Fifteen
by T. Scott Faulkner
I am fifteen.
Fifteen is nowhere.
I am nowhere.
Last period, Friday, and Ms. Ramey's teaching us logic. I'm killing time, mastering the art of the syllogism. "Silly jizm," I scribble, then quickly erase.
There's a party at Cassandra Mitchell's house tonight, and everyone will be there.
I'm not going. I wasn't invited.
I am no one.
The bell rings and thirty sophomores pour out of Room 232. Ms. Ramey stacks her books and lets out what sounds like a sigh of love. It could be exhaustion. It could be gas. "Have a nice weekend, Aidan," she manages, locking the door behind her.
Aidan. That's me. Je suis. Soy yo. "See you Monday, Ms. Ramey."
Fifteen minutes later, I'm home. "Home," I think. "What a concept!"
Home is where the heart is.
I cannot find my heart.
Where am I?
Don't get the wrong idea. I live here, and it isn't bad at all. No tyrannical father, no manic mother, no uppity sister, no seditious little brother. The refrigerator is stocked and there's art on the walls. We've got Digital Cable, and a library, and from my bedroom on the third floor I can see across the backyards of a neighborhood where nothing at all could ever go wrong.
Nobody's home, which is just as well. I'm a fan of silence. I think sometimes that I can touch silence, smell it even, like leather or Auntie Colleen's body wash. Mother will appear in an hour, Dad an hour later. They'll sit down with Old Fashioned's to watch Jim Lehrer, then Mother will whip up something tasty, yet sensible. She'll call me down to dinner, and for half an hour I'll smile and beg off their reasonable questions. It's been like this for a while, now. I can see the hurt in her eyes, the confusion in his, but the smile seems to have enough reassurance in it to ward off tears or phone calls to shrinks, or even a friendly tap at my bedroom door.
I know what you're thinking: with millions starving in Botswana, how can this little shit complain? I mean, you're thinking: there's that deformed kid with the incurable genetic disease, and you don't hear him bitch and moan! He's all twisted with pain and he's got about a year to live, and he writes happy poems about hope and sunshine and sends them to Oprah, for God's sake.
Okay, okay. You're right. I'm insufferable. But I guess since nobody can suffer for me, I'll just have to do it myself.
II
I'm up in my room, the door locked despite the fact that I'm home alone. I'm staring at myself in this freestanding mirror my mother bought at an antiques fair - stationed in my room to torture me in style, I guess. I tilt my head, scrunch my brow, flash that toothy smile. I stick out my tongue, proud that it can tickle the end of my nose, my very long nose, my Modigliani nose. "He'll grow into it," I once heard Mother tell Grandma Bea. I'm not a patient guy, and I just wish it all had fit to begin with. My glasses are pretty slick, though, make my purple eyes look dangerous under that wayward shock of black hair.
Then it's off with my shirt. And my Dockers. And my Joe-Boxers. I'm naked. Just thinking the word gives me chills.
And what a spectacle I am, naked. No abs, no lats, no delts, no glutes, biceps, triceps. No six-pack - not even an empty can. I look like 130 pounds on a 5 ' 11" frame is supposed to look. I look like Jesus on Calvary. Like one of those hollow Jews in "Night and Fog." Not Cassandra Mitchell's type, I'm pretty sure. Not Joey DiMarco's or TyRon Vaughan's. If I were any skinnier, I'd be invisible. Check that: I am invisible.
Now this is not where some spider bites me in the ass and I get huge and telepathic and save the world. Nope, I passed on that screenplay. I can blink fifty times and the mirror never wavers in its conclusion: this boy puts the skin back in skinny.
I told you about my nose? Well, at the end of my matchstick legs with knobby, perpetually bruised knees, two enormous feet protrude. 16 EEE, baby. When the kids at school aren't busy ignoring me, they're disparaging my proboscis or tripping deliberately over my feet. I guess it's hard for them to ignore the obvious, all things considered.
But I digress. Or rather I avoid. What they haven't seen, what they cannot know because I've never let them, what would really freak them out is just now starting to unlimber itself between my legs. My penis. My cock. My dick. Shit, this story is as much about my dick as it is about anything. It frightens me. It screams to be set free. I am fifteen, nobody, nowhere, and my dick wants to run away. I can't let that happen.
Lighten up. All boys have them, you demur. True dat. I've skipped the locker room entirely since I first became aware of my dick, but it only takes a few strategic clicks on a search engine to validate the theory in the present. Mine is bigger. This mirror doesn't lie - at least it hasn't yet.
