Lucrezia Magazine

I was careful, that's for sure. Not because I wasn't out of the closet...exactly. Just that I didn't tell a whole heck of a lot of people at the mine where I worked. We spent our days extracting ore out of the earth, avoiding falling rocks and explosions. They didn't need a new reason to get jumpy and I'm sorry to say that outing myself would have made them jumpy. To call these guys traditional would be an understatement. They gave me enough grief for being a college boy as it was. I didn't need more.

Red was different though. He was a longtime Yellowknifer with roots going back to the first Europeans who came north to trade fur, but he hadn't stayed in the north. He'd gone to college too, then hauled ass out to San Francisco before finding his way back home.

He'd tell me stories at lunch. I think it made him feel good that a young guy like me was interested in what an old codger like him had to say. He'd been a miner for close to twenty-five years and it damn well showed. Oh, he had muscles in all the right places and was a spry, wiry old fella, but his body had been ravaged by rock and dust. I knew because we showered off our dirt together daily. I made sure of that. We came out of that mine pitch black and even after scrubbing hard, we could never quite get all the dirt off. I think Red had gold in his veins. He had enough wrinkles on his skin to make an elephant look smooth. I didn't care though. Just made him seem tough to me.

I'd be lying if I didn't admit that my nights were full of fantasies about Red. I'd seen his cock after all. It wasn't huge or anything, but it was a handful and more than a mouthful, I imagined. If we were in a bigger city, maybe some folks might think I was stalking him. After all I went to the Wild Cat for dinner the same time Red did. I brought him his favourite pipe tobacco when I went into Yellowknife for a week-old copy of the Yellowknifer so he could do those cryptic crossword puzzles he liked. If I couldn't get into his pants, at least I could make myself part of his life. But our town was so small, running into people all the time was natural.

I'd heard he'd had a wife, a Russian woman who left him pretty soon after they got hitched. He didn't talk about her at all. I assumed he was straight. No, I was positive he was.

Red didn't seem to mind my hanging around. He didn't ask me questions like the other guys: where was my woman, and all that. I'd babble at him and he'd just give me a stare that silenced me nicely, pat my shoulder in a fatherly way. He didn't know that his touch sent tingles straight to my cock.

One night we'd just finished eating dinner at the Wild Cat. It was dark and the Northern Lights were glowing red through the big picture window of the café. We were both full of good food and beer. I'd had more than a few. Red turned to me and put his hand on my shoulder again, like he did. It caught me off guard. I didn't have time to hide my reaction. I shivered and he saw it. He stared at me a long time and we didn't move until Sheri, the waitress brought back the change.

It was another night of forty below temperatures. Snowplows scraped along the ice road, and tankers full of oil made their trek up to the mining camps and back. The wind gusts were whipping the snow up around us as we left the café. I was wrapped in layer upon layer, but I was still shaking. Maybe not all of it was from the cold. I still wasn't used to the weather. The guys were always teasing me about it. Red didn't tease me, even though twenty-five years of Arctic mining had made him pretty much immune to the cold. He loaned me a warm woollen sweater. Handmade. Turns out he had actually knitted it himself. He swore me to secrecy.

At night I gathered that sweater to my chest and breathed in the scent of Red: Old Spice, wood smoke and that musky smell of sweat at the armpits. I stroked off, sniffing those pits and imagined licking them for real, then moving to his nipples. I didn't spend all my nights masturbating or hanging out with Red. I liked to keep in shape. When I wasn't dog-tired from the strenuous workday, I pumped iron. At twenty-five I had a hard body, and firm abs. This is what made me so popular with the college guys back home and so unpopular with my father. When he found out I was gay, he freaked. He insisted I leave. Said I should join the army or something. Instead I came out here. As far away as possible from my old man.

The guys in college were fun, but I wasn't that attracted to men my own age. Seems like I'd always had a thing for older guys. Maybe it was the life experience, I dunno. I never spent much time analysing it. I never had a problem finding a professor to suck off or to take my ass. But Red was different. I wanted him to have me, for sure. But I also wanted him to keep me. I held that secret in my heart.

