Skater Boys

by Neil Plakcy

  Rick hesitated only a second. “Wait!” he called after the kid before he’d taken more than five long steps toward the stairwell at the far corner of the parking garage. “My car’s right over there.”

  The kid stopped, turned his head toward Rick. “Yeah?”

  “Let me give you a ride.”

  There. The words were out. Rick couldn’t take his stupid idea back. He’d be lucky if the kid didn’t belt him with the board and rob him blind.

  The kid’s eyes narrowed. “What the fuck do you want from me?” the kid asked again, quieter this time.

  “Just to give you a ride out of here.”

  Red and blue flashing lights bounced off the white concrete at the edge of the parking level, reflecting up from the street below. Rick was never sure if that was what finally decided the kid, or if he’d seen something in Rick he could relate to—something more than just a simple character flaw that wouldn’t let either of them back down from a challenge.

  Whatever it was, the kid said, “Then let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Rick sprinted to his car, the kid close behind. Rick unlocked both the driver and passenger doors with the key fob, and the kid got inside, buckled himself up and slouched down on the passenger seat before Rick had even shut the door behind himself. If the kid recognized Rick’s car from earlier that afternoon, he didn’t mention it. In fact, he didn’t say another word until they were out of the parking garage and past the police cruiser gunning its way up the up-ramp.

  “Motel 6 on East Fourth,” the kid said.

  “What?” Rick said, not sure he’d heard right.

  “That’s where I live. If you’re giving me a ride, you might as well take me home.”

  This Motel 6 was like every other Motel 6 Rick had ever seen in his life. The kid’s room was on the back side, away from the four-lane road, at the far end of the parking lot. Rick pulled into a space in front of the room and left the motor idling, not quite sure what the kid had in mind. Other than giving Rick directions, the kid still hadn’t spoken. He’d spent most of the ride looking at his board, propped up on the floor in between his knees.

  “Come in for a beer,” the kid said as he opened the passenger door. “Or not. It’s up to you. Doesn’t matter to me either way.”

  He got out and shut the car door.

  Challenge thrown.

  What the hell? Was everything a game of chicken with this kid?

  But wasn’t that the same game Rick played with all the men he met on the road? Meet someone as closeted as he was, play chicken to see who’d back down, who’d risk it all for a quick fuck. The best sex Rick ever had had been with men who wouldn’t back down any more than he would.

  Rick turned off the engine and got out, pocketing the key.

  The room had one king-sized bed and a small refrigerator. A vanity with two sinks took up half the back wall. Shaving supplies, a toothbrush and toothpaste were scattered next to the sink. A separate bathroom opened to the right of the vanity. To the left was a small, open clothes rack. A black leather jacket hung on a hanger attached to the rod; beneath the jacket, a faded green canvas duffel bag stuffed full sat on a luggage rack. Rick had a feeling he was looking at the kid’s entire worldly possessions.

  “So, beer?” the kid asked. “Or do you just want to fuck me and get it over with?”

  What? “Hey, I never said—”

  “You didn’t have to.” The kid took off his green jacket and tossed it on the floor in the bathroom. The hoodie he hung up on a hanger. “I recognize the look. I’ve been getting it all my life. Men and women.” He met Rick’s eyes. The kid’s gaze was defiant, daring him to say that the kid had read Rick’s interest all wrong. “I don’t take the women up on it. Or all the men either.”

  He switched the light on over the vanity and peered at himself in the mirror. “Fuck,” he said softly, examining his nose. “Maybe I shouldn’t brag. This heals up wrong…”

  “It’ll give you character,” Rick said, finding his voice. “You won’t have to prove you’re a badass all the time.”

  “Oh, like it’s really helped you.”

  “Are you saying I’m ugly?”

  “Not as pretty as me, even with the nose.”

  The banter helped ease the sudden case of nerves that had settled in Rick’s belly when the kid called him on his intentions. Rick bent down and retrieved two cans of beer from a six-pack the kid had in the fridge. It was cheap stuff, but Rick didn’t really need the alcohol. He offered one to the kid, who set the can on the counter without taking a drink.

