Giuseppe and Me

by Robin Reardon

strokes my arm with a hand, down and then up and then down. Suddenly, he hooks a finger on my waistband and pulls, and he reaches for my mouth with his.

  I'm kissing another boy. I'm kissing another boy. It thunders through my brain until I have the mental strength to silence it so I can enjoy the softness of his mouth, the warmth of it. And then the softness gives way to a harder pressure, a strong, firm, masculine feeling. I grab his head with my hands, barely aware of the way the seams of our jeans are catching together at our crotches.

  Another sudden move, and he's flipped me onto my back. He hovers over me, poised there, breathing through his open mouth, eyes boring into mine, and then his tongue is deep inside my mouth, my face caught in a vise grip between his hands.

  My hands find a new place, and I grab his ass and press our hips together, and I don't know how long it is before we come up for air, or how I manage to hold onto my cum.

  Both on our backs, now, panting and gazing up through the bright, spring green of the leaves overhead, we lie for maybe five minutes before he sits up, elbows on bent knees. Gazing into the distance a little, not at me, he asks, "Will you be here next Sunday?"

  "Same time?"

  "Meet at the fountain." And he's gone.

  Back at the Dunlaps', it's everything I can do that night to act natural, so I just go through the motions, desperate not to give anything away or provide Derek with any ammunition. And that's what it would be, even if he didn't manage to figure out any details. Because I'd just made out with a guy. For the very first time. Just like that: no fuss, no muss. And what's really getting to me, in a really good way, is that I had liked it. Because, you know, I'd hated what that monster Mr. Ellis had done to me.

  I know I've said that it can only get better, but the truth is I haven't been entirely sure it ever would. Just imagine, if you can, that you're a guy who doesn't know a whole lot about yourself except that you're Italian and gay, who doesn't have any reason to think there's anything worth knowing, and then you're tortured by this man who does something horrible to you that gay guys actually choose to do together (in concept, anyway). You hate what the man did. And this horrible thing that happened to you is something you're supposed to like. Something you're supposed to want to do a lot of.

  Now, I get that two guys who actually want to fuck are going to do it in a way that they both like, not like Mr. Ellis did to me. The point is, I'd really liked making out with Ron. True, no one had touched anything intimate without a couple of layers of cloth in the way, but-I'd wanted to. And I'd wanted Ron to touch me, too. And I've come to the conclusion that if we do that next time, I'm pretty sure I'll like it. A lot. This is some kind of epiphany. And if that isn't enough for me to be over the moon about, it's happened with a great-looking guy, a rich guy-someone I would never in a million years have expected would have anything to do with me.

  Thoughts of "next time" going through my mind, I go to the fountain next Sunday at the appointed time, even though it's raining. Ron doesn't show. Guess if all he wants to do is roll around on the grass, it's not a day for that. I wait for a long time, getting wetter and colder, not sure whether I'm more disappointed about missing the make-out session or missing just being with someone who likes me.

  But in my heart I know that focusing on those two disappointments is just a smoke screen. What I really feel like is that poster I've seen, about homeless children. It says, "Go ahead. Throw me away. I'm used to it."

  . . . . . . . . . .

  Ron doesn't throw me away. When I see him the next Sunday, when he smiles at me, sun practically glinting off his white teeth like you might see in a very different kind of poster-teeth that probably cost the gross national product of a small nation-something gets behind my shield. Something warm worms its way into cracks I hadn't known were there and softens that hard shell so much that it's everything I can do not to wrap my arms around Ron and hold him tight.

  But I don't. I can't. It would chase him away for sure. So I do my best to reconstruct enough of my shield to help me maintain at least an appearance of detachment.

  Neither of us says anything about our missed connection the previous Sunday. We do basically the same thing, without the dogs this time. Then we sit on the grass, leaning against the tree-which means we can't look at each other very well.

  After a few minutes during which I'm trying to decide what I can do to keep him here a little longer, he says, "Are you out?"

  "No. You?"

  "No way. My folks would kill me."

  I let the sounds of the park fill the space between us, trying to decide if now would be a good time to say something about what the word "folks" means to me. Or, more accurately, doesn't mean. But it seems Ron isn't waiting for me to reveal anything one way or another, and he goes on with his own story.

