Thursday, February 1, 2018

Bait

markwildyr.com, Post #53

Note: Beginning this month, I will do two blogs a month, on the 1st and 15th day of each month.

I seem to have turned this blog over to flash fiction. Let’s continue the trend with another one today, a shorter version of a story I originally wrote as “Live Bait.” I’ve adapted it to the flash fiction format… authorspeak for lopping huge chunks out of the blessed thing. Hope you enjoy the story.

*****
Courtesy of Pixabay
BAIT
          My brother Lyle Banes Ormond oozes an earthy kind of sex that demands to be grabbed and exploited. In addition, he is a brain and a jock and popular and has a killer personality. He’s so frigging perfect you’d swear he’d have to be gay just to balance out the scales.
          Nope. No way. That is the honor the quirky Fates bestowed on me, Alan Williams Ormond, his younger brother… by about thirty minutes. Yep, we’re twins. Fraternal, not identical. Two inches shorter, two inches thinner in the chest, and about ten pounds lighter.
          The point is that after eighteen years of suppressed envy and jealousy, I finally figured out where Mr. Perfect fits into my life. Like most gays I know—all one of them—I live life on two levels. Normal, or as close to it as I can manage, and clandestine, or as close to it as I can manage. Of course, Lyle and I interact as brothers, and in that world, I am proud of him and his accomplishments… class president all the way through high school, football A-team captain, basketball guard, senior prom king. Well, you get the idea.
          And to be fair, he is proud when I shine in my own way. He hooted embarrassingly loud bravos when I successfully maneuvered some Chopin pieces at my piano recital and cheered me on as I took the hundred-yard dash. And when I swatted the winning homer at the district baseball championship a few weeks back, he led the cheering section.
          Back to what I was saying; I finally accepted I was but a pale shadow of Lyle’s perfection—the Peregrine to his Golden Eagle—so to speak. The epiphany came at our birthday bash out at the lake. That was the night I figured out he was valuable to me in another way… as bait.
          Birthday wishes and good cheer, lots of it the liquid kind, flowed generously around the bon fire. Around sunset, the affair mellowed out into clumps of kids sitting around sipping beer, necking, and talking. Although it was my birthday, too, most of the kids gravitated to Lyle. That was okay. I was used to it. I hovered at the edge of the group and played my usual game… watching the by-play surrounding my golden brother.
          Pleasantly buzzed, I indulged in another familiar pastime… assessing the desirability of our friends. Tazin Nordlund was as dark as an Arab sheik. Billy Whitfield’s open-faced eagerness made him fetching rather than handsome, but on him it wore well. Sam Pelter was….
          Where was Sam? Ah, he sat to my left, not really a part of the group, either—merely observing like I was. Sam ran Lyle a close race in just about everything. Whenever I looked at my brother with incestuous thoughts, my mind went defensive and slid to Sam. Tall, built, handsome, witty, he could have been Lyle the Lesser. He habitually wore a smoldering eroticism like the perfume of some exotic blossom. Right now, his lanky form sat propped against a log, his right arm thrown across it so that his hand almost touched my shoulder. The left rested on a drawn-up knee, fingers dangling in a manner so unconsciously masculine that I could hardly stand it. The other sculpted leg stretched full length across the ground. Distant firelight played with the shadows on his trousers. As was my wont, my eye roamed the firm pectorals clearly outlined by his T-shirt and enjoyed the musculature of his upper arms before taking in his groin.
          Whoa! He was aroused! I glanced at his face and found his attention centered across the blazing fire… on Lyle. Shocked, I checked out his groin again… and got caught.
          He lifted his leg, spoiling my view. “What’re you looking at?”
          My mouth went dry, but I spoke up. “A guy watching my brother harder’n he ought to.”
          “Was not. I was watching the girls.”
          “Yeah, right.”
          “You’re weird, Alan.” With that, Sam got to his feet and walked through the darkness toward the parked cars.
          He strode with manly grace to his old VW Wagon, opened the back door, and paused to look my way before crawling into the back seat—leaving the door ajar.
          I scrambled to my feet, breath coming in little gasps and my pulse racing. My heart about leapt out of its cage when I reached the van and caught Sam’s irresistible grin of invitation.

*****

Of course, not many of us are twins, but most of us had brothers. Does this remind you of something from your past?

Please remember that DSP Publications has released Cut Hand. Please give the book a look. Amazon permits you to read a short passage. This is the first novel in the Strobaw Family Saga series.

My contact information is provided below in case anyone wants to drop me a line:
Website and blog: markwildyr.com
Email: markwildyr@aol.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.wildyr
Twitter: @markwildyr

The following are some buy links for CUT HAND:


Thanks for being a reader.

Mark

Blogs posted at 6:00 a.m. on the first and 15th day of each month.

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