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| Part 5 |
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| The night I found him was one of those awful gray rainy October days thatVermont produces with such regularity. The foliage season was pretty muchfinished, and most of the leaves had come down with the rain. I was drivingback from a conference in Boston. It was Tuesday. I was supposed to lead aworkshop at the University the next day, and I still had some preparation todo, so I was in a hurry. It was just dark, maybe six o'clock, and I wasgetting hungry. In Vermont when there is no moonlight and it is dark andwet and you are the only car on the road coming through the mountains it isvery dark. My eyes scanned the shoulder of the road on both sides, wherethe pavement met the trees, out of habit, watching for deer. This time ofyear the car accidents from hitting deer were legend. Even in my truck adeer could do a lot of damage. When my headlights caught his eyes I really thought he was a deer. I liftedmy foot off the gas to slow, trying to anticipate a sudden dart into theroad in front of me. I was past him before I realized he was a person. Hewas waving his arms wildly as I passed. I slammed on the breaks and skiddedonto the shoulder. I was out the door and running through the rain towardhim before I realized what I was doing." "Please," he screamed, "you've got to help me." He was sitting on theground, his legs splayed, gesturing wildly with his arms. "Are you all right?" I screamed back idiotically. I assumed he must havebeen hit by a car. I couldn't see any blood. "I think I've broken my ankle. I was hiking. I fell." His eyes were wide,dilated, and his voice was strained. "I'm in a lot of pain. I'm so gladyou stopped. I was afraid I'd be here all night. I can't walk anyfurther." He choked back a sob. "Oh Jesus." "You're going to be all right." I knelt down beside him. I could tellright off which leg was hurt. It wasn't laying right. "I don't know if Ishould move you. I should maybe call an ambulance. I have a phone in thecar." "No. Just help me into your truck. I've walked at least a mile on thisankle already. You can't possibly do any more damage. I think there'sbleeding inside. I know it's swollen bad in my boot. It's throbbingsomething awful. I'm cold and wet. Please." I backed my truck up as close as I could, to narrow the distance we had tomove him. As he reached up toward me I pulled him up, off the ground, andthrew my shoulder under his arm to support him. He moaned loudly as hemoved, the pain visible on his face. "Oh Jesus," he whistled. "Go slow. I think I might pass out." We movedwith small steps toward the open door of the truck, shifting his weight fromme to his good leg and back. I was half-carrying him, and he was carryinghis ankle and foot, gently. When we got up next to the truck I actuallycradled him in my arms and lifted him up into the cab, trying to ease himdown onto the seat as softly as I could, jostling his leg as little aspossible. Even so he cried out, and dug his fingers into my neck. I sethim in so his back was in the middle of the seat, and he was facing thepassenger door with his foot and ankle stretched out and nested against theangle where the back of the seat met the bench. It was only after I had set him down, and backed away, that I discovered tomy horror that I was achingly erect. I rearranged myself as best I could,trying to lodge the bulge in the folds of my jeans, and ran around the backof the truck to jump inside. "How far is it to the hospital?" he wanted to know as soon as I had startedthe engine. I hadn't really thought about it but I guessed that was wherewe were heading. "It's usually about forty or fifty minutes from here, but the rain is prettyheavy, so it might take us longer, an hour I guess." "I don't think I can make it," he announced. "Of course you'll make it. What are you talking about?" "My ankle really feels like it is going to explode. The pressure in my bootis getting worse and worse. I think I'm bleeding inside. I think we haveto get my boot off. I can't feel my toes anymore. You have to get thisboot off." I was trying to drive, and see the road through the rain, and watch his faceto see if I could tell how serious he was. He was very pale, and veryearnest, and the strain in his voice was plain. "I think your boot is supporting your ankle, maybe holding it together. Idon't think we should try to manipulate it. I don't want to make it worse.We're not that far away." "Pull over, there, at that rest area," he barked aggressively. It was acommand. I pulled over. "Maybe if we just loosen the laces it will feel better." My voice wasuncertain. "Let me take a look." I stopped the truck under the lone lightin the empty parking area. "You have to take the boot off." He was stern. There was no room to argue."I can't stand the pressure." I wondered if he was delusional. My cock was still raging and straining inmy pants, relentlessly hard. I ached. I came around the truck to see whatministry I could perform to ease the pain and pressure in his boot a bit sothat we could get him into Burlington and into the hospital. Gently Iloosened the laces, which were stretched taut over the top of the swollenjoint. "Yes," he whispered, closing his eyes, "yes." The boot camehalf-way up his shin, and I could see the dislocation of the bone inside hisshoe. It poked against the leather at an odd angle. Slowly I pulled thelaces out completely, pulling the tongue free. "I think we should leave it at that. That should give the joint some roomto expand. I'm afraid to try to pull your boot off." "No. My toes are numb and my foot aches something awful. I have to move mytoes. You're almost there. Just ease the boot off, over my heel." Hisvoice was softer, less manic. I braced one hand up under his calf, abovethe boot, and tried to pull the heel of the boot, slowly, with my otherhand. His eyes were closed and his teeth were clenched against theassault. I gently increased the pressure but nothing moved. He was silent,holding his breath. I decided that one clean sharp yank might do it. Irelaxed my grip on his heel for a moment and he opened his eyes. We lookedeach other square in the face for the first time. Our eyes locked. Iyanked as hard as I could and my hand came away with the boot. His screamcovered my own, blotted it out. He was screaming from the pain, the agony,the sudden attack on his senses. I was screaming a senseless adrenaline cryof sexual release as I came, gobbing jism in my pants, heaving from theeffort. Neither of us could stop screaming. We were like two startledpeople in a dark house, frightened to death by the unsuspected presence ofthe other. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I managed to finally blurt out over his cries. Hegrabbed my hand and squeezed, and pushed his face into the back of the seat,biting the vinyl. I could feel my sticky crotch beginning to drip, cold andwet. My aching erection had finally subsided. He seemed almost to bewhimpering, subdued, his bombast and command evaporated. Late in the afternoon on the day I returned his boot, and invited him tostay with me, I convinced a friend to drive me back up to the Long Looptrail-head parking lot, so that I could try to get Red's car. He had lefthis keys in his pack, which he had abandoned along the trail when he fell.The weather had been grim enough in the last 24 hours that he and I both hadsome hope that his pack and keys might still be lying along-side the trailwhere I could find them. My friend thought I was nuts, but he did walk withme into the woods, and about a mile up the trail we did find Red's muddypack, soaked through from the rain, and in the front pocket were the keys tohis Honda. The state police had ticketed his car for being parked illegally overnight.The car had Texas plates. I popped the hatch to throw his wet pack inside,and found a large overstuffed duffel, partially unzipped, and full ofclothes. Instinctively I dropped my face into the open bag and breatheddeeply to take in the smell of Red. There was a musky spicy aroma thatescaped from the clothes-- part soiled laundry and sweat, part dampness andmud, and in my imagination at least, part sex. It was a masculine smellthat filled my nose and led inevitably to that pleasant rush of blood thatengorged the pecker tucked in my pants. I was acutely aware that I wasviolating a privacy I had no right to violate, but couldn't stop myself allthe same. I rummaged through the duffel to see if I could find any clues atall about who Red was, but discovered only clothes-- jeans and t-shirts andsocks and underwear that seemed mostly to have already been worn. There wasa small blue canvas bag of toiletries which did include four plasticenvelopes with condoms inside. That discovery cheered me up, and emboldenedme. This man is at least prepared for the eventuality that he might havesex with someone. All is not lost, I thought. Driving back down the mountain into town in his little and unfamiliar car Itried to sort out in my mind just what was going on. Clearly I was becominginfatuated with this guy-- a person I knew virtually nothing about, least ofall whether he was sexually attracted to men. My best judgment on thiscount was that he was not. He seemed for all the world to be the definitionof a regular guy. He was physical, and athletic, and seemed to have acertain unselfconscious sensibility about him that was unusual. Still, thismorning standing in his hospital room, trying to hide my own half-hardnessby keeping my hands in my pockets, I had been fairly certain that I wastalking to a straight man. The only thing I had to go on at all, and theonly real hope I held out, was that awful and wonderful moment the nightbefore when we had stared directly into each others eyes, just before Ifinally managed to pull his boot off. I had a sense then that somehow hewas looking right into my soul. And then there was this constant erection that I seemed to have acquiredever since I stopped the car in the rain the night before. It was hard forme to sort out exactly what it was that was turning me on so completely.The image of a young guy with a broken leg or ankle swinging along in a castwith crutches under his arms had always been a sexy image to me. It wasbasically an attraction to athletes, and youth, and beauty, andvulnerability. Dissecting why exactly the image of a young man limpingalong on crutches was so hot for me was difficult to do, though I hadthought about it often. I had concluded that the image of the fallenathlete/fallen hero was at the root of things the most intensely eroticimage of all. I was turned on by the almost classical archetype of theinjured athlete or soldier being helped off the field by a comrade, leaningon a buddy for support. My earliest sexual memories, from age four or five,and throughout my childhood, were fantasies about having a friend with asprained ankle or a broken ankle, unable to walk, wincing from the intensepain, leaning on me for support, arm around my shoulder, injured leg bent atthe knee, unable to support any weight, my arm around his waist,half-carrying half-leading him off the field, home, where we could tend tohis injury. I was in touch enough with my emotions to be able to see that plainly in avery eerie way this was a childhood sexual fantasy come true. It spookedme, because I actually did believe that on some level you could make thingshappen if you imagined them clearly enough. I didn't think I had inventedRed, or that I had caused him to be hurt, but I did know that if you neverimagined something, never articulated to yourself your own desires, it wasnever likely to come about. So in some strange way I was living out somevery potent imagery that had animated my internal sex life ever since I wasa kid. But there was something more than this that I had not been in touchwith before. Last night on the side of the road in the rain there was nocast and no crutches and it wasn't my imagination but reality and thereality was Red's pain, and Red's pain had made me very hot, and that scaredme. I was getting off on Red's pain and I didn't know how to process thatrealization. |
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