  "I'm the only son. The only kid, actually. My dad has my future all planned out. Columbia, then Columbia Law, then his law firm, then marriage to some woman he and Mom deem appropriate. In that order."

  I know this sort of thing exists, where you might have parents who've planned out your whole life. But it still feels pretty foreign to me. Hoping he'll interpret it however he needs to hear it, I say, "Wow."

  "Yeah."

  Ron's mention of lawyers makes my mind go to the trial where I'll have to testify. "Your dad? um, what kind of lawyer is he?"

  "Corporate. Why?"

  "He wouldn't, you know, have anything to do with-oh, I don't know, like, a rape trial, or something like that?"

  Ron snorts. "No way. There's no money in that sort of thing, unless you're Alan Dershowitz."

  Whew; at least I won't be facing Ron's father in the courtroom. And now I want to change the subject, totally. So I ask, "What if your folks weren't so specific about your future? What would you change, other than marriage to an appropriate woman?"

  "I'd go about as far away as I could. And do something as non-directional as possible. Maybe become a windsurfer in Hawai'i. I'd have to support myself somehow, I guess, maybe as a waiter or something."

  "Well, if it's any encouragement, you look the part." He turns a puzzled face toward me. "I mean, you look as much like a surfer as any guy I know."

  He looks back across the park and nods. Then, "What about you?"

  Decision time. What to say? But, I figured, he hadn't known anything more than my first name when he'd asked me to make out; I could have been anybody, or nobody. So I told him the truth. "Never knew my father. My mom died of a drug overdose when I was five. I'm in a foster home in the East Village, now." No need for gory details; that would be enough for him to mull over.

  He turns his whole body toward me. "Wow." Somehow his "wow" carries more meaning than mine had. He makes it seem like he actually thinks what I'd just said is cool. Or at least interesting. "For real?"

  "For real." I wait to see what else he might say.

  For a minute he just stares at me. Then, "So there's no one pushing you. Checking up on you all the time. You don't have to answer to anyone. Oh, man?" He leans back hard against the tree, facing into the park once more.

  Somehow I want him to know it's far from heaven. "Yeah, but there's no one who cares, either. And, I mean, there's no money."

  "Yeah, it shows." He picks up a stick, staring out at nothing, tears little bits of wood and flings them at that same nothing.

  I struggle like mad to get back into my shell, away from the pain of what he's just thrown at me like it doesn't matter any more than the stick-like I don't matter any more, either. Then he says, "So either there's money and prison, or you get nothing in either department. Somewhere, somehow, there's got to be a middle ground." There's no arguing with that. Then he says, "Next week? Unless it's raining."

  I'm still stinging, but it lessens a little with the knowledge that he wants to see me again. But-why does he want to see me again? And do I want to see him?

  It takes nanoseconds for me to go through a scenario where I tell him to go to hell and then realize that if I do that,
I'll regret it. Maybe he didn't really mean that comment the way it had sounded. Maybe it really doesn't matter to him. Because, really, if it did, would he want to see me again?

  Trying to deny-to him, and to myself-that anything is bothering me, that I have any conflicting feelings about next week, I stand, nod at him, and walk off. Not toward home, but west toward Greenwich Village. Maybe I don't have money, but it's true that I have freedom.

  . . . . . . . . . . .

  Our make-out sessions, Ron's and mine, continue with no particular regularity; mostly we meet up casually. But they see us through the change of season from spring to summer in WSP. Some days when we meet up there are enough boy-girl combinations trying to hide behind the larger trees that it's challenging to find a good spot.

  I guess it's predictable that it doesn't take us long to move beyond kissing and panting and general groping. We can't exactly strip in public, but we can reach into each other's jeans. Usually Ron comes prepared with a few cheap washcloths he's picked up from the CVS at Eighth Street and University Place. We use these to catch our cum and then dump them into one of the trash barrels that are everywhere. Keep the park clean, eh?

  I never stumble upon him making out with anyone else, so as far as I know I'm the only one. So many times I almost ask him for a telephone number, but since he never asks for mine, I just keep my mouth shut. Plus, it still isn't clear to me