Cowboy

Chapter 1-4

I cook three burgers and leave one of them on

the grill—I’ll have it for lunch tomorrow, I know Kent well enough

to know that he won’t eat it tonight. He sits at the picnic bench

we have out back, between the barn and the main house, and watches

me through the amber bottle in his hand. More beer, at least that’s

all he’s drinking tonight. He’s not a mean drunk, not bitter or

hateful or angry like some men, but the alcohol dulls his senses,

makes him sleepy, makes him brood, and he’ll fall asleep in his

recliner, wet snores filling the house until I could smother him to

shut him up. And in the morning he’ll wince at the sun and the

sound of my voice, and he’ll tell me to keep off him, it’s hot, and

keep it down, I’m too loud.

But he’s not a bad drunk, he doesn’t hit me,

doesn’t yell, doesn’t tell me what I’m doing wrong or how I can be

someone more to him, something better. Sometimes I think if I could

figure that out then maybe he wouldn’t drink so much. Sometimes I

wonder what kind of man he’d be without the alcohol, if he’d be

like the men in my sister’s magazines, the ones she tears out and

sends to me with little Post-It notes stuck on the pictures. How

about this one? she’ll ask. Have you seen one like this down

there yet?

I don’t bother to write her back. What would

I say? Unfortunately…

Kent wolfs his burger down in four

bites—sometimes beer gives him an appetite, but when I ask if he

wants the second burger, he shakes his head no. Instead, he gives

me a smoldering look across the picnic table, and there’s a fire in

his eyes that the alcohol can’t dim, he wants me. Me.

Finally, he wants me. I gulp down the rest of my meal as fast as I

can and take the third burger off the grill so it won’t burn. I set

it on my plate and pick up his when Kent stands over me, his hand

curving around my ass, rubbing along the seam of my jeans. “Leave

it here, Marcus,” he tells me.

I nod, suddenly famished for him. “I’ll get

it afterwards,” I say, my voice cracking like the desert ground.

His fingers fumble between my legs and I lean on the table, arch up

into his hand, moan at his touch. From the corner of my eye I see

his belt already unbuckled, his other hand rubbing at the front of

his jeans. I hope we at least make it inside.

We do, but just barely. He drops his pants

the minute the screen door slams shut behind him, and I can’t seem

to get my belt to work, I want it undone, I want it open and I want

my pants gone now. Kent’s already working himself hard,

another few minutes and we’ll miss this, it’ll end in a rush of

thin, beer-laced c*m on his hand and the floor and I’ll be out of

luck.

Somehow I manage to get my belt loose enough

to shuck my jeans down my narrow hips, and my boxers follow suit, I

don’t think we’re even going to make it as far as my bedroom

because he won’t be able to get it up again if we miss this now.

“Kent,” I sob, I want him so bad, it’s been too long and I want

someone in me, holding me, loving me, anyone at this point.

“Babe, do you think—”

That’s as far as I get to asking if he wants

to hold on until we get to my room, because he touches me and

that’s it, that’s all I really wanted, his hand on me in places

that quiver for another’s touch. His hands are large, calloused,

rough, but they turn me on when he cups my balls, strokes my hard

shaft, caresses the smooth skin of my ass. He eases inside of me,

one finger, two, and then he presses his thick c**k in, I swear

it’s as rough and large and calloused as those hands.

I have to grip the back of the recliner and

spread my legs to get him all the way in, and the way I’m standing

makes me giggle breathlessly. We never do it lying down. s*x is

standing up in this house, and it’s usually against the foot of my

bed but this in the living room, that’s new. It makes me think

maybe we’re not as settled into routine as I feared. God, if any

customers pulled up now and dared to creep around the back of the

house, they’d get an eyeful through the screen door. Kent shoving

into me as I lean over the recliner, his breath coming in quick

huffs that reek of beer, his dark hands on my hips and his white

ass probably gleaming in the dusk. He’s that pale below his waist.

The image makes me laugh as he pushes further into me. “What?” he

wants to know.

It comes out like a grunt, and his fingers

dig into my skin. I arch back into him and close my eyes, savor the

fullness inside, my muscles working to hold him in even as he tries

to pull back out. “Assume the position,” I say, just to be silly. I

can be silly right now if I want to—I’m finally getting him,

he’s finally mine.

He’s a selfish lover, only works for himself

and when he’s done, he thinks I should be, too. Not one for

foreplay, doesn’t like sucking or kissing or hugging or anything

like that. No, just a f**k for him, just s*x, and it’s always me on

the receiving end because he says it just doesn’t do anything for

him to get it up the ass. He can be crude when he’s sober, and it

makes me laugh because he’s so quiet, you don’t expect it from him.

The first few times we had s*x, he would pull out just as he

started to come and I’d end up with his juices trickling down my

ass cheeks, hot and wet and so damn nasty that it was enough to get

me off, as well.

