Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  While Shit’s incredibly warm mouth slid in and out, Eric looked over, where the gawky black kid blinked at them behind his wire-framed glasses, with a distressed expression:

  “…excuse me, please. But, see I…” He shook his head. His flower swung. “I can’t pee if you guys are…you know, doin’…that.” He looked away, his flower bobbing.

  Shit must have heard him, because Eric’s dick went cold. “Why the fuck can’t you?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just…” The tall kid’s hands were clutched between his leg. “Maybe, you know, you could…go around the other side?”

  Eric said, “See, I told you—”

  “There’re two of us and one of you.” A knee on the floor, Shit’s shoulder twisted back. “Why don’t you go around the other side?”

  “Oh, yeah…sure. I just meant because of the sign.”

  Eric’s hands still caged Shit’s head. “You know, really, he’s right—”

  Shit looked up, head rotating between Eric’s fingers. “What you mean, he’s right? You guys are fuckin’ crazy—I wanna suck some goddam dick!” Shit turned back and his rough hair rubbed Eric’s hands. His green eyes went up to Eric—and he grinned. “And you must wanna get sucked, ’cause you ain’t lettin’ my head go.” Again his mouth closed on Eric’s cock.

  Through the returned warmth, Eric looked down at Shit’s hair between his thumbs, its rough cotton a dirty tan over his bony skull, more rectangular than round. Already Shit had a tongue of flesh, one at each temple, as well as, in the exact center of his mustard matt, a thinner spot where you could see to the bony scalp. Shit’s head moved out and back, taking Eric’s hands, taking from those hands only the rhythm and speed, while gums and tongue slid hotly around him. In such a rush of pleasure—like Shit’s cartilaginous ears on Eric’s palms—all these fore-signs of age, as they were unusual on someone of Shit’s years, were themselves the stuff of beauty.

  As Shit sucked, eagerly and—hell!—expertly, the gawky youngster at the hall’s end put himself away and moved forward, his back to the windows, watching and blinking behind his glasses. His lower legs looked scrawny. Whenever his flower moved into direct sunlight from the windows, again it turned bright scarlet. His face and arms were only slightly browner than Shit’s hair. Near enough so that his whispery voice was a surprise, he said, “Excuse me…?” The kid was talking to Shit. “But, uh, maybe you want to…um, get him up against the wall. So when he comes, he won’t fall down or nothin’.” He coughed, one hand—a loose fist—rose before his mouth, then dropped back to his crotch. “That’s I how I did it, the time I was in the train station in Washington…um,” (and Eric frowned) “but he was a policeman.” He stood again between windows.

  Again his flower was orange.

  Eric felt Shit’s mouth slow.

  Both his knees on the brick, Shit came off Eric, settled back on his haunches, and looked aside. “Now, why the fuck are you tellin’ me that?”

  Eric heard Shit take a breath. Looking down, he saw Shit’s own cock slanted up, from his open fly, now outside his pants.

  The kid’s eyes moved between it and Eric’s. “Um…I’m sorry…I mean, you know…maybe, I don’t…but ’cause this is supposed to be—” He blinked. “…friendly?”

  Shit drew another breath. “Get the fuck around the other side and finish your goddam piss. And lemme suck this goddam dick, will ya’?”

  From the other side of the wall, someone called, leisurely, loud, and muffled within a stall. “Will you fellas shut the fuck up? I’m tryin’ to take a shit!”

  At the same time, the kid said, “Oh, yeah. Sure…” darted to the wall’s end, and dashed around it—flower swinging, first scarlet, then orange behind.

  “When you’re finished,” Shit called after him, “if you wanna come back here and watch—maybe jerk off or something—that’s okay. I’m gonna take my time. It’s really nice suckin’ on this fucker, you know?”

  Eric whispered, “Why’d you tell ’im that?”

  Looking up, Shit shrugged. “I don’t know.” He raised up on his knees again. “I’m bein’ friendly.” Shit spoke as loudly as before.

  From the wall’s other side, the enclosed and echoing voice came over: “Come on, guys. This ain’t no hog callin’ contest. It’s a fuckin’ men’s room. Shut up.”

  Now Eric called back, “Hey. It ain’t a public library, either!” Looking down he saw Shit wince.

  “What you tryin’ to do, huh?” Shit whispered, from his knees. “Start a fight?”

