The Man from Mars

Art by Tsutsu. Thanks to Sween for the inspiration. Pow pow pow.

1.

It must be a joke, but if it is, Josef doesn’t see the punchline coming. He looks again at the help wanted ad: “July 22, 1968. Writer needed. Must write good. Fast turnaround.” The address matches the one on the squat brick building, but it doesn't look like a publishing house. It’s not a business tower like he’d imagined. Just a tired three-story tenement with a seedy bar on the ground level.

It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have the luxury to refuse an opportunity. He’s been out of the military for a while now, and though there are jobs for a young man, it’s better to not be asked too many questions about his discharge. Unless he wants to wash dishes, it’s this or leave the city. And he doesn’t want to go back home.

He lets himself in the exterior door, which probably should lock but doesn’t, and up the stairs. There’s noise from behind the closed interior doors: children screaming, adults yelling. And smells — of cooking and worse. It’s hard to imagine anything being published out of this squalor that he’d want his name on.

The door to Unit 3C is ajar, as are several others, not surprising, given the sweltering heat. 

Josef’s military haircut hasn’t grown out yet, and the white dress shirt he ironed that morning is crisp and his black pants are snug at his 28-inch waist. He straightens his posture, using every inch of his 6’2” frame to project confidence. 

He raps lightly on the door, enough to be heard, but holding it so it doesn’t swing open, not wanting to be rude.

“Hello?” 

Peering inside he sees a barren room with a threadbare sofa, an oscillating fan that rustles large sheets of paper taped to the walls with every rotation. Somewhere further inside he can hear Martha and the Vandellas crooning Nowhere to Run. 

He enters quietly and steps up to the sheets on the wall. They’re covered in drawings, like comic book pages but larger. Rawer. They’re only just penciled in, black and white, but dynamic, bolder than anything he remembers from comics as a kid. There’s an energy in them that makes the figures feel as if they’re jumping off the page.

He can hear a gravelly voice from deeper inside the apartment. The inflections and pauses sound like a conversation, but there’s only one speaker. He follows the sound to the next room where he finds the back of a single man seated at a low stool, facing a drafting table covered in more of the same oversized sheets. 

He wears a white t-shirt that hangs loose off his boxy shoulders that taper sharply to his waist, where his pants are belted. His legs spread wide and hooking back beneath the stool. The soles of his shoes are worn.

He talks to himself, occasionally glancing in a full-length mirror and then penciling something onto the sheet on his table, and then does it again. During one of those glances, he catches Josef’s reflection and spins around on his stool. 

His face surprises Josef. He’s surprisingly young, given his build. Only a little older than Josef. Maybe 26 or 27. It’s hard to say. He’s square jawed with a short, blunt nose and boyish cheeks. His brown hair is darkened with sweat at the scalp, but the ends curl in the humid air.

“Hello,” Josef says again, taking a step closer.

“Oh hey,” the man responds, grinning wide.

2.

Josef introduces himself — as Joe — and asks if this is the right address for the writing job.

The man says yes. His name is Ben. Standing, he’s a head shorter than Joe, but twice as broad, with a blocky chest, powerful shoulders and long arms. A regular tough guy, but for his disarming smile.

He’s a comic book illustrator. Freelance. He’s drawing this one but needs help with the scripting. He is, he says, not so good with words.

His art is another story. The dynamic drawings Joe looked over are his, and it’s hard not to notice how much like their artist they are. Blocky, smiling with fists and jaws like cinder blocks, they crackle with energy. They’re so alive.

But the drawings Ben shows him for this job are more subdued. 

It’s a one-off story, Ben explains, for an issue of Strange Tales of Science, a catch-call for science fiction, the creepy, or — in this case — both. So it has to go from start to finish in just a few pages.

It’s titled The Man from Mars. It opens on an ordinary looking man in an ordinary US city. In the morning, he has a chance encounter with another man who asks if he knows him. No, not at all. But for the rest of his day — going to work, having lunch, taking his girlfriend out to dinner — he keeps seeing the other man, at a lunch counter, at a payphone. He’s being followed.

The reader doesn’t know why. Is one of them a commie? A spy? 

Our hero finally reaches the sanctuary of his home. There he removes his mask of normalcy, revealing green skin and big eyes. His secret is safe for one more day.

But there’s a twist. The reader can see his stalker returning to his own home where also peels off a mask, that he too is a Martian. The end.

Joe studies the partial drawings. “Why’s he following him?” 

“Not clear,” says Ben, looking slightly frustrated himself. “That’s why I need a writer.”

It’s a funny way to back into a story, but Joe’s too drawn in to complain.

He traces a fingertip over the false faces, accidentally smudging one.

“He’s looking for his own kind,” Joe suggests. So he won’t feel so alone.

Ben looks up at him with a raised eyebrow. “Yeah? I thought maybe the one committed a crime or something? And the other guy is the Mars police? 

Mmmmm. That’s only an external conflict.

