Tales From Cushman Row

by Suanne Laqueur

  Jav shook his head. “You’re making me think about things I never gave any thought to. If I got sick, I was sick. I powered through and took care of myself. If I broke my leg… I don’t know, I guess I would’ve figured something out. Gloria would’ve helped me. My buddy Russ. I mean, I had friends, but…”

  “You had no one you let take control. No one who said ‘poor baby.’”

  Memory pressed on Jav’s shoulders. “When I was living with Ari in Guelisten, we both got the flu. Val Lark actually did bring over soup for us. And Trelawney would send up this honey-lemon-ginger drink…”

  Because we’re your family, dumbass. We’d do anything.

  Stef pulled another rib off the rack. “Crazy how much basic human connection was snatched away from you. At such a young age. It’s not that much of a shock you fixed things so no one could ever do it again. But there I go being shrinky again.”

  Jav watched him eat, suddenly filled with memories of his mother fussing over him. Bandaging cuts and blowing on scrapes. A wrinkle of worry between her brows as she put a hand to his fevered head. Lighting the burner under the kettle to make a hot drink for a sore throat. He remembered her bringing him a soft-boiled egg and toast in bed, then pulling the covers high and telling him to rest. She ran a cold cloth on the back of his neck when he was throwing up his shoes, murmuring he’d feel better when it was over.

  Rosa Gil deSoto was a prickly, difficult woman, but she took care of her own. Jav wasn’t making the memories up. The recollections were true and they belonged to him. He was Rosa’s only son and she loved him, tended to him and kept him safe.

  Until it was all snatched away.

  “I missed out on a lot,” he heard himself say.

  That night, he lay under Stef, fenced in by his tattooed arms and crushed by his tall, solid weight. When his wrists were held down to the mattress, he didn’t fight. He tried to set aside words like conquered and dominated and controlled. To turn them inside out and connect with ideas like shelter, protection, trust and safety. To lie still and do nothing. Not being passive, rather being an active recipient. To just…

  Enjoy it, he thought.

  It took time for three decades of skin to slough off and new skin cells to emerge, but when they did, they were full of nerves and curiosity and electric interest. He held still and let Stef kiss him everywhere.

  Everywhere.

  Stef rolled him over and down and up and side-to-side, taking off his clothes and running his hands, mouth and face along every muscle, every angle and plane and curve and fold. Jav exhaled, letting go the long lonely years. Letting go his uncertainties and insecurities. Basking in the discovery what felt good to him and letting it feel good.

  “Feels so good,” he whispered, lolling under the strong hands that pushed his legs apart, coaxed his knees to bend up and out. Stef’s kiss was soft in his mouth but his touch was immutable. It held Jav down, held him open, held him sprawled and splayed and vulnerable to the world.

  “Feels so good.”

  He was hard all this time, but Stef hadn’t touched him there yet. His hands moved along Jav’s limbs, stroking and caressing and kneading. They dug into his hair and held his head still for kisses. The heat in Jav’s blood built up and built up until he had to come or die. He closed fingers around Stef’s wrist and moved their hands down between his legs.

  “Touch me,” he said. “Make me come. Feels so good.”

  Stef woke him up the next morning. Outside a torrential downpour of rain cracked like a hundred whips against the windows. Inside, Jav curled and cracked out of sleep. His head cradled in the crook of Stef’s elbow while Stef’s other hand slid down his chest and stomach. The pull of the drawstring and then Stef’s fingers slid beneath the waist of his sweats, plunged in and took hold of him. His cock ached and twitched and howled in Stef’s palm, wanting to come fast and hard.

  Stef squeezed and stroked him, his thumb rolling in a circle at the tip and then sliding down the length again. He let go and slid his hand toward Jav’s hip, moving his pants aside.

  “Pull these down,” he whispered against Jav’s mouth.

  Jav slid the pants down his legs, leaving them at his calves like loose bonds. Stef’s hand pushed his knees open, ran in long strokes over his thighs, spreading him into a diamond and then taking hold of his cock again. He groaned into the kiss, biting and sucking.

  “You want my hand or my mouth,” Stef whispered.

