1.
The teens pair off two by two like animals boarding Noah’s ark, all but for Jim, the sole solitary figure in line for the sideshow. And like those dumb beasts, he thinks, they’re as unreasoning about what draws them to the traveling amusement park, as it does every year. They attend as if on instinct, the girls with their sticky pink bubble gum and the boys with their tawny arms, like Jim’s, tan and muscled from their summer farm work outdoors.
He can practically feel the heat coming off their bodies, standing impatiently in the crowded line for the lunar display. It’s the new feature, added since President Kennedy’s promise to land a man on the moon, and the only reason Jim is there at all. He doesn’t care for the tired exhibits or the rides, and especially not the freak show. The two headed calf and bearded woman and the rest fill him with unease for the singular creatures without a kind of their own.
He’d read about Disneyland’s Rocket to the Moon exhibit, but California is so impossibly distant it might as well be the actual moon, so the amusement park has to do. But when the doors open and the crowd moves into the display area and the dumb teens gasp, Jim sighs. He didn’t expect Disneyland, but what he sees is not just inferior, it’s altogether wrong.
The display is in a darkened room, the floor covered with gray sand and gravel. There are boulders made of chicken wire covered in gray tarp, Jim guesses. The flimsy walls are painted indigo to simulate the night sky, with tiny white lights twinkling through them. A sad excuse for distant stars.
Worst of all are the plants – plastic, Jim assumes – spray painted gray, with pointed leaves and curling fronds. As if there could be vegetation on the airless moon. The diorama he’d made for the science fair was far more accurate, if a fraction of the size, and no further than his own bedroom.
The other teens stand by, dumb and unthinking. The girl nearest him chews cotton candy, her hand snaking around the muscled arm of her boyfriend. He’s good looking, with a cowlick at the crown of his sandy colored hair, and the short sleeves of his white t-shirt rolled halfway up his shoulder. He’s that type, so at ease in his own body.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the guide announces, “you are looking at the surface of the moon, or our best approximation of it!”
A speaker crackles and plays President Kennedy’s words uttered just a year earlier.
This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the earth.
“But what will we find there?” the guide asks. “What new life will we encounter? What wonders? What… menaces? What of the Man on the Moon?
2.
On cue, one of the constructed boulders nearest Jim shifts as something -- someone -- lunges out of hiding. It’s the same gray as the surroundings, but it has arms that are ribbed and its fingers are dull talons, reaching out for the girl beside Jim. She shrieks and folds into her boyfriend who pulls back an arm to throw a punch. His elbow hits Jim hard, knocking him to the floor.
Curled up on the gray gravel, blind in one eye but for the stars that flash in it, he makes out the boy throwing the punch spun away by something -- or, again, someone -- stronger. Girls scream, and red, white and pink sneakered feet stomp on and around him. Jim hears the guide say, “What the —- Jesus Christ!”
Amid the chaos, Jim with his one good eye he can see only two feet moving with clear intent, but unlike the others they’re dark and scaled, reptilian, making their way purposefully to him. The Man on the Moon.
“Kid,” a muffled voice says. “You okay?”
Cold rubbery hands pull Jim up off the floor, where he can better see the alien -- or the alien costume. It’s ridiculous, more of a sea monster, with big fishy eyes and gills, painted gray to match the cheesy display.
When let go to stand on his own, Jim’s legs go wobbly. As he drops, the monster catches him and lifts him in its arms. It walks away, carrying him like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, as if Jim is as weightless as the chicken wire boulders.
He can hear, as if very far away, the voice of the guide saying “What a mess. Take care of this shit.”
And then even more distantly, the recorded voice of the President on the crackling speaker.
We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
The Man on the Moon carries Jim to a set of doors it backs into to open, bringing him into a cooler, quiet dark room, filled with cardboard boxes. As the door close behind them, the monster gently sets Jim down on a workbench, helping him into a sitting position. His head aches and his eye struggles to see right, but he manages stay seated upright.
The monster crouches clumsily grasps at the gills on its neck with webbed clawed hands, twisting its neck side to side. “God damn it,” it says, and its head comes off in its hands, revealing under it just a man. Of course.
He’s a rough looking guy, with a blunt nose and short cropped blond hairy. He’s maybe five years or so older than Jim. His lips are full, and his jaw is covered with the short scruff of a dirty blond beard. Free from his costume, he shakes a spray of sweat from his head, just a trace of it misting Jim.
“You okay kid?” he asks again. His eyes are cool blue and crinkle at the corners when he breaks into a full smile.
3.
“I…” Jim sputters, holding a hand to his head, to cover his hungry stare. He feels something wet at his fingertips, and when he looks at them, he sees blood.
“Oh boy,” says the man in the monster suit, bending at the waist and cocking the handsome wedge of his head to assess the situation. “That’s gonna be a shiner. And maybe a stitch or two up there.” He grazes Jim’s forehead with his rubbery hand, and the boy winces. “Oh yeah.”