“No,” Joe says softly. “It’s not about crime. It’s about survival. They’re in hiding because they have to be. They’d be in danger if they’re found out. They could be beaten… or lynched. Or worse. They have these perfect disguises so they can blend in, but that means they also can’t find each other. They might have subtle signs to try to signal each other, but if they make a wrong call…” He lets the thought hang between them. “Our hero's tragedy is that he’s so afraid of being found out by the enemy he runs from a potential friend.”

Ben considers this and nods. “What’re they doing on Earth?”

Joe shrugs. “There’s a… diaspora? They’re displaced persons.” Or DPs, as some say. A slur. “They’re running from something worse than loneliness.” There are always refugees.

His stomach growls. 

“The job is mine,” Ben explains, “but I can’t write for shit. If you can do it I’ll split the pay.”

The project is due at the publisher by Friday, he says. It’s a rush job. But Joe doesn’t need to fill in the lettering. The letterer will do that. He only needs to write up a script that matches the art.

It’s not the great American novel Joe dreams of writing. But it beats starvation. Or going back home with his tail between his legs.

“Can do,” Joe says. 

3.

The men fall into an easy rhythm, working around each other.

Ben sits at his drafting table, bringing the story to life. Some pages he finishes in one sitting. Others — most, Joe observes — he returns to again and again, filling in panels as inspiration strikes. When he’s done, or done enough, he hangs the sheet on a wall. 

Joe goes from one sheet to another and is perplexed. “Are these pages in any kind of order?”

“In here.” Ben taps his temple, grinning.

Joe frowns. “Well they’re not in my head. Not yet.”

He tries to organize the sheets in sequence, leaving spaces for those not yet done. It monkeys with Ben’s process, but Joe needs to know the order, so he can work out the story from start to finish.

“What’s this blank panel? What’s going on there?” he asks.

“The big kiss. The Man from Mars and his girlfriend.”

Ben taps his pencil fast and furrows his brow before turning away. Joe’s eyes follow the back of his neck and the tiny fine hairs on it. Fuck.

He turns back to the empty space on the page. The kiss scene. 

It was funny how many guys back in the barracks would put their slimy cock down his throat, leave a load in his ass, or take his in theirs — all in isolated corners, in the showers at certain hours — cross any line, but a kiss was a bridge too far. Except sometimes, in the briefest heady afterglow of cumming.

He didn’t mind the rest. He got off on most of it. But no kissing was hard.

Ben’s pencil tapping snaps Joe back to the present, and the job at hand.

The heat increases with every hour, dragging the humidity with it. Joe is still in his job-hunting clothes, and his shirt is wet in his pits and around his belt. He can see why Ben is in just a t-shirt. It’s a marvel he hasn’t ditched his pants yet.

“Hey, do you mind?” he asks Ben, signaling at his top. The artist shrugs.

Joe unbuttons white shirt and strips out of it. He’s wearing a white tank beneath. Unlike Ben’s loose t-shirt, it’s ribbed and clings to the planes of Joe’s long lean frame. His chest rises in twin swells of muscle, with a thatch of dark glossy hair that trails down to his firm abs and spreads on either side of his belly like an open book.

His dog tags clink and he drops them into his shirt.

Between jotting down notes on the story he spies how the artist uses his mirror to test poses, mimicking the action he’s drawing. “Cuppa joe,” Ben mutters to study his own position and expression for the scene in the diner.

Stacked near Ben are magazines with titles like Physique Pictorial and Muscular Development, featuring muscle men like Charles Atlas and Steve Reeves, frozen mid flex in their skimpy swimsuits.

“You like these?” Joe asks, feeling his underwear contort as he flips through them.

“For when I do superheroes,” Ben says. “Y’know, muscle guys.”

He gestures to a few finished comic books. Some are mystery and science fiction; others are romance and there are superheroes too. Men with square jaws and blocky shoulders, throwing massive punches. And a few voluptuous women. 

“They’re good,” Joe says. He chuckles. “They look kind of like you.”

“Damn, I’m trying to get away from that,” Ben groans. “Especially the women.” In frustration he throws a thick rubber eraser at the wall, where it bounces off and falls to the floor. “That’s what happens when you use yourself to model too much.”

“Maybe I can help you out with that sometime,” Joe chuckles. 

His stomach growls, loud enough to be heard.

Ben looks him over. “Let’s get some suds.”

4.

They visit the bar downstairs. Hank’s. It’s a dark respite in the heat of the day, and the cool air feels like a welcome slap against Joe’s dewy skin. He steals a glance at Ben, whose bowling shirt is already wet through his pits and back,

“Two,” Ben calls out, raising and two beers appear in mugs as sweaty as the two men. “Sandwich in a glass,” he says, tipping his to clink against Joe’s in a toast.

“Does this happen often?” Joe asks, throwing a handful of free peanuts into his mouth. “These rush jobs? Comics?” 

“Sometimes,” Ben shrugs. “Wouldn’t be such a rush if I didn’t wait so long to figure it out. But if we nail this one there’ll be more.”

“We,” Joe notes. Interesting choice of words. But he cares more about the bar’s peanuts, downing one bowl and reaching for another. 

