The Peter & Charlie Trilogy

by Gordon Merrick

  Peter lifted his head. The light rising from the stairwell shadowed it with anguished beauty. “Isn’t there? Doesn’t it prove what I said—that I’m a fairy or a queer or whatever they call it?”

  “Stop saying that,” Charlie replied savagely, but remembered to keep his voice down. “We’re friends, aren’t we? It’s perfectly natural.” He was sure there was a distinction to be made. The Greeks had made it. They recognized the passionate love that occurred between men as opposed to the serious everyday love of man and wife, based on childbearing and so forth. He lifted Peter’s chin and cupped it in his hands and said more gently, “Go get ready for bed and stop being silly. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  “What about the clothes?”

  “Keep them. C. B. knows I’ve given them to you. Go on.” He gave Peter a little push and turned toward his room. He took off his clothes and hung them up as usual, refusing to give way to the joy that surged in him, that urged him to fling everything at the ceiling. He went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth and anointed himself with cologne. He gathered together towels and the tube of lubricant and was just coming out when he heard light footsteps and Peter appeared in the door. He was wearing striped cotton pajamas from which arms and legs protruded by a foot or more. Charlie threw his head back and laughed. This was the way he wanted it to be—silly and fun and relaxed. “What are you supposed to be dressed up for?” he demanded and laughed some more.

  “Well, I—”

  “You better take a quick look at me. This is the way you’ve been wanting to see me, thanks to that sexy costume.”

  Peter took a step forward and stared. “It’s amazing,” he said. “Nobody would believe it can get so big. Talk about sexy. It looks so damn powerful, even like that. The champion.”

  “All right now. Take those things off. Not here. We might forget them. I don’t want anybody to find them in here.”

  Peter left obediently and Charlie completed his preparations, placing everything within easy reach. In a moment Peter returned naked, holding his hands in front of himself as a clumsy and inadequate screen. Charlie pulled them away.

  “You’re beautiful, baby. Can’t you understand that? Stop hiding yourself. You like to look at me, don’t you?”

  “God, yes.”

  “Well, then, what’s wrong with my liking to look at you?”

  Peter gave his head a little shake, his eyes wide and wondering. “I just can’t believe that any of this is the same for you as it is for me.”

  Charlie took a step toward him, he slid his arms around him and pulled him close, and their mouths opened to each other. Charlie backed him up and they fell onto the bed on top of each other, grappling with each other, arms and legs intertwined, hands clinging and exploring, moaning and crying out and shouting with laughter in an exultant prelude to union.

  After the first tumult of their lovemaking, when Charlie had washed, they lay side by side flat on their backs, their heads touching, their hair tangled together on the pillow. After a while, they talked.

  “Do you understand now, baby?” Charlie asked. “It’s the same for both of us.”

  “I guess I’m beginning to believe it. Anyway, I know what I’m going to do. I’ve thought about it all evening and now I know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going to New York with you. I never had any intention of going to West Point, but now it’s impossible. I can get a job. It doesn’t matter what. I’ll cook for you and clean for you and be with you. That’s all that matters.”

  “But what about education and all that?”

  “What difference does that make? There’ll probably be a war—my father says there’s going to be and he ought to know—and then what? At least I’ll be with you.”

  “You mean, you’d live with me and—uh, well, the apartment’s pretty small.”

  “If it’s as big as this room, I can’t imagine wanting anything more.”

  “It isn’t actually, but that doesn’t matter.” He felt that he should resist the proposal and was astonished to find so little resistance in himself. He simply couldn’t quite grasp it. He wasn’t accustomed to thinking in terms of the future; three months seemed a long time away. He didn’t even know if they would still want to have sex together. He had had relationships extending over a year or more, but actual contact had been intermittent and interspersed with transient adventures. Peter was suggesting that they should actually live together like—well, they would really be roommates. There was nothing unusual about that. He had always longed to be grown-up and on his own, but now that the fact of it loomed before him, he found it intimidating. To face the world with an eager lover at his side made the prospect much more cheerful and gay. As he turned the idea over in his mind, he sought the hand at his side and pressed it.

