by Plakcy, Neil
I was also obsessed with Walter. I listened to the Spanish-language gossip behind his back and learned that he had gotten married very young, while he was still in college. His wife’s father was wealthy and politically connected, and he had helped Walter’s career in big and small ways. But the marriage hadn’t lasted, and he was in the middle of a divorce. It was an awkward one, because his father-in-law was one of the investors in the warehouse project.
There was apparently no new girlfriend in the picture. Some said that Walter’s wife had cheated on him; others that he had worked too hard and ignored her. I didn’t know whom to believe. The only important thing, I figured, was that he was straight and therefore not worth lusting after. At least, I kept telling myself that.
Getting Wet
I stayed as late as I could each day that first week; I didn’t have a key to the trailer, so I had to leave when the last manager did. Walter stuck his head in my office door a few minutes after six Thursday evening. He wore a ratty white T-shirt from a charity fund-raiser, electric-yellow nylon running shorts, and expensive sneakers. He looked so handsome and sexy I had to close my mouth to keep from gaping.
“I’m going for a run,” he said. “You’ll still be here for a half hour or so?”
“Take as long as you want,” I said, struggling to stay aloof. “I’m reviewing the drywall contract, and it’s a bear.”
“You having a problem with something?”
“I don’t understand the penalty clause,” I said.
“Let me show you.” He stepped into my office and bent over the contract beside me. I was so conscious of his body next to mine that it felt like my brain circuits had fried. His scent, a mix of lemon cologne, sweat, and dust, filled my nostrils.
“You have to keep an eye on the penalties,” he said, moving my hand off the pages so he could lift a couple up. My skin tingled from his touch.
He went back and forth from the schedule to the penalty clause, pointing out what had to happen in order for the contractor to get his full pay—and what the consequences were if his schedule ran too long and interfered with the work of other trades.
He was excited by the ideas—his voice caught a couple of times, and it was almost like his pulse was racing. That excitement was contagious. “I get it,” I said. “I see how it works.”
He stood up, and there was a look in his eyes I couldn’t quite understand. I guessed it was pride—he was pleased that I was learning. “I’d better get out there.” He backed away, knocking into the door frame, then turned and hurried out. I got a great view of his ass, and the way the bright yellow fabric clung to his cheeks got me hard.
I knew it was stupid, but I couldn’t help myself. My handsome, straight boss had stolen my heart. Walter Loredo was everything I wanted in a man—he was charming and smart, and old enough to satisfy the craving I had for mature men. Looking at him made my heart race and my dick jump. But I was going to have to tough it out, keeping my desire hidden; I needed the job and the experience, and I needed to learn how to control my libido too.
After I pored over the contracts for a while, I took a break and looked out the window. Walter pounded across the site, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. He swerved and darted to avoid new trenches, stacks of stockpiled materials, and parked earthmovers and cranes.
I couldn’t figure out where he got the energy. I’d only been on the job for four days, and I was beat. I’d worked full-time jobs before, during the summer, but never ones as physically and mentally demanding as being a construction manager for Loredo.
Walter returned to the trailer as I was ready to give up work for the day. We were the last ones left on-site, and he pulled his T-shirt over his head as he walked in the trailer’s front door. His chest was magnificent—muscular, lightly furred, with areolas around his nipples as big as quarters.
He used the T-shirt to wipe his forehead. “Make a note, Manny,” he said. “The rear tire on the golf cart looks like it’s going flat. And the forms on the northwest corner of building one are crooked.”
I scribbled the notes. “You saw all that as you were running?”
He smiled. “Gotta keep an eye on things.” He raised his right arm and sniffed under his pit. “Better get out of here before I stink up the place. You go on, and I’ll follow you in a minute.”
I grabbed an empty manila folder to hold in front of my crotch, and I hurried out to my car. My dick was so hard I was tempted to pull off the highway and give myself some relief, but I managed to hold out until I got home and could lock myself in the bathroom with the ABC Book again.
