The Next

by Rafe Haze

  “Do you…do you even want to?” I pressed.

  “Hmm hmm,” he sort of affirmed.

  “But?”

  “But…it’s the rest that…that I can’t…”

  “Do you think it was easy for me to tell you about the fire?”

  I said no more and waited. I was well aware I’d pushed the tit-for-tat button at just the right intersection of candidness and necessity, so all I had to do was wait. I knew he would not try to evade anymore. I knew he couldn’t.

  Minutes passed. His brow glistened. He stroked his throat upwards with his nails as if guiding the words in the right direction.

  At last he put his hand to his forehead. “I told you Nathan’s story?”

  “Mom abandoned him when he was seventeen.”

  “Hmm hmm,” he muttered, once again hesitating.

  Then he turned to face me.

  “I was fourteen,” Marzoli continued. “I never really fit in with my father. I never fit in with the north side of Chicago.”

  Marzoli unbuckled his belt. I did not understand why, but the last thing I was about to do was interrupt the man.

  “It was Sunday supper. Pamigiana di Melezane and chicken. My father looked across the table at me and asked Are you sleeping with Joey? Just like slamming me with a two by four, right in front of my mother. Right in front of my brothers. Right in front of Grandpa and Grandma. Christ! I’d barely let him touch me. He put his mouth around me. It lasted all of two seconds. And that was it. We were in the back alley between the garbage cans. I didn’t know we could be seen. But we were. By his mother. She grabbed him by the hair and pulled him inside.”

  Marzoli’s face was locked tight in consternation.

  “I ran all the way home. I hid in my room for days. Until that Sunday.”

  He pulled his belt all the way through his pant loops and dropped it to the floor.

  “Joey’s father was my father’s boss at the restaurant. So when my father asked me if I slept with Joey, I was more than mortified. I was terrified. All I could say is No! But he knew. He was embarrassed and ashamed and furious. He took up the chicken knife, knocked his chair against the wall, and walked toward me. Sdraiata pervertito! Sdraiata pervertito! He wanted to kill me. No one tried to stop him. Not one of my brothers. Not my grandparents.”

  He paused and looked away.

  “Not my mother. She sat there like her mouth had been duct-taped. I knew what she was ashamed of. Herself. She thought it was her fault I was what I was.”

  Marzoli unbuttoned the top button of his pants.

  “He wanted me dead. Right there at the table. He was that angry. He would have plunged that knife into me, and in that neighborhood it’d be all right if he did. I had to throw the chair at his hand, and I hit it. And the knife went flying. And I think I broke his finger. I don’t know. Throwing a chair is not something you do to your father in the north side of Chicago and live. I ran to the garage. He followed.”

  Marzoli unbuttoned the remaining buttons.

  “I couldn’t get out of the garage. The door was blocked by the Ford Thunderbird parked right against it. There was a bucket of battery acid on the floor. He picked it up, but he didn’t throw it at me. He had a better plan. He pulled my pants out at the belt and…”

  Marzoli lowered his pants all the way to his ankles, with his white 2(X)ist underwear still protecting his package.

  From his right knee up his thigh and to his right hip, the skin was creviced and pruned in a permanently scarred landscape. Some patches bulged out as if swollen, other parts were indented as if layers had been dug out and never filled in. The coloring was irregularly blotched in white, pink, and tan puzzle pieces of skin. Raised ridges spider-webbed across his skin. There were long lines as if a candle melted and cords of fleshy wax streamed down from his 2(X)ist to his knee.

  “Pretty, aren’t I?”

  “Keep going,” I urged.

  He closed his eyes, took two sharp breaths, and held them for seconds without releasing them.

  “No.”

  “Keep going,” I repeated.

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t,” he repeated ferociously under his breath, but his voice cracked with shame and sadness and anger and disgust.

  I reached for the band of his underwear. He swatted my hand away. I reached for it again. He swatted it away again. He stared directly into my eyes, steely. I lowered myself onto my knees in front of him. He grabbed my hair and yanked my head away from him, but I grabbed my left hand around the back of his right hamstring. With my right hand I reached yet again for the band of his underwear again. He released my hair. I pulled down his underwear slowly. I heard his heavy sad breathing above me.

