Nowhere Man - 5. Chapter 5: Stars

They say that in the split second before you die, that your entire life flashes before your eyes. Right before you kick the bucket and fly away to the next life, everything you’ve ever done appears in an instant. I sat in the passenger’s seat, waiting for my life to flash before me.

It never did.

“What is this?” I asked, picking out of the one million questions that went through my mind.

He looked at the revolver and the metal glisten off what was left of the sunlight. “What does it look like?”

“It looks like a gun,” I said.

“Well then, that’s probably what it is,” he said, coolly. “Now what about that flask?”

I felt really stupid. Here was a guy who lived and traveled alone. Of course he’d have protection. He wasn’t trying to kill me.

I missed the Tyler that didn’t talk much. At least that Tyler didn’t make me feel stupid.

We drove on for another hour, three hours in total since we’d left, and I realized we were in the middle of Nowhere, East Texas, population two. Tyler pulled off the road and onto an even smaller one. A few miles later, turned into a park that looked like it hadn’t been visited in years. We drove into a clearing just big enough for a truck and a tent, with trees covering 80 percent of the clearing and a path between two trees that led down a hill.

When I gazed upon the landscape, I felt nervous. This was the perfect secluded place to shoot someone. No one would ever hear the gun shot or my screams. We hadn’t been parked for more than twenty seconds before the uneasiness started to wear me out.

“You don’t plan on shooting me do you?” I asked. I couldn’t help but feel like a lamb being led to the slaughter. I had to make sure. He had practically kidnapped me with his magnetism and now we were in the middle of the wilderness. He’d brought me so far away from home, but I was still stuck nowhere.

“Shit, you’ve got an imagination on you,” he said opening the door to the truck and stepping out. He reached into the cab and pulled out a large hiking back pack and a styrofoam cooler with a red handle. As I walked two steps behind him down the trail, barely able to see his back in the wooded darkness, I heard a click, saw a light and then smelled the smoke of a Marlboro Red.

Every sound made me nervous. Every branch click under my foot made me jump inside. Every owl hoot and holler made me look up into the trees. Every rustle made me wince. I was a jumping mess.

“Where are we going?” I asked impatiently after we’d walked for twenty minutes, steadily downward. I didn’t think it was too much to ask.

“You got somewhere to be?”

“No, I just—“

“Then relax,” he said. “Here.” He paused for a second, handing me a can of beer. He cracked one open for himself, and then continued down the path.

His pace was confident, but not fast. Steady, without being hasty. As we walked deeper and deeper, the woods created a dark coverage and the sky disappeared completely. I could only see as far as my leader’s back.

“I was leading a boy through the woods once,” he began singing out of nowhere. I knew from the first line that it was another of his made up songs. “He kept asking me where we were goin’. I told him he’d know just as soon as we got there, and kept on down without slowin’.”

I was proud that his songs were beginning to rhyme. This was a slight improvement from the last one.

“I gave him a drink just to hush him up, ‘cause the sound of his voice hurt the peace. As we got ever closer to destination nowhere, I hoped he’d just hush and trust me.”

My beer was almost empty and I thought about throwing it at him. He was making fun of me and there was nothing I could do about it. He switched to a higher register and a different key for the next part of the song.

“Follow the Nowhere Man, follow him where he goes, follow him where he leads. He won’t lead you astray, so stay on the path, and he’ll take care of all of your needs.” He repeated the chorus, and I joined in with the lower harmony.

He handed me another beer. We were going to be drunk before we even got to reaching our destination. He sang another verse about the Nowhere Man, me coming in to help with the chorus. Four beers and thirty minutes later, Tyler stopped abruptly. I almost walked into him, but stopped just in time, waiting for him to move. Instead, he finished his fourth can of beer, tossed it and knelt down.

“You wanted to know where we’re going,” he said. “This is it.”

I noticed that we were in a clearing. The trees had opened up from the path and created a semi-circle of knee-length grass and wild flowers. The reason I hadn’t noticed we were out of the woods was because it had grown so dark while we were walking, my eyes thought we were still under the cover of trees. One look at the sky told me otherwise. There were a million stars, each one glistening, but all of them working together to create a glowing picture. Ahead, reflecting the millions of little stars, was a jet black lake, rippling calmly for as far as the eye could see. I took the whole thing in, interrupted only by the sound of another can of beer opening and Tyler standing next to me.

