Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  “Okay, all right…” Eric said. “All right, I’ll—” He walked up the steps in front of Shit, who was grinning even harder. As Shit took his fist away, Eric bent down and mouthed the forward curve.

  “Oh, fuck…” Shit grunted. “Oh, yeah, that’s feels so fuckin’ good! Yeah, suck that big ol’ thing. Ain’t it feel good in your mouth? I like that, that’s so nice—my fuckin’ cocksucker loves me and my dick so goddam much, I can tell from the way he’s suckin’. That’s fuckin’ beautiful, nigger—” One, then the other of Shit’s hands curved and caged Eric’s head. “Yeah, that’s right, get my balls out and lick them suckers—yeah, that’s good. Oh, man, this nigger cocksucker always knows how I like it…” Eric moved his head up and down.

  Arms over Shit’s thighs, while Eric sucked, his face was warm in Shit’s lap and smell and the cave his belly and chest made.

  Then the table moved…in a jerk.

  And something pushed against Eric’s arm. Raising his head, Eric saw Dynamite had left the pew, to sprint onto the dais. He too had turned and jumped back on the altar table, to sit thigh to thigh with Shit.

  Dynamite hunched over, fly already wide, balls out and his own cock in his pistoning fist, his mouth half open, eyes fixed on Shit’s dick which Eric took into his mouth again, prising under the skin and troweling beneath the rim, for the night’s discharges.

  “Oh, fuck—that’s so good, cocksucker! Hey, my daddy’s up here too, now. Yeah, go on and suck him—lemme watch you work on his dick. You look so fine suckin’ his fuckin’ dick. Go on. His is just as fuckin’ nasty as mine—you know that. Keep suckin’ that big white cracker dick, and I betcha he gonna take a piss in your mouth.”

  Dynamite’s voice was lower, more urgent, more strained. “Go on, son—go on, suck it! Go on—yeah…” while Eric moved around their knees (Shit had put his leg over his father’s), “and take my motherfuckin’ dick in your motherfuckin’ face, now.” (Eric took Dynamite’s, surprised only at how much cooler it was.) “Yeah, I’ll piss in your mouth. I know you like that, son.” (Eric backed off to lick and suck first one, then the other of Dynamite testicles, then went back to the cock that Dynamite had started pumping again.) “Oh, yeah, suck my Georgia redneck dick. Suck it, you goddam nigger cocksucker…”

  Dynamite’s whisper was low enough that Eric could imagine his not wanting someone to hear it.

  Beating again, and leaning close to watch, Shit chuckled. “Hey—I’m the nigger here—not him. That’s a goddam white cocksucker, Dynamite! Ain’t he?” Shit’s voice filled the space with its easy, loud obscenity.

  “You both fuckin’ niggers tonight,” Dynamite said hoarsely. “Now suck my big white dick!”

  “Oh, yeah—I see it now. Yeah, I see.” Shit’s voice hung between parody and ribaldry. “Yeah. Suck that fuckin’ white dick, nigger—”

  And while Eric held Dynamite’s legs, Dynamite suddenly took a breath, and pushed himself off the table. “Gonna piss now. Get on down—get on down on the floor, nigger.” It was eager and urging. “Gonna piss in your mouth—”

  Shit was down too, holding Eric by the shoulder, as he dropped, cross-legged, on the upper step. Dynamite put his work shoes apart, pushed his skin forward with his fist. Piss shot down, in a full, spattering stream, into Eric’s mouth, salty, harsh, to back up his nose with his first too-eager swallow—though he didn’t choke on any.

  Somewhere in there, Eric came—an orgasm muted with the strangeness of it.

  Forty seconds later, as Dynamite ran out of urine, Shit said “God damn…!” and pumped out a load all over the side of Eric’s face—two of the five spurts went in Eric’s mouth.

  Eric got his knees under him to kneel up, while Dynamite leaned back on the altar’s edge—and, holding onto one of Dynamite’s hands and one of his pockets, Eric finished him, while now and then Dynamite reached down with his free hand to rub away some of Shit’s semen from Eric cheek, and suck it off his own fingers…fueling his own orgasm—

  —which, as Dynamite grunted above, filled Eric’s mouth. Again, Eric swallowed. He went forward, sucking deep, while Dynamite’s hard, hard cock slowly, slowly softened.

