My friend Burke Gordonson died around 11:30 on a bright day in June. I was his last friend. His other friends had abandoned him as the cancer weakened him, and when he died I was the only one in the room. It was a good thing he died. He didn't do any complaining, but I know the pain had gotten bad.
It was real strange to walk out of the hospital and look up and see the deliriously blue sky, and the wet, sparkling vivid green grass and all the shining puddles on the sidewalk. The city was drenched in sun after a shower of morning rain. I left the hospital meaning to go to work, but somehow I ended up going home instead. I was tired out after trying to hold down my job and then sitting up with him for nine hours each day for the last six days. I'd been getting about four hours of sleep each night if I got any sleep at all. I ended up in my own apartment sitting on a filthy bed that hadn't been made or had the sheets changed in two weeks thinking, "How did I get here?" And then I rolled over and went to sleep.
You'll think, of course, that Burke was a special buddy, a guy that I shared some kind of a bond with. He wasn't. I had a crush on him, but he was straight and I sure as hell wasn't going to make a big deal out of a few hormones. He'd started out as just one of the guys in our crowd. And I used him as a weather gauge to test how badly fucked up I was. If I got a hard on around him, the rule was no beer, to make sure I stayed in control. And if I felt giddy around him, the rule was don't open my mouth and say anything, so I wouldn't sound stupid. And if I got the urge to touch his arm, reach out and place my fingers on that warm pale brown flesh -then it was time to go home and write in my journal what a poor sick prick I was. I was brought up in a good Christian home, you see, and I wasn't going to wreck my life by acting on those urges.
So Burke was kind of a lust object to me, unbeknownst to him. Only in the autumn he got rather red in the face. Harry Honeycutt called him "Rosy Tomato" because he developed this prink complexion. And then Burke came back and told us he had Hodgkin's, and there a tumour in his chest, which was putting pressure on some blood vessels, which is why his face had turned red. Well, we all rallied around him as he went for chemo and radiation and stuff like that and the statistical odds were he was getting better. Everyone swore if he ever needed a buddy to take him to the hospital or anything, all he had to do was call. And then they put him in the hospital, flat on his back in a white bed and about half of us visited, half of the crowd came and clustered around him and gave him insulting cards with pictures of fat men in Johnny shirts. And then week after week, it turned into spring and he was only getting three or four visitors and I was one of them.
Sometime that spring I did touch his arm, not out of lust, but because he was restless and kicking as he lay in the bed, uncomfortable with the swelling lump in his chest that was killing him. I touched his arm not because I had a hard on and wanted to know how warm his arm was, to draw in close and smell the scent of him, to make him aware of me. I touched him because I thought, fuck, this guy needs to be touched. And my hand steady on his arm made him calmer.
I didn't spend his eight month long death with a hard on for him. Burke got uglier and uglier. He got grey in the face and wrinkly in the forehead, and his muscles grew soft from being stuck in the bed. I stayed because he needed someone to stay. His friends Sharon and Keith didn't come one Friday and they never came again. And then in the last four days, when he lay very quiet, and maybe most of the time not caring or knowing I was there, I stayed because it's a fucked up world, and it can't be fixed, but I thought it would be better if he didn't die alone.
I woke up at seven-thirty that night feeling like I had the worst hangover in the world. I kept my eyes closed for as long as I could, trying to believe it was just a hangover. But then I woke up enough to remember that Burke was dead, so I sat up and started making phone calls. The hospital had phoned his mother to say that he had passed away, so I didn't have to make that one at least. I sat there and made half a dozen calls, calling half a dozen friends, "Sharon? Burke's dead... Yeah, this morning, just about noon." I made the same call and said the same thing half a dozen times.
I looked up at the white blank ceiling of my apartment and I thought, why does everything in the world have to hurt? Fuck, it wasn't even unbearable pain, just the same familiar agony that suffused waking, sleeping, learning, loving, thinking, seeing and hoping. Poor old Burke! You know what made me bitter? About a week and a half before he died Burke said to me, "I never did anything with my life! I never used it in any way at all. I just lived -and now it's too late to do anything with it at all."
When I came into work the next morning my boss, a slender brainless man named Charles demanded, "Is it over yet?" He knew I'd been keeping a death vigil, and was sick of me working four hours here and four hours there so I could spend time at the hospital.
"Yeah, it's over." I said.
And Charles said, "I'm very sorry." in a different tone of voice, which in no way made up for him demanding impatiently if Burke had died yet.
I spent a couple of days mechanically playing catch up with my life. The laundry got done, I went back to the hospital and picked up a white plastic shopping bag that contained all the pointless debris from Burke's life, and the projects at work got finished, after deadline, but within the average over run time for projects at the place where I was employed. The shopping bag was full of Burke's pyjamas and the collection of cards and his watch. I let it stand in my front hall waiting until I'd see Burke's mother. And Charles said to me, "Look, take a couple of days off if you feel like it. That'll help you get back to normal."
A couple of days off sounded like a good idea, but like most of the ideas that Charles had, it was a bad one. I stayed in town having nowhere to go, shoved my hands in my pockets and walked around the lake at Reunion Park. It was three days after my last day of keeping vigil. The still ducks afloat on the lake were all right, but the gleeful kids in shorts prancing across the grass and kicking up their heels like young colts annoyed me. The path was crowded with mothers pushing baby strollers and teenagers and runners with mp3 players stuck in their ears with the volume turned up so loud that everywhere I went I could hear a tinny ching-jing-ching noise from the spill over. The more I walked the more my disgust with life came rolling in at me like a wave in the sea.
And then to cap it off at the very end of the path around the lake there was this guy, so blatantly gay that even my under-developed gaydar could tell he was trying a come-on on me. He was right at the end of the path so I had to either walk past him or turn around and walk the mile and the half back around the lake again. The guy oozed sex and sunscreen. He had bare sun-browned sculpted arms and belly, legs spread in an aggressive pose because he was offering me his cock, and the big bulge prominent in his rudely tight shorts. His eyes fixed on me, trying hungrily to catch my eyes; hot, dirty, promising eyes that didn't give a fuck that the straights saw him and knew the kind of sex he liked. He didn't give a fuck either that he creeped me out. He smiled.
I fixed my eyes beyond him and walked on.
