Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 23:42:12 -0500 From: Cepes LA Subject: The Interviewee Part 6 This is gay erotic fiction. If you are offended by graphic descriptions of homosexual acts, go somewhere else. Neither this story nor any parts of it may be distributed electronically or in any other manner without the express, written consent of the author. All rights are reserved by the author who may be reached at cepes@mail.com. This is a work of fiction, any resemblance of the characters to anyone living or dead is pure coincidence and not intended. They are all products of the author's overactive imagination. The Interviewee Part 6 The next morning, I awoke with Chris in my arms. I just laid there, holding him, watching his chest rise and fall. For twenty minutes, I needed nothing else to keep me fascinated. However, the outside world encroached with the ringing of the alarm clock at 9.30. Normally, Chris and I enjoy a lazy Sunday, unless he wanted to get out to the point and surf. Today, however, we were having brunch with two of Chris' friends from work. For better or worse, we couldn't lay in bed all day. Nor would we have time to repeat last night's `make up' sex, the very best kind. I turned off the alarm and started nudging Chris awake. Although I loved looking at him all day long, my favorite times were when he was sleeping and just after he had gotten up. He looked so innocent, so happy. I decided I had better get up from the bed, otherwise I would not be able to keep myself off Chris. When I finished with my shower, I returned to our bedroom and found Chris watching me, from bed, as I toweled myself off. I dragged out the drying process, primarily for our mutual pleasure. I finished and crawled into some comfortable clothes. I threw the wet towel at Chris. "Your turn, hotshot." Bathed and dressed, he joined me at the breakfast table twenty minutes later. I was sipping down some orange juice and reading the paper. Chris grabbed away part of it for himself. "Come on," I said. "We need to get going. Paul and Nate will be waiting, right?" Paul and Nate were roommates, Chris' surf buddies, and they also worked at the same investment management firm with Chris. Definitely straight but not narrow types, Paul and Nate knew about Chris and me. Well, I was pretty sure they were straight^×no vibes whatsoever. They were a hell of a lot of fun to hang out with: completely insane when the mood called for it. Today, it would be pleasant banter over a sedate meal, most likely. Lately, the four of us had been getting together about once a month. Even though I only ventured out onto the beach for swimming and was a failure on a board, I was still included in the group as the resident spouse. Once we were in my car and on the road, Chris looked at me, smiled his wicked little smile, and asked me a question. "So you were pretty closed mouth about your friend Kay; would you tell me more about him?" That was something I had already decided I would not like to do. "I might. But I haven't heard anything about your list of guys." I put on my best Clarice Starling, West Virginia girl accent. "Quid pro quo, doctor." That movie was one of our shared favorites. "Oh, so all of a sudden I'm Hannibal Lecter, huh? You'll pay for that." But, the crack had gotten Chris' mind around the idea of it being his turn to talk. In the few minutes we had left in the car, and while walking to the beachfront restaurant, Chris managed to give me the outlines of his first crush and his first time. Chris had me laughing when he told me about the crush. The first time story, however, hit a little bit too close to home. "You know how you read all those porn stories about a guy getting it from his best friend's older brother." "Hey," I interjected. "I'm not the only one in this couple who likes porn." I could think of a few hot times when we had reenacted a couple scenes from a story or four. We even felt like porn stars at the time. "Yeah, well, fine. But, I was saying, you know the cliché. Well, that was my story. Except god damn it hurt. I was 17 and off camping with my friend, who didn't know I was gay, his older brother, and their father. Well, as the typical porn story goes, the brother and I find ourselves together. He's got good instincts or something but he knows exactly what my game is. No foreplay. He just says, `Chris, you wanna mess around.' How could I say no to an offer like that? Of course, that's where the porn story ends and my life begins. First, let's say nature had not been kind to him, err, down there. And, even though he wasn't monster sized, let's also say I didn't exactly feel a painless entry. He just popped it in, a bit of saliva to smooth everything out. Me pressed up against a tree, barely able to breathe because of the pain in my ass and my chest being forced too hard against an immovable object. I cried, but I didn't scream or anything. That was our first and only time." Chris had put his poker face back on. I couldn't tell exactly what kind of mental baggage he carried around because of it. But, in my mind, I could see the blood leaking from Chris' body and the pain radiating from his face. "Why does everything interesting in life have to hurt?" Chris grunted in agreement. I was almost no longer in the mood to have some medium-quality `bad food.' Greasy eggs, fantastic killer of a burger, nothing green in sight on the menu. Angry about what had happened to Chris, my anger transferred over to this restaurant. I wondered how Paul and Nate could eat like this all the time? They lived here a few blocks from the beach; they literally lived off food like this, since they didn't have Chris to cook some really special meals for them. Poor bastards, I thought, my hard anger softening into a kind of generalized pity. Next time, they were coming out to where we lived and I was picking the restaurant. I could see them in the restaurant. "Let's hold the rest for later, huh?" I touched his hand, stroking it for a