You Again?

You Again? by Michael P. Thomas Sensibly shod grandmas bundled in heavy cardigan sweaters direct handsome bearded youths in turbans and Polo shirts in the care and wrangling of hard-sided suitcases. Sons swath boxes of DVD players and peanut butter in rolls of shiny packing tape while grandsons run and tumble up the down escalator. Moms keep a collective watchful eye, but reprimand only the most rambunctious behavior, hoping the kiddos will wear themselves out and maybe everybody can get some sleep on the long trek home—to Hong Kong, to the Philippines, to Poland and to points beyond. The Vancouver airport is carefully and cleverly designed to echo its Pacific surroundings: wood floors evoke trees, stone walls evoke mountains, skylights are washed by sun and storms alike. Rivers of blue and green—tiles swirling in the floor, banners fluttering from the ceiling—swoop past totem poles and Tlingit art, and Henry Kavalauskas resents the triteness of the analogy even as he pushes against the current of preoccupied people, swimming upstream through the International Departures lobby in an effort to distance himself from the A&W. Which is fine as jobs go, but not an especially lush breeding ground. Shooting the rapids between luggage carts and self-check-in kiosks, sleeping backpackers and sleek business travelers, heavy-bottomed young men in sweat pants on cell phones and heavily made-up older women in fur coats and little else, he scarcely notices the burble and splash of languages. Nobody in his apartment block speaks English to their parents, and in fact Henry’s not sure he knows anyone who’s not bilingual. Besides the vaguest impression of the smell of a bakery or the clackety-clack of his grandmother’s bracelets, Henry has no memories of Lithuania, but it was his world until he was four; he’s just as foreign as any of these families that swirl past. And every bit as Canadian, for that matter, if you overlook the fact that he doesn’t give a s**t about hockey. He falls in behind a high-heeled cabin crew from one of the Asian airlines—distinguished as such less by their appearance than by the unity of their movement through the mob—and rides their wake through the edge of the check-in chaos until he washes up in the relative calm of the pre-security clearing of gift shops and coffee carts. Okay, so maybe “breeding ground” is an exaggeration, but the boy-watching is way better on this side of the airport. The International terminal is too hit-or-miss, for one thing—too hectic to leisurely cruise the promising guys when departure time draws nigh; crickets chirping in an empty hall the rest of the time. Canadian Departures is okay for comings and goings, but there’s nowhere really to sit, and it’s too close to work. He likes the people he works with fine, but he doesn’t consider any of them friends, and they seem completely unable to get their heads around why anyone would hang around the airport before or after work. Henry likes watching the world go by, but he finds constantly explaining to the world why he hasn’t gone home yet tiresome, so he changes his shirt and makes for USA Departures at the opposite end of the airport. He’s not a hustler; he’s certainly not a predator. But he’s got nothing to rush home to. The people at the airport are a lot more interesting than the people roaming around the mall, and if he’s going to be looking at people, you can be sure he’s going to be looking at guys. Sometimes Henry’s imagination snags on a particular guy, and in the time it takes him to roll his suitcase by or change his money, Henry’s mentally inserted himself next to him, bags packed, and is ready to jet off into the fabulous life he does not yet inhabit. But he is certain it awaits. Perhaps in the swank Mumbai penthouse he might share with this gorgeous, caramel-colored cricketer rollicking along with his team, all biceps and eyelashes. Perhaps galloping across the Argentine pampas with Tall, Dark, and Handsome over at the ATM, racing for the barn at the end of an afternoon spent tending the vineyard. Perhaps part-time in Toronto, part-time in L.A. with the very famous sitcom star that he recognizes behind the sunglasses, but whose name eludes him. Henry’s not especially choosy about who whisks him away, nor about where he gallivants off to, he just wants to get on a plane and go. Henry was raised by immigrants—hell, he is an immigrant, not that he made any choices around that at age four. He supposes it’s in his nature to look towards the Unknown for relief from the Usual. And while the hours he spends at his uninspiring job fit snugly into the Usual category, the rest of the airport fairly sings of the Unknown. The Departures board reads like a geography textbook, studded with the tour bus highlights of Asia or Europe or the USA according to the time of day. He’s never been to Seoul or Stockholm or Lihue—wherever that is—but being amongst people who are from these places or on their way to these places makes the notion that the world might be bigger than his parents’ Richmond apartment and his grease-trap job feel less like a pipe dream. These giant airplanes have just brought hundreds of people thousands of miles so that they might refill and return home. To the tightly tailored crews crisscrossing the terminal, Vancouver is just a stopover. A dot on the map. Another box to check on the list of ‘Places I’ve Been.’ He figures these cabin crews have it made. Get paid to see the world, test-drive a few of the cities in which he knows he’d be right at home; spend his life in hotel rooms and not on the fold-out couch. He’s tried twice. He was even willing to cut his hair. Air Canada was looking for qualified applicants with fluency in more than one language, but regretted to inform Henry that Lithuanian was not among them. The West Jet recruiters had handed out crisp yellow folders to all the candidates who had passed the group interview and were invited to continue on to the next phase of the application process, then thanked Henry—along with about five hundred other people—for his interest and wished him the best. Henry doesn’t suppose that the A&W in the food court in the domestic terminal adds much to the cosmopolitan luster of the airport—or of Vancouver in general—but if it doesn’t make him a part of the Big Adventure, at least it gives him a front row seat to more than another episode of the live-action living room drama It’s All Your Fault, which plays on something of a constant loop at home, and is a crappy guest star gig. It’s Sunday, and it’s after five. USA Departures is busy, but not a mob scene. He eats for free at the A&W—something that’s starting to show in the thumpable melon-shaped pot in the middle of his otherwise lanky frame—but the food court is the best vantage point in this part of the airport, so he grabs a coffee from Tim Hortons and sidles up to a seat at the rail. He sets his worn leather backpack, his trusty airport companion, on the table next to him, but he doesn’t dig through it; it’s not a day for doodling in the margins of library travel guides. Passengers rush, employees meander and gossip, police patrol, jade-carved Inuit people pose for pictures with passersby, and Henry leans back in his chair. He frees his hair from the ponytail the health department makes him wear, shakes the day out of it, and sits with his mane in his face, observing precisely nothing. He got up early, he worked a long day, and lord knows he loves Timmy’s coffee. It feels good just to sit for a minute and not have to give a s**t. Only after he makes eye contact with the light-eyed bulldog in the blue suit does he realize the guy must be walking in circles. He’s walked by at least five times and Henry hasn’t been sitting there ten minutes. Henry likes the look of him, and when the guy tosses off a little half smile, he c***s his chin in recognition. If the guy isn’t hoping to see it, he won’t, but if he is looking for Henry’s attention, he’ll know he found it. A couple minutes go by without another walk-around, and Henry figures it must have just been a fly-by flirt. Common enough in the airport, but people have places to be. He shrugs and takes a tug at his coffee just as the guy slides into a seat about three tables away. He’s got a combo plate from the Chinese place on a little plastic tray. He sprung for the egg rolls, Henry notices. Two bucks extra. An appetite on a fella’s always a good sign. The guy digs in with gusto. He’s hungry and he’s loving the orange chicken, quaffs from his Coke like a guy who knows thirsty, but he never looks away. Even as he licks his lips between bites, his eyes are locked on Henry’s, which Henry takes as a definite compliment from a white guy using chopsticks. From time to time, Henry breaks away, like maybe he’s got more interesting things to be looking at. But people strolling by are blurs. The time doesn’t register any of the hundred times he glances up at the giant Bienvenue au Canada clock, and every time he looks back at the bulldog, his eyes are waiting. Eventually he finishes his food, then moves his elbows to the table, weaving his fingers into a chin rest from which he continues to drink in Henry with greedier gulps than he ever brought to his Coke. Henry runs his fingers through his hair to brush it back from his face. He’s more “distinctive” than handsome—with his wide-set, narrow eyes and his cartoonishly prominent cheekbones; too round in the front where he used to be flat, too flat in the back where he’d rather be round—but the bulldog likes the look of him, and when he raises an eyebrow, Henry looks away, suddenly self-conscious. The guy could have strolled over and palmed his c**k through his jeans and it would have seemed less overt, and according to the red rising to his forehead, less intimate. It should feel invasive, Henry thinks, except for the way that it makes him want to strip naked in the food court. Pretending he’s not wildly aroused seems rude. Certainly pointless, considering