Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 00:05:35 -0700 From: joe jones Subject: Jack's Place (Author of Letters Home, Man of the House, Men of the House, and Thanksgiving with the Leary Men in the Bisexual section.) Jack's Place by Joe Jones As an adult I have traveled far afield from the small town of my boyhood. I live in a major American city, where I earn my keep as a writer. I have seen firsthand the art treasures, and known intimately the bodies of men both well loved and anonymous. But wherever I have been, and with whomever I have been with, the memory of the town of Mason, and of the man who raised me there, asserts itself. I am leashed, deep in the root of my being, to that place and that man. I was born and raised in a small logging town called Mason. Most everyone who lived in Mason had been born there, with the exception of my father. A native of Spain he had traveled farther than anyone who ever lived in Mason since the time of the settlers. My mother met him during a summer trip to "the big city" (Seattle) whereupon they promptly conceived the first of three children. I have grown to understand since that my mother viewed this handsome European as her ticket out of the every day sameness of Mason, even as that mundane American existence was what attracted him to her. Having lived in the US since age 19, and having fathered three children with American names like Betty and Charley and, myself, Jack, he regarded himself as a true American. "When I came to this country I had only four words in English: yes and no, man and woman. Now you could not even tell I am not a native speaker," he would say in his rich Spanish accent. But in truth, he stood out in Mason like a ruby on a bed of lettuce. Of all the men in Mason who were near or past 40, only my father had a body as good (or better) than in their youth. Some of it genetic - his long face and handsome bent nose bore little in common with the modestly inbred face of Mason - and much of it his own doing. Naturally so thin that my mother on first sight thought him a malnourished war refugee, he took pains to build his body. While the men of Mason began their days with pancakes and sausage, he began his with push ups and sit ups. The evenings they spent watching television he spent swimming laps in the lake. When his peers began to lose their hair, they kept it lank and grew bristly whiskers, he kept his glossy black hair short against his scalp, and grew a neatly trimmed mustache, the ends of which extended in two vertical bars down to his long jawline. Another way in which my father was unlike the other men in Mason: he had no wife. There had been my mother, of course. But sometime after the baby was born (Charley was his name, but in my recall he is always "the baby"). Things had not gone well between them for years, my parents, jailers to each other. In fact my last memory of my mother is hearing her screaming, on the other side of my bedroom wall. My father had brought the baby to bed to sleep with them - he had done the same with myself and my sister, both to my mother's consternation. "Absolutely not," I heard her shriek. "You've already ruined one of them and you're not doing it again with Charley." The next day she was gone, the baby and my sister gone with her. I wasn't sorry she was gone, entirely - I knew that by ruined, she meant me. There were other things I had heard and remembered, things other children might not have noticed. But I did. I was an exceptionally bright child, though extraordinarily reserved. I listened meticulously, recording comments and nuances, tracking themes and patterns. I spoke rarely, and was for a time thought to be "slow", which may be why adults spoke so freely in my presence. Once as a boy I accompanied my father to Mr. and Mrs. Brewer's place, the summer he helped paint their house. I remember how the white paint splatters on his arms and shoulders made his skin seem more russet, how the jeans he wore rode low around his slim, boyish hips. I remember also how Mrs. Brewer brought him iced tea, and marveled at the tattoo on his shoulder. And I remember how when my father was out back, Mr. Brewer kicked his wife in her square buttocks - something my own father would never have done - and angrily said to her "Don't think I don't see you lookin' at that spik like was a piece of meat and you ain't had a meal in a week!" I didn't know what a "spic" was, but since my father was one I understood that I must be as well. None of the men of Mason were ever overtly rude to my father, but I always sensed a wariness on their part, and a pleasure in keeping him down. I recall once seeing a dog trying to fit into a pack of neighborhood dogs, with its own established ranking. The new dog crept around lowly, exposing his vulnerable neck to the dominant dogs in the hierarchy, seeking their favor and tolerance. He put his head low and submitted to other dogs mounting him, asserting their place in their