by David Connor
I held his sight. “Maybe love is your mom just being there, not how much she paid to come, or how much you did. Maybe love is a bowl of chips, a homemade sign, and a bottle of orange soda. I would love you even if you never bought me a gift, even if you had to write a letter and send it in the mail because your phone got cut off. I’d love you even if your emojis were made of punctuation marks. It’s a feeling, not an act.” I reached for his hand and gently held his fingertips. “What are you feeling now?”
He moved toward me and we kissed. “That.”
“That could be love.”
“I’m not sure I feel it. I mean, for you… yeah. Toward you… but what if I can’t feel it back—ever? I guess what I’m saying is, I can’t believe anyone would love me. I really think I’m fucked-up like that.”
“I don’t think that’s true. If you can feel love one way, you can feel it the other—feel it back.”
“This celebrity I’m suddenly thrown into… it’s like a drug, man. The lonelier I felt, the more attention I craved. It’s always been like that, ever since…. You remember when I peed my pants?”
“Of course.” I smiled.
“Oh sure, laugh about it.” He smiled too, which made me smile more. “My parents told me I had to go to school the next day, even though I didn’t want to. I held my ground—cursed a blue streak, threw things. They gave in, and I switched.”
“Mild-mannered fourth grader Mathias Webber cursed a blue streak?”
“Fuck yeah, he did. I was different at home, like there were two of me even then.”
“Two of you?”
“Like with the interviews—real me and say-all-the-right-things me. The opposite then, though. I was all meek in front of people and boisterous at home. Now I come off all confident when everyone’s looking, but when I’m alone, I don’t know who I am.”
There was something I understood. “So, you went to Albany Prep Whatever because you didn’t want to come back to Dover?”
“No. That’s why I went to Millbrook Academy, yet another school I left after a few months, because my teacher was awful.”
“Worse than Mrs. Smeckler?”
The smile that came then seemed easier. “Way worse. Or maybe not. I barely had to fight to bolt from that school, and I thought I’d won, until I noticed after a few more tantrums my parents just stopped trying. Whatever I did, they just turned the other way. I never got in trouble. I just always got my own way.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Just the opposite, Reed.”
I was standing in front of him, brushing his palm with my thumb. He wouldn’t look at me, but rather fixed his gaze on the floor.
“The whole point of a child acting out is to get attention. That loneliness thing was already niggling at me, and then it got worse. I became an attention whore before I became a real one.”
“Oh.”
“No. Really. The gardening guy was first, and then…. You know why I had to leave AMP?”
“Why?”
“Because I offered the drama director my cock in exchange for the part I wanted in My Fair Lady.”
“Dude….”
“Yup. I made sure my parents knew right off it wasn’t Mr. Cole who was the predator. I took full blame. I confessed to the principal, the guidance counselor, Mother and Father, and you know what they said?”
“What?”
“‘What do you want to do?’ That was it. Like, did I want to drop out of school, or maybe go to counseling, or maybe just switch to public school, which, as you know, is what I did. I got more attention at Schenectady, from teachers and stuff, than anywhere else ever. I kind of loved it there. I kind of wonder sometimes what would have happened if I’d have hung in there with you at Dover.”
“Mrs. Smeckler could have been good for you.”
“Maybe you could have been. Either way, I’m a work in progress. I thought I was over the brattiness, but I don’t speak with any of the people from Cloverton. All those groups, all those activities, not a single bond formed. Or maybe a bunch did if you ask them, but I didn’t nurture it or whatever. I minored in psych. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“Sports medicine, which I’ll need to continue on for, and psych, so I could figure myself out. We joked about it.”
“I remember. So… have you… more than back then?”
“Probably not. I know what’s wrong with me, but I still don’t know how to fix it.”
He took his hands away from me and folded his arms across his chest, as if the vulnerability of sharing his heart felt way more awkward than the fact we were both buck naked in my kitchen. I’d taken several psych classes too.
“I bickered with most of them at one point or another and then just up and split without a good-bye when Coach Keller called me out on my shit. I bicker with everyone… until I drive them away… so I won’t be hurt when they up and leave on their own. I test people, as if you didn’t know that. As if you didn’t know that whole wild-oats speech was all about that. I wanted you to stop me. I wanted Keller to come begging for me to come back and….” Now he looked at me. “I wanted you to.”
“I should have.”
“Don’t you dare take the blame, because what if coming out at that news conference was just to grab the spotlight away from you, and then not calling when I was two hours late was just more of the same? When will I stop doing it, Reed? Cloverton, Dover Plains, Schenectady, Russia, I’m a globetrotting asshole.”
“You’re not.” I pried his hand away from his heart and brought it to my lips.
“The stuff is going to burn.”
“Unplug it,” I told him. “Who cares? Keep talking.”
“We can talk and deforest you at the same time.” He turned and stirred the wax with the Popsicle stick that came with it—with his left hand. I noticed something then, in the small of his back.
