Hermes's Den

            In the silence of my truck, my heart’s frantic beat thunders viciously. I sigh once and attempt to wring the steering wheel. The sandy leather creaks beneath my fingers and after a moment, I release it with a gasp. This should be nothing or next to it, considering everything else. My eyes land on the narrow line of paler skin before skipping off the rearview mirror, across the dusty gravel parking lot, up the stairs, and to the door of a modest denim colored house. I take another breath and pull open the center console, nodding again at my phone in its ragged case, my wallet belching papers, and, just poking out from under my work i.d., the lip of a plain gold band. The lid snaps down. Another sharp breath. One more. The next, I hold and allow to swell in my chest against the seatbelt before releasing slowly, unbuckling, and stepping out of the truck before I can stop myself.  

            Humid air encircles my body and makes me long for the cool snap it had when I was driving but not enough to turn round and head home. I need to buy gas first. The house, with its bare porch, few curtain cloaked windows, and silo besides, sits a distance back from the road but not enough for the comfort of a yard larger than fifteen feet of choking grass and a wooden fence. From a pole in the yard, a New York state flag lazily moves in a stuffy breeze. At the base of it, Betsy Ross’ stands attached to a wooden dowel crowned with a gold nub. They’re technically not the same pole, but still, I bite my inner cheek at the disrespect. The distant hiss of a car drives the thought from my head and me forward faster than before.

             A chill creeps up my ear as I reach the relative seclusion of the covered porch. The stairs sag between the two planks beneath my weight. Overgrown grass peeks out before it’s cut off from view as the wood snaps back into place. In the second of light, it looked lush and deceptively soft. A creaking sound draws my attention back in time to see the door drawn back and watch a mustached youth stride out with a cool, bouncing air. His chin juts up once by way of greeting as he slides around me and out into the glaring light, his flesh warming to a lively teak. Behind him, the air snaps keenly with the smell of sweat and my mind and eyes drift like unmoored rafts. Rejected the opportunity to make out the true character of his face, I settle for and manage to take full stock of his firm legs and ample behind twitching beneath his grey running shorts before he reaches his car. His departure leaves three in the lot and another parked on the grass a bit beyond the gravel.

            On the oval of glass suspended in the door, a man raps his knuckles slowly until I turn back to him. Something in the gentle wrinkles that line his face and way his ears protrude from the sides of his bald head calls to mind a monkey waiting lazily to trick you into a lesson. Like one of those hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil monkeys, only slightly less HomeGoods-y.  He grins and nods once. “ID?”

            I frown, first for it being stashed away in my truck and again for being asked the question in the first place. Before this, the last time I was asked I was twenty-six and drunk on the Vegas strip outside a casino that took a healthy bite from my savings. In the twenty-one years since then, the majority of my baby fat has melted away from my jaw and, where it ran up my cheeks, been covered by a beard greyer than I think strictly necessary. “Oh. Um. I didn’t realize…” I gesture up to my face and more specifically my facial hair. “I thought I wouldn’t need…”

            He asks “Over twenty-one?” I nod at the formality. “Twenty-five.”

            I chew the inside of my cheek but reach into my pocket for the folded tens then stop with my fingers wrapped around them. The website said twenty for over twenty-one and I was expecting as much. At least, it did when I checked before I left. At one point it was thirty and another it was ten. If you ask me, this is all a load of horseshit—just pick a price and stick to it. Then again, he’s probably not too concerned with the profitability of this. “Is there a, um…” I clear my throat and look around as if a mic and camera might be lurking behind the doorjamb. “There isn’t a, uh… military… discount… is there?”

            His eyes rove hungrily over my body and takes wanton stock of my form. I try to keep my movements subtle as I straighten my back a bit. Where the breadth of my shoulders satiates, the gentle curve of a blooming belly seems first to diminish and then on second glance excite. “West Point guy?” he asks my thighs.

            “Yes, sir.”

            He leers then says gives two hearty nods and a two fingered salute with his left hand. “Just for you, I’ll take fifteen, but if any of your buddies ask, tell ‘em twenty. I’m willing to support the troops but I’m still trying to make money, ya hear?”

             I try my best to tamp down the smirk growing on my face and accept the corners of my lips just turning upwards. Of the four people I know who might have any interest in coming, I could, realistically, only see one of them being even remotely willing and even still, I don’t think I’d gain much from telling Garrett. Somethings should be kept close to your chest. “If they hear, it won’t be from me.” He accepts the tens, reaches into his pocket, and hands me a five before stepping out of the way.