canine society. The town of Mason was not so different, in the end. *** Though my father sometimes worked at the lumber yard, the main source of family income was through my father's bar. Jack's Place was named, like myself, for my grandfather who founded it. Jack's Place was not much as bars go. It consisted of a main bar room, a small pool room, a bathroom and a glorified closet that my father called his "office". It had a regular clientele, who slowly sipped their beers during the week. But it was the lumber workers who came in on the weekends who really spent the dollars. They drank so much, and got so rowdy on the weekends that the Mason forefathers had long ago passed an ordinance making it illegal for a woman to be present in a bar on weekends. It was not the sort of law that could stand up to a challenge in court, but no one in Mason ever did so because it so effectively nipped in the bud what would have been a flourishing prostitution business. The fact that Jack's Place shared my name was not lost on my school mates, who teased me about it, especially because of the dark rumors that surrounded it. Every high school boy knew the jokes about the loggers, deprived of whores, who got drunk at Jack's Place and then went into the woods to hump each other and drunkenly imagine a woman's touch. I never saw any of them myself, when I went to the bar after school for a coke, though I looked. That was where my father spent his evenings, working. I usually saw him before, and he came home at night while I slept. For some of that time I slept in his bed, waiting for him to join me, wrapping his warm body around mine. I remember only vaguely the sensation of sleeping with him, though I have longed to recall it. I have always had an acute memory, of photographic detail, for words spoken or read. But my recollection of physical experience is dim and elusive. Consequently I have only a fleeting senses of sleeping in my father's bed with him, but total recall of its end. It happened at age 9, on a night when I fell asleep curled around the back side of my father, my arms wrapped around slim hips. It was his body, jerking suddenly that woke me, and then his voice sternly saying "Jack, Jack...what are you doing?" He then lifted me in his arms, and carried me to my own bed where he told me I would sleep from then on. I came to with no knowledge of what my sleeping body had done, except that it was something delicious and forbidden. I have long considered my actions that night, turning it one way and another, like a gift wrapped box, trying to guess its contents. I wonder, did I kiss his back? Or did my small fingers wrap around his adult cock? Did I press my boyish erection into the cleft of his buttocks? I still don't know what happened, except that it led to the exile of both myself and my father to our solitary beds. As I grew older I made few friends, but no enemies. The women of the neighborhood tended to me, made sure I was well fed and reminded my father that I was a growing boy and needed larger clothes from time to time. Often silent and watchful, inept in sports, another boy would have been taunted mercilessly. Instead my strange status as a boy abandoned by his own mother made me an untouchable, so peculiar that no one wanted to risk my peculiarity rubbing off onto even their fists. For a boy as inquisitive, and imaginative, as I, being left to my own devices created a freedom of thought which most people will never know. I seized onto ideas and carried them through every permutation, then moved on to the next. But the notion to which I returned again and again, unresolved, was that of my father, and the effect he had on me. I was, by then, intoxicated with the sight of my father, and longed to touch his body. In the summer he mowed the lawn shirtless, and I studied the gentle swell of his chest and the glossy black hairs that circled his nipples. It bisected his flat belly and ran down beneath his navel and into the stark white waistband of his briefs. His ass, two smooth orbs, seemed made to be held, one cupped in each of my hands. There were other men who aroused me. Handsome blonde athletes at school. Lumber workers with shoulders and biceps so broad and hard that you could almost not notice their beer bellies. But none of them provided the fodder for sexual fantasies that my own father did. I wondered how my mother could have left him, how she could have once touched his skin and been content not to do so again. I envied her, as well, that she had had him, had aroused him, had spread her legs and wrapped them tight around him, had held his cum in her body. All these things that she had done and I longed to do. *** As it is bound to do in Mason, life had found its groove. An endlessly repeating cycle, as predictable and unchanging as the Earth's orbit around the sun. During the week I attended school, came home to eat dinner with my father. On the way out to work he'd kiss me on the forehead (unless I