Boys Will Be Boys - Their First Time

by Mickey Erlach

  By the way, her exposure to her two companions’ tender, loving care had completely rid her of her shrewish, viperous tongue. After the two men helped her deliver their son, Helen of Troy and Sparta turned out to be the sweetest mother and wife imaginable.

  No one was sure which one was the father, but they didn’t care. The trio loved each other in their fashion, and they adored their baby boy, Troy.

  However, it must be remembered that most men will shove their erect cocks into any place that feels good; be it hand, mouth, ass, wet n’ wild snatch or ... uh ... armpit, so Adrian and Paris serviced Helen regularly to keep her happy and agreed the three-way stuff was OK. Still, the two males were predominantly gay, and preferred their love-making one-on-one. Their tender togetherness giving them the sort of pleasure ordinary love can never bring.

  Perfection – A Novella

  By Kyle Michel Sullivan

  He had the longest, smoothest, most perfectly shaped legs I’d ever seen, with hair the color of corn silk, soft like down and glinting gold in the morning sun as it swirled up skin tanned to just the right shade. His shoulders were broad, but not so much that they dominated his body, and his hips were slim, but not so much that they seemed narrow. More of the golden threads whispered up clean arms and even more lay gentle over his chest (well, what little of his chest that I could see above the few buttons he’d left undone). Further glints were visible across a smooth but firm chin (probably three days growth of beard for him), indicating how masculine he was even though his face was still unlined. He was at least six-feet tall, and longish hair crowned impossibly blue eyes that were still open to the world. He wore a white cotton shirt (long sleeves rolled up) tucked into an old pair of corduroy “OP” shorts that were so retro they were new, again, with Topsiders on his feet (no socks) instead of Nikes or boots, giving his casual stride just the right grace and making his proportions feel exactly right. And when I saw him on that April day under a cloudless sky, exiting one of those overpriced Lexus convertibles, all I could think was, “I’ve got to have you.”

  On canvas, that is. Nothing weird or kinky here. I’m too – what was that word my mom once used on me? – “risky-less” to get into something like that. Besides, I already knew better than to expect such a thing was possible because of the golden female “twin” who was driving the Lexus. I’d seen them both around campus, and you could tell from the way they clung to each other and kissed that they were anything but brother and sister.

  Dammit.

  I mean it’s one thing to want to possess perfection; it’s totally something else to have to compete with it for it if that makes any sense. Especially when you’re like me.

  Not that I’m ugly or vividly deformed or anything. I’m just average – in every way be it height, weight, looks or attitude. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told by my jock brothers that if I’d just put some effort into it, I could have a good body instead of an okay one (and lose twenty IQ points doing it, I’m sure). And how many times my sister told me I could get any girl I wanted if I’d just talk to them and smile a bit more – “as if,” to quote an old “Valley Girl”. And how many times my mom told me that even though my skin freckles instead of browns, like theirs, it’s no big deal (to them, maybe). Fact is I think the only time I ever heard my dad make a joke was when he suggested I was conceived by the Holy Ghost because I was almost that white (which for years made me wonder if what he was really saying was, I wasn’t really his). No, the one problem here was I’m male and I saw zero indication Mr. Perfect-Man-On-Campus would be interested in anything like what I wanted him to be interested in.

  If I really was interested in that.

  I know, it makes no sense. After all, I’ve done things with guys. Older ones who picked me up and liked to be called “daddy” as they sucked me off (a crude way of putting it, but it was a brutally crude kind of fulfillment). And others about my own age who liked the fact that I looked five years younger than I really am (which was creepy) and who only wanted to get their rocks off and split before you were able to find out their names. I’d get a moment’s satisfaction out of it, but I never really enjoyed it, never really knew if it was right for me, if it really was “my way.”

  Not that women ever did anything more than make me uncomfortable. I mean, a couple have, but I’ve only come close to going all the way with one, and she was a dyke in my high school who just wanted to see what it was like with a guy. Jeez, we got so freaked at just the heavy petting stage we both bolted from the bedroom and slammed The Sound of Music into the DVD player to keep from having to deal with it (I still sigh over Christopher Plummer singing “Edelweiss” at the end).

