dontravis.com
blog post #337
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Last
week we meet Vince Lozander, an ex-trucker meets Davy, a twink, in the Eagle
Bar, a bear place near the Continental Divide in western New Mexico.. They
strike up a conversation, and it soon becomes clear the younger man is looking to
hitch a ride. Vince wants to know a little more about him before deciding
whether to help out or not. They are still in the bar.Let’s see what gives.
*****
SPLENDID ISOLATION
I showed Davy the Blue Room with a blonde
UNM grad student and a smooth-skinned Navajo on the stage. Davy’s eyes bugged at
the tiny G-strings struggling to cover their privates. We found a couple of
seats, and I watched him with interest as he took in the show.
“I thought bears liked big, hairy boys,”
he said eventually, sounding like he had a catch in his throat. His eyes never
wavered from the two male bodies on the stage.
I laughed aloud. “You guys dance better,”
I responded, watching him closely.
His eyes flicked to me momentarily, and he
swallowed hard. “You a bear? You don’t look like one. I mean,” he hastened to
add, “you don’t have a beard, and you’re not fat, and… Aw, I’m not saying this
right.”
“I’m big,” I said, playfully pumping my
biceps for him. “And I’ve got a rug under my shirt. I’m a bear, all right. All
the way.”
“I…” he faltered. “You may be big, but
you’re not fat.”
“Two eighty. But I try to keep it all
muscle.” I made a quick decision. Might as well introduce him to the rest of
the Eagle. “Come on. Show you something.”
“Where we going?”
“You wanna see bears, I’m gonna show you
bears.”
As we passed through the crimson door to
the Eagle Bar’s real den of iniquity, the kid stopped like he was
pole-axed. The Red Room is the action arena at the Continental Divide Eagle. Little
private alcoves lined the fringes, and sturdy backless divans occupied the
middle where men lounged like Romans at a feast. And it was a feast. Naked
bodies undulated in a tangle of erotic pleasure.
I grabbed Davy by the arm and led him to
one of the unoccupied alcoves. The kid followed along blindly, his head
swiveling to take in the action at the other sofas. He finally sat down beside
me as if in a daze, but he sure came alive when I touched him.
“Hey!” he exclaimed, brushing my hand away
and looking around wildly.
It took a moment to realize he didn’t
object to being handled; he just wasn’t comfortable doing it in public. Or
maybe he was just being coy.
“I always heard bears don’t go for guys
like me,” he said.
“Normally, I’d prefer the sergeant over
there doing his buddy. But sometimes a little change is exciting.”
“Don’t you have someplace private we can go?”
“We can get a room, I guess.”
“How about your truck? You’re a trucker, aren’t
you?”
“A week ago, I’d have said yes. But I sold
my rig and bought a pickup.”
“Can we use it?” he asked, but I sensed
disappointment.
The guy wanted to do it in the sleeping
space of a semi. I wondered how long that had been a secret dream of his. The
mental image of my six-four frame laid out in my pickup’s passenger compartment
brought a chuckle.
“The truck bed, maybe, but no way in the
cab. They’d have to use the Jaws of Life to pry us out.”
“That would be okay, wouldn’t it? The bed,
I mean. You can spread out, and I’ll make it good for you. I promise, Vince.”
“Doing it in public in the Red Room of the
Eagle Bar is one thing, kid. The back of a pickup in a public parking lot is
something else.”
“We can drive out to some place private,
can’t we? I really want to do you, Vince. I’ve never had a bear before.”
I motioned to the center of the room. “Let’s
go out there. You can have a cheering section all your own.”
“I…I can’t. Not with everyone watching.”
“Lots more comfortable here in the alcove.
Not so public.”
He glanced around doubtfully. “Uh-uh. Still
too many prying eyes.”
I sighed and got to my feet. “Okay. Let’s
go.”
“You won’t regret it, big guy.”
I’m not certain, but I think he flushed. Hard
to tell in a room full of red lights.
###
I blinked hard and glanced up into a
cloudless sky, wincing at the strength of the sun. Where the hell was I? This
was pure desert. What in the world had happened? I struggled to sit up,
surprised by the unexpected weakness I experienced. My trousers were down
around my ankles; my shirt was open. I’d apparently had a hell of a time before
something happened that left me lying half-naked in the desert sand.
I got uncertainly to my feet and pulled my
clothing into place, struggling to remember. Bits and pieces came back slowly. My
name was Vince Lozander. Thirty-five…no thirty-six. I’d had a birthday last
month. From Arkansas. Now on my way to San Diego. Sold my rig and bought a pickup.
