by Daryl Banner
Then, Trent emerges from the dark like a ghost. “Where ya been?”
“Got lost in the house looking for booze.” I lift my second bottle I haven’t cracked open yet to indicate. “Where the fuck’s Kirk?”
“When’s our lease up, bud?” he asks quietly, drawing himself up to my side. “Do you know?”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“The lease. My mom wanted to know.” He chugs from his can. It crinkles loudly in his squeezing fist, dripping with condensation onto his shirt.
“Why do you—Why does she … need to know that?” I feel my heart racing and not in the good way.
“Never mind.” He belches, not meeting my eyes and, instead, peering through the window back into the house. “Fuckin’ full of nobodies. Who the hell did Kirkland invite, the fuckin’ high school? Where’s the assholes our age? Hope the walk wasn’t that bad, bud. Girls here aren’t even that hot.”
I’m still lost figuring out his question. Is he thinking of moving out? “Are we alright?”
He frowns, annoyed. “Of course we’re alright. What the fuck.” He chugs again.
I know Trent. He’s never evasive about anything. He’s blunt with me, always is. His hesitation and his weirdness unsettles me like nothing else in this stinking town can. I’m flooded with a million guilty thoughts all at once. Does he know? Did he figure it out? Did Charlie fucking say something? Did he find something on my computer? For that matter, what the fuck is on my computer?
But I can’t say any of this. I can’t even express it in some vague, indirect way. I’m stuck with my worries while Trent guzzles his beers, checks out his ladies, and goes about his life with no regard or awareness whatsoever to the war being waged in my mind. The same war I’ve been fighting since we were dumb horny teens and jerked off while staring at differently stimulating … things.
We were fourteen when I first stayed overnight at his house. He wanted to show me something and it wasn’t until 2 AM when he had the porn open on his computer that I realized what. I’ll never forget those fake perky tits and the grunts she made as the frat boys fucked her one by one. I never really got to see the frat boys very well, as this was straight porn—I think—but it didn’t matter when I had Trent pulling out his wiener right next to me, going to town. Some wicked part of my mind wanted to feign “not knowing what to do” around him. My heart raced, almost to the point of nausea, almost to the point of throwing up his mom’s brownies she made us earlier. I wanted him to touch me so bad. He got hard to the porn. I got hard to him, watching him breathe heavy, watching him gnaw on his own lip, watching his face wrinkle up as he grew closer and closer and closer to the edge.
When he came, a string of his cum landed on my face. I shut my eyes and gasped, feeling it run across my tongue and lips.
He laughed and laughed and laughed.
And then I came, too.
“You see Sandy inside?” he asks, slapping my belly and jerking me out of the memory. “She was upstairs, last I saw.”
“She’s in the dining room,” I say flatly. “She saw me. Can’t say she liked it.”
He throws an arm over my shoulder suddenly, as if sensing my withdrawal, and pulls me into him. “Patch things up, dude. She’s forgiving. You two could really hit it off. You could finally have a girl in your life.”
“What if I don’t want a girl in my life?”
The thought came so suddenly that I voiced it without thinking twice. A rush of dread reddens my face. Trent’s lips are near my nose, his alcohol breath wafting over me as he breathes.
“What else you gonna have in your life?” he asks innocently, missing the point I might have been making.
You, Trent. You, you, you. You are all I want. You are all I need. You and your breath and your slender punk body and your cocky charm. You and your competitiveness. You and your annoying habits I can’t stand. You and the way you’ve made me feel around you for over a decade. You are everything to me.
But there will come a time when he meets a girl, and that girl actually sticks. She won’t be a prom queen nominee from the high school around whose parents he has to tiptoe. It won’t be any of the easy girls at the bar, none of whom he actually picks up, despite throwing each and every one of them at me, Sandy included. But he will meet a girl and she will be everything he dreamed of. And I will have to be invited to the wedding. I’ll be the best man, standing at his side, watching him be taken away by another girl I’ll be forced to like. Hell, maybe I’ll even actually like her. Wouldn’t that be worse? I’ll have no reason under the stars to protest their marriage, no reason to talk him out of it. She’ll be perfect and sweet and friendly and beautiful. She’ll even be pro-gay or some shit.
And I’ll still hate her. I’ll hate her for taking him from me. I’ll hate her and I’ll hate him. And for all the rest of my days, I’ll live under the shadow of some fantasy I should’ve thrown away the year I grew my first pube.
“Probably just more beer,” I answer him finally, wondering how true my answer, in fact, really is. I stare at my half-empty bottle, lost in thoughts of a future without him. I’d never even considered one, but I’m no longer a kid. I’m an adult. I’m an adult who’s running out of time.
What am I doing?
Trent slaps his neck suddenly, curses. “I’m heading back inside. Getting bit the fuck up out here. You comin’?”
Aren’t I always? I nod.
We move into the living room again. The boys on one side, the girls on the other, and a sea of reluctance between them. Kicking back my new bottle, I laugh on the inside at the dumbness of the scenario in front of me. All these horned up, lonely, desperate folk of my horned up, desperate town … and they can’t even approach each other at a party. What is this, high school? People are already coupled off in bedrooms and dens and backyards and wherever else, yet the pump of dance music paralyzes these fools.