was standing, as I was then taller than him). In the evenings I read books and wrote short stories. Later I'd dig through my father's underwear, inhaling his odor deeply and masturbating. Meanwhile the other boys my age were out carousing, playing mix and match with their female counterparts, with whom they'd inevitably be married. I imagined them, male and female, paired in their twos like the animals in Noah's Ark, and myself shut out, a strange lone creature beneath an ominous sky. On the day I selected to end my virginity, and my exile, I intentionally "forgot" to ask my father to sign the permission slip needed for me to go on a school field trip. I would need that excuse as my alibi, if I was caught in the woods near Jack's Place. I was on my way to see my father, I'd say, and show them the slip. I wasn't allowed at the bar on weekends, even for a Coke, but that didn't matter. I felt cocky thinking that it was really my bar, after all. My mother never gave it to my father when she left - he was just running it for the family. It even had my name. I don't know how long I was in the woods that night, my heart pounding so hard I thought I'd vomit. I was sure that it had been hours, but looking back it couldn't have been more than 40 minutes. I hadn't seen another person, or even a clue that another person had ever been there. Disheartened and bone cold, I gave up and walked to the bar, my fingers on the unsigned permission slip in my jacket pocket. I felt stupid and childish, and fearful of encountering anyone I knew at the bar - especially anyone I knew from high school. Some of those boys I remembered as burly senior football players were adults now, and some probably went to Jack's Place. To circumvent this, I went around back to the office door. It was locked as usual, but I knew that a key was hidden right on top of the door jam. I remembered my father showing it to me as a child, and how it amazed me that he was tall enough to reach up over doorways. It struck me as funny that I could so easily reach it myself. At six feet and once inch I had exceeded my father. In the dark office I could hear the jukebox playing, but hardly any voices. Without turning on the office light I peeked through one of the small dusty windows on the office walls. My grandfather built them so that he could keep an eye on the bar at all times, to make sure no one pilfered any liquor. I could see men, loggers and locals both, lined up against the hall. I guessed they must be lined up to use the bathroom. In fact quite a few of them had a hand down the front of their pants, which seemed pretty odd. But then I realized that the line was not queued up to the bathroom, but to the pool room. I turned to the window that looked into the pool room, and found something even more confusing. Laid out across the pool table on his belly was a man in a snug white tank top, but no pants. I could see by the familiar tattoo on his shoulder that it was my dad. Behind him, between his legs was a man I didn't know, a logger I guessed, and it looked like he was shoving my father back and forth. It occurred to me briefly that there was a hold up, and that a robber was beating my father. But that wasn't so. I saw that the logger's pants were down around his calves, and that he seemed to be rolling up onto my father and then off again. And then I realized that he wasn't beating my father. He was fucking him. Confounded I still thought it was an attack. Thought my father was being raped. I thought I should call the police. But the truth is, I was transfixed. I couldn't believe the sight of this burly bearded man humping my father, his beautiful ass hanging over the end of the pool table. The logger picked up his pace and suddenly let out a choked gasp and grunt. He stepped back and pulled his pants up, and left the room. Instead of running after his attacker, or running away, my father just pulled himself up and sat on the edge of the pool table. He didn't even look upset, Then another man came in, and my father nodded at him. It was Matt Spencer - a man I knew from Mason. He was my dad's age or older, and I knew his 3 sons frok high school. He was a burly bear, with a man sized belly hanging over his jeans. He tossed a wad of dollars at my father who put it into one of the pockets in the pool table. Matt Spencer unbuckled his jeans and yanked them down to reveal a fat erection, which he stroked twice, then motioned with his hand. My father leapt lightly from the table and stood almost face to face with Matt, who put his hand on top of my father's head. Apparently knowing this prompt well, my father dropped to his knees and buried his face in the Matt's hairy crotch. He seemed to swallow the erection whole, and Matt Spencer gasped lightly as my father sucked his cock expertly. A well of pre-cum pooled on the floor, oozing from the head of my father's stiff cock. Matt Spencer didn't take too long - he seemed to melt into my father's mouth. Then