My Busboy

by John Inman

He let out a burst of laughter. It was so loud and abrupt it startled Clutch, who almost fell off the porch. “I’m not being insidious, Robert! I want us to get to know each other. Tell me a secret! Tell me something you’re too embarrassed to tell anybody else in the whole wide world.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Like maybe that your dick’s so big you’ve always been afraid you might inadvertently kill somebody with it.”

  This time it was my turn to howl with laughter.

  He watched me, his face alive with humor. He ratcheted his laugh down to a controllable chortle. His face and ears went bright red, as were mine, I’m sure.

  “Who told you about my dick?” I sputtered around one of those smiles that feels like it’s going to slice your head in two. I tried to look stern, but apparently I didn’t do a very good job of it.

  He tumbled off his chair and curled up into a fetal position at my feet, laughing so hard now he could barely catch his breath. “You—you mean it’s true? Boy, am I in for a rough night! Ow! My lip!”

  He fought desperately to catch his breath. When he finally had himself under control, he grunted his way up to a sitting position in front of my chair. Folding his hands together over my knee, he rested his chin on them and gazed up into my face, all the while taking deep breaths so as to calm himself a little more.

  “Am I blushing?” he asked, still barely able to control himself.

  “You’re brick red,” I said, smiling down at him. “I’m the one who’s embarrassed, and you’re the one who’s blushing. And your lip is bleeding again.”

  He tapped it with a fingertip as the humor fell from his face. “Damn thing.”

  I pulled a paper napkin from the holder I had brought out onto the porch with dinner. Oh so carefully, I pressed it to his upper lip. He sat obediently still while I tended to his wound. His one brown eye that was still functioning never left my face. It was without a doubt the kindest, most open, most expressive eye I had ever seen. I dreaded the time when he would be able to point both his eyes at me at the same time. I was lost having one staring at me. How would I ever survive two?

  Tears of laughter still sparkled on his cheeks. I longed to taste them.

  The evening grew cooler as the sun slipped toward the horizon. We had donned our heaviest sweaters to ward off the chill. There was a perfectly good fire burning in the fireplace inside. I could smell the smoke of it on the air. Yet somehow we had needed to be outdoors. To share our meal with the mountain.

  He dug his chin a little deeper into my knee. “Back to the humiliating stuff,” he said, taking control of the napkin and dabbing at his own wound for a while. I was happy to see the bleeding had slowed already. His eye once again focused on me. Humor glimmered in its depths.

  I sighed a weary sigh. “You’re not going to let up on this secret business, are you?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. So we might as well get started.” His handsome young face beamed brightly. His dimples flashed. “You first.”

  I grunted in exasperation, but it was all for show. He knew it, and I knew it. “Fine,” I grumped. “Let the truth-telling, soul-bearing, shit-stirring humiliation begin. God help us both.”

  Dario’s eyebrows shot up, as if to say, I’m still waiting.

  “Fine, then. If you must know, I’m lazy. I can sleep all day. Straight through. Without waking up once. And I do it more than I care to admit.”

  Dario didn’t bat an eye. “I picked my nose as a kid.”

  “Lovely. But you’re obviously an amateur at this game.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes. I once caught the clap from a Peruvian tour guide on the Inca Trail.”

  Dario blinked. His mouth twisted into a teeny smile. “I didn’t see that one coming. In high school I sucked off three friends in one night. My reputation as a junior varsity slut was pretty well anchored after that.”

  “Now we’re getting to the good stuff,” I simpered. “My first act of gay sex was with a cousin. His name was Rodney.”

  “So was mine.”

  “You mean with Rodney?”

  “Well, no. Arthur actually. He was my cousin, not yours. He was also a snively little prick who used to eat all my candy when I wasn’t looking, but he had a nice dick. The first time he came in my mouth, he cried. What a wuss.”

  I was getting a hard-on again. Maybe it was time to get off the subject of sex before I embarrassed myself beyond redemption. “I hate writing, but I love having written.”

  “Dorothy Parker said that. You’re plagiarizing.”

  “So sue me.”

