Herm I.T.

Robin Paley liked being by himself. Well, he didn’t like it, exactly. A librarian at one time, now an editor, always a stickler for words, he decided he’d have to come up with a better one. “I’ve assimilated,” he said, rubbing a towel over salt-and-pepper hair, wet from the shower. “Because that’s just how it has to be. Not that I’m in any way alone.” Robin relaxed just a bit, peering into friendly brown eyes. “And we’re actually having company today.” Just as quickly, he stiffened again, filled with dread. “Lucky us, huh, Magnus Renegade?” Apparently unaware of the sarcasm, Robin’s huge bullmastiff thumped his tail against the marred wooden floor. An IT guy was on the way to take a look at Robin’s Internet setup, a freelancer from the Yellow Pages. Robin wanted someone who could diagnose the stuff his provider’s tech would be able to, in addition to checking out his PCs, just in case the problem was with one of them. One stranger in the house, one day of inconvenience and stress instead of two—that was Robin’s plan. “And I wish he’d hurry up.” Though the calendar was three months into the year 2001, Robin couldn’t help but wonder if some big Y2K issue was responsible for his interrupted service. He’d held his breath, filled with even more anxiety than usual at 11:59 P.M. on December 31, 1999, recalling an entire year’s worth of doomsday predictions, as d**k Clark counted down. Nothing had happened, of course, not then, but more recently Robin had heard some so-called expert say the real trouble would hit in 2001. The computer guy on the phone had snickered at the mentioned correlation, which had immediately made Robin feel a bit like a moron. “I hate people,” he told the dog. Mags barked in response. The World Wide Web was Robin’s only real connection to the outside world. “Another incorrect word choice,” he mused, patting Mags on his warm, plush head. “Sitting in solitude, reading about the universe as it exists, following conversations in AOL chatrooms, like the virtual talkers are fish in a bowl or performers in some coin-operated peep show and I’m just their audience, is that really connecting?” he asked. Staring out the window as he would at the screen, into his real world, far less active, less enticing, also less explored, Robin knew the answer. He thought of the activity he’d been engaged in when the laptop first crashed, one similar to what he’d started in the shower but then abandoned due to time. “Even chatting, myself, with typewritten words devoid of voice, voyeuristic, exhibitionist s****l play without emotion, pretending it’s satisfying even as it ceases to be halfway through…I feel that hardly counts either, my friend.” Still, if someone wasn’t coming soon and the system wasn’t down, the idea of signing into the local M4M AOL chat where gay guys could talk dirty, exchange photos, beat off on webcam, or achieve the very rare but ultimate goal of getting together to play in person…”Well, it’s rather new and always tempting, isn’t it?” Mags woofed once more, always glad to engage in conversation. “But not today.” Robin rubbed both floppy ears, silky soft against his palms. Dressed in shorts and a plain white undershirt—an outfit usually saved for summer, not mid-March—Robin gave the tidy cabin one more visual sweep to make sure he hadn’t left anything about he didn’t wish a stranger to see. He straightened a frame on the wall, one containing a pencil drawing of his home nestled far back in the woods. The picture took him back, as it so often did, to a time some thirty years before. * * * * “You own a cabin?” “My parents do.” They’d met on side-by-side army cots in a medical tent in Vietnam. One was nearly twenty, the other barely twenty-one. “Is it romantic?” Frank’s Brooklyn accent was as thick as his jet-black eyebrows and the stubble on his cheeks. “More…rustic.” Robin blushed and wondered why. “Where’s it at?” “New York…where I’m from.” “Upstate?” Frank asked. “Not really,” Robin said. “I live nearly as far south on the New York map as one can get without being in the city.” “If it ain’t one of the five boroughs, Bird Man,” Frank said, “it’s upstate.” That bugged Robin a little, but when Frank reached over and touched the back of his hand, when he said, “Maybe I can see it someday,” Robin let it pass. “Maybe,” Robin told him. * * * * There were no photographs of Frank left in the place, but Robin had no problem recalling his