“Hey, you want a burger?” Ben asks. Before Joe can answer he shouts out in a booming voicer, “Hey! Couple of cheeseburgers here!”

“Oh — no,” Joe interjects. “I’m not hungry.”

Ben shrugs. “It’s on me.”

Joe yields. He thanks Ben, but calls out, “No cheese. Not on mine.”

He’s not kosher, but the old prohibition against dairy with meat is a habit now.

Ben studies him over his beer. “So what got you out of the army?”

“Got in trouble,” Joe says. “For fighting.” 

It’s true enough. There were fights. He won most and lost a few too. 

“I thought that was the point of being a soldier.”

“Yeah, well, not with your own side,” Joe answers. “What about you?” 

“Kinda fighting too,” the artist chuckles. “Bad knee. Boxing.” 

“You look like a boxer,” Joe says with a grin. Understatement of the year. 

He can see Ben in the ring, jaw jutting forward, fists raised with so much coiled power. He’d hate to be on the receiving side of a punch from those long arms, though the thought of it gives a rise in his underwear.

Joe doesn’t share that he was never overseas. In the screening aptitude tests he scored so high on math and writing they put him to work at a US base on communications. It’s not this guy’s business.

When the burgers come, it’s like a gift from heaven. Salty, fatty. HaMotzi, Joe says to himself, silently, HaMotzi. And as his hunger ebbs his eyes return to Ben, whose lips are shiny with burger grease. 

“When we were kids and me and my cousins would act up, rough housing and shit, my Bubbe used to say we were full of hops,” the artist shares. He talks with his mouth full, lips smacking and chewed burger in his cheeks. “I thought she meant, like, jumps, y'know? Then I figured out she meant like the hops to make beer. Like we were drunk.”

Joe takes this in. He never knew his own Bubbe.

“The old lady next door used to tell us kids not to hit each other, me and the neighbor kids,” Joe offers in return. “Don’t fight with your hands, fight with your mouths.” He chuckles. “She meant for us to debate. Reason things out. We ended up having the meanest mouths in the neighborhood.”

They both laugh.

Joe asks what’s next for Ben after Man from Mars as he wipes his plate clean with the last of his burger bun.

“I got this idea for one called Max Golem,” Ben says. “He fights Nazis.”

“It’s the sixties,” Joe replies, looking down into his empty mug. “There’s no more Nazis.”

“There’s always Nazis,” Ben answers, looking past Joe. “They just change uniforms.”

Joe looks over his shoulders and turns to Ben. “Are the Nazis here now?”

“You’re a laugh riot,” Ben responds, but with a friendly smirk. He downs his beer and wipes the froth on his thick forearm. “Hey, you want to go back up? I got something to show you.”

Oh yeah, Joe thinks. About damn time.

5.

“More comics?” Joe asks, flipping through illustrated sheets in various stages of completion. 

“My comics,” Ben answers, beaming with pride.

“Who’s The Olympian?” The drawing is of a thickly built figure, like Ben, in a white t-shirt, with winged boots, a quiver of arrows slung across his chest and a shield on his back.

Ben shrugs. “He’s a guy — an archeologist, an athlete — I’m not sure — but he wrestled in the Olympics — and he’s picked by the Greek gods to be their champion. To do… stuff.  So he’s got their weapons.”

Joe studies the pages. “Like Hermes’ winged shoes… Athena’s shield? And what’s the bow and arrows? Apollo?”

“Eros,” Ben answers.

“Really? Cupid? Love arrows?” he chuckles.

Ben’s eyes meet his, confident and steady. “Love’s the most dangerous thing of all.”

He has a point.

Joe flips to the next page. A fight scene. “And this is the… Minotaur?” He holds up an image of the creature, filling the page in battle with the Olympian, a massively shouldered brute with a broad furry neck and horned head.

Ben nods. “I started a bunch but never got around to finishing them.”

He has whole superhero scenarios begun, of his own invention. There’s the Infinite Man, who wears a bodysuit and a medallion. He taps into an unearthly power source, but for only one hour at a time, Ben explains.

“Not very infinite, is he?” Joe asks.

Ben points to the medallion, with the letter I at its center, tracking his borrowed power like a gas gauge.

“So the reader gets a sense of urgency,” Joe says, nodding. “Smart.”

Ben grins.
 
Then there’s IQ Jones. He’s a younger hero with a close-cropped afro, in a mod outfit with blocky patterns, a kind of amped up version of the look some young guys are wearing now..

“Y'know how they say we only use 10% of our brain power? IQ Jones cracked the code to use 100%.” 

“So he’s super smart. But he knows how to use his strength too, right?” Joe asks. “And he’s maybe kind of a jokester. He could narrate his stories. And drops science facts like bombs.”

“IQ points!” they blurt out simultaneously and laugh.

It feels good and a little weird at the same time.

“This is great stuff. Fantastic,” Joe says. His own writing seems so ponderous beside Ben’s art. These pieces especially leap off the page, more than what he’s seen in The Man from Mars, usually fist first. They’re like those 3-D movies, the ones you need special glasses to see properly, but on a page. He’s never seen anything like it before. “So… all these ideas of yours. Who owns them? The characters?”

