Robin and Ruby

by K. M. Soehnlein

  That’s the other thing he remembers about smoking pot. It’s the on switch to horniness.

  “OK, George, admit it. You don’t come here just to watch.”

  “Well, think of it like this. You go to a museum to look at paintings. You just want to be around the art. It doesn’t mean you wish you were a painter.”

  Robin considers this. “The first time Dorothy took me to MoMA, and I saw Starry Night, I wanted to go home and throw paint all over a canvas.”

  “Maybe I’m just waiting for the right inspiration. One time, this guy talked to me for a while. He was kind of a clone, a big Italian guy with moustache. He wanted me to follow him that way.” He points toward the railroad tracks. “Didn’t seem wise.”

  Robin peers into the darkness. “I’ll say.”

  “I walked with him to his pickup truck, but at the last minute I changed my mind. I’ve realized that I’m just not into doing it with strangers.” George takes another puff, smaller this time. He stares with almost comic intensity into Robin’s eyes and announces, “I better stop or I’m going to be too high to care.”

  Robin doesn’t ask, Care about what? because the silence that follows is full of suggestion, and even with the moonlight on George’s glasses, Robin can see into his eyes, can see what might happen next, if they’ll let it.

  From out of nowhere, there’s a swirl of red and blue light and the shrill of a siren. Back at the curb where they just parked, a car is slowing down. A police car. It comes to a full stop. The doors open. “Fuck,” Robin says, the warmth of the high shifting instantly to panic. He grabs George by the arm and says, “We’re outta here.” But the way out is where the cops are. He looks upriver, toward the overpass, where men are scattering like birds.

  George says, “Come on,” and pulls him toward the train tracks.

  Together they move into the shadows, stumbling alongside the freight cars. The ground is difficult to walk on; there’s garbage everywhere, and loose, sharp stones between the ties. He slips on a beer bottle and tumbles into George, who pulls him by the arm through some bushes into a tiny overgrown clearing at the river’s edge, a leafy, protected area you might call a “fort” if you were a kid playing in the woods.

  George whispers, “I’ve never seen pigs here before. The guy with the truck, he told me they don’t bother with this place.”

  “Maybe they want their dicks sucked.”

  “You’ve got a dirty mind, Robin.”

  “You’re the one who hangs out here.”

  Through the bushes, beams of light flicker in the dark. He hears rustling; footsteps moving closer. Cops on foot, wielding flashlights, which means nightsticks and guns, too. Robin’s blood pounds in his ears, and he shivers from the damp river air, from the effect of the high, from nerves. Their pot smoke is probably still lingering in the air, back by the fence. He starts preparing a story: Officer, we were going for a midnight stroll and got lost. We’re tourists trying to find our way back to our hotel. We were looking for a little lost dog, a hound dog that follows its nose everywhere. His mind leaps to police dogs, big growling canines trained to sniff out dope smokers and cocksuckers. Is this really happening? Hiding from the cops in the bushes in the middle of the night, stoned? George is supposed to be the sensible half of their friendship, the responsible one. What was he thinking?

  One of the flashlight beams swings in their direction, and Robin shrinks deeper into the darkness.

  Then a burst of static slices the air. He gasps, then covers his mouth. Another loud burst. It’s a walkie-talkie. There’s a muffled communication, voices trading information, hard to make sense of. Robin picks up the word “suspects.” Suspects? Are they suspects? Did that little bitch Douglas actually call the cops on them? What if they have George’s license plate number? If the two of them are arrested, who will they call? Rosellen? His mother?

  “Should we surrender?” Robin whispers.

  George shushes him, softly but insistently. Then he takes Robin’s hand and squeezes and doesn’t let go. Robin suddenly realizes how much scarier this must be for George. Philly cops are not going to look kindly at a black kid, growing dreads, with the stink of pot on his clothes.

