by Rob Rosen
Spy cameras and magic crystals. Poor Katie. “Another girl?”
“No.” He must have seen the scepticism on my face. “There isn’t.”
“Okay. But why tell me? I’d have thought she should hear it first.”
As if I hadn’t spoken, he said, “Kate’s a lovely person. Kind, warm. Pretty. I like her, but we’re not right. I thought we could be, but we aren’t. We see the world differently. We want different things. Need different things. I wanted . . . I tried to make it work.”
We sat in silence, until I asked again, “Why are you telling me this?”
He turned to face me full on. There are only two reasons adult men lock eyes, and I didn’t think he was preparing to throw a punch. Understanding dawned, and my heart began to bang against my chest wall.
“Don’t you know?” he asked.
I shook my head and kept shaking it, as if this would stop the pieces falling into place. I’d thought the stares, the way I’d often caught him looking at me, were down to jealousy, or the simple fact that he didn’t like me. I’m not usually slow in picking up signals, but it had never entered my head.
“I’m not sure what you’re saying here.” I jerked my hand away as he reached for it.
“What I’m saying is, I’ve been trying to be something I’m not. Someone as gorgeous as Katie, and I have to think about dicks to get hard? One particular dick. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
The treacherous bolt of excitement I felt was instantly superseded by an image of my friend, eyes huge with hurt. I got to my feet so fast that my chair fell over. “It tells me there’s a shit storm coming and you’re trying to get me involved.” I stabbed a finger. “Don’t. You and Katie, it’s nothing to do with me. You do what you have to, but keep me out of it.”
I kicked the chair away and left him to his beer.
I’d been prepared for tears, and they came, but not as many as I expected. I kissed Katie’s boiling cheek and pulled her to lie against me. She blew into a fresh tissue. “I’m glad in a way,” she said, mopping. “You know, that it’s not my fault. Can’t compete with a man, can I?”
“Probably not.”
“I just wish . . . I mean, if he is, he is, but . . . oh, James.”
“He’s a tosser. Forget him. Come on, drown your sorrows.”
“This won’t help,” she said, poking an ice cube.
“Course it will. Numbs the pain.” I’d been half-cut on Grey Goose for a week after Stephen.
“I’ll be over the limit.”
“Stay, then.”
“Can I sleep with you?”
We often shared a bed. I liked sleeping with her. I found her comforting, as I used to find a little woolly dinosaur I’d had when I was four. I still had him, worn and grubby, tucked away at the top of the wardrobe.
“He said he was going to come out. D’you think he will? Oh god, can you imagine what they’ll say? I hope people won’t be horrible to him. Matthew told me he always thought Adam was a bender.”
“Matthew’s a homophobic twat who talks through his ass. He didn’t suspect fuck. Christ, I didn’t, and I should know. If Adam’s decided to come out, that’s up to him. Things’ll be said, that’s for sure. No way round that.”
“You could help him.”
“Katie, Katie . . . ” I rested my chin on her sweet, silly, generous head.
“You could help him with . . . well, with gay stuff.”
“What gay stuff? He can find out everything he needs on the net, probably already has. He’ll work things out soon enough, once he meets someone. Come on. Bed.”
I couldn’t sleep, though, partly because Katie was a little furnace, pouring out heat in one of my T-shirts. I’d already shifted as far from her as I could without falling out on my butt, so I hung on to the edge of the mattress and stared into the dark, replaying the scene at the Ferryman. Adam wanted me, and the fuck of it was, I wanted him, and not just for sex, although the thought of him writhing under me made my cock tighten. He intrigued me. I was curious about what lay behind the detachment, the impenetrable facade. What might be released once he faced the world as an out gay man? He’d be himself, but what was himself? And why had he felt compelled to live a lie? Had he fucked men on the quiet? Must have done.
Katie gave a snuffling snore and reached out an arm. I got out of bed and slid back in on the other side. I slapped the pillow over and buried my face in cool cotton. Sleep took a long time coming.
A week later, Ben married his Marie.