Jim feels a little queasy, but he’s not sure how much is from the sight of his own blood and how much is being so close to the handsome carny with the deep voice.
“Let me get out of this damn thing,” says the man. He pulls at the arms of the monster costume, and it sways side to side, loosening but nothing more. “God damn it. Kid, would you unzip me?”
Jim is unsure of what he’s being asked, but the man turns around and points with a gloved thumb at his back. Jim can see a sturdy looking zipper running down the back of the monster costume, from the center of his shoulders down to the small of his back.
Still seated up on the workbench he grasps the zipper with one hand, taking the other his aching eye to push against the suit, and the sturdy back of the man in it. With some effort he wrenches the zipper down in a series of jerks, and when he does the rubbery sides divide, parting to reveal the man’s flesh beneath. He’s tan and sweaty, and when Jim lets his fingertips run down his spine, and as they do, tiny blond hairs spring up after his touch.
The man turns and pulls at one side of the costume collar and then the other. The tip of his tongue juts out between his teeth as he concentrates, and Jim feels a stir in his underwear and swallows down a gulp in his throat.
The costume loosens and slowly peels off the man’s muscled shoulders. Not boyish muscles like the teens Jim knows, not even after the summer’s farm work, but dense and manly.
“They didn’t make this damn thing for one man to get in or out of,” he says with a smirk, twisting his arms out, one and then the other. They’re inked with tattoos, which Jim has never seen in person before, like a sailor in Moby Dick or Treasure Island, books he’s read.
The heavy costume falls to his waist, exposing the broad V shape from the man’s brawny shoulders to his slim hips. His chest muscles are squared off like a movie star, with pink nipples and sparse blond hairs that run in a nearly invisible trail running down his belly. And there are more tattoos. So many more, on his arms and his flanks.
Jim is tempted to count them – there must be twenty at least – but between the ache in his head and in the crotch of his jeans he’s not so concerned with the number as he would be otherwise.
The man slides out of the bottom of the costume, pulling out his legs one at a time. Standing there in just a pair of boxers, his bare legs look firm, hairier than his torso, but the same dull blond, and there are yet more tattoos on his thighs.
He shudders to shake off more sweat and wipes it off his chest and belly with his bare hands like windshield wipers, then rubs them on the rear of his boxers before extending one to shake hands.
He asks Jim’s name and then trades his own.
“Orville,” he says, his still hand damp in Jim’s. His voice is thick and warm, with just a bit of a twang, like Elvis Presley. “Let’s see about that eye.”
4.
Orville gingerly plies Jim’s hand from his forehead to inspect the damage. His eyebrows knit and the tip of his tongue again juts between his lips as he focuses, his head cocking from one side to the other.
“We can put in a couple of stitches,” he says.
Jim’s never had stitches before and is surprised at the news, but mostly at the pronoun “we”.
The man hoists a metal toolkit from the floor and retrieves from its contents a spool of thread and a needle. Jim gulps. The man really means he’ll take care of it, there, in the filthy backroom behind the lunar display.
Jim asks if that’s wise, if they shouldn’t get a doctor, or at least a nurse.
“Oh,” says the man, in a carefree affect that sounds more feigned than genuine to Jim. “There’s no need to make a fuss. The bosses won’t like that.” He smiles in a way that makes Jim’s balls pull up tight. “I’ll take care of you.”
Orville takes a flat glass bottle half full of some amber liquid from the toolkit, twists it open and offers it to Jim. He knows it’s some kind of booze, but not which, owing to his family’s disposition against it. Drinking alcohol is one of the many things his parents disapprove of.
He’d say no reflexively, but he’s anxious about the stitches, and he wants to seem more worldly than he is to Orville. Also – maybe mostly -- he wants to put his lips to the same bottle where the man’s were, to share even a trace of his spit.
The liquor sears his mouth when he drinks it, and he has to fight to not spit it out. He’s pretty sure he’s not fooling anyone. But he gets a mouthful down, and then a second.
“That’s a good boy,” says the tattooed man, beaming that smile again.
He runs the thread over his tongue between his lips to hone the tip, and then loops it into the eye of the needle. When he approaches Jim, he grimaces. “It might hurt at first,” he says, his rough finger on Jim’s forehead. And then it pierces him.
“Ow,” Jim says, involuntarily, shuddering.
“I know, I know,” Orville answers in a hush. “It’ll be over in a minute.”
As he does the job, the tip of Orville’s tongue juts out from his full lips and teeth, and Jim tries to think about how his spit was on the thread and it’s in him now. He’s the most handsome man Jim’s ever seen, and it might be worth a scar to have that.
