Chapter 19. Crossing the Waiting Room. Day #31.
Wednesday February 14, 2019. Day #31. Acapulco, Mexico
We fell asleep early last night so I was up early today, I knew this was our last full day in this hotel, but in a pinch we could probably extend another day or two in the marina if we stayed on the boat.
Overnight Carlo scooted up, his face was in my arm pit, his arm across my stomach, it was early but we had time. I wanted to take him to see a doctor today and was sure there was an urgent care here on the peninsula.
A while later I got up without waking him and used the bathroom, brushed my teeth again, and went back to bed.
I climbed back under the blanket beside him and he reached across and snuggled against me, but I don't think he actually woke up. His fingertips landed directly on my tit, I was able to fall asleep again, next time I opened my eyes there was sunlight coming in around the curtains.
I woke up again at 7:40am and got him up and dressed, we shaved and went downstairs for the breakfast buffet. After that I researched clinics in this part of Acapulco and what time they opened. Language would not be a problem for us.
We ended up at a clinic called Unimed Health about three quarters of a mile away further south on the peninsula, they even accepted some American insurance plans but I planned to pay cash.
We sat in the waiting room for almost an hour then Carlo got called back, I went with him. That was the most Spanish I ever heard him speak at one time before. Then he was very surprised when I started telling the doctor (in Spanish) what I saw: his color, sleeping all the time, starving for two weeks, and general weakness. The doctor said he would send someone to draw several blood samples and he wanted a urine sample too.
I watched closely when the girl came in to collect his blood, I looked closely at his arms for signs of needle marks but there were no red dots. He went across the hallway to collect his pee sample and brought it back to the room, his urine looked like river water.
We walked back out to the waiting room while all the tests were run, Carlo held a cotton ball on the spot on his arm where they drew five vials of blood (one of them was put on ice). The TV blasted some travel show, Carlo stared at the TV then at me and smiled. Back in Florida I had a pocket size device called a TV-B-Gone that worked in places like this, gyms, and airports too.
We were called back to a different room 90 minutes later and talked to the doctor. He said Carlo was anemic and dehydrated and wanted him to start taking iron pills. He also said he had a urinary tract infection and they were going to give him a shot of antibiotics and a prescription for 14 days of pills, one pill every 12 hours with food. And he wanted him to drink two gallons of Gatorade (or Pedialyte) over the next two days. I asked if that would explain his tiredness and color and the doctor said, yes.
Carlo asked about drinking wine and beer with the antibiotics and the doctor said it was usually okay as long as they didn't go down together, he suggested no alcohol one hour before to two hours after taking the pills because the alcohol destroyed the antibiotic drugs, caused them to fall apart in the blood stream and GI tract.
After that the doctor came back in and had Carlo get up on the exam table on his stomach and slide his shorts down, he got a shot in his butt cheek that made him wince in pain. "Wow that stung!"
We went to the lobby, I paid the bill in cash, $180 in US dollars. We left with a fist full of papers and walked to a nearby pharmacy and got the iron pills and antibiotics ($32). He said the shot burned really bad for about one minute then got better, but his entire butt cheek was still tender.
We took a taxi to a store for the two gallon bottles of yellow Gatorade then went to the hotel and went to the room, the clock said it was 11:05am. I asked if he would like to walk down to check on Susan. He went to the bathroom before we left. I picked up his papers from the clinic and looked at the blood test results while he peed. They also ran blood tests for 12 different STDs, HIV, and Hepatitis, they were all negative. The only tests that were wrong were his hemoglobin, potassium, sodium, magnesium, and iron were all low. But he had dirty pee and a bladder infection. So he should start feeling better in a day or two.
I had to introduce Carlo at the guard shack and tell them he was with me, should have the same access as me. But the guard recognized Carlo since he lived in the weeds and watched their sidewalk for two days before I arrived. Carlo told him in Spanish I was the guy he was waiting for. We walked the 200 feet out to the end of the middle pier and stepped on board Susan.
I unlocked the door and went below. The cabin felt very warm so we opened hatches and turned on fans. I went right to the batteries while Carlo checked the bilge, which was dry. I asked him to make sure all the lights were off, switches in the down position. Carlo laughed as he watched me checking the batteries and told me how he had dreams almost every night about turning those lights on.
