by John Inman
I lifted my head and gazed at him. “And where did Susan fit into all this?”
He smiled gently at me as he stroked the hair from my eyes. “Like I said last night, she was convenient. Without her I would have had no social life. I couldn’t go out and drink with the guys for fear of what I might do if I got drunk. I pretty much kept to myself. With Susan, I could go places. I could see people. Without anyone suspecting I was anything other than what I appeared to be.” His eyes suddenly darkened. “Except for Susan, of course. I think she was beginning to wonder about me—about my sexuality—before we split up. I can’t say I blamed her.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Again, I laid my ear to his chest and listened to his heartbeat. It was beating slowly now. Not like it was last night. Not like it was when we made love. This morning it had a gentler rhythm, an easier cadence.
“It must have been a lonely life,” I said. “I’m glad you left. I’m glad you came here.”
He smiled at me then. “Are you?”
“Yes.”
“Should we tell Beth we slept together?” he asked.
“You won’t have to tell her,” I said. “She’ll figure it out on her own.”
“Will she?”
“Oh, yeah. Fag hags always know.”
We shared a guilty chuckle before it died away.
“Malcolm?”
“Hmm?”
“I wasn’t lying about the picture, you know. I really did come out here to get to know you. Do you think I still can? I mean, will you still want to see me after last night? There won’t be any more surprises. Any more mystery. It’ll just be boring old me from now on.”
I stared at him like he’d just sprouted a second head. “Do you really think you’re boring?”
“Well, I’m not as smart as you.”
“You fixed my car. I don’t even know how to open the hood. There’s a latch under there somewhere, but I can never seem to—”
“I’m sure you can change a tire.”
“Wanna bet?”
“Jesus, maybe you are dumb.”
He howled with laughter when I poked a finger in his ribs. He flung me to the side and rolled over on top of me, pinning me beneath him. Sort of like I’d just done to him. Only he was much better at it. He growled at me. A friendly old bear. “No tickling.”
“Oh, really,” I said. I tried to work a fingertip back into his rib cage, but he had me trapped. We wrestled around, giggling and snorting, and just when I had worked myself back on top of him and prepared to deploy the finger again, he stopped me with a kiss. I mean a real kiss. His mouth covered mine, and he wasn’t laughing anymore. Neither was I.
Suddenly my heartbeat wasn’t lazy anymore either. Nor was his.
He mumbled into the kiss, “You taste so good.”
“Yes,” I said.
He pulled away just enough to focus on my eyes. “Yes, what? Yes, you taste good?”
“No. Yes, I still want to see you after last night.”
“Really?”
I swallowed hard, wondering if I should tell him what I was really thinking. It took me only a second to know I had to. I couldn’t have kept it to myself if I tried. “Cory, you’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever been with. And the nicest. If you want us to get to know each other, I mean really get to know each other, then I’m game if you are. I like you. I want you to like me too.”
He grinned. “I liked you even before I met you.”
I ducked my head, embarrassed. “Jesus, nobody ever told me that before.”
“Can I sleep with you?” he asked. “I mean, every night?”
“Do you want to?”
“Yeah. I really hate that fucking foldaway bed.”
“Bastard.”
He honked out a laugh. “I was kidding. It’s not your bed I want. It’s you. I like holding you. I like making love to you. I like hearing you mumble in your sleep.”
“I don’t mumble in my sleep.”
“You not only mumble, you also kick like a kangaroo. I think I have bruises. It’s sexy.”
I burst into laughter, and, embarrassed as hell, I buried my face in his armpit, where I stumbled across a very sexy patch of armpit hair. I perused it for a while with my tongue as his fingers laid burning tracks across my butt, as if he enjoyed touching me there. The next thing I knew there were two hard things poking me in the belly. One belonged to me, one belonged to him. It was the one belonging to him I was most interested in at the moment.
