Текст книги "Rough Trade "

Автор книги: Todd Gregory

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Leaving Fresno

Max Reynolds

The heat comes up before sunrise in Fresno. A harsh, blaring heat, loud and insistent. A heat so intense it seems suited to a more brutal and unforgiving landscape than this lush, bustling agricultural town in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley. Tiny, sleepy villages fan out from the flat hub of Fresno—Pixley, Surrey, Waco, more. Each has its own surreal greenery, each its specialty: cotton, artichokes, avocados, strawberries, soybeans, tomatoes, grapes, carnations, roses. Everything you eat, everything you wear, everything that sits on your table from soup to nuts, from wine to dessert, to your very napkin—everything you want comes from here. Everything.

Gabriel Luñez stood leaning against the squat, whitewashed one-story square that had served as home to him and his two brothers for the past three years since they had come up from Tijuana to work the California fields. Four a.m. on a late June morning in Fresno and the sky was still—for another half hour, maybe a little more—irrepressibly black. The stars begin to recede as dawn encroaches and it was true that out here the night was thick and deep. No light pollution like in L.A. where it was never truly dark, even in the hills. Here on the outskirts of Fresno the night enveloped you in a caress surprisingly soft, achingly real. Here, as Gabriel leaned back with a long sigh against the flaking stucco wall behind which his brothers slept, here as Gabriel ran his strong, tanned, work-roughened hands first slowly, then more urgently over the cock stiffening in his loose jersey shorts and pinched his dark nipples again and again until they began to hurt a bit, the heady night was the only thing holding him. It wouldn’t take long for him to come, unless he drew it out, made it last, like he had the night he had seen that boy, that blond Anglo, Joey, the one who hauled the carnations out by truck across from where Gabriel was walking home from the orchard. That Joey, slender and tall, like the flowers he hauled up Route 85, too blond, too gringo blanco to be out in the full sun every day. But there he was, Joey, in the twilight, on his knees, in his jeans and the white T-shirt that always had little streaks of color from the flower petals smeared here and there. There he was, Joey, that sweet, supple Anglo, sucking the dick of the field manager, Mr. Adamos, in the half-light outside the office on the edge of the carnation field. Sucking his cock like he knew how it was done and liked doing it. Sucking Mr. Adamos’s dick with his hands pressed up against his balls and his knees spread wide in the soft brown dirt. Gabriel had stood and watched. Just stopped in the twilit lanes of the carnation field as the colors bled out of the flowers and into the night and tried not to grip his own hardening cock as he watched young blond Joey suck his boss’s dick till the older man pulled it out of Joey’s mouth and jerked it fast onto Joey’s petal-smeared T-shirt, all the while urging Joey in Spanish to rub his balls harder and faster. Gabriel had run his hand over his dick then, exhaled deeply into the sharp-scented night, felt a small damp spot on his pants near the head of his cock, and had watched as the scene ended outside the office with Mr. Adamos reaching down and touching Joey’s face. Then he folded his cock back into his pants, pulled some bills from his wallet, and walked away as Joey got up from his knees, took a cigarette out from behind his ear, lit it, and smoked as he leaned against the back of the truck.

*

The carnation farm came flush up against the orchard Gabriel worked with his brothers. Gabriel like to cross through it some nights on his way home, letting Diego and Luis take the old Corolla back home or out to meet with some chicas down from the canning factory over past Alameda bodega. Sometimes they’d rag him, make him come along, tell him he needed to get laid, get some nice mestiza pussy, take some of the ache of the day away. If they pushed, he’d go. But that night, the night he’d seen Joey, Gabriel had begged off, claimed exhaustion and too much irritation with the day to be around people. Walking back to the sweaty box of a house through the sharp-smelling lanes of the carnation farm, feeling an ache of need and emptiness, he had come upon Joey on his knees, Joey, pulling on Mr. Adamos’s cock the same way he had sucked on the Corona at the bar that night they had shot a few rounds of pool with some of the other workers.