  Out on the tracks there’s more static, more talk of suspects, and then a sudden rush of footsteps and crunching gravel. Miraculously, the sounds are traveling away. The flashlight beams disappear. Hand in hand, they continue to wait this out. A silent minute passes, maybe two, maybe five, who knows how long, but at last they hear a siren and a screech of tires. Robin breathes deep, in and out. George stays, “Stay here,” then lets go of his hand, steps out of the brush, and takes a look. The air seems to get colder when George’s body pulls away. It’s a moment of pure loneliness.

  At last George returns and says, “All clear.”

  After all the activity, the park is deadly quiet. They pass only two men, white guys wearing worn, tight jeans and black leather jackets. The men slow down to stare at them, and one of them lifts his chin and nods suggestively. Robin looks away, unsettled by how gaunt this guy seems. He used to fantasize about older men, who were experienced, who were strong, whose bodies had hair and muscle tone, so different than the pale awkward boys in high school. But older men now seem entirely dangerous. Not dangerous like cops. Dangerous like death. George picks up the pace, and Robin follows.

  In the car, they rub their arms to warm up. In astonished, relieved voices they go back over everything that just happened; already, with their fear behind them, it has become a thrilling misadventure.

  “Another night in the City of Brotherly Love,” George says.

  “Never a dull moment.”

  “So, Robin—”

  “What?”

  “Do you regret that you moved here?”

  “No,” Robin says quickly, too quickly, really, because it masks the truth: he doesn’t yet know.

  “Seems like you’re not that into it.”

  “I’m getting used to it.”

  “Philly can be pretty rough.”

  Robin nods. Carefully, he adds, “Seems like it’s changed you.”

  “To what?”

  “I’m not really sure. One minute you’re George Africa. Then you’re George the Voyeur.”

  “I’m just me. You gotta stop thinking of me as Little Georgie. I haven’t been that guy for years.”

  “I know that.” And then it occurs to him that he has a similar question for George. “Do you regret inviting me to live with you?”

  “It had to be done.”

  “What does that mean?”

  George does something surprising then: he sheds his glasses, folds them, tucks them on the dashboard. He shifts in his seat, drawing closer to Robin.

  Blame it on the pot, on the full moon, on the adrenaline rush of their escape from the cops. It’s in the air. You might be misreading this, Robin tells himself. But there’s only one way to find out. He slides closer, too.

  George’s mouth is floating toward his. The remaining gap between them closes. There’s a pinprick of static electricity when their lips make contact.

  George’s mouth is warm and wet, his lips a little rough. He keeps his eyes closed. Robin’s eyes stay open, he wants to see this, it’s so new and unexpected, unexpected even though he was ready for it. They kiss shyly, a string of individual kisses. Maybe if he doesn’t think about the fact that this is George, his best friend, practically his brother, George whom he’s never kissed before, if he lets this be about the kiss and not the kissee, there will be nothing to worry about. His dick is pinched inside his briefs. He tugs at the fabric to free things up. His other hand is braced against the dashboard, as if to keep him from lifting off like a traveler in a hot-air balloon.

  Then George tilts his head just the slightest degree, a tiny but unmistakable surrender that sends a shudder through Robin. At last he closes his eyes, he bears down, he accelerates. Little pecks become one complete kiss, mouths open, tongues moving, and time disappears into their bodies. Their
hands are moving, nervous but unstoppable, finally dropping into each other’s laps, groping for hard-ons.

  Which is when Robin feels himself hit a limit. “Wait, wait,” he insists. “Needle off the record.” He takes George by the shoulders and gently lifts him upright.

  George blinks. His lids are heavy, drowsy, like it’s morning and he’s waking from a dream. Robin can see that he’s still inside the kiss. “Greetings,” he says, with a grin.

  “I just want to be sure you want to,” Robin says.

  “Duh.”

  “Because this is out of the blue, right?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “But, we’ve never…”

  George stares at him. “I’m pretty sure that I’ve been dropping hints.”

  “Like dancing naked in the apartment?”

  “That was just a coincidence. Other things.”

