Levi 11

80... 76... 25… hut, it’s been a slow end run along the E-470 past Denver’s open wifi temptations and the usual Mile-High multitude of curiosity. Levi surfaces at the red-roof-checkerboard flag of the Flying J Travel Center. The Luxor Winnebago needs a top up, and Levi fills Fourteen’s black-hole tank with the breakfast special at Max’s Highway Diner.

Levi’s thousand-yard stare past Fourteen’s tangerine shoulder unsettles the boy more than this too public, restaurant fumble. Fourteen thinks Fucking Jardine sacked the old man good in North Platte. He is not Levi-quip-sharp, reading the plays. Fourteen is sidelined too. Instead of panic-prancing, arms-flapping for the security cameras, napkin-note-scribbling the sleepy (smoking-hot) waiter, Fourteen is wanting Levi back in the Luxor Winnebago.

“I’m your waiter, Xander,” is average height with cacao skin, brown hair and brown eyes. Temple Fade Line Up Haircut, messy fohawk top, sides shaved with an arched surgical line. Not a Jeremy Gates look, but mildly Fourteen-appealing. Sort of Levi’s taste in Fourteen: buzz-cut-clean-cut. Xander gave Fourteen a frank look, took his measure.

Fourteen is past his Cameron-face-sucking best-before date. He has a chest wound and a rug-burn fever five inches long. A near-miss of his femoral artery, the boy cannot even bring himself to acknowledge. Never happened, not that close. The Hikari blade was a step-off-the-curb bumper-nudge reminder of mortality. Glance at the careless driver, hand pressed against the hood, just a bruise. Keep walking, because you won’t let yourself travel the alternate timeline. The Luxor Winnebago moment is etched on Fourteen’s grey face, along with the manic drive from North Platte. Still, The slim young man gave Fourteen a frank look, took his measure. Tangerine tang still happening. Bobcat takes a sniff, whiskers twitch interest.

Statistically, Xander is half-a-mind on his somewhere-girlfriend. This is the decimal calculation of Fourteen’s life. Jeremy Gates slouches listlessly in a twenty-something class, Two, maybe two, one’s a girl. The other is… and it would probably be pudgy Norman. I just like you as a friend, Jeremy Gates’ blushing brushoff, hasty retreat. He needs someone John-hard, Patrick-pretty. You’re definitely a shallow-end slut, Jeremy. Fourteen is near fifteen horny, a guy has his dreams.

This Xander-perving is instinctual, but maybe also unconscious-calculated. This sunrise moment, Fourteen is sandwiching Levi’s Hikari blade between sweet-n-hot Cameron and owning the Luxor Winnebago. Never happened, not that close, just the road, just the August Fair horn-dogging now. Xander notices him noticing. No boy-blush left in Fourteen. They exchange a bathroom cock-suck look that might be just Fourteen’s caffeine buzz. Maybe Xander has just seen it all, nineteen, fourteen-like with his (how can I serve you?) frank friendliness. Xander works the truck stop marketplace. Maybe he has brushed off the groping offers more than once. Fourteen could see that, but his half-hard cock looks anyway, till nineteen (off the menu) turns the possibilities away without a second glance. Xander-perving is instinctual.

Fourteen expects to be punted to the back of the RV, but Levi stumbles into shotgun and then drifts back to wherever the Fucking Jardine concussion and the near-ending Tuan-Kale left him. Fourteen considers the bed, considers the shower, considers the old man slumped in the passenger seat. Sunrise and the breakfast special decide it for him. Street-illegal Fourteen puts them back on the I-80. He is focused on the driving, because it is all just a Patrick-crazy now. Fourteen feels like John, piloting the Bronco. What was John’s self-annihilating collar anyway? The boy always wondered. Guilt, he decides. Lip-biting-numb, Jeremy-Fourteen divided, he literally-figuratively does not know where he is going.

Muscling the Luxor Winnebago feels take-charge good. The Tuan-Kale ending lies somewhere ahead through a snow-pack path. The story writes itself. Fourteen’s teenage friends driver-train life in their own ways. Life is a highway, everyone on the Interstate (maybe backroads). Fourteen and his friends learner-licence steer their lives away from moms and dads, as warm hearted Makayla-types wink at them from the eastbound lane. Like this Colorado now, an adolescent-heavy overcast presses down from the forbidding mountains they all have to crest on their way to somewhere. It is a journey, right? Cameron’s journey, Shane’s journey, a thousand bright sparks in the empty night. Fourteen taps the vynl wheel with a nervous hand. Pastel color cars in a heavy dawn. Fourteen listens to the whisper of the dashboard vents, checks his speed. Whispers of Nebraska-cold powder whip across the highway, testing the traction of his wheels. There are no summer roads for Fourteen. Fourteen till March, the dashboard vents whisper, Fourteen till March and it never happened, not that close.

