by B. G. Thomas
“Hey, Buck!” shouted a man from the other end of the bar. “You serving today?”
“Ah, kiss my ass,” Buck cried. He winked at Wyatt. “I’ll be back.”
Which left Wyatt alone with no idea what to do. He looked around. The baseball game was right out. He’d rather match socks. Match socks while watching Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
So what to do? Get a book out of the car to read?
Maybe take a drink of his rum and Coke? Probably. So he did, and he choked—Crap! How much rum was in this?—and hoped Buck hadn’t noticed. He wasn’t sure, but he thought Buck might be flirting with him. And something told him Buck was a whole lot different than the high school boys he’d fooled around with. Too bad you’re so thin, thought Wyatt. Buck had all that pretty, soft-looking chest hair, but he was sooooooo skinny. He was still hot, but gods, wouldn’t he be even hotter with a bit of belly?
Wyatt looked around the room again and near the entrance spotted what looked like little piles of magazines. He went and checked and found what looked like some kind of combination of a newspaper and a magazine. Several of them. With names like KC Gay Times. Gay newspapers? Why, one even had a sexy, husky, hairy guy on the cover. “Bear Bust” it read. What the hell was that?
He grabbed one of each of the little newspaper things and took them back to his seat, leafed through them, sipped at his cocktail, and became amazed.
It seemed there was all kinds of gay stuff in this city! Had he fallen into paradise? He trembled. Scared. Delighted. Stunned. Bars. Drag shows. Advertisements for bath houses in St. Louis—sexy advertisements! He’d read about places like that online. So they were real! Imagine…. And bear busts. Holy crap! They were for guys like him. Hairy guys. Chubby guys. He’d heard about bears when he was on the Internet too. But to think. The guys he really liked, the ones that really turned him on—never the high school football star with his tiny waist and all muscles but men like Mr. Carson, the shop room teacher, older, big and burly, and hairy—the ones he’d masturbated thinking about late at night. They were right here in this city! And they were advertising!
He’d died and gone to the Summerlands!
“How’s that drink coming along?” Buck asked him, making him jump.
It was only about half-gone. Wyatt had been very busy reading his magazines. “I’m okay for now. Give me a little bit.” What he wanted was something to eat. All he’d had since he left Damview was a dollar cheeseburger from McDonalds, and he was starving. He already felt buzzed.
“You have anything to eat here?” he asked.
“There’s popcorn,” Buck answered and cocked a thumb in the direction of a small movie-theater-style popcorn maker near the door.
Wyatt all but ran to it, filled one of the cardboard rectangular bowls provided, and made his way back to his stool, eating as he went. He finished it in seconds. He couldn’t slow down.
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
Wyatt turned to see a big man sitting a couple of stools down. Really big. When had he gotten here? He was seated, so Wyatt couldn’t be sure, but he looked like he was probably at least six foot. He was bald, but it was sexy, and he had a fairly thick beard that was shaved down to the jaw line. Like that bartender, he was wearing a wifebeater, and it did nothing to hide his huge hairy chest, and unlike Buck, this guy had a nice sexy belly.
Wow, Wyatt thought. He’s fucking hot!
The man studied him with sexy dark eyes. Like he was waiting for something.
Oh! He hadn’t answered the man’s question. Shit! And embarrassed, he simply shrugged in response.
The big man sighed. He looked to be at least thirty, a good twelve years Wyatt’s senior. “And you can’t really afford anything, can you?”
Wyatt shrugged again.
“What were you going to use to buy something if Buck had told you they did have food?”
Wyatt paused. Shrugged once more.
The man shook his head. “Tell you what. I was about to order a pizza—”
Wyatt’s mouth immediately began to salivate.
“—so how about if I share?”
Wyatt could only sit there in surprise. “I… I don’t want to take your dinner!”
He laughed. “That’s okay, baby bear. I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t mean it.”
Wyatt didn’t know what to say. It was charity. His father had always told him not to take charity. But his dad said all kinds of crazy shit. Like God made Eve out of Adam’s rib! And Wyatt was hungry. Really hungry. He gave a single nod.
