RAINBOW
part one
“You would have me come over in the middle of the night—the sun doesn’t come up for another two hours—and walk the streets to come to you because you’re so horny?”
He sits in the hotel room high above the town below, and in the middle of the night another message scrolls across his phone. This old man is saying a bunch of nonsense abut caring for his safety, and this old man is truly old, but the only adventure that’s presented itself since he came to the city, and there have been old men before or unattractive men, or unfit men who turned out to be the greatest adventures, so who knows what will happen with this one? It is not desire that will make him dress again and head out into the early pre-morning, it is the desire to have an adventure in a place of adventures. He agrees to come and see this man. He can always leave.
The weather is balmy at not entirely five in the morning. The wind shakes the trees a little so that they rattle. There is rain in the air. He always stays to the north, just outside of the city, he wraps the multicolored scarf about his neck and plants his hands in the pockets of warm, snug dungarees and pads across the street to the station. No one is manning the uncharming place at this time of morning, but the stile has the audacity to still be in operation. He steps over it and then walks up to the platform, waiting for the Purple Line bound for Howard. Up here, a little above the streets, trees grew through the tracks, and the platform was quiet. He heard that in some far off parts of the city, people were knifed on the platforms, and the trains weren’t safe, but he never went that far south or west. To him, the world was harsh, but people were kind ,and the wind shifted the trees growing up all around the station.
He was just beginning to wonder if he had misread the schedule when he saw, in the distance, where the track curved, the pinprick of light that was the rail car, coming closer and closer, humming along until it rumbled up like a silver serpent, many doored and many eyed and opened and he stepped in, sitting in the clean seats. They had not been this clean in his childhood, but neither had they been this expensive. The conductor’s voice informed him and the one other person on the rail that they were arriving at Howard Station, the last stop on this line and the first into the city and moved through the darkness toward Chicago.
The Howard Station platform had many trains on many platforms, an arcing bridge where one could go from platform to platform, and half sleepy people waiting for the next trains down into the city. No one looked like they were going to any place as respectable as work. Jacen Datlow thought he looked too jaunty, too simple in his salmony colored shirt, almost snug and his blue hair shaven at the sides, the lock falling ito his face. His skin was brown as a nut, but his eyes were blue slits. His head was round but his mouth and jaw. He saw the shadows of tall buildings and below him, the sleeping neighborhoods that led to the university. At the first stop, while he looked out a sleepy, shifty young ma with a great duffel bag sat at the platform, and he was slouching to get on when a large woman who had come before he nearly tumbled onto Jacen who burst out laughing as she did
“We almost shared a seat.”
“I don’t mind,” she said.
“I don’t mind either. She sat down big and brown, wide eyed, one thigh the size of both Jacen’s legs, and across from him sat the sleepy, curly haired boy with the duffel bag.
“I love your kind,” she said, frankly. “I just left my brother. He’s one of you. I always know when I see you. I love you all.”
Jacen was only semi surprised, After all he was dressed like a dandy, and some people seemed to know everything, and some people knew nothing at all, Some people were quiet and secretive and some were loud and celebratory, and while she was going on, Jacen said in his quiet voice, “You might shock our friend,” gesturing to the boy across from him.
“Naw, he ain’t shocked. We were just talking about black pussy. He said he ain’t never had none, and I told him, black pussy is the best pussy. So he’s heard everything.”
Jacen saw the boy was smiling an him in that way that some men—many men did—when they realized he was not off limits.
“You know,” he said, “Everybody wonders about everything. Everybody wants to try something they haven’t tried before.”
The boy—he couldn’t be older than Jacen—was now definitely looking at him. He had a green shirt on, curly brown hair. When Jacen was more awake he would think, I could have sat on this train and asked where his stop was, chased him maybe, kissed him in the misty morning. But his mind was not there, it was on keeping his promise to this man waiting for him at the next stop.
“I don’t want to leave you all,” he said frankly. “How often you get on this train and get stuck next to people you don’t want to be bothered by? And now I don’t want to get off.”
When he was on the platform, and the train was pulling away, he thought, in another world I didn’t get off, and other things happened. He thought how he shouldn’t have gotten off in this one, but went down into the world again, and was met by a fit looking older man who might have been a good time until he opened his mouth and it smelled like unwashed dentures and damp attics.
