by Todd Gregory
Her face twists into a nasty sneer. “Brandon Benson. Is that what this is really about?”
“It’s none of your fucking business if it is.”
“You’re going to cheat on Marc.” She’s gathering her self-righteousness around her like a cloak now, and starting to get her controlling bitch on. “You want to fuck Brandon, isn’t that what this is? Well, go ahead and throw your future with Marc away if you want to!”
“I never said that I wanted to fuck Brandon. And if I want to throw my future with Marc away, news flash: it’s my fucking future to throw away, not yours. And if I want to, or if I want to fuck Brandon or I don’t, it’s none of your fucking business in the first place. Who I sleep with is none of your fucking business!”
“I’m your friend and I care about you—”
“You don’t care about anyone except yourself.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say! Do you really believe that?”
She’s breathing hard now and her face is red. This is where I’m supposed to apologize and blame being drunk but I’m not going to because it feels good, it feels good to finally tell her the truth. Just because we get along and have a similar sense of humor and enjoy the same movies and TV shows and think the same actors and singers are hot and like to laugh at the Kardashians and the real housewives doesn’t mean I want to spend the rest of my life being controlled and manipulated by a straight girl who’s in love with me.
And that’s really what this is all about it. She’s in love with me and she can never have me so she settles for this weird twisted Will-and-Grace thing when what I’d rather have is a Karen to my Jack.
“No, I don’t,” and even through my own anger and the haze of the alcohol I’m being gentle with her, “I think you care too much about me. You need to step back and let me live my life, Joni. And you need to live yours.”
Tears spill out of her eyes. She wipes them away. “Fine. I will.” She grabs the doorknob. “Have a nice life, Dylan Parrish. And someday you’re going to need me and I’m not going to be there.”
The door slams behind her.
I know I’m supposed to run after her, apologizing and begging her to forgive me, but I don’t. That’s not how this episode of the soap opera that’s Joni’s life is going to play out, and I’m finished being her courtier.
I lie back on my bed.
I feel…free.
It is my life, after all.
I don’t know what I want. I love Marc, I still want to marry him and I don’t want to hurt him, but…at the same time, he chose to go into the military. Would it be fair to him to stay with him out of obligation rather than because I love him and want to spend the rest of my life with him?
I wouldn’t want him to stay with me that way.
I’m confused and I need to figure this all out.
But Joni wouldn’t have helped, and not because she had my best interests in mind.
She hasn’t in a long time, if she ever did in the first place.
The kindest thing I could do for her is stop being her friend, stop being around her, stop letting her think in her wildest dreams I would spend the rest of my life with her. She needs to get over her obsession with me and find some nice guy.
And Madison is her responsibility, not mine.
I need to talk to Marc.
I owe him honesty.
Otherwise, whatever we have is over already.
I close my eyes.
RICKY “You need to relax,” he whispers in my ear, his lips brushing against it and making my whole body shiver again. “Can you do that?”
I am lying on my stomach and he is kissing the back of my neck and running his tongue down my spine and then his mouth is between my butt cheeks, kissing me, darting his tongue into my asshole, and I have never felt like this before, I never knew it was possible to feel this good and I am so glad I gave up the priesthood I don’t want this to ever end and Brandon’s taking me to places I never knew I could go, making me feel pleasure I’d never imagined or dreamed was even possible, and his hand slides under me and grabs my aching dick again and I am shuddering and shivering and then a finger is tapping at my asshole again and I want him inside me, I do but at the same time I’m afraid, I’ve never done something like this before, and I can feel the pressure against it and I close my eyes because it hurts a bit and it feels good at the same time and he’s whispering “relax don’t worry I’ll go slow I don’t want to hurt you” and I feel so safe and I know he cares about me I know he knows what he’s doing but I’m not sure what he means by relax so I try really hard I let my muscles go limp and then I tense up as the pressure increases and I cry out and everything goes tense again and my eyes open oh my god he can’t be serious how does anyone do this and I can hear him whispering “relax baby it’s okay take your time and get used to it I won’t force you” and his fingertips are brushing against my lower back and I don’t know if I can do this and he says “if you tell me to stop I will” but even though I’m afraid I don’t want him to stop and I try again and then I feel it, he’s inside me and it’s an odd feeling I’ve never felt this way before and it hurts but it also feels kind of good and he’s gentle, oh-so-gentle and moving inside me a little bit at a time and I can’t believe it’s happening I can’t believe he is doing it and I—
Oh my god oh my god this is amazing I’ve never oh my god I want him inside all the way inside I want to take all of him I want him to ride me a little bitch I want him to own me and make me his oh my god oh my god
BRANDON He likes it.
I smile to myself.
I had a feeling he would.
I’m almost all the way inside now.
