Broken Rainbows

by Rager, Bob

  As a thick-waisted street walker strolled by, Madame X shook her head in bafflement. Her lips plunged down at the corner, her eyes rolled, the eyelashes fluttered spasmodically, and she wagged her head, sending her gold door knocker earrings swinging back and forth. Her move was Grand Opera, her emotions readable all the way from the balcony.

  “These people,” she said to no one in particular, but others turned to hear. Madame X has standing on K and 4th Avenue and she commanded attention, “They’re off the farm. They put on a cheap store wig and think they can shake down a John for change. It’s insulting to our profession.”

  Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

  “Uh, Uh,”

  The gunfire rang out from somewhere across the street, from the black hole of an alley.

  Their heels clattering, the crowd rushed up the street as they run away, anywhere, every direction, away from the side street.

  Everyone except Madame X, oh she wasn’t running. In two steps she was behind the metal booth at the entrance of the parking lot, safely behind a dozen rows of metal boxes. She watched the alley.

  A moment passed, the entire block eerily silent, vacant, the traffic gone.

  Madame X nodded, “hmmm”. A woman ran flat out of the alley’s blackness. She tilted and swerved this way and that, then fled along a wall of billboards, a sign that exclaims “Capital Glamour!”, “Luxury Condos!” She ran to the parking lot kiosks.

  “They’re craaaaazy! This white boy from Virginia,” the words ran together, ‘white boy from Virginia’, “pulls out a gun and starts shooting in the air while I’m going down on him. Fucking white trash.”

  Madame X eyed the woman sizing her up. A genital female, no Adams apple, small wrists, even, clear paper bag color skin, black mini dress with rhinestones at the neckline and ankle boots. The skin color is interesting: still fresh, not been at this too long, still healthy, the accent is not urban south – suburban Atlanta?

  Madame X figured this honey colored kid is a moonlighting student, finding out about “real life”. The kid was shivering now, the adrenaline rush disintegrating into the shakes.

  The kid’s eyes were wide – vivid white pupils around a dilated green.

  “Oh my God!” the kid wailed. All this time Madame X has watched in silence, nothing she sees moved her. Then she hauled back and she slapped the kid hard.

  “Now listen you cheap ass bitch. You get the hell off my block and if I see your skinny ass again, you’re gonna really have something to cry about.” Madame X raised her hand and the kid started running.

  “Yeah,” Madame X said, “that’s right. Run back and get a cab back to school.” She gave herself a moment of disgust.

  Boys and men who call themselves straight cruised the street along with the Johns, white, black. The ‘straight boys’ were fans of the girls and drove compact cars that make outsize roars and growls. The Johns drove fancy cars, big sedans, even the occasional van, liberated from the driveway at the end of the cull de sac.

  The street pulsed about 3am; the nether world between night and day when the shadows squirm alive, itches erupt that can no longer be ignored, hunger that becomes all that matters, sense and restraint worn out and exhausted, a hunger that could be for drugs, sex, excitement, adrenaline, all of these, any, or none, all at once.

  Gradually the girls returned. They lighted cigarettes – the fingers tapering to the inky fantasies of black studded with rhinestones. No Chinese Empress possessed more useless fingers than these.

  A murmur, then chatter, laughs, a keening, buzzing.

  The traffic thickened, the Johns cruised by; nothing can keep them away for long. Madame X shrugged.

  Without turning her head she spotted a black sedan, out of place among the Japanese performance cars and down market fancy cars.

  ‘Guests,’ she thinks, ‘disoriented by the time changes, Eurotrash think it’s chic to cruise the dark streets, like visitors at a zoo of humanity, the animals safely behind the glass, their smell, their snarling framed by the upholstery of their limousines.’

  Some folks were still discovering the sexual revolution, right here throwing themselves at it. The revolution, running headlong bare ass naked, then thongs flopping, eyes and faces blank with astonishment.