  Still kneeling, Eric moved back.

  Dynamite’s cock pulled loose, the collared head dragging Eric’s cheek, leaving liquid. “That…” Eric caught his breath—“was fuckin’…intense!” Dynamite’s work shoe under his knee, Eric started to stand.

  “Oh, wow…!” Shit helped him, then hugged him, then stuck his tongue deep into Eric’s mouth.

  Dynamite moved forward from the table edge, blinking at them, breathing hard. After a moment, the lean garbage man put his arm around both boys. He pushed his face between to kiss them, first Eric, then—longer—his son, as all three held onto each other. Finally, he let them go…and went down the steps.

  “Damn.” Shit’s arm loosened around Eric. “That’s almost as good as at home. Only thing I didn’t do was fuck your damn assholes—both of you. We gonna do that later?”

  Eric said, “Probably—if you want.”

  Dynamite glanced back.

  As they walked up the aisle, Shit took Eric’s hand. Eric looked over to see that Shit—and his father—were both biting on their nails, vigorously, committedly. Was it nervousness…? Eric felt some himself. Only then Shit paused to say, “I feel real good now. Real good. This really is a…real beautiful place!”

  Dynamite pulled open the door and they went through.

  Outside, Eric moved off to the bushes beside the steps to tug his dick from his semen-sopped jeans—and take a piss.

  Dynamite stepped up, dropped his bony fist from his mouth. “You didn’t spill no piss, did you? In the church, I mean?”

  “Nope,” Eric said. “I didn’t spill none at all.”

  Dynamite reached over, put two fingers in Eric’s stream, then raised his hand, sucked them, and grinned. “Well, at least we got you trained so—” and went back to gnawing, as, beside them, the door closed to a sliver and the light swept from Dynamite’s face and fingers—“you don’t make too much of a mess.” The smile had been audible.

  Eric shook and put himself away.

  As they walked back to the truck, Eric swiped up a last sack that had fallen beside the back wheel and hurled it into the hopper. His cock stuck to the inside of his jeans, where the load he’d spilled was already getting gluey. He scratched himself. It was also getting cool. “That place looks so much like the social service office, in the Dump—it’s the same colors and everything—I wonder if it ain’t Ron’s. I mean, the one he should be goin’ to, if he don’t already.”

  “Hey, now,” Shit said. “It do, don’t it? That’s just what it looks like…a real beautiful office. I probably wouldn’t mind workin’ in it—if I didn’t have to read none.”

  Shit, then Eric, got in the cab.

  Stopping outside, Dynamite called up: “Hey. You drive.”

  “Me?” Shit looked over, grinning. “You want me to? Yeah. Sure. Why?” Sitting up, he slid further over under the wheel.

  “’Cause I feel good—and I wanna sit by the window and look out.” Dynamite climbed up beside Eric. “And let everybody else do some goddam work for a change. I’m tired. And I wanna relax and get my breath.”

  “Sure,” Shit said. He looked at Eric. “You feel good?”

  “Yeah…” Eric admitted, as, after a proud look at the dashboard, Shit started the ignition. Eric said, “You guys made me come in my pants—again.”

  One hand on the wheel, with his other Shit fingered his pocket. “You wanna breath mint?”

  “Naw,” Dynamite said. “Them things taste funny. It’s all I could do gettin’ myself used to what you two taste like.”

  “Oh.” Shit stopped fingering and took his hand down. “Yeah, I guess so.” With gray, grubby fingers, again he hooked the wheel’s lower rim. “Hell, I didn’t feel like suckin’ on Jesus anyway.”

  Deep blue and light blue, gold, copper, and teal, behind strips of morning cloud, th
e first of the day spilled between trees and houses and electric poles as they made the last trip to the Bottom—Shit had gone from gnawing to nose picking.

  When Shit’s wide finger—something slimy on one side, something dry hanging from it—pressed his lip, Eric started as if he had never considered the act it represented, much less indulged it. He thought he was going to jerk back: his body refused to pull way. Nor would his mouth stay closed. His head would not turn away—as if a dozen self-preservational reflexes (as had his gag reflex even before he’d come to Diamond Harbor) had deserted his body.

  Shit’s finger pushed in.

