somewhere for a nap. He tried one more time: “Here, kitty kitty.”
Very manly, he thought. You are the epitome of a manly man.
He chuckled and made a few more kissy noises. When she still didn’t come, he shrugged.
She’ll be waiting for you after your shower. And will probably appreciate the lack of that nostril-searing stench.
In the bathroom, he took the t-shirt off his shoulder, stripped out of his jeans, undies, and socks, and dropped the wad of dirty clothes in the hamper beside the toilet. He turned on the shower and stood naked before the mirror while the water warmed.
He’d cut his back on a protruding nail earlier in the day. The cut wasn’t bad, but he thought he probably ought to put some ointment on it anyway. No sense risking infection just to prove how tough he was and make up for the fact that he made kissing sounds at his cat. He stood with his back to the mirror, looking over his shoulder at the cut. Not bad at all. Just a nick. After the shower, he’d hunt down some anti-biotic cream. He looked into his reflected eyes. They shone out from amid the streaks of mud and sweaty sawdust. Blue. With a speckling of green. There had been women who referred to them as beautiful, mysterious, sexy, magical, and (his personal favorite) intoxicating.
Steam wafted out from behind the shower curtain. Bruce slid the plastic sheet aside and stepped in.
He stood beneath the spray, watching the grime sluice down his body and swirl toward the sucking drain, and thought (as he often did in the shower) of Eileen. The two of them had made a habit of showering together at night: him washing her back, her washing his, and then (more often than not) the washing leading to steamy bouts of lovemaking. Even now, he could still smell her shampooed hair, remember the taste of her just-soaped body, feel her wet legs around his waist and her pebbly nipples against his chest. Six month’s worth of dust there might be on her side of the vanity, but those shower memories were still fresh, vivid. By the time he’d washed away most of the day’s dirt and sweat, he was rock hard.
His erection jutted from his pubic thatch, throbbed. He wrapped his fingers around the shaft and gave it what it wanted. Gave himself what he wanted.
It didn’t take long.
When the convulsions came, thick wads of semen erupted from his penis. Some of the fluid splattered against the wall and oozed down to the edge of the tub. The rest dripped to the bathmat between his feet and stuck there despite the surrounding currents of water. He continued stroking for just a little bit longer, closed his eyes, braced himself against the wall, and waited for his shivering body to settle. The fuzzy current of pleasure electrified his mind, replaced his thoughts with an incoherent jumble. Things cleared (eventually), and he opened his eyes.
He used the side of his foot to slide the dollop of sperm from the bathmat to the drain. Then he reached down to pull the clinging streamers from between his toes. These bits he flicked in the drain’s general direction. The shower would wash it all down. Let the water do its job. When he had finished the clean-up, he stopped and listened for a moment.
Sucking. Was that sucking he heard?
He eyed the tub’s drain, thought the water seemed to swirl around it a little more quickly than usual, thought the sound of the water slipping into the plumbing below had intensified somehow, become a sucking, slurping sound. A strand of semen came unstuck from the tub’s floor and spun into the black, guzzling hole.
You’re insane, he thought. And of course that was true. Had to be. His aunt, upon catching him in the act in her guest bathroom during a family picnic one summer, had told him he’d go crazy if he touched himself too often. Maybe she’d been right.
He lathered his entire body with soapy layers of Irish Spring, rinsed off, repeated, and repeated again. Sawdust could be a bitch to get off. If he didn’t overshower,
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