Bad Luck, Good Luck, or Disaster? (Part 2 of 2 Parts)

markwildyr.com, Post #76

Courtesy of Pixabay

Last week, we saw Billy injure his ankle on the job and take temporary duty with an adjoining warehouse boss, a case of bad luck turning good, right? But what if he can’t contain his adoration for his handsome new boss? What if he does something inappropriate. That could lead to firing… or worse, much worse. This week, we learn the answer.

*****

BAD LUCK, GOOD LUCK, OR DISASTER?

          My temporary boss sent me to the rest room to remove my boot and wash the stink of that boxcar away. Then I perched on the commode while he plopped down on a stool, lifted my naked foot, and laid it across his manly thigh. I almost forgot the pain as he bathed my swollen ankle in horse liniment. The smelly stuff cooled my flesh while his long fingers heated it right back up again. As he turned to fish for a bandage in an industrial-sized first aid kit, my foot slipped off his thigh and landed in his full, warm crotch. It was an accident…scout’s honor! He didn’t even flinch.

          After binding the ankle with an elastic bandage, he helped ease my work boot back on. Ending the intimate, personal attention, Amico put me to work filing paperwork and answering his phone, neither of which required much manual dexterity of the lower limbs. After that he disappeared for thirty minutes.

           “Finished already? That was fast,” he observed when he came back. “I’ll be able to find the reports again, won’t I?”

           There’s always a little lag time while I sort the sober from the banter, but eventually, I realized he was teasing. “Yeah, everything’s right where it oughta be, Mr. Amico.”

           “Dave,” he corrected. “What’s your name?”

          “Billy… uh, Bill Ratner.”

          “Okay, Bill, you goof off until the whistle blows.”

          As it became clear Dave was not only a sultry Adonis but also a decent guy, I tried to analyze my fascination for the man. Steve, the swimmer, was handsomer in an All-American way, but he couldn’t hold a candle to the dark, smoldering sex appeal of David Amico. I’d like Steve as a friend and an occasional partner; I wanted to seriously jump Dave’s bones!

          Most of the warehouses have a resident pussy cat to keep down the rodent population. Most of the felines grew fat and many went feral, but the big black in H-25 was taking it seriously. After lunch, Dave walked into the office fingering deep scratches on his hard-hat.

          “What happened?” I asked.

          “That green-eyed mouser took a swipe at me from the top of one of the pallets. If I hadn’t had my hat on, he’d have ripped up my scalp.”

          I couldn’t think of anything to say but “Jeez.”

          After saying he was going to get rid of the monster once and for all, Dave turned and walked into the warehouse Ten minutes later, I heard him bellow my name from the far end of the cavernous building. Grabbing my hard hat, I stumped out to answer the summons. I found him back in a maze of pallets at the far end of the warehouse. He was leaning over to peer behind a stack, giving me a heart-stopping, groin-grabbing view of his fetching butt.

          “I saw the bastard,” my new boss said. “He’s in there somewhere. You block that end while I flush him.”

          More than a little nervous over encountering an angry tom cat damned near the size of a mountain lion—a small exaggeration, I’m sure—I eased to the far end of the pallet stack and took a cautious look. Dave suddenly appeared at my shoulder.

          “You see him? He scooted down this way! Here let me have a look.” My, handsome, hunky boss leaned around me, his hand on my shoulder for balance. Dave’s thigh warmed my butt, giving me an instant reaction. Our sweat raised a musky aroma that set my heart to racing. I imagined his arm across my shoulders as a caress. The length of his body pressing against me set me afire.

          “Son of a gun,” he mumbled, stretching more, leaning more, inflaming me more. “I know I saw that black piece of shit. Oh, well, I’ll get him sooner or later.” The pressure on my shoulders increased as he pulled himself upright and began to move away. He paused with the hand still on my shoulder; his fly teased my ass. I wanted to lean back and make contact but didn’t dare.

          “That butt’s been driving me crazy all summer,” he whispered in a husky baritone.

           “It… it d-did?” I gasped. “I…I looked at you…yours a lot.”

          “Did you like what you saw?” he asked, his lips at my ear.

          “Oh, yeah! I mean, you’re the sexiest guy on the reservation.”

          “You think so? Sexier than Bart? Or Steve? They’re hunky guys.”

          “I guess so, but not like you.” My breath was hot on my tongue. His slender hips gave me a slow, languid thrust. I couldn’t help myself; I pushed back against him to feel what was hidden behind those denims.

          “You ever been with guys?”

          I nodded and managed to squawk. “Only been with three. The first was a cowboy, uh… ” I faltered as his right hand slowly slid down my side and came to rest on my hip. “He was a star in western B-movies they brought to town to promote a new film. He showed me about, you know, doing it with your mouth up the projection booth where I worked.”