The next day was Friday, the start of the Memorial Day weekend. I worked at contracts and drawings all day. There was a big exodus of cars, pickups, and guys walking down to the bus stop at three thirty when the contractors shut down, and by four o’clock the site was deserted. I was alone in the trailer with Estefani when Walter walked in. “What are you two still doing here?” he said. “Get out of here. Go enjoy the holiday.”
“Yes, sir,” Estefani said. She began clearing her desk as Walter went into his office.
I was thrilled just to get three days to catch up on sleep. I waved good-bye to Walter and Estefani and got into my car, feeling like a kid who’d been let out of school early. When I got home, Larry was lounging in the living room, and Gavin was winging his way to his parents’ vacation home on a lake in Wisconsin.
Larry asked me to go out on a bar cruise with him, but I was too pooped. After he left, I crawled into bed. Lying there naked, my right index finger diddling the top of my stiff dick, I thought again about Walter Loredo. I don’t know when I dozed off, but I dreamed that Walter and I were walking together on-site after everybody else had left, and we got caught in a downpour. We had to run all the way from the fourth building pad back to the trailer, the two of us laughing and enjoying getting soaked. By the time we got inside, our clothes looked like they’d been through the rinse cycle in a washing machine, waiting to get spun.
* * * *
I sneezed once, and Walter said, “You’d better get out of those wet clothes before you catch a cold.” He pulled his dripping polo shirt over his head and shook the water from his hair. His abs had a little padding—not too much, but enough so you could rest your head there without landing on bone. Just the way I liked them.
“Go on, Manny. What are you waiting for?” Walter said as he unbuttoned his khakis. My polo shirt was a big sodden mass, and I had trouble getting it over my head.
“Let me give you a hand with that.” Walter stepped up to me, his belt and pants hanging open, and lifted the wet shirt over my head. My nostrils filled with the smell of him, lemon and sweat and clean rain. Then he leaned in and kissed me.
His lips were wet and so were mine, but I could feel the heat radiating through them. He wrapped his arms around me, and I leaned forward and pressed my smooth cheek against his grizzled one, feeling my skin tingle. He pushed his wet chest on mine, and he ran his arms up and down my back. “Oh, Manny,” he whispered in my ear, and nibbled on the lobe.
My dick swelled and pressed against my pants, and I felt the heat of Walter’s body drying my wet skin. His dick was hard too, and I tried to shimmy against him, but he pulled away and began to drop the rest of his soaking clothes in a frenzy. I matched him, and Walter hoisted me on his desk, pushing aside the paperwork and the project drawings, and spread my legs open.
He got down on his knees in front of the desk and slurped up and down my shaft. I whimpered and ran my hands through his wet, wavy hair. With one hand, he played with my balls, and with the other traced patterns along my thigh that made me shiver with ecstasy.
He was a master cocksucker, with the kind of experience you only get with age. He nibbled my mushroom cap and flicked his tongue at the sensitive spot just beneath it. He sucked on the top while stroking my shaft up and down. Way too quickly I felt my orgasm rising. “No, Walter,” I said, trying to push his head away from my dick. “I’m going to…”
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He wouldn’t let go, and I shot off in his mouth. He swallowed every drop and then stood up with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Young and full of cum,” he said. “The way I like my men.” He pulled me toward him and kissed me, and I tasted my own semen on his lips, salty and dirty, and even though I’d just shot off, I felt my dick stiffening again.
Walter turned me around so I was leaning down with my hands planted on his desk. Once again he dropped to his knees, this time eating my ass, prying the cheeks apart with his hands and attacking my hole with his tongue. He released one cheek and grabbed my dick with that hand, pulling it straight down and squeezing it. I thought I’d go crazy from the sensation. He was the best lover I’d ever had, and I didn’t want it to end.
He stood up and guided his dick toward my puckered hole. With his index finger, he rubbed the ring around my sphincter, opening me like a flower to receive him. “Oh, God, I want you,” he said. I heard the drawer of his desk get yanked open, and his free hand fumbling through the contents.