He carried the ice chest outside and drained the water and brought it back inside and left the lid open. I asked him to get out the bag lady cart and bring it with us, we would have supplies to bring on board, tonight was our last night at the hotel.
After the battery checks were done I left the bed propped up and got stuff from the bathroom for a belly button deep cleaning. I asked him to join me in the front bunk room and got him on his back across the head of the bed. In this bunk it was common for people to climb in and slide their feet to the far end, where the mattress came to a point.
When he got positioned on the bunk I pushed his shirt up to his arm pits and slid his shorts down to the middle of his thighs. Then I poured hydrogen peroxide down the hole and let it sit while I was on my knees beside him and ran my fingers through his thick black hair. He relaxed on his back smiling, he tolerated my work because he knew how important it was to me, but it wasn't as much for him. I was the first person he knew that truly cared about the inside of his belly button.
I told him I slid his shirt up so the peroxide didn't splatter and make tiny white spots. Carlo said no matter what I did to his body I always moved his shirt up to expose his chest because I had a tit fetish. I laughed and admitted that was true too, but it wasn't my fault, like being born Gay and autistic.
After it stopped foaming I used a Q-tip to loosen the stuff that looked like tiny flakes of sand then poured in more and let it boil again. That time I gently played with his right tit, which made him half hard. He boiled for about ten minutes and I got more tiny chunks of black stuff out and did it again, but that time the chunks were gone. I poured in some water and used paper towels to wipe it out all the way to the bottom. The inside of his belly button was basically the same as the outside of a hot dog. Like most people his collected lint and dust and sometimes grew bacteria and formed things that look like scabs. It's hard for him to clean and he cannot see inside it unless he used his cell or a mirror, but I could easily do it and once its clean I felt entitled to mess around with it all I wanted. His hole was very visible to other people, I just didn't want him walking around where people could see crud, a belly button as wide (and highly visible in public) as his should always be kept clean because it attracted eyeballs when he walked around with no shirt on, same as his tits.
I've said this before, but Carlo acted as if he had no clue how uncommon and erotic his body looked. I'd bet if you got him really drunk and asked him he'd say his tits were way too big, his belly button too wide, his lips were too fat, his eyes and hair too black, and his dick was too short. Maybe the grass really was always greener in the other guy's yard (until you saw his water bill).
After his cleaning was done I jerked him off but he came on paper towels. He pulled me down on top of him and we made out for about ten minutes of very passionate kissing. I must say there were several things that Carlo was capable of faking, but passionate kissing ain't one of `em. When he really loved you he communicated that in his kiss, you could actually feel his love. He was very passionate and full of energy when he kissed you to convey his love. We locked up Susan and walked back to the hotel. 12:55pm, we talked on the long walk back to the hotel.
"We're leaving tomorrow?" He asked first.
"Yep, but we don't need to leave at any particular time although after sunrise would be better, we'd have some wind and sunlight."
"Do we need supplies?"
"Yes, we should go back to the grocery store this afternoon but my list isn't big." I explained while I pulled the cart behind me.
After we cleared the guard shack by the lighthouse I asked if he was hungry and he said he was very hungry, I said there was a steak house nearby, within walking distance and he said he was ready. I told him steak was a good source of iron.
Back in the hotel room I had him drink 1/3 of the first gallon and put it back in the refrigerator. He asked what it was for and I told him it provided electrolytes, which were certain minerals we needed, since he went all those days without eating or drinking he was low on lots of stuff.
We went back down to the lobby but used the front door and walked the quarter mile to the Brazil Steakhouse and got there during the lull between lunch and dinner. 2:05pm.
First we went around the salad bar then the meat deliveries started. We both declined the lamb and fowl and asked for beef. The guys came by and sliced off strips of different meats, sirloin, ribeye, prime rib, and NY strip cuts. It was almost burnt outside but pink and juicy inside. I went back to the salad bar and got us baked potatoes and chunks of butter and cups of sour cream. We left that place stuffed and slowly walked home, but we couldn't hold hands in public. Carlo said that was some of the best beef he'd ever had, he really liked the charred outside and the smoke scent.
