Ted of the d’Urbervilles

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

We were eating ramen ten minutes later. He was behind the steering wheel, me in the passenger seat. A wall of steel behind him got slid to the side, revealing the hidden space within: a mattress, a microwave, a small fridge, some crates, bric and a whole lot of brac. Everything appeared tied down. It looked homey in that it looked lived in.

“How long have you been homeless, Ted?”

I choked on my noodles. I coughed. I slugged a bottle of water he handed me. “How did you…how did you know?” I hadn’t told Giselle. I hadn’t told anyone. I kept myself relatively clean in San Francisco. I cut my own hair, from time to time. I trimmed my nails. I found sinks to bathe in. I stole clothes from corner coin-operated laundromats, from inside the dryers. I returned them later, found new ones. I appeared, I always assumed, shabby-chic. I appeared, I also always assumed, like any of the thousands of hipsters that toddled around San Francisco and paid fifteen bucks for toast slathered in avocado, chugging it down with ten dollars’ worth of organic lemonade.

He slurped on his noodles, then swallowed and replied with, “You’re travelling to New York with nothing but a backpack. Plus, I’ve seen my share of homeless before. They look lost, anxious, leery, hungry. You check all the boxes, Ted.” The shrug repeated. “Then again, with millennials, you never know.”

I sighed and set my soup to the side. I set the water bottle in the cup holder. I didn’t talk about being homeless. I didn’t talk about my parents. I didn’t talk, period. I wasn’t in denial; I was simply on auto-pilot. I probably did look lost, anxious, leery. I was certainly always hungry. Maybe I wasn’t fooling anybody but myself.

“My parents died. I didn’t finish high school. Six months before graduation. I just…couldn’t. The bank took the house. The bank took everything. Dad hadn’t paid a bill in over a year, I was told. Sorry for your loss, but please hand over the keys.”

“They kicked out a teenager?”

I inhaled. I exhaled. I could still see it, still see me standing inside one minute and out the next. I slept at my friends’ homes for a while, but that was uncomfortable—for everyone. I had no money to contribute. I was depressed. People felt sorry for me until they were sick of having me around. They would ask me how long I planned on staying in a way that let me know that my time on their couches, in their spare bedrooms, would be short. Parents tried to intervene, suggested foster care, government handouts, shelters. They smiled as they suggested. You could see them counting the minutes until my departure. People cared, but only to a point. There was a timer on compassion. Beep, bye-bye Ted.

“Seventeen is a teenager. Eighteen is an adult. Everything has a thin line separating it,” I replied.

“Sucks.”

I nodded. “Yep.”

“And New York might make it suck less?”

My nodding stopped. “Couldn’t suck more.” Could it? I looked his way. “You gay, Chuck?”

It was now his turn to cough, to slug down some water. “You some sort of rampant homophobe, Ted? You gonna kill me in my sleep? Should I be worried?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Probably because I was all cried out—for the time being. “I was thinking the same about you. As to the gay thing, takes one to know one. Just had a feeling, an intuition, is all.”

“Gaydar.”

I touched fingertip to nose. “That mean yes?”

He didn’t reply. He finished his soup and crouched down, turned, until he was quickly sitting on his mattress. He reached into a crate, tossed me a spare sheet. “Long day tomorrow, Ted. Long day today, too. Mind if we turn in?”

“Sure,” I said. “Sure, sure.” I went for my backpack. “Just gotta brush my teeth and pee.” I grabbed the door handle. “Be right back.”

I walked to the bathroom. Chuck made me nervous. Horny and nervous. It was a disquieting dichotomy. It had been some time since I’d been alone with a man. I stopped going to the bars a long while ago. I had no money. I had no place to bring men back to. I had no cellphone. If homeless people dated, it was probably with other homeless people, which seemed about the most depressing relationship imaginable. If I had s*x, it was with passing strangers, men coming home from parties, bars. s*x was hot and fleeting. I never spent the night. I gave out fake phone numbers. I made dates I could never keep. Chuck was the only guy to ever clock the homeless thing. That’s what made me nervous, I think. There was a certain safety in the anonymity of my situation. Chuck had pulled the net out from under me.

