“Damn! I used to jimmy this thing all the time. Where’s the flashlight?”
I glanced over my shoulder at the road, then back to Guy’s shape hunched in front of the door. “I think the battery’s dead.”
“Don’t chicken out now, Maur,” Guy said, teeth gritted from cold and frustration. I sighed and turned on the light, then huddled in close in hope of hiding the beam. In my heart I knew it was already too late. I was certain our dark outlines had been recognized against the arena wall, and phones were ringing throughout the little town of Ile des Chenes.
“Maurice is home! And that wicked Guy LePont is with him!”
I imagined my mother and father had just sat upright in their narrow double bed and somewhere in a Montreal graveyard, the almighty ‘Rocket’ had flipped over on his side, preparing to shoulder-check his way out of the grave.
Guy and I had come home to commit something worse than mortal sin.
Metal clicked. “Got it!”
He pushed the heavy door open. I handed him the light and seized our duffle bags, which had been sitting in the snow. The first breath of the old arena was a staggering dose of memory. Popcorn and angst—the smell of my childhood. Our childhoods.
Guy and I had both grown up in Ile de Chenes, a dot of a town on the French Canadian landscape. It was three hours’ drive from Montreal, and a world away from Satan’s metropolis, the city we lived in now. Neither of us had been back in over a year, and never together. When I’d casually, carefully mentioned that I’d ‘run into’ Guy LePont in Toronto, my mother fell silent.
“Well, once couldn’t hurt,” she said at last.
He laughed a short gust when I told him, but later I felt the force of his pride. Fists clenched in my hair, he bucked hard into my mouth, the swollen, meaty bell of his cockhead striking the back of my throat. I clung to his legs, the driving power of his thrusts nearly gagging me, squeezing water from my eyes.
“Is this it? The once that doesn’t hurt?”
He kissed my battered mouth afterward. “Coward,” he said gently. “You’ve got to come out sometime. I’m ready when you are. Hell, I was ready before I was born.”
I believed that. I’d been in awe of Guy all my life. What did a ten-year-old boy have to do to receive the appellation of ‘wicked?’
My father’s searing look could have melted the ice on the driveway. My mother simply said, “Never mind. Keep your eyes in front of you. Study hard.”
“Play hard,” my father intoned, the command that eclipsed all others.
There were two forms of worship in Ile des Chenes: the church and hockey, and the former only got one day a week. Growing up, I hadn’t known that sports were something people chose to play. I’d been thrust onto the ice at four, maneuvered into the game by the same deft hands that steered me into church and school. The rest of the boys in Ile de Chenes met the same fate, yet the press was a little harder on my shoulders: my very name was an incantation, a prayer. I had been named after Maurice ‘The Rocket’ Richard.
It was no use even suggesting that there had been other greats in the NHL Hull, Orr, Gretzky. My father would clench his fist over his chest, as if squeezing the blood from his heart.
“Skaters.” He spat the word out. “Did any of them start a revolution?”
It wasn’t the scoring records Richard had set, or even the five straight Stanley Cup Championships he’d led the Montreal Canadiens to win. In 1955 the Rocket had done something no Francophone had ever dared: he’d publicly criticized the team’s arrogant Anglais owner. Retribution was swift—Richard was suspended for the season. In answer, riots exploded in the streets of Montreal and raged for seven hours. It was the beginning, some said, of French activism. Defiance.
In our house admiration tipped over into reverence. The winter of 1956 was renowned for its storms, and one howling night in January, my grandfather opened his farmhouse door to a snowman.
“You couldn’t even tell his coat was black,” my father would say, as if the memory was his own. In truth he’d been only three, and already in bed.
The man had missed his train to Montreal and tried to drive it, hit a patch of ice and put his car into the snow-filled ditch. Could he phone a tow truck? When he unwound his scarf and took off his cap, my grandfather realized a god was standing in his kitchen. He didn’t own a TV but there wasn’t a soul in the country who wouldn’t have recognized the Rocket.
My grandmother was struck dumb; my grandfather had to call for the truck himself, with instructions to come, “but not too quickly.” For an hour they entertained the legend with whisky and laughter, and a plate of stew. When the truck finally arrived and put the miraculous evening to an end, my grandmother recovered her senses and ran out after it, in her slippers. Maurice Richard graciously signed the dinner plate he’d eaten from, a piece of turquoise Fiesta Ware. The fact that my grandmother didn’t even catch cold was a sign, some said, of divine intervention.
