This chapter would not have happened without the help of Adam Phillips, author of Crosscurrents (/nifty/gay/relationships/cross-currents/) and “ghost writer” for the remaining chapters of ISWB. Thank you, Adam. Thank you also to Bill for his continued editing help.
Finally, as always, thank you to my partner. I'm a lucky, lucky man.
Chapter
13
The two jobs I’d taken that fall—the AIDS
internship and the waiter job—were a huge part of an incredible
burden I’d taken on that first year of college, but they were
necessary, and they helped keep money from being too much of a worry.
I’d gotten connected with the AIDS organization in high
school because we had to do 90 hours a semester of volunteer work,
and it was just down the street, so it was easy to get the hours in;
at least, that’s what I told myself. I think somewhere in the
back of my head, I thought that contact with gay people would help me
figure out those feelings swirling around inside me. I didn't know
where else was I could find gay people.
The other job came
from a friend of the family. Jimmy owned a tiny Italian restaurant;
his father had come over from Italy with my grandfather, and when my
family had gone nuts and thrown me out of the house, he had taken
pity on me. He called the day after all hell broke loose and offered
me a job waiting tables at the restaurant. He was a caring and
compassionate man, and he gave me free food. I didn't make much, but
it was usually the only meal I got and I could eat all I
wanted.
Working at the AIDS center hadn’t really helped
me figure anything out. I met plenty of gay men, but that only
increased my confusion. I knew I wasn’t your standard-issue
straight guy, but I came away from that volunteer work pretty clear
that I wasn’t gay either.
While it hadn't answered the
questions I had hoped it would, working there helped me get to a
better place in my self-understanding and in my feelings about the
disaster that had been my last year in high school. First, it was the
most accepting group of people I had ever encountered. No one cared
what you looked like, how much money you made, if you were gay or
straight or old or young or anything else. It was partly that
virtually everyone there knew what it was like to be shunned for one
reason or another and partly that there was simply too much to be
done and too many concerns that were fundamentally far more
important.
Secondly, many of the center's clients had been
tossed out when their families discovered they were gay--some when
they were in their early teens--and they had done whatever was
necessary to survive, or had become addicted to drugs and alcohol to
kill the pain. That put a lot of my own troubles into perspective.
Yes, I'd been booted out, but I wasn't thirteen or fourteen and alone
on the streets; many of the people I was working with had been. I met
people who had been through far worse than I could even contemplate,
who were so sick they could barely walk, and they still pried
themselves out of bed every day to go care for others who in even
worse shape. They weren't bitter. They didn't just give up. They
didn't spend their time going "why me?". They made every
moment they had count.
Seeing that almost daily was one of
the factors which assured that I didn't let myself wallow in
self-pity. What kind of an insult would it have been to the people I
was working with if, knowing the pure hell they had been through, I
walked around giving off the attitude, "Hey, I know you got
kicked out when you were fourteen and I know you got infected by some
creep who raped you while you were on the streets and now you're 25
and dying by inches and totally reliant on the kindness of strangers
and yet you're still trying to help others, but my life has
really been awful and I feel the need to wallow"?
I
don't think so. I was shut down enough that much of the loss I
experienced then didn't really hit until years later, but even in
that state, I couldn't miss the rather glaring lessons about how
to conduct myself when things were rough. So, while I wasn't making
much money, the primary payoff was in what I learned, and since my
scholarship paid all of my tuition and books, I was doing reasonably
well, all things considered.
My apartment-mates were two
people I'd met at the AIDS center back when I first started
volunteering there in high school. Adam and Megan came from families
that made mine look positively warm and loving. We split the rent and
food and carpooled everywhere. Adam was gay; Megan was a lesbian; I
was confused; so we had one of each. They both had beds, so they took
the bedroom. I only had an old circa-1945 army cot that doubled as
our couch in the "living room". The room was about the size
of most people's hallways, but that's what we had, so that’s
where I slept.
On the social front, I avoided everyone I knew
as much as possible. That was easy between the jobs and the school
schedule I’d created for myself. I had a ton of AP credit from
high school and I had taken classes at the university every summer.