A panhandler guy approached us on the sidewalk and Carlo told him to go away in Spanish but he kept following and asking for money. Carlo stopped and stepped up close to the guy and told him in a rather angry voice to go away, which was not like he normally handled people like that. I stood and watched but if it turned physical I'd step in and put a halt to it. He certainly seemed to have more energy now. It almost looked like he was trying to protect me by staying between the beggar and me.
Twenty minutes later we were back in our hotel room, I had him take another of his pills and drink a lot more Gatorade. Then we changed and went down to the pool. Before we left we both used the bathroom, I leaned against counter to look at his pee to see if the color improved, which it had.
The Russian looking boys were back lounging in the sun, side by side again. Carlo said he recognized them as being from the 300 foot yacht out in the bay, then he pointed out a small rubber dinghy on the beach and said that was their ride. He said the owners had two rooms in the tower but those guys stayed on the boat in lower deck quarters. He said he heard hotel people talk about them, yes they were paid human sex toys and they didn't speak Spanish or English.
I commented, "And they don't understand a wave and a smile?"
"No, I think they're just stuck-up." Carlo replied.
We stayed by the pool until after sunset and spent most of time in the water. Carlo got more stares than I did. I watched the people on the deck turn and look at him when he walked to the water fountain and the bathroom. When Carlo walked in a swim suit the three things that stick out the furthest on his body were the lump in his swim suit and his girly tits. At a glance he also looked like a topless girl with small breasts, or maybe a guy taking female hormones. The women seemed to stare at him more than the guys.
We decided to skip dinner and went back to the hotel room at 7:30pm. We hung our suits on the shower curtain rod and got ready to run to the store with a list.
We bought fresh fruit and veggies, 30 lbs of ice cubes, more beer, more 3-gallon jugs of water, toilet paper, paper towels, dish soap, two packs of 12 ounce heavy paper cups, plates, and bowls, and two bags of pretzel rods. He picked out several cans of stew and chili and I remembered to grab a bottle of distilled water for the batteries. We delivered those to the boat as soon as we got back then went back to the hotel room. 8:55pm.
I was going to take off my clothes down to my underwear and climb in bed and relax, Carlo seemed to be doing the same but he came back in the room holding the tube of lotion and stroking his boner that pointed up at the ceiling, I instantly got hard.
At first I got him on the bed on his knees over my legs so I could suck his rod for a while, and rub it all over my face. Carlo kneeled over me and watched what I was doing with his dick. He leaked pre-come badly, way more than usual for him, but none of it went to waste.
After he'd had all he could take he moved down, and had me lube his dick, then he raised my legs and pushed inside me and fucked me hard, luckily the bed didn't squeak, move, or bang against the wall.
I was on my back with a pillow stuffed under my hips while he fucked me, his beautiful chest above me. I held his arms while he rode me, but he didn't last long, maybe five minutes and then fell limp on top of me, I felt his dick twitch as he came inside me and panted heavily, the hair on the top of his head pressed into my face. He really needed a haircut.
I put my arms around him and held him against me and rubbed his back while he caught his breath and cooled off. Slowly, his breathing returned to normal, but his dick stayed hard. Ten minutes later he fucked me again, slowly at first.
The second time he went slower and shoved in all the way hard several times, my head bounced off the headboard each time, he grunted and moaned each time he did it. He lasted longer that time, maybe ten minutes. I lowered my legs so my feet were on the bed and my knees were in the air. While he rode me he moved his position until he was back up on his knees, upright. That gave me an even better view of his body, he had his eyes closed and his hands on my knees, his face turned red and his forehead was drenched with beads of sweat.
I loved watching his belly button change shapes as his body bent to gain the best penetration while he fucked me. Then he started to slow but instead of ramming it in really hard he came to a stop and pulled out, his shiny bright red dick stuck out right over my body then started to bounce up and down. (His hands were still on my knees)
A long white string of semen shot out and landed in a line from my nose to my lower belly, it was followed a second later by another as big as the first, it hit my cheek and ran across my chest and stomach.
