The Hook Up
By Steven Kerry
Published by JMS Books LLC at Smashwords
Visit jms-books.com for more information.
Copyright 2011 Steven Kerry
ISBN 978-1-61152-164-1
For more titles by Steven Kerry at Smashwords visit
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/stevenkerry
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Cover Photo Credit: vkoletic
Used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.
Cover Design: J.M. Snyder
All Rights Reserved
WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.
This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It contains substantial sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America.
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The Hook Up
By Steven Kerry
I wasn’t cruising. I swear. I was only window-shopping. I considered it a reward for having sat through two hours of online education related to my job, all of it dry as a week old crumb cake. I told myself, “Fifteen minutes won’t hurt.”
An hour later I’d looked at so many faces and bodies they all began to look like the same man saying, “I’m beautiful, dammit. Pick me!”
An ad for chicken broth with “NO MSG” kept popping up on my screen, and I gave up trying to figure out why this product was being marketed to gay men looking for a roll in the hay. I could just hear the post-fuck conversation: “God, that was great. Would you like a little chicken broth to recover?”
My butt was beginning to feel like a waffle when I was distracted by an ad for a brand of male underwear called GRRR: FOR THE ANIMAL IN YOU. I really wanted a pair of GRRR; in fact, I wanted two, including the “Flaming Red Devil” glow-in-the -dark GRRR, but decided I was five years too late. The models were so young they looked like pre-pubescent mall rats. There wasn’t much to the underwear; they looked like thongs for male anorexics. I sighed and chalked it up to the insults of ageing when some Knight in Shining Armor stormed my monitor with a greeting of such sweeping romantic passion it made me swoon.
LoneStar: ’sup?
I attempted in vain to match the greeting with the photo accompanying it. My jaw dropped; this was one hot motherfucker with thick, black hair and steel-grey eyes of such wild intensity one imagined him a Civil War general on horseback about to cry “Charge!” He was handsome, but it was a rugged, backwoods sort of handsome. My imagination erupted in flames of fantasy.
However, since “’sup” was not part of my vocabulary I had to consider how to respond without sounding like his uncle. “’Sup” wouldn’t match my profile. Some loud mouth in a chat room once said I looked like a “science teacher with a secret weapon up his sleeve.” I bristled, assuming this was code for “you look like a geek.” I replied that my only “secret weapon” was eight inches and south of my sleeve, then deleted him when he reacted like a starved Chihuahua.
As for “sup,” I thought that was what people in biblical times did when they ate dinner together. The man in the photo looked more interested in breaking open a vial of amyl than breaking bread.
Whatever the case, I was flattered, for I knew “’Sup” was a popular greeting with young men who wore their caps backward. Never mind that this guy looked closer to my own age. He could’ve been mute and I would’ve been interested.
I responded to LoneStar in a cordial, restrained manner despite having groped myself several times like an agitated ape since laying eyes on his photo.
Humpty One: Hi
Why does “Hi” always sound so nelly in the context of two men circling one another like two animals on the Discovery Channel? It wasn’t the most original icebreaker, but I forged ahead.
Humpty One: Just chillin’. And you?
Cringing, I suspected I sounded neither butch nor cool.
LoneStar: same, exited to meet you buddy
Huh? Excited? I thought. Already? Who cares if the guy can’t spell worth a shit. He sounds horny as hell.
Before I could respond with a gushing “Me too!” he added:
LoneStar: i got picked to come to Hollywood I’m from Texas. Can’t believe I got chosen!
Humpty One: Congratulations!
My curiosity was piqued.
Humpty One: Chosen for what?
I awaited his reply, which was not forthcoming. My God, I thought. We’re three minutes into this and I’ve already blown it. Should’ve gotten right to the point: “I’m a top.” Had those words not guaranteed a stampede to my door before? Why must I be so…civil?
And then, there he was again.
LoneStar: chosen to be the new Marlboro Man, buddy! I won! Their big wigs want me to meet them here in Hollywood! Came up from Austin, and i thing you are good lookin!”
Naturally, this reply spun my head around. The skeptic in me said, “Oh, please. Marlboro would never audition men like they were contestants on American Idol.”
Or would they? Maybe it was a publicity stunt. The guy would certainly look good sitting on a horse. Or me…
Humpty One: Thanks. You’re good looking too. What are you into?
LoneStar: You. Can I come over?
Humpty One: Tonight?
Duhh.
LoneStar: yes!
How does one resist such unbridled enthusiasm? After all, some guys teased you online, jacking up the heat until they exploded like hot air balloons, reached for the Kleenex box, and fluttered away like moths in the night.
Damn, I thought. It was already nine-thirty, and there was work the next morning. I told myself the only responsible thing to do was to try to persuade him to come over the following evening a bit earlier. Indeed, I’d always prided myself on my mature sense of self-discipline when it came to such matters. Alas, my self-discipline capsized like a paper boat as my crotch hyperventilated.
