Текст книги "Rough Trade "

The Fratboy and The Faggot

Aaron Travis

Ted crouches naked on the floor, peering over the window sill, his nose pressed against the rusty wire screen. The window is open—open because the Texas night is hot and humid, and Ted’s little attic apartment has no air-conditioning. Open so that Ted can have a better view into the bedroom next door.

Ted’s nude body is glazed with sweat, sweltering inside and out. Sweat runs down his forehead, drips from his nose. Sweat pours down his hairless chest and back, trickling into his crotch, sliding down the crack of his ass, adding its moisture to the lube that crackles in the quiet stillness as he slowly pumps his cock, rotates his hips around the dildo up his ass—and watches.

The room is dark. Dark so that Larry won’t see him, if Larry happens to look his way. Larry lives in one of the condos next door. On the top floor. Just across from Ted’s attic room in the old student boarding house. Only fifteen feet of empty air separate their bedrooms.

From his window, Ted can see into every room of Larry’s place. Directly into the bedroom; at an angle into the alcove that branches toward the bathroom, where Larry keeps his weights and rowing machine; and if he opens the screen and sticks his head a few inches beyond the sill, he can even see into Larry’s living room and kitchen.

Larry’s condo is air-conditioned, the windows always shut; but Larry likes to leave the blinds open, even at night. Ted has been watching him in secret every day since Larry moved in at the start of spring term. As spring turned to summer and the weather turned hot, and Larry started wearing fewer and fewer clothes around the condo, the watching has become an obsession.

Larry is a god. No other word will do. Perfect face. Perfect body. Perfect cock. In the last few months, Ted has had the opportunity to study every part of Larry’s body in minute detail. Dressing, undressing, watching television. Stepping naked from the shower. Working out with his weights, wearing only a sweatband and a jockstrap. Screwing his girlfriend on his king-size waterbed. And sometimes, like tonight, lying alone and naked in the big waterbed, stroking his big cock while Ted watches him in secret and does the same.

Except that Ted does it with a dildo up his ass, the biggest dildo he could find, imagining that it’s Larry’s cock stuffed inside him.

Larry is perfect. In his mid-twenties, a few years older than Ted. His hair is jet black, slightly curly, cut short; bunched into tight rings when he steps from the shower, losing its kink when he blow-dries it. His face is athletic and handsome, every feature strong and smooth. His eyes are dark and remote, his mouth broad and sensual with a slight twist at the corner of his lips, a hint of cruelty. The kind of face that seems made for a photographer’s lens; there isn’t an angle that doesn’t flatter him.

His body takes Ted’s breath away. Broad shoulders, chiseled torso, thickly muscled arms and legs. Skin like polished marble, tanned to a deep, golden luster. Too sleek and graceful to be a weightlifter’s body, too massively developed to be a swimmer’s, too large to be a gymnast’s. Packed with muscle, but all in perfect balance. Sleek and powerful, perfectly styled, like a body made by design. Like the Mercedes-Benz convertible that Larry drives.

If his cock were somehow flawed, then Larry might seem human.

But Ted has seen it. Over and over. The kind of cock he could never grow tired of looking at. Soft, it hangs heavy and thick from Larry’s crotch, almost too big, bigger than Ted’s cock when it’s fully erect. Hard, it curves up from his washboard belly like a club, obscenely thick, bigger than life. Bigger than the dildo lodged up Ted’s ass. Smooth as satin, perfectly shaped. Like his body. Like the Mercedes. Ted has never seen a cock as beautiful.

And Larry knows how to use it. On his girlfriend. On the platinum blonde who comes over every Saturday night, with her Bo Derek body and her fashion model face. Whose perfect hair and makeup are always such a mess when Larry is finished with her. Whose painted red lips open in a little girl’s moan when Larry pulls her legs apart and slips his big cock inside. Who squeals and pants, loud enough for Ted to hear through the thick plate-glass windows, when Larry turns her over and fucks her from behind, screwing in and out of both holes, yanking on her platinum hair and spanking her ass with the back of his hand. Who crouches between his legs and takes it in her mouth afterward, getting it big and stiff for the next go-round, while Larry leans against the headboard, smirking down at her and twirling his fingertips through her frazzled blond hair.