another man, the next in line, took his place. Again he gave my father a wad of money, and received the service of his choice. They spoke rarely or not at all, but indicated what they wanted. A blow job, or a cornholing. Some wanted my father on his back, some on his belly. Some wanted both. In each case my father worked the man to orgasm, though he never came himself. And then, after each had shot their hot cum onto my father, or into him, smearing his face or filling his throat or asshole, they left. And another took his place. How many cocks had he serviced that night? I had seen 14. And there were no doubt more earlier. Then one more came in - the last of them. It was Kurt Wall - a Mason oddity. He was a local, but he lived and worked with the loggers. I thought at the time he was a foreman, or in some position, because he'd been around forever. He had a full dark beard and a world worn face, and the body of a working man. My father seemed wary of him, but deferential. As he dropped his pants he said "You save it up for me Chico?" And though that was not my father's name, he nodded yes. Kurt seemed less inhibited than any of the other men. He had my father do things none of the others had, and he groaned and growled out loud. He even made my father bury his face in the man's ass, furiously eating out his hairy logger asshole. When he had enough, Kurt lifted my father to his feet and bent him over the pool table. Without pause he plunged the length of his cock into my father's ass, pummeling him hard. None of the other men had fucked my father so vigorously, or so loudly. My father grunted hard each time the logger's cock slammed into his guts, though he took each stroke without complaint. The logger slapped one of my father's thighs. This must have been a familiar command, because my father lifted that leg up, steadying it there with his foot on the edge of the pool table. It was plainly uncomfortable for my father, but it gave the logger better access into my father's hole, driving his cock into it faster and deeper. "Give it up, Chico," said the Kurt, pistoning. "No," whispered my father, "no, no." But it was not much of a protest, as he wrapped his fingers around his own cock and stroked it gently. He did he ground his ass up against the logger's thrusts, and his face pinched up. Long white streaks erupted from his erection, the semen built up during a long night of fucking pulsed out of my father so violently it seemed painful. Kurt gasped audibly as the contractions of my father's bowels milked his prick. "Oh yeah" he whispered and thrust so hard that it made my father almost collapse onto the pool table. The logger roared when he came, dropped his weight onto my father's back, and pumped his cum into my father's worn ass. Like the others before him, Kurt pulled up his pants and turned to leave. On the way out he turned to my father, who was still bent over the pool table, breathing hard. "Put that one on my tab, Chico," he said. Slowly my father stood upright. He pulled off his tank top, now soaked through with sweat, and dropped it onto the floor to mop up the pool of cum there. On shaky legs he hopped up onto the pool table, and took out the money he had been putting into one of the pockets. He sat in silence for a few minutes, and then he looked right at my hiding place. And spoke. "Jack," he said, "you come out now." *** Obediently, if reluctantly, I stood and emerged from the office. Though on the surface, the sight of my father naked on the pool table might seem absurd, it felt deathly serious. He studied me up and down, and though my eyes longed to feast on the sight of his body, I could not bring myself to look up. "Now you know," he said to me. "Maybe I should tell you before, so you don't find out like this." "Too late," I responded, in barely more than a whisper. He waved for me to come over to him, and I did. "Now you are man, you know the truth," he said, and tenderly brushed my cheek with his rough fingertip. "What's the truth?" I asked, and finally looked into his eyes. "Do you do this...do you do this all the time?" He nodded. "This is weekend business, Jack. For long time no puta-no whores. This way the loggers are happy, the bar makes money. Good money for college for you Jack, all saved." "For me? This is for me?" "Not to start - but now it is good money." "How long? Did mom - my mother - did she know?" "No Jack, not from this. But before I come to Mason, in Europe...Jack, I didn't grow up like you, happy childhood in nice American town. So some things I had to do, I did. Your mother knew those. But you don't need to think of things like that." "Do you....like it?" My voice trembled as I asked. He rested his fingertips on my lips, to quiet me. "Jack, enough. I just tell you this - for me sex is not so important. For you it is sex and love - I know how Americans are - it is whole world to you. But for me, no. Since I am young boy, younger than you, I do many things, many people. I smile, just like when customer orders beer. 