These Violent Delights

by Whitecroft, Jess

  The rapier tip comes out of nowhere. I duck, lose my footing and fall back, thankfully on the right foot.

  “Fuck!”

  “Okay, stop. Stop!” Levonian claps her hands and the piano stops. “Milos, do you need a moment?”

  I starfish on the floor. “I really do.”

  Ed peers down at me, sword still in hand. “Seriously?”

  “Do I look like I’m kidding? Quit acting like you’re trying to kill me.”

  “I’m supposed to be acting like I’m trying to kill you,” he says, handing me a bottle of water. “That’s the whole point of the choreography.”

  “Tybalt,” says Levonian. “What’s going on with you?”

  I peel myself off the floor. “I’m sorry. I’m tired. If there’s a sword coming at me then my natural instinct is to get the hell out of the way. I wanna be landing blows but I’m just…I’m slow.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Put down the swords. We’ll go back to doing it without. This isn’t a fight, Milos – it only needs to look like one. You two are essentially dancing a pas de deux, just a very violent one. We’ll strip it down to the steps again, yes?”

  We start over, this time with invisible swords, but I know it wasn’t the swords that were the problem. I’m making excuses because I can’t seem to keep pace. Too many late nights jerking off for strangers. Or getting my dick sucked by passing English professors. Now there’s a thing I haven’t had time to deal with, but it’s clear it’s slowing me down. Right after it happened and all through Saturday morning I felt like a building must feel right after an earthquake. Still standing and all, but cracked and more brittle for the experience.

  The piano stops again. “No,” says Levonian. “No. Not like that.”

  We stop. Ed wipes sweat from the back of his neck, barely concealing his frustration with me. He came here for a brawl and I’m a sleepy mess.

  “When I said it was a pas de deux,” she says. “I didn’t mean you should treat him like a lady. You’re far too delicate, Milos.”

  “Sorry.”

  “More energy. Test your strength against him. He’s a man; he can take it.”

  Ed raises an eyebrow, but I’m not in the mood for double entendres. “You okay on your left?” he says, instead, giving me an out. “You look a little stiff.”

  “Hamstring’s playing up. I ran a rough trail yesterday morning.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so?” says Levonian. “You should be resting it.”

  “I know, but–”

  “–but nothing. This is all useless if you pop your Achilles tendon before the performance. Go. Get out of here. And no more trail running.”

  “Right. Thanks.”

  She claps her hands. “Ed, take a break. Mercutio, over here – I’m still not happy with your death.”

  “You’re not happy?” says Cameron, our Mercutio, as he passes us crossing the studio. “How do you think I feel about it?”

  I hop off to the sidelines. The tendon feels stiff, not sore, but I’ve had enough hassle with it in the past to know it won’t give me any breaks here. And I know Ed only pointed it out because he was sick of going round after round with a listless Tybalt. “What’s up with you?” he says. “It’s not just your leg. You’re like, different.”

  Oh God, is it that obvious? Of course I’m different. I’m clearly not as straight as I thought I was, which is a big deal because I was sure I was very, very straight. Sure, if you put on a pair of tights and a dance belt everyone assumes you’re gay, but the joke was always on them; while they were buying into the stereotype about male ballet dancers I was surrounded by – and dating – women who could wrap their ankles around the backs of their necks without so much as breaking a sweat.

  “I’m tired,” I say. “And my parents are on my ass about academics.”

  “Still?”

  “Always. They never let up. ‘Gotta have a back up plan.’”

  “I’ll trade you mine,” says Ed. “They won’t be satisfied until I’m at least on the level with Polunin. Come on, you can’t let it worry you.”

  “I guess.”

  “You have to be like a rock on the shore,” he says, tearing open a bag of beef jerky. “Life beats against you like waves, but you don’t care. You just take it, because you’re a rock.”

  “Deep,” I say, taking a piece of jerky. “What kind of self-help bullshit are you reading this time?”

  Ed looks insufferably pleased with himself. “Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, actually.”

  “Uh, why?”

