Teach me to dance, Matthew said to Barry.
They had met, as they had arranged it, at the bus stop after school. It was Friday afternoon, and they had gotten permission for Matthew to stay overnight at Barry's.
They were both nearly fourteen and they were both freshmen in high school, but Barry went to St. Martin's Prep and Matthew went to Harwood, the public high.
Academically, it was just as good as St. Martin's, but St. Martin's was known for its discipline and because it catered to a very wealthy clientele. Its young men were all on track to be managers and partners and practitioners and professionals, slated to join prestige firms or hang out shingles on their own in the best neighborhoods.
Its young men! Young women did not attend St. Martin's. They went to its sister school, St. Margaret's. Boys and girls took classes together in both buildings going through a courtyard connecting the two buildings whose sides extended to touch each other enclosing the courtyard as if it were an atrium.
The teachers were not nuns, but they might have been, except Miss York. She looked to everyone like she had an entirely different kind of life at home. Everyone knew she would not be renewed once the year was over. The fact that it was her last term seemed to bring out the imp of her mischief. The boys day-dreamed and talked dirty about her and the girls imagined being like what they imagined she was like when they caressed themselves.
St. Martin's and Saint Margaret's were Tudor blond stone buildings each facing across a narrow avenue, their backs to each other across the courtyard. Old umbrageous boughs spread branches green-heavy with foliage over their streets. Touching the sides of each of the buildings were a row of nineteenth-century brownstones. You would say the schools looked like castles if you were in a good mood; and fortresses if you were having a bad day. A wrought iron gazebo swirling like a great art nouveau flower stood in the center of the courtyard.
Barry had met Brenda there clandestinely more than one dark evening after school when they both had told their parents they would be studying at the library until it closed, which was at nine p.m. weekdays. They took an extra sandwich in their lunch bags just for verisimilitude.
Their tongues clung one to the other as he petted her just-beginning breasts feeling their impossibly soft firmness with proud fingers, and she felt the metal of his incipient manhood in a palm that had an uncorrupted delicacy of touch.
It was, of course, a secret, what they did together, but not one Barry kept from Matthew. Matthew listened with envy when he boasted, but he was not envious of Barry. He envied Brenda. He longed to be where Brenda had been, limp in Barry's arms, feeling him take possession, but he knew better than to say anything, even to himself.
Matthew was a good looking kid. He felt inconsequential when he was around Barry. He liked being around Barry. But it was always frustrating. Barry gave the world an edge. Whatever they did was exciting. There was romance and chivalry in it, whatever they did, whether exploring the empty lots and rotting piers by the river, riding the subway, walking along the waterfront, combing their hair in the men's room of a movie theater.
Now they were in Barry's bedroom and the radio was playing and they were dancing. It was a slow dance and Barry held Matthew in his arms as if he were the girl and pressed against him and whispered instructions in seduction, but as Matthew heard them he heard them as words that Barry might actually have been saying to him.
You follow the music, he said, and you look into her eyes, and let your lids get a little heavy and just stay quiet. Follow the music and take her with you. Girls like to follow. So you have to be a strong and confident leader.
Matthew was lost in the rhythm of their movement; it felt real.
Matthew's cock began to grow in the pouch of his underwear.
Barry was not thrown by it.
That's why it's a good idea to wear a jock. Some girls know what's what, but others can get freaked out and it can get embarrassing.
I'm sorry, Matthew said.
Forget it, Barry said.
But they had stopped dancing.
Matthew's discomfort was short-lived because it was getting to be the time they were to meet Barry's father. After an early, quick dinner, he was taking them to a night baseball game.
Although Matthew had no interest in baseball whatever, that night he worked himself up into a frenzy of excited rooting.
Back at Barry's house, they had ice-cream before they went to bed. Matthew slept in the second twin bed that formed an L with Barry's. In the morning they went to the library where Barry met Brenda and Matthew took the train downtown.