Romantic.

“How’d you find a place like this?” I asked.

“You got a quota of questions you’re trying to reach today, or something?” He asked, setting about to juge the camp together. The first thing down was a sleeping bag. I noticed two things about it; it was oversized and official, maybe Army issue. I also noticed that there was only one.

Tyler walked up to the water’s edge and scooped water into the cooler. I wondered how full the cooler was, but I knew this Boy Scout was adequately prepared.

A few minutes later, the camp was ready. To one side of the sleeping bag, he’d built a fire while I dragged a log big enough for the two of us to sit on. He put rocks around the fire and the sleeping bag a few feet away from the rocks. The cooler was within reach of the log and the sleeping bag, with at least a dozen beers floating inside. There was a handle of gin and more in the bag. When we were done, we sat facing the fire, passing the gin between us.

“I used to come to this place with my wife,” he said out of the blue. I had been too nervous to ask any questions since he had scolded me about it. “This is my first time back since she died.”

He sat with his elbows on his thighs, looking deeply into the fire. He opened up to me, and I felt bad for questioning his motives earlier.

“How long ago was that?” I asked, realizing I didn’t even know how old he was.

“369 days,” he replied. His wife had been gone for a little more than a calendar year. In fact, I thought, the first day Tyler came to my trailer, had been the anniversary of her death. Since he was in an answering mood, I decided to ask something else.

“How’d she die?”

He raised his head slowly and glared at me.

“God took her,” he said. He stood up and walked away from the fire towards the lake. I gave him his space but watched him stand there, tall and lean. The embers created a silhouette that was equal parts saddening and attractive. “You wanna go for a swim?” he asked me loudly. Before I could answer, he had his shirt off. I followed suit.

His pants were next, followed by his boxer shorts. He picked up the bottle and ran towards the water, hollering loudly as he went. He surprised me with the change in mood, but I decided not to question it, and joined him in the lake.

I swam straight to him and could barely see the contours of his face in the dark, but I knew he was there. He offered me the bottle and I took another swig.

“How long have you known you were queer?” he asked me as we waded around. The water wasn’t deep. I crouched down and allowed it to wash over me.

“I think the sensitive ones prefer homosexual these days,” I replied.

“Well I asked you,” he said, leaning back, stretching his arms out wide and completing one large backstroke that took him a few yards away from me. I swam towards him and when we’d settled in water too deep to stand, I replied.

“I guess I’ve always known. I never really tried to make it past kissing with girls.”

“I’ve never kissed a guy,” he said. Here we were again playing the “What Does Tyler Want Me To Do” guessing game. Last time he’d talked like this, he wanted me to blow him. “Is it different?”

I didn’t confess that I’d only been kissed by one guy. A rodeo clown.

“You could see for yourself if you would just ask,” I said, trying not to sound irritated. He waded closer to me and stopped just inches away from my face. We were too deep in the water to stand, and our heads bobbed close together.

“If I don’t like this, we never do it again, okay?” he said. His eyes were large and boring into mine. It was the first time that his question had actually sounded like a question and not a simple command. I respected that.

He leaned in to me, pulled my body close to his and kissed me softly at first, almost like he was asking my lips a question. He wasn’t sure exactly what to do. I opened my mouth up just a little, as if I was asking him for permission to taste him. He did the same and our tongues touched, tentatively at first and then more aggressively.

His tongue was long and warm. It danced around my mouth like it was looking for something; like an insect using its antenna to digest flavors of something unknown.

I don’t know how long we swam, giving the stars a free show, but I certainly enjoyed it. I reached out slowly and hugged Tyler. Being larger than him, it was easy for me to pull him into my body and the moment we touched, I felt his rock hard dick graze against my outer thigh.

Emboldened, I reached down and grabbed it. Shaking, I wrapped my fingers around his tent pole. He made no objection, and instead, let out a soft moan. I kissed him harder and squeezed his dick firmer.