moment. Chris agreed and held the door for me as we both entered the restaurant. Brunch was fun, but weird, as usual. The three of them would get into a zone. About surfing or work. I would disappear from the fields of vision even though I was still at the table. Of course, the conversation would eventually turn around. Or I might throw in an irrelevant remark just to set one of them off. It was amusing even though I was definitely the outsider in this group. My face flushed when I heard Chris start talking after one of those zone outs. "Guys, my John here finally opened up to me." "Eww, gross," they moaned. Typical, I thought. "No, Mr. Secretive finally told me some of his stories. Some of what he got up to in high school." "Really," Paul said. "You know, John, Chris has been wondering about you. Maybe you were in witness protection. Maybe you ran away from the circus. He never knew." Chris took no notice of Paul and continued, "And I love him even more now than I did before." A statement made for my benefit, it elicited more groans from the guys. I got a huge smile on my face. Of course, I also shot him a look with my eyebrows that said `knock it off.' As always, he caught my drift and tactfully changed the subject. When we had all eaten our fill of grease and paid the bill, Chris and I parted ways with his friends. We returned to the car. I stopped Chris before he walked to his door, wrapped him in my arms, and gave him a kiss. Probably the first kiss I had ever given him, or anyone else, in public, in the light of day. "What you said was so sweet." I swatted his ass. "It was also embarrassing. Watch yourself. I'm of two minds what to do about it." I almost let him go before I decided I wanted another kiss. Less chaste than the first one. "And let that be a lesson to you, mister. I was never in the mafia. They don't do tongue." I guess I had decided to let him off with a warning, as pleasurable for me as it was for him. Chris smiled at me. Before he turned around and walked to his door, he said, "You really have changed, John. I love it. You're happier than I've seen you in a long time." He was right, I thought. We started the drive back in the comfortable silence two people long familiar with one another can enjoy. Halfway home, Chris decided he wanted to take a detour, a long one. All the way to Hollywood, to the Farmer's Market on Third and Fairfax. It was an unusual kind of place in Los Angeles, old and with some interesting history. It was the site of farm stands during the Depression and had continued on in various incarnations until the present. It was now a loose collection of butchers, farm stands, tiny restaurants, and booths filled with sweets or chilis or anything else your culinary imagination could conjure up. Chris was on the make for some ingredients. By tradition, no matter what else we got up on the weekend, we always tried to have dinner together, alone, on Sunday nights. Chris would handle the main dishes; I got the dessert (and, usually, the dishes, too). Chris also loved making desserts, but he had taken me under his wing and taught me his secrets. It had become my sphere, even though Chris could certainly have kicked my ass in a bake-off. I also loved digging through his cookbook collection. With a sweet tooth as big as his generous heart, Chris often rewarded me repeatedly in the bedroom after dinner for the excellent desserts I made. Chris found some excellent steaks in one of the butcher shops. I found some beautiful berries at one of the fruit stands. We found great potatoes, asparagus, and lots of other tasties. What a haul; what a dinner we would have tonight. I would make something chocolate; berries go great with that. After we had gotten back into my car, Chris pulled my hand into his and said he loved me. I asked him to tell me about who else he had said those very same words to in the past. He nodded and said there had been only three. He clarified that by saying there had been a lot of casual hook-ups and random, fleeting encounters. "Full disclosure," he said. I almost didn't want to know, but I was glad Chris would trust me with this kind of information about himself and matters deeply personal to him. His first use of the "l" word came in the summer before his freshman year in college. Chris was a lifeguard at a local pool for the summer, along with a number of older, college-aged guys and girls. Caught checking out one of his fellow lifeguards in the changing room, he found himself a special friend for the summer. The way he described it, lots of fucking which he had mistaken for love. The "l" word was used and the other guy freaked. The great summer of sex prematurely ended. The second use occurred at the beginning of his sophomore year of college; he had finally gotten together with a guy who was now a senior after lusting after him for almost a year. He thought it was love, but he waited to say it, afraid he had misjudged; afraid of making the same mistake again. Almost two months into it, he said the "l" word and he heard it returned to him in kind, for the first time. Three days later, he stopped into the unnamed boyfriend's place (he had been given a key, always a good sign). After waiting for some time in the living room for his boyfriend to return from classes, he went to use the restroom. A used condom was sitting atop the refuse in the garbage can. Three facts: boyfriend lived alone; boyfriend had not fucked Chris in this apartment for a week; yet, here was a condom filled with fluids that hadn't been extracted while being rubbed inside Chris. Chris broke it off; he never found out who had displaced him. He drowned his sorrow for a couple months in a parade of nubile young things. After Chris had wiped away the tears that had made their way down his face, he told me something that probably shouldn't have surprised me, but actually did. I was the third. He still knew the day he used the "l" word with me. A bit weird, I thought, but definitely deserving of bonus