“Another good man down,” Patrick said. He sniffed suspiciously at his drink. “What is this anyhow?”
“Elderflower champagne. Marie’s father makes it.”
“Tastes like piss.”
“And you’d know that how?”
“Fuck off.”
I grinned and leaned back on the hideously uncomfortable gilt chair, watching him scan the crowded marquee. “God’s sake, ask her to dance or something.”
“I don’t know . . . you reckon she’s still got a thing for Queer as Folk? Shit, sorry James.”
As to Adam, who was also old friends with Ben, hence his presence there, I hadn’t encountered him again until I’d joined the rest of the groomsmen at the church that morning. My focus should have been on Ben, who’d been sick with nerves—it had taken some straight talking and a hip flask to calm him down—but half my attention had been on Adam, heart-stoppingly handsome in morning dress. We’d exchanged a few stilted words, and that had been that. Neither of us had known what to say, and it had been easier to spend the rest of the day avoiding each other.
“I don’t know if I can,” said Patrick.
“Can what?”
“Katie. Really punching above my weight there.”
“Come on. Be a big boy, a brave soldier. Just bloody ask her. Rescue her from the aunties.”
He stared at me, then took a decisive breath. “Right.”
The first piano notes, signalling the beginning of the end of the party, had brought most people to their aching feet. Patrick murmured in Katie’s ear, and she nodded, smiling, and continued to smile as he took her hand and they threaded their way on to the minuscule dance floor. Katie and Patrick. Yes, that was more like it.
Someone tapped my shoulder. I looked up. “Dance?” Adam asked.
I’d be exaggerating if I said that a shock wave felled the wedding guests, but there were a few glares from the Colonel Blimps and a few dowager hands clutched pearls. I winked at the wolf whistles from our corner as Adam rested his hands on my biceps and I held his waist. We kept our lower bodies from touching, and even when the crush of dancers threatened to force us together, we maintained a crucial couple of inches between zipper and crotch. We were both trembling.
“Haven’t seen you here before,” I said, dry mouthed. “Come here often?”
He drew his head back so he could see my face. “This feels so weird.”
“You’ll get used to it.” I moved closer. “You smell nice. What is it?”
“John Varvatos.”
A few heads away, Katie caught my eye. We exchanged a glance, asking and answering, until she nodded and gave me a tremulous smile. I was glad of it. I didn’t want to lose her friendship, but Adam was dancing with me. Adam, in my arms. It might have felt strange to him, but it was blowing my mind.
“James?” The brush of his beard on my ear thrilled through me.
“Mmm?”
“Come back to my flat later?”
I raised my arms and linked my hands at the back of his neck. “Sure.”
I’d been as nervous as hell the first time I ventured into a guy’s bed, scared that he wouldn’t want me when push came to shove, and even more scared that he would. Staring out of the window at the harbor lights, Adam seemed as strung up as I’d been.
“Hey.” I patted the couch. He sat alongside me, ramrod straight. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want. We don’t have to do anything at all. There’s no rush.”
&nbs
p; He threw me a look. “I’m thirty-one, James, and I’ve never even kissed a man.”
Fuuuck. “Want to tell me?”
“I’m a Catholic . . . well, I was. Don’t know about now. You’re brought up in the faith, you’re taught that homosexuality is wrong. Sinful. I’ve heard that my whole life. What do they call it . . . intrinsically disordered.”
It occurred to me to point out that there was nothing more intrinsically disordered than priests raping altar boys, but I kept it to myself. “So, what’s changed?”
“Ben getting married. Did you see him? So bloody happy, like a dog with two dicks. I was watching him with Marie, and something clicked in my head. Why was it okay for him but not for me? Why could I never be with someone I love, never love in the way that’s right for me?”
“Adam, it’s—”
“I’ll tell you what’s sinful. Lying is sinful. Leading a person on, like I was leading Katie on. Don’t get me wrong; I like her, I like women. Christ knows I’ve fucked enough. But that’s all it’s ever been. Fucking. Physical release. I’ve never felt any connection. Most of the time, I’d have preferred a wank.” He hunched forward and clasped his hands between his knees. “I did try to make it good for them, though. I wasn’t that cold-blooded.”