That’s where he had seen Joey before, spoken to him a few times. They had run into each other at the bodega and the little low-rent bar the field workers went to after work on Fridays, had a few Coronas. Gabriel’s English was good—much better than Diego’s or Luis’s. His mother had pressed him, over and over, to try and learn before he left Tijuana, to help his brothers out. Gabriel, who could read, which his brothers could not; Gabriel, who wanted out of Tijuana to make some money and make some life that didn’t include days spent breaking his back like his father had done till the day he died. Gabriel had taken his mother’s advice and had gone in search of teachers. He had hung out at a dank little club just in from the border where Anglos came across seeking drugs and sex—foreign pussy and hot cock—and he had learned first some passing English which he shared with his pleased mother and then better English which he stored for later, for when he would cross the border.

Gabriel learned a lot from the turistas. He had learned how to let an Americano teach him words and then suck his dick and squeeze his balls and lick his ass for a hundred pesos, maybe more, maybe less. They liked the lessons, these turistas, liked the idea that they were making something out of this boy from Tijuana who they could imagine tending their gardens or cleaning their pools, shirtless, his skin slick with sweat just ready to be licked off by an eager Anglo tongue. At twenty-two, tall and lean with the muscled body of a laborer who split rocks at the quarry all day long, with the deep, glowing bronze tan of a man who stood baking against the harsh white rock from five a.m. until four in the afternoon with barely a siestina at midday, with the sleek black hair that fell across his forehead and the eyes so dark they seemed to have no discernable pupils, Gabriel had learned just how to ply his language-learning trade, had learned that men thought him rough, but beautiful. And he learned what it meant when they said to him that he was a gorgeous animal, a sexy beast, learned that they didn’t really see him like themselves, that he was like something they found along the seaside—a shiny bit of glass, a pretty shell—he was treasure, but treasure that didn’t need to be protected or even coveted. He was something to ooh and ahh over for as long as it took to have a drink, get hard, and get off. No more, no less.

Gabriel had learned the language, all right, had learned just how much he liked having his cock licked and sucked by strange white men he’d never see again. Learned how to say in his roughly accented English, Wait, not yet, don’t let me come yet, and he would pull his cock away from the gringo, breathing por favor, and hold it tight for a minute, press his fingers to the head and pretend that it ached not to come, but that he could take it, this strong Mexicano could take it, because he knew that little bit of play, using their words back at them, taking away his big, Latino cock, made them want to shoot right then and there, made them want him more, made them want to pay him more, made them grab for it back and then they would suck him with mucho gusto, make him come that much harder, that much better.

But by the time Gabriel got to Fresno a few years later, well versed in his now not-too-thickly accented English and gleaning jobs for his brothers and himself, he had wanted more than strangers, wanted more than just to have his dick sucked hard and rough for pesos in a bar where no one ever knew anyone for more than an evening. Gabriel had wanted more than another back-breaking job in the unrelenting heat, wanted more than the endless line of chicas he wasn’t interested in and the yearning for man after man that he couldn’t have. When he crossed over into California he had believed his days of doing anything for a peso, anything to escape his grim barrio in Tijuana, were over. Not yet.

Gabriel was ready to come now, and pressed his back against the rough stucco of the house, his fingers laced around his balls, his other hand stroking, stroking, stroking his cock. Thinking about Joey, about his supple, leanly muscled body that glowed, like the roses from the other farm a few miles down. Joey was tanned, but pink underneath, as if the sun had slapped him a little too hard. His hair was blond, too blond from too much sun, and short and spiky. He looking like he should have been surfing down in Malibu, not hauling flowers for Mr. Adamos, not sucking his boss’s cock for a few dollars tossed in the dirt.

