Going Sasquatch

by Jess Whitecroft

  He slid out of his jeans, his thighs pale golden even in this ugly light. “I don’t think they’re waterborne parasites,” he said, slipping into bed. The frame shrieked. “Although I could be wrong.”

  “We’ll probably get some kind of piss disease from the ice machine,” I said.

  “Uh, you might. If the first thing someone tells me is that there is no piss in the ice machine, you’d better believe I’m drinking my Coke warm.” He reached up and turned off the bedside light. “Well, I’m beat. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.” I turned out my own light. It was incredibly dark.

  I lay there for a while, feeling the ache in my muscles, which were still throbbing a little from yesterday’s electrical adventure. My body was sinking fast into sleep, but my dick had other ideas. All day and all night I’d been telling it ‘not now’ and ‘behave yourself’, and it wasn’t going to be denied any more. I felt it thicken beneath the clammy sheets, swelling to a purposeful erection that made my palms itch with the desire to touch.

  Oh God, this was torture. He was right there, in nothing but a thin pair of boxer briefs.

  I arched my back, desperate to feel something against my cock, even if it was just the sheet. As I did so the bed frame creaked. I’d barely moved and it creaked. Chase cleared his throat, as if to remind me that he was still here, and that he could hear everything. I lay absolutely still. Rigid. All over.

  With a cacophony of busted box springs, Chase rolled over in bed. I closed my eyes and tried to think sad, unsexy thoughts, and I was starting to wilt just a little when I heard it.

  His bed creaked.

  It was the tiniest sound in the dark, but it came again. Soft, but rhythmic. Creak. Creak. Creak. Like the steady stroke of a hand. His hand. On his cock.

  I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t lie there and listen to him without losing my mind, so I coughed. The bed beneath me shuddered.

  There was silence for a moment.

  And then the creaking began again. The same steady rhythm, echoing the pulse thrumming in my cock.

  “Okay,” I said, unable to stand it any more. “What’s that noise? What are you doing?”

  “Breathing,” said Chase.

  “What?”

  “I swear,” he said. “I’m not masturbating. It’s just that the bed creaks when I breathe.”

  I laughed. My bed shook underneath me. He was laughing, too, and his bed gave voice with the kind of fibrous, woody groans that are usually accompanied by someone yelling ‘timber!’ “Holy shit,” I said. “These beds are terrible.”

  His birdlike giggle seemed loud in the dark. “I know, right? I tried lying on the less squeaky side, but there’s a damp patch on the mattress. I can feel it through the sheet.”

  “Oh, gross.”

  “What the fuck have we got ourselves into?”

  The thought of damp mattresses had taken the edge off my boner, so I turned on the light. “This is bullshit,” I said. “I can’t sleep through this.”

  “Really?” he said, propping himself up on his elbows. “What are you gonna do? Complain to the management?”

  I got out of bed. “Nope. I’m too tired for that. Come on. Give me a hand.”

  Tossing the comforter loose, I grabbed the bottom of my mattress. Chase got out of his own bed and helped me pull the mattress onto the floor.

  “You want to get yours?” I asked.

  He shook his head and knelt to help me readjust the bottom sheet. “Not really. I don’t want to think too much about what might have happened to make it damp. Do you think someone killed a hooker in here?”

  “Nah. More likely someone blew their brains out.”

  Chase shuddered. “Finn, you say the loveliest things.”

  “Obviously. I’m trying to get you into bed.”

  “Well, it’s working,” he said. “But only because your mattress is drier than mine.”

  “You see? That’s exactly the kind of erotic chitchat that makes this inevitable. Get in.”

  He looked uncertain for a second, the way straight boys sometimes do when you flirt too far. But then he grabbed his pillow and settled down on his side of the double mattress. Taking my phone for the light, I turned out the bedside lamp, picked my way back across the darkened room and found the edge of the mattress with my bare toes.

  As I lay down I could feel the heat of his pale golden skin. Inches from mine. God, were we really going to do this? How was I going to keep my hands to myself in my sleep?