The man moved a seat closer. “What’s your name, baby bear?”
Wyatt shivered. Gods. Was this happening to him? This was like something right out of one of Wyatt’s wet dreams.
“Wyatt,” he replied.
Now he’s going to say, “Like Earp?”
But he didn’t. Instead he said, “Well, I’m Howard,” and held out his hand. Wyatt’s all but vanished in Howard’s callused and considerably bigger one. Wyatt trembled again. Felt his penis shifting in his jeans.
“Nice to meet you, Wyatt. Now what do you like on your pizza?”
“I like pepperoni,” Wyatt said quietly. “And sausage.”
“Didn’t hear you,” the man said.
Apparently the lady belting out, “I’m a red-necked woman,” from the jukebox had drowned him out. Wyatt gulped. “I like pepperoni and sausage,” more loudly this time.
Howard laughed. “I bet you do! How about some mushrooms?” He arched an eyebrow suggestively.
Wow. This guy was really flirting with him. Right here in public! And he was so hot.
“Whatever you want,” Wyatt replied.
Howard leaned in close and in a husky voice said, “What I want is for you to take your shirt off. That’ll pay for your pizza and at least one more rum and Coke.”
Wyatt shivered. God. Wyatt looked down at the table. Take his shirt off? Right here in the bar? He turned his face back up and looked shyly at the big man.
“I’m kidding,” Howard said and then leaned closer. “Mostly.”
“You—you really want me to take my shirt off right here?” Wyatt said, his voice almost a squeak. Thank goodness the song had faded, and the new one was a little quieter.
“Why not?” The response was almost a growl. He pointed over Wyatt’s shoulder.
Wyatt turned and saw that the two guys who had been watching the muted baseball game were now kissing without the incentive of anything happening on the screen. And both had taken their shirts off. When had they done that?
And as if to encourage him, the song on the jukebox had shifted to one about how no shirt and no shoes were no problem at all for him.
“I will if you will,” Howard said.
God. He wanted to see Howard’s chest. He wanted to see his belly.
“O-okay,” Wyatt said bashfully, his heart pounding. And pulled his shirt off over his head.
Howard made a sighing sound and got close again and said, “Oh, my. Soooo nice.”
Me? thought Wyatt incredulously.
Howard liked his chest? And told Wyatt he liked his tummy too. A lot. Asked politely if he could touch. And, trembling, Wyatt had given permission.
The touching had been so gentle. Not at all what he expected from the big man. His fingers raked slowly through the hair on Wyatt’s chest—“So soft,” Howard whispered—and his nipples went as hard as two little pebbles as Howard’s fingertips brushed them. His cock grew even harder. He could feel it leaking in his underwear.
And when Howard whipped off his wifebeater and offered to let Wyatt touch him, Wyatt did so with shaking hands. Gods. So sexy. Howard was sweating a little too. Not a lot. Just a little. The wetness was sexy as hell. And he could smell him too. It wasn’t acrid or gross. Just man. All man. Like the boys in the locker room right after PE class. Fresh.
But this was manlier. Not boy at all.
The pizza came, and it was huge, and Wyatt all but fell upon it. Howard only laughed an
d encouraged him to eat all he wanted.
They talked. They talked and talked and talked. Wyatt told him about how his day had started and where it had gone, the violence, throwing as many of his worldly possessions as he could into his Camry and then driving away. The last sight, his mother, hysterical, in his rearview mirror—and wondering if he would ever see her again. He started to cry at the end of his story, and Howard shifted his chair around—they’d moved to a table by then (getting a scowl from Buck in the process)—and then he was holding Wyatt against that big soft chest. Soft, but hard underneath. There were muscles of steel under that padding and Wyatt had gotten hard again, even while he cried. Somewhere along the line, he let his hand drop to Howard’s belly, and it was so sexy he thought he might shoot off in his pants.
But he didn’t.
They had more drinks, Howard drinking small pitchers of beer—no glass—and plying Wyatt with all the rum and Cokes he wanted. Even buying some shots called Cock Sucking Cowboys, and boy, hadn’t that been funny? And they were so good! Wyatt had protested at first, said he was getting drunk and could he just have some water, and that’s when Howard said it. “We’re not allowed….”
