by Emily Snow
“You here for the military peeps?”
I turn, startled. It’s the bartender who’s addressed me, leaning over the counter and lifting his eyebrows.
“Yes,” I say self-consciously.
“In the back.” He gives a nod in the direction. “Corner tables by the darts.”
I thank him with a nod—though it may seem a bit more like a convulsion in my neck, for all the nervousness that just invaded my system—and move in the indicated direction. Around the corner where the wall bends there’s a brightly-lit nook where two long tables lined with tall chairs jut out from the walls. Surrounding the tables, I see four men who are entirely disregarding the chairs, crowded around the table on their feet and chatting amongst themselves. Separated from them, two others are occupied at a tattered green dartboard.
The moment one of them catches my eye, the rest follow at once, as if they were all desperate for something to cease their boredom.
“Hey,” I mumble quietly, then wonder for a sec if I even spoke at all or imagined it.
Then their eyes shift, and I realize they’ve taken note of the elephant in the room. The big, bad, muscly elephant. The one I came with: Brandon. They look like they’ve seen God. One of them doesn’t seem to be aware that there’s a peanut stuck to his lip, gaping unabashedly as he is. Someone else, a guy in a red shirt with a happy face on the front, looks like he’s in physical pain watching Brandon, his eyes glossed over with some mix of desire and fear.
Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to bring him after all.
“Hello!” one of them blurts, a middle-aged bald man in a leather vest with a trimmed grey beard framing his puckered lips. His cheery voice does not match his appearance. “Let me guess. Marine? No, no. Navy, maybe?” He turns away from the table, revealing a beer gut that overhangs his pants so far I can’t see his waist. “If I’m wrong, I’ll buy you a beer.”
Unsmilingly, Brandon stares the man down for a solid ten seconds. I’m just about to answer for him when he says, “Guess you owe me a beer.”
The others titter, their tension released, but their attention is still fully engaged.
“Well, come on over here,” says mister leather daddy Santa Claus. “We don’t bite.”
Brandon gives me one dark look, as if accusing me for inviting us into this nest. Then he takes a few steps toward them. In the silence of their stupor, his innocently heavy footfalls seem to shake the floor.
“What’s your name?” asks the man grandiosely, as if on behalf of the whole gay table.
“Brandon.”
The man flags over a nearby server, ordering up a beer. My existence is utterly forgotten, or perhaps never noticed in the first place. Brandon’s presence overshadows literally everything in the room, now that he’s caught the attention of the local homo army gang. Even though I know for a fact that this isn’t Brandon’s preferred cup of military tea, I can’t help but welcome a possessive pang in my chest. Am I worried this band of rainbow misfits is going to steal him away from me? I can’t even pay attention to their small talk, so distracted by my sudden flood of fears.
Really, I’m just the escort. I’m the chaperone, as I don’t have a military background. These are the people Brandon is supposed to fit in with, right? This whole thing was supposed to be a good idea. It’s going to help him feel less alone.
The pair of boys playing darts have caught sight (or scent?) of Beastly Brandon, their game brought to a halt. These two boys are—in my humble opinion—far more attractive than the others. One of them is somewhat plain, but his face is fair, his eyes are round, his lips are full, and his hair is annoyingly perfect. The other one looks like he walked out of a fashion magazine, and his sleeves hug a pair of arms that have seen more than one or two bicep curls. His face is more square than the other, his hair is short but styled in a way that gives his head the shape of a sandy-blond flame, and his eyes bleed with desire at the sight of Brandon. With his tiny jeans and tinier waist, his upper torso has that dramatically triangular shape. I pray the pair of them are a couple and I have nothing to worry about.
Well, even if they are a couple…
I’m so distracted by them that I didn’t hear the one in the red shirt ask me the question. I flinch, my gaze pulled back to the table. “Sorry?”
“I’m Tim,” he says. “Come join us. I’m having a bet going that you’re Air Force. You seem like an Air Force type. Please just lie and say I’m right.”