  A week ago, back home after a murderous dinner shift, George gave him a backrub that felt so good, and ranged so far and wide that Robin had to cover up his hard-on. George noticed and made a joke that “A happy ending costs extra.” Robin was so flustered all he said was, “You better get yourself a boyfriend, Georgie. Don’t let those hands go to waste.”

  But this is different. Not a reaction to something; an intention.

  There’s the sound of an engine starting up. Across the street, a pickup truck pulls out of a spot and rolls alongside them. George stares at it. “Hey, look! It’s the guy who hit on me that time.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, see that, above the turn signal?” Robin looks there, at a diamond of bent metal, shining in the light. George says, “I remember that dent.”

  Aglow in the passing headlights, glasses off, shirt unbuttoned, mouth raw from contact, his friend is absolutely not, Robin sees, Little Georgie from high school. He tries to recast him: not as his best friend but as a sexy stranger, a hot opportunity arising out of nowhere. When he thinks of it this way, there’s no hesitation. No emotion to get in the way. Yeah, he realizes, I’d have sex with this guy.

  George leans in for another kiss, which gets Robin stiffer. He hasn’t actually softened up since this started. If the kiss is any indication of what actual sex would be like, that just might be reason enough to push this further. He scans ahead to tomorrow. He doesn’t work on Sundays. He can’t remember if George works brunch or dinner. That could mean the two of them home all day, figuring out how to deal with what happened the night before. And what if Peter calls? Will there be some last-ditch attempt to make things right again? Does what’s happening here have anything to do with Peter, or is this completely separate?

  Neither of them speaks as they begin the drive back to their apartment. But the silence seems to hum, like the resonance of amplified music after a speaker has cut out. Maybe it’s too much for George; he flips on the car radio, tuned to the community radio station he listens to lately. Right now there’s a Bob Marley song playing. Robin has never really understood reggae, but right now, with his head still thrumming from the joint they smoked an hour ago, it seems to fit the mood.

  George finds a parking space on their block, and Robin lets out “Yes!” as they pull to the curb. Parking the car sometimes means walking the worst blocks in the neighborhood, unlit, mostly empty stretches where muggings are a fact of life. The zone where the university bleeds into the neighborhood is the worst of it, because college students are known to carry wallets full of cash, and wear watches and gold chains, and to carelessly shut out the world with headphones attached to a Walkman. Robin’s years living in cities have stripped him of all of these, even his wallet (ever since he was pickpocketed on the New York subway, he has used a money clip, kept in his front pocket), but that doesn’t make him any less a target. George warned Robin about this before he agreed to move here, and every time he feels his stomach clench, he remembers that he said, “If you can handle it, Georgie, I can handle it.”

  They shuffle down the sidewalk with a meter of empty air between them, hands stuffed in pockets like school chums. The walk carries for Robin memories of late-night treks to other apartments, those penultimate steps when he finds himself barely able to contain his excitement, or, on less successful nights, when he is overcome by last-minute doubt and scrambles for a way to back out. But this walk is unlike any of those, because it feels so absolutely ordinary: Robin and George are simply going home.

  They enter the apartment as they usually do. George unlocks the door, kicks off his sneakers, and nudges them to the wall. Robin steps past him to the bathroom and leaves the door open while he pees. Exhibitionist. He avoids the mirror as he washes his hands. He doesn’t want to tempt the truth his eyes might reveal (apprehension? eagerness?); he just wants to move without deliberation into whatever comes next.

  He hears the refrigerator door open and close, another familiarity. George is forever searching their generally empty fridge for a snack or a sip of something. Robin always comes upon him staring into the shelves as if patiently awaiting an arrival.

  Robin goes into the living room and looks to the answering machine. A little rectangle of red light strobes.

  “Wait,” George says from behind him. “You don’t need to talk to him now.”

  Robin pauses, index finger poised above the play button. “You think it’s Peter.”

  “Who else?”

  George hands him the newly lit end of the roach, and Robin steps away from the answering machine. Strange to realize he’s not going to listen to whatever Peter’s left on the tape. That he’s going to wait, so he can be with George.