With each shot his dick bounced up and down but he kept his hands on my knees. Two more landed on my stomach then it hung there like a leaky faucet and dripped for almost a minute. He had an enormous pained look on his face, his eyes tightly closed. Finally his upper body relaxed, his shoulders went down and he lowered himself and licked semen off my face. It ran from my nose to my chin then down my chest. He licked both lines off my face then we joined our mouths and kissed for about ten minutes. I swallowed my semen three times.
Carlo rose up and using three fingers together like a spoon he scooped up a large wad of semen and gently wiped it onto his nipple then lowered it to my mouth so I could have it too. After several minutes he rolled off me onto his back and said that was one for the record books.
He cooled off beside me in silence for a while then rolled on his side and blew me, then finished me by hand because he knew that's my most favorite way to come. I liked to have him by my side, stroking my dick with his right hand exactly like I showed him, then watch my dick twitch on its own as semen shot out onto my belly. He gently aimed it up so the semen shot out a little further.
We took showers and had a conversation for the next two hours about sailing to Cabo, 900 miles north-west of Acapulco. I told him it would be open ocean after we were north of Guadalajara. I expected it would take six days to get there and we had a pier reservation, but it wasn't a great spot because it was close to land and a busy street lined with lots of stores and bars. After Cabo our next stop would be Los Angeles. Cabo was sort of halfway between Acapulco and Los Angeles.
After the showers I had him take his next pill and drink more Gatorade then we went to bed like spoons in the silverware drawer.
Thursday February 15th, Day #32.
Departure day.
We were up, dressed, and ready to go by 7:50am. Outside on that long sidewalk I looked at the palm trees, they were swaying a little but the bay was nearly flat, and the sky a cloudless blue. The sun was up and Acapulco was coming to life. We went to the security booth and told them we were leaving, he handed us a paper survey form but Carlo quietly ripped it up and dropped it in the trash.
Everything was set, Susan passed our inspection. Within ten minutes we were ready. Our suitcase was put away and he started disconnecting stuff, first to go was city water, then 117vac power, then I started the DC motor at its lowest setting while he un-tied the bow rope, jumped on board, and sat on the cabin roof. I untied the stern rope and shoved us away from the pier. We motored around the marina piers as we turned towards the center of the bay at the speed of a crawling infant. 8:21am.
I wanted to clear the nearby boats very slowly. After we were headed straight out into the bay I bumped up the throttle to about 3mph and we started moving slightly faster. Without using the GPS I sailed us around the peninsula and then towards the mouth of the bay. At our closest point to the 300 foot yacht I saw Carlo pull out one of our little air horns from his pocket and blast it aimed at the yacht. Those horns are terribly loud, he blasted it until it ran out of gas, about twenty seconds. I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes. Carlo glanced over his shoulder across the cabin roof at me, I smiled at him and he nodded his head up and down but stayed on the bow, mission accomplished! I softly said out loud, "Good Dog!" but I knew he couldn't hear me. It's amazing sometimes how much we think alike. I bet that horn woke up everyone on that yacht and when it ran out of gas we heard it echo off every condo building around the bay.
By the time we were clear of all boats I lifted the throttle up to 6mph. When we got to the mouth of the bay the boat started to ride the waves. I yelled, "OKAY!" and without instruction he cranked up the mainsail then looked back at me. I nodded towards the windsock near the mouth of the bay said the wind was blowing north to south along the coast, Carlo looked too. I held up my arm to demonstrate how far we'd lean on that wind, he nodded yes then raised the two foresails and came to the back deck. 9:01am.
She leaned to the left and we caught more wind once we were away from land, I set the course for the northwest towards our undersea canyon we'd follow to Cabo. My best guess was we'd get there next week Tuesday. Carlo came back on deck eating an apple and offered me one. He sat on the bench beside me and rested his bare feet against my leg. I asked him to take off his shirt but he stripped to his boxers.
We had to zigzag the rest of the day, I told him it was likely the wind would be against us the rest of the way to California so our speed would be slow. Carlo said he didn't care. I told him to take his pill and drink the remainder of his first gallon of Gatorade.
When he came back on deck he asked how long it would take a 300 foot yacht to get from here to Cabo, I told him about 700 miles, it might take them about 30 hours. It'll take us about 100 hours.
