| About the Author |
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Rick Austin has published fiction in A&U Magazine, 14 Hills and The Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly. Last year, he received a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center and fiction awards from The Stonewall Foundation (San Francisco) and A&U Magazine. Nuvein Magazine hopes you enjoy his fiction work flux, exclusively published in Nuvein.
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Like a moth pinned to a bit of balsa wood: shudder and squirm at the force of his implement – heft and tempo – how beautiful, how stunning; precision and intention and sweat and the bitter, spicy scent of my overwrought, elastic fundament.
Madness follows plenty: mouth open, shut eyes; clench, reach, grip the folds above his hips. A sheath of latex makes us distinct. I know a dose of spit is trapped beneath the sheath; it mingles with the slime that travels from a vesicle inside of him, under the source of his heat.
I open my eyes.
The spit and slime will lubricate his glans: a facsimile, a poor impersonation of my intestinal walls. He’s hard anyway, thick and heavy at the sight of me below him: I am unravelling. There’s more to this than skin, pressure, puncture.
He will solve me.
More slime travels through a duct, oozes through his urethra, passes around the glans, over a ridge of fiery nerves. In this clear medium a poison too small to be seen is conveyed. It has a birthday, like need and supplication. He said, I think it happened back in 89.
He picked me up and carried me down the hallway, ducking under the transom. I was very small: a man stood over me in swimming trunks, he picked me up, held me against his chest. Come on little man; you’re not that lost. He leans forward, digging deeper, fucking like he’s going to pull up something shining and precious; wraps his mouth around my left tit, sucks, chews the purple flesh, gnashes his teeth on the swollen nub.
A sound like waking from a nightmare fills the room. The tragus of my left ear tickles; a tear rolls off its edge and falls into the shallow shell. I make the sound again, I wake up again. He kisses my wet cheek, my ear, speaks – a rumble from the base of his throat: You’re a good man. I fill my nose with him – salty, moist, the scent from his skin is slight, I can barely smell the furry crooks of his armpits.
To ward off bacterial infections, he eats antibiotics every morning. They diminish him, they eliminate the hosts that thrive in his corners. His breath is a stutter. My heart catches on a root and staggers. Across a swelling throng I saw his shoulder, his neck, the curve of his nose, green eyes.
What’s in a wink?
He leans back, tilts his chin forward, spits into his heavy hand and closes it around my rigid cock. A charge is transmitted from tip to spine to brain. Over their heads I waved backwards – a child from a passenger window – the hand means bye-bye or hello. We’re very close to something.
His hand is a hide of calluses.
I let go of his hips and grip his tits. He cuffed me on the cheek: I’m kind of particular, he said, I only play one game. I see him shudder, part his lips: a low, deep groan. He’s rough, hungry, hunting something fluid, brilliant. I feel him pulsing. I close my eyes; in my skull I see the sheath expand, bloating with his flux. I tilt my pelvis, arch my back, contract. Fluids mix, force their way up and out, landing on my neck, my chest, my navel, his knuckles.
This is flat, extends in all directions: any moment, a thought, talk and touch and rut will rupture, disperse, become horizon. Before, after, now: like triplets – parted by seconds, and more or less the same.
I flew over mountains, black and craggy, they passed beneath my feet. I’ll stand beside the edge of things and watch the heaving sea. He eases onto me, embraces me: I inhale, my belly fills, rises, presses against him; I exhale, he pulls in air, as my belly falls his abdomen begins to weigh against me.
He says, listen.
The air moves through us, sighing; we fill ourselves, empty ourselves, pause. Now, we are still.