            I nod and cross the threshold then follow his finger to another door just off the side. When I pass through, the cool air and shadows envelops me welcomely and the carpeted length of a staircase spills down to my feet. At the top, a door looms etched out of the darkness in strong, unbroken scarlet lines and my heart, in response, doubles its rapid pace. It would be wrong to call me nervous, but certainly… curious. Each step I take up summons a new form of being for whatever is on the other side of the door.

            The air isn’t heady enough to suggest an abundance of leather, but a note in its smell still at least dunks my head and invites it to swim. Maybe there’s a swing, I settle. Just a room with a swing and a few chairs. For the most part, I can deal with that. Anything beyond a swing is beyond me, at least currently. There’s a grunt and the sound of something heavy hitting the ground followed by laughter. Or maybe there’s a wrestling mat. Today isn’t the wrestling day, is it? Please let it not be the wrestling day. I’m not even sure how that’d work. In my experience, wrestling involves far too much hitting, shouting, and waxing to be anything other than a “professional sport”, but in the same vein, I guess that’s part of the appeal to some people. That and, probably more likely, the contact part of it. This is a lonely world, after all.

            I reach the door and stop with my hand just short of the knob. On the other side, weeks of curiosity will be settled in one way or another and once it’s done, I can go, grab some gas, and forget all about this. Inhale slow, exhale slower, push open the door and I’m almost disappointed by what I find. Rather than a hall of a leather swing, or a gym with mats spread out and grappling men, on the other side of the door is a living room bearing a brown leather sectional, a television mounted on the wall over a bookcase offering a fishbowl of condoms, and two naked men holding paper cups exiting from a small room off to the side all bathed in the light of a red bulb shining above the door. Appliances hum softly but other than an air conditioning unit set in the open mouth of a shaded window, I see nothing that would make the sound. Next to the door, nylon bags sit in a pile on the floor. From metal hooks, two hang stuffed with some things. “Your clothes,” one of the men informs. A barbell through his left nipple catches the light. “You can keep your socks, though.”

            “If you’re into that,” says the other while scratching absentmindedly at his nest of pubic hair. “I think he has a few videos of that lying around here somewhere.” At that, I finally look at the contents of the shelf and am greeted with Drill Bill, Gay of Thrones, and Shaving Ryan’s Privates among other less stellar titles.

            “I’m not,” drops from my mouth before my memory of my search history catches up. “I mean, not really.” My throat seizes with the revelation and I turn around to grasp a bag. “Feet are feet. Can’t live without ‘em.” I bite my tongue and hide the scowl. In my head, the flag at the top of Anthony’s Nose snaps in wind and Frank, mouth split open in a grin, points one finger to the sky, his prosthetic foot resting on a rock, the metal ankle glittering in the sun. “They’re not my thing,” I settle, grasping my shirt and pulling it up over my head.

            “He doesn’t suck toes but won’t kick you out of bed if you suck his.” Barbell claims a spot towards the center of the far part of couch and kicks his legs out. “It might be your lucky day, Matt.” I try not to imagine the dank sweat pouring out of his ass onto the leather. I try to push the idea that hundreds, thousands of men’s bare holes kissing through this one couch out of my mind. A second later, the image fills my head and I chub up as much as I internally gag. My movements are slow as I undress, the weight of their eyes on me stretching out each motion. By the time I’m loosely folding my jeans and balling my socks, my thighs are sore from flexing and are happy for me to saunter over to a spot not quite in the middle of the other section and relax.

            The tv shows an aproned but otherwise naked man chopping vegetables and placing them in a bowl as another, clothed man looks on in both confusion and something close to arousal. He could easily just be constipated though. Pornstars seem to think the face you make while trying to drop a week’s worth of bricks would be the same face you’d make while laying pipe and if that’s the case, then I’m glad they only make mainstream studio porn. I nod at Barbell and then at Matt, both of whom juggle their attention between me, the other, and the tv. Matt drains his cup and returns to the other room then appears without it moments later.  He drops himself in the meeting place of the two couches. For a few seconds, we sit in silence to the tune of a knife slicing through carrots and the clothed man asking if his wife will enjoy the salad. “Hope it’s a shitty plot,” I offer. I’ve seen my fair share of skin flicks and in my opinion, the only thing that can make a subpar porn passable is bad acting delivering badly written lines.

