Nuvein Fiction | topography of no by by Rick Austin

topography of no
by Rick Austin

About the Author

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 topography of no, exclusively published in Nuvein.

        They lived in Edgerton, Ohio; we fought four hours, drove the fifth in silence; his parents didn’t know – they wanted us to stay in his old bedroom in his bed – the two of us, good buddies, never a touch between us, that night we sat on separate chairs Because the couch, he explained, would make us look too cozy; we ate his mother’s horrid cooking, sat with them in front of TV basketball until 11:00, then we got back in the car and drove on into town, parking in the lot outside the Sonrise Inn.
         The hotel clerk was fat and ripe, suspicious, he looked us over twice and then he opened wide his lipless mouth and said, We only got the one room left and it’s just got one king-sized bed; there was an ugly, fetid, pause in which much information was transmitted, and when we said – both of us – Fine, he crossed his arms and glared, when I gave him cash he tossed the key onto the counter, clink.
         From a black frame he was watching over us, hands together, praying and the halo circling his head and I said I had no idea how very white my lord and savior was, looking up from the bed where Lee was hard, tugging his nuts with one hand and stroking with the other, the nearly purple head, the shaft as pale as Jesus’s skin.
         “Oh come on – aren’t you even just a bit – really – seems like I got to make appointments – for god’s sake why can’t you do this for me – I mean dammit – you make it sound like you ain’t got no choice – like you don’t get nothing out of it – ”
         He climbed on top and pinned me to the mattress – six foot two, two hundred twenty pounds – he worked his way inside of me, he didn’t even stop to spit.
         I’m sure of it I know I did I remember very well: I said No.
         I slept on the edge of the bed, in a nightmare I ran beside a river in a colossal, vacant city, and all the signs that offered any hope were in a foreign alphabet.
         We ate breakfast at the diner underneath the giant tilting neon coffee cup and halfway through his american-cheese-and-canned-mushroom-omelet he looked up from his greasy, cracked buffalo china plate and said, You’re awfully quiet – You OK?
         I said I’m fine and Aren’t these hash browns mighty brown – and this is how I did it, manufactured OK-me: in the space that’s in-between the world of substrate and this other world I conjured up the distant me, saw him clearly in full sunlight napping on the greenest grass, with no one there except the watchful, patient, strong-jawed hound.
         The eleventh moon was filling up: I was uncomplaining, did not argue, did the dishes three times daily, cleaned the toilet, ironed shirts and pants, paid the bills, without a word I tallied up the cost of what had happened; in my head I made a list of what I needed to attain velocity sufficient to escape the gravity of us; I counted down the days, on the calendar beside the fridge there was a circled date that read Departure.
         The day the moon was full, he flew off to Finland on a business trip; I sold the car and bought a pickup truck, on a Tuesday in broad daylight I took what I wanted, loaded up the bed and drove across the country, slowly, stopping frequently for picnic-table naps; when I got to San Francisco I parked on a hilly street and bought a postcard with a picture of that bridge with so much dazzle underneath, the city spread on the horizon and I sent it to him and I don’t have to tell you this part, you know the word I wrote.