By sheer bad luck, no more boys were born to the family until me. I was their first chance to brand someone with the name of the deity, and no one ever let me forget it. ‘Maurice’ was the epitome of bold French-Canadian spirit, of manhood itself.
“The Francophone dink on skates,” wicked Guy LePont said—although not loudly.
Guy had been the saving grace of my teenage years. He was slight and nimble, a quick-thinking forward with a diamond-shaped face and pale skin that flushed pink at the first bite of frost. He had dark, dark hair and hard-knotted muscles; I was entranced by the abrupt point of his Adam’s apple.
The chance to see him and hear his laughter, or feel his wiry body jostle my big-shouldered frame during practice, helped me survive a game I loathed. Sometimes, in the middle of donning his uniform, he would look over his shoulder at me, and the shock of it—pads and skin and twisted smirk—sent me sailing on an erotic drunk. Guy LePont’s heavy-lidded gaze was thick with both promise and menace, the ultimate mystery.
When we met again in the city, I came to understand that look, and quickly discovered I couldn’t resist it. I was bigger than Guy, but never his match. Sex in an elevator, or the parking lot outside a busy club—he found my boundaries and goaded me over them.
“We should go home together,” he said one night, in the close curl of the sheets.
“Sure. When is hell due to freeze over?”
He brushed my light words aside, slipped his hand between my legs.
“This winter,” he said with conviction, “you and I going are to Ile de Chenes.”
I sputtered an argument but my erection was hardening, stroked by fear and his touch.
“No one has to know. This is just for the two of us.” His voice kinked with a smile. “If you come home with me, I’ll suck you off at center ice.”
My cock surged, a steel piston against my belly. The threat of it danger and defiance wound tightly into my most secret teenage dreams. Would he really? Would I?
Guy flipped over deftly on top of me, pinned my wrists above my head, a call to scuffle that I never answered.
“And if you get that, I get a little thrill, too.” He told me what he wanted.
Sound vibrated in my chest laughter or a scream. He couldn’t be serious! Guy muffled me with a bruising kiss. My alarm twisted into a moan, then another as we writhed and slid into eager, familiar rhythms. Yet all the while the shock of his blasphemy swirled, molten in my belly, lapped in fiery waves at the base of my balls. Coming was like hitting a wall of sex.
“You’re a madman,” I said afterward.
Guy’s voice was ethereal, as if he was drifting near the ceiling. “It’s only a plate, Maurice. It’s washable.”
Fear smacked me fresh. He wasn’t asking permission. He planned to do this, and he knew I would agree. I felt the dizzying sway of realization: It’s dangerous to love someone from your hometown. He knows you too well.
* * *
The flashlight’s beam danced wildly over the walls, lingered on windows. He was trying to unnerve me.
“Guy, stop!”
“It’s after one. They’re all in their coffins,” he said cheerfully.
I was relieved when we got to the windowless dressing room and turned on the lights. In the stark fluorescence I blinked at familiar things made strange by time and memory: benches, grey lockers, the spongy black mat floor. The white board was in its usual corner, leftover plays marked in red arrows, blue X’s and O’s. Manhood’s road map, still incomprehensible.
Guy was already hauling equipment out of his duffle. “Get changed, Maur. And remember, no shorts or jock.”
The room was chilly enough to see our breath. But I felt safer hidden deep in the building, and when I glanced over at Guy, the sight of his naked ass against the wooden bench caught me in a long lick of desire. How many fantasies had I spun in this room? Wasn’t this where it all began?
I crept in from behind, leaned down and kissed the base of his neck, the enticing hollow of skin above the breastplate of his shoulder pads. He stopped dressing. I dropped to my knees and began to stroke his hairy, naked thighs, my cheek nestled into the furrow of his spine. I could hear his heart, the quickening rise of his breath. My hand closed around the base of his cock, a thrilling column of want. I had him. I’d win this time.
He caught my wrist. “No. On the ice.”
I pulled back, got to my feet. “Your way! We always do it your way. Maybe I don’t want to go out on the fucking ice.”
Guy twisted to look at me and his erection swayed, a ruddy, earthy shock of sex in a mausoleum. I felt a whiplash of desire even through my anger.
“You like it my way,” he said.
“Well, not this time. So you’ve got issues. Welcome to the human race! But yours aren’t mine, Guy. You want to jerk off on my plate? Go right ahead. I’ll stand here and clap. ” I pulled it out of my duffle and thrust it toward him, a shock of 1950s turquoise wrapped in cellophane.