His thoughts swam that weekend and they floated in his mind like bodies resting in the sea facing the open sky. He looked surreptitiously at the male model magazines on the rack without daring to take one down and page through it when he went to the candy store to buy his father a pack of cigarettes.
He hardly could think about how it might have been if Barry, even if only continuing his educational pretense, had kissed him rather than disengaging when he felt Matthew's sexual upsurge.
When Matthew called Barry on Monday night after school, Barry's mother said he was not home. A few days later, he called again. Barry had not called back. But it was the same thing. Mrs. Hacker was polite. Matthew felt a chill and did not call again. He was not surprised when Barry never called back.
It was probably a good thing that they did not go to the same school. There was no added tension to Matthew's everyday routine, and he could put his momentary embarrassment out of his mind and go on without being reminded too much about his loss.
He was fourteen. He was fifteen. He looked in the windows downtown where the male model magazines were displayed in stores he could not dream of going into. He stared at them. He dreamed of standing like the models, head turned this way and that way, wearing only a posing strap. He improvised in front of the bathroom mirror before he took a bath. It made him hard and he saw himself in the mirror nearly as if he were a picture he was looking at and not simply the elusive image of himself, the illusionary reflection of the person he wanted to be and was not.
He liked the water hot in the bath and sometimes he made it too hot. When he did, he came out dizzy and fell into his swirling bed unable to stand, his head pounding.
Like what you see?
The voice was friendly. It was not an accusation. Matthew felt ridiculous and embarrassed.
Matthew was waiting for William and had wandered away from the subway kiosk and was looking at the posters of male models posing in the window of the newly installed Hudson's Gym that had opened on Metropolitan Boulevard.
Matthew jumped.
Hey, Jamie said. I'm not here to scare you. I want to give you some literature about us. We just opened, and we're inviting everyone in for a free session. It looked from the way you were looking at these pictures, Jamie said pointing, like you were interested.
Matthew was taking the handout. Jamie was well built, handsome, and only a few years older. He was wearing tight black short shorts with a thin double red stripe up the sides and a sleeveless black t-shirt with tiny epaulets. It was his work uniform. It made Matthew weak in the knees.
As he was taking the handout, William was coming out of the subway kiosk across the street where they had arranged to meet. Matthew saw him and panicked.
Without warning, he jumped away, and without being aware of it, he let the papers fall because he suddenly failed to grasp them.
I gotta go, he said. There's my friend.
He was afraid William had seen them.
Jamie picked up the papers.
Next time, he said, catching Matthew's eyes before he slipped away, looking up at him as he was couching over the papers, it won't be this easy.
He smiled and gave a wink and stood up as Matthew was darting away.
At least, next time, it won't be this easy is what Matthew heard, but he could not make sense of it.
Who was that? William said.
Some guy giving out coupons for the new gym, Matthew said.
Just by looking at him you can tell he's worried about the size of his cock, William said.
William was tall and pale and skinny, lanky and his eyes were piercing, his hair messy, and his voice was raspy and burning with intellect. Without trying he cultivated a circle of listeners around him and expected to. He was a year ahead of Matthew, a junior when Matthew was a sophomore. Matthew saw him for the first time in the lunch room the second semester when they both had been assigned the same lunch period. He was magnetized by him. William, who always cultivated a coterie, sensed there was something in Matthew that needed domination, and took him under his wing. New friends excited him, like new-bought books he began to read with eagerness. Frequently, he embittered the recently prized one after he had read through as much as he wanted to and then stopped, lost interest (was it the book's fault?), shut the book, and put it on the shelf.
Why do you say that? Matthew asked.
Displacement, William said knowingly as they passed through the turnstiles.
Displacement? Matthew repeated.
He's got a cock he's ashamed of because it's little, so he compensates by showing off his muscles. It makes him think he's potent.
You think so? Matthew said.
It's obvious, William said as the doors of the train closed and they were roaring downtown. All those guys into body building are ashamed of their small penises.