“Allowed?” Wyatt asked.
“We’re gay,” Howard said. “Boring nonalcoholic stuff is not allowed. Gay men are required to drink alcohol. Besides, you know about water—right?”
Wyatt said he didn’t.
“Fish fuck in it,” Howard replied and then shuddered.
Wyatt laughed. More than he should have probably, but by now he was drunk.
Then, since he’d already told Howard just what his father had found in his room and the full extent of why he’d been kicked out of his home, he shyly asked if Howard would like a tarot reading. Howard said that he would.
So Wyatt went to his piece-of-shit car and got his deck—thank the gods he’d had his favorite deck in his car or who knew what fate might have befallen it—and brought it back and read Howard’s cards. Howard had been intrigued by it all. Said the layout wasn’t at all what he was used to.
Wyatt had looked up, surprised.
“You know about that?” he’d asked.
Howard nodded. “The usual layout is called a Celtic Cross, right?”
“Yes!” Wyatt said, thrilled that the man knew.
“There’s a placement for your past, your future, above, and below, and I forget the rest.”
“Yes!” Wyatt nodded happily.
“But the way you’re laying the cards down. It seems… random. And you don’t reverse any of the cards. They’re all right-side up….”
Wyatt grinned. Howard really did know about the tarot! “Well… there was this big fair in town once,” Wyatt said. “And I went into the gypsy tent—at least the lady was pretending to be a gypsy. She was doing the standard layout and something kind of funny happened. She saw I knew a little about the cards, and she stopped and looked at me and then swept them all up—I thought I’d pissed her off at first—and then she said, ‘You have the eye, don’t you?’ Well! I didn’t know what to say, and I sorta shrugged—you know?”
Howard nodded encouragingly.
“And then she just started putting the cards down wherever, and sometimes she would say a card meant what I’ve read they meant and sometimes she would say something different. Totally different. And she told me that was what I needed to do! To say whatever popped into my head. She told me something horrible was going to happen, but not to worry. That I would go on a journey, and I would find my way. And gods…. Howard. Do you think she meant today? It was certainly fucking horrible! And I took a journey….”
“Maybe I can help you find your way,” Howard said. And his voice was so gentle, but strong and warm, and he reached out and took Wyatt’s cheek in his big rough hand.
Wyatt was stunned. He didn’t know what to say.
Pulling his hand back—Wyatt hadn’t wanted him to stop touching like that—Howard said, “What does my reading say about tonight?”
“Tonight?” Wyatt looked down at the cards spread out in several rows before them.
Howard nodded. “Does it say if I am going home alone tonight?”
Wyatt had to fight to keep his mouth from falling open.
“I—I….” He looked back down at the last two cards he’d placed on the table. That was the Page of Cups. A young man. Usually a bit effeminate. Is that me? And the Knight of Swords was right next to it. Brave. Strong. Was that Howard?
He looked back up at Howard, suddenly afraid.
Howard reached out again and this time laid a hand gently on Wyatt’s. “Not trying to scare you. But you don’t have any place to stay. If you want, I can make you a place on my couch.”
Wyatt felt his eyes well up with tears.
“Tomorrow I can look at your car. I’m pretty good with them. Maybe I can fix it.”
“Gosh,” Wyatt managed. His voice caught. No more words would come out.
“Is that a yes?”
Wyatt paused. Then wondered why. True, he didn’t know this man. True, the guy could be taking him home to rape and kill him. But hell. What was he going to do? Sleep in the car? And tomorrow?
“I—I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Finish the reading,” Howard said gently. Wyatt could hear him because there was a ballad playing. He recognized this one. Shania Twain’s “From This Moment.” For some reason his heart started to pound.
Wyatt turned another card over.
The Ace of Cups.
He gasped.
He looked up.
Howard was watching him with those dark eyes. Wyatt’s heart trip-hammered.
“Well?” Howard asked him.
“A-Ace of C-Cups,” Wyatt stuttered.
