Sarge

"I can't afford new clothes," I said.

"My treat," he answered. "You need toiletries too. Toothpaste and brush, shaving stuff, soap, deodorant. The works. What you brought was well past its death date."

I started to say that I didn't take handouts like that, but I could see how anxious he was to do it. Then, in the only mention of the previous night, he said, "It's the least I can do. I was out of line. I shouldn't have . . . not like that . . ."

I wanted to tell him that I'd loved it, had begged for it, but I could see that he really didn't want to talk about it beyond what he said. So, instead, I just agreed to shop after dinner. He looked relieved. I chalked whatever he bought as payment for if he wanted to do me again when we got back from shopping.

I wanted him to do me again when we got back from shopping. Just like last night would be just fine with me.

He apparently didn't want to do me again, though. We got back from shopping very late. He bought me a lot of stuff—but it was practical stuff, not any sexy fuck wear like most daddies would buy their fuck boys when they took them clothes shopping. Or so I'd heard. Certainly not what the casino bouncer bought me in Las Vegas when he took me shopping.

Most of it was what I could wear to work. The new construction boots were great—and cost him a pretty penny. If he wanted to fuck me when we got home like he'd done the night before, he'd paid the fare. Although, I liked it enough that I couldn't see charging him.

"It's late. You might as well stay the night," he said when we got home.

"Yeah, I guess so," I said, almost licking my chops at the thought of another visitation in the dark of the night.

I stayed awake most of the night, waiting for him, watching the door to the corridor, with the light from the hallway showing in a large gap at the base of the door. He did come to the door. I snapped awake at seeing the shadow of his feet under the door and hearing the rub of his hand on the other side of the door. I even heard the long sigh and deep groan.

But he didn't come in.

At breakfast, we started off saying nothing about where I was going after work the next day. That question just sat there, heavy, in the air. He was more relaxed, though. Still, there was some sadness about him. We were becoming more comfortable with each other. And for the first time, he told me his name was Sarge and I told him I was Kevin.

"What brought you to Albuquerque, Kevin? You weren't raised in that cardboard carton in the alley, were you?"

"No. A good family. A normal family. Outside Las Vegas. A bad relationship, though. I decided to move on."

"Ah," he said. Before he could ask more, although I didn't get the impression that he'd worry that wound, I got in a question.

"Sarge?" I asked. "You were military with a nickname like Sarge?"

"Yes. Marines."

I would have guessed. He was that squared away and put together that well. "Served overseas?"

"Yes. both Iraq and Afghanistan."

"I don't see any stuff around that's military. Souvenirs and campaign medals and such."

"No, you don't."

I sensed he was closing down on me, so I changed the subject. "About this evening, after work—"

"I have tickets to a farm team baseball game . . . if you'd like to go."

"Yes, I'd like that," I said, keeping my smile to myself. We were getting comfortable with each other. Maybe he'd get over whatever barrier was being raised between us sex wise. "But the expense."

"I'm not a pauper, Kevin. I'm the super of this apartment building. But I also own it. You don't see me going to work, because I work right here. But I make good money off of this apartment house. Bought it as soon as I left the service. Needed to get away from that."

"Ah," I said. But even that maybe was too much.

He did sort of a double take, like maybe he'd said too much about leaving the Marines. I didn't pursue the point. We were getting along so well.

* * * *

There was a step back that evening when I came home from work—and then a few more disturbing withdrawals after that.

I'd gotten a ride back to Sarge's place on the back of a construction worker's motorcycle. Sarge must have heard the roar of the muffler, because he was up the stairs and on the sidewalk before I could get off the bike.

"Never do that. You should never do that," he cried out.

Shocked that he would react this way to me being with a construction worker—who was quite hunky and also totally hetero—took me back. It was the first sign of possessiveness. It both disturbed and impressed me.

"Let's discuss this inside," I said to Sarge. I turned to thank Dave for the ride home and to apologize for Sarge's outburst, and when I turned, Sarge was gone.

He was sitting in a chair in the living room, seething, wrapping his arms around his chest, and rocking back and forth.

"There's nothing between me and that guy, Sarge," I said when I came in. "It was just a ride home." Funny that I didn't trip even a little bit on calling Sarge's apartment "home."

"It's not the guy," Sarge said through set teeth. "It's the ride. Motorcycles are only good for killing people. Don't do that to me again . . . please. Don't show up here on a motorcycle again."

I could see that it really set him off, so I quickly said that, sure, I would stay off motorcycles. It was yet another sign I was getting that the man had issues, though. I didn't know how many such issues I could deal with in a fluid situation like this.

We went to the ball game and had a good time, but there remained something under the surface for both of us—whatever Sarge's demons were and me not sensing any solid ground here to stand on with him. I wished he'd just fuck me like he did the other night—claim me as his territory. I would have minded less him taking off on me being cuddled behind Dave—who was a real hunk—on a motorcycle than the inexplicable rage at riding a motorcycle. This was the West and I was twenty-two. Loads of twenty-two-year-old men rode motorcycles here.

