What do I want, they ask, what could they do for me, they want to know. If there was ever anything he could do for me, just let him know, one who calls me “stud” says, who asks if I like to role-play and just for a minute, once, goes into another set of words, to play with me like we’re just two boys home alone. Another: You blonds, you always look so young. “Pretty boy,” my stepfather had taunted. The more different I could look back then from all those rednecks, the better. There was one bar for boys like me, called the Pegasus. The boy like me and I would go around looking for more like us. I’d say stop the car, there in that stretch of the park, in Macon, where a street pulls through. That one perched there, smoking a cigarette, on the hood of his car, parked off to the side, looked like someone I might like. Looked “bohemian,” an odd word at the time I liked the sound of in my mouth.
The more voices I gathered in my head, the better. The more they might build to a finer opinion, counteract, balance each other. More options. More possibilities. More ways to see myself, see how men could be and want. Then the more chances to escape.
It’ll begin to tickle them, scratch at them, when I haven’t shaved in a while, and I’m letting my beard grow in. In his DVD, when the scenes shift more toward what I’d guess are the ’80s, the settings move to nicer ones, bigger beds, richer sheets, bigger and smoother men on them. Afterward, after we’ve gone through a number of the scenes, manipulating ourselves and each other, together, or I let him do to me whatever he wants, don’t really object, he tells me I can sit down, relax. I don’t have to put my shoes and clothes right back on just yet. I can sit on the chair with the towel he’s spread out on it for me, catch my breath. Do I want a beer or something? Some offer. Some before, some after. And if I take off too immediately, some are not going to ask me back.
Let him talk to me some more about my body, while he spreads out on the couch, keeps himself nice and hard, still slick, slippery. Squeezes out a bit more lube. I used to like to get it in my mouth. We were in love, so I could take in more of him. We were only doing it to each other.
All sorts of things are said in the heat of the moment, in the throes, but he wants to talk, too. About his job. He has birds in cages and cactus in terrariums. He’s a landscaper. His ex, they both still live in this building, since they broke up. His ex got to keep the front apartment, while he moved into the back of the building. But they’re still on the same floor, still close. They both like the neighborhood. Still like each other.
What’s wrong with me, he keeps asking. I’d seemed so removed, so distant, earlier. He asks me if I just broke up with someone. You know how it is, he says, when you’re fucking around, and you’re saying to yourself, what am I doing here?
His ex is a man of fewer words, almost fewer even than me. I know because some nights I go to see him, too.
Just because they’re no longer interested in each other, that doesn’t mean they’re no longer interested in sex. He does keep saying how some night he was going to let me fuck him, wanting to know would I like that, did I want that, like that might keep me interested, coming back. But he was going to have to be ready for it. I haven’t lost my restraint with him, or he with me, like slipping inside the boy between neighborhoods, on the outskirts of my old one, not just his mouth, when he pulls me back, on top of him, on his back, strong legs up around me, spurring me.
His ex wants me to enter their building quietly, to walk down the hall quietly, will emphasize mostly the way I should come and leave, makes sure I know how not to get lost in that building. When I get to the top of the staircase, go up one flight to the second floor, take a left, go down to the end of the hall. One scene in the movie he has on a couple of times when I arrive starts by showing a “soldier” alone in his military jeep, and then when he’s caught with his khakis down, playing with himself over and through the steering wheel, he says something to the effect of, what would you do with one this big, Sergeant?
I was from “The International City,” a joke, basically. They called it that because of everyone in the military who moved there. I used to think older men might help lead the way, might point me out of there. Sheltered, I knew, I needed to get away. Then I began to go to them because I thought I knew what I could expect from them. Believed I knew what they wanted from me.
Could he offer me a drink?
Back in Macon, this one with his life, dog, obviously expensive things, side table for his cocktails.
Something sweet.
He’ll put it in some Coke.
