Sinner's Prayer

by Seth King

  Surprisingly, I am able to sleep perfectly with Fabian. During past sleepover parties and summer camp trips and such, I’d wrap myself up in the corner of the bed, nervous and rigid, but with Fabian I lay my leg against his side totally comfortably. The next morning I wake up wrapped inside heaven. Well, Fabian’s arms, I mean.

  I do my morning thing where I thank God for letting me wake up again, because many people who went to bed last night will not wake up, and then I realize I said that prayer from the arms of a man. But I don’t feel bad at all. If they said gay love was wrong, why does it feel so right to be here with him? It can’t be wrong. Not when his arms are this strong around me, this strong, this comforting…

  We kiss in the bright morning light, just like out of some movie or something. I feel dreamy, starry-eyed, wonderstruck. His breath isn’t great, but I don’t care. It’s still coming from his mouth. It’s still Fabian’s breath, something originating from deep within him, down in the place where I want to be, too.

  But on some level, I am petrified. And not just because of the God factor. Fabian is unreadable on the best of days, and a human question mark the rest of the time. What does he think of all this? And how long do we have to figure this out before he gets impatient and wants to walk away?

  Fabian Blanco

  I turn around one day and realize I’ve known Adam for a month. Every day is wonderful. Every day is also so scary, too. Because the faculty knows. And Adam doesn’t know that the faculty knows. I heard some chatter in the work room – two cooks were talking about some rumors, but they didn’t know the rumors were about me. But talk is getting out there. I know I should tell him about the incident with Kinnan, but I can’t. And it eats me up sometimes. But I am intent on enjoying my time with him while we still can. Because he is giving me some of the best days I have ever had…

  When we went to Golden Corral as a joke and just pigged out, when we went to the movies and he rested his leg against mine in the darkness, when we drove to the lake and rented kayaks and his flipped over next to a submerged tree – it’s all becoming so beautiful. How can I stop this? Should I stop this? And how long until he notices I’m hiding something?

  Because I think he is noticing. When his kayak flipped, I jumped into the lake, too, and swam up against him. Our faces brushed together, and he just stared into my eyes.

  “What’s happening?” he asked, breathless.

  “Um, the boat tipped, and now-”

  “No,” he said. “What’s happening? With us? What is this? And are you sure you’re okay?”

  I glanced off. Just then his dick rubbed up against my leg, making me shiver. In that moment I wanted it more than anything I’d ever wanted – it was thick and beautiful and I wanted it down my throat.

  I rubbed back, and he looked at the sky and moaned. I reached down and took it gently in my hand.

  “What’s happening is that your fat cock is against my leg,” I murmured.

  “Oh.”

  “Adam, do you get how badly I want this thing? I can wait if I have to, but don’t you understand the things I am going to do to this cock when you let me?”

  “Like…what?”

  “Things you can’t imagine. Things you’ve never even dreamed.”

  He moaned one last time, took a breath, and turned to start dragging his kayak through the water to the shore. But the only one drowning was me.

  And I desperately needed a sip from his glass.

  Adam Venus

  A few nights after our lake trip, I make an anonymous profile on Reddit, a sort of community chat room for the whole Internet. Fab and I are getting closer than ever. I need new advice, advice from people whose opinions won’t revolve around God.

  I think long and hard, and finally write up a posting:

  So I desperately need advice. This is my basic situation: one year from now I am going to be a pastor, and I yet am falling in love with a man I met last month. Some background: I always identified as “straight,” but this has been a deeper issue for years. I just avoided sex and dating, thinking a life within the church would save me from ever facing my feelings. And then, boom: I locked eyes with Fabian, I felt things I could no longer deny, and my world exploded. I can’t run anymore – I am surrendering. This is obviously a problem, because although many of the people in my world are fine with gay people, some of them are majorly not. Growing up, my life revolved around one goal: living true to the Lord so I could get into heaven. But two new facts now rule my out-of-control life: one, that homosexuality is considered a grave sin, punishable by purgatory. And two, I am falling for Fabian more and more by the day. If I am a sinner, he is my prayer – and this challenges everything I have ever believed. What do I do?

  The first response makes me laugh.

  Run, a woman named Pam says. I respond, asking her why.

  Just too much of a mess, she says. You’re coming from two different worlds, two different mindsets. Too many hurdles. Better luck with the next match. People aren’t always who you want them to be. Love says more about the person doing it than it does about the person who’s receiving it.

  I roll my eyes and mute her thread. If she’s this much of a pessimist, I’d be willing to bet she’s single, herself.

  But many of the messages say something similar. Many of them seem to feel bad for me, or some of them say disparaging things about my religion or call me a closet case or wonder how a gay Christian could possibly exist. Of course there are some nice responses, they’re just not helpful – I guess I’d underestimated how truly weird my situation really was.

  One is sort of helpful, though. A woman shares a story about a woman she loved, back when she was a fervent Catholic. She nearly committed suicide, she says, before she walked away from the church and moved in with her now-wife. But the story isn’t totally happy. She says she lost her friends, her family, her church pals. She realized she had to choose, and so she made her decision – but she still lost some things.

