by Posy Roberts
Reluctantly I left the warm wonder that was his mouth and eased my way down his chest toward his straining cock. I quickly released the buttons on his pants, and he lifted his hips, sliding the wool trousers down to his knees. Pulling my jacket over, I set it under him, the cotton lining in contact with his skin so he didn’t have to lie in the dirt.
Sitting between his knees, I took a few moments to look him over. I’d always averted my eyes in locker rooms so my body wouldn’t react. But now I drank the sight in, unimpeded. He was pale, with a dusting of freckles only showing up on his chest and shoulders. Strong but lean. Willowy. By comparison, his dick was thick.
I reached for him, traced the veins that pulsed below the silky skin. The head was rosy pink, matching the color of his nipples and lips. Such a contrast to my olive skin. I trailed my finger around the ridge and skimmed over his slit. Shep’s breath hitched and he gave me a small smile as he watched me explore his body.
“Have you ever?” I repeated his own question, positive he was more experienced than I.
“No … never this far,” he said, hushed, as he propped himself up on his elbows. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, Andrew. I know this is fast.”
“And our only chance,” I whispered, not willing to give this experience up because of expectations or rules or anything arbitrary that had been beaten into my head over the years. “I want to. I really do.” I looked into his blue eyes, trying to show him how badly I wanted to do this for him … for me.
Holding the base of his rigid cock, I slowly stroked him before bending down to rub the soft skin against my nose. Breathing deeply, I smelled the concentrated scent of Shep that invited me to taste him. I cautiously darted my tongue out and licked his warm skin from the base to the tip. I wrapped my lips around the head of his cock and ran my tongue around it, surprised at all the different textures I sensed. Attempting to copy what he’d done, I stroked, sucked, and licked him.
I must have been doing something right because Shep tangled his fingers in my hair and made sinful noises that made me smile around him.
I continued to stroke him but slid my lips down his ridge until I came to his balls. Pulling one into my mouth, I delicately sucked, causing him to moan. So I tried the same on the other. Shep’s moan shifted over to words. “Andrew, it’s so good. Please don’t stop.”
I sucked a bit more, tonguing the seam of him before I took lazy licks all the way from below his balls to his crown, loving the heft of him, the silkiness, the taste. Fucking everything!
Despite being a novice, I wanted to feel him in my throat, have him fill my entire mouth. He palmed the back of my head and moved me in the rhythm he wanted me to keep, gradually getting faster as I took him in. I fought my gag reflex with everything I had.
I could tell he was so close to his release, balls drawing up tight, breaths short, as if he’d been sprinting. I wanted to swallow, just as he had, and when he tried to tear me away, I shook my head, looking up at him and taking him in as far as I could.
His body tensed as he thrust into me and came. I swallowed, glad I’d taken him deep.
I was out of breath and a little bit stunned. My throat hurt.
I’d never felt better in my entire life.
I chuckled, and when I looked up at him, he gave me a sated smile, eyes slow-blinking.
Then I finished up as he had, licking him—his balls, his shaft, his head—and ending with a kiss on the tip of his beautiful cock before I sat up to stare at his beautiful face.
At some point, he’d lost the will to hold himself up on his arms, now lying back flat on the warm soil. I reached for his forearm and tugged him into a sitting position so I could press a chaste kiss to his mouth.
It seemed right.
We stood, pulled our pants on, and positioned ourselves so we were sitting on my jacket, facing each other for what I knew would be the start of our goodbye.
I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want to go back to face my father’s permanent disappointment.
Looking into Shep’s eyes, I didn’t feel the need to say anything. I simply wanted to look at him, memorize his face, the way his eyes warmed with his smile.
I wanted to learn how to read his multitudinous expressions.
I wanted to know what was hidden beneath.
He must’ve had the same feeling because we sat there in silence, occasionally reaching for each other, tracing lines on faces, arms, necks, fingers seemingly pulled there through some magnetic force.
Gunfire ceased in the distance, and cheers rose above the trees.
“We should get back,” I whispered, not wanting to break the moment despite knowing I had to. “My dad’ll be looking for me, no doubt wanting to yell at me for not fighting hard enough.”
“Wait, Andrew. Just kiss me one more time.”
How could I deny him that?
He leaned forward, brushing his lips back and forth against mine, teasing and tickling my sensitive skin. I eagerly opened to him, knowing this would be our last embrace. We reached for each other, allowing our naked chests to press together, and I sighed at the sensation. So foreign yet, somehow, so familiar.
I pulled away, no longer able to contain my anguish that I had to say goodbye. Then I buried my face in his neck and squeezed him until I swore I didn’t know where I ended and he began. We stayed there, breathing each other in, feeling the softness of our hair brush against our foreheads, relishing every lingering touch.
Somewhere inside me, I found the strength to pull away. I reached for my shirt and mournfully put it on, fastening each mother of pearl button as he stood up and brushed the soil from my jacket. He helped me into it. I dressed him then, working each and every button through its thread-wrapped hole, trying to let him know how I felt about him with this last bit of care.