Being the nerd that I was, my idea of a fun summer vacation was
learning about international politics or differential equations.
With the college credit I already had, I figured out that if
I took a large overload, I could finish in five quarters. So I
registered for 25 hours that first quarter and each quarter
thereafter. That meant I never slept. I had to maintain a 3.8
grade-point average to keep my scholarship. That wouldn’t have
been a huge issue for me--I’d always done well with my
studies--but when combined with two jobs, it made things like organic
chemistry a little hellish.
I’d decided to major in
psychology. I was hoping to go to medical school, so I minored in
biology, but I guess over the years, observing the twists and turns
in people’s psyches had engaged my interest in people’s
emotions. After all, I had major crazies for family members, and I
considered myself something of a freak too. The dynamics of my
disastrous life, while personally devastating, also interested me in
a sort of detached, academic way as well, and I always had something
of a knack for insight into the people’s psyches when I wasn’t
personally involved in the situation.
I had a place to live,
I had some meaningful work, I had my money concerns basically taken
care of, and I had more schoolwork than anybody should take on: My
plans for myself were pretty brutal, but they were manageable: Work
until I dropped; don't think about the past or people from the past;
and keep my attention occupied with productive things instead of
focusing on my hurts.
Life never seems to go quite the way I
plan. “Best laid plans of mice and men” and all
that.
That first quarter, I met a guy at the AIDS center named
Bryan. I didn't realize he spelled it differently from "my"
Brian, so the name threw me at first, but the name was about all they
had in common. He had two years on me, and a good eleven inches in
height. Even so, he wasn't very imposing. He had dark brown hair that
would have hung to his shoulders if it hadn't hung over his eyes most
of the time, and he was totally uncoordinated. He had a voice to
match; it was really low, but it still cracked like a young
teenager’s when he was nervous. If you looked up the word
“dorky” in an illustrated dictionary his picture might
well have been there next to the entry. Still, for all that, he was
incredibly nice.
I'd seen him in the company of a beautiful
girl named Diane. I didn't know what kind of relationship they had;
were they friends? More? I couldn't tell. But I thought she was
wonderful, and I was attracted to her myself. I was talking to her
one day when she'd stopped by the office to meet Bryan. Our
conversations always seemed natural and easy, and it was obvious that
we enjoyed each other's company. Still, I was surprised when she
ended our talk that day with, "Hey, you know, we ought to go out
on a date or something some time."
After I picked my jaw
up off the floor, I said, "You're dating Bryan...aren't
you?"
"We've gone on a few dates," she
replied casually, "but really, we're just friends; he won't
mind."
She laughed at the look on my face as I said,
"Well, uhh...okay. Yeah. We oughta do that."
So much
for my no-social-life vow.
I asked her out to a movie that
weekend, but when we got there it was sold out, so we ended up over
at her place watching old episodes of "Dr. Who" with her
dad. It wasn't the most romantic first date in the world; in fact, it
was pretty awkward, but I had a good time with her anyway.
We
had some time to talk later that evening. I thought she was
wonderful: Alive, enthusiastic, but also compassionate and accepting,
and I was in such need of someone to talk to that I ended up telling
her about my disastrous past with Mary and Brian.
We actually
made it to a movie for our second date. Afterwards, though, in the
car it became clear that, at least in this mode, our relationship
wasn't going anywhere. I’d been talking honestly about myself
and she’d been talking honestly about herself, and after a
while the conversation paused and couldn’t seem to get started
again. I leaned over to kiss her. She leaned in and kissed me, but it
wasn't very passionate or very long. She moved away from me and
smiled a little before she said, “I like you, Sam, but I just
don’t see us having a third date, and I think if you’re
honest you’ll admit you don’t either.”
I
looked at her for a moment, “Why?”
“Oh,
Sam,” she said. “You know why. You know you’re
still hung up on Mary and Brian. I totally understand it, and I feel
bad for you, but it would be awful for both of us to try and have
anything serious as long as that’s true. I’m just not
interested in playing that game.”
I stared at the
steering wheel briefly, then looked up at her and shrugged. “Yeah,
you’re right,” I admitted.