  “Your hand.”

  Stef reached for lube and his palm turned slippery and warm, like his kiss.

  “So fucking hot,” he said against Jav’s lips.

  Jav pushed his hips into Stef’s grip, writhing and bucking. “You’re making me come.”

  Stef’s teeth closed on Jav’s lower lip and pulled a little. “Show me.” His hand slid faster, squeezed tighter.

  “God,” Jav cried. “Fuck…” It was on him and he torqued and twisted in Stef’s relentless grasp, overflowing and pouring out hot as he was kissed into oblivion. The dark behind his eyelids unfolding and peeling away into gold.

  “Feels so good,” he said into Stef’s mouth, over and over. “Feels so good, Finch. Feels so fucking good…”

  Shrinks & Kinks

  The Coalition for Creative Therapy didn’t have enough players for their own softball team. They banded with the staff from a West Village head shop, and the resulting lineup called themselves the Shrinks & Kinks.

  The official season went to mid-October. But this November weekend’s forecast was irresistible: clear skies and high seventies. In a flurry of emails and texts, the team got Horatio Hardware’s lineup to join them on Randall’s Island for a last hurrah.

  As the sun dipped down, the temperature dropped rapidly and the wind off Hell Gate turned fierce. Fleeces were pulled on and zipped high. Players blew on their ungloved fingers. At four o’clock, the field lights were already turning on.

  Stef, playing second base, squinted to his left, where Jav was poised at first.

  It was a no-brainer inviting him to play. Not even a question if he played. He was a Dominican-American growing up in Queens, of course he played fucking ball. With an unconscious, natural athleticism that was…

  Hot.

  Stef pounded a fist into his glove, refocusing for all of five seconds before his eyes drifted left again. Jav hunched, hands on knees, hips kicked out, watching the pitches. Unshaven, baggy sweats and cap backward. Two chicks sitting along the first base line were openly enjoying the view.

  You like that? Stef thought with a smug exhale out his nose. I sleep with it.

  He punched his glove harder. Hard enough to hurt and get his mind off the visual before he popped an infield boner.

  Just in time, too. The batter hit a ground ball to second. Stef scooped it up and fired it across to Jav, who caught it easily and stepped on the bag. He lobbed it to Beau on the mound, his smile stretched wide, making Stef’s chest tie itself up like a bow.

  How the fuck did this happen?

  In five weeks, Jav had slipped seamlessly into Stef’s circle. Whatever the venue or activity, Jav was game. You mentioned tennis and sure, Jav played tennis. Golf? Absolutely. Squash, racquetball, handball—he was in. Jav could carry a half-dozen sports the way some people could carry a tune. What he lacked in practical skill he made up for in knowledge. He could talk skiing, sailing, surfing or hang-gliding with the same ease as baseball, hockey and basketball.

  “It was part of the job,” he said, shrugging. “Client wanted to scuba dive, so I got certified. If she wanted to ride horses on the beach, I rode. Go to a hockey game or go to the opera. Ballroom dancing or paint ball. If she paid, I played. Being an escort means being a yes man.”

  “Ever say no to anything?” Stef asked.

  “Sky diving,” Jav said, with a strangely sad smile.

  Stef glanced at him sideways. “Before or after Nine Eleven?”

  “Well, before I didn’t really have
a desire to jump out of a plane. But afterward… I didn’t exactly have a phobia about flying after Nine Eleven, but I had really strong issues with falling through the sky.”

  Stef mused over Jav’s impressive resume, thinking it couldn’t be entirely built from necessity. Jav had a hungry mind. You had to work really hard to find a topic of conversation he couldn’t engage in. If he wasn’t informed about something, he was asking questions so he could get informed.

  “In school, I was the kid who could deflect the teacher off topic,” he said. “Reading Tale of Two Cities, I’d ask about guillotines. Teacher would forget Dickens and lecture on all of mankind’s gushy methods of capital punishment for an hour. Girls were turning green and the guys couldn’t get enough.”