  After prodding in his own nostril, Eric gave Shit some, who, while he drove, gripped Eric’s finger between his gums (Eric was glad Shit and Dynamite both had left their teeth home that morning) holding it within his mouth, licking at the nub, releasing it only after more than a minute

  Then Shit laughed and, with one hand, let go of the wheel to reach over and feel between Eric’s legs. “Yeah—you come in your fuckin’ pants all right. Or you busted a fuckin’ egg in your pocket.” He laughed even more loudly, at the joke Eric had heard eight, twelve, fifteen times in those last years.

  “Hey,” Dynamite said. “We ain’t stopping in the middle of no more jobs to fuck around, now. Okay? You hear me?” Looking out the side window, he took a long breath. “I’m too old for it. Save that for home.”

  “Goddam,” Shit said. “We ain’t done that in a long time—had sex out on the garbage run—more’n a year. It was nice.”

  “Yeah,” Dynamic said. “We still ain’t doin’ it no more.”

  For moments, the morning road got rougher.

  Shit looked at Eric; Eric looked at Shit—first one, then the other chuckled.

  Under them, it smoothed again.

  * * *

  [46] SINCE ERIC’S FIRST year at the Dump, pretty much every three weeks, sometimes every two, Dynamite had driven the boys to Turpens (where of course they absolutely never went) for a few hours in the johns there. Of the five bathrooms around the truck stop, two were built by Robert Kyle back when he purchased the place. The two johns in the front were mostly a waste, though most guys would at least glance in.

  Making the rounds between them, you could have a fair amount of fun. A population of twenty-five or thirty people Eric had gotten to know pretty well—and an itinerant group of drive-through visitors, stopping off anywhere from five minutes to a few hours—kept you busy most days and into the evenings.

  On alternate weekends, they’d spend at least one day at the Opera. Once, when Eric was twenty-four, after letting them in, Dynamite went to sit in the orchestra’s front row, as usual, settle back in one of the seats near the side, open up his pants, and wait for one of a dozen regulars to come on by and service him, while Shit and Eric went off and explored various corners on their own. The first few times, it had been together, but soon pretty regularly they went off by themselves, since Shit confined himself to the orchestra and the downstairs men’s room, while Eric explored the balconies, which is where most of the black guys in the theater hung out anyway. Usually in Nigger Heaven, from age eighteen to seventy-five, twenty-five or thirty black fellows usually lay back in their chairs, eyes closed—quite ready for Eric or any other halfway descent cocksucker to ease in beside them, open up their pants, and go down on them; though it took Eric three visits to learn that all of them were. Frank, Roggy, and Calvin would open their eyes and, if they really weren’t too tired, go over the recent weather with you, comment on a basketball or football game, or recount the doings of this or that eccentric relative (often one they weren’t speaking to)—while the others, whose names he didn’t know, pretended to sleep through the whole thing. Other than Mac, who took forever to come, you could get a baker’s dozen loads—or more—in a couple of hours.

  Working his way through, Eric had already done Calvin, then Roggy, sucked on Mac for ten minutes (then left him with his dick hanging out his jeans for someone with more staying power), and was finishing another “sleeper” (Did they tell each other how to do it, before they started coming? Or did they just look around and imitate one another? Probably both) when, with one hand on the chair back in front of him and one on the wooden seat beside him, he pushed himself up to stand. Reaching down, Eric patted the bony shoulder in the worn plaid shirt. Without opening his eyes—or ceasing to snore—Lucius reached up and patted Eric’s hand in turn. “Thanks,” he said, eyes still closed. “You was good.” The snore took up again. Looking around, Eric noticed a white guy in a denim jacket a dozen seats away. He stepped from the row, in the guy’s direction—though not very purposefully.

  Since the guy was neither sleeping nor pretending to sleep, Eric was curious. Denim jackets often meant tourists, who assumed that’s what a gay country dude would wear and wanted to blend. Probably he was a visitor who had decided to check out the uppermost level.

  Eric was curious whether the guy was masturbating or not—since he was sitting on his own. Sometimes that was a reason to come up here and distance oneself from the lower floors, where a lot more obvious action was going on, and guys walked up and down the aisles.

  Eric went down a couple of steps and looked at the man, then away. Suddenly, he turned back and walked up again. In the flicker from the far screen, the man’s hair was dark red and curly around the retreating space of a bald spot. He looked over at Eric.

