The Next (29 page)

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 of 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.

There was evil, there was hypocrisy, there were secrets, there was heartbreak, and there was death out there in the courtyard, but for these few seconds, they could just drift outside in the cold wind.

Chapter Twenty-One

That night, the roof of my cave crashed in.

Although it was only 9 p.m., we’d drifted asleep on the couch together. All was dark. Marzoli’s breathing was deep and regular, and his arms were limp and relaxed around me. I opened my eyes. The sun had set behind my curtains, which remained completely closed. The apartment was pitch black, yet I could see a faint outline of the pictures of the children on the shelf. Light had to be coming from somewhere.

Then I moved my eyes toward the door. I saw the slight sliver under the door where the orange hued hall light was doing its darndest to pry into our sanctuary.

From deep in the trailer’s shadowed belly a lighter flicked, and I saw the wrinkles of his face and the phallic protrusion of a cigar extending from his mouth. How did he get in? What the fuck does he want from us?

I cautiously unwrapped Marzoli’s arms and sat up.

The warmth of Marzoli’s intimacy was a protection I knew could not last forever. I sensed no foreign presence. Graves was not lurking in the corner puffing smoke. I was not in Placerville. Whatever happened in that trailer was still attacking me with its cold green sticky tentacles from whatever rock underneath it lurked. It could still pull me down beneath its murky surges. I was not free. Kissing Marzoli was pointed enough to inspire songs, to be sure, but was not sharp enough to cut me loose from the mire of unaddressed history.