  “It’s the only thing we can do,” Peter said. “Can you imagine shaking hands and saying good-bye in a month or two? You do want me, don’t you? I wouldn’t be any trouble to you.”

  Charlie lifted himself onto an elbow with a chuckle and rolled over slightly so that all his body was pressed against Peter’s. “It’s a fabulous idea. We could fix up the apartment together. Do you really know how to cook? I think you save money if you eat at home. Hey, it’s exciting.” He ran his hand over Peter’s chest and down to his navel to grasp his sex, which stood erect to the summons. Peter looked up at him with shining eyes.

  “Can we tell C. B. tomorrow? I want to tell everybody. It’s like getting married.”

  “Good God, no. We can’t tell C. B.”

  The light went out of Peter’s eyes, and they widened with apprehension. “Why, doesn’t she like me? Does she suspect something? Did she say anything when she went out with you before dinner?”

  “Of course not. She’s mad about you. You can see that for yourself. But—well, she has very firm ideas about college, for one thing. She wouldn’t approve of your not going on with school. We’ve got to work out the practical details. Maybe you could take some courses at Columbia or somewhere. That might make it all right with her.”

  “You care a lot about what she thinks, don’t you?”

  “Well, sure. She’s always been the most important person in my life. Besides, she’s going to give me an allowance at first. She says I’ve got to live like a gentleman and all that. It’s something I have to take into consideration.”

  “What if she is against it? Would you still let me come?”

  “Of course,” Charlie said impatiently, but he was unable to imagine himself in opposition to C. B. “We’ve just got to figure out the right way to put it to her.” To forestall more questions, he fluttered his fingers along Peter’s sex and brushed the silken curls at its base. The hair was so fine and delicate that the feel of it sent a shiver down his spine. He gathered the balls into the palm of his hand. Peter’s eyes turned dreamy with pleasure.

  “When I told you I was in love with you, I was afraid you wouldn’t have anything more to do with me,” he said. “I had to tell you, before we could decide all this.”

  “It’s all decided, baby,” Charlie promised him.

  “It’s fabulous. We’re going to live together. I always knew there was something that would make life make sense.”

  Later, at Peter’s request, they lay with their shoulders hunched up, propped on their elbows, their sexes riding side by side along their bellies to illustrate the difference between them.

  “Are you sorry mine isn’t bigger?” Peter asked.

  “Bigger? If it were, it’d be bigger than mine, and that isn’t allowed.”

  “I should hope not. Hey champ, you’ve done it with lots of others. Is—is mine—?”

  “You can take my word for it, it’s a lot bigger than most guys, if that’s what you want to know. So don’t start running around trying to check up for yourself.”

  Peter burst into laughter. “Would you be jealous?”

  “No,” Charlie said with a cold flash of anger. “I just wouldn’t ev
er speak to you again.”

  Missing the steel in the voice, Peter laughed again. “Imagine me even looking at anybody else when I have you.”

  Charlie rolled over abruptly and slid down and lowered his head to Peter’s sex. It was not his favorite erotic exercise and he knew by experience that he was incapable of equaling Peter’s prodigies, but he was driven by a sudden necessity for this additional act of possession and by an instinct to demonstrate the equality of their desires. He ran his tongue around the sex and Peter’s whole body leaped at the contact and he let out a shrill cry. Peter’s hand was tugging at his hair as he opened his mouth wide and took the head. Further effort was ended by the violent contortions of an immediate orgasm. The warm liquid filled his mouth and he tasted its sweetness as he drank it in grateful communion. He remained where he was, nursing the sex with his mouth in the convulsed aftermath, amazed at the tenderness swelling within him, at the richness of the reward. When it was over, he pulled himself up reluctantly. Peter lay with a forearm flung over his eyes, his mouth open, his lips tremulous. Charlie kissed the side of his face and murmured with playful reproach into his ear, “I thought you weren’t going to come without me any more.”

