Bravey Boy stood where strawberries had once grown. He nudged the earth with the toe of his worn sneakers, disturbing some browned weeds and cigarette butts. October in Philadelphia could be fickle. He had left the tenement building he lived in wearing a jacket, but as the sky darkened the air turned warmer and he unzipped letting the sweat cool on a bare chest the color of dark coffee.

Some years back, a garden had filled the lot where he stood. Nothing grand, a site large enough to bring the local community together to plant a few greens and build a place for the kids to play safely. Then six months ago, the mayor had chanted ‘Safe Streets’ to every news camera, paper, and council meeting. The cops went out to the corners, forcing the dealers elsewhere. They had found the garden an earthly delight where they could lounge about during the daylight and sell at night. Parents had boycotted the garden, keeping inside at all hours, and the lot quickly fell into despair. When some other crime crisis drew the politician’s attention, the cops returned the corners back to their rightful owners.

So an entire city block had been abandoned by everyone except for some dying brush and a sickly couple of trees along the rusty fence. Then came the men and boys, looking for sex, yet another addiction.

Bravey heard the normal sounds of the night: hip-hop music banging as a car floated by, someone somewhere yelling, the bloody fight between feral dogs. A breeze blew past, bringing with it a deep, musky odor, a touch of old sweat on an unwashed body. Bravey closed his eyes and shook his head even as he breathed in deeply. Please, he thought to himself. Not him, not tonight.

A muttered “Yo, my brotha,” came from behind him. The smell intensified. He turned around to see Demonte shuffling up to him.

He hadn’t seen Demonte in over a week. The boy didn’t look so good to Bravey. His left eye was swollen half-shut, blood crusted one nostril, and the blatino’s strut had more limp than his usual swagger. Yet he swung his arm around Bravey as if nothing was wrong.

“What’s up?” Bravey kept his tone steady and cool though in his head he urged Demonte to move on and get lost. If Lashon saw them standing there, he might get cold feet.

Demonte shrugged. “Same shit.” His breath smelled sickly-sweet like flavored cheap wine. He reached over to tug lightly at Bravey’s jacket, revealing more smooth, toned chest. “Heh, what have we here?” Fingers scuttled over one nipple.

“Don’t.” Bravey slapped Demonte’s hand away from him.

“Oh, am I not good enough a lay for you.” Demonte plucked at the grungy Seventy-Sixers jersey he wore. “Didn’t complain on your first fuck, ese.”

Bravey Boy had noticed Demonte hanging around the neighborhood of late. He could not stop himself from admiring every bit of muscle that showed with the young man’s wife beaters and shorts, ached to see the muscles that lay hidden beneath the cotton tank top and baggy pants.

One night he had gotten up the nerve to follow Demonte. After a winding route through some pad parts, Bravey had finally ended up at the derelict garden. An old man seated on a bench muttered a greeting and when Bravey looked down at him he saw the man’s hands busy below the belt and out in the open. That almost sent him running. But he knew that that Demonte had walked past without breaking stride, so he had to also.

It had taken him a while to navigate the garden; in the dark it seemed to expand to the size of a park. Here and there he glimpsed men standing or sitting about. He could feel their eyes on him and it made him tremble.

By one sorry-looking willow, he had found Demonte, leaning up against the thin trunk. One of the brother’s hands had lifted up his shirt, obscuring half the printed marijuana leaf, to scratch at his furred flat belly, offering a peek of the waistband of the boxer shorts he wore.

Demonte had nodded at Bravey who forced himself to walk over to the object of his obsession.

“Yo, didn’t know they let little boys in here.”

If the guy hadn’t been grinning as he said it, Bravey might have been hurt instead of slightly stung. He unconsciously stepped back though.

“Don’t leave. Come closer.” Demonte had reached out and took hold of one of the younger boy’s belt loops and pulled Bravey to him. The boy’s arms went up and his hands had landed squarely on Demonte’s chest. The heat from the solid muscle had coursed over Bravey’s fingers, making him sweat and yearn.

“So what do you want to do?”

Bravey felt his face burn. “I-I don’t know.” His mouth had been dry and the words came out as a hoarse whisper.

Demonte had laughed and taken hold of one of Bravey’s hands by the wrist, leading him to some bushes. The boy noticed how the guy’s pants and boxers had slid down to show just a hint of an ass crack. He had swallowed hard, more turned on by the strangeness, the speed of what was about to happen than he ever thought possible.

Behind the cover of vegetation, Demonte roughly pushed him down to the ground. Bravey became suddenly scared, worried that the guy had been playing him all the time and now would beat the shit out of him. One dead faggot. In this neighborhood, who would ever care?

But instead of pounding Bravey’s face, Demonte’s hands had quickly started undoing the zipper of his jeans.

The greatest feeling overtook him a few moments later when a warm wetness engulfed his dick. Bravey squirmed in the dirt, biting his lip not to cry out and let everyone in the garden know what was happening to him.

