by Seth King
After Birdie left last night, Beau took me by the chin and told me something. “You know how a slice of lime makes a vodka soda even better, but it’s still great without the lime?” he asked me, and I nodded. “That’s how that threesome was just now. It was fun, and watching you eat her was hot as fuck, but you’re good enough, and I think you always could be.”
But still that offered me no absolution, no certainty. When I returned from my walk on the beach with my black coffee earlier, he appeared from the bathroom looking absolutely breathtaking in a dark blue suit and skinny black tie, his tanned face and his messy hair making him look like a beach-ier version of a JCrew model. From the moment we walked down into the lobby, my brain was a senseless jumble of nerves – I was nervous and terrified and exhilarated all at the same time. I knew I was a goner. He’d taken me away – his eyes had transported me.
But was he a goner, too? In the same way I am? Because as well as I know him, his innermost thoughts are still mysteries to me, and the clock is ticking away every moment. Sweet words are one thing, but what is in his heart?
The wedding setup is gorgeous and looks like it probably cost a hundred thousand dollars – but then again, considering my circle, it probably did. Beside the mansion and the wedding gazebo is a massive, lit-up tent, with modern chandeliers hanging above a glossy bar in the center of the space. I can’t wait to get drunk, but first we have to sit through the actual service. For the first time I am saddened by a wedding – they seem so perfect together, so natural, that soon I start to want this for myself, too. Will I ever get it, though? Or am I doomed to a lifetime of…grey?
I know I agreed to have my way with Beau Lindemann’s body this week. The problem is, I think I started looking past that body, and fell for the heart at the center of it instead.
Once it’s all said and done, we all rush into the tent to begin the after party, and the DJ starts spinning hip-hop songs from 2007 designed to make your oldest aunt get up and dance. The scene is pristine and pastel and perfect and a wretched explosion from hell, too. It’s likely the last time I’ll be with him like this, trapped in a paradise nobody knows about – we have to leave in the morning, and return to the real world, and deal with everything that entails.
The banter between my “friends” at the circular tables by the table is fairly routine, and nothing happens that raises any alarms – save for a few pretty terrible comments about the female cater waiters assembled by the bars. (If I keep paying attention to how awful these dudes are, I will be a skirt-burning feminist by the time I’m twenty-five, I swear.) After it all, though, I still can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe I’m next to him, here with him, in so many more ways than one. Honestly I thought I was done before this – done with love, at least. Life chipped away at me like a sculptor at a block of stone, but it didn’t make me a masterpiece. It made me a mess. People took and took and took from me until only darkness was left.
But here is Beau…
Except not anymore. Beau disappears to the bathroom, and then doesn’t come back. I’m just starting to worry about him when I get a text that stops my heart.
Boy. Meet me in the bathrooms. The fancy one, in that big white building. You’ll find it.
Why?
The response comes almost immediately: Because sitting next to you without being able to touch you was torture, and I want my ass fucked before we leave Key West. Can you do that for me?
I get up before I can stop myself. A public hookup, here, surrounded by these people, would be the most reckless thing we’ve ever done, but Lord knows we won’t be able to stop ourselves, anyway…
Beau Lindemann
As the post-sunset wind peppers the air flowing into the Hemingway House courtyard with coconut and wet sand and suntan lotion, I think about one word: curious.
Curious was how I started this trip, but it’s not how I want to end it anymore. I want to be sure, I want to be surefooted as a running back plowing down a football field. Talking to Birdie last night, listening to her divorce story and watching the sadness in her eyes, really got me thinking. So many people go through life listless and unfulfilled and curious. Curious about where they’d be if they’d taken that leap and asked for that promotion, or taken that chance and made that move to Denver. Curious about what would’ve happened if they’d hugged their mom the last time they’d seen each other before she died. Curious about whether they would’ve ended up happy if they would’ve walked back to the house of their first love in the pouring rain and laid out the truth, instead of letting it go and letting their love fade into the background like most other love does.
But not me.