True to his word, it’s over quickly. When it is, Orville cuts the end of the thread with utility scissors from the toolkit. He picks out a little jar of some sort of greasy salve and scoops some out on two fingers. He applies it gently to the stitched gash, making Jim wince.
“‘S’okay, this’ll help keep it clean,” he says, cocking his head to admire his work. “That’ll heal up just fine. Just three stitches, right at the hairline.”
Jim reaches up to touch the area and feels the salve.
“You’re a real tough guy,” Orville smirks. “Still pretty enough though. Must have the girls after you like flies on honey.”
No one ever commented on Jim’s looks before much less called him pretty. The words catch his breath, and he feels a sudden hot wet streak on his cheek.
“Girls aren’t my problem.”
“Well, what is?” Orville asks.
“Never getting out of this place.” Jim answers.
He doesn’t mean the backroom or the amusement park, and he’s surprised to speak so honestly for maybe the first time ever.
“Oh, oh, oh,” says the tattooed man, reaching out to catch the tear on Jim’s jaw.
Jim is shocked, but feels his underwear again contort at the sight of the good-looking man when he sucks his tear from his thumb.
Orville cocks his head and smiles. “You’re a sad boy, just like me.”
Jim snorts and sniffles. “You don’t look so sad.”
Orville shakes his head and chuckles.
5.
The tattooed man hoists himself up beside Jim on the workbench, the muscles in his arms and chest swelling as he does. He sits so close Jim can feel the little hair on his arms against his own. He can see the tattoos and the blue veins running through the man’s forearm and wrist, down to his hand, the fingers loosely curled to contain the greasy salve on them.
“I grew up just like you, I figure,” he says. “Couldn’t wait to get off the farm. Everyone said I was kinda pretty in the face, like you, and fit, so I went to California to get in the movies.”
Jim perks at the mention of California. “You look like you could be in movies.”
“Well, jokes on us, kid. There’s a hundred guys on every block like me in Hollywood. Working at gas stations, waiting tables. Other things too, to get by. Waiting for a big break. And I didn’t have the money to wait it out.”
The idea of a hundred handsome boys like Orville doesn’t sound so bad to Jim, but he gets the point.
“That’s why…?” Jim looks around the improvised storage room.
“It’s work,” he answers. “The movies was never gonna happen. And I like to travel. Do different things. Sometimes I’m lubing up the Tilt-a-Whirl, sometimes I sing. Sometimes I’m the Man on the Moon.” He nods at the discarded monster mask on the ground. “Sometimes a bandit for the wild west show.” He picks up a black mask and holds it up, covering the top half of his face, his blue eyes visible through the cut out slits. Oddly enough it makes him even better looking. “I can be whatever they want me to be.”
“And… these?” Jim asks, pointing to, but not touching a big tattoo in the shape of a bull on Orville’s thigh.
“Just picked em up along the way. After the first you get a taste for em.” He touches the bull Jim’s pointing at. “That was… that was Bill. Just a roustabout, like me.”
“And that?” Jim asks, pointing to a pair of dice inked into Orville’s side.
“Didn’t know his name, but he gambled.”
Jim points to a lion head on his thick bicep. “Leo,” Orville says.
There are dozens more, Jim notes. “Are they each for a… man?”
Orville shrugs. “Reckon so.”
Jim reaches closer, his fingers nearing the dark green pigment. “Can I…? I never…”
Orville holds his arm up to flex slightly, and as Jim’s fingers make contact, he rests a hand over Jim’s to press it down. “You can touch anything you want, buddy.”
Jim traces his fingers over the images inked onto the man’s firm bicep, and then over his shoulder, noticing all the minuscule blond hairs and freckles. If his eyes were closed couldn’t tell the skin was inked at all. He touches his thick neck and collarbone, and Orville leans back to give him access. Then -- heart pounding -- he touches the plush muscle of the man’s chest, stopping at the burning heart tattooed there.
“Did they… did they hurt?”
“Just the one,” Orville says, with a soft smile on his handsome mug, tapping the heart on his chest. His eyes water up like Jim’s did earlier. “See?”
Following Orville’s example, Jim reaches out to catch a tear on his finger and puts it in his mouth. It’s salty, just like his own.
They’re so close they hardly have to lean in at all to butt their noses together and then their lips. Jim inhales deeply as he kisses the Man on the Moon and his hand sinks down to the solid mound in the man’s crotch.
6.
Orville sinks down onto his back and Jim jerks down his boxers. His pale hard cock rises in Jim’s hand, and then in Jim’s mouth as he licks and sucks it. “Oh buddy,” whispers the tattooed man.
It’s more than Jim thought would ever happen already, but there’s so much more he’s thought of and wished for.
He kicks off his red hi tops and wrestles his legs out of his jeans and white cotton underwear while the man slides his own boxers off. Jim’s hurriedly straddles the tattooed man, aiming the towering erection at his own butthole.
“Whoa buddy,” Orville smiles, catching Jim’s waist in one rough hand.
