Thanks, readers. I didn't need much more than a few quick strokes to get me back on task. I got more than I bargained for!
This part is also pretty slow - for a while. In sex, I guess it's called foreplay. Some of y'all might call it a stall. The writer in me knows it's nothing more than pacing.
Again, the issue is: what more can I do with Aidan and Billy? I didn't intend it as such, but that last paragraph sure feels like The End. Fortunately, it's a story, and stories never really die - they just get saved on the hard drive.
I guess I'm spozed to warn away schoolboys and chaplains. But that seems pretty ridiculous. I think I would have liked the story if I had read it when I was fifteen.
pijito52@aol.com
Fifteen
V
I figure if I don't think about the things I really want, then I won't be disappointed when I don't get them. Some might call this pessimism. I call it insurance.
Take Billy Rowland, for example. I've never afforded myself the luxury of really looking at him, not because I don't want to, but because I've always imagined he wouldn't look back. He's been a fixture on the increasingly crowded periphery of my life: we did 3rd and 6th grade together; cassocked and surpliced, we served mass at Queen of Heaven before the scandals. When his uncle died on American Air #77, my mother marched us over to his house with a roast chicken because "it was the decent thing to do." I remember Billy standing in a sea of cousins, sad and proud and more than a little embarrassed.
Now, talking in the darkness, I am unafraid to let my eyes wander all over him. I'm certain that even with night- goggles he couldn't see into my thoughts. I'm sitting and he's standing, kicking stones - ready to leave, I suspect, if the moment gets too heavy again. He looks perfectly at ease, even so. And well he should, because all the parts fit. The uniform, part prep, part urban renegade, is a total affectation, but on him it looks unaffected. The body underneath is strong without being bulky, tight without being sculpted, graceful without being cultivated. Billy's a lot of boy, but he's not vain.
"Yo Aidan." Sounds suspiciously like Rocky Balboa, but he's not laughing. "I mean, what do you do all the time? I never see you anywhere."
This is a scary question. I'd like to dodge it, but that might wreck the little scene we've got going. "I don't know. Somehow I wind up at home. Then I go to my room. I do dork things, I guess. Read. Watch TV. Build model rockets. Just kidding." I'd like to add that I jack off a lot, that I've created a host of cyber-selves, that I'm skatrrboy15 to the bald guy in Jersey, and a Russian immigrant to the nice schoolteacher in Pomona. And that when I jack off, I look at myself in the mirror, and shoot at all the fools with my giant dick. "Not too thrilling, huh."
"It's cool. My cousin David told me he spends six hours a day on the net. He's pretty much of a dork, too, but I like him anyway. I mean, I just can't sit still that long. My butt cheeks start to hurt."
Ah, sweet honesty. Billy says exactly what he means, a skill that has somehow eluded me. It can't be that hard, I tell myself. But irony is so much easier. "Maybe you just need a better chair. Ergonomics, you know."
"Nah. I'm, like, restless." With this he heads down the slope again. I think he's leaving, and I'm about to protest, when I hear him laughing.
"Whoa! Beer goes right through me." I hear faint splashing against the tree. I imagine a bright silvery arc. The sound is enough to stir things up in my britches.
He comes back tugging at his zipper like a first grader and plants himself at my side on the picnic table. I can feel the heat radiating from his summer-brown skin. "I'm still pretty juiced," he tells me. "Like I drank a Venti Latte or something. I sometimes don't fall asleep so good. I guess you don't either."
Actually, it's one thing I do quite well, but that feels like the wrong answer. "It is 3:00 A.M., after all, and I'm not any closer to my bed than you are than you are to yours." But I am much closer to Billy, and the molecules are starting to dance inside me. He smells like beer, pheromones, and the oncoming summer, and it's all I can do not to bite him.
"Do you like school?" he asks.
"Yeah. I guess. I mean, there's not all that much to it."
"That's easy for you to say. I remember when you kicked Mrs. Monahan's ass on those timed multiplication tables."
"She was two years from retirement. It wasn't really fair."
"No. Get real. You don't think we knew it? That you were the smartest fucking kid in the school? You're still the smartest kid in the school, and if you deny it I'm going to waste you right here. So tell me, Maguire, 'cause I need to know: does it really suck as much as I think it does?" Billy's pretty much in my face, now, and as my personal space shrinks, everything else is growing. This syllogism's out of whack. No logic can save me.
He hates me.
I want him.
God help me.
"I suck, Billy. Okay. Is that what you want me to say: that it sucks being me?"
"Damn, dude. Touchy, touchy." He flicks my earlobe with his middle finger and I cringe as if he's about to pummel me. "Don't be so bitter. I'm just trying to make conversation."
"No, I mean it: I suck. I've been waiting for three years to tell somebody. Sorry it had to be now and sorry it had to be you."
"Jeez, Aidan. I mean, where does all this come from? I just wanted to know what it's like to be good in school. You know? Research the unknown." He's actually smiling, satisfied with his joke. I can't stand it. I can't think of a single wiseass thing to say. I can get out of anything, just ask my parents, but I can't get out of this moment. He's got to know that I need space. And suddenly I realize that desire feels a lot like claustrophobia, that if I want to breathe again I'm going to have to surrender. The night is starting to spin, so I look down at the ground and shake my head, and puke up the truth:
"I'm gay, Billy."
