by Daryl Banner
It’s driving me insane.
Then the activity at my nipple stops. He lifts off my chest, then withdraws his hand. It is so abrupt, I flick open my eyes and turn to him, startled. He’s looking at me with a strange mixture of guilt and excitement in his eyes. What happened?
“Sorry,” he slurs, hiccups, then repeats, “so sorry, Benny. I didn’t mean to—”
“Huh?” I say, stupid as ever, unwilling to acknowledge what he was doing to me, even now, even in my current state.
“I’m drunk. You’re drunk. We’re such a mess, the b-b-both of us.” He burps just then, guttural and bassy. Then he wipes his mouth and, after a moment of thought, adds, “I don’t want to take advantage of you, Benny. You’re a good guy. I could’ve beat those fuckers up myself, but you came and acted like some knight in shining armor and like … I’m a big sucker for the knight in shining armor, okay? And I’m lonely. And you’re here. And—” He loses his words, staring at me expectantly.
Why can’t I just say it? Why can’t I tell him to keep doing what he’s doing? He’s waiting for permission. He wants permission. Here I am, a block of muscle and fear, a big tangle of hunger and needs. Didn’t he just feel my boner? Doesn’t he get that I want it, too?
Why do I have to say it?
“You’re a good guy, Benny.” He reaches up, which excites me for a second, until I realize he’s doing my shirt buttons back up. One, then two, then the top button.
My cock is throbbing. My insides, whimpering.
“W-What’re you doing?” I finally get out, sounding as stupid as I feel. “W-What do you mean?”
“I’ve overstepped a bit. I took advantage of you.”
He puts a hand on my shoulder, patting me, then thinks the better of it and just gets up from the couch.
No, no, no, no, no.
“Wait,” I blurt out, getting up, watching him as he walks to the door. “Wait, Charlie. I told you, man, you can crash here. I trust you. We’re cool, right?”
He stops at the door, looks at me hard, his hungry eyes drawing a path from my crotch to my face. Then he says, “To be honest, I don’t trust myself.”
After he leaves, the only sound I’m left with is the pounding of a heart against my ribcage like some sickly, starved prisoner begging for release.
[ 5 ]
Trent doesn’t return from his weekend with his high school prom queen until about midafternoon Monday, just before I’m heading in for work. He looks like a number’s been done on him. I likely look the same, with all his beer I’ve been guzzling. Hope he doesn’t mind. I’ll consider it a price for not having a car all weekend due to his teenager-lust. In fact, I was about to walk the thirty minutes down the street to work before he showed up.
“Need the keys,” I say as he drops into the couch right where Charlie was two nights ago.
“I almost encountered the dad.” Trent sighs, wipes his face and turns to look at me. “You totally fuck things up with Sandy, or did she forgive you and you fucked her brains out last night?”
This one time back in eighth grade, we went to a party where they played a weird combination of spin-the-bottle and seven-minutes-in-heaven. There were approximately four other boys there, all four of which I would’ve given anything to be stuck in a closet with. I didn’t even know what I’d do with them. I just wanted to be near them, for them to like me. I’d never been kissed, but I was sure I’d like it to be one of them. When I spun the blue hairbrush, which we were using as our bottle, it landed between the adorable punk boy Trent Hollings … and goth Katy Windsor. Boy and girl. Of course, as the way of assumptions go, that meant my “bottle” had chosen Katy. My heart sank as Katy got up and took me to the closet, the hooting and howling of the others meant to encourage us.
Once in the dark, though, she slumped against the wall and sighed. Through the cracks in the slatted door, I could see her face. What’s wrong? I asked her. She told me she really wanted her first kiss to be with Trent, and that’s why she sat by him. I had to smile because I was thinking the same thing. How nice it would’ve been if the group had laughed, played along with the hairbrush and decided that I had to go into the closet with Trent. My heart leapt at the thought. I told Katy it was okay, that she could save her first kiss for a boy she really wanted to kiss. She looked a touch grateful and a touch sad. Then, for the next six and a half minutes, we didn’t touch at all, sitting alone together in the darkness and listening to each other breathe.