Only now I know he pulls out because he

can’t come, that’s the beer in him, it makes him hard and he

can go all night long if he wants, but there’s no release. He

thinks he’s slick when he moans my name and bucks into me ten,

fifteen minutes later, and suddenly he’s finished. What the—? I

look over my shoulder and he’s already tucking himself back into

his jeans. One hand is fisted like he came in it, but I know he

didn’t. I know he can’t. “Kent,” I sigh. I don’t bother to pull up

my own pants. I’m not done yet.

“You’re good,” he tells me, like that’s

a consolation. It doesn’t make my d**k any less hard, it doesn’t

make the dull throb that has settled into my balls go away. With a

slap on my ass, he heads for the kitchen and I hear running water

when he turns on the sink to wash his hand off. Does the pretense

go that far? Does he think he’s gotten off from

this?

I stand there, naked, clutching the back of

the recliner, and I look at him incredulously when he comes into

the room. “Babe,” I start. I’m still looking for more.

He doesn’t like it when I call him that. He

says it always sounds like I’m whining, babe, like I’m

trying to wheedle something out of him. “Don’t start with me,

Marcus,” he says, weary. “I’m tired. I can’t keep it up all night

like you—”

“All night?” I ask. Who’s he kidding?

We’re talking barely a half hour here. Is it so bad to not want

such a rush job? From my lover, no less?

“I’ve got to get up early in the

morning,” he tells me as he heads down the hall to his room. When I

start to say something else, he holds up one hand to stop me. “A

showerhead, I know. I’ll pick it up.”

I’d like to pick this up, where we

were a few minutes ago. My hand trails down my stomach almost

absently, heading for the erection that still stands up from the

patch of blonde hair at my crotch as if refusing to believe we’re

through. That’s it. And he called this dessert? Heh, this

was a spoonful of whipped cream, one strawberry, maybe a bite of

cake, nothing more than a mouthful, if that. Neither of us got off

on it, despite whatever lies he wants to tell himself. I’m aching

here and I know he held nothing in his hand, nothing at all.

Down the hall his door closes softly, almost

like an apology, and I’m left with my d**k in hand, staring around

myself in disbelief. I got worked up for this? I cooked him burgers

on the grill, two of them, for this? My s*x life with him is

like rain in the desert, a scarce occurrence that is barely-there

and brief when it does happens. And those women earlier, our

customers, they seriously think they want in on that?

Disgusted, I kick my pants off from my ankles

and head for my own room, my long t-shirt covering my ass and cock

and the hand that works at my crotch. Beneath my bed is a folder of

all the magazine clippings my sister’s sent, all those underwear

and cigarette and cologne ads, all those cowboys in their Stetson

hats and bolo ties, flannel shirts, spurs and chaps. I kneel on my

bed, the folder open in front of me, and my own hand has to squeeze

and knead as I flip through the pictures, imaging those boys with

me. I picture their lips on my skin, their hands on me, their

fingers doing the delicious things I have to do myself while Kent

sleeps off the booze in the room next door.

Finally I come in an embarrassed spurt that

slicks my hand and belly and I wipe myself clean with my shirt

before putting the folder carefully away. Those are my men in

there, those are my boys, not the snoring cowboy who stuck it to me

tonight.

Until tomorrow, of course, when I see him

from the window, his skin bronzed by the sun. If only he could love

me then, at that moment, when he’s everything I want him to

be and more. If only that man came to me after the market

closes. That man has to be in him somewhere, right? That man is who

I love about him, right?

* * * *

Later, when I remember the plates on the

table outside, I move through the house quietly so I won’t wake

Kent, unashamed of my nakedness. In the living room, I pull on my

boxers and leave the jeans on the floor, then push through the

screen door out into the cool night. It’s almost cold out here—the

temperature drops once the sun goes down—and I hurry across the

stony ground, telling myself I don’t feel the gravel biting into my

feet. The grill is cold now and I close its cover, working quickly

because it’s chilly and I’m wearing next to nothing. It’s odd how a

body grows used to things, after living with them for so long. In

Jersey, this would’ve been a balmy summer night, I would’ve thought

nothing of running down to the beach in shorts thinner than these

boxers I have on now. But after two years I’m almost shivering

here, and I bet it’s not below sixty degrees. How did I ever

survive before?

The plates are where I left them, but the bag

of chips is gone, the extra burger, gone. I look beneath the table,

under the benches, around the darkened yard for as far as I can

see, but they’ve simply vanished. The scarce dirt is unmarked, no

prints from a coyote or bobcat or weasel, and there aren’t any

feathers scattered around from vultures, but that doesn’t mean

anything. The worse thing is that whatever ate the burger and made

off with the chips will probably come back tomorrow looking for

more, and Kent hates animals prowling around his garden, he’ll take

the gun down from over the stove and heaven help us then. He’s not

a good shot when he’s not drunk, and I’d hate to see him

when he’s been hitting the booze.

I gather up the plates, the cups, the tongs I

used to turn the burgers on the grill, and head for the house. I

won’t mention it, then. Maybe ask him to pick up some poison in

town tomorrow, tell him we have rats, I’ll take care of it myself.

He doesn’t need to know anything more than that.