Kruger was not a good looking fellow, nor was he disgusting to behold. A plain man. Peasant stock. Thickly built and somewhat awkward in his poise. I could see he worked in a factory. He wore the overalls and shabby cap common to that sort of trade and he lived in the apartment next to mine in some town in Michigan.

Like so many other men in that place, he had escaped the family drudgery of farming and sold himself to a steady paycheck in the soul absorbing machine age that newly flourished in the region like fungus grows in the dank and dark of a cellar, or a sewer.

I was there to make drawings of the factories and the industrialized landscape. I sometimes tried a few figure studies but never liked them. I favored a bleak, oppressive scenery devoid of human figures. I was never sure if I brought my own depression to the region or if it was an indigenous mood. It felt pervasive and thick, invasive and all-consuming.

While I painted I left my door wide to draft the turpentine stench out the window. Kruger stopped and looked inside my room, came in as if invited and studied the few canvases I had hanging to dry.

I couldn’t avoid watching for his reaction. A total stranger, and not an attractive one, yet I cared far more than reason allows for his opinion. He didn’t give away any reaction in his face. His rather flat, German eyes stared, as if not seeing. His gaze took in but did not process. He simply looked.

He stood before a large charcoal sketch I’d done of street boys who stood about the saloons at night and offered their bodies for sale at the price of a heroine dose. Hopeless young men, with no future, barely any past.

Kruger stood before the drawing and seemed in a trance. I did not believe he was even aware of the subject matter, perhaps drawn to the harsh black lines and smudges of the gritty texture. Or did he see something of himself there? Did he realize he too sold himself for a few cents per hour? Did Kruger, in his dumb and numbed soul, grasp the battle that was being waged around us? Did he acknowledge the loss of pastoral sustenance to the great devouring maw of machines?

“What are you thinking?” I finally had to ask him.

Kruger glanced at me quickly, as if surprised I’d even noticed his ghostly presence. “I know that one. I fucked him one night.” He pointed a blunt finger at a ravaged figure near the left edge of the composition. His eyes went back to the drawing. “His name is Edwards.”

Kruger’s voice was husky, low and deep. I doubted he used it much. It sounded a strain to put it to use at all.

I knew I should have been shocked that a man would openly admit to such a base act; fucking a street boy was not a thing to brag about. I would have been shocked if I’d heard the words at a dinner party in a fine dining room. But there, in the private and desolate solitude of my rooms, I felt no surprise nor moral outrage. It was a simple statement. He knew the boy because he’d once shoved his dick up that ass. Knew, as the Old Testament used the word. I wasn’t certain that physical intimacy actually equated to “knowing someone”, but I didn’t bother to argue the word choice.

In reality, there was something honest and genuine in the man’s admission. I wondered, is his degradation so complete that he has no feeling left of shame nor guilt?

I don’t know if he responded to the look on my face or to my silence. But he turned back to glance at me and told me, “I don’t have a wife.”

I didn’t understand if that was an excuse or just an explanation. I took it as an explanation. He probably didn’t see anything amiss in fucking a man so long as he wasn’t married. I couldn’t argue with that concept, wouldn’t want to disallow it, in fact. I’d long held a silent and unspoken respect for men who could so casually sidestep social bans and traditions. Admirable, no doubt, to be free of dogmatic regulations.

“You? You have a wife?” His first question of me.

“No longer.” I watched his face for pity. “She died of the influenza. Twelve years ago, it is now.”

His nod was a small one. Devoid of pity that I could see. I relaxed my tense defenses. “I have coffee. Would you take a cup with me?” I stood and moved to the bench by the window.

“Sure.” Kruger grunted, as If the question were moot.

“I didn’t know if you were in a hurry.” I added. “Are you off to work?” I filled two cups and set them on a tray with a sugar bowl and spoons.

“Not working, now. Laid off. We got overstocked and nobody buying.” Kruger came over to my small table and joined me.