When we got back from the game, nothing was said about me leaving and going back to the alley either. I didn't want to go—at least unless Sarge got stranger—so I didn't bring it up. And then he made his position on that obvious.

"If you need transportation, I'll get you a car," he said. And then he went to the refrigerator to pull out a beer, handed me one in passing, and planted himself in front of the TV, giving his full attention to a pro baseball game—as if we hadn't seen enough baseball that day.

And he came through on a car. When I came home the next day, he had an old, beat-up Civic coup waiting for me. "It's old, but it runs good," he said, as he handed me the keys. "It's gassed up. Let me know when it's running low and I'll gas it up again."

I knew I could take that as an indication that he wanted me to stay, but that was what happened the next day. By then I was in a tailspin over what happened the previous night, after the trip to the ball field, after I'd gone to bed, leaving a brooding Sarge glued to the TV set and swigging his third beer.

Sometime after eleven that night, while the couple over head were thumping their headboard against the wall, I heard Sarge's front door open and then close again. Shortly before midnight, I heard him return. But not just him. I heard voices, men's voices, both set low, as they passed in the hallway outside my door. The thumping overhead had stopped, but the thumping just behind my headboard, in Sarge's bedroom, started up. And the sounds of taking and receiving. The sounds of being taken hard and deep, the pistoned, rhythmic pounding of the headboard of Sarge's bed against the bedroom wall. Impassioned cries in Spanish.

Miserable and with the draining emotions of having been rejected, I pulled a pillow over my head and fought for sleep—for anything that would end my confusion, frustration, and dejection.

Nothing was said in the morning while Sarge fixed breakfast. I'd heard the front door open and close—twice—later in the night, so I knew whoever Sarge had brought home had been taken away again in the morning. And nothing was said when I returned from work that day, our attention taken up with the car he provided me.

It was so confusing. Sarge didn't want to fuck me, but he still wanted to keep me here. He didn't mention me leaving. He gave me a car to drive between his apartment and the construction site.

We went another day in an atmosphere of false normalcy. I bristled and analyzed everything he said, everything he did. I'm sure he was doing the same with me. Increasingly, the apartment, which seemed such a commodious space when I first arrived, began to constrict around me—around us. We were getting in each other's way as we moved about it, looking at each other when we did, each of us about to say something, but stifling ourselves.

The next night, the young man Sarge brought home after midnight and fucked—repeatedly during the night—was still there in the morning. When I went to the bathroom—the main one off the hallway rather than the small one off Sarge's bedroom—the young man was standing at the sink, naked. The room was misted up. He'd just come out of the shower. He was shaving—using my razor and shaving cream—the razor and shaving cream Sarge had bought for me the evening he'd taken me clothes shopping.

I simply took them out of his hands, glowered at him, and pointed toward the door. I'd meant the door exiting the apartment, but he turned the other way in the hall—back to Sarge's room, shook his pert little buttocks at me, and entered Sarge's room. While I performed my own morning hygiene ritual with shaky hands, Sarge was fucking the young man again in his bedroom, the headboard bumping rhythmically against the wall.

I dressed quickly, just glanced at the kitchen on my way out the door, and couldn't leave the apartment fast enough. There would be two for breakfast in that kitchen, as usual. But one of them wouldn't be me.

When I came home that evening, there was a note from Sarge that he was working on a plumbing issue in an apartment up on the fourth floor. Nothing written about the visitation of the young man.

I walked into Sarge's bedroom—the first time I'd ever been in there—to see if the guy perhaps was still there, or if there was evidence that he was moving in. I didn't find that, but what I did find were framed photographs on Sarge's nightstand. They all were of two men, a tall, muscular one, and a shorter, younger guy. The tall figure in the photos were Sarge. Sarge in his Marine uniform, Sarge in a tuxedo, Sarge in a Speedo at the beach. The younger man was appropriately dressed in each photo—each photo clearly showing an intimate relationship between the two. Each one had an effect of longing on me, of the two having something together that I wanted with Sarge too.

But those weren't the aspects of the photographs that gave me pause. What arrested my attention was that the other figure in the photographs were always the same young man—a young man who was the spitting image of me.

"The other man in the photograph is Andy, my lover," Sarge said softly. "The photo with the tuxedos was the day we took vows of commitment. There wasn't an option of marriage in those days." I looked up from where I was sitting on the edge of his bed, holding one of the photographs.

"You have a lover—one who looks like me?"

"Had a lover, yes. We were together for six years. He's dead. Died in a motorcycle accident."

"Ah," I said. There didn't seem to be any more to be said. This went a long way to explain his strangeness.

Having said that much, though, Sarge seemed to think there was more to be said. "We were in the Marines together. We found each other when we were serving in Afghanistan. We were discovered and sent home. Dishonorable discharge both, despite a chest full of combat medals each. They don't do that anymore in cases like ours, but they did it then, and there's no changing that. I do have medals. So did Andy. I can't and won't display them, though. We moved here. We were happy. We were committed. I kept my commitment; I'm sure Andy did as well. And then I bought Andy a motorcycle. You are so like him. Too, too much like him . . . I'm so conflicted."

