Superhero

For my husband, who always supports me in any creative endeavor, even writing m/m romance. You’re my hero.

T
HANKS
to my beta readers Kate Rothwell, Kim Whaley, and Yvette Ganoe. Thank you for your time, encouragement, and excellent suggestions.

M
Y
NAME
is Jordan Carson and this story is about Pin Man, my superhero. The first thing you should know is that I am the biggest, sappiest dreamer in the world. I graduated from high school in Jefferson, Wisconsin. My dad drives a truck, and my mother sells Avon and Tupperware. You’d think I would have grown up with modest ambitions, but no. Since the seventh grade, I’ve dreamt that one day I would live in Manhattan and work as a comic book artist for DC. I’ve dreamt of traveling all over the world, maybe to comic book conventions, where I’d sit at one of those tables signing my name for fans who are as adoring and geeky as I am now. And, sappiest of all, I’ve dreamt about having Wisconsin state champion wrestler, Owen Nelson, as my boyfriend.

I guess I’m an optimist. Then again, I’ve had this lucky thing going for me all my life. I know it’s not going to be easy to become a paid comic book artist, but I was born with a talent for drawing. It’s a gift, the way some people are born with lungs and musical ears that let them wail like an opera star. Others are born incredibly tall, with hands the size of dinner plates, and they’re just made to slam-dunk basketballs. And a few are born with solid, stocky frames that muscle up, a talent for strategic thinking, and a pit bull-like tenacity that allow them to become champion wrestlers. Look, personally I’ve got very little in the physical gifts department, clear? But when it comes to art, I can draw the fuck out of anything. That’s all I’m saying.

Without a doubt, the luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that I became best friends with Owen Nelson.

Jordan

O
WEN
and I met in the second grade. Our desks, those little L-shaped wooden ones with plastic chairs, were side by side in our homeroom. The first day of school, when Owen sat down next to me, I couldn’t help but stare. I think I stared at him all day long. Another kid might have smacked the shit out of me or said something like, “See something green? Pick it off!” But Owen was chill. He just looked at me every once in a while and smiled.

Owen was the biggest boy in our class, tall and wide. He was probably twice my body weight then, because I was a dark-haired little runt. He wasn’t fat. He was just a big kid, the kind that could be scary, the kind who could do some damage if he wanted to. But I wasn’t afraid of him. You could just tell by his eyes; Owen wasn’t like that.

He was beautiful, with light blond hair, navy blue eyes, and a square, perfect face. He had this glow about him, this Yoda-like centeredness, like he was cool all by himself and he didn’t care what anyone else thought. That was godlike at our age. Maybe at any age.

Of course, I didn’t know I liked boys then. I didn’t know why I was fascinated by him. I wondered if he was really in the second grade. I wondered if he was the kid of a Norse god or something (I’d just been reading a picture book about them). Or maybe he was the son of a mob boss hiding in our little school, and they just put him in second grade because there was an empty seat.

Wherever he’d come from, I liked Owen. And I wanted Owen to like me. So I, at the ripe age of seven, set out on my very first seduction.

See, I have this cool aunt on my mom’s side who lives in California, Aunt Beth. She makes lots of money at her job in computer games. Every birthday and Christmas she showers me with toys. Get what I mean by lucky? By second grade I had what was probably the biggest, baddest collection of action figures and Matchbox cars east of the Mississippi. Every day I’d bring some of my stuff in my bag and flaunt it in front of Owen, acting like I was perfectly happy to play with all that shiny stuff by myself.

For a couple of days I took notice of which toys Owen looked at the most. He liked the Matchbox cars, and he particularly liked the ambulance. So one day I brought in my fire engine, ambulance, all my cop cars, and a couple of cool racers I had. At lunch time, I sat alone in the play area, unpacked them all and began zipping them around. Owen came over and sat next to me.

“You have really neat cars,” Owen said, watching them yearningly.

“Thanks.” I shrugged. I kept zipping the ambulance around, up and down my legs making a siren sound. I opened the back and took out the little roller cot with the victim on it. I was going for the maximum drool factor.

“Hey, I need help!” Owen suddenly said. He took one of my racers in each hand and ran them toward each other. When he banged them together, he slowed down and was careful not to actually hurt them, which was mighty fine elementary school manners.

I smiled into his blue eyes. Those eyes stared back into mine for a few seconds, then went comically wide with a vacant glaze.

“Help! Help! We need an ambulance!” he said in a high voice. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he shook all over.

I put my hand over my mouth and faked a hissing sound. “Dispatch 9-1-1, please send an ambulance to Jefferson Prince Elementary School. Yes, it’s awful. There’s been a terrible accident. Body parts everywhere. I think… I think I see a glove on the monkey bars—with a finger in it! Please, hurry!”

I rolled the ambulance toward the gruesome scene. Owen lay down on the carpet and began jerking like he was dying. He clutched the two Matchbox racers to his chest and gurgled.

“Oh my gosh! It’s… it’s too much!” I moaned in a deep paramedic’s voice. “We need blood plasma, stat! Call the hospital and tell them we’re coming! Call in all the doctors, and… I’m sorry, but you’d better notify the coroner.” (My mom loved the Discovery Channel.)

Owen peeked at me from under his lashes. He looked very impressed.

We played together until the end of lunch that day. At recess, he came right over. And the next day he brought in a few
Richie Rich
comics, and I brought in some action figures. We never spent one moment of school time apart for the rest of the year.

From that day on, Owen was my best friend—jelly to my peanut butter, fellow pea in my pod, Sam to my Frodo. And I was his.

