Surfer Boys

by Neil Plakcy

  Kiernan looked over at Trey, smiling softly and leaning forward to get a kiss. They kissed slowly, tasting each other’s come, and then just hugged each other closely. It was going to be a great summer. I guess you can fall in love in three days, Kiernan thought to himself, hugging Trey tighter. Maybe those romances hadn’t been so far off after all.

  ROGUE WAVE

  Keith Peck

  I met Blake the night I first fucked Nhung.

  An hour or so north of Ballina by taxi, the village of Byron Bay lay west of a great humpbacked headland topped by a stubby white lighthouse. It’s the easternmost point of Australia, with great vistas from Belongil Beach looking across the bay itself to Mount Warning, an ancient volcanic caldera now wreathed in eucalyptus and cannabis groves. It’s popular with the pagans, the New Agers, the artists, the backpackers, the musicians, the young. They rent ultralight aircraft and scuba gear here. In the spring you can watch the whales migrate. The crowd is eclectic and young: beach flesh, golden and oiled, in bulging Speedos, or loose board shorts, or ass-hugging trunks; tasty, salty, male.

  My balls steamed up, eager to unload into the hot flesh sizzling in the Pacific sun.

  Nhung proved to be the best place to start.

  Short, broad shouldered, bubble butted, he caught my eye as he leaned against the bar in the Byron Bay station, ordering a schooner of Victoria Bitter. He drew me with his dreamy, mysterious eyes, like candied almonds; his moist lips, the color of plums; his smooth forearms like amber scepters.

  I’m lying. It was his ass, palm sized and firm, limned by soft blue swim trunks that showed just enough crack, just enough cheek, to turn even a Baptist to the fag side of the Force.

  Nhung didn’t speak using the accented tones I’d imagined for him. His speech was pure Strine. A little bit of a shock, but this was a sunburnt, shocking, lucky country.

  “Buck’s night out, eh?” he asked.

  “Um,” I said. “Yeah.”

  “Fair dinkum,” he said. “Cheers.” He quaffed heartily, set his glass down, grinned.

  I’m never sure about these Aussies. They always seemed to be having a joke at my expense. It always felt like after I left the room the Aussies indulged in a private session of pitying the American. What secret did they hide?

  “I gotta be honest,” I said, trying to make gotta as New York as I could, working the hands, copping an attitude like they did on TV. “You got a hot ass.” I hoped he saw it as parody.

  He did. “Arse,” Nhung corrected. His eyes roved my body, seeing something he liked as well. And thus a great fuck was launched.

  Nhung liked the big boys, the horse hung, and I was a ponyshafted boy who liked sweet, succulent, Asian ass. He was hooked the moment I chubbed up in my boardies, ogling his butt. His eyes, pearlescent like a winter crescent moon, danced with delight as he watched my shorts tent.

  After small talk, we left, making for my hotel because Nhung was bunking with friends and had no privacy—my arm around his shoulder, his arm around my waist.

  I grinned down at him and said, “I need some weed.”

  He grinned up at me and said, “No worries.”

  He led me down Lawson Street. The lighthouse standing high on the headland brandished a lambent sword over the village as if warding off some unseen dark power from beyond the Pacific. No one cared that my lips were on Nhung’s, that my hands were in his pants. A sunburnt, shocking country indeed.

  The stars were strange here. In Sydney you couldn’t see them: too much light, too much pollution. Here in Byron Bay the ancient sky reigned unsullied. There was the Southern Cross, a handful of glittering diamonds cast onto velvet, and Fornax, Horologium, Eridanus, Phoenix, and Tucana: unfamiliar words from the celestial dictionary. They were poetic, evocative, lovely in an unforgettable way.

  Tucked off on the left, behind thick, glossy-leafed bushes, a cluster of old bungalows squatted around a courtyard throbbing with the noise and excitement of a party. The music was European, that kind where good, dirty, raunchy fuck-rhythms are infused with ethereal, psychedelic melodies. A plethora of chemicals kept partygoers mellow and sensual. Pacific swells foamed and hissed on the beach behind the bungalows, soothing this elder continent. The night breeze was warm and smelled of orchids.

