put up with for a free one of those.
"What are you lookin' at?" Virgil finally said.
"Just looking."
This was probably the difference between him and Virgil. Kirk mostly liked being alone, and he liked being on the move. He was that kind of man. He didn't need a home, and he would never feel homeless.
Danny and Mike could have each other, like an old married couple, glued to this crappy dirt farm. But staying put wasn't for him, and he sure didn't need any man's constant company.
It was time, he decided, to get his ass in his truck and get going.
"Let me show you something in the barn," he said to Virgil, and he took a few steps away from the fence before Virgil turned to follow him.
Inside the barn, there was the familiar smell of dust, dry hay, and old manure.
He stopped at the empty horse stall. Pulling open the gate, he stepped into the scattered straw on the floor and beckoned Virgil to come inside. There behind a mound of hay in one corner, was a black and white cat nursing some kittens.
The two men watched for a while, the mother cat purring, looking back a them with eyes that blinked slowly half-closed and then open again.
"Hey, mama kitty," Kirk said softly, squatting on his boot heels. "Been shackin' up with the old tom cat again, I see."
Virgil bent down beside him. "They're just little bitty things," he said.
Kirk had discovered the cat and kittens when he'd been out here before, and even pulling back the sliding door to step inside, he had no intentions beyond showing Virgil what he'd found. But sliding the door shut behind them, he'd felt his dick coming to life in his jeans. He knew what was about to happen.
Virgil was right beside him now, hands on his knees, studying the cats. Kirk slowly turned to him, reaching for the collar of his coat, and the two of them stood together.
"Let's get this over with," Kirk said, pulling him closer.
Virgil showed no surprise, like he'd been waiting for something—anything—to happen. He looked into Kirk's eyes, his jaw dropping in a little intake of breath, and then their mouths came together, the spit and Copenhagen mingling on their tongues as Kirk kissed him hard and then harder.
Kirk paused to blow out a wad of tobacco into the straw and then kissed Virgil again. He felt his dick surge as his hands pressed into the canvas shell of the army coat and then fumbled for the zipper.
He may not have surprised Virgil much, but he'd surprised himself. He hadn't kissed anyone in a long time, years. Hadn't wanted to; hadn't needed to. But the warm sensation now of another man's lips on his own was a pleasing shock. Like a memory of something he'd forgotten.
For his part, Virgil didn't seem to know how to kiss, but as Kirk forced his mouth open farther, he'd started getting the hang of it.
Then, suddenly, Virgil stopped, pulling back with a strangling cough, the tobacco going down his throat or his windpipe. He bent over, coughing up his lungs, spitting it out.
Kirk pounded him on the back until he finally stopped gasping and slowly straightened up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he worked some last bits to the end of his tongue and turned his head to spit them out, too.
Their eyes met again.
"Sonofabitch," Virgil said. "Next time give me some warning."
And then Kirk kissed him again, his heart pounding, and he thrust Virgil back against the wall of the stall, pressing his body against him.
Certain now that he was not about to bolt and run, Kirk opened Virgil's coat and grabbed between his legs as they kissed, finding his cock hard and ready in his levi's.
Looking straight into his eyes and grinning as he pulled apart his fly buttons, he said, "Virgil, this is your lucky day. I'm gonna take down your pants and put a smile on your face."
Working open his jeans, he freed Virgil's cock from his jockeys, then opened his mouth over it while he reached around to hold his butt cheeks.
His cock wasn't big, and it was easy to swallow whole. When he did, Virgil had gasped, banging the back of his head against the wall behind him.
In less than half a minute, he was coming, jerking his hips in a kind of helpless frenzy and making little whimpering cries, his legs trembling. Still holding Virgil's warm, oozing cock, Kirk looked up and saw that he'd covered his face with both of his hands.
Afterwards, they lay in the thin straw on the stall floor, on their backs, unmoving, arms flung out, catching their breath.
Virgil hadn't known much about sucking cock either, but he'd thrown himself into it with the hungry enthusiasm of a beginner, finding a steady rhythm, only to lose it again, raking the skin with his teeth, stopping short of sucking him all the way in, the spit sopping down onto his balls and between his legs. Finally, he'd lurched back in surprise when Kirk started to come, trying hard but failing to gulp most of it down.
"Virgil," he said now, attempting to zip up his fly over his wet, cold crotch. "You suck much cock?"
"Yeah," Virgil said.
"I doubt it."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize," Kirk said. "Shit, you got the job done, didn't you?" He cinched up his belt and buckled it, the inside of his jeans now feeling soaked and clammy. "Hell, I'm outta practice myself."
"You did me good, sir," Virgil said, unmoving. He lay there, his big army coat unzipped, his jeans covered with dust and straw, his fly still open.
In Kirk's mouth there lingered the taste of Virgil's cum. It had been rich and strong, thick like pudding, and lots of it, coming fast.
He'd forgotten this about cock. How it filled your mouth and your nose with that salty taste of old sweat and a man's body and then when the man unloaded, the burst of oatmealy cum flooding the back of your tongue and flowing everywhere faster than you can swallow it, the smell of it like something earthy, sweet and sour like last year's fallen leaves decaying into the ground or the bloom of lather on a working horse, or the smell of a wet dog. Strong smells that men knew and were used to, and every man's cum a little different.
"You gonna be OK, Virgil?" he said now, getting up.
Virgil just groaned, his hands fluttering up to come to rest on the front of his shirt.
Kirk found his hat and shook some wisps of hay off it before he set it again on his head. Then he put his hand out to Virgil, who took it after a moment and pulled himself to his feet. Still a bit dazed, he fumbled with the buttons of his jeans, while Kirk brushed some of the straw and dust from his coat.
"I see you wear them levi's, like Danny," Kirk said.
"These are his," Virgil said.
"No shit."
Kirk had to laugh at the thought of putting his mouth in Danny's fly. Danny had once showed him how to give a blowjob.
"Is that funny?" Virgil said. He bent down to pick up his cap from the floor.
Kirk reached under the back of Virgil's coat and stroked his butt. "Long story."
They'd walked back to the house, Rusty greeting them at the gate and nosing each of them between the legs, wagging his tail. Kirk had hopped into the truck to warm up the engine and switch on the heater. The seat was cold on his butt as he sat there.
Turned away from the rising sun, the windshield was still covered with a layer of frost, and he got out an ice scraper to clean it off.
Kirk had run into the house for something, saying, "Don't leave yet." A strand of straw, Kirk noticed, was still stuck to the back of his coat.
Mike and then Danny had come to the porch door to say goodbye and the other stuff people seem to want to say before you hit the road again. He stood by the gate, wanting now to be gone, the truck idling behind him.
Suddenly Virgil reappeared, with a duffel bag over his shoulder, Mike and Danny stepping aside to let him by.
What the fuck, Kirk thought.
Virgil hurried to the gate and past Kirk to pitch the bag into the back of the truck. "I'm coming with you," he said, returning to the house to say goodbye to Mike and Danny, pumping their hands with fierce handshakes.
Then he had turned and come back to stand in front of Kirk.
"Is it OK?" he said.
Kirk didn't answer for a moment. Just looked back into his face, lit with the morning sunlight, the sadness gone from his eyes.
He looked across the yard to Danny and Mike, still standing in the open porch door. Fuck if it didn't feel just like taking candy from a baby.
"Hell, yeah," he said to Virgil. "Let's get goin'."
Once they were on the road, the throaty noise of the truck's muffler rumbling under them, Kirk said, "Dammit all, one of us is got to be making a big mistake."
Virgil just shrugged and grinned.
"Hey, you got any more of that Copenhagen?" he said.
Continued . . .