rugged handsomeness. Frank was the epitome of gruff. He often wore a scowl, but Robin also remembered the gentleness, only rarely revealed once home, that sometimes shone in his eyes. Frank had made the drawing for Robin right before heading back to combat, purely from imagination and Robin’s description. Robin, who had returned home to the States from the hospital, had stuck it in a box once back, prepared to forget about Frank and the war. They’d hung it together, in its original spot, just a few months later, once they’d reconnected and run away from one Paley family dwelling to another, in order to start a life together. The rendering’s current location, off-center on the pine-paneled wall, out of balance and symmetry with the room, was to hide a reminder—a mark in that paneling—of how that life had ended. The sun was just coming up over the mountains. It wasn’t supposed to stay out for long. Muggy as hell for St. Patrick’s Day week, the weatherman was calling for “strong to severe spring storms” by midday. It was the kind of weather—sultry, humid, and uncomfortable—that would have taken Frank back over there, to when he and Robin were kids, kids with rifles at war. “Enough of that.” Robin raked his hand over the hair he still kept military shorn. “The repair guy was supposed to be here ‘first thing in the morning,’” he complained to Magnus Renegade. “In my opinion, that makes him late.” Robin had gotten a little ornery with age and detested anything out of the ordinary, which certainly included strangers—or anyone, actually—entering his home. No one had been inside the cabin since the Cablevision guy back in ‘89, when service finally became available that far out of town. Robin had installed his Internet setup himself, years later, with a modem and cables sent by the telephone company through the mail. Surfing the web was a lot faster since, way better than when he’d had dial-up and had to unplug the phone to go online. Not that anyone called, so that part didn’t matter. Videos were so slow back then, though. Robin had pretty much been stuck looking at naked men in pictures. Streaming pornography, so readily available, so clear and fast without impossibly long buffering and download times, that was very new as well in 2001, and also highly addictive to a rather lonely man. The upgrade had been quite simple. All it required was screwing in one wire, clicking in a few others, and then putting a plug in an outlet. Anything more complex and Robin would have been lost. He had tried for days to get to the root of his current problem, and then decided, f**k it! I’ll just live without porn, when he couldn’t. After only twelve more hours, however, he’d given in and made the call to Speedy Internet Repair. “Hardly speedy at all,” Robin said to the imaginary IT guy. “Let’s get this over with. Get here and get gone.” With his knees too wobbly to pace, while at the same time too wired to sit, Robin was somewhat relieved when, two hours later, a little orange compact finally sputtered up the dirt road. The disheveled driver looked barely out of high school, with a mop of messy dark auburn waves sticking out from under an orange cap. He was rather squat—that was the word Robin chose—and a bit of roundness with a line of fur showed when his shirt hiked up, as he set a bottle of Sprite on the roof of his car. Black-framed glasses had slid partway down the kid’s nose by the time he got to the door, and the satchel he had slung over his shoulder—with the not-at-all-accurate name of his alleged business written in magic marker—looked as if it was stuffed so full its seams could burst at any moment. “Man,” he said, scraping his feet on the rather ironic “Welcome” mat, “you really are up in there.” Even after seventy-some hours without pornography, Robin’s mind went to something unrelated. “When you said ‘Keep going. You’ll think you missed the place, but you haven’t,’ that ain’t no line, dude. I almost turned around five or six t—” Mr. Speedy suddenly stopped—stopped talking and stopped fidgeting, which he’d been doing with his bag, his belt buckle, his glasses, and his fly since getting out of the car. “Come in,” Robin offered, knowing full well his tone was not terribly inviting. “I’m sorry I forgot your name.” “Hendrix,” the kid supplied. “And I…uh…” His eyes hadn’t left the dog. “Oh,” Robin said. “Renny won’t hurt you—Magnus Renegade, formally.” Mags had barked, just