Humpty One: Come on over
As expected, he responded in a flash, asking my address and phone number. I provided only the former, and instructions on how to use the security code at the entrance.
LoneStar: I look forward to having you
Okay, that was bewildering. After all, was it not I who was having him over?
Humpty One: I’m a top. A safe sex top only.
Would the expectation of a condom kill the whole thing?
LoneStar: Okay. Ten? Wink-wink
Humpty One: See you.
I hoped I managed to disguise my excitement with an air of aloof cool.
Somehow, one does not imagine the “Marlboro Man” saying “Wink-wink.” Whatever…Nevertheless, my anticipation was by now so great I had a half hard on.
Our communications had no sooner ended than I began chastising myself.
What are you? Crazy? It’s a fuckin’ Sunday night. You have to be up in the morning! And what if he shows up and he’s like that other guy that came over, the one who said he was “an old soul in a young man’s body”? What actually arrived was the man with the posture of an infirm geriatric who possessed the personality of a blank sixteen year old. Oh, God…t’ hell with it. You fell for him, so just enjoy it.
Come to think of it, the current Marlboro Man was starting to look a bit crusty, like an aged Chuck Connors still slinging his rifle before checking into an upscale retirement home.
My macho man did not show up at ten, but that was to be expected given L.A. traffic. I had long ago come to view Los Angeles as a wonderful, yet impractical, urban playground.
The first disagreeable thought that he might be a flake occurred to me at around 10:15, but I attempted to shoo it away like an unwanted gnat.
By 10:30 I figured I’d been played for a fool. I tried to shrug it off. Internet hook-ups were dicey, so I turned on the television to distract my ruffled ego.
Just as I was about to watch the evening news at 11:00 the phone rang.
“I’m outside,” a male voice said. I tried to dispel my inner hissy fit.
His timing did not portend well as first impressions go, but I buzzed him in anyway, my initial wave of heated anticipation having somewhat dispersed. But then again, no, it was not too late…and my smoldering anticipation was reignited. A good fuck would be the perfect cap to a great weekend.
Soon there was a knock at my door so faint it was barely audible, hardly the confident, assured arrival of the “Marlboro Man” one might’ve expected. I opened the door, and there he stood, all six feet of him, every bit as advertised. As hunks go, I’d hit the jackpot.
“Hey buddy,” he said, extending a size Large hand to me. “I’m Toffin.”
“Hey, how ya doin’?” I replied, having never met a man named ‘Toffin’ before. “I’m Burt. Come on in.”
He entered my apartment tentatively at first, like a shy Labrador. His expression was flat, as though to smile would be less than masculine. Nevertheless, it was obvious this guy would look hot as hell on a horse with a lasso in his hand. The top three buttons of his flannel shirt were open, exposing enough chest hair to make me want to rip it off.
“Nice place,” he said, surveying my modest, but tidy, apartment.
“Thanks,” I replied. “Would you like a beer or a Coke?”
“Sure. A beer,” he replied.
He spoke in a pronounced Southern drawl that I found both charming and sexy. I was smitten. It was as if I had invited over some hot stud from a Tennessee Williams novel.
He was wearing faded jeans, revealing nothing of promise; I hoped he’d brought his “horse” with him. Having expected perhaps a cowboy hat or kerchief, he instead wore CHP sunglasses and carried a small backpack. Perhaps he had come prepared to camp out for the night?
I offered him a Bud and we sat on the couch. It was clear he was not the type who walks in the door and begins molesting his host, not a sexually ravenous “clawer and pawer” like some men I’d met. Thus began the ritual of pre-sex socialization that could prove either most enjoyable or dull as dirt. I took the lead, having gotten the impression he was shy.
“So tell me about this contest,” I said, trying to restrain myself from attacking him like a slab of Texas ribs.
“Yes,” he nodded, somehow managing to look toward me but not at me. “Well, I saw the ad on a highway billboard with a phone number to call. And dang, I thought, that’s for me. I can go for that. So I did, and there was this process of elimination in Houston that took forever with about ten photographers instructing you to ‘do this’ and ‘do that’ and when it was finally all over they called me and said, “Toffin, you’re it. You’re our next Marlboro Man. And they paid me to come out here. Put me up at the Holiday Inn. Best thing ‘ts ever happened to me.”
“The Holiday Inn?” I said, blinking. Huh? “Wow,” I said, “that’s great. I can see why they chose you. You’re better looking than the guy I see in magazine ads.” I glanced briefly at the clock.