Ted imagines himself in the girlfriend’s place. Crouching on his hands and knees, holding the big slick cock in his mouth. Looking up at Larry with his broad shoulders propped against the headboard, his handsome face twisted in a smirk. Ted imagines and watches, day by day, crouching naked beside the window of his hot, stuffy room, riding the dildo stuffed up his ass and beating his meat.

Ted seldom goes to bars, never makes pick-ups at the bookstores. Most of the men he sleeps with come from the political groups on campus and the other English majors he meets in classes. Mousy, intellectual types like himself, up-front gay, aspiring to a certain dignity and self-respect that carries over into their sex. Some of them are attractive enough. A few are handsome, athletic, well built. But none of them is even remotely like Larry. Larry is a god. Larry comes from another world. Sometimes Ted thinks that men like Larry were put on this earth just to torment cocksuckers like himself.

Living next door to him for three months, able to see so clearly into his rooms, Ted knows a few things about Larry. That he comes from money—the condo and the expensive clothes he wears and the dark blue Mercedes with leather upholstery testify to that. That he’s a graduate student, studying architecture or engineering to judge from the books that line his shelves and the drafting table in his living room, cluttered with big sheets of translucent paper. That he gets up early and runs every day—it’s the thing that gets Ted out of bed, reaching over to shut off his alarm clock and seeing Larry getting in from his run, his curly black hair frazzled and damp, pushed back from his face by a sweatband, his tanktop and running shorts soaked with sweat and clinging to every muscle, clinging especially to the bulge at his crotch. That he works out with the weights after his run, every morning from eight until ten, pumping himself up till his big muscles glisten with a fresh sheen of sweat, stripped down to nothing more than a jockstrap that barely contains his big soft cock.

Larry was on the wrestling team as an undergraduate—a dozen trophies and medals are mounted atop the bookshelves. The plaques on the wall tell more: Phi Beta Kappa, a diploma with the words summa cum laude, Chapter President of the Young Republicans three years in a row. But the trophy that intrigues Ted most is the wooden paddle hung on the living room wall. A fraternity paddle, long and intricately carved, with a leather loop through the borehole in the handle. Mounted on the back is a bronze seal with raised Greek letters. Ted can make out only the first: Omega.

Maybe the paddle is only symbolic. Or maybe not. Hazing is banned, but still goes on. Some of the fraternities on campus are notoriously brutal. Some of the stories Ted has heard are hair-raising—pledges humiliated, degraded, stripped naked and sexually abused. Maybe the stories exaggerate. Or maybe not. Larry would know.

At that moment, watching Larry masturbate on his bed across the way, thinking of the paddle, imagining Larry standing above him with the paddle in his hand, Ted loses control. His cock expands in his fist and starts to shoot. His asshole convulses around the dildo. The sensation and the fantasy overwhelm him and his vision goes black.

And when it clears, when Ted opens his eyes again, his face pressed hard against the rusty screen, the first thing he sees is Larry.

Larry, lounging in naked perfection on his big waterbed, his upright cock clutched in his fist like a club—staring back at him. Staring him straight in the eye across the fifteen feet that separate their bedrooms.

Larry is still for a moment, his handsome face expressionless and blank. Then the corner of his mouth curls up, the smirk spreads across his lips. He slowly rises from the bed and walks toward his window, his hard greasy cock snapping against his hips, his eyes locked on Ted’s face.

Ted stares back, unable to move. For a moment, Larry stands naked in the window, slowly shaking his head, a look of utter disgust on his face. Then he reaches for the cord beside the window and snaps the blinds shut.

*

Ted wakes the next morning to the buzzing of his alarm. He reaches for the button and automatically looks out the window, into Larry’s bedroom. The blinds are open again. Larry should be getting in from his morning run, but the room is empty.

Ted lies back in his bed, groaning. He reaches down to his crotch. His cock is still hard. Hard and sore. Sore from so much abuse. Like his asshole, throbbing and swollen from the job he did on it last night with the dildo. After Larry caught him watching and shut the blinds, Ted tried to sleep but couldn’t. He beat off three more times, lying sweaty and naked in his bed, remembering the scowl on Larry’s face, remembering the sight of Larry standing naked and erect in the window. Ted had never seen him that naked, that close. Almost close enough to touch.

He wonders if Larry will start closing the blinds at night. He turns on his side and peers into the empty bedroom, wishing Larry would come in from his morning run. Dreading it if he does, flushing with embarrassment. But the room across the way is deserted and quiet.