The next day was the funeral. It had been delayed for a bit until Burke's mother could fly in from the West. She owned a daycare someplace in Oklahoma City, which meant she had had to get things settle there somehow before she could come down. All those fair weather friends of his showed up at the chapel. There must have been ninety people, dressed in dowdy colours, murmuring and shaking their heads. Burke's mother held court, looking kind of like confused Royalty. She received her condolences gratefully, and clearly felt the attention was appropriate, but she had no idea who anyone was.
I joined the line up shuffling slowly along to take my turn and shake hands with the lady. I had a little speech prepared. When I got to the top of the line I said it, but I said it like my mouth was full of cotton wool. I was so surprised and offended. "Burke had so much potential. It's a genuine tragedy that he passed. He meant a lot to me." I said. That gay guy from the park had come to Burke's funeral. He was standing behind her, one hand even resting on her right shoulder. He met my eyes again.
Well, he didn't smirk this time at least. While I said my piece and the lady said, "Oh, thank you dear," he was looking at me, a small wry smile on his lips. He didn't have the decency to look away. He kept his eyes on me until the last moment, when I kept walking so the next person could come shake her hand. It felt like he was still looking at me as I went back into the crowd.
I made sure to sit up front where I couldn't see the bereaved mother during the service. It was a good sermon. Sharon had set up the funeral arrangements for Burke's mother. She had asked me if I could find a preacher and I'd asked the preacher from my own church to help out. He'd preached how Burke had been a good man, and had managed to avoid sin during his life and how we could use that as an example.
I dodged out without having to mumble another platitude at Burke's mother and without having to endure any more stares from Super Faggot.
The next day I worked late, getting a good start on the new project to make it up to Charles for being a slack off the month before. I mostly managed not to think about the faggot from the funeral and to keep my mind on my work. It was eight o'clock before I got out of the office, but it was July and still broad daylight. I live in an apartment building. Down in front of my building is a square of grass, and in the centre of that square are three pine trees. When I came home that day the gay guy was standing under the pine trees in front of my building.
Well, I couldn't just walk past him turning my eyes contemptuously away after seeing him at the funeral. He must have been some special friend of Burke's if he'd been with the guy's mother. I still had no idea who he was. But I slowed down reluctantly and gave him a nod.
"I saw you at the funeral." I said.
"I saw you the day before at Reunion Lake." The guy said. He had this deep, sexy voice.
I couldn't help the grimace that came to my mouth. He had not the least bit of shame about who he was or what he did.
"I guess you cared about Burke a lot." He said.
But I was too fed up to go on with the platitudes. Some things are so much a revolting waste that it's useless to keep talking about them. And this guy was so blatantly, challengingly gay that it was idiotic to pretend he was normal. "I guess you were Burke's secret gay friend. He never mentioned you to any of us." My voice came out hostile. I didn't really mean it to.
My aggressive voice only made him smile. "Want to fuck?" He suggested with a mean playfulness.
I just looked at him.
"Grubby, impersonal, dirty sex with a stranger?" He suggested.
"You fucking queer!" I blurted.
"Well, don't you?" He asked.
We went upstairs. I was breathing hard through my nose, looking at the ceiling of the elevator as we rode up. He was looking at me.
All that stuff, like right and wrong and the possibility of hurting myself, like the contempt I'd heard all my life used for the disgusting, weak, immoral men who disrespect their souls and bodies enough to make themselves the objects of hate of half of society - none of that stuff mattered because it was so damn hopeless. You live, living hurts and then you die. So what did it matter if I fucked my life up completely?
We didn't make it as far as the couch, because as soon as we got into the apartment he started kissing my neck and it was like getting hit in the face with the male, sweet salt smell of his sweat. I managed to get the door kicked closed but then he was unzipping my pants and his big fingered hand was groping inside, grabbing for my cock. I grabbed him by the butt and squeezed and it was all muscle, tight, dense, round hard tissue, solid muscle.
I managed to get his mouth off my neck, but then he was kissing my mouth and I put my tongue down his throat because I wasn't intimidated by him, I was a man and I could take the lead in this. Then he was humping my leg and his immense cock was riding on my thigh, sliding up and down toward my crotch, the head of his prick rubbing up towards my balls, and then he was buckling backwards half on my floor and half on my carpet. I got his trousers open so I could grab him by the prick.
I thought it would be dirty, quick sex, get it in his dick-sucking tainted homo mouth and pollute him. And do the same kind of thing for him, just get my fucking load out, quick as I can and try not to feel the bare hard hot skin that I wanted so much to feel and wanted so badly it already felt like I was just a few seconds from coming. But then the dirty cheating fuck started to make love to me.
He took my naked butt in his hands and he didn't grab and squeeze the way I was squeezing him. He rubbed over my ass like he was a blind man reading Braille, feeling it, and savouring it. And he kissed my mouth flicking his tongue at mine, tasting, plucking and letting the harsh hairs of his beard play a contrast to the soft touch of his lips. He should have had his eyes tight shut like I wanted to keep mine. But he looked into my eyes instead.
It was so much what I wanted it was too intense, so I pushed him away. I pushed him down my body. I didn't ask him if he minded doing it. I just thrust his face down to my prick so I could fuck his faggot face, cum in his throat and get him the hell out of my apartment. But he put his lips on my balls and he started licking them and he mouthed until he sucked them both up into his mouth. And his hands were rubbing my body, my hips, my belly and my ass while he did this. His cheeks were rough on my thighs. The heat in his mouth was stunning.
He went on like that, making love to my balls and to my cock, mouthing on it, running his tongue up and down the shaft, sucking, and squeezing my prick with his hand. I thrust towards his mouth and towards his lips. I was thrusting into the air, uncontrollably. Pre-cum was coming out of me so fast that a thick bead of it dripped down the side of my prick like wax on the side of a candle.
"More, you fucker." I groan. "More!"
He didn't give me relief. He gave me more. He took my ass in both his hands and pulled my cheeks open. He put two fingers in, touched my asshole, took them away, licked them brought them back and touched my hole again, wet, probing and slippery.
"Fuck! Fuck!" I groaned and I thrust forward trying to turn the licking and the lapping on my prick into an ejaculation. I thrust backwards trying to get the sensation in my ass as his two fingers ground and pressed hard, stretching me and getting my asshole open.
At that point he could have done anything to me and I didn't care what it implied. One finger went up me at the same time as he slid his lips tight over the head of my prick and down my shaft. He pulled the finger back and slid back. He pushed the finger in and pushed his mouth down, all the way down. I felt his nose and lips in the curls at the base of my cock. He pulled back again and this time when he came in it was two fingers, I was stretched so wide I groaned, and his lips were so tight it was about to happen.