  He shrugs, chews. “I don’t know. I guess I’m a little bored of being the brainless pretty boy.”

  “Oh, shut your hole. You’re sitting next to me; there’s no way you’re going to be mistaken for the pretty one.”

  He laughs. “You are not that pretty.”

  “Shut up. I’m fucking gorgeous. Everyone wants to fuck me.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Yeah, well. You’re a rock. You don’t count.”

  No matter how many times I tell myself I’m over it, I still check my email when I get home. Just in case.

  But there’s nothing, at least not from him. Not so saintly after all, it seems. Maybe he’s having a lazy Sunday in bed with the boyfriend, who has no idea that Saint Thomas has been getting some student strange behind his back. He has a lot of secrets, it seems. Things you’d never suspect about him at first glance, like how his mouth feels like a hot, wet slice of heaven when it wraps around your dick. I’ve never had a man handle me like that before, and I admit that I get the appeal; nobody knows how to work a penis like someone who has one of his own. Most of us start playing with those things before we even know how to talk or take a crap in the big boy potty.

  I check my bank statement while I’m there, and it’s even worse than I thought. Time to turn on the cam and think happy thoughts, I guess, but I’m really not in the mood. I’m sore and sleepy and confused and the only thing I know for certain is that I don’t feel like jacking it on camera for a bunch of weirdoes who never stop asking me when I’m going to take it up the ass. Last night was…annoying. That’s the only way I can put it. There I was, trying to enjoy the memory of Friday night and thinking that maybe it would make my performance that much more realistic, but these guys aren’t into method when it comes to their porn. All I got was ‘show me ur ass’ and ‘fuck yourself’, and it seriously interfered with my enjoyment of my own sexual fantasies. I turned off the cam, angry that I wasn’t even allowed to be alone in my own head, and for the first time it left me feeling – if not exactly dirty – but unappreciated. Used.

  I guess that’s the problem. When someone looks at you like you’re the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to him, then all other sexual attention starts to feel kind of flat. Sour. Second best.

  I don’t know. Maybe this is just something I need to get over. The only thing I know for certain right now is that tomorrow’s class is going to be really, really weird.

  *

  He walks in on Monday like it’s nothing. “Okay,” he says, without looking over the class even once. “So, looking at some of your papers, I can see that we’re going to have to have a refresher course on the whole concept of the tragic flaw. The Greek, anyone?”

  “Hamartia,” someone says, and he turns to the board to write it down.

  “Good. Hamartia.” He turns back to face us and there’s nothing he can do about it. His eyes meet mine. I’d like to think that blush was something to do with me, but he’s obviously been in the sun this weekend, hiking or running or whatever it is he does with the boyfriend when he’s not sobbing in the crotches of tricks like me.

  He gives me a brief, awkward smile and I feel like I’ve been shocked or stung.

  “Contrary to popular fiction,” he says. “Hamartia has nothing to do with posing with an unlit cigarette on your lip at all times. There is a word for that kind of behavior, but it’s neither Greek nor relevant to this class.”

&n
bsp; There’s a ripple of laughter and he takes a moment to enjoy it. I knew he’d seem different to me after Friday night, but not this different. He’s lighter, brighter, like somebody screwed in the right bulb for once and shining at the wattage he was meant for. Was that me? Did I do that?

  “Hamartia – the tragic flaw - means ‘too err’, or ‘to miss the mark’. Imagine it like a trajectory error in air-traffic control or a missile system. The error was there all along from the take-off, and because of that error it was always going to end in death, fire and screaming. It rules out a safe landing from the start. It’s just a question of whether the plane – in this case the play – is going to crash down into the ocean where everyone is eaten by sharks, or whether it’s going to land in the mountains where they’re all eventually forced to eat one another.”

  Is that me? Am I that? A trajectory error?

  “Milos.”

  I almost jump out of my seat. “Yeah?” Why does my heart feel like it’s about to explode? I can feel my cheeks glowing so hot that I’m sure everyone knows what we did.

  “Name me a tragic flaw. Macbeth, for example. What was his?”