Gabriel did what he used to do in Tijuana to turn his patrons on—he stopped himself from coming. Let his dick go for a minute while he still caressed his balls, slid a finger back toward his asshole. He saw Joey between his legs, like all those men in Tijuana, all those gringos who slid pesos and pesetas into his pockets, under his balls, into his hands, whatever either turned them on or made them feel better. He saw Joey on his knees, this time in the orchard, saw Joey run his hands over his jeans, rub his hands hard against the outline of his cock, then do the same thing to himself. He watched as Joey took the pull of his zipper in his teeth and teasingly, achingly slowly, jerked it down. He felt his long, hard cock push against the opening of his jeans, push to meet Joey’s mouth as he pressed first against the bulge in the fabric, then nip just a little at it with his teeth through his underwear, then pull it out, still teasing, still way too slow, so slow it hurt, with his long, tapered fingers, tapered just like the stems of the carnations.

Joey’s mouth was like one of the flowers that peppered the fields surrounding the countryside where they both worked—it opened pink and soft in front of him, the lips like petals as they caressed his pulsing cock. Gabriel saw, then felt Joey take the entire length of his cock into his mouth, the tender warm wetness of his mouth enveloping first the head, then the whole shaft. Then he took it out, his tongue languidly licking over the head, his teeth teasing an imprint along the foreskin, that tongue running down to his balls, each being sucked into Joey’s hot, wet mouth, then held in the long fingers, one finger slipping back and just barely entering his asshole, just barely making him gasp.

The images of Joey were palpably real, real as the sweat streaming down Gabriel’s chest, real as the dawn starting to pinken the horizon just beyond the house. Gabriel ached to have the man’s hands on his body, his cock, his balls. Yearned for the sweetly petaled mouth to press hard against his, smelling sharp and flinty, like carnations and raw earth. Gabriel closed his eyes tight enough to keep it dark in the rosy half-light, his cock now about to spill into his hand as he wanted it to spill into Joey’s mouth, into the ass that he knew will be just as hot, just as pink, just as welcoming, pulling in his pulsing cock, letting him thrust and thrust until he couldn’t stop, he had to come, he couldn’t—wouldn’t—wait any longer. He could feel Joey under him, his legs up across Gabriel’s broad shoulders, he could see himself reaching with one hand for Joey’s cock and stroking it as he pumped hard into Joey’s ass, feeling the hot, milky burst on his hand as he came into Joey’s pink ass, felt Joey’s soft lips pressing into his, that tongue a pink petal between his lips. No money changed hands as they pulled on their clothes and headed back to work after this siestina of sex.

Gabriel’s hand was wet from coming, his balls ached from waiting so long to let go, his legs shook just a little. Sweat ran from his face and neck and chest, his bare legs were damp, and the jersey shorts clung to his thighs. He pushed himself forward and walked over to rinse his hands under the spigot in the yard, splashing the tepid water on his face and neck and chest. He lowered his head under the spigot and wet his hair. His head felt too hot in the stifling dawn. No time now to go back inside for another half hour of rest before he headed out to the orchards with Diego and Luis for another oppressively endless day.

Gabriel stood on the sharp grass in the tiny yard and looked out over the sunrise toward the orchards and the carnation farm and all the fields he could not see but which he knew stretched from one horizon to the other beyond where he now stood. In another hour he would be there, in the shadeless grove, working the trees with his brothers, first the almonds, then the lemons. Less than a mile away Joey would be stripping a lane of fresh, soon-to-bloom carnations and loading them onto the truck for transport.

