by Willard, Guy
“You know…Ron. I’m sure that if you told him your feelings—”
“Oh, get lost! I’m not ‘the boy’.”
I laughed. “Oh yeah, that’s right. I keep forgetting.”
“Do you want me to introduce you to ‘the boy?’ Maybe you’d like to get a few pointers on how to please a guy.”
“Forget it! That’s not in my line.”
“Oh? Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”
“Why? Have you tried it?”
“Of course not.” He smirked. “But even if I did, do you think I’d tell you?”
“Sure. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Not that close friends….”
He had been rolling a third joint during the telling of the story, and now he lit it up.
It was completely dark outside now, and as I gazed past Mark’s face at the night sky framed by the window, I saw a sudden flash in the sky.
“Look,” I said, “a shooting star.”
“Where?”
He turned to look, but it was long gone. The meteor’s quick slide down the sky had occurred in the blink of an eye, like the striking of a celestial match, snuffed out almost before I’d had a chance to register my own reactions.
He turned back to me. “Can I ask you a personal question, Guy?”
“Sure.”
“All those girlfriends you had—Wendy, Judy, Vanessa…how do you do it? I mean, you seem to have no trouble getting girls.”
“You have plenty of girls around you, too.”
“Those are just friends, not girlfriends. It’s different.”
“How so?”
“Well, you don’t think I’m actually fucking them, do you?”
“I don’t know—”
“I don’t even have to ask if you fucked Judy or Vanessa. I just assume you do.”
The statement made me feel good. In high school it was virtually an insult to call another boy a virgin, so my tacit acknowledgement of his statement had been automatic. But I was keenly conscious of the falsity of my claim. Something inside me made me want to turn my guilt against him, to make him an accomplice in my lying.
“You mean to tell me you’re still a virgin, Mark?”
“I didn’t say that.” He took a deep drag at the joint and handed it to me. “I lost it when I was thirteen,” he said somewhat smugly.
“Thirteen?” At that age, I had just discovered masturbation, and considered myself all-knowing merely because some other boys hadn’t. Mark had already been experienced then. I felt crushed. And then I thought about it. If he wasn’t a virgin, and all the girls around him were just “friends”…. I saw how to belittle his new-found superiority, to bring him down to my level.
“Was it with a boy or a girl?” I asked with a smirk.
“Does it matter?”
I felt a jolt. My taunt hadn’t fazed him at all. In fact he seemed to take it in stride. This was the first time he hadn’t directly denied my innuendoes about his sexual leaning.
His face, when he turned to look at me, wore the strangest expression, an enigmatic mask which I despaired of ever reading. Was it a mocking grin, or just a gentle smile?
“Are you feeling all right, Guy? You look a little sick.”
“It…it must be from all our smoking.”
He was staring at me now, and I grew uncomfortable. I had to turn away from his gaze. A sudden thought popped into my head.
“Mark, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“The stories about you…at that Boy Scout campout back in junior high school. Are they true?”
“Stories?” He looked away. “Oh, them.” He slid off the bed and sat down on the floor. For a long time he was silent, picking at his toe. I noted the tiny hairs at the nape of his neck, just below the cleanly barbered hair, and for some reason found this sight so erotic that I felt faint. My eyes misted over and I felt a lightheadedness distance me from the bedroom. I brought my knees up to my chin to hide the sudden erection which blossomed hot in my jeans. I’d never felt such an instantaneous excitement, so powerful that it hurt.
“Well?” I prodded.
“They say I was gang-banged, don’t they?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice to speak.
“It wasn’t exactly a gang-bang. But I was caught.”
“Doing what?”
“You know. With Jeff Lyons, a guy from another school.” He took a hit and exhaled quickly. “A couple of the guys that caught us made me take turns with them, with the promise that they wouldn’t tell on us.”
A heavy weight settled in the pit of my stomach. I knew I was about to ask a question which would change my whole life.
“Mark. Are you gay?”
He looked at me but said nothing. The heaviness in my stomach wouldn’t lift. Finally he said:
“Would it change anything if I said I was?”
“I—don’t know.”
He looked down at his toes. “You’ve probably guessed anyway, so I’ll go ahead and say it. Yes. I’m gay. I like boys and I always have.”
I felt as if I’d just exhaled, though I knew I was still holding my breath. “But do you like girls, too? I mean, if you see a good-looking girl, do you feel anything?”
“Of course. I had a crush on a girl named Leona for a whole year. It’s just that my first experience was with a boy, and that’s probably what made me the way I am. If my first experience had been with a girl, who knows what might have happened?”
“So when you told me just now that you lost your virginity at thirteen, it was with a boy?”
“Actually, I lost my virginity when I was twelve, in the sixth grade. But that sounds too young for most people to believe.”
The memory of the time I’d bullied Mark in the music room came back to me. So it had been true then, all the things I’d accused him of. He had done those things with boys, he had already been experienced. Yet, even after hearing this confession from his own lips, I still found it hard to truly believe in. Such things just didn’t happen to someone you actually knew.