Guy’s face was untroubled, as if I raised my voice to him all the time. His gaze touched on the plate. I noticed it was trembling.
“I know you’re scared.” His voice was quiet, a distant swish of steel on ice. “But if you didn’t want this, you wouldn’t have come. Get changed, Maur.”
I dropped to my bench, outmatched again.
There is no footwear that grabs you like skates. I tightened the laces row by row and the leather clasped my ankles like hands, a familiar death grip. When I pushed myself up, four years fell away and my body shifted to accommodate the sudden height, the precarious balance of blades. Some things you never forget.
One sensation was new. Hockey pants fit loosely, and without shorts or a jock, the nylon fabric caressed me in strange and exciting ways. I felt both liberated and…licked. I hesitated before I pulled my old jersey over my head, black and red, Ile des Chenes’ proud home ice colors. It seemed sacrilegious to have a hard-on in uniform.
I followed Guy wordlessly down the unlit hall to the rink. He guided us with the flashlight and I carried the turquoise plate, making sure my fingers didn’t smear the grease pencil signature. Neither of us had helmets or sticks. My heart began to knock in my throat, my body grew light with anxiety. What if we’d made a mistake? What if someone had followed us in? I had a mental flash of a terrible ghost, the fiery-eyed blaze of the Rocket himself.
Then, space. I felt the darkness soar above me, a canyon’s worth of air moved listlessly by half-speed fans. I smelled the ice, vast, ionized. Clean. A whole town’s crystallized hope.
Guy cut swaths with the beam, illuminated slivers of wooden seats. He laughed, a whoop of joy. “Anybody home?”
“Guy!” I pleaded.
“Meet you at center ice. I’m going for a spin.” He pushed open the gate and hopped down. I watched in disbelief as he lit out around the perimeter of the rink, a shadow behind a beacon, skates hissing. Flying.
In that instant I both loved and hated him. His bravery taunted me. If I could push him once just once! the way he pushed me, that would be enough.
I made it to center ice a half-second before he did. Guy twisted to a halt, sprayed snow over the tops of my skates, and caught my arm. I could smell the faint rise of perspiration, feel the new heat beam from his skin. Excitement. Even in the dimness, he seemed to glow.
He set the flashlight on the ice. “Do you know where you are?”
“Stop this…”
“I’ll tell you. You’re in the heart of your hometown, dressed up like a gladiator, the good little man. They’re all out there, Maurice.”
As soon as he said it I felt them, hundreds of reproving faces surrounding me in the expansive darkness. Their collective gaze burned past my uniform to where my desire coiled like a spring. Wicked Maurice. Worse, I’d brought my family’s icon, the thing their hero had touched, eaten from. And I was going to let Guy jerk off all over it. Shame prickled like rope burn; my cock thickened, throbbed. This was so wrong.
I tried to turn away. Guy gripped me harder, made me look into his glittering eyes. His other hand fumbled under my jersey, tugged the drawstring on my pants.
“We got such good advice, didn’t we? Keep your head up. Skate fast. Shoot hard.”
There was a cool draft on my erection, then cradling heat that made me catch my breath. I’d surged out into his hand.
Guy grinned. “I’ll help you, Maurice. To shoot hard.”
He dropped to his knees and sucked me into his mouth. It wasn’t a coy seduction—he swallowed me in a single gallop of wet heat, pulled me into the center of the earth. A low moan rumbled up from my belly. I was transfixed by raw sensation as he rode up and down my shaft with his virtuoso mouth, tugging me soft then hard, teeth grazing the engorged head of my cock. He was devouring me.
Guy burrowed his hand into my pants and they loosened—fell. Oh, God! The sudden chill and alarm smacked me across the ass; I twitched in his throat. Before I could think of retrieving them, he reached between my legs and gripped the loose skin behind my scrotum. My balls rode up against the base of my cock in a luscious squeeze. New pleasure unfurled down its length.
Again and again he sucked me deep, his hand working my balls in exquisite undulations. I was helplessly pinned by a machine of lust, gears moving in unstoppable rotations. Faster. As if from a distance, I heard Guy grunting beneath me, curious animal noises that verged on…alarm. I glanced down and saw that I clutched his hair in my fist. Revelation. I wasn’t trapped, I was fucking his mouth, driving into him, shaking his body with my need. And I couldn’t have stopped even if the stands were filled, even if the Rocket himself was watching my bare ass pumping at center ice.
