Oh, dear God, I would have died for him, right then. I would have taken a bullet. Would have ripped the head off anyone fool enough to want to hurt him. I was Thor ready to hurl thunderbolts at any threat to Valhalla. I was a lioness ready to protect her cub. Could that be love? I honestly do not know. All I did know was that an exquisite knife had slipped between my ribs and was caressing my heart. I could never feel this beauty and pain with a woman; it just wasn’t possible. And somehow (I don’t know how) I knew. I just knew he had seen the same truth.
He had. And he would not be back till Tuesday.
How could I live until then?
The next day did not exist for me. Oh, I dimly noticed the passage of night into day into night. And I do sort of recall the distant sounds of church bells calling people to services. This was Texas, after all, where even if the state doesn’t have an official religion, people still wonder why you don’t; I’m Presbyterian, for the record. I probably even ate something, though I couldn’t tell you what. All I really remember of the day after Aaron’s sitting is looking at the sketch I did. Gazing upon it from a number of different angles. Touching it. Feeling the gentle roughness of the paper give way to the quick smoothness of the Conte pencil. Smelling the black wax. It was as if I lost contact with the world and vanished into another existence where time had no meaning and God was replaced by this one tentative work of art. Could that be a form of insanity?
My mother had once told me that I was the least stable of her children. I know she meant it in a flattering way. She knew I could never be happy just getting a job and settling down and raising a family and becoming part of a nice middle-class world like my brothers and sister have, but it still marked me. Made me feel damaged. I wonder if she sensed that sometimes I quietly crash into a subtle psychosis whenever my life becomes overwhelming? Like with school not going well and my complete dissatisfaction with my current existence and that fucker who tried to fuck me. On more than one occasion this past year, I’d felt I was flirting with a Van Gogh phase and had feared for my ears.
But that Sunday it just vanished from my life, and I do not now believe – never really did – that there is anything wrong with that. It was like – like I dove deep into a cocoon of waking sleep and when I floated out of it, that is when I began my true life. That is when I had the first real notion of who I was and where I was going, and I don’t remember ever coming to any conscious conclusion about it except that I could now see what was and was not important to me.
I mean, why was I taking a class in Faulkner? I hated his writing. Maybe he was important to an English major, but to an artist? Who cares if he never met a comma he didn’t like? He was the epitome of unimportant.
And then there were my art classes. Failed painters and doodlers trying to tell me how to paint or sketch, so I could fail like them. All their moments were good for was practice, at best, and could actually wind up being harmful if not carefully managed. I could go anywhere for that kind of non-support, and for a hell of a lot less money than it was costing my folks in tuition.
I know these shifts in my psyche were seismic, but they still were not cognitive concepts in my little pea brain. They were mists drifting around my thoughts and obscuring them and altering them in steps and stages, so any action I took on my new beliefs was not deliberate. I just, oh, drifted. Like I drifted into Monday. Like I drifted into ignoring every one of my classes.
What did I do, instead? I began transferring Aaron’s sketch onto my dorm room wall to obscure the Polo inspired one that was still hinting at my past existence. And in my boldness, I did it with a Sharpie instead of charcoal. Once it was on, it wasn’t gonna come off. And if I screwed up? Hey, I screwed up; so what?
But I didn’t, and somehow I knew I wouldn’t. I popped a Yanni CD into the player (I don’t care what you think; I like him) and got into a carefully gliding rhythm of sketch to eye to pen to wall. The smell of the Sharpie chased the Conte pencil’s aroma from my senses and may have added to my feeling of euphoria. I never did do the paint-sniffing thing so I don’t know. Didn’t matter. All I focused on was the white paint tainted with a charcoal horror that was giving way to the mural that signaled my brave new world.
By late afternoon, I had a great rendition of Aaron’s face gazing out at me, fuller, richer, with his secret little smile daring me to add color. Once upon a time, I’d have hesitated. Instead, I squeezed a half-full tube of unbleached titanium acrylic into one of my Jif jars, added dabs of burnt umber, portrait pink and a hint of cadmium red, mixed them with water and set to filling in the lines with my best camel’s hair brush. After a moment, I realized the color wasn’t exactly right and added a squirt of Azo yellow medium. And that was it.
