Tool

  By R.W. Clinger

  Published by JMS Books LLC

  Visit jms-books.com for more information.

  Copyright 2021 R.W. Clinger

  ISBN 9781646567904

  Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

  Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

  All rights reserved.

  WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America.

  * * * *

  Tool

  By R.W. Clinger

  “What are you looking at, Sir Lance-A-Pot?” Marcus says from behind me on the floor. He is playing some video game with dragons, castles, and handsome knights in shining armor. “Get away from the window and give your new neighbor some space. Help me slay this three-headed dragon before he has me for lunch.”

  Sometimes I think Marcus lives with me in my two-bedroom saltbox in downtown Pittsburgh because he’s always around. But my bestie doesn’t. He has his own place across the Allegheny River on the North Side, next to Heinz Stadium in the Mexican War Streets District. Maybe he likes my place better than his, although, if ever asked, I will surely disagree with the person regarding this statement, hands down, since his place is vast, three levels, and has an incredible view of downtown.

  I tell him, “I haven’t smoked pot in three months. Since Valentine’s Day. When Ricky Starr broke my heart. So you can’t call me that anymore. I’m pot- and boyfriend-free.”

  He clicks and clacks the handheld device with his fingers and thumbs, controlling some time-traveling fool he has named Gridiron. “Starr isn’t boyfriend material. He might look good and stir your private parts, but trust me, he doesn’t have a brain in that delicious body. He’s into cars, muscles, and drugs. You will never have an in-depth conversation about gentrification or climate control in highly-populated cities with him.”

  It’s early May and I stand at my open living room window. I roll my eyes. Sometimes Marcus is too honest with me. Frankly, I’d be perfectly fine if he lied to me once or twice. Guess this will never happen, though. Too bad. I ignore him and check out Tool in the double lot next door. My neighbor’s a dreamboat that stands at six-three with a golden brown tan all year round, wavy cinnamon-brown hair, a chiseled body at 210 pounds with perky nipples, pumped abs, and creamy brown eyes. He’s bent over the engine of a mustard-colored 1976 Nova. He’s in the mouth of a single red-brick garage where he works. His ripped back and tight bottom faces me. The guy sports a pair of tight, greasy jeans, cowboy boots, and no belt. The hood of the Nova is propped open and a blue metal tool box sits on the right side of the engine, open. He grabs a stainless-steel tool out of the box, clicks and clacks it against the engine, hard at work, looking like Hercules, Troy, or Apollo, and causes me to ogle him like a high school boy.

  Behind Tool is the semi-dark garage filled with managed clutter: working fan that Tool sometimes plugs in and uses; paint cans of many colors on one wall; workbench to the right with a heap of stainless-steel tools; hubcaps galore here and there, a radio near the fan. Next to the Nova’s rear bumper is a single man-door to exit from the garage. There’s also a foldable steel chair. Sometimes Tool sits here and enjoys a smoke. He relaxes, taking in life for a minute or two, drifts away…somewhere. He has pretty much taken over the garage from his uncle, who I rarely see these days, enjoying his (private?) time.

  Over my right shoulder, I lower my voice and ask Marcus, “Do you think the guy next door knows he turns me on when he’s working on the Nova?”

  “Hell no. He’s a good neighbor who minds his own business. Unlike you.”

  I snicker, admiring Tool’s bronze, flexing shoulders and back.

  Behind me, I hear an angry dragon make a horrendous squealing sound, breathe fire, and a man scream on the seventy-two-inch flat-screen. It definitely sounds like Marcus has just lost one of his three lives. “Fuck!” he yells, and pounds the heel of a foot against the hardwood floor.

  The outburst is loud. Tool hears it. He grabs a greasy rag, spins around, lifts his head, and checks me out in the window like I’m Juliet in a high school play. Adorably, he sports grease on his right cheek, and his left pec. I can’t help myself and check out his chest: swollen pecs with perky nipples, unlimited puffed abs, treasure trail beneath his navel. Just a beautiful specimen. Gloriously spectacular.

