*****
He pulls his pickup truck into the rest stop. It’s one in the morning on a weeknight. The rest stop isn’t a happenstance place where he’s stopping to catch some sleep before moving on. It’s his destination.
Nobody else is there yet. But another truck that had been behind him on the highway pulls in after him. He ducks his head, prays to God for forgiveness, then flashes his lights. A specific sequence of shorts and longs, signaling what he’s here for: signaling generally, and then more particularly, what he’s here for. A sequence he now knows intimately. A sequence he sometimes has nightmares about.
The truck behind him flashes back.
He gets out of his truck, goes into the men’s room, walks over to the metal sink. He bends over it, braces himself with his hands. He waits. He tries to pretend that he isn’t here for what he’s here for; that he’s just pulling over at a rest stop to wash his face, and that what’s about to happen will be a shock, nothing he planned for, against his will. The fact that he has inserted lube into his asshole with a syringe makes this pretense impossible. He waits.
The man walks in behind him.
*****
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The sad thing is, there are a lot of men exactly like the POV character: True Believers who live deep in the closet and visit truck stops and sex club in a shame spiral of desperation and self-loathing. I’d like to think this guy at least takes precautions against STIs, but if the story is reasonably realistic….
Gregory in Seattle @ #1: I think if you read the story, you’ll like where it ends up.
@Greta #2 – Feh. I wasn’t going to buy the book — you are an awesome writer, but the material isn’t really my cup of chai — but dang it all, now I’m going to have to.
This was an incredibly poignant story. I definitely liked where it ended.