I had the first layer down and was mixing up some color for the details when I heard a knock at the door. I didn’t even turn to look who it was as I said, “Go ‘way!”
Then I heard that gentle drawl say, “Sorry, boss. Didn’t mean to bother you.”
I spun to find Aaron in the doorway, leaning against the jam, looking very unsure of himself. He was wearing a loose athletic T-shirt and basketball shorts, his hair pulled back under a baseball cap that was on backwards, Reeboks and floppy socks on his feet. The beauty of the moment slammed the mural from my mind, and I all but cried out, “Don’t move!”
He jolted, startled. “What you mean?”
“I mean, stay right there,” I said as I wiped my hands off on my shirt (not even thinking that it was the same one I’d so carefully put on two days earlier), grabbed my sketchpad and a pencil and plopped onto my stool to sketch him. “Just like that.”
“Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
He gave me a wary glance and muttered, “Joe, you are freaky,” but he stayed put. Though he did nod at the sketch on the wall. “Y’know, you ain’t supposed to do that.”
“So?” I said, without really thinking. I was too focused on the sketch – on transferring the lines of his body and the curve of his legs and folds of his clothing and jauntiness of his cap onto paper.
“So they’ll charge your folks to paint it over.”
I just snorted in derision. “I thought you were coming, tomorrow.”
“Yeah, well, Andrea went home to Houston an’ she’s not back, yet, an’ nobody’s ‘round to shoot some hoops with ...”
That’s when I noticed he had a basketball under his arm – very observant, aren’t we?
“... and it’s kind of borin’ to do it by myself, so I thought I’d drop by to see what’s up.” And he gave a little shrug and smile.
“Now you know,” I smiled back.
He eyed the mural, let a frown cross his face. “That’s a little creepy.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Just is.”
“C’mon, Aaron, it’s only a sketch. Besides, I’m doing a painting of you. This is good practice.”
His secret little smile slipped back onto his lips and he said, “I know. You’ve done a lot of pictures of me ... an’ it’s got me wonderin’. Y’know?”
“Yeah,” I said, finishing off the outline of the sketch, fluid; good proportions; even a little sexy but not overtly so. I started filling it in. “Am I your stalker? Guess you have a reason to wonder.”
He nodded. “Uh, you ... you are gay, right?”
I smiled. He’s as bright as Andrea, but on him, it’s sweet. I kept working as I said, “Totally. And I think you’re beautiful. But I’m not gonna do anything about it. I mean, look at you. If I did, you could break me in half.” And oh, wouldn’t I love it.
“Beautiful?” he sneered. “That’s what you call girls.”
“Attractive, then. Good-looking.” But then I snapped to it and thought, What the fuck? “I still think beautiful is the best word. See?”
I turned the pad around to show him what I’d done, and he blinked. I had him, again on paper. His broad shoulders. His clean arms. His sleek body. His perfect legs. His neatly curled lips. All rendered
in soft graphite tones and lightly shaded, giving him an ethereal feel. Even without studying it, I was proud of this sketch.
“Damn, Joe,” he said. “An’ I wasn’t even here five minutes.”
“C’mon in,” I said. “I want to do some more. You want a beer?”
“Bock?”
“That’s all I buy.”
“Cool.”
He sauntered in and sat on my bed instead of the chair. And don’t you think I didn’t notice.
“You’re a funny fella,” he said, accepting the beer with a nod of thanks.
“How?”
“I dunno. You don’t act like the fags … uh, other gay guys.”
I sat in the chair, propped my pad on my knee and noticed his left hand was draped over his left knee, a bit of the shorts – they were this neon blue with sunshine yellow trim – trapped under his wrist, the material stretched against his thigh. I started sketching that as I said, “What do you mean?”
He shrugged, sipped the beer.