  “Come on,” Eric said, voice as soft as Shit’s. “Will you please suck my goddam dick? You started it, now—and you don’t do that so often so as I wanna give up in the middle!”

  “Damn, I’m spoilin’ this nigger.” Shit caught Eric in his mouth again, pushing himself forward at the same time.

  Moments later, Eric staggered—and stepped back, as, kneeling and spilling from his fist, Shit spattered the brick between his knees. Eric’s shoulder hit the wall and the back of his head hit the window frame’s side—though not hard. Wired glass rattled behind him, and he started to protest.

  Then didn’t…

  His hands were back on Shit’s head.

  Moments before he came for the second time that afternoon, Eric looked up.

  The tall kid with the red paper flower and the scrawny knees had come back. He had his hands between his legs, under his long shirt.

  Eric shot. It was as if, outside, a cloud slipped from the sun and the windows along the wall, either side, filled with light. He closed his eyes, raised his head. And the growing light was inside, not out. Opening them again, again he began to breathe. (Shit’s hand slid from Eric’s hips to tighten around his butt. He ground his face against Eric’s jeans.) “Come on…come on…not so…!” (Shit stilled.) Eric, sensitive and tender, pushed Shit’s head away and grunted.

  Shit released Eric, and, while Eric shoved himself back in his pants, Shit looked over at the kid. “What you doin’ here again?”

  “Oh, gee…no, I’m sorry—” the kid began.

  Shit rocked back on his toes, and, in an awkward motion, stood.

  “You told him to come.” Eric zipped his jeans. “He’s bein’ friendly—” He looked at the lanky kid. “Ain’t you?”

  “Oh, no…yes, no, I didn’t…I mean—”

  “What…?” Shit looked the kid up and down. “You want yours sucked, too? I’m tired.”

  “You know,” Eric said, “really, we should’a gone around the other side. He should’a stayed on this one. That’s what the sign says.”

  Shit asked, “What sign?”

  Eric grinned. “The one telling everybody where to go if they just wanna piss, or if they wanna fuck around. Or if they just wanna jerk off.”

  “Tellin’ everybody where to go,” Shit said. “That don’t sound so friendly to me. Why can’t you go wherever you want?”

  “Sure,” Eric said. “Maybe,” as, slowly, Shit put himself away. “But we should have been around there on the other side.”

  Between the edges of his open shirt, Shit nubbed his hard, ridged belly. “But this is the nice side—it’s got all the light. This side should be for the fellas who wanna suck and fuck and jerk off together—I mean, if it was really gay friendly.”

  “Maybe—” and the kid’s red flower bobbed again—“they got it so that you can duck into one of the stalls if somebody comes in what you don’t want…you know, to see. Around that side.”

  “Actually—” Eric grinned—“havin’ a place like this where you got to run and hide ain’t very friendly, either.”

  “Oh.” The kid frowned. (By now he seemed much younger to Eric than he had. Fifteen or sixteen? Eric wondered if he himself could have seemed that young two years ago, when he’d arrived at Diamond Harbor.) “I hadn’t…you know. Thought about that.”

  Shit pulled his shirt up on his shoulder, where, open and mostly buttonless, it had slid off. “The fuckin’ john at the back of Turpens Truck
Stop is more gay friendly than this place.”

  Someone said, “Hey…” from the end of the room toward the entrance. “You guy’s here is all crazy, huh? I mean you’re all gay…?”

  All three looked.

  Standing behind the wall’s edge, wearing a plaid shirt and jeans, buttoned down over a full belly, stood a white guy in a blue cap, peak backwards, who looked between twenty-five and thirty-five. If he had turned out a cousin of Jay MacAmon’s, Eric wouldn’t have been surprised, except that he was half a head shorter than Eric, rather than two heads taller. A stocky man, he had no beard but was as unshaven as Dynamite usually was.