Maybe we can work with this?
The sky was a cornflower color, and dark violet light struck the five in the morning city. Sheridan was not busy, but people were already walking about, and this man was constantly, endlessly talking. Well, some men were like that. They were so terrified of sex they just talked and talked and talked. Jacen was less than half listening to the man ramble as they approached a tall building and walked around it to come to benches and the entrance. Inside there was a woman sitting at a desk with an open book, that the man made a great show of signing Jacen in and telling him how he had to sign out, though the woman looked like she just wanted to go home.
But they were going to this old man’s home, and when Jacen could not smell his breath, he could imagine some form of sex with him, perhaps sex in which this man was the most active, and Jacen only received, for he could not rise to excitement thinking of him. He wondered if this old fucker would ever shut up. It did not annoy him. He simply wondered. The elevator took them several floors up, and then when they came into a hallway bleaker than Jacen expected, the man confided:
“I like the stairwells, because there it is a nice quiet place to,” he pronounced the word silently: “Fuck.”
But he made no offers toward that, and simply went down the hall and to the apartment.
Jacen had told himself to be ready for anything. At the same time, he was beginning to regret not being on that train, or all the things that might have happened if he’s stayed.
The flat was cluttered and small. You immediately entered a kitchen. Past the kitchen space there was another man, not as old, sitting in a chair in a darkened corner, paying too much attention to ripping pieces of paper. There was a little sofa under the window that looked onto the lavender grey beginnings of morning, and then, to their left, with only a screen for divider, was what must have been the bedroom, and in it were several brown, naked men smoking.
“Make yourself at home,” the old man said, as the men rose, elegantly and left that room. Three he noticed, one round and short, plump and well made, one long and brown haired, sad faced and long handed like El Greco, and the last one was white, but so very white. Jacen stared after them for a while, and then, in the bedroom, planning to do as everyone else was doing, without shame he stripped to a thin burning pink g-string that held only his sex, and left no imagination.
What did he need imagination for? He was young and beautiful, sleek and slender in the right places, endowed in the right places as well. long thighed, and well calved with long delicate feet, deep chested, slender with heavy buttocks and, as the bulge in the burning salmon g-string indicated, endowed. He was nut brown, hazel eyed and blue haired with the tuft of blue beard at his sharp chin.
The old man came back into the room, still talking to himself, undressing, fussing, getting up and walking around and finally, Jacen said, “Did you actually want to do anything?”
After all, he’d gotten up well before sunrise and left an interesting train car all to sit in the room naked while this strange man mumbled to himself.
“Oh, yes. But just one thing,” he said, getting up, and Jacen sat on the bed, wondering if he should leave.
But then the other young men came in, looking uncertain and sexy, and the plump short one sat down on the bed and, without much thought, pulled out the penis of the tall sad looking one and immediately began sucking on it. He stopped to snort something from a bottle, while the tall one was making clouds, smoking meth which he passed to the pale white boy. He looked as if he had been painted over with gypsum, or as if he were carved from white marble, not so much European as porcelain, and his lips were so red they were almost black in this light, as was his hair, and his cheeks were red. While he smoked, Jacen, who had come here to have an adventure, determined to have an adventure, and hearing the man on the other side of the partition still talking to himself, and the other man tearing apart bits of paper, Jacen lifted the white boy’s penis, and pulled it into his mouth.
There had been a time when Jacen was shy about these things, shy about everything. He wondered if he lived hard because for the early part of his life he had lived so softly, and his biggest regret was not doing things. He imagined himself telling this story, if only to himself, and there were three or maybe four versions. The one where he had stayed safe in bed, risen later and gone shopping, the one where he had lingered on that train, the one where, sitting here with this old man who had rolled over and gone to sleep he chalked this all up to a bad experience and wondered what it would have been like to indulge, indulge in something, and the one right now where he became a mouth and was unashamed, where he worked off the small pink string of underwear and naked, on his hands and knees, felt this boy, his mouth open, his eyes fluttering, shudder in pleasure, while he held his hips and kept sucking.
