Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

Ziggy's Christmas Story

Okay, because it's Christmas, I wanted to do something special, and I realize this means dragging out the cliffhanger a bit, but that's just how the dates fell. I wrote you guys a little Christmas story from Ziggy's point of view, about his high school days in NYC. Thursday we'll be back to our regularly scheduled chapter! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! -ctan
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Ziggy's Christmas Story

"So, this is Christmas..." I didn't mean to quote John Lennon, but sometimes these things just happen. "...in the big city."

"This city's not that big," Vanni said with a shrug, hands in his pockets as we walked along the crowded sidewalk up Fifth Avenue. "Sao Paulo's bigger."

"I wouldn't know." All I knew was that New York was a helluva lot bigger than Baltimore and that it suited me well.

"I thought you're part Brazilian?" He glanced at me through ratty bangs, the last frayed remnants of a bad bleach job clinging to the final inch.

"Doesn't mean I've been there." It wasn't the size of the city that suited me so much as its place at the center of things. TV, radio, Broadway, it was all right here. The true cultural capitol of the United States of America.

"Ah, too bad," he said. "Sao Paulo's the best. Sex there is like..." He snapped his fingers.

"Like...?" I snapped my fingers back at him and some tourists swerved on the sidewalk to get out of our way. There were a ton of them, in the city to see the big tree and the department store windows and do their shopping. "What do you mean?"

"Easy as shit," he said. "You just see a girl, tell her you think she's beautiful, and if she likes the look of you, bam, you're getting some within minutes. I'm telling you, after a week my dick was raw."

I snickered, unsure how much stock to put in Vanni's boasts of conquest. "You go there a lot?"

"I've been twice. You know, we've got family there. It's different down there. Not like here where everybody's uptight. I swear it's the weather."

The weather. We were pretty well bundled up, or as bundled up as we could be and still look acceptably cool, which meant hoodies under our leather jackets and our hands in our pockets. The air was crisp, getting close to freezing, which is normal for December. "What's the weather like there?"

"Hot. So people are showing skin all the time. So they're just used to letting it all hang out all the time, so they're horny all the time. Everyone accepts it. Just part of life."

"Sounds great," I said. Horny all the time was a state I was familiar with and I'd had to go to great lengths to make sure my needs could be met given that I was still in high school and living at home. One thing about the city being so big was I could run in several different circles that never overlapped: a midtown youth choir, a neighborhood gang in Brooklyn, a queer art collective in the Village, school. I had people in each one.

I was still figuring out Vanni, though. We'd met at school because his mother and mine had hit it off on Back to School night. She was a single mom, like mine, and he and I were in the same grade.

I wanted to suck his dick. It was long and slender, like he was, and I'd seen it numerous times after gym class. I was fairly sure I'd seen it that often because he'd wanted me to see it, but he'd never said anything outright, never made a move. I wanted him to suck mine, too. This feeling of lust never left me. It was always there, whenever Vanni was present, pulsing in the background.

"Hey," I said, as we came to some of the famous windows. "Let's look."

There were ropes to keep the crowds close to the building and still leave room on the sidewalk for people to walk past. The crowd was very thick, and people were pressed together like sardines, trying to get a look.