I turned to him, edging a bit closer, but he did not react. His every movement, and there were few of them, seemed studied, as though he was from the John Wayne school of strong and silent masculinity. This one was wrapped tight as a coil of copper wire…
“My whole family is in Texas,” he said, resuming the conversation with that sing-song voice soaked in Southern Comfort. “My aunt lives in…
And he proceeded to give me a lengthy description of his extended family, and a barrage of details, some eccentric, but mostly mundane. Funny how all our families sound like the same family. Nevertheless, it all grew wearisome as time passed.
I glanced at the clock again. It was 11:20 and there still wasn’t a single sign of sexual desire in this man’s body language. In fact, he seemed even more tense the longer we talked, content to drone on about Texas and his relatives. I noticed there was not a word about friends, boyfriends, or the gay social scene in Texas, which was most odd, given his striking looks.
At a quarter to twelve he paused, and I took this as a signal that perhaps “it was time.”
I placed my hand on his thigh and he didn’t even flinch. Gently, I began to rub a little, testing the waters as it were, as by now I’d concluded that this “Marlboro Man” was one very shy gunslinger. Not only was he a “slow burn,” I could not detect so much as a spark.
I found myself more and more discomfited by his reticence, and began to feel like some creepy sexual predator seducing an innocent. Even worse, I began to feel that he wasn’t really attracted to me. Nevertheless, I forged ahead from modest groping near the crotch to actual groping in the crotch, and this led to a disconcerting discovery.
Having let my hand stray between his legs, I was baffled by what felt like some sort of thick pad or…something. Whatever it was, it did not feel like what one expects between a man’s legs.
I imagined the possibilities, at first assuming he felt the need to augment whatever Mother Nature had given him. Worse, I considered the unsettling possibility that he may have had some medical necessity for whatever I was feeling. A catheter? A colostomy bag? Ewww…Perhaps that accounted for his apparent unease, which he continued to disguise beneath a veneer of frozen detachment and what I now surmised to be nervous chattiness.
I resisted the momentary urge to ask, “What’s that?” for fear it might make him even more uncomfortable.
Then I, in my clueless confusion, considered the possibility that he may be one of those men who requires a bed for any sort of sexual activity. I’d always found this a curious, but insignificant characteristic. I suggested we progress to my bed…and, surprisingly, he agreed. My anticipation rebounded.
It somehow came as no surprise that, although I’d taken my shirt off, he remained fully clothed and left the damn sunglasses on as he lay next to me. Only the backpack remained on my couch.
“Why don’t you get comfortable?” I said, and took off my pants, hoping to encourage him to do the same. However, he laid there like a rock. Making matters worse, his Southern chattiness abated, seemingly inhibited by the increased possibility of intimacy. I assumed he needed to be put at ease, but how? I could feel the weight of his boots next to me, but he seemed barely breathing, let alone talking. As I watched the flicker of the candle on the bedside stand, I considered putting some music on in hopes that might help him relax, a state which he seemed as far from at the moment as Los Angeles was to Cairo.
But what music? Reba McEntire? The Texas Tornados? Considering the circumstances, perhaps “The Sound of Silence,” by Simon and Garfunkel might have been more apt. I certainly did not wish to drive away such a butch man with Kylie Minogue’s Greatest Hits.
“So my friend and I went to see Clint Eastwood’s new movie Gran Torino last night,” I said, unable to think of anything else to say amid the awkward silence. I’d assumed that someone like Clint Eastwood might be of some interest to a man who fancied himself a “cowboy.”
He said nothing.
All I could hear was his breathing. The silence hung over us, oppressive and suffocating. I considered undressing him myself, but given the untoward discovery in his crotch I was not sure I wanted to “go there” at all. But then he stirred.
“How was it?” he replied, startling me.
“We enjoyed it," I said, striving for a casual tone I no longer felt. “Not as much as some of his others, but hey, he’s Clint Eastwood. He’s the man.”
“I saw a movie too,” he said, his voice little more than an icy whisper.
Suddenly the Southern drawl was gone. It seemed like the voice of another man altogether. I was unnerved.
“Yeah?” I replied, my skin beginning to crawl. “What did you see?”
His only response was a series of sighs that only alarmed me further, for they seemed like heavy sighs of festering anger, laden with frustration. I sought some explanation for his behavior, but could do no more than assume that Toffin was unable to respond sexually, that he was perhaps…impotent?
The candle sputtered. Even his breathing seemed to have stopped, and a sense of dread grew in my gut. I looked at the clock. It had just turned midnight.
“I saw a movie too,” he said, and I nearly jumped when he spoke. A night breeze ruffled the curtains, and the struggling candle was extinguished.
“Oh?” I replied. “What did you see?”
He was silent. His sighs grew more frequent, as though he was engaged in some terrible conflict in his head. They sounded like the sighs of some seething, malicious child. For the first time I felt that he was trying to scare me, and that he was doing it with cold calculation. He wanted me to feel afraid, naked and vulnerable. And then he spoke again:
“I saw a movie called Killing Me Softly.”