Then what? Fourteen’s fingers choke the wheel. Xander-watching is automatic. I could kiss you, just saying. Feel the contours of your cock and the hunger answers.  He cannot fabricate a comforting after. Fourteen till March, but April on, he is still Fourteen. That is a Shane-wanting, Cameron-kissing, Xander-perving, in-your-face fact. Now is the cock-heavy, gay fact for Fourteen. It does not take John’s Saturday Night Special, or Levi’s silver surprise (always there, probably-certainly bullshit) to compel  him to post Power Cum to XVIDEOS.COM. Maybe, maybe not. This is his adolescent, horny now. He is Levi’s Boy till, maybe, he is not. Fourteen sighs behind the wheel. Yes, Fourteen is going somewhere, only it feels like nowhere on the lonely winter road.

There is relief when Levi’s take-charge voice breaks the tortured silence. “Turn south. Follow 76.” Fourteen wants to press the peddle, feel the Luxor Winnebago’s diesel guzzle gas, put North Platte’s never happened, not that close behind them. Levi again, “Follow 25.” Fourteen nods in the traffic flicker now of driving meditation.

It is south now. Another Tuan-inspired flag-marked monument to Levi’s misjudgement perhaps. Fourteen shoulders the Rockies reluctantly. His after is far west, not south. South feels wrong. South won’t let him take broken Levi to Nguyen Huu Tuan. It is motion, though. The boy needs motion and distance. Fourteen drives south.

It all catches up to Fourteen as the Stratmoor Walmart Supercenter rises with the sun. He is running on empty, finally. Five hours safe, finally. Fourteen face plants onto the bed, marathon-tired. Sleep-of-the-dead, he misses the morning. Misses Levi shuttering them back into the Fourteen-reality-now identity. Misses Levi’s sober whispers as the bed shifts beneath him.

Levi surveys the lean length of Tangerine-hooded almost-fifteen. Before and after on the bed together. Or to be honest, the excellence of Fourteen’s hard-body now and Levi’s restored embrace of his own best-before-date expiration mortality. Know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away… Levi needs to think on that. He can do cheap gambling metaphors as well as the zonked man child. “Do you have a partner?” Neil Jardine asked sourly. Apparently, he does.

Fourteen stirs beneath his hand. With a mind of its own, Levi’s fingers and thumb have been seeking warmth along the cotton polyester blend sheet. You cut him. Do no (more) harm. This latter thought comes to Levi abstract-arm’s-length. He has thought about this before. It is an easy (practiced) retreat to the numb amorality of side street rent boys, young-cock ready for old queens. Levi needed a partner on the way to Mỹ Sơn Temple. Fourteen, hyperventilating- bound, the trashy dog-chain-bondage around his neck, did the trick. Complications but oh so fucking, excruciatingly Tuan-like. Easy to imagine the boy was fated to fall into Levi’s hands. It had to be this way.

The shock when he learned the truth. This Jeremy Gates’ ripped from a safe suburban now. That John-killer a grunt away from ending the boy, and only Levi to step up. Just like Tuan, Fourteen needed rescue, needed to come to Levi’s arms. He is so fucking beautiful! Levi runs his hand down Fourteen’s back. Levi needs a partner, but Mỹ Sơn Temple… Levi still needs to think on that.

Malcolm King, Levi decides. Let the fates decide, the wanting whisper coaxes him. Patrick stood by the Bronco as Jeremy Gates flashed by on his bike. Will he pass? Will he stop? It was a casual spin of the roulette wheel to Patrick. The young man was drawn to the easy bruising possibilities of Jeremy Gate’s tangerine everything. If it was not to be, it was not to be. Patrick lived that on that Chillicothe road. Levi is like that now, in the fresh after of seeing Fucking Jardine. Malcolm King will surface, answer Levi’s email, or he won’t. Tuan-like in its circumstance perhaps, but in the light of day, Levi is stroking some kid from Ohio. He is so fucking beautiful, so increadibly alive to Levi’s touch.

