It's been awhile, I know. Let's just say that I had other things to do. But I was starting to miss my guys - enough, obviously, to pull off a little resurrection. So here they are, alive and kicking.
I hope veteran readers feel it was worth the wait. New readers: you might want you start at the beginning. And all of you: I welcome your feedback. In fact, I doubt that I'd ever do this if I didn't think somebody out there would like it enough to tell me so.
Oh. This story features outrageous figures of speech and the occasional homoerotic moment. If such things trouble you, steer clear.
Fifteen
VIII
And they lived happily ever after. The End.
Yeah, right. It's The Day After the Day After, Sunday evening, and I haven't heard from him. Of course, I haven't called either, haven't messaged, haven't hustled the three blocks to the Rowland's and rung the bell.
"Who are you?" big brother Danny would ask, and I'd mumble "Aidan," and he'd look at me like I'd just had my tongue up Billy's ass, which of course I had.
So I'm sitting at my desk, and I'm thinking to myself that nothing at all has changed. The face in the mirror is the same one I've always looked at, though I had popped in my contacts in the hopes that it might not be.
But my heart is racing and my mouth is dry. I've been staring at the same page in "Gatsby" for an hour now. "Who's that beautiful boy on page 88?" I ask myself, but of course there is no boy in the novel, only Billy's ghost beside a garish yellow roadster. I see Billy everywhere, his image burned onto my retina.
Am I making too much of this? One transcendent night of love in a vacant bomb shelter? It's not like we delivered peace to the West Bank or saved a little girl from drowning. It's not like the earth moved - that much.
And suddenly my dick is swelling in my boxers, and I pull it out for a little chat. I tell it to behave, that we aren't going to be playing like we used to. "I'm saving up for Billy," I tell it, but it doesn't listen, and pretty soon, I'm stroking intently, covering and uncovering the red head, squeezing a little bubble of pre-cum out of the slit. Three days ago, I would have finished the thing, sent a billion spermatozoa to their cold grave. But I guess I really have changed after all. My dick softens. I tuck it back into my shorts. "I'm saving up for Billy. I'm saving up for Billy."
IX
Monday finds me walking down the long first floor corridor at Walt Whitman Senior High. After the renovations, the place looks a lot like a shopping mall, simultaneously Moorish and Colonial, the rows of lockers painted bright green, the lighting bright, yet indirect. Whitman screams affluence, and if, as they say, cleanliness is next to godliness, then I know I am studying in a holy place.
Most of the parents don't know enough about Whitman - and I mean the namesake, not the high school. Mr. Barrows pointed out that irony back in January, though I don't think most of my classmates bothered to catch it. Whitman was a flamer, at least once you got past "Oh Captain, My Captain." I mean, we didn't dawdle on this detail, but I got a little glimpse in "Song of Myself," and then, of course, I had an itch that needed scratching, and I went to Borders and bought a cheap Collected Poems, brought it home, went up to my room, and skipped to the good parts. I suppose I could have downloaded "Frat Boys III" for about the same price, but - and this is where I truly deviate from the norm - Whitman seemed a lot sexier. I mean, it's not like there's ever going to be a Joey Stefano High, even though he's pretty famous, too, and quite dead.
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under
the same cover
In the cool night,
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined
toward me,
And his arm lay around my breast - and that night I was
happy.
Pretty ripe stuff. Whitman, my Whitman, you are the Mack Daddy. I owe you. That night, with his arm around my breast, I really was happy.
No Billy anywhere, and it's not that big a school. Of course, he's mainstream and I'm IB, but that shouldn't matter if we're in love. It's not like I'm going to put my arms around him and ask him to Prom. We need our goddamned secret, and I have no intention of selling him out. I'm not going buy myself a letter jacket with a big scarlet G. God, Billy, I'm not a threat. I just want to see you again, and know that you're seeing me.
I get through the day, nonetheless. I scribble notes for the upcoming exams, though I won't really need them. I remind myself of a Sophomore College Night I have no intention of attending. I eat lunch with Krishna and Li, my lab partners, and I think they somehow manage to work Jessica Simpson into their debate on Chaos Theory. If they had ever thought to notice me behind the milk cartons, they'd sense that I was out of sorts. Finally, I'm back in Ms. Ramey's Geometry where it all began, and I don't know what gets into me unless it's a six degrees of separation kind of thing, but on my way to the back of the class, I brush up against Cassandra Mitchell, say excuse me, and ask about the party.
"Awesome, of course. Until it got busted. I'm grounded for, like, eternity. You shoulda come by, Aidan."
I should have come by. If P, then not Q. "Yeah, you're right. My cousins were up from Richmond. Next time, maybe. If there is a next time." I think I give her a knowing wink, but it could be that facial tic I get whenever I lie spontaneously.
"Sure. Whatever. Bring your cousins." She is absolutely certain that there will be other parties. I admire her certainty, I really do.