  I think about my own life. My dad would never look me in the eye if he knew about this. I’ve always known that. My straight, churchy friends would probably act politely confused for a few weeks before fading me out completely. So she brings up a good point. Even if I end up with Fabian, I’d still be losing other things. There is no totally happy ending here.

  Soon my phone buzzes with a message that breaks my heart, from a man named Frank:

  My first love was a kind man named Roger with blue eyes and an absolutely wicked sense of humor. We spent two beautiful years together, but we weren’t really together – we were forced to act as “friends.” Today I regret every moment I never spent touching him, every kiss I never gave him.

  Two years flew by, and then it all changed. I was devastated when he got sent off to Vietnam, and even more devastated when he killed himself while in the service due to PTSD. (That was the official line, anyway – obviously I knew another pretty big thing that could’ve made him suicidal.) He came back home in a fabric bag. I think about him all the time, I see his blue eyes in every lake I pass. If I could do it all again, I would love him as deeply as his lake eyes, just as he deserved.

  Tears clouding my eyes, I think about Fabian again. My Fabian. If I don’t at least explore this, if I don’t find out what could potentially happen, I will probably regret it for the rest of my life. What if we simply part ways and let it fade away, and the worst happens? What if I wake up in a few years and see his name in the obituaries? Or I step in front of a truck, and he sees mine?

  Hey, he texts me soon. Hang tonight?

  For a moment I see the flames promised to me if I ever did anything like this. But then I see light – bright light, radiant light. Fabian’s light.

  And then I ask him to come over. And tonight, I want to do a few things we haven’t done yet. Things that will require wine…and maybe even a condom. Because I need to start moving faster. Take driving, for example. I used to be scared absolutely bloodless of the concept of driving, and I always
thought someone was going to just stop paying attention and drive into my car and kill me. So my dad took the wheel during a training session and turned me onto the freeway, and after my initial panic attack, I performed perfectly – and I was never afraid of driving again. Maybe that’s what I need to do with Fabian – maybe I’m just not driving fast enough.

  ~

  “Hey. You want dinner? I’m making fish, and some of my homemade bread, too, from Colombia. One loaf can feed five people, I swear.”

  The way he asks it so easily an hour later, in such a familiar way, makes me melt. He brought over some wine and groceries after his workout, and now he’s busy in my kitchen as I watch TV on the couch. How can he make athletic shorts, socks, and a T shirt look sexy? His clothes hit him in all the right places, hug him at all the right angles. Every tendon, every muscle is in the right spot. Weirdly, I keep finding myself wanting to protect him and do things for him – I don’t even want to sit here being lazy while he cooks for me. I want to help – and I want him to be happy and have a good life. That’s odd and crazy, right? We barely know each other…

  “Fabian,” I say soon. “Fabian…”

  “Yes?”

  “I just love saying your name.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I just do. It feels safe in my mouth.”

  He smirks, but it’s a Fabian smirk – one that could render a normal person his sex slave, if he wanted. And in that moment I decide I want it – I want to try to be one of those people. I think of the Reddit story and I know for sure – I don’t want to become that man, the man who left all his stones unturned. I don’t want him to pull away, and so I am going to swallow my (admittedly shrinking) anxiety and…well, maybe swallow something else.

  “Fab,” I say.

  “Yeah?”

  “Turn off the stove.”

  “Why?”

  “I want you.”

  He stops. Turns. “You want me to what?”

  I inhale. “To…do things to me.”

  He doubles back. “You do?”

  Before I can say anything I walk over, reach for the wine bottle, and slam down the whole thing. With the warm courage burning in my stomach already, I turn around.

  “I have for a while. But now I’m brave enough. Get into my bed. Naked. Now.”

  When I enter the room, he’s naked, holding himself again. I swallow hard and tell myself to stay calm. But I can’t. Even the scent of his skin is turning me on.

  To leer at a male body in this way – it still feels a little wrong and shameful, on some weird level. I can’t lie about that. Everything I’ve ever been taught has told me the Word forbids this, that everything natural is against this. Hell itself is held over the heads of people who do this.

  But I’m also getting better, I really am. It all also feels electric and new and fresh, like a Friday night out at the bars after a few weeks of social hibernation. His smell, his muscles, his stubble, and again, his muscles – everything in me was wired to think this was wrong. But beneath the lingering shame, I don’t really feel that it’s wrong. If anything I feel more alive than any hymn has ever made me feel, I am burning brighter than any passage ever made me burn. Light streaming through stained glass on a Sunday morning, powdered old ladies lifting their voices into the back rafters – this is hitting me with the spirit harder than religion ever did. If anything, he feels like a different form of God, Himself, and I know I might burn in hell for saying that. But it feels true. God is supposed to activate the purest center of your heart, make you feel like you are bigger than whatever humanity has to offer – that’s what Fabian does.

  I join him on the bed. Every breath is an earthquake. He starts scooting closer.

  “Wait,” I say. “Let me ask something first. The thing gay men do…”

  “Anal sex?” he asks, and I nod. “Dude, hate to break it to you, but straight couples have anal sex all the time. There’s no difference when it’s between two guys. Hey, do you think anal sex is a sin, between married, straight couples?”