  Anyway, there’s the real problem. Here I am, a third year art major, finally and officially legal for anything and everything I could possibly want to do (at least, what I’d be allowed to do in Texas, it being such a fascist state), and I don’t know what it is that I want to do – in anything, be it career, future, life or love. Not cool, to say the least.

  And, on that particular day (period of time, really), I was in the middle of really regretting coming to this university because suddenly nothing I did seemed to please me or the idiots who call themselves “professors of art.” My smooth, sweeping, monochrome landscapes were “perfunctory.” My still-lifes layered in colorful oils were “derivative.” My graphic art style portraits (sort of a more detailed Nagel with expansive color; a bit retro but I liked the feel) were compared to “second rate crap you’d see in a junior high public school.” And as for history and geology and a course on Faulkner (of all people), they were off to very bad starts. On top of all that, my ridiculously over-priced dorm room was feeling way too small even if it was just me living in it and had piss-poor natural light available, and my folks were howling about the money vis-à-vis my mid-term grades.

  But I think the capper was when my asshole former roommate who still swears he’s straight got wasted on Tina and tried to rape me. When I wouldn’t let him (probably the only time I ever successfully knocked a guy on his butt), he called my mom while he was still stoned and told her how I liked it up the ass, which I don’t; I don’t think; at least, I haven’t, yet. I convinced her he was full of it, and what helped put it over was how his folks yanked him into rehab the very next day, hence my solitary quarters. All in all, not a banner year.

  Anyway, there I was sitting on a bench in the quad, soaking in the last cool breeze of spring (there were already hints in the air of the usual eight-month Texas summer) as I waited to go to my horror of a life drawing class when he hopped out of the Lexus and “his twin” drove away.

  Now, I’d seen him around campus before, and I’ve sketched him on so many sheets of paper (in pencil, in pen) that I’ve lost count, dashing off the feeling, grabbing the curve of his body under his clothes, adding the details from memory and usually turning out something good (well decent, anyway). You see, there was more than just physical attraction here (I don’t usually go for blondes). I have this obsession with proportion. It’s so rare to see every aspect of anything match just right – be it a building or tree or human body – that when I do happen upon something or someone that does, I freeze-frame and try to burn it into my brain by rendering it in some form or fashion. So it’s not as if he was sudden or new to me.

  But there was something about this one time and this one place with everything crashing in on me that seeing how he looked that morning, binging me a hint of peace. A sense of – I dunno – consistency, I guess. So I whipped out my sketchbook and pen, by habit, and glanced at him a few times as he passed, trying to get the feel of the moment as I let my pen dance over the page. Then he caught my eyes for the first time and smiled and nodded in that college-guy way of saying, “I’ve seen you around campus,” and I forgot to breathe. I just sat there, my mind a complete blank until I heard a perfectly modulated Texas drawl purr, “What’s that?”

  I jerked around to find he was eyeing the few lines I’d managed to do in my s
ketchbook. He laughed, a bit embarrassed.

  “Didn’t mean to spook you,” he said. “Just wanted to see what you’re drawin’.”

  “Nothing,” I mumbled. “Just trying to capture something on the fly.”

  “What?”

  Numbly, I slipped the previous page over to reveal the last sketch I’d done – a felt tip scribble of him in left profile, smiling, his arms crossed. I didn’t like it, much; it was missing something – a final spark to give it life, maybe, but he still grinned with pleasure.

  “That’s me. Wow, you’re good.”

  I shrugged and said, “This was just a quickie – a ... a quick sketch,” which was a lie. He’d stood still for a good ten minutes waiting for his girlfriend to finish talking with a girl she knew. “I’ve done better.”

  He leaned closer to look. “You still signed it.”

  “I ... I sign all my work, even the stuff that’s crap.”

  “Uh-huh,” and he flashed me a smile touched with a twinkle that suggested he knew I knew it was better than I said, then he looked closer at the sketch. “So you’re Joe. You did that paintin’ that’s hangin’ in the refectory.”