“And was it?”
“I know where a woman’s on-switch is, and that always helps. What about you? Have you ever . . . ?”
I shook my head. “Thoroughbred. So, Katie . . . ?”
“She’s so sweet. Yeah, I know she can be off the wall, but . . . she made no demands. I thought that we could make a go of it, that I could make myself . . . that I could will myself straight. What a fucking idiot. And then I realized she was beginning to have feelings for me. I was stringing her along, and it was cruel. I’d see her with you, and the only thing in my head was how much I wanted you.” He extended his fingers, then curled them back into fists. “I had to be honest with her. With myself. She was lovely about it, when I told her.”
“You didn’t tell her you had the hots for me, did you?”
“Rub salt in the wound? Do me a favor.”
“And do you? Have the hots for me?”
“I’d have thought that’s obvious.”
My erection was upright against my belly. Hunched forward as he was, his groin was hidden, but even under the shadow of scruff, I could see the pulse tripping crazily in his throat. “So what d’you think we should do about it?” I asked.
“Depends on how you feel about me.”
“High time you found out, isn’t it?”
Dotting kisses on his eyelids, his nose, the angle of his jaw, I slipped each button free and pushed his shirt off his shoulders. Dark hair hazed his pecs, glossy and fine. I mouthed each nipple, then trailed my lips to his armpit. Cupping his face, I kissed his musk into him, loving the first, tentative touch of his tongue in my mouth, his feverish response when kissing became hard and deep and wet. His zipper was pushed out in a curve, tricky to maneuver over the bulge, but I finally got it open. One quick tug, and I followed his trousers and boxers to the floor.
Not the nine-inch monster beloved of porn writers, but a beautiful prick, nonetheless. Thick and smooth, angled high from a dense bush, the foreskin almost fully retracted by the force of his arousal. His glans was wet, and when I gripped the base of his shaft, a glimmering bead formed and trickled from the slit. His balls cupped in my palm, I extended my forefinger to his asshole and took his cock in, all the way in to the back of my throat. He began to pant as his hands tightened in my hair. He wouldn’t last, couldn’t last, not the way he was thrusting. I felt the warning swell and drew back to mouth his glans, sucking, sucking, my finger gently massaging his hole. He gave a groan, and a shuddering spasm twisted his body. His semen was thick, almost jellied, and I kept it in my mouth, letting it bathe his cock for a while before I let it slip down my throat.
“I’m sorry, James, I couldn’t . . . ”
“Hey.” I got to my feet and pulled him against me, pressing my erection against the hard bone of his hip. “Told you. No rush.”
“Adam?”
“Ngh?”
“I don’t want to come like this.”
He seemed reluctant to stop. Understandable: there’s nothing as good as having a cock in your mouth, unless it’s having one in your ass, and he’d been starved for years.
He licked up the side of my shaft and flickered his tongue over the tie. “How, then?”
“Fucking.”
“You want to fuck me?” he asked.
I hauled him up to lie on my chest. He was erect again, his shaft solid and warm next to mine. I ran my hands down satiny skin to his buttocks, separating them and squeezing them together. I hadn’t caught sight of his asshole by this point, but my future plans involved more than looking at it. “Other way round.”
He bit gently at the curve of my shoulder. “Okay.”
“Need my wallet.”
“I’ve got some. In the drawer.” He hid his face against my neck, shy suddenly. “And lube. I knew I’d need them at some point. I wanted to practice. I bought a dildo from Prowler when I was in London.”
I nearly came at the thought. How would he have done it? On his back, arm curled under his thigh to stick it in? Squatting to lower himself? On all fours, reaching back? Lube glistening as he positioned its head. The push and the gradual distension. The enormous stretch of his hole around the plastic girth of the toy. Adam. Fucking himself.
“But I couldn’t do it. I don’t know what I was doing wrong, but it hurt like buggery. Gave it up as a bad job.”
Amused, I kissed him. “Buggery doesn’t hurt, not if it’s done right. I won’t hurt you, Adam.”
