Men in Love: M/M Romance

by Jerry L. Wheeler

  The whistler lived on the first floor of a three-story apartment building on the northeast corner of 6th & E. From the street, I could see most of the rooms and corresponding windows. Facing onto E Street was a small, high-up kitchen window, the closest to the apartment building entrance. Next to that was his living room. His windows were always open, although he kept the mini-blinds half-drawn when he was at home. A sofa or love seat was flush against that windowed wall. Directly opposite the window was a fireplace with a large mantel, painted white. I could see the blue lights on his receiver, a CD player and cassette deck. I could tell from the glow that it cast that the TV was on some kind of stand in front of the fireplace.

  As one week bled into the next, I grew to anticipate his evening salutation. I would make sure my flat-top was standing evenly, that the laces on my black leather Chuck Taylor high-tops were tied. I wore baggy shorts and oversized printed T-shirts to work. That mid-80’s summer Tammy Faye Bakker, Pee-wee Herman, dinosaurs, and a punk rock Ronald Reagan, among other images were silk-screened across my chest. I had just quit smoking at the beginning of the summer and was conscious of a slight weight gain on my usually thin frame. I thought the walk to and from the Metro station was good exercise.

  By the end of the second week, I was in a quandary. Matt had been in summer school since the beginning of summer. When he wasn’t doing research or writing a paper, he drove down to D.C. to spend time with me. On most Saturday nights, however, I would take Amtrak to Baltimore. It was convenient, since Union Station serviced Amtrak as well as Metro.

  I’d stay with him in the graduate dorm, where we had wildly safe sex and ordered pizzas and Chinese food. Occasionally, we’d head out and go dancing at the Hippo or meet friends at a seedy bar in Fells Point or have dinner at his favorite crab house in the Inner Harbor. He had arranged his schedule so that he didn’t have classes on Monday, my day off, so we could have a full weekend together. Once in a while, he’d call me at work on Saturday and tell me he was too bogged down for a visit. I’d leave work, carrying my weekend bag, filled with condoms, water-based lube, and other accoutrements, back to the house, where it would sit in a corner of my room, still packed until Monday night. I was always afraid that if I unpacked it on Saturday, I’d end up crying myself to sleep.

  The weekends with Matt were something to look forward to, a reward for getting through the week in one piece. Having a man whistling at me from his apartment window didn’t make life any easier. In fact, the complications that existed, coupled with my growing curiosity, were a potentially lethal combination.

  When it all began, I considered telling my housemate Jack. To me, he was older and wise beyond his years. He had been out almost as long as I’d been alive. He was a well-known figure in gay Washington. An outspoken activist, he was a well-respected educator, cherished as a friend and confidant, and I felt very close to him. He opened the doors of his house to me at a time when I thought I’d never find a place to live. But as close as he was to me, he was that much closer to Matt. I couldn’t risk telling him for fear he would misunderstand and confuse matters even more.

  I added the whistler to my growing list of traumas. My advisor at school advised me to make up my mind about my plans for the fall term, and be quick about it. There were a few too many incoming grad students, and if I didn’t want to return to classes, I had to let him know soon. Time was running out. In addition to that, just as I’d gotten settled into Jack and Bob’s house, my parents started in again about me moving back home. My room was as I left it, they reminded me. No rules this time, they insisted, I could come and go as I pleased. How, I wondered, could I come and go as I pleased, if either action involved asking my parents for the keys to the car. Their house was nowhere near a Metro station, and a ridiculously long walk to the closest bus stop.

  *

  Then there was Matt. If I moved to Baltimore and we got a place together, how long would it last? Neither of us had lived with a lover before, and we were both apprehensive. Matt was something of a slob. When he was still living on Capitol Hill, he and his gay Republican roommate lived in what we all comically referred to as the “slaughterhouse.” They both worked long hours and were busy with social activities outside of the house. Patrick went to his political rallies, which I insisted were Hitler Youth meetings. Matt and I plunged into a very concentrated romance. Love at first sight and all that other nonsense. We alternated between his house and mine, although we ended up at my place on 16th Street more often than not.