It's hard in my hand now. I point the shiny red head, unsheathed, at the window, at my computer, at the face laughing in the mirror. I make machine gun noises. I shoot at the world like some trenchcoat mafia flasher, then twirl it with my right hand, then bend over to kiss it with the very tip of my tongue. I'm seriously pumping now, teasing, then squeezing, breathing for two, joyous and desperate. They're in my room now, Cassandra and Joey and TyRon, urging me on, swaying to my mad little sonata. "God, Aidan, you're so fucking hot…fill me up, Aidan…give it all to me." Then I'm being kissed, and it's not Cassandra, but Joey, and I don't care at all, because I'm not about Cassandra anyway, she's just there for show, I'm about all the Joey's in the world, and this one wants my humongous dick more than her tight pussy, and, whoa Daddy, just stay on it, suck it hard, oh yeah, and after I cum, I'll deal with the fact that I'm miserable, fifteen, and gay. Pearls run down the mirror. Tears run down my face. I always cry when I cum.
III
Mother's home. I've cleaned up the mess and washed my face. I feel okay, and the mirror doesn't look back when I pass it.
"Hi Mother." She's putting away groceries. I make a move to help.
"Are you feeling okay, honey? Your eyes look puffy."
"I just woke up. Took a nap. I feel fine." Now she'll ask about school.
"Did you get that composition back? The one on The Crucible?"
"Yes."
"And?"
"And I did fine. Mr. Barrows says I'm a rhetorical prodigy."
"I wish you'd let me read some of these papers. But I'm not going to beg." Actually she's being sweet here, not pushy at all. She majored in English, and I guess she'd like to know if any of it rubbed off on me. "Okay, so maybe I will beg."
"Please, Mother. I can't stand to see a grown woman grovel."
"Aidan Michael Maguire. I don't know what to do with you."
"Just keep doing what you're doing. I'm not complaining."
As my Dad launches into his monologue, I realize that I've never seen him naked, or at least not since something like that would have registered. He's talking about a senior partner at the firm being diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and suddenly I start to giggle. He shoots me one of his patented "how dare you" looks, and I mumble, "sorry, I was thinking of something else." I tell myself I'll find a way to check him out, even if it means hopping in the shower with him. Who knows, maybe I'm adopted. Or maybe this potbellied windbag who gave me my surname is hung like a water buffalo with balls the size of honeydews. And I can't help it: honeydews crack me up, and I'm overcome once again by mirth.
"Son. I wish I knew what was so hilarious."
"No you don't, Dad."
"I don't understand you at all, Aidan. I don't understand you at all." The exaggerated repetition is supposed to be my cue to cut my losses.
"No you don't, Dad." Mocking.
"Well, I do understand one thing, young man: why you don't have any friends."
"Byron! That's quite enough." Good old Mom.
He's finished. And you know, he's right. "The trout was delicious. May I be excused?" They both nod and look away.
IV
Sometimes I slip out late, after the folks are down for the count. Don't get your hopes up: I never stray too far from the manicured byways of the Glade. Mostly, I just like the night air, the way it hides me from myself. If this were a movie, I'd probably break out a flask of Vodka, light a butt, and strike a lonely poet pose, but the only thing I've ever drunk is Peach Schnapps, and I'm not sure nicotine would be good for my asthma. And then, Reese Witherspoon would materialize from the shadows, and she'd know by my pout that I was miserable and by my silence that I was a tough one. She'd start to say something, and I'd put my fingers to my lips and tell her,
"Don't frighten the night."
She'd come closer, and the camera would pan to her face awash in moonlight, then to mine, looking out beyond the stars. After a few pregnant seconds, she'd whisper my name:
"Aidan? What the fuck are you doing here?" I nearly fall off the picnic table. "It's 2:30 in the morning."
Once I get my breath back, I manage to counter with the obvious: "I guess I could ask you the same thing, Billy." Billy Nolan, my neighbor and classmate. Once, during freshman year, he asked to see my notes on Athens and Sparta. I obliged. He returned them promptly, told me they were awesome, then ignored me for 18 months.
"I was at Cassandra's, you know. The party."
"Oh. How was it?"
"Dude, it rocked. Her folks were nowhere. They had two kegs on the deck and another in the rec room."
"Still going on?"
"Nah. Neighbors called the cops, yada, yada. I heard Joey DiMarco passed out in Mrs. Mitchell's bed. Dropped a lit joint and set the bedspread on fire."
"Wow. Sounds great. So why are you here, I mean? By the creek."
"I don't know, Aidan. I was supposed to hook up with that junior Meghan chick, but, like, when the party got busted, all bets were off. But anyway, I asked first."
"I have a rendezvous with destiny."
"What?"
"I like it here."
"Aidan, you don't party much, do you?"
"Not with Cassandra, I don't. Wouldn't want to ruin my reputation."
"Fuck you. You think you're so cold."
"I'll have to take that as a compliment."
He gives me the same look I got from my father at dinner, only this time - maybe it's the auroral chill or maybe it's just the strangeness of it all, me and Billy talking - it gets to me.
"I'm sorry, Billy. I guess you know I'm not so hot with the small talk."
"Whatever. I just wanted to check out the path by the creek. I didn't know I'd run into you. Later."
He takes a few steps down the slope and into the shadows.
