Free Papi by J.P. Barnaby

Papi
    W HAT the fuck am I doing here?
    Kyle Lang surveyed the street with distaste. The area was rundown, almost like a warehouse district. Grimy buildings, faded paint peeling with age, stood as silent witnesses to the street’s illegal and immoral goings-on. A woman in a short, slinky electric blue skirt and jacket looked around quickly before grabbing her latest score from the dealer and slapping bills into his outstretched, dirty hand. Shoving them quickly into a large bag, she walked away on four-inch heels. As his car rolled along the stretch of road, he moved slowly around vehicles parked against the curb. The occupants of one parked car, a jacked-up Honda, leaned out of the window and leered at a couple of working girls.
    It had been nearly a year since his old lady had split, taking their two kids and moving in with her mother. She had called him “emotionally unavailable” during the divorce, and Kyle didn’t contest that. He thought that “not remotely attracted” would have summed it up a little better, but he was rid of her, and that was really all that mattered. Though he would miss the boys, they were probably better off without him. Better for his ex to find someone else and get married again to give them a real home, a real family. Kyle just wasn’t a family guy.
    Kyle had gone out during the last year and fucked his share of barflies. Each of them wanted more than he wanted to give. They all wanted “the dream”. Apparently, they didn’t know that there was no fucking dream. There was no cute little house, no white picket fence. That was the bullshit guys told girls to get them to give it up. He was surprised that half of them still believed it.
    The last month, however, he hadn’t hooked up with anyone.
    The thirty-five-year-old with the salt-and-pepper hair and the nice body, who always scored with the women in his neighborhood bars, had decided he wanted something different. After years of carefully concealed stares at the gym and lingering around the locker room, Kyle decided to be honest with himself and explore the possibility that he might be attracted to men. The normally confident Kyle was shaken, but it didn’t matter. After four weekends of fruitless attempts to hook up at various gay bars near his home, he felt old and out of touch. At least at the straight bars, he recognized the classic rock blaring from the speakers. In the gay clubs, he was completely out of his element, as if he were on a different planet. Their hair, their clothes, their tight hot little bodies rubbing and grinding against each other, had been a completely foreign experience.
    When the car rolled farther up the street, Kyle saw what he was looking for.
    Rolling down the window on his beat-to-hell Ford, Kyle scanned the few young men who mingled with the women trying to score a “date” from passing cars. A few of them looked strung out, like tweaked out little meth queens, high on shit they probably scored from a john in return for sex—a blow for a blow. One of the guys actually tried to pass for a girl; too bad for him he didn’t own a scarf to cover up the prominent Adam’s apple. Just a few feet away stood a boy helping one of the girls into a jacket. She was a hot little mamacita with black, wavy hair and very long legs. Kyle could only see her from the back, a tight little ass wiggling under a too-tight jean skirt. As he watched from his car, she turned around, and he would have bet anything that she was a popular girl. The pair both had sweet, heart-shaped faces and full, pouting lips. In fact, the boy and girl were too similar not to be related; it wouldn’t have surprised Kyle to find out that they were brother and sister. The boy spoke quietly as the girl walked toward the car in front of Kyle’s. A tender expression passed across the kid’s face as the girl stepped into the car.
    “ ¡ Texto que me tarde ! ” the boy called as the car sped off, pausing briefly at the stoplight on the corner