  A white panel van parked at across the street. There must be a pow wow in town, the G Summit or Councils. ‘Let’s see’, Madame X thought, ‘The FBI, CIA, Metro PD, State Department Police, DEA, DOD. You could cook a frozen TV dinner with all the microwaves crisscrossing the street.’

  “Hmm.” Madame X saw that hustler from the Nickel bar wandering along the shadows. “Mixed bag tonight.”

  Chapter 29

  It wasn’t fair now free to gaze on a young man, to feel weak at the sight of his finer textured skin, as tender as a rose bud, to run his fingertips across the mouthwatering muscles at his waist and hips and slowly because he was no longer in haste, but wanting instead to feel and know every second now that the seconds were all that he had. It wasn’t fair that he should now after all these years open wide his eyes, that his heart would beat so wildly, that he was breathing the faint sweat in the crook of the man’s neck, felt the coarse stubble of the chin on his lips, a sensation that was like discovering a new part of his body; had he never known a man as fully as this? Simply he remembered the first time he had ever been inside a man— decades ago inside a cubicle in the basement of the Ansonia Hotel; it happened so quickly, it was all over before he knew it.

  ‘No, tonight now,’ he thought. Nothing else seemed to matter. Everything happened in slow, exquisite motion, each second a drop of healing balm, a sting of excitement, a pang in his heart knowing that everything he had ever wanted in knowing a man was here before him, the urgencies of lust, mingling with connection so overwhelming that he felt he was drowning in his body.

  They were now lying facing each other clasping each other in an embrace… He was afraid to look into these eyes afraid that this was an apparition that would disappear when examined too closely, and then he was just afraid, afraid because of these strange stinging feelings, afraid he might laugh or sob and afraid because he didn’t know which, afraid because he was feeling so much just holding this man, pushing the man’s back so their bodies and groins pressed together, feeling a leg thrown over his hips, a thigh pressing, urging him.

  The silent stranger watched him, their noses touching and with his lips covered his mouth taking deep breaths as if inhaling wine. And then they nodded to each other. He lay on top of him now; he looked on as the nameless stranger squeezed his cock, pressing out his pre-cum then putting his hand down beneath his balls to wipe his asshole. And again they nodded to each other. Baffled and surprised he felt the narrow muscled legs come up and over his shoulders. He was surprised still when another man wanted his cock inside him, something that he had tried and found too painful to enjoy.

  He pushed and explored with his cock. He saw a tube of lubricant and squeezed a glob onto his fingers then rubbed them across the hot sphincter filling its faint creases, the secret center of another flower.

  He pressed the head of his hard cock between the man’s butt and moaned as he slid in feeling the hot, tight grasp, if melting into him.

  He wanted to please this silent golden man with the light fluid legs and arms of an adolescent boy. Usually he felt only the urgency to reach his own orgasm but now he didn’t care if he came or not. With each thrust of his hips he plunged into ecstasy and moans and quiet gasps of private surrender came from both.

  He was too excited to come. This had happened before when extreme pleasure numbed him. And he wondered if this man could endure his assault; yet the moans reached his ears; low quiet gasps that were meant only for each other. The golden man stretched backward and pulled his arms and draped him over his shoulders and then caressed the backs of his hands with his lips.

  Their heads again pressed together, he took his lover’s ear into his mouth, who else could this be? So much tenderness in their gentle press
ing and exploring. Then thinking he might hurt the man with his thrusting-- surely a sphincter was as fragile as any other human flesh-- he gasped again and again into the haven of the man’s ear, and felt a squeeze and pull of his cock in return. That’s all this man wanted, a man inside him, a man spilling himself inside him, the weight and power of another man, the muscles and the flesh, merely the physical clumsy crude shell of their union.

  He slowly pulled out, his breathing ragged, sweat across his face, and lay beside him. To his surprise the golden man rolled over on top of him and again embraced him to keep him from flying apart, to hold him down to keep from falling.