“When did you get this?” I touched it—an orange-and-yellow maple leaf tattoo. It was small but colorful.
“Right after that day in your dorm room. I was sitting outside a couple days later. I dropped my notebook. It was windy. Remember?” He chuckled—one beat—and then shook his head. “How could you? Both leaves blew away. I fucking swim faster than I can run after foliage caught up in a goddamned updraft.”
I smiled at the mental image of him running across the quad after two floating leaves.
“It’s not funny.” He smiled too, but then it faded. “I figured it was a sign. Then the very next day, I got this.” He touched it—touched me, actually, because my hand was still there. “So I would never lose it again.”
“You covered it when we swam.”
“Yeah.”
“I wish I could offer you some assurance,” I said, taking his hand in mine.
“Eh. I just have to grow the fuck up, I think.”
“Me too. I told Coach just today I was a new me.”
“I like the old you.” He let me hold it.
“Most of him is still there. The same for you. I can tell. I think if we have some time together… not just a moment or an hour, we’ll get to know each other, maybe for the first time since when we were kids—big, naked, hormonal kids in a tent or behind a dumpster.”
I got another smile for that.
“It’s been a while, like you said.” I pressed myself to his back as he turned and tended to the banana hair remover. “We’re men now. And now we can start over, without all the stuff that shouldn’t matter.” I grabbed him roughly, unsure of what had come over me. “I’m not going to let you go again, because here’s the truth I live in.”
His expression went from surprised to curious.
“I’ve been in love with you since that first high school swim meet, if not way back to that vocabulary bee. I never stopped, no matter what I did or how I acted or who else I was around or with.”
“Same here. Honestly.”
“Really?” I pulled him closer.
“Yes.”
&n
bsp; “Really?”
“Yes. I swear.”
“Nope.”
“What?”
I pressed my forearm into his back as if I was the cop and he was the robber. “That’s not how you say it.”
“What do you mean?”
I twisted his hands toward each other. “Say it right.”
“Ow.” He chuckled. “Brute. Say what right?”
I wrenched his wrists and drove in harder with my elbow.
“Ow.” He grimaced this time, but the look in his gray eyes, alternating between squinty slits and opened wide, like some sort of mischievous feline, told me I wasn’t hurting him.
“What you just said, Mathias… say it again… like you’re supposed to.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
I rushed him with a grunt. Like the day in the leaves, I needed to kiss him again, and so I rammed him to the wall with the calendar so I could. But first, “Yes, you do. Say it the right way. Say ‘I’m telling the…’”
“Oh.” He came back at me full-on, and it caught me off guard. “Truth.” I was trapped against the sink now, my dick getting hard. “I’m telling the truth.”
“There you go. Man, don’t forget it again.”
“I won’t.” One hand at my throat now, his body fell into mine again, all of it, and we kissed one more time.
“Hmm.”
Ten more times… twenty… one win for him, and I hadn’t given it purposely.
“I feel better,” he told me.
“Good.”
“I’m glad we talked it all out.”
“Good.”
“So… front or back?” The question was to himself, apparently, though asked against my lips. He spun me around before I could answer, and forced me forward at the waist, bending me over the clean morning dishes with a hand in the small of my back. I was breathing hard. I felt his exhales too, just as forceful on my ass, once he’d gone down to a squat, trailing his way with fingertips against my flesh. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw him lick the lips I’d just tasted. “I need to get a picture. Seems to me you’ll be winning the ‘Who Got Hairiest’ contest. Couldn’t even let anyone else take that prize, could you?”
Since I could reach his phone where he’d left it before stripping down, I passed it back. I wanted that pointless challenge win as much as the ones in the pool. “Get some good ones.” Shit yeah! I did. “Nothing porno. So not… where you’re breathing on me.”
The flash went off a couple of times. I tried to turn, but Mathias held me where I was with his hip, not letting me move, until he wanted at the front. “Chest and gut,” he said. So, finally released, I came around to face him. “What’s with the face?”
I could feel myself pulling quite the expression. “I’m not as pretty as you.” I tried to play off my insecurities as a joke.
“Bullshit.”
“I have a snaggletooth, not enough melatonin, and my hair is out of control. Swimming fans say so. How much do you pay for a haircut?”
“Reed.”
“And do you even need those glasses you wear, or are they just a fashion accessory? Nerdy, hot, gay… that’s a thing, right?”
“If I take them off, I might poke you in the eye with my cock when I aim for your mouth. And you better get used to having your picture taken.” He snapped a whole bunch before he set down his phone—the latest model, of course—and then twisted me toward the sink again, gently this time. “If only you could see what I do.”
“If only you could.”
“Touché. Now then….” He rubbed my ass, both sides, and also in between. “It’s like petting a stray cat.”
“What do you know from stray cats? How’s your horse?” The teasing just came out. I never could control my mouth, so I tempered it with a compliment. “I love your ass hair too, all bronze and fuzzy.”