“I fucked my right hand last night,” I answer the now-ten-years-older Trent. “But thanks for asking, buddy. I was about to walk to work, but now that you’re here and I got the car back, I have about twenty minutes before I gotta leave. Wanna play Wii? Some Smash?”
“You’re gonna need to walk, actually.” Trent kicks his feet up—two oversized chucks with the laces half-undone—and throws his arms over the back of the couch. He’s wearing a black leather cuff on his right wrist that I’d gotten him last year for his birthday. “I have a job interview at five.”
I come up to the back of the couch. “What happened to your other job?”
“I think my boss is into me. Like, into me. That’s gross and it makes me uncomfortable, so I put in applications elsewhere.”
His boss is a blond-haired man in his forties whose name is Donald, but he goes by Dick. “So, you’re scared of Dick. That’s what you’re telling me. You’re letting Dick scare you away.”
“When Dick’s trying to touch my dick, yeah.” He turns on the TV, tosses the remote on the cushion next to him.
“Never know. You might like it.”
“You might like it,” he jests back. If only he knew. But he doesn’t, and never will.
“You talk about me flakin’ out on dates,” I point out, “and here you are, flakin’ out on a job because you can’t stand someone checking you out who isn’t a girl.”
“Whatever, it’s gross.” He changes the channel, plops the remote back down.
Even after knowing each other so long and having spent years talking about our private lives and wants and fears, I still don’t know if he really knows about me. So every time he says something about gay men being gross, I can’t tell if he intends to hurt me, or if it’s pure ignorance and he might not say those things if he knew. Thinking this, guilt rushes in, and I’m staring at the back of Trent’s head, his spiky black punk hair, and my stomach’s roiling.
Am I in the wrong for keeping this secret from him for so long? Am I a terrible friend, to keep this huge part of me hidden from Trent …?
I imagine how that other night might’ve been, had Trent been the one passed out on my couch, and I was the one latched to his nipple, running my hand up his inner thigh, waking parts of him he didn’t know were asleep.
Staring at the keys he left on the counter, I sigh, resigning myself to the thirty minute walk in this unforgiving summer heat. I have half a mind to grab the keys and drive myself anyway, forcing him to get a ride or walk to his own interview, but as usual, I allow Trent to have whatever he wants, take whatever he wants, get whatever he wants, no matter how much I suffer for it.
I spoil him. I kinda want to spoil him.
“Will you pick me up after work?” I ask. “I get off at ten. I really hate to walk home in the dark.”
“Nah. I’ll be at Kirkland’s. He’s havin’ one of his beer fests tonight, remember? Marked it on the Star Trek.”
I give a tired glance at the Star Trek calendar he’s referring to. He and I jokingly told his mom that we are huge Trekkies, and every year since then, she gets us a Star Trek calendar. I doubt either of us have seen a single episode or movie.
“That’s tonight?” I bite my lip. “But—”
“It’s just three blocks north from your work, ain’t it? Maybe four, five. Come by after you get off. It goes ‘til, like, whenever A.M. His house is huge. There’ll be pussy aplenty. And probably high schoolers, if that’s your thing. Just kidding. Not really kidding. Loud music. Lots of dancing and pro
bably weed, if we’re lucky.” He pushes himself off the couch, comes around the counter to the kitchen.
Watching his ass in those skinny jeans of his, ruefully I say, “We’re never lucky. Not in this fuck-all of a town.” Then, I grab my wallet, shove my phone into a pocket and head for the door.
“Hey, where’s all my beer?” I hear him ask as I shut the door behind me.
[ 6 ]
The scent of smoke, sweat, and barbeque precedes the party by about three blocks. I admit, my shift at work was not that long tonight, but here I am slumping down a dark street to Kirkland’s fat pad of sin. And I’m still in my work uniform, which consists of khakis, brown belt, loafers and a white chest-hugging polo with nametag. I couldn’t look dorkier if I tried. Even my hair’s parted because, well, I can’t stand to make a bad impression, even at my day job of the past however-many-years.
I find Trent on the porch with Steve.
“Hey, fuckface,” says Trent, raising the bottle he’s drinking as if in a toast. “You’re finally here, I see. Why so late?”