            Barbell releases a breath and smirks. “I think it is. I keep seeing clips of it online and at this point, I’m just waiting for the wife to come in. She has the best line.” He lazily strokes himself for a few minutes before Matt gets up and drops to his knees in front of him and takes the place of his hand. I avert my eyes, noticing how the paint around the light is chipping and one tile of the other room is cracked almost to the point of shattering. I scan the carpet for shards of ceramic and take quick glances from that to Matt’s back, to the screen, to Barbell’s rising and falling chest, to the door as the guy from downstairs enters, to Barbell’s eyes on me, to another room I had not noticed before, to Barbell’s eyes on my crotch, and finally to my crotch as well. I swallow once and shift my hand to my sides. “Why don’t you go make our friend a little more comfortable, Matty?”

            “Better do a good job, too.” Monkey-man pushes his jeans down and sits close enough to me that my cushion sags slightly under his weight and his body heat reaches my skin almost instantly. If he’d had any, I’m sure our leg hairs would be swapping secrets, but as it stands, mine alone unveil the hidden parts of the universe. “That’s an Army guy, straight outta West Point. Show your support for our troops.”

            Crawling forward, Matt smiles up at me and rubs a light, dry hand up my calf and down. His face is younger than I originally thought. What I took for a wrinkle turns out to be a scar that runs through his left eyebrow, disappears over his eye, and comes back on his cheekbone. Whatever could’ve made that? I’m reaching out and rubbing a thumb along the line before I can stop myself.In the pleading of his eyes, there’s something equal parts reproachful and desperate. He turns his head into my palm and kisses it, once, twice, licks up my thumb, and draws it into his mouth. Inside, he licks over the pad again before releasing it and kissing my thigh. Next, his lips graze my knee while his palm cups my heel and his fingers dig into a knot in the center of my right foot.

            A soft groan slips out of my throat and his hands pause. Where he had touched thrums with the lingering threads of a silent, coursing energy. He looks up at me, eyebrows knit, and mouth slightly opened. Did he wish I were silent? Did he hope I’d be some silent monolith? The figure he could stare at with contempt and then orgasm over? His fingers return to the arch and ball of my right foot, running first along, and then generally massaging. My head drops back and I moan appreciation.

            From the moment I step out of bed in the morning to the moment I lie back down at night, my feet kill me with a fierce vengeance even I am yet to fully understand. They spend each day conspiring to put me in such a deep cavity of misery that they almost succeed. The lines of communication are shattered by his hands as my right one nearly hums from their care and my left remains unloved, unattended, and umbraged on the floor. I gently place its toes against the skin of his knee, which ripples slightly under the contact before he places my right squarely on himself and begins to massage the left. The sensation engulfs me again and I hum, flexing and curling my toes in his downy leg hair. “Good boy,” falls from my mouth in a whisper before I realize it’s tumbling forward.  

            I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that exact phrase moaned with great gusto, but I know that each time I have, I asked myself who really says that? Who’s going to, when everything is in motion, say aww, yeah, suck that dick, boy, that’s a good boy with genuine passion? Even the though draws a smile. I tried calling Natalie a good girl once and she burst out laughing, which was the right reaction in all fairness, but also, due to the course of events, made it feel like she was laughing at either the size of my penis or the fact that it was entering her at all. Frank once asked me to say it and when I did, awkwardly then with more force after his moan, he shot so hard he painted both of our faces with hot stripes. It echoes in my head and hammers shame laced by the overwhelming need to be there again, to hear it again, to see, and touch, and taste him again.

            Matt, on his knees and worshipful, lifts my foot up fully and raises his eyes. His gaze paddles up my body slowly before settling on my face. He slices through me more than sees me. “May I—” he starts, swallows, and wets his lips. “May I kiss your foot?” The adoration with which he looks at me feels gritting and bitterly surrendered. Somewhere, in front of me or miles away, there is a Matt who looks at this one on his knees and rejects him outright, one who shuns feet and spits in the face of those who don’t.

            Keeping my eyes on his, I sit forward, beckon him closer with one finger, and coax his mouth open with two. The wad of saliva hits his tongue with a soft wet thwack and his expression flutters as it tries to fight and fuck at the same time. I give the barest inclination of my head and sit back.