I call after him. There's a catch in my voice. "Come on, Billy. Stick around. I'll shut up, I swear."
He stops, waits a few seconds to turn back.
"All right. You're fucking nuts, you know."
V
I figure if I don't think about the things I really want, then I won't be disappointed when I don't get them. Some might call this pessimism. I call it insurance.
Take Billy Nolan, for example. I've never afforded myself the luxury of really looking at him, not because I don't want to, but because I've always imagined he wouldn't look back. He's been a fixture on the increasingly crowded periphery of my life: we did 3rd and 6th grade together; cassocked and surpliced, we served mass at Queen of Heaven before the scandals. When his uncle died on American Air #77, my mother marched us over to his house with a roast chicken because "it was the decent thing to do." I remember Billy standing in a sea of cousins, sad and proud and more than a little embarrassed.
Now, talking in the darkness, I am unafraid to let my eyes wander all over him. I'm certain that even with night-goggles he couldn't see into my thoughts. I'm sitting and he's standing, kicking stones - ready to leave, I suspect, if the moment gets too heavy again. He looks perfectly at ease, even so. And well he should, because all the parts fit. The uniform, part prep, part urban renegade, is a total affectation, but on him it looks unaffected. The body underneath is strong without being bulky, tight without being sculpted, graceful without being cultivated. Billy's a lot of boy, but he's not vain.
"Yo Aidan." Sounds suspiciously like Rocky Balboa, but he's not laughing. "I mean, what do you do all the time? I never see you anywhere."
This is a scary question. I'd like to dodge it, but that might wreck the little scene we've got going. "I don't know. Somehow I wind up at home. Then I go to my room. I do dork things, I guess. Read. Watch TV. Build model rockets. . . . Just kidding." I'd like to add that I jack off a lot, that I've created a host of cyber-selves, that I'm skatrrboy15 to the bald guy in Jersey, and a Russian immigrant to the nice schoolteacher in Pomona. And that when I jack off, I look at myself in the mirror, and shoot at all the fools with my giant dick. "Not too thrilling, huh."
"It's cool. My cousin David told me he spends six hours a day on the net. He's pretty much of a dork, too, but I like him anyway. I mean, I just can't sit still that long. My butt cheeks start to hurt."
Ah, sweet honesty. Billy says exactly what he means, a skill that has somehow eluded me. It can't be that hard, I tell myself. But irony is so much easier. "Maybe you just need a better chair. Ergonomics, you know."
"Nah. I'm, like, restless." With this he heads down the slope again. I think he's leaving, and I'm about to protest, when I hear him laughing.
"Whoa! Beer goes right through me." I hear faint splashing against the tree. I imagine a bright silvery arc. The sound is enough to stir things up in my britches.
He comes back tugging at his zipper like a first grader and plants himself at my side on the picnic table. I can feel the heat radiating from his summer-brown skin. "I'm still pretty juiced," he tells me. "Like I drank a Venti Latte or something. I sometimes don't fall asleep so good. I guess you don't either."
Actually, it's one thing I do quite well, but that feels like the wrong answer. "It is 3:00 A.M., after all, and I'm not any closer to my bed than you are than you are to yours." But I am much closer to Billy, and the molecules are starting to dance inside me. He smells like beer, pheromones, and the oncoming summer, and it's all I can do not to bite him.
"Do you like school?" he asks.
"Yeah. I guess. I mean, there's not all that much to it."
"That's easy for you to say. I remember when you kicked Mrs. Monahan's ass on those timed multiplication tables."
"She was two years from retirement. It wasn't really fair."
"No. Get real. You don't think we knew it? That you were the smartest fucking kid in the school? You're still the smartest kid in the school, and if you deny it I'm going to waste you right here. So tell me, Maguire, 'cause I need to know: does it really suck as much as I think it does?" Billy's pretty much in my face, now, and as my personal space shrinks, everything else is growing. This syllogism's out of whack. No logic can save me.
He hates me.
I want him.
God help me.
"I suck, Billy. Okay. Is that what you want me to say: that it sucks being me?"
"Damn, dude. Touchy, touchy." He flicks my earlobe with his middle finger and I cringe as if he's about to pummel me. "Don't be so bitter. I'm just trying to make conversation."
"No, I mean it: I suck. I've been waiting for three years to tell somebody. Sorry it had to be now and sorry it had to be you."
"Jeez, Aidan. I mean, where does all this come from? I just wanted to know what it's like to be good in school. You know? Research the unknown." He's actually smiling, satisfied with his joke. I can't stand it. I can't think of a single wiseass thing to say. I can get out of anything, just ask my parents, but I can't get out of this moment. He's got to know that I need space. And suddenly I realize that desire feels a lot like claustrophobia, that if I want to breathe again I'm going to have to surrender. The night is starting to spin, so I look down at the ground and shake my head, and puke up the truth:
"I'm gay, Billy."
