The snow’s covered up every goddamned thing in this city worth seeing and lemme’ be honest with you: that number wasn’t even in the double digits to start with. I’m wandering around downtown as the snow flurries around me in the miasma of gray shit that is this afternoon. The Logos building looms above me like a disappointed father. Even decked out in red and green lights it still feels like it’s mocking me for dropping out of JV football. I give the building the finger and then shove my hand back into my jacket pocket, no use losing digits to the cold for a futile gesture.
I had a date, I swear I did, but I guess considering the blizzard conditions and approaching holiday she decided to stay home and make nice with her husband. Her loss: he’s no great shakes in the sack, take it from me, but don’t ask how I know. It’s a long story. An embarrassing story. Don’t most long stories end up being the embarrassing kind?
I hang a left at Claremont St. because I see a glow in the window of a bookie’s office I can’t be seen outside of just now. Nothing illicit, just a little disagreement between me, a china vase, and a guy’s face. The vase hasn’t apologized yet.
Everything’s closed, and everything’s cold and everything—if you’ll forgive me a maudlin moment here—is fucking depressing. Still, the undisturbed quality of the city is something else; like stumbling over a frost-ridden corpse, and thinking, “hey, at least the fucker looks peaceful.”
There’s nothing open along Lake’s End Drive except a dumpling shop where two kids on the inside have their faces pressed against the frosted glass. I flash them a peace sign, and they scurry away, perhaps thinking until that moment that they were invisible. Snowstorms make a lot of people feel invisible.
I head to a more concentrated area to find a business that’s reliable enough to be open while God pisses on us from the other side of the snow globe. The clerk at the box office of the Cinema Commons is the kind of seen-it-all old fellow that makes seen-it-all young guys like me come off like babies in their cribs. He’s got a cigarette hanging out of his mouth by magic alone as far as I can see and a girly mag open to a particularly graphic spread. I’m pretty sure I can see the model’s uterus from where I’m standing.
“Looks good doesn’t it, buddy?” the old guy says.
“Only if that’s supposed to be a gynecology textbook. One ticket to whatever’s showing, please.”
It costs me five bucks, but you can barely get a coffee for that anymore.
The inside of the Commons is hospitably warm; I’m surprised they’ve splurged on the luxury of heating. I start to feel my legs again almost immediately. The woman who tears my ticket gives me a distasteful look before directing me to one of only two working theaters in the whole building. I don’t bother telling her she’s in the wrong line of work if she’s judging patrons: the severe arch of her eyebrows and the lines around her mouth tell me that she already knows.
The movie’s already playing when I arrive, but it hasn’t been playing long. The flick’s still in the setup. You already know how it goes: football coach scolds star player who hasn’t been playing so hot because he’s too busy staring at coach’s crotch. Cue the music. Cut to cocks.
At one point the Cinema Commons used to be a legitimate theater with a smiling staff and clean carpeting. At least that’s what the twenty-year-old posters on the wall all attest. These days it’s a home away from home for guys like me, sliding down in the cheap seats, making great friends in the dark for minutes at a time. I take off my jacket and start getting comfortable. Before the star player on the screen even starts moaning some guy gets up from two rows ahead and comes back to takes a seat in my row. I can see him looking at me hard out of the corner of my eye, but I’m not done ruminating on the desperation of my situation yet, so I don’t acknowledge him.
I should be at work. I’ve been getting close to cracking a job wide open: a guy who’s looking for his lost kid. By that, I mean finding a tactful way to tell this chump that his son’s just fine, but prefers smoking pot and getting blowjobs from his alcoholic girlfriend to dealing with his overbearing, quasi-emotionally abusive dad. Tact in this situation might get me paid, but under no condition do I intend to tell this guy where his kid is. So maybe I’m not getting paid after all. Not getting paid makes me cranky.
The guy moves a seat closer and clears his throat. Amateur.
“Hey, buddy,” I say while unzipping and without looking over at him. “Want to give me a hand?”
He sits down in the seat next to me and reaches for my cock.
“By hand, I meant mouth,” I explain, still staring at the screen.
The coach makes the player run drills in a jock-strap. I appreciate that the player doesn’t have tan lines across his naked ass, but the actor looks as likely to be running football drills as I would running for mayor. My new friend fumbles with my half-hard dick and gets his mouth on it long enough to start coaxing a little more chutzpah into it. I grunt my circumstantial approval.
The dude polishing my knob has more in the way of enthusiasm than actual skill. I look down at his rusty-blond head bobbing up and down and suddenly feel like the coach forcing the slender twink to run up and down the locker room with his butt cheeks hanging out.
