He reached over, grabbed my hand and held it tightly, silently. Then gradually his hand relaxed as he slept.
In the morning, it was as if it had never happened. Perhaps he thought he had been dreaming. Perhaps he had. Or I.
So Casey began to consume my life. I thought of him constantly. I watched him every chance I could, sat with him at meals, stood extra duty just to be with him, coincidently took my showers when he did -- I became his shadow. And always, I hoped I could reach beyond that hearty, grinning, arm-punching camaraderie. I hoped I wasn't just another puppy.
It was after the night he cried that I noticed the scratching -- I mean really noticed it. Before the kindling of my hopes, his scratching had been faint static in the background of an otherwise perfect recording. Now it became music too.
He had chronically dry skin, a genetic condition which made his skin as thick and rough as sandpaper; he had permanent goosebumps all over him. The ship's medic carried a supply of olive oil especially for him and Casey slathered it on, sometimes two or three times a day in the summer when it was hot and the air was full of salt.
So with studied casualness, I became his official back-rubber.
It never ceased to amaze me, his strange, rough skin: it was so stiff and hard I don't know how it bent without cracking. The oil soaked into his back like it was a beach, right at the water's edge, where the waves leave a gloss of wetness to show where they've been, the gloss gently puckering into coarse, pale sand. His skin was like that. For a while it would be almost smooth, soft and supple before flaking again; rough and gritty and itchy. Like sand.
I embraced my new duties with such fervour that we became part of the ship's sexual theatre. He would stand before me totally naked while I rubbed the oil into his shoulders and back as far down as I dared.
I worshiped every muscle and bone in his back. I marvelled at the gravelly contours of his skin, the secret separations of his muscles, his tense, animal grunts of enjoyment. I savored his smell. I learned where to squeeze and where not, how much pressure tickled and how much produced a moan of ecstasy.
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