A Warm Day in August
The email simply stated:
Danny. Missed you at the 30th reunion. Stay in touch. Ben.
Dan hadn't intended to skip the reunion when he opened the invitation in February, but the discovery of his mother's pancreatic cancer a month later and her rapid deterioration pushed the thoughts of attending from his mind. In late May, he moved into her two-story home on Peterson Street on the west side of Eau Claire where he'd grown up. By the time she passed peacefully in mid-July, just a week before the reunion, his focus was fully absorbed by the twin ordeals of caring for her in her final days and preparing the funeral arrangements. Soldier-like, he commanded himself to carry on, even after his brother, Darren, arrived to lend a hand, three days before her death. It was easier to take charge and make sure the rest of the family had their moments to grieve than to let himself become immobilized by his own reflections.
He could have stayed on in the empty house a few more days after the burial and attended the reunion festivities at the downtown Holiday Inn. His wife, Jenny, even encouraged him to. But, by that point, utterly exhausted, he had no motivation to relive old times with former high school classmates--very few of whom he had any emotional connection to after so many years. So he left Eau Claire the day before the reunion and returned to Monroe, four hours south, seeking a reclusive few weeks, reluctant to speak to anyone, even to Jenny or the kids, except on the most mundane levels. Because his sleep patterns had been altered by two months of nursing his mother, he continued to wake at four. As dawn ascended off the screen porch in variations of grey and muted pastels, he tasted spoonfuls of the sorrow he had bottled away amid his devotion to the responsibilities he knew she expected him to perform in her final days.
Ben's email coming a week after he returned interrupted his contemplative state. Somewhere near his boyhood memories that had become so churned up during his long stay with his mother, images of his joyous times with Ben now swirled freely, unfettered by the usual control he had over their flight. A mild regret at having missed the reunion clung to the other bittersweet sensations that had been coursing close to the surface for weeks. Ben's greeting was unusual. Over the past twenty-five years, since the rituals of the reunions began, he was always the one to make the overtures, in letters or emails, but Ben rarely responded.
He thought this reticence or, more likely and quite crassly, Ben's simple disregard for his outreach odd. When they saw each other at the five-year revivals, Ben, without fail, welcomed him with genuine warmth and they talked for hours about matters that ranged well beyond their jobs and children and the intoxicated antics they had fallen into when they were nineteen. But when the bar at the banquet hall closed during the hour after midnight and Ben's wife, Ellie, slipped her arm through his, Ben faded away for another five years.
He didn't usually assess his social interactions so inaccurately. As a high school counselor, he shouldn't have been this rusty, even if most of his psychological interventions for the past twenty-three years had been with teenagers. Perhaps, in the end, there was not much more to talk about. Many of their social and political outlooks had diverged over the years. Other than for a few years of their lives, decades ago, they had little in common as middle-aged men. Their philosophical ramblings every five years interspersed with anecdotes from high school and early college would likely become redundant without something else from their present lives to balance these discussions.
He sipped his coffee and gazed into the faintly tangerine tinge of the changing dawn. Ben's terse note, the more he contemplated its intent, resonated as an off-key note against the finality of something much more profound. He had never expected his mother to die, in any real sense, always anticipating that the weekend phone calls and the visits to the old house would go on indefinitely. Seventy-eight seemed far too young even when his more practical side accepted her passing in the many weeks he spent at her bedside assisting the hospice workers. As he reflected further, he concluded that Ben likely heard the news about his mother at the reunion and wanted to pass on his regrets, so he sent off a quick response:
Missed seeing you too, Ben, but family matters kept me away. My mother passed on near the time of the reunion. Things are OK, though part of me is still reeling from the loss. Hope all is well with you--and I did miss our once-every-five-year chat.
A few days later, Ben responded:
Danny. Sorry about your mom. I heard at the reunion that things were going poorly. The next day, when I visited family in Eau Claire, my aunt told me that your mom passed away some days earlier. I recalled how you listened to me ramble on about my mother's death five years ago. I missed our chat as well and would like to see you sometime to get my fix. Don't really want to wait until the next reunion. As always.
Dan was bewildered by the open-endedness of the last part of the response. Ben lived just north of Madison, ninety minutes away, but, for the past twenty years, that distance could have been a day's drive as far as Ben wanting to see him. At least he could do what Ben most often never did: have the decency to respond.
Thanks for the note and your appreciation of what I have just gone through. Would like to see you, too, but you make the call. Where and when? My family is heading out of town for the next few weeks, so I have a lot of flexible time before the school year starts. Let me know.
Ben's response came just a few hours later.
I have to visit our Monroe plant next week and will be in your neighborhood for a couple of days. How about that?
