These Violent Delights

by Whitecroft, Jess

  “Wow,” he says, after a long, sweaty silence.

  “Yeah.”

  I can barely think in sentences right now, and I’m sticky. I right myself on the bed and reach for the baby wipes I keep in the drawer.

  “Wait,” says Milos, and I feel his hand on the base of my spine. “Can I just…”

  My knees are still like jelly anyway, and I flop down. His fingers slide lower and I think I know what he wants. “I just want to try something,” he says, and his fingertip is back where it started. I’m too limp and wrung out to get too excited, but his curiosity still turns me on. I dig both knees into the mattress, raising my hips for him. He pushes gently and he’s in, wriggling and searching until he finds what he’s looking for, and his touch makes me shiver from the inside out, all the muscles in my lower back and pelvic floor pulsing at once.

  “Is that it?” he says. “Is that your prostate right there?”

  I make a squeaky sound in the back of my throat. Oh God, it’s so good. He’s tickling me in there and if I hadn’t just come I’d be waving my arse in the air and telling him to come and get it while I’m hot. I’ve had too many hectic dreams about him fucking me for this to be a good idea.

  “Am I hurting you? Is this okay?”

  “No, it’s good. I’m just still very sensitive.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” He slides his finger out. I’m a joke, like the straight guy who goes to the proctologist and accidentally says ‘I love you.’ After everything I’ve been through I’m still contemplating the idea that a hot, fresh-faced twenty year old could be into me, a shop-soiled thirty-two with more baggage than Louis Vuitton.

  He reaches over and grabs the baby wipes. “Here. Let get that for you.” I feel him swipe gently between my cheeks, over my inner thighs. He taps my arse lightly – “Roll over,” – and I do as I’m told, mostly because I’m scared that if I don’t look him in the eye there’s going to be nothing preventing me from bursting into tears.

  “Well,” he says. “I just wiped your ass and I’m so into you that it’s not even that weird. That’s weird, right?”

  I pull back the covers. “Come here.”

  He slides into my bed and cuddles up to me. My heart hurts in a way I know means trouble, but I’ve been starved for this more than anything else. Just the touch of someone, hearing them breathe beside you, feeling the warmth of their skin between the sheets. From the beginning he surprised me by how eager he was for it, too; in my experience it’s often the case that straight boys will give handjobs, blowjobs and even let you fuck them, but kissing and cuddling fall under the umbrella of things too gay to mention.

  But not Milos. He kissed me first, and the first time we actually went to bed together he rolled straight into my arms and seemed to find all kinds of joy in figuring out ways for our bodies to fit together while we were lying in one another’s arms.

  “You set the alarm?” he says, a reminder that not everything is as it seems. We curl up like true lovers, but there’s a limit. My limit. I don’t let him stay over.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.”

  He’s my student. He shouldn’t be here, and I’m an idiot for letting this happen, but his breathing is soft and slow and the weight of his thigh settles over mine as he nods deeper into sleep. Maybe two weeks ago I could write this off as a rebound thing, someone I scrambled for while I was still in pain, but I can’t hide the truth any more.

  “I love this,” he says, in a half-asleep voice.

  “Hmm?”

  “This. Snuggling with you.” He goes to kiss my collarbone but he’s so sleepy that he only brushes his lips against me. His black eyelashes cast long shadows on his flushed cheeks and I can’t even look at his mouth without thinking of all the wicked, experimental things he did to me tonight. He’s so utterly, beguilingly unafraid.

  “I like it, too,” I say, afraid that he’ll hear the catch in my voice.

  “Everything is still,” Milos whispers, his breath fanning my chest, his voice so far away that he could be talking in his sleep already. “So quiet. And warm.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe if you turned off the alarm…”

  “Yes. Maybe.”

  But he’s gone. I can feel it. He’s heavier in my arms, his breath slow and even, his head rolling against my shoulder. My throat aches, but I have to say, even under my breath. Just once. Just to say I said it.

  “I love you, Milos.” I bury my lips in his hair. “I love you so much.”

