Just 'cause, here's a story from my recently-released queer collection, Filthy Boys. I have a certain fondness for this story as it was written as a kind of thanks to all the gay men I've known - and who've changed my life for the better.
LOVE
"You could have
stayed with me," he'd said the first time I went to Seattle to see him, but
stayed in a motel. I hadn't even thought
of it, and so the disappointment in his eyes.
I never went back. After he got promoted there wasn't any point.
You could have stayed with me evolves into a fantasy in which
those four days play out differently: an invitation made earlier, my discomfort
of staying in someone else's house miraculously absent. Fresh off the plane, strap digging into
my shoulder (I always over-pack), out of the cab and up a quick twist of marble
steps to his front door. A knock, or
a buzz, and it opens.
A quick dance of
mutual embarrassment as I maneuver in with my luggage, both of us saying the stupid
things we all say when we arrive somewhere we've never been before. Him: "How was your flight?" Me:
"What a great place."
Son of a decorator,
I always furnish and accessorize my fantasies: I imagine his to be a simple one-bedroom. Messy, but a good mess. A mind's room, full of toppling books, squares
of bright white paper. Over the fireplace
(cold, never lit) a print, something classical like a Greek torso, the fine line
topography of Michelangelo's David. A few pieces of plaster, three-dimensional
anatomical bric-a-brac on the mantel.
A cheap wooden table in the window, bistro candle, and Don't Fuck With The Queen in ornate script
on a chipped coffee cup.
Dinner? No, my flight arrived late. Coffee? More comfortable and gets to the point quicker. We chat. I ask him about his life: is everything okay? He replies that he's busy, but otherwise
fine. We chat some more. I say that it's a pleasure to work with
him. He replies with the same.
I compliment him,
amplifying what I've already said, and he blushes. He returns it, and then some, making me smile. My eyes start to burn, my vision blurs,
tears threatening. I sniffle and stand
up.
He does as well,
and we hug. Hold there. Hold there. Hold there. Then,
break – but still close together. Lips
close together. The kiss happens. Light, just a grazing of lips. I can tell he wants more, but I'm uncomfortable
and break it but not so uncomfortable that I can't kiss his cheeks. Right, then left, then right again.
But his head turns
and we're kissing, lips to lips again.
Does he open his first or do I?
Sometimes I imagine his, sometimes mine. But they are open and we are kissing, lips and tongue, together. Hot, wet, hard.
But not on my part. Wet, definitely – in my mind it's a good
kiss. A generous and loving kiss. Hot, absolutely, but only in a matter of
degrees as his temperature rises and mine does in basic body response.
Not hard on my part,
but I am aware of his. Between us,
like a finger shoved through a hole in his pocket, something solid and muscular
below his waist.
Does he say something? "I want you," "Please touch
me," "I'm sorry," are candidates. I've tried them all out, one time or another, to add different
flavors, essences, spices to that evening. "I want you," for basic primal sex. "Please touch me," for polite
request, respect and sympathy. "I'm
sorry," for wanting something he knows I don't.
"It's okay,"
I say to all of them, and it is. Not
just words. Understanding, sympathy,
generosity. All of them, glowing in
my mind. It really is okay.
I'm a pornographer,
dammit. I should be able to go on with
the next part of this story without feeling like ... I'm laughing right now, not
that you can tell. An ironic chuckle:
a pornographer unable to write about sex.
Not that I can't write about myself, that making who I am – really – the
center of the action is uncomfortable, because I've certainly done that before. I've exposed myself on the page so many
other times, what makes this one so different?
Just do it. Put the words down and debate them later. After all, that's what we're here for, aren't
we? You want to hear what I dream he
and I do together. You want to look
over my mental shoulder at two men in that tiny apartment in Seattle.
I'm a writer; it's
what I do, and more importantly, what I am. So we sit on the couch, he in the corner me in the middle. His hand is on my leg. My back is tight, my thighs are corded. Doubt shades his face so I put my own hand
on his own, equally tight, thigh. I
repeat what I said before, meaning it: "It's okay."
We kiss again. A friend's kiss, a two people who like each
other kiss. His hands touch my chest,
feeling me through the thin cloth of turtleneck. I pull the fabric out of my pants with a few quick tugs, allowing
bare hands to touch bare chest. He
likes it, grinning up at me. I send
my own grin, trying to relax.
His hand strokes
me though my jeans, and eventually I do get hard. His smile becomes deeper, more sincere, lit by his excitement. It's one thing to say it, quite another
for your body to say it. Flesh doesn't
lie, and I might have when I gave permission. My cock getting hard, though, is obvious tissue and blood sincerity.