We walked out of the cornfield, hand in hand, thumbs slowly caressing sun-warmed skin. As soon as we hit the trees, Shep reached into a pocket and retrieved a small piece of paper. It was his address.
“Write to me, please.” His voice cracked but he didn’t react to it. Neither did I. I just nodded, unable to speak at all because of the lump growing in my throat. I squeezed his hand before dropping it, making my way through the trees and back onto the battlefield.
I had no idea at the time that the battlefield would become a metaphor for my life.
4
After my dreamy, summer-fling with Shep, my life landed square in the center of reality. I was faced with a crisis of sexual identity. At home, I freaked a bit when I realized what Shep and I had done and what that actually meant. I wrote my first letter to him, doing my best to explain my rambling thoughts so I could make sense of what was going on.
What we did felt so good, but I think it was because of the intensity of the situation. Being away from my boring life, sneaking around, being on that strange battlefield gave me a freedom I don’t have at home. But I’m not really gay. I don’t know what I am, but I can’t be gay. My father would kill me.
It was obvious from his return letter that I’d hurt him by essentially telling him he was nothing more than a situational hook-up. That’s not what I’d meant, but I’d shown him my hand.
I wasn’t comfortable with my sexuality at all, let alone coming out.
But Shep asked why I couldn’t be gay and what my father had to do with it. Each answer I sent back, he replied with more questions that opened up a new world. He challenged me to back up my statements, which I quickly realized were more my father’s beliefs than my own.
I could’ve easily stopped writing him. Most of my friends already didn’t get why I had a pen pal in the day of chat, text, and emails. But I liked writing to him and knowing within a few days or a week, another letter would be in the mailbox for me. I was drawn to him, to his words, to the way his mind worked.
He recommended articles to read, books, ancient texts even, and I devoured everything he suggested, going to the public library and reading in the stacks those b
ooks I knew I couldn’t bring home. If my father saw what I was reading, we’d end up in a huge argument. Shep was the political opposite of my father and a breath of fresh air.
I vowed I’d discover my sexuality at college. Without my parents looking over my shoulder and spying on everything I did, I’d have the freedom to experiment and have sex with men and women and see what I really was. I’d figure it out somehow.
He wrote to me about his past travel adventures, sharing how much he enjoyed going to new places, listing the countries he planned to visit in the coming years. His stories were fascinating.
They were also the polar opposite of what I wanted in my life. I wanted to stick close to home, go to college to study kinesiology, hopefully end up as a strength and conditioning coach with one of the professional sports teams in Dallas. College teams were my backup plan.
Shep went off to college and lived freely. He already had shaved nearly a year off with all his AP classes, so he was able to start working on his major from his very first class. He became exactly who he thought he would, according to all the plans he’d written down in letter upon letter.
My plans didn’t quite work out how I envisioned.
Even my backup plan failed.
The day before I was supposed to move into the dorm, my father confessed he’d gambled away my tuition money that had been gradually building since I was a baby. I’d applied for grants and scholarships and got a few. But because of the cash that was set aside, I didn’t qualify for most. I’d never even bothered to apply for loans, and by that point, it was too late.
His numerous hints about military service ended up as no joke. I was left with only one choice if I wanted to go to school without being left with a mountain of debt.
I joined the army.
*
I wrote my father off after that, too pissed to forgive him. Too pissed to even try.
In the end, I didn’t need to worry about it because he was out of my face. As I was packing up to leave for boot camp, my parents planted a For Sale sign in the yard and packed up my childhood home to move to western Arizona.
Phoenix was far enough away to avoid dealing with my dad on a regular basis. Even if that meant he was closer to Vegas. It was his money to burn now, and his alone, now that my mom had taken steps to help ensure her financial independence. Separate bank accounts, and the new house was in her name. She still loved him and was willing to give him another chance.
I’d never trust my father for anything again.
*
At boot camp, I stared at myself in the mirror as my already short hair was shaved down to nothing. I didn’t recognize the man who stared back at me.
The clumps of black hair sitting on my shoulders were a clear sign there was no way out.
My life was no longer my own.
All I’d wanted was to go to school, get a job that would keep me in the state I loved, and maybe find a way to stop playacting at life. But I was stuck in the army for at least four years.
I fought on actual frontlines rather than reenacted ones. This thrilled my father, who Facebook bragged constantly about his brave son volunteering to fight for our country. There was nothing voluntary about it.
I ended up a reluctant soldier hiding my sexuality for fear that I’d mess with the cohesion of my unit.
Experimenting my way to sexual understanding never happened.
Hellish landscapes, facing enemies with no fear of death … That was my fate.
I wrote letters to Shep from a foreign land I never wanted to visit while real gunfire sounded in the distance. I told him how confused I was at being so drawn to certain men while on missions, again thinking it was the intensity of the situation that drew me to them.
He wrote back and told me about how sexual attraction worked for him, likely in hopes it would help me better understand myself. He shared what he loved about men’s bodies, what he would never want to give up.