He wrote back affirming a meeting time, then helped Jenny finish her preparations for the annual August vacation to her family's cottage in northern Minnesota, a trip she knew he needed to skip this year. Four days later, after an early morning farewell to Jenny and the kids, he began to think about seeing Ben the next day and felt himself slipping into the same reveries he relived after each high school reunion. He reminded himself of what he was convinced was the real reason Ben never wanted follow-up meetings after their intense conversations. Ben knew that at the heart of their relationship, that had not really blossomed until the final year of high school and the first year of college, was something that Ben didn't want to be a part of. He tried to pretend, as he usually did, that the love he had for Ben when he was eighteen and nineteen was simply something unique. The synergism of two maturing personalities blended together in taverns and during pot-filled nights on the shores of the Chippewa River as they were emerging as adults into the maelstrom of craziness that defined their version of the 1970s. A relationship that clicked so purely and sweetly for a flash of time before Ben's life became consumed with his pursuit of Ellie Barstow.
But in those most honest moments that were sometimes very frightening to him, he understood there was something more for him: a physical attraction about which he had no understanding at age nineteen was part of the whirlwind that propelled him to be with Ben. Amid all the other aspects of his affection for Ben, this physicality was energized again every five years. If he let himself, he could easily recall the first time he'd seen Ben in the locker room after a P.E. class. At the time, Ben had brown belly hair, just a bit of youthful chest hair, as well as the beginnings of a tuft just above his ass. Images of his cock accompanied those memories: uncut and thick in its resting position, surrounded by a surprisingly dense thicket of pubic hair. They had gone skinny dipping in the river on a number of occasions the summer after graduation. On one occasion when Ben was talking about the women he had dated, he had gotten hard and stroked himself. His glans had protruded fully beyond the foreskin as he enjoyed himself, though he stopped with just a few drops of precum showing, saying, "When I get home, I'll take care of this." Dan had allowed himself to get erect as well. But it had nothing to do with Ben's descriptions of women. But then Ben continued stroking and went too far and his jizz spurted several feet into the river. It was so arousing that Dan followed soon after, imagining Ben's cum on his belly and chest. They laughed afterward as they opened fresh cans of beer, but had never spoken about that night again as though it were no more than teenage sexual hijinks.
At one of their earliest reunions, he thought it was the tenth, Ben referenced Dan's interest in him in private, telling him that several of their classmates wondered if he was a "fag"--the operative word that still existed in the 1980s. Ben asked him politely about this and with affection, and Dan said, "Of course not, I'm married." He had married Jenny four years before this, though she was not present at the reunion. Ben merely remarked that he didn't think Dan was gay but wanted to alert him to what others were thinking.
It was with anticipation and uncertainty that he walked into the lounge at the local Best Western the next night. Ben immediately rose from a booth at the rear of the bar to greet him warmly with a hug. "Danny, good to see you. You're looking great. Trim as high school. Damn, how do you do it?"
That wasn't exactly true. He had put on nearly twenty pounds over the past thirty years, but it manifested very subtly without much of it at his belly line. This was Ben's traditional way to talk around his own battles with the scale, a topic he always seemed to rely on as an ice-breaker. He had been forty pounds over his high school weight of two hundred at their last meeting though now looked trimmer. Oddly, he always thought Ben's weight well distributed on his six-foot-three frame. For as long as he'd known him, he had the stature of a defensive lineman, and even now, in a modified version, looked like a big-barreled, large-assed professional waiting for the next snap at the line of scrimmage. Dan remarked about the weight change and Ben lit up. "Glad you noticed, but hold that question while I get you a drink. What's your pleasure?" Ben said.
"Something local would be great."
He slid into the booth, and when Ben returned with bottles of Spotted Cow, they eyed each other across the table. He began to feel the discomfort immediately, but Ben seemed oblivious. "So, you want to know about me losing a few pounds?" Ben said.
"How much have you lost?" Dan said.
"Over twenty-five in the past couple of years. It was the usual. Doctor scare. He reminded me that my blood pressure was too high and that my family line is filled with heart attacks. He's told me that at least a dozen other times, but this time something stuck," Ben said.
"Why this time?" Dan said.
"Maybe I just didn't want to look like a fat pig at the reunion. I figured I'd see you there, and you never look like you've changed," Ben said.
Ben laughed, amused by his self-deprecating remarks. Dan noticed that Ben's jowls were tighter allowing his daylong whiskers to highlight the angles of his face rather than the roundness of the features Dan remembered seeing. His hair seemed greyer, though still thick and wavy. "At least you've got a lot more hair than I have," Dan said.
"Yeah, but avoiding male pattern baldness never kept anyone alive," Ben said.
"How did you drop the weight?" Dan asked.
"Mostly cutting down on beer, ice cream, and beef. Been working out more, too," Ben said.