  The white band finally slid beneath his balls, freeing his penis and scrotum.

  His left testicle was tender and relatively unscarred, but his right testicle was marbleized with acid scarring, discolored and hard with scar tissue. His shaft had the appearance of random skin grafting, swollen irregularly with the same puzzle pieces of blotchy discoloration as his thigh. He had no pubic hair. It appeared to be shaven off entirely to disguise the fact that large sections could grow no hair at all.

  My throat swallowed a lumpy slimy ball. How could any father do such a thing to his kid? I was angry for Marzoli. As I explored his scarred skin centimeter by centimeter with my eyes, a horrifying thought occurred to me. Marzoli would have had very few sexual encounters for fear of disgusting someone with the sight of a groin scarred by battery acid.

  It’s possible, in fact, he’d had no sexual encounter ever, man or woman.

  My heart broke at the thought of a boy growing to manhood, permanently scarred by his father and ashamed, embarrassed, and disgusted by the very sight of his own organ. How it must have affected every encounter with another. The date that leads to a kiss that leads to some groping through the clothes that leads to desperate excuses to halt everything before the pants came off:

  “I want to wait until we’re married.”

  “I’ve got to get up early for work so I need to get home.”

  “I haven’t taken a shower at all today so let’s hold off.”

  I could see the go-go teenager with the hard rippled body in biker shorts and cut-off jeans directing the bills towards his boots rather than his underwear. I could see the man in the gym finding the most remote corner of the locker room to avoid the jeers and stares that would make him feel like a circus freak.

  I could see the person who would perfect every other part of his body, brain, and being in order to compensate for the imperfection from his thigh to his belly button: the muscles, the intellect, the nobility, the work ethic, the smile, the charm, and the wrinkleless button down shirt.

  My eyes welled with tears at the tough road Marzoli’s own family had sent him down, and how magnificently he found a way to travel it. But I knew at this moment the slightest utterance of understanding or compassion might be interpreted incorrectly. How easily I could join the others with similar reactions that, ultimately, made him feel more estranged than less. Marzoli was at his most exposed. The most emotionally vulnerable. I had to choose my words carefully.

  Then I realized the best reaction had nothing to do with words.

  I didn’t dare look him in his eyes. Instead, I put the fingers of my right hand underneath his shaft. Its leathery look belied how it felt. It was surprisingly tender and supple. Marzoli gasped when I touched him, and I interpreted that as encouragement. I wrapped my hand around the shaft. His penis filled with blood. The crevices on his testicle expanded. The puzzle pieces of skin on his shaft stretched.

  The head of his cock engorged, and I saw how the battery acid had melted half the ridge of the helmet, leaving narrow white bands running from the head to the shaft like erosion on a hillside after a flood.

  “You don’t have to,” Marzoli tried to interject.

  I shut him the fuck up by suddenly wrapping my mouth around the head o
f his cock.

  He uttered an unintelligible exclamation of surprise and pleasure.

  Every bulging scar and divot of his patchwork penis passed the tenderness of my lips. By the time my nose pressed into his leather-scarred abdomen, his cock had hardened to its full plumpness. His eight fat inches were fucking fantastically proportioned—thick and meaty. He slid them in and out of my mouth. The irregularity of the scars on the head and shaft stimulated my tongue and the insides of my cheeks.

  I tightened my mouth and increased the suction.

  He groaned.

  Then I felt warm heavy drops falling onto the top of my head. I glanced up briefly. His eyes were closed, but he was sobbing.

  I hardly knew what I was doing, but it moved him overwhelmingly. I had to be his first blowjob. And if I was his first blowjob, I had to be his first anything. Nobody who pursued perfection as stringently as he did would allow anyone to know he was so imperfect in this area. This intimacy was a gift of more value to him than any other. I knew I needed and wanted to do more for him in return. I didn’t know exactly what, but I had to try something.

