— Previously published in Honcho magazine - October, 1995 —

— The hidden talents of housepainters —

Three young painters had come to re-stain the oak trim on the condo. So, I'd have about a two-week private showing, if it didn't rain. From my living room window on the second floor, I checked them out. Not too promising. From this far away, they looked shapeless and grungy in their splattered white jumpsuits.

But who was I to be picky? I was thirty-two and still a virgin. I went down to take them cans of soda.

Ruggero, the oldest, probably in his late twenties, was the job boss. He was deeply tanned, had long black hair, a pirate mustache outlining cherry-red lips, and a grin like a bayonet. Scrubbed up and properly clipped, I thought in my hyper-snotty way, he would be rather attractive. What was I talking about? I was so rattled by his green eyes that I almost pissed in my pull-on navy-striped gauze pants.

Up on the ladder, Elmo, the middle one, looked like a skinhead. On ground level I saw he had about a quarter-inch of brown hair and a ring in his ear. In facial appearance, he put me in mind of a skinny Tommy Smothers, with the same tiny pout about the thin lips, but differing in his goat eyes. At first he seemed reserved, almost unfriendly, but that was a wrong impression. The second day when I came down with the sodas, I heard him singing to himself in a falsetto. He was so delighted with the free drinks that he turned giddy. I felt his dry, thin fingers on the back of my hand as he accepted the can, and thought to myself there were worse conditions than celibacy.

Alfy was the youngest and by far the cutest. He had wavy red hair, parted in the middle and cut in the current teenage style; i.e., practically shaved up to the crown with the top jutting out like an ill-fitting wig. He could get away with it, though few others could. His face was boyish, open, and startled, rather like Mickey Rooney's as a teenager. Freckled. A slightly turned-up nose. Naturally, I began to fantasize what his body looked like under the floppy jumpsuit, and how he'd be in bed.

I ingratiated myself with all of them, bringing down the drinks just when I thought they'd be driest. When it came time to varnish the front doors, I knocked myself out being helpful. The problem was that the owners in our condo are mostly absentee-rich people who live elsewhere most of the time and come to this beach-side town, if at all, on weekends. They leave their keys with me, some of them. I did a lot of long-distance phoning (on my bill) to get their okays to leave doors open the four or five hours necessary for drying.

The guy I looked for each day was Alfy. The weather warmed up, and he came one day in a T-shirt. As he worked on the other wing of the building, I had a lovely view of him from my widows. Each time he stretched, the T-shirt, which had gotten free of his pants, would flare up, baring his slim waist and the crinkled waistband of white boxer shorts. I wanted him.

Even so, things might not have turned out as they did if Ruggero hadn't asked one morning to use my phone to call his boss. Sure, I said, without thinking what might be lying around the living room. I felt a chill go down my arms when I came in and saw the April "swimsuit" issue of Torso on the coffee table, while Ruggero stood phoning at a nearby table. If the title didn't mean anything to him, the bare-chested guy on the cover certainly spoke clearly of where I was coming from.

I searched his face later, hoping not to seem to. His manner hadn't changed. Neither did that of the younger boys, so I supposed he kept the information to himself. They were respectful, not overly friendly, obviously conscious that I was the customer and needed a certain amount of sucking up to. Yeah, Ruggero probably hadn't told them. Yet I felt pretty sure he'd seen the magazine and that the wheels must be turning in his head.

I prayed for a hot day, and it came. From my air-conditioned unit, I watched through my binoculars as, first Ruggero, then Elmo and, after so much tantalizing delay that I almost missed lunch, Alfy pulled off their shirts.

Ruggero had a lot of black chest hair, as his forearms had suggested. I could imagine burying my face in it, smelling his sweat. He wasn't unusually muscular, but there was a wiry hardness about his torso that made me think he was strong. He had a tattoo on his right bicep, something with a ribbon going diagonally across it.

