The Price Of Dick (9 page)

During what
should have been a long, quiet drive home, Dick yammered excitedly. First about the event itself. Then about how great he’d done. And finally about a couple of the other athletes he’d met that morning in the registration tent.

“
The ass on the guy in the gray wetsuit, Jesus H. Christ! Ass of death. I could die fucking that ass. He would die from me fucking that ass. Hence, ass of death.” Animated limbs flew everywhere as he talked.

“
You okay?” I asked. I was ducking arms.

“
He didn’t have much in the coin bag. But you know what they say, the smaller the cock, the quicker the pop. And the last thing I care about is spending time on a front door when the back door is where the action is.” He made a ridiculous thrusting movement with his hips that made me laugh.

“
You’re mixing metaphors,” I said, knowing full well he’d ignore me. I was in his periphery during this ride. Just there to listen to what he wanted to say.

The highway ahead of us was seventy miles of blank
space. He was in his sweat-cutoffs, and smelled like a barnyard. Instead of being dog-tired, he was bouncing all over the place. I didn’t know if I could tolerate it for the rest of the drive.

“
Oh my God, I’m so horny. My nuts feel like sandbags weighing my dick down!” he announced out of the blue like a man unable to restrain any thought that passed through his mind. “I gotta get off! This is crazy. I can’t stand my dick feeling like it’s going to explode. You ever have that?”

I informed him we were still an hour away from the apartment. Small details like that were incidental to him at this point.

An impish giggle burst from him. “Hard cocks don’t wait for anyone or anything,” he said. And with that, he stripped out of his ragged sweat-shorts and briefs. His legs stretched out in the car, filling it with the smell of stale sweat. From my nervous sideways glances at him, I saw his cock release and flip upward to the edge of his shirt. Leaning back and sliding down in his seat, he admired his own hunk of hard flesh as if Michelangelo had personally sculpted it.

“
What are you doing?” I asked both thrilled and panicked. “What if we get pulled over, you dipshit? What if a bus drives by, or a guy in a Mack truck?” I was checking my side and rearview mirrors.

That
statement appeared to amuse him. “What if I just christen your car?” And with that came another bizarre burst of laughter. “Imagine a priest christening things like that?” He pointed at his dick in three directions as he said, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” and then he laughed again.

He began stroking himself.
I began thinking of excuses I could make to the cops should I get pulled over.

I should have made
more of a protest. Each passing vehicle sent a stab of terror in my chest, worrying we might be caught. On the other hand I thought, how many men have the opportunity for a gorgeous stud to strip half naked in their car and jack off?

“
Did I tell you about the priests at Saint Jude’s when I was a kid?” Again, asked for no reason in the middle of his masturbatory act. “It’s the church behind my folks’ house. I went to grade school there. I used to mow the rectory lawn every Saturday during summer, from the age of twelve until I was sixteen, because I could walk the mower from my house to the church. They were supposed to pay me ten bucks for each time I mowed.”

When he remarked how old he had been, I recalled seeing the pictures of
him as a pre-teen and teenager on the wall going down into the basement of his folks’ house. The same lantern-jawed face, but with lighter blond hair. He wore glasses back then. Big, nerdy glasses that took up a third of his face. And he still had that same jutting bone structure that made him appear older.

“
The first time I mowed the lawn I noticed the priests in the rectory windows watching me. They thought I didn’t see them peeking through those curtains, but I saw their beady little eyes.” He talked without missing a stroke on himself. I had to peek.

“
So what did you do?” I wondered.

“
Oh dude, it gave me the hardest erection knowing they were watching. I grew this monster between my legs starting at eleven years of age. I knew it was there for a reason ‘cause it went from being a peanut to a banana in less than a year. I knew what I had down there and I knew they were looking at it, standing behind their curtains and yanking on their willies. You think I wasn’t gonna show it off?”

He tightened his grip on himself as he said this.
He counted this as a salient trophy memory and not something inappropriate.