But somehow he kept me going kept me writhing on the rug while he sucked my cock and finger fucked my ass. His naked skin and body heat was overpoweringly rough and smooth, contrasting coarse hair and perfect skin with polished rock smoothness. And he was laughing, not snickering, or a nervous giggle but a deep, body-trembling laugh of pure pleasure. He was laughing with my cock all the way down his throat, his arm scrubbing over my chest and belly, my legs wrapped around his ribs and back, clutching him in to my crotch.
His laugh made my body shake and then his lips and tongue were thrumming hard and urgent. His fingers were going up, all the way. He pulled back: three fingers. I gave a deep rending groan. It felt so good it was close to pain. It was all I could take. It was more than I could take. And he sucked my prick so tight, so wet and so deep I was past where I could stop it. My hips gave a spasm. At the height of my stroke the shudder hit me. I felt my load come up, my tautly contracted balls sending the pulse up until it was jetting, up, up, a hot shudder of great sensation, cum shooting, thick shot after shot. The man was catching it in his mouth, on his lips and his tongue, audibly, palpably gulping and he caught it, drank it and let it dribble all at once.
Then it wasn't over because he was climbing on me. I could still see him swallowing as he pushed my leg up and back and got up half behind me, half on my side with my knee hard against my chest and he was lining his massive prick up into my crack where I was damp with sweat and spit. His cock was huge. It was too big. It was nothing I could take. It sent another orgasmic shockwave through me as he fitted the fat head into the place where his fingers had been ramming into me.
He thrust, still the same rhythm. He was licking his fingers. The next stroke was a mixture of immense prick and slippery spit wet fingers. And the next stroke his big prick was opening me all the way, wider even that three fingers. My gay pick-up was groaning low in his throat. I was struggling, but struggling in rhythm, trying to back down on the male cock invading me. It bored its way upward, wide, thick and penetrating, naked skin into the stretched wide crevice. He pushed it all the way up and I was moaning, the sweat trickling out of me, and new subtle shockwaves sending new pulses down into my prick. I was groaning. I rolled on my belly. He rode my butt, legs tangling in mine, my ass thrust high, cocked up to meet him. He took only ten strokes, each one more intense than the last.
Then I felt his sawing rhythm grow steady, building hard. I never knew that human skin could give off so much heat. His body was like fire on my back. He fucked me and the taut trembling sensation of his ejaculation in the ring muscle of my ass was a new sensation that made me open my eyes wide. I felt him build. I felt him reach that point, felt it become a pulse, and then I felt the hot shooting of liquid inside me.
I didn't even have to try to get him out of my apartment. By the time I was rolling over on the carpet, able to reach for my own crushed clothing he was already dressed. I sat up, got my shirt on and the guy was gone. He didn't waste words on a good-bye. He slipped away closing the door silently, leaving me to clamber to my feet, shaken, completely relaxed and weak at the knees.
The next day, sitting in my cubicle at work, the drained relaxed sensation hadn't left me. I rotated diagrams on the screen blindly, fingers mechanical on the keys. Burke is dead, the grave is the only goal in life and you want to waste what little possibilities this shitty life holds? I told myself. Use his death to find some meaning, not as an excuse to be depraved. That was disgusting. It's perverse, doing the worst, self-hating, gross thing out of anger. Yeah, the good in life is so little compared to the futility. But you meant to never do that. You had committed yourself to not giving in to it. Why are you throwing it all away?
But the relaxed feeling in my body was saying something different than the words in my head. I spent the day batted around bewildered by my thoughts. And on my way out that evening Charles called after me cheerfully, "It's good to see you're back in a good mood."
Going home it stuck me, one odd piece of the puzzle. I'd not only fucked bare- skinned with a strange dirty man I'd barely met -I didn't even know the man's name. It really had been grubby impersonal sex with a stranger.
Well, I'd fucked up everything. I wasn't man enough to pull myself out of the blue devil mood and I wasn't man enough to have the self-control to stop myself from doing obscene things. I hadn't even found out the man's name.
I phone Sharon, "What was the name of Burke's gay friend?'
"Burke's gay friend?" She said.
She hadn't realised that about the guy. Well, it would hardly have been something she would have been watching for, especially at a time and place like that.
"I mean the guy who was with Burke's mother." I said.
"I'm not sure which guy you mean." She said. "There were several guys that talked to her for awhile. What did he look like?"
"He looked gay." I said.
"I mean what was the colour of his hair, what was he wearing." She said.
I paused. "He was wearing black." I said. I couldn't quite remember. That hadn't been something I paid much attention to. I tried to retrieve it. Hair... It was probably it had been dark, hadn't it? And I hadn't seen the colour of his eyes. You don't really get close enough to see that usually. His intense, challenging gaze, I could remember that but not his eyes.
"A lot of people were wearing black." She said. "Was he big, small, skinny? Shabby?"
"He was pretty big." I said. I was sure of that. He was heavily masculine, so that meant he was big. But I still couldn't retrieve the colour of his hair.
"Sorry." Said Sharon.
It was funny, being off balance over Burke being dead. I just hadn't taken the information in. The guy had looked at me so hard I'd never even observed the colour of his hair or his eyes. That was so weird. I hung up thinking, I'm really off balance over this. As if that hadn't been obvious, what with me impulsively doing a homosexual pick- up.
I wondered if I would even recognize the man again. I probably wouldn't. When I tried to recall what he looked like I just couldn't retrieve it. That was probably a good thing, because I wouldn't have to deal with embarrassment or shame if I ran into him at a barbecue or something. I'd just cut him dead, miss his signals and never know I'd done it.
I missed Burke. I'd spent the last two months not doing much but sitting silently in a hospital room. That left a gap in my routines I didn't quite know how to fill. It left me wanting to walk, needing to fill my time. I was fucked up. I took another walk around Reunion Lake.
I walked swift and steady, the sun warm on the top of my head. The ducks were swarming the bank, sway-stepping on the sand after the children that came down to the shore with bread. The runners ran past me, going faster than I was. The trees were wide and green and still, like they were waiting. The man was waiting for me at the end of the lake, sitting under the tree where I had first seen him.
I went up and sat on the grass facing him. He grinned.
"Want to go back to my apartment and have sex?" I said.