Jordan

S
IXTH
grade was the first year that had full-on team sports like football, baseball, and wrestling. Owen came from a big family of wrestlers. His brother, Charlie, had gone to state championships a few times in high school and was currently wrestling for the University of Wisconsin Badgers. That was like a Nelson tradition. Owen’s dad wrestled for the Badgers in his day and so had a few of his cousins. During wrestling season, the whole clan gathered at Owen’s house to watch the UW Badgers on some weird channel like ESPN-102. Nelson was a name Wisconsin knew well.

That year, I became the pet project of my art teacher. She gave me a couple of books on drawing comic book figures and worked with me all year on it for extra credit. That was the year Owen and I did issue #1 of
Pin Man and Pencil Boy
. And Owen became the top ranked sixth-grade wrestler in our division, statewide.

My parents
loved
Owen. He was that good-looking, quiet kid who acted like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth and said “Yes, ma’am” and “No, sir” when talking to adults. That was just the way his family was. When we were goofing off too loud and our parents yelled, he was the one who insisted we stop. He always took his glass to the sink and rinsed it out. I mean, the kid was a parent’s wet dream.

We hung out together at school, studied together afterward, and had sleepovers a few times a week. We only lived a mile apart, so if no one was around to drive us we could walk it. By the time we were ten, we’d ditched the Matchbox cars and played video games, read comics, and played board games. Sometimes we’d make home movies, stupid stuff like competitions to make the funniest face or fake news reports about alien invasions. And then there was
Pin Man and Pencil Boy,
which was destined to take on a life of its own.

My house was within walking distance of the school, and I went to all the home wrestling matches. I think my mom and dad were glad to see me taking any interest in sports whatsoever. Normally I’d rather read comics, play video games, or draw than do anything involving large muscle groups and sweat. Of course, they knew I went to support Owen, but maybe they hoped the machismo of it would rub off on me somehow. I can say, without a doubt, that those wrestling matches were highly influential in my young life.

After home matches, Owen’s parents let him walk home with me and sleep over, even though they were always at the match and could have driven him home. I think it was a special treat, like, “We’re thrilled to our marrow with you, you wrestling godling, so we’ll tolerate you spending the night with that skinny kid you like so much. Have fun!”

At Owen’s matches, I sat by myself in the bleachers and ate popcorn. I would normally be a top-of-the-bleachers kind of guy, but at wrestling I liked to sit close, close enough to smell the sweat and see it dampen the wrestler’s scoop-necked singlets. It was easy to get a good seat, because not that many people came to the sixth grade matches. Wrestling was a big hairy deal in Wisconsin, kind of like soccer, football, and the Knights of the Round Table all rolled into one. But in middle school it was not yet the screamfest it would become later on. About the only people who wanted to watch eleven-year-old boys grab each other’s legs and necks and lay on top of each other were the most dedicated of parents and the occasional sports reporter or high school coach scouting out future prospects. Oh, and other eleven-year-old boys who might, or might not, be gay. That would be me.

That year, watching sixth grade wrestling, was the first time I had any serious bouts of those odd, fluttery feelings and tingles. I didn’t know what it was at first. I just knew that
I really liked wrestling
. And I really,
really
liked to watch Owen wrestle. Part of me wanted to be the other guy, the one he was wrestling. That made no sense, because I was to a wrestler what a rubber ducky is to a Christmas goose, body-type-wise. There is no way I would ever go out for the sport. And even if I did, I wouldn’t be in Owen’s weight class. But it was hard to shake that feeling of wishing I was the one in the ring with him, that I was the one he was pushing down.

The thing is, Owen and I did wrestle, lots of times. We were always horsing around, just stupid stuff like Owen throwing me into the pool in his backyard or “say uncle” types of strangleholds. But once he started wrestling, he’d use real wrestling moves on me, which had me down and helpless in about two seconds flat. He was forever grabbing me and pinning me. He thought it was great fun to hold me down and tickle me until I begged for mercy. That was okay. Even if I couldn’t physically beat him, I had my own superpowers. In retaliation I’d dump a cold beverage on him when he least expected it, put salt in his chocolate milk or hide his underwear when he was in the shower. I was nothing if not inventive. He was the warrior, and I was the rogue. So he knew he could only go so far before risking unpleasant retribution. You could say we had our own balance of power.

But
watching
him wrestle was different than any of that. Maybe it was because I could see him from a distance, his bare legs and arms, toned and lightly muscular, his chest and stomach and thighs under that tight singlet, his butt when he was on top of the other guy, using all his weight and leverage to try to keep him down. And then there was just his beauty and strength, and the way he just went for it and never, ever wavered.

The first time I ever got hard from sexual arousal, as opposed to just waking up that way or it coming on like some random freak show, was while watching Owen wrestle in sixth grade. The opposing team was Wisconsin Hills and Owen’s opponent was a pretty good athlete. Owen had to work hard for a pin, scrambling over him with his groin on the guy’s butt. I started to feel a little breathless as I watched, and then fluttery, and then sort of hot. The next thing I knew my jeans were tight in the crotch, and I almost came in my pants.

I felt humiliated and ashamed. I put my jacket over my lap and looked around, trying to see if anyone else reacted like that. It sure didn’t look like it. And when they separated, Owen and the other guy didn’t seem to have that problem either. I mean, it would have been obvious in that Lycra.

After that, I usually got boners at wrestling matches. I started to think that maybe there was something different about me. And that maybe my friendship with Owen was a lot more complicated than I’d thought it was. I had a pretty good idea that I shouldn’t want the things that were starting to itch around inside me. I heard other guys talk about girls, and I wondered when I would start feeling that way about
them
.