"How do you feel?" Dan said.
"Great. Blood pressure's better. I actually feel like I'm walking with a lighter step. Ellie says I'm easier to live with. It's all copacetic," Ben said.
Dan laughed. "Copacetic" had been their comic yet elevated term, or so they thought, for having the world by the balls, something they picked up in a freshman literature course after reading a short story by John O'Hara, but he hadn't used the term or even heard anyone utter it for decades. An awkward silence slipped in alongside them, then Ben reached across the table, touched his hand, and said, "Sorry about your mom. I didn't really know her, but it's the shits. Sometimes I still get weepy about my mother, and it's been seven years. I wish I had known about her before I went to the reunion. I would have called."
He thanked Ben and talked about the final days of her life. Then they philosophized, much like they might have at a reunion, about how the passing of parents brings families together and splits them apart at the same time. Ben asked about Darren, with whom Ben had played football, and, after he recounted what Darren was doing in Indiana, the quiet that had already perched itself in their booth took hold again. The conversation about his mother subdued him and tempered his usual energy to interview Ben, and he realized that was what he usually did at the reunions: asked Ben questions about his life so relentlessly, questions that he would have liked Ben to send his way, that there was no reason Ben wouldn't get tugged into an intense conversation. What seemed like it was clicking with them at those gatherings was simply him penetrating Ben's core values and passions about work and family to such an intimate level that Ben felt compelled to answer--that we all feel compelled to answer when someone seems that keenly interested in us. But with so many thoughts about his mother, he didn't feel the urgency and the social obligation to be the journalist.
Ben got up to go the men's room and asked if he wanted another beer, but he had hardly touched the first. He reflected about how Jenny had been so instrumental in helping his family with the funeral and wake. She needed to have a break from the grieving that was only hers secondhand, and her trip to Lake Bemidji would allow him the unscripted days to process his family dissolution in privacy. So deeply was he pondering the recent past that when Ben clasped his shoulder from behind, he jumped from the unexpected touch. Ben laughed. "Sorry, Ben, was off somewhere else," Dan said.
"I'm not a counselor, like some people I know, but if you want to talk about your mom go ahead," Ben said.
"Nah. I've had months to process it," Dan said.
Ben swallowed some beer, then paused like it had gone down the wrong way. He looked at Dan and asked sheepishly, "Can I ask you about something else?"
Dan smiled, glad to leave the trance of death, and said, "Sure, we're old friends. Nothing to hide."
Then Ben backed off, and Dan sensed he'd have to conduct an interview. "What is it?" Dan asked.
"Shit. Bear with me," Ben said but he paused again.
"Everything OK with you? Ellie? The kids?" Dan said.
"Yeah, the same there. I mean everything changes but everything remains mostly the same. Must be the same for you," Ben said.
"Of course," Dan said.
"This is really awkward," Ben said.
"We hardly ever see each other. Pretend we're strangers," Dan said.
"That's why I emailed you, to meet like this. We're like strangers who know each other too well," Ben said.
Dan smiled and said, "Nice turn of phrase."
Ben took another detour. "Several times over the years, after we met up at reunions, I was going to call you, but I never did. Sorry. I should have. You've sent me plenty of notes and emails over the years, but I seldom responded. You must think I'm a real asshole."
"I wondered a little bit, but life goes on. What we have in common is such a slender slice of our lives that maybe it doesn't really count for much," Dan said.
"You think that's true?" Ben asked as though surprised.
"Nothing personal. You know I like you and always have. But thirty years of hardly seeing each other is a long time. When I walk away tonight, I might not see you again until the next reunion. If I go and we're still alive," Dan said.
"You'll be alive. You're a healthy fucker," Ben said.
"Probably," Dan said.
Again the silence swept in. "You want another beer? I'm having one," Ben said.
"I'm good." As Ben walked off, Dan had the feeling that he might not come back. His drifting conversation had become that undirected. So, when Ben returned, Dan moved things forward. "Not to be an overly aggressive shithead or anything, because I do like seeing you, but what do you want?"
"Blunt fucker, aren't you?" Ben chuckled.
Dan was only mildly annoyed. "Outside of the reunions, we've hardly had any contacts like this since we were teenagers and none at your instigating, so just say whatever's on your mind," Dan said.
"OK. But you've got to hear me out," Ben said.
"I won't go anywhere unless you continue to stonewall me," Dan said.
The words had come out unexpectedly, but Ben seemed unaffected. "When we talk at reunions, with such intensity, but still laughing in that carefree, uninhibited way, that's always been something special for me. So, I figured I could talk to you about anything. About a year ago, something happened to me physically. Part of it was recognizing I had to do something about my weight and the doctor trying to scare me about a heart attack, but there was something else. I was having a lot of weird dreams--sex dreams. I've been married nearly twenty-five years, and my marriage is good. But the dreams were not about Ellie or anything she and I have done in the past. Guys I was working out with at the health club appeared in my dreams. They were lifting weights--wearing hardly any clothes and sometimes we were in the group showers," Ben said.