Around 3pm I asked him to dump the poop tank, which he did while I sat in the captain's chair at the helm and stared at the compass and GPS.
For lunch we had thin sliced smoked ham sandwiches with lettuce and onion slices, which was crunchy and nice. We only had one head of lettuce because it doesn't last long on ice, it was too cold and wet despite being in a zipper plastic bag.
Later that afternoon we watched the sun slowly get closer to the horizon. He sat beside me and asked me to tell him about crossing Panama.
"The canal is old, its ugly concrete walls with big iron plate doors. Three locks on each end, with a huge reservoir lake in between. The lake was about 90 feet above the ocean, which meant a thirty foot lift in each lock. They built a fairly large dam to generate electricity to operate all the locks, but there were several dams built to turn the river into a lake.
When I got there I paid twenty eight hundred in cash then waited for two days. On Sunday morning a group of thirty small boats crossed together north to south, another group of thirty crossed south to north. I would have hired two men to handle ropes but I met two American backpackers in Colon and they wanted a ride across so we traded rope handling for transport."
"Who were they?" He asked sounding curious.
"A young couple from Seattle, they were hitchhiking across the Americas on their way back home and needed a ride to the west side to get on the Pan American Highway and try to get rides up to Texas."
"So what did you guys do?" He asked a question to get me to explain more.
"I'll explain that but let me finish the story of the canal. We pulled up anchors in Colon around 8am Sunday and tied up at the marina on Naos Island after crossing Panama around 8pm Sunday, that's 52 miles in 12 hours, do the math (about 6mph). The single longest part was crossing the lake in the middle. The route was marked with buoys, like sailing down a highway on the water. We crossed on battery power because the winds were wrong, the batteries were nearly dead by the time we tied up at the marina. Each lock took about forty minutes once we got tied up to the wall. Everything moved slowly in the canal, it was like a giant slow motion world of concrete, iron, and murky water. Those iron doors are original, made in Pittsburgh back in 1912 about the same time as the Titanic. They're basically floating iron hulls that are made exactly the same as iron ships."
Carlo noted it sounded like going back in time, I told him it was exactly like that once you got near the locks. They were just thousand foot long concrete boxes with iron doors, water in, water out. That was mostly how it worked. He asked what the difference was between iron and steel.
Steel is made from iron but its refined, purified, and different additives are thrown in to give it the specs they want, that's also how stainless steel is made, but it all starts as iron ore. I told him that iron was an extremely plentiful element on earth and probably most of the other inner planets. Then I went back to describing crossing Panama.
"That lake in the middle, Gatun Lake, it's huge. And it's up in the mountains. It's surrounded on all sides by the thickest jungle I've ever seen. When you study the weather there you see that lower Central America sits in the exact spot where multiple weather systems collide, that's why it rains heavily there. Trade winds off the Pacific and the Caribbean Sea collide there and produce some wicked storms. We saw bad storms every day and that was during the dry season."
"On the canal the boats crossing as a group stayed pretty close, each boat needed a pilot and two rope handlers and they checked before you entered the locks, we were number four of thirty. If you're missing either they'd turn you around or sell you what you needed on the spot. I was going to hire ropers at the locks but the hitchhikers were good enough."
"They were Gen-Z'ers, a hetero couple from wealthy families, but they were snowflakes and not very smart, but they were well behaved. We sort of became friends over time. I met them in a bar when I first arrived in Colon on Friday. My first stop was at the office to pay the canal fee, after that I walked somewhere to get some hot food. That was my first hot meal and footsteps on dry land after Cozumel."
When I said, `after Cozumel,' we both glanced at each other's eyes because both of us sustained injuries there, but he was too busy learning about carburetors to feel it like I felt it.
"We sat at the bar and talked and agreed to a trade, so I took them on-board, they re-arranged cases of food and converted the sofa to bunks. We had all day Friday and Saturday off and I ended up feeding them and we hung out and played cards and drank and they got horny and fucked while I watched. It was kinky and cool at the same time."
"You fuck `em?" He wanted to know.