  Well, I know mine. It’s definitely sluttiness. “Uh…his wife? No, wait. Ambition.”

  “Ambition. Good. Although I think you’d be watching a very different play if you didn’t think the wife had something to do with it. Classic case of the folie a deux, that one.”

  That sounds a little like a ballet term, and as he turns to write on the board I look it up. Literally means ‘the madness of two’. Yeah, it may not be a ballet term but it’s safe to say I got down to that tune on Friday night. Every time I close my eyes I feel his mouth on me.

  “Cara,” he says, picking on someone else for a change. “Othello?”

  “Jealousy.”

  “Good. And for a bonus round – Kevin. Hamlet. Tragic flaw?”

  “Indecision.”

  He looks us over and shakes his head. “Excellent. So why am I not seeing this in your papers, people? The question very clearly indicated that you would have to cross-reference. So…reading for this week…”

  I sit through the rest of the class in a daze, hardly listening. The sun is shining and the windows are open, but every now and then a breeze will waft that classroom smell right under my nose. It’s floor cleaner, I guess. Chalk and dry erase markers. I’ve been smelling it all my school days but now it comes with a whole fresh bunch of hot, sticky memories. When he’s talking I can’t stop looking at his mouth, his hands. He has his sleeves rolled up and his forearms look sunburned. His wrists are beautiful, his fingers long, and it’s impossible to look at them without getting smacked in the face by the sense memory of them curling around the base of my balls, squeezing me gently until I had no choice but to explode on his tongue.

  And he swallowed. Jesus.

  I could walk out at the end of the class. I could do as I was told and pretend it didn’t happen, but that’s not me. I’m nothing if not self-destructive.

  So I wait until everyone else has filed out and approach his desk as he’s packing up.

  “How was it?” I say.

  He looks up, startled. His horn-rimmed reading glasses have slipped down his nose and the sun’s shining at an angle that shows me the thumbprint on the glass. The ends of his eyelashes are golden. “What?”

  It’s just one word, but it says so much. It’s not a teacher ‘what’, it’s a Tom ‘what’, whatever that is. It’s human and off-balance and soft, like he is. I know if I could touch him there would be a little give to his belly and around his waist. Not carved and hard like I am. He’s allowed the luxury of rest from time to time.

  “My paper,” I say. “Edward II.”

  “Oh,” he says, like he wanted it to be something else. “Um…not great, actually.”

  I exhale, frustrated. “Okay. So how do I make it great? How do I pass this class? I need…” Oh, it’s a stupid idea, but me and stupid ideas, we go way back. “I need extra lessons or something.”

  He lets out this short, disbelieving laugh. “God, no.”

  “No?”

  “Nooo,” he says, letting his lips clearly shape the word. It doesn’t help make the point he’s trying to make. My mind is too dirty for that. “That would be beyond inappropriate, considering–”

  “–considering what? That thing that didn’t happen?”

  “Yes. That.” He glances at the door as someone passes by, and when he speaks again his voice is low. “Look, I’m very flattered, and you are so, so gorgeous–”

  “–really?–”

  “–not to mention conceited.” He sighs. “I’m sorry. I can’t give you one-on-one sessions under the circumstances. Surely you can see that? Ethically I shouldn’t even be marking your papers right now.”

  “Oh come on. It’s not like I’m blowing you for better grades. I mean, you were the one doing the–”

  “–stop. God, Milos. What happened to discreet?” He shakes his head and sighs again. “Look, come by my office this evening around six, okay? That way we can talk about what we need to talk about. In private.”

  “Okay. It’s a date.”

  “It’s absolutely not, but okay. I’ll see you then. Excuse me, I have to go.”

  I watch him walk away. He has a nice butt. Huh. Check me out, checking out a man’s butt. It only seems polite, seeing as he thinks I’m so gorgeous and all.

  And he’s right. I’m vain as hell.