once, sharp and high-pitched, midway through young Hendrix’s sentence, but his tail still wagged, creating a rhythm against the wall akin to a bass drum keeping time for a marching band. “I call him a lot of different things, and he hates being left out of the conversation.” Robin smiled—sort of. He felt almost charming, once again, only sort of. He reminded himself in-person conversation could be just like the kind in chat rooms, only without all the questions about d**k size, preferred s****l positions, and kink tolerance. Whatever colon/close parentheses smiley face he might add, Robin figured he could imitate. Though typing one was quite a bit easier than making one with his face. “I don’t do…dogs…” The PC tech swallowed hard. “Dogs scare me.” Robin’s forced smile flipped. He was afraid of a lot of things; dogs were not one of them. “You’ll be fine.” People could be so annoying. “Magnus Renegade, sit!” The dog, on the other hand, immediately obeyed. “See,” Robin said to Hendrix. “Can you maybe put him in another room or something?” Flat against the wall, Hendrix held his bag at his chest, as if it was a bullet- or canine teeth-proof shield. “There are only two, the bedroom, where the modem is, and the bathroom, which is way too small. I’ll…” Robin wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but he offered it. “I’ll put him outside.” This seemed to appease the high-strung stranger, who finally let out his breath. By the time Robin came back, Hendrix was in the bedroom, bent over the small table where the modem sat, flashing some skin, more fur—a coppery brown color—and the waistband of his Joe Boxer undershorts, which sat way lower than his waist. “You left your windows down, and it’s going to start pouring any moment.” Robin’s friendly reminder came out as an admonishment. It, perhaps the tone, made Hendrix jump midway through, sending everything flying from the nightstand. Glasses, a book, a mug filled with red pens, and one half full of water, plus the telephone, the modem itself, and some military medals in a small tin box, all hit the floor and spread in several directions. “I’m…I’m so sorry,” Hendrix stammered. The two nearly clunked heads when they both knelt to rescue Robin’s reading glasses from the onslaught of liquid. After a moment of silence, during which each studied himself in the reflection of the other’s eyes, Robin spoke, as he deposited what he’d saved upon the bed. “I’ll have to bring the dog in too. When it starts.” Robin stood. Hendrix followed, and though he was much younger and supposedly more agile, only he made a grunting sound doing it. “Bad knees. Football,” he explained. “Defense, I’m guessing.” Robin shoved a blue bottle of lubricant farther under the bed with his foot. “You’re a big guy.” He tried the punctuation smile once again. “If the modem checks out, Mags and I will stay in here while you look at the laptop and wires in the living room,” he said. “I better go get him.” “Wait.” Hendrix touched Robin’s arm. “What?” Robin cringed. His heart pounded harder, and his face felt suddenly flushed. How long had it been since he’d been touched by another man? “The…medals. Did you serve?” Hendrix asked. Robin closed his eyes much longer than a blink. He bit his tongue, the physical pain used to stop the emotional kind from bubbling up. “Yes,” he said, before he turned and left the room. Robin only breathed again once he’d finally gotten outdoors. “He’s as jumpy as I am, Mags.” The dog twisted his head side to side. “Who could ever be afraid of you?” Robin asked. “He is rather good-looking, though—for a kid—even with such a stupid name. Hendrix Higgins…if ever a first name didn’t fit with the last…You think he has a sister named Mama Cass Golightly?” Robin didn’t often get to try out humor. Perhaps that was a good thing. His smile was genuine, however, at least until it suddenly dawned on him, with a shiver and a knot in his gut, why, at first mention, Hendrix Higgin’s name had sounded so oddly familiar. “It has to be the same guy.” Staring up at the clouds, quite menacing and dark, Robin fastened the leash to the little metal ring on Mag’s royal blue collar. He kissed him on the head, lingering there a bit, and recalled the news story from not that long ago about the kid in his house, the one whose name he wished he could forget again, as not to get attached. They slowly made their way to the door, Robin in a bit of