"Hell no! But when I heard the story about their hike across Argentina I started to believe they were sort of like swingers but maybe not entirely. I never really understood exactly what they did or didn't do, their story telling skills were clear as mud. He whispered to me that she couldn't fuck vaginally at all. He tongued her like a pro, that's what they did on the sofa with me sitting at the table. After their performance they told me about their time in Argentina and a big outdoor party they went to for migrant harvest workers. It sounded like part of it was a fuckfest for the farmers if they wanted to participate. He described a gathering of almost a thousand farm workers from different countries. Most of them were single men and lots of them were drunk and horny so they had a few places where they could pay for sex. One was where you paid to fuck a gay young man on his hands and knees, beside a large fire, in front of about two hundred of your coworkers. The other was similar, it was two guys jerking off men beside a large fire for about one dollar per orgasm, and it was done in front of a few hundred people, some of them watching and jerking themselves off too.
On their second night of the fuckfest he ran a service, he'd jerk-off farmers for coins but the catch was he did it in front of a big crowd, so you had to pull it out and orgasm with all your coworkers standing there watching. Sometimes he did two at the same time."
"That's wild."
"Yes, of course they told the story better than me, but you get the idea. Picture an outdoor gathering at night with hundreds of poor migrant farmers and in a couple areas people were fucking or getting jerked off publically, at night around a large fire while others were passing joints and homemade moonshine."
"Wow! I wanna go."
"And he also said that most of those guys only bathed a few times a year so it was very cheesy and gross touching all those turtle necked wieners, but he got used to the foreskins and the smell but he gagged a lot at first."
"I can tell you more but I want to hear about your bus ride across Mexico. How'd that go?"
"Well there were no optional services but I rode on eight different old school busses over 900 miles. Mexico has a long distance bus company but there's lots of private short range busses, most of em were old school busses all painted up. You gotta ask around what bus goes where you want to go. Since they're all private they set their own prices, schedules, and routes. It's expensive to ride from town to town, and none of em ran overnight. They all had shelters like a bus terminal, but most of those were run down places with busted windows and no water or power. Maybe a few chairs and a place to get inside out of the rain, but that's about it. I saw lots of people go out back to pee in the trees. That's why it took so long to get here because they only went about 100 miles a day then stopped for the night. And since its Mexico nobody's in a hurry. I could have caught a flight from Yucatan to Acapulco but I'm not sure I'd trust some mom and pop airline in Mexico."
"There's no route maps because there's no routes. I had to ask every driver where they went and what bus to take next to get to Acapulco, nobody knew all the routes. They'd say something like, "Take the twenty peso White Horse bus to Cintalapa." That's the most they could tell me. The busses had fantastic paintings on the outside and one of them had white horses painted on both sides, so it was called the Autobús de Caballo Blanco. Where I grew up busses had numbers not paintings!" He said with an exasperated look.
"The thing I learned is there's a highway along part of the coast, my challenge was to get to that highway, then it would be easier the rest of the way. It took eight busses and two weeks to get here, it's about 900 miles across Mexico. On a Greyhound Bus you'd do that in one day for ninety bucks."
"I basically sat on the seat and stared out the window. We got into the mountains but the roads were okay, I saw a few Mayan pyramids and lots of poor old Mexicans. Most busses stopped at rest areas with outhouses. That's about it."
"Your suitcase got stolen?"
"Yes, in the shelter in downtown Cintalapa, Mexico. I went to sleep on the floor with my arm over it and the next morning it was gone. The morning that happened I was so freaked out after we got on the bus and started moving I sat in the back seat and cried, I had nothing left but the air in my lungs, how much lower can you go than that? I never thought I'd make it to Acapulco on time so I came up with a plan to kill myself, but you probably don't want to hear about that. Maybe dead really is the lowest you can go, I was one step above that because I still had a pulse."
"I want to hear everything." I told him in a soft voice.
"It's harder to kill yourself when you don't have anything, but I decided I was going to walk into traffic. There's big semi trucks racing down the roads all over Mexico, that's all I could do if I got here and never found you. Once I starved down to 90 pounds that's what I was going to do, it would be an instant death, stepping in front of a seventy thousand pound oil tanker going 70mph."