  Neighbor guy winks at me, smiles, and calls up like Romeo, “Everything okay over there, Lance?”

  I yell down to him, “Never better! My friend is here and he’s losing at a video game. I think a dragon just toasted his ass!”

  “My skin and muscle are burning off my bones,” Marcus whines, presses a button on the video console, and attempts to save a village called Windysour for the gazillionth time.

  My neighbor nods, keeps his handsome grin and eye contact, goofily laughs, and calls, “Tell him to be careful. We need as many dragon slayers in this world we can get.”

  “I’ll do that,” I say, and spin around, feel a twitch of blissful excitement at my center, leave the guy to his dilapidated Nova.

  * * * *

  Tool isn’t the guy next door’s birth name. His real name happens to be Michael James Danning. But Marcus and I love to call him Tool because this is how he acts, and what he looks like: big, handsome, sometimes dumb sounding. I know very little about him: recently moved from Phoenix to Pittsburgh to take care of his Uncle Craig Danning, who lives in the house next door and has always kept to himself. Uncle Craig suffers from open-angle glaucoma and he’s slowly going blind. Craig uses Tool as a…tool, of course. Tool’s the same age as me: thirty-four; a year younger than Marcus.

  I’ve done an hour or two of homework on Tool and know that he works as an electrician for the city schools: black wire, red wire, white, red…zzzzolt! It’s a superior job these days that offers a healthy paycheck, great bennies, and a reliable source of income. Before his Uncle Craig retired the summer before from the local school district, he’d taught English for over thirty years. This is how Tool got his job in maintenance for Pittsburgh Schools. Sometimes it’s not what you do that lands you the elite gigs in life, it’s who you know; Tool is the perfect product of this theory. Without his uncle, he wouldn’t have the job he does.

  More of my homework showed that he’s not a vegetarian, he’s big on ordering-in sushi and pizza, works out almost every day in his uncle’s side yard with a massive eighteen-wheeler tire, next to the garage, and he enjoys action-packed movies; the higher the body count, the better, obviously. I never see him have visitors at his uncle’s place, or socialize with men or women of any age. In fact, he’s somewhat of a homebody, keeping to himself, and keeping his uncle company, rarely straying from Brecker Street. He drives a 2021 navy blue Dodge Charger, and leaves his uncle’s house at around seven-thirty in the morning for work and returns around five in the evening. There’s a battered refrigerator in the rear of the garage with beer inside that he drinks; probably the only negative feature I learn about him, not that I care. Sometimes he drinks Budweiser. Sometimes it’s Miller. I rarely see him with an IPA.

  * * * *

  “Motherfucker!” Marcus yells behind me. “The fucking dragon burned me to a crisp again!”

  I hear Marcus toss the remote at the flat-screen: click, clank, thunk. Tool must hear his outrage because he looks up at me. He pushes a brown wave of hair out of his eyes, grins, and calls up to my living room window, “Sounds like the dragon slayer died again.”

  “‘Fraid so. Once a loser knight, always a loser knight.”

  “Hey!” Marcus yells at me. “I have unlimited lives!”

  Tool hears this and smiles from ear to ear. It melts me. There’s nothing better than when a handsome man smiles, showing off his pearly whites and upturned cheeks. It’s a total turn-on for me; a simple action I’ve always loved, particularly with Tool today.

  As Marcus calms down and refreshes his game, my eye-gig with Tool becomes heated and untamed. Something strange and erotic happens. There’s a rag in Tool’s toolbox which he snags and wipes grease off his hands. To no avail, it doesn’t accomplish much. Tool walks out of the garage to the side yard where he keeps a battered workbench with heavy weights and his giant tire. He finds a coiled hose on the ground next to a narrow bed of daffodils, turns it on, and attempts to clean off one hand and then the other. I’m not sure if this works or not, but he’s certainly diligent about the process. In doing so, facing me, some of the hose water splashes against his chest. Droplets roll down and over his hard pecs and nipples. Clear water drags along his navel and into the lip of his snug jeans. Some of the liquid darkens his mound of denim-covered crotch.