It's just a word, I know, but to me it sounds like a curse. Sticks and stones and all that shit. But it tastes terrible on my tongue, like gunpowder or bile. Okay, I think, so Jack and Will are good with it, and the Queer Eyes with their relentless hip, and the whole freakin' ten percent saying it loud and saying it proud. Not me. I don't want a hug from Dr. Phil. I'm old school. It's trauma.
"No shit?" He doesn't punch me and he doesn't run, if that's what you're thinking. He doesn't move an inch. It's like I told him my shoe was untied.
"No shit. You can go now. Tell the world. I'm sure they'll be fascinated."
"Would you shut up, Aidan. Stop being such a fucking baby." I know it sounds stupid, but it feels good to be called out. "Besides, this bench is as much mine as it is yours. So just be a nice faggot and shut up. You walk around like you're the only one who knows shit. Well I got news for you. You don't know a damn thing. But you're gonna find out. Now. Follow me."
VI
Billy asks me to shut up, so I shut up. He asks me to follow, so I follow. We're walking down streets I've known all my life, yet I feel like I'm in Bangkok or Brazil. The dogs bark in French, and bats swirl around the lampposts. Eden Glade is sleeping, but the dark things are out in force.
And suddenly we're in his backyard. "Wait here for a second," he whispers.
The Glade was born in the late fifties. Some intrepid developers, a Nolan or two among them, identified paradise in the woods across the river, 40 minutes from downtown, and got to work. They flushed out most of the vermin and dug up Indian bones and gave the wealthy frontiersmen exactly what they always wanted: security.
They didn't bargain on the Russians, however. During the Great Fear, some of the Glade's early settlers decided that the only truly safe place was underground, so instead of gazebos or fountains or crystalline pools, they built bomb shelters.
Well, the Russians never came. The shelters were sealed or simply forgotten like elderly relatives. Most of the young ones had no idea their swing sets were hammered into hallowed ground, that once upon a time their childhood games were due to be swallowed up by a mushroom cloud.
"Voila!" says Billy. The flashlight casts crazy shadows on walls lined with shelves. 32-ounce cans from a bygone era wink at me like shrunken heads.
"This is awesome." I'm fifteen again.
"My family never talks about the shelter. Specially since 9/11. When Uncle Paul died, I guess they realized how stupid it was. Anyway, I've always known where the keys were. I figured since they didn't want any part of it, it could be mine."
"You come down here all the time?"
"Yeah, pretty much. It beats the crap out of a tree house."
He starts to light candles. The room - several discreet spaces, really -takes shape before me. Billy has rescued a sofa and an old LazyBoy. In the middle of the floor is a mattress, covered with what look to be clean blankets and pillows. I wonder how many of his friends have been down here, smoking bones, drinking warm beer, and hatching ridiculous plots.
"It's like a fort, Billy. Check that. It is a fort."
"I'm not ten anymore. I don't need a fort. Sit down, Aidan."
"Sure. This where you bring Meghan Whatsername? This where it all happens?"
"Nope."
"So what's the bed for?"
"Sleeping."
"Yeah, right."
"Don't believe me, then. This is my place. You're the first person I've ever brought down here."
That has to mean something, but I'm not thinking so hot. The bed looks like an invitation. It looks like a giant mouth open to receive a kiss. "I'm honored."
"How honored are you?" Shadow-flames jump up and down on his lovely face. The perpetual smile is gone. "How honored are you?" he repeats, though I don't think he intends for me to answer. "Take off your shirt, Aidan."
"That's okay. I'm not hot."
"Take off your goddamn shirt. Please."
"All right." I pull off the Polo and fold it gently beside me.
"Take off your glasses."
"Billy, I'm blind as a fucking bat."
"Bats have sonar. They don't need glasses. Hand them over."
I'm feeling crippled and overwhelmed. Dead air and candlelight have sucked all the blood from my brain. I'm going somewhere I've never been before, and I don't have a passport, and I don't speak the language.
"Billy," I squeak. "Are you gonna hurt me?"
"I don't think so. Take off your pants. And your shoes."
"Billy, I told you I was gay. That's all. It just slipped out. I'm still Aidan."
"And I told you to shut up. I know what I'm doing."
I untie my laces and slip off my sneakers. I unhitch the belt and slide off my Levis. I think I'm wearing the Bart Simpson boxers, but I'm afraid to look.
"Nice boxers. My cousin goes to U.V.A. God you're skinny."
So this is it. I thought it would be Joey or TyRon or Stuart. Bashing the fag. Teaching him a lesson. Reminding him of his terrible inadequacy, of how lucky he is that they're going to let him live. Or Father Poricier in the sacristy with sick blandishments. Or some sweet-talking dude in the alley behind the Odeon.
"How does it feel, Aidan? All that stands between you and naked are those stupid Cavalier boxers. Tonight's about the last step. I want us to take it together."
Off comes his shirt. His khakis. He's wearing briefs, goddamnit. Billy's wearing briefs. The world is a blur, but I'm thinking to myself that I won't be raped by a boy in briefs.