I want to shove my dick all the way inside, I want to fuck him hard and long and stretch him out like an old whore and just pound that beautiful ass, he looks so beautiful there under me, his beautiful big thick bubble muscle ass spread wide and curved and the muscles in his back and shoulders rippling as he trembles and shivers in pleasure and I want to slap his ass and call him names, make him beg me to fuck him, but this time has to be about trust…
He’ll beg to be my little fuck bitch soon enough.
His ass is tight but it feels like velvet inside, the way it’s closing around my cock and holding on to it, I actually have to stop because if I don’t I’ll come and it’s too soon, but his ass feels amazing and I am definitely going to fuck this boy again.
And I push the last little bit inside him.
He reaches back with both hands and arches his back up and grabs hold of my ass.
He was born to be fucked.
PHIL The party was a huge success.
I should smoke some pot, get really stoned and fall asleep but I’m in the I want stage with the coke so I take the mirror out of my desk and do up another fat line. Usually when I get to this point I don’t because that’s how the coke takes over, how it takes control, you give in to the impulses and the need and it’s not smart, you don’t really need more and you’re never going to get that original high back but I am celebrating and the key is just not to buy any more and there’s really not any point in saving what I have left but is that just rationalizing but the truth is I bought more coke than I needed because I thought Brandon and I would spend the night partying tonight and so I bought some for him but he decided he wanted to fuck someone more than he wanted to hang with me and that’s fine.
That’s why we aren’t a couple.
Brandon is a little like coke, I realize as I roll up a twenty dollar bill and snort the fat line up and tilt my head back, run my index finger over the debris and rub it on my gums.
Kenny is asleep on my bed, his mouth open and some drool running out of the corner. He’s kind of cute, not usually the kind of guy I go for, I’d probably swipe left on him on Grindr, but he’s sweet and kind of innocent and I feel bad for him. That sister of his is some piece of work, that’s for sure.
I finish my beer and decide to head out to the kegs to get one more cup, my head
feels light and I see that the DJ is packing up and there’s still some people around, wasted out of their minds and the dining room floor is covered in muddy beer and I get another beer and head back to my room and I see Kenny’s sister’s friend what’s her name stumble out of Joey Henderson’s room and she looks wasted and her T-shirt is on inside out and she just grimaces at me and her makeup is all smeared and her hair is a mess and she runs up the stairs and I go back to the office and back into my room and he’s still snoring and I lock the door behind me and sit down.
Brandon is like coke, his big dick. I remember the first time we were together, oh my God, when he was fucking me I couldn’t believe how he made me feel, it was so amazing and we had so much fun and we pretty much spent the entire weekend fucking and sucking and getting high and by Sunday my nipples and ass and dick were so sore I couldn’t stand to have them touched and we’d been taking turns fucking each other and his ass I’ve never fucked anyone the way I fucked Brandon that weekend but I also knew it was never going to work with us because we were so much alike and if we tried to make it work I knew I’d eventually hate him and he’d eventually hate me and I didn’t want that and neither did he so we closed those feelings off and became friends and kind of just enjoyed watching each other’s tricks and games and living vicariously through each other because I know Brandon will never fall in love and he knows I never will either and someday we’ll both graduate but I think we’ll be friends, we’ll always be friends and we’ll always compare notes.
Love is for suckers. Look at his stupid Dylan, for example. Love only works when the two people aren’t appealing to anyone else, right? I mean, once someone attractive starts showing you some attention or distracts you away from the person you love, you’ll cheat and it’s over. I’ve watched this happen with straight people all the fucking time. My dad cheats on my mother every once in a while and she just pretends it doesn’t happen because she doesn’t want to know about it, because if she does she would have to do something about it and she doesn’t want to get a divorce and be alone for the rest of her life and it’s sick and sad, like there’s some kind of crime, some kind of shame, in being alone?
I’d rather be alone than be with someone who is going to treat me that way.
I refuse to be a laughingstock like my mother.
And there are brothers here who have fiancées who go to other schools or live somewhere else and they fuck around on them all the time and then blame getting drunk and we’re all supposed to pretend it never happened when the fiancées are around, we’re all supposed to pretend like they’re faithful and all that “bros before hoes” shit, which makes me sick. I’d want to know if I was being made a fool of.
And Brandon agreed with me after that weekend was over, he knows what he is, he knows what I am, and we both knew it would never work and so we remained friends.
Maybe in a different time, maybe in a different world, we could have made it work.
But this world isn’t that world.
I couldn’t be faithful to him any more than he could have been faithful to me.
I mean his whole thing with Dylan? This is about proving there’s no such thing as true love and fidelity, isn’t it, proving the way we see the world is right?
I want to believe it, or is it the coke? I sip my beer and take another hit from the pipe.
This is why I don’t like to get this wasted.
My mind goes to weird places, places I don’t want to go, thinks things I don’t want to think, never want to admit to, brings up feelings I don’t want to have.
I pity any fool who falls in love with Brandon.