  Besides being driven by imagination, Jav had an innate curiosity about the world, evident in his sharp powers of observation, his hundreds of questions and a genuine desire to learn. He was a fierce perfectionist when it came to his writing, but nearly everything else was for the amusing hell of it. Merely gaining passing knowledge of a new skill pleased him. Mastering it was beside the point. Even failure served a purpose.

  “Bad decisions make good stories,” he said.

  He approached sexual exploration the same way. Once he voiced his hard limits, and his confused qualms about topping and bottoming were out of the way, he fell easily into bed, following where Stef slowly led. Getting comfortable with the fluidity, realizing Stef wasn’t locking him into any one position or role.

  “You’re not the bitch in the arrangement,” Stef said.

  “Good to know,” Jav said. “Take your clothes off.”

  Stef found getting Jav to trust him meant more than getting him naked. It wasn’t so much how they moved in the throes as it was Jav lying still afterward. He stayed the night, or Stef stayed with him. Jav fell asleep asking questions, Stef nodded off mid-answer. They woke up, another day unfolded and the weight of Jav’s trust settled a little more into Stef’s hands.

  He didn’t know trust had this kind of mass. Jav’s was a treasure unearthed. Weathered and golden, warm and heavy in Stef’s palms. His fingers closed around it almost reverently, not sure when guiding Jav through this new sexual terrain had gone from an adventurous turn-on to a privilege. Stef’s eyes rolled to the ceiling, denying any such bullshit, before they helplessly closed and admitting everything.

  “You guys are getting serious,” Stavroula said. A certain booth at the Bake & Bagel now had a Reserved sign on weekend mornings, waiting for its two regulars.

  Serious, Stef thought, struggling to keep his head in the game as he wondered why serious was a word used to describe human relationships. Serious meant not fooling around, and a fuck-ton of that was going on. Serious meant things were grave or somber, but he and Jav cracked each other up.

  “We take each other seriously,” he said.

  Stav smiled. “I’ve never seen you like this.”

  “It’s never been like this.”

  He’d bump into Lilia in the front hallway and she’d ask, “Is your boyfriend coming to Sabbath dinner on Friday?”

  “I saw someone reading your boyfriend’s book on the subway,” Rory said.

  Your boyfriend.

  I have a boyfriend, Stef thought, rolling the word round and round his mind. Jotting it on scraps of paper until the word looked foreign.

  How did this happen?

  I saw him across an empty gallery. I thought he was hot. I hoped we’d hook up and get naked. Have a good time and be on our way.

  Now he’s my boyfriend.

  Jav seemed just as bewildered. Even with his trust safe in Stef’s grasp, he still fell into pockets of his self-proclaimed idiocy. Mornings after hot nights when he’d sigh a lot, somewhere between pensive and brooding. At least the guy didn’t bullshit Stef with “Nothing” when asked what was up.

  “I’m all in my head,” Jav said. “Being with you feels so good. It feels like me and it feels right and I love it. But sometimes my brain gets fixated on the…”

  “On the gay part,” Stef said.

  “Yeah. It’s cerebral. It’s dumb. But, yeah, that’s what it is.”

  The confused desire in anyone else would’ve irritated the shit out of Stef. Coming from Jav, he only wanted to protect it. “Don’t forget this is the most time I’ve spent with a guy I sleep with,” he said.

  “So…are we friends with benefits?”

  Stef crossed his arms. The doors of his heart had swung wide open, slamming back against his chest, and he needed that bit of barrier. “I’ve had fuck buddies,” he said. “This is different.”

  “How?”

  “Because when I visualize my week and map out my time, I’m starting to prioritize when I’ll see you.”

  Jav’s shoulders settled down. “Me too. You’re a factor in my plans. I’m past the point of thinking you’re a fun companion to do shit with. I’m starting to just want your time, and where we go or what we do is irrelevant.”

  “Which means, possibly, we’re dating. Can you dig it?”

  Jav smiled. “This is me digging it.”

  “Ball four,” the umpire called, A smattering of applause as the batter from Horatio Hardware trotted out to first. Jav took off his cap, ran a hand through his hair and replaced it, bill forward this time.