White on white. My orgasm kicked open a door and hurtled through, a geyser of bliss flecked with guilt. I shot, eyes squeezed shut, balls pulsing; my toes curled inside my skates. Guy continued to suck, a slower, sensuous rhythm now, winding me around until the relief was raw, sweetness at the edge of pain.
I pushed away at last, rubber legs trembling, and reached down to pull up my pants. Guy leaned over and spat the hot mouthful of my come onto the ice. A christening.
“Better now?” he said.
How could I not be? I felt bold, audacious. I’d had sex here, on my home ice. What the hell could scare me now? Yet at the same time I resented him. He’d known how this would be. Damn him anyway. Guy always knew—what frightened me, fueled me, what I’d do and why.
“My turn,” he said, reaching for the plate.
The impulse caught me like a comet. I spun around suddenly, arm extended like a discus thrower. I felt the plate wheel out of my grasp, an exhilarating, terrifying emptiness. There was a long second of silence, then the crash shattered the distant dark.
Breath, blood, time all suspended. Had I really done that? Had I meant to? I looked at Guy. His elfin face was flat, cherubic mouth agape. I’d actually shocked him, wicked Guy LePont.
Then he started to laugh. “Cheat me, will you? You sneaky son of a bitch!” He grabbed me by the shoulders, eyes sparkling, his astonishment still beaming from him in waves. “Well, you’re not off the hook. You can bet your Bauers I’m going to shoot somewhere.”
He steered me off the ice but I reeled, drunk on sex and the unthinkable. Was my family’s treasure really in pieces somewhere near the rafters? I could still feel the smooth ceramic edge as it spun out of my hand, pressing each finger as it left. My old life pitched away.
In the locker room, Guy tossed his gear, and let me take off everything but my pads, garters and leggings. It woke me. Now the familiar straps seemed tighter, and the stretches of exposed skin were more than bare. On display. I felt like a gladiator, large and powerful, stripped down for the delight of a devilish, brown-eyed king.
He slipped one hand under my breastplate, tweaked my nipple so hard I winced. His rising cock nudged my thigh.
“Nice pecs. Must have been all those push-ups they made us do.” He tweaked me again. “Now drop and give me twenty.”
I seized his forearm. “You first.”
We’d never sparred. He was surprised by how strong I was; I surprised myself. But then he recovered and threw himself back at me with double force. We scuffled, grappling, sweat and excitement rising. I wrenched him around, taking care not to let his unprotected body hit anything. He shoved me with all his might, sent me staggering back into the lockers with a clang.
Enough. I caught him in a deft arm lock, twisted him to his knees, then his stomach. And leaned.
“Pitie, pitie!” he gasped against the mat.
I felt a surge of heat and triumph, and let him go. Guy rolled onto his back, long, tight body still trembling with exertion, black hair flattened with sweat. My mouth swam. Guy gazed up at me with new respect. And fire.
“I forgot to say…the winner…gets fucked,” he panted.
And the winner was, gladly.
It was a quiet drive back to the city. The night had slipped into a strange twilight, as if the coming day already waited in the snow that banked the highway. The plate—or as many pieces as we could find—was in a plastic bag on the back seat. Guy and I had worked together, him holding the light, me crouched between the seats, picking up shards. That physical act had settled the rollercoaster of euphoria and disbelief: my knees hurt. This had to be real.
What surprised me was my regret for the plate itself. All my life Rocket Richard had loomed over me, the French Canadian hero on skates, impossibly tall and distant. Yet now that I’d hurled him away I felt a fierce blaze of kinship: We were both defiant men.
“What are you going to tell your family about the plate?” Guy asked suddenly, reaching across the seat for my hand.
“I don’t know. The next time I go home I’ll have something else to tell them.” I squeezed him back. “That’ll be enough.”
“You could get another one on ebay for about sixteen dollars. Turquoise comes up pretty often.”
“But not autographed.”
“Oh, no. You do that yourself. That’s how I did mine.”
“Yours!”
His gaze was still on the road but a grin slunk over his face, a tiger released from its cage, or the cat out of the bag. The bastard had switched my plate with another! I’d broken a forgery. I was staggered by relief, and incredulity.
“Don’t tell me you knew in advance—”
“That you’d break it? No.” His voice softened, the low hush he saved for secrets or promises between the sheets. “It was me. I couldn’t…desecrate him. I may be wicked but I’m still French, Maurice.”
I squeezed him again, amazed at my luck, the wonder of loving someone from my hometown.
© 2004 Tulsa Brown. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.