  Dario stuck his tongue out and shot me a raspberry. Very adult. “I hate studying, but I love having learned.”

  I stared down at my hand in his. “I like the way you want to touch all the time.”

  He sucked in a tiny gulp of air. Obviously my words surprised him. “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, ’cause I like it too.”

  I figured it was time to really lay some cards on the table. I took a deep shuddery breath. “I think you’re the sexiest man I’ve ever known.”

  Silence. Dead silence.

  “Well?” I asked. “Your turn.”

  Dario was blushing again. “I think the same thing about you.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Like hell I am.”

  “I have high blood pressure. Really high. Dangerously high.”

  His forehead furrowed. “Do you really?”

  “I do now.”

  He dropped his forehead to my knee and laughed quietly. I jumped when his hand slid under the hem of my trouser leg and his fingers rustled through the hair on my shin.

  I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry.

  When Dario lifted his head to gaze at me again, he was no longer laughing. His black eye was still welded shut so only our three remaining eyes burrowed into each other. We sat quietly on the porch of my old cabin as the darkness of twilight settled around us. The moon peered out from behind a cloud bank to cast my mountain in purple shadow. Gusts of evening breeze stirred the hair on Dario’s head. The finches renewed their fluttering in the eaves. Clutch had stalked off into the bushes in search of prey. Perhaps eyeballing the unreachable finches had made him hungry. I was suddenly hungry. But not for food. Later I would wonder if Dario had seen that hunger in my eyes and if that was why he said what he said next.

  “Take me to bed,” he whispered, his fingers still twisting lazy circles through the hair on my leg, his chin still digging into my knee. “We’ve waited long enough.”

  I reached down to where he knelt before me and gently traced a line along his torn lip. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  His gaze softened and flared with heat at the same time. It was an astonishing thing to watch.

  “You won’t,” he said. “I don’t think you ever will.”

  I had a hunch there was more in that exchange than either of us intended, but we let the words remain in the air, hovering between us, connecting us somehow. I knew the words were true, and I was pretty sure Dario knew it too. I really would never hurt him. At least, he suspected the words were true, and that was good enough for me. More than good enough. It was wonderful. Trust wasn’t something I understood explicitly. But somehow trust was exactly what I felt with the young man before me.

  Dario rose then and gently tugged me to my feet. Without hesitation, he stepped into my arms and burrowed his face into my chest.

  His next words were muffled against my shirt. He was trembling ever so slightly. “My writer,” he said.

  I smiled, inhaling his scent. “My busboy.”

  He lifted his head enough to lay his lips to the base of my throat. I closed my eyes as he skimmed a gentle kiss over my Adam’s apple.

  “I won’t always be a busboy,” he said.

  I pressed a kiss into his hair. “No. I’m sure you won’t.”

  The silence of the mountain settled around us.

  “Bed,
” Dario said again, his lips still on my throat. This time I obeyed.

  IT WAS barely night. The full brunt of darkness had settled over the mountain only minutes before. The bedroom loft was in heavy shadow but for the silver light of the rising moon streaking through the triangular window that comprised the whole west wall. The fire in the fireplace below had warmed the cabin. Even the bedroom above was toasty with the rising heat. The heady scent of wood smoke permeated all.

  Dario stood naked at the foot of the bed, the sleek lines of his body blurred by shadow. His acorn-tinted skin, so much richer and more lustrous than the paleness of my own, was almost indistinguishable from the night shadows surrounding him. I lay naked on the spread, waiting for him, too excited to be nervous. Too in awe of the young god before me to feel unsure of myself.

  “You’re not positive, are you?” he asked.

  “Well, I try to stay upbeat.”

  I heard him snicker and mutter the word, “Ass,” just prior to diving onto the bed beside me. I bounced once, and when I came back down, I found myself trapped in two sweet-smelling arms. The cotton-soft hair on his forearms felt luscious on the bare skin of my back. The hair on his legs bristled against my own. Dario’s laughing breath was as fragrant as mountain wildflowers on my face.