I pity any fool who falls in love with me.
RICKY I didn’t think it was possible to feel this way.
I came twice while he was inside me and now I’m lying in bed curled up with Brandon. I can’t help myself, I say that I love him.
He laughs and kisses the top of my head. “You don’t love me, Ricky, you’re just feeling close to me because you I made you come a couple of times. There’s a difference between sex and love, Ricky, and don’t ever mistake the two.”
“But—”
He puts his index finger on my lips. “Shhh. You don’t love me, Ricky, you barely know me. Do you think you can fall in love with someone you barely know? What about Kenny?”
Kenny.
I sit up in the bed, cover my face in my hands, shamed. “I’m a terrible person.”
He traces a finger down my spine, and my body reacts, shivers, goose bumps come up, and my—my dick starts to stir again. “You’re not a terrible person, Ricky, you’ve just always been taught that sex is the same thing as love, and that’s wrong.”
“But I love Kenny, or at least I thought I did.” I’m confused. How can I love Kenny when I didn’t even think about him when all this was happening?
How can I love Kenny when I want Brandon to do it all to me all over again?
He takes a hit from his pipe and offers it to me. I know I shouldn’t, getting drunk and high was part of what caused this to happen—
No, I did this. I can’t blame alcohol and drugs.
I’m responsible for what I do.
Well, I’m already going to hell, so I take the pipe from him and inhale. My whole body starts to relax as I blow the smoke out and I lie back into him, his arm around my shoulders, and rest my head on his chest. His dick is hard again, and I hope that means—
“You can love Kenny and have sex with me,” Brandon says. “The two things aren’t mutually exclusive. We just won’t tell Kenny about it, is all. Besides, you don’t want your first time to be with someone who doesn’t know how to do it, do you?”
I think about it. I’m high, the buzz from the beer is starting to go away but my mind is cloudy, what he’s saying shouldn’t make sense, it goes against everything I believe, but somehow it does make sense.
And I want him again.
Is that why it makes sense?
Am I justifying what I’ve done? What I want to do again?
I don’t have anyone to talk to about this. I know what a priest would say. Kenny…he’s right, I can’t tell Kenny, so I can’t talk to him about this. Uncle Rubin wouldn’t understand. Sergio and Lupe wouldn’t, but they’re straight and they’re all about one person.
Being gay is different. I really am understanding that now.
The same rules don’t apply here.
And I know he’s right. Kenny wouldn’t have known to be so gentle, wouldn’t have known to tell me to relax. It wouldn’t have been nearly this nice, wouldn’t have felt this good, wouldn’t have left me wanting to do it again the way this did.
“Kenny might not understand,” he is saying, and he kisses the top of my head again. “And you love him, and he loves you. You don’t have to tell him until you think he can handle it. And you two haven’t exactly decided that you are committed to each other only, have you?”
“No.”
“So, unless you’ve decided not to see other people, you haven’t done anything wrong.”
It—it makes sense, or does it just make me feel better?
I’m so confused.
“Tell you what,” he purrs in my ear, “this time I’ll let you fuck me, so you can see how that feels.” He leans down and sucks on my left nipple and my eyes close and I’ll do anything he wants me to.
I nod. “Yes, yes, please.” I barely breathe the words out, and he is slipping a condom on me and straddles me, grabbing me with his hand to guide it inside him, and his body above mine is so amazing, like something Michelangelo would have carved, like all the paintings I’ve studied and the muscles and the veins bulging and his eyes close as he lowers himself down onto me, and it feels so great, and I can’t stop looking at him as he starts riding me, squirting some lube on himself and sliding his right hand back and forth as he rides me…
I don’t want this to ever end.
Oh my God…
PHIL I open the door and Brandon is standing there with a
shit-eating grin on his face and a greasy bag from Carl’s Jr. in his hand.
“We’re not supposed to eat there because they’re homophobic,” I say as I let him in and close the door behind him.
It’s after noon and I finally fell asleep around six, after waking Kenny up and sending him on his way. I’ve been up for an hour and have already showered, was thinking about rousing the house out of its hungover stupor and start the after-party cleanup. My own head aches a bit from too much beer and my nose and sinuses feel fried from the coke, and the homophobic food smells fantastic.
He sits down on my bed and grins at me. His eyes are bloodshot and he hasn’t showered, he stinks of sweat and sex and he has a UCSF baseball cap turned backward to cover up how messy his hair is. His lower face is covered with razor stubble. He hands me a large soda with condensation all over the cup, a wrapped hamburger, and a little box of fried zucchini. I pop one of the zucchinis in my mouth and it’s perfect, hot and fried and tasting like breading and grease. He opens my nightstand drawer and pulls out my pipe, loads it and takes a hit without even asking but I’m too busy shoving food into my mouth to say anything. I didn’t eat anything before the party and I’m starving.