Gabriel remembered the night they shot pool and drank Coronas together, biting into hot slices of lime before drinking the cold beers down. It was before he had seen Joey sucking Mr. Adamos’s cock, before he heard the little rush of Spanish or saw the quick flash of bills. Joey had watched him, Gabriel had felt it, but he hadn’t known what it meant, hadn’t wanted to try to press him against the back of the bar, or up against the men’s room stall, and risk being beaten later by who knows how many other workers, maybe even his own brothers. Now he tried to remember if Joey had checked his cock or given him the kind of look the guys in Tijuana had given him again and again, the look he knew meant more cash to give his mother, more cash to horde away in the sock burrowed in the center of his mattress. He could see those pesos now, could see the men counting them out onto one or another part of his body. Remembered the one guy, Gabriel had liked him, wanted to see him again, but had said nothing, stuck to his routine, gotten himself and the gringo off with a little more intensity than usual—they had kissed, kissed hard, and it had made Gabriel’s prick throb and ache and he had grabbed the man and pushed him back against the wall of the men’s room in the club and pulled out his dick. They had rubbed their cocks together and it had felt so good, the hardness and softness all at once. It was then Gabriel knew he’d had enough, had enough of anything to learn another word or phrase or idiom, had enough of gritting his teeth for a grimy peso when he didn’t even want to come anymore, maybe ever, he was so tired of doing it for something other than his own pleasure. He remembered how that particular gringo had run his hands over Gabriel’s whole body, had touched him after, tucking pesos here and there—under his arms, under his balls, in the webs of his fingers. Each note he would kiss first. The last one he had rolled tight and smooth, as if he were going to light it and smoke it. Then he slid down, opened the cheeks of Gabriel’s ass, and slipped the money inside. He had stood and run his hand along the line of Gabriel’s jaw, had taken Gabriel’s chin in his hand and had kissed him one last time and then exited, just like it was some movie he had seen. Gabriel had left then, too. He hadn’t gone back to the club again. A few weeks later the three brothers had left for California.

Gabriel thought about Joey, wondered where he had learned to suck dick and why—since he already lived here, already knew English, was blond and sleek—he took money for it.

Dawn was brightening into sun-drenched day as Gabriel walked back to the house, his head throbbing dully from lack of sleep and misspent desire. If he walked to the carnation farm now, if he got in the truck with Joey as he headed out with his haul of fresh flowers, could they leave Fresno, leave Mr. Adamos and Diego and Luis and all the chicas and bills tossed into the dirt and head north, beyond the delivery point for the carnations, beyond the Central Valley, up into the hills where it got cool at night and where they might lie in each other’s arms and open their mouths and asses for each other with no money changing hands?

Gabriel dressed for a day in the fields, dressed in silence as his brothers yelled and joked with each other, making the small house smaller still with heat and noise and the harsh scents of cheap coffee and overdone huevos. Gabriel dressed and said good-bye to Diego and Luis, told them he’d see them later at the grove, that he needed to walk this morning, watched them both shrug and tell him adios and mumble about his mother’s loco hijo.

Joey was deep in the field when Gabriel reached the edge of the carnation farm. The bright colors of the flowers—oranges, pinks, reds, yellows—swirled before him as he walked right up to Joey from behind, walked right up behind him and wondered what it would feel like to grab his hips and pull the boy’s ass back against his cock. In the stark sunlight he could see how burnt Joey’s skin was, how deeply red and freckled at the back of his neck and his arms. “Por favor,” Gabriel said softly as he came up beside Joey cutting down carnations the color of sunset.

Joey turned slowly, his hand still holding the heavy shears, his one hand gloved, the other glove stuffed in his back pocket. It was only six a.m. but already streaks of color bled across his white T-shirt. He looked at Gabriel and licked his lips, lips full and bruised from the sun. “Hola,” Joey responded, snapping the shears shut and standing up, the cascade of flowers in his arms.

Gabriel looked hard into Joey’s eyes, squinting in the sun, pale green, like sea glass. He wasn’t sure how to ask for what he wanted. Wasn’t sure he knew how to do it without money changing hands.

“When do you leave Fresno?” he asked, and ran the tips of his fingers along the zipper of his jeans. “Why don’t I go with you?”

Joey’s pale green eyes had followed the tracery of Gabriel’s fingers on his cock, had gone there at the same time Gabriel had led him there. “Another half hour,” Joey said, re-opening the shears and heading for the next stalks of flowers. “I’m nearly done here. You want to ride with me?”

Gabriel pulled his wallet from his back pocket and held it out. “Do I need this?” he asked softly.

