The Gold Diggers by Paul Monette Page A

shape had more to do with it, Nick thought as he worked it, since a cock was rumored to be just as telling as a thumbprint. What was he going to do about the paradox: four years of UCLA, no grade below eighty-five, and then two years at Stanford learning how to overdevelop the third world, and still he could spend an hour meditating the contours of a hustler’s cock. Perhaps he shook his head in some dismay, just to think of it, and Sam groaned a little when the rhythm hit him at the root.
    The truth was, the moral paradox didn’t interest Nick, and it didn’t give him sleepless nights that he had such a fix on sex. Ten years ago—when he blotted out the thought of sex in all its incarnations, and his own cock coiled in his pants and wouldn’t sleep, for all his rising above it—his A’s and his degrees were all well and good, but he tossed on his bed all night and clutched his fevered pillow. He went around walking on eggshells, trying to find the nice girl life was preparing for him, and the moral edge he felt had a way of cutting like a blade of grass or a sheet of paper. It was quite another paradox that kept him haunted: Why, in the middle of making love, had his mind started to race? If it wasn’t cowboys and gym gear, it was a stream of unspoken comments on the act itself as he played it out. It was true what he said to Rita, that he loved to fuck, but lately his fantasies fed on a thousand men before he came. So he didn’t go wild imagining Sam when they were together. That went on all the rest of the time.
    â€œWhat was funny,” Sam said gently, reaching to clutch at Nick’s hair with his hands and talking easily, as if his lower body weren’t riding in heat, “the car turned out to be loaded with dope. One day a Baggie dropped out from under the dashboard. I dug out a couple of pounds, all tied up in ounces”—he rattled off the story as if it weren’t supposed to make sense, as if it were the tune and not the words he was voicing—“in the spare, in the tool kit, under the seats. Why would anybody smuggle grass to LA ? I mean, no wonder the guy got lost.”
    Nick lifted his head and sat back. All the while he was getting excited himself, but made no move to his belt or his boots. Sam’s eyes widened a fraction, as if he were about to take his turn and had ideas he’d only just thought of. Nick wondered where it came from, his endlessly renewed enthusiasm for another round. Sam went into detail readily about the high points of his career, and he gave indications of the sheer amount of work. But if he made you believe it was a job with special limits, like professional ball, the most confining having to do with what can be done with the time between games, he was all the more remarkable for his energy in the stretch.
    â€œWhat do you want?” Sam asked, very civilized, as if he had swords laid out on a cushion.
    â€œI don’t know. I’m just an old dog without a bone.”
    â€œIs that right? You look like you couldn’t unzip your fly because of the pressure. I want to do it on the floor.”
    It was a frivolous idea, sprung from his annoyance at the narrow bed—narrow as a grave, Sam had said, and it proved to him that cowboys didn’t do it—a free-float longing for novelty. While Nick undid his pants, still kneeling on the bed, Sam drained the beer and flung the can in the deep stone fireplace, where it clattered and ricocheted. Then he slid off the bed and scrabbled, hands and knees, to the middle of the floor, where he rolled over on his back in the dust. His pants were down around his boots, but he kept his clothes on. He seemed to want to get them dirty. Nick would have gone naked if he’d had the choice, but the situation called for mirror images. He stood above Sam and released his own cock at last, which stood out straight and swayed a little. Then he came down on top of Sam, sixty-nine,