the way these jeans fit him and the way he’s got his legs spread, one foot on a rung of the railing, leaving no stone unturned. He’s hard and he wants the bulldog to know it. Not like he’s gonna do anything about it. Or is he? Shortly, he gets up and walks the short distance from his seat to the trash can just behind Henry. They don’t physically brush shoulders, but his energy slams against Henry’s with an almost audible smack. He smells of vinegary fast food and sandalwood soap, traces of hair product and clean shirt, and Henry leans back in his chair. He hears the bulldog slide his plate into the rubbish bin, the slosh of ice in his cup, the light clack of the orange plastic tray onto a stack of others. These are all-day, every-day sounds to Henry, which adds to the sensation that this barrel-chested stranger has fused his personal space to Henry’s, mitigating any pesky get-to-know-yous. Henry wants to feel violated, encroached upon at least, but when he feels the bulldog start back towards him, it’s all he can do to stay in his chair. The almost of his proximity is more tantalizing than any shoulder brush or handshake—or hell, French kiss—could ever be. He moves past Henry, past the railing and out onto the floor of the terminal. Henry actually leans forward in anticipation, and the bulldog is taking the step that will, once culminated, dispel the illusion of connection when he turns over his shoulder to see if Henry’s still with him. He slides his eyes towards the men’s room, then turns his head and walks on. He doesn’t see Henry scramble from his chair, just assumes Henry is following him, and it is this assumption that pulls Henry across the floor and into the men’s room behind him. The bulldog acts as if he knows what’s going to happen, which, to Henry, makes resistance seem futile. The bulldog has a squat, compact little body. He’s broad in the shoulders and thick in the chest, tight at the waist and kinda wiggly in the tail. Henry finds himself wishing they were going on a longer walk so he could watch those two juicy melons bounce in the seat of his clinging, uncuffed trousers atop his short, muscled legs for a while. The bulldog doesn’t have a suitcase, must have left it in his airline’s elite lounge, Henry figures. Or maybe in his suite at the Fairmont, just overhead. He looks like a five-star traveler. What Henry really wishes is that he was following this ass all the way to the Ritz or the Raffles or whatever sweeping drive must surely wait to welcome him at the end of his flight. Champagne at check-in, breakfast on the breathtaking balcony in the morning… He shakes his mind clear and pushes through the swinging door into what looks, annoyingly, like an empty restroom. Where’d the guy go? Henry sees his flannel trousers and square-toed black loafers under a stall door and exhales with relief, but then wonders what to do. Does he push into the stall? Wait to be invited? He checks the adjacent stalls for any unknown glory holes or other access points, finds none, and leans against the bank of sinks. He’s hard and he’s ready, but he waits. He sees the bulldog step out of his pants, and his hard-on strains against his own jeans at the prospect of getting a crack at the juicy booty that’s lured it across the terminal. When the men’s room door swings open, Henry fumbles to act natural. He spins around, turns the faucet way too aggressively, splashes the mirror and the front of himself with warm water so he looks and feels like he wet himself, turns the sink off, then knocks around the empty paper towel holder while two college-age buddies in the same team sweatshirt pretend not to size each other up at the urinals. He figures they’ll leave without washing their hands, shouldn’t be but another minute, when the door to the stall swings open and his bulldog steps out, pants pulled up and everything. Henry turns back to the mirror, the better to wish all manner of ill on the reflections of the two c**k-blocking jocks, but he meets the bulldog’s eyes, which slide once again suggestively, this time towards the stall. The bulldog heads for the door and Henry makes to follow. Where are we going now? he wonders, like he’s on some kind of sexy scavenger hunt, but the bulldog breaks the spell. He yanks the door and turns his back, strides from the bathroom into the airport corridor as if he’d never even been aware of Henry in his orbit. Henry teeters, prepares to wonder if he somehow imagined the entire exchange. Just before the door swings definitively shut, the bulldog cuts his eyes over Henry’s left shoulder, towards the stall he’s just vacated, and, with the tip of his tongue at the corner of his smile, drops a wink that knocks every butterfly in Henry’s stomach off-kilter. They’re crashing into each other like tiny winged drunks when Henry takes the two steps into the stall, and he almost comes in his jeans before he gets the door closed. Henry’s only ever worn white briefs his whole life. The only real qualities he