“Why it gotta be bronze?” He cocked his head. I saw it in the glass part of the oven door. “Looks golden to me.”
“How often do you look at your ass hair? Trust me. It’s bronze.”
“And you think that compliment makes up for that horse shit?” I’d set the current tone, and Mathias gave as good as he got.
“I was hoping.”
“It doesn’t, but I saw that piece-of-shit car you drive parked outside, so now I feel too sorry for you to retaliate.” Another competition—insult ping-pong. “And you really gotta get over the financial disparity thing. This isn’t Downton Abbey or The Haves and the Have Nots.”
“That’s a good show! But… yeah.”
“I am going to buy you some nicer underwear, though, because I love this thatch of fur right here, between the dimples just above the crack of your beautiful ass, and it’s way too nice to cover in your cheap shit Walmart ones.”
I chuckled.
“Hold still.”
I didn’t know for what. He hadn’t touched me yet. All I felt so far were his warm, moist exhales. “I told you I didn’t want you buying me stuff.”
“Not even stuff I can strip off as foreplay?”
“Okay. Maybe.”
“Hold still, I said.”
“It seems to me someone raised as you were might call that section ‘the small of my back,’ by the way. Money don’t fucking buy class, I gue—” I sucked in hard with a hiss. “Son of a mother!” The wax was hot, not scalding, but I hadn’t been ready for it. “Warn a guy next time.”
Mathias kissed the spot just above the molten hair remover and then just below it, all in between. “I told you to hold still—twice.”
“If you love that hair so much, why’d you start there?”
“So I can eat your ass while the wax sets.”
“Is that how it works with your guy?”
“You jealous?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t be. It’s not even like that at all. It’s what he does. It’s no different than when they check us for doping, except I can get a boner and not feel self-conscious about it.”
“And happy endings are optional.”
“I’ve been saving those for you lately.”
“Lately?”
“You want a rundown?”
I shuddered when the Popsicle stick brushed my pucker. “Not really.”
“I’ve been with no one since I told you I loved you in Russia, and not for quite a while before. I swear.”
God! I wanted him. “Are you watching the clock?” I asked. “How long does it stay o—shit!” He’d yanked the strip and pulled out the hair.
“Not long. Did it hurt?”
“No…. Yes…. Yes it hurt, goddamn it!”
Mathias laughed. “Should I keep going?”
“Don’t get any closer to my asshole.”
“I’d never hurt you there.”
“And remember, pretty soon, we switch positions.”
“Uh-huh. So… uh… any major developments in your sexual dossier?”
“I had a three-way. Ow!” He tugged the next patch of hair way harder than necessary. “You did that on purpose.”
“Maybe.”
“Caryn and Cal….” When I reached back to rub my open ass, my hand was slapped away. “And technically, we just shared a bed and watched dirty movies with boners.”
“Caryn had a boner?”
“A lady boner, yeah.”
Mathias laughed. “We’re pretty childish men.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with that sometimes. It was fun… with Cal and Caryn… not romantic… even though I adore them both. Jacking off Cal, him doing me, Caryn doing both of us, and watching the two of them with each other… it was kind of hot.”
“Wish I was there.”
“Next time, Cal says. And I dated this guy awhile with a genital piercing and a lot of tats. He was nice.”
“Nice?”
“His parents wouldn’t be thrilled with him bringing home a whitish guy.”
“Wow. The world is complicated.”
“Yeah, it is.”
�
��That was all that stood between you?”
“I couldn’t fall in love with him. He couldn’t fall in love with me. Those feelings… we’d already both given them over to someone else, I guess.” I winced, even as Mathias was far gentler the next time. “We’re friends, like me and Cal. I love my friends, but being with you feels different. It’s a different kind of love.”
“It does. It is.”
“You’re getting it now… sensing it.”
“I think.” He got up in my ass again. His touch combined with my cock alternately stiffening and then going down was driving me mad. The tactility of warm, viscid wax around the sensitive area his fingers kept taunting—intentionally or not—didn’t help. I kept squirming.
“Stop moving.”
“I can’t.”
Mathias’s gentle stroking after plucking one more area coupled with the new cool, soft sensation of talcum powder in the split of my ass, and I was done—not because I was a wuss, but because I needed him to fuck me. I spun around, whether he wanted me to or not, and charged him like a bull again, head-butting him across the kitchen, through the living room, and right to the bedroom door. It was the shortest bullfight ever, but when I had him where I wanted, both of us loudly breathing, I just looked at him, his glasses all crooked, his chest heaving, his thick cock throbbing before my eyes. “I want us to do it.”
“Me too.”
“I want to eat you all hairy and then again all smooth.”
Mathias laughed. “I was thinking the same thoughts exactly.”
“Though mine is all gone back there now.” I reached for my ass.
“All gone? Hardly.” Mathias put his hand on top of mine. “There’s a lot.”
