A Fable — Chapter 5

At their ramshackle camp on the edge of the woods, the summer evening was heavy with humidity, the air so thick with wet haze you could literally see it before your eyes. Thank god Scooter gave in and they took the 4-wheeler instead of climbing all the way up the hill.



“C’mon man, let’s sleep out — too blazin’ hot in there.” Scooter grabbed Bubba’s ankle, pulling him out of the tent and onto the grass.



“Yeah,” Bubba chuckled, “I can smell me almost as much as I can smell you.” They had recently survived a science class for boys (translation: sex ed) in which the expert instructor (translation: track coach) kept referring to a study about the role of scent in sexual attraction.



“Makes scents to me!” they both started, but Scooter finished the punchline first and jotted down his five points on the back of a notebook.

“Quiet back there,” Coach Dogdrill snarled as he looked towards the corner where they always sat, snickering at their own jokes. “This is serious stuff, boys. You might be in trouble and you don’t even know it. Your future Missis might not have a good enough sniffer and pass you right by.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Bubba mumbled without moving his lips. “He’s fuckin’ losin’ it.”

“Don’t mean nuthin’ ’cept maybe Mrs. Dogdrill’s found her sense of smell and now she won’t put out. And he don’t know how to fix it. What a dumb-ass fucker.”

They were seriously proud of how far they’d come in mastering rude repartee. But despite themselves, they learned a new vocabulary word in Coach Dogdrill’s class that day: pheromones.

Looking up at the stars between gigantic trees, Scooter absent-mindedly played with his damp armpit hairs. “So do you think it’s real? Would girls really get off on smellin’ me if I stopped usin’ my Dad’s stinkin’ Right Guard?”



"Hell, I don’t know, man, but you better keep on with that shit or you’ll smell like Red Dick.” Whose real name was Reed Dickerson, but for whatever reason he was pretty pungent. And not in a good way.

“Com’ere and take a whiff,” Scooter leaned over to where Bubba was laying splayed out on the grass to catch as much air as much as possible, though the air was at least as hot and wet as his skin.

“Hey, asshole, don’t fuckin’ touch me.” Bubba pulled up and started to sprint away but Scooter was faster.

“Don’t touch me? Don’t touch me? What the fuck do you mean, don’t touch me?! I’ll touch you any way I fuckin’ want to, that’s the deal, man.” Scooter frowned with impatience then wrestled Bubba onto his back.

“Dude, get off me — you’re too goddamn hot.” Bubba never gave up without a fight and used his one and only wrestling move, the leg scissors, to make Scooter submit. Or at least chill. In more ways than one. If he was lucky.



With Bubba’s strong runner’s legs around his waist, pinning him to the ground and cutting off his air, Scooter got more and more pissed. “Fuck you, motherfucker, I’ll make you sorry I ever showed you how to throw a fuckin’ scissors on me.” But he couldn’t break the hold. Gradually, because they were both sweating like proverbial pigs, he was able to slide his body up slightly from the unrelenting pressure of Bubba’s legs. Just close enough to grab his best buddy’s neck and pull his face straight down into a headlock. The sticky pit's chemical impact was almost immediate and Bubba’s strength began to waver.



“Jesus, Scooter, what’re you doin’?” and he inexplicably thought about the time his tonsils were removed, the nurse putting that thing over his face and telling him to count backwards from 100. “99, 98, 97…” and then she was saying, “Okay, it’s all over, how are you feeling, dear?” and he wanted to say, “I feel like shit, you fuckin’ bitch,” but it hurt too much to talk so he just laid there.

The analytical part of Bubba’s mind wondered how there could be so much of Scooter’s sweat and how it could be so sticky and yet so sweet at the same time. Wouldn’t profuse, dense sweat smell stronger and wouldn’t that be bad? But his primary sensation was of being safe, secure, at home. His body started to shake a little. “Oh Jesus, man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Scooter said urgently, thinking he’d instigated one of Bubba’s asthma attacks.



But Bubba pushed his face deeper into the cleft. He breathed in Scooter’s natural scent as if it was life-giving oxygen on Mars. More and more and still he couldn’t get enough. It was sweet, so fuckin’ sweet, like the answer to all his questions rolled into one.

As Scooter relented and Bubba raised up on one elbow, they both realized they’d reached a turning point.



TO BE CONTINUED