“The publisher,” Ben sighs. “I’m just work for hire.”

It doesn’t sit right with Joe that Ben should come up with all these ideas to enrich someone else. But he has no alternative to offer. And it’s late, and solutions seem as distant as the moon.

“It’s after midnight. I’d better get going.”

“Eh, you can crash here,” Ben offers.

Joe protests weakly that he can make it home, but exhaustion wins the long day.

He flops down onto Ben’s sofa, but the artist invites him to share his bed. “Don’t worry. No funny business,” he chuckles.

When they strip down to their underwear on either side of Ben’s bed, the artist catches sight of the dog tags hanging from Joe’s neck, resting in the dark thatch of hair in the center of his chest. Joe notices Ben’s focus and puts his hand over them. “Habit.”

“You see any action?” Ben asks.

Not the kind the artist is asking about, Joe thinks. “Not much.”

It’s hard to not stare at Ben. A boxer’s build, broad shoulders tapering to a solid waist. Thick necked, a hint of a belly. 

“You still fight?” he asks, with a gulp.

“Not much,” Ben answers. “There’s a boxing gym a few blocks away I go to now and then.”

When he motions with his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the boxing gym, his chest and biceps flex. Joe’s briefs torque around his growing erection. 

It’s going to be a tough night, he thinks.

6.

Joe doesn’t sleep well generally. He ruminates often, thinking through plots and dialogue. Often, he drifts off to the phantom sounds of typewriter keys striking in the hazy space between waking and sleep.

But this is different. The unfamiliar bed and the brick walls release the heat of the day into the apartment. And Ben.

Glancing over Joe watches the steady rise and fall of his chest, and the downy brown hair on his broad chest and belly. His strong right hand rests on the waistband of his white boxers, just covering a mound that shifts slowly as he sleeps. The slight part of his lips as he breathes,

What a man.

If he was trade, like the other guys Joe usually encounters, he’d know what to do. Test the waters, grab the artist’s cock and hope for the best. You never knew for sure if it would lead to a fleeting pleasure or a sock in the eye. Joe had pretty good instincts, mostly.

But Ben’s more complicated. Harder to read, with all that boyish affability.

Joe’s had his share of fights. Sometimes a guy calls you a queer, and you can’t let that stand, or you’ll never shed it. Sometimes the same guy would come sniffing around for a blow job later. “C’mon Joey.” He always gave in.

There was something about Joe that made it easy for the other guys. Good looking enough, but with prominent ears and a long nose, so quite pretty. Fit, but slim waisted, supple, inspiring a longing to take him from behind, grasping at his chest as they humped a load into him like dogs in heat. And afterwards, no complications. “I don’t remember a thing after the beers.” Just a guy’s guy.

He smears his palm with spit and reaches into his briefs to take hold of his long dark cock. Jerking it quietly is a skill he picked up in the army barracks. Most nights it’s the only way he can get to sleep. 

He imagines taking the artist’s chunky cock in his mouth, savoring the weight and heat of him, getting it down his gullet till his nose is buried in the coarse brown pubes. He imagines Ben’s gasps, seeing his friendly composure melt into raw desire, makes Joe’s hand move faster. The pleasure of another man when you’re giving him something forbidden is so intoxicating.

He can hear the hushed smack smack smack of his hand on his cock, but it’s louder than it ought to be. He opens his eyes to see it’s not only him. Ben’s boxers are jerked down, and the artist is pumping his dick in his brick of a hand.

Oh fuck. 

They glance at each other’s faces and then down to each other’s jerking fists, not speaking. 

Joe’s dick is leaking precum, making his strokes slicker and his cock more sensitive. He pulls his balls down so his work the whole length of his cock, and sees his bedmate do the same.

Ben has a beautiful piece of meat between his legs, and the sight of his thick forearm as he works it, the tip of his tongue jutting slightly between his full lips, the clear liquid streaming from the head, puts Joe over the edge. His chest heaves, his guts contract and his cock shoots a jet of white onto the dark seam of hair running down his belly. Fuck yeah.

As he pumps out the last of his load, he sees Ben’s bull cock shoot jets of cum onto his own chest and furry belly. Ben gasps out loud as he unloads, his body tensing and releasing, his hips thrusting. It’s all Joe can do to not reach out, to help him.

When he’s worked it all out, Ben sighs. He smiles at Joe and lets a knuckle rest against his arm.  When his breath has eased, he turns to pick up his discarded t-shirt from the floor and uses it to wipe the load up from his belly and passes it to Joe. 

Joe runs the shirt through the inlets of his abs, where his cum has pooled and wipes his cockhead with it, mingling his with Ben’s. 

He drops the used shirt on the floor on his side of the bed and says softly, “I’ll go.” 

Joe turns to get up, to head home, but Ben’s touch stops him, catches his breath. “Stay.”