  A student leaning into his open locker, casually reading a textbook, done in shades of blue except for his skin, feeling a bit hidden and distant. One of a dozen paintings on exhibit from last semester’s composition class, the only art class I did okay in. I was surprised he noticed it – that anyone did.

  “Yeah,” I croaked out. “One of my classes.”

  “Art major, huh?” He squatted beside me, those amazing blue eyes piercing into mine, that fan-fuckintastic smile on his face, those perfect legs seeming even more perfect in their sudden fullness, the golden down curling up his thighs to his crotch.

  Shit, Joe, don’t look at his crotch! Not when he’s this close! I concentrated on closing my sketchbook and took a sip of the melted ice in my drink. I was having trouble breathing. My mouth would have made the Mojave Desert seem like a rain forest, and I was suddenly terrified about the tuna sandwich I’d just eaten. But he didn’t seem to notice, so I nodded, hoping I didn’t look like a monkey in heat, and said, “Third year.”

  “I’m dual … sports an’ communications. Name’s Aaron Friesen,” and he held out his hand. I took it, and just the fact that I was touching him in any way, form or fashion sent screaming lighting down my back to my thighs and brought about what has to have been the fastest erection in modern history. Thank God, I’m into briefs instead of boxers.

  “Joe Martin.” See even my name’s average. Well not exactly. It’s Joseph Allen Martin, also known as “Jam-The-Cat” in high school, and for none of the dumb reasons you can think of; just mostly because I was heavy into art and used that to keep the dicks who weren’t afraid of my jock brothers off my butt. I’d do sketches of them for their girlfriends of the moment and that seemed to get them plenty of play in the back of daddy’s car, so I was cool enough for that and for other reasons, and now I’m drifting close to hallucinating because of this gorgeous guy squatting next to me. Not good. Focus on Aaron, you dumb shit.

  “Listen, Joe, I’m gonna be straight with you. (Pun intended?) I knew you’re an artist. I’ve seen you workin’ in your sketchbook and Andrea – that’s my girl – her roomie’s seen more of your stuff on exhibit in the art department. She says she saw one that looked a lot like me.”

  Yeah late autumn by the dorms, sitting under a pecan tree, three-quarters right, soft green T-shirt, tan Dockers, sunglasses, done in easy watercolors and – oh, shit, he’s gonna bawl me out for being a fag and staring at him so much!

  “I ... I just liked the composition of it,” I muttered, “a student under the tree ... studying.”

  “Cindy liked it, too,” he said, still even and smooth. “Fact is, I was wonderin’. My folks’ anniversary’s in a couple weeks, and I never know what to get ‘em. And my brother, Josh, he always gets ‘em just the right thing; don’t know how he does it. Andrea says since it’s their twenty-fifth, I should get ‘em something silver, but I was thinkin’, y’know, a ... a portrait or somethin’ painted would be perfect, this year. So could I ... could I buy that one from you?”

  I just looked at him, blank. I would never in a million years have expected him to want anything I’d done. Period. And he wanted to buy this second rate toss-off piece of crap from me? Man. All I could think to say was, “It’s just a watercolor.”

  “I know,” he said, looking bashful (Jesus, God, I wanted to hold him). “But Cindy, that’s Andrea’s roomie, she said she knew it was me the second she saw it, and I think my folks’d like that. I could get it framed and …”

  “I’ll do a better one if you want.”

  He looked at me, taken as much by surprise by what I said as I was. “Really? You mean, like off a picture?”

  “No,” I said, without thinking, “no, pose for me and I could ... I could do something in oils on canvass. It’d take a couple of sittings, but it’d ... it’d mean a lot more. Be a lot more impressive.”

  “Wow.” He thought about it for a moment then looked at me, sideways. “But how much’d that be? I don’t have much money.”

  We could work something out in trade, slammed into my brain but I caught it before it hit my vocals, and all that came out was, “Forty bucks.”

  “You kiddin’ me?”

  “No. That’ll cover the canvass and materials.”