"Aidan?" My name sounds like a song, like the invocation of a deity. "Come here. Come to me, Aidan." Now I am sure that I am safe, because Billy is crying, and I know that crying boys don't hurt each other.
VII
So this is foreplay. Staring with hot hands. Listening to the sweat. Exploring. It's not at all like the videos, I think. A kiss lasts forever, or at least until it's time to breathe again. Tongues battle on. We clean each other's teeth, recently stripped of orthodontia. I keep after Billy's ears, and he keeps mussing my hair. Looking into his eyes from a distance of eight inches, I feel like the world's tiniest astronaut gazing at continents on the big blue marble. There's so much here to keep us busy that we haven't even gone down there. I'm still wearing my boxers; Billy's still wearing his briefs.
Now we're on the bed, and I'm the one telling Billy to take them off. He stands over me, and I watch as he pulls them over his distended cock. He reaches to cover up, and I say, no, let me look, please, let me look. It's not huge, but it's lovely, perfect in every way like the boy it belongs to. There's a bubble of pre-cum oozing out of the slit in his dickhead. He's circumcised, as I guessed he'd be, and that flaring glans looks like a gumdrop from heaven. You want to scream at me now, in my ecstasy, tell me to get on with it, cut the crap, but I'm telling you that I have proved the existence of God. Mere physics could never design a body like Billy's.
"You, too, Aidan. I want to see you, too." This is communion, and his voice, like mine, is hushed, even reverential.
"Oh my God," he murmurs when he sees it all. I know he's been sensing it, but there's always a hundred miles between the imagination and the truth. For the first time in my life, I am controlling it. It belongs to me like my terrible mind and my awkward heart, a friend in need.
"Yeah. Who'd a thunk it? But you know what they say about guys with big feet."
"Oh my God."
"Touch it, Billy. I promise it can't get any bigger."
We're back on the bed, checking each other out. My fingers walk on his brown and sweaty chest like the first man on the moon. His dick points straight up like a beacon in the night. I kiss it - but only to acknowledge it. I know there's time now, time I didn't used to have.
Billy's conducting his own private examination of my penis. I don't think he knows what to do with it yet, which makes two of us. He's clearly intrigued by its heft, by its floppy-hardness (so different from the solid onyx I am kissing). And I have to guess that he is mystified by my foreskin, the way he slides it too gently over the crown and back, as if it might tear away in his hands.
"This is pretty cool. I mean, you're ginormous, and I didn't know that, but you're not cut, and that's really cool."
"It's all I've ever known. I don't even know if it's cool."
"It's cool, Aidan. I mean it's not like I've known that many dicks."
"Slut."
"I am not."
"Ho-Bag."
"Am not."
"Okay, my vestal virgin. Do you want to suck it?"
The answer is immediate. He opens his mouth and swallows the head. The delirium of his tongue swirling around my foreskin and burrowing in my pee slit distracts me from the damage his incisors are wreaking on the frenulum.
"Billy - Stop - Please, " I say, and I start to laugh again because I now know that reason is just a minion in the service of ecstasy, and because I know that I never want him to stop, never, never, never.
He doesn't pull away in time, though I'm guessing he understands at some pre-conscious level what he is up against. A few jets go down his throat. A couple of spurts wind up on his tongue. One blob drips comically from the tip of his nose.
"I'm not sure I like it." Then he wipes the cum from his nose with his index finger and places the dollop like a communion wafer on the bed of his tongue. "But I guess I could get used to it. At least it doesn't taste like chicken." And there's that smile again, the one I think I love, the one that convinces me God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.
"How big is it?" he asks, as if this is the next logical question.
"I don't know, Billy. But I'm guessing it's a keeper. Sounds funny, but until tonight, it's been my enemy. I mean, not really, but I've always treated it like a retarded little brother. Fuck, all the porn books say it's awesome to have a big dick - but that always happened to the other guy, the one who winks at me every time I hit bearsntwinks.com."
"You're bigger than TyRon. Bigger than Coach Hiller. You're the fucking King of Dicks, Aidan. And you know what?"
"What?"
"I'm gonna take care of your dick forever."
"Why, Billy," I croon in my best magnolia drawl, "I do believe that was a proposal."
"Yeah, so it is. And I'm gonna take care of you, too, genius boy."
"He likes me. He reeeeeaaalllly likes me!"
"Yeah. But you better shut up about it. I could hate you in five seconds."
"Oh! So strong!"
"Fuck you, Aidan. Four. Three."
"Yes, Billy. I'll shut up. I know. I talk too much."
"Two."
Then I do to him what he did to me, and I think he likes it. I think I've got a gift. It's like I've been sucking dick for years. I can go all the way down his shaft without gagging. I can sense exactly when he's about to explode, and squeeze. When he cums, I drink it all, and it doesn't matter that it's pretty nasty, because it's Billy, and at this moment I'd drink Drano for him. And when I look up at him, half-smiling, half in tears, I know the answer to the riddle. It's nature, Billy. It's nature. Such wonder cannot be anything else.