I watched the expression on his face turn to one of despair as he told his story, but I just let him talk and paid close attention to every word.
By the time he was done telling his story about how his situation improved after he got on the west coast highway, it was dark and we were both tired. I suggested he go to bed and I would start taking short naps on the bench seat all night. Wake up every hour, check the heading, the GPS route, the compass, the winds and weather, check the radar, then set the alarm for 55 minutes and go back to sleep.
Friday February 16, 2019. Day #33.
Day #2 of 6 sailing to Cabo San Lucas.
First time I saw he was up I reminded him to drink 1/3 of a gallon of Gatorade and take his pills. Although his hair looked shaggy his color looked better today. He said he felt better too.
We decided to hold off making breakfast and just hung out on the back deck, he said he'd take over driving.
While he was at the helm we talked about Los Angeles stuff, he asked again about buying a car.
"What about a motorcycle since parking a car is a major hassle where we're going?"
"I drove one there back in college, its tons easier. On the down side if you want groceries you need a backpack or pay extra for delivery. The few days it rains in LA there's a city bus network but the clientele can get a little rough, busses are slow but reliable. I think I would suggest you look into one of those scooters with a motorcycle engine, one that goes 65mph but they're small and lightweight and have a locked trunk. You can usually park them at bike racks. You're not going to impress anyone with it but I don't think that's why either of us wants to move there."
"Almost everywhere you go in LA they have bike racks near the door, which means they're usually the best parking, even closer then handicap parking. If you get a scooter you'll mostly always have the best parking, best gas mileage, and in traffic you can fit between cars and keep moving when everyone else is stuck."
"You're talking about the ones with lawnmower engines that go 35mph?"
"No. Most of the big name Japan motorcycles make ones that look like scooters with a bigger engine that can go over 60mph. I forget the model names but they all make `em. If you watch travel videos in Vietnam and Thailand you'll see some people ride the little 49cc engine bikes but lots of them own scooters with 200cc engines and can run down the highway and pass semi trucks. That's the kind I'm talking about. Oh yeah, and insurance is a lot lower too."
"Can they carry two people?"
"Watch your travel shows, yes. Almost everyone can carry two adults, in Vietnam they'll carry two adults, and a chicken." He laughed.
"Oh hey I just remembered. Would you do something for me?" I asked.
"Sure."
"Would you take all the booze bottles off the racks and put them on the table and check every one and come up with a shopping list for what's missing or needs refills, since I got no idea what to stock. Those snowflake kids really hit the booze hard."
"Sure, I'll do that, but just so you know, there were empty bottles on the rack when we started dating." He said then got up and went below for a while.
About an hour later he returned and held up three empty bottles, he wrote a shopping list for liquor only and added things to complete the selection. He tossed the empty glass bottles into the sea behind Susan. I told him he should have put notes in them, but none of `em had caps, so they'd sink right away.
After he came back I looked at the GPS, it said local time was 10:46am. I was feeling hungry. I brought up the subject of his monthly allowance again. "So what I'm thinking it I'll put $4800 in fifty dollar bills in a kitchen cabinet. You can spend it or hoard it. You can spend it all on day #1 or make it last. Every month on the first day I'll add another $4800 in cash. Does that sound okay?"
"Well, without time to consider it I'd say, yes it sounds acceptable."
"As long as you don't break the law with it then I don't care much what happens to it. I'm paying you to not get a job, and in exchange for that I would appreciate it if while you're not employed if you could sort of keep the house decent inside. I'm not asking you to be the maid, but I am asking you to do more than your share of the housekeeping. We'll both do housekeeping but on work days I'm not going to be doing much of that stuff because I'll be working twelve to sixteen hours a day so I'll only have time at home to shower and go to bed, literally."
He had no comment so I said it again.
"I've said this before but it is the most important thing for you to understand, so I'm going to say this again: My job as a lawyer pays all our bills, yours and mine. It pays our rent, our insurance, our groceries, our internet, for our cars, and our movies and cell service, it pays everything. Therefore, my work is the most important activity in the house. Nothing must interfere with my work, nothing. Let me repeat that: Nothing can interfere with my work, nothing on God's Earth should interfere with my mental focus on my job." Brief pause.