"It'll cost you." He said.
"How much?" I reached for my wallet with a sigh.
He thought about it. "We can have sex," he said, "If you give me a massage."
"Alright." I said. A massage would be no effort. Cheap.
We went back to my apartment. He kissed my neck again, in the elevator and I was hard long before he touched me. We went in and he shucked his clothes off. It felt like a blocked swallow in my throat seeing the smooth six-pack of his abs, the thick width of his thigh muscles, tapering to his groin. It hurt to breath looking at that big sausage cock, those full balls covered in the thick downy hair. I looked at his body not his face.
I put him on his face on my carpet to do the massage. I assumed he'd demand it first, trusting me as little as I trusted him. I knelt over him and smoothed my hands over the solid, wide sun-brown skin on his shoulders: Smooth skin over solid muscle. Burke had wasted from lying in bed. When he had been in the hospital they had offered him painkillers. He hadn't wanted to take them. I had given him back rubs because they relaxed him and made him able to handle the pain.
I knelt there kneading the solid healthy muscle. I had to work it, use my own muscle to dig in, effort I hadn't had to make when I had worked on Burke. I worked the shoulders, fingertips, heels of my palms digging in, pressing. I worked down the spine, push, push, push feeling the lumpy hardness of bone. I worked on the back muscles around his shoulder blades and down. The skin was perfect. His scent was male, subtle. He lay quite still breathing deeply and easily. The rhythm was too familiar.
It feels good to my hands... I thought. The muscles relaxed as I worked on them. I found knots in the neck, rubbed hard with my thumbs and felt them loosen. I found myself bending forward, leaning towards him closer and closer while I worked. He must have felt my breath. I wanted to rub more, to touch, to lay my face on his back and get the tranquility of his breathing that way. I had done this before. This is solid. This is strong. The last time I did this it was weak muscle and dry-skinned. I miss Burke.
It hurt. It really hurt to massage the guy because of the memory that was there in my head. Burke. I wanted to say the name. Burke. Why? Why you? Why when there was so much unsaid? I kept working. It's not right. I tried to make the man feel good. I worked patiently not thinking of stopping, but then I did stop. It hurt too much. My hands stopped moving of their own accord and I sat there hands in mid-air over him, memory a solid ache in my chest.
He rolled over and sat up and linked his arms around my neck. My hands were just in midair still, limp. He pulled me in, chin onto his shoulder and arms on my back through my shirt. His belly and chest were warm from the body heat that had been trapped against the carpet and I felt the nakedness of his chest, the pectoral muscles through my shirt buttons. He was breathing in my hair. He started to rub me, my shoulders and back and body and I reached for his cock.
It wasn't fully hard, so I got to make it hard. Three, four, five pulls and his cock was almost too big for my hand. I rubbed it and took his balls and he sighed. Then I got down on my belly and tried licking a cock for the first time and found it tasted the way a man smells, enticing. And the shape in my mouth felt like it fitted my mouth. The cap of his penis was soft. It was good to swirl my tongue on it and felt the tiny lips part, pulled open as I ran my tongue across it. It was good to slid my lips down it under the flared rim of the cap made my mouth widen and tighten like I was taking a gulp, drawing the head of his prick inside. It was good to feel the wrinkle skin pulled taut on his shaft and good to take a rhythm, up and down so that the rhythm of sex was in more than just my cock. I played with his balls while I sucked him.
He didn't flop back. He took my head in his hands and held it. He didn't demand a rhythm from me. He put his hands in my hair around me, small fingers on my ears and thumbs on my scalp and he let his hands join in the rhythm.
If I closed my eyes the scents and flavours grew stronger and the easy stretched sensation of my mouth was stronger. If I opened my eyes I saw curls of hair, the web of thigh tendon almost concealed by the width of muscle. I saw the symmetry of his belly muscles beginning their ripple upwards. If I listened I heard the soft moist sound, and I heard the peaceful strong rhythm of his heart. I felt the beat of my own heart.
But them I was working it harder and faster. I was running it up and down, the softness impacting on my gullet, the fullness pushing right down. And his balls were getting tighter in my hand, getting firmer and firmer. Now his breathing was coming fast and I knew his mouth was open so he could breath deeper. His thighs were spread so tensely, pushing towards the sensation, so that the muscles were even thicker but now the tendons were as stiff as bones. And now his cock was so rock hard that I was tasting the little salt smear traces of pre-cum and now he was huffing and chuffing. His balls were clenched up. The salt was coming. I heard his deep lung-emptying exhalation.
Cum surged into my mouth. It was in the back of my mouth. It flooded up, pulse and swallow, so far back I only caught part of the flavour, pulse and swallow, another pulse, a smaller jet, more. I gulped to keep it. I swallowed six times. Then he was still and I was still and I let his cock slide out of my mouth.
His eyes were closed. I looked up at him; head flung back, eyes closed. Remember the colour when he opens them, I said to myself.
He opened them, smiled and rolled towards me. He climbed on me. I knew my breath had to taste and smell of the spunk, but he leaned in towards me and he was kissing my body, squeezing my cock against the firm callous pads of his hand. He kissed my chest, he sucked on my belly, plucking.
I'm going to get a blowjob, I thought. I was wrong. He licked his hand and squeezed it up and down. And when he had it very wet, he guided me to clamber up. His knees were up and he got me to climb on him, onto his bony calves and guide my cock head down to the tight cheeks of his butt and the spit wet crack where he had rubbed spit on his asshole.
I pushed his knees wide so that I could get closer to his chest and the warmth of his body. I embedded my cock head into the twin taut muscles. I pried him wider and pushed down. He was rolled back using his arms to brace his body and push his ass upward. I got it in. It was tight, it was refusing, it was wet and my weight leaning on him made it widen. His asshole gave in to the thick hard pressure of my cock and the muscle squeezed and peeled my skin back. I drew a long gasp as I entered him.
He was smiling up, chin up so his Adam's apple stretched. I slide down solid and thick into his body, into his ass. I pulled back and it was a ripple of sensation. I pushed in again and it was an intense wave of sensation. I pulled back; ripple so good it made me pant. Push in: intense, incredible, making me suck air, filling my lungs in a big breath. He started groaning. I began drumming, stroke, stroke, stroke. Sweat was coming from us both. His lips were gaping and his eyes rolled back as he pushed gasping to meet me. I drove down, leaned down and got his mouth with my lips. I was panting too hard I couldn't kiss him, but then he thrust his tongue up into my mouth. I fucked his ass. I fucked it, driving and driving, our skin fusing and my body reaching the peak. I groaned, almost shouting. I groaned again. It was unbearably good. Then I felt my balls draw up and it was even better. I was cumming. I was shooting spunk into his asshole.