VIII
And they lived happily ever after. The End.
Yeah, right. It's The Day After the Day After, Sunday evening, and I haven't heard from him. Of course, I haven't called either, haven't messaged, haven't hustled the three blocks to the Nolan's and rung the bell.
"Who are you?" big brother Danny would ask, and I'd mumble "Aidan," and he'd look at me like I'd just had my tongue up Billy's ass, which of course I had.
So I'm sitting at my desk, and I'm thinking to myself that nothing at all has changed. The face in the mirror is the same one I've always looked at, though I had popped in my contacts in the hopes that it might not be.
But my heart is racing and my mouth is dry. I've been staring at the same page in Gatsby for an hour now. "Who's that beautiful boy on page 88?" I ask myself, but of course there is no boy in the novel, only Billy's ghost beside a garish yellow roadster. I see Billy everywhere, his image burned onto my retina.
Am I making too much of this? One transcendent night of love in a vacant bomb shelter? It's not like we delivered peace to the West Bank or saved a little girl from drowning. It's not like the earth moved - that much.
And suddenly my dick is swelling in my boxers, and I pull it out for a little chat. I tell it to behave, that we aren't going to be playing like we used to. "I'm saving up for Billy," I tell it, but it doesn't listen, and pretty soon, I'm stroking intently, covering and uncovering the red head, squeezing a little bubble of pre-cum out of the slit. Three days ago, I would have finished the thing, sent a billion spermatozoa to their cold grave. But I guess I really have changed after all. My dick softens. I tuck it back into my shorts. "I'm saving up for Billy. I'm saving up for Billy."
IX
Monday finds me walking down the long first floor corridor at Walt Whitman Senior High. After the renovations, the place looks a lot like a shopping mall, simultaneously Moorish and Colonial, the rows of lockers painted bright green, the lighting bright, yet indirect. Whitman screams affluence, and if, as they say, cleanliness is next to godliness, then I know I am studying in a holy place.
Most of the parents don't know enough about Whitman - and I mean the namesake, not the high school. Mr. Barrows pointed out that irony back in January, though I don't think most of my classmates bothered to catch it. Whitman was a flamer, at least once you got past "Oh Captain, My Captain." I mean, we didn't dawdle on this detail, but I got a little glimpse in "Song of Myself," and then, of course, I had an itch that needed scratching, and I went to Borders and bought a cheap Collected Poems, brought it home, went up to my room, and skipped to the good parts. I suppose I could have downloaded "Frat Boys III" for about the same price, but - and this is where I truly deviate from the norm - Whitman seemed a lot sexier. I mean, it's not like there's ever going to be a Joey Stefano High, even though he's pretty famous, too, and quite dead.
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover
In the cool night,
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined
toward me,
And his arm lay around my breast - and that night I was
happy.
Pretty ripe stuff. Whitman, my Whitman, you are the Mack Daddy. I owe you. That night, with his arm around my breast, I really was happy.
No Billy anywhere, and it's not that big a school. Of course, he's mainstream and I'm IB, but that shouldn't matter if we're in love. It's not like I'm going to put my arms around him and ask him to Prom. We need our goddamned secret, and I have no intention of selling him out. I'm not going to buy myself a letter jacket with a big scarlet G. God, Billy, I'm not a threat. I just want to see you again, and know that you're seeing me.
I get through the day, nonetheless. I scribble notes for the upcoming exams, though I won't really need them. I remind myself of a Sophomore College Night I have no intention of attending. I eat lunch with Krishna and Li, my lab partners, and I think they somehow manage to work Jessica Simpson into their debate on Chaos Theory. If they had ever thought to notice me behind the milk cartons, they'd sense that I was out of sorts. Finally, I'm back in Ms. Ramey's Geometry where it all began, and I don't know what gets into me unless it's a six degrees of separation kind of thing, but on my way to the back of the class, I brush up against Cassandra Mitchell, say excuse me, and ask about the party.
"Awesome, of course. Until it got busted. I'm grounded for, like, eternity. You shoulda come by, Aidan."
I should have come by. If P, then not Q. "Yeah, you're right. My cousins were up from Richmond. Next time, maybe. If there is a next time." I think I give her a knowing wink, but it could be that facial tic I get whenever I lie spontaneously.
"Sure. Whatever. Bring your cousins." She is absolutely certain that there will be other parties. I admire her certainty, I really do.
Somehow, the hour passes. Ms. Ramey looks at me from time to time as if she knows something's up. Something's up, I want to scream, but it don't fit on the freakin' y-axis. In the geometry of love there is no symmetry.
X
I take the long way back, past the creek and the picnic table where less than 72 hours earlier Billy found me staring up at the stars. I guess it shouldn't surprise me that in the hard light of 4:00 P.M., a creek is just a creek, a table is just a table, and the illusion or whatever it was that drew us together doesn't register. So I walk on.