In my class in the city, we were reading The Ravishing of Lol Stein. (“She says that in school—and she wasn’t the only person to think so—there was already something lacking in Lol, something which kept her from being, in Tatiana’s words, ‘there.’”) I was taking out loans from the government, ostensibly for school, and I’d defer until I couldn’t any longer, I figured. Who cares if you die in debt?
In a small town, you needed to move, so you didn’t keep coming across whomever, when it hadn’t worked out. When I walked out of the building in Bay Ridge, I walked along a sidewalk that ran along road on one side, park on the other, a highway on the other side of the park.
A year and a half since I’d known where I could try to go at night when I just didn’t want to go home, that long since I’d been with someone I didn’t feel I had to protect myself from in subtle ways in sex. Then two years, three even, when I’m doing what you could call just fucking around. Or you could call it trying to see if the only thing I’d lost was a release. The city was full of alternatives.
I’d read the words wrong, sometimes in class, or mispronounce, like slips of tongue, though not quite, exactly. Things like reading “unwordly” in place of “unworldly.” Maybe not a pointless juxtaposition.
Make it feel good, make it feel good for yourself, he kept saying to me, when he wanted me to control the way, the speed at which, I was going in and out of his opening.
FIGHT CUB
Geoffrey Knight
I wasn’t looking for a fight. And yet there I was, sitting in the physics end-of-year exam with a cut on my chin and a wrist so swollen that my writing hand had to drag my pen across the page like a slave with a ball and chain strapped to his ankle. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t complaining at all, because every time I stole a glance across the examination hall at Mason my cock stirred and pulsed with such pleasure I refused to stifle it. Heck, I even sat back in my chair, a different person, and let my dick harden with the memories of the night before.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
“Get him!”
This I heard over the rattling pipes of the hot water system in the dilapidated dorm in which I lived. I’m not a member of a fraternity—I’m just not frat material. Sure, I try to look after myself, I have a pair of dumbbells stashed under my bed and when nobody’s looking I do curls and dips and try not to pop a shoulder, and to be honest with myself—which doesn’t happen all that often—my body’s not that bad. Transformation from weedy geek to lean, well-proportioned lad is definitely within my reach. I look okay in the mirror these days—if I take off the glasses and tousle the hair and just relax. But that’s a me the rest of the world simply never sees. Because I can’t do exactly that—I can’t just relax! I’m always on my guard: woolen vests as a shield of armor no matter what the temperature outside; glasses for a helmet; straight, flat hair because I simply wouldn’t dare to do anything attention getting.
“Get him!”
The hot water was spluttering and pissing in bursts over me as the pipes clanged and shuddered. I was the only guy in the showers at the time. I showered late, when everyone else was at a party or having fun at the college bar or fucking someone in their room. It was supposed to be the safe time to take a shower, alone, in private, with nobody to size you up and put you down.
But suddenly I heard the cry of their voices.
I opened my eyes to the sting of soap and saw two buff guys in ALPHA GAMMA FUCKYA T-shirts practically slid
ing across the moldy tiles toward me at top speed. In their hands they held a pillowcase, like park rangers about to bag a snake. Only my snake didn’t lash and hiss and spit. It simply recoiled in terror, stunned into shrinkage, before an elbow connected with my chin (the now gashed chin). Suddenly the white tiles all around turned into a star-filled night sky, then swirled into complete darkness.
Physics is different from quantum physics.
Physics deals with the things we can see: an aircraft made out of heavy metals and packed with human souls flying through the sky; two cars bouncing off each other when they collide while their occupants sail through the windscreen still full of momentum; an apple falling on Isaac Newton’s head while he sits under a tree reading Shakespeare.
Quantum physics, on the other hand, deals with the things we can’t see: what are atoms and protons and electrons and molecules and particles truly capable of? Metamorphosis? The folding of space? Time travel? What happens when you sleep? What happens when you’re elbowed in the chin by a quarterback with a buzz cut and arms bigger than my thighs? Where do we really go—what alternate universes do we traverse—as minutes and hours slip by, lose their meaning, and before you know it, you’re opening your eyes and your thumping head registers the fine cotton weave of the inside of a pillowcase? And the smell of manly sweat. And the sound of jocks laughing at you.