Ben stopped, and Dan could sense that while Ben likely had rehearsed the words in this dissertation many times, the puzzled and embarrassed look that now arose on his face was unplanned. But because he had always trusted Ben's intelligence so profoundly, he instantly sensed something else: Ben was fully aware that, by speaking about these dreams and by simply asking him to listen, they were breaking taboos that both of them lived by one hundred percent of the time. Even if they didn't believe in them as deeply. Perhaps Ben half-expected him and even wanted him to start laughing, but he didn't. In a softer voice now, reflecting the delicacy of the subject and, he assumed, Ben's perception that he fully understood the forbidden terrain they had entered, Ben continued. "Here's the weird part, and maybe it's really fucked, but I was enjoying the dreams. I woke up hard almost like I was having a wet dream. You know how long it's been since I've had one of those? We're knocking on fifty and the possibilities for nocturnal emissions ran out a long time ago. And I used to have a lot of them, about women all the time. I was such a horny fucker. You remember that about me?" Ben said.
Dan said, "I remember, and I'm as old as you, so I know what you mean about the clutch starting to slip."
"I was really spooked. Ellie and I don't get it on as much as we used to, once a week, sometimes two weeks go by. But when we do, it's still good. But this dream shit was something different. I'd look at other guys in the shower rooms like everybody else, but not seriously, and I don't think I'd ever dreamed of a naked man. But two, three nights a week I was sleeping with these guys from the club. And then other men took their place, from work or that I knew twenty years ago and haven't seen since. Even you made an appearance. Shit, I was waking up horny like a teenager and was thinking about it throughout the day. Then I'd get pissed off," Ben said.
He stopped as two men positioned themselves noisily into the booth next to them, talking loudly about the best meal on the menu. Dan glanced over his shoulder at the men and looked back at Ben. He said, "Like a cold shower, huh?"
"What?"
"Those guys behind me," Dan said.
"Yeah."
He knew Ben wasn't finished, so they slipped out into the parking lot. The sun had an hour left and daylight another forty-five minutes beyond that, so Ben drove them to Sugar Valley State Park five minutes up the road. The silence which had become more complicated curled into the backseat as Ben drove up the highway and through the winding roads to the valley in the park. They walked down to the lake and sat on a bench overlooking the beachfront as the evening swimmers gathered up their clothes and beach chairs. The game was still in Ben's court, but he owed him a jumpstart. "Why were you so pissed off about the dreams?" Dan said.
"For one thing, I found myself staring at some men at work. I mean, at their groins. I'm not gay, so why me, at this point in my life, and so often?" Ben said.
"Are you still having the dreams?" Dan said.
"Not as often. But, yeah. Before I nod off each night, I'm wondering if they might
appear while I'm sleeping," Ben said.
"And the guys at work?" Dan said.
"Sometimes I give myself over to it," Ben said.
"Weird shit happens in dreams," Dan said.
"I tell myself that. But now, at work or the health club, I look at these guys funny. They've become part of my sex world." Ben paused and spoke softly, "Sometimes, when I'm having sex with Ellie, I think about them."
"Lots of people have sex fantasies. It's pretty healthy. Ellie's probably thinking about lots of things while you're blowing your stack," Dan said.
"Maybe," Ben said.
Dan watched the sun slide behind a bluff and said, "Ben, why are you telling me this stuff?"
"I trust you." He grinned and slapped Dan's arm. "You're the perfect stranger."
Dan giggled nervously.
"What's so funny?" Ben asked.
"If I told you I wanted to screw around with somebody I shouldn't, what would you tell me to do?" Dan said.
"I don't know. Be smart. Be careful. Get over it," Ben said.
"Isn't that your answer, too?" Dan asked.
"Could be. But I've never had sex with a man, so I don't know," Ben said.
Dan got up from the bench and walked toward the lake knowing his part in this conversation was at a crossroads. What Ben was revealing touched what he kept buried more deeply than any secret, like the coins that escape from swimmers' pockets and the rings that, seemingly with minds of their own, slide from bathers' fingers to lie under the sludge on the lake bottom. There was no reason to stir up the muck. He felt his teeth clench, almost tasting the bile, irritated that the past few months had made him this vulnerable. But the conversation was, as well, titillating and even arousing him physically in an unanticipated way. He didn't think anything was apparent to Ben. But the feelings he had but never understood about Ben when they were nineteen and that he successfully smothered all these years, even when the same sensations were stirred up by their conversations at the five-year reunions, were now rising in his gut. He didn't want to send either of them into water so deep that the rescue could only end in awkwardness and anger. He considered telling Ben he needed to get back to his car but instead repeated his question, "Why are you telling me this?"