I decided to be even bolder. I took my hand off his Johnny Appleseed and reached for the hand he was using to pull my head into him. I pulled his hand down into the water and guided it down my body and to my crotch. I pulled his fingers around my dick, feeling the warmth of his hand envelope me, and I squeezed both of our hands around me.

As soon as Tyler squeezed my dick, it was like I’d flipped a switch. He pushed me backwards, took two strokes towards the shore and by the time I realized what was happening, I could only make out his silhouette walking back towards the camp.

I had made a huge mistake pushing him too far. I’d made a huge mistake coming out here in the first place. This was a total disaster and I couldn’t escape it. How the fuck was I supposed to get home?

When I got back to the camp, Tyler had calmed down, but was still visibly disturbed. I guess he was ready to kiss me, but not touch me. Would he ever be able to touch me?

I sat down next to him on the log, took out a beer and handed it to him. He looked at it for a long time before he grabbed it from my hand and opened it.

“Why’d you bring me out here?” I asked.

“More goddamn questions,” he replied. The even tone he normally maintained had grit to it now. It was aggressive. “You wanna fucking know why I brought you out here? You fucking queer, you wanna know? I have no fucking clue.”

His words frightened me almost as much as his unpredictability. I braced myself for a punch. I could handle a punch.

“I didn’t mean to piss you off,” I said, hoping an apology would diffuse the situation.

“Well don’t mean for a million bucks next time,” he replied, spitting in the opposite direction.

I sat silently, watching the fire dance. This was by far the most awkward situation I’d been a part of. I started to wish he had brought me out here to kill me; at least then I wouldn’t be sitting here wondering why he was so angry at me. This was ten times worse than the vomiting incident; I couldn’t go back to my trailer.

“I want you to blow me again,” he said, just as the silence was getting excruciating.

“What?” I asked, surprised by the blatant request. A minute ago, he’d pushed me away and now he wanted me to give him head? I realized my frustration with him was stemmed from the fact that I couldn’t predict anything about him. He was like a song with no melody, jumping from line to line. It terrified me.

“Did you leave your ears in the lake?” he asked, rudely. The grit was still in his voice; he was still upset. He didn’t want me to blow him because he wanted it; he wanted me to blow him so that he could feel in control again. Kissing me had taken away his control.

“No,” I said. He whipped his head toward me, harboring a fierceness in his eyes. I wasn’t scared because it didn’t look dangerous. It looked vulnerable.

“Kiss me again,” I said in the same commanding tone he had used on me.

“Fuck that,” he replied. He walked away and I followed him.

“Kiss me again,” I repeated.

“Leave me alone.”

“You want me to blow you, then kiss me again.”

“You fags are always trying to turn people,” his words were biting. He shifted his weight, and I knew I’d pushed a button. He turned around and gazed at me with the same vulnerability as before. “This is just so that I can get a blow job and go to bed, okay?”

He leaned in and kissed me again. I allowed him all the control he wanted. After making out for a few minutes, he mimicked the move I’d tried on him and brought my hand down to his dick. I pulsed it a couple of times, and each time, his kiss got more aggressive. His dick was the hardest I’d ever felt in my hand.

He moaned as my pulsing turned into stroking. I used his own free-flowing precum to slick my hand back and forth effortlessly. We didn’t release lip-contact once as I jacked him off until he came buckets on the side of my hand.

As soon as he was done shooting his load up and down my arm, he pulled back and mumbled something like, “Sorry about that,” and turned around. I walked to the water and washed my arm, flicking it dry as I walked back to camp. Tyler was already under the covers with his hands behind his head, looking up at the million stars.

“Can I join?” I asked, standing above him. He looked up at me and traced my entire body with his eyes. He didn’t say anything as he turned away and opened the bag to me.

I slid in, instantly warm. A minute later, as if he wasn’t already full of adequate surprises, I felt him turn towards me. I felt him breathe warmly on my back for a second and then, as if he was gearing up to rip a band-aid, he wrapped his arm around me. A few minutes later, he did what would prove impossible for me to accomplish for the rest of the night.

He fell asleep.