'Yes sir,' and take dollars. Do I like it? Some yes, some no. But I never take it serious, like you do. You know how I mean?" I had tears running down my face then, which he wiped away, saying "Oh Jack..." He stood up and hugged me, wrapping his bare arms around my shivering body. He kissed my cheek and neck and made soft cooing sounds to ease my distress. He held me tight, and between us I felt something I had barely noticed. It was my own cock, erect in my jeans, a hard lump between us. I jerked back, but my father held tight. He craned his neck back around to look right into my face, eyes to eyes. "You are upset for this?" he whispered. His hand slid down to cover my stiff bulge. I could feel the material around it wet through with my pre-cum. "Don't worry Jack, it's okay," he continued. "It is normal thing for young man like you." I could not speak or even look at him any longer, so torn by conflicting emotions and desires. So he continued. "This is too much for you," he whispered. "Too much news, too upsetting. My fault - but you relax. I make you feel better." He unbuttoned my jeans, and spread them open with his broad hands. His long fingers slid under the waistband of my underwear, smooth and a serpent, and wrapped around my erection. He smiled and whispered "See, I make you feel better now." I shuddered, and he wrapped his free arm around me, tight. He turned us around, propping my skinny ass against the edge of the bar. He kissed me gently on the lips, and began to stroke me cock. The slick precum coating my cock and belly became sticky under his hand, as he pumped my dick slowly. I don't know when it happened, but he was hard again, his beautiful cock aimed straight up at me. He wrapped his legs around one of mine, and began to hump it, rubbing his erection against my denim covered thigh. He kissed my lips tenderly, again and again, and pumped my cock with his fist vigorously. As my body tensed repeatedly he chuckled softly. I felt his rough cheek pass against mine, and heard him whisper in my ear. "You do it in my hand, Jack." As much as his hand, his voice broke down whatever reserve held me back till then. My hips thrust forward and my cock felt too big for its skin. A hot white blast spewed from my cock, arcing straight up in front of my eyes. My father gripped me tightly in the crook of his arm, bearing my weight. Another volley of cum broke free of me. My father pumped my cock slowly, as the cum seethed out of me and dropped onto the floor like white lava. I reached down to touch his erection, but my father put his hand around my wrist, and said flatly "No, Jack. That's enough." And then he let me go. *** In another version of this story, I could tell you that we then made love. I could tell you how my father spread my legs and entered my ass, and how when he came his face was sixty different expressions of the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. But none of that happened. After he jerked me off, my father's own erection waned. He told me to get dressed. While I did, he was in the bathroom, shitting the semen of the men of Mason into the sewage. Whatever happened that night, it was clear that my father felt no more lust for me than for any of the men he had whored himself to that night. I realized then that what I had wanted was not only my father's body, but for him to want me even as I wanted him. And that would not happen. He was the perfect sexual beast, but for the one thing he lacked: desire. I left Mason as soon as I could thereafter. There was, of course, money for college. I visited Mason less often with each year, and now not at all. He eventually sold Jack's Place to a much younger man, and retired with a modest nest egg. My father writes infrequently - it is not in his nature to convey himself in writing, and his letters are almost foolishly positive and optimistic. I write less often - I don't care to think of myself as I was, then. Nor do I care to think of my father as he must surely be now, a sad old man, bereft of his looks and his family. Though I have had several lovers, and share my life and home happily with one now, my most potent sexual fantasies are always of my father, then. I am not ready to lose that yet. I looked briefly for my mother and two siblings. It was my mother, after all, whom I took after in the end. I was later glad not to have found them. What would we talk about? How my father allowed men to fuck his ass every weekend? What their lies were like without me? No. I had friends, a career, happiness. It was enough. In fact I changed my last name, to make it more difficult for anyone to find me if they should look. I didn't tell my father about it - it would hurt him beyond anything else I could tell him. I chose for myself a surname not of the one man who fathered me, but the name of the many men who shaped me, and who in their own way gave me opportunities beyond their guess. Mason.