It's just a word, I know, but to me it sounds like a curse. Sticks and stones and all that shit. But it tastes terrible on my tongue, like gunpowder or bile. Okay, I think, so Jack and Will are good with it, and the Queer Eyes with their relentless hip, and the whole freakin' ten percent saying it loud and saying it proud. Not me. I don't want a hug from Dr. Phil. I'm old school. It's trauma.
"No shit?" He doesn't punch me and he doesn't run, if that's what you're thinking. He doesn't move an inch. It's like I told him my shoe was untied.
"No shit. You can go now. Tell the world. I'm sure they'll be fascinated."
"Would you shut up, Aidan. Stop being such a fucking baby." I know it sounds stupid, but it feels good to be called out. "Besides, this bench is as much mine as it is yours. So just be a nice faggot and shut up. You walk around like you're the only one who knows shit. Well I got news for you. You don't know a damn thing. But you're gonna find out. Now. Follow me."
VI
Billy asks me to shut up, so I shut up. He asks me to follow, so I follow. We're walking down streets I've known all my life, yet I feel like I'm in Bangkok or Brazil. The dogs bark in French, and bats swirl around the lampposts. Eden Glade is sleeping, but the dark things are out in force.
And suddenly we're in his backyard. "Wait here for a second," he whispers.
The Glade was born in the late fifties. Some intrepid developers, a Rowland or two among them, identified paradise in the woods across the river, 40 minutes from downtown, and got to work. They flushed out most of the vermin and dug up Indian bones and gave the wealthy frontiersmen exactly what they always wanted: security.
They didn't bargain on the Russians, however. During the Great Fear, some of the Glade's early settlers decided that the only truly safe place was underground, so instead of gazebos or fountains or crystalline pools, they built bomb shelters.
Well, the Russians never came. The shelters were sealed or simply forgotten like elderly relatives. Most of the young ones had no idea their swing sets were hammered into hallowed ground, that once upon a time their childhood games were due to be swallowed up by a mushroom cloud.
"Voila!" says Billy. The flashlight casts crazy shadows on walls lined with shelves. 32-ounce cans from a bygone era wink at me like shrunken heads.
"This is awesome." I'm fifteen again.
"My family never talks about the shelter. Specially since 9/11. When Uncle Paul died, I guess they realized how stupid it was. Anyway, I've always known where the keys were. I figured since they didn't want any part of it, it could be mine."
"You come down here all the time?"
"Yeah, pretty much. It beats the crap out of a tree house."
He starts to light candles. The room - several discreet spaces, really -takes shape before me. Billy has rescued a sofa and an old LazyBoy. In the middle of the floor is a mattress, covered with what look to be clean blankets and pillows. I wonder how many of his friends have been down here, smoking bones, drinking warm beer, and hatching ridiculous plots.
"It's like a fort, Billy. Check that. It is a fort."
"I'm not ten anymore. I don't need a fort. Sit down, Aidan."
"Sure. This where you bring Meghan Whatsername? This where it all happens?"
"Nope."
"So what's the bed for?"
"Sleeping."
"Yeah, right."
"Don't believe me, then. This is my place. You're the first person I've ever brought down here."
That has to mean something, but I'm not thinking so hot. The bed looks like an invitation. It looks like a giant mouth open to receive a kiss. "I'm honored."
"How honored are you?" Shadow-flames jump up and down on his lovely face. The perpetual smile is gone. "How honored are you?" he repeats, though I don't think he intends for me to answer. "Take off your shirt, Aidan."
"That's okay. I'm not hot."
"Take off your goddamn shirt. Please."
"All right." I pull off the Polo and fold it gently beside me.
"Take off your glasses."
"Billy, I'm blind as a fucking bat."
"Bats have sonar. They don't need glasses. Hand them over."
I'm feeling crippled and overwhelmed. Dead air and candlelight have sucked all the blood from my brain. I'm going somewhere I've never been before, and I don't have a passport, and I don't speak the language.
"Billy," I squeak. "Are you gonna hurt me?"
"I don't think so. Take off your pants. And your shoes."
"Billy, I told you I was gay. That's all. It just slipped out. I'm still Aidan."
"And I told you to shut up. I know what I'm doing."
I untie my laces and slip off my sneakers. I unhitch the belt and slide off my Levis. I think I'm wearing the Bart Simpson boxers, but I'm afraid to look.
"Nice boxers. My cousin goes to U.V.A. God you're skinny."
So this is it. I thought it would be Joey or TyRon or Stuart. Bashing the fag. Teaching him a lesson. Reminding him of his terrible inadequacy, of how lucky he is that they're going to let him live. Or Father Perrault in the sacristy with sick blandishments. Or some sweet-talking dude in the alley behind the Odeon.
"How does it feel, Aidan? All that stands between you and naked are those stupid Cavalier boxers. Tonight's about the last step. I want us to take it together."