We sat and sipped. Kruger’s face, up close, had an underlying caution in his lowered brows and tense cheeks, a slight strain on his forehead. Not the carefree aplomb I’d ascribed to a man free of social conventions. I thought it was being out of work; that would be worrying to a wage earner, surely.

“What will you do? Find a new job?”

He lifted his thick shoulders slightly, let them drop. “Not many jobs to be had, nowadays. I’ll find something or I’ll steal. I won’t starve.” He didn’t put any emphasis on it. Not a threat. It was a quiet statement of his determination to survive. He saw no reason to hide it.

“You are a survivor, eh?” I was amused, in spite of myself. I liked his simple assurance.

“I can usually find day work. Don’t need much. The room’s cheap.” His tension was not about getting money, something deeper.

“I’ll hire you to model for me, if you’re interested in making a few dollars.” The words almost startled me as I heard them come from my lips. I’d not planned anything of the sort. I never hired models.

“Yeah. Sure. I got nothing else to do today.”

The idea, once spoken and born into reality, had a certain excitement around it. Not only that figure drawing was my weak spot, but the thought of seeing more of this strangely distanced man. I was fully aware of our separation. He was not a man I shared any path of empathy with. As much a stranger as any chance met soul on a dark street.

I finished off my coffee in a gulp, hurried to set up my drawing materials and a fresh pad of rough paper. I used the pulp wood, cheap sort. I had absolutely no hope of doing anything that might become salable. This was simply my ongoing struggle to polish my skills, my technique. I’d passed through all my college art classes while avoiding the human figure except for the few required classes. Something about the human figure repulsed me; I could almost say, unmanned me. Each attempt brought forth my most repressed feelings of ineptness and doubt.

I glanced, once more, at the sketch he’d recognized. That was a hurried and rushed drawing, caught in natural movement and unpolished, yet he had recognized a single figure? Aha, I thought. He knew the odd cap, of course. The boy he picked out wore a dirty white sailor’s cap. Not likely a souvenir of sea duty, more reasonably he stole it from some drunken sailor. Combine the odd cap with a slim figure, put in place near the saloon, and the boy became recognizable. Not by my drawing skills but due to the context of the figure.

My internal doubt and uncertainty of the human figure was part and parcel of my sense of never understanding other people, in general. I had a constant and nagging lack of knowing others. Everyone was a stranger. The separate and alien feeling went back deep into my childhood to a point where I realized I didn’t know my own mother or father. They were odd, unpredictable and unknowable.

All through my school days, I passed among peers that seemed to have no similar thoughts to mine, no contextual points of connection. My vague interest in the girl I married was all about getting closer to another human, learning what I could of her inner thoughts and perhaps learning to know her. That was a disappointing pursuit. During our five years of living together, I discovered only how distant we actually were; how widely separate were our desires and needs.

Most often, I felt much like an observer of the human condition from some distant and cool point of remove. And I was fully aware of my own poor ability to grasp the dissonant disparity. I felt machine like, operating on a non-emotional source of power. While people in general, as I saw them, were driven by passions and motives that I never experienced nor recognized.

So long as I continued my path of remaining distant and aloof, I had no chance of ever understanding that separation. No, I needed: I required a closer contact. Perhaps only by immersing myself in such human contact would I ever begin to breech that divide.

I hurriedly set up some drawing materials, clipped my paper to a backing board. I moved my drawing table back from the window and pushed aside a chair to make room for my model to stand beside the window. “Here. Stand just here, please.” I told him.

Kruger stood up from the little tea table and began unbuttoning his canvas overalls. I breathed a sigh of relief. I was unsure if I could ask him to remove any of his bulky clothing without arousing his hostility but he seemed to know what was required of him. He sat and removed his heavy work shoes and stood, again, to struggle out of the thick, outer covering.

Below the coveralls, all he wore was a rough, brown shirt and a pair of thin drawers that stopped several inches above his redden knees. The shirt had only one button and the drawers stuck to his skin like waxed paper to a cheese. More body exposure than I’d expected to see.

I began a hasty outline of a drawing to distract myself from staring at this suddenly slender and vulnerable man. But Kruger didn’t think of his exposed body as vulnerable, he turned from me and went over towards the open door.