“Who was it?” I asked, my voice almost a croak.
“A friend of mine named Dave.”
“Dave who? Do I know him?”
“No. This was in summer camp. He’s from Oregon.”
“Have you ever done it with a girl?”
“No.”
“But if you had your choice—let’s say you were marooned on a desert island and could pick one other person to be with you. Which would you choose, a boy or a girl?”
“I don’t know. That’s hard to say. Like I told you, I’ve never been with a girl yet, so I don’t know what it’s like. If it turns out I like it better, sure, I’ll turn hetero for the rest of my life.”
And then he looked questioningly at me.
“How about you? Did you ever think about doing it with boys?”
My throat felt raw. “Sometimes. But only things like beating off together…things everyone does. Heck, my cousin Bobby and I used to beat off together when we were kids. But we never thought of doing—anything else.”
“‘Anything else’…?” he prompted me with a catch in his throat. “What is ‘anything else’?”
I flushed. My head was throbbing, and I felt almost suffocated…my ears felt stopped up.
“You know,” I said with a parched mouth, “blow jobs and that kind of stuff.”
The sound of a passing car sliced sharply into my consciousness after what seemed a long interval of complete silence, as if the whole universe had halted momentarily at my words. These were words I’d never dreamed of saying to another boy. But I knew if I stopped now I would regret it forever.
“Mark…have you ever…sucked a guy off?”
He laughed, then leaned forward onto his elbows and slid his legs out from underneath so that he was lying flat upon his stomach. In an attitude of reverie, he rested his cheek upon a fist, bending one knee coquettishly so that his heel lazily brushed a buttock. The position only
emphasized the rounded fullness of his buttocks and I was disconcerted. I hugged my knees harder against my chest.
“Like I said, my first experience was with Dave. And that was one of the things we did.”
“You actually did it to him?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I guess I always wondered what it would be like, so the best way to find out was to do it.”
“What was it…like?”
“You mean the first time?”
“Yeah. Weren’t you scared?”
“Not at the time. But I was scared that someone might find out about it later.”
“What was it like?” I prompted again.
“You mean, how did it feel? Oh, about like what you might expect: hot and hard. As for the taste, it was a little salty.”
“Gross!” I felt a shiver creep up my spine.
He laughed. “You won’t believe this, but I didn’t know what to do at first. They call it a ‘blow job,’ so I guess I thought that’s just what I was supposed to do: blow. But after a while I knew that sucking would feel better for him, so I started sucking.”
“Go on.”
“At first I was only putting the tip of his dick into my mouth. I was afraid to let him go in more than that. Have you ever heard of the ‘gag reflex’?”
“No. What’s that?”
“It’s this instinct we all have. Basically, it’s to keep you from choking to death. If anything rubs against the back of your throat you automatically start to throw up. It’s natural. Some people have a very low tolerance and I’m one of them. That’s why I only let him in so far.”
“Go on.”
“As you keep doing it you get more and more used to it. First, I’d take him in as far as I could, for as long as I could. But when I couldn’t stand it anymore, I’d pull away and wait till I was ready for another try. I kept repeating this, and the more I did it, the easier it got to take him in further. Pretty soon, I could take him all the way in.”
“All the way? But your mouth isn’t big enough!”
“No. That’s why you have to relax these muscles here at the back of your throat. You can overcome your gag reflex with practice, and pretty soon it’s nothing. You can let him slide all the way in, even down your throat.”
“God!”
“You can practice with carrots and stuff. Anyone can learn to do it.”
“What makes you think anyone wants to do it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe you don’t believe me. Maybe you think I’m making all this up.”
“No way. But if someone could overhear us now, I wonder what they’d think.”
“They’d beat the crap out of me, of course.”
“Did you let him come in your mouth?”
“Not at first. But after the first few times, I wanted to see what it was like. So I let him.”
“Can you tell when he’s ready to come?”
“You can usually feel the excitement building up. The balls shrink up tight. Then the dick seems to grow even bigger and hotter just before he shoots off.”
“God! And what was it like when it happened?”
“I almost choked on it the first time. I didn’t expect there to be so much. I spent the next ten minutes coughing my guts out because it almost went down my lungs. It sounds funny now, but believe me, it wasn’t funny when it was happening. I felt sick for a long time afterwards, like I wanted to throw up. It was terrible. But eventually I learned how not to gag on it anymore.”
“How does it taste?”
“Kind of salty…like a warm, salty gob in your mouth.”
“Ugh!”
“I know. That’s how I was at first. But once you get over the taste and the texture, you even start to like it.”
I felt faint.
“You seem fascinated, Guy.”
“Well…anyone would be. I mean, who doesn’t like to hear about forbidden things?”
“You’re right,” he said. “I think most boys are interested in it, only they’re afraid to admit it. Deep down, they want to know what it’s like…doing it with another boy.”
“You’re probably right.”
“What about you?”