  While Rick waited, the kid ran hot water in the sink and cleaned his face off. After the blood was gone, he stripped off his T-shirt and washed off his neck and chest, splashing hot water beneath his arms.

  The tattoo Rick had glimpsed turned out to be a leafless tree, its branches gnarled and twisted, the trunk coming up from beneath the waistline of the kid’s jeans on the right side of his flat belly, the branches reaching across his hairless chest and around his ribs to his right shoulder blade, the highest branches terminating on his neck. The tattoo was half heavy tribal lines, half stylized realism. Against the kid’s smooth, tanned skin, the effect was startling.

  “That’s a hell of a tattoo,” Rick said when the kid straightened up from the sink.

  The kid popped the top on the can of beer and stared at Rick in the mirror. He had an egg-shaped bruise on his forehead surrounding the cut near his hairline, and the bridge of his nose was swelling up. “That’s what everyone says,” he said, taking a long drink from the can.

  “Any particular reason you have it?”

  The kid took another long drink. The muscles across his shoulders tensed for a minute, then the kid took a deep breath and his muscles relaxed. “It’s personal,” the kid said. “I fuck. I don’t share. You have a problem with that?”

  “I’m good with that,” Rick said. He never shared any details of his personal life with any of the men he fucked either. It made it easier to walk away in the morning.

  The kid finished his beer and tossed the can in the garbage. “Then what the fuck are you waiting for?” He undid the top button on his jeans. “An invitation?”

  Rick put his beer down on the top of the fridge, took his jacket off and made a point of dropping it on the floor.

  Challenge accepted.

  They grappled on the bed the way Rick knew they would, the way he liked it: hard and fast and sweaty. The kid was all grabby hands—Rick’s ass, his cock, his balls, anything the kid could grab on to, he did. He didn’t want to kiss, but he sucked Rick’s cock like a pro, shoving a finger up Rick’s ass and pressing just the right spot until Rick had to pull the kid’s mouth off him to keep himself from shooting down the his throat. That wasn’t how he wanted to come.

  The minute he’d seen that tattoo, Rick had known he wanted to bury himself inside the kid’s body while he traced the tattoo with his fingers.

  “On your back,” Rick said, pushing the kid down on the bed. “Spread your legs.”

  For a moment he thought the kid might object, then he did what Rick asked. “I’m clean,” the kid said. “Not that I expect you to believe it. Condoms and lube are in the drawer, right next to the Bible.”

  Better safe than sorry. Rick didn’t fuck men without a condom. He and his wife might not have sex often, but he wasn’t about to put her at risk when they did. They hadn’t used a condom in years. He didn’t want to start now and have her asking why.

  The kid rolled the condom down Rick’s cock, then grabbed his own ankles and pulled his legs back against his chest, opening himself up.

  “No,” Rick said. He lifted the kid’s feet up until his legs were draped over Rick’s shoulders. “This good for you?”

  The kid’s cock was so hard, the head was nearly purple, leaking on his belly. “Shut the fuck up and just fuck me already,” the kid said, his voice strained.

  Rick obliged.

  The kid was tight, and his body gripped Rick
so hard, Rick had to fight not to come at the first thrust. He couldn’t look at the kid’s flushed face, his dark eyes dilated with lust, his lips swollen from sucking on Rick’s cock, not if he wanted to keep some semblance of control. So Rick concentrated on the tattoo.

  The trunk of the tree terminated right above the kid’s crotch. Rick shifted until he could balance himself on his right arm. With his left hand, he traced the lines of the trunk, thick tribals and the thin lines that detailed the rough bark. By the time he got to the first branch, he realized the kid was jerking himself off in time to Rick’s thrusts, but by then Rick was too far gone in the design to bat the kid’s hand away and take over, until finally he lost himself in the design even as he lost himself in the kid’s body. When he came, he was buried balls deep inside this beautiful, headstrong, fucked-up kid.

  Like Rick had been when he was the kid’s age, the kid had an amazing recovery time. Under the kid’s insistent mouth, Rick did too. When he finally fell asleep, he was exhausted, the kid already asleep on the cheap motel bed.