  “Hmm, let me check the Bible chapters marked ‘anal sex’…”

  “Okay, good point. Sorry.”

  I can’t believe I just said the word ‘anal sex,’ but also, I kind of can. I’m noticing so many little changes in me: yesterday I was flipping channels and saw RuPaul on some talk show, and instead of flipping away, I watched. Most Christians reflexively pull away from people like that, because they represent everything we’re taught to loathe – secularism and free thinking and liberation. But why? Why are we so judgmental of a man in a damn wig? To borrow a phrase from Fabian: who even cares, dude? It’s not my job to live other peoples’ lives for them. It’s just my responsibility to love them no matter what, to make the world brighter with my energy, and I’m starting to wish more and more of my people would see it this way.

  “We’ve got to watch gay porn,” I say after taking a breath.

  “Got to?”

  “How would you do something you’ve never seen before? Do they let any random person get behind the wheel? No, you need a driver’s test.”

  The air goes from tense to explosive as he takes out my laptop. After I unlock it he types something quickly – he knows what he’s doing – and it takes us to a page with assorted videos that make me turn away immediately.

  Then I turn back.

  An attractive – okay, hot – brunette guy is sucking another guy whose penis is about a foot long. My body goes rigid as I watch.

  “Usually they start by…well, sucking each other.”

  “Why?”

  “They just do, I don’t know, I didn’t make the rules, I just fuck by them.”

  I ignore the heat in the air and throw him some side-eye. “Oh, really? With how many people?”

  “Oh, trust me, it’s not nearly as much as you’d think. Remember, I have very high standards. And sex is also very emotional – there’s a big risk I’ll get attached if I fuck someone, so I try not to do it very much. Keeps things easy. And it’s not that bad. I have a good imagination, and lube isn’t too expensive.”

  I give him another look and then settle against him as the movie progresses. The guy being sucked moans louder and louder, and then the big scene comes – he puts the other guy on all fours, and then…well, you know. It looks too big to ever fit, but slowly, it does. I have to look away several times, out of guilt and arousal and several other things I can’t name. Just having my skin against Fabian’s right now is igniting me – and it’s not going unnoticed that he keeps rubbing his leg up against me.

  Bump-bump…

  Soon it becomes overpowering. The sounds coming from the movie, his body against mine – I can’t take it. So I do the only thing I know how.

  I turn to Fabian. “You’re trying to kill me. I need to do something.”

  “What?”

  “This is just a video. Let me see it in real life. Let me check you out. Explore you. I’ve never…I’ve touched a penis before. Okay?”

  “Fine, if you must…”

  He lays out flat on his back. For a moment I just leer. He is everything I ever wanted, and I didn’t even know it. Losing him would flatten me.

  “Open…open your legs a little.”

  I glance away, then finally look down at him. I can’t process how gorgeous he is. Long, slender legs build up into muscular, pale calves, and those curve up into…well, something I can’t process yet. A deep V shape is carved into his lower abdomen, and above that are all kinds of other muscles and tendons. He looks so beautiful, actually, it kind of just makes me want to cry. God knew what he was doing when he created this. How could anyone doubt divine design in the universe when Fabian Blanco exists?

  “Can you touch me?” I ask. “Without really, like, you know, touching me down there?”

  “Of course. Dick is off-limits. I get it.”

  He pulls me over to him, and now we’re chest to chest. I let out a breath, he does the same. We roll around for a few minutes, and it’s
the first time my body has ever been in full contact with his. And good God, I never knew anything could be like this – it’s like he’s ignited every nerve ending in my body, and I am radiating into him. You know how, when you’re looking at something through a heat scanner, when something is touched the color goes from blue to orange? That’s what his touch does to me. He lights me up.

  “Ugh,” he moans soon, his eyes somewhere else.

  “Yes?”

  “Just…fuck me,” he pants. “I want to feel you in me.”

  I stop breathing. “Oh. Are you not the one who usually does the…banging?”

  “Both can do it. Fine, don’t fuck me.”

  He’s getting frustrated – which I understand. So I decide to compromise. “Can you finger me instead?”

  He looks down at me like he’s a child who has just been given the keys to Toys’R’Us for a night. “Oh, babe. Lay yourself out. On your stomach.”

  I lay on my stomach, every bit of me tense and nervous. He dances his fingers around my entrance for a minute – or, to be accurate, what I considered until a few weeks ago to be an exit. Hehe…

  “What does it feel like?” I ask, and he pauses.

  “Um, like…like being invaded, stretched, in the best way. It’s like nothing else. Just wait.”

  He spreads some baby oil across his hands, then gets ready. He gets closer and closer, and I inhale. He arrives at the big spot, then stops.

  “Sure you’re ready?

  “Yes! Just do it!”

  I get a mental image of Moses parting the seas as he presses in. I moan, then inhale.

  “Holy…”

  “I know.”

  His finger inside me, I groan. He’s right – it’s totally different, and totally amazing. I can’t even describe it, I just know I love it.

  “Just relax your muscles. Your body only knows this as an exit point – it’s going to have to get accustomed to this. Fuck, you’re so tight.”