Ben raised his gaze slowly, as though he heard every thought Dan just explored. "Please don't take this the wrong way. I always had the feeling when we were friends, and even when we met at high school reunions, that if I had come on to you, you would have been willing. I didn't realize about the nineteen-year-old stuff until more recently. But when I think back, there was something about the way you spent time with me back then that was...different from how other guys acted," Ben said.
This time giggling was Ben's best escape and Dan didn't mind. "Is that why you told me I was a fag at the high school reunion?" Dan asked.
Ben's face reddened. "You still remember that? That was just me, not anybody else in our class. Maybe you figured that out. I thought I was being helpful, warning you to be more...shit, more what? I don't know what it means to feel this way," Ben said.
Dan felt his confusing state of arousal continue. "Let me get this straight, Ben--no pun, intended. Are you asking if some part of me is gay despite the fact that I've been married for over twenty years and have two nearly grown-up kids?"
"I guess I am. I know it sounds stupid and maybe you're insulted," Ben said as he looked away and seemed to gulp some of the mid-August air before turning back. "Is my hunch about you accurate?"
Dan glanced at the lake knowing that Ben was asking him to step deeper into the silt than he dared go, so he backed off. "If I say, no, what would that mean to you?"
"That I was wrong. That I'm sorry I started this conversation. That we should have brought a six-pack with us, just like the old times when we watched the sun set over the Chippewa River at Bostad's Ramp," Ben said.
"And what if I say yes?" Dan asked.
"First you'd have to say it. And if you don't say anything, I guess you'll be just like me, wondering what's going on with my fantasies," Ben said.
Dan looked away and saw a fishermen pull in a good size fish, probably a smallmouth bass, then expertly swoop in his net to bring it into the boat. He glanced over at Ben who was waiting for him.
"What the hell. Yeah, if you really want to know. I loved you when I was nineteen, like I've seldom loved anyone since. And part of it was some kind of physical attraction. I knew about it then but didn't understand it. I was really naïve. You and most of the guys were way ahead of me in matters of sex. Times were different, and I was saved from doing something I would have always regretted because I was so ignorant. Our world wouldn't let me go any further with it. I've been aware of it for many years, though never allowed myself to talk to anybody else about it. I wouldn't be now if you hadn't started it. Wouldn't have had the nerve in a million years," Dan said.
Then he smiled and looked directly into Ben's face, knowing his grin was false, that all the wretched stripping away of his defenses over the summer months had allowed his most carefully nurtured secret to become spoken words. Through his embarrassment, he looked at Ben who seemed both satisfied and stunned. Annoyed, Dan continued. "Does that answer your damn question, Ben? Is that why you came out here to see me, to hear me admit that?"
Ben hesitated as a wry smile found his lips. Dan felt his disgust ease a bit as Ben spoke softly. "I'm amazed you're so honest, Danny, but I got to admit I'm at a loss for words."
"Even though your suspicions have just been validated?"
"I owe you an answer to your question. You know, why am I bringing this up?"
"Don't leave me dangling now that you squirmed the truth out."
"You want to go back to the motel?"
"Yeah. My car's there."
"No. To my room."
When Ben shut the door to room 207, Dan thought they'd left the silence behind, but it was there again, just more a part of his own confused past than it was earlier. He didn't know what to say or do. Were Ben someone he had just met, it would have been easier to just unzip his pants and suck him off. He had thought fleetingly about such possibilities before this. But Ben was someone he knew, not well in the present moment, but intimately in the past who had forced his way on stage and raised the curtain without any auditioning or rehearsals. Ben was backstage, flushing the toilet and washing his hands. Maybe changing his mind, while he was drifting into a state of mind that was so fantastical that he felt like a fool. Ben came out and asked if he needed to use the john, and he did, though he knew it was mostly out of nervousness. He looked in the mirror as he rinsed off his hands. He viewed himself, as he often did, ignoring the physical changes that would be apparent to others and seeing himself as little changed from thirty years ago. Sometime in his first year out of high school, his portrait in a mirror had become fixed, defying his sagging tissue, a thicker set of whiskers, and a forehead free of hair. And, he was sure, a weariness that had arisen from enduring almost half a century. He dried his face and hands and went out. Ben was sitting in the chair near the window looking up at him. "What do we do next?" Ben asked.
"You really want to continue?" Dan asked.
Ben shrugged his shoulders. "I could call Ellie and wish her goodnight. Tell her you and I had a drink and that you're doing great. Then you went home and I'm planning on seeing you again at the next reunion because you promised to come if you're alive."
