Golden Ticket: Brody (musc)
by kdumd
“HELL YEAH! 340 points, suck it!”
Brody Adams was excited about setting a new personal best in skee-ball. Maybe a little too excited. If he would have bothered to look to the right at his girlfriend, Tracy, who was turning 17 shades of mortified red, he might have realized he needed to dial it back. Especially considering his “competition” was a group of Cub Scouts.
“Jesus Christ, babe, calm down,” Tracy said, grabbing Brody by the arm and trying to drag him away from the scene of her embarrassment. Brody would not be moved, even though he wasn’t that big or strong a guy; at 5’8” and 120 pounds (soaking wet), he was small by college freshman standards. He had dark, messy hair styled to look like he didn’t style it, along with the barest smattering of wispy facial hair that he refused to shave for fear it would never grow back. The dark hair stood in contrast to his alabaster white skin and pale blue eyes; his WASP of a mom had married an off-the-boat Italian, and they were still married 35 years later. In Brody’s ears were the standard faux-diamond stud earrings, the ones every high school kid gets until they become a college sophomore and realize how doofy they look. This warm and muggy summer night, he was wearing a size XS t-shirt that was still plenty baggy, along with a pair of seersucker-style shorts and his big brother’s hand-me-down Jordans. Brody’s brother, Adrian, had run off to join the Marines right out of high school. While Brody was far from the smartest kid in the class, Adrian was even farther, and he’d confided in Brody that joining the military would be the only way to make something of himself. Brody and Adrian were incredibly close, and the younger missed his big brother every day, worried about him every night. Brody often wondered if he should have followed Adrian into the Marines, but could never bring himself to do it.
He still refused to be moved from the skee-ball machine. “Babe, wait,” he said insistently. “I gotta get the tickets.” After the lights stopped flashing and the old-timey bells stopped clanging, tickets started spewing out of the slot at the front of the lane. Even if his celebration was excessive, 340 points was a high score, and Brody knew he had a lot of tickets coming. Tracy had spotted a stuffed giraffe on the prize shelf the moment they had walked into the arcade, and Brody was gonna get it for her if it killed him.
Ticket after ticket issued forth, and Tracy’s irritation turned to amusement, her scowl curling into a slight grin. Brody was wiggling back and forth on the balls of his feet, getting into the spirit of it. When the final pale blue ticket came out, Brody tore it from the slot and began to gather up the pile. But just a moment later, the machine spit one more ticket out. That wouldn’t have been all that odd, but this ticket wasn’t pale blue like the others. It was a golden shade of yellow.
Tracy had already moved on to another game across the arcade floor, so Brody stood there and stared at the anomalous ticket. Just like the others it said “TICKET” in large black letters, and had a number printed below it. This ticket was number 000001. “The first one?” Brady mumbled out loud, then mused internally that it must be the beginning of some kind of special promotion or contest. He wheeled around to try and find Tracy, but she had disappeared, so he walked over to the prize counter. As he walked, he thought about his plans for the rest of his night. He and Tracy would finish out their day at the park, maybe go in the haunted house together so she would have to hold his hand when she got scared; they’d go see a movie, sit in the back row and make out the whole time; he’d take her for ice cream and eat in in the parking lot while they sat in his mom’s beat up old Ford Taurus; maybe some more making out, but nothing more than that because he and Tracy were virgins and saving themselves for marriage, a stance that earned Brody more than a little ribbing from his buddies; then he’d drop Tracy off at her house and he’d drive home, play some video games in his room and eventually fall asleep not long before the sun came up. Then he’d stumble out of bed around noon, lounge around the house for a bit and then head off to his summer job at the neighborhood grocery store where he worked as a cashier. It wasn’t a very exciting life, and Brody knew he wasn’t one of the “bros”, but he didn’t care. It was who he was and it made him happy.