He feels Ben’s arm slide under his own and around his ribcage, drawing him back. Chest to back, Ben nuzzles his face into Joe’s shoulder and murmurs, “Night” into the writer’s skin. 

7. 

When Ben wakes, Joe is already up. He’s in the work room, taking notes as he drinks a cup of coffee.

“Hope you don’t mind I made myself at home,” Joe says.

“Waking up to coffee?” Ben replies. “I could get used to this.”

“Had to shake off last night’s beer,” Joe adds, gesturing as if waving something away. “Don’t remember a thing after the bar.”

Ben catches himself before responding and just raises an eyebrow instead as he passes by, 

“I found bread, but no toaster,” Joe calls out, not looking up from his work. “Turned the oven broiler on.”

Ben’s eyes widen and he bolts to the kitchenette, nearly face-planting on the linoleum. He throws the oven door open in a panic and frantically pulls out of it a cigar box. Blowing on it he realizes the grill didn’t burn his hands. The box isn’t even hot at all.

“Very funny,” he says to Joe, who can barely contain his laughter.

“I looked,” Joe says. “Funny place to keep your valuables.”

Ben opens the box. There’s a watch, his high school ring, a few documents, and three wads of dollar bills of various denominations, held together by rubber bands. “Yeah, well. I’m the only one here usually and I don’t cook so much.”

“You make all that bank on comic books?” Joe asks.

“Mostly.” Ben pours himself a cup of coffee. “That’s my nest egg. If I can figure out how to publish my own comics then I can use it, so I can own the stuff I make.”

This is suddenly even more interesting to Joe. “That’s amazing. What’s stopping you?”

“You might not have noticed but I —” Ben pauses. “I’m not so good at organizing. Drawing’s easy.”

Joe nods. What Ben needs, he might say, is a partner. But he doesn’t want that to be mistaken for an overture. This is just a one-and-done job for him. Just enough to get by. He has his own writing to do, and it’s not comic books. He doesn’t need to put ideas in anyone’s head. 

Besides, they barely know each other.

“Well let’s get to work,” Ben says, turning to his drafting table.

With a little effort they fall back into the work pattern established the day before, Ben with his pencils, Joe studying the art and jotting down notes.

But as the day goes on, the small apartment becomes a sauna.

Joe’s worn clothes are limp, and his pants hang low on his slim hips. 

When Ben strips out of his t-shirt and resumes his work, Joe’s eyes roam the expanse of his back, the dip of it and where it meets his rounded ass, and the slight arc of his belly.

He’s risked so much in the past for guys who weren’t worth half of Ben. But something’s holding him back.

Still, he’d like to get on his knees and suck Ben’s fat cock. To hold that firm ass, grope at his chest and belly. To hold him the way the artist held him in bed last night. How he’d like to kiss him.

He’d wanted so many boys he couldn’t have it seemed he was always in a state of longing, he writes in his head. And longing is a cruel teacher, but a poor one. It left him mistaking simple friendship for something else.

It’s just deadline pressure, Joe tells himself. And it’s hot. And his back is bare. That’s all.

But by the afternoon the mercury is still rising.

8.

They work around each other, with Ben sometimes coming back to a page Joe thought finished, adding some detail, or asking Joe for a revision because of a new idea he has about a later page.

“I thought you were done here,” Joe says to Ben, who’s squeezed himself between the writer and the wall, so close they can’t help but brush up against one another.

“It’s done when it’s done,” Ben replies, turning to face Joe, their noses nearly touching.

Why are you doing this to me, Joe wants to ask, adjusting his underwear to accommodate his erection.

This isn’t how he’s used to working. Start, stop, revise, repeat. He half wants to scold the artist, half to kiss the sweaty back of neck.

The most frustrating challenge is the kiss scene. It’s a simple date, a goodnight kiss and a hidden watcher, lurking in the shadows. It shouldn’t be this hard. But while Ben’s at ease drawing square jawed bruisers, he’s less certain drawing women. And though he knows fights inside out, he's vexed by the angles of the kiss.

He sketches as Joe hovers and then furiously erases what he’s begun, again and again.

He curses under his breath and then looks up with an accusing gaze.

“Do we need the scene?” he asks.

“The kiss? Yeah.” Joe answers. It wasn’t his idea, but it’s important.

“Why?” Ben asks.

Joe replies, “We just do.”

Why are they arguing over a stupid comic book? He’s tempted to quit the whole thing. But his writing gears are turning. 

“Look,” he says, “The Man from Mars is living a lie even in his most intimate relationships. It shows his… desperation. And it adds a creepy factor — some woman could… could marry one of them without even realizing it. Ben, it matters!”

Ben pushes his sweaty curls back with the palms of his hands, his nostrils flaring. “Fine. You’ll get the fakakta scene!”

He tries to start again, but he pushes so hard on the pencil that the tip snaps off.

“SON OF A—” he shouts.

He pulls the sheet off his drafting table as if he’s about to crumple it.

“Stop!” Joe gasps, reaching out to grasp at the sheet as it waves like a flag of surrender. There’s a lot of hours of work already there, and they’re running out of time.