“Grab the base, man. Kinda jerk it while you… No, not like that. Look—”
I show him how to hold it, and he catches on like an A student…well more like a determined B. He jerks my cock from the base up while stuffing as much of it into his greedy mouth as he can. He’s got me fully hard just in time to watch the player position his coach’s massive prick at his own presumably “virgin” hole. I’m starting to get into the fantasy of it and the reasonably hot reality of having my cock sucked.
Then the cops show up.
I raise a hand to block the sudden blinding light of the cop’s flashlight while my little cocksucking friend scurries away like a rat caught in a larder. Me? I’m just caught. With your pants around your ankles, it’s a little hard to beat a hasty retreat.
“Put your dick away, sir, and let’s have a chat about public decency laws,” the cop says, without having the decency to stop shining his flashlight in my eyes.
I pull up my pants and have no trouble stuffing my soft dick back into them: the fucker deflated at the first sign of trouble. Chickenshit.
I get up, and the cop has me walk out of the theater in front of him. Elsewhere, another cop, probably this one’s partner, rounds up another couple perverts. In the relatively bright lobby of the Commons, I get a good look at the officer. He’s burly and has the look of a man who brooks no fast-talk. It’s an unfortunate pairing for the both of us.
I put out my hand—"Nicolas Noir, Private Dick"—and the cop just stares at my hand. It occurs to me that its the same one I just used to tuck my prick back in. I withdraw it smoothly.
“More like a public dick,” the cop says.
Admittedly I left myself open to that one.
“So are you about to tell me that you’re on a case or—”
I know cops hate being cut off, but I cut him off.
“Actually, I was just getting my dick sucked. I thought we could forget about that though… as a professional courtesy,” I say. “Otherwise you might want to figure out how you’re going to explain to Dom Mason how you arrested one of his poker buddies.”
Yeah, I’m the kind of guy who regularly boozes with and loses money to (purposefully, in this case) the police commissioner. In my line of work, it’s necessary to know people in high places, especially if you tend to crawl around the low ones.
The cop rolls his jaw to the right and cocks an eyebrow. He looks kind of bemused.
“Dom Mason, eh? I’ll give him your regards,” the cop says, then, “when I see him for dinner tomorrow. I’m officer Kevin Mason. And I’m going to have to ask you to put your hands behind your back.”
Even the least of the royal court beats whatever the fuck I’ve got in my hand. Throwing out Dom’s name was my best bet, and I happened to get the guy’s son. His hot, gruff, woodsman-esque son…
Son…
I resist the urge to snap my fingers and shout eureka.
“Kevin! Shit, you’re that Kevin. The sex add—”
I’ve been in a few scraps over the years, and I’ve seen my fair share of surprising speed, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone move so fast. Officer Mason puts his hand over my mouth and shoves me back against the nearest wall. The one or two people in the lobby look over, including the ticket-tearer whose self-satisfied smile is a mile wide.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Dropping that shit out in the open like that?” Mason hisses. “And I’m not a fucking sex addict, you piece of shit.”
Mason backs away suddenly leaving a vortex where his hulking presence just was. I’m not much into being crushed to death by huge men, but who am I kidding: Mason could probably crush me to death on a Monday, and I’d be okay with it. And I fucking hate Mondays.
“I agree, out in the open is not the place to talk.” I point to the stairway to the projectionist’s booth. “Can we go in there? Just to talk. If you still want to arrest me afterward, I’ll go without a fuss.”
“Do you think I give a rat’s red fuck whether you make a fuss or not?” Mason asks colorfully, but he’s eyeing the stairwell, so I’m guessing he’s not as resolved as he’s trying to sound. He sighs and shakes his head. “Get whatever you need to say off your chest in two minutes, then I’m hauling your ass downtown.”
We head up to the projectionist booth and open the door to find a bespeckled projectionist flipping through a graphic novel. He looks up, adjusts his glasses, and says, “can I help you?”
“Yeah,” Mason says. “You can give us a minute.”
He flashes his badge.
“Police business.”
“Sure,” the projectionist says, and starts gathering his stuff. He goes out a door opposite to the one that Mason and I entered.
At this point, I could tell the officer that our friend, the projectionist, just entered the room where the theater keeps their archival prints—if they had any that is. I could also tell him that there’s a peephole in the door that I’ve taken advantage of once or twice, but Officer Mason hasn’t been particularly courteous to me so far, so I neglect to remember to inform him of these facts. Instead, I flash the projectionist a covert thumbs up which I know he can see because I hear him shuffle backward in surprise. People who spy on other people for a living generally don’t like to be spied on, but I figure it couldn’t hurt having a potential witness in case Officer Mason gets slap happy with that baton.
“Was that you?” Mason asks, when he hears the noise the projectionist made.
“Yeah. I shuffle my feet when I’m nervous,” I reply.
“You should be nervous. Public indecency is no joke. The commissioner’s cracking down on this stuff. Considering you know him personally you should be a bit smarter than to get caught up in something like this.”