  “That was really weird, what you guys was doin’—where everybody could see it, and stuff. Wow!” From his wide belt, a chain looped down over one thigh and back up to a ring with a bristling sphere of keys on his hip and two pocketknives hanging from it. Under the rolled-up short-sleeves, Eric just saw a tattoo of Porky Pig in a sailor’s suit and a large-toothed groundhog, standing on its hind legs, conferring with each other. His jeans went down to frayed cuffs, lapped over once-orange work shoes as worn as Dynamite’s—or Shit’s, when he wore them. “Someone told me there was a—what did he call it?—a ‘gay friendly’ restroom around here. I’m just deliverin’ bottled water to the market. But I figured I had to see this.” (Only now, Eric realized from the voice, it was the man who’d shouted for quiet from the shit stall.) “I mean, I ain’t gay—but I was curious. I never knowed any gay people. The ones outside, walkin’ ’round, they look pretty ordinary—even if they all black. Till I learned about this place, I didn’t even know black people could be gay. Kind of figure you black guys are too mean, huh?” He chuckled, looking from one of them to the other. “But I guess, yeah, you guys is all crazy, right…?”

  The silence drew out. Since Eric wasn’t sure what anyone was supposed to say, he said nothing.

  After a while, the driver said, “So I guess you guys’ll suck anybody’s dick what comes in here, right? Well, yeah, that’s kinda crazy. I mean, out where people can see. I guess it ain’t bad if it’s what you’re into. But I ain’t into it.” Reaching up, he rubbed an ear.

  Again the silence drew out.

  “You know that place—Turpens—you was talkin’ about? The truck stop out on the highway? Someone told me a whole lot of faggot fellas go in there. In that place, there ain’t supposed to be nothin’ else but, half the time. I done stopped in there, I mean occasional like—used the restroom, too. But I ain’t never seen one. Fact is, I don’t think I never seen a gay feller in my life, except you guys. Maybe sometimes you see a guy in the stall, lookin’ over, but unless you lookin’ back, you wouldn’t even know. And I don’t see how just lookin’ gonna make you gay. I mean, everybody gotta be a little curious, know what I’m sayin’?” He stepped back toward the door. “Well, I gotta go and make my deliveries.” Turning abruptly, he walked out the restroom door.

  Now Shit asked, “Hey—are you that kid, Lurrie?”

  Surprised, the gawky youngster turned. “Oh—yeah. I am. I’m Lurrie Stone. How’d you know?” The red flower was going up and down.

  Shit said, “Ain’t that many people around here I don’t know.” He ran his thumb under his jean's rope. “So if you hear about somebody you don’t know and you see somebody you don’t know both, chances are they’re the same person.”

  “Oh,” Lurrie said. “Yeah—I guess so. I’m down here for the winter with my uncle—Ezra Potts? You know him? He’s gay, too—like me.”

  “Yeah,” Shit said. “I seen him.” He looked at Eric. “Dynamite sees him all the time at the Dump town meetin’s.”

  “Yeah, my uncle goes to those. He was tellin’ me all about ’em.” Lurrie said. “My mama’s his sister—she sent me down from Chicago to spend the winter with him.” Lurrie looked uncomfortable. “Before I go to college. She wanted me to meet some nice, respectable gay people—you know? There’re supposed to be a lot of really nice gay men livin’ around here…? Black ones…?” The statement had ended in an inquiry that Eric felt Lurrie was waiting for them to confirm.

  Shit had started looking at the opaque glass in the window frames along the wall. Suddenly, though, he put his fists up beside his neck, raised his elbows, and yawned—the one time when his missing teeth and the two or three rotted-out ones looked a little strange even to Eric. Shit’s belly thrust forward between his shirt’s green edges, his shoulders went back. A moment later, he rocked back and stood up. “I’m fuckin’ tired. That’s ’cause I been workin’—you know: workin’ at havin’ fun. That’s what my daddy says.”

  “Oh, wow,” the gawky kid said. “Are you…the garbage man’s kid?”

  “Hell,” Shit said. “I’m Garbage Man number two. This here—” he dropped his fists and stood up again—“is Eric, Garbage Man number three. You can call me Shit, though, if you wanna call me at all.” (Lurrie had gotten a big smile, which Eric could see he was trying to hold in.) “Hey.” Shit shook his arms, and stepped around on the tile, moving closer. “Can I ask you a personal question? I mean, I don’t wanna offend you or nothin’. But—”

  Eric thought the question was going to be about the flower.

  “—I was wondering why you wear them big ol’ baggy pants you do, that look like they’re fallin’ off your ass—like I said, I don’t mean to be rude. But you see kids in them things, all the time comin’ down to the Harbor. I asked a couple of ’em, a couple of years ago. But they never seemed to know.”