She smiled and put her hands on top
of mine. “But we can stay friends, right? I mean, you’re
not in love with me anyway, so it’s not like I’m breaking
your heart here.”
I laughed, and she smiled, and that
was the end of that.
One day she invited me and Bryan both to
lunch. The food was great and so was the company. We were laughing
and having a good time, and things seemed comfortable. As we were
finishing up and trying to help her clear the table, she said, “Sit
down at the table for a minute, guys, I can get this myself. I want
to say something to the both of you.”
I looked up at
Bryan. He shrugged and sat down, so I took a seat myself.
She
took the plates and put them in the dishwasher, then grabbed a seat
and sat down next to us.
She stared at us with the hint of a
smile. That really bugged me, so I said, “What’s
up?”
“Not much,” she said. “I just
thought we ought to clear the air a little." She paused for a
minute, then said, "Okay, here's what it is. It didn’t
work out with you and me, Bryan, and it didn’t work out with
you and me, Sam.”
I looked over at Bryan; he looked as
uncomfortable as I felt.
“Relax, guys, I’m not
gonna kill anyone. I just wanted to say that you guys are pretty
cool…but you don’t have your crap together.”
“Nothing
wrong with that, though,” she added before Bryan or I had had a
chance to protest. “In fact, that brings me to my point.”
She
took Bryan’s hand in one of her hands, and one of mine in the
other. “I think the two of you would make a good couple while
you’re each getting your crap together.” Then she put my
hand on top of Bryan’s, pulled hers away, and walked back to
the kitchen, leaving us both sitting there, blushing. I pulled my
hand back and mumbled something incoherent. Bryan just stared at the
table.
I was tongue-tied. I’d never thought of Bryan as
anything but straight. From the expression on his face, his brain was
short-circuiting just as much as mine was, so nothing much got said
for several minutes while both of us tried to unscramble the mess in
our heads.
Finally I looked at him and said, “I seem to
have a thing for women like her.” That got him laughing.
From
there things got easier.
I don’t know how it’s
possible, but Bryan was more shy than even I was, so at first things
were seriously awkward. We both owned up to the fact that we wouldn’t
be grossed out to give it a try, in a roundabout way, with much
shuffling of feet. At the very least it seemed to me that we had the
makings of a good close friendship.
We started hanging out
together, mostly just to talk, learning a little bit about each other
and growing closer in the process. I discovered that he played in a
band with a guy I knew from high school, so I went to see them play a
couple of times. He had amazing hands. I loved to watch them move up
and down the neck of the bass while he played. It planted the idea
that they would probably be just as amazing on something a little
closer to home, but I didn't let myself dwell on that.
Diane
was happy that we seemed to be succumbing to her matchmaking. One day
at work she said to us, “I kinda miss hanging out with you
guys.”
‘Hey, it was your call,” I told her,
joking.
“And it was the right one, I can see,” she
said, winking at me. “I don’t know if the guy I’m
seeing has his crap together yet, but seems like you two might have a
chance to. Hey, we’re going out Friday; come along with us.
We’ll make it a double date.”
“I don’t
think so,” Bryan said quickly.
“I didn’t
give you the option,” she said, grinning. “Come on, guys,
do it for me.”
Both of us were pretty much putty in her
hands, so we did it. It went okay, as okay as double dates ever go.
It was all perfectly chaste, but it was a date.
Beyond that,
though, Bryan and I just “hung out together.” We danced
around the notion of getting physical for almost two months. Neither
of us had the stones to make any kind of move in that direction.
One
night, for one of our “hangouts,” we rented a movie,
Cinema Paradiso. Bryan lived in an apartment by himself, so we
went there to watch it. We were enjoying the movie, and each other’s
company, and as the night went on, it occurred to me that for the
first time in forever, I actually had a friend that I felt
comfortable around.
He had tweaked his back earlier that day
and I offered to massage it for him. I know what that sounds like,
but my intentions really were virtuous. There wasn’t any sexual
subtext to it at all in my mind. The sum total of my romantic
experience up to then was making love to Mary and barely kissing Amy,
so it wasn’t as though I was experienced in the art of
seduction.