“Look, Kevin. Can I call you Kevin?”
“You can call me Officer Mason.”
“Mason then. Look, Mason: I don’t want to draw this out any longer than I have to. The weather sucks and this interaction, while completely edifying on the subject of decency laws, is not putting either of us in better spirits. It’s the holidays, after all.”
“And I’m here busting perverts. So I’m not in the best mood,” Mason points out.
“Right, so I assume you have someplace better to be. With your family, maybe. Or is there a little love nest somewhere?”
“Alright. I’ve had enough of this, I think. Please turn around and put your hands behind your back, Mr. Noir. If I have to ask you again, I’m going to take it as a sign of non-compliance, and we can go ahead and add resisting arrest to your other charges.”
The thing about a gambit is there has to be a reasonable assumption that it might not work. That risk and hope of reward are what keeps gamblers on the hook for years. Me, I’m not much of a gambler. I just hate being arrested when it’s cold out. They never keep the jails warm enough.
“Hey, Officer Mason, how about you let me off with a warning and instead we make use of this empty room?” I ask, as I turn around and stick out my wrists so he can cuff me. If he still wants to.
“Bribery now? You’re just full of surprises. And what makes you think that you have anything I want?”
“Officer, let’s be frank with each other, yeah? You’ve had an erection on and off since you saw that guy sucking my cock in the theater downstairs. All I need to know is if you wanted to be him or you wanted to be me.”
“You know what, Mr. Noir? I don’t think I like you very much. Since we’re being frank with each other, and all.” Mason comes close enough that he’s practically whispering in my ear. “Drop your pants.”
There’s nothing quite like having a physically imposing man pressed close enough to you that you can feel his heat through your clothes. I start unbuckling my belt, and he snaps in my ear.
“Faster, Mr. Noir. I’m growing less generous by the moment.”
Down go my slacks for the second time tonight. I stick my fingers in the waistband of my briefs and start to lower them, but Mason removes my hand and replaces it with his own. He traces the outline of my butt through the thin cotton.
“Do you like being in control, Mr. Noir? Can I call you Nick?”
“I prefer—”
Hard and fast, Mason slaps my ass hard enough to silence me. I can assure you that’s pretty fucking hard.
“Speak only when spoken to. Answer only the questions I ask. Otherwise, I will cuff you and throw you in jail. You will stay there for longer than usual, Nick. I promise you that.”
I don’t reply. At least I can keep my sidebar comments running in my head.
“Good,” Mason says, “I’m glad we understand each other.”
He pulls down my briefs just far enough so that he can get a hand under the hood. He gets a finger angled at my fuck chute, which without prior lubrication, is more like a gopher-hole. Undeterred he pushes a finger up and in while I wriggle for him and stiffen up.
“I’d like to put my fist inside you, Nick. If we had a little more time… I’d open you up and make you sing for me. But we don’t have that kind of time, Nick. So—” I feel his fingers circling my wrists and a vague sense of foreboding…
Click. And before I can protest. Click.
And I’m handcuffed.
“Is that really necessary?”
That earns me another two open-palmed slaps on the ass. I keep my hollering to a minimum and remind myself that this is better than jail.
Mason walks me over to the high-backed chair that the projectionist was sitting in and pushes me over the back of it, so I’m hanging forward awkwardly while my ass is exposed to whatever punishment he has in mind.
I consider myself a pretty sharp guy if you haven’t noticed. I can usually wriggle my way out of tight situations, but this, well I have to admit I’ve screwed the pooch a little. Figuratively speaking, of course. I’m handcuffed, slung over the back of a chair, with an anecdotal sex-addict staring at my ass. Not my finest hour. I vacillate between hoping the projectionist is still watching from the closet so that there’s somebody to point the finger if Mason kills me and hoping he’s gone so I can keep this indignity to myself. Well, myself and my assistant Penny, who’s always the first one to hear about all my improprieties. We have that kind of relationship, she and I.
I smell olive oil distinctly and immediately wonder what kind of guy carries olive oil around with him. At least he’s got something because when I feel Mason erection pressed up against me, I’m suddenly very grateful for whatever Italian first cultivated those magnificent trees. He grunts as he starts pushing into me. It’s like…
Well, it’s like getting fucked by a beast of a beat cop with a big, fat fucking dick. The way that I’m slung over the chair and the fact that my hands are cuffed gives me little in the way of control over the process, which I think is what Mason likes about it. He’s kind enough to give me a moment to acclimate once he gets his entire length in me. He’s sadistic enough to make it a very short moment.