shock, just as the first rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, causing the huge pup to tense. “It’s okay, buddy. It’s just a storm.” Robin sometimes wondered if he was to blame for Mag’s anxieties, his fear of thunderstorms and fireworks the only two. “We’ve got a genuine hero in our midst,” he said, by way of soothing the dog with his voice. “What that young man did for those children…So what the heck is he doing in my house instead of a classroom?” Robin did a good job at keeping Mags at his side once indoors, as Hendrix took forever, at least by Robin’s calculation, to continue his work in the bedroom and the thunderstorm intensified. The rain was torrential, and the wind quite fierce by the time he and Hendrix Higgins switched rooms. “Sounds rather nasty out there,” Robin stated, as their tummies met in the tiny hallway, despite Robin’s best effort to suck in his gut. “Oops. Cramped quarters.” Robin kept the tone light, but Hendrix still blanched. He didn’t answer back, but rather nervously chewed on his already scarred lower lip, something Robin recognized as a nervous habit, one he himself had at times. The kid practically bit through it when Mags’s huge nose touched his hand as he and Robin broke free and passed. When Mags added tongue, Hendrix’s stunning hazel eyes, behind the thick lenses, rolled up into his skull. “The thunder makes him uneasy. Plus, I’m certain he’s wondering who you are. Neither of us is accustomed to company.” Robin was suddenly a chatterbox. So many words in one day were making him hoarse. It had to be some sort of record, though he did speak to Magnus Renegade more often than he’d care to admit. “Sorry. I’ll desist. And we’ll go sit in the—” To Robin’s surprise, Hendrix reached toward the dog. “It’s just noise, big boy,” he soothed. Hendrix actually leaned in closer, and when he stroked down Mag’s entire back, his hand met Robin’s, already there. “Got to face our fears.” Hendrix swallowed hard. “Ain’t that right, sir?” Sir? Was Hendrix going military or ageist, Robin wondered. “Everything checked out in—” A loud crack of thunder made everyone jump. “f**k! Sorry, sir. Inappropriate language.” Hendrix scrunched up his adorable face. “I’m not too fond of this weather either.” “It’s just noise,” Robin repeated. “Right?” He placed his hand atop Hendrix’s, still on the dog. “And call me Robin. ‘Sir’ is for drill sergeants and old men.” Great! Now he was flirting—once again, sort of. “It didn’t sound like thunder, though,” Hendrix said quietly. And it hadn’t. It was one of those snaps, the kind after a lightning strike, the kind that sounded like gunfire, like in a war-torn jungle where kids fought for freedom, or a high school hallway where another generation sought misplaced vengeance. And then another one boomed. “s**t!” Robin would bet Hendrix thought the same thing. He looked to him, and Hendrix took a breath. “Sorry…Robin.” “Don’t be. I get it.” Young Hendrix was a bundle of nerves, just like Robin, only instead of blathering uncontrollably, he cursed, and also sweated. His yellow shirt, under each pit, was almost as orange as his cap. “Is the problem on the laptop only?” Hendrix asked, his voice still shaky. “It could be as simple as the Ethernet cord. Did you try buying a new one?” “I…I don’t get out much,” Robin answered. “Sorry.” It was his turn for regret. “No problem.” Hendrix offered a strained smile resembling a colon and a s***h as he squeezed past again to head back toward the bedroom. “Sometimes a loose connection on one PC can mess up another, if they’re both plugged into the same modem,” he said over his shoulder. “I have spare cords in my bag—which I left back here. I’ll hook you up with a coup—” Apparently slightly more prepared for the next round of thunder, Hendrix only twisted his neck and balled his hands into fists when it boomed. Mags, on the other hand, headed for the perceived safety of the bed, pushing right past Hendrix to get there. Robin pointed. “I better…” He followed Mags, getting to Hendrix’s bag before Hendrix. “Here ya go.” He handed it off. Their hands brushed once again, and then Robin pulled away and shut the door with a deep, ambivalent sigh. Ten minutes later, the job was apparently finished. “All set,” Hendrix loudly announced. “It was the—” “How much do I owe you?” Robin cut him off, padding from the bedroom barefoot, his wallet in hand, eager to send the kid on his