Howard smiled. Did he know what it meant?
“Cups are emotions,” Wyatt got out somehow. “Aces are new beginnings….”
Howard smiled. “I like the sound of that.”
Wyatt swallowed hard.
And he went home with Howard.
He didn’t sleep on the couch.
WYATT DIDN’T know sex could be like it was that night. Drunken fumblings with mostly straight boys (or at least boys who wouldn’t consider that they might be gay) and porn hadn’t prepared him for a gay man making love to him.
And the surprises started before then. The apartment was huge. Beautiful. There were several plaques on the wall over the couch. A Pan, a Green Man, and a lovely triskelion. Three different pagan symbols. Could it be…? Or did Howard have them simply because they were considered cool these days?
He looked up at Howard, who was at least six feet tall, questions in his eyes. “Are you…?” Then he stopped. He couldn’t say it. For some reason “gay” was easier. But pagan? Wiccan? He’d never met anyone who was actually pagan before. Sure there had been a couple girls at school who wore black and painted their faces pale and used black lipstick and tons of mascara and said they were witches. But they were more into the movie The Craft than anything real. Could Howard…. “You know the cards,” he said. “And you have these plaques. Is it just because you like them or…?”
Howard smiled and turned around and there between his shoulder blades was a pentacle tattoo the size of a saucer. How in the world had he missed that?
“So you’re… pagan?” There! He’d said it.
“It’s the closest thing I’ve found to what I believe.”
“I’ve never met anyone who believes the way I do,” Wyatt said.
“So you’ve never done Ritual with anyone?” Howard asked him.
Wyatt shook his head. Found he was trembling again.
“Do you want to see my altar?”
Wyatt managed only a nod.
Of course it was in his bedroom. A bedroom with the biggest bed Wyatt had ever seen.
Howard went to a corner to what looked like an army locker up on one end. It was draped with a silk cloth. On top were several glass pillar candles—which Howard lit—and a statue of a dancing satyr.
It was naked, one hoof raised high, playing the panpipes. It sat on top of a wooden box. Howard pointed at it. “My deck is in there. But I’m a pretty shitty reader. I can’t do anything without consulting the book for every single card.” He opened a long slender box that lay in front of it, took out a stick of incense, lit it from the candle, and placed it in its place on the wooden burner. Without turning he said, “I could take you to a ritual if you wanted. With all men. All gay men.”
“What?” Wyatt gawked at him. “There are gay rituals?”
Howard chuckled. It was more of a rumble. Wyatt got goose bumps.
Howard made one of his little growls again, and Wyatt shivered delightfully. “And sometime we go skyclad.”
Wyatt, who had of course read Scott Cunningham’s and Starhawk’s books on the Craft, knew what that meant. “Oh. I don’t think I could be naked in front of a bunch of guys. Especially gay guys.” He blushed again. He’d hated taking showers in gym class. To just stand around naked in front of other gay men? No way. They might laugh.
“And camping!” Howard exclaimed as if he hadn’t heard what Wyatt had said. “You would love Men’s Festival.”
“Men’s Festival?” What in the world was that?
Howard nodded. “Heartland Queer Men’s Festival. It’s at the end of July. Anywhere from a hundred to a hundred and fifty gay men, out in the woods for close to two weeks. It’s great. It’s like this big gay brotherhood. We do this big Queer God Ritual one night—”
Wyatt’s mouth fell open. “Queer god ritual…?”
“—and there’s a talent show. One day we usually have a big group mud bath. There’s an auction and there’s food and swimming in the lake and—” He arched his eyebrows. “—and skinny-dipping.”
There was that naked thing again. “I don’t know.” The skinny-dipping he’d done at home was late at night, and it had been dark. “I just don’t think I could get naked in front of people.”
Howard reached out and cupped Wyatt’s cheek like he had in the bar. Gazed into his eyes. They stood for what seemed like forever.
And then Howard kissed him.
Wyatt had never been kissed before. Not by a boy. And certainly not by a man. His knees turned to water, and he almost fell. Howard’s strong arms kept that from happening.