Ted drags himself from bed. He showers and eats a quick breakfast, then pulls on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. He goes downstairs, headed for the corner store to buy a newspaper. Ted walks across the porch of the boarding house and steps onto the sidewalk. The way to the store leads him past the entrance to Larry’s condo. And there, sunning himself on the concrete steps, is Larry. Stripped to the waist, wearing a pair of skintight jeans and shiny alligator boots.

Ted freezes. Larry hasn’t seen him yet. He could turn around, head back to his room—but then Larry looks up and fixes him with a hard, cold stare.

Ted falters, takes another step. His heart pounds in his chest. He tries to turn his head, but Larry’s stare is like a grappling hook. Then Larry smiles at him, a strange half-smile without a trace of warmth.

“Hi.”

Ted continues to walk, but very slow. Hours pass between each step. He clears his throat. “Hi.”

“You headed somewhere?”

Ted stops in his tracks. “No.”

Larry leans back against the steps, propping himself on his elbows. The sunlight across his chest is dazzling, casting a deep shadow into the cleft between the plated muscles, casting smaller shadows down the scalloped muscles of his hard, lean stomach. His narrow hips and broad thighs seem to be poured into the tight jeans. The bulge at his crotch is enormous.

Larry looks him up and down in return. His smile fades to a frown. “What’s your name?”

Ted can hardly hear above the pounding of the blood in his temples. For a moment he simply gawks, confused. Then he opens his mouth to speak. His mouth is dry, his lips seem heavy. “Ted.”

“Mine’s Larry.”

I know, Ted almost says, but stops himself. How could he explain that he came over one day while Larry was out to check the name on Larry’s mailbox?

Ted steps toward him, thinking for some reason that Larry will reach up to shake his hand. But Larry keeps his arms at his sides. He cocks his head and spreads his legs a few inches further apart.

There’s a long silence. Larry keeps staring at him. Ted thinks he should say something more, but doesn’t know what. Then Larry stands up, straightening his powerful legs, raising his body to its full height. His crotch is at eye level, only inches from Ted’s face. His naked chest looms above. The sight takes Ted’s breath away.

Larry turns and opens the door to the stairway that leads up to his condo. He steps inside. Ted’s heart sinks. Then Larry turns back. “You coming, or what?”

Ted walks up the porch steps, his knees wobbling, and follows Larry inside. Up two long flights of plushly carpeted steps. Watching Larry’s ass flex inside his skintight jeans. Tracing the silky cleavage of his spine up to the broad, flaring muscles of his shoulders and back. Making small talk.

“You a student?”

“Yeah,” Ted says.

“What year?”

“Sophomore.”

What are you studying?”

“English.”

Larry snorts. “Figures.”

In the condo, Larry makes himself at home, sitting at the butcher block table in the dining area between the living room and the kitchen. Ted looks around the room, so familiar, but never seen from the inside out. From the living room window, at an angle, he can see the window of his room.

Ted feels uncomfortable, self-conscious, out of place. Then he sees the paddle on the wall, hung just above Larry’s head. Larry sees him staring, cranes his neck to look up at the paddle, looks back at Ted.

“You in a fraternity?”

“No.”

Larry scowls. “Figures. You’re not exactly the fraternity type, are you?”

Ted shrugs. It’s the best he can manage.

“Don’t just stand there.” Larry pushes a chair from the table with his foot. The legs squeal across the glazed stone tiles. “Sit down.”

Ted sits. Embarrassed to look Larry in the face, afraid of staring at his naked chest, he raises his eyes to the paddle above Larry’s head.

“Kinda fascinated by that thing, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. I guess.” Ted clears his throat.

“Are they just, I mean, are they just for decoration, or…” His voice trails off into a whisper.

“Decoration.” Larry curls his lip. “Yeah, you could say that. Use a paddle like that to decorate a pledgeboy’s naked ass.”

Ted swallows hard. “Oh. Yeah—they tell a lot of stories about the frats on campus. Hazing—stuff like that. I guess it’s mostly made up.” Ted finally lowers his eyes from the paddle to Larry’s face. Larry is smirking at him. The same smirk he wears when his girlfriend is down on her knees with her face buried in his crotch. The same smirk Ted saw last night, just before Larry closed the blinds.