Do no harm, I cut him. That will do. “Hey, Fourteen (not Jeremy), let me take a look at you.” Whispered bedside manner. Fourteen is somewhere dream-safe, so Levi tugs him over. A loose-limbed flop brings Fourteen to the surface with sleepy-eye fluttering questions. “Need to check you out.” Levi repeats, “See your chest.”

Fourteen nods. He rolls up off the bed, then settles back, eyes open when the hoodie comes free. “You okay?” The boy asks softly.

“Hangover,” Levi admits. Fourteen nods off (literally). Scalpel-keen Hikari steel cut clean into pale flesh. Red desert dry-blood smear, trickle-clots gravitate down the contours. So damn close to shoving it in. He was that angry at Tuan, or Jardine, or himself. Levi abandons the sleeping boy for a hot cloth.

When Levi kisses the clean cut, his lips move up to a nipple. Not asleep, it seems. A brush of Fourteen’s hand encourages-invites him to kiss up just short of Fourteen’s soft lips to the warmth of the neck where the blade began its journey. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Levi’s mouth wanders across Fourteen’s Great Plains a bit like that. He straightens, feeling fresher. The Japanese steel wandered further.

Levi did trace a line along a hairless thigh. Dull rust beads, more malpractice, Levi leaves it, damage done. Eyes on the silver Vietnamese necklace encompassing young neck, his fist finds Fourteen’s flesh beneath the black fabric of the boy’s pants. Light of day, it is Fourteen, not Nguyen Huu Tuan. Levi is wistful for the comforting delusion. It is lost now. Let the boy sleep, but he cannot. Levi feels his age, lets it settle comfortably about him. His surgeon’s hands have opened up so many bodies since Da Nang. You should sleep, he warns himself, but he cannot. Levi soothes himself by awakening Fourteen’s pulsing animal urgency.

Eyes open when Levi frees the button, slides the zipper down. Hips lift willingly off the mattress to allow the pants to slip off the hips. Fourteen free for Levi. Hung over, feeling all his seventy-some years, but still needing this young flesh. This grey morning, Levi is content to take pleasure from Fourteen’s pleasure. Hard glass stands in for reluctant flesh.

Fourteen’s lips part, his tongue darts out to lick the dildo shaft. There is knowing in his eyes. Before anticipation in that lick. “Good boy,” Levi tells him. Good boy to save him in North Platte, good boy to drive through the night, good boy to swallow inches of the dildo as Levi pulls the pillow free from behind his head. Something to bolster Fourteen’s tired flesh. The boy rolls his hips over onto the pillow. Crazy true, they both need this never happened, not that close ritual between them. “Your hands,” Levi suggests, as if hours earlier he had not carved the boy.

Handcuffs at the back, fingers stretched above the parted legs. Now anticipation of cuming frenzy, Fourteen flexes his arms, sleep forgotten. Long muscles tense and flex from groin to knees as he shifts to part welcome this now invasion. Let Icicles No. 7 sweep every doubt away, bring him an orgasmic clarity. Cameron Krueger could not do this for him. Cameron does not have the skills-imagination to do him like this. This is the private Fourteen-safety of the Luxor Winnebago. Levi bites a firm cheek, feels the flinch, licks the rose, before the inexorable thrust that starts the boy’s assent. Alley cat (bobcat) whine greets the sinking shaft.

Forehead pressed into the mattress, shoulder blades and biceps strain to lift something heavy. Fingertips Braille the repetitions of Levi’s glass dildo. Fourteen’s glass shaft, he owns it now. Sapphire swirls and pink flesh belong together now. Levi likes to thrust it in from his pelvis. Each time the long shaft sinks in, finds that spot, the boy’s fingers brush against Levi. The reps continue delicious-deep. The Luxor Winnebago chills unnoticed as teenage everything saturates the air. “Try not to cum, I want to suck your dick.” Another bobcat-worthy response. It is a back-alley yowl. It is a warning in a voice-break submissive-stubborn alto only Levi ever hears-devowers in their shared solitude. Frustration or gratification? Who knows, who cares? “Oh fuck, you are. So beautiful.” Levi growls back at the writhing boy. The reps continue deliriously-deep. Fourteen will cum hard this way, soak the sheets, every time, time, time….

It is a turn of direction from Mỹ Sơn Temple. Levi absorbs this as his young companion sleeps teen-drained, afterglow. So hairless, except for the luxurious tangle wicking musk above the perfect prick. The air is pungent with the boy’s all that. There is a need to focus. Levi’s consciousness skipped like a river stone on the banks of Bull Shoals Lake during the flight from North Platte.