“Oh, shut the door. Of course, I should have already got that for you.” I apologized.

Kruger glanced back at me, a look of incomprehension on his face. “Lonzo!” He suddenly shouted, loud and lusty. He turned back to the open door. “Lonzo! Come’ere!” He shouted, again.

The apartment door across the hall opened and a kid came over to my side of the hallway. A slim, delicate looking kid about ten with fair hair and skin. I’d seen him about but didn’t know he lived there. His blue eyes were enormous. He stood silently and watched Kruger strip off his drawers. As Kruger got his feet free he instructed the boy to go down to the corner store and fetch him some tobacco.

“You gettin’ a bath?” The kid asked, closely studying all the exposed skin Kruger displayed.

Kruger ignored the question. “Hold up, I’ll get you some coin.” He came back over to pick up his coveralls and dig into various pockets until he’d found some change. “Prince Albert. The fine cut.” He handed over the money to the kid who had followed on into the apartment. “I’ve got some papers.”

“What’re you guys doin’?” Curiosity still gnawed at the boy.

“None of yor business, is it?” Kruger growled. “Quit staring at my cockerel and go get my ‘baccky!”

“Right, alright!” The kid took the money and scooted off.

Kruger dropped the coveralls to the floor and moved into place as I directed him beside the window. “I’ll keep on my shirt if you don’t mind.” He told me. “Unbutton the front, but I got scars on my back and I don’t much like people looking at ‘em.”

“Uh, fine – that’s okay.” I stuttered. I wouldn’t have dared ask the man to take off his clothes but he seemed to realize that modeling for an artist meant being naked. Of the two of us, I was much the more embarrassed. My experience with models were limited to the college classes and the models wore bathing suits or posing straps, something. I doubt I’d ever seen a man’s privates displayed quite so close and intimately.

Kruger noticed my quick glances, I suppose. He finally asked me, “You really want to draw me or just want to fuck? We can skip all this malarkey if you just wanna fuck.”

“What?” I gasped at the affront to polite conversation. Kruger grinned a malicious tribute to my blush.

“Okay, okay. Whatever you want. You the boss ‘cause you’re paying me, right?” His grin passed and faded. “How you want me to stand?”

The sun came in at a high angle. “Pull the chair back over, sit down and just get comfortable. Your face is in shadow, you see?”

“You want to draw my face?” he asked as he followed the instructions. He sounded surprised.

“Have you modeled before?” I had to ask, he seemed to know more about it than I did.

“Well, sort of. A Fellow got me naked once but we didn’t get around to the drawing part, did we?” He chuckled.

“So you thought I really wanted to … to fuck you?” I asked.

“Or to get fucked, yeah. What do I know about artists, huh?” He shrugged, sat down and faced me, straight on. “I’ll do it, whatever. Think I’d like to fuck you, matter of fact. You look all clean and smell nice. Except for the spirits, of course.” He wrinkled his nose against the constant stench of turps. “But I don’t mind that, do I?”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you. But I’ve never had sex with a man. Just the idea of being fucked is not something I can imagine. I should think it hurts, quite a bit?” I made it a question.

“Nawh. Not so much.” He shrugged off the thought of pain. “Not enough to count. The good feeling far outweigh the bad, anyway. Getting off is one of the great joys of living, huh? Otherwise, why keep going?”

“Something wrong with me, no doubt.” I had to smile at the vast understatement. “I never enjoyed sex very much. Found it more tiresome than enjoyable.”

“That’d be a real problem, surely.” He quietly mused. He continued to stare at me, watching my face as I studied his. I was making a large study of Kruger’s face. No doubt he’d be surprised that I found his face more fascinating than the rest of his body. He was proud of his body, I decided, if shy of his scars. He still got some sort of enjoyment showing off his prick. I knew that much.

“How did you get the scars?” I watched his eyes as I asked. They showed a small flinch, no shock. Just a reaction of the reminder.

