Note: In this story, Stacy and Pontius are both 19.
"You're not here to tell me how lucky I am, are you? Another inch, and the bullet would have hit my aorta, and I would have bled out before the paramedics arrived? God was watching over me?"
"Hell, no." Stacy recognized the voice...but...the guy slid his chair over to the bed with a loud screech. Pontius Gemstone, his friend from the Salvation Center. Well, not really a friend: he saw Pontius at church and at the skate park, but they had only spoken two or three times. "I'm here to tell you to get well, so I can get back to watching you wipe out your ass on the tail slides."
"Har-har, big joke. Dude, you know you're a wannabe mobber. Just wait til I get back to that skatepark." He hadn't realized how much he missed skating, and jamming about skating.
Pontius grabbed Stacy's free hand and pressed it against his own. "I brought you some chocolate Turtles, 'cause you know, you're into lizards, but they accidentally got eaten in the car on the way over."
"Jackass!"
He laughed. Stacy felt surprisingly happy to see him. His brash, no-nonsense attitude was the perfect remedy to a week of "God had his hand on you!"
"I wanna know what it was like to work for Jeffrey Dahmer. Did Cobb like, give you body parts to feed to the gators?"
"It was weird. I liked working at the Gator Farm. Cobb was so nice to me, always asking about my classes and the Salvation Center, and all the time he was killing people, and he kept that guy Big Dick as a sex slave, like five feet from where I was mopping the floor."
"Yeah, dude, if you knew, you could have splattered the mother-f*cker!"
"Hey, do you think he was asking so many questions because he was keeping tabs on your Grandad?"
"Probably. Seems like every year, some guy pops up with a grudge against my Grandad, the World Famous Eli Gemstone or whatever." He reached up and squeezed Stacy's left shoulder. "Does this hurt?'
"No. I was shot in my right..."
"How about this?" He moved his hand down to Stacy's crotch and squeezed.
"Hey, knock it off!"
"Just checking to see if your junk still works. Scoot over." Pontius slid onto the bed next to him, so their thighs and legs were touching, and grabbed the tv remote. "You get any porn on this thing?"
"I don't think you're supposed to do that."
"So call a nurse and complain."
Stacy had never sat pressed against someone before, except maybe his brother when they were little. He dated a couple of girls, back before he figured out that he was gay, but they never did any hugging, just handshakes and goodnight pecks. He had been with two guys, but they were just hookups, unzip, suck, and don't say hello in the hallway the next day. Was this what having a boyfriend felt like? Were they cuddling?
Wait -- wasn't Pontius straight?
Pontius was casually clicking on the remote as if the closeness didn't bother him at all. Flustered, Stacy tried to think of something simple to talk about. "Did you know that your Grandad visits me every day? Your brother Gideon has been by, and Kelvin..."
Uh-oh, Pontius took that as an accusation. "I would have come before, but I've been busy. Gideon is starting a new Christian-themed skatepark. I'm going to be the manager." He stopped on Spongebob Squarepants, then put down the remote and took Stacy's hand. Their fingers interlocked.
They watched in silence for a few minutes.
"This is nice," Stacy said.
Pontius started to blush, a reddening in his neck and face. "Yeah, well, touching a dude is good for healing, or some New Age bullshit."
He had a thin, tight frame, small hard biceps, some cool tattoos, and the most beautiful hands. Why had Stacy never thought of asking him out?
Reason #1: Stacy was a straight-A student at the College of Charleston, a biology major, planning to become a herpetologist. And Pontius was kind of a screw-up. Fun to hang out with, but no goals, no future. Wait -- managing a Christian-themed skate park?
Reason #2: Wasn't he straight?
"I've seen this episode," Pontius complained. Let's find some chicks, or some dicks." He clicked until he found a soap opera with a shirtless hunk sitting on a couch. "Awright! Check out those pecs! Man, I'd love to be working on those."
"I thought you were...you know...you like girls."
Pontius laughed, then lay his head on Stacy's shoulder. "Dude, you are adorable. I like pussy, but who's gonna say no to a cock? I went down on half the cadets at the Citadel, and the other half went down on me. Sometimes they wanted me to screw them while they screwed their girls, or the other way around."
Casually outing himself as bi? No long, angst-ridden conversation? Stacy was astonished, but strangely, not at ease. Reason #3: Pontius was a player. Whatever was going on here, it wasn't real.
"I'm gay...."
"Well, duh. That's obvious, Stace. Everybody knows. My grandmother knows, and she's not even alive."
"So...if you knew, and you like guys, why haven't you ever asked me out?"
More after the break. Caution: Explicit
Only then did Stacy realize that they were not alone. Jesse Gemstone, the senior pastor at the Salvation Center. was standing in the doorway, staring at his son's erection. He was holding a Bible wrapped in a red ribbon.
Stacy quickly sat up in bed. Pontius had already swallowed, but he made a show of swallowing again. "Hi, Dad." He returned to his chair and grabbed Stacy's arm. "Have you met my boyfriend?"
Boyfriend? So this was real after all?
"So," Mr. Gemstone said slowly, "I have a gay brother, Kelvin, and two gay sons, Gideon and Pontius..."
"I'm bi, if you want to label it."
"Figures." He walked over to the bed and held out his hand for Stacy to shake. "Welcome to the family, Son. A little warning -- it only gets crazier."
Pontius lay his head on Stacy's shoulder. "Don't listen to him. We're so normal, it's sickening. Well, except for Uncle Baby Billy..."
See also: Gemstones Episode 4.8: We finally see Big Dick Mitch, the Boy Named Stacy, a serial killer, and a lot of tied-up guy
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