  Peter’s mouth worked before he spoke. “I tried to stop you. Oh, God, just thinking about it almost makes me come all over again. When I first knew I wanted you that way, I thought I’d lost my mind. I never dreamed you’d do it to me.”

  “I tell you, baby. It’s the same.” He stroked his hair. “Next time, do you want to be the one to do it—the other way? I mean, with us the other way around, you inside me?”

  Peter dropped his arm and looked at him with stunned eyes. “No. Oh, no. It wouldn’t make any sense. I want you inside me all the time. You having me. You—is it all right to say fuck? You fucking me. That’s what it is, isn’t it?”

  “Sure. That’s what it is.”

  “I want you to fuck me always. Never the other way around. I want to be the best fuck you’ve ever had so you’ll forget all the others.”

  “Good lord, do you think I’ve ever had anybody like you before? You’re fantastic.”

  “Am I? The way you make me feel, it’s as if my whole body were made for you.”

  “Do you want me to fuck you now, baby?”

  “God, yes.”

  And again …

  “Haven’t you really ever been in love before?” Peter asked. They lay on their sides facing each other, arms and legs intertwined. Peter was tracing Charlie’s eyebrows with a finger.

  “Not the way I feel with you. Oh, I suppose once, long ago. The last year of school. With the captain of the football team, of all people. We didn’t discover it until Graduation Day. That is, I didn’t discover he felt the same way, and then it was a bit late. We met once after we’d both started college, but it didn’t work out.”

  “Met how? Tell me.”

  “He took a room for us in New York. I remember I had to sell some books to pay for the trip. I went up from Princeton and he came down from New Haven.”

  “Golly. You actually did that? Why didn’t it work out?”

  “Oh, I guess we’d both worked it up into such a big thing in our minds that it was bound to be an anticlimax. It just wasn’t any good.”

  “Did you suffer a lot?”

  “Suffer? Why? It just happened and that was that.”

  “I’d kill myself if anything went wrong with us.”

  “You’re crazy. My crazy baby. How do you know you’ll even like me a week from now?”

  Peter lifted his arms in the air and wriggled his body in closer against Charlie’s, making a deep animal growl of lust and longing in his throat. He dropped his hands on Charlie’s shoulders, still growling, and kneaded his neck with strong fingers and ran them through his hair. “I know,” he said, smiling into Charlie’s eyes. “I love everything about you. Your looks, of course, your huge cock, but lots more than that. I love everything you say, I love your voice, I love the way your lip curls here when you smile.” He put a finger on the spot. “And that’s just the beginning. That’s just the first day. Think of all the other things I’ll find to love. Golly, when I got out of that train this morning and saw you, I knew something tremendous was happening. Darling, dearest love, dearest, beautiful lover, precious love, my champ.” The words poured from him in a gentle croon as if they had been locked away for years, saved up for this occasion.

  Charlie had always shrunk from endearments. There was something ridiculous and distasteful about men calling each other “dearest” and “darling,” but Peter was somehow, apparently, an exception. The words were undeniably sweet on his lips. Charlie warned himself not to be beguiled into reciprocating. “That’s enough of that,” he said. “You’ll hate me in the morning. I suppose we ought to be thinking about sleep.”

  “Oh, no. Not yet. There’s still so much I have to find out about you.”

  So the night passed. They went back and forth to the bathroom, sometimes they showered together, somehow eventually they went to sleep without knowing they had done so. When Charlie woke up, the first pale morning light was in the window. His eyes made a slow, drugged inventory. The golden head was nestled in the hollow between his shoulder and chest. A leg was thrown across his, and Peter’s sex thrust up hard against Charlie’s thigh. A hand was clinging to his own sex. His arm ached, but he was so enchanted by what he saw that he scarcely noticed it. His chest was suddenly bursting with happiness, tears pricked behind his eyes, his throat tightened. A sob that was also laughter burst from him. He ran his finger down the tilt of Peter’s nose and across his lips. They stirred in the motions of a kiss. My boy, my lover, my baby, my love, he thought, so befuddled with exhaustion and happiness that he didn’t know his mind was singing a litany of treacherous endearments.