The world feared sex, but it wanted to be sexy. The stories, the plays were about people going to bed, wanting to go to bed, showing each other on the way to bed, but it was all after or before. There was sex all the time in the movies, but it was never sexy. It was humiliating, or silly, but never sexy. He had passed the bath houses and had the invitations to sex parties, these doors to the mystery of sex. He entered the mystery through his phone, perusing profiles of thirsty men, one of whom happened to be this old man who, having spent so much time getting him to come over, had no use for him. And so, not caring at all, he gulped and sucked on this boy, and allowed him to place his hands in his hair, he pulled him all the way to the back of his throat and rejoiced in the aching of his jaw.
It just felt good to be there, doing that. Sex just felt so good, pleasuring and being pleasured. It was difficult to explain to anyone, though everyone knew but sort of punished themselves for this, and the four of them, beyond this partition, were pleasuring each other in almost silence, and the two old men moved about the apartment, seeming to not notice. The sky lightened, and the two brown boys lowered themselves to the mattress, side by side and began kissing. Jacen’s thighs were longing, his sex was longing, his arms were longing, so he brought down this white boy, cool skin, eager eyes, firm flesh, and they moved on the bed as well, this white boy shuffling between Jacen’s thighs, kissing him eagerly. Jacen moved to kiss the round brown boy and the sad faced one as well.
“You’re lovely,” the sad faced boy told him, and Jacen stroked his face and told him he was lovely too.
Was this what happened in the bath houses? This was the opposite of the secret sex he’d once heard on the other side of his parents’ room, or seen two boys at in the bushes, this quiet happiness, passing the fuming pipe they kept lighting, sniffing from the bottle and feeling their limbs melt into each other, the sight, as the morning became day, of the towers of Roger Park under this high one, stretching out to the great blue grey mirror of the lake.
There was a place of opening and closing eyes, of closing them and falling back into memory upon memory of first pleasures, of times like this, and of opening them to be in this moment, letting himself be surprised by whatever, but never shocked, never in judgment, never in fear. There was a time when he had been afraid of everything, and so he had experienced nothing. He grew up in judgment, and so he judged everything even while he lusted for it. This is the way people were.
He was startled when the sad faced boy gently pushed down the round boy and squelshed him like an accordion, his face in the pillow, the quiet light of day on his round cheeks and soft hair. He knelt behind him and oiling his stiff penis that curved like a sausage. Gently he inserted it. While Jacen and this white boy were still tasting each other, the boys beside them fucked quietly, and Jacen looked up from the bed and saw the lake before the end of sunrise, the color of pearl, and heard the two men on the other side going about their lives, heard the boys beside them as the clapping of body to body grew quicker and the round one began to make noise. Jacen’s hands hung around the white boy’s neck, and he said, “What’s your name?”
The boy said, “Ethan.”
Jacen Datlow turned around, knowing the power of his ass and without shame he took the bottle of oil, dipped his hand in, liberally rubbed it in himself and on Ethan’s eager penis, them turned over and arched his back. He took his small bottle of poppers and shook it, inhaling it, feeling his nerves melt into his flesh and his flash flame as Ethan entered him. He had come here for this. He was floating in a type of ecstasy where he paid attention to everything around him and nothing mattered, and Ethan was holding his hips, pressing in and out of him, in and out, and he was pressing back and he closed his eyes and opened them, inhaled the poppers and thrummed with the heat in his body while he watched the flat, blue grey expanse of the lake stretched below them and heard the quick thumping of the round boy and sad boy. He gripped the pillow as Ethan fucked him harder and couldn’t tell whose shouts were whoms.
The sad face boy was called Jon, but he was still pounding Pedro, the round one, when Ethan gave a great groan and pulling out of Jacen, ejaculated all across his back, all over the sheets. Jon made an approving sound and Jacen closed his eyes as heat sprinkled all over his buttocks, his back and the pillow. Jon had stopped fucking Pedro, and now Jacen, heedless of manners or decency, pulled Jon to him, It was as dawn became morning that the four of them, moving between resting and fucking and smoking learned one another’s names and lay in a soft tangle in the bed.
The sun was fully up and the old man was walking about his kitchen still talking to himself when Jon, who had a sort of wound under one eye and squinted a lot said, “Should we still be here?”
“I was going to the beach,” Jacen said. “I was going to watch the sunrise. That was my plan.”