ever looks for in a pair of undies is are they dry and are they skid-free. He’s never even really heard of an underwear fetish, and he certainly doesn’t have one, but the sight of the bulldog’s red briefs hanging from the coat hook inside the stall door is as inebriating as it is embarrassing. God, anybody could have walked in here. What if he had followed the bulldog out of the bathroom, who would have found these? He knows they were meant for him. They’re sporty and hot, just like the bulldog. The waistband is still warm and the lightest bit damp; the huge load of c*m in them is sticky and fresh—and his brain whispers Eeew even as his hands, his nose, and especially his throbbing c**k cry out Hot damn! For the second time in fifteen minutes, Henry feels like the bulldog has dragged his secretest needs up from deep inside him and plopped them on the floor of the airport like an exhibit of excessively intimate indigenous art. He feels shame bubble up, but the exhilaration of such a supremely private act being performed just for him in such an overtly public space spills over. The shame is residual from his Eastern Christian upbringing, not something he actually feels. The ick factor is the reaction he knows he “should” have, but here alone in this bathroom stall, whose expectations is he trying to meet? He’s insanely aroused. The bulldog shot this load thinking of Henry. Imagining Henry’s lanky body, trying to conjure Henry’s orgasm face. Holding a cotton wad of the bulldog’s smelly spunk in his hand, Henry can’t help but know this, and his own mental image of the bulldog coaxing this load into his shorts is suddenly so real he wants to reach out and smack that round dough-colored ass. He sees the bulldog with his pants around his shoes, with his shirt pulled up just enough to expose a preview of the washboard. He can imagine the bulldog’s tight, shallow, tongue-tempting navel implied rather than displayed, and the swell of his plump, leavened buns, but also the ecstatic contractions of his glutes as the part of him that must know Henry rips free and spills into the little, loamy red shorts. Henry smells his c*m, his taint, the smudge of his asshole and the residual clean from the start of the day. He burrows his nose in the mess of the crotch and hurries to free himself, but the heady mix of funk and fantasy is more than poor Henry can take. He’s still fumbling with his jeans when he fills his own drawers with climax. He starts to cry out, remembers the jocks at the urinals—who could have left or could be gawking over the wall of the stall for all Henry knows—and silences himself with a mouthful of sweaty stranger. He bangs against the side of the stall with a shudder that rumbles from his head through his feet to the center of the universe. But if anybody hears, nobody cares, and he plops onto the toilet with the seemingly unrealistic objective of maybe one day regaining some semblance of control over his breathing. The automatic toilet flushes, splashing the seat of Henry’s jeans. He shakes when he laughs and it flushes again. He cleans up the best he can. Wriggles out of his clothes and puts both pairs of fertilized underwear in his backpack in one ball. When he puts hands on his d**k to wipe it clean, it hardens and unfurls at the thought of their c*m co-mingling, and he can’t help pulling another load from it before he tucks it back into his jeans. He knows his bulldog won’t be waiting for him in the terminal, which almost makes it more of a let-down when he’s not. His jeans are wet, front and back, and he creeps up the stairs to the food court’s overflow seating balcony, deserted as always. Henry perches in a corner and waits to air dry, figuring he’d rather watch people scurry by from a hiding place than watch them gawk at him on the train. He’s already late for dinner, but that’s his mom’s crisis. He’d rather eat his half-cold in front of the TV than hot and fresh in a ringside seat. So leave, already! He wants to beg his dad to follow through with this weekly threat. Not because his dad’s such a d**k or his mom’s such a shrew, but just because they’re sick to death of each other and neither one of them is fifty yet. Have they stayed together for “the children?” Henry doesn’t have a brother or a sister, and he’s twenty-four years old—a grown man, even if he is sleeping on his parents’ couch. Mission Accomplished. If you can’t find a way to love each other, then go find a way to love someone else. He’s actually said this to his mother, but only once. She’s been scrubbing toilets for a lot of years and has a hell of an arm on her. He’s worried if she slaps him like that again it’ll cost him a tooth. It’s not like he was expecting his bulldog to still be in the airport—wherever he’s going, his flight’s long gone by now—but by the time he admits to himself that that’s what he’s waiting for, his jeans are bone dry. He scoops up his backpack and gets hard again. One last time in the men’s room, and he heads for the train.