“What he means,” chimes in a skinny dude with thick-rimmed designer glasses—who I belatedly realize by her voice is a woman, “is that he thinks you look like the type who sits at a desk all day filing paperwork for your superiors. Which I resent.”
“Not what I said or implied,” argues the other, bristled. “My bro-from-another-mo is in the Air Force and he’d run circles around your bitch-ass.”
“I’d love to see him try.” She sips from her beer.
Brandon looks at me expectantly. I paste a smile onto my face, determined to think of all of this as a good idea. “I’m Jesse,” I announce. “I’m actually … not in any branch of the military. I’m just here with Brandon.”
“With Brandon? Or … with Brandon?” asks Santa with a wiggle of his fuzzy grey eyebrows.
For some unknown reason, I completely dodge the question and say, “My only experience with war is what I see on TV and playing too many hours of World of Warcraft. Which I guess isn’t the same unless there’s Death Knights and totem-throwing Shamans and murlocs in Iraq,” I add with a chuckle.
My chuckle is returned with squinting, deadpan stares, and silence.
Was that wrong to say? Was it insensitive to make a comparison between what they go through and a computer game I play? It was a joke. A nothing joke. I just meant …
“I’m not cut out for being in the military,” I go on, digging my hole deeper. “I’m too nerdy. I just sit at my laptop all day and, and I just, I’m just … I get into the, uh … I don’t really have a …”
Keep talking, self. You’re doing a great job. Look at how much they all seem to like you right now.
“You think it’s all just big, brawny dudes with no brains and all muscles who enlist?” asks Tim.
My mouth goes dry. “Uh … No, no, I was just—”
“There’s nerds all over the base,” he goes on. The way he speaks, I can’t tell if he’s meaning to school me in front of everyone, or if he’s just making light conversation. “Bet if they took you, they’d put some meat on those bones of yours. Matter of weeks, if lucky, you’ll grow to half the size of your … buddy … here.” With that, he gives Brandon a onceover.
“He’d probably cry his first week away from mommy,” mumbles the lesbian with the glasses, and I don’t suspect she intended for me to hear that.
A server drops by right then, handing Brandon his well-earned bottle of beer. Brandon nods at the server in thanks, then pops it open against the edge of the table. I don’t drink, he insisted when we got out of the car. So much for that.
“Yeah,” I mumble, staring despondently at the beer bottle as Brandon tips it back. “I didn’t mean to imply that there’s only brawny brainless dudes in the—I was just, uh, meaning that I—Well, really, I wouldn’t know anything about—”
The two gorgeous guys shooting darts have made their way to our table, their presence making me swallow the dumb sentence I was trying to form. The plain one hangs back while the maybe-fashion-model steps forward boldly and, as if I were invisible, extends his hand across me to Brandon. “I’m James,” he says, his sleeves sucking on his taut, enormous biceps. “You from around here?”
“Yeah. Just thirty minutes that way,” Brandon answers with a nod in the direction we’d come.
James takes a step, bringing himself closer to Brandon and somehow forming a wedge between us. So close he’s drawn, I find myself backing away into a neighboring table. “Nice. We look about the same age. What high school did you go to?”
“I’m gonna go g
et a drink,” I say awkwardly to no one in particular. “I’ll let you be with—do the—hmm.” I turn, unsure what I just said, and make my way to the bar, a thousand unspoken words of loss and frustration dying at my feet.
I order a Coke from the bartender—my lovely stepbrother’s beverage of choice as opposed to my usual tea, which suddenly feels too soft to be drinking among present company—and plant myself on a stool. I turn my head, giving the group a distant glance, and regret it. Brandon is now the center of their universe with the adorable muscular satellites of other military boys—who undoubtedly have a hundred more ways to relate to Brandon than I’ll ever have—orbiting him with pawing hands and fawning looks and chatter. Even the lesbian looks all invested and shit, if she’s gay at all.
This was my idea, I keep reminding myself. This was my idea and he’s coming home with me, isn’t he?