Then it stopped. Bravey looked up to see Demonte tugging his pants down. Amid
a forest of black hair, a thick cock pushed out of its sheath to wag at him. It leaked a strand that caught the moonlight and turned silver before breaking.

“Have to get it wet,” Demonte said and then manipulated Bravey’s dick towards his furred crack. He grunted a few times, eyes closed, as the tip went in, and then sat down, forcing the boy deep inside him.

If Bravey felt a mouth around him to be intense, this was a thousand times hotter, tighter, more demanding. He instinctively pushed up as Demonte rode him hard and slapped his chest. Neither of them lasted long and when it was over, they lay there in a heap, sweaty and sticky, and quiet, listening to one another’s pants.

Demonte didn’t date or even fuck the same guy regularly. That had been made clear in the awkward aftermath as they parted.

Still, that didn’t stop Bravey Boy from finding his way back to the garden in the hopes he might change the guy’s mind. But he was dissed, ignored, and ended up just jerking off by himself in the dark while listening to someone else get laid.

He promised himself that he was done with the garden, to just forget about it, but two nights later he was lying on the bad mattress in his room and could not stop thinking about what happened there that first night. He tried to close his eyes and fall asleep but couldn’t. So he threw on a few clothes and snuck out past his snoring grandma and went out, cursing himself with every step but knowing he had to go back.

He didn’t see Demonte there but an older guy in his thirties with muscles only construction gave you approached him. He wanted to kiss the man, know if the goatee would tickle his face, but the man made it clear he only wanted to suck Bravey off. He let him.

So it went. The craving satisfied too quickly after a trip to the garden leaving behind a need for something more. Bravey couldn’t put a name to it until one bumped into him while on break from bagging groceries.

Lashon. The new stock boy.

On break, Bravey couldn’t step outside cause of the rain, so instead he went down the chips aisle meaning to get a snack. That’s when he saw the boy with a linebacker’s wide build humming to himself as he carefully arranged bags of salty pork rinds. As Bravey watched, wasting he knew precious time off his fifteen minutes of freedom from ringing up cold raw chicken and boxes of mac and cheese, the stock boy would pause in mid-hum to actually sing out words in a high and sweet voice. Not some rap song but an old R&B tune Bravey’s grandmother listened to on the radio, one he couldn’t remember the name of.

Stock boy saw Bravey staring at him and smiled and nodded ‘Hey’ but kept on shelving salty foods and humming despite the looks people gave him.

After work, they hung out, sipping soda, chatting. That happened for the entire week. Bravey had never been so excited to come to work. Seeing Lashon, talking with him, made Bravey feel alive, wanting to sing songs of his own or dance or just move to some new rhythm going through his head.

At night though, before he could find sleep, the worries started. He would replay every moment he spent with Lashon over and over in his head, trying to figure out if this look or that gesture or some word said by the fine boy meant that Lashon liked him too. More than liked. Did he feel the same ache or was it all in Bravey’s head? Not knowing the answer drove Bravey crazy.

That was why he had a fight with his manager and told to go home early. Lashon saw him leaving in a huff and ran out, risking his own job to ask what happened. Bravey didn’t even remember exactly what he said, but then Lashon was giving him a hug, out in the parking lot in front of everyone. Not one of those quick slaps on the back and squeeze jobs either. He held Bravey tight for seconds that seemed to become hours and softly sang in his ear, “If I have to sleep on your doorstep, all night and day...just to keep you from walkin' away. Let your friends laugh, even this I can stand...'cause I wanna keep you any way I can.”

On the walk home, Bravey didn’t see the dilapidated buildings or trash on the street or notice the dealers and drunks lazily lounging to pass the day. He sometimes shut his eyes and just recalled the feel of Lashon holding him, the clean smell of the boy, and the sound of his voice.

Nervous as all hell—that maybe he had misread the stock boy’s reaction—he called Lashon that night. Asked him to meet him and told him how to get to the old garden.

Demonte didn’t seem ready to leave. He stepped so close to Bravey Boy, their bodies practically brushed against one another. Bravey could feel the heat rising off the brotha’s body, coupled with the smell it was like a dump in July. Demonte smirked.

“I know you remember it.” He reached down and grabbed hold of Bravey’s crotch, expertly rubbing with his thumb the tip of the shaft and making it grow bigger. “See, this remembers me too.”

The touch made Bravey gasp. He felt unsteady, leaning in to Demonte, their heads touching. The guy’s forehead felt damp and feverish enough to scald Bravey’s skin. He lifted an arm and laid it on a bare shoulder.

“Please,” Bravey muttered.

“Please what?” Demonte said, aping the younger man’s voice. He started to slide his other hand underneath the jacket Bravey wore.