Somehow, the hour passes. Ms. Ramey looks at me from time to time as if she knows something's up. Something's up, I want to scream, but it don't fit on the freakin' y- axis. In the geometry of love there is no symmetry.
X
I take the long way back, past the creek and the picnic table where less than 72 hours earlier Billy found me staring up at the stars. I guess it shouldn't surprise me that in the hard light of 4:00 P.M., a creek is just a creek, a table is just a table, and the illusion or whatever it was that drew us together doesn't register. So I walk on.
But I can't make myself go home just yet. I don't want to climb the stairs to my room and lock the door behind me. I don't want to give up on this new Aidan. I'm not ready to euthanize him just because his poor heart is beating irregularly and desire seeps out of every pore.
And I double back through The Glade, past the Johnston's and the Wasserman's, past Mrs. Golightly's azaleas, past Cassandra's place where the party was, where the silver 750i in the circular driveway tells me Mrs. Mitchell will be greeting her daughter at the door, past twenty stolid Parthenons in a row, sudden monuments of a new Golden Age, past the Mount Vernon and the Monticello squaring off at the corner of Alwyn and Sunnymeade, Sunnymeade, where the Rowlands live, where Billy lives, and where, in a bomb shelter built for a war that never came, two boys found something like peace.
I don't know what to do. I can't stand on the sidewalk and wait for someone to notice me. I can't take a chance that Billy's mom will call out to invite me in for cookies and a chat. "Yes, Mrs. Rowland, my Dad wants me to look at Princeton. No, thank you, really, I can't stay for dinner. Yes, ma'am, Mom loves Pilates, says it's better than sex, which, by the way, I had with your son Friday night while you were sleeping."
I must look like I belong there figuring out what to do. No eyeballs peer at me through louvered blinds; no sirens wail. So I open the gate to the back yard, walk the flagstone path through gardens in mid-May splendor, to the vine-covered mound where the shelter is. And wait, like an orphan at the end of time.
XI
"Aidan, what the fuck are you doing?" I must have dozed off. Billy stands over me, blocking the late afternoon sun.
"I didn't see you at school. You didn't call."
"You can't just come here. It's, like, trespassing, you dumb fuck."
"I know. I know. I'm not thinking so hot. Dumb fucks are stupid. They trespass. They get busted."
"Damn, Aidan, what if my brother found you here? He's not cool at all. He takes supplements for God's sake." Not that he would need any muscle mass to mess me up.
"I know. I would have thought of something. And besides, if he killed me, they'd probably suspend him or something."
"Goddamn. Motherfucker. You goddamn motherfucker. You goddamn, motherfucking motherfucker." It might be sunstroke, but these words sound more like a benediction than a curse. Billy is proud of me, I think.
"I am, Billy. I need you, Billy." I've never said anything like that, never, ever. All the filters are off. All the cues have been lost.
"Shut up, Aidan. You can't just say that, you know. You can't." And he opens the padlock, then the creaking wooden hatch, and he looks at me one last time in the sunlight, and I think: he needs me, too. He needs me.
He turns on the Coleman lantern, motions me to the couch. "We gotta talk."
"Yes," I say. "Please, let's talk."
He sits down across from me, on a couple of boxes. The silence chokes me, but I can't go first. I understand that much.
"This is my place, Aidan. I have to invite you. It's my rule."
"Okay."
"What happens in here, happens in here."
"Of course."
"I won't come looking for you at school, Aidan. I won't. I can't. And please don't come looking for me."
"Sure."
"No, I mean it. We're not gonna hang out, Aidan. You don't know me out there. If you say 'hey, Billy,' I'm gonna walk away."
A little voice in the back of my head tells me I should be crushed. The rules of the game are stacked against me, and I'm heading for humiliation. But instead of growing louder, the voice disappears in a wash of love and desire and utter joy. And when I speak, it is with conviction, not fear, compassion, not anger.
"Yes. Out there is out there. I am nobody out there, and that's okay. Really. I think I knew that all along. I think that's why my legs brought me here. I mean, I think that anything is okay, here, that I can need you and you can need me, and it's all right. I don't want to lose the shelter. I don't."
Wordlessly, he comes over and sits beside me. Just sits, staring at the strange shadows on the wall. He is breathing deeply and heavily, as if something large and angry has been chasing him, and he's just now found a place to hide and catch his breath. I brush his cheek with my lips, kiss his earlobe, stick my index finger through one of his blond curls. He turns to me and whispers: "Goddamn, Aidan. What are we going to do?"