  THE summer had begun. They quickly established a routine, with the club and Charlie’s room as its centers of activity. They played tennis, at which they were closely matched. They swam. Invitations to parties accumulated, and there were weekly dances at the club.

  Despite Peter’s indifference, Charlie insisted that they should take an active part in the social life of their age group. Peter was a welcome addition; they lived in the midst of laughing, playful youth. This communal life stimulated their passion. Aside from the long nights they shared, Peter was always ready with sexual improvisations whenever they found themselves briefly alone. In broad daylight on a deserted beach, at night, on the grounds of the club, in the guest room of a neighboring house where they were attending a supper party, he celebrated his adoration of Charlie’s body, finding in these dangerously public acts a sort of public sanction of their love. Charlie was an enthralled and enthusiastic partner, but at the Saturday night dances, he insisted that they should go their independent ways, attaching himself to girls, dancing and flirting to the exclusion of everybody else in a continuing need to assert the normalcy of their situation. Peter quickly came to loathe Saturday.

  In the first few days, C. B. made good her promise to outfit Peter. They all went in the stately Packard to the local shop and bought slacks and summer jackets and shoes and shirts and various accessories.

  “Nobody’s ever been so wonderful to me,” Peter said on the way home. “I’m going to stay with you forever.”

  C. B. took his hand. “Darling Peter. You can’t imagine what pleasure you give me.”

  “Hey champ. You hear that?” The nickname was an endearment he could use with impunity in public. He used it constantly. “I’m going to live with C. B. We’ll let you come for dinner every now and then.”

  Shopping had been a hot business, and they raced upstairs to change for a quick swim before lunch. A colorful beach robe was one of Peter’s acquisitions, and he flung it over his shoulders. Charlie carried one like it. They encountered C. B. crossing the wide entrance hall on their way out. She stopped and threw up her hands in a characteristic gesture of admiration.

  “What a glorious color you’re both getting. I can see
heads turning as you two walk down the beach. You look more alike every day. I’m soon going to find it difficult to choose between you. You’re both such superb specimens. Which of you do you think has the better physique?”

  They both began to speak at once and looked at each other and laughed. Peter eyed the swelling pouch of Charlie’s trunks, amazed not for the first time that he was allowed out in public. Only the blind could fail to be aware of his majestic dimensions. He was both proud and jealous of the display. He wondered what C. B. thought of it.

  “I’m stronger than he is,” Charlie asserted.

  “Ha. I very much doubt it,” Peter countered.

  “We’ll have to battle it out. We can set up a ring on the lawn and sell tickets.”

  “And risk spoiling your lovely faces?” C. B. protested. “Not on my lawn.” She looked from one nearly naked youth to the other. “You’re very powerful looking, my dearest, but you’ve never had Peter’s grace. He’s so exquisitely made, without, of course, the slightest trace of effeminacy. Heaven spare us effeminate men.” She turned to Peter and took his hands. “I think I’d have to award the prize to you, my darling.”

  “The champ bites the dust,” Peter exclaimed with glee.

  C. B. moved from him to Charlie, prepared to offer him a conciliatory embrace. He saw it coming and gave her cheek a quick peck and moved away. She had always been prodigal of caresses, but for reasons he couldn’t quite define, perhaps because of the intense physical life he was sharing with Peter, he had become sensitive to all such contact. He was beginning to find C. B. too insistent. He gave Peter a quick jab. “Come on, dope.”

  Peter jabbed him back and danced out of reach. “Watch who you’re hitting. We haven’t any tickets yet.” Charlie went for him and they rushed from the house, sparring and romping and shouting with laughter.

  C. B. stood for a long moment looking after them when they were gone, a thoughtful but not dissatisfied smile on her lips.