“
I took off my shirt. I wasn’t as built then. Didn't have any body hair either. But I had a good tan, and I had on a pair of those pleated shorts that rode up my ass crack real tight so they got a good look at my rear junk.” He spit into his palm and continued to work himself more vigorously. “I kept my dick pushed way down in my shorts so they could see the outline when I mowed toward the window. I bet they were just dripping Holy jizz at the sight of a little boy with a big cock.”

I hazarded a quick look at him. He smiled at me, pointed with his eyes for me to look at the dick in his hands. It was huge
, like all the blood in his body had pooled in that specific location. The head glowed shiny with pre-cum, was a deep tropical color, like a jungle snake about to strike.

“
The Devil wore tennis shoes,” I quipped, reluctantly turning my eyes back to the lanes ahead of me. Several cars passed. I sighed with relief as each one went by.

“
When I was fifteen or sixteen years old, Father James used to ask me in so I could shower in the rectory afterwards. Told me it would help me get used to high school showers when I’d have to be naked in front of other boys. But I knew what he was doing. I let him think I was a dummy; him standing there watching me as I soaped myself up, running my hand up and down my hairless little boy crack for him to see; keeping a nice half-woody worked up.”

“
You know you’re giving these priests a defense if they need one, don’t you?” I joked.

That gave him some perverse delight.
“Just because they put on black robes with a silly little collar doesn’t mean they ain’t ruled by their dicks like the rest of us. We all got the same dirty little secrets. And my mom thought they were all so holier than thou. That was a kick in the ass. Her bending on her knees, sucking the wine out of their cup and munching their dumb little crackers like God picked them out and put them on a pretty little pedestal. And there they were hankering after her boy’s hot little ass.” There was no mistaking the malice heard in his laughter this time.

I was hesitant to ask, but couldn
’t live without the information. “Did you ever do anything with the priests?”

I saw the shadow of his shaking head.
“Nope. You only get so much for ten bucks and a cold soda,” he said.

Even then,
at such an early age, an astute little prick tease.

“
We should do that in a photo shoot. A priest going after an altar boy. Have the priest down on all fours sucking on the pud of an altar boy with his robes all hiked up? Big glob of white, creamy splooge all over the priest’s lips, him lapping it up like a hungry little Dachshund. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”

“
I don’t think I could actually sell those anywhere,” I said, still aware of his hand pumping away.

“
Yeah, we’d have to do those just for the fun of it,” he said.

He
hadn’t yet caught on to the reality that I needed to shoot photos to make a living. They weren’t all intended to be a way for him to live out his sexual fantasies.

“
Did you ArmorAll your dash?” he asked.

Confused, I told him I had.
“Why?”

With that, three geysers of ejaculate hit
the dash with a resilient plop and slid down past the lock on the glove compartment.

Honestly,
I’d known I’d taken in a scoundrel, but I liked having him around. And yes, I knew from the beginning that he was an egotistical, self-serving, good-looking cad. We all know that we love having that kind of diversion around. Daytime television makes a fortune off of soap operas based on guys and gals like Dick. The bottom line is that none of us likes being alone, or looks forward to doing many things by ourselves. I will order take-out before I sit at a table by myself in a restaurant. However, when my previous relationship dissolved, I didn’t have it in me to try to find another right away. I didn’t want the drama, the emotional turmoil, the feelings of failure, and ultimately, the loss. A failed relationship was like putting a beloved dog down. You knew it was the best thing to do, but it didn’t lessen the pain of the deed.

Being
a little older brought a new psychological perspective to the situation. I wasn’t a youngster anymore. Sleep wrinkles didn’t erase as quickly as they used to, hangovers lasted longer, and the immediacy of one’s mortality seemed present in every cough or minor ache. Middle-aged crazy wormed its way into my subconscious, and with that came the previously uncharacteristic need to do the things I hadn’t done yet, live the dreams I hadn’t lived: blah, blah, blah. Those were the things I’d been trying to do up until the point that I gave him the key that made my door his, as well.

None of us want to go through our days feeling like we meander aimlessly, filling our time
only with the things that pay the bills from pillow up to pillow down. When asked, we’d like to be able to say our lives were exciting, or at least mildly entertaining. We don’t come into the world looking to be humdrum, or just maintaining, or just surviving. Dick subtracted those things from my day-to-day and added the fun back in. That’s why he became my accomplice.