He had one of those awful metal futons; it was
black, and it had lumpy black futon mattress on it. He put it down
flat so that I could massage him while we watched the movie. We
didn't watch much of the movie, but I really didn't intend for
anything to happen.
Because of that, I was surprised at the
jolt of electricity that shot through me when he took his shirt off.
I’d never really thought of him in that way, or if I had, it
was only a passing thought or two. He wasn’t unattractive, but
he wasn’t stunningly beautiful like the other Brian I knew.
Still, he was one of the nicest men I've ever known; intelligent,
kind and engaging. I was attracted to who he was, and I guess all
that combined with the sight of his bare chest that night sent sexual
electricity surging through my body.
Having made the offer to
give him a back massage, I had to go through with it, although I was
feeling pretty nervous, so I set myself to the task.
I was
totally mesmerized by the feel of his skin, and totally captivated by
the look of it. It was slightly olive colored, almost like he had a
light tan all over. It was also incredibly smooth, though nothing
like a woman's; I'd never really thought about the difference before,
or at least I hadn't let myself think about it much, had maybe shut
down thoughts like that before. But tonight I was allowing myself to
consider the difference between smooth male skin and smooth female
skin, and I was enjoying the silky power, the muscularity that skin
wrapped up. There was something utterly compelling about it.
He
had a mole just to the left of his spine right below his shoulder. I
don't know why--maybe it was fatigue, or maybe it was just that I'd
kept my desire for guys suppressed for so long--but I kept watching
that mole as I rubbed his back, and I was positively obsessed. I
wanted to bend down and kiss it or lick it or something. Before I’d
even realized it, the back rub went from something aimed at working a
knot out of his back to something a great deal more sensual.
He
must have noticed the change somewhere along the line, but I don’t
know where that was. He must have known that this wasn’t back
therapy as I was lightly ran my hands up and down his spine, his
neck, his sides while I straddled his hips. Before too long I heard
quiet moans from him every time my fingers went up his spine.
My
brain was full of white noise and I seemed to be acting out of pure
instinct. I was hard as a rock and well beyond thinking about my
actions. At some point, I leaned over and kissed that mole that had
me obsessed.
At that point, a flare of warning came up from
deep in my head and I paused, but his only response was to sigh. That
only succeeded in driving me back into a stupor of lust for him.
I
pulled my own shirt off. Then I leaned over gently and began kissing
his neck. I felt his breathing deepen. I started sucking on his neck.
In response, he began moaning under me even louder.
Finally,
he rolled over. Awkwardly, insistently, he pulled my face toward his
and we kissed.
The last semblance of coherent thought totally
left me. For all his awkwardness and dorkiness, he was an incredible
kisser. I’d like to be able to tell you what I was thinking,
but I was beyond thought; I was totally given over to the raw
physicality of his lips on mine, his tongue sparring with mine, our
mouths locked together. I couldn’t keep my hands from exploring
his chest. His hands were all over my chest too, and I had been right
about how wonderful those hands would feel.
It was pretty fiery, but when all
was said and done we were both pretty shy; each of us were hesitant
to move lower. I could tell he wanted to, but he was holding himself
back. That made me feel inhibited and self-conscious about it, so I
didn’t push things either. The end result was as hot a makeout
session as a from-the-waist-up makeout session could be and nothing
more.
Somewhere in all that, the movie ended and the TV went
to very loud static. The noise jolted us back into the real
world.
Awkwardly, we separated.
I looked at him and
blushed; I was incredibly aware of my rock-hard dick, and my brain
moved off autopilot and began a wild and somewhat frightened interior
monologue.
He put his shirt on silently, blushing the whole
time as well. “I guess…” he began, but trailed
off. The he took a deep breath, smiled hesitantly, and said,
“Thanks.”
“Uhh…you, too,” I
said. So lame.
I put my own shirt on and stammered out, “Uhh,
I guess I’ll see you later.” Still amped up sexually, I
climbed reluctantly into my car and drove home in something of a
daze.