"Maybe you should," Dan said.
"But that's not why I came out to see you," Ben said.
"You can change your mind. We're not impulsive teenagers," Dan said.
Ben nodded, each of them understanding the precariousness of the moment. Only a few feet separated them from an irretrievable leap. Whatever maturity they had come to in nearly fifty years was slipping away on this precipice. Dan watched him intently, waiting for Ben's common sense to take control of this curiosity that had infected his desires. But Ben continued to sit there, knee bouncing, teeth nibbling on his lower lip, until he stood up and said, "Fuck it. Just fuck what I'm supposed to do."
He took three steps toward Dan and held out his hands, and Dan took them pulling them into an embrace. Their bodies touched for a long time, not nearly thirty years, but long enough to allow him to remember when he was nineteen. Ben caressed his back and shoulders, and some of the tension he felt subsided. Ben pulled back slightly and said, "The kiss will tell us a lot."
He felt Ben's lips pressing lightly against his. He wasn't sure what to do next, nor did Ben, their references being only the cues they had learned from being with women. Then they began to discover that many of the signals were the same. Dan pushed with his lips and the passion trickled out, still fearful as he'd always been about giving himself away. Ben responded and their tongues touched, but then he pulled back, seemingly surprised. Dan now anticipated Ben backing off, sensing his mistake, but instead he said, "It's nice, but your glasses are in the way."
Ben removed Dan's glasses and set them on the desk and kissed him again, this time with his tongue licking Dan's lips. Dan could feel himself drifting into the youthful portrait he'd just glimpsed in the mirror even though the lips he was touching were from the face of his old friend who so clearly looked nearly fifty. In reality, Dan was the same, a slightly paunchy high school guidance counselor whose face and body portrayed his age quite accurately. He figured that was the only picture Ben was viewing at this moment. Still he wondered if Ben, in any way, might be awakening to something Dan had felt so passionately when they were close friends. His hesitancy prevailed again. "You OK about this, Ben?"
"I think so."
Then he grinned and squeezed Dan's shoulders like he had done occasionally when they were younger after they'd been drinking for hours and were saying goodnight. "Danny, you queer. I was right all along."
He could feel the same affection in these words that had always drawn him to Ben's lively personality. "Maybe so, but you're not completely right. And what about you?"
"I don't know. Just let me kiss you again."
The kissing became more intimate as they removed each other's clothing and settled into bed in just their underwear. Ben's erection pushed against his blue and green striped boxers, while Dan's filled out his black briefs. Their kissing eventually slid down to their chests, with each of them taking turns sucking on each other's nipples. Ben moaned loudly, "Damn, Ellie has never played with my tits like this. I feel it in my cock and ass. Do it some more please."
Dan leaned onto his body so his mouth was directly over Ben's nipples. He licked and sucked them. When he nibbled lightly, Ben wiggled and moaned again. "Man, that is just fantastic. You do that with Jenny?"
"A little licking and sucking but not nibbling. Thought I'd try it."
"You sure you haven't done this before?" Ben said.
"Only thought about it. How about with you and Ellie?"
"She's not a very adventurous lover in most respects. Short answer, never had it done like this," Ben said.
Dan rolled off of Ben and they faced each other side to side. "Maybe we should stop. Talking about what we do with our wives might be the wrong message to each other," Dan said.
"What else can we compare this to?" Ben said.
Ben rubbed Dan's belly coated with dark hair trailing downward, then the waist band of his briefs. "We were almost there before you stopped us," Ben said.
Dan felt Ben's hand slide across his briefs and settle on the wet spot, rubbing the moisture. "You're a big leaker, huh?"
"Yeah. Comes easily and usually quite a bit. How about you?" Dan said.
"About the same. Feel my boxers," Ben said.
Dan slid his fingers across the slit in the boxers finding them quite soaked. "If you guide him, he'll pop right out," Ben said.
"You sure about the next step?" Dan asked.
"I need to try it, buddy. That's why I'm here."
"No regrets so far?" Dan said.
"Just some hesitation. Maybe some doubt. Probably because it's the unknown," Ben said.
Ben place his hand on Dan's and together they slid his rigid cock out through the slit of the boxers. "Hold it," Ben said.
Dan held the shaft interlocking his fingers with Ben's. "I always thought it was impressive," Dan said.
"When have you seen it like this?"
"Only once hard. When we were swimming in the river late at night. I was always curious. Wondering what it's like to be uncut like you are."
Ben laughed and said, "I was such an outsider in the locker room. Only a few of us were intact. Made me feel like I didn't belong in the ninth grade. Then I got used to the differences. And it didn't matter."