“Nada, amigo,” Joey said in his lightly accented Spanish, shaking his head.

In the truck they rode in silence out through the fields. Gabriel could smell the carnations, sharp and flinty throughout the cab of the truck, and wondered what his brothers would think when they didn’t find him at the almonds or later at the lemons. When Joey took the turn off the highway half an hour in and headed onto a small road once used to drive cattle, Gabriel slid down in the seat, feeling dizzy suddenly from heat and desire.

“There’s water under the seat,” Joey told him and Gabriel reached under and pulled out a bottle for each of them. Ahead a small grove of old orange trees that looked like they hadn’t been tended in years thickened over the road. Joey pulled up into them and the leafy greenness enveloped the truck. Joey stopped and turned off the engine. He leaned back hard against the seat and looked straight ahead. Neither man spoke.

The first time a man had offered Gabriel money, had held out a fistful of pesos and slid his own fingers in and out of his mouth, making a loud sucking sound, Gabriel hadn’t been sure what to do, had felt a small frisson of excitement, a little twinge of fear. He had just zipped up his pants at the urinal in the back of the little cantina where he sometimes ate lunch when he worked the quarry just to get out of the heat and sun. The man, fortyish with dark hair graying at the sides, wore a suit and tie and kept looking toward the door of the men’s room. When Gabriel hadn’t responded the man had put his hand flat against Gabriel’s zipper, then had cupped the hand over Gabriel’s balls. He had rubbed his own crotch, too, as if showing Gabriel how to do it. Gabriel had reached out and taken the bills from the man, then unzipped his pants, pulled out his dick and begun to stroke it in front of him. He had put his finger in his mouth and then pulled it out slowly, sucking it hard. He remembered the soft moan that had come from the man as he gripped his crotch and rubbed back and forth over his suit pants. Gabriel had reached over and touched the man’s cock through his pants and been surprised at the intensity of his own excitement as he felt the other man’s hardness in his hand. He had stroked them both—his own cock, the other man’s—stroked them hard and fast until the man had said he was going to come and taken Gabriel’s cock in his mouth, taken his own cock in his hands and made them both shoot. He had given Gabriel more money after he washed his hands and rinsed his mouth at the sink.

After that it had been easy to go down to the club by the border and let the gringos do what they wanted to him. Had been easy right up until that tightly rolled peso had been slid into his ass by the one man he had wanted to see again.

Now Gabriel slid across the hot seat of the truck and ran his hand inside Joey’s thigh, ran his hand over the muscled chest under the stained T-shirt, traced his fingers along the sunburnt cheek and waited to see what would happen next. “You want me to suck your cock?” Joey asked him in his flat, breathy Spanish. Gabriel remembered the scene with Mr. Adamos. He shook his head no and leaned forward and began unbuckling Joey’s belt, unzipping his pants, reaching for his stiff cock. It was hot in the truck now that the air-conditioning had been turned off, and Gabriel felt the sweat leak down the back of his neck and under the hair that fell across his forehead. Beyond the open windows insects buzzed and a light breeze riffled the leaves of the orange trees. “Wait,” Joey said and leaned forward, reaching under the seat. “Push back.” Gabriel pushed against the seat and it moved back, nearly flat. Joey slid his pants down, kicking off his boots. He stripped off his shirt and reached behind the seat, pulling a thin blanket out. His skin was a burnished red except for the white section where he wore shorts in the sun. His cock stood stiff and straight out from his body and Gabriel leaned over and ran his tongue down the shaft. He heard the sharp intake of breath from Joey.

Gabriel sat back and pulled off his shirt and boots. Then he waited while Joey unbuckled his belt, bent to unzip his pants. They were both eager now, cocks swollen and hard and ready. This was what Gabriel had imagined as he stood jerking himself off in the dark in the yard while his brothers slept last night—Joey, his legs up, his ass open and ready, his cock thick and pink and aching for Gabriel’s hands and mouth. Joey opened the glove box and pulled out a small tube of something and a couple of condoms. He rolled one onto Gabriel’s cock, slowly, teasingly, like it was his tongue or his mouth enveloping Gabriel’s dick. Slowly, stroking Gabriel’s balls and running his long, tapered finger up toward Gabriel’s asshole while he pushed the condom down hard to the base of his dick.