  He was still hard; more so with all this muscle, pressing on him. They looked into each other’s eyes, the golden man’s eyes a deep amber, his brows little curves first in puzzlement then a smile that disappeared as he kissed his nipples, each kiss closer and closer to his cock until again he felt the not wet of his lips around his rigid shaft then ripples of dripping ecstasy as he sucked and pulled up and sucked and pushed down, slowly at first then gradually faster and faster.

  But this way he needn’t worry about hurting this willing and patient bottom man. To help both of them he reached down thinking he could jerk himself off but the bottom didn’t yield even after he tried to push his mouth away to force away his mouth and rob him of the pleasure he wanted so much, the golden man now moaning in hunger with each plunge of his head to his groin. Instead he licked the base of his cock with his fingers and squeezed tight and began stroking himself staying in the hungry mouth.

  The head of his cock felt huge, engorged by a flame of licking pleasure that grew larger and hotter, then engulfed him as he lost himself in his orgasm. He heard the moans from himself from them both, the cocksucker holding him in his mouth as jets of cum carried him down the bottom’s throat.

  He looked down his chest at dark thick curls. He was covered in sweat now, his and the bottom. With effort he caught his breath. Then the golden man pushed himself to his knees and rising like a waking fawn, flexed his arms and smiled down at him, his throat throbbing with deep swallows as he devoured him.

  He lingered in this pose, his body arched, his thighs taut showing off his body, sweat gleaming on his skin, sweat making ringlets in his hairy chest.

  He stared, how he watched the firm arms, the hard butt, the taut bow of his thighs; his eyes roved over this body, his hunger to express his longing without shame, satisfied at last.

  Without a word between them, a moment passed, and gone, he knew what he was supposed to do. He sat up on the edge of the bed, the bed again just a vinyl-covered foam mattress in this bath house. The bottom again just another stranger among many that wandered restlessly its hallways. Another anonymous encounter, one of a countless such encounters going as far back as his last year of college.

  “Thank you,” he said so quietly he wasn’t sure he had actually spoken the words. He pulled his towel down from the hook on the door and found his key hanging underneath it. He felt numb again but there was no pleasure, just numb as if his body had gone asleep from the neck down.

  The golden bottom had his back to him now as if to say ‘what’ to ignore him? Telling him that whatever had happened was all over? He didn’t even feel slighted if it was a slight. Everything that mattered had already happened. He had come here a starving man and feasted and now he was leaving sated.

  He had been the top, supposedly the dominant aggressor, a man moving as a man does, the bottom the passive and weak, even effeminate, yet this man held the upper hand, had him inside him now, had taken what he wanted and having what he wanted no longer needed him, superfluous and spent.

  He could leave now, he thought; there was nothing for him now tonight how could there be after what had just happened? There was nothing to do, nothing to say and he slipped through the door leaving the door ajar behind him, leaving his thoughts behind as he walked down a dark hallway to the showers. His only thoughts were the here and now. He must shower, he must dress, he had the blank stare of a man who has just been in an explosion and walked out of a fireball dazed, acting without thinking.

  In this state of suspended life he pulled his jeans on, he pulled his t-shirt over his head; slipped into his cowboy boots. Then drawn as by a strange force he found himself standing at a urinal, the communal shower in view before him.

  And there under the glittering cascade of water stood the golden bottom: Although the shape was human, the powerful arms and ropey muscles of his thighs and calves seemed more like a wild animal unbound by polite rules, the pretense of responsibility and the burden, the weight of convention. Even in this place certain rules held away, an indifference to other searchers pretending not to see the other men they were searching for.

  As he watched another man tall and pallid walked past the golden man to stand at the next shower head and the golden bottom turned to him, the water pouring down him in rippling sheets. There he stood, his arms hanging down, the marble hard stomach.

  He was surprised that under the bright lights the bottom’s ass lay in loose folds just where they joined the back of his copper thigh. But he didn’t care.

  Even when the tall pale man turned around and stood and returned the bottom’s open gaze, he didn’t care, he willed himself not to care. He knew ahead what would happen and he turned away and went to his cubicle to gather up his limp towel and while there he was seized by an impulse to see the golden bottom just one more time but when he returned to the showers he was already gone and so was the pale man, the newest of his admirers.