The work at the mine kept me focused most of the time. I went home exhausted. Yet I still spent every night replaying each moment with Red. Standing side by side, our picks digging into the walls of the mine.

Sometimes Red would sing. He had this resonant baritone voice that echoed through the mine. The voice would come back to me in my fantasies, moaning out in ecstasy as he came into my ass.

We talked too, made plans to kayak on Great Slave Lake the next summer. I couldn't wait. We'd have twenty hours of daylight together, camping and fishing - just him and me. I was even thinking that maybe I would tell him then, that I was gay: a strange and likely stupid idea on my part. But you know, I had this daydream I told him and he wasn't angry or surprised or uncomfortable.

He'd pat me on the back and call me son. Of course that idea got me hornier than ever. I wouldn't admit I had the hots for him, oh no. That would be too much. But just let him know who the real me was.

He surprised me one day as we were riding the elevator up the mineshaft. It was close quarters. As I said the man didn't talk that much. Out of the blue he started to reminisce about his days as a young guy in San Francisco. The drugs and the flower children. The bars. The sex. He said it was a free spirit time. He wasn't much into dwelling on the past, but he had fond memories of those days. Maybe this was supposed to be my opening, my chance to tell him about myself, but I just nodded and we rode the elevator in silence. Jeezus I wanted to tell him so badly, but I figured I knew how it would turn out. I'd tell him and he wouldn't want to be near me anymore. At least we had a friendship.

Toward the end of the spring, there was a cave-in. I was topside with Red when it happened. Maybe it was stupid, but I really hadn't thought of being trapped down there before. I just did my work and focused. This was the first time I'd been around when a cave-in occurred. Red was amazing. He talked to the wives and other employees. A true leader.

I just stayed out of the way, feeling claustrophobic for the first time, at the thought of all that dirt, burying me alive. I didn't know what to do with myself. Mining operations were closed and all the effort was focused on getting the poor fucks outta there. Red didn't have time to pay attention to me, and I understood that. I wasn't feeling too keen on much myself at that point.

My mind kept flashing to the sign in the saferoom I passed every day when I went down: "12 men, 24 hours." There were ten men in that sealed room.

I was thinking that maybe mining wasn't for me. But then if I left, I'd never see Red again. I went back home to try to sleep and wrapped myself in Red's sweater. What if he got trapped down there? I knew his lungs weren't the best. He had a bad cough from all the dust. He was thirty years older than me, likely going to retire soon.

I realized I was an idiot for not telling him my feelings. Emergency ops would have likely insisted all the miners went home. I figured Red would be at his place, trying to get some shuteye.

Red lived in a cabin outside of town. You couldn't get there very easily. No roads for sure. He had dogs and a sled. Other guys used snowmobiles, but Red hated the damn things.

I lived in town and didn't have many places to go anyway, so I just snowshoed everywhere or strapped on skis. I looked over at my skis. I was dead tired but also afraid. What if Red tried to help rescue those guys? What if he went down the mine? What if he never came back?

I put on a bunch of clothes and Red's sweater, strapped on my ski boots and slipped into my skis and skied as fast as I could. It was freezing. The snow came down hard. I was out there for ages. Not sure how long. I was tired, cold and sweaty at the same time but I had to see Red. Finally I got to his cabin. The light was on and the dogs barked when they heard me coming. Red opened the door.

"What are you doing here, kid?"
I was too out of breath to talk. I just unsnapped my skis and rushed into his arms. He held me for a bit. I could feel his heart pounding hard against mine. Then he moved off.
"You'll catch your death. Get in here."
He seemed as out of breath as I was, somehow. I was so out of it, I didn't make any sense. I just came in to his place and stood there. He helped me take off my coat and ski pants. He rought me over to the fireplace and plopped me down on the sofa, rubbing my hands.

"You're like ice, Buzz. Jeezus, boy, what the fuck do you think you're doing?"