Elmo was, as I already knew, thin as a pancake. His ribs showed. His pale skin contrasted with his sunburned face. My sex-meter didn't respond very strongly as I contemplated his bony frame.

But Alfy's bod had it clicking like a Geiger counter smelling cosmic rays. His fresh, young torso was my ideal of the high school swimmer's-pink-skinned, hairless, softly but substantially muscled, narrow at the hips and long-waisted, with carved pecs and tits like half-ripe cranberries. You wanted to lick all the indentations where one muscle defined itself from another. His spinal groove left about two fingers of space where it disappeared into the waistband of his pants. In the otherwise tight fabric, I needed no imagination to picture his bare butt. Each bun would be a firm, round muskmelon. I wanted him so bad!

Even so, I might not have made a move on him, if I hadn't seen Elmo slip his right hand between Alfy's thighs from the rear, as they stood on two ladders side by side. Alfy didn't flinch, and Elmo ran his index finger up the butt-crack and up the spinal valley I'd just been exploring mentally. He reached the younger boy's neck and flicked the gathered sweat onto the side of his face. Alfy, who had let all that happen, turned toward him and gave him a fuck you sign.

So he wasn't as innocent as I had feared. Make your move, Charlie, I told myself, and immediately fell into a cold panic.

Around three o'clock, when I knew they would be cleaning up to leave for the weekend, I just had to do something. I put on my thinnest T-shirt to show off my pecs and tits, and a loose pair of powder-washed blue-denim wrap pants to camouflage my erection. I loitered around where they were piling the ladders, and when I saw Alfy alone I motioned him aside. I was petrified, but it was a case of shit or get off the pot.

I asked him if he'd stay behind a few minutes--I had some work I wanted to discuss with him. He looked more startled than ever, glanced toward the others, said he and they were all going back in the same truck, and they wanted to get away as soon as possible. I'd drive him home, I told him. Looking cornered, he said okay. I didn't stick around to see how the others took it, but went on up to my unit, shaken by my own chutzpah.

I was afraid he wouldn't come, and afraid he would. The doorbell rang. I froze for a moment and then opened the door, hardly able to speak. He'd put his shirt back on and was looking mousy. He seemed smaller now. The realization that I had him alone in my condo unit gave me equal surges of lust and fright.

My bedroom and study are down five steps from the foyer; the living room and kitchen are on the second floor, for the view of the ocean. I led him down to the study, knowing he'd assume wrongly that the bedrooms were upstairs and wouldn't be immediately nervous on that account.

He looked at me, obviously expecting me to tell him what additional job I had in mind. Now I could smell his sweat. It was the same clean, wild fragrance that had aroused me when I first wrestled in high school. It had haunted me ever since.

"How's about a beer?" I said, as offhandedly as I could. My hands were cold and trembling. God, I was so close to him!

"No, thanks," he said. Then, maybe feeling his thirst: "Uh, okay." He was probably figuring, well, these older guys have to do small talk before they talk business.

"Yeah," I said, "painting's dry work. Uh, why don't you, uh, go take a shower while I get it?" I'd said it! Abashed, I nodded across the hall to the bathroom.

He was looking at me incredulously.

"Go ahead," I said, thinking, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. I could see him posed between obeying and fleeing. "Go ahead," I repeated, more forcefully, feeling like a school teacher. "The beer will taste better when you feel clean."

Before he could answer, or see how jumpy I was, I turned and fled upstairs. When I came back down with two beers, the bathroom door was closed, and I could hear the shower.

I gave him about two minutes. Then I quietly opened the door. His shirt, jeans, boxers, socks and shoes were on the floor. I could see his blurred figure through the shower curtain. Oh, shit! In my tub! He was standing right under the shower. He was soaping his crotch. His dick hung maybe twenty degrees out from his thighs, about what I'd call healthy non-arousal in a raunchy nineteen-year-old. I took the damp clothes and slipped out. I opened the folding doors of the laundry room a few feet down the hall and dumped them into the washer. Before starting it up, I impulsively snatched out the boxers and pressed them to my nose. I staggered and almost fell, the aroma was so intoxicating. I set them aside. I decided to steal them.