“Feel like headin’ home yet?” asks Trent. “This party’s lame.”
And full of high schoolers, judging from the fear they have of the opposite sex. Even the twenty-somethings in the crowd won’t look at me. None of those hot boys will give me the time of day or night. None of them see me. None of them know. I study the crowd long and hard, feeling brave.
“Actually, I feel like dancing.”
Trent looks at me, thinking I’m crazy, when I slap my bottle of beer into his chest and push myself out onto the floor. Two girls look at me, startled by my suddenly popping into existence. They become my inspiration. I start working my shoulders to the music. One of the girls smiles. The song pumps harder, and then my hips start to rock, my arms working into the sexy-bad performance I’m putting on. Now I have four girls looking at me, a small grouping of them, all of their eyes at perfect attention to my seduction act. I grin, emboldened by their excitement, and move my hips harder. I lift my arms in the air.
The girls begin to circle me like a flock of birds, and now their bodies are moving too. The music wraps us up in some sort of trance. What do you know? I’m part of the heterokind mating ritual, my arms twisting, my hips working an invisible hula-hoop, feet stamping the floor. I can’t take the smile off my face, all the pretty birds circling me and shaking their feathers and laughing. I’m suddenly the most charming blue jay that’s flown into their lady-tree. At long last, after an eternity of waiting here at this party for something to happen, I pull them out of the darkness.
When I turn around, I see the eyes of all eighteen or nineteen boys across the room. All of their eyes, all of them, are on me.
They envy me. They want to be me. They want all these women to be all over them.
I am their focal point, in this one moment. I am their everything. I am their cream and their butter and their prize in the cereal box.
All the boys are watching me now.
But the reality is, no one’s winning. These girls are grinding their hips for me—for a guy who will never choose or prefer any of them. The boys across the room, they’re no
w the ones pining for something they can’t have, at least not right now. They’re drooling in envy. They’re wondering who I am. They’re curious and infatuated and dreaming, just like me.
And Trent on the sidelines, watching all this happen. Trent and his punk boy lips and his lip ring. Trent and his messy dark hair, giving him that air of mystery and sexuality and depth. Trent and the utterly bewildered expression on his face … and my beer bottle that still hangs in his slackening grip.
All of us, playing the lonely game. All of us, losers.
[ 7 ]
I can’t sleep.
I close my eyes and dream Trent is trying to dance with me, pushing his hips into mine and gripping me the way he grips the girls. Stop, I try to tell him, shoving him off, knowing he’s fucking with me. He drunk.
Stop.
Then, his mouth lunges for my face. He’s trying to kiss me and I shove at him, but can’t push him away far enough. Stop trying to kiss me, the dream-version of me says while the dream-version of him keeps reaching.
He laughs drunkenly in my face. I even feel the heat of his breath as if it’s there. He grips me harder, suddenly having all the power and strength of the world in those hands of his.
He always had that power.
Even in my dreams.
It doesn’t matter what I do. I push his shoulders, his mouth seems to grow closer. I push his hips, they grind me harder. Harder. That’s the key word: harder. My cock grows and grows, and it isn’t wholly pleasurable.
I’ve never hated a boner more than I have tonight. Every tossing and turning in the bed runs my hard-on along the sheets, stimulating it worse, tickling it, sending shivers up my spine that I resent.
Stop doing this to me.
He never stops.
Then, when the struggle is almost too much to bear, I turn and find him just staring at me, almost hurt. He asks me something, his lips moving, and I don’t understand. What? He asks again, but I still don’t hear him.
Does he really want to kiss me? Have I had it wrong all along?
The rhythm of the music is a heartbeat. The walls bend inward with each beat, synchronized. It scares me. My heart races.
What are you trying to say, Trent?
His mouth grows closer.
Does he really want to kiss me?
When I open my mouth to finally accept his, he shoves a sock in it.
I wake up in the darkness of my room, alone, and Trent isn’t there, neither the real one nor the imaginary. I stare down my body, my sheets forming a huge teepee with my boner pointing at the ceiling fan.
“I’ve had worse dreams,” I say out loud, miserably.
Deciding I can’t sleep at all, I drag myself out of the room in just boxers and gym shorts and a white tank. The subtle titter of voices on the TV draws my attention, surprising me. Trent’s still awake? I come to the living room and find Trent leaning back in the middle of the couch, his feet propped up on the coffee table and the remote hanging in his left hand.
He’s asleep.
I listen to the calm ins and outs of his breath. His eyes closed, his lips slightly open, he looks so … adorable. I envy his peace. I can’t remember the last time I fell asleep at his side while on the couch.
I miss that so much.
I’ve wanted nothing but to fall asleep with him, curled up, his arms draped across me carelessly. Maybe when we’re asleep, he’ll absently put his leg over me, hugging me like a fireman’s pole, with his face nuzzled into my neck like a pillow, not even minding that I’m a dude.
Why can’t guys be like that? I don’t even need him to be gay. I just want him to comfort me. We’ve been through a lot. We’re closer than most brothers who are related by blood.