  There’s nothing else going on today. No rehearsals and I’m forbidden from running or the gym, so I head home. Ed’s not around, but he must have picked up the package that’s sitting on the table for me. I know what it is without opening it. I ordered it on Saturday night after my webcam show fizzled because I couldn’t get my head in the game. What I really wanted at the time was a nice, private jerk-off session, but you can’t enjoy a thing like that on camera. People keep telling you to cram things up your ass and telling you they want to wear you like an animal feed bag, whatever it is that’s supposed to mean.

  I don’t unwrap it. I’ve got a paper to deal with, and it’s all on me. I thought I’d need to cross-reference and I didn’t; I figured he wouldn’t ask me to do that much. But he did, and I should have risen to the occasion.

  The afternoon slides away in Wikipedia and Google searches, in tragedies from Shakespeare to Sophocles. It’s only when my head starts to ache that I put down the pen and my eyes wander back to the package. I’m kind of impressed at my self-control; didn’t think I had it in me, and there’s a thought to make me smile, considering the context. I take out my nail scissors and open the box.

  It’s a toy, but it looks quite serious. A small black thing, maybe six inches long and narrower than my own dick. It unscrews halfway down and there’s a battery compartment. I steal a battery from the TV remote, slip it in and twist the shaft. It buzzes, and I laugh; I can’t help it. I’ve bought an actual vibrator.

  This is what they want, my viewers. They want to watch me stick things up my sweet little virgin butt hole, the weirdoes. And I’m totally not averse to the idea; I had an ex-girlfriend who used to get creative with her fingers when she was going down on me, but...well...

  Would he do that? If he’d have been able to reach would he have slid a finger up inside me? Found that spot inside that makes everything tighter and harder? God, I bet he’d know what he was doing. He probably knows how to straight-up fingerbang a guy.

  So much for self-control. I’ve managed to keep these filthy thoughts at bay for most of the afternoon, but I can’t seem to hold them back any longer. This was what I wanted on Saturday night - time alone. Time to think about what happened the night before and replay the moments that rocked my world the hardest; his hand on the back of my thigh, the first time I pushed into his hot, wet mouth, that heartstopping swallow.

  There’s time before I have to be back on campus. I slide off my sweatpants and lie back on the bed. My cock looks all the harder and happier for knowing we’re alone
again. No cam, just me and my hand and my dirty little mind, just like the good old days, when masturbation was purely a leisure activity. Don’t they always say you should never try to make money from your hobbies unless you’re prepared to run the risk of ruining the enjoyment of them?

  I grab a handful of lotion - ow, cold - and start off slow, closing my eyes. I keep thinking about his hands, his wrists, about how the hairs on his sunburned forearms are the same gold as the tips of his eyelashes.

  He said I was gorgeous.

  Not in the dark either, but in the clear light of day, the sunlight so bright it lit up the thumbprint on his glasses. He made it real when he said that, and up until then it wasn’t completely real. I still couldn’t mentally sift it from a strange but vivid sex dream, but just seeing him blush has thrown all the details into even sharper relief. The texture of his tongue, the heat of his come and the lingering bleach smell it left on me afterwards. As I left I tasted it, or tried to; I was curious, so I wet my finger in my mouth and rubbed it over the thin film already crusting on my stomach. It barely tasted of anything, but I keep coming back to that, about what he would have done if I’d scooped up his load in my fingers and licked it up eagerly the way he did mine.

  Where would we have gone from there?

  I hitch up my legs and slather a fresh blob of lotion on my fingers. I’ve played with my ass enough times on camera to know it feels good, but my mind jumps ahead at the first touch. Getting fucked. What would that feel like? His dick looked pretty big from what I saw of it, clutched in his fist and aimed at my belly. There was a moment before he was about to come when I felt his breath on my lips and he was looking at me like he wanted nothing more in the world than to kiss me. Jesus, I’m hard. From that. Just that. The thought of the thing we didn’t do, the thought of him curling a hand around the nape of my neck and pulling me in…

  My lotioned hand makes little wet noises and I’m good to go right there, but I mustn’t. Not yet. There’s some business to attend to in all this pleasure.