I felt a squirt of cold liquid in my ass, and I contracted my muscles, then opened them again. Walter had a condom on his dick, and he was nosing against my hole with his tip. I took a deep breath and said, “Please, Walter, fuck me.”
He pushed forward gently. There was no pain, only pleasure, only the sense that I was opening my body to receive him, that we were sharing in this amazing give-and-take.
“Do you love me, Manny?” he whispered.
“Oh, Walter,” I said. “Oh, yes.”
“Show me, baby,” he said. “Use that ass.”
I pushed back against him, and we built up a rhythm, him jackhammering into me, whispering things in English and Spanish, telling me what a good boy I was, how sexy, how I drove him crazy. He pushed hard into me and shot off, howling with ecstasy, and I came again on his wooden desktop.
* * * *
That second orgasm was so hot, I was moaning and thrashing around so much, that I woke myself up. My bedsheets were soaked with cum, and I hoped Larry hadn’t heard me through the walls. Or at least, I hoped he hadn’t heard me crying Walter Loredo’s name.
Sunday Dinner
I slept most of Saturday, though I managed to drag my ass out of bed that night to join Larry and some friends for dinner on Lincoln Road. Most of us were working at our first real jobs, and it was interesting to compare notes.
I won the prize for earliest start—my friends were amazed that I had to be at work at seven. Larry worked the longest hours, because his coworkers had no lives and he was encouraged to hang around the office and play networked games with them after hours.
Larry and I straggled home after one in the morning. Early Sunday afternoon I showered, shaved, and got into my car for the ritual drive to my parents’ house for dinner.
I drove past the retail clutter of Alton Road to the MacArthur Causeway, a six-lane highway that ran through the middle of Biscayne Bay, with the residential islands of the rich and famous sticking off it like lollipops. Each house was more elaborate than the next, with arcaded balconies, terracotta roofs, and huge powerboats docked at the water’s edge.
From there I took the highway until I exited at Coral Way beside a stand of feathery Australian pines and faced the commercial sprawl of the part of Miami where I had grown up, called Westchester. Row after row of small houses that represented a milestone for Cuban immigrants, their first home in the US, a chance to move up from the tiny apartments clustered around Calle Ocho.
My father lived on Calle Ocho when he first arrived in the US in 1980, when Fidel opened the port of Mariel and anybody who wanted to leave and could fit onto a boat could go. He hadn’t known anyone in Miami, so he lived in a tent city under the highway until he found a job. He worked his way up at a machine shop to become foreman, and he and Mami pinched every penny to buy our house when I was six and my sisters were four and two.
My papi’s parents never came to the States, so the only grandparents I had were my mami’s, and once they had reconciled to Mami marrying a Marielito, Abuelo and Abuela were always underfoot, especially at Sunday dinner. Abuelo’s battered old Ford sedan sat at the curb. I parked behind it and walked up the concrete driveway. From inside I could already hear Papi and Abuelo arguing.
Instead of going inside, I walked around to the tiny backyard. My sister Maria del Carmen, Del for short, was sitting in a lawn chair with her six-month-old baby, Fabiola, on her lap. Her husband, Hernan, was standing by the back fence talking on his cell phone.
Del looked a lot like me—narrow face, fine dark hair, slim build. She had a china-doll beauty, accentuated with lots of makeup and false eyelashes. She and Hernan were high school sweethearts, and got married right after they graduated. “Hola, mi amor,” I said, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “How’s my beautiful niece?”
“She’s a handful,” Del said. “She doesn’t like something inside, and she’s only quiet when I have her out here.”
I picked up the baby and held her up to my face. She smelled like talcum powder and the musky perfume Del wore. “Hola, niña,” I said, sticking my tongue out at her. She giggled. I held her up to my shoulder and hugged her.
“You okay?” I asked Del. “You look tired.” Her eyes were puffy, as if she’d been crying or not sleeping.
“Just tired. Work is crazy. We have a new assistant manager who’s running us ragged.” Del worked part-time as a cashier at a Sedano’s grocery.