  I’m not su
re if he does this water act on purpose, performing for me, teasing me, but it is a tantalizing show and a total turn-on. Things stir below my waistline that maybe shouldn’t. My private parts come alive and vibrate, harden somewhat, and twitch. I whisper, “OhmyGod,” completely caught off guard by his solo performance with the hose and water and his muscles.

  Behind me, Marcus asks, “What’s going on over there?”

  I stammer, “Nothing…nothing at all.”

  Does Tool wink at me? I think so. I’m really not sure. Maybe he does. Maybe he doesn’t. Jesus, I’m so confused. Dizzy. Breathless. Enflamed. Sweating from toes to head. I take the back of one hand and wipe it across my forehead and puff my cheeks, exhale.

  Tool. He eventually turns off the hose and vanishes into his uncle’s house, leaving me excited and hard.

  Damn men!

  And damn him!

  * * * *

  Later this week. Twilight. Closer to dark than not. Sticky-hot. Eighty-eight degrees thanks to global warming. I get this bright idea to borrow a tool from Tool. Why not? What do I have to lose? Maybe a screwdriver. Maybe a handsaw. Maybe a wrench. I have yet to decide. Maybe when I’m face to face with the stud I’ll make up my mind and tell him what I need…What every gay man needs from a Tool. Until this moment arises, I…

  I don’t know why I’m attracted to Tool. Is it his bulging muscles, his handsome face, or his mysteriousness? Maybe it’s all the above. I’m sure. How can I not be sure? I’ve never been into tools. Never. Not once in my life. I’m more into thin geeks with glasses and no muscles. Weaklings. Bookish types. Men who read nonfiction. Men with high IQs and are usually weak. I’m drawn to men with bowties, electrified brains, and Harvard scholars with nicely pressed shirts. I like gangly types who understand chemical reactions, fractions, and how the planets sometimes line up among the spacious stars. Never…never have I been sexually attracted to, or chemically dependent on, or interested in, a tool. Not once.

  Until now.

  Now.

  But Tool has this magnetism about him that I don’t fully understand. His broad shoulders. His summer suntan. Hair that hangs in his eyes. His beaming eyes. His chiseled chest. The treasure trail above the lip of his jeans. His corded biceps. His firm nipples. The pumped lump of pipe in his jeans between his legs. His thick thighs and…

  He has a pull that causes my balance to slip left, slip right, and go off kilter. The hungry draw prompts me to dress in a short-short pair of running shorts—I’m a whore, such a bad little whore, a toy that wants to be played with, needed, wanted, desired, kiss me, press against me against something and do what you will with me, press inside me, pull on my dick, pump me with you, let me play with your dick, shame on me, because I’m a dirty dirty dirty dirty little whore—and no shirt this evening. I feel animalistic and brave and daring and step out of my comfort zone and strut over to his uncle’s property.

  I walk down the sidewalk and pass the battered gym set and the large tire that Tool uses to work out. Behind the garage is Craig Danning’s red-brick saltbox; a mirror image of my place. To the left of the house is the garage. I walk to the front of the garage, which I can’t see from my living room window, find myself inside the garage, and discover Tool seated on an old chair, half-hidden behind the Nova, sweaty and bare-chested, nipple-hard and caught off guard by my sudden, unannounced visit.

  Oops, my bad. What have I done?

  I’ve interrupted you on purpose. Haven’t I? Shame on me.

  Shame. Shame. Shame.

  I’m such a bad bad bad bad neighbor.

  He looks up from his cell phone. “Lance. What brings you over here?”

  Nervously, he fumbles his phone in his hands and immediately turns it off. Before he shuts it off, I see a half-naked dude on its glowing screen: muscular, hard-packed, no shirt, hairy-chested like me, suntanned and golden brown like me, blond like me, blue-eyed like me, Caribbean Sea backdrop behind the sun-dude’s frame, lemon-colored bikini covering hard junk shaped like a banana. Filth. Absolute filth on his phone.