  “Stop fucking him with your eyes, Finch,” Dominique said from shortstop.

  “Can’t,” Stef said.

  “Jesus, how do you leave the house?”

  “Under great duress.”

  “Think people that beautiful know they’re beautiful?”

  Jav definitely knew. He’d be the first to admit he had a vain streak. And why not? The guy had gotten far with his looks and subconsciously or not, he still relied on his appearance to keep him where he was. He worked out religiously and dressed well. In fact, he was picky as fuck about his clothes. He liked looking good. He’d mastered the art of looking like he rolled out of bed half-gorgeous and threw the other half of himself together without giving a shit. But he gave quite a large one.

  “It’s a thing,” he said. “I complain that people can’t get past my looks, and at the same time I never give anyone the chance to get past them. I guess because for a long time, they were all I had.” His sheepish expression became resigned. “Or hell, maybe I’m just a vain fuck.”

  Nice thing about dating a forty-five-year-old, their self-awareness was in place. And to be fair, looking at Jav didn’t suck. For five weeks now, Stef had been cramming his eyes with the man. Jav at work and at play. Resting or running. Eating, sleeping, shaving, showering. Anxious, brooding, worked-up, let down, excited, frustrated. Coming and going. And best of all, looking right back at Stef.

  "No puedo dejar de verte,” he said from across the room, across the couch, the table, the bed.

  I can’t stop looking at you.

  Their nights together were filled with wild heat, which filled Stef’s work days with distraction, as torrid moments tapped his shoulder or intense memories sat in his lap. Besides curator and sailor, he was now a train of thought engineer, constantly concentrating on keeping the rig on the rails.

  He wasn’t alone in the daily derailments.

  “I can’t get shit done,” Jav mumbled. “A thousand words a day has been my quota for years. A thousand is clearing my throat. Lately I can’t get fifty on the page before I’m staring into space, thinking about you.”

  “Sorry,” Stef said.

  “Basically all I do is think about you. All damn day long.”

  “I take full responsibility.”

  “I’m so behind on this book it’s ridiculous.”

  “Entirely my fault.”

  They were adults. They knew how to power through and do their jobs. It only took so many days of lost productivity before they laid down the law of no sexting during business hours. They tried the sensible step of spending at least two nights a week in their own beds, only to end up talki
ng or texting all damn night and being useless the next day anyway.

  The metallic crack of bat connecting with ball sliced through Stef’s thoughts. It was a sound that could transport him instantly to middle school and manifest his father’s voice from the bleachers.

  Look alive, Finch.

  The batter had aimed a grounder toward Dominique at shortstop, no doubt thinking the drag queen in yoga pants couldn’t field. Wrong. Like liquid, the former Little League champ plucked the ball and flipped it to Stef at second. Stef touched the bag, pivoted on his heel and sent the ball screaming into Jav’s glove. A flawless double-play to end the game. Horatio Hardware 7, Shrinks & Kinks 10.

  “To the bar, ladies,” Dominique called.

  What About My Asshole?

  Christ, thought Stef, but the man could kiss like a motherfucker.

  Had he, for want of a better word, melted like this when Courtney kissed him? When Quinn or Thomas or… Oh hell, forget it.

  As his thoughts disintegrated, his hands climbed up the back of Jav’s sweater, palms spreading wide to get as much of that skin as he could. His knees inched up Jav’s hips, shifting and bucking to get their erections to rub just the right way. All the while kissing and kissing and kissing.

  I haven’t sucked face like this since I was a teenager.

  Jav started laughing softly.

  “What?” Stef said, sitting up. He followed Jav’s gaze to Roman, who sat on his haunches. Head tipped to the side and expression curious.

  One wonders what you are doing, master. May one participate as well?

  “He’s so confused,” Jav said.

  “I see the humans are mowing,” Stef said, pushing his hair back in place. “I also enjoy mowing.” He let out a groan as Jav’s mouth found his neck. What he could do to a neck should’ve been illegal. An edge of teeth, a slide of tongue and a bit of suck Stef was sure would leave him with marks he’d have to explain at work. But Jav never left a trace.

  At least not where anyone could see.