  Matt had a car, so we spent a lot of time outside of the city, including weekends at the Eastern Shore, Rehoboth, or Virginia Beach. We drove to his grandmother’s house in West Virginia for our first 4th of July together. His grandmother was more open-minded than I would have expected for a woman of eighty-eight and made us feel comfortable and loved. But these were only weekends. During the week, we’d talk on the phone, see each other for dinner, return to one of our houses for a full-body massage and hours of mutual masturbation. One or the other would leave and we’d sleep alone during the week.

  Now, not five hundred paces from my house was a man who whistled at me every time I passed his window. Two and a half weeks after his first whistle, I acknowledged him. His persistence won hands down over what I considered one of my greatest talents: an iron will and the tendency to be incredibly stubborn.

  He had, at some point, established a pattern, a mating dance, if you will. As I approached the apartment building, I could see him, or at least the back of his head, in the window. He would be sitting on the couch, watching the news or some reruns. Just as I got to the building entrance, he would look over his shoulder, out the window. He would stand up, lean on the windowsill, and watch me walk, as slowly and innocently as I could, to the corner. By then, he was standing in the bay window, a swag lamp glowing dimly behind him. Then he would whistle.

  August in Washington is like turning on the oven and leaving the door open. It’s like having big kettles of boiling water on all four burners of the stove, all going at once. And then someone holds a magnifying glass between you and the sun. Someone once told me that diplomats and ambassadors used to get hardship pay for their stays in Washington in August. Clothing becomes an obstruction to comfort.

  The whistler wore red running shorts or blue and white vertically striped running shorts or black running shorts, and nothing else. His shoulders looked wide enough to carry the world. His arms were muscular and defined; I could see the veins from my vantage point on the street corner. There was a chiseled separation between his pectorals. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I detected a small patch of hair in the crevice. He seemed to be tan, and his nipples were as dark as Godiva chocolate. The window ledge began mid-thigh, where his shorts ended.

  He was cute, too. Short, brown hair, combed back. Big blue eyes that always seemed to be on the verge of winking. And he smiled so much, I wondered how he found time to whistle. I smiled back, finally. After all, there was no harm in smiling. I smiled and then a few days later, I nodded. He smiled, he nodded, he touched himself.

  I closed up like one of those underwater flowers, like a Venus flytrap. Suddenly, the whistler-smiler-nodder wanted more than I could offer. Sinless flirtation came dangerously close to the jagged, erotic line I could never cross. I had a lover. Who lived in Baltimore. That I saw on weekends. Well, most weekends.

  He touched himself, and I could make out the outline of something bigger than both of us. I crossed the street quicker than usual and didn’t bother looking back, as I had begun to do. I just kept walking, moving both arms as if to propel me safely to my front gate. Watching my feet, the sidewalk. Trying not to be conscious of George Michael singing “I Want Your Sex” blasting from my Walkman, the car parked across the street, the window of Bob’s bedroom.

  I called Matt that night. We talked about our plans for the weekend. He would drive down to Washington on Friday. My boss, Gigi, was going to cut his hair. While I was at work Saturday, he would help Bob and Jack paint
and wallpaper the kitchen. We had tickets for a concert at Lisner Auditorium that night. We had dinner reservations at our favorite restaurant on M Street. He was going to spend the whole weekend, Sunday included. As we talked, I waited for him to tell me that something had come up, that he was going to have to cancel, again. I waited, anticipating every vowel. I realized I had drifted off, that I wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying.

  So, when he said that he’d see me at Bouffant Circle at four on Friday, I had to ask him to repeat himself. He laughed that hypnotic laugh of his, and said he loved me more than frozen grapes, and he couldn’t wait to see me and kiss me and taste me and sleep and sweat with me on Friday. And Saturday and Sunday, I added. He agreed. We hung up, and I wondered how I would make it, on a Tuesday night, until Friday, without changing my route home or relocating altogether.

  On Wednesday, I walked up F Street to 7th. I took the long way home. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t risk losing control, now that I seemed to be back on track with Matt. This weekend would be a new beginning. Maybe I would leave Washington entirely. Start fresh in a new city with the man I loved. Everything looked brighter, as if I’d been viewing things through a dirty lint screen, and now it was clean.