            His head ducks to kiss the top then the sole, wedging his nose between my toes and inhaling deeply as he does. Long lashes hide his piercing gaze for a moment. “Thank you, Sir,” he answers in a shuttering sigh. The air whispers and tickles in time with his breath. My musk must be all that colors the air for him with familiar noxious tones. I set my jaw into something like controlled arousal with a core of disgust but the core is far too thin and the arousal far too great. I allow myself to be carried fully into it by how hungry his eyes are, how restless his tongue is, how quickly his arm pumps. When I stop his arm with my other foot and press the one to his nose more firmly, the two Matts wrestle again. Pride boils up between them, the scar on his face twitches in rage.

            We both know which will win but it is not until he presses both my feet to his face and inhales deeply before releasing an aching groan that I grin and release the breath I didn’t know I was holding. The knives of his disgust remain, but their edges are blunted by lust. “Good boy,” I drop again and watch all those blades shatter. How long will it take for them to be reformed? And when they are, will it be the echo of my face that breaks them again?

            “Are y’all fucking? Really? Right in front of my salad?”

            Barbell chuckles. “Classic.” On the screen, a woman pushes a bowl away from her and leaves her husband and the chef to their business. I try to laugh with him but emit something closer to a grunt. The context is lost on me. More than that, I had all but forgotten he was there. Had Monkey-man not been so close, I likely would’ve forgotten him too. This draws Barbell’s attention to me and more specifically Matt, “He’s so sweet, right? So keen to worship anything you throw at him.” I nod. “You should see him when he really gets going.” He whistles low. “Could suck the paint right off a moving car.”

            I chuckle at the image; Matt, stood solidly on the shoulder of I-95, emptying his lungs entirely and lacquering them again with silver and burgundy, black and cobalt. “I’d love to see that.” I manage. “I’ve been looking for something new.”

            Monkey-man takes my length in his hand and waves it back and forth. “Looks like you’re not the only one.”

            Matt puts my legs down and runs his hands up them and swallows in one fluid motion, pushing Monkey-man away in the process. The groan comes out of me slowly. I kick my legs apart more, close my eyes, and roll my back into the couch. Matt runs his hands along my waist. When I feel a third on my right pec and an arm around my shoulders, I look enough to confirm my suspicion that it’s Monkey-man before closing my eyes again and enjoying them. If this is what’s been going on here, I’m almost mad at myself for having waited this long. I mean, sure, I love Natalie and when he’s down for it, Frank knocks it out of the park every time, but to have a supply of people paying you to blow someone in your house while you get to join is a level of genius I never would’ve come to. “You have it all figured out, man,” I tell Monkey-man. “This has to be the life if I’ve ever seen it.”

            He nods. “You should see Fridays. Guys wall to wall and practically falling over each other. They’d eat you up.” At a chime, he groans and removes his arm. “Duty calls. Don’t get too far along, boys, sounds like we’ll be having some company.” He stands, tucks himself away, and exits the room. Before his footsteps even reach the bottom of the stairs, Barbell swoops into his spot and is rubbing across my chest.

            “They would eat you up. You wouldn’t have to jerk off for four days after a Friday if you spent it here. Maybe five if you came in uniform.”

            I don’t fuck civilians in my uniform. “I don’t fuck in my uniform.”

            He shrugs. “Just saying it’s an option. I can’t tell you how many guys I’ve helped leave here with stains around their fly. If you’re worried, you can always show in uniform and strip after. Guys love a uniform. I’m sure that’ll get you quite a few fans and a busy night once all is said. You’ll be fighting guys off that thing before you even get hard. Jesus, how big are you?”

            Before I can answer, my breath seizes in my chest when the door opens, admitting Monkey-man followed by two cops. Against the black maw of the stairwell, they stand etched out of embers and shade, their badges gleaming with a sick luminosity. Their skin swallows the light, leaving them burning fiery crimson beneath their uniforms. Annoyance and amusement swim together in a primordial sludge across their faces. They don’t know which to lead with and for that reason alone, the cruel humor of it swells in their minds. The shorter of the pair, his hands on his belt, taps his gun while looks at the other before shaking his head and sighing. I can feel him thinking pervs and I just manage to reign in the sudden and shameful wave of arousal crashing into me. “Alright, lads, I’m going to need everyone to separate and stand up against the wall. And for the love of God, will someone turn that shit off?”