Across the fifteen feet of cracked concrete by the Mexican’s stall, two other black guys — one notably stockier than the other — were laughing over something. Their flies bowed open — which made Eric think one, the other, or both had been fooling with the Mexican. The bigger one had a fist inside his and, as Eric blinked over the kid’s shoulder, pulled out a thick cock, not as long as the boatman’s. Probably he’d put it away at the boatman’s and Eric’s entrance, and only now loosed it again.
The kid hugged Eric tighter, drew in his tongue, then rubbed Eric’s neck with his face. His beard was softer than it looked.
Beyond the kid’s smell was the odor of wet stone and moist cinderblock and what seeped through cracked cellar walls from the damp — a smell that, at sixteen, already Eric associated with a half hour here or an hour there, sitting in some basement john stall, at a library or in a truck garage or at a bus station, because some guy finishing at the urinal had flashed him, then hurried out, and he’d waited to see if anyone else would come —
Waiting for men…
Waiting for men like these…?
The kid was strong, as strong as Eric, and — both arms around Eric’s chest — his grip was tight with bone and a desperation Eric recognized…
Eric slid one hand between the boy’s and his own belly, to grip his cock, which had just been up the older guy’s ass. It was about three-quarters of an inch longer than Eric’s — a little thicker. Holding it, Eric realized, made his own feel bigger — as, between them, the boy squeezed Eric’s with his rough hand. Eric thought: I wonder why he likes holding mine?
Beside them, the white guy bent to tug up his bib overalls. As he stood, on his once black T-shirt Eric saw a foreshortened dump truck, in gray, green, and more gray, before the denim rose over it. The john space was small enough for Eric to hear the suspender’s wide wire snap catch a steel button.
Then the boatman raised his tattooed arm and put it around Eric’s shoulder — a third arm around him. “’Scuse me, Shit. But this boy’s gonna suck my dick now. You can have ’im soon as I’m finished.” Taking a deep breath, Shit released Eric, stepping back, looking a little confused.
Disoriented, Eric looked left and right, still holding Shit’s cock.
“Hey, Jay,” Shit said. “I’m sorry. Sure.” The boatman — Jay? — had actually called him ‘Shit.’ Till then, Eric had assumed it was a repeated miss-hearing, perhaps, of “Shim.”
(In Florida, the security guard for Barb’s trailer park had been called “Shim” and his mom had had a neighbor, Mr. Shippey, who Shim had always called “Ol’ Ship”…)
“Now you — ” which was Jay talking to Eric — “can hold onto his dick all you want, long as you’re suckin’ on mine.”
Eric laughed. And the colorful, multi-headed arm lowered him to a squat.
Eric looked up at the boatman with his yellow beard and bare upper gum, grinning down. Above the boatman’s jutting cock and bloated testicle, practically the size of a baseball really — the normal one a nodule at its side — from the john’s uneven ceiling, the metal fixture around three incandescent bulbs suggested a glass globe had once softened their unfrosted glare.
Eric went forward, knees on the concrete.
With his callused hands, the boatman slid his wide hooded cockhead, with its full veins, its downward curve, into Eric’s mouth. It was salty — and thick enough so that, when in, it filled Eric’s mouth. Eric took it deep, then backed up and, tongue thrust under the meaty hood, troweled beneath the glans — God, there was a lot in there, faintly bitter, salted, mostly dry — till his tongue pushed the frenum, which stretched against it. The big-armed boatman gave a pleased grunt.
Maybe the Mexican’s tongue hadn’t gotten to it that morning…
It felt good to get the guy’s cock in his mouth.
Still gripping the other kid’s dick — Shit’s — in his hand (Was he three years older than Eric? Was he four?), Eric could feel Shit moving — an inch one way, half an inch the other — to position himself more conveniently. Eric came off Jay long enough to look up again. “You pack that stuff in there with a spoon?”
“Hell…” the big boatman drawled, “I thought you said you liked it.”
Shit chuckled — and stepped nearer: Eric’s arm bent.
“I do.” Releasing Shit’s cock, which bobbed up an inch, to hit Eric’s ear — the head was wet — Eric brought that hand over to cup the boatman’s immense testicle with the smaller, while four fingers of his other hand leaned like tent poles on a bit of cement. Again Eric swallowed dick, till the boatman’s zipper cut at his lip.
Other guys laughed, watching, grinning. Eric grinned too — and in the dark space had a flash of spring clarity, the afternoon sun a-slant beneath the Atlanta highway — as Jay rubbed his head, the way the hillbillies sometimes had.
Eric thought: Damn…!
Someone said, “My kinda cocksucker, Jay,” though Eric wasn’t sure if the speaker was black or white.
Sucking again, Eric got to a rhythm, he could tell — from the way Jay pushed forward, his hand firm on Eric’s head, the overhead grin — the boatman liked. For moments Eric wondered if he should not butt his chin into the enlarged scrotum. But after a few times — and he liked the feel of its hair against his lower face — Eric forgot it; or, rather, just enjoyed it; which the boatman seemed easy with.
Here is what, later, Eric thought: When you’re sucking a good dick, you can get so involved with what’s going on in your mouth — the way something as big as, or bigger than you, another tongue and of a different firmness, is sharing the space, the stretch of your cheeks, the way the palate sends one with that kind of curve down your throat — it is different from the ones that curve up, not that I’d send someone away because of it — and the rightness it transfers to you, each thrust; of the way the thicker part toward the back — at least with a cock like this — has all the hair and also most of the salt, like someone who’s been working. Scott says he doesn’t like hair on a dick. But Scott’s fuckin’ nuts — ! I don’t think Scott like guys! He’d be happier suckin’ off chix-with-dix. (Imagine two nuts that big, in a real loose bag. I’m gonna jerk off over that…) You can live inside your own mouth, and all the world’s in there with you. I guess you’re aware of what’s going on in the world, though it’s not a third as important as what moves over your tongue, big tube with the little tube beneath, expanding in you, the quarter inch you keep between your teeth and his meat —
Behind Eric, hinges squeaked.
Everyone in the space moved —
At least a little — and Eric knew it and moved, too.
The boatman’s hands firmed on either side of Eric’s head, not to halt him but to slow him, so that the motion of Eric’s mouth kept on: a way to let his cocksucker know (Eric thought right there) that whoever had entered was okay.
Or, maybe, Jay doesn’t give a fuck…?
What would it be like to be that big…?
Could you learn such strength through knowledge alone…?
At the urinal, the black guy said, “Hey, there, fella. You come for a taste o’ dis?” and — Eric could just see the man around Jay’s hip, when he pulled back — turning from the urinal enough so that Eric saw what the shaved-headed black man in his safety vest held.