He wasn’t sure what to say. He no longer wanted whatever quick fix Demonte offered. Yet, old cravings could not be denied. But when he heard the whistling and saw in the darkness a figure walking towards them, the desire that had overtaken him turned to sick fear and shame. He pushed away with both arms, separating them.

It wasn’t Lashon though. Just a man dressed in bad overalls. With goggle eyes he looked them both over. “Any you boys want to party?” He held up a paper bag with the tip of a dark, amber bottle showing at the top.

Demonte turned back to Bravey. His voice was low, dangerous. “Come on, one more time. You can ride me good. Hard.” He slid down his baggy pants a little, showing where the trail of wiry hair lead to. Some of the flesh was bruised raw. “Let you bust a nut in me.”

The man piped in with a desperate pant, “Let me watch that shit at least.”

“Get the fuck outta here,” Bravey said.

Demonte’s face fell, for once not at all resembling the cocky young man but a scared boy. “I need this.”

Bravey looked away a moment. He knew it would be good with Demonte. But it would not be enough, not what Bravey needed. “Can’t,” he muttered.

The man next to them wavered, unsteady, obviously drunk. “There’s me.” He took a long sip at whatever was in the bag.

“Yeah, yeah.” Demonte grabbed hold of the man’s arm. “Too bad, papi,” he said without looking back.

Bravey watched them walk away. In the moonlight it looked like Demonte’s feet never touched the ground as he led the drunk deep into the garden. Bravey let out a breath, without realizing how tense he had just been. He stood there a while, started pacing back and forth, and worried that Lashon wouldn’t show but the next one to walk over to him was the stock boy.

Bravey didn’t bother with the usual greeting, instead hugging Lashon tightly, then easing into him a while, relaxing in the other boy’s thick arms.

“This is some strange place,” Lashon said, shaking his head. “Two guys came up to me lookin’ to hook up. Freaks.”

Bravey saw the look of disgust on Lashon’s face and knew he had been wrong to ask Lashon to come to the garden. What had he been thinking or even wanting? A fast grope or blow or even fuck? No, not that, not with this boy. Just seeing a smile from him would be enough of a thrill to end the night with a smile.

Lashon must think me a ho, Bravey said to himself. “Yeah, you shouldn’t be here.” Bravey hated himself, but wondered maybe he should just send the boy away, forget thinking he deserved someone as fine as Lashon.

But his friend only chuckled. “Like you do? Shit, look at this.” Lashon motioned at Bravey’s clothes. “You acting all sexy for me?” He laughed. “Trying to make me think you like me or somethin’?”

“No,” Bravey lied, looking away. He could no longer meet the other boy’s eyes. moment. He backed up a few feet and then found himself walking away, cursing himself for even thinking something good could ever happen here.

“Wait up. Why you leavin’?” Lashon started after Bravey.

Bravey shrugged not sure what to say anymore. The two boys passed an overturned barbeque grill, the metal long since turned to a rusted hulk. Not far from it a man lay on the ground.

“Damn.” Lashon said and nudged the guy with a foot. The guy didn’t move or even respond.

Bravey saw the paper bag wrapped around the bottle leaned up against the barbeque. He remembered the drunk that left with Demonte. He looked and saw that the guy’s overalls were undone but hadn’t been pulled down yet. He stunk like rotten meat, like something that’s been buried a long time. How had that happened so quickly? He glanced about but Demonte was no where to be seen.

“He’s just overshot,” Bravey said out loud, more to himself, because he wasn’t so sure.

“This is some park,” Lashon muttered.

“I’m sorry I asked you to come here.”

“I’m not.” Lashon’s fingers gently cupped Bravey’s chin.

“No?” Bravey didn’t dare smile, afraid that maybe he had heard wrong.

“Unless that’s all you want.” He pointed at the man on the ground. “What everyone else ‘round here wants. I’m not trash and won’t be treated like it.”

Bravey shook his head. “It’s cool. I mean, I want...”

Lashon smiled and chuckled. “Wanna go get somethin’ to eat with me?”

Bravey nodded, buttoning up his jacket, suddenly embarrassed at how much skin showed.

“Cool.” Together they headed back to the edge of the garden, walking so close they often rubbed shoulders or lightly bumped against one another. Lashon pulled out car keys and flicked them playfully into the air. Bravey meant to catch them but only succeeded in knocking them to the ground.

“S’all right.” Lashon bent down to pick them up. “Damn,” he said then, lifting up something small and red from the ground near his foot.

Bravey looked at the strawberry the boy held up. Small, and a bit misshapen. Lashon smiled and lifted it up to Bravey’s lips. He opened his mouth. The tiny thing’s flavor was sweet and strong, lifting him away.

“How does it taste?”

Bravey Boy leaned in and showed Lashon how it did.

© 2003 Steve Berman - Contributor's Bio

'Derelict' was anthologized in Best Gay Erotica 2005 & Best Gay Love Stories 2005