But I can't make myself go home just yet. I don't want to climb the stairs to my room and lock the door behind me. I don't want to give up on this new Aidan. I'm not ready to euthanize him just because his poor heart is beating irregularly and desire seeps out of every pore.
And I double back through The Glade, past the Johnston's and the Wasserman's, past Mrs. Golightly's azaleas, past Cassandra's place where the party was, where the silver 750i in the circular driveway tells me Mrs. Mitchell will be greeting her daughter at the door, past twenty stolid Parthenons in a row, sudden monuments of a new Golden Age, past the Mount Vernon and the Monticello squaring off at the corner of Alwyn and Sunnymeade, Sunnymeade, where the Nolans live, where Billy lives, and where, in a bomb shelter built for a war that never came, two boys found something like peace.
I don't know what to do. I can't stand on the sidewalk and wait for someone to notice me. I can't take a chance that Billy's mom will call out to invite me in for cookies and a chat. "Yes, Mrs. Nolan, my Dad wants me to look at Princeton. No, thank you, really, I can't stay for dinner. Yes, ma'am, Mom loves Pilates, says it's better than sex, which, by the way, I had with your son Friday night while you were sleeping."
I must look like I belong there figuring out what to do. No eyeballs peer at me through louvered blinds; no sirens wail. So I open the gate to the back yard, walk the flagstone path through gardens in mid-May splendor, to the vine-covered mound where the shelter is. And wait, like an orphan at the end of time.
XI
"Aidan, what the fuck are you doing?" I must have dozed off. Billy stands over me, blocking the late afternoon sun.
"I didn't see you at school. You didn't call."
"You can't just come here. It's, like, trespassing, you dumb fuck."
"I know. I know. I'm not thinking so hot. Dumb fucks are stupid. They trespass. They get busted."
"Damn, Aidan, what if my brother found you here? He's not cool at all. He takes supplements for God's sake." Not that he would need any muscle mass to mess me up.
"I know. I would have thought of something. And besides, if he killed me, they'd probably suspend him or something."
"Goddamn. Motherfucker. You goddamn motherfucker. You goddamn, motherfucking motherfucker." It might be sunstroke, but these words sound more like a benediction than a curse. Billy is proud of me, I think.
"I am, Billy. I need you, Billy." I've never said anything like that, never, ever. All the filters are off. All the cues have been lost.
"Shut up, Aidan. You can't just say that, you know. You can't." And he opens the padlock, then the creaking wooden hatch, and he looks at me one last time in the sunlight, and I think: he needs me, too. He needs me.
He turns on the Coleman lantern, motions me to the couch. "We gotta talk."
"Yes," I say. "Please, let's talk."
He sits down across from me, on a couple of boxes. The silence chokes me, but I can't go first. I understand that much.
"This is my place, Aidan. I have to invite you. It's my rule."
"Okay."
"What happens in here happens in here."
"Of course."
"I won't come looking for you at school, Aidan. I won't. I can't. And please don't come looking for me."
"Sure."
"No, I mean it. We're not gonna hang out, Aidan. You don't know me out there. If you say 'hey, Billy,' I'm gonna walk away."
A little voice in the back of my head tells me I should be crushed. The rules of the game are stacked against me, and I'm heading for humiliation. But instead of growing louder, the voice disappears in a wash of love and desire and utter joy. And when I speak, it is with conviction, not fear, compassion, not anger.
"Yes. Out there is out there. I am nobody out there, and that's okay. Really. I think I knew that all along. I think that's why my legs brought me here. I mean, I think that anything is okay, here, that I can need you and you can need me, and it's all right. I don't want to lose the shelter. I don't."
Wordlessly, he comes over and sits beside me. Just sits, staring at the strange shadows on the wall. He is breathing deeply and heavily, as if something large and angry has been chasing him, and he's just now found a place to hide and catch his breath. I brush his cheek with my lips, kiss his earlobe, stick my index finger through one of his blond curls. He turns to me and whispers: "Goddamn, Aidan. What are we going to do?"
It's even better, this time. We know better what we like and we know better how to get there. I want to drown in Billy's skin. My fingers cannot travel anywhere on his body without eliciting a moan. I don't know if the nerves are in my fingers or on the contours of his chest, abdomen, thighs. It's like I'm playing an ancient instrument, a lyre or a sitar, and the music that I make is thrillingly out of tune, a strange melody never before heard. I kiss his nipples, and he squeals; I bury my tongue in his belly-button, and his back arches, and he bucks a bit, and he says, "oh shit, oh shit, ah shit, aah" a prisoner of the Tourette's that afflicts lovers everywhere. Then my fingers find his dick, flush against his belly, and I play with it like a seven year old drill sergeant with a G.I. Joe doll, commanding it to salute, squeezing the head just a little and watching the slick slime seep out. Billy is silly putty. I can stretch him and knead him at will. He has no voluntary muscle control. He has surrendered to my sweet ministrations, and from the looks of it, from the ecstatic sound effects emanating from his throat, there is nothing quite so wonderful as being powerless. Now, I'm down on him in a serious way. I suck at his dickhead like a sweet jawbreaker, then shoot to the root, letting the head pummel my tonsils. I might be gagging, but I'm not stopping, and once more I go back to the peehole, drill my tautened tongue into the urethra, and Billy announces his readiness with an expletive worthy of Satan, and he tightens all over, and starts firing wads of cum which I swirl around my mouth and swallow. I don't let go of his dick right away. I let it go soft, and when I graze my teeth over the head, I feel him tense again, and shudder, and squirt a last delinquent blast. Only then do I look up at him and see the smile and the tears.