“Get off!” Ben barks back.

Both grabbing at the sheet they each pull. Then comes the sound. The terrible, irreversible sound of paper tearing as the sheet splits, leaving each man with half a ruined page.

Oh fuck. 

“Look at what you did!” they each shout.

“Do you — do you know how LONG it took to draw that?” Ben rages.

“You’re the one who was gonna ruin it!” Joe answers.

Ben’s red faced and his white knuckled fists are like bricks. He looks like he could kill.

“We’ll make it right,” Joe says, though he doesn’t know how.

“We have a deadline,” Ben says between gritted teeth. “Or is that something else you ‘don’t remember’ after too many beers?”

Whoa. Where did that come from? “What are you —”

Joe’s crossed some line. He fucked up. It’s not the torn sheet, but what happened in bed last night. Shouldn't have done it. Shouldn’t have spent the night. Shouldn’t have gotten so close.

He shakes his head. “This was a mistake.” 

“You’re right about that,” Ben snaps.

And Joe is done.

He picks up the shirt folded over the sofa arm and walks toward the door. “I quit.”

As he exits the building, he hears Ben call out from a window, up above.

“HEY!” the artist shouts. “For services rendered! Good riddance!”

He throws a 20-dollar bill that, for all the strength with which it was hurled, flutters gently to the sidewalk at Joe’s feet.

9.

The so-called Den is the city’s worst neighborhood. Like every port city or any area where desperate immigrants are warehoused with lowlifes and other undesirables. It was nicknamed in ‘38, when Mayor Pasquale famously said, “This should have been an Eden for those seeking refuge. But it has become a den of poverty and vice.” 

Joe doesn’t care about the history but knows the area surrounding Ben’s flat is the kind of place where he ought to be able to buy some trouble at a good price.

He wanders until he sees a solid dark brick block of a building. It looks like a former warehouse space. Hanging by the door is a sign. The Triple Hit Boxing Gymnasium. 

The edifice is square and steadfast as a boxer’s jaw— No. Resolute. Square and resolute as a boxer’s jaw.

He’d imagined a bar. The kind where you might find guys with time to kill over a mid-day drink, loosening their inhibitions, open to bending the rules. But this might do as well or better for some rough trade.

He enters to find a mostly vacant cavernous space, humid despite the open industrial overhead skylights and the slowly rotating ceiling fans. It reeks of years of sweating fighters. He asks what it costs to use the gym for just the evening. He almost laughs when the guy at the counter says a dime. Joe’s paid more than that for a little trouble before, and with his mood today he’d have handed over the twenty for some relief.

He strips down to his tank top, letting his dog tags catch whatever light there is. They’re just props now, like his military cut. Soldier status can be good bait. Still in his dress pants and shoes he throws a fist at a punching bag. As he does, he scans the room at the few guys there. He’s not a regular like them, so they take notice. That’s good.

After a while he’s worked up a sweat. It trails from his armpits down his flanks, turning the ribbed tank top that hugs his abs and chest into a wet second skin. The gym’s tinny speakers play Barbara Lynn singing You’ll Lose a Good through the gym’s tinny speakers as he paces around the punching bag like a panther. His pants ride so low under his tank that his Apollo’s belt and the flat of his lower belly show. He knows how to give the signals.

He thinks of the barracks, once word had spread. Rough hands, hushed demands. “C’mon Joey. Suck my dick.” And every time, he did. Sometimes with another guy taking him from behind. One, he remembers, gently tugging at Joe’s ear to bring his face to the guy’s crotch almost tenderly.

It’s a young blond guy who approaches him. He’s better looking than Joe would have expected in a place like this. Tawny skinned like a lion, with compact muscles and golden hair. He has a chiseled jaw and a full bottom lip, like two cherries. He reminds Joe of movie star Guy Madison, if the actor had ever had a menacing bone in his body.

“You look like you know what you’re doing,” the blond says, eyeing the tags hanging between Joe’s sweaty pecs. He jerks his head toward one of the three empty sparring rings. “Wanna go a round? Gloves off?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” Joe says, with his flirty sideways smile. “Just gotta take a leak.”

The blond follows Joe to the locker room, and it’s all going in the right direction. There they stand shoulder to shoulder at the trough urinal. It’s hard to piss with his cock half hard in his hand.

Use me, he wants to say. Bend me over and fuck me. Get your friends. Let them all take turns. Fuck my ass and mouth. Pile on me and get off. I don’t care how you use me, just drive this all out of my head.

It’s a little soon, but he’s eager. He glances over his shoulders to be sure they’re alone and then reaches out to take the blond’s cock in his hand.

He doesn’t see the fist until it connects with his face.

10.

The door to Ben’s apartment is ajar again when Joe reaches it, as it was the first morning he was there, three days earlier. He raps on it gingerly and lets himself in.

Ben’s at his drafting table, tapping the pencil percussively. 

“Hey,” Joe says.

Ben turns and his jaw drops. “Oy gevalt,” he gasps. “What happened to you?

