Lay Your Sleeping Head

by Michael Nava

  I finished my drink and said, neutrally, “Your grandfather wants to kill you. Really?”

  He frowned. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  “Put yourself in my position. In the middle of the night, a guy you met once shows up at your house and tells you he’s being stalked by his grandfather who’s some kind of serial killer. What would you think?”

  “See,” he said angrily. “That’s why I didn’t say anything to you at the jail.”

  “How did you get out of jail?” I asked him. “Who did you call?”

  “My great-uncle John, my grandmother’s brother. He has some influence down here.”

  “I’ll say he does. I heard the DA dropped all the charges,” I said. “Does your great-uncle know about your allegations against your grandfather?”

  Hugh shrugged. “I told him. He thinks . . . He thinks I’m angry about how the old man’s treated me.”

  “He doesn’t believe you,” I said.

  “I have evidence,” Hugh said.

  “Then you should take it to the police,” I said. “There’s no statute of limitations on murder and if your grandfather is cheating you out of money that belongs to you, I can refer you to a good civil lawyer.”

  He stood up. “I’m sorry I bothered you, Henry. I’ll be leaving now.”

  I grabbed his hand. “Wait. This is what I think, Hugh. You come from money but you ended up on the streets shooting junk and now you’re clean. While you were out there, your grandfather cut you off and you’re angry about that. Maybe he was practicing tough love or maybe he’s an asshole, I don’t know. I do know that depending on how long you used, it might be awhile before your head clears up completely. In the meantime, I’d be very careful about accusing people of being murderers.”

  “You’ve got me all figured out, don’t you?” he said with a small smile.

  “I’m just trying to make sense of what you’ve told me.”

  He looked at me. “You want me to go?”

  I shook my head. “I want you to take your clothes off.”

  He smiled. “If you still want me to stay after what I told you, you’re as crazy as I am.”

  “I haven’t stopped thinking about you since we met.”

  He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor, kicked his shoes off, unbuttoned his pants, pushed them to his feet and stepped out of them. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of his briefs and slipped them off. He stepped between my legs. This time when he sank to his knees, I didn’t stop him.

  I woke up alone and watched the shadow of the tree outside the window sway across the wall. The only noises were the clock ticking and the wind. The sheets and blankets were kicked back and over the foot of the bed. A wadded-up towel lay crumpled on the floor among Hugh’s scattered clothes. The detritus of passion.

  I could still taste him in my mouth, ripe, meaty, musky. Armpits, anus, cock. My stomach was glazed with his semen, the sheets were stained with mine. Like everything else about him, sex was compelling and off-kilter. What started as the standard one-night-stand groping and negotiations quickly became something more serious.

  “Use me,” he told me, when I had tumbled him to his back and parted his legs. “That’s how I like it.”

  There was always that moment when I was grappling naked with another man that our bodies veered toward violence; it was part of the excitement of the encounter that these tough, male bodies capable of inflicting injury on each other would, instead, become instruments of pleasure. The line could be very fine. Now I looked into Hugh’s eyes, dark with emotions I could not decipher, inviting me to cross that line, to hurt him. I couldn’t deny that some part of me was urged to give him what he wanted because I wanted it too. To hurt him as a surrogate for all the men who had hurt me with their rejection and contempt. But he wasn’t one of those men. He was a man like me who, having suffered the same rejection and contempt, wrongly believed he deserved the worst.

  “Come on, Henry,” he said. “You can do anything you want to me.”

  I lay down beside him, pulled him into my arms and kissed his forehead. He was startled but then he relaxed into my arms and let me hold him. I pulled the blankets over us, stroked his hair, and let him fall asleep in my arms.

  Just before dawn, his tongue parted my lips and slipped into my mouth, waking me. His small, muscled body rested on mine, his hard-on trapped between our bellies. My hands drifted to the small of his back, to his butt, as we washed the sourness of sleep out of each other’s mouths. Now I was hard, too. He slipped his hand between us and gently tugged our cocks together. It had been months since another guy had touched me but his hand squeezing the bulbs of our cocks together was all it took to set my nerve endings on fire. I let my fingers slip between his ass cheeks, pressed his hole with my index finger and slipped it in. He broke our kiss and lifted his head slightly so we could see each other.

  He stroked my cock and said, “You’re big.”

  “If you don’t stop that, you’re going to make me come.”

  “Just doing this?”

  “It’s been awhile since I had sex. It won’t take much.”

  He let go of my cock. “In that case. Lube?”

  “In the drawer in the bed stand,” I said.

  He rolled off of me, opened the drawer and removed the tube of KY Jelly. He straddled my thighs, squeezed a gob on his finger and his hand disappeared behind his body. He smirked as he coated his hole with the lube. I reached up and traced the ridged muscles of his belly with my fingertips.

  “You are so beautiful.”

  “You are, Henry.”

  He squeezed another thick drop of lube on his fingers and slowly spread it up and down my shaft. I squirmed beneath the cold jelly and his fingers.

  “I’m going to ride you,” he said. “That okay?”

  I managed a weak, “Uh-huh.”

