my trip out west

in the west, wide-open wallets are
quickly emptied
as tumble weeds roll merrily along
the sands.
**
there's nothing like the smell
of scrub juniper in the morning,
as my fossil-digging partner
and i eat our breakfast, and
ready ourselves for a day
of searching for fossils.
**
my fossil-digging partner is a moody
guy with a mustache, a big chest,
and no sex appeal.
**
after breakfast, he goes his
way, and i go mine.
we plan to report back to
the campsite at noon.
**
we roam the "badlands" --
looking for fossils, of mammals,
and of fish; near 10 a.m., my shirt
off, wearing shorts, the sky
so blue and the air so
dry and wonderfully warm,
i get horny and, in a sunny and
secluded crevice, i take off all
my clothes and lie down on
a big smooth rock and start
masturbating. i, unlike him,
am pretty good-looking, and blond,
24, lanky, and tan.
**
shortly after i cum, i see him
walk by on a ridge not too far
away; he makes like he doesn't
see me lying there. back at the campsite,
whether he saw me or not is
never discussed, ever.
**
he's a terse one, a creep,
actually, and i hate to think
of him skulking about, perhaps nearby,
as i spurt one of the best
loads of my life, out there
in the middle of the warm
blue and friendly western
sky.
**
so, generally i don't think
about that part. i just
remember the rest, subtract him
out of the picture entirely.
**
never saw him even once again after that
fossil-hunting trip. 2 weeks with him
was enough for the rest of my life.
**
the few fossils i found and kept,
i later gave to a local museum long long
ago. they seemed glad enough to
have them.
**
the only part of that trip i kept
was certain furtive memories,
the smell of juniper in the sunlight,
wind in the night, memories of
masturbating in the badlands,
such a good orgasm that time i can
still remember it, without
even really trying.
**
i really did hate him, though
subconsciously i may have flirted,
just a bit,
like the time we had to sleep in
the same bed at a relative of
his's house in Leavenworth, Kansas,
and when i was sure he was
asleep, i lay there on my
back beside him and
masturbated into a fistful
of tissues i'd grabbed from a
nearby table. he stirred once,
kind of twitched, but i don't
think he ever figured out
what was going on.
**
with his shirt off, he looked like
a big beefy lumberjack.
and i just wasn't into that. really.
he just wasn't my type. i preferred
lean and skinny, with a minimum
of body hair.  besides, he
was a sour surly grouch.  nice nipples,
though.  pink, as i recall.  and lots
of sand-colored fur all around.
**
basically, though, he was
a mean, ugly guy.  and actually,
i really wasn't interested in
him at all,
though he did have a nice voice --
deep, and well, you know, manly. and,
when he snored, sometimes i watched
his mustache hairs move atop his lip.
that was generally
early in the morning, when he was
still sound asleep, and i wasn't.
actually, i barely slept at
all that trip--barely
slept at all.

--Carl Miller Daniels (2007)