Then suddenly—
—the pillow case is whisked off your head and your flat, wet, honey hair flips and flops in the air, wanting to free itself and simply relax. But your chin is bleeding and your head is throbbing and your sight is blurred and all you can see are twenty ALPHA GAMMA FUCKYA T-shirts in front of you, all covering thick, muscled college torsos, all begging to be torn to shreds and flung to the ground.
Yes, those T-shirts would be much better off, off!
But then again, my chin was very sore!
“You’re the money!” I heard someone say and looked up to see the gorilla-jawed, buzz-cut quarterback who had elbowed me.
I then looked down to see that I was still completely naked, my lean body glistening, having been snatched from the dorm showers. My hands were tied behind my back. I was in a rickety, broken chair in what looked like a derelict, rat-infested basement.
“Welcome to the attic,” Buzz Cut screamed in my face.
Now I saw the window with its curtains drawn and the vaulted ceiling. Nobody has secret meetings in basements anymore, duh! This must have been—
“—the attic of Alpha Gamma Fuckya!” I was shouted at. “You’ve been chosen by the fraternity as tonight’s prize!”
“Prize?” My lip cracked and started bleeding again.
“You heard me, bitch! You’re here to be won.”
“Won by who?” I should have said by whom, but I was bleeding and dizzy.
“By whom, bitch!” shouted Buzz Cut, surprisingly astonished by my mistake. “Jesus, it’s a good thing we don’t need you for your grammar skills! We need you for the end-of-year physics exam! You and your nerdy brain will be the prize for the winner of tonight’s fight, and I for one intend to win. You’re gonna help me pass tomorrow’s test, or else!”
“Or else what?” I asked fearfully.
Buzz Cut didn’t actually have an answer prepared and simply spat one out in straight rage. “Or else we’ll make you wash every one of our jockstraps…with your tongue!”
He glared at me, his eyes and nostrils flaring like those of a demon from hell, but as I looked at the wall of muscled shirts in front of me all I could see were angels from heaven—in tight, torso-hugging T-shirts, with lats for wings.
I hid my increasing desire. At least that was the plan. Unfortunately my cock was less subtle. It made its way down my thigh like a plane on a runway until it took off, ascending straight up, defying both gravity and my brave intentions not to make a bad situation worse.
Buzz Cut stared at it in horror and rage, as did everyone else, including myself. “Are you listening to me, pervert! Or are you too busy having some sort of faggot fantasy!”
I gulped nervously and stammered, feeling the heat of my erection against my belly. “N-n-neither! B-b-both! Yes! No! Shit!”
My rantings just made him madder. He was pushing the already high, tight sleeves of his T-shirt farther up his bulging biceps, true comic-strip style, and bunching up a fist, ready to beat the pleasure and desire out of me, when suddenly a piercing whistle cut the air.
It was a whistle of confidence, the sexy kind I could never make, the one that hot New York bankers in designer suits conjure up when they need a cab, with two moist fingers probing their mouths and manipulating their tongues as they blow.
Everyone ducked and covered his ears as though a missile had just passed too close overhead. Slowly the crowd of Fuckya frat boys turned then parted to reveal the one man in the room I hadn’t noticed before, probably because of the wall of testosterone blocking my view.
This man—the one with the sexy whistle—was sitting at a bench press that I also hadn’t noticed. He was unforgivably handsome, with a strong jaw and a flash of freckles across his perfect nose, the last sign of something innocent and sweet on his manly face. He looked to be around my age—perhaps twenty, maybe twenty-one—but his body was that of a man who’d been working out since he was a young boy. The sweat stains around his armpits and down the middle of his pecs suggested he’d just finished lifting, and now his bouldered shoulders and heaving chest looked as though they could rip their own way out of his fraternity T-shirt. Then there was the matter of his gym shorts, tight and also bulging.