Mason fucks me like he found my hole lying around his basement and decided to pound it once for old times before tossing it in the garbage. If that’s too opaque a simile for you, or if you have no idea what a simile is, then let me put it a different way for you: Mason fucks me like he doesn’t give any fucks. Not any. He wails on my ass like it’s the first piece he’s gotten in years, and I just grit my teeth and take it.
My very hard cock rubs the velvet chairback with every spirited slam, and it actually feels pretty good. The combination of the anal assault and the staccato friction on my dick ends up snake-charming a decent amount of precum out of me, which I can feel painting the back of the chair.
Mason doesn’t bother jerking me off or even saying nice things to me. Our only points of contact are his hand on the small of my back, his cock up my ass, and the occasional slap of his balls on my perineum. My mouth is dry, and I want to get off, but the friction on the chair back is not quite doing it for me, and I’m not one of those guys who blasts off with just a little prostate tickling, not that there’s anything little about Mason or his herculean efforts in my anus.
“Mason, can you—”
“No,” he answers. He doesn’t even slow down.
“I didn’t even—”
“Shut up, Nick. You’re killing my hard-on.”
I can attest that that is empirically false since he’s still ramming it up into me and it still feels pretty hard to me, but I don’t want to do anything that’s going to encourage him to get malicious.
More malicious.
Mason’s sweat drips down on my back, and he growls like some nightmare creature. My diamond-hard cock bounces uselessly between my legs, and I wonder, vaguely, if the projectionist is still watching. I’d never tell anyone besides you this, but it’s kind of exciting if he’s watching.
“You’re a hot fucker, Nick. I’m going blow my load. Where do you want it?”
“I—” I start saying.
Mason slaps my ass hard, and I yelp instead. He chuckles, pulls out of me and starts shooting his jizz across my back. Six or seven hot blasts later and he steps away, panting.
“Not bad, Nick. Not bad at all.”
I start to hear Mason shuffling around, pulling up his pants and I use my stomach and legs to lever myself up to a standing position again. I turn around and watch him get the last of his uniform together.
“What the fuck, Mason? Aren’t you going to get me off?” I ask.
“Nope. I’m not going to uncuff you either.”
Mason punches me in the pec—not quite hard enough to bruise—and says, “have a nice day.”
And the son of a bitch leaves. I’d like to follow him out, give him a piece of my mind, but his cum is running down my lower back, and I’m still hard. I can already imagine the ticket-tearer’s expression. Plan B then.
“Alright, guy, come out of there.”
The projectionist is suddenly playing coy, so I walk up to the door and kick it a few times. He yelps and then opens it. From his disarrayed clothing, I have no doubts about what he was doing while Mason was doing me.
“I’m going to need a few things including a paperclip, rubber band, and a moist towelette. But first, and I’m going to need you to listen to me because this is part is important.”
“Yeah, ok. Sure. What do you need?” the projectionist asks.
I squint at him. “Wait. How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“Good, ‘cause I’m gonna need you to jerk me off.”
Later, I’m sitting beside Penny at our favorite local bar—or at least our preferred alternate considering that everything else within a five-mile radius is closed for the holidays and the snow. All she wants to hear about is the nineteen-year-old.
“I didn’t take you for such a chickenhawk, Nicky,” she says, as she downs another ounce or two of scotch. She only drinks the good stuff, top shelf, and her crimson dress is tight, and the bar’s lights are so dim that her big bright blue eyes sparkle. Naturally, she doesn’t pay for shit. “Did you cum all over his hands? Did you make him eat it?”
“You’re disgusting, Penny.” I pick up my scotch—which I had to pay for, by the way—and down it. Trying to keep up with Penny has ruined many a night for me, but like any empty-headed thrillseeker, I just keep coming back. “He slurped it down of his own accord.”
Penny raises two fingers, and the bartender comes jogging (jogging!) over with two more glasses.
“On the house, Red,” the bartender tells her.
“You’re an absolute doll, baby.” She coos and turns away from him with drinks in hand. Sweet as candy and cold as Alaska. She should write a fucking book.
Penny slides a glass my way and raises her own. “May we live long enough to miss this dump.”
“Cheers to that shit.” This scotch goes down considerably less smoothly than the first five.
Penny glances at the clock behind the bar: it’s just turned twelve. Her expression when she looks back over at me is a not-quite-smile. Something a little misty about it that on a human being I would call nostalgia, but I know better than to assume anything with this one.
She cocks her head. “Merry Christmas, Nicky.”
I raise my empty glass and look at her through its side: she’s broken up into a half-dozen warped images. All of them look aloof, predatory, and a little dangerous. I wonder what I’d see if I could look at myself. I smile, laugh even.
“Merry Christmas, Penny. Next round’s on me.”
Famous last words.
I eagerly await the next installment in the Nicky Noir series, and I’m starting to think I should turn my hand to some porny genre stylings myself…
Tales from Under the Mattress 