“Had to close because Pete didn’t show up, otherwise I would’ve been here an hour ago.” I squint through the window where likely everyone under the age of twenty-five in this godforsaken town has gathered. And maybe a few much younger, too. “Why does it smell like horse poop?”
“We drank up all the soda and the punch that Emma brought over,” Trent goes on while Steve just stares at me with red, drunken eyes, “but there’s Miller in the mini-fridge.”
I nod at the pair of them. “Appreciated. I’ll be back.”
I need to be drunk if I want to get through this. Like, super drunk. Like, fall on my face, fuck-off, lips-against-the-floorboards drunk.
Inside, the house looks like the electric bill wasn’t paid. A dark entryway (with a couple making out by the stairs) spills into a den area where about seven people are all over the couch, illuminated by the glow of a TV. I can’t and don’t want to be able to see what they’re doing to each other, judging from the wet sounds I hear. Further in the house, the larger living room is flooded with dancing fools, and the farthest wall overlooks a backyard through tall floor-to-ceiling windows.
“Where the fuck’s the kitchen?” I mutter to myself, pushing through the crowd of half-standing, half-gyrating bodies toward an archway that I pray leads me into the kitchen. Instead, it leads me to the dining room where two girls are seated at the table, chatting.
When one of them catches my eye, my stomach drops. “Hi,” I say to Sandy, my date from the other night.
“Hello, Benny.” She regards me coolly, her lips squeezed into a permanent smirk. Her friend, a girl with a sideways ponytail, simply watches me as though I were the menacing dog who happened on a pair of kittens.
“Having a—a—a good time?” I finally get out, inching my way through the room.
“Marginally,” answers Sandy. The friend remains silent as a crypt.
“Great.” I force myself to smile at them both. My transparent, cheesy politeness goes unreturned. “I didn’t have a chance to change after work, otherwise I’d—”
“You look fine.” The friend interrupts, lifting her brows at me. Sandy gives her a quick, disapproving nudge with her elbow. The friend, after a glance at Sandy, clears her throat and draws silent.
I nod at them. “Gonna grab myself a beer. I’ll see you two later.”
Knowing full well that at least one of them has no desire to see me later, I say it anyway, then move into the kitchen.
Pressed into the counter by the sink are three guys in jeans. One of them’s shirtless, sporting a distractingly nice set of abs, and the other two wear t-shirts. The tall one to the left has a cowboy hat on and a beer in his hairy fist. He’s first to look at me, but doesn’t greet me in any way except for a suspicious squint. The other two are occupied in conversation … or maybe it’s more of an argument about something to do with barbells.
“Excuse me,” I say as I draw near the tall one who’s leaning on the fridge. He shifts his weight to the counter next to him as I pull open the door. Nothing but cheese and a gallon of milk and a bin of potatoes meets my eyes. I frown.
“Mini-fridge’s upstairs,” says the tall one, “if you’re looking for the good stuff.”
“At this point I’m looking for any stuff.” I meet his eyes, shutting the fridge. I extend a hand. “I’m Benny.”
“I know. We went to school together, just never talked is all. You got—?” Then, he cuts himself off, distracted by a girl passing through the kitchen. She gives him a onceover, smiles, then disappears into the doorway connecting back into the den with the TV. “You got … Sorry, forgot my dang question. That lady was fine.”
Straight guys and their dicks. “No prob.”
“Dude, there’s so many fine chicks here,” one of the other guys—the shirtless one—says. “Never even seen half of them before. Tony, if we don’t get laid tonight—”
“Good point,” the tall one I was talking to, Tony, says, then excuses himself wordlessly from the kitchen in pursuit of the girl.
The two at the sink watch him go off, then drop back into their conversation as if I’m not even here. What I wouldn’t give to draw as much of their attention as the pretty girls do. What I wouldn’t give to not be so pathetically dependent on Trent’s approving glances and smiles and laughter … to have any hot guy of my choice at this party, the shirted and the shirtless ones. I give another doleful onceover of the young dude’s abs, feeling a pang of desire stir my heart. He doesn’t notice my ogling, which is both fortunate and unfortunate. No hot dude ever seems to notice me, not in the way I want to be noticed.