“Hardly.” Larry leans forward, crossing his arms on the tabletop, tilting his head back. “Anything and everything you’ve heard is true. Especially about Omega boys.”

Ted bites his lip. “I don’t know. Some of those things—I don’t see how a guy could go through that kind of stuff.”

“Simple,” Larry says. “Pledges are there to serve the upper-classmen. Pledges do what they’re told. You’d know that, if you’d ever been through it. If you’d ever been stripped naked in a room full of older guys, put down on your knees—if you’d ever felt that paddle across your naked butt. I got a feeling a guy like you would probably do just about anything he was told to.”

Ted’s chest is suddenly tight, he has to struggle to breathe. “Any of those pledges—you know—you ever make them—give you a blowjob or something?” Ted blurts it out, then bites his lip, wishing he hadn’t said it.

Larry’s lip curls back in a sneer. “Shit, what do you think Omega boys are, a bunch of cocksuckers—like you?”

Ted feels a warm, prickling blush spread across his forehead. He bites his lower lip, then stops, realizing that Larry is staring at him from across the table, eyes narrowed, mouth twisted in contempt. Larry leans away from the table, tilting his chair back on two legs. He raises his arms and clasps his hands behind his head. The muscles flex and bulge across his shoulders and chest. The sweaty smell from his armpits wafts into Ted’s nostrils, making him dizzy.

“Nope,” Larry says. “Not a faggot in the house. Except for one. Guy named Steve. You wouldn’t have thought there was anything wrong with him. Came from a good old Texas family of oilmen down in Beaumont. Daddy was one of the founders of the fraternity, all his older brothers pledged Omega. Steve played football down in Beaumont, star quarterback, made all-state his senior year in high school. Big guy. Good-looking, sandy hair and muscles, had the chicks hanging all over him. Wouldn’t have figured him for a faggot. ’Course he didn’t know he was a cocksucker himself, not until we put the screws to him during Hell Week. Kind of an interesting story.”

“Yeah?” Ted’s mouth is dry.

“Yeah. You’d probably like to hear it. What do you say, cocksucker? You wanna hear what happens to a pussy like you in a place like Omega?”

Ted bites his lip again, unable to stop it. He should get up and leave; he shouldn’t stand for Larry’s abuse. But every time Larry calls him a cocksucker he feels a lump in his throat, and another lump between his legs, and a warm, loose feeling in his guts. Then Larry leans a little further back in his chair, just enough so that Ted can see the big, soft bulge pushing at the crotch of his jeans, and Ted knows he couldn’t move if he wanted to.

“Yeah,” Ted says. His voice is so hoarse it sounds like a croak.

Larry cocks his head and smirks. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, I’d like to hear the story.”

Larry shakes his head, like a teacher with a half-wit pupil who just can’t get it right. “Seems to me that guys like you ought to call guys like me sir. Why don’t you ask me again. Ask me to please tell you about the cocksucker in Omega.”

Ted is chewing his lip so hard it’s almost bleeding. He counts ten heartbeats before he manages to open his mouth. Ten rapid, throbbing pulses like drumbeats across his forehead. He wants to say, Go to hell, asshole.

Instead he says: “Please—sir. Tell me about the cocksucker in Omega?”

Larry nods, baring his perfect white teeth. “That’s better, queerboy. Sure, I’ll tell you all about it. You just keep your hands away from your faggot dick while I’m doing it.” He gets up from the table and walks to a chest of drawers in the living room, rummaging inside. Ted looks after him, staring at his broad, tanned back, the deep silky cleft of his spine, the hard muscles of his ass and thighs packed into his skintight jeans. Suddenly his mouth is no longer dry, but slick and wet inside, the saliva gushing like a starving man with a slab of beef waved under his nose. “I think I got a couple of pictures of him somewhere,” Larry says. “Yeah, here they are.” He returns to his chair and tosses one of the photos on the table.

Ted picks it up, his hands shaking. The picture is a wallet-size color photo, a high school graduation portrait of an all-American boy in mortarboard and robe. Clean-cut, more cute than handsome. Coppery blond hair, bright blue eyes, and a bullish football player’s neck. Just a trace of baby fat in his freckled cheeks, bunched up to make room for his beaming grin. Like a face from a toothpaste commercial.

“Yeah, that’s Steve. And that’s him, too.” Larry tosses the second picture on the table.