Curious is how I feel now – I want to explore how I feel about Nate, to turn over my feelings like stones and figure out what’s under each one. Because this wouldn’t fit into my life. Could I make this work back in Charleston, where the “bro code” rules and where men are expected to act in a certain way, dress a certain way, live a certain life? I don’t know. Running around on vacation with him and living a life with him back home are going to be two very different things. But then again, what choice do we have? Walking away at this point is just not an option. So I want to explore this. I’m sure of it now.
Curiosity is what brought me to him that first night in the Jacuzzi, and curiosity is keeping me here. (Yes, I knew he would be naked in that spa, and yes, I think on some level I was daring myself to follow him.) But I don’t want to become Birdie. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life being curious. Curious about what would’ve happened if we’d made it work, curious about what could’ve been if I’d just been strong enough to be myself…
Curiosity is also what led me to dive into Nate’s diary earlier today while he went to the lobby to ask about check-out services. Yes, that’s right: I took the chance to grab the little notebook and read what he’s been writing, and I was blown away. (I swear it started as an accident – I was just tidying up the bedside table area, and then I saw the little book, and…oh, well. Sue me.) But every night, every single night, he’s been writing about me. I’ll never be able to tell him how much it meant to me, because he’s the wordsmith here – not me. But I think I want to keep reading those poems forever. To see myself through his eyes, to see myself as someone worth all that love…well, I don’t have the words. They fail me.
So taking the poems into account, I am making a pre-emptive strike against the curiosity, the regret, the what-ifs. I don’t know if I’ll be good at being with him. I don’t know if we’ll be perfect together in a world that still doesn’t quite know what to do with gay people, as he put it. But I do know I want to figure it out. I want to try. I cannot, and do not want to, see myself with anyone else right now. And the sex – oh, God, the sex. I would probably be happy to slurp up his dick every night for a very, very long time.
In fact, I want it right now. His poems made me crave him more than ever, but we didn’t have time. So that’s why I just came here and called him to this restroom…
If you asked me a few days ago, I would’ve said that maybe we should just stay friends, and hook up on the down low. Shit, I know how our world treats gay and bisexual men, and it isn’t pretty. It isn’t pretty at all, actually. Even in places where gays aren’t really rejected outright, they’re still kind of just tolerated, and never allowed to forget how different they are.
But even the thought of parting ways with him makes a shudder run down my leg. And as I wait for him to find me, memories wrap around me like tendrils of ivy, lighting me up from the inside out. Yes, yes: I love him. I love Nathan Sykes. I mean, obviously I do. And did. When he flipped his motorbike in high school and almost broke his leg, I remember I felt like I was drowning until I ran up and realized he was alive. When my dad died, I remember how low I was, how I couldn’t take a full breath of air into my lungs until I saw him and knew for sure that he would be there. And when he got really serious with Elizabeth last year, a strange twinge of something angry and possessive us
ed to tug at my stomach. I never liked her at all, I never wanted her around, and maybe I know why – maybe I wanted to be her. Maybe my fear was just putting wool over my eyes and closing me off to the possibilities of what could be.
But maybe I want to be the one holding his hand. Maybe I want to be the one going on fro-yo dates with him, laughing at memes in the corner with him. Maybe I wanted to be his best friend and the one who hears him cry out in the moonlight while we lose each other in the passion, too. Maybe I want to be the one who dies and fades away if he chooses someone else and does all of those things with them instead. Because love is not conditional, regardless of its form at any given moment. Who would I be without Nathan Sykes? I would be nobody. I would be a negative integer. He’s inside me, holding me up, holding me together – he is like my bones.
So maybe I want to be the one he loves. Yesterday, now, tomorrow. And maybe I want it to start tonight.
He just has to find me first…
Nathan Sykes
“What are we doing?” I ask when I find Beau in the large “family changing room” that is separate from the other bathrooms. It smells like disinfectant and salt water, but it’s spotless. He can’t possibly want this – he can’t possibly want me to make love to him here. Right?
But before I can even say more, he silences me with a deep, desperate kiss. It makes me feel…alive, in the simplest way.