As he talked more about what it was like growing up uncircumcised, Dan played with the foreskin, sliding it up and down as Ben's precum oozed out. "Does Ellie like to play with it?"
"Not much. Maybe if one of our kids had been a boy she would have gotten used to mine more. I would have insisted we leave a male kid uncut."
Dan felt Ben's hand along his thigh, sliding inside his briefs, pulling his mostly erect cock and his tight balls free with his hand. "Did you ever look at mine much when we were younger?" Dan said.
"Didn't look much at anybody's much then. This is all new for me. Yours feels just as long as mine," Ben said.
"Not as thick," Dan said.
"You ever shave your balls?" Ben asked.
"No. You?" Dan said.
"A few times. Shaved it all off down there one time. Before we had kids. Ellie laughed when she saw it. Said it looked like a chicken without any feathers."
Ben pulled Dan's briefs down to his ankles and flung them to the floor. Dan's cock stood upright as he reached toward Ben's boxers, tugging them to his knees, then all the way off and onto the floor. They looked at each other naked. Ben said, "Kind of how I remembered you, as much as I could. When I imagined you naked, you looked like this. Though I wasn't sure about your cock. You know, how big it would be when I pulled it to my mouth."
Dan smiled. "You've been thinking about it?"
"Damn, some nights so much I'd jack off several times. It's been crazy in that respect."
"You want to try it?" Dan asked.
"I want both of us to try it. Do you think you'll cum quickly if we do?" Ben said.
"Not sure."
Then quickly, Ben was between his legs, licking his balls and up his shaft, repeatedly, without sucking him, teasing him with his tongue. He was as stiff as he could possibly be. Just as Ben began to slow at his tip poised to take him inside his mouth, Dan said, "Put it on pause, Ben. So I can catch up."
Ben rolled onto his back, and Dan repeated the overtures Ben had just overwhelmed him with. Ben's cock was huge close up like this. Bigger than he could remember it. Dan moaned as he lathered Ben's hairy balls. His taint area was also fully thatched with dark hairs and licking from the taint, over his balls and up his thick shaft was overwhelming. As much as he may have wanted to be physically involved with Ben when he was nineteen, he knew he could not have enjoyed this pleasure at that age. Delaying the gratification through the foreplay.
When Ben made him stop, he suggested they suck each other in unison. He sat up and grabbed a quarter off the bedside table. "Heads or tails?" Ben said.
"For what?"
"Whether you follow me or the other way around. As we suck each other."
Ben flipped the coin and when he lost, he kissed Dan. "I was hoping I'd lose."
They turned head to ass and found comfortable positions so they could take each other. Dan licked Ben's shaft lightly on all sides, circumnavigating the cylinder, veins bulging at every turn. He felt the same being done to him. New sensations rifled through him as they mutually swirled their tongues around each other's glans. It was extraordinary. As he descended onto the shaft, he wondered how deep he could take him. He sensed Ben would be able to take his length more easily. But as his mouth approached Ben's pubic hair, he realized he could take all of him. Surprisingly, as Ben followed suit, he paused gagging a bit. "Sorry to interrupt," Ben said, but then he tried again and took Dan fully. Neither of them worked the other into a frenzy. It was slow, almost languorous sensuality. It wasn't just the novelty of the sensations, but the friction from such an active mouth and tongue was uniquely different. Ostensibly, Ben was following him, but Ben's instinctual abilities with his tongue forced him to follow Ben's lead. The passions intensified as did the quickness of their oral action. He paused, but Ben shouted out, "Don't stop," and soon they were at the cusp. The final actions of their vocalizations and deep sucking brought them simultaneously to explosions. Neither of them had difficulty taking each other's white liquid. Ben's had a sweet edge to it as he took it all down his throat. A unique sweetness he had never tasted, but had always wanted to.
He was in such an altered state that he had no sense of reclining back on the bed. Ordinary consciousness began slipping back in as the thrill of the rush to orgasm and then the explosion faded. He wondered if Ben was still at his side. When he reached over to touch him he asked, "You OK?"
Ben pushed his hand off him and said quietly, "Please don't touch me."
Dan pulled his arm back and the rush of exhaustion poured in. He tried to fight off the drowse and rolled toward Ben. Again Ben rebuffed him and scooted further away toward his side of the king bed. Then sleep took them away.
Forty-five minutes later, they lay motionless under the sheets, the silence with them again. The near darkness of the room, which minutes ago enabled the unleashing of powerful passion from both of them, now felt like a restrictive closet. Dan was confused yet immensely pleasured at the same time. He heard Ben breathing deeply, not knowing if that meant he was sleeping or something else, but he wouldn't let himself drift off again. He was anticipating the next scene and knew he didn't have the lead role. Would Ben sit up against the headboard and wordlessly indicate it was time for Dan to leave? Could Ben stay in this room and sleep in the bedding that was still moist with their drying juices? Then he reminded himself that Ben had seduced him far more than he had taken advantage of Ben. The sheets rustled as Ben pulled away. "Hey, you OK?" Dan said.