  When Rick woke up the next morning, the kid and all his stuff was gone.

  Rick checked his wallet, but his cash and cards were still there. The kid had left a note on top of the television.

  Checkout’s at noon. The room’s paid for until then. Thanks for the assist and the fuck.

  No good-bye, just like Rick always did it, only Rick was always the one walking out, not the one being walked out on.

  Once again, the kid had won.

  “You sure this is what you want?” The tattoo artist stared at Rick’s hand-drawn artwork.

  “Yeah, something like that,” Rick said. “I’m not an artist, but that’s the general idea.”

  “Huh,” the man said. “Give me a minute and I’ll see what I can do with this.”

  Rick had drawn a smaller version of the kid’s tree from memory. He’d told the tattooist the truth, he wasn’t an artist, but he’d traced every line and branch on the kid’s skin until the design had been burned into his brain.

  He hadn’t been able to take a memento from the motel; certainly not the kid’s note—he’d burned that—and if he came home with anything that said Motel 6 on it, his wife would want to know why. Rick’s company never put him up at any place as cheap as Motel 6, which would scream to his wife of hookers and out-of-town affairs.

  He’d settled on getting a smaller version of the kid’s tattoo. He could chalk the tattoo up to midlife crisis and his wife would be satisfied.

  It took the tattoo artist about fifteen minutes to come back with an eerily accurate miniature version of the kid’s tattoo. “That good?” the artist asked.

  “Perfect,” Rick said.

  They settled on a price. The artist led him back to a chair, and Rick took his shirt off. “Here,” he said, pointing to a spot low on his belly.

  The artist arched an eyebrow. “That’s pretty tender skin for your first,” he said. “You sure you don’t want it on your arm?”

  Challenge thrown down. “Right here,” Rick said, still pointing at his belly.

  The tattoo hurt like a bitch, but Rick never made a sound. He wasn’t going to blink, not this time around.

  After the work was done and the artist wiped the blood away, he held up a mirror so Rick could see the tattoo right side up. It looked perfect.

  “Something to remember you by,” Rick murmured to the mirror.

  The artist didn’t ask Rick what he meant. He probably didn’t want to know.

  Rick paid the man, tipping him well, and walked out into the bright sunshine. His trousers felt loose on his hips—he hadn’t been able to buckle his belt over the new tattoo—and his belly stung, but he felt good.

  All of his other mementos would eventually vanish, either thrown out by mistake or degraded with age, just like his memories of the men he’d fucked would fade. Eventually Rick himself would get too old to be attractive, and his out-of-town fucks would stop.

  But this tattoo would be with him forever. Every time he looked at it, he’d remember the kid who wouldn’t back down. Who wouldn’t tell him the meaning of the tattoo. Not that it mattered anymore. The tattoo had its own meaning now to Rick.

  “I’ll remember you,” he said again, girding himself for the long trip home.

  BOYZ IN THE ’HOOD

  P. A. Brown

  The roar from the tangle of freeway competed with the rush of wheels and the slap of my truck as I climbed the bowl and pulled a 50-50 grind. B-Boy and Rio practiced their shuv-its and kick flips. I knew they were as eager to impress the scouts, rumored to be showing up this weekend, as I was.

  I had every intention of being front and center in their eyes. It was going to be my ticket out of here.

  Cypress Park hadn’t always been home. Mi papi came up from Querétaro, in Mexico, and mi mami from El Paso, Texas. Me, I was born in El Paso, but the promise of better jobs drove them west and they ended up here, in CP. They used to tell us stories about those days. Good old days—old men always call them good old days, even when they weren’t. But then it went bad. The jobs moved out, bangers moved in, pachucos with their knives and their chains, and later their guns, and drugs drove the good people out. My family was one who fled.