  Nhung was popular here, and I was exotic. The mood was ambisexual. Rules were loose, perhaps nonexistent. There were many ages here, but the spirit of the evening was young. Hands reached out in eager exploration of other flesh. Parted lips softly glistened. Somewhere a didgeridoo droned. Jokes were cracked. Laughter sparkled. Couples, triples, quadruples danced, made out, talked, humped.

  Is this what it means to live in a country at peace?

  Blake sat at the kitchen table. Half a kilo of pungent weed was distributed around him, rolled firmly into fat joints, packed into baggies. Other guys lingered in the kitchen, in animated conversation with girls, with guys, with whomever; yet you could tell they belonged to Blake. They exchanged quick smiles with Nhung. Me, they watched, coolly. I sensed knives on them.

  It was Blake’s soul patch that did it, maybe, delicately feathering his chin. Or maybe his shoulder-length dreadlocks, maple brown and burnished by the sun to pale gold. He smelled rich, like the earth. His well-developed shoulders and chest stretched an old, ratty tie-dyed shirt. A pagan amulet carved from bone dangled from a hemp necklace. His boardies sagged from his trim waist. He wore flip-flops. The hairs on his legs shone like copper wires. His forearms were polished brass, corded with muscle.

  His eyes glittered like opals: multidimensional, infinitely colorful, unconventional, dangerous.

  “Blake,” Nhung said, grinning easily. “Sell him some.”

  Blake drawled, “So, how much you want?”

  “Five joints and a hundred grams.” I had been trying to see if his nipples were visible through his shirt.

  Blake smirked. “A Yank. Beaten the A-rabs yet?”

  “Blake,” Nhung warned.

  Blake shrugged indifferently. “Five joints.” Like a croupier, he scooped together five joints and shoved them my way across the table. “One hundred grams.” His fingers deftly sent a bag of packed weed spinning my way.

  It didn’t come cheap. But I liked putting the warm yellow and red banknotes into Blake’s palms, because I touched him, because I got to breathe his scent. He was real and vital. Nothing pallid about his flesh…or his soul.

  I let my eyes linger disconcertingly on his. I could tell he knew I was looking.

  I could tell he knew.

  He smiled a slow grin, maybe salacious, probably malicious. He opened his mouth to speak.

  “Blake.” A slender arm languidly touched his shoulder. A hot brunette Latina slid onto his lap. “You promised.”

  The potentiality vanished, whirled away on a quantum whim.

  She was in his lap, mysterious, and warm, and eager. He kissed her. I saw the play of muscles in his throat as he thrust his tongue into her mouth. But as we left, his dark eyes lingered malignantly on mine.

  Later I learned Nhung meant “velvet” in Vietnamese. Had I not been so ignorant I would have appreciated how prophetic it was. For Nhung’s rectum was velvet, and it squeezed and twitched on my long, fat, pot-fueled dong throughout the rest of the night. Pinned on his back, a stud rutting between his legs, Nhung’s fingernails raked crimson slashes onto my back. His pleading eyes begged for more, always drawing me onward and inward, sometimes making me hard when I was soft. I turned him over and dogged him hard. His ass, plugged with my fat prong, was a luscious, drool-worthy, nut-draining sight.

  In the morning, sore but happy, I grinned at Nhung and said, “Rode hard, put away wet. You ever heard that one before?”

  “In a movie.” He winced. Air pheeped demurely from his sphincter. “Damn. Wet. How many times did you spunk?”

  I shrugged. “Wasn’t keeping count.”

  Moments later I increased that magical, mysterious number.

  That afternoon at Belongil Beach Nhung lay
next to me on a sandy blanket, bathing in the descending sun, his amber flesh decorated with grains of sand. He was all boy, lanky and muscled, devilish crescent eyes, creamy thighs, lips glistening like raw oysters, sparse armpits smelling of ginger, a palm-sized, dimpled, succulent ass, well-fucked, squishy with my spunk.

  Gulls wheeled and darted in a sky of appalling immensity. Great combers rolled in from the Pacific, thrashed with futile fury, and died upon the curving strand. The rough, surreal terrain of Mount Warning rose across the bay. Eastward loomed Cape Byron and the lighthouse. Blake’s golden body rode the waves.

  A quick, sensitive, clever boy, Nhung knew who’d caught my eye.

  “You got the hots for him, mate?” Nhung said, bemused, not bothered. “Give it up. He doesn’t swing the way you think.” He patted his delectable asscheeks. “I do.”