“Is it because I haven’t hit on you?” I asked.
He sort of nodded. I kept sketching. It’s weird, but I wasn’t getting nervous over how he felt about me. I was more curious to find out.
“Do you want me to?” I asked.
“No!” he said, shocked. “I’m not that way.”
But something in his tone was sending me clues of self-doubt, and for the first time in my life I felt a true-life Jam-the-cat stir from his sleep. Okay, sure – I’ve had the nickname for five years, but I never felt up to it, you know? I just accepted it because it sounded great, and no one in high school really cared if I acted the part or not. But this time, I caught an image of a hungry tom in a dark alley thinking maybe he smelled a mousie, and I let my vocals rumble in pleasure as I answered, “Then what’s the big deal?”
“I dunno. It’s just ... well, when your hand was on my face, the other night, it felt ... it was ... well, you see, in my family, well ... fact is, if my daddy does anything more’n shake your hand and pat you on the back, you know he’s had a few too many. Even Andrea doesn’t ... well ...”
He shifted and the material fell away, drifting loose across his leg, tickling the hairs that swirled up his thigh. I ached to tickle them, myself.
“I can see where it spooked you,” I said, “me feeling up your face, like that.”
“What a way to put it ... but, yeah … little.” He sipped the beer then looked directly at me, and I stopped drawing. “But I ... I liked it, too. An’ that’s got me all confused. I never even thought about bein’ with a guy. It’s got no interest for me. But here I am feelin’ ... I mean not mindin’ ... I mean ... aw, shit, I don’t know what I mean.”
He flopped back and put the cold beer bottle to his forehead. And you know what? I didn’t even think about the fact that Aaron-un-fucking-believably-good-looking-Friesen was lying on my bed. I didn’t cast one look at his legs or his crotch or his body as I stood up. I didn’t even think about wanting to trail my fingers up his thighs – not then, anyway – or kiss the hair on his chest – as I’m thinking now – as I sat on the bed, beside him. The only thought that entered my head was comfort him.
“C’mon, Aaron,” I said, “just because you liked being touched doesn’t mean you’re gay. Shit, you think it’s contagious? That I infected you with queerness or something?”
“No ... but it’s so ...weird ...”
“Why? Even if a guy does make a pass at you, it doesn’t mean you’re obligated to say yes. It’s not like guys like me are diseased monsters out to force you into something that’s not right for you.”
“I know. It’s just ... I ... uh, I got ...”
His voice trailed off, and I finally understood the problem. I’d forgotten the extra little bulge in his pants, the other night.
“It got you going.”
He blushed and nodded. I just shook my head.
“Dude, haven’t you ever had a massage?”
He looked at me with complete confusion. “What? No.”
“Well ... I have. And it was at the hands of Olga, she-wolf of my dad’s gym. That woman had arms bigger’n my legs, and she hurt me right and left as she rubbed and pounded and twisted me into a pretzel, once. Not what you would ever call foreplay. But let me tell you something: I got a real woodie off her.”
“You kiddin’ me?”
“Swear to God,” I said, giving him the Scout’s Honor salute. “And I mean it … she was not at all attractive to me. But there I was, lying face down with a hard-on as this big blond buff dominatrix smacked my ass and told me to roll over.”
“What’d you do?”
“I told her, No, and pulled the towel tighter around me. So she grabbed it, gave it a good yank and flipped me sunny side up. And there I lay, totally birthday suit boy, the joy of my life pointed straight to the sky. Talk about embarrassing. But all Olga did was laugh and say, ‘Vell, by Gott, ye’ll have not’ing to vorry ‘bout in der bedroom’.”
“No shit?” he laughed.
I nodded. “Seems she’d also worked over my brothers. And while they may have inherited the brawn in the family, I was ... oh, compensated in other ways. In comparison.”
Aaron doubled over with laughter and choked out, “Fuckin’ shit, Joe!”