  “Well,” I said, trying to dispel the awkwardness a little. “Here we are again.”

  “Hmm. We gotta stop meeting like this.”

  We lay flat, side-by-side, breathing softly. This time nothing creaked. Better.

  “It’s so dark,” he said.

  “No security lights here.”

  “No light pollution at all. The stars are incredible.”

  “That’s the beauty of this place,” I said. “You’re so far away from the sprawl.”

  “You been up here before?” he asked.

  “I’m from here. Humboldt County, born and raised. Home of Bigfoot and weed.” I could hear insects chirring outside, and the sound brought with it a vivid sense memory of sunsets on the porch and how the chill in the air tasted when it mingled with the dank smoke scorching my tongue. And pumpkin goo drying like glue on the boards of the porch, the seeds sticking to the wood. Fall squash. Sasquatch. “Do you really believe in Bigfoot?”

  Chase swallowed. “I don’t know,” he said, a low, drowsing voice. “I believe that there are things out there that are smart enough to avoid people.”

  “Like what? Aliens?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

  “Why not? Are you serious?”

  “Yeah. I am. What are the odds that we’re the only planet in an infinite universe that has all the right ingredients for life? They’ve found other planets that could be like us. They call it the Goldilocks zone; just the right distance from the sun. And water. We know there’s water out there. On comets. On Mars. Europa.” His voice was getting sleepier. “We’re the only ones alive in this solar system, but think of how many solar systems there are. How many stars. More than any human being could ever begin to count without going crazy.”

  “You have a way of making a man feel small,” I said.

  “That’s because we are. We’re specks upon dots.” I felt his fingers brush mine and I held my breath. “But we’re here. Thrumming away in the dark.”

  The words were just beyond my lips. I didn’t even know what they were beyond the substance of them. Desire. Longing. But I didn’t get to say them. Instead he pulled my hand towards him and I felt skin, smooth and lightly sheened with sweat.

  “Feel,” he said. “Feel how much slower my heart is now.”

  “Chase…” I said, and I really thought this was it. This was the moment when he rolled over into my arms and I finally got to show him – with my hands and my mouth and my body – all the ways I’d ached for him over the last eight months.

  His fingers curled around mine, but then I felt his breath against my bare shoulder, slow and even.

  “Chase,” I said, again, but he was already sleeping.

  *

  I woke up fucking him.

  We were both stark naked and sweaty. His ankles were wrapped around my neck, his lips parted and his eyes hot and dark as he rode my thrusts. His dick was high and hard, baring his tight, round balls, the shaved skin a beautiful dusky rose shade that darkened further down around the place where I breached him. I leaned back to watch my cock going into him. Bareback. I could feel everything, and as I pushed inside him I felt my brain melt once more at the delicious wet glide of him against my cock.

  “Oh God, I love you,” he gasped, as I pounded into him hard enough to feel the floor under my knees through the thin mattress. “I love you. Fuck me, Finn. Fuck me.”

  He was tight and silky, and every thrust of my hips wrung fresh moans from his flushed, full l
ips. God, it was like having my dick inside an angel. “Come for me,” I said. “I want to feel it when you come.”

  Chase threw back his head and let out a long moan, but somewhere it turned into a hum, and then it was like someone had pushed a thumb through the thin tissue of my dream. The heat of sex drifted away like steam, leaving only his voice, humming on the edge of my consciousness. A tune. When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.

  Oh.

  Through the thin bathroom door, I heard the toilet flush. Then water running. Chase stopped humming, and I lay there listening to him brushing his teeth, wondering how my life just kept getting weirder. One day you were waking up to horny bulldogs and Instagram vomit, the next you were rolling out of bed after having several thousand volts fired up your ass, and the next you were waking up in the Sasquatch Lodge motel listening to the movie star subject of your sex dream brushing his teeth.

  Already I was beginning to think I’d need a vacation. To get over this vacation.