I’
d never blame anyone else who falls for the same brand of seduction. I embrace that we’re all similarly flawed. That makes the self-inflicted wounds hurt less. I’d read Tennessee Williams. I just didn’t expect to be living my own tainted little version of
Suddenly Last Summer
.

Dick took his
triathlon training to a more serious level; rigorous training paired with strict dieting. It changed the food I bought and cooked, as well as our workouts. I would reap the benefits of both by following his training regime as much as I could. In exasperation, we gave up on our journeys to other gyms because they had silly things like rules and time limits. When he ran on a treadmill, it was for an hour. Twenty minutes with a waiting list of toe-tappers behind you wouldn’t do at all. So we began working out at the small, well-equipped key club that the apartment complex offered. While he was doing his long run on the treadmill, I ran my twenty minutes, took a break to do some weights, then joined in again for his last twenty. I lost another ten pounds in the next few months and gained muscle mass. Now past another birthday, I had my thirty-four inch waist back.

Without the gyms as scouting grounds,
I was forced to find other ways to recruit models. Most were discovered by word of mouth through previous models who were paid a small finder’s fee. It kept the business moving along.

Several months into the workouts at the new place, I began to notice that we
’d attract small audiences at the windows. Sometimes a few muscle envious teenagers would peer in, look at us and compare. Now and then we’d get the curious middle-aged female. And then there was one person I noticed who began to show up as if it had been a scheduled appointment.

He was an elderly man, always dressed in a prim suit. He was bald with a shiny, speckled pate,
and wiry gray eyebrows. The man was thin and his skin had a yellow cast to it, like he wasn’t well. The object of his fascination was obviously not me. I could move throughout the room like dandelion fuzz, invisible unless it happened to blow into your line of vision. His attention remained fixed on Dick running on the treadmill. How he knew when to show up was a mystery. We never had a designated workout schedule. Often, in the middle of the evening, if we got bored, we’d grab our keys and head down. If none of the other residents were using the facility, we’d take ownership of it for a couple of hours. However, there were no regular times. In spite of this, the old man would still show up, lurking in the shadows, peering through the glass. I made a joking comment, something to the effect that Dick had a stalker. One that we had to assume lived in the apartments facing the gym to be able to see us walk inside at different hours of the day and night. I nicknamed him “The Crypt-Keeper.”

Dick
enjoyed the attention. I found that a little unnerving and said so. He chided me with, “Have some pity for the old fella. A little prick tease will get the cobwebs out of his pecker.”

“
He could be dangerous.”

“
He’s a harmless old fuck.”

The kids
probably thought that about Gacy in his clown suit offering to blow up their balloons. Dahmer’s dates probably thought an invitation to dinner had burgers on the menu. No one knows what dangerous looks like.

A few weeks later while I was engaged in a bread and butter shoot, Dick left for the gym ahead of me. I
’d catch up with him after the shoot. Imagine my surprise at arriving to find him squatting on the bumper of his Toyota talking to the Crypt-keeper. He was on full display for the geezer: shirt off, slung over his shoulder, crotch bulging from a jock strap stuffed in a flagrant show off. The poor old man in front of him looked one involuntary orgasm away from a heart attack. His yellow tint had gone white in the afternoon sunlight. I shook my head thinking my roommate had lost his mind.

He waved at me with that bull-headed smile, patted the old man on the shoulder,
and jumped off the car. The Crypt-keeper walked away, looking back with eyes only for Dick as I joined him at the door to the gym. I wasn’t sure if I was disgusted or dumbfounded. Dick didn’t care.

“
What was that about?” I finally asked when my curiosity outweighed my need to not look nosey.

He stepped on the treadmill, nonchalantly
punching buttons. “Oh, that’s Mr. Walsh. Nice old man. He’s a retired hospital administrator.”

I
’m sure my mouth was gaping. “You didn’t invite him to our place, did you?”

That
smart-assed smirk of his appeared. “I made him my new client. He’s got a fortune saved up that he hasn’t done anything with. So I’m gonna handle his investments. Says he has a lot of important friends he can send my way.”

As far as he was concerned that was the end of the discussion.