  Oh my God, what have I walked in on?

  “I need to borrow a tool, Mike. It’s Mike, right? Mike Danning?”

  Lost in the garage’s shadows, does he push away a boner in his shorts? I think so, but I’m not sure. What else would he be pushing away? Nothing that I can imagine.

  What? What? What? What did I walk in on?

  Was he getting busy with himself before my arrival? Does the boner boy on his cell phone turn him on? Was he getting ready to jack out a load to the filth on his phone just before my arrival? Probably, by the looks of it. Actually, I have no doubt.

  Someone’s uncomfortable. He clears his throat, shifts left in his chair, shifts right.

  I see right through his gig. I’ve done this move before. Many times. I’m a guy. I’ve had a boner before. Many times. I know what he’s doing: buying some time to deflate the blood-filled erection between his legs. Getting his shit together. Acting like he wasn’t getting off to a picture of some hot dude on his phone.

  He fakes a cough, which sounds ridiculous. Totally bad acting. B-rated stuff. “Yes…Yes, it’s Mike Danning. What tool do you need?”

  “A wrench.”

  He has his composure together. Finally. He quickly rattles off, “Pipe, open-end, box, socket, ratcheting, crescent…Which kind?”

  Jesus. I’m pretty clueless about wrenches. I have no idea there would be so many to choose from. Maybe I should have done my homework on such a tool before slipping over here? “Ahh…Crescent. Yeah…That should do the trick.”

  “What size?”

  I have no fucking idea and guess, “Four-inch.”

  He stands and I see a shadowy bulge at his center, under his thigh-tight jeans. He’s definitely semi-hard…Chub stuff all the way. Definitely turned on by the blond guy who looks like me on his cell phone…Definitely has a good chance of being queer…Definitely was about to get off and pop a load in the semi-darkness…Definitely was going to blow it all over his plated chest or on the garage’s floor.

  He fetches the wrench from the tool bench to his left, which allows me to check out his bare back and tight waist in the blue-purple-red twilight hues.

  “Damn,” I accidentally whisper, excited by his good looks.

  There’s very little space where he stands, but he finds enough room to spin around and face me. The chub is gone from between his legs. Too bad. He holds the wrench in his right hand, awkwardly between his solid pecs, which makes him look like a tool model and causes me to drool. I want to smirk because he’s a tool holding a tool, but don’t.

  He asks, “Excuse me? Did you say something, Lance?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  He passes me the wrench, which is heavier than I think it should be. As I take it from him, I scan his frame again from toes to head and calculate his handsomeness as above average: football player-sized, rugged-right, mighty and meaty, tasty all the way, and about as sexy as hell. Again, I want to say damn, but keep the word to myself, and stay on my best behavior. No need to make a scene. No way.

  “Thanks for this,” I say, wave the wrench and nod. “It will come in handy.”

  “Good thing. Glad I can help.”

  I’m just about to make my exit, slipping past the parked Nova, when he says, “Do you want to stick around and have a beer with me?”

  How about a hot fuck? How about a dick-snack on your chub? I want to ask him these curt questions, but don’t. Instead, I bloom with a smile, feel my insides burn with pleasure, feel a necessary twitch between my legs, and reply, “Sure. No problem. I’d like a beer. Some convo with you would be nice, too. Thanks.”

  * * * *

  We do more than have a beer and convo in the back of his uncle’s garage. Because we’re not children. Because we’re adults. Because we are neighbors and we can.

  He bashfully asks, “Do you trust me?”

  “More than the both of us probably realize.”

  He blinks once, twice, three times. “Do you smoke weed?”

  “Sometimes.” I sound confident, overly eager.

  “Will you do a hit with me this evening?”

  What I want him to hit is my ass with his solid, erect, pulsing, and veined dick. Fire burns around my heart and navel. The two areas connect, create a line of pure heat. “Sure. Light a stick up.”