Wrong simile, his consciousness was a barnacle-crusted whale calling someone in the cold depths. Levi offers whale-song encryptions to Nguyen Huu Tuan, his lost companions, God. Levi surfaced randomly to change the boy’s direction along his great migration to Mỹ Sơn Temple.

Randy Ishmael stirs because Icicles No. 7 wants out (or in again). Levi opts to gentle the long dildo back into the sleeping boy, just because he can. Levi remembers he harpooned the boy into this wild (doomed) ride, not the other way around. The glass withdraws once more, freshly boy-infused. The worry is, the longer he drags this out, the more whale dives he is going to make. You are dying. That is what this is all about. You are driving this kid into your failing flesh like Rutger Hauer drove his rusty nail. You need the Adrenalin he gives you. Blade Runner, that’s what this is. It is not Moby Dick.

Levi strokes Fourteen gently (and pushes the patient dildo back in where it seems to belong). He confesses he loves the adolescent-alive angles and curves, the hormonal-chrysalis promise of manhood. I like to watch, I like to remember. Levi is swimming in the memory-sea. It happened, it was that close. North Platte has to be a turn in direction from the Mỹ Sơn Temple’s final sounding. That was your plan. Levi imagined Tuan-Fourteen pulled beneath the memory-waters with him. Embrace the good death. Fourteen (push the dildo back in) would be a Tuan-ghost-Ahab tangled in the knots of love-hate-revenge as Levi made his necessary end. Icicles No. 7 glides free again. Reluctantly, Levi lets the swollen-satiated ring expel it.

Get off the bed old man, let him sleep. Had he ever consciously admitted this beautiful-slave-boy-sacrificed-with-the-Fisher-king-plan to himself? Levi wondered. He had made such elaborate plans to get Fourteen to Vietnam and the Mỹ Sơn Temple resolution. Cross to Mexico, fly to Malaysia because the passport would be good there. Slip (somehow) into Vietnam. Finish it at Mỹ Sơn Temple. Delusional plans, Levi admits. How did I imagine it could work?

He wants to shake Fourteen and ask him where they were. This Wallmart harbour could be anywhere. The boy frowns in his sleep, as if to say, “Google it, old man.” Levi thinks about covering Fourteen, the old RV is cooling. He decides not to disturb his companion. Fourteen is a young furnace, everything about him scorches, if he needs cover, he will seek it. I like to watch, remember? Levi sits down to think about geography and other things.

There are moments like this. Moments when Fourteen (near fifteen) sleeps adolescent-heavy through the morning, Levi manages life’s things. Fourteen must imaging them in their Luxar Winnebago moving unattached from the necessary commerce of the world. The journey needs planning. A missing teenager needs (cautious) watching. Five months off the face of the earth, people want Jeremy Gates back. Did people want Tuan back? Did I ever consider that as I lay with him?

It is a habit to look at Facebook first. A penance to Check Jeremy Gates’ Facebook and also his frantic mother and father. Not just penance, cynically self-serving. It’s like watching the guard as you dribble the ball down the court. Which way are they poised to move? Any tell to guide Levi through the cluster fuck the two young Pennsylvania psychos (Patrick and John, not forgotten) left him. You should have cut him loose in the State Park. Only then what? The Tuan-need and Fourteen’s own tangerine hooked him. Trussed boy in a fear-daze not so different than Nguyen Huu Tuan in the catastrophe of his family staring blankly at Fucking Jardine. So Fourteen sleeps slaved-satiated from Levi’s agile distractions, Levi moves West cautiously, Milk carton-Facebook updates to consider.

“Changes,” Levi murmurs to himself, faced with Facebook. “I’m okay, don’t worry, love you.” He whispers aloud to himself. Levi looks at sleeping (interestingly naked) Fourteen. “We both seem to have had a busy night kid.” Neil Jardine distracted him, obviously. Where had Fourteen found a free computer? Levi wondered. Too easy to do, it seems. Fourteen stares at Levi’s cards wondering if he is facing a bluff. Somehow, Fourteen palmed another card into his own hand while Levi was reaching for the next (bad) whiskey.