“Well,” I say when we come up for air. “I’ll certainly take that for a greeting.”
“Shut up,” he whispers with a smile. “Can you please fuck my ass?”
“Um…”
“No hesitation. Please do it. Something happened, nothing bad, but I…I want to feel you. I want to fuck, and then talk – but definitely fuck first.”
“You’re sure?”
He pulls me so close I feel his breath on my chin. “Yes. I wanna feel my man inside me.”
Okay, then.
“Do you have…?”
“Condoms and lube? Yep. In my pocket. Now bend me over the sink and fuck me.”
That’s all the insistence I need. Latching the door, I lick my lips and turn back to him.
“Fuck,” he says.
“What?”
“That face – make it when you fuck me, okay?
“You got it,” I say as I drop to my knees and undo his belt. “Now let’s get you ready by sucking-”
“No,” he says. “Just pull my pants to the bottom of my ass so I can feel our suits rubbing together when you fuck me.”
“Good idea, babe.”
I caress his firm, round ass a bit as I wiggle his pants down so that they’re just exposing his hole. Then I undo my own fly and take out my cock, which of course is already seeping with liquid. I take the tip and rub it against his hole.
“You ready, babe?” I ask once I’m in a condom and we’re both lubed up. His eyes, which I can stare into via the mirror, are hungry and almost closed.
“Yes. Fuck me. I want this. I want it while we’re both still here, still hidden…”
“Trust me, I know what you mean. And hold your breath in the beginning – it’ll sting until I open you up. You close up down there after every session.”
“Listen to you – an expert, already!”
“Yeah, yeah. Now get ready for me to fuck you, baby.”
I press myself against his hole, take a breath, and – bingo. I slide in about an inch, and he cries out far louder than he should be in a place this public.
“Bad boy,” I whisper against his ear. “I know my cock is in you, you’ve just gotta take it like a man.”
“Like a what?”
“That was awkward – you know what I meant.”
I return my attention to burying myself in his tight hole. Damn. Just being in him is making me ready to bust already – he’s that tight. Now I understand why he wanted his first time (besides the absolutely drunken session of wrestle-sex) to be like this instead of some romantic, kiss-me-in-the-moonlight thing – it’s hot.
It’s making this aggressive, animalistic feeling rise in me to be fucking his ass like this, but I try to swallow it down to keep things at least a little romantic. He is ten times tighter and wetter than any female I’ve fucked, and just inserting myself an inch has me groaning. Fuck.
“Relax, baby,” I say. “I can’t get in there if you don’t let me inside. This isn’t like last time. I won’t force my way in there when you clench up.”
He closes his eyes and breathes. I retreat a little and then sink deeper, and holy hell – he feels even better around more of my cock. We were made for each other, actually. Inch by inch I ease myself in him, and soon we’re moaning and sighing together.
“Fuck,” I hear myself say. “This is so fucking tight. I love this.”
“So do I,” he pants. “I’m ready. Fuck me. Fuck me hard, Natie. My Natie.”
I grunt into his ear, bite his earlobe, and thrust for the first time, pushing my body forward and shoving myself into him with all the force of almost twenty years of team sports. He leans back and cries out as I do it again.
“Fuck,” he groans. I love that sound so much already. “Fuck fuck.”
“You ready to take it for real now?”
His eyes pressed shut, he nods. “I’m ready.”
I grab him by each hip, take a breath, and boom. Another thrust, another cry he is barely able to stifle. Drilling him, I lean back a little and reposition his lower body to get a better angle. It’s almost like fucking a woman, except I have his big dick to play with while I fuck him – damn, once again, I can’t believe we never did this before. I feel like we just wasted so many years of potential pleasure…
Lifting his pelvis, I slam my cock into his hole until I’m at the root of me, getting deeper than ever. He bites his finger so he won’t scream, and then we lock eyes in the mirror.
“How does it feel for you?”
“Like heaven, baby. Keep fucking me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, my dude. Please.”
Within seconds I’m fucking him so hard, his body is bouncing back with each thrust. It’s so hard to control myself from busting, but suddenly I am distracted by a thought – how does it really feel for him right now? What’s going on inside that head, and why did he ask me for this right now?