Cumming left me sagging, lips on the sweat moist skin of his collarbone. His heart was pounding under me, incredibly alive. I let my full weight rest on him but he only lay back, breathing hard the way I was. My cock came out cum slick. It was all over my crotch and his crotch. I still couldn't move. I felt a sound come out of me that was half a moan and half a chuckle. It felt so unspeakably good.
When I got off him he rolled over. And while I watched him he got dressed not saying anything. My heart was beating so strongly and so comfortably. I just lay on my side on the carpet. I knew he wouldn't say anything. I watch him, smiling until he was back in his cruising clothes, hair smoothed back to perfect cool and then, with a smile that looked more like affection than self-satisfaction, he was gone.
That's twice. After the second time there was less disgust. Falling once, falling the first time is worse than falling the second time. The sex stays good however. So I'd done the disgusting homosexual stuff again. Well, I'd already failed and knew that I wasn't a strong enough or moral enough man to keep from doing it. When I thought about Burke everything closed down hollow inside of me, and when I thought about the gay slut I'd get a little image -something inconsequential, like the fluff of hair on his thigh and the way it had tickled my chin, or maybe the repeating memory of the rhythm of doing a suck job. My body remembered doing it, up and down. And I'd feel half relaxed and half a kind of intent hopefulness, like I wanted more.
What, I thought, would Burke think of me running around mourning him by doing nasty, physically comforting stuff with a man? He'd probably shrug it off. One of the reasons I'd had a crush on him was because he was so forgiving. When I'd grabbed a lift in his car and some moron had cut him off in traffic he used to just shrug and smile. "Guy's wife is probably in labour." He'd say, or "Hope he gets where he's going alive." So one of his friends converting to being a faggot would probably only have made him shrug. Burke might even have been able to have a gay friend.
I called Sharon. She sounded confused. "What is it?"
I opened my mouth to speak into the phone and shut it again. I'd been going to ask her if she knew the gay guy's name yet, but I was the one supposed to tell her the description. But then it hit me I wasn't comfortable quizzing her for a second time about some faggot. She was bound to start wondering why I was interested. "I was just wondering how you and Keith were doing." I asked lamely.
It's not like Sharon and I were close in any way. She was just was one of the girls that hung out with the crowd and she and Keith had been the two last of Burke's friends to give up visiting him. "We're fine." She said. "I got another bunch of condolence cards from the funeral home I'll have to forward on to Burke's Mom."
"Funny how much clearing up there still is to do," I remarked. "I mean Burke tried to take care of everything. He even gave up his apartment and gave his stuff away so there wouldn't be that left. But there are still things."
"Yeah." Said Sharon. "He really didn't want to be a burden on anyone. That made it even harder. Like, we kept looking for things we could bring him, you know, movies for his VCR or anything. But then he told Keith it would be easier for him if we didn't come around any more. You don't know how hard that was on Keith. He just didn't want to give up and walk away. He bawled like a baby that night."
"Burke told you guys not to come visit him any more?" My voice came out funny.
"Yeah, he told that to every one." She told me.
"Why??" I said.
"He said he needed to think. He needed to come to terms with things, so he wanted the time alone to think." She said.
I said nothing at all.
"Even his mother." Sharon said. "Don't think bad of her, he said. I've asked her not to come down. He said he'd find it easier having to deal with the pain and all that if he didn't have to worry about her business maybe going under and to watch her too, grieving."
"No shit?" I said blankly.
"How come he never asked you to go?" Sharon asked.
I didn't know what to tell her. I hung up the phone feeling like I'd been punched. Suppose Burke had been wishing I wasn't there all those weeks? Suppose he had just wanted me out of his hospital room? Why didn't he say so? He'd maybe been so sorry for me, coming around like a bereft pet dog, that he hadn't been able to say it. Maybe he hadn't wanted me there all along!
I thought I was doing something for you! I said inside. I was trying to be there for you!
At work the next morning I cleared my head. I won't think about any of this, I said to myself and I didn't. I worked away steadily, four hours. I did maybe two days work in those four hours, complete, precise, clear-headed work. I had no thought in my head but the logic and the planning. It was like a bubble, isolating me. And the bubble burst around one o'clock when Charles came and leaned on my cubicle wall. "Hey, aren't you going to lunch?"
I looked up startled.
"Aren't you going to lunch?"
I glanced at the clock. "It's barely one o'clock. I've got work to do."
"You should look after yourself." Charles said seriously. "You seem to be manic depressive. One day misery, the next day euphoric, then day after you're back to misery again."
"So it's a problem now if I get absorbed in my work?" I scowled.
Charles is a green-eyed blond, with a square jaw, perfect teeth and surprisingly, dimples. "Be like me." He proffered helpfully. "I take it easy on everything and I keep a routine. I never come in to work until nine, and I never stay after seven and I make sure I get my meals on time, a good breakfast to start the day off right. You don't need to let yourself get over involved in anything."
I just glared at him.
"All work and no play make Jack a dull boy." He said weakly, and escaped from my cubicle.
I went home afterward, showered meticulously, shaved, combed my hair to the right, combed it backwards and then combed it to the right again. You silly faggot, I said to myself. I walked around the lake. It was overcast and the ducks were in a smooth cove, all way out on the water where the little islands were. The only kids had parents with them who were tugging them to get back to the care before the rain began.
I hurried. He won't be there. He'll go to some gay club, some cruising bar. He won't wait for me. I thought. I had to see him. I wasn't even really planning to pick him up. For one thing he was probably tired of me by now. The novelty of my carpet would have worn off. But I still couldn't remember what colour the guy's eyes were. I'll just stroll up, I told myself, chat with him for a minute. Look at him. And this time I'll remember. It's brown hair, probably. Brown hair and... I'll find out what colour his eyes are. This time I'll see his face.
The big drops began while I was still walking. I had a quarter mile left to go. You fucking dipshit! I finished the walk at a near run in a deserted park. He'd be gone, of course. He never would have come out on an afternoon like this.