Off comes his shirt. His khakis. He's wearing briefs, goddamnit. Billy's wearing briefs. The world is a blur, but I'm thinking to myself that I won't be raped by a boy in briefs.
"Aidan?" My name sounds like a song, like the invocation of a deity. "Come here. Come to me, Aidan." Now I am sure that I am safe, because Billy is crying, and I know that crying boys don't hurt each other.
VII
So this is foreplay. Staring with hot hands. Listening to the sweat. Exploring. It's not at all like the videos, I think. A kiss lasts forever, or at least until it's time to breathe again. Tongues battle on. We clean each other's teeth, recently stripped of orthodontury. I keep after Billy's ears, and he keeps mussing my hair. Looking into his eyes from a distance of eight inches, I feel like the world's tiniest astronaut gazing at continents on the big blue marble. There's so much here to keep us busy that we haven't even gone down there. I'm still wearing my boxers; Billy's still wearing his briefs.
Now we're on the bed, and I'm the one telling Billy to take them off. He stands over me, and I watch as he pulls them over his distended cock. He reaches to cover up, and I say, no, let me look, please, let me look. It's not huge, but it's lovely, perfect in every way like the boy it belongs to. There's a bubble of pre-cum oozing out of the slit in his dickhead. He's circumcised, as I guessed he'd be, and that flaring glans looks like a gumball from heaven. You want to scream at me now, in my ecstasy, tell me to get on with it, cut the crap, but I'm telling you that I have proved the existence of God. Mere physics could never design a body like Billy's.
"You, too, Aidan. I want to see you, too." This is communion, and his voice, like mine, is hushed, even reverential.
"Oh my God," he murmurs when he sees it all. I know he's been sensing it, but there's always a hundred miles between the imagination and the truth. For the first time in my life, I am controlling it. It belongs to me like my terrible mind and my awkward heart, a friend in need.
"Yeah. Who'd a thunk it? But you know what they say about guys with big feet."
"Oh my God."
"Touch it, Billy. I promise it can't get any bigger."
We're back on the bed, checking each other out. My fingers walk on his brown and sweaty chest like the first man on the moon. His dick points straight up like a beacon in the night. I kiss it - but only to acknowledge it. I know there's time now, time I didn't used to have.
Billy's conducting his own private examination of my penis. I don't think he knows what to do with it yet, which makes two of us. He's clearly intrigued by its heft, by its floppy-hardness (so different from the solid onyx I am kissing). And I have to guess that he is mystified by my foreskin, the way he slides it too gently over the crown and back, as if it might tear away in his hands.
"This is pretty cool. I mean, you're ginormous, and I didn't know that, but you're not cut, and that's really cool."
"It's all I've ever known. I don't even know if it's cool."
"It's cool, Aidan. I mean it's not like I've known that many dicks."
"Slut."
"I am not."
"Ho-Bag."
"Am not."
"Okay, my vestal virgin. Do you want to suck it?"
The answer is immediate. He opens his mouth and swallows the head. The delirium of his tongue swirling around my foreskin and burrowing in my pee slit distracts me from the damage his incisors are wreaking on the frenulum.
"Billy - Stop - Please, " I say, and I start to laugh again because I now know that reason is just a minion in the service of ecstasy, and because I know that I never want him to stop, never, never, never.
He doesn't pull away in time, though I'm guessing he understood at some pre-conscious level what he was up against. A few jets go down his throat. A couple of spurts wind up on his tongue. One blob drips comically from the tip of his nose.
"I'm not sure I like it." Then he wipes the cum from his nose with his index finger and places the dollop like a communion wafer on the bed of his tongue. "But I guess I could get used to it. At least it doesn't taste like chicken." And there's that smile again, the one I think I love, the one that convinces me God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.
"How big is it?" he asks, as if this is the next logical question.
"I don't know, Billy. But I'm guessing it's a keeper. Sounds funny, but until tonight, it's been my enemy. I mean, not really, but I've always treated it like a retarded little brother. Fuck, all the porn books say it's awesome to have a big dick - but that always happened to the other guy, the one who winks at me every time I hit bearsntwinks.com."
"You're bigger than TyRon. Bigger than Coach Hiller. You're the fucking King of Dicks, Aidan. And you know what?"
"What?"
"I'm gonna take care of your dick forever."
"Why, Billy," I croon in my best magnolia drawl, "I do believe that was a proposal."
"Yeah, so it is. And I'm gonna take care of you, too, genius boy."
"He likes me. He reallllllllly likes me!"
"Yeah. But you better shut up about it. I could hate you in five seconds."
"Oh! So strong!"
"Fuck you, Aidan. Four. Three."
"Yes, Billy. I'll shut up. I know. I talk too much."
"Two."
Then I do to him what he did to me, and I think he likes it. I think I've got a gift. It's like I've been sucking dick for years. I can go all the way down his shaft without gagging. I can sense exactly when he's about to explode, and squeeze. When he cums, I drink it all, and it doesn't matter that it's pretty nasty, because it's Billy, and at this moment I'd drink Drano for him. And when I look up at him, half-smiling, half in tears, I know the answer to the riddle. It's nature, Billy. It's nature. Such wonder cannot be anything else.
pijito52@aol.com