I watch the swarm of gay moths flutter around the hot flame that’s Brandon and suppress the bile of bitterness that rests on my tongue. When I get my Coke, I don’t even drink it, still staring at the crowd of leeches. My Coke sits there with its ice melting until all I’m holding is a glass of watered-down murk, just like the sad fuckers at the other end of the bar.
This was my brilliant idea.
[ 3 ]
I pick up my phone to glance at the time. We’ve been here just fifteen minutes.
Fifteen.
Fucking.
Minutes.
I sigh, the words still circling my head that I’d said to the others. They must think I’m some dumbass who has no idea in the world what they go through. Even with the little bit that Brandon’s told me, I guess I really don’t know. I just smile stupidly and thank them for their service.
Then, when Brandon goes away, I sit at home with my music studies at the university and my computer games and I continue to take every little luxury in my life for granted. The comfy bed I sleep in. The meals, which I can have at any convenient time of day. It’s all about the little things, Brandon told me once. He hears his mom complain about not knowing what to cook for dinner, or he hears his dad gripe about their cell phone service or the fuzziness of some channels coming through his sleek, high-definition, sixty-inch flat-screen. We are so spoiled. We have so much. Every day of our lives is a gift. Every stupid minute.
It seems like just yesterday when Brandon and I were in his bedroom and he had his lubed fingers pressed against my hole for the first time. He told me that this “wasn’t a gay thing” and he didn’t want to fall in love and do the wife-and-kids ordeal. I never let myself believe him, thinking he was just putting on some straight-dude-in-denial act. But maybe I let that moment define him more than I ever cared to admit. Maybe I’ve always been afraid of losing him to someone else, or to a “real” life, as if I was just some dream he’d inevitably wake up from. Maybe I always thought this was a just-for-now sort of deal and that my happily-ever-after was some sick joke I’ve been playing on myself ever since that fateful day in sixth grade when he saved me from a bunch of bullies.
That was the truly defining moment of my childhood and he was a part of it. The bullies, my enemies, they had me against the locker and they owned me. They’d owned me for years—until the great sea of oppression parted and Brandon emerged. He was a lot smaller then, but still scary as sin, and when he was finished with those boys, they didn’t just stop bullying me; they fucking respected me.
I’ve never felt more … noticed.
Brandon, he’s never had anyone in his life, not like he’s had me. All through school, people were too afraid to approach him. He was the messed-up kid. Everyone thought he was dangerous and drank bat blood and tortured squirrels in his backyard. I knew better, and maybe I was the only one who did. He never had friends. He still doesn’t have friends.
He’s only ever had me.
And that leads me to realize that, romantically speaking, Brandon’s never been with anyone else before. Sure, he’s fucked girls—if that little factoid he told me long ago can be believed. I’m his only dude. He’s never known the gay world outside of the four walls of either of our houses. I’ve been his only option.
Now, he’s got a roomful.
“Jesse, was it?”
I turn, startled. It’s the somewhat plain-looking fair one with the annoyingly perfect hair who’d been playing darts alongside that James guy. He’s a lot cuter face-to-face.
“Yes. It’s Jesse,” I confirm, straightening up. I feel a tinge of relief in his presence; I really needed someone to be nice to me. “And you’re?”
“Jealous!” he says with a crooked smile. “How’d you land a slab of beef like that?”
Everything about that sentence annoys me. “We grew up next-door to each other,” I explain, tasting the utter inadequacy of my words. “We went to the same schools. Last summer, we sort of reconnected, and then we pretty much—”
“Oh, since just last summer, then?”
It’s like he ignored the fact that I just implied that Brandon and I have known each other our whole lives. Our relationship has now been reduced to a matter of “just last summer”. Is this bitch gauging how available Brandon is? Does he give a shit about me at all, or is he just fishing?
“We’ve known each other our whole lives,” I reiterate. “We go way, way … way back.”
I needed the three way’s. All three of them. Just one wouldn’t do our relationship justice.
He props his elbows backwards on the counter, facing outward. He is blessed with a lean, tightly-built body that—forgive me—I could easily see in a hundred gay pornos. It’s the type of body I wish I had, as it’s close to my shape except for the firmness and ripples of abs I know hide under that close-fitting heather-grey t-shirt of his. If I just did about a hundred crunches a day, I could look like him.