Pity party for one. I abandon the kitchen, pass through the den of eerily quiet souls and ascend the stairs to the second floor. Leaning over the banister is another pair of guys staring down at the selection of girls dancing in the living room. One of them comments about a pretty one in a pink dress, to which the other makes an obscene show of humping the banister, I guess to portray to his buddy what exactly he plans to do with her, despite it looking like he’s ramming some dude in the ass. Or maybe it’s just my oversexed mind.
The game room on the second floor has a pool table that is being used for anything but a proper game. Bottles and cans line its perimeter, and a pair of guys that can’t be older than sixteen or so are seated atop it, talking to one another and stealing glances at the other young girls across the room who are laughing about something.
Boys with girls. Girls with boys. This is all my life is full of in this fucking town. When I was in high school suffering the same fate, school dance after school dance after school dance, I was convinced that my life would change when I graduated. I dreamed a hundred dreams of what my college experience would be like, about the freedom I’d exercise, about the boys I’d meet and the love I’d find. Instead, I took Trent with me, and he was the dangerous light bulb toward which my stupid moth self was inevitably lured. I spent those almost-two college years being boy-blind, then dropped out with him and returned home with nothing to show but a list of half a hundred things I swore I’d do when I left … and didn’t.
Ah, there it is. “Pardon me, ladies.” I make for the mini-fridge near them. They draw quiet and seem to just watch me as I feel around for a bottle, then pull it out and snap off the top. “Thanks.” I give them a smile, then take a swig. Reconsidering, I grab another bottle for later, then dismiss myself from the game room to let the boys resume their dumb fascination with the two pretty girls they’re obviously too chicken shit to approach. Just fuck each other already, I have more than half a mind to shout.
The same two guys are at the banister still, staring down at the crowd of dancers. So many people from town are here, I wonder if Charlie is among them. With Steve poised on the porch like some ugly watchdog, I doubt he’d let Charlie through the doors. The thought angers me, even if I’m not super attracted to Charlie or excited about his presence. For some reason, the fact that Charlie even exists in a tow
n like this gives me a bizarre, unknowing strength. It makes me feel like I’m not alone, even if Charlie and I are so … unalike. We at least have that one thing in common, even if Charlie himself isn’t aware. Thinking of him makes me feel the gentle touch of a hand on my inner thigh and, frustratingly, I feel my cock stir. Not now, dummy.
I take another swig from the bottle. Fuck it all. I’m so alone.
The music has grown louder somehow, and when I poke a finger through the blinds in the front entryway, I notice Trent’s missing and only Steve sits out there now, staring out at the nothingness in the street. His brown-booted foot is propped up on the porch railing and a cigarette dangles from his left hand. I sneer at him through the window, then release the blinds and walk away, wondering where Trent’s gone.
Just as always, I’m puppy-dogging the focal point of my existence, my rope and tether, my black hole of a crush that is ruefully named Trent. Where the fuck did he go? He’s not in the den with the creepy TV-watchers and whatever-else-have-you’s. Unless he slipped into a bedroom, he’s not upstairs. I doubt he’s in the kitchen because there’s no beverages left there.
I move through the living room, deciding to give the backyard a combing-over. The guys, who don’t look old enough to be drinking, are generally at one end of the living room, chatting, joking, some of them dancing stupidly, but most of their eyes are shooting arrows of desire at the spread of girls across the room, hoping any of their arrows stick. Regular cupids, all of those dumb fucks. The girls are just as stupid, doing the same thing. They sip their drinks, shake their bodies to the music, laughing at one another’s jokes while they shoot quick glances at the guys. Is this a fucking school dance? It’s just the forever, inevitable mating ritual dance bullshit of heterokind. Much like the inevitable mating ritual dance bullshit of homokind, except I’m likely the only fucking gay guy here. None of those guys shoot longing glances my way.
I squeeze shut my eyes, frustrated, and finish off the bottle, abandoning it atop an end table by the couch before pushing out the back door. A barbeque pit still smokes where, likely a few hours ago, some actually edible food was being grilled. I still haven’t seen Kirkland, and with his bushy head of hair and pointy beard, he’s impossible to miss. There aren’t many people out here, but with it being so dark, I can’t quite make out who’s sitting in lawn chairs by the inflated baby pool.