“My lovin’ ol’ dad.” He explained with light sarcasm. “He was a drunk, liked to beat on somebody. I figured it was better me than my mom. He did me a job, he did. Leather strop with metal studs. He brought the blood with a few strokes, laughed like a banshee when he seen blood. Only pleasure he ever got. He didn’t like sex, neither, see? Well, he might have liked it if only he could get it up!” Kruger laughed in a deep and guttural sound that leapt from his chest and then stopped as quickly as it began.

He watched me silently a while as I worked, then asked quietly, “Can you get it up?”

“Umm …” The question needed more time for reflection and cogitation than I had to answer. “Yes. I can get it up.” I went for quiet soberness.

Alonzo came back with Kruger’s tobacco. Kruger waved him on into the apartment and sent him to find rolling papers in his coverall pockets. Alonzo did as he was told but his eyes took in the room, absorbing everything. He brought the papers to Kruger and then stood watching my work from behind my shoulder.

“Go on, with you. Leave us to it. Go!” Kruger sent the boy running.

I glanced around at the fleeing kid. “He’s a pretty lad, isn’t he?” I commented, no response expected.

“Fledgling. Green yet. Doubt he’s got a hair on his pecker.” Kruger grinned. He took every thought back to sexual context. It was the lens thru which he viewed the world, evidentially.

“And when he’s ripe? Will you pluck him?” I asked, quietly.

“Sure enough.” He admitted freely. “But years down that road, huh? May not be alive to get the harvest of that one.”

“You don’t think you’ll have a long life?” I pried where I feared I should not.

“Nawh. Don’t count on it. Don’t even ask it, truly. A day at a time, uh? More than enough life in a day at a time.” He lit his hand rolled cigarette and smoked quietly. He flicked ashes out the open window. His left hand lay in his lap, only occasionally teased at his fat and wrinkled prick where it lay atop the bulging balls below. More often, that hand stroked curly hair and pet his bush like a kitten.

When he finished his smoke, he stood and turned to the window. He leaned out and rested his elbows on the sill before flicking his butt far into the street below. The tail of his brown shirt rose above muscular and hard looking buttocks. The shadowed cleft parted wide as he leaned out. It dawned on me that the sight of an asshole was a rare thing. I’d never even seen my own, much less some other person’s most secret spot. A strange and perverse reasoning brought to mind the image of a hard prick pushing into that tight and wrinkled fissure. I glanced away, shamed at my own thoughts, then looked back because I had some after image of scars … yes, all the high flesh was striped with lumpy rows that crisscrossed and abused that smooth, white skin. Not red and brown stripes, as I’d expected, but a paler white, raised so they caught the light and looked tactile. I had a quick impression of smoothing my palm over those memories of pain and injustice. Smoothing and softening their presence. An elusive thought, quickly brushed away.

Kruger stood aright and turned to me. “Let me see what you’re doing to me.” And he came around behind me to see the drawing.

“Who’s that?” He chuckled. “Sure and it ain’t me you drawed, eh?” He chuckled, derisively.

I was silent. I couldn’t articulate the thoughts that flooded into my head and sealed my lips.

“Could you do better?” I finally got out that one absurd question.

“Too nice by half. Let me give it a try. Show you what I mean.” He tugged at my arm, helped me rise and move aside so he could take my chair. I know my face was white from shock and affront but Kruger didn’t even glance at me, he shoved me aside and took my place.

He picked up a stick of charcoal and made harsh and brutal lines around the head and face I’d so carefully softened into form with pastels and chalks. I was humiliated and alarmed at his desecration of my artwork. But he was force and I was effect. I stood watching, mute and silent.

Kruger’s thick brown fingers rubbed at carefully drawn lines and smudged into blotches the soft colors I’d applied. He scrubbed with the charcoal and reformed a lopsided jaw, thickly shadowed eyes that he re-drew into cave like recesses. He pulled the hair down more onto the forehead and worked all around the hair to create a zigzag and harsh shape that actually did more represent Kruger’s mop of unkempt hair. Again and again, he replaced soft shade and couture with harsh and hurried, highly unprofessional strokes. My inner rage softened as the childlike image began to assert its power over my stylized likeness. Rude, yes, but a much more honest representation than I’d ever imagined.

