Though I hung around the store for a few minutes longer I spotted the Cyclops the moment I stepped outside. He was sitting in the cab of a filthy junkyard pickup that looked barely operational. Built in the 1960s, it hadn’t been painted in decades, and what paint remained was peeling off. He kept it up himself, I could tell. A shadetree mechanic. He probably kept things in place with bent wire hangers. The mouth of the gas tank was stuffed with a red rag like a bomb.
I looked every bit the part of the dandy, no doubt, making my way to my own pickup with its leather, heated seats — a last artifact of my real estate career. Safely ensconced, I let myself stare at the Cyclops for the first time. In the store, we had been side by side. This felt better. Our windshields were between us, and he was across the lot. I touched myself over my pants, and imagined he might be doing the same. To stall a moment longer, I pretended to search the cab of my truck for something. I pantomimed finding my sunglasses at last, then I gave him a small goodbye wave and reversed out of my parking spot. As I exited the lot, I could see him leave just behind me. I got onto the highway and drove, heading to a store several miles away. What a funny episode. I felt as if the arcade’s energy had clung to me, following me out into the real world.
At first, I assumed we were merely going in the same direction, and he would soon pass me with a final farewell glance. He never got right on my tail, but stayed a car or two back as though trying to avoid detection. He was following me. I recalled car chases from movies in which the person being followed did something dramatic like running a red light or performing an abrupt U-turn. I considered the evasive driving techniques I had read about or seen on TV, though I doubted my ability to execute them in my aroused and increasingly terrified state.
When I exited the highway, the one-eyed man’s pickup took the same exit. I pulled into the Home Depot parking lot. The truck was behind me. I found a spot away from the other cars, at the far end of the lot, and the Cyclops pulled up next to me. I tried to appear calm as I got out of my truck, but the adrenaline was loose in me, and I could feel the jerkiness in my movements. He was smoking a cigarette and he opened his truck door, which creaked loudly. I took out a cigarette of my own and leaned against his pickup.
“It’s too bad I don’t have time to connect today,” I told him. “Why don’t you give me your email address so we can get together another time?”
“I don’t do email,” he said.
“What’s your name?” I said. “I’ll tell you mine.”
“I just wanna get you naked and suck you,” he said. “Why don’t you come on? There’s a place right there. I’ll pay for it if that’s the hold up.”
He was right, I saw. There was a motel just next door.
“I only wish I could, man, but I’m just supposed to run this errand and be home.”
“Well, shit, how long you think it’s gonna take for me to suck a load outta you? That sound like something that’s gonna take all day?”
“Wish I could, buddy,” I said. My dick was so hard I could already feel a drip in my underwear.
I finished my cigarette, rubbing myself through my pants when there was no one to see us, and, once or twice, touching him through his.
“I’ve really got to go now,” I said at last. I reached out and shook his rough hand. He held mine a bit too long, acted as if he wasn’t going to let go, then grinned slyly and released me.
I took off in the direction of the entrance. As the electronic doors parted, I turned and saw his truck pull out of the parking lot, heading in the direction of the highway. It was a relief seeing the Cyclops go.
Inside, I killed some time in the nursery looking at plants, and asking one of the employees about which one might be good in my apartment. I described its total darkness and asked what might thrive there. It was as the plant expert gave his reply that the Cyclops came into view behind him. He was stalking through the place, looking down every aisle with his one eye. At first he didn’t see me, but then he did. He halted suddenly, looked at me, and then slowly proceeded in the direction he had been heading. My expression changed so abruptly that the plant expert looked at my face and then looked behind himself to see what it was I was reacting to.
Though he went on at some length after turning and finding nothing and no one behind him, I didn’t hear another word he said. As soon as he was finished, I made my way to the front of the store with the vigilance of a soldier, scanning the terrain before me and whipping my head around to look down every passage, lest I become the victim of an ambush. Every denim-clad hoss received a double-take.
When I stepped through the doors of the store, I spotted his pickup parked next to mine once again. I considered going back into the store to discuss my dilemma with the security guard on duty. “There’s a man outside who wants to blow me,” I could have said.
Opting for decisive action, I racewalked in the direction of my truck imagining that he might still be in the store, and that I could escape before he realized what had happened. But, as I drew near, his driver’s side door creaked open.
“I left, but I come back,” the Cyclops said. “Okay if I sit in your truck?”
“I just got a call when I was inside wondering what’s taking me so long.”
“What difference five minutes gonna make?”
“You can sit with me, but just for a minute, okay?”
In my pickup, I could smell him. He didn’t stink, but he wore an invisible cloud of cheap tobacco and grease. I knew I’d have to ride with my windows down to get rid of the scent. I could see the bizarre jumble of junk in the bed of his truck beside us. Nothing about it made sense. There were auto parts and what looked to be a paint spraying rig and folding outdoor chairs. Each item looked as if it had been in there for a long time.
As soon as he was certain there was no one in our immediate vicinity, he surprised me by saying, “Okay if I kiss you?”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”
As soon as the words left me, his mouth was over mine.
The world is filled with repressed gay men who have strict stances against kissing. Many men won’t even consider it. I’ve literally been inside of men, their hairy legs over my shoulders, who, if I leaned down to kiss them would reply, “I don’t do that, man.”
Only rarely have I run into this other breed of closeted men, who have no greater desire than to kiss another man, and have almost no actual knowledge of how to go about it. The usual complaints apply. In his case, the Cyclops seemed to think kissing meant filling my mouth with his entire tongue, pinning my own inside of my mouth with nothing to do but taste his cheap rolling tobacco.
He kept trying to mouth me even as I pushed him away. “I’ve got to go now,” I said, feeling the first inklings of genuine fear.
“Just show it to me,” he said, rubbing me through my jeans. It was amazing, I was as hard as I have ever been in my life.
“I don’t want to get caught out here,” I said, looking around anxiously.
“That ain’t gonna happen. My truck’s blocking us,” he said. “I done that on purpose.”
He was right. I took it out. Upon first sight, he grasped it with such frenzied titillation and pleasure that I could hardly help but mirror his enthusiasm. He removed his own dick from his pants, lost though it was in a sea of never-trimmed pubic hair. I touched it a little for him, but he was much more interested in mine than I was in his. He lowered his head to take it in his mouth, but I stopped him.