"There, I think I've said it clearly to you about five times since we met! The reason why I'm saying it over and over it most lawyers felt the same exact way about their work but this is also the number one cause for divorce among lawyers, the wife interferes with the focus and does it on purpose to get attention. Being the spouse to a lawyer requires her to be independent and self-winding, that's what I expect from you too. I also do not know yet how the new office is about gay relationships, but that's a thing we all know well, the secret relationship. Oh, he's just a friend. Oh, he's a relative. Oh, he's my wife's brother -- we're good friends."
Carlo nodded and said he's good so far.
"And this might be a good time for you to consider going to college. Remember how trapped you were at the tire store? If you had a college degree you'd be better able to do what you want for a living or even start your own company. You'll also find that as you talk to people around LA that you will be one of the few that doesn't have a college degree. I'll pay for it, you do the work and get good grades. If you went to school you'd have something big to focus on instead of my annoying autistic habits."
"Maybe, I have no idea what to go to school for." I told him that's a topic for next month but as soon as we get settled he should work on getting his high school transcripts or find out whom the college should contact for them.
Carlo asked about the apartment.
"It's 11906 Venice Boulevard with a balcony overlooking the main drag, about 900 square feet which is pretty large for a one bedroom apartment in that area."
"I honestly got no idea where that is."
"Don't worry you'll like it. But it's a lot more crowded than Saint Pete. There's lots of busses and weird people all over the place."
"I can hardly wait." He said sarcastically.
Then I reminded him about the disadvantages of being paid secretly in cash. "I'll pay it once a month, based on working a 40 hour week for thirty bucks an hour, tax free. Just so I know I said it again you cannot show your allowance on your taxes and if you don't have a job that gets taxed you'll possibly regret it when you get old enough for Social Security and Medicare, or apply for unemployment benefits. You won't qualify for some government benefits with me paying you in cash. The good part is getting paid in cash is almost a doubling of the power of your money. I think forty eight hundred bucks a month comes to sixty thousand a year or if you paid taxes it would be an eighty thousand dollar a year job. How much did you make at the tire store?"
Carlo stared in my eyes for a moment then said he made about half that working for his parents but he got even less because he paid taxes too. I got his attention by moving my hand near his eyes and told him in a serious tone: "Depositing that money in any bank could draw the attention of the IRS too. You've been warned."
Then he asked, "What about rules?"
"Huh. Uhhhh, rules. I don't have them written down but I should so we both know what to expect from each other. And my rules govern both of us, not just you. The short version of the No list is: illegal drugs, criminal acts, excessive drunkenness, fucking or being fucked by other people, theft, lying, deceit, threats, violence, assault, drunk driving, bringing home STDs, or selling drugs."
He looked at me as if I might have more to say, then he laughed and said he's never done any of those things, except for fucking strangers but he hadn't done that since we started dating.
Then Carlo asked what he could do to get fired.
"Cheat on me, bring home an STD, turn into a criminal, charge things to me without asking first, hit me or threaten me, putting our home, our safety, or relationship in jeopardy." We stared at each other then I said, "Everyone does dumb shit, those are generally not included, perhaps the biggest factor would be your intent, but I expect you to be responsible and trustworthy."
Carlo said it sounded fair so far. Then he asked if I still had six million in the bank and I told him it was twice as much now, like I said before I reminded him he can see the books with a ring and a vow.
"If I get a job that pays taxes do I lose my allowance?"
"Maybe, depends on how much you earn. If you get paid more than me then yes - it stops. If you worked at Taco Hell for $8 an hour then no, you wouldn't lose it, but this agreement is negotiable."
The thought that ran through my mind was I've said to him four times now: ring and a vow. I guess he thought I was kidding.
Our conversation continued for hours as we sat by the helm on the back deck, Carlo was driving and I was by his side on the bench seat, our feet were touching and he seemed in a very good mood today.
Contact the author: borischenaz gmail
You've reached page 364. Roughly ninety more pages to go.
If you like this book you may also enjoy my other recent book titled Response Team, it's on Nifty.org in the Adult Friends section dated August 20, 2021. It had two different endings and forked midway through chapter 15. (clearly marked)