Joey leaned back against the door of the truck. He was naked and his body was slick with sweat. Gabriel thought he looked oiled, like a bodybuilder in a competition. “Did you like that, what you did with Mr. Adamos?” Gabriel asked him as he lowered his body down onto Joey’s, felt his cock against Joey’s cock and their bodies slick with sweat slapping against each other.

“I used to,” Joey admitted, reaching his hand down to stroke at Gabriel—his cock, now tight in the condom, his balls, tightening with the need to come. “I still like the money.” Then Joey laced his fingers around Gabriel’s neck and pulled his body down onto him. “Fuck me,” he whispered into Gabriel’s neck as he ran his tongue from Gabriel’s earlobe to his shoulder. He slipped the little tube to Gabriel and Gabriel lubed Joey’s ass, then his cock. He pulled Joey flat along the seat of the truck, pulled his legs up and held them over his shoulders, licking and kissing the inside of Joey’s thighs, just as he had wanted to last night and every night since he had seen Joey sucking Mr. Adams’s dick.

When his dick slid into Joey’s ass Gabriel though he might come before he had even thrust all the way in. He was running his fingers along Joey’s balls, taking Joey’s cock in his hand and jerking it like it was his own while he pumped his prick into the ass that was every bit as sweet and hot and tight as he had hoped. He looked down at the blond boy lying under him, the blond, sunburned Anglo who held his wrist tight and whispered “Fuck me hard, hard, hard,” to him in Spanish as he moved his ass against Gabriel’s cock.

When Gabriel came the intensity made him cry out. He turned his head and bit into the flesh of Joey’s calf pressed against his shoulder. He thrust one more time into Joey’s sweet ass as he jerked the boy off, pulling hard on his cock and rubbing his balls until Joey spurted onto his chest with a gasp and a chorus of “Sí, sí, sí.”

Joey’s breathing was regular and deep as he slept against Gabriel’s chest. In the dream Gabriel was back in Tijuana. His mother had made tamales and the corn and green chilis were sweet and thick in his mouth. Later he and Joey would ride up past Santa Rosa, the carnations hardy, barely wilted from their hours in the sun. Later Gabriel and Joey would stop for something to eat, make a few dollars in the men’s room of a hash house fifty miles outside Fresno. Gabriel would watch as Joey got on his knees and rubbed at the man’s balls while he sucked his cock. Gabriel watched Joey watching him as he let the man suck his thick, Mexican dick and asked him how he kept it in his pants, it was so big.

Back in the truck, with the hot breeze blowing through, ruffling their hair and cooling the backs of their necks, they had looked at the road, then at each other. They had stopped one more time. Pulled into a thicket of bougainvillea, the heady perfume swirling over them as they stood outside the truck, pressed up against each other, kissing hard and wet, their tongues running over each other’s lips, into each other’s mouths. They were hot and hard, their cocks aching against each other, but they didn’t touch this time, didn’t come, got back in the truck with the ache in their balls, the throbbing of their cocks, heading back home.

In Fresno Joey would explain about the flat tire on the shortcut that had left him stranded for hours and Gabriel would tell his brothers that he had felt sick from the heat and had left the orchard, gone home and then out again, told them he would explain to the foreman tomorrow.

Gabriel took his blanket out into the yard and lay down on the spiky grass, looking up into the dark night, the lacy outline of the stars. He was tired and spent, he ached for sleep. He remembered Joey under him in the truck, remembered Joey asleep on his chest for the siestina. Now he closed his eyes, his left hand thrust deep into the pocket of his shorts, and fingered the soft petals of a carnation the color of sunset.