Quickly I blinked away the lure of his crotch and looked once more at his face, his iceberg blue eyes, the generous locks of his raven black hair. Instantly I wanted to run my fingers through those locks, but as though reading my mind he indulged in that privilege himself, using one large hand, fingers splayed, to push bountiful strands away from his beaded forehead, raising his arm high. I could almost smell the scent of his armpit, sweet and dangerous, irresistible.
My cock thumped eagerly against my stomach, an unruly dog pawing at the door. Luckily for me nobody noticed; they were all watching the muscle-bound god, obviously their alpha male. All but one had a look of adoration on his face—Buzz Cut.
His eyes turned to hateful slits as he glared at the man on the bench press, like a tribesman who had been number two for too long. “If you think you can beat me, Mason, then bring it! I need that pass in physics and I’m ready for you!”
Mason, the god, stood. “I need to pass too, Bobby.” Oh, Jesus, his voice was so calm, so confident. “And if it means getting physical over physics, I’m ready too.”
Despite being slightly larger (and certainly uglier) than Mason, buzz-cut Bobby’s throat clacked at the response, nervous and mad. But he stood his ground nonetheless. At least he tried. It was a difficult thing to do when Mason threw down the gauntlet by peeling off his shirt. Actually, let me do this scene justice…by replaying it in slow motion…and please forgive me if I embellish a little… but Mason didn’t just peel off his shirt—he teased it off over every last inch of his torso.
First his hands crossed each other in front of his belly before hooking the hem of his body-hugging tee. His fists lifted it just a little at first, hoisting it up three inches to reveal a navel buried deep in muscle and surrounded by a trim forest of stomach hair—so much hair for a man that young, yet so under control, so beautifully clipped, so admirably well-maintained. He lifted the T-shirt higher to reveal a four-pack, then a six-pack, then a glorious eight-pack, because let’s face it, nature smiles on some guys—as was I.
Each pack was blanketed in that neatly manicured young male’s mane, a little matted in areas from sweat, twisting into inky trails here and there. He pulled the shirt higher to reveal nipples. They were small and milky brown, waiting for someone to drink them, begging for someone to suck on the trim fur around them before clenching those hard buds between his teeth.
I swallowed hard and glanced down, notic
ing the glimmer of precum in the eye of my tortured cock. It was a good thing that nobody was looking my way. Mason still had everyone’s undivided attention…
…as he pulled the T-shirt up to fully reveal his bulking chest…
…as he tugged the shirt over his head, messing up his bouncing black locks…
…as he threw the sweaty tee on the floor and flexed his pecs.
First the left.
Then the right.
He was like a young male lion about to take charge of the pride, giving off so much intensity and testosterone I thought I was about to cum right then, right there, even with my hands tied behind my back and my legs crossed trying in vain to stifle my stiffy.
Not to be defeated before the fight even began, buzz-cut Bobby suddenly ripped—yes, literally ripped; apparently hot men really do that—the shirt off his wide, muscle-carved back. I’m sure I heard a telling sigh escape one of the other spectators, but everyone ignored it, much too focused now on the two subjects who began to step out a circle, turning the attic into an arena in which to fight.
The others formed a ring and included me in it so that my rickety chair became the best seat in the house, so close to the action I could smell the perspiration as Mason stepped in front of me. For a moment he stood with his back to me, sizing up the opponent opposite him. I could make out his perfectly muscled ass beneath his gym shorts, and again my cock flinched. Then suddenly he turned around, and for a heart-melting moment he smiled at me. “Don’t worry, Ethan,” he said, winking. “You’re mine.”
I gasped, completely taken aback. Instantly I wanted to know how this stranger, this god, knew my name. But all that came out of my mouth was, “Look out!”
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