Every hair on my body stood up.
Trying not to signal the least bit of panic, I got out of bed and turned on a light.
“Excuse me,” I said, my heart pounding. “I just need to see what time it is.” I then unlocked the apartment door and opened it, creating an escape hatch, making it as easy as possible for either of us to leave. I peered into the hallway hoping to see one of my neighbors, but the hall was grey and abandoned. I grabbed my pants and put them on, making sure I didn’t appear to be rushing.
Meanwhile, he had returned to the couch and was fishing for something in his backpack. I must’ve turned pale as a ghost: a knife? A rope? A gun? I tried to appear casual, even while watching him with the intensity of prey observing the predator. Adrenaline exploded in my body; I was certain I would either have to run or fight for my life.
At last he found what he was looking for—a pack of cigarettes, and I exhaled internally, wondering, who, and what, is he?
He sat on the couch as before, a presence grave and heavy as a night filled with the blackest despair of lost humanity, yet coiled like a serpent ready to attack at any moment.
It was then, at last, that a ray of intuition broke through my fear. It was as if something, some mysterious power, some intelligence I never knew I had, told me what to do:
I walked to the coffee table and picked up a small pad of paper and pen.
“I’d like to see you again,” I said. “Why don’t you write your name and phone number down for me? Would you like to do that?” I managed to say this in a tone both calm and sincere.
As he sat there, still wearing his shades, I realized I’d never seen his eyes the whole night; I wasn’t sure now that I wanted to. He stood and approached me. My heart pounded; I feared he could hear it.
“Sure,” he said, taking the pen. And he began to write…
“I enjoyed having you over,” I said, continuing the charade, for I knew that my very survival depended on my being pleased, not disappointed. I had to lie, and to lie convincingly.
I noticed that he wrote with deliberate care, much like a child about to present his effort to an adult in hopes of approval. He handed me the piece of paper, and I knew that it was important that I looked at it, knew that he was watching my every reaction from behind those impenetrable sunglasses.
I nodded my approval.
“Thank you. I’ll give you a call sometime,” I said, sounding pleased. Every nuance counted: this was no time for revealing the slightest sign that our encounter had been anything other than normal or that he had been anything other than an enjoyable guest that evening. One knows…
My God, I thought, my acting abilities stretched to the limit. He seems to have no awareness at all of how his behavior has affected me. Or maybe he did. Maybe it was a game, and he found me an unsuitable victim by not reacting with panic or anger. God only knows what the outcome may have been had I done so. I knew that one wrong word, one slight action deemed as a threat, one careless movement and he may have attacked me.
I led him to the open door of my apartment, I a man feigning calm, he at my heels like some cursed creature of the night I could not even begin to understand.
“C’mon,” I gently urged. “I’ll walk with you to the front door of the building.”
As we walked I knew, knew in my gut that whatever urge to violence he had had was dispelled, that I’d given him what he needed: the feeling he was part of the human race after all, that he was not weird or sexually inadequate or crazy after all.
“Take care,” I said, even managing a smile, as I opened the door to the apartment building, and he stepped outside into the dark of what was now the middle of a cold, damp night in mid-October.
I watched him descending the stairs to the street below. What I remember most vividly from that night is not the feeling of relief; it was the surge of unexpected sorrow that arose from my heart, a sorrow so deep it was like the cry of a choir of lost souls in the black of night.
It was sorrow not only for this man, but for all the men, all the women like him, for all the damaged driftwood of humanity floundering in the cross currents of the river of life. All those twisted by life through no fault of their own, for whom normalcy is out of reach.
And I? I was safe, having sent him back into the dark, back to the tangled wires of his haunted brain chemistry.
I stood at the door and watched him as he walked away, soon swallowed by the night, and the oddest thought struck me:
He didn’t even smoke Marlboros.
THE END
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ABOUT STEVEN KERRY
Steven Kerry is a musician and songwriter from Los Angeles who has had several of his songs published and recorded, and both sang and co-produced his own album of original material on LML Music under the group name Stain’d Glass. His writing has been published in Frontiers Newsmagazine and other publications. His extensive experience as a hospital social worker has proven a natural source of inspiration for the My Strange Little Oasis trilogy and future novels.
Steven describes his writing style as ‘inspired by cinema,’ as he prefers listening to movie soundtrack music while writing at night ‘the old fashioned way,’ with nothing more than a pen, paper, and sufficient caffeine.
ABOUT JMS BOOKS LLC
Founded in 2010, JMS Books LLC is owned and operated by author J.M. Snyder. We publish a variety of genres, including gay erotic romance, fantasy, young adult, poetry, and nonfiction. Short stories and novellas are available as e-books and compiled into single-author print anthologies, while any story over 30k in length is available in both print and e-book formats. Visit us at jms-books.com for our latest releases and submission guidelines!