  Chase came out of the bathroom. He looked different and a whole lot more clothed than my current recollection of him, but none the less angelic for it. It took me a moment to realize he was wearing a pair of black-rimmed reading glasses I’d never seen before. Chase being Chase, they only made him look even hotter, but that wasn’t all. There was something else different about him.

  “Hey,” he said, and ran his hand over his hair.

  That was it. That was the difference. His hair was bleached so blond it was practically white.

  “Oh my God,” I said, sitting up on the mattress. “What did you do?”

  “Do you like it?”

  It should have looked like fried ass, but this was Chase. He had the ability to make everything look good, including an amateur bleach job. He had thick hair with about three separate crowns to it, so that he existed in a permanent state of photogenic bed-head. “Why would it matter if I did?” I asked. “Or didn’t?”

  I drew up my knees as I spoke, carefully tenting the covers over the remains of my dream boner. As I leaned forward I rested my elbows on my knees, and it was then that I saw my arms were covered in wide spaced red blotches.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “That was the other thing I was going to say. I think there are bedbugs.”

  I leapt up from the mattress, no longer caring what he saw. “Oh my God. This place is literally a fleapit.”

  “I guess Bigfoot hunters aren’t that picky about accommodation.”

  “Yeah, no shit. We cannot stay here. This is gross.”

  “Totally agree,” he said, taking his phone from his jeans pocket. “Here. I did some Googling while I was waiting for the bleach to work.”

  “Googling? You didn’t look at TMZ, did you?”

  Chase shook his head. “Nope. Or any gossip sites. And when the battery goes I’m not going to recharge it. I am incommunicado from then on.”

  He handed me the phone. It wasn’t going to be long before he went quiet to the outside world. There was less than fifteen per cent left on the battery. I scrolled through a series of glossy photos, all of a fancy log cabin with a big bed on a mezzanine level, a view, a deck and what looked like a hot tub.

  “Not far from here,” he said. “What do you think?”

  “I think it looks expensive.”

  Chase shrugged. “It is, but do you know how much money I get paid to pour my ass into a spandex suit? It’s pretty shameful.” He drew closer and swiped over to the next photo. “Look. There’s a fire pit. Imagine sitting there with a glass of wine, watching the sun set.”

  “Chase…”

  “…no, listen. I’ve got it all worked out. It’ll have to be on your credit card, though. I’ll give you the cash and you put the cabin in your name, because my name is on my card and the wrong person sees it…”

  “Right,” I said. “And the sasquatch hunters will wind up getting joined by the paparazzi.”

  “Exactly.”

  I handed him back the phone and shook my head. “No, Chase. I can’t let you pay for this.”

  “Can too,” he said, folding his arms. “You’re the reason my ass looks that good in spandex in the first place. It would come a damn sight cheaper if you hadn’t made me squat so much.”

  I had to admit it. His logic was watertight. I had helped him earn his paycheck. “Okay,” I said. “But I think you’re devaluing yourself as an actor. You’re far more than just a beautiful pair of buttocks.”

  He peered over his glasses at me. “You think my buttocks are beautiful?” he said, playfully batting his eyelashes.

  “Obviously. I’ve presided over a lot of transformations over the years, but your ass is my Mona Lisa. It’s my finest work.”

  “There you go then,” he said. “You earned this, Leonardo. Want to go check the place out?”

  “They’ll be booked solid.”

  “You don’t know that,” he said. “Come on. You never know if you don’t ask.”

  *

  The cabin Chase had found was part of a complex, a series of upscale lodges dotted all over a hillside with a commanding view of the forest. We walked up there, along trails where the mud dried so hard that it had cracked like paving stones. The air was hot and dry and I wondered if you could get some kind of danger discount for staying in a place that seemed likely to burst into flames any minute. The droughts had left a lot of the state a tinderbox.

  Halfway up the hill was the main reception, a low eaved stone building with a paved terrace shaded by umbrellas that might have once been a modish shade of tan, but were now bleached almost white by the steady California sun. There was a squarish arrangement of low settles, with a firepit in the middle. Chase tugged my sleeve when he saw it.