I flung the sheet aside and scooted down his long torso until my face was at his hip. His cock lay fat and eager, lying there in front of me, bobbing faintly with every beat of his heart. I slid between Cory’s legs and pressed my mouth to his balls. He dragged his fingers through my hair and arched his back, giving me total access.
“So I guess it’s me first,” he said in a husky, hungry voice.
With that, he gave himself up to my many talents.
Later, as the morning sun crept higher in the sky, he gently laid me on my back and returned the favor.
With the taste of come still on our lips, we once again slid into each other’s arms and fell asleep. His arms were home now. I couldn’t imagine myself sleeping without them.
Chapter Ten
“WHAT THE hell is this?”
I opened my eyes and found my face nestled against Cory’s stomach in a pool of sleep slobber. Lovely. His arms were still around me, which told me I hadn’t pissed him off or anything. So who the heck was cussing?
A grumbly, sleepy voice from up above said, “Hi, sis.”
I groaned myself awake and lifted my head to gaze up at Cory lying there beneath me. His eyes were centered somewhere else, so I followed where they led to find Beth standing at the bedroom door with two forgotten cups of coffee in her hands. She was staring at us lying naked on the bed in each other’s arms with a truly amazed expression on her face, as if this was the last thing she had expected to see in her lifetime. As I’m sure it was.
I wiped the spit off my chin.
Cory continued to hold me in place against him as he gathered up a fistful of sheet and leisurely covered us from the waist down. Modesty wasn’t totally dead, apparently.
“Ever hear of knocking?” he asked.
I dug a sleep booger out of my eye and sat up in the bed, or tried to. Cory wasn’t having it. He pulled me back down against him, with a grouchy “Where do you think you’re going?”
I hacked up a glob of phlegm, then ungraciously swallowed it back down. What else was I supposed to do with it? Spit it out the window? Tilting my head back, I snuck a peek at Cory’s face. He smiled down at me and gave me a wink.
“Now you’re winking?” Beth snipped. She still stood in the doorway holding the two stupid coffee cups. She was tapping her toe too, I suddenly noticed. Never a good sign.
“Coffee. Yum,” Cory said. “Set it on the nightstand.”
Zombielike, Beth did as he asked. As soon as that task was over, she stood at the side of the bed staring down at us still snuggling together in front of her, naked from the waist up, naked and God knows what else under the sheet from the waist down. Neither Cory nor I had made the least show of embarrassment. Why should we? We were adults.
Beth didn’t remain zombielike for long. “I didn’t think you two would ever get together.”
She couldn’t have surprised me more if she had started reciting the times table. “You mean you knew?” I asked.
Beth crossed her arms like an exasperated schoolmarm. “That depends on whether you’re asking me if I really knew what I thought I knew or if I just thought I knew what I thought I knew.”
“That’s like the worst sentence ever,” Cory said. I didn’t have to look up at him again to see he was smiling. I could hear it in his voice.
Avoiding the cooling pool of my sleep slobber, I laid my head back onto his stomach, just because it was the only place I wanted to be right then. Let Beth and Cory duke it out up above. I just
wanted to soak up a little more of Cory’s delicious heat. He didn’t seem to mind either, since he laid his land over my head in a proprietary sort of way, sort of like a running back hugging a football.
Cory spoke softly to me while Beth listened in as if it was her God-given right to eavesdrop.
“My sister’s not as dumb as she looks,” he said. “I think she was beginning to suspect I was not quite as straight as I had always pretended to be.”
I gazed up to study Cory’s smile, envious of it. I didn’t seem to have one in me at the moment. I turned from Cory to stare at Beth.
“Did you really think maybe he was gay?” I asked. “You might have shared the information with me.”
“Why?” Beth asked. “So you could have lured him into your bed even sooner.”
Cory cleared his throat. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, sis, but I’m the one who did the luring.” He snuggled me closer. “It’s the best catch I ever made too.”
Beth was tapping her foot again, but I was pretty sure I saw a glimmer of a smile awakening on her face. “So is this a onetime deal, or are you two thinking of carrying on for a while. I’d like to know in case I decide to serve you coffee in bed again at some future date, which you can rest assured I probably won’t.”