  Where the notion came from, he wasn’t sure. But Eric began to frown.

  The man frowned back. Sitting three seats in from the aisle, he seemed to be in his late-thirties.

  Eric stopped walking. A row in front of him, he turned back and asked, “Eh…hey? Is your name Bill?”

  The man’s frown got deeper. “Yes…?”

  Eric asked, “Bill…Bottom?”

  With inquisitive surprise, the man said, “Yes…?” Mixing in with the frown was a puzzled smile.

  “Emet yashalom yasood ha’ollam,” Eric said. “You had that on your door. And somethin’ else in Latin. I’m Eric—you remember me?”

  In the three-quarters dark, the smile and the frown that asked for more information mingled like miscible oils. “You remember that?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t remember the other one. I’m Mike Jeffers’ boy.”

  “Of course…Eric!” Recognition illuminated the face. “In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni. Hello! How are you?” Bill Bottom leaned forward and pushed out a hand.

  “In girum…?” Hesitating, Eric grasped it and shook. “I could never remember the other one. I don’t even remember what it means. Hey—how you been? What you doin’ here?”

  “Just…trying to have some fun. What about you? It meant, by the way, ‘We spin through the night, and are consumed by fire.’ It’s a palindrome.”

  “The same backwards and forwards—yeah, I remembered that. But I didn’t remember the words.”

  “I’m here with…some friends.” (Bottom kept pumping Eric’s hand.) “We were driving through Runcible, on the way to Jacksonville. We’d read about this place, and we thought we’d come in. One of my friends is even a straight guy.” Bottom laughed. The hand shaking stopped. “He was curious to see it. Right now it doesn’t look like a lot’s going on, though. I can’t believe you remembered those lines—I’d almost forgotten them. For a while I thought they were really profound.”

  As Eric let it go, Bottom’s hand seemed incredibly soft. He wondered if the more than half-a-dozen years of labor separating them had left his own hand as surprising.

  “I have some friends downstairs, too.” (Didn’t Bill have some sort of beard the last Eric had seen him?) “But I’m up here suckin’ my goddam brains out!”

  “Yeah? I’d heard this wasn’t a bad place for that. But I’d just about decided it was little over-rated—”

  “You like suckin’ niggers,” Eric said. “I remember you tellin’ me you did. You should be in hog heaven.”

  Bill gave a grin and a small snort. “Everybody looks like they?
??re asleep.”

  “Naw—they ain’t, really. Just pick out one you like, go on in the row, drop down on your knees, and open up his pants. Some of ’em are a little salty—you know, from the sweat.”

  “Salt I can deal with. Actually, though, I was looking for something a bit more…mutual.”

  “Oh,” Eric said. “Well, for that, probably you do need to go downstairs—on the first floor. On the left. Don’t bother any of the guys on the right. That’s for the ones who wanna beat off and be left alone. I hope that’s where your straight friend ended up.”

  “Sounds like you got a system going here.” Bill grinned.

  “We do.” Eric chuckled. “More or less.”

  “This place is kinda famous,” Bill said. “I read a couple of articles about it in some gay newspapers I was looking through last year. Isn’t there someplace called…the Dump not too far from here?”

  “Yeah. That’s where I live,” Eric said. “My friends and me. It’s nice. They wrote an article? Hey, what’d it say?”

  “It said some black gay philanthropist started a living development for black gay men.”

  “Yeah. Robert Kyle.”

  “Thanks to your dad, you’re kinda passin’, huh?”

  “I dunno.” Eric shrugged. “Maybe—I guess so. I’m not sure.” Halfway through the sentence, he realized Bill must mean Mike, not Dynamite. “A lot of the black guys in here really like white guys—and a whole lot of others are only interested in other black fellows.”

  “That can be confusing.”

  “Keeps it interesting. And most of ’em don’t really care one way or the other.” Turning now, Eric sat down in the end seat. “Hey, you know?” He put his arm over the back of the empty seat between himself and Bill. “That was some pretty good advice you gave me.”

  “What advice?”

  “Don’t you remember—the mornin’ Mike and me took off for the Harbor, here? You told me I should be ready to try anything that was gonna make me happy. And I should be ready to say yes to it.”