My roommates were out when I got home, thankfully,
because my dick was still trying to rip its way through my pants. I
headed straight into the bathroom, locked the door, and undressed
completely. I replayed the feel of Bryan’s chest, the intensity
of his kisses. Caught up in the fantasy, I visualized the scene as it
had happened, but here by myself, where I could be bold, I took the
next step with him. I fantasized myself kneeling down and undoing his
pants. What stopped with a makeout session blossomed in my head as a
full-on sexual encounter. I stroked myself as I imagined his hands on
me, his mouth on me, not stopping this time at the waist. I felt the
sexual tension rise higher and higher, as my dick got harder and
harder, until finally I exploded in the most intense orgasm I’d
had in months.
My head felt light as I recovered my breath,
and I felt a little foolish. I cleaned myself up and got dressed;
just as I walked back into the living room my roommates returned. I
did my best to act nonchalant, although it felt to me as though I’d
been wearing a sign that said “I just jacked off thinking about
making out with a guy.” They didn’t notice, though, and
probably wouldn't have cared, so eventually I relaxed, and by the
time I was ready for bed, I felt as peaceful and content as I had in
some time.
Bryan and I continued to hang out, and virtually
every time we were alone we would find some excuse for me to give him
a back rub, and these back rubs always turned into intense makeout
sessions. Neither of us had the guts to push it beyond that, so, to
put it frankly, I was starting to experience bad cases of blue balls
pretty regularly.
During those first months of college, Brian
Walker called me every six weeks or so. It was pretty awful. I'd been
trying so hard to get him out of my mind, and succeeding pretty well,
and just when things seemed to be rolling, he'd call, which would
always set me back a little. I had to be friendly, though. I'd hurt
him too much already by pushing him away and I really didn't want to
lose him even if I thought I should, so I tried to stay upbeat with
him and have decent conversations when he called.
Early in
October I was working on an organic chemistry assignment I wasn't
sure I'd survive. My brain was fried and I needed a break, so I
called Bryan and made plans to meet up with him at his apartment.
Just as I was headed out the door, the phone rang.
I thought
about letting it ring, but decided to grab it at the last minute.
I
gasped a little when I heard the words, "Hey, Sammy, how's the
brain?"
It was Brian; the "Brian" whose
mere voice could melt my heart. I suited up in my emotional armor and
walked into the battle.
Forcing a social laugh, I replied,
"Under assault." Man, it was so good--and so painful--to
hear his voice. Determined to make this a good conversation, I took a
breath and asked, "What's up?"
"Nothin's up,"
he answered. "Just making sure you didn't fall off the planet or
lock yourself in the science building."
"Well, I
tried both of those things," I joked, "But you know what I
failure I am in the really important stuff."
He paused
for a minute. "Hey, Sam..."
"I'm just kidding,
man. Relax."
"Okay," he said. I heard a note of
relief in his voice. "So if you've gotten your crummy sense of
humor back you must be doing something fun besides studying. How's
your love life?"
Man, was this topic ever a minefield,
but I was determined to defuse every last one of those suckers.
"Well, as a matter of fact, I'm seeing someone, I guess you
could say."
"Really? Excellent. What's she like?"
I
took a deep breath. It was time. I needed to tell him; it would show
that I'd given up any stupid hopes for anything between him and me;
it would show him I'd gotten over him and moved on. I really needed
him to believe that lie.
"Well, actually," I said,
"It's a guy."
There was silence on the line for a
few seconds. After what felt like an eternity, he said, in an oddly
subdued tone, "I'm happy for you, Sam. You've been working too
hard and you need to have some good times."
My head felt
light and I felt my throat tighten up. I shook it off and said,
"What's up with you?"
He said, "Well, I joined
a frat."
"Oh, jeez, Brian, tell me you didn't. You
really wanna be one of those guys?"
"Hell,
yeah," he said. "It's the easiest way to get into the
hottest parties with the hottest girls."
"Sounds
like business as usual," I said. "Serial monogamy. Rapidly
serial, I'll bet."
He laughed. "Why fix somethin'
that ain't broke?"
"So who's the flavor of the
week?"
From the sound of his voice I could almost see him
leering as he said, "Hey, it's more like 'flavor of the hour,'
Sammy."