He felt around in the drawer, and brought out a pack of condoms and a bottle of Liquid Silk. I rolled one on him as he knelt between my thighs. His fingers were shaking as he smeared the lube. I closed my eyes and waited, but when things seemed to have ground to a halt, I raised my head from the pillow.
The mask was gone, all guard down. Here was the truth of him, revealed in the hard, bright stare. My hole clenched with wanting and he let out a breathy whine of lust.
Just his middle finger in, in to the palm, exploring unfamiliar terrain. A slither out and the slide in of a second finger, circling the pliant walls, not sure, testing, pressing . . .
“Is that it? There?”
“Not so hard. Just kind of . . . stroke it. Stroke around. Oh, fuck . . . ”
You know what it’s like. The feel of a man’s fingers playing with your prostate. Waves of pleasure radiating through your cock, your balls, and the dark glory of sensation in your ass. For me, it’s as if I’m being held on the brink of an orgasm that never comes. Until it does.
“Adam.”
He was careful and slow, pushing, pausing, and pushing in a little farther. I hadn’t been fucked since Stephen, and despite the copious grease, I felt the burn. I loved the brief pain. I loved the responsiveness of my body. I loved that it was Adam’s cock penetrating me.
“What does it feel like?” His mouth was against my neck, each breath a hitching gasp.
“Full. Pressure inside. Adam, oh Christ, fuck me!”
Hips rocking, he began to thrust in earnest. I felt the thud on my buttocks and that luscious, pulling drag, the intensity of pleasure you get when a cock withdraws, as if your guts are going to follow it out. Faster, in and out, each slick glide, each wet slap of his balls getting me closer. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and the press of his belly gave me the exquisite friction I needed to come. I lifted my face for his kiss. He took my cry into his mouth and hammered his prick into me, over and over, until his rhythm faltered and broke. He stilled, then gave one last helpless thrust, all control gone. I heard his savage groan of release and felt the tiny spurts of his climax juddering high in my bowel. As he collapsed, his full weight hot and sweating on me, I wondered if maybe, one day, we wouldn’t need to dam the flood. He pulled out, holding the condom in place like the fast
learner he was, and once he’d tied it off, I took him in my arms. Maybe, one day, we wouldn’t need protection. No need for latex when two men commit. When they make love.
“Work tomorrow, James. Better get some sleep.”
“Call in sick. Spend the day with me.”
“Can’t do that. Lucky sod, we’re not all self-employed.”
“Swot.”
“After work, though?” He picked a damp strand of hair off my temple.
“Don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”
He drew back, and I grinned at his expression of crest-fallen dismay. “Right, I’ve thought about it. D’you like Chinese?”
“Yes. Prefer Thai, though.”
“Thai it is. Okay, sex bomb, turn over.”
He wriggled his ass into my lap and tucked my arm around his chest. I held his hand and spooned into him more closely, pressing a kiss to the top of his spine. He murmured something into the pillow and I shut my eyes. I slept well that night.
RED CARPET JITTERS
T. R. Verten
Actors are famously known for their weird rituals. Everyone in the industry knows this. Hell, the only people who are worse are pro athletes, who’ll wear the same jersey if they’re on a winning streak, or forgo sexual release of any kind, or eat only blueberry waffles for days on end. Whatever the fuck works, right?
You learn those rituals in high school plays. Words you won’t say, good luck charms you’ll wear. Pacing clockwise around the stage, crossing yourself. Praying. And then it gets drilled into you even harder in college or drama school, in summer stock and community theater. Or maybe your first crappy TV role, where you barely make the cut for Equity pay scale, a couple of pilots that go nowhere, Indie films, stage work. Perhaps Off -Broadway, maybe the West End, if you’re lucky. And then the big one hits. A romantic comedy, usually, or, if you’re really fortunate, a franchise gig where the studio supplies you with everything you need for superstardom: a trainer, a nutritionist, a publicist, and, to keep up the whole charade, a girlfriend-slash-beard. For the photo ops, of course.