  Wednesday night, I got a craving for a bowl of Life cereal. I went downstairs in my grey sweatpants and Silence=Death T-shirt. I got my favorite big bowl down from the cabinet above the microwave oven and found a recently washed soup spoon in the strainer. I poured the cereal into the bowl until it was almost even with the lip. Then I discovered we were out of milk.

  I left the bowl of dry cereal on the kitchen counter and ran upstairs. Sometimes at night it got cool, so I grabbed my Levi jacket and slipped my bare feet into a pair of old Nike running shoes. I knocked on Bob’s door, but Jack called out from his room that he’d gone out for the night with some friends to a movie. I stood in the doorway of Jack’s room, which was next to the bathroom, and asked him if he needed anything from the convenience store on Maryland Avenue. He was sitting up in bed, eating a bag of Utz crab-seasoned potato chips and watching a video of The Way We Were. He had a box of Kleenex on his lap. He smacked his lips and sniffled and said he was fine, thanked me for asking. I told him I’d be back in a few minutes.

  It was an almost perfect summer night. People were sitting on their porches, on their stoops, talking and drinking and laughing. The air smelled like bar-b-q and flowers. Every car that drove by had its windows down, and no two cars had the same song coming from their radios. Children darted in and out of each other’s front yards, playing Freeze Tag or Statue. A constant breeze carried sounds and smells around the corner and out of reach. I crossed against the lights at Maryland and 8th.

  Once inside the convenience store, I realized I’d left my money at home. Luckily, I found my ATM card in my jacket pocket. I got in line behind two women who were arguing about what kind of beer to buy after they got their money. I recognized one of them as a waitress from Mr. Henry’s on Pennsylvania Avenue, a restaurant Matt and I went to for Sunday brunch when he still lived in the neighborhood.

  When I got to the head of the line, I inserted my card and punched in my secret code. I took out two mutilated tens. I walked up and down the narrow aisles, looking at the shelves jammed full of overpriced food. Even though milk was the only thing I ever bought at this store, I always walked around as if I was going on a shopping spree. The stock was a constant, dusty and unchanged. I doubted that they ever rotated the merchandise.

  At the counter, I admired the displays of beef jerky and chewing gum especially for denture wearers. One of the clerks, in a logoed smock, was refilling the pornography rack behind the counter, occasionally flipping through one or two magazines that caught his interest.

  The clerk at the cash register was voiding the purchases of the man in front of me because the convenience store didn’t accept traveler’s checks. The man kept saying, I thought these things were honored everywhere, I’ve never heard of such a thing, wait till I get back to Springfield. I wondered if it was in Missouri, Illinois, or Massachusetts, but I decided against asking him.

  Instead of walking down 8th Street to E Street, I decided to walk down Maryland to 6th Street. I wanted to walk past Daniel and Tom’s house and see if they were home. A man walking two Dalmatians came toward me. He had shoulder-length blond hair and a few days’ growth of beard. He seemed to be younger than me from what I could tell by the street lamps. He was very thin, but in a healthy way. As we got closer to each other, he opened his mouth to speak, but a car blew its horn as it drove past, which made the dogs bark madly. He had to calm them down and untangle their leashes. I didn’t look back; I kept on walking.

  All the lights were off at Daniel and Tom’s house. I’d left my watch at home, so I didn’t know what time it was. I crossed Maryland where D Street cuts in and walked down D Street to 6th. Just a few blocks in from the busy street, a sudden hush fell through the air. Even my footsteps sounded muffled, as if I was walking on the sidewalk in my bare feet. Air conditioners and fans pulsed in the windows of some of the houses. Others just had their windows thrown open all the way, screens between the outside and the inside.

  Before I knew it, I was at the corner of 6th and E. Every light was on in the whistler’s apartment. All the windows glowed like a landing strip, a beacon in a lighthouse. As I stood like an insect attracted to the heat of a candle, he came into the living room in a pair of white Jockey shorts. He didn’t stop and sit down on the couch, he didn’t crouch to look out the window below the blinds. He walked straight to the bay window on the corner and looked out. If my mouth weren’t so dry, I would have whistled.

  He put his hands on his hips. I imagined he was tapping his foot slowly, patiently, beating out a rhythm that matched my heartbeat. The Don’t Walk sign blinked in syncopation, without a moving car in sight. I crossed the street on a diagonal.