“Y’know,” he says with his eyes on the others, “I had a high school sweetheart. He and I were totally inseparable. We were mega nerds, too. We collected all the Magic cards we could fit into our backpacks and we’d throw down on a tabletop any chance we got. I was killer with my black and white set. He was all about the trample cards.” He twists his torso, the shirt defining his tight pecs in a very annoyingly distracting way. Last thing I need is to be turned on by him. “When college hit, mister high-school-sweetheart took up with a posse of self-entitled engineers and, honey, I never looked back. Then, I met James. Being an Army wife has its perks,” he adds with a sneer.
I stare at him, my blood pressure flooding into my ears. “What are you getting at?”
“It’s possible to never outgrow your jeans if you keep away from the cupcakes and cola,” he finishes, “but people outgrow one another all the time. I’d toast to that, but my drink is over there by my boyfriend James.” He leans into me. “We don’t go way, way, way back.”
With that, mister perfect-hair—whose name I still don’t know—saunters back to his friends. I watch him with mounting anger surging through me as he squeezes himself between James and Brandon, then laughs at a joke someone makes.
I don’t need to hear the punch line to get it. The joke is me; it’s always been and will be.
[ 4 ]
The next instant, the group moves as one collective unit to occupy the three available pool tables. For the first time since I fled to the bar, Brandon looks at me. He waves his hand, beckoning me over. I give a subtle shake of my head, declining, then lift my glass of melted, flat Coke, as if to indicate that I’m totally busy nursing this nothing-drink and can’t be bothered.
That answer doesn’t satisfy him. Breaking from the others—and inspiring a cloud of disappointed looks from his new best buddies—Brandon crosses the room and brings himself in front of me.
“They wanna play pool,” he informs me.
“Have fun.”
His pug nose wrinkles adorably, despite my not being in the mood to appreciate it. “Be on my team,” he orders me.
I lift an eyebrow. “They’re doing teams?”
“Yeah. Teams of two.
We’re gonna play against James and Justin.”
Fabulous. “I don’t want to interfere. We’re kinda here for you.”
“Yeah, and I said I wasn’t doing this without you. Here you are, all by yourself at the bar, and—”
“I know, but—”
“So what’s the deal?” Brandon’s eyes turn black and he squares his shoulders, frowning down at me. “Quit being a bitch and let’s go play with some sticks and balls.”
“You have plenty of sticks and balls to play with without needing mine.”
He reaches out and grabs my crotch. The effect is instant; I choke on my own air and clasp his arm futilely, unable to gain any relief from his mercilessly tight grip of my junk.
“B-B-B-Brandon—”
“These are mine,” he says in a low, hungry voice, “and they’re the only fucking stick and balls I want on my team. Get the fuck up and play.”
I meet his eyes, feeling desire surging through my every appendage—especially the one between my legs.
Brandon lets go of me, leans in for a kiss, then slaps the side of my head. “Come on, boy. Don’t let a little game scare you. They’re probably pussies. Let’s fuck them up.”
Well, when he puts it that way.
I abandon the glass of tastelessness and follow Brandon across the room. Two other games have started at two other pool tables, and the ever-gorgeous James waits patiently with mister perfect-hair, whose name I now know to be Justin, at a third.
“Oh, yes, sir,” exclaims Justin, his eyes flashing. “Yes, I just had a brilliant, brilliant idea. We need to flip this shit around.”
Brandon grabs a stick from the wall, then turns with a grunt. “Huh?”
“You be on James’ team,” Justin suggests, “and I’ll be with your friend. Team Army, you two, versus Team Civilian Bitches, us.”
“Like a crossed double-date,” says James with a smirk, his blue eyes glowing as they drink in the sight of Brandon chalking the end of his stick. Even I can’t focus properly when Brandon’s doing that, his biceps bulging as he works the end of his stick with the small cube of blue chalk.