Hernan finished his call and came over and gave me a hug. He was stocky and a couple of inches shorter than I was, with a constant five o’clock shadow. “How you doing, bro?” he asked.
“Wiped out. It’s hell working for a living. Don’t see how you do it.”
He laughed. “Welcome to the real world.”
He lit a cigarette, offered me a Hatuey beer from a cooler beside the back door, and took one for himself. Hatuey was an old-time Cuban brand, and the only beer my father drank. We stood around and talked for a while until my mother opened the back door and saw me there.
“Manuelito! Why do you hide back here?” She kissed me on both cheeks and dragged me inside. My father was sitting at the dining room table, a half-empty bottle of Hatuey in his hand, gesturing wildly with the other. He was broad-shouldered, with rough hands, and his nose twisted to the right from a long-ago break back in Cuba.
“You don’t understand!” he was saying in Spanish to Abuelo, who sat across from him with his typical sour look on his face. “The Republicans got this country into the trash, and Obama has had to dig it out.”
“Not politics again, Papi.” I leaned down to kiss his cheek. We Cubans are a demonstrative bunch, and I’d grown up kissing and hugging every relative and every visitor. When I was an awkward teenager, starting to come to terms with my sexuality, I tried to back away from it, but my parents wouldn’t let me.
Abuelo was an accounting clerk at the Flagler dog track, a skinny old man in a white guayabera, the Cuban pocketed shirt. Hairs sprouted from his ears and his nose, but his head was completely bald. “The Democrats are too good to Fidel,” he said. “I tell you, Emilio, we need to get rid of them and crack down on the Castros once and for all.”
“All right, enough,” my mother said. “Dinner is ready. Where is Beatriz?”
My youngest sister had graduated from high school in June, and spent her time either working at a beauty supply store or hiding in her room with her earphones on, listening to music and texting her friends at the same time.
She clomped down the stairs as Maria del Carmen and Hernan came in. Beatriz had a beautiful heart-shaped face with deep dark eyes and a purse-shaped mouth. But she inherited our father’s stocky build, and all the pork and fried food in the Cuban diet had blown her up like a beach ball.
Abuela came in from the kitchen, carrying a platter of roast pork, and placed it in front of her husband. Her favorite color was lavender, and she must have had a dozen dresses in different styles in various shades. Today’s looked like a sixties cocktai
l dress in some kind of manmade fabric that had gone out of style with the space shuttle, with big lavender buttons down the center and a hemline that would have been too short on anyone over five feet tall.
Del placed Fabiola in a swingy thing, and she, Beatriz, and I sat down in the chairs we’d always occupied. Hernan had to pull a folding chair up and squeeze himself in.
There was way too much food, as usual, and too much loud conversation. Papi and Abuelo tried to talk about politics, but Mami shut them down. Abuela was full of gossip from the beauty parlor where she got her hair done every Saturday. Del was busy with Fabiola, and Hernan zoned out.
I noticed that Beatriz was wearing a crucifix on a thin gold chain around her neck—Jesus twisting in pain on the cross.
“That’s new,” I said, pointing.
“Beatriz has gotten religion,” Del said, looking up from spoon-feeding the baby yellow mush.
“We have always had religion,” Mami said. “Didn’t you all receive holy communion at San Lazaro? Don’t we still go to church for Easter and Christmas Mass?”
I looked at Beatriz. I’d been out of the house so much I hadn’t paid much attention to her over the last four years, when she’d developed from a dumpy little kid to a young woman. She had gone through a Goth phase, all black T-shirts and eye makeup and clunky silver jewelry. But the makeup was all gone now, and she wore a plain light-green blouse with long sleeves. “How’s Father Fillipo?” I asked her.
“I don’t go to San Lazaro,” she said, shaking her head. “A different church.”
I took a forkful of pork. “Which one?”
“One near my school. How’s your new apartment?”
Okay, Beatriz didn’t want to talk about her church. That was fine with me; I wasn’t that big on organized religion. “Pretty cool. We have a great view of Biscayne Bay, and at night with all the lights on in downtown Miami, it’s like a picture postcard.”