  Come on up, he said, and he walked back into the living room. I stayed where I was. No, I said. Yes, he said, come inside, and he kneeled on the couch and raised the mini-blind a hair. He opened the window a little wider. I watched the muscles in his arms move.

  I have to go home, I said. No you don’t, he said and stood up and walked out of the living room. My heart seemed to stop. I couldn’t see him. Where had he gone? And then I heard him say, I’ll buzz you in. I looked up at the small kitchen window to the right of the apartment building entrance. What if I don’t want to come in, I said. I don’t want to come in. Oh yes, you do, he said, and I want you to come in. I clutched the half-gallon carton of 2% milk to my chest. It felt cool through the jacket and T-shirt.

  I have to put the milk in the refrigerator, I said. I have a refrigerator, he said, come on, come in.

  The security door buzzed loudly, and I was afraid the neighbors would run to their windows if I didn’t go to the door and open it so he would stop pressing the button. I opened the door, walked up four steps. The buzzing echoed in my head, rang like an unanswered phone. He was waiting for me in the doorway of his apartment.

  When I stand straight, I’m probably five foot nine and one half, although my driver’s license says five foot ten. Matt and I see eye to eye, but I may be a fraction taller. The whistler was at least six foot one. I leaned my head back a little to meet his eyes, and he pressed his open mouth on mine. He had a tongue with a mind of its own that moved slowly across all of my teeth and then probed almost to the back of my throat. He wrapped his arms around me so tightly, I was afraid he’d crush the milk carton, so I pushed him away, our mouths still attached.

  We bent slightly, together, so I could put the bag on the floor. On the way back up, he removed my jacket in one swift tug and began to lift my T-shirt over my head. Since we were joined at the mouth, I was certain he was going to rip the T-shirt off. Just as suddenly as he’d started, he stopped kissing me. Take it off, he said, now. The T-shirt was off me and on the floor in record time. He pulled me to him, and the hairs on our chests met. He half carried, half swept
me into his bedroom at the end of a short corridor that also led to the kitchen, living room, and bathroom.

  I fell on top of him on the king-size bed. He managed to work the Jockey shorts off and his huge, hard cock throbbed between us. He struggled with a knot in my sweatpants while licking my chin, my Adam’s apple, and the rest of my neck. The string was untied and he slipped his hand into the sweatpants and gripped my hard-on. With the other hand, he tugged on one of my nipples. Ouch, I said, not really meaning it, and he let go. He wrapped his legs around mine. He held both of our cocks in one hand, each curving up and away from the other as he moved the skin back and forth. We were kissing again, our tongues slopping around inside each other’s mouths. Both of our eyes wide open and staring wildly into the others. His eyes were not as blue as Matt’s.

  Suddenly, I closed my mouth around both of our tongues. I gently spat his tongue back into his mouth. I put my hands on his immense shoulders and pushed myself up, off the bed, into a standing position. My stiff dick was pointing at him like some kind of an indicator. What’s wrong, he asked, the look on his face a combination of arousal and confusion. I have to go, I said. Go, he repeated, go where, you just got here. I have to go home, I said. Please don’t go, he said. I’ll put the milk in the refrigerator if you’re worried about it, he said, just don’t go.

  I have to go, I said and began to pull the sweatpants up from around my ankles. He sat up, resting on his elbows. He watched me stuff my still erect cock into the sweatpants. It was pointing at him. I felt like a compass. He was a porno magazine dreamboy come to life. It was obvious, looking at him, that he’d worked out long and hard for that body. I tied the string and adjusted myself. He sat up quickly and untied it, pressing his face into my crotch. He brought his arms up behind me, around me. No, I said, please. And he let go.

  Why are you leaving, he asked, what’s wrong with me? Nothing, I said. I just have to go. Can’t you at least tell me why, he asked. I looked at him. I was in his apartment, in his bedroom. I wanted to stay. I have a lover, I said. A lover, he repeated. Yes, I said. Where is he, he asked, where is your lover? In Baltimore, I said. In Baltimore, he said like the world’s sexiest echo. Yes, I said, in Baltimore. I have to go.