  “Yeah, okay,” I said, because it was nice. There was no getting away from it. The view alone was probably worth the price of admission.

  Inside was a little atrium with an actual pool in the middle, a pebble fountain bubbling gently, the water cooling the air. Beyond was an antique redwood desk, and behind it a blonde receptionist who smiled when she saw us.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Can I help you gentlemen?”

  “I don’t know,” said Chase. “Can you? Do you have any vacancies?”

  The blond glanced in her ledger. “When would you need that for, sir?”

  “Tonight?”

  She made a little moue. “Oh, I don’t know. We have a vacancy tomorrow?”

  “Oh.”

  “Technically the cabin is empty,” she said. “But this is a boutique resort and we like to take a day after our previous guests depart to make sure that everything is up to our very exacting standards when our new guests move in. If you’d like to claim the cabin now we can make sure everything is perfect for you when you move into it tomorrow.”

  Chase glanced at me. I shrugged. I had no idea. It all seemed kind of stupid to me, or maybe this was the upscale way of saying someone had either killed themselves or a hooker in the cabin and that specialist cleaning was going to take a while. I liked to think you wouldn’t get suspiciously damp mattresses in a place this pricey.

  “We can pay extra,” said Chase. “If you can do it by tonight?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, sir. It’s just not possible.”

  “Are you sure?” I said.

  “No, it’s okay,” said Chase, tugging my sleeve again. “We’ll just have to spend the night in the car.”

  “There’s a motel down in town...” said the receptionist.

  “We know,” I said. “We were there.”

  “There were bedbugs,” said Chase.

  “Oh, God.”

  “And I think someone peed in the ice machine,” I said.

  Chase sniffed hard, and to my astonishment I saw that his eyes were shining. With tears. “The beds creak when you breathe,” he said. “It’s terrible. And this was supposed to be our honeymoon...”

  What the fuck?

  “I’m so sorry,” said the blonde, who
appeared to be buying this hook, line and sinker. And to be fair, Chase was busting out some Oscar chops here. Real tears. I noticed he was keeping his left hand out of sight, too. No ring.

  “No,” he said, taking off his glasses to dab at his eyes. “It’s our fault. We should have checked the reviews more carefully. We were going to camp, you see...”

  “In the forest?” she said, looking apprehensive.

  “Sure,” said Chase. “We’re not scared, are we, hon?” He gave me a brave little smile. “Actually we met on a Sasquatch forum.”

  “We did,” I said, barely managing to keep the question mark off the end of that sentence.

  “That’s so...sweet. Quirky.”

  She was a real diplomat, this girl. Anyone else would have gone straight for ‘batshit insane’, but I guess that was the difference when you had enough money in the bank. You got upgraded to ‘quirky’. Once you hit six zeros you upgraded even further to ‘eccentric’.

  However, there were limits even to her diplomacy. “Oh God,” she said. “You’re bleeding.”

  And he was. One of the bug bites on Chase’s collarbone chose that moment - probably not by accident - to start bleeding onto his shirt. The girl quickly pushed a box of Kleenex towards him and he took a couple. “Sorry,” he said. “But that place is infested. And we took our camping gear into the room because I heard the parking lot security was not so great.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. So now the tent and sleeping bags and everything are going to be crawling.”

  “Ew,” she said. “That’s awful.” That was it. I could see it in her eyes. It was the moment she finally cracked, done in by Chase crying prettily at her. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I will call, and see what I can do for you, okay?”

  “Thank you. Are you sure? We wouldn’t want to put you out.” He had some big, clanking brass ones, that boy.

  “I can’t promise anything,” said the blonde. “But I will try and see if we can’t have the place ready for you tonight.”

  “That would be wonderful. Thank you so much.”

  “Like I said, I can’t promise–”

  “–no, no. But it means so much to us that you’d even try, doesn’t it, Sean?”