I walked inside the bathroom. I peed and brushed my teeth. I washed my pits. I washed my face. I was going to go to sleep in a truck and I wanted to look presentable. It both made sense and was surreally f****d up. Seemed my entire life was a disquieting dichotomy. A man walked in and stood at the sink next to me. He looked to be in his late fifties. Portly. Pockmarked.

“How much?” he asked.

I shrugged. “The water is free. Welcome to America.”

His hand slightly shook. My knee bounced. He was blocking the door. I’d never sold myself for s*x. I stole, sure, and squatted, natch, but I doubted that would f**k me up too bad, psychologically speaking. s*x work, that’s got to f**k a guy up but good. I was desperate, but not that desperate, not yet. Hope is a strange thing. You only need a sliver of it to keep you from going over the deep end. And, like I said, a sliver was all I had.

“For a blowjob,” he said, his voice trembling like his hand. “How much?”

I blinked. I had youth on my side, but he had me by a hundred pounds. I held my toothbrush like a weapon. Four out of five dentists recommend it as a makeshift shiv. Guess the fifth dentist gave the blowjob. Or got the blowjob. The stranger wasn’t clear in that regard.

“Cold sore,” I said, pointing at my mouth, then quickly at my crotch, just to be on the safe side. I thought to point at my asshole but wasn’t sure you could get a cold sore there. “Sorry.”

The stranger cringed and hightailed out of there. My heart was pounding. I grabbed the countertop. I breathed in. I breathed out. I counted to ten a few times. I touched my cheek. Dry as a bone. Too bad, too, because that would’ve been an opportune time to let the waterworks flow.

I packed up and shipped off, double-timing it to the truck. I hopped in, locked the door. The sheet was already over the seat, a small pillow waiting for me. It was dark outside, mostly dark inside, save for the beams from a nearby streetlight. It was all so comfy, so homey, so weird. I turned to thank my host. He was on top of the sheets, shirtless, pantsless. He had on blue boxers. It was hot in the cab, literally and figuratively.

My gulp returned. We were now in the melon-sized range. “Thanks,” I warbled, my voice returning to puberty levels.

“No problem, Ted,” he replied. “Good night.”

I nodded his way. I got undressed. The sheet smelled like Clorox. I smelled like truck-stop-bathroom soap. I stared up as I lay down. My foot kicked the steering wheel. Did I say weird? Because it beared repeating.

“I….” I said. “You…” I said. “Um…” I said. Eloquent I was not. Apart from Giselle, I hadn’t had a formal conversation with anyone in too f*****g long. I was out of practice. There was a nearly naked man behind me. I was nearly naked in front. And my front could’ve given the stick shift a run for its money.

I sat up. I turned around. Chuck was on his side staring back at me. I crawled between the seats, until our faces were barely separated. My lips found his. It was a chaste kiss goodnight. Until it wasn’t.

Chuck was a great deal older than me. Chuck was a trucker. The situation lended itself to something rough and tumble. Porn movies were made from moments such as these. But as I maneuvered myself atop him, Chuck was soft and gentle, tender. He held me as if I could crack at any moment. Perhaps I could. Perhaps I already had. And all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men, blah, blah, blah.

I mashed my lips into his. Our tongues did an oral tango. I grabbed onto his beard like an anchor. Our c***s dueled it out below. It was hot in the cab and growing hotter by the second. Our boxers got kicked off. Every inch of my body was firmly pressed to every inch of his body. He was hairy and thick. I was lithe and smooth. In this, the dichotomy was anything but disquieting. If opposites did indeed attract, a crowbar would’ve been needed to pry us apart.

I sat up, positioned myself between his legs. The dim light illuminated his torso, his steely prick. I ran my fingers through the matting that covered his chest, pinched at his n*****s, stared into eyes that stared back at me, through me. People no longer looked at me; now I was being looked at. Here was a new bend in my road.

I crouched to his crotch, which smelled like musk and sweat. It was a heady aroma that drew me in further, my lips soon wrapped around the fat, leaking head. A thick bead of precome hit the back of my throat like a bullet. I sucked deeper, until his bush tickled my nose and I, in turn, tickled his hole.