“Pity,” Cory said. “I thoroughly enjoy coffee in bed.”
Beth aimed her eyes at me like a couple of howitzers. “Apparently you thoroughly enjoy other things in bed as well.”
“Indeed I do,” Cory said around another smile.
“Me too,” I chimed in. “Me too, a lot.”
Beth snorted. “Fine. I see how it’s going to be. You two will be fooling around under my very nose every chance you get. You know what this means, don’t you? I’ll have to find a man of my own. I’m not going to be the only one in this apartment who is using battery-operated devices to get my rocks off. I’ll have to lower my standards. Just as you two have done.”
“Oh, shut up.” I grinned.
Beth leaned over the bed and tousled my hair. Then she tousled Cory’s. She stepped back and studied us one final time before heading out the door.
“Well, I guess you should enjoy it while it lasts. Oh, and I almost forgot,” she pulled a slip of paper from her blouse pocket and tossed it on the bed. “You have a gig today, Malcolm. A kid’s birthday party. They need a couple of mimes.”
We had an acquaintance who was a mime. His name was Jonah. “Is Jonah sick or something?” I asked.
“Or something,” she said. “He broke his leg, and not in a show-bizzy sort of way. I mean, he really broke his leg. Snapped it like a twig. This kid’s birthday party has been scheduled for months, and he would really appreciate it if you would cover for him.”
“You said a couple of mimes. Are you coming too?” I asked.
“No. I’m still having cramps. It’s hard to be limber when you’re stuffed with blood-soaked cotton cylinders.”
“Eww,” Cory said.
I narrowed my eyes. “What a handy excuse. How am I supposed to do this by myself, and where am I going to get a mime’s costume? I’d never fit into Jonah’s. He weighs a ton. Why do you think they call him Jonah? And how am I going to learn how to do mime stuff? Like trying to get out of that stupid invisible box?”
“Then go as a clown.”
“Same problem, dumbass. No costume.”
Cory tapped me on the shoulder. “Wear your gorilla suit from work. The kids’ll love it. I’ll deck myself out as an organ grinder and go with you.”
“You’d be my partner?”
“Sure. It’ll be fun.”
“This I have to see,” Beth groaned.
“Really?” I asked. “You’d come with me? Act stupid for a bunch of ungrateful spoiled brats, leave your pride at the door, and flounce around like a twit?”
“Well, yeah. It’s showbiz, ain’t it.”
“Marginally,” I said.
“Marginally is good enough for me.”
I turned to Beth. “What are they willing to pay?”
“Sixty bucks. Thirty apiece if you both go. For two hours’ work.”
“Ooh,” Cory said. “Fifteen bucks an hour. Let’s do it.”
He gave me another wink, which was so sexy I wanted to do a swan dive into his crotch again, but I couldn’t because his nosy sister was standing there. I was awarded a consolation prize when he dragged me up his chest and planted a kiss on my mouth, sister or no sister.
Beth went through the motions of gagging and heaving her guts up, then fled the room with her arms flailing. The consummate actress. Cory grinned, watching her go. He reached over and hooked the two coffee cups off the nightstand.
“Here you go, partner,” he said.
I took the cup with a smile. “Thanks.”
Cory gave a celebratory war whoop, splashing coffee halfway across the room. “Two acting gigs in two days!” he yelled. “We’re on a roll!”
I took a sip of my coffee, and he took a sip of what little he hadn’t spilled, then I used his belly for a coaster as I cuddled up against him again.
“Warm,” he said, referring to the cup parked just above his belly button. “Feels nice.”
“You feel nice too,” I said, kissing his rib cage, kissing his furry nipple. “Cory?”
“Yeah?”
“Were you embarrassed letting Beth see you with me like this?”
His green eyes melted into me. “No. You helped me find myself, Malcolm. You helped me see myself as I really am. How could I be ashamed of that?”