  He is still holding smoke in his mouth when George leans into him. The onrush of the high and the wetness of the kiss meld into a surge that sets Robin’s hands in motion. He raises George’s T-shirt and caresses his back, brushing lightly up his spine. George shivers. “You need to warm up these mitts,” he says, reaching around to cover Robin’s hands with his own. He guides them down his back, past the elastic waistband of his scrubs and over the slope of his ass, which is hairless and hard. George mutters, “Hot damn,” with a deeply satisfied growl that Robin registers as the most unguarded expression either of them has allowed thus far.

  George shoves Robin onto the lumpy cushions of their beat-up couch. Robin locks arms and legs around him. Their differently angled cocks slip across each other under layers of fabric, hard against hard.

  A pillow wedged under Robin’s head shoots over the armrest, knocking the answering machine from the end table. The device dangles on a wire for a moment, then dislodges and clatters atop the carpet. The ejected microcassette is a tease: Is Peter’s apology recorded there? Robin’s eyes meet George’s and then they both laugh: at Peter’s expense, at Robin’s, at all of this.

  No longer is he imagining George a stranger. His own awareness of the moment won’t allow it. And yet: this is George, but not the George he knows. George’s mouth is all over him, clothes are coming off, little giggles are emitted as they shuffle and adjust and gasp at each new sensation, but there’s something serious running beneath it all, some intensity of purpose. Robin reaches between George’s thighs and wraps his fist around a shaft swollen thick. He strokes to the root and back up to the damp tip. Then he dives forward and sucks George into his mouth. “Oh, yeah,” George says, which inspires Robin to give it his all.

  Above him, he hears George say, “Don’t worry, I won’t come. And if I get too pre-cummy, just stop.”

  It takes Robin a moment to understand what George is trying to communicate: how to have sex in an epidemic. This is how it’s supposed to go now, how it should have gone with so many other guys. A plan: voiced, agreed upon. An understanding of what they won’t be doing.

  Though part of him wants to taste it.

  “You better hit pause on this tape,” George warns, seizing up until Robin relaxes his grip. George’s mouth hangs slack while he holds back his breath and a premature burst. He stands up, naked and erect, wearing only tube socks, white with red stripes. “
This couch is working against us,” George says. “It’s not wide enough, and it’s not long enough.”

  “Your place or mine?” Robin asks. Robin has the wider bed, a double to George’s twin.

  But George guides them to his room, saying, “Let’s break mine in.”

  Their rooms are identical in size and laid out in mirror configuration. But where Robin’s is tidy, George’s is a mess. The furniture came with the rental: a banged-up table, now cluttered with opened envelopes, unopened textbooks, crinkled bills and scattered coins from shift-tips; a wooden chair draped in George’s hideous robe; a tall shelving unit crammed with summer clothing and crowned with an emerald-green bottle of Polo. A pile of unwashed laundry spills out of the closet and fills the air with body smells: pits, feet, dirty underwear. Near the bed is a white tube of K-Y Jelly and a balled-up hand towel.

  George has pushpinned above his bed a handful of postcards purchased in a gift shop on South Street: Albert Einstein lit celestially from behind, Harry Belafonte with his shirt blown open, Prince looking slick and sleazy, doe-eyed Sal Mineo dreamily hanging on Elvis’s every word. The last image is a dark-skinned black man in a dress shirt and tie loosened at the neck, a cigarette poised impatiently, eyes wide as dollar coins, a man not lovely but formidable. “Remind me who he is,” Robin says.

  George points to a book splayed facedown on the pitted carpet, scarlet and navy letters on a cream-white dust jacket: Another Country, a novel, James Baldwin. “Oh, right,” Robin says. “Dorothy has this book.”

  “Please don’t mention your mother while we’re…”

  “Sorry.”

  As George fusses with a fitted sheet that has come undone from the bed, Robin flips the book over and scans the opened page: someone named Vivaldo is about to bottom for someone named Eric. Robin reads aloud, “He whispered into Eric’s ear a muffled, urgent plea. There seems to be gay sex going on here.”