  In the crystalline water slender tanned youths sat astride their surfboards, watching Blake, a blond Poseidon. He mastered his board with delphine grace, arms outstretched as if they were gull’s wings. His body glistened with spray. His dreadlocks streamed like naval pennons.

  His insouciant grin made me forget the crack about Arabs. Made me think about another crack, eloquently displayed by Blake’s clinging shorts. Made me think of his pucker, and splitting it wide open with my dong.

  Blake dropped off his board as the wave undulated past the Wreck, an old steamship. You could see the outline of her hull, like some vast sea monster lurking on the seabed about a hundred feet off shore. Foam boiled around the steamship’s barnacled tiller. Surging waves revealed the old rusty metal hull, slimed and bearded with green sea-life.

  We watched Blake and the boys frolic in the sea. From time to time they paddled up-current away from the jagged metal of the Wreck. A line of young ass, hard, tight, smooth, clad in Speedos or trunks or cutoffs or wet suits, strong legs kicking the sea into white froth.

  A mysterious argument erupted between Blake and his mates, but the symphony of wind and surf stole the words. Blake jabbed his finger toward the huge headland and its white turret. Right where the beach turned sharply south, at the northernmost tip of Cape Byron itself, there was a rock formation, shaggy with vegetation. The open Pacific lay beyond. Surfers bobbed there like crumbs. Obviously he wanted to move there. But his friends weren’t buying it.

  Then Chaos threw dice, and this time they landed in my favor.

  The wave drew my eye, for it entered the bay slow and sinister, like the sidewise undulation of a huge sea serpent lying just under the surface. Yet there was no sense of ineluctable terror to this wave. If waves were the ocean breathing, then this wave was merely a deep exhalation, not a death rattle. It had power, majesty, beauty—enough to make you catch your breath.

  I saw the surfers at the cape mount it, skate across it like jackrabbits fleeing a hound dog. The wave front bled spray as their boards sliced into it.

  I saw Blake point excitedly, paddle frantically out to sea.

  As it rolled in, he mounted that steep jade wall crested with vanilla froth. The young Poseidon rode his surfboard masterfully. Water boiled around his feet. His black boardies were sculpted onto his hard body. He gracefully danced, balancing and steering his way as the wave curled behind him. He glistened like wet amber. Water erupted in scintillating pinpoints from his thick dreadlocks. His nipples were dark menhirs atop his muscled breasts.

  “Are you getting stiff?” Nhung asked.

  “Yeah.” My throbbing cock pressed into the beach towel. Images of Nhung, facedown, spread-eagle, a teardrop of my jism leaking from his bruised anus, flickered in my head. Images of Blake. “Yeah. Big and stiff.” I grinned, thought of offshore drilling.

  I watched Blake drop from his board, vanishing into a white plume of spray. He emerged grinning, tossed his head, grabbed his surfboard, swam toward the shore.

  When he reached the beach, Nhung suddenly yelled: “Hey, Blake!”

  “You motherfucker,” I said, laughing.

  Tucking his board under his arm, Blake grinned, waved.

  “You’re going to get me deported,” I said, pumping my steely hard-on against the beach towel. I wanted to hump a hot, hard, muscled ass—Nhung’s or Blake’s.

  “What for?”

  “Having a hard-on in public!”

  Nhung snorted derisively.

  Then Blake was there, sea water beading on his flesh. Though his black boardies clung to him, I couldn’t see his junk. His ass enticed me like rock melons would someone dying of thirst.

  To Nhung Blake said, “G’day.” To me: “Found bin Laden yet, or did you bugger that, too?”

  Bugger. Hmm. “Not looking for bin Laden.”

  He nodded. “Good onya. You got a name?”

  “Aaron.”

  Blake grinned, cocked his head toward Nhung. “He your Moses?”

  “Uh, yeah, sure.”

  “You like his rod?”

  “I like his,” said Nhung.

  “You got a cramp?” Blake asked me, noting how I humped the towel and the hot sand beneath.

  “A—” I almost dodged it. But—why? They don’t get outraged by words, these Aussies. Unprotected by a First Amendment, I can say what I think. “Nah. Hard-on.”

  He was bland. “Good thing Nhung’s here, I guess.”