He was under the tree with a large black umbrella. He was standing under its shade with grey water sluicing down on all sides. I joined him under the umbrella, soaked to the skin. I couldn't see his face very well because it was dark under the umbrella. I was panting. My hair was soaked and plastered down from the crown with the weight of the rain.
He looked me over, and no, he wasn't smirking at me, although he was smiling. He reached a hand out and took the material of my jacket and squeezed it until the water welled up and ran. "You could have come the short way around the lake.' He said.
"I came out for the walk." I said.
"Alright," said the gay guy. "Let's walk."
"Uh... You want to walk back to my place?" I said.
"You want to fuck again?" He asked. He knew I was even more desperate than he was. It wasn't an offer.
"I'll pay you with another massage again." I said.
"I like your massages." He said, "But the price goes up every time. This time you've got to kiss me."
"Sure." I said. "Come on."
"Kiss me here." He said.
"Here?!" I said. I was horrified. But then I looked around and there was nobody in the park, nobody but us two horny indiscriminate faggots standing in the dark park in the dim light under an umbrella. I double-checked to both sides all around. All I need is a vice cop, hanging out in the bushes waiting to see something like this, I thought. I leaned in and gave him a peck on the mouth.
That wasn't enough. He wanted a real kiss, but nothing was moving except the rain drumming through the trees, so I kissed him for real, tongue in his mouth slowly and my arms around him. If the cold of my soggy jacket bothered him soaking through his clothes where we were pressed together, he didn't let on. He kissed me back and I didn't get to see what colour his eyes were, because they were closed.
I stopped kissing him with a big sigh.
"You kiss like you love me." He said.
"I'm just horny." I said impatiently. "Come on."
So we walked back to my apartment and he stood on the rug while I pulled all his clothes off and he pulled off mine. Our clothes left dark wet spots on the carpet. That time I looked at him carefully so I observed what he looked like. He had a straight line of dark hair running up from the top of his bush to his navel, but when he had a hard-on, of course, it was behind his cock, so you might not see it. He had battered fingertips, with calluses there, so he obviously did some kind of work with his hands. He had some hair on the side of his neck that the barber had missed, longer, so that it was a tuft down the side behind his ears. His nostrils flared just a little bit when he smiled under my scrutiny. I looked really carefully so I'd remember his face this time. I was looking so carefully I saw even that detail, the way his nostrils moved.
Then we lay out on my couch, side by side, his knee on top of my thigh and my head on his shoulder where it was smooth and hard and I jerked his prick and he jerked mine. "Touch my belly." I said. "Squeeze it. That feels really good to me. I squeeze my own belly when I'm jerking off."
So he did that, and I found out that the side of his neck was so sensitive that when I kissed it, it made him snort and groan. That was why he was always kissing my neck. It was the place where he liked to be kissed. I gave him hickeys on the side of his neck, sucking hungrily. He moaned and humped up into my hand.
I wanted to see him cum just as much as I wanted to cum myself. From a moral standpoint that was no better than just wanting to get my rocks off with a man, but I was at the stage of trying to fool myself. It struck me that maybe it was more decent and less of a depraved thing to do, if I made sure he got as much pleasure as I did. I was still so far from facing what I was doing that I thought the other guy's feelings mattered.
So I used all the best tricks I knew how to use on myself from him, and I watched him to see what worked for him and I jerked him wet and dry and tight and savouring. I figured as big a cock as he had, and as much lean healthy muscle as he had, he probably had no problem finding other guy guys to service him. Because his body was really perfect. There wasn't a flaw in it anywhere. He was masculine, every half-inch of him. I figured I had a lot of competition to live up to.
And he gave it to me like an expert. I got jerked by a man who loved cock, who loved the feel of it in his hand, who knew exactly how hard to squeeze it and exactly how fast to rub it. He'd build the intensity by bringing his other palm up and licking it and then bringing it down and just swirling it on the head of my dick, making a hard surface for my pick to bump into. And he built me when I was building him so that we were getting ready at the same time. I was all but kicking, and I was making incoherent cries halfway between groaning and swearing. And he was rolling his head on my shoulder while I thrummed that wick like crazy, so that my balls went tight up and my cream started surging at the same time as I felt the shudder lift his head up. I felt his cum spurt and trickle down my knuckles at the same time I felt my cum shooting down on my belly.
Afterwards I didn't let him dress and run. I got up and brought some wet towels back from the bathroom and we cleaned ourselves up. And I handed him his jeans to climb back into. Jeans, I told myself. He's been wearing jeans. I remembered what he wore. His eyes sort of glittered at me while I was watching him dress, like he found it amusing but also like he was waiting for something from me. I guessed he didn't completely trust me still. Then he was gone and I had my wet clothes to hang up and a damp rug, still showing the marks from the rain.
I had the details at last, which I needed to get the name from Sharon. And yes, she was probably going to suspect something, with me calling for the third time in a week, and asking about a gay guy. I mean, what reason could a straight guy have for wanting anything to do with a gay guy? So Sharon was going to suspect. I didn't give a fuck.
I went to the phone. I rehearsed it in my head. I was smiling, partially in embarrassment. Yeah, that gay guy: I've remembered what he looked like. He's got these tiny tufts of hair on both sides of his neck behind his ears where the barber didn't shave them when he got his hair cut. He was wearing jeans and his hair was... His eyes are...
I stopped smiling. Fuck! What was the matter with me? I couldn't remember what the guy looked like. I still couldn't remember.
I didn't pick up the phone.
I went to work the next day and at least Charles ignored me. He stayed in his office and didn't meet my eyes and didn't come down and tell me that I worked too hard, I didn't work hard enough, I shouldn't come into work so early and I should eat a good breakfast every day. But you'd better believe I was ready to head out to the lake early. I came into work for seven thirty so that I could leave before four.
Last night he -whatever his name was -had said I didn't have to take the long way around the lake. But I took the long way anyway. It was sunny, balmy, full of toddlers in sun suits, and full of dandelions and full of fat, hopeful ducks. And I didn't want to risk changing anything. Every other time I had walked the full way around the lake before I saw him. This time I was going to walk the full way around the lake just to make sure. He might have said I could have come straight to him but this was starting to feel so strange I wasn't about to mess with the details.
I saw him from a distance. The sun was bright and although he was in the shade he was clear. He was sitting down again waiting for me. I made sure not to hurry up. Possibly I was making a pact with the devil. That seemed rather like the plot line to a bad horror comic, but I was more concerned with not looking out of control and un-cool than with what kind of a risk I was taking.