  “No,” Lurrie said. “Ain’t no offence in that. It’s the fashion.”

  “That’s what the other ones said. But why?”

  “What somebody told me,” Lurrie said, “is that it started with the hip-hop kids, when they started hip-hop music.”

  “You mean that stuff when some nigger talks so fast you can’t hear what he’s sayin’?”

  Apparently, Lurrie found that an amusing characterization. “You can hear it if you listen. But a lot of the first guys doin’ that were goin’ in and out of jail—you know, that’s why they called it gangsta rap. And there were all these shootin’s and things. And when you’re in jail, you can’t have no belts. ’Cause you could go and kill yourself or get yourself in a fight and use it to strangle somebody. So they started wearin’ clothes that made ’em look the same way, when they came out.”

  “You hear how he talks, so fast like that? That’s how all them people from up there talk. That’s funny.” Shit stopped to grin at Eric; then he looked back at Lurrie, who still hadn’t seemed to take offence. “Why would somebody want to look like they been in jail?”

  “I guess it was a kind of a rebellion,” Eric said. “Like you callin’ yourself Shit.”

  “Oh,” Shit said, puzzling the two together. Then he kind of pulled the corners of his mouth back, so that his lips got even thinner than they were. “But what sort of a rebellion is it if everybody’s doin’ it?”

  “Fashion,” Lurrie said. “That’s what it means, I guess. Could I ask you a question back?”

  “Sure,” Shit said. “What?”

  “I don’t wanna offend nobody down here, neither. But…well, you was suckin’ on his dick, and you said I could come back and watch. Do you think…well, maybe…um, him…or you, even…I mean that it would be okay to even—”

  “You want one of us to suck you off, too—?”

  “No!” Lurrie exclaimed. “No—that’s not what I wanted. I mean…un-un. No, I wondered if…well, maybe—”

  Eric was frowning.

  “—if you could…fuck me. I mean, if you wanted to. Either one of you—or, both of you, if you wanted. I wouldn’t mind. I mean…I was hopin’, maybe, I was gonna find someone…you know, who could—”

  Shit had started chuckling.

  “I didn’t mean to be insultin or nothin’—”

  “I ain’t insulted,” Shit said. “I’m just tired. We started out pretty early this mornin’.” They had begun the day, as they often did on their days off, with a session with Dyna
mite, before Shit and Eric had wandered off together—and dropped in on Mama Grace. “I’m afraid I’m about fucked out for the day. I’m really sorry. Maybe some other time.”

  “Hey.” Eric fingered his fly again and pulled down his zipper. “You wanna hold my dick for a minute?”

  “Huh?” Lurrie looked totally confused.

  “His, too,” Eric said. “He’ll let you—won’t you, Shit?”

  “Huh?” Shit said. “Oh, yeah—sure. You wanna?” He looked almost as confused as Lurrie.

  Once again Eric pulled out his penis. “Come on—take it out and let him play with it. Just so he can go home and at least say he had his hands on a couple besides his own, today.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Shit said. “Sure. I know what that’s about.”

  “Wow…It’s all right?” Lurrie’s narrow shoulders had gotten even narrower. “You ain’t gonna do nothin’ to me? I mean, you ain’t makin’ fun of me, are you?”

  “Naw,” Eric said. “I’m serious. Take hold of ’em—go on.”

  “If you don’t wanna,” Shit said, “you don’t have to. Nobody gonna make you do it.”

  “I don’t know if I should.”

  Eric said, “If it was all right for us to fuck you, it should be all right for you to hold ’em.”

  “Yeah, but I…done got fucked before.”

  “Come on,” Eric said. “Grab hold—then you can let ’em go. That’s all. And you got somethin’ to take home with you and think about.”

  Lurrie breathed out. Reaching forward, he put one hand around Eric’s, the other around Shit’s. His fingers were thin. His oval nails were neatly cut. The expression on his face was that of someone doing something both delicate and difficult.

  “See,” Shit said, “they ain’t gonna bite ya’.”

  “Wow…!” He looked up, smiling—and looked back down. “That’s…awesome. They’re…nice.”

  Eric found himself wanting to laugh, with his penis in Lurrie’s grip.

  Shit reached up and put his hand on Lurrie’s shoulder—and, Eric saw, began to squeeze.

  Remembering how that always relaxed him, watching made Eric relax.