Joe raises a hand to the tender tulip-purple bruise that’s spread around his eye. “Took a fall,” he says. “I’m a klutz. It’s nothing.”

“Fell into a fist, looks like,” Ben says, inspecting the shiner. “I hope you got some licks in yourself.”

“I did okay,” Joe answers.

He flashes on the scene in the locker room. Covering his face and guts. But the blond was strong. And fast. And Joe was distracted. He remembered taking kicks to the belly and head while he was curled up on the floor. In the end it was his dog tags that saved him from worse. He held them up in a trembling hand. “I’m a soldier.” That was when the blond relented. “Get the fuck out of here.”

Ben doesn’t need to know any of that. 

“I’m sorry about the page,” he says to Ben’s back as the artist pulls off his t-shirt to fill with ice cubes. 

“Eh,” Ben says with a shrug. “Shit happens, right? I put in an all-nighter. I’m pretty caught up.”

“Ow, ow, ow,” Joe winces as Ben presses the makeshift icebag to his face. His cheekbone is where it smarts most.

He’s been icing it himself. But it’s nicer when Ben does it.

“I did some work too,” Joe says. He gestures to two sheafs of typing paper he brought. Each is clipped, with a typed cover sheet. The top one reads, The Man from Mars. 

“I finished all the scripting. Or best I could do from memory.”

Ben hands off the icebag so he can flip through the pages. “This is the dialog and everything. Amazing.” 

He turns to the second and reads the cover. “What’s ‘Labyrinth?’”

“It’s for your Olympian. An origin story. It’s just a… just a treatment. Maybe it’ll help, when you get to it.”

“You did all that yesterday?” Ben asks.

Joe nods. He writes all the time. On paper is easier than the working and reworking of storylines in his head.

“It’s all your ideas. I just did a little… clean up. I thought I ought to give them back to you.”

“Thanks,” Ben replies. 

“Anything I can do to help with deadline?” Joe asks. “I’m not much of an artist, but —”

“Yeah,” Ben interjects. “Actually, you’re just in time. I need a model.”

He grins, and Joe wonders what he’s gotten himself into.

At Ben’s instruction they stand together between the mirror and the drafting table. He sets his radio nearby on his stool, Aretha Franklin singing Dr. Feelgood. 

“To set the mood,” he says, standing them face to face so he can see their positions in his mirror. 

“So, I’m posing as the girl?” Joe asks skeptically.

“Nah, you’re too tall,” Ben scoffs, pulling Joe’s hand to rest on his waist. “You’re the Man from Mars.”

Joe sighs at the close contact. 

“Now I put my arms through yours,” Ben says, bringing them close enough that their crotches meet. They both look in the mirror. “That looks good.”

“And what do I do?” Joe asks. His underwear is torquing and his heart racing.

“I figure a good-looking guy like you has done this plenty of times,” Ben chuckles. 

“You’d be surprised,” Joe replies. The bruise around his eye winces when he smiles.

“I gotta do everything here?” Ben asks, smiling. “You just turn your noggin… no, like this.”

He turns Joe’s head, gently nuzzling his ears.

“I…” Joe whispers, his tongue darting over his dry lips. “I…”

Their faces are so near they can feel each other’s hot breath.

They turn their heads together and their lips meet.

11.

They’re on the floor before they know it, tongues wrestling and teeth glancing, hands pulling at each other’s clothes, sending Ben’s radio clattering from the stool.

Ben’s strong, but Joe is wiry and manages to get Ben on his back, straddling his waist. He suspects if the artist wasn’t willing it’d be another story. In fact, Ben is eager to run his hands up Joe’s lean torso as his tank top peels off. He pushes under the dog tags, into the dark hair at the center of Joe’s chest, and then down his abs, grazing gently over the blooming bruises there.

“Must’ve been some fall,” he says, impressed.

“You shoulda seen the other guy,” Joe says with a smirk.

“I don’t want to think of you with some other guy right now,” Ben says in a hush.

Belts are pulled back and undone, and they both wriggle their hips as they yank their pants and underwear down, freeing their erections.

“Fuck, I’ve been wanting to get you like this,” Joe murmurs, wrapping his hands around their cocks to hold them together. Ben’s is more girthy, Joe’s longer and straighter. But a good match. And both circumcised. Sign of the Covenant, he thinks, and smiles.

He drops down on Ben to kiss him again and grasps at the artist’s solid chest and sides as they grind against each other, getting a feel for each other’s bodies. Ben’s mitts grab at his hips and his rear, clutching and caressing. Fuck, his arms are long.

As their cocks rub together Joe’s streams precum, slicking them up. Even before it can dry Ben’s gushes his. Their erections together in their mixed precum is itself such a turn on they surge more of it.

Sliding his cock against Ben’s soft furry belly feels so good, but kissing him is even better. And better still when Ben’s hands pry apart his ass cheeks, feeling for the soft pucker there. He moans his approval, and Ben’s thick digits push at his hole, gently prying into him.

“Oh fuck,” Joe gasps, grinding his hips harder into Ben, then pulling back to feel the fingers coaxing, opening him. “You’re gonna make me cum.”