I groaned. "You're gettin' your studies
done, I hope."
"Oh, man, Sam, you won't believe
all the stuff I been studying." He laughed wickedly again. "But
enough about my social life; let's talk about yours."
"It's
not as exciting as yours, trust me," I replied.
"So
fill me in. Like, for example, whatcha up to right now?"
I
thought about Bryan and about what I'd be doing the next couple of
hours. "Uhh...well, I'm gonna go watch a movie with Bryan."
He
was silent for a moment, then he said in a serious voice, "I
didn't realize we had plans."
I didn't know what he
meant, or what to say; I thought he was making a crude joke, which
made me blush, because my intentions for this evening weren't pure at
all. Then the "name thing" dawned on me. Between that and
feeling really embarrassed to be discussing my impending makeout
session, my reply couldn't have been more ridiculous. "I...no,
man, his...you...Bryan is...I mean, not you. He...we...I didn't
have plans with you; his name..."
I couldn't finish
because he was laughing so hard at me. He stopped to say, "You're
so damn hilarious when you get flustered. Damn, I miss that. I was
just yankin' your chain, Sam. Anyway, I told you, I'm glad you got
someone to have a good time with."
I was glad he couldn't
see me blushing.
Since there wasn't any response from me, he
continued. "So what's up with you and this Bryan?"
He
might as well have been asking me about my organic chemistry
assignment. I said, "Well, I...I met him at work, we...it's
only....I...I...he...I mean I guess we..."
I heard him
start to laugh again. I finally gave up and said, "I don't have
a clue."
It was the truest thing I'd said to him the
whole conversation.
We talked for a while longer. It was a
good conversation. I couldn't escape the almost crushing sensation
that a lot was being left unsaid on both ends--it felt like there
were things that still needed to be resolved between us--but there
wasn't anything I could do about it. I hung up the phone when we'd
finished talking with a mixture of happiness and grief. Then I put it
behind me, left the apartment, and drowned any residual sorrows in
Bryan.
* * * * * * * *
Thanksgiving holidays
were coming up. Both of my roommates were going to be out of town.
“Dude,” Adam said to me one night. “It’s just
gonna be you and the apartment over the holidays. So, I guess while
we’re gone, you gonna be getting some like there’s no
tomorrow.”
I was tired, and I was about as sexually
frustrated as a young college guy could be, and so I sad back to him,
none too pleasantly, “I’m not ‘getting any,’
as you put it, so just shut up, okay?”
He looked at me
incredulously. “You’re not?”
“No,”
I said, blushing. Again.
“Well, hell, Sammy, you got to
make some moves, he said, grinning. “Just get over yourself and
attack the guy.”
“Easy for you to say,” I
said. “I’m don’t go around hooking up with every
dick I can find so I don’t have your kind of
experience.”
“Every dick I can find? Moi? I
think I’ve been insulted; and to think I was considering doing
you a favor.” He feigned offense, but his goofy dramatics had
up both grinning.
“I didn’t mean it like that,”
I said. “I just don’t know what to do to take the next
step.”
He grinned. “It’s not rocket science.
Just do what your dick wants you to do but your head isn’t
allowing you to do. Talk back to your head, man. Tell it to shut the
fuck up so you can get laid. Tell it that it’ll thank you for
it.”
I grimaced at him. “Gee, thanks. I don’t
know why I didn’t figure that out before.”
“Oh,
and another thing,” he added. “That piece-of-shit army
cot isn’t gonna cut it,” he said on his way out the door.
“You get him over here, you use my bed. Trust me, it’s
a lucky bed. It’s seen lots of hot gay action.” He
started laughing like a madman at that. “Don’t worry,
I’ll have everything you need all ready for you, so just go for
it.”
I wasn’t sure whether I could, but I was
getting pretty desperate and pretty frustrated, so I decided that
when I had him over here I’d try to at least to get him out of
his pants.