way. “Umm…” Hendrix’s eyes rolled back again, this time for mathematical purposes, Robin assumed. “A handshake,” he said. “It’s on the house.” “I wouldn’t feel comfortable. I insist on compensation. You came all the way out here.” “Eh. Wasn’t that far. And I didn’t really do anything,” Hendrix argued. “Turned out to be just a loose input making everything wonky. I tightened a tiny little screw, and now you’re good to go. No Y2K trouble here.” The ribbing did not sit well with Robin, and when the light over the table flickered, the one where Hendrix had been working, he was even more determined to send Speedy Smart Ass on his way, before the power went off for good. “Someday soon all these stupid wires’ll be obsolete. Wireless Internet, like cell phones, is just around the corner,” Hendrix promised. “We are three months into the twenty-first century, after all.” “Good for us.” The three words came with more sarcasm than was necessary. The lights went out before Hendrix could respond—the overhead pendant and the fan and the TV in the bedroom. Suddenly it was darker, and quiet, until another loud crack possibly identified a strike as the cause. The rumble of the generator kicking on startled Hendrix as much as the thunderclap had. “That’s just the…” “Yeah. Seems like you’re set for anything up here,” Hendrix said, obviously on edge. “Is it because of the millennial?” Robin recoiled, taking what was likely an innocent question—though the third reference to such in a row—as a knock against his sanity or intelligence. He was set, however, and never had to leave the place if he didn’t want to. A friend he’d made while working at the library brought his weekly groceries, and though he still had an old pickup he filled with gasoline deposited into a tank beside the cabin by a delivery guy, he never traveled far. He’d quit his job even before Frank had left him, and had become a virtual hermit, driving only to the end of the long, twisty road from the cabin and back, because Magnus Renegade, and a dog named Winston before him, liked to ride with his head out the window. Robin had a cellar filled with canned goods, and, yes, the generator, which he also filled from the tank. It had all been set up long before 1999. He and Frank had lived that way toward the end, and now, on his own, Robin figured he always would. “You should get on the road,” Robin said. Even in the stress of the storm, he would rather be alone than standing around making awkward conversation with a stranger, albeit a noble one. He took a twenty from his wallet. “I have no idea what the appropriate charge would be, but here. Please.” “Thanks.” Hendrix took the money and headed for the door. “You’ll be okay?” f**k, Robin thought to himself. Why the hell did I ask that? “Car’s the safest place you can be in a storm,” Hendrix said. “That’s what they claim.” He added a shrug. “Whoever they are.” Robin was torn between comforting the frightened young man and getting back to the bedroom, to Mags. “The sound…” He trailed off. Anxious about a great many things, the dog was tops on his list, since Robin knew he wouldn’t budge from his spot against the pillows until the storm was over. Still, despite his unease, he was drawn to Hendrix too, torn between wanting him gone and wishing he could stay. The tug of war between perpetual isolation and making a bold move toward anything different was an all too common battle. “It’s just noise.” Hendrix shrugged again, repeating the apparent mantra du jour. “Good, then. Thanks,” Robin said, and though he wanted to ask chubby redheaded Hendrix Higgins the reason for his name, if not more, he settled for shaking his sweaty hand when offered. Fear pulled the rope harder. It won. It always did. Robin listened as two car doors shut, the engine started, and the vehicle rumbled off. “He’s gone.” He tried to breathe normally. “Thank the Lord that’s over.” The bedside lamp, now powered by the generator, sent off a glimmer from a medal on the floor, overlooked, apparently, when Robin and Hendrix had gathered up the others. It pinged when dropped in with the rest, and made Robin recall someone telling him “Medals are for heroes.” He wondered if Hendrix had one, as he shoved the box back to one corner of the nightstand, and then reached beneath the bed to return the lube to its proper place as well. Robin had grabbed a magazine while under there. Signing on to the Internet during an electrical