“Where are you from?” said Jon.
“South Bend.”
“South Bend?” Jon tried it, as if it meant something.
“It’s the last stop on the South Shore.”
“South Bend,” Jon said again. “I’ve never been.”
“Why would you? For a while I was staying in Michigan City.”
“Is that nice?”
“None of it really is.”
Ethan laughed and turned around on his other side, looking over the pile of clothes. His body was like a marble sculpture, and Jacen freely caressed him, passing a hand over the hills of his ass, cupping them.
“I’m looking at this building my sort of ex lives in,” Jacen said.
“Is that wise?”
“We’re friends. It’s called the Mariner.”
“How… sea like?”
“Yeah,” Jacen said.
“I wanna go to the beach with you,” Ethan said, not turning around. “Let’s get out of here. He turned around, sitting up and reaching for his shirt, which was full of autumn colored sworls and paisleys, loose, almost silken, and pulling it over his glorious body.
“Let’s all leave together,” he said, seeming to not care if he was heard or not, “These people are crazy, and none of us should stay here alone.”
That seemed like a very good idea and Jacen trusted these boys, especially the sensibly Ethan, so he went into the bathroom, which was right across from the bed, took a towel and began wiping himself down. A moment later, without knocking, Ethan slipped in. He took the cloth from Jacen, put it in hot water, wiped him down, and then sat on the commode and began to suck on him. Jacen drew the black haired boy up and kissed him on his mouth quickly, and they were fooling around when he said, “Aren’t we leaving, and don’t Pedro and Jon need to get in?”
While they dressed, coming out of that little bathroom over and over again, laughing, giggling, touching, tasting, it took near a half hour for them to clear out of that place, all laughing. Pedro slipped on his glasses and said, “I should be going.”
“No beach?” Ethan said.
“No. I’d like to, but…”
As Pedro left them, Ethan murmured, “I’ll never understand people who can fuck and drug all night, but get responsible when the sun comes up.”
He looked to Jacen. “You might say I’m here for an adventure too.”
The sun had only been up an hour, but the sky was overcast, and Jacen was glad for it. Ethan said the same thing.
“I love sunny days from my window, but above a certain temperature they just oppress me.”
Jon kept squinting and finally he said, “I lost my glasses.”
“Not at the flat?” Jacen asked.
“No, I had lost them before.”
Jacen did not want to be rude, but it was Ethan who said, “How does one lose their glasses?”
“I had them,” Jon said, “and then I didn’t.”
Ethan’s eyes rolled to Jacen as quickly as they rolled away, and Jon said to Jacen. “So you’re staying at a hotel up north?”
“Yes, right on the border. Like five minutes away from the end of Rogers Park.”
“I’ve gone there a few times,” he said. “I like it. Once I took all of the trains. The Red line, the Yellow, Line, even the Pink, all of them. I wanted to say that I rode the rainbow.”
Having experienced the Blue Lines and part of the Pink, Jacen thought that he would gladly avoid riding much of the rainbow. He was also amazed at the stamina in Jon’s legs, his ability to keep walking and the sweat that was beading on the top of his own head.
The sun had already risen but sat between the mercury colored water and the pewter sky like a cracked egg. Jon departed from them and they embraced him. He gave them his number.
“We’ll never see him again,” Ethan said.
“Why you say that?”
“Meth heads. They’re unreliable. The only way we’ll see him again is if we go to that man’s apartment, and I’m never going to that apartment again.”
“But you think he will?”
“Fuck yeah. Pedro too.”
They walked to the end of the pier, around the tower overlooking the water and as the sun rose higher the water cleared and for a moment Jacen fancied he could see endless wonders under the water, cities, seas beasts, castle, mermaids and then they were all gone and there was only water. He was not terrified, it just was, and now, on the other side of this tower, shielded from beach watchers, he lay back against the tower, looking out at the sky while Ethan sucked on him. Ethan had tugged down his snug dungarees and was cupping his ass, slurping on him mercilessly until, overcome, Jacen lifted him up, pressed him against the tower and fucked him slowly. He stopped when he heard the whir of a boat across the water, and then fucked him harder until they both shouted and he felt his seed bust inside of Ethan who cried out, clutching the chain link that surrounded the watch tower.