So the Friday after Thanksgiving he and I were in
my apartment. I took Adam up on his invitation, and we were on his
bed. As usual, a back rub had turned into a makeout session. I hadn’t
noticed it when we first came into the room, but as we were getting
into it hot and heavy, I saw that Adam had left a stack of condoms
and lube fairly conspicuously out next to the bed. When I first saw
all that, my face got hot, and I panicked at the thought that Bryan
would see them and think I’d brought him here to seduce
him.
But hadn’t I?
We were both clearly enjoying
the makeout session, but I couldn't get the condoms out of my head.
Somewhere in the middle of making out I blurted out, "Do you
want to?"
He stopped kissing me, and I saw his eyes
light up.
Looking straight at me, breathing heavily, he said,
“I...are you…do you mean what I think you mean?”
I dropped my eyes and looked down at the bed. “Yes,”
I said quietly.
I hardly got the word out before he said,
“YES!” His voice actually cracked, and he said it so
quickly and with such enthusiasm that I nearly burst out laughing. He
yanked me back down on him and we lost the remaining clothes.
It
was pretty awkward on the bed. He was too long for the bed, by a lot,
and it was a day bed, not exactly the most comfortable thing ever. It
had a twin size mattress with no box spring, and it was too high up
off the ground. I’m not sure where Adam got this particular
nightmare of a bed, but it was clearly intended for a little girl's
room: It had metal sides, and the metal on the sides and back was
supposed to look like flowers and leaves. I think it was meant to
look like wrought iron. It didn't. It was just ugly. It was also
pointy and hazardous. We kept banging into it, but we were so horny
it didn’t matter; it was only occasionally distracting.
Bare
skin was rubbing bare skin all over. Dicks smeared precum on body
parts. I was as turned on as I’d ever been.
At one point
in our mutual grope, he whispered, “Reach over and grab a
condom.”
Suddenly I was more than a little nervous. We
had never actually talked about any of it. Even though it was
the sight of those condoms that caused me to ask him if he “wanted
to,” I was kind of expecting that we'd exchange blow jobs or
something, not have anal sex. I certainly wasn't ready to let him go
there.
I guess he caught the look on my face, because he
said, “Sam…I want you to do me.”
I don’t
know why I assumed he’d want to be the guy on top. I looked at
him. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” he said.
He looked slightly to the left of my face, avoiding my eyes, and
said, “I like it.”
I was a little shocked. He’d
never said anything about sex with other people, but obviously this
meant I wasn’t his first.
I wasn’t sure what to
tell him. I won’t for a second pretend that I hadn’t
thought about doing it. Hell, I’d thought about it with Brian,
or at least I'd thought about thinking about it; it wasn't
very often that I'd allowed myself to think about that with him at
all, and my mind always pulled back before the thoughts got too
explicit. So I wanted to do this with Bryan, but I was nervous. I was
even more nervous than I had been my first time with Mary. There
wasn't the same level of comfort with him. I liked him--he was a good
friend--but I didn't love him. More importantly though, was the fact
that he was a man. As much as I wanted it, the taboo aspect of the
whole idea was doing a number on my head. I couldn't deny how much I
wanted it, though.
I grabbed a condom. My hands were shaking
so much I could barely hold it. I absolutely couldn't get the wrapper
open.
Bryan chuckled a little. “Here, let me,” he
said. He tore open the package and pulled out the condom out of the
wrapper. Seeing that little roll of latex caused my dick to jump. He
moved closer toward me, and took my hard cock in his hands. It took
all my concentration not to blow my wad right there.
It was
apparent Bryan hadn’t been with an uncut guy before, though,
because between trying to figure out what to do with my foreskin and
trying to position the condom right, his fingers got all tangled up,
and the condom went flying across the room. “Dammit!” he
said, blushing.
It was my turn to chuckle. “No problem,”
I said, grabbing another one from where Adam had left them. I tore
open the package and put it on, and then wondered what I should do
next.
He lay back and bent his legs at the knee spreading them
to give me access. “You gotta get me prepped; you know, kinda
stretch things out.”
I looked at him
questioningly.
“Put some of that lube on me there. Then
put some on your finger and slide it in kinda slow and gentle. When I
get used to that, lube up two fingers and put ‘em both in. Then
three.”
I looked at him a bit skeptically.