  He lifted his thighs, scooted up my body, positioned my cock against his hole and then, mouth slightly ajar, his eyes locked on mine, slowly lowered himself. The tight muscle gave way, stretching to take me in.

  “Oh, fuck,” I whispered, as the cock penetrated the sticky heat of his anus. A rush of blood prickled my chest and belly; my groin pulsed sweetness.

  Hugh’s mouth was an O, his eyes clouded with pleasure. For a moment, he remained motionless, his butt on my thighs, his hands on my chest. Then, he began to move up and down on my cock, slowly fucking himself on me. I thrust upward in response.

  “No,” he said. “Let me take care of you.”

  I nodded and lay back. Expertly, he impaled himself on me, varying the speed and depth of the strokes, tightening and relaxing his hold around my cock as he did. He watched me, smiling when I moaned, shaking his head when I couldn’t help thrusting. Translucent threads of precum spilled from his cock to my belly. I reached for it, massaged the head with the stickiness. Gently, he moved my hand away. “This is all about you,” he said. I surrendered and lay back, closed my eyes and slipped into the swamp of sensations, smells and sounds of sex; his butt rising and falling on my sweaty thighs, the bursts of breath and involuntary moans, the fire in my engorged cock responding to the heat and friction as he pounded himself on me. When I stuttered, “I’m coming,” he slowed the pace, squeezing my cock with his hole, and when I came, it wasn’t in a hot gush, but a slow flood that curled my toes.

  When the last pulse of my semen emptied into his gut, he grabbed his cock. A few rapid strokes brought an arc of cum that splattered my chest and chin. Slowly, he disengaged from himself me. “Lie still,” he said and went into the bathroom. I heard the water running, and then he returned with a wash cloth and a towel. Delicately, he washed his come off me and then washed and dried my genitals.

  He tossed the towel and washcloth on a chair and settled back in the bed beside me. “How was that?” he asked.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever come that hard. Was it good for you?”

  He smiled. “This was about you.”


  “I wanted it to be about us,” I said.

  He looked away. “I barely remember what it’s like to have sex I’m not getting paid for.”

  “I’m not one of your johns,” I said.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “I was trying to explain that for me sex has been a way of getting what I need, not how I express,” he paused, searching for the word. “Affection.”

  “We don’t have to fuck again until you want to,” I said.

  He turned his face to me. “You mean that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “No guy has ever not wanted something from me,” he said.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want something from you,” I said. “It just isn’t sex.”

  He lay his head on my chest. “What do you want, Henry?”

  I put my arms around him. “This.”

  After a moment he said, “You seem so confident I wouldn’t have guessed that you’re lonely, too.”

  “Now you know,” I said.

  He came back into the room, wearing an old robe of mine that was too big for him. He sat at the edge of the bed. “You’re awake.”

  “I’m glad you’re still here. I was afraid you might have left.”

  “I like being here,” he said.

  He climbed into bed. On his chest above his heart was a tattoo of a peach, beautifully rendered and colored, ringed by Chinese characters. I had noticed it as soon as he had undressed but had been too preoccupied with other things to ask him about it.

  “What is this tattoo?” I asked, touching it.

  “It’s for protection,” he said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “When I was nine, my dad took me to a tattoo parlor in Amsterdam and had it done. He said it would protect me against evil.” He ran his fingertip across the tattoo. “My dad was pretty sick by then and he didn’t always make a lot of sense, but I would do anything for him.”

  “Why were you in Amsterdam?”

  “My parents were pretty footloose,” he said. “It was the sixties, they were like hippies. We lived in communes, on an ashram and one winter in a castle in Scotland. God, that place was freezing cold.”

  “Who took care of you?”

  “Dad, when he could. My mother, when she was sober. Sometimes I had a nanny, but I spent a lot of time on my own.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t bad.”

  “What do the Chinese characters say?”

  He looked at the tattoo. “You know, I had no idea until this one time in New York I was with this Chinese john from Hong Kong and I asked him. He said it says, ‘Heaven protects the innocent.’ ”

  “What was wrong with your dad?”

  “I don’t want to talk about that now,” he said. He stroked my cock. “I want you to fuck me.”

  “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

  “Oh, yes, I’m absolutely sure.”

  All my questions went out of my head.

  Afterwards, we lay beside each other. Hugh asked me, “Have you always known you’re gay?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You?”

  He squeezed my hand. “I knew I was different than other boys but not why until someone showed me.”

  “Showed you? How?”

  He let go of my hand. “He raped me when I was ten.”

  I started to speak but he pressed his finger to my lips.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t ask me any questions. Don’t say you’re sorry it happened. Let it go.”

  “Have you let it go?”

  “I said, no questions.”

  I pulled him on top of me and held him. His heart beat against mine. He tipped his chin and I kissed him gently.

  “You’re sweet,” he said.

  “You called me that at the jail.” I said. “I’m not, you know.”

  He laughed and rolled on his back. “Yes, you are. You look tough and you talk tough but you’re a soft touch. You learn these things when you’re on the street. Call it junkie’s intuition. Don’t get pissed, Henry. Here, lay your head on my chest.”

  His heartbeat pulsed in my ear. “Hard to imagine you on the street, Hugh.”