points in my book. This time he waited more than four months before using the "l" word. He knew how tense the air had been after our first drunken coupling; like Scheherazade, he had doled out enough caring and compassion to me from night to night to keep what we had going alive. I wouldn't be able, he had reckoned, to cut off the head of someone I loved. He was right. I started tearing up. I never heard Chris get so eloquent; he must have been thinking about how exactly to push all the right buttons. He did a perfect job. One part of me, though, the doubting, suspicious part, still gnawed away. I hope I had really earned his trust. Lately, I hadn't exactly been the most ideal companion. But, however I poked or prodded, I couldn't see any fire or anger in Chris' face. What he had told me on Friday evening^×that he had been expecting some kind of yearning for variety, a desire to taste the fruits of the other trees^×seemed to be absolutely true. But, wasn't making that kind of fear true a violation in itself? Hadn't I wronged him? Shouldn't he be angry with me? Some part of me couldn't understand his too forgiving reaction. Thankfully, the rest of my mind^×deeply enamored with Chris and grateful for his understanding nature^×was the victor. The gloomy thoughts went away, hopefully not to return another day. Chris' hand moved to rest on my thigh for the remainder of the drive back. For some reason, the Sunday afternoon traffic was a bit heavier than usual. Normally this would irritate me to no end, various expletives flying from my mouth. But, with Chris' words echoing in my head and his hand on my body, I remained calm. We returned home, without incident, and shuttled the new purchases from the car into the apartment. We put all the groceries away and found ourselves entwined on the sofa, watching a movie together. The Princess and the Warrior, a German film, had earned solid reviews from many of our friends. We were playing movie catch up, interspersed with bouts of feeling each other up. While that can pep up my reaction to pretty much any movie, this one was sufficiently incredible that the movie could have stood on its own and I would have paid attention. I love cute German guys and this movie had one of the scruffiest, but cutest looking guys I'd seen in a film recently. From the lump in Chris' pants, I was pretty sure he agreed. I got up briefly near the middle of the movie to get the dessert started so we would be able to enjoy it tonight after dinner. I returned to his arms and finished watching this great movie with him. When it was over, our stomachs started grumbling. It was time to get to work in the kitchen. After shedding our unneeded clothes to adhere to another part of the traditional Sunday dinner (cooking it in as few clothes as possible), we cleaned our hands and got to work. Chris was masterful in timing all his food to arrive at the same moment. I did the chores, mincing the garlic to roast the steaks in. He washed the fingerling potatoes and put them in the oven to roast. Then, the steaks went on. I checked on the chocolate mousse I had whipped up; it was setting nicely. A layer or two of that with some berries would be incredible. Chris added the butter and the garlic to give the steaks a good flavor. When they had the right color, Chris threw them in the oven with the potatoes. To cut a long culinary ballet short, everything came out beautifully and we ate our fill. We talked before dessert, which I was glad to dish up and bring to Chris, eagerly awaiting my reward to come later that evening. After we did the dishes, we lounged together on the sofa. Just talking. More of Chris' stories; some of the raunchier ones. I hoped there was nothing in his repertoire to top those stories, otherwise he was more twisted in his youth than I had thought. To my mind and my crotch, this made for a very strong and satisfying session of aural foreplay before the main event in the bedroom. And the main event was incredible; Chris evidently enjoyed the dessert I made for him. With one gesture or another, he thanked me repeatedly that night. All the happiness from the previous day was gone when I awoke with Chris snuggled up to my body in the morning, again before the alarm had sounded. I felt only dread for my task of tracking down Alex. While I bathed, ate my breakfast, and drove my car to work, I could think of nothing besides fulfilling this unpleasant request made of me by Chris, as part of my penance, I suppose. (Well, I guess I also managed to think briefly about how great Chris was being regarding all this mess.) My morning at work was incredibly unproductive. Everyone must have imagined I'd become a caffeine addict with the number of trips I was taking down to the coffee shop. I was hoping Alex would continue with his daily visits; I did not see him, though. I kept hoping he was running late or some such foolish notion. After the sixth or seventh trip down, I finally accepted that he wasn't coming here. I would have to initiate the contact. After I returned to my desk a little before 1.30, I fished around for my interviewing folder and found the contact information I had for him. Just a phone number. I felt the phone in my hand; abstractly heard the ringing; listened, dumbfounded, to the answering machine; and didn't fully realize at the time I was speaking the following words. "Alex, this is John. I would like to talk to you about our conversation on Friday. Please call me back; I believe you have the number." After the phone was in its cradle and my mind had returned to a semi-normal state, I twitted myself for sounding so formal. It could scare him away; it could keep me from fulfilling my promise to Chris. `Please, Alex, listen to the message and call me back.' Only time would tell if my request would be granted. To be continued. Author's Note: I appreciate hearing your comments on this story or anything else. You can send me a message at cepes@mail.com. I will respond to all messages I receive.