Beau Lindemann
I moan as he sinks into me deeper. “Ahhh, babe…”
“Nah,” he says, wrapping a huge hand over my mouth as he nibbles at my ear. “Don’t make a sound while I fuck you. We’re in public. You’ll get us into trouble, silly. Good boy. Now stay quiet while I fuck your lights out.”
I adjust my body as I try to get used to how this feels. The other night, during our romantic little sex session, that was making love, and that was amazing – but this is fucking. I am getting fucked by him. And it feels just as good, just in a more raw, real, visceral way. I want him to invade me, I want him to fuck me and make me his own. Just thinking of that word alone makes me wet, literally makes me seep. Holy shit – suddenly it occurs to me that we could live together and use each other’s holes every morning and night, and we could have each other’s friendship at the same time and never get lonely – it would be like dating a woman, but without all the dysfunction, and with semen all over my face every night, to boot.
He pounds me harder and harder and harder. Just the concept of it is sexy and a bit daring and dangerous. I’m getting it from Nathan Sykes. He’s fucking me. I’m his bitch right now. The moans he’s making are due to me. His eyes rolling back into his skull – that’s all me. To see the cause and effect of it, as I feel him inside me…it’s weirdly intoxicating in a way I never experienced with a female. I thought I’d want slow, romantic sex for my first semi-sober encounter, but no – he makes me want to have manly, aggressive things done to me. I don’t want to make love, I want him to fuck my living brains out.
“Fuck me,” I say. “Fuck me harder.”
And he does, both hands wrapped around my wa
ist. For a moment I am taken away – this is just on another playing field. It’s animalistic, primal, revolutionary, and I never want it to stop…
For the first time, we actually orgasm together, a stuttering, gasping little infinity that stretches out into the Key West night.
Oh, yes, I think when he finally pulls out of me and kisses my shoulder. This is what I came here for. And this is what I hope to keep getting after we head back to Charleston, too…
Soon he clears his throat and looks at me expectantly, making me jump with nerves. “So…you wanted to talk?”
Nathan Sykes
Beau takes a deep breath, pauses, and then says that all along, he just wanted to tell me I looked hot in this suit tonight.
“That’s all?” I ask. He looks like he’s lying, but I’m not totally sure.
“Um…yeah. That was all.”
I’m not sure if I believe him, but oh, well…we both know we don’t have much time to be separate from the party. So we return to the reception silently and, I am guessing, red-faced and messy-haired. I walk in first, and then he follows two minutes later, as we arranged. Sex just makes him look more gorgeous and perfect and heavenly and model-esque, and every second he is not under my tongue is a second I loathe. (Can you tell I’m falling in love? Ugh, I sound like a character in a Harlequin novel, even to myself.) As we return to the table and slip back into chit-chat with the few guests who aren’t on the dance floor, I start to let my mind wander…straight into Beau-ville.
In physics, there is something called the multiverse theory. I read about it a few months ago, during my nightly nerdy time I enjoy after everyone else falls asleep. Anyway, the theory says that all decisions we make are both interconnected and independent, and that our lives contain a billion little potential universes that could be created if we make this decision or that decision – say, if I choose to fly to Puerto Rico instead of China, that trip to China still exists in an alternate universe somewhere, because I still went on that trip in my head before deciding against it. It’s just imaginary, but it still exists. Our lives are a million different worlds inside a prism, all colored by the choices we make every single day. Our thoughts give off energy, and energy is matter, so dreams are real. Inside that prism, and inside my dreams, my grandmother is still alive with her quiet smile and her grey eyes, and she never chose to stop eating and die after my grandfather passed away, and she still loves me. She’s still here in a way because I want her to be here, and my fantasies have inherent power. And also inside that prism, my first crush chose to like me back instead of walking away, and she didn’t leave me alone at the bus stop to cry in the searing sunlight while my friends laughed. I love to wander down those unexplored hallways in my daydreams sometimes, and live all those unlived lives…