My pickup! Where the hell was my Ram? I looked around wildly. I could see for
miles. High desert country. Nothing. No highway, no buildings…no pickup!
“Son of a bitch!” I cursed, beginning to
remember. I’d been at the Continental Divide Eagle Bar last night. Met somebody
new…a damned twink! Davy something or the other. We’d gone to the pickup
because he was too shy to get it on in the Red Room. Too shy my fuzzy ass! He’d
set me up.
I vaguely recalled driving a couple of
miles and pulling off I-40 into the evergreen forest that dotted the high
continental divide country. Then we’d got in the bed of the pickup and had a
romp on a couple of blankets. The kid had been as good as his word. And
then…and then….
Damn! He’d pulled a bottle out of the
backpack he’d grabbed at the door when we left the bar and offered me a drink. Thirsty
from all the action, I’d taken a big slug, and that’s the last thing I
remember.
Son of a bitch! I’d been carjacked! The
fucker was a crook. A criminal. That’s why he’d looked so disappointed when I
said I’d sold my rig. He was looking to heist a hundred thousand dollar
container, not a twenty-five thousand dollar pickup! Brazen little bastard had screwed
me… and not in a good way!
It smarted a little that a pipsqueak I
outweighed by a hundred pounds had not only dared take me on; he’d also
succeeded. He’d doped my ass, rolled me out of the bed of my Dodge, and
abandoned me in the middle of the desert. I took another look around. I was
probably still in New Mexico. The horizon didn’t have the look of the Arizona
Sonoran Desert. Wasn’t the malpais or lava tube country around Grants either. The
bastard likely headed back toward Albuquerque and then turned south off the
Interstate at one of the exits. Shit! Just plain shit! Wait until I caught up
with the little twink!
That thought hauled me up short. Hey, man,
this might be serious. The desert is a deadly place. And here I was in the
middle of this desolation without water, without a windbreaker for the cold
night, without cover from the blistering sun. Had he left me to die or just
tucked me away somewhere nearby to give himself a lead?
With a sigh, I closed my eyes and called
upon the reserves that had served me over the last ten years of long-distance
trucking…my inner strength. After a moment of intense concentration, I felt
power flow back into my limbs. I was shrugging off the effects of the
drug…whatever the hell it had been.
Then I looked around the immediate
vicinity. There were tire tracks all over the place. What the hell had gone on?
Then I understood. Davy had driven around tearing up the countryside to make it
harder to follow his tracks back out.
Taking an oblique look at the sun, I
calculated north, assuming that was the direction I-40 lay. Pissed but not yet
worried, I struck out in that direction. By noon, my tongue was swollen, and what
little saliva I could bring up was thick with mucus. I hadn’t encountered a
living thing except an occasional buzzard wheeling about in the sky, a placid Gila
monster, and a huge, ill-tempered rattlesnake. Was every creature in this
God-forsaken place sinister?
The oppressive, ever-present, overwhelming
heat soon chased all other concerns from my consciousness. My skin felt as if it
were cracking. I recalled reading that certain desert succulents were sources
of water, but when I stomped one likely-looking spiny plant to a pulp, the small
amount of revolting moisture it held convinced me it wasn’t one of those.
Forgetting about snakes and other
poisonous creatures, I propped my head against a stone at nightfall and fell to
sleep instantly. I woke freezing to death and vainly tried to warm myself by
igniting the few dried plants revealed by the moonlight. As I shivered against
the cold and listened to the far-off, lonely cry of some creature with a voice…probably
a coyote. It made more sense to travel by night to keep warm and rest by day in
the shade of anything that cast a shadow.
Deliriously happy when the morning sun broke
the eerie loneliness of the night, I was cursing the burning orb two hours
later. Every scrap of rare shade was host to a bunch of creatures unhappy over sharing
space. Lizards and snakes and scorpions make poor neighbors. Unable to sit
still, I staggered off cross-country again, taking step after painful step
until I finally collapsed. By the end of that second day, I was on my last legs.
As I drifted off into unconsciousness in the freezing night air, the
realization I might not see the sunrise didn’t bother me a bit.
*****
A
twink in a bear bar. What could go wrong? Lots, apparently. We see the
desolation, but when does it get to be “splendid?” Maybe next week.
Now
my mantra: Keep on reading and keep on
writing. You have something to say, so say it!
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Don
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