Before the midlife upheaval that drew Levi into the streets, the triggered memory of Tuan, before medicating his tired heart with sex, recovering the ecstasy of Da Nang in the flesh of anonymous underage partners, Levi was content. In Levi’s third tour, the remorse-fever gave way to comforting whispers of acceptance. Tuan was gone.

Tuan had not opened himself to Levi. Sitting with a cold beer and a bowl of Pho, the young Marine could not help but watch the indifferent male traffic. In the intensely Band-of-Brothers world of Vietnam at war, absorbed by the intercourse-exchange (as it were) of life waiting to go back in-country, Levi knew it was time to move on. First kiss, first boyfriend, first breakup, Vietnam was an experience. Tuan was gone.

Tuan had not opened-shared himself to Levi. There were secrets it seemed. Family was a powerful thing. Tuan was lost to family, Tuan had plans. “I’m okay, don’t worry, love you.” Jeremy Gates managed to say. In that Midwest-suburbia nuclear family thing, Levi could imagine Fourteen pausing to hug his mother, near-man confident, surprise her with a melt-your-heart, “Love you.” Maybe even a whirlwind moment as he took his final exit from the safe Chillicothe before to this destabilizing-illuminating after. Fourteen had family, Fourteen has plans. Fourteen has plans, but “I’m okay, don’t worry” plans, not I’ve got a satchel bomb plans. The innocent kid who stopped for the rapists, blocks short of safety, has stopped for a sick (lecherous) old man.

Not cold, Fourteen lays innocent-open on the shuttered bed. Solstice sun filters through the clouds and RV curtains, muting the oh-so-perfect, coltish curves of grace. Levi studies him as he taps the laptop lightly. There’s an erection (possibly) sandwiched between belly and blanket because, well because there is a cock on the boy. It’s the function of the form. The silver necklace bomb-threat is a slender excuse for Fourteen’s male vanity. Levi is sure his (too) young companion wraps the threat around himself modestly-carefully, lest he rip the freeing-fabric, exposing the truth. August to November, Levi has been sure the boy is cock-proud of his pole dancing. Boys want to be men. He has seen this all his life, never stronger than in the young with something to prove.

The March after promise is another slender excuse. Cold Nebraska street, Levi’s Beretta Nano in hand, why not put-up-or-shut-up force Levi to disarm the bomb binding Fourteen to the Devil’s deal? Why drive wasted-crazed Levi up to the mountains? Computer at his fingertips, and Jeremy Gates chirps, “I’m okay, don’t worry.” Okay with what? Cock-hard vanity, Levi was sure.

Tuan used Levi’s vanity-lust-guilt to blind him from seeing the truth. Levi tries to keep Fourteen cock-throbbing-dizzy and vacation-adventure distracted as much as he can. It had seemed to do the trick. Now, Levi is not so sure. Fourteen has him more than a little boy-cock-dizzy. There has been nothing rational in this surge across America.

Eminent thoracic surgeon Dr. Levi Fisher knows his prognosis, notes the growing list of symptoms. This final Hajj to Mecca-Mỹ Sơn is no doubt one of them. But the self-deluding Tuan-fever is definitely cooled this morning and Fourteen has the Beretta Nano and plans of his own. They need the talk that Levi never had with Nguyen Huu Tuan, share plans. There has been a turn of direction from Mỹ Sơn Temple.

7 a.m., Cloudy in Colorado Springs, CO, USA. 48F, Thank You Google, Levi feels the chill seeping through the old RV’s skin. Malcolm King is ossifying near Supai, just short of Havana Canyon. On or off the Havasupai Indian Reservation, Levi cannot remember. Malcolm owes him, or perhaps that conviction-hope is simply another delusion helping him to limp along. Okay Google, Levi looks at the new result: 788 miles following I-40, only 15 hours. Albuquerque is the obvious destination. Best to find another Lake Michigan-Bull Shoals resting point for Christmas. In the New Year (last year) Levi will decide on Supai. Malcolm King will surface before that, answer his email. Malcolm King can help.

The North Platte confrontation with Neil Jardine and Fourteen catches up to Levi. The weariness is sinking into his bones like the chill Colorado winter. He is too tired to contemplate the significance of this turn of direction from Mỹ Sơn Temple. Let the kid have his after. The sun’s retreat pivots to advance towards the next desert spring. Life wins, if not for Levi, at least for Fourteen’s after. Levi shucks off the tobacco-whiskey stink of Jardine’s carefully preserved war memories with his clothes. Too tired to think, he slips beneath the sheets beside Fourteen.