Without looking at him, Ben flicked on the bedside lamp and said, "Need to take a leak," and he hustled off to the bathroom, his right hand covering his groin.
He heard the flushing toilet and the cascading shower, so he sat up with a glimmer of hope. The water stopped and after ten more minutes the door opened. Ben emerged, a towel snugged around his thick waist. He paused briefly and glanced at the bed as though he was surprised Dan could still be naked under the sheets. His towel popped loose as he sat in the chair by the window, forcing him to hold it in place with his left hand while he commanded his right to retrieve his boxers and undershirt from the carpeting. As Ben squeezed his garments into his lap, he shook his head without looking up. "This is what fags do, Danny. Knew it but didn't get it. Shit."
Ben started choking, and Dan thought he might be gagging. "That bad?"
"Shouldn't have emailed you. Knew you'd say yes if I seduced you. I was certain part of you is queer. Could have bet a hundred dollars on that. How could I be so fucking stupid!"
Dan looked away and saw the digital clock pop onto 9:47, and through the slit in the drapery could tell that dusk had completely slipped into blackness. He sat motionless in the bed for a moment feeling an urge to punch Ben for entering his life like this, on his home turf. This was exactly what would have happened if he had been able to seduce Ben when he was nineteen or after the bar closed after one of the reunions. Nothing but regret. At least now the outcome was perfectly clear. Sadly, there was nothing more to say. He stood with a pillow covering his groin and searched for his underwear in the tangled bedding. Ben looked up. "Right here, by the chair."
Ben picked up Dan's briefs and, as Dan reached for them, grabbed Dan's wrist tightly. "I wanted this to go bad. Then I wouldn't be consumed by this urge any longer. Would have purged this fucking demon that's been knifing my guts and my balls for the past year. And all I'd have to do was say goodbye to you." He paused as he looked away again. "We never see each other anyway."
Dan pulled his hand away and snatched his underwear. "Yeah, perfect strangers." Then the anger pulsed. "Screw you, Ben."
He quickly dressed, grabbed his eyeglasses, and reached for the door, but looked back one more time before leaving. Ben was facing away from him, standing at the window. He roughly pulled the drapes apart and opened the window, his face breathing in the air of the nighttime skies.
Fifteen minutes later, Dan walked into his darkened house and automatically pushed for messages. Jenny's voice announced that she and the kids had arrived safely at the cottage, signing off with her love. He sat down at the kitchen table, and as his vision adjusted to the darkness, he saw the outline of his mother's photo amid the other memorabilia of her life that Jenny had arranged on the table, effectively turning it into a shrine for the past few weeks. He rubbed the wooden frame, then let his thumb trail over the color on the paper, over her thinning hair and weary face and frail shoulders. She was sitting in the rocking chair in the kitchen, her favorite place to rest. Like the hub of a wheel, the kitchen led to the other rooms of his childhood, to the holiday gathering places of his family. To the corner in the basement where he would go when he was lonely or needed solitude. To her bedroom and the side of her double bed which remained empty after his father walked out when Dan was seventeen. To his bedroom and the frequently laundered blue cotton sheets infused with the sun and stiff breezes of spring entangling so many of the nights and early mornings that defined the core of what he was. He recalled from his teen years capturing his seed in his hands and rubbing and rubbing it onto his bare belly and chest, not ever wanting to tarnish the smooth, sweet-smelling percale, wondering if other boys at the high school did the same.
They nearly sold the house eight years ago, but backed off at the last moment when he saw how crushing it would be for her to leave those rooms. And now the past sat framed and lifeless while the lilting, late summer breeze and a choir of crickets slid through the kitchen window screens pulling it away from him. The past recreated itself over and over in his memory, each time altering the events he had been convinced were unalterable at the time, weaving them into stories of sadness and passionate joy. Some of the stories rose from the very dense layers of memory that only opened up when he walked alone at night and when the rustling leaves of the oaks and hickories stilled his controlling voice. The present absorbed the memories and sometimes, like tonight, revealed them as lies. His mother was gone, but he had seen her infrequently before her illness struck six months earlier. Putting aside the many weeks he spent with her before her death, he seemed to remember only what she had been to him when he was growing up. Not much different than the time he'd spent with Ben. He searched for the light switch to look at her more closely but paused when he felt the tears trailing down his cheek. Before he could reach any farther he was convulsing in sobs, letting go of what he hadn't been able to during her final days and feeling the tenderness of his youthful love escape through the screens into the late summer air.