“Not yet,” Ben whispers back. 

He flips them over easily, cushioning Joe’s landing with his own arm, as he gets the writer on his back and rolls on top of him.

He takes his turn straddling Joe’s hips and leans forward to pin the writer’s wrists to the floor.

“You’ve been making me crazy since you walked into the place,” Ben rasps, face to face, their noses grazing, his sturdy legs on Joe’s, holding them down.

Their lips meet again and Ben grinds long and hard against Joe, kissing him more aggressively. His big cock glides easily down the center of Joe’s abs, the black seam of hair now coated with their combined precum.

“That hurt?” he asks, wary of the bruised sides.

“Only when I laugh,” Joe jokes, grabbing at Ben’s meaty ass to pull him forward.

“Wise guy,” Ben hisses in Joe’s ear. 

He drives his cock up and down Joe’s flat belly faster, humping him like a bull, sweating and gasping as his back arcs. “Fuck yeah, buddy,” he grunts between wet smacking kisses.

He picks up speed and sweat drips from his brows and nose, and then at once he pushes hard. His cock shoots a jet of cum that arcs and falls on Joe’s belly, and then a second that hits his chest, and finally a third back onto his belly and streaking down his cum gutters as Ben thrusts his hips to draw out the rest.

“Fuck,” Joe whispers, his cock begging for release, to match Ben’s. To not be left behind.

As Ben shifts, Joe’s hand gasps at the back of his neck, pulling him closer.

“I ain’t going nowhere, buddy,” Ben whispers back, lowering himself to get his mouth on Joe’s, their tongues catching each other’s.

Joe thrusts into the humid space where their bellies meet, slick with sweat, precum and Ben’s load. His breath catches with each drive of his hips, his cock is so sensitive and the feelings so intense. When his cock stiffens and he shoots his load, they’re kissing so hard it muffles his gasps and groans.

“There you go buddy,” Ben says in a hush between smacking kisses as Joe shudders, and the last of his cum surges out onto his belly.

Ben rolls off of him and they lie together on the floor, staring at the ceiling, white as a blank canvas. With time words tumble out, punctuated by bursts of laughter. Then exhaustion pulls them under, into the twilight space between wakefulness and dream. 

The only sounds left are their drowsy breaths and the whispering of sheets of paper against the walls, stirred by the rotations of the fan.

12. 

It’s late Friday afternoon when they drop off the art for the Man from Mars. The sheets are rolled snugly in a cardboard tube, and Joe’s script is in a manila envelope.

They run together like kids to the nearest bank like kids with a treasure map, eager to cash Ben’s check before weekend lockdown. 

He counts out nearly half the amount, handing half to Joe. “Some walking-around money,” he jokes. “Less the twenty I fronted you.”

“Fair enough,” Joe replies. The money feels good in his hand. “The rest going to your nest egg?”

Ben nods. “You wanna grab a beer? To celebrate? I like to celebrate hitting a deadline.”

It takes longer to walk back to Hank’s Bar, but it seems fitting, and neither minds having a little more time with the other. They’re stretching it out, while they can.

It’s dusk when they arrive and Ben takes a booth for two - a deuce, he calls it — and orders beers. 

As they tap their mugs in a toast, Ben says, “Shabbat Shalom.” 

Joe smiles. “Good Shabbos.”

“You’re a good writer,” Ben says. “Pleasure working with you. Mostly. Maybe we can — ”

Joe’s face says no. This isn’t what he wants to do. He’s got stories to tell. His own words to type into his own books. The kind without drawings or thought balloons. No cosmic medallions or Martians. And him and Ben? These things can’t last.

Ben wraps his hands around his beer and nods. “Well. Maybe in another life.”

When Joe’s done with his he thanks Ben. “For… everything.”

He exits the cool dark of Hank’s, emerging into the bright afternoon light and the hot damp blanket of summer air.

The storyline comes to him as he walks away.

While the summer of ‘68 swelters like a blast furnace, an ex-soldier with regrets finds a slim shot at a fresh start. He’s paired with an ex-boxer who traded his gloves for a pencil but never lost his punch, sketching masterpieces in a cramped apartment between overdue notices. Together they need to create a comic book in just five days. But as the deadline weighs and the city melts around them, the real story isn’t on the pages, but what’s unfolding between them.

It’s just the end that eludes him.

It takes five slow loops around the block before Joe returns to Hank’s. What good is a story with no Martians anyway?

His chest tightens as he sees their booth is empty, but he spots Ben at the bar, seated solo. 

He’d know that back anywhere, now, the broad shoulders and thick neck. The close-cropped curls. 

Joe takes the stool next to Ben’s. Hey.

“Did you know I’m… crazy about you?”

Ben smiles. He’s not so good with words. More of an action guy.

“So, Max Golem,” Joe says. “Is he made of clay? Or are we talking more of a robot situation? I have some ideas that'll knock your socks off.”

Ben’s grin widens when he shouts out for two more beers. This might take a while.

END