  8

  Milos

  I slept late. It happens. I can’t be expected to roll out of Tom’s bed at three o’clock in the morning, drive home and grab what few hours I can before having to get up, go to class and pretend I’m interested in Doctor fucking Faustus.

  We’re going to have to have a serious talk about the not-sleeping-over rule. He’s way too paranoid, and it’s not like we’re doing anything actually illegal.

  To add insult to exhaustion I step on a piece of toast on my way out of the door. An actual piece of toast, with bite marks taken out of it and everything. I know neither Ed nor I are exactly the picture of domesticity, but how fucking hard is it not to hurl your half-eaten breakfast on the floor like a toddler? I peel it off my shoe and fling it hard – overarm and with a twinge that can’t mean anything good - over the railings and into the parking lot.

  God, I’m so fucking tired.

  Last night I fell asleep while getting a blowjob. I didn’t even know I could do that. I always thought getting my dick sucked was sufficiently exciting to keep my eyes open, especially when it’s Tom doing the sucking, but there I was and there he was, going to town with his usual attention to detail, and I closed my eyes for a moment. That was seriously all it took to pull me straight down into one of those velvet black sex dreams where all you can do is feel. There’s no plot or even imagery to them, just darkness, sensation and this all consuming desire to get off.

  And the worst part? Part of the all-consuming desire was mostly about getting off so that I could finally go to sleep.

  I was asleep when I came. I’m sure of it. The next thing I knew was he was shaking my knee and asking me if I was okay – “It’s not like you to be so quiet,” – and I could have cried I was so sleepy, like an infant who stays up long beyond bedtime and lacks the words to explain that they feel like shit. My sexual fantasies have taken a weird, chaste turn lately; I daydream about cuddling with him, of spooning and drifting off to uninterrupted sleep, with the weight of his arm across my ribs and my ass pushed snugly into the curve of his belly and legs, his dick snoozing – half-hard – between the tops of my thighs.

  My neck feels brittle, like it’s barely up to the task of holding up my head. A breeze across the parking lot feels like it could blow it clean off my shoulders. As I get into my car that car smell of gasoline and dusty upholstery almost makes me gag. I remember when I was a very little kid the moms used to carpool us to swimming classes and I always dreaded riding in this one car with this one girl – Natalie, I think her name was. Her mom had two big Basset hounds who rode in the hatchback and the smell of dog and drool on top of the usual car smell would mean I’d spend the whole journey carefully breathing through my mouth. I still remember the shame of the one time when I gagged so hard she had to pull over. I couldn’t very well say ‘It’s because your car stinks enough to make me puke’, because even when I was seven or so I knew that was rude. I remember Natalie’s mom’s eyebrows drawn down with concern – distorted by the tight red bandana she wore – as she explained to my mother that I’d been sick. A virus, maybe?

  And I still remember my mother’s reply. “Oh no. He’s fine. He’s just sensitive is all.”

  Thanks Mom. Short of printing out a t-shirt with KICK ME on the back you couldn’t have made me look more like a target. I had nothing more than a keen nose and a minor case of motion sickness, but oh no – sensitive. Everyone heard that, and even though most eight year olds didn’t know what it meant they kn
ew it meant nothing good. And that it almost certainly had something to do with why I was the only boy in my class who did ballet.

  At least the car starts, but that doesn’t mean life is done giving me the finger today. When I see the lights I’m yawning, glancing in the mirror in that vague oh-shit-someone’s-in-trouble way that you do. Until the other shoe drops and you realize that someone is none other than you.

  The cop waves me over to the side of the road. I know right away that this is bullshit; I wasn’t doing more than thirty and the limit is thirty-five. It’s one of those random shakedowns they do in college towns, and it wouldn’t be my first time. One time when I was still sporting a summer tan a cop stuck his head through the window and asked me if I habla’d Inglese, causing him to go into some kind of racist shame-spiral when he realized he’d just pulled over a white kid and not the Mexican heroin dealer who would vindicate whatever ignorant thoughts were squirming around in his bullet-shaped, bone thick head.

