Flight (revised and expanded)

After some brief editing and rearranging, I've added to the story I started some time ago.

Hope some of you enjoy reading this...the next installment promises to involve pup/latex 'fun'; this is a kind of counterpoint, to help establish plot and psychological tension.

~~~~~

Flight

(noun) The act or an instance of escaping, as from confinement or difficulty.



He had wholly lost his natural self. He wanted to empty his mind of his day to day life, which meant absolutely nothing, a series of dull steps; bills, jobs, shirts, ties, meetings, office talk about neighbors, houses, kids, the pretense of it all. If he carried on like this he was going to die. One turn of the wheel in his tiny Chevy Metro on the highway, off the overpass, into a semi-truck would work. Or the feeling he got as the Amtrak express train went by at the DC station, the rush of wind, the weight of the cars shaking the platform like nerves. The thoughts kept crossing his mind like static on a radio.

Wesley had wanted to become a dog for some time. To lose himself to this simpler being. It had taken months to let go of the fears that held him back from his own desires. The fear of what though? Here he was, an atheist, who listened to NPR, who used to have a Mohawk, a scrappy iconoclast. Why should he feel anything even close to fear over the sexual? He’d spent countless hours looking at boys online in their pup gear, begging, being petted, their butts in the air. Tail plugs wagging. The images held him in a state of near hypnosis. He’d ordered his pup mask, paws, a tail, and a full rubber suit, waiting. A few more days, with any luck. He wasn’t sure how this would feel, to be wholly encased in the second skin of some cybernetic seeming dog, but he grew hard thinking of it, and the feeling sustained him.

~

As a child, on 300 acres in far northwest Michigan, Wesley spent hours each day exploring the woods with his best friend, a dog. He had no brothers, no sisters, his parents often worked late. He did not care for school, did not run fast nor could he hit baseballs, or any other kind of ball, for that matter. He would rather sneak out into the woods, past the playground with a friend, and look for wild mushrooms, or ferns, and take off his shoes and walk up the stream-bed, feeling the gravel and the mud between his toes. He would stare out the windows of the classrooms with their flickering fluorescent pallor and smell of sour milk counting down the hours until he got off the bus and his big dog would run down the driveway to him, jump up on his shoulders, taller than he was, and shower him with kisses until he pushed him down, his tail wagging, his entire body a spasm of welcome and joy. Rex, a Collie-Malamute mix, was a mutt that had arrived on their porch one day, and his main companion. He saw more of the dog than most people.

Wesley would go inside, make a snack, then set out to the woods until his parents got home. They set out through the fields to the tree-line, past the garden, down the overgrown two-track, through the blackberry bushes to the big sand-hill. He’d lay there high up, looking up at the sky. In the spring, after the snow melted, he loved to trek through the marshes and stream-bed, coming home all muddy, smelling of musk and water. His dog always followed close beside him. Without friends in walking distance, or a brother, he was in the habit of talking to the dog, telling him his problems, sometimes crying, the dog looking back with sad eyes, head cocked. Sometimes, a pheasant would fly up in front of them and they would both jump in unison, as if tuned to the same set of vibrations. Once, they came upon a badger near dusk, lumbering along the path, which stopped and looked at them with its odd pointed head, and bared its teeth. The dog growled back, and they all stood frozen: the badger showed no sign of backing down. He grabbed the dog’s collar, and took off running in the opposite direction, seized with a strange fear. The image had stayed with him all his life, the small, fierce animal confronting them like some threshold he knew not to cross.

. . . . . . . .

But now his days all went the same: the alarm clock rang, a shower or no shower, depending on how long he lie there not caring to wake, the hour drive to work, the eight hours at the desk, another hour for lunch, the hour drive home. It was dark by then. He seldom spent any time outdoors anymore, a few hours wedged in here and there on weekends, the trees, the grass, the sky and stars had all collapsed to a very small box, the four walls of his apartment, a memory from childhood, dust.

Wesley sat in his car daydreaming, head cocked to one side to see why traffic had come to a total stop. He sat there in the heat, breathing in exhaust fumes amidst the rumbling engines, and closed his eyes: He was no longer near to the wild heart of nature, but in a place from which he needed to flee.

~

Twenty minutes later, he started to move, one lane passing by on the shoulder of the BW Parkway, squeezed so close against the emergency vehicles, you couldn’t help but notice the body being lifted into the ambulance. And yet he felt nothing seeing the blotched, red pavement, after seven years of the same drive: Just another accident, one in which you were not involved. Not responsible. Just one more thing in the way. An officer waved some of the people who were taking their time to stare along; on the other side, the road lay open and clear. Wesley shifted though the gears as quickly as he could: even his little car could give you a jolt, if you gunned it hard enough.

Another half hour, and he was almost home, just a few miles though city streets now. But as merged onto MLK, the traffic came to a standstill at the second light: water-main break. "Fuck!", he said out loud, and pounded the wheel. Every fucking day, it was something different. The fan didn't work nor did the AC, and stopped in the 90 degree heat, he felt almost delirious. He tapped a small, yellow pill from a bottle labeled ‘Diazapam’, into his palm, popped it into his mouth, and let it dissolve; he had become oddly fond of the bitter, chalky taste.

How would you describe the place he lived? An old brick warehouse overlooking the north-south highway, the tall buildings, high up over the city, crumbly, artist spaces, loft spaces, but not fancy like in New York. Cement floors, bands played in the building, students from the art college lived there, as did aging hippies, punks and other oddballs. It had a certain reputation for being wild, though that was less so as time had gone on. Still, some big parties on the top floor continued, and as he walked in he was reminded of how these kids needed to learn to use a toilet or an alley, as opposed to the stairwell; it smelled like a zoo in the heat and humidity, mingled with smoke and stale beer. Tomorrow, they’d wash it down with bleach, hose it down, metal and concrete; he felt this was what they must do to clean prisons. But for all that, it held a certain charm, he had friends there, he could be as wild as he might be, and not get in trouble, and in some sense it was a place where the young and innocent went to get into trouble. This gave him a certain thrill, to live in a building with such a storied reputation.

Wesley lived on the 5th floor, and decided to take the freight elevator: more fun, that way. You could watch as the floors went by; he liked how it was an open cage. You could see the enormous gears turning, and the huge cables.

It let him out in the next section of the building over. He had to take a detour though a common area to reach his place. These units shared bathrooms and showers; mostly students from the art college lived here, using the big open space to display sculptures, or hold art openings. And once in a while, boys would flit from the showers, back to their rooms, like shy birds.

As he began to daydream, a short, thin boy stepped out in front of him, dripping wet, wrapped in a small towel, black spiky hair, dark eyes, and as Wesley said hello out of politeness, their eyes met briefly, and they both blushed. He’d seen him out at a few shows; he had high cheekbones, and a boyish smile; Wesley thought this was what Franz Kafka would have looked like, if he had smiled more often. Probably straight. That was the case in 99% of the times he found a male attractive: gay stereotypes put him off, and going to a gay bar left his cock as flaccid a saggy, partially deflated balloon, so he seldom went. He'd had only a few chance encounters with boys from the art school, whom he had met at hipster dive bars, and indie rock shows. This boy didn't look 21; maybe he had a fake ID. Wesley thought with a smile that he still got carded, even at 35. As he neared the the corridor from which his own loft-space was attached, he looked back, and saw the boy quickly turn his head. Had he still been staring? Wesley felt his heart quicken, and a gentle warmth spread outward though his limbs.


~

To be continued...

S. Pea, Malamute, 2010-2013