          “He blow you?” Dave asked, still close to my ear. His breath tickled the lobe.

          I nodded, hoping to brush those lips. “And… and he showed me how.”

          “You like that?”

          “Uh-huh,” I admitted. “It was something else. Only other guy was a neighbor kid my age. We’ve jerked off together a few times. He’s kinda skittish, and I’m afraid I’ll spook him if I try too much.”

          “He taking care of you okay?”

          I shook my head, my knees turning to water as his fly steam-pressed my ass. "Uh-uh, he's at his grandfather's this summer."

          “Let’s go see how good a teacher that cowboy was. You game?”

*****

So black cats aren’t always a sign of bad luck or disaster, are they? What do you want to bet that the Cowboy was such a good teacher that Billy pleased Dave so well they got it on regularly until school started again? You come up with the answer.

Amazon permits you to read a short passage of my novels, Cut Hand and Johnny Two-Guns. I also believe the STARbooks-published River Otter, Echoes of the Flute, and Medicine Hair are still up. I sure would like to get the final book in the Cut Hand Series, Wastelakapi… Beloved, published, but it’ll take some help from readers to get Dreamspinner interested.

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 buy links for CUT HAND:

DSP Publications: https://www.dsppublications.com/books/cut-hand-by-mark-wildyr-420-b

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cut-Hand-Mark-Wildyr-ebook/dp/B073D86RWV

iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/book/cut-hand/id1256084273

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/cut-hand-2

And now my mantra (yes, it’s mine, even if I borrowed it from Don Travis): Keep on reading. Keep on writing. You have something to say, so say it!

Until next time.

Mark

New posts at 6:00 a.m. on the first and third Thursdays of each month.

Bad Luck, Good Luck, or Disaster? (Part 1 of 2 Parts)

markwildyr.com, Post #75

Courtesy of Pixabay

Wired (from last week) got a bunch of page views and a few comments. Thanks, guys. Be sure to remember  to like.

This week, we have another two-parter. We’ve all had bad luck, but have you ever had what seemed to be bad luck turn out to be good? Our protagonist, Billy, is a gay guy in a time and place where that is dangerous. Billy has some bad luck that could turn good… or disastrous. The time is the early fifties, and the place is East Texas. While working a summer job between school years…. Well, Billy tell the story.

*****
BAD LUCK, GOOD LUCK, OR DISASTER

          “Okay, son, report Monday morning at seven-thirty sharp! And remember, you gotta have steel-toed work boots.”

          The interviewer’s unexpected announcement generated a mixture of joy and anxiety. When applying for summer work at a local ammunition plant after my freshman year at college, I had no expectation they’d accept the proverbial ninety-pound weakling…well, hundred-ten. Heck, I didn’t even think the army would take me, and they were sending boys over to Korea by the boatloads.

          On Monday, I joined a crew at a railroad siding running alongside a series of warehouses on the sprawling munitions reservation. My stomach dropped into my shoes when I saw the five college kids making up the rest of the gang. They were big football players, hoop stars, brawny men who shaved and everything! You know the type, broad shoulders, narrow waists, strong jaws, thick unruly hair, symmetrical features, and an interesting contour of denims… front and back.

          Steve, a green-eyed lady-killer with curly locks and a swimmer’s physique, rarely participated in the endless sports discussions but held his own when talk turned to women. Terry, short and shaped, wrestled for SMU, and if he grappled as good as he looked, he was terrific. Bart was a footballer, a tight end… a name that always made me inspect the hip pockets of his Levis. I’d like to be the guy who snapped the pigskin if Bart was the one with his hands between my legs. The other two, Jim and Hank, were okay, meaning I wouldn’t have objected if either one checked me out in the restroom, which they didn’t, of course.

          My foreman, a beefy red-neck named Cooligan, took one look, and his expression said it all. What the hell did they send me this time? Physically immature but not dumb, I knew exactly what they’d sent him…a scrawny queer in a time and place that did not tolerate such creatures.

          Cooligan’s gang unloaded endless streams of spent artillery shells from Korea, the war the entire crew avoided by staying in school. Wrestling artillery casings half as big as I was by both weight and linear foot almost did me in, but I managed… barely.

          If the crew fit my definition of hunky, the guy who really sent my pulse racing was the foreman of An adjoining warehouse, a tall, lean, dark-haired Mediterranean type named David Amico. Like Cooligan, Amico was no college kid; he had to be at least twenty-eight or so, but a well preserved twenty-eight.