  Well, fuck the police. I’m clean. Squeaky. I don’t even have so much as a teenth in the glove box.

  I roll down the window. I really don’t have time for this. English class is in less than thirty minutes and the suburban traffic is jammed solid with moms heading out for the day. “Is there a problem, officer?”

  The cop puts a heavy red hand on the door. He’s wearing mirrored sunglasses and they put me in mind not so much of actual cops, but those strippers who dress up in uniform and go wiggle at bachelorette parties. Not that even the thirstiest bachelorette would want this one wiggling anywhere near her; he’s got to be at least forty-five, and pushing three hundred pounds.

  “You know you got a tail light out, sir?”

  Seriously? The most bullshit excuse in the book. “A tail light?”

  “Yeah. On your left.”

  “No,” I say. “I didn’t know. But I’ll check it out. Thank you.”

  He raises his eyebrows so that they peek over the tops of the aviators. “You didn’t know?” he says slowly.

  “That’s right. You asked if I knew I had a tail light out and I said no.” I really don’t know what his beef is, but I don’t have time for this today. “Because I don’t know. Until now.”

  “Is this your vehicle?”

  It’s heading that way anyway, so I whip out the license and registration. He looks it over and hands it back to me. “You might want to take a look at this, sir,” he says, nodding to the rear of my car.

  I do as I’m told. I’m pushed for time but I’m not about to argue with a police officer who is like twice my weight and probably packing pepper spray.

  Shit. He wasn’t kidding. My tail light looks like an eye gouged from a socket and left dangling. When I take a closer look I see that’s exactly what has happened; there’s a scrape mark in the paintwork that looks like someone tried to pry the thing out with a piece of metal. It’s so damn deliberate that I suddenly feel cold.

  “You have no idea when this happened?” asks the cop, and I must look rattled, because he sounds almost gentle when he asks.

  “No. None at all.” What the fuck? Oh, park a couple of streets away, Tom says. It’s a nice neighborhood; your car will be quite safe. Yeah, right. “Jesus, it looks like someone did this on purpose.”

  “Yeah, well – you need to tuck that in or cut it off,” he says. “You can’t drive around with it dangling back there. It’s a hazard.”

  It’s another goddamn thing I can’t afford right now. The class has already started and I know Tom’s not going to like this one bit. I’m not supposed to be anything other than a perfect student right now, far above suspicion; it’s not going to look great if I don’t show up for class because I was up late last night banging the teacher.

  By the time I finally get onto campus – almost a full hour later – my mind is a swirling hot mess of paranoia. That busted taillight has shaken me up harder than I’d like to admit.

  There’s no point going into English, so I wait outside the class until everyone else leaves. Tom catches my eye and gives me the long, wide-eyed what-the-fuck-were-you-thinking stare I’ve come to expect, but he waits until we’re alone in the classroom before he goes all in.

  “Where the hell were you?”

  “Late. Tired. Stuck in traffic. Oh, and did I mention that I think your ex just Fatal Attractioned my car?”

  He stacks the books on his desk. They fall into place with a solid, dusty thump. Behind him the board is covered with a list of themes, things I couldn’t care less about. MAGIC AND THE SUPERNATURAL, REJECTION OF AUTHORITY, and lower – underlined – DISOBEDIENCE TO GOD. “Just so we’re clear,” he says. “You do mean Simon, right?”

  “Yes, I fucking mean Simon. Someone came along and gouged out my tail light like it was a goddamn eyeball or something – clearly on purpose – and I have a pretty good idea who did it.”

  He shakes his head. “You must be joking. Simon once had a series of panic attacks over a parking ticket. I’m sorry about your car, but did you get the paper finished, at least?”

  “The paper?”

  “Yes, Milos. The paper. You know, the thing you were supposed to do for class?”

  I reach out and close the door. “Right,” I say, leaning on the end of the desk. “The thing I was supposed to do for class but didn’t have time to, because I had to roll out of bed at four o’clock in the morning and drive home because you’re fucking paranoid?”