Why do guys have to be so … afraid? Why can’t they be more …
All these struggles bring me to the end of the couch. When I get a full look at him, I realize he’s only in his boxers. I see the tattoo he got when he turned eighteen, a big scorpion on his shoulder. His boxers are black and hug his thighs—which makes the wood inside them show all the more. I stare at it, surprised. His legs somewhat spread, his arms across the back of the couch, his slender, toned body painted the bluish glow from the TV, I find myself completely entranced.
I’m such a fool. I fall in love every single time I see him. I fall in love over and over.
I lower myself to the arm of the couch, watching Trent, listening to him breathe. My heart is literally jumping out of my chest, yearning for him.
Why do I like him? He’s not even always nice. But … he includes me, most of the time. He’s kept gravitating back to me over the years. I’ve always been there. I’m dependable. Even in college when I was sure he’d make a hundred other friends, he seemed to only bother keeping my company. What if there’s something there? What if …
What if …
I put my hand on the back of the couch to brace myself, misjudge where it is, and slip off the arm, landing clumsily on the couch, halfway into Trent’s lap.
I freeze. I don’t move a muscle. I turn to stone.
Trent fidgets, his breath changing for a second, and then he resettles in the same position, his legs outstretched and apart, feet on the coffee table, and his arms still over the back of the couch. He’s still asleep.
Still asleep.
And here I am, a hand on each cushion to either side of him, hovered over him with my face an inch from his crotch. His hard cock, tenting his boxers, threatens to poke me in the eye. Ever so fucking slowly, I turn my head, looking up at his face.
His eyes are still closed, his mouth still hanging partway open, and he breathes slowly, in he breathes, a long moment, then out he breathes, a long moment, then in …
My heart is racing so hard. I feel a certain dark inspiration brewing inside me from my night with Charlie. What he did to me … the excitement I felt …
What if Trent has just been … waiting? What if he’s awake right now, pretending to be asleep? What if …
What if …
Balancing all my weight on one hand, I lift the other and, so, so, so, so gently, I take a pinch of his boxers between my fingers.
I look up to check his eyes. Still closed. Still asleep.
I give my fingers a gentle tug. The fly to his boxers moves a smidge. I give it another tender pull, sliding it. I hear Trent’s breathing give a start, as if affected by something, and then return to its normal rise and fall. When I tug the boxers just a tiny bit more, suddenly his cock slides out of the fly, popping up as if it just burst a hole through the fabric.
His swollen, rock-hard cock … inches from my lips.
I look up to check my victim again. Eyes still closed. Lips still parted. I listen to him breathe a few rounds before I turn my attention back to Trent’s dick. Is this really happening? I ask myself, I ask all my dream selves who were in this situation before, who have lived this over and over again.
Except they’ve never really lived it. Because I’m living it. Because this is not a dream, and Trent’s cock is in my face, and there are real consequences if he wakes up.
I’ve been afraid most of my life. Can’t I, just this one time, be brave?
I open my mouth, daring myself. It’s just right there. It’s right there in front of me. Right there. I stick out my tongue, reaching, like an experiment.
My tongue touches the tip of his cock.
Tongue still touching, I twist my face to look up the mountain of my best friend. Eyes still closed. Mouth parted. No reaction.
I let my tongue slide. The whole pad of my tongue rests along the tip of his cock now, like the palm of a small, warm, wet hand. I dare my tongue to move.
His cock jumps.
I stop, twist my eyes to look up, frozen in place with my tongue latched on.
Eyes still closed.
I run my tongue down the length of his cock, slowly, slowly, then run my tongue back up. After seeing hundreds upon hundreds of boys do this in porn videos, it’s my turn. I let my tongue slow
ly bathe every inch of his tall, swollen dick. Slowly, slowly up one side, then slowly, slowly down the other. His dick grows more and more wet, slicker, smoother as my tongue traces its length over and over and over again. He never opens his eyes.
I’m in gay heaven.
The next time I reach the tip of his cock with my tongue, I pause, taking another glance up at his beautiful, peaceful face.
Here goes nothing.
I part my lips wider and, slowly, I take his cock into my mouth.
Nerves I didn’t know I had are waking up.
At first, I just accept the tip of his cock, closing my mouth around it like a popsicle. I think suddenly about Charlie and the girl he told me about on this couch, the popsicles she’d sell. I’ll take a cocksicle instead, please.
It might be my imagination, but I think I hear his breathing quicken. I hesitate, waiting, hovering with my mouth wrapped around the tip, wondering if I should go further. Give me a sign, I beg him, horny, insane, desperate. Give me any sort of sign that I can go on.
I barely slide a bit more in, taking another millimeter of his cock. His breath quickens. It’s not my imagination. Whether he’s dreaming it or not, some part of him is aware of what’s happening.
He wants it, I tell myself.
I take another inch, my tongue sliding, my wet lips sliding, his cock like a rod, firm and unrelenting and pulsing with need.
Can I satisfy that need? Me and my lips and my tongue?
Trent breathes a bit differently now, the more I take in. I hear his throat opening up, his breathing lighter, his breaths getting closer together. Trent’s cock is in my mouth and his pleasure is at my mercy.
I’m in control.