It's even better, this time. We know better what we like and we know better how to get there. I want to drown in Billy's skin. My fingers cannot travel anywhere on his body without eliciting a moan. I don't know if the nerves are in my fingers or on the contours of his chest, abdomen, thighs. It's like I'm playing an ancient instrument, a lyre or a sitar, and the music that I make is thrillingly out of tune, a strange melody never before heard. I kiss his nipples, and he squeals; I bury my tongue in his belly- button, and his back arches, and he bucks a bit, and he says, "oh shit, oh shit, ah shit, aah" a prisoner of the Tourette's that afflicts lovers everywhere. Then my fingers find his dick, flush against his belly, and I play with it like a seven year old drill sergeant with a G.I. Joe doll, commanding it to salute, squeezing the head just a little and watching the slick slime seep out. Billy is silly putty. I can stretch him and knead him at will. He has no voluntary muscle control. He has surrendered to my sweet ministrations, and from the looks of it, from the ecstatic sound effects emanating from his throat, there is nothing quite so wonderful as being powerless. Now, I'm down on him in a serious way. I suck at his dickhead like a sweet jawbreaker, then shoot to the root, letting the head pummel my tonsils. I might be gagging, but I'm not stopping, and once more I go back to the peehole, drill my tautened tongue into the urethra, and Billy announces his readiness with an expletive worthy of Satan, and he tightens all over, and starts firing wads of cum which I swirl around my mouth and swallow. I don't let go of his dick right away. I let it go soft, and when I graze my teeth over the head, I feel him tense again, and shudder, and squirt a last delinquent blast. Only then do I look up at him and see the smile and the tears.
"Where did you learn that, Aidan?" He's hoarse, and I've been doing all the work.
"Instinct. Raw talent. I suck at so many things, I guess I'm good at sucking."
"Thank you."
"Any time. I mean, any time it's okay with you."
"Oh shut up, Aidan. I don't know why I said what I said. I don't really know much of anything."
"You knew that I wanted you. You knew that much."
"Yup. I guess I did. I thought I wanted Meghan. I thought I wanted Nicole. I thought I wanted that blonde freshman with the J-Lo booty. I really did. But, nah, all I wanted was your scrawny ass, Aidan. You are beautiful, you know."
"Now it's my turn, Billy: shut the fuck up. Don't fucking lie to me. I am no such thing."
"Touchy. You are, though. I don't say shit like that unless I mean it. If you'd stop hating on yourself for five minutes, you might see it, too. You have purple eyes, Aidan. Purple. They're amazing. Your lips are, I don't know, puffy and sweet, like you got those collagen injections. And, okay, so you're bony. But I think you're the hottest skeleton I ever met."
"And I'm smart."
"And you're really smart."
"And you want me anyway."
"And I want you anyway."
"And if I start to cry, you won't stop wanting me."
"I won't."
"Billy? Why don't I believe you?"
"Because for a smart guy, you're a fucking idiot. A beautiful fucking idiot."
Then he's lathering me with kisses, his tongue a hummingbird on Methedrine. He brushes aside my attempts to hold on to him. He wants what I just had, the Golden Rule, to do to me what I did unto him. And who am I to argue?
I close my eyes. I wonder if this is what blind people feel when they make love. They can't anticipate the touch or the breath on their skin. They can't prepare themselves for the ambush. Billy has bathed me like a newborn, a baptism with saliva. I can sense my dick twitching, but I don't think he's taken it yet. Then his tongue licks up and down the shaft, and his mouth pulls my foreskin back over the glans, and he pinches it into a little pucker with his lips, and holds it there a few agonizing seconds. Then he retracts it ever so gently, ever so slowly, and I think, my boy's learning fast, and if he doesn't stop right now I'll pop like Vesuvius.
I don't blow, because Billy stops. When I open my eyes, I realize that I'm straddling his chest, and he's bracing me with his knees. I wonder if he's tired and resting. I wonder if somehow he's bored, or if, looking up at me in my delirium, he's having second, third, one- hundredth thoughts.
"I love it," he mutters.
"Love what, Billy?"
"All of it. This thing."
"My dick, you mean?"
"Yup. And how you taste. And how I know you're gonna cum, and how I know I'm not gonna let you. Sex, you know. I love it."
"It is pretty amazing." My dick, in all its considerable glory, rests eagerly on his chest, awaiting a revival. But I want even more to listen to my boy.
"I'm still hard, Aidan. I blew my load twenty minutes ago, and I'm still hard. I'm sucking your cock and I'm not even thinking about me, and I'm hard. I keep squirming like there's something moving in my ass, and I know it's not you, but I want it to be you."
He wants it to be me. He wants me to fuck him. My dick jumps an inch as I try to fathom his request. I quickly do the math, lean over to kiss him, and say:
"I don't think so, Billy."
He doesn't say anything, so I guess he's heard me. He kisses my dick, then engulfs as much as he can. He starts to bob in earnest, and pretty soon my back straightens, every muscle in my body contracting all at once, and I feel the rumble below where soul meets bowels, then that telltale surge through tiny pipes, and one, two, three, four seminal jets before Billy pulls away and lets the last few drops fall harmlessly onto his chest.
"Next time, maybe? You in me? Me in you?"
"God," I say, still shuddering. Then I collapse on top of Billy so he won't see that I'm crying. As I said, I always cry when I come.
We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving -
Fulfilling our foray.
(Where do I go from here? pijito52@aol.com )