storm for moving images of men in the throes of anal s*x, even if service had been up and running, was something Robin was too scared to do. Inanimate hunks on a page would have to do, because Robin was suddenly in the mood. “Hey, Hendrix, can you come back?” Mags lifted his head, as if the young hunk actually might or already had, while Robin pulled off his T-shirt, imagining himself at the door in just his shorts, and then without them. “I was watching porn, and the modem got zapped by lightning. I didn’t even get to come. Maybe you can fix that?” Mags sighed heavily, then dropped his head back to the pillow. Robin agreed. As an editor, mostly fiction, often romance, if he came across such dialogue in a manuscript, he’d strongly suggest a rewrite. He’d started his new profession several years back, red pen in hand, slashing through typewritten pages that arrived in his mailbox with no interaction with a human whatsoever. Just recently the process had gone more high-tech. Book manuscripts and magazine articles arrived digitally in his e-mail inbox now, and everything was done online. Though Robin enjoyed the old-fashioned way better, as long as he didn’t run across a particularly argumentative or thin-skinned author, the new, much faster, slightly more communicative way wasn’t so bad. If he ever had to video chat edit, however, instead of doing it through AOL mail, well, that would be a deal breaker. “Let me see what’s hiding in those Joe Boxers of yours,” Robin said softly. “You first.” He changed his voice for Hendrix, well aware he was making a fool of himself in front of the dog, and also pretty sure he would never venture into writing. Robin slipped off his shorts for real. The fantasy conversation sent a tingle to his d**k. It was already hard. Was it the flash of furry gut and ass nearly an hour earlier that had him so worked up? Even with the vision still fresh in his mind, Robin knew it was more. The very essence, the aroma of Hendrix Higgins, and his touch upon Robin’s skin, it was that, yet something deeper. Though Hendrix had seemed petrified, there was obviously a brave soul within him, one that could surely hold Robin in his arms and convince him everything was going to be all right. Mags slept now, as the loudest part of the storm seemed to have subsided, so Robin stood, facing the window, watching the rain that still fell with fury. He closed his eyes and recalled the paleness of the little bit of off-limits skin Hendrix had inadvertently shown. Robin’s imagination slowly continued to undress him, until every part of Hendrix reserved for a lover was fully revealed, and fully ready for what would come next. “Take me,” Hendrix said. “There on the bed.” It was a bit of bad storytelling on Robin’s part, he realized. That line should have been his, because of the way his insides burned for Hendrix to fill him there. “After you take me,” Robin said. “Right here against the window.” There. That was better. Robin’s words were barely out before he climaxed for real, upward into the dark pelt that ran in a thick, feathered line up his gut. He strummed the semen-matted wisps as if playing a guitar, then offered c*m-coated fingertips to his imaginary lover, Hendrix. In reality a streak formed across the windowpane, where his reflection accepted the tasty offering across his lips, then stared back seductively, as Robin finally tasted it himself. “Wow!” Robin leaned against the wall and his breaths began to slow. His long floppy d**k softened quickly. It, along with the way his feet stuck off the end of every cot he lay upon, had earned him a certain nickname amongst the soldiers in his platoon during basic. Robin’s mind immediately skipped from a group to one person, though, the one he’d been in love with, the one he’d only met because they’d both been injured, the one who never called him Goliath, nor even Robin, because that was too feminine. “I gotta find a way to get back to you, Bird Man, no matter what it takes.” Robin cleaned himself off with the undershirt he’d dropped to the floor. “Frank’s gone,” he said to Magnus Renegade. Not that the dog was awake, or even knew who Frank was. Frank had been a distant memory by the time Mags came along, long dead and buried—literally. “And the kid, as sexy as he was, we’ve seen the last of him as well. It’s just you and me again, big guy, in perpetuity. I may not like it, but I’m definitely better off.”