  “But that’s leavin’ nothin’ for you.” And he had this little I-know-what-you’re-up-to smile on his lips.

  “I ... I’d get to work with a real model. I’ve never had one, before,” which was a lie. I just never had one I wanted to pounce on before. But he seemed to accept it.

  “A couple nights, you said?”

  “Yeah. Uh, a few hours Saturday or Sunday then a couple nights over the next week to get the details down. And if it doesn’t wind up perfect, I ... I’ll give you the watercolor.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Okay. When’s good for you?”

  “I dunno ... Saturday I’m interning at Channel Two till five ...”

  “You could come by, afterwards. I’ll have everything ready.”

  I wrote my dorm and phone number on a strip of paper and gave it to him, hoping he wouldn’t notice how my hands were shaking. He chuckled.

  “Rushin’ Hall? That’s across from the Phi-Delts, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, smiling. “They keep reminding me every Friday and Saturday night.”

  “I been there. ‘Bout six, then? Saturday night?”

  I nodded.

  “See you then, Joe. And thanks.”

  He stood up, and I let my eyes furtively sweep over him, again, then I looked up at him and said, “No big deal.”

  He smiled and sauntered away, and I watched him go. And I began blessing those little ol’ OP shorts, and blessing him for wearing them in the face of a time where style demands that men and boys wear hideous clothing like those baggy half-pants which were, at the very least, a desecration against human anatomy. They fit his form just right, emphasizing his hips instead of his crotch as he neared me, and laughing over his magnificent rear as he strolled away. Now I use the word “rear” deliberately, because there was nothing vulgar in his movements, nothing crass, just the gliding motion of a panther wandering through its domain with a patient benevolence. It hurt me to watch him, to watch the smooth rolling of the shorts as they slid up and down the back of his leg, the golden hairs tickling away from the fabric then gliding back under, like waves whispering upon a gentle shore.

  Suddenly, I realized I was about to ejaculate in my briefs. I pressed my legs together and let myself enjoy the sharp little sensations it sent all over my body. Then Aaron glanced back, caught me looking at his rear and turned away, smiling that little I-know-what-you’re-up-to smile to himself again. I exploded right then and there. Came close to dying from the beauty of it. At that moment, I realized I could spend the rest of my life doing nothing more than painting th
is one guy and I’d be happy, just like Andrew Wyeth and his “Helga” pictures. What a dream of a world that would be.

  Well, looks like I answered at least one of my questions, and caught a pretty good glimpse of the answer to the other. Only question left was did it really matter?

  I don’t remember much about the rest of the day, just that I went into this time warp where everything seemed to zoom past in slow motion. I mean, c’mon Aaron Friesen was coming to my dorm room Saturday evening! Aaron-un-fucking-believably-good-looking-Friesen was going to model for me! What else could I possibly care about?

  Well, maybe that my place was a brutal mess. And I don’t just mean the usual college guy junk of six week old pizza crusts hidden under piles of dirty clothes and text books plopped atop a dozen CD cases whose CDs hung from stick pins rammed into a cork bulletin board. Oh, I had that, sure with empty beer bottles and Dr. Pepper cans and juice cartons mingled in, but I also had sketches I’d crushed and slung aside in frustration or ripped in half and never picked up off that ugly gray carpet. And I had empty plastic peanut butter jars (I like creamy Jiff) I’d washed out and used to hold water for my acrylics or to dilute my oils with a dash of turpentine for a flat feel. I had colors from paintings I’d worked on back in September crusted on the rails of my unmade twin bed and artist’s table, and my easel had nothing but a mass of smudges to prove I used it (no tubes of paint or used brushes or discolored canvas or indented pad anywhere in sight). Y’know, the only undamaged work of art in my room was a sketch of a guy in a Polo ad I’d started on a blank wall using a charcoal stick but had never finished. It was a caricature of the worst that a dorm room could be minus nude pictures of girls or posters of sports heroes or rocker boys taped to the walls, and I hadn’t realized how bad it was until I came back to it after my last class. Brother. Couldn’t have Aaron see what a slob I am, could I? Problem was where to start?