“Me?”
“Yeah.”
I looked at my feet.
“You’re turning red, Guy.”
“It’s because of all the crazy things we’re saying.”
“I only want to know the truth. Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Don’t you want to know what it’s like?”
“I don’t like that smirk on your face. Since you put it like that, no, I don’t.”
“Oh. I thought you might.”
I was taken aback. “What makes you say that?”
He didn’t answer for a long time. And then he started talking in a softer voice. “You know, all through eighth grade I thought you had a crush on me.”
“What?”
“Yeah. The way you were teasing me, the way you got your friends to gang up on me. Underneath all that cruelty, I detected something else. I thought of your bullying as a sort of courtship.”
I shook my head in denial. He went on: “But once we got to high school, you started having all those girlfriends. I was watching you from the sidelines, so to speak…Wendy, Judy, Vanessa, the new girl I saw you with yesterday. I figured you couldn’t be gay. So I kind of gave up, even though a part of me—”
“—was still in love with me?”
He laughed. “It isn’t like that. Stop thinking of it as a boy-girl kind of thing. It isn’t like that at all. It’s something you’d have no idea of.”
The thought that he’d once felt attracted to me (and perhaps still did) sent a surge of joy into my heart.
He got up from the floor and walked back to the window to close the curtains. It had gotten so dark inside the room that the sky outside actually seemed brighter than it had been a few minutes ago. He looked over his shoulder at me. “You remember that time in the music room, way back in junior high?”
“Yeah. What about it?”
“You were so much more aggressive about things back then. Now you’re scared.”
“I was a kid then—curious…just discovering things. I don’t know what made me do it. Just fooling around, I guess.”
“You wanna know something, Guy? I was actually ready to do it. Till you chickened out.”
“I didn’t chicken out. I told you I was only fooling around with you.”
“Well, a little while ago, you said you were curious about it. Was that ‘fooling around,’ too?”
“I said curious, yeah…but curious in an abstract way. That doesn’t mean I want to actually do it with someone.”
I found myself trembling but he didn’t seem to notice it—he seemed silently intent upon something, perhaps the memory of that moment in the music room. His mouth suddenly twisted into an amused grin.
“Who knows?” he said. “If things had turned out differently at the time, you might have had your curiosity satisfied long ago. More than your curiosity.”
“Get outta here…..”
Perhaps it was the effect of the marijuana, but I could visualize clearly what it would be like to have him suck me off. I could picture it vividly, down to the tiniest details….
Suddenly, he sighed loudly and said: “All this talking about it….”
His statement hung suspended in the air, unfinished.
I glanced nervously at the bedroom door. It was getting dangerous to remain here much longer. I knew exactly what he was leading up to, and my desire to escape the room became overwhelming.
When I looked back at him he was gazing straight at me. His smile was so suggestive that I sensed his desire like a keen smell. I felt dizzy.
The room had acquired a tingly, vibratory clarity; it suddenly became filled with menace.
I got up. “Listen, I have to go now. I—”
“I know, I know. You suddenly remembered something you had to do, right?” His faint s
mile had turned mocking. It looked pasted on; he was smiling with an effort. My stomach ached.
Somehow I found my way to the door. My fingers clawed for the doorknob in the dark; I found it, turned it. The hallway outside was even darker than the room but I managed to find my way down the stairs and out the back door, to freedom. But even as my feet began running, my feeling of release was tumultuously mixed with the keen ache of regret.
The Heterosexual Blues
From my room I heard the telephone ringing. I listened as the vacuum cleaner was shut off and my mother went to answer it. When there was no knock on my door after some time, I relaxed. It wasn’t for me.
Mark had called my house several times since that afternoon in his bedroom, but when I refused to come to the phone each time, he finally realized I had no wish to see him again. I had no other choice. He might get the wrong idea about me and I couldn’t take that risk.
I wished now that I had never pressed him to confess about his homosexuality. While it had still been an exciting possibility, I could live with it, but now that it was a fact, I could no longer think of him as a friend. He was a danger now, a threatening temptation to give in to my baser instincts. In his bedroom I had come dangerously close to stepping over the line. Too close.
I didn’t trust myself to remain indifferent to what he represented. His confession had contaminated me, weakening my defenses, sapping my strong resolve to remain pure. The surest way of building up my defenses again was to avoid seeing him. It was as simple as that.
At the same time, it was thrilling to know that Mark was a real faggot, that he had actually done the things I only fantasized about. It gave me the ability to delight in them vicariously, with no danger to myself.
But the games I played, and the things I fantasized about, were done with the consciousness that I was playing with fire. The thrills I experienced came from that very knowledge: I was stepping into forbidden territory and breaking taboos.
His confession also changed forever the dynamics of our relationship. I now had the upper hand: the power to tell someone else about his secret. But somehow I didn’t want to tell anyone yet, perhaps ever. Just the possession of his secret was satisfaction enough.
The telephone rang again. I held my breath and waited.
There was a knock on my door.