He was glad to see me. He'd left a comfortable piece of grass for me to stretch out on. I sat down there. I even lay down on my side and looked at him. God, he was handsome. He had an easy smile. No, it was the way he lit up at the sight of me. It was the way when he looked at me he couldn't help smiling. He had the cutest curve to his mouth.
Well, is it just the smile or is he handsome or not? I couldn't decide. I knew I liked looking at him, but that was the warped, horny part of me. Was he conventionally handsome? To fuck with that! He was handsome. He made my heart beat hard, made me want to grab him and squeeze him up against me, feel his heartbeat, feel his pulse, feel him breathing. He was making me want to touch him so bad now that it was making me tremble.
Think, I said to myself. What does he look like? Look at him. See it! Those eyes, steady, warm, accepting... Never mind those kind, honest, decent eyes! What colour is his hair?
I opened my mouth to say it out loud. I was going to say it, "Your hair is..." But instead I said, "What's it going to cost me for some sex this time?"
"Nothing more." He said quietly. "Just the same as it did last time."
Oh God! There were a hundred people in the park this time. But I didn't look around. I just hitched myself forward and brought my lips to his. I gave him a kiss. Not a long kiss, just a few seconds long, on his mouth, in public.
I couldn't stop myself from looking around afterwards. There were a group of teenagers with a beach ball not far from us. None of them were staring. They were hooting with laughter at the way they kept missing the ball. There were some people walking on the path, but they were looking at the ducks on the sand. I don't know if they had just looked away, averting their eyes. But I didn't know that out of so many people around us, some one, at least one person had seen us.
So when he got up, just for a moment I took his hand before I chickened out. We walked back to my apartment together, side by side, but not holding hands.
We lay down on the carpet, because after all on the carpet there was more room than anywhere else. And this time he fucked my ass. I lay on my belly and he lubed me up with spit and got his fingers up into me, and I got up on all fours and he jerked me and worked another finger into me at the same time. And then he got three fingers in and out and I was groaning and I didn't know if could stand it, but I didn't know if it was because I was too full or because it felt so good. He had me so wet that his spit was running on my balls.
And then he put his cock inside me and I said, "Fuck me. Oh, fuck me. Yeah." And he fucked my asshole, in and out while he played with my cock and I felt his swinging balls wobbling into mine. He just rode me like that, making me feel well and truly fucked before he came in my asshole, jetting and clinging to my shoulders while he jetted, gasping and sweat sticking his belly to my back.
Afterwards it was my turn and I wanted him to suck me, so he did that for a while. I also wanted to try sixty-nining, since I'd never done that and we tried that, but it was pretty intense on him, after he'd already cum, so he got me to lie back, just flat and let him do all the work for awhile. He lay on his belly head towards my knees while he took my prick down his gullet. He sucked and swirled and lapped and gulped on me, down all the way, back and down. I started to play with his butt. He had such a gorgeous butt. It was just as masculine as an ass could be, so tight and so hard and so square. I played with his ass and he sucked me until my cum came shooting and then he drank it I saw his eyes closed with pleasure as he swallowed the spunk that I shot into his mouth.
Then he tried to get up but I was holding his leg. So he laughed and lay down again, and tried to get up again before I was quite recovered but I still didn't let him get up. I shook myself out of it, out of the deep relaxation and comfort and pleasure that was still making the whole world feel good and I climbed on top of him. I held him in my arms. I looked at his face.
He smiled like he loved me. He looked at me like I turned him on. His face... I closed my eyes. Long nose or short nose. One or the other, c'mon. I told myself. If you can't say how long his nose is, say that it's medium. I couldn't say it. Eyes: Brown, blue green or hazel. Purple for fuck's sake? Demonic red? C'mon! See an eye colour. I couldn't see it.
Hair? I took a strand of his hair in my fingertips. I held it. Dark? Or light? Red? What about dyed? Natural looking? What colour is this hair?
I closed my eyes again. "Okay." I said. "Okay. I've done what you demanded in return for the sex. Now you have to do one thing for me." I opened my eyes again and stared at the handsome face I couldn't see. "Tell me what your name is." I said.
He hesitated for a long time. His eyes flickered. I stared at him steadily. I wasn't going to let him go until he told me, but I didn't say that.
"Burke." He said.
It was like fog on window glass, when you can't see through the glass, then a hand comes and wipes all the fog away. One moment I couldn't see him and then the next moment I could see him. I could tell it was a face I'd have known in the first instant if ever it had been clear in my eyes.
"Why?" I said, and "How?" I guess I yelled it out loud more than I spoke the words.
He was sitting up and had one arm around me, "Well," he said, "You remember it hit me hardest dying, because I'd never done anything that mattered while I was alive? This is something that mattered."
"Seducing me?" I said.
"Meeting your need, because you weren't going to." He said. "Hey, you know I never guessed you were feeling all that? You were the guy I could rely on, right? Every one else, they talked when I needed them to be quiet, they made me wake up and fake cheerful when I needed to stay still inside to deal with the pain. I needed to do that. So you were meeting my need all that time, and you were in love with me. You could have told me but you didn't know that. You weren't ready to do that." He shook his head. "So you lost your chance. What I did was give it back to you."
"How did you come back?" I said.
"I never went very far." He said.
"You feel alive." I ran my hand over his sweat damp shoulder, down to his chest where I could feel the heart beats steady thumping below it.
"You couldn't have had sex with me if I didn't feel alive." He said.
"I love you." I said. "Are you real?"
"I'm real." Said Burke, "But I'm dead. I'm not real the way you might want me to be real. I'm here all right, but I'm not your boyfriend. I'm not your friend you can go out and catch a game with. I'm here for you, but I'm not here for anyone else."
"This is not what I was taught in the church I go to." I said.
He thought for a moment. "You know, it's not what I was taught in the church I went to either." He looked at me seriously. "God is a hell of a lot nicer than they said."
I looked at him steady. "I guess it doesn't hurt being dead." I said.
"It's a good thing, though, being alive." He told me. "Enjoy it while you can."
He didn't stay the night. He wouldn't stay.
The next morning I got up really, really early and watched the sun come up, just marvelling at what a cool shade of pink it was. Just crazy beautiful with the birds doing a riot of singing and the sky like the inside of a conch shell, like the colour of a guy's ears when he blushes. A cliché. All of it, and still, even though it was a cliché, it was all just crazy beautiful.