When he got to the counter, Brody flagged down the worker, who looked to be even younger than Brody’s 19, and held up the golden ticket. “Hey man, what’s the deal with this?” He held it out for the worker to see, but the kid took a half-step back, put on a smile and shook his head, never saying a word. Brody was a bit weirded out, but when it became clear this kid wasn’t going to be any help, he put the ticket back in the pocket of his camo shorts and began to walk toward the door.
“Wait,” he said aloud but to no one in particular as he stopped just past the arcade’s threshold. “Was I wearing…yeah, I was…wasn’t I?” Brody shook his head, reached into the back pocket of the camo shorts and grabbed the half-empty tin of Copenhagen black. As he expertly packed the tin with a forceful flick of his finger against the lid, Brody suddenly couldn’t remember ever having dipped before, let alone packed a tin; he’d seen other guys do it, or try to do it and fail, but he himself had never tried it. He was sure of it. He was sure of it even as he opened the tin, pinched the entire remaining contents between his fingers, shoved into his lower lip and used his tongue to pack it down and clean off the excess tobacco off his teeth and gums. He had to briefly fight his gag reflex, the overwhelming metallic and woody flavor overwhelming his taste buds. He almost reached in and took the whole lipper out, but by then Brody remembered how good the grainy dip tasted, how diesel it made him feel. Brody didn’t know why more guys didn’t dip. He’d done it four or five times a day since middle school and loved it every time. It was so masculine, so manly, and Brody didn’t know many dudes more masculine than himself.
Brody began walking along the gravel path away from the arcade, his black combat boots making loud crunches as he stepped. He vaguely remembered having sneakers on, but as he spit a black gob onto the nearby grass, he corrected himself; he’d worn boots ever since he enlisted in the Marines right out of high school, just like his big brother. The sun was shining through milky clouds, giving his tanned light-mocha skin an exotic hue. Brody stopped again. “Fuckin…what?” he said in a loud, gravelly voice. That, too, seemed way out of place; Brody’s voice was much higher-pitched, though certainly not feminine. And his skin had never been this dark, not even at its most tanned, and Brody almost always skipped “tan” and went straight to “burn”. Furrowing his prominent, almost simian brow, Brody kept on staring until it hit him. “Shit, I ain’t right today.” Of course his skin was supposed to look that way. He spent a lot of time outside, shirtless whenever possible. Brody couldn’t have been more tan if he slept on a tanning bed at night.
While marching through the center of the park, Brody saw a buddy from childhood across the way. He raised his right arm, which took a little more effort than he expected because it was heavy with muscle. But once he got the arm over his head, causing his drab olive t-shirt—already a size too small at an XL—to bunch up at the armpit where his enormous pecs and 23” biceps collided. Brody remembered being a gym rat from the time he was old enough to pick up a one-pound dumbbell. He’d always wanted to be a Marine drill sergeant, and he knew he’d have to be big and strong to make that dream a reality. By the time he took his oath and officially joined up with the Corps, Brody was a specimen. At 17 he had the kind of body men twice his age would kill to have. Now, at 24, Sgt. Brody Adams was built like a brick shithouse, his body perfectly suited for his role as a USMC drill sergeant. Brushing aside vague images of college English courses—Brody, or “Bro-dog” as his fellow Marines had taken to calling him, had clearly never attended college—he recollected his unusually rapid rise to a highly desired position. Brody was a wunderkind, and his superiors never missed an opportunity to tell him about the bright future he had if he chose to make the Marines his lifelong career. Of course he would; Brody had never dreamed of doing anything else.