  He left, pulling himself away, fighting an undertow that had sprung suddenly from nowhere. He was confused by what he felt, because he didn’t know its name, he had known unhappiness, he had known pain. Yet here he was still walking, the street the same 14th Street, the world remained the same even though he had been wrenched and tossed by what had just happened.

  And what was that? What had just happened? He shook his head. The golden bottom had held him with the arms of skill and experience, drawn from somewhere deep and unfamiliar. The silent harmony that sprang up from their bodies, his head bent in submission as if at his own execution; too afraid to look down at the bottom when he bent down on his knees to hold him in his lips.

  He had been helpless though he had moved like a man over the bottom’s back, as he had lain on top of him reminding himself of the power of his arms and thighs.

  And now as he walked away he felt what he had seen in the eyes of other men, the hollow eyes that looked at him when asking for his telephone number, the eyes uncertain of his answer, hope and fear spinning around in their chests.

  He had seen that longing and now he felt it too as the other must have felt it. The longing of men for other men, the demon in the shadows of his life. Longing and hope even when he was now in the eyes of the golden man just another nameless stranger in passing. Married men, married to men or married to women or the more or less married, men who didn’t score at the clubs, men who couldn’t or wouldn’t cruise the streets or the parks came here to meet. He understood that. The golden man could treat him as if he were the only man that mattered and go on to another man and with skillful hands and eager mouth and gentle smiles make the next man feel that he was the only man that mattered practicing his magic again and again long into the night.

  He knew this but knowing didn’t matter. Maybe he imagined even as he knew it was impossible that some whimsical twist of fate he might glimpse the golden man again, at the opera he thought with a sad smile, like characters in a Russian novel dressed in silks and trimmed in gold, he might catch the eye of the fabulous creature but this man was not a gilded youth.

  His thoughts frightened him; they came from nowhere he could understand, and called to him in whispers of a foreign language; his own longing had kidnapped him and he had become a hostage of his own heart.

  He walked for hours across P street passing through ranks of men in suits and women in suits, over P Street Bridge above Rock Creek Park. Down
there in its thickets and tangles men hungry for each other escaped into the privacy of leafy bowers, only a few feet away from the marching footmen of bureaucracy. He walked across cobblestone streets and past the disapproving facades of Georgetown. He turned back, the freeze-dried houses reminded him of a mummy preserved in plastic.

  He found himself standing on 17th Street staring at a crowded restaurant, at men sitting outside in the cool spring almost warm evening. Their animation fascinated him and he studied them, men who sought each other for… sex to be sure but there was something else. The men laughing, men eating together talking to each other. What were they laughing about, what did they talk about he wondered? No; it was all a charade, a pantomime that at its core was foolish empty display. Still he watched, spying on a world that was so close he could by reaching out touch it. He looked on, a man lost at sea floating on a raft in a great ocean watching a ship glittering in the night as it swept by leaving him behind tossed by the furious wake of his own confusion, his loss, the debris of life. He turned away afraid, not sure if he was about to cry or howl. All the fear he had buried and had hidden was erupting and fusing with grief into something hard and cold, a glass heart. He had been searching for something, there had always been a target, a bull’s eye and now he could barely think.

  Then in a sudden fury he damned anyone, and everyone, someone to lash out at before he shredded himself to unrecognizable pieces. And all he thought of was… Glandings.

  Had Glandings really saved him? Was he a wise teacher that had seen his talent and made a path for him, had praised his full work, his analysis, his insights but all he really was… was a whore, a weapon wielded by this master intelligence?

  He stumbled along P Street consumed by his loathing of himself. He had lured the sad and the lonely, the naked and the hard, the weak and despairing; he had whispered in their ears telling them the secrets of their own hearts; he had looked into the eyes of men starved by frustration and stirred the spark of trust into a flame that lacking the fuel of hope, guttered and went out leaving even darker their desperation.