  “I’m paranoid?” he says, lowering his voice. “You’re the one who thinks my milquetoast ex-boyfriend has gone full-on bunny boiler. Anyway, I wasn’t talking about writing it in the middle of the night; I was talking about writing at some point in the day when you might be conscious. Come on – this is basic time management.”

  Oh my God, how is he not getting this? “Okay, I am dancing a principal role in Romeo and fucking Juliet, and even now I’m not getting in the kind of rehearsal time that commitment deserves because my mother won’t let me drop a couple of classes. Add to that all the other stuff I have going on and having this thing with you in the meantime and I don’t have a great many windows in my schedule. Sure, if the paper was about blow jobs–”

  “–keep your voice down,” he says, looking so ashamed of himself that I want to strangle him. All those times he told me I was his and this was ours, those whispered moments when he kissed my closed eyelids and told me I reminded him there was kindness still alive in the world; that look on his face right now has turned all those moments into dirty secrets. The bad kind. The kind you see perennial dumbasses like Anthony Weiner regretting loudly in public, while the cameras flash and the spouse stands there looking like they want the floor to open up and swallow them.

  “This is insane,” he says.

  I have a terrible feeling I know what’s next. It’s just that sort of day. “If I could just drop English…” I start to say, but I know I’m fucked.

  “No. God, no. Don’t do that.”

  “Why not? It would make life a lot easier.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” he says, and I’m satisfied to see that at least he looks like this hurts. “And what about your family? I didn’t think you could afford to drop English?”

  “I can’t, but if it’s the difference between this bullshit and us being able to…”

  He frowns. “Able to what?”

  “I don’t know. Be together?” I barely get the words out of my mouth. He looks so uncertain that I want to scream.

  The silence between us is painful. Somewhere in another room I hear a chair scrape across the floor, and Tom winces at the sound like it was nails on a chalkboard. He could fix this with a couple of well-chosen words, but he’s not going to, that much is clear.

  Trust me to take something that hurts and make it worse. I hear myself say it, like my mouth has decided to operate independently of my brain. And my heart. Jesus, fuck - when did that thing start getting involved?

  “You do want to be with me, right?”

  Why would I ask that? Why? I kno
w the answer isn’t going to be anything I want to hear. He’s already looking at me like I’m something he regrets. And he’s not saying a word.

  “What the fuck am I to you?” I ask, deliberately keeping my voice low. “A rebound fling?”

  He swallows and his hand comes up to tug at the hair behind his ear. “No,” he says, after too long a pause. “You’re you, and you’re wonderful, but...”

  “But?” Saw that coming.

  Tom sighs. “This is...complicated. And it’s obviously taking a toll on you. Maybe it’s better if we just...”

  “Just what?”

  He exhales slowly. “Just...stop.”

  This is it. He’s really doing this. “I’m sorry,” he starts to say, but I’ve heard all I want to fucking hear right now. Stop. That was clear enough for me. I may be flunking English but I’m not that goddamn stupid. I fling open the door and walk away, fast, conscious of every step and its rhythm. I have to be at the studio in ten minutes and that suits me just fine; if I didn’t have somewhere to be right now I think I’d self-immolate or drink gasoline or plunge into some kind of industrial level self-harm, just to distract from the horror of being the unwanted thing that I am.

  I take out my phone and scroll through the contacts. I feel sick, but there’s a clarity in what I mean to do. There’s a sense to it that I’ve resisted for too long, and although I might be flailing out right now from pure instinct, this feels right. My counselor - Kate - is not around, but I leave her a message. “Yeah - hi. This is Milos Waxman. I need to talk to her about dropping a class. If she could get back to me when she’s free...thanks.”

  Oh, this is going to be a shitstorm on every imaginable level, but he was the thing that tipped me over the edge. I’m not going back into that class. Not ever. If Mom finds out about it, too bad. I’ll find another way of getting paid. It’s not like I don’t have some experience now; I suppose this whole affair was useful for something.