But despite the fact that life was wonderful, and absurd and kind of a fantastic blessing, there wasn't very much to do in my apartment at the moment so I went to work early. It would be rather fun to make some headway on that project, maybe even finish it ahead of schedule this time. And then I could go out to Reunion Lake or some other place like that, breathe the air deep into my lungs and wonder why of all people I was loved so much. So I got into work at ten to seven and I found Charles in his office sitting at his desk with a greasy looking bag of deep fried breakfast on the desk in front of himself and his face buried in his hands.
I stopped. "Hey," I said gently. "Anything I can do?"
He looked up, white, maybe a bit sick, maybe a bruise under one eye. His mouth worked, his nostrils flared and a sickly smile didn't come off. "My boyfriend dumped me last night." He said.
"Your boyfriend??" I said.
"My boyfriend." Charles repeated. Like I said, my gaydar was underdeveloped. It certainly wasn't the gossip in the office that he was gay. I had had no idea. But now he was looking in front of himself bleakly. "He said I was a prissy little twink, and he'd rather suck cock for half the guys at the Blue Angel that spend another night with a wannabe wife like me. The shit face probably did suck cock with half the guys at the Blue Angel last night. He lied about it often enough when we were supposed to be keeping it clean for each other."
"Sounds like it was good riddance." I said.
"It was good riddance." Said Charles and his voice wobbled. "But I wish I had been the one to dump him."
"As long as he's gone then." I said.
"It was past time he was gone." Said Charles and then he got embarrassed and actually really looked at me for the first time. "He wasn't any good for me." He started to babble out of nervousness. His colour rose. "He was headed for a drinking problem, and I don't do that. I try to take care of my body, and he thinks that's stupid."
"You call that a good breakfast?" I gestured at the spotty paper bag on his desk.
"I couldn't deal with it this morning." Said Charles.
I smiled again. "Let me take you out for a walk and a good breakfast." I said. "It'll clear your head and make you feel a bit better. You can be back in the office by eight."
So I took Charles for a walk, not to Reunion Lake but just up on the bluffs to look out at Hopewell Cape and then for something healthy to eat at a place he knew of that did not-fried breakfast burritos. And then we ended up in my apartment, but not on the couch or on the carpet, on the bed. I gave him a massage, because Burke had said I was good at it, and this gave him a chance to think the idea over.
"This is a bad idea." Charles said. "I'm on the rebound and I think you're still somewhat off balance because of your friend that died. You're not even gay."
"This is a bad idea if you don't want to do it." I agreed. "But I think we both want to."
We did both want to. Charles had a very nice ass, and I bit it, which made him go "Ow!" and jerk around and look over his shoulder, but it also made his hard on so much harder it started dripping. I got a rubber on me and used some lube, both of which he very practically had in his car, and then I drove it into him. He crouched on all fours with a silly looking smile on his face while I rode him gently. By and by I rode him harder than that and the silly looking smile dropped away and his mouth went wide and his eyes turned back and he made small groans down in his throat. I watched him in the mirror on my dresser.
Then it got really good for me, I was cumming, and I hung onto him hard while I rode him. "Oh Baby," whispered Charles. "Oh, cum inside me!" I held him tight while it surged and spurted.
"Stay inside." He said. So I stayed inside, but I collapsed, so he collapsed and lay half on his side, rubbing his cock. "It's good." He moaned. "It's good.
We did break apart for a bit, and there was something of a production while I got the rubber off myself and got rid of it. I had some trouble getting the thing off; I learned one thing about being gay that I hadn't known. I'd heard that a lot of gay guys trimmed their bushes real close, which I thought was kind of a swish affectation, but after pulling a couple of pubic hairs out and trying not to show how bad I was wincing, I started to see the practical side of that.
Meanwhile Charles was sitting there naked with his heels together watching me, and thinking about what the hell we were doing so impulsively. "I thought you found me annoying?" He said.
"I do sometimes." I admitted. "But I thought you were really cute too. You'll find me annoying at some point too, I'm sure."
Then when I'd gotten rid of the condom I went back to playing with his prick and I think I did a fairly good job of it. I did him a hand job first of all, with some spit, up and down and silky and swirling and rubbing it hard while I cupped and played with his balls with my other hand. He had a real sensitive ass, so when he was thrusting up into my hand I got my hand under him and when I squeezed it tight he groaned and thrust harder. The firmer I squeezed the more uncontrolled his thrusting got.
I rolled a condom down his prick so I could finish him properly. I took his willy in my mouth and did him manfully. I could lick all I wanted and feel that ridge and the helmet head, suck fiercely and flick my tongue on him. But most of all I gave him the suction and the rhythm together and by and by Charles was calling out again, "Yes! Yes! Oh, fuck. It's good. Oh, I'm cumming. I'm cumming!" He grabbed me by the head and made me stop bobbing. I felt his surge and I felt it in my throat but I didn't taste it. The man whimpered as his orgasm faded away.
It was mid-morning by then, late and we lay on my bed, facing each other, lolled out comfortable. Charles was rueful. "I do not know how I'm going to face you in the office tomorrow." He said.
"With a lewd suggestion, I hope." I suggested.
"Yeah, but I hadn't let anyone find out I go for guys." He said.
"I don't think anybody else knows I go for guys either." I said. "We can keep it a secret."
"I didn't know you were gay." He said.
"You were my first guy." I said.
"For real?" He got up on one elbow.
"For real." I said with a shrug. "I think it was worth it."
"Wow." Said Charles lying back. "That makes this something special for you. I'm honoured by what you just did for me. Now this is honestly special for me too."
I winced because there's no way to listen to someone say something like that seriously without wincing. "Every fucking second is pretty special, when you come down to it." I said. "And every act of sex. I mean, something that is pure pleasure, don't even have a purpose but pleasure. It's a fucking great world because there's stuff like sex, and love and kindness and faithfulness in it."
"And Fred thought I was bad for being starry eyed!" Charles chuckled.
I laughed too. "Maybe we make a good pair then."
We didn't go back to work that day, although we didn't have sex again until that afternoon. Charles borrowed my phone to call in unavoidable detained from work, citing a car problem, and I called in sick about ten minutes later. But by then it was nearly ten o'clock and they would have long since missed us. It didn't matter. We had a good day together, mostly naked and laughing a lot about little things. It was good to have someone to share the day with.