I chuckled, remembering the response my brothers had when I told them the story. They’d dragged me into the bedroom and yanked down my pants to see for themselves – the Neanderthal creeps – as if we’d never seen each other “nekked.” And they both were pissed as hell when they realized how right she was. I still use it as a weapon whenever they get too pissy.
Finally, I told Aaron, “Everybody likes to be touched. In some way or other. My mom says that’s why men used to get haircuts every week – for the feeling of it. Same for contact sports. It’s a way of connecting with another guy. And that’s what happened when I ran my fingers over your face … I connected with you and found a way to transfer you to canvas. And you felt that.”
“An’ that’s the only reason you did it?”
“Yes,” I said, with full and complete truth behind that lie. “I ... I didn’t realize how nice it was until after you left.”
“You think it was nice?”
All I could do was nod, in answer. The vision of him lying there looking up at me, arms up, hands cupping his head, I felt a quickness of breath that made me a little light-headed. I wanted so much to put my hand over his heart and send signals of understanding into it. He looked back at me, almost smiling.
“Guess it was, kind of,” he said, and before the softness of his voice could register in my nimrod brain, he added, “So you ... you want to do it, again?”
“I’ve already got your face,” I said – still being dumb. Then I snapped to and quickly added, “But I don’t have your body.”
“That a fact?” And he gave me his little I-know-what-you’re-up-to look.
I got up, stretched, and man, I did feel like fuckin’ Jam-the-cat: cool as ice and full of self-confidence. I wasn’t just stretching; I was flexing my muscles in preparation to run for my supper, and “guess who” was most definitely the mouse. I liked it. I sat on my stool and said in what had to be the coolest voice I ever used, “You’re right. It’d be weird for you, wouldn’t it?”
He sat up, eyed me for a minute, took a long sip of the beer, and pulled off his shirt! And his body was even more perfect than I dreamed it could be: pecs like something you’d find on a statue of David, smooth round nipples standing at attention, a belly so tight that even sitting there were no creases or folds to it, silken threads whispering up the center of his abs to fan out over his chest. Oh, sweet Jesus, this little kitty was so ready to pounce! He stood up and strolled toward me.
“Think you’re in my seat,” he smiled.
I shifted to the chair before the easel, carefully removed his sketch from the pad to reveal a fresh sheet and grabbed an umber Conte pencil, this time. He sat on the stool, hands positioned above his crotch, his eyes
sharp and warm on me.
“You better stop when you touch the top of my shorts.”
“You got it, boss,” I smiled back.
“Now close your eyes,” he said.
“What?!”
“Do it right.”
I sighed and placed my left fingers on his left shoulder, pressed the pencil to the paper, sat up straight and lowered my lids. The darkness wasn’t as complete as with a blindfold, but it would do. It took me a moment to focus on just touch, focus on the idea that I was sketching him, not making love to him (not yet, I hoped). It wasn’t as hard to shift away from my imagination, this time. Why, I don’t know; I guess I just knew it wouldn’t be the last time I got to do this, and that made me less needy.
I took a deep breath. The gentle aroma of soap – Irish Spring? Coast? – mingled with the scent of the wax. I could both hear and feel his breath whispering in and out of him. I could sense him watching me, waiting for me to try something stupid. Well I wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction. This was going to be exactly what we agreed to – torso only, nothing lower – and what suddenly surprised me was that was all I really wanted, right then.
His skin was smooth, of course; I never doubted it would be. And his muscles were solid without being hard, which is also what I expected. I traced my fingers from his left shoulder up his trapezius to his neck, then down and around his throat and across to his right shoulder. There was a sharpness to his bones that I found surprising but right. Then I pulled back to his chest, felt the soft down whisper against my fingers as I followed the line of his right pec around to its nipple. All perfectly molded. I let my fingers circle it atop the bumpy little ridges (just noticeable under the hair) and then brush over the erect tit in the center of it all. He drew in a deep breath when I did that, so I did it twice more, making him almost gasp in surprise.
Mee-yow, pussycat.
Boys Will Be Boys - Their First Time Page 30