“I want to,” Jim says. He’s played with his butt before, with fingers and other things too. And he can’t die a virgin, not now that he’s so close.
“Okay,” Orville chuckles. “But hold on.”
Using the fingers with the gooey salve still on them he pries between Jim’s butt cheeks, finding his hole and pressing into him, with just one fingertip and then two. They slide up into the boy, gentle but firm, easing him up. Jim gasps as his insides are opened, and the man’s free hand runs up his chest and into his mouth so he can suck on the thick fingers.
Orville reaches over to the salve jar to scoop up more, to smear it on his erection. He finds the spot at the crux of Jim’s rear by feel and nudges his dick in, just some. He lets Jim manage from there, letting the cock sink into him slowly, pressing down and then pulling up and then down again, till he’s all in, to the furry base.
Orville starts to thrust up into Jim, and all the boy can see are stars, like when he was knocked down, but in both eyes. And it’s beautiful this time. Even though he’s craved this, it’s not like he ever knew he could feel, and his breath comes in quakes.
“You like that?” the man asks. His hands run over Jim’s torso, under his white t-shirt. “Let me see you.”
Jim awkwardly pulls off his shirt. He’s gotten stronger in the last year or two, built some muscle.
“Beautiful,” the man says, his grin more handsome than before.
His clean hand runs over the muscle of Jim’s chest and belly, wrapping around the slim waist to pull him down to match the thrusts entering his rear. And when the salve smeared hand wraps around Jim’s dick, greasing it, Jim quivers.
His pumping into Jim increases in speed and seems to hit new depths, pushing the boy’s hips forward so his dick fucks the greased fist.
“I can’t... I can’t,” Jim moans, and Orville thrusts into him harder, taking his measure and pleasure of the boy’s ass. Jim’s dick stiffens harder, and he gasps “Fuck me,” and shoots his load in hot white arcs out onto Orville’s belly and chest.
“Fuck, FUCK,” grunts Orville. The boy’s twitching hole triggers his own load, pumping it into the boy, grinding into him with each new release. As he does, Jim drops at the waist to cover the tattooed man, kissing him again and again.
When Orville’s thrusts and panting breath slow, his dick slides out of Jim. He sighs from the sense of absence in his insides – another new feeling -- and then rolls onto his side.
“Whooo,” the tattooed man.
They laugh together and lie there, looking up at the drab ceiling as if it’s the nighttime sky.
Jim finds himself talking. He says things he’s never said before to anyone else. He talks about the planned Moon mission, and how the rocket has to break free of the earth’s gravity, and how it won’t be anything like the amusement park display. He talks about the relative weightlessness on the Moon, with its lesser gravity, only one sixth or so of Earth’s.
Orville turns to him, grinning. “Here all week, if you want to come back.”
“Yeah?” asks Jim. There’s nothing he wants more. More than California or even the moon.
“Only next time,” Orville says, “I want you in me.”
Jim’s dick stirs at the prospect.
Orville eyebrow raises. “Or maybe we don’t have to wait.”
7.
Afterwards they lie side by side on the workbench together, cooling as their sweat evaporates.
“You gonna get in trouble for being here so long?” Jim asks.
“Nah. Maybe get chewed out. Not too bad.” The man grins and raises an eyebrow. “Errybody likes me pretty well.”
Jim can see why.
Orville raises his arm and points to the bare interior of his bicep. “Was just thinking of gettin a rocket ship inked right there to mark the day. You think?”
Jim asks “Really?”
“You got that scar on your noggin,” says Orville. “Seems like a fair trade.”
Jim says he’d like that a lot.
He likes being there. He’s never felt like himself with a man before. He’d like to stay. But they’ll both be missed soon in the outside world. They both know it, and without saying more they rise to clean up and get dressed. It’s hard to clean up the greasy salve from their dicks and butts with just rags, and hard to use a bucket as an improvised toilet. They're slow to do it.
Orville has Jim go out first, staying behind to put things in order.
When he exits into the cool gray of the lunar display, Jim nudges a gray boulder with the toe of his sneaker, and it rolls away, nearly weightless. From there he emerges into the hot late afternoon sun, and the clamor of the amusement park.
He maneuvers through the crowd, vaguely aware of the screams, the scent of buttered popcorn and fried dough, the sight of fluffy clouds of cotton candy, the screeching and grinding of the rides. The other teens seem distant now. Childish. He’s mindful of the slick feeling in his underwear. He’s been fucked and fucked too. He’s never going back. Permanent as the scar he’ll have from the hastily stitched gash on his forehead, he’s changed.
Striding down the side of the road home he kicks some sandy gravel and skips over a stone, and then a larger one. He begins to trot, and then runs, bounding over rocks and shrubs, as if gravity has loosened its grip on him. He feels as if he could run all the way to the moon.
END