The photo is a Polaroid lit by a flash, the background solid black, the foreground stark and grainy. Ted holds the two photos side by side and sucks in his breath.

He has to look hard to convince himself that the two photos show the same person. The smiling blond jock in the first photo, and in the second—a face even his own mother might not recognize. A face his mother wouldn’t want to recognize.

The Polaroid is a tight shot, taken from two feet away. The blond’s face is in profile, turned toward the camera just enough to show both of his startled blue eyes. His head is thrown back like a sword swallower’s—chin tilted up, shoulders scrunched against the back of his neck. Dark circles under his eyes. Eyebrows drawn together. Hair frazzled and damp. Cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk’s, bruised and smeared with sweat. Mouth opened wide, lips stretched thin—his whole face bent out of shape by the cock plugged down his throat.

The cock hangs downward, rubbery and thick, like a cock that’s already shot its load; half of it exposed, the other half buried in the blond’s distended throat—Ted can see the outline of the head bulging against his Adam’s apple. The rest emerges from the rim of his lips like a fat link of pale sausage, plump and greasy, arching upward and finally disappearing into a thatch of wiry black pubic hair matted with spit. The owner of the cock can’t be seen, except for a glimpse of his muscular thighs and washboard stomach; but Ted knows without being told that the cock belongs to Larry.

“Candid camera,” Larry says. He leans back and clasps his hands behind his neck again.

Ted can’t take his eyes from the photo. After the initial shock of seeing the blond’s contorted, cockswallowing face, it’s the dick in his mouth that Ted keeps staring at. Plump and swollen, not even fully hard, big enough to plug the blond’s throat with half the length—

“Yeah, Stevie boy turned out to be quite a dick lover. The kind that’ll crawl and beg for it. The kind that’ll sit there and let you call him cocksucker to his face.”

Ted looks up over the edge of the photos. Larry is staring at him, smirking, flexing the muscles in his arms and chest. The bulge at his crotch now extends halfway toward his knee.

Larry laughs, a low, growling chuckle. “Yeah, that was taken during Hell Week, two years ago. Shit, even a pussy like you must know a little of what goes on during Hell Week. That was my senior year. Stevie boy was a freshman, pledging Omega. Hell Week’s where we separate the men from the pussies. The usual stuff. Make ’em shave their crotches. Make ’em go to classes with a rubber plug up their butts. Get ’em drunk, load ’em in the trunk of the car—take away their clothes and make ’em walk back into town stark naked. Line ’em up, bend ’em over and warm their butts with a leather strap. A lot of the houses have softened up on Hell Week, but Omega is strong on tradition.

“And at the end of Hell Week comes the Gods Gauntlet. You ever hear of it? Any of those horror stories about hazing ever mention Gods Gauntlet at Omega House?”

Ted has been staring at the bulge between Larry’s legs. He tears his gaze away and looks into Larry’s eyes. Eyes as cold as steel. “No.”

“The final night of Hell Week. Draw ten names out of a hat, and those ten lucky pledges get to pass the Gods Gauntlet. Me and five other guys—we were the Gods that year. Top six men in the house. That was the year we came up with a little game called ‘Egg on His Face’ for the Gauntlet. You ever heard of that?”

Ted shakes his head.

“Egg on His Face. You line the pledges up outside the room, take ’em inside one at a time. Once you’ve got him alone, you make the pledge strip off his clothes. Knock him around a little, call him names, get him softened up. Then you give him an enema. Bend him over and stick the nozzle up his ass. That’s so his butt’ll be squeaky clean inside—just in case he loses the game. Lot of those guys never had an enema before, especially not with six guys looking on. They all blushed red as a beet, but you could tell that some of ’em like it. A lot of ’em got hard-ons, couldn’t help it. That made ’em blush even redder. Yeah, when it came his turn I could tell Stevie boy liked it. The way his little weenie stood up hard as a bone, poking up from his shaved crotch while we flushed him out.

“After the enema, you make the pledge stand naked in the middle of the room. Take a fresh egg, crack it in a cup, spoon out the yolk. Tell him to open wide, then slip the yolk inside. Make him hold it in his mouth. It’s only after you’ve got him bent over, grabbing his ankles with his butt in the air, that you explain the rules of the game—you ever been zapped with a cattle prod, Teddy boy?”