  “Nhung’s more than a good thing,” I said, motivated, I thought, by a sense of gallantry.

  “So it’s said. You like what you bought?” Clearly I looked confused, for Blake quickly added, “Last night.”

  After I sorted it out, I said: “Pretty fucking awesome. We ought to get high some time.”

  Colors swam up out of the inkiness of his eyes, sank back into oblivion. Something had awakened. A lion, roused? A white pointer, emerging from the dark depths? “All right. Come by the Great Northern.”

  I hadn’t expected him to agree. I said, “Tonight, then.”

  “Tonight,” he nodded, then trotted back to the ocean, board under his arm.

  “You’re not going to get what you think you’re going to get,” Nhung warned.

  “I know,” I said. “He’s teasing.”

  “Oh, yeah, he’s teasing,” Nhung said. “And something will happen. You just don’t know what.”

  The Great Northern Hotel was a pub, standing on Jonson Street, Byron’s main drag: dark red brick and yellow tile exterior, brightly lit, and incomparably friendly. I’d eaten there once already; best pizza ever, loaded with prawns, not shrimp.

  The bar in front was raucous and friendly, replete with eye candy. I found Blake in the back room, however, where a band covered Regurgitator and Powderfinger. He sat at a table, alone, his eyes bloodshot, his grin easy, his legs spread, scratching at his crotch.

  He waved me over. “Dropped any space shuttles into the drink lately?”

  “Someone oughta punch you,” I said.

  “Well, mate,” he drawled, “it isn’t going to be a dill like you.”

  Now I’m a pickle. Damn Aussies. I said: “We gonna smoke?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Here?”

  “Oh, no,” Blake said, “it’s not that free a country.” He grinned. “Yet.”

  It was free enough that we could light a jay outside in the night and walk past the cops on our way toward Cape Byron and the lighthouse. The pony that sways between my legs began, ever so slowly, to grow into a mighty stallion.

  “Where’s your girl?” I asked.

  “Back home with my ankle biters,” he said. His chest puffed up. “Three boys.” He paused, changed the subject. “Wish we had my bong. Burns a good cone.”

  He was so natural—young, male, vibrant, a Tarzan in everything but a loincloth. His soul was curling turquoise waters foam kissed; was the music of crying seagulls; was the spiraling infinity of a nautilus shell; was the golden barque of the sun in a cerulean sea, sails the color of pale flame; was his three young sons, lusty and free.

  I wasn’t anywhere near America.

  Is this what it means to live without te
rror?

  Sometime later we stumbled and laughed our way into Arakwal Park. Banksias and scribbly gum trees rose like tall hedges on either side of the path, holding out waxy green leaves as if they were parchment presented for signing. Grasses shivered in the breeze. Blake told me the high-pitched squeaking I heard was not crocodiles but frogs. The town was far away. The lighthouse remained vigilant against the evil that came, as it always seemed to do, from the East.

  I wasn’t thinking of Nhung, just this resplendent male, and his bullshit, and his ass.

  Some carnivorous bush had almost finished devouring a bench, enclosing it with thick, gnarled branches. There was plenty of space inside, lots of concealment.

  Blake fired up another jay. Exhaling, he said, “Got it from a mate in Nimbin.” He wagged an eyebrow knowingly.

  “Cool.” My eyes wandered to his nipples. I felt like a seventh-grader again, eyeing the cute boy in the desk next to me…that thrill, that sense of freedom and possibility, the proximity of the undiscovered country.

  He passed the joint. I inhaled deeply. It was potent stuff, like a surfer’s fat nut sac, dizzying, empowering. My hard rod throbbed in my shorts.

  He saw it. “I’m not Moses. Not into dongers.”

  “Come on, man, do it with a guy.”

  “I have,” Blake said.

  “With who?” I asked, imagining him on top of Nhung, thrusting vigorously, nuts quivering like overripe plums ready to burst.

  A sly grin. “Blokes you don’t know, won’t ever meet.”

  “So you swing.”

  “Like a garden gate in a cyclone.”

  “Your girl know?”

  “She watches,” Blake said. He toyed with the drawstring hanging from his boardies. “She loves bloke-on-bloke. Hell, she gets the sheets so wet—” He looked at me. “But you’re not interested in how wet she gets, are you, Yank?”