"Shush," I whispered putting a finger up to his lips. His voice faltered and stopped, running out of gas. There were tears in his eyes.

"You don't have to say anymore," I whispered. "Just hold me, kiss me, fuck me." He already was embracing me in his arms. Then he was kissing me. All that remained was . . .

"I . . . I can't hold back. I can't control myself when I'm with you. I couldn't with Andy either."

"But he wanted it that way, didn't he?"

"Yes, I guess so," Sarge answered, his voice faltering.

"So do I. As hard, fast, and deep as you can. But the gentle, making love, start to it. Making love to my body until I'm begging for something more intense. And then giving that to me. Drilling me hard and deep. Putting me to the sword, taking no prisoners possession. Losing yourself in wanting me, as you did when you fucked me. That's one of only two things I have in common with Andy. That and the fact that we look alike. Otherwise I'm not Andy. I'm Kevin. We can start again, just the two of us. Not Sarge and Andy, but Sarge and Kevin. Just don't hold back from me. Give it all to me. You don't need to bring anyone else home to hold me up on some sort pedestal. Fuck me hard, punish me, make me totally yours."

"But I lose control. I did so the other night more with you than I did with Andy. I can't control my lust."

"I don't want you to control your lust with me. It shows me your passion. It shows me how deeply you want to do it with me. No one has shown me before how much they wanted me as you did the other night. That was the moment that I realized I loved you."

"That you loved me?" he asked, stunned. "That you could love me as I knew almost from the beginning that I loved you?"

I pulled out the drawer of his nightstand, assuming I'd find what I did there—lube and condoms.

He took me hard on the bed, harder even than that one night we had together. But, as requested, he romanced me to begin with, made sensual love to my body to where I was beside myself in wanting him inside me and begged him for the fuck. And then the headboard did a mean ratatatat against the wall as he fucked me doggy style again, crouching over my buttocks and holding me at the waist, using the leverage of his feet on the bed and the power shift of his pelvis to thrust hard and deep again and again and again and . . .

Begging no mercy; receiving no mercy. Both of us lost in want of each other. Him not being able to meld enough with me; me not being able to get him deep enough, thick enough, punishing enough inside me.

As the military recruitment commercials said: Nobody can do it like a Marine can do it.

Afterward, lying in each other's embrace, still panting from the exertion, I thanked him. The air still needed to be cleared, however.

"Those other young men, the last couple of days. Was it because I remind you so much of Andy, or have I displeased you somehow?"

"I've been a crazy man. Underneath it all, I suppose I was trying to drive you away. I couldn't send you away, so I needed you to want to leave. I'd had you once—in the form of Andy. I had him, but I ruined his military career through my own lusts, and in the end I killed him. I bought him a motorcycle and urged him to learn to ride it. I even told him the streets weren't slick enough from rain that morning for him not to ride his motorcycle."

"Shush on that," I whispered. "I think what you did give Andy was more than enough in life from his perspective. You can't go on blaming yourself."

"And sheer frustration from wanting you and thinking I had to stay away from you—while still not letting you go," Sarge continued. "Sexual frustration, needing sexual release. I think I wore those young men out."

"It wore me out just listening from the other side of the wall of you fucking them." I forced a laugh; he was too emotional to join me.

We were silent for a few moments. Then I spoke again. "I would like you to wear me out like you did those young men—to fuck me totally and often."

"I think I can do that."

"I know you can do that." A pause and then, "I like your bedroom better than mine. Can I move into your bed?"

"You know you can."

"Can I stay here . . . forever?"

"You'd really want to do that? I've got a good twenty-five years on you. You'll still be young and vigorous when I'm doddering."

"Did you plan for Andy to still be here when you were doddering?"

"Yes, of course. But I've grown wiser . . . and more realistic."

"Is there something you had with Andy you don't have with me?"

"Well, there is an aspect of intimacy, symbols of total commitment. Something understood when we took our commitment vows."

"Ah, you mean you barebacked him."

A pause and then the answer of, "Yes. For us it made all the difference. The commitment was total. The pleasure was total. The pledge of loyalty was there each time we fucked."

"Would you give up those other men for me?"

"In a flash. I only fucked them because of you."

"But you cruised before. You picked me up cruising."

"I was looking. And I found you. I didn't cruise when I was with Andy. I'd found him."

A long pause again, and then I rolled over on top of him. "I'm going to ride you now," I said, "But I'm off work tomorrow. I'd like you to take me somewhere."

"Oh, where? You have a car now. You can drive yourself anywhere you want to go."

"Yes, but I need you there too. I want you to take me to the free clinic—for both of us to be tested. And when we are both tested as safe, I want you to bring me home and fuck the stuffing out of me—bareback. I promise it will only be you from then on."

I was straddling him and riding his cock while I was making another silent vow to him: I also would never get on a motorcycle again.