“Hey man!” Brody shouted, causing many in the crowd to turn, and more than a few—men and women alike—to stare lustily. “Good to see ya brother!” The buddy said something back, and Brody just smiled and gave a very loud, very intimidating “hoorah” in return. Lowering his gargantuan right arm and moving to walk away, Brody was momentarily alarmed to see it covered with black tattoos, from shoulder to wrist. Brody had always been too chicken to get a tattoo, and had to be peer pressured into getting his ears pierced. But after an instant he waved away his surprise; he’d been acquiring his ink for years, most of it for free. He had plenty of buddies who worked as tattoo artists, and the ones he didn’t know had a tendency not to charge him once they heard what he did for a living. The tattoos ran the gamut, from a stylized “Semper Fi” and the USMC emblem of the bald eagle perched atop a globe and an anchor taking up his massive shoulder, to a devil dog taking up most of his forearm, with a couple of random, smaller pieces he’d had done wherever there was space. Of course, when he looked down to launch another globule of black dip spit, he smiled as he admired the tattoos on his tanned legs, visible below the cuffs of his camo shorts. Those shorts felt awfully tight on Brody, but they shouldn’t have, because he’d always had a pair of tree trunk legs, the product of an adolescence spent lifting hard and heavy. And though no one could see it at the moment—though Brody was considering taking his shirt off—there was a massive piece covering his sculpted back, the initials “U.S.M.C” in old English script atop an intricate weaving of images and symbols only Marines would understand. He had Bible verses on both his ribcages, a rosary from his neckline down through the well-defined cavern between his thick, meaty pecs. Even his eight-pack abs were darkened by black tattoo ink. Brody had been a busy man since enlisting. His only regret about the tattoos was that he was just about out of room to get any more of them.
As he made his way toward the general vicinity of the parking lot, Brody finally had enough. Between spits, he cursed out loud—and quite loudly, as his time as a drill sergeant had given him a predilection for shouting. “Too fuckin’ hot,” he growled, his voice the classic embodiment of a Marine drill sergeant’s ultra-masculine, ultra-deep and ultra-intimidating growl. Using both his jacked arms, he peeled off the sweat-soaked t-shirt and tucked it into the second back pocket of his camo shorts; the first was still prominently displaying the empty tin of Copenhagen as the fabric clung to his prominent ass. Brody had done a lot of squats in his day, and still did.
As he was passing a gift shop he decided to take a second to step inside. He paused for a second at the door to spit before entering; he’d have to gut his spit for as long as he was inside. The thought of swallowing a mouthful of dip spit almost made him sick at first, but that didn’t last long. Brody didn’t mind gutting it, he had done it plenty over his years in the Marines. He just liked to spit whenever he could simply because it was macho. Before stepping in, Brody took his brawny hand and ran it over his head to clear away the sweat. “The fuck did I go bald?” he mumbled, lisping the “f” because of the dip in his mouth. He panicked for a second, especially when he felt the patch of short, bristly hair at the crown of his head, a sharp contrast to the smooth skin he had found everywhere else. But his mind reminded Brody that he was a Marine, and Marines kept a certain hairstyle. Brody’s state of anxiety returned to one of machismo, and he flicked the sweat off his hand into a nearby bush.
After browsing through the souvenir license plates and cheesy t-shirts, he came to a mirror and stopped. For a second, but only a second, Brody felt his heart sink as he caught his reflection. But a heartbeat later, Brody smiled, because this was the reflection he remembered, from head to toe: his black hair was shaved smooth, except for a small patch on the very top of his head, a textbook recon high-and-tight; his unpierced ears sticking out just a bit, the byproduct of having no hair next to them; bushy, dark eyebrows and a nose that had been broken a time or three; on his upper lip, a full, thick black mustache, the kind that oozed testosterone and fit his drill sergeant image perfectly; his lips were purple and plump but not too plump, the product of his black mother and white father, though he had never known his father (the man, Brody had only learned recently, had been in the Army and knocked his mom up before being killed in a training accident); the skin below his mouth was hairless, the massive wad of dip still protruding as he swallowed another mouthful of tobacco-infused saliva; a bull neck, so muscular it almost looked like he didn’t have a neck; and from there down, a statuesque, hypermasculine body that looked like it had been carved out of granite, covered almost totally by tattoos of every size, style and color, nothing more eye-catching than the massive red, white and blue American flag spanning his entire beefy chest, bisected by a dark black tattoo of a rosary running down through the crevice between his pecs; and those tight camo shorts—too tight, Brody knew, but it was hard to find camo shorts to fit a guy with massive thighs and ass but a narrow 31” waist—leading to his tattooed shins and calves and black boots.