  “Like I said, sometimes the family cut me off and you know how much a habit costs. A pretty blond boy can make a lot of money on his back.” The street hardness slipped back into his voice. “Not every guy was as reluctant as you were to hurt me. I charged extra for that.”

  “Why did you use?”

  “To get well,” he said. “That’s what we say when we need a fix. I need to get well. Like life is the disease and junk is the cure.”

  “Then why get clean?”

  “The cure became worse than the disease. It always does, whether it’s junk or speed or alcohol.” He combed his fingers through my hair. “It’s Tuesday, shouldn’t you be getting ready for work?”

  “I quit,” I said.

  His fingers paused. “You did? Why?”

  “I stopped believing that what I was doing made enough difference to keep doing it.”

  “What will you do now?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I looked at him. “Get to know you better.”

  “You know, Henry, I’m not really like you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not another man with a boy inside of him waiting for the kiss that ends his loneliness and takes away his pain. Junk took away my pain, but in exchange it turned me into a liar and a thief and whore. You shouldn’t trust me.”

  “You’re clean now,” I said.

  “You know what they say about old habits. They die hard. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  “I have to go,” he said. He slid off the bed and went into the living room. After a moment, I followed him and found him rooting among the pile of our clothes for his underwear and pants. I sat down on the couch and watched him dress.

  “Was it something I said?”

  “I have a meeting in the city this afternoon with someone who doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

  “Okay,” I said, skeptically. “Call me later?”

  He pulled his shirt over his head, tucked it into his jeans. He came over and kissed me and said, “Thank you, Henry,” and then he slipped out the door.

  A week passed. Two. I slept late, went for long runs, read some of those books I’d always promised myself I’d read, ate a lot of eggs because that’s all I knew how to cook, drank myself to sleep more often than was good for me. I didn’t expect to hear from Hugh again, but that didn’t mean my heart didn’t flutter every time I walked into my apartment and the answering machine light was flickering. Half those calls were from Gold who had heard I’d quit the PD’s office and wanted the story. I finally agreed to meet him for a drink.

  Barney’s was a yuppie bar for the freshly minted graduates of the university who missed their frat houses. The walls, floors and ceiling were planks of oak with a dark, shiny varnish. A rail along the top of the walls held a collection of beer bottles while the walls were decorated with neon signs, license plates and stolen traffic signs. There were dark booths and ugly tables and the floor was covered in peanut shells. Young guys in suits—lawyers, stockbrokers, bankers—or in khakis and crewnecks and button-down shirts parked their worked-out butts on the bar stools and drank expensive scotch and imported beers, mindlessly cheering whatever sporting event was on the TV above the bar. I never saw a woman in the place. Gold knew I loathed the place which is why he chose it. He was already in a booth working on a Jameson on the rocks and cracking peanuts when I arrived.

  I slid into the booth and said, “You know, Gold, there are never any women in this bar. Doesn’t that seem a little gay to you?”

  He smirked. “You wish.”

  “No, really, all we need is a disco ball and Gloria Gaynor on the jukebox singing I Will Survive and we’d be in business.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know what any of that means,” Gold said. “I don’t speak gay.” He flagg
ed down a waiter, ordered a refill of his Jameson’s and a Jack Daniel’s for me. When the drinks came, he tapped my glass with his and said, “So I heard you quit the PD. Mazel tov. You were wasting your time there.”

  “When did you become such a reactionary? I seem to remember back in law school you called yourself a socialist.”

  “Everyone was something in law school. Socialist, feminist. Gay. Call it youthful experimentation.”

  “It was more than that for some of us.”

  “Whatever,” he said, brushing peanut shells to the floor. “My folks were honest-to-God socialists. My dad lost his job teaching at Cal State LA because he wouldn’t sign their loyalty oath and ended up working on an assembly line at a Ford factory to keep us fed.”

  “Principles come with a price,” I said. “I’d be proud of him if he were my dad.”

  “You wouldn’t feel that way if you’d seen what that did to him. Broke him down, made him old before his time, and what did his principles change? Not a fucking thing. Money still rules the world.” He poked around the peanut bowl for the last couple of peanuts. “I am in need of sustenance. Hey, waiter. Another round and an order of potato skins. Why did you quit, Henry?”

  “The system is gamed against my clients. I was just one more stop in the conveyor belt that dumped them with all the other garbage.”

  “Your clients were guilty,” he said. “What were you supposed to do? Pull a Perry Mason and get some witness to break down on the stand and confess?”

  “Not all my clients were guilty,” I said, remembering Eloy Garza. “And the ones who were, what were they really guilty of? Desperation. Poverty. Being the wrong color and the wrong class. The entire criminal law system has one goal, to protect the haves from the have-nots.”

  “Now who’s the socialist,” he said, as the waiter set a plate of fried potato skins on the table and carried off our empty glasses. “Hmm, bacon, the forbidden fruit of Jews. Seriously, Henry, you had to know you couldn’t change the world by doing criminal defense.”

  “I wasn’t trying to change the world. I was trying to get justice.”

  “Well, we both know from first year law school how unrealistic your idea of justice is,” he said. “What are you going to do now?”