I always knew of the man who lived in the house at the end of the dead end street as the Creeper. His real name was Mr. Manson, and I thought that his first name was Barry or Barney or something like that. The word around the school was that he liked boys, and from the time I was in elementary school, to the time I was a senior in high school, I was warned by other kids to stay away from his house.
I'd heard the stories, and they were pretty titillating for a young boy growing up, but it was never a first hand account. All the stories were a friend of a friend of a friend who had went there for something or other. Maybe it was someone who was selling magazines for a fund raiser, or maybe it was someone looking to make a few bucks mowing his lawn, but the stories always ended up the same. Mr. Manson would offer to give them a blowjob, free of charge and with no strings attached, and usually the kid would take him up on his offer and receive a toe curling blowjob. Apparently afterward, he would even pay them in some way.
Of course my friends and I would always talk about him like he was some kind of an old pervert, and that was how he came to be known as "the creeper", or more precisely, "the cock gobbling creeper". As boys often do, we would invoke his nickname to insult each other in the worst way we could think of. Usually saying something like, "Yo, I saw Marty coming out of the cock gobbling creeper's house yesterday. He was walking bowlegged with a big shit eating grin on his face. Did the creeper suck your cock Marty?" Everyone would laugh and Marty would punch the offending person in the shoulder and yell, "Bullshit man, that never happened." But it was all just boys being boys.
As for me, I avoided his whole street, as if walking down that dead end road toward his house was risking being stung by killer bees and bit by venomous snakes.
I finally asked my folks about Mr. Manson when I was in middle school, and I had heard another rumor that he had sucked off three guys who ventured onto his property to retrieve a rocket that they had launched from a nearby field that landed on his front lawn. The story was that he had seen the rocket and parachute land, and he had taken it inside. The three guys, whose names and ages weren't disclosed to me, knocked on his door and asked for their rocket back. Mr. Manson invited them all in, and then told them that they could have the rocket back after he sucked their cocks. Apparently these boys weren't shy, and they allowed him to suck them all off one at a time, swallowing each load of cum. Afterward, he gave them the rocket and fifty bucks each, and sent them on their way.
"Mom, what do you know about Mr. Manson? Is he the creep that people say he is?" I asked that evening at the dinner table.
I saw my mother's eyes dart up to my father, who looked down at his food and cleared his throat loudly, then she looked back at me. "Now why do people call him a creep honey?" she asked.
I had hoped that she had heard the same rumors that I had heard and she wouldn't ask me what I meant, but of course I wasn't that lucky. "Well, people say that he likes coc- he likes penis. They say that he likes to suck penis, and not just any penis, but young guy penis." I was aware that I kept saying the word 'penis' over and over again, but I had nearly slipped up and used the word 'cock' instead, and my mother would have tanned my hide if I'd used that word at the dinner table during dinner.
I looked up with a red face at my parents, both of whom were now staring directly at me. "Is it true?" I said with a squeaky voice.
My mother cleared her throat and said, "Well Devon, first of all, the stories that you're hearing are just that... stories. Rumors are created by people with too much time on their hands, and some rumors tend to take on a life of their own, and those rumors may have the potential to ruin someone's life. You just remember that when you're talking about someone that you've never met. Does Mr. Manson suck penis, as you say? I don't really know if he does or not, but as long as he is doing things with consenting adults in the privacy of his own home, who am I to judge him. If he is in fact doing things with young boys, then he will pay for his crimes."
It wasn't an answer to my question, but another look at my father told me not to pursue the line of questioning any further. The rest of dinner was eaten in silence.
When I entered high school, I became more curious about Mr. Manson, and I became more brave about getting closer to his house. The old name calling and teasing that occurred in elementary and middle school slowed, and the stigma about homosexuality seemed to lessen a bit also. Suddenly I wasn't that concerned about being called a 'faggot or a 'queer' by my friends, because it just wasn't cool to use those words anymore. I think part of it was that the shock value we got from using those words wasn't there anymore. We had graduated to the big boy swear words, like 'shit, fuck, asshole and mother fucker', but most of us wouldn't utter those words in the vicinity of any adult still.
I started using the dead end road as a short cut to get to another friend's house. I wouldn't make it all the way to his house, but I would cut through the property of an abandoned house that was right next door to his. Occasionally I would see him outside, and to me he looked like a normal guy, not at all what I expected him to look like. Nobody seemed to talk much about him anymore, so I really didn't care if anyone saw me.
Being in high school was an adventure for a young teen boy with raging hormones. It seemed like I was popping a boner every time a breeze blew, and the skimpy clothes that the girls wore just made things worse. My problem was that I was a skinny kid with a big nose and glasses, and my parents couldn't afford designer clothes, so I was kind of a loser in school. That meant that the girls wouldn't give me the time of day. The longer I went without getting any action, the more I was worried that I might remain a virgin forever, especially after hearing about so many other guys who seemed to be having sex all the time.
My freshman year passed by pretty uneventfully, followed by my sophomore and junior years in which my right hand became my best friend. Masturbation seemed to be the only way to curb my nearly constant erections, and at one time I was stroking myself around four times a day. By the time I was a senior, I still hadn't had a girlfriend and I was still a virgin, so I was getting more desperate for any kind of close contact.
I got my licence at eighteen, and suddenly money became my driving force. I wanted a car, and because I was still in school full time, and jobs were so scarce, I decided that I would continue my seasonal lawn mowing jobs for one more summer, if they still wanted me. For the last four years, I had eight different houses on my street that I mowed for, so I began to call each one to see if my services were still wanted. As luck would have it, only two of the eight still wanted me to mow. The economy was hitting people hard, and everyone seemed to be cutting back.
Two lawns was just not going to cut it(no pun intended), so I headed out to knock on more doors. The dead end street that I had avoided most of my life seemed like my best bet, as there were some expensive houses with very large lawns, and large lawns meant more money.
I hit all seven houses on the street before Mr. Manson's house, and had picked up three medium sized lawns and one large lawn, which was really good because I had raised my rates, and no one seemed to have a problem with that.
I almost didn't bother to even go to Mr. Manson's house at all, as my brain was trying to convince me that I would be making enough money with what I had. But then I decided that I wasn't a little boy anymore, I was a buff eighteen year old man with confidence, and I wasn't going to let the stories of children keep me from more potential profit. Taking a deep breath of fresh morning air, I headed up the front walkway to his front entrance, and rang the doorbell.
A few moments later the door opened and there he was. "Can I help you?" he asked. He was a clean shaven, well dressed man in his mid forties with a slick haircut, square jaw and piercing eyes. To me he looked like he could be a movie star.
"Hello sir," I said, then went on to repeat my practiced speech. "My name is Devon Bubior, and I was wondering if you would be needing to have you lawn mowed this summer."
He stood there staring at me for an uncomfortably long moment, then said, "How old are you Devon?"