“I think you had already found yourself. You just needed a merry gay push to send you on your way.”
His face molded itself into a friendly leer. “And what a push.” He ran his fingertips over my chest. His gaze had gone from warm to hot. Idly, or not so idly, he asked, “What time is the party?”
I tried to act like his touch meant very little, when in reality it was all I could think about. I did manage to turn away long enough to glance at the note. “Two o’clock.”
“That gives us six hours. We should have time to run to the zoo, pick up your costume, jerry rig a costume for me, then get to the party with a couple of hours to spare.”
“How do you want to fill those two empty hours?” I asked as his fingers slipped down my stomach.
He set his coffee cup aside and said, “I guess it’s too late for acting lessons, so I have a better idea.” His eyes twinkled as he threw the sheet aside. “Here, let me show you.”
And show me he did.
SINCE EMPLOYEES sneaking in and stealing stuff on their day off is frowned upon at the San Diego Zoo, I had no alternative but to walk into the primate center, don the gorilla suit just as I did on an ordinary work day, then walk back out through the front gate, knuckles dragging, like I owned the place. No one gave me a second glance. No one in authority at any rate. There were a few astonished passersby in the parking lot, but I gathered my acting skills about me and stomped and hoo-hooed around, ignoring them as any self-respecting gorilla would do.
Flapping up the sidewalk to the apartment building in my bigass gorilla feet with my stolen gorilla head under my arm, I found Beth and Cory had not been idle while I was away. As I began my life of crime and pilferage, Beth had assisted Cory in preparing for his upcoming role of organ grinder, and she had succeeded admirably.
I walked in the front door and dropped my big fuzzy gorilla head in astonishment. The head rolled halfway across the living room floor and scared the hell out of the dog, who jumped up on the sofa with a yip to get away from it. I stared at Cory for a full ten seconds before I could find my voice. “My God,” I cried, “you look great!”
He did too. He was standing there barefoot in big billowy harem pants that hung tantalizingly low on his hips. Above the pants, he wore an open Arabian vest that was three sizes too small. The vest was sleeveless and embroidered with beads and spangles, and it showed off his bare chest and flat belly to perfection. Atop his handsome head was perched an
orange fez with a gold tassel hanging off the side. He had bracelets on his wrists, another bracelet around his bare ankle, and gold coins dangling from his waist. In his hand he held a long leather leash with a leather collar on the end, which I could only assume would be placed around my gorilla neck. Lest I forget, there was also a big gaudy emerald that perfectly matched his eyes glittering in his belly button. I longed to pluck it out with my teeth. If Disney ever makes a porno movie starring Aladdin and King Kong, Cory would be a shoo-in for the monkey’s love interest.
He gave a spin to show off his ass in the harem pants. He was probably the only gay man in the world who could twirl like that in harem pants and still make it look butch. Peering back over his shoulder, he asked, “You like?”
I gaped and nodded. “Wow. You’re the hottest organ grinder ever.” With a hell of an organ to boot.
Cory’s ears burned red under his fez like he knew what I was thinking, but still he seemed pleased.
Beth gazed proudly on. I turned to her and asked, “Where did you find all this stuff?”
In all fairness, Beth really did look under the weather. She was pale, her hair was a stringy mess, and she had dark circles under her eyes. Still, she was able to conjure up a grin as she stood there studying her creation.
“The harem pants are Cory’s pajama bottoms,” she said. “I just sewed up the legs to make them tight around the ankles. The vest and fez I had left over from that time we played extras in Kismet down at the Convention Center. The bracelets are from my cheapass Avon collection, and the gold coins are foil-wrapped chocolates from last Christmas that I forgot about and found under the bed.” She sweetly blushed. “The leash and collar I had in my dresser. Don’t ask.”
She folded her arms across her chest and went into schoolmarm mode again, looking all stern and grumpy as her eyes traveled from Cory to me, then back again. “Now, then, about last night—”