  He snuggled his head into my pillow, and we stared at each other through the moonlight. I could see the sparkle of his teeth. His body lay hot against mine. His cock—and mine—were already bumping heads down below—firm spikes of flesh stroking one against the other, bringing to life every nerve ending in my body. I could feel my legs begin to tremble as my arousal intensified. The nearness of the young man holding me was like a drug, and if I wasn’t an addict before, I was certainly one now.

  In the darkness, Dario rolled me onto my back and dipped his hand between us. His cool fingers slid around my cock. He brushed my slit with his thumb, and my ass rose off the bed to meet his touch.

  Dario eased his mouth to my ear and whispered in a trembling voice, “I don’t think it’s big enough to kill me, but it’s certainly big enough to make me happy.”

  “Thank God,” I breathed. “I’ve been worried all afternoon.”

  He laughed and rose from the bed to straddle my chest with his slim, strong legs. He scooted down until his knees were clamped at my waist, his balls settling over my erect cock, his own cock rising straight up into the air between us.

  He gazed down at me, his hands sliding over my chest, ruffling through the small patch of hair that stretched from one nipple to the other. His fingertips lingered against the hardness of my breastbone as if he enjoyed the solidity of it.

  I laid my hands flat to the heat of his stomach and slid them upward along the clean contours of his torso until I framed his face with my fingertips. He tilted his head into my touch and kissed the palm of my hand. While he fed there, with the other hand, I stroked down across the wales of his rib cage, over his delicate hipbone, until I gathered his cock in my fist as he had done to me. It filled my hand perfectly, throbbing with every exploring movement of my fingers. His pubic hairs bristled against my knuckles. Already, I felt a drop of moisture at the tip of his dick. I slid my fingertip over the fat head to scoop it away, then brought the finger to my mouth, tasting him.

  “Sweet,” I moaned, so hungry for him now I could no longer remain silently supine beneath him.

  I grunted my way up to a sitting position and pressed my lips to his stomach. He let me graze there for a moment before coaxing me back down onto the bed with a shushing sound.

  He leaned over me, his face mere inches from mine. His voice was as husky with desire as my own.

  “I want to take you into my mouth, but I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  I hushed his apology. “I know, I know. Just having you where you are is all I need. Let me take care of you, though. Please, Dario. I’ve never been this hungry for anybody in my life.”

  “Fuck me, then,” he said, breathing the words onto my face like a kiss. “Like this. In this position. Fuck me.”

  I nodded. “Yes. God, yes. If that’s what you want.”

  Still favoring his injury, he laid his lips gently over mine, the barest brush of a kiss. “Don’t move. I’ll get what we need.” Before he rose from the bed, he let his lips linger over mine a moment longer. His tongue slid out to taste my mouth. Then he was gone, thumping down the stairs on his bare feet to the bathroom, where he had left his bag and, presumably, where he had also left whatever he felt he needed. A condom, certainly. Lube, no doubt, and if not, I had a tube in the nightstand by the bed. I had condoms there too, but he hadn’t given me time to offer them. Besides, it was Dario’s show. I would let him do what he felt he needed to do. I just wanted him back with me as quickly as possible.

  As if he heard my silent plea, he raced back up the stairs and flung himself onto the bed, once again gathering my waist between his warm strong legs and holding me prisoner within them.

  Bending over me, he stroked his cheek along my chest, avoiding his injured lips on my skin. His eyelashes brushed my nipple, and I trembled as if an earthquake had been set loose inside my body. At my stomach, he pressed his forehead into me, and I squeezed my eyes shut to better feel the heat of it against my tender skin, the brush of his dark hair, his breath against my hard-on. His fingertips were at my balls, stroking me gently. Cupping me there as if measuring the weight.

  He chuckled lightly as I arched my back into the feel of him, and as I arched, he slid his tongue along my shaft from root to tip, ending with a gentle kiss on the underside of my corona. He gazed up to my face across the planes of my stomach and chest and smiled at the way I trembled.

  “Shh,” he whispered, and with a feather-light touch, he placed a condom atop the head of my cock before expertly rolling it down my shaft as far as it would go.