Matthew waited that night until after he finished his geometry homework before he looked at his penis. He didn't think he really cared about its size. Then he remembered the pictures of the guys in the posters in the window of Hudson's. They were awesome, like the guys he couldn't take his eyes off when he looked in the windows downtown at the male models on the covers of the octavo magazines that he never had the courage to purchase.
He had not disputed what William said when he said it. He would not have known what to say had he tried, and William spoke with such finality and authority, that whatever he said seemed incontrovertible.
He wanted William to be right. It felt good. It felt like he was being initiated into an understanding of the world he had never had before.
Nevertheless, Matthew wondered if it were really true. Guys went into body building because they were ashamed of their penises? It did not seem to him that the guys posing on the covers of the male model magazines he could not help looking at were ashamed of anything. He wished he looked like them.
Sunday morning he was unable to sleep.
He showered and put on jeans and a t-shirt and a pair of moccasins. It was mid May and overnight it had gotten summery.
He took his bike from the storage room in the basement and rode over to the river where the river split into several channels.
He chained his bike to one of the girders supporting an overpass and walked along the shore.
The sun was strong and he stripped off his tee-shirt and his jeans and lay down upon the thick grass near the water's edge in just his underwear. He became drowsy and fell asleep.
He awoke from the dream that he was taking a shower after gym class and felt an unpredicted rain soaking him.
How do you like this!
It was someone in a canoe swiftly paddling to the shore and laughing who was calling to him.
He stepped out of the canoe in water up to his knees and pulled the canoe onto the shore.
I didn't expect it was going to rain, he said.
Neither did I, said the canoeist, laughing as he chained the canoe to a tree.
You're all wet and so are your clothes, he said as Matthew pulled up his wet jeans and the tee shirt that clung to him.
I remember you. It was Jamie. I told you there would be a next time. He was smiling.
I live nearby. Come over and we can dry off and have coffee.
My bike is chained up under the bridge.
Leave it there. It'll be safe. Come on.
Ok.
You don't like being who you are, Jamie said once they'd gotten in out of the rain which had become relentlessly torrential. It was not an accusation; nor was it pity. He was just stating the obvious in a friendly way.
What's your name? Matthew said.
Jamie, the canoeist said. Why didn't you take the brochure from me? You like those pictures.
Matthew blushed.
I was ashamed, Matthew said, hoping to get out of it by exculpating himself.
But Jamie was not having it.
Ashamed of what?
Ashamed of wanting to be like what he liked, of liking it. He did not want to be the way he was and he was not able to be anything but.
You're ashamed of your body and ashamed of wanting to make it look better. How fucked up is that?
Very fucked up, Matthew said. I guess you're right.
He felt an uncanny excitement that he did not trust.
Did you tell him? Jamie asked.
Who? Matthew said. What?
Your friend whom you ditched me for, Jamie said with a laugh.
Tell him what? Matthew said.
That you were excited by the idea of joining the gym?
No.
You don't talk about that?
He thinks it's neurotic.
What's neurotic? Jamie said, puzzled. Joining a gym?
Homosexuality.
Is that the connection you make?
Maybe it is, Matthew said.
So you are excited by the idea of going to the gym, of developing your body, of having a physique you'd be proud to show off and ashamed of wanting to because it shows your homosexuality?
Matthew remained silent.
And it scares you.
Matthew said nothing.
Because it excites you.
Matthew was feeling dizzy.
Jamie was too near him.
You are afraid of yourself. You are afraid to feel. Like right now, when I'm this close to you, you can't let yourself give in.
Matthew was trembling with the desire to touch him and the inability to do it, but Jamie was not waiting for him. He took hold of his trembling shoulders and looked into his eyes and smiled.
He brought him near and took possession with a kiss.
Matthew fell and disappeared and reappeared levitating in the kiss.
You aren't trembling anymore.
No, Matthew said, excited by the hardness of Jamie's body, gazing into his eyes. He was not thinking about what would happen next. He was here in unbreakable now.
[Please put the story name in the subject slot if you write me. Thanks.]