"That's nice,"
"Can I take it out?" "I hope you're all right with this." Basic
primal sex, a polite request including respect and sympathy, and the words for wanting
something he knows I don't – any one of them, more added depth to this dream.
My cock is out and
because he's excited or simply doesn't want the moment and my body to possibly get
away, he is sucking me. Was that so
hard to say? It's just sex. Just the mechanics of arousal, the engineering
of erotica. Cock A in mouth B. I've written it hundreds of times. But there's that difference again, like
by writing it, putting it down on paper (or a computer screen) has turned diamond
into glass, mahogany into plywood.
Cheapened. That's the word. But to repeat: I am a writer. It's what I do. All the time. Even about love – especially about this kind of love.
He sucks my cock. Not like that, not that, not the way you're
thinking: not porno sucking, not erotica sucking. This is connection, he to I. The speech of sex, blowjob as vocabulary.
I stay hard. What does this mean? It puzzles me, even in the fantasy. I have no doubts about my sexuality. I am straight. I write everything else, but I am a straight
boy. I like girls. Men do not turn me on.
Yet, in my mind and
in that little apartment, I am hard.
Not "like a rock," not "as steel," not as a "telephone
pole," but hard enough as his mouth, lips, and tongue – an echoing hard, wet
and hard – work on me.
The answer is clear
and sharp, because if I couldn't get hard and stay hard then he'd be hurt and the
scene would shadow, chill, and things would be weighted between us. That's not the point of this dream, why
I think about it.
So, onto sex. Nothing great or grand, nothing from every
section of the menu. A simple action
between two men who care about each other: he sucks my cock. He enjoys it and I love him enough to let
him. That's all we do, because it's
enough.
He sucks me for long
minutes, making sweet sounds and I feel like crying. He puts his hand down his own pants, puts a hand around his own
cock. For a moment I think about asking
him if he wants help, for me to put my hand around him, help him jerk off. But I don't. Not because I don't want to, or because I'm disgusted, but because
he seems to be enjoying himself so much, so delighted in the act of sucking me,
that I don't want to break the spell, turn that couch back into a pumpkin.
He comes, a deep
groan around my cock, humming me into near-giggles. He stops sucking as he gasps and sighs with release, looking
up at me with wet-painted lips, eyes out of focus. I bend down and kiss him, not tasting anything but warm water.
I love him. I wanted to thank him. I hope, within this dream, I have. The night that didn't happen but could have.
For me, writing is
just about everything: the joy of right word following right word all the way to
the end. The ecstasy of elegant plot,
the pleasure of flowing dialogue, the loveliness of perfect description. Sex is good, sex is wonderful, but story
is fireworks in my brain. The reason
I live. The greatest pleasure in my
life.
And he has given
me that, with nearly flowing letters on an agreement between his company and I,
between his faith in my ability and myself. He looked at me, exposed on the page of a book, in the chapter
of a novel, in the lines of a short story, and didn't laugh, didn't dismiss or reject. He read, nodded, smiled, and agreed to publish.
Sex cannot measure
up to that. Bodies are bodies, but
he has given me a pleasure beyond anything I'd felt: applause, and a chance to do
much, much more with words, with stories.
He doesn't have a
name, this man in my fantasy. There
have been a lot of them over the years, and a lot more in the future, no doubt. Gay men who have touched me in ways no one
has ever touched me before, by making love with my soul through their support of
my writing. Each time they have, this
fantasy has emerged from the back of my mind, a need to give them the gift they
have given me: passion and kindness, support and caring, and pure affection.
I worry about this. I worry that they won't understand, take
this secret dream of mine as being patronizing, diminishing them to nothing but
a being with a cock who craved more cock.
I've confessed a few times, telling a select few how I feel about them, how
I wish I could do for them what they have done for me, to be able to put aside my
heterosexuality for just an evening, an afternoon, and share total affection together.
Luckily, or maybe
there really isn't anything to worry about, the ones I've told, they smile, hold
my hand, kiss my cheek, say the right thing and to this day, even right now, make
me cry: "I wish we could too, but I understand. I love you too."
Am I bi? I know I'm physically not – I simply don't
get aroused by men – but that doesn't mean I don't adore men, or for the ones I
care about, the men who have touched my soul through their support and affection
for my stories and writing, I wish I couldn't change. More than anything I wish I could give them what they have given
me.
With a cock or a
pen, with a story or hours of wonderful sex, it all comes down to one thing: love.