  I smelled lotion, then felt the coolness of it through the latex as his fingers stroked it over me, coating my cock. He gave a last gentle cupping to my balls before rising up to hover over me once more.

  Guiding my cock with his hand, I felt the world around us fall silent for that long, agonizing heartbeat while our planets aligned. Then, as if a hand were gliding with excruciating slowness into the softness of a heated glove, Dario lowered himself down over me, impaling himself with my cock.

  After that I gripped his hips and guided his movements as he took pleasure in me, and I in him. He cried out once, but it was not a cry of pain. It was a cry of bliss, and I smiled beneath him to hear it.

  With his hands on my chest, he rode me at a gentle pace, taking me all the way inside, then freeing me to almost escape before drawing me back in. The pleasure was exquisite.

  His back arched over me as mine arched beneath him. With his hands at either side of my face, his breath danced over me at every thrust. In the moonlight I could see him smiling down at me. I saw his head tip backward, and he opened his mouth in a silent, jubilant scream as my cock perhaps stroked his most tender spot deep inside.

  Our gasping breaths mingled on the air, the fevered scent of our two bodies merging there as well. The fragrance of it all gathered us together in a cloud of only Dario and me, where nothing else could intervene. Our scents were as joined as our bodies, as our mutual pleasure. They meshed perfectly, creating one exquisite whole.

  We were one thought, with one gentle, incredible purpose.

  Seconds, or minutes, or hours later, when I came inside him, lunging out of control, he hovered over me, staring down. Proprietary. Allowing me my pleasure even as he continued to take his own.

  It was only after I had finished that I realized he had come as well. His juices were splattered across my chest, as hot as lava, as sweet as cane. He came as I had probed deep inside him—

  —spilling his seed without ever once taking his hands from my face.

  DARIO SLEPT as he had the night before in my condo in the city—snuggled inside my arms, his naked back to my naked chest, his face pressed into the palm of my hand. This time he didn�
��t weep in the darkness, but snored softly into my hand with what I imagined was a gentle smile on his face. My own face was pressed to the nape of his neck, where I could best inhale the delicious scent of him as I drifted off to sleep.

  Later, as dawn laid a soft light over my desert hillside, I woke to find Dario once again guiding my cock into him. We made love for the second time as the cabin came alive beneath a yellow sunrise. This time, after I came buried deep inside him, I slid free and urged him onto his back. Taking my time about it, I kissed my way down his stomach until his iron cock lay pressed against my cheek. Inhaling the heat of him and all but dying for the beauty of the man beneath me, I took him into my mouth and coaxed a climax from him. He gasped and thrashed and laughed and sputtered as he filled my mouth with come, his fingers tugging at my hair.

  When our bodies were both at ease and our hearts had ceased to thunder inside our chests, we lay like that for the longest time—his legs around my shoulders, my face burrowed into his mound of pubic hair. The lazy rise and fall of his stomach lifted my smile up and down as he breathed beneath me and stroked my hair. His softened cock, still oozing precious secrets, which I languidly lapped away, lay pressed to my cheek.

  Later, we showered together, which was one more high point of my first thirty years on the planet Earth. Almost all of those high points I had experienced in the company of Dario Martinez over the space of one weekend, which was an epiphany that might have troubled me had I not been so happy about the whole thing.

  We ate breakfast in our sweats, barefoot, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the fireplace. The day was overcast, and the light of the flames flickered over us in the dawning light. Dario cooked again. He made omelets. Honest-to-god omelets, stuffed with cheese and ham, served up with potato chips, which was the closest we could come to hash browns. Between the two of us, we devoured almost a dozen eggs.

  Clutch had slept by the fire all night and was curled up in the log box, snoring softly. He had had a rough night carousing, for he was sprinkled with twigs and burrs. Since he didn’t beg breakfast, he must have devoured some poor unsuspecting creature who failed to escape Clutch’s clutches as he sneaked through the desert underbrush. A vole, maybe, or another of his alligator lizards. I could only feel grateful he hadn’t dragged the carcass into our bed and consumed it there.