  But life sucks, and things drag you back to hell, even when you don’t want to go, and here I am, no family but the doddering old fool, Tio, mi mami’s brother. And Nattie. I do my best not to think of Nattie, and when I’m riding the deck I can forget her and her slack, half-wit face, and the way she lisps and slurs her words. The drive-by that killed mi mami, might as well have killed Nattie, too. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, when I had to listen to her whimper and cry out from whatever cucuy haunted her nightmares, I thought she might be better off dead instead of brain damaged from the bullet still lodged in her head.

  Then guilt over the thought rode me harder than the need to escape the local crew that wanted to jump me in and make me one of their tax collectors. I would drive myself twice as hard on the half-pipes and the vert ramps to prove to everyone I was good enough, tough enough to handle anything.

  Sister Francis Marie had preached to me every day at Divine that her way was best, that I should concentrate on the books, that my mind would help me escape. But there’s nothing stupid about P-Bull or Gato, both of them OGs in Locusts 13. But she don’t want to listen. She’s all up in God and that shit. If she knew the stuff that lives in my dreams she wouldn’t be so hot to save me.

  But that’s a secret I don’t tell no one.

  Sister would pray for me. If those pendejos in Locusts 13 ever jump me in and find out what I think about when the lights go out, they’ll give her a body to pray over.

  When the black-and-white patrol car pulled into the lot I knew immediately who it was, even before he climbed out and shaded his eyes to scan the park. I don’t know whether he spotted me right away, but I didn’t stop what I was doing to find out. He’d find me soon enough. Maybe the pequeños would distract him, and he’d ignore me, so I could ignore him and the fluttering in my gut I felt when those chocolate brown eyes settled on me.

  I launched myself up the vertical pipe and pulled a laser flip. Damn near made it, too. On the second turn my tail came down too low and ended up doing a 5-0 grind that tossed me onto my ass. I ended up splayed out at the bottom of the bowl, listening to the hoots and catcalls from Boner and Trey and even the titters from a few of the skater skirts that hang around the park.

  I sat up and dusted myself off, just in time to see a pair of booted feet appear in my view. Two hands reached down and dragged me to my feet.

  His touch sent a jolt straight to my cock.

  “What the fuck you doin’?” I jerked my arm away.

  “Picking your ass up outta the dirt. Gotta problem with that?” Alejandro grinned at my discomfort, like he knew the real reason for it. “Didn’t they teach you manners at that fancy Catholic school you went to?”

  I glared up at the uniformed cop who stood over me, arms
akimbo, broad chest barely contained inside his dark shirt. I’d known Alejandro Menendez for several months by this time. He came to the center to talk to the kids. Coach said he wanted to mentor us. B-Bone said he only wanted to bust our asses. Get him some bangers, make captain sending all the OG to the Towers.

  I didn’t think so. Brushing my bruised knees off, I scooped up my board, checking it for damage and flipped it up, dropping it on the pavement at my feet with a clatter. He was there to make my life hell.

  “Hey, que onda, Churro,” he said softly. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine, ese. Really, what you doing here?”

  “It’s your birthday, right?”

  “Yah,” I said not sure where he was going with this. So it was my birthday. He really think that meant something?

  “You don’t remember, do you?”

  “Remember what?” Sometimes the fool could be more aggravating than my fifth-grade math teacher.

  “Didn’t I promise you we’d go to the beach?”

  Ever since I told him that I’d never been west of the river, had never seen the ocean, he had vowed he would take me. But for some reason he insisted we wait until my twenty-first birthday. Maybe he was going to get me drunk. That made him the biggest fool of all.

  Damn po-po think they can reform everyone. If he wanted to think I’d never had an eight ball or a hit, who was I to tell him he was a fool?

  “You ready for this weekend?”

  “We don’t even know they coming,” I snap.

  “But if they do, you want to be ready, right?”

  I begrudgingly nodded. If I had a chance to go pro and get sponsors, like Alejandro and some other players thought I could, it would change my life drastically. I might well and truly get out of the flats and go to someplace where Locusts 13 couldn’t jump me in. If I couldn’t land myself a pro career, I was sure I’d end up collecting for the gang, or worse, I’d end up a cherry to some hard ass in Folsom or on the Shelf at the Q. It all came down to the scouts showing up and being impressed with my moves.