“Trust me, it’ll
work.”
Except for the fact that we kept bonking our
heads on the bed, I managed all that with relatively little problem.
But when I actually lined up my dick with his hole, all kinds of
problems with geometry and friction were conspiring together to see
that it just wasn’t happening. I was getting more and more
frustrated; it was enough to make a bi guy completely give up on the
“gay” side. If I hadn’t had a two-month lead-up of
utter sexual frustration, I probably would have given up.
Fortunately, Bryan was really patient, and a good teacher, so after
repeated fumbling attempts, I finally felt the head of my cock
opening him up.
I was amazed at how easy I slid into him from
there. I went very slowly. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, and
I didn’t want to hurt him. But, oh, man,
it felt so amazing. Once I’d pushed in to the hilt, he lay on
his back staring into my eyes. They were wide and full of expectation
and wonder.
“You’re in,
Sam,” he whispered. “Go for it.”
I pulled
out, and took a first firm thrust into him. The forward motion caused
us both to smack the crap out of our heads on the bed.
Both of
us said, “Owww” simultaneously.
The utter
absurdity of the whole evening smacked us in the head too. After the
whole comedy of errors--all the ridiculous fumbling and bumping and
condom tossing and geometry mistakes--the joint brain concussion was
the last straw.
We both fell into hysterical laughing fits. I
was laughing so hard I could hardly breathe. So, of course, the bed
from hell struck again, and since the bed was too high and kind of
poorly balanced, our thrashing around in hysterical laughing fits
caused us to fall out of the bed.
Let me mention again that
the bed was way
too high. Add to that the fact that
the floors were hardwood. When our naked bodies hit the floor, insult
turned to injury once again. I’d heard people say that love
hurts before, but I’d never experienced it quite like that. We
kept right on laughing, though; in fact, this set us off even worse
than before.
Finally, when we’d both recovered from our
laughing fits, horniness and a kind of grim determination took over.
I grabbed condom number three and put it on, lubed up again, and
nailed him right there on the floor. We went at it like a couple of
wolves in heat.
After it was all over, my knees were killing
me, but I felt like I'd finally gotten past some huge hurdle in my
head that I didn't know was even there.
Bryan and I "dated",
unofficially, until that spring. We never talked about what was
happening between us, never talked about any attendant emotions, or
about expectations of any kind, or about what was happening next. We
had a standard routine: We always got together to “watch a
movie” or something of the sort, and always ended up with me
giving him a back rub; which always ended up with us in bed. I always
topped when that was what we did, which seemed perfectly fine with
him.
The sex was great. Well, I had almost nothing to compare
it to at the time, but even today I remember it as good.
It
was an important time for me. The relationship with Bryan had come
just at a time when I was in danger of shutting my entire personality
down. Beyond that, my relationship with Bryan helped me move farther
down the path of self-acceptance. I'd thought about sex with guys
before, especially with the “other” Brian, but back in
high school, whenever my fantasies moved in the direction of making
love to him, I'd wrench them back. Part of me wasn't ready to be okay
with the notion of having sex with guys. I wasn't fully able to
accept my desires for men.
Having a sexual relationship with
Bryan helped me get over my mental block about sex with guys. This
led to another complication, though. I found that I was now able to
fantasize about being with a guy, and when I did, the man I wanted to
think about, to dream about--to love
and
make love to--was Brian
Walker. I cared deeply for my new friend, but he was never really the
guy I wanted to be making love with; to be brutally honest, he was
just a stand-in. I found myself once again wanting Brian so much that
it frightened me, and that created nine kinds of chaos with my plans
to put him behind me and move on with my life. The bottom line of my
relationship with Bryan was that it was a breakthrough for me, but
the breakthrough just made it harder for me to get over Brian.
All
this pretty much dictated that there wasn't much of anywhere for my
relationship with Bryan to go, so there were no hard feelings in May
when he said he'd met a woman he wanted to date. We'd never made our
relationship very clear to each other, and whatever we were doing, it
didn't involve the kind of emotional intimacy that I'd experienced
with Brian Walker, so I was okay with seeing our physical
relationship come to an end.