The sound of the shower stilled. I heard the curtain rings scrape against the metal rod. There was an agonizing silence for two or three minutes. Then the door opened and Alfy stood there, naked, clutching a white towel to his middle. He looked good enough to eat, but his face was full of alarm. "Where's my fuckin' clothes?" he said, his voice going high and threatening, like a small kid who knows he doesn't have anything to back up the threat with.

"Relax," I said primly. "Your clothes are in the washer. You can put them on as soon as they're dry. Why put on dirty clothes?"

I could see he knew he was getting in deeper than he'd ever guessed. But he heard the washer, and I could see him resigning himself to waiting. With a charming lack of self-consciousness, he wrapped the towel around his waist, in the process not trying to hide his dick, which was smoothly cylindrical and gracefully knobbed. So his suspicions hadn't gotten so far as to fear I was going to come on to him.

I motioned him to the big, soft, black-leather recliner, where his knees were higher than his butt, so that there was a tantalizing possibility of a view up under the towel.

He took a dainty sip of the beer. "About the job?" he prompted.

I took a healthy swig of my brew. "Yeah," I said. "Well, it's, uh ... uh ... something I want you to do ..." He was frowning to make substance of what I was saying. I thought, I can abort this mission right now and I'm back on safe Mother Earth. Then I thought, No guts, no guy. "Or, more exactly," I went on, "something I want you to, uh, let me do."

I sank to my knees on the carpet in front of him and put my right hand casually between his legs on the recliner cushion, not touching him. He was in mid-sip. He stopped, froze. His eyes widened. He swallowed. "Unh-unh," he said, reddening, shaking his head and moving slightly as if to get up. In that slight movement my hand slipped under the towel and touched his warm, smooth inner thighs.

I leaned forward, the sides of my arms spreading his legs. Almost in a daze from the touch of cool, wet, firm skin, I managed an insincere chuckle. "You don't even know what I'm asking!" I said.

He gargled on a mouthful of beer. "You wanta blow me," he said accusingly.

"That's bad?" And with scarcely a pause: "There's a hundred bucks in it."

"I oughta-whip-your-butt." He enunciated each word, scowling. I bit my lower lip to keep from laughing. He was half my size. Why do straights always assume they can lick a gay? Then it sank in. I felt the tenseness in his thigh muscles relax. "A hundred bucks?" he sputtered. He was comparing those apples with the niggling wages of a day on the ladder.

I inched my hand farther into the dark, humid cave. He didn't jerk as my fingertips touched his balls. But my heart did. "A hundred bucks," I repeated, keeping my voice calm, though the top of my head seemed to be coming off. My cock was rigid. Thank God for the soft-washed denim. The straight-from-the-loom kind would have rubbed my poor peter raw.

I slipped my hand under his moist, hard-packed scrotum. He moaned slightly, and his thighs spread. His right hand went to his crotch and rubbed it, as his hips began to writhe. A pinnacle appeared in the towel. I took hold of the whole ball sack and tugged it gently, just enough to let him know I was boss, while with my left hand I took a wrapped condom out of my hip pocket. His hand closed around my wrist, but the grip was weak. "Oh-h-h-h," he keened softly.

I bit the cellophane open and squeezed the lubricated rubber out. "Strip," I told him, putting my obscene soul into the word. I wasn't going to have him play this "involuntarily."

His scared eyes met mine, blinked. Still holding my wrist with one hand, with the other he pulled the towel loose and off. Now he was totally nude. His rosy cock swung up like a pump handle. He was big-dicked, in the way that modern teenagers often are, as if they're higher in the evolutionary scale. I leaned forward and buried my nose in the wedge between his cock base and his in-tight balls. I heard his intake of breath. I took hold of his shaft with my left hand and began to lick it, going with broad strokes from the base to the scar of his circumcision.