Brody’s eyes moved back up the mirror as he thought about the rest of his night. For a second his mind showed him images of a movie theater, an ice cream stand, an old sedan and some stupid video game. “Fuck that shit, kid’s stuff,” he rumbled, spitting a big glob as punctuation. He hadn’t eaten ice cream in years, because obviously that wasn’t going to help him become the behemoth of a Marine man he was still working to become. And video games? Who had time for that? Sure, a lot of the guys in his unit played Call of Duty, but Brody didn’t need to shoot virtual guns; he was the best marksman on the base and everyone fucking knew it. And in case they didn’t, the giant bullseye tattoo on his lower back gained another bullet hole for every marksmanship award he’d won, every record he’d shattered. Safe to say, there was lots of bullet holes tattooed on his back.
No, none of that made any sense. Brody would walk back to his lifted, roofless Jeep Wrangler repainted in an American flag motif with camo highlights and a USMC spare tire cover. He’d drive home, diesel engine rumbling the whole way, and he’d stop at the gas station for another three tins of Cope to get him through the next day, if he was lucky. He’d walk in the door and his three kids would be there with his wife, Tracy, who was seven months pregnant with their fourth. He’d wrestle with his sons, 2-year-old Jack and 3-year-old Britt, and play tea party with the oldest, his 4-year-old daughter Bree. Jack was still a bit too young, but Britt idolized his dad; the elder boy’s first word was “hoorah”, and he’d told everyone he met that when he grew up, he was going to be a big, strong Marine like his daddy. Then Brody would spend an hour or so on the couch with Tracy after the kids tired themselves out, and he’d see how many times he could cop a feel of her swollen boobs before she’d playfully swat his meaty paw away. If she wasn’t too tired, Tracy might even suck his cock; he loved it when Tracy sucked his cock. She was a pro. They couldn’t fuck, though. Tracy was just too far along. Brody didn’t mind all that much, because the almost nightly blowjobs were more than enough to tide him over. Then Tracy would go to sleep, and if Brody was still up, he’d strip down to his boxer briefs, go out on the porch of their ranch-style home on the grounds of the Marine base, light up a big, long, thick cigar—in addition to a lipper of fresh Cope in his mouth--and invite his big-but-little brother Adrian, whose muscular development paled in comparison to Brody’s, to come over and smoke one with him. They’d have a few beers, get yelled at for laughing too loud—always a problem with Brody’s booming, raspy downhome drawl, acquired over years of serving with Marines from the deep south—and eventually Brody would take off the boxers, letting his 10” uncut dick hang out, and slide into bed next to Tracy. Tomorrow was the last day of his mini-vacation, and the day after he’d have to be back up before the sun for his own PT, and then to spend twelve glorious hours terrifying new recruits into submission, screaming at them while his football-sized and tattooed biceps strained the cuffs of his BDU jacket. He’d busted his sleeves before; for Brody, there was no better way to learn he needed a bigger size than to shred the fatigues like the fucking Hulk.
Back in the moment, back at the park in the gift shop, still smiling, mouth pried open by the huge pile of dip, Brody looked at himself in the mirror one last time. His golden yellow eyes looked back at him. For a moment, but only a moment, Brody thought something was wrong; he didn’t have golden eyes, and in fact, did anyone have golden eyes? Brody shook his head ever so slightly. “I fuckin’ do, motherfucker.” he said to himself. As he marched out of the gift shop, giving a respectful “ma’am” to the employee behind the desk, Brody never doubted again that he was now exactly who he was meant to be.