dontravis.com
blog post #326
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| Courtesy of Pixabay |
How about
another short story this week? Hope you enjoy.
*****
Who in the hell gets thrown in jail
for lipping off to a cop nowadays, particularly a stockbroker not yet thirty who’s
busy racking up his third million? Money guarantees a fellow a get-out-of-jail
card, doesn’t it? Even in a place like Albuquerque …
especially in a place like the Duke City
Apparently calling one of APD’s
finest a ‘son of a bitch’ rates right up there with serial murder. And standing
before the bar proclaiming the judge a ‘crotchety old bastard’ apparently compounds
the crime exponentially, but what the hell, I was drunk on my ass. The verdict…
guilty. The sentence… forty-eight hours in hizzoner’s free downtown hotel.
It takes forever to break into the
Duke City jailhouse given all the paperwork and waiting for your name to be
called, but I eventually managed it. The city was busy moving most of its provincial
felons into a brand-new facility way the hell and gone out on the west side,
thus the downtown pokey, where the authorities decided I would accept hizzoner’s
kind invitation, was now only semi-occupied when normally it would have been half
past full.
Eventually, I was delivered to a
small cell fronted with bars like you’ve seen in a thousand jailhouse movies. The
sides, however, were solid, except for a gap of perhaps two inches between the
side panels and the back wall, probably designed for the circulation of air. Without
having to contend with a cellmate, I quickly grew accustomed to the clanging,
rumbling, never-quite-silent ambiance of the place and was bored out of my
skull within an hour.
My stress, already alarmingly high
despite a cool-guy act, went soaring with movie images of mess hall violence when
we were called out for dinner. As I marched down the long corridor following
the felon ahead and trailed by the one behind, I took note of my next-door
neighbor, the guy in front of me. Tall and slender but well-built, he wasn’t
Hollywood’s idea of a convict. His skin was a smooth, natural tan, so he was
likely Hispanic. As we turned the corner, I caught a glimpse of his face. Classically
handsome… young, but already in that stage where young Latinos go from being
girl-pretty to Valentino-virile. Nineteen or twenty was my guess.
I saw him again later as we went to
clean up in a madhouse of yelling, cursing, rough-looking men in the shower
room. Putting on my best tough-guy demeanor, I dived into the melee, and
immediately spotted my next-door cellmate. Naked except for a towel around his
slender waist, he was busy scraping off invisible whiskers with a safety razor
held in long, graceful, and strangely sexy hands. Confused, I turned to my own
toilet, trying to keep my eyes off the nameless young man, even as we rotated
naked beneath the shower head after the shave. Was it my imagination, or did he
give me a quick glance or two?
Later, as I lay in a bunk bolted
hard against the side of my cell, I considered my reaction to the anonymous youth.
Less than halfway through my sentence of forty-eight hours, I was thinking like
a man denied women for the last ten years.
The lights winked off, so I slipped
beneath the blanket and turned on my side, realizing as I did that my graceful
young man was lying inches away on the other side of that thin steel wall. Expecting
the night to be difficult because of the never-ceasing noise, I closed my eyes
and sought a comfortable position, my left hand pressed against the wall with
my fingers in the narrow opening between the two cells. Surprisingly, I dozed
rather quickly…only to be startled awake. Something brushed my fingers. Instinctively,
I snatched my hand away from the opening. What was that? Mice? Spiders? No, it had to have been my neighbor. His hand
had hit mine, probably as he turned over. Ruing my sudden reaction, I curled my
fingers back through the opening, wondering… hoping?... there would be contact
again.
I dozed. I woke. I froze. A finger
rested against the back of my hand. Slowly, it moved in what could only be described
as a caress up and down the length of my curled fist. I opened my eyes. Afraid
that if I moved, he would withdraw, I lay still and silent as the handsome
youth’s hand played over mine. Eventually, I lifted my index finger. He grasped
it. Fingers entwined, we lay quietly while something built within my breast. I
stiffened my finger. Immediately, he closed around it, his fist gently moving
up and down my digit. Erotic! Fantastically, magnificently sexy! His fingers
held me loosely, and the resulting friction sent a jolt of electricity into my
groin.
My heart fluttered. My breath came
shallowly. I felt as I had not felt since high school when I was in headlong pursuit
of my first sexual experience. The same mystery, the same anticipation, the same
delicious, soupy feeling seized me. I grasped myself with my other hand and set
up a rhythm synced to the invisible fist playing up and down my finger. Either
he felt my efforts or sensed them, because he slowly built his tempo. I
imagined this was the way he would manipulate himself when he was alone and
feeling horny. The mental image of that heightened my excitement. Once or
twice, his moving fingers flinched, and I understood he was pursuing the magic
of the moment for himself. Was his mental image of me playing in his mind as his
was in mine?
Shallow of breath, mouth sagging, my
legs trembled with the excitement of a little boy doing something he knows to
be naughty but unspeakably pleasurable. My finger remained straight, sheathed
by that good, strong hand. A glorious sensation rose within me where it rattled
around before carrying me to a delicious ejaculation worthy of those wonder
years when sex was fresh and new and truly awesome.
Those fingers gripped me hard as he
went from rhythmic to spasmodic, and I knew my secret lover, my lithe, handsome,
unnamed youth was experiencing his own cataclysmic orgasm. Listening hard
through my ragged breathing, I heard a muffled baritone sigh. That good, brown
fist held onto me tightly for a long minute before releasing me and breaking
the magic spell.
My young lover was among those
prisoners released with me the next afternoon. As our eyes met briefly, his
firm mouth curled slightly at the corners. I tried to maneuver my way to his
side, but as I succeeded, another con called him by name. Daniel. My lover’s
name was Daniel. I tried to hold him with my eyes, but with one quick, knowing
glance in my direction, he turned to answer his friend.
It took as long to be thrown out of
jail as it did to be cast in, but eventually we were ushered into the lobby
where our loved ones waited. Dismayed, I saw Nellann among them, but I
understood from her frown that it was truly over. Coming to pick me up was merely
her way of saying goodbye. Well, that was okay; probably even desirable, given
the advent of last night.
I watched covertly as my young Daniel
strode across the reception room with those long, graceful steps right into the
welcoming arms of an adoring young woman. “Daddy,” a dark-haired child cried,
clasping his slender legs, exciting a moment of jealousy. Experiencing a
crushing disappointment as unacknowledged dreams of replaying last night’s
passion faded away, I turned on Nellann in frustration.
“Sorry, kid,” I mumbled, awkwardly
kissing her dry forehead as she gave me a perfunctory hug, “but it’s over.” With
that, I walked away, leaving her to nurse her frustration at not being able to
deliver the carefully crafted speech she’d doubtless worked on for the past
forty-eight hours.
But I didn’t have time for that. I
had to follow up on what I’d learned about myself during the last two days. I
might have lost my handsome young Hispanic, but there had to be other good,
strong hands out there; in a place the size of Albuquerque…there had to be!
*****
Talk
about an epiphany kick-started by an inanity… this seems to be one. I suspect
Parker Welles’ life may never be the same after his 48 hours in jail. Ah, well…
we learn strange truths in strange places.
Abaddon’s Locusts,
the
fifth in the BJ Vinson mystery series, received several positive reviews. I
hope you’ll consider buying a copy. If you do, please post a review of the book
on Amazon. Each one helps… as do letters to the publisher.
Now
my mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on
writing. You have something to say… so say it.
My
personal links:
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@dontravis3
Buy
links to Abaddon’s Locusts:
See
you next week.
Don
New Posts are
published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.