  I let his head slide out of my mouth until one clear thread of saliva connected my lips to his pole. Then I kissed my way down the side of his acid-pitted shaft to his right testicle and suspended my mouth above it, releasing hot breath onto the scarred and mutilated skin. I engulfed the testicle in my mouth.

  “Oh god…” he uttered, the vibration of his low growl resonating through his groin.

  My tongue painted every last crevice of his testicle with warm, thick saliva. I pulled at the skin tenderly with my teeth, and I could feel his pelvis shudder slightly. I pulled it again a little harder. His ass clenched. I couldn’t resist burying my fingertips into his cheeks and squeezing. His dick throbbed forward.

  I realized that no memory was creeping into my brain or springing from the shadows. Even as his hot rod pressed against my face, I was not attacked by memories of Jessie being slowly sliced by the Blond Boy’s knife. There was no acidic rainfall of the horror of my father’s face melting from a blast of fire from the neighbor’s house. The memory of Tilden Park and the fire existed, but only like a show you Tivo’d and could play on command if you chose. I was not a victim to its stalking anymore. Because of Marzoli, I’d captured the memory from the shadow where it crouched, sent it to trial, and ruled a sentence. I was not rid of it, but I was free of it.

  I released his skin from my teeth, and he let out his breath.

  I ran my tongue under his shaft, around the hole on the head, and then down the upper side of his dick toward his abdomen. With slow, full strokes of my tongue, I licked his belly button, his sternum, the valley between his pecs, the pit of his throat, his Adam’s apple, and then paused at the rough scruffy shadow under his chin. I breathed in the scent of shaving cream and salt. I pressed my tongue against the roughness and scraped my way to his side toward his jaw hinge.

  “Oh my god,” he uttered in my ear.

  As my mouth hovered there, breathing through his facial hair into his skin, I felt his hand fumble around my back. The proximity and intimacy was so fucking intense, he grabbed for anything to stabilize himself. He ended up wrapping his arms around the small of my back and squeezing my body flat up against him. The bareness of biceps and forearms pressing into the vulnerability of my spine was a sensation I’d never felt before in my life—the strength, the firmness, the maleness.

  His mountainous pecs squeezed into mine, his hard nipples prodding me through my shirt. How could a chest so massive and rigid also feel so comfortingly soft at the same time?

  As we embraced, my mouth pressed into the hole of his ear. I extended my tongue into the hole and felt the heat. This was my first penetration into this man, and strangely apropos. He was giving me his ear, and a solitary, lonely person could ask for no more.

  Except for this…

  I moved my lips from his ear, across his temple to the bridge of his nose, and then down to his lips and hovered. I looked him in the eye. He felt the pause and opened his eyes. He was wet from tears, grateful, sad, in ecstasy, in pain, overwhelmed. I needed him to know I was one hundred percent with him.

  That I was his skin.

  He reached behind my head and pulled me in.

  Our lips pressed onto each other.

  How does the brain fire off so many synapses all at once? The fingertips, the toes, the spine, the nipples, the buttocks, the armpits, the scrotum…everything charged…everything on its knees for more.

  This was it. The height of human evolution. The height of spiritual ascendency. Every fucking Olympic victory merging with every gold medal and raised in muscular arms to the sky on the top podium step. Our lips, our tongues, our breaths—merged, emboldened, totally satisfying, yet totally insatiated.

  “More,” he murmured, “More…”

  He pressed his way down to my ass and squeezed.

  God, god, god…

  As much as chicks like to look at men’s butts, many never really know what to do with them once they’ve got them. Thus, Johanna approached my bare ass with as much enthusiasm as she would a toilet plunger or an electric lawnmower. Marzoli, on the other hand, pried his hand between my cheeks and pressed upwards on my hole through my underwear and pants.

  Holy shit!

  The pressure shot brand new erotic sensations up though my abdomen into my lungs and out my throat. How could I have gone through my life without ever once feeling this fucking incredible feeling?

  I couldn’t help but descend down his chest with my tongue again, tracing his rippled washboard to his navel. I had to make sure he knew I hadn’t blown him as a charity case; that it wasn’t a one-time deal.