“There.” He spoke with a relief. He’d not liked that other, fake and proper image of himself. It was as much an affront to him as I felt when he took over my work. In a way, I suppose, a man owns his image, right? Why should he be expected to allow just anyone to distort it and change it.

“What do you think, huh?” He pushed back the chair, stood and pulled me over to stand in front of the new drawing. He gripped my arms from behind, set his chin heavily on my shoulder. “That’s more like it, right?” He waited, then went on to explain. “You tried to make me look slick and polished, like you want me to be, I guess. But I ain’t like that. I got a mirror and I know what the hell I am. A wild dog is what I am.” He chuckled. “Not your gentleman with a hanky in his pocket, am I?”

“It’s wonderful, my friend.” I spoke with the awe I felt. “Not trained and skillful, but absolutely honest and genuine. There is a fine beauty in that face, very much the sort of feeling I get looking at your face. You hate everything false and artificial, don’t you?”

“Can’t abide it!” He growled and his arms came around me to hug me back against his hard body. “I likes whatever’s real. Stuff a man can count on!” His hands explored down my belly and went past my belt. I remained still, as if I’d not noticed.

“You’ve made the eyes look fearful … are you afraid, my friend?” I asked, soft and mellow as I could speak.

“Hell yeah! Afraid of everything in the whole world. Fear is what drives a man, right? If you got no fear, you got no feelings at all, do you? Fear is what makes everything … real, I guess.”

I couldn’t argue with his choice of words. They may not be accurate but they were highly expressive. “I didn’t realize you were afraid. I thought it was just me. I carry around my fear like a lead weight around my neck. It weighs me down.” I admitted it to him as I’d never admitted it to myself.

“That’s good, see? Means you can’t lie to yourself like everybody else lies all the time. Grab onto that fear and hold it. Know it. Value it as the only thing that matters.” Kruger cupped my balls in his palm, slowly and gently squeezed them into a heated explosion awaiting a fuse to bring them to vivid purpose.

“I’ve got to fuck you or you got to fuck me. Which is it gonna be? I’m sore hurting and I bet you feeling the same … I’m afraid of what’s gonna happen if I don’t get inside you or you get into me. I’ll burn myself up with wanting and needing.”

“Uh, close the door, okay?” I began unbuttoning my shirt. His tight arms restricted my movements.

“Forget the friggin’ door, man! Who gives a good god damn? Just get out of them clothes a’fore I rip them off your ass!” His voice went deeper, louder. His excitement smelled like violence and I could feel his body heat soak into me, his hurry invested me, his need fed my own.

I shut out every thought not connected to making this joining of two people advance. I needed to blend into him, to become part of him. To unite our fears and our joys.

On the bed we tumbled, Kruger gnawed at my neck, my face like a hungry wolf. He kissed and licked at ears and eyes and his hands touched me in every secret and private part. No square inch of my body was barred from his knowing and touching and absorbing and kissing and tasting and devouring.

When he rolled onto his belly and his ass squirmed up and he begged for release I shoved that scratchy brown shirt up and up and exposed a tangle of scars that screamed of injustice and violation. I pushed on in that search for hot socket bonding, found it, probed it, filled it and abused it as I kissed each and every scar and soaked up the energy that rose off him like incense from smoldering embers.

Everything we fear most; self-exposure and loss of respect and the lack of dignity and honor … those losses felt like freedom. My body responded as never before in reality or in dreams. A powerful yearning and craving need arose in me that far outstripped anything else in my distracted mind. Sanity itself flew from me and I was the better without it, free from it.

We were both destroyed and reborn into new life. I had no breath left to tell him of it, but he knew. He’d always known. No matter how alienated and removed we are, no matter how different, we are all the same in our fear and our need. That binds us and makes us whole. That’s all reality needs that little bit of order and truth. All else is myth and legend, stories to tell the children until they grow up.