Kissing was one of his favorite things, and I grew hard in my bunk as I read his description of the perfect kiss, thankful for the field cap resting over my groin. He could’ve easily been writing about our kisses in the middle of the cornfield.
His words felt that familiar.
On the third page of his letter, he talked of a friend he was spending a lot of time with.
Milo.
He was in Sweden then, and I read between the lines. Milo was his lover. When I wrote back to ask, he admitted as much. Why not? I’d just told him how confused I still was about my attraction to men, and he certainly had no reason to think I was still pining for him.
After that, he no longer held back about his love life, taking my curiosity about Milo as an invitation to be honest. So letter after letter he told me about his romantic pursuits, sharing how he’d fallen in and out of love with this guy or that as he traveled, studied abroad, lived in small villages I couldn’t pronounce in countries around the globe.
By the time he was twenty-two, he’d fallen in love at least a dozen times.
I hadn’t fallen in love since I’d left him in that cornfield.
5
It was my third deployment when I fully accepted I was attracted to men. It wasn’t just sort of, as I’d been telling myself since I was fifteen and fighting off getting hard in locker rooms. But I still refused to fraternize in the way I craved. I wasn’t willing to risk hooking up with someone I had to rely on in battle.
I wrote and confessed everything to Shep so I didn’t end up spilling my guts to the men I needed to watch my back.
My attraction has nothing to do with the heat of the moment. I’m attracted to men, through and through. I’m gay. You were right all along.
Shep was the only person who knew everything now.
As I waited for his return letter to arrive, to see if he was off somewhere new and in love with someone again or if he was single now, I counted down the days until I was finally out of the army. After this deployment, I’d only have a few months before I was sprung. I worked on transitioning back to civilian life, applied to the kinesiology program at UT-Austin, found out which benefits I was qualified for, and set my life up as well as I could while stuck in the middle of a desert continents away.
My life had taken a huge detour, but I was determined to get back home and start living my dream.
I wondered if there was any room for me in Shep’s whirlwind life. Maybe he’d be willing to swing by Austin from time to time on his travels. Spend a week or a month with me before his wanderlust took over and he felt compelled to move on to one of his other boyfriends in another part of the world.
I could be happy with that.
It was more than I’d ever had.
*
One misstep and my body was blown apart.
My future crumbled to dust.
In a matter of days, more metal than bone supported my left side. I was medically discharged, and for months I sat in a bed recovering, casted, drugged, suffering from the hell of physical therapy.
By the summer, I was ‘healed’ but I moved around like an old man. There was no way I could work as a strength and conditioning coach now. I no longer had the stamina for the job.
My entire life, I’d taken my body for granted, but now it failed me at every turn.
I shut out friends, quit logging into social media. Everyone was happy and hopeful, graduating from college, getting hired for their dream jobs. Some had even gotten married and started families. Their lives had already begun.
It was hell to witness.
So I holed up in my apartment complex, taking advantage of the pool only when I was sure everyone else had left for work or school or wherever they went. Floating on the water helped my pain. If I spent enough time being buoyant, I could almost believe I was still whole.
Empty prescription bottles became an all-too-common sight. I was twenty-three and ready to give up. All I had going for me was a part-time desk job as a paper pusher in a government office.
That was it.
Nothing else.
Until I surfaced from the pool one day to see a gangly kid with limbs too long for his body, feet too big, crying into his palms. He had a backpack at his feet that was gaping open, books tumbling to the concrete patio.
“Hey, you okay?” I asked as I headed to a deck chair nearby and toweled off.
He looked up, dark brown eyes terrified, and sniffed. I recognized him as my neighbor’s kid. I’d spoken to his mother, but never him. I didn’t even know his name.
“Did you get locked out or something?” Still no answer, so I kept talking. “I bet we can find the super to let you in. I’m Andrew. I live right there.” I pointed to my sliding glass door less than thirty feet away. “I know your mom. Rosa,” I added so he knew I wasn’t lying.
His breaths were unsteady, but I noticed his fingers curl around a book.
“Oh, The Outsiders. Did you get to the part—” I cut myself off just in case he hadn’t. But if that’s why he was crying, I understood.
“I didn’t get to any part.” He wiped his eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t read this shit.” He tossed the book aside.
“I love that story. It’s one of my favorites.”
He shoved the book on the table and the broken spine caused it to open to a page somewhere in the middle. I picked it up and squinted at the tiny font.
“Geez. The printer didn’t make it easy on readers’ eyes, did they?”
“What do you mean,” he asked.
“It’s like … eight-point font. Not to mention the lines are squished together. Makes me grateful for my ereader.”
He laughed and shook his head. “I don’t think reading it on a screen would make a difference for me.” He pinched his bottom lip as he looked out over the pool. “I’m Carlos, by the way.”
“Good to meet you. Andrew,” I repeated, just in case he hadn’t caught it the first time. “So, what’s really going on with the reading?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s always been hard. I’d rather watch movies or even listen to a book.” He picked up the novel and I watched as he tried to parse out the words.