He spread his legs wider. I spit into my hand and delved a spit-slick digit in and up and back. Chuck bucked and moaned. I was in uncharted territories and needed backup, a second finger, a third. A twist of the wrist, and four was managed. I felt surprisingly in control of him now, a puppet on a string. He was jacking furiously at his prick. I stared from it to him. A man could get lost in that beard of his. A man could get lost in that ass of his. Suddenly, I felt anything but lost. Here was another first. Unlike the others, this one was oddly comforting, as if we were tethered together—which, in a way, we were.

I grabbed my own prick with my free hand. I matched him stroke for furious stroke, all the while pounding into his hole, which gripped my hand with fervor. He nodded my way, his mouth in a pant. “Come with me,” he rasped.

“No problem,” I replied, now on my knees, waiting, waiting—and then not. His prostate grew to steely proportions. My c**k threatened my very grip. His head thrashed as he shot. My body trembled as I followed suit. His come flew up before raining down. Mine shot out and covered him in pearlescent spooge. He huffed while I puffed, threatening to blow the truck down. He milked out every last drop. I did the same. The cab smelled of us, intoxicatingly reeked of us. My head was swimming. I’d just four-finger-f****d a man. That was intense. Then again, so was my life, as of late.

I eased my fingers from him. He winced as they popped free from his warm confines. I immediately missed being inside him. I’d been set adrift. I told him as much. He smiled up at me. The smile vanished. “I’m sorry,” he said.

I tilted my head. “For?”

“I took advantage of you.”

I laughed. It was becoming a habit. I wondered if my cork would ever fit back in. “I kissed you, Chuck.”

He squinted up at me. “I guess I’m not sorry then.”

I collapsed on top of him. When the come dried, we’d be stuck together. That crowbar would again be needed. “Can you sleep with a finger inside you.”

“Sleep?” he hummed into my ear. “Probably not, but there’s lots of coffee shops between here and Denver.”

Meaning, I finally spent the night with someone.

Inside him.

* * * *

We hit the road again early the next morning. After coming again.

“I hate that you’re homeless, Ted.”

“Makes two of us, Chuck.”

He glanced my way. “Sounds weird to say. Like I’m making light of it. I’m not. It’s just the only way I know how to say it.”

I nodded. I grinned. “I liked ramming four fingers up your ass in the back of your truck, Chuck. Sounds weird to say. Like I’m making light of it. I’m not. It’s just the only way I know how to say it.” My grin widened. “There, now we’re even.” I stared down at my crotch. “And hard. Your hole is Pavlovian that way. Pavlov threw his dog a bone; you threw me a boner.”

“Paints a pretty picture.” He’d made some instant coffee. He took a swig. He paused. “This trip to New York, you think that will solve you’re, you know, problem?”

My problem. Was it possible to shrink it down to a single word? Problem? Could I ever solve it? What if I was coming into a large monetary inheritance? Or even a new home. Would that erase the homelessness? When you take a man out of war, the war lingers within, right? PTSD, I think they call it. For me, that would be PTHD, the H for homeless. I think it’d stay with me forever, a stain on my psyche. Still, it’d be nice to find out for certain.

And so, “Maybe,” I replied. I looked his way, then back at the road. “Do you always do…I mean, do you always get, um, off that way?” That way being the majority of my hand.

He chuckled. Chuck gave good chuckle. PS, kissing Chuck was about as close to landing on a cloud as a guy could get. In other words, heavenly. Nearly fisting him was no less divine. “Most people don’t think to try, so it’s not a usual occurrence. Suffice it to say, I enjoy it.”

“But doesn’t it hurt?”

“Pain turns to pleasure,” he replied.

Maybe it’d never before been my turn then. Pain was pain. I’d begun to think of pleasure as a myth. I was glad to disprove it. I was also glad for Chuck. Both were temporary: pleasure and Chuck. Or maybe Chuck had stained my psyche, too.

Fingers crossed.

Fingers buried deep up his ass, of course.