Sucking off Tommy

by Anel Viz

(c) Anel Viz

How many years had gone by since they moved away?  Thirty, at least.  He couldn’t be sure which house was his.  The Dutch elm on the front lawn, over three stories high, had disappeared, no doubt killed by the blight, and the empty lot at the end of the block had been built over with houses, also in red brick and now old enough to blend in with those that had been there longer, so he couldn’t tell by counting up from the corner either.

The alley behind the row of houses was still there, and the low retaining wall on the other side of it as well, but the plots beyond which had belonged to the houses, where people grew vegetables, put up playground equipment for their kids, or kenneled their dogs, were not, bought up by developers to put up homes on the street in back and on the field across from it.  He would not have known which street was his if he hadn’t remembered the name.

Somewhere along that alley, which used to end at Frankie’s garage but now ran through to the end of the block, was the place where the little path had run up the rise into the empty lot overgrown with tall weeds where the kids used to play.  On that path, hidden by open garage door, Tommy had crouched down, taken out his wiener, and asked if he wanted to suck it.

Tommy lived with his divorced mother in the basement studio apartment they rented out and was in eighth grade then.  He was four or five years younger, which would put him in third or fourth.  He knew now that Tommy wouldn’t have had a man-sized penis yet, but to him it looked it, ramrod straight and pointing right at him.

He backed away, frightened.  He’d never heard of people doing things like that.  Those things were dirty.  Tommy got to his feet and closed his pants, warning him not to tell anyone.  His voice sounded at once threatening and scared.

About fifteen years would go by before he sucked his first cock, the first of many.  He wondered what it would have been like, a little kid sucking Tommy’s cock.  He wondered if some part of him, latent and untapped, had wanted to.  He didn’t think so.  He wondered why Tommy had picked him.  Had something about him marked him as gay, years before he was even aware of sex, and if so, what was it?

For that matter, what had brought him back to the old neighborhood, and what was it about the old alley, changed beyond recognition, that had sparked a memory so long forgotten?