  I hovered above his helmet, wrapped my hands around his thighs, and pulled him into my mouth. His dick plunged all the way in. I felt his head scrape lightly against the back of my throat. I’d never felt so hungry for something. I pulled him in again, encouraging Marzoli to pump at will and hard. He started pumping…then thrusting…then pummeling.

  More! Fucking more!

  When he hit his deepest thrust, I suddenly grabbed his dick tight with my lips and squeezed the back of my throat on his head. I’d no idea if this would increase the pleasure or be painful. He groaned in surprise at being captured. His dick suspended and expanded in its tight lubed jacket. I gagged as my eyes watered, but I held on. Finally I released and sputtered his dick out.

  “God!” he cried.

  His thrust out of my mouth was so forceful he overshot his hips and fell backwards on the couch. I attacked him where he lay, pouncing on him like a lion about to rip into his prey.

  I wasted no time.

  I held his wet, acid webbed penis by the head and stretched it north and out of the way. I tugged with my other hand to lift the melted testicle. And there I found his puckered asshole shining as smooth and pink as a raw breast of chicken. I parted his lobes even more.

  “You ready?” I heard myself asking to him as much as to me.

  “No,” he replied breathlessly.

  “Good.”

  I dove in, tongue first.

  The musty, sweaty smell filled my nostrils.

  “God damn!” he cried as he inhaled sharply. “God damn it!”

  His pole quivered and then shook violently. My tongue burrowed deeply, prodding through the walls, searching for the trigger that would dynamite the dam. He thrust his ass toward my face, demanding more and totally overloaded all at once. His hole tightened stiffly around my tongue, gripping it, not letting it enter more, and not letting it exit.

  His entire body went rigid with tension, whitening with the strain of mitigating the pain of too much pleasure.

  “I don’t know how to…control…to keep control…to…” he sputtered.

  Let it go, Marzoli. All that self-contained perfectionism and fight to better yourself. Let it go. Lead the way to ecstasy for both of us. A better existence. A more enlightened life. Free yourself. Free yourself and free me. />
  I reached around and wrapped my palm and fingers around his dick. I massaged him firmly and sensually, and released a deep warm breath from the bottom of my lungs into his hole.

  He finally followed my lead and released the tension he’d been clamping down on. Every muscle—from his rear deltoids to his calves—relaxed. His abdomen loosened. Then his hole opened wide, freeing my tongue.

  Green light, clutch, shift, pedal to the metal.

  I forged deeper with a final thrust and hit the trigger with the tip of my tongue. I circled it, then pounced, holding it down completely at my mercy and my disposal.

  Marzoli was roasted.

  “Motherfucker!” he screamed gutturally, and I felt his dick retract and jut forward explosively with his pelvis, forcing my tongue out of his cave. I felt the explosion of cum at the base of his dick surge into his length. I gripped hard, cutting off the passage momentarily. When I released my grip, the gush exploded out of his head hole, jetting white past his chin toward his forehead, then he immediately spurted another stream which frosted his nipple, and finally another which puddled in his belly button.

  He heaved large breaths as he sank his back and legs even further into the cushions. Heavy salty tears dripped down his temples and into his ears.

  “Come here…” He sobbed, pulling me into him.

  I still had my shirt and pants on, but I didn’t give a fuck. I gently flattened my body on top of his, feeling the streams of cum soak into my clothes and moisten my skin. He wrapped his arms around me tightly.

  The curtains swayed softly in the wind.

  Although I knew the answer, I needed to ask. “Has anyone ever…?”

  He shook his head no.

  “Not even…”

  “Nothing,” he sighed, and he squeezed me even tighter. “I thought you’d see me and…”

  “And what?”

  “Run screaming from your apartment.”

  “Wouldn’t that have been a breakthrough for me?”

  He politely chuckled.

  I submerged myself in the thickness and solidity of his limbs and torso, like a steamy bath on a cold night. I had no desire to surface. In this moment, we had no score to settle. No justice to enact. No past to reconcile. No future to put into perspective. Just contact, warmth, and breathing.