          He made me so nervous I damned near dropped artillery casings all over the place when he was around. Most of the guys were on a first-name basis and engaged him in easy, casual conversations, which was something completely beyond my ability; I didn’t know a blessed thing about football or baseball or guzzling beer or screwing women. In fact, I didn’t know anything I hadn’t learned in one of my classes. You know… book smart; street dumb.

          Within a week, proximity to all of those studs was getting to me, and Bobby, the kid next door who occasionally jerked off with me, was working on his grandfather’s ranch in Wyoming for the summer. Bobby was at that stage where going only so far wasn’t queer. He didn’t know it yet, but one of these days he was going to learn what it was really all about. Whether from me or someone else remained to be seen.

          In the meantime, all I could do was masturbate with Dave Amico’s hot, masculine image imprinted on the back of my eyelids.

          One day, a boxcar of spent shell casings rolled down the track oozing evil. It happened sometimes; a load came in that smelled like trouble… things like rotting human flesh, undetonated explosives, and lumps of suspicious matter. It made a fellow reluctant to touch the casings even with a thick pair of work gloves. This particular car, cooked by the intense Texas heat, trailed a particularly foul odor of putrefaction.

          Cooligan did his Simon Legree thing and soon had us shuffling reluctantly up to start unloading. It was so bad that every half-hour we rotated working inside the car. I completed my turn in the hot-box with running nose, burning eyes, and some serious gagging. My T-shirt was soaked like I’d showered in it. But old Tight-End Bart, who’d partnered alongside me in the car, wasn’t in much better shape.

          As Terry and Jim straggled up for their turn in the box, I rushed to get outside as quickly as possible. Half-blind from sweat and tears, I stepped on a loose casing and went over, twisting my ankle and banging my hard-hat against the steel-sided car. As you might imagine, safety is a huge thing at an ammo plant, so Cooligan charged inside, bellowing at the top of his lungs.

          “Dammit, what happened? Anything busted?”

          When I saw who was trailing along behind Cooligan, I gulped hard and blinked back tears…my idol, Dave Amico.

           “Shell casing was loose and turned under him,” Bart unexpectedly came to my defense. “Wasn’t his fault, Cooligan.”

          “Can you move it?” Amico asked. Those deep brown eyes almost made me forget my agony. Man, they were beautiful.

          “Yeah,” I gasped, rotating the joint gingerly.

          The hunky warehouseman probed my injury, and like my mother’s touch, made it all better. That ankle hurt so good!

          “Naw, I don’t think it’s broke, but it’s sprained.” He glanced into my pain-filled, adoring eyes. “You wanna go have it checked out?”

          There was a pregnant pause. Cooligan feared an accident report; the crew waited to see if the pansy could take it like a man. Amico merely expected an answer. I gingerly placed some weight on my steel-toed clod-hopper, testing it cautiously.

          “I’ll be okay.”

          “Arright!” Cooligan roared, pleased with his pantywaist for a change. “Let’s get back to work!”

          Amico grabbed one bicep to steady me and Bart took the other. Sandwiched between those two dreamboats, I made it onto the solid concrete loading dock where the warehouse foreman turned to my boss.

          “Clive, he can’t unload shell casings in his condition.” That was the first time I knew Cooligan had a given name. “I’ve got some office work he can do if you’re willing to keep him on your roster.” A minute later, I limped into Warehouse H-25 with one hand on Dave Amico’s broad shoulder for support.

          “Bad luck, man. Bad fucking luck!” Terry, the wrestler, called after us.

          “Yeah,” I agreed. “Rotten luck.”

*****

Oh, boy! Talk about bad luck. Billy’s temporarily out of the clutches of Cooligan, but can he contain himself around his hero Dave Amico? Remember, this is in a dangerous time and place for gays… something that was very real for those of you not old enough to remember. So his bad luck putting him in proximity to Dave might turn out to be even worse luck if he gives himself away.

Check in on Thursday the 12th to find out what happens.

Amazon permits you to read a short passage of my novels, Cut Hand and Johnny Two-Guns. I also believe the STARbooks-published River Otter, Echoes of the Flute, and Medicine Hair are still up. I sure would like to get the final book in the Cut Hand Series, Wastelakapi… Beloved, published, but it’ll take some help from readers to get Dreamspinner interested.

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 buy links for CUT HAND:

DSP Publications: https://www.dsppublications.com/books/cut-hand-by-mark-wildyr-420-b

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cut-Hand-Mark-Wildyr-ebook/dp/B073D86RWV

iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/book/cut-hand/id1256084273

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/cut-hand-2

And now my mantra (yes, it’s mine, even if I borrowed it from Don Travis): Keep on reading. Keep on writing. You have something to say, so say it!

Until next time.

Mark

New posts at 6:00 a.m. on the first and third Thursdays of each month.