"Where did you learn that, Aidan?" He's hoarse, and I've been doing all the work.
"Instinct. Raw talent. I suck at so many things, I guess I'm good at sucking."
"Thank you."
"Any time. I mean, any time it's okay with you."
"Oh shut up, Aidan. I don't know why I said what I said. I don't really know much of anything."
"You knew that I wanted you. You knew that much."
"Yup. I guess I did. I thought I wanted Meghan. I thought I wanted Nicole. I thought I wanted that blonde freshman with the J-Lo booty. I really did. But, nah, all I wanted was your scrawny ass, Aidan. You are beautiful, you know."
"Now it's my turn, Billy: shut the fuck up. Don't fucking lie to me. I am no such thing."
"Touchy. You are, though. I don't say shit like that unless I mean it. If you'd stop hating on yourself for five minutes, you might see it, too. You have purple eyes, Aidan. Purple. They're amazing. Your lips are, I don't know, puffy and sweet, like you got those collagen injections. And, okay, so you're bony. But I think you're the hottest skeleton I ever met."
"And I'm smart."
"And you're really smart."
"And you want me anyway."
"And I want you anyway."
"And if I start to cry, you won't stop wanting me."
"I won't."
"Billy? Why don't I believe you?"
"Because for a smart guy, you're a fucking idiot. A beautiful fucking idiot."
Then he's lathering me with kisses, his tongue a hummingbird on Methedrine. He brushes aside my attempts to hold on to him. He wants what I just had, the Golden Rule, to do to me what I did unto him. And who am I to argue?
I close my eyes. I wonder if this is what blind people feel when they make love. They can't anticipate the touch or the breath on their skin. They can't prepare themselves for the ambush. Billy has bathed me like a newborn, a baptism with saliva. I can sense my dick twitching, but I don't think he's taken it yet. Then his tongue licks up and down the shaft, and his mouth pulls my foreskin back over the glans, and he pinches it into a little pucker with his lips, and holds it there a few agonizing seconds. Then he retracts it ever so gently, ever so slowly, and I think, my boy's learning fast, and if he doesn't stop right now I'll pop like Vesuvius.
I don't blow, because Billy stops. When I open my eyes, I realize that I'm straddling his chest, and he's bracing me with his knees. I wonder if he's tired and resting. I wonder if somehow he's bored, or if, looking up at me in my delirium, he's having second, third, one-hundredth thoughts.
"I love it," he mutters.
"Love what, Billy?"
"All of it. This thing."
"My dick, you mean?"
"Yup. And how you taste. And how I know you're gonna cum, and how I know I'm not gonna let you. Sex, you know. I love it."
"It is pretty amazing." My dick, in all its considerable glory, rests eagerly on his chest, awaiting a revival. But I want even more to listen to my boy.
"I'm still hard, Aidan. I blew my load twenty minutes ago, and I'm still hard. I'm sucking your cock and I'm not even thinking about me, and I'm hard. I keep squirming like there's something moving in my ass, and I know it's not you, but I want it to be you."
He wants it to be me. He wants me to fuck him. My dick jumps an inch as I try to fathom his request. I quickly do the math, lean over to kiss him, and say:
"I don't think so, Billy."
He doesn't say anything, so I guess he's heard me. He kisses my dick, then engulfs as much as he can. He starts to bob in earnest, and pretty soon my back straightens, every muscle in my body contracting all at once, and I feel the rumble below where soul meets bowels, then that telltale surge through tiny pipes, and one, two, three, four seminal jets before Billy pulls away and lets the last few drops fall harmlessly onto his chest.
"Next time, maybe? You in me? Me in you?"
"God," I say, still shuddering. Then I collapse on top of Billy so he won't see that I'm crying. As I said, I always cry when I cum.
We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving -
Fulfilling our foray.
XII
I've always envied those guys who can step right up to a urinal, zip down, extract, and fire away. Some of them carry on coherent conversations all the while, as if nothing could be more natural. Okay, you're right: nothing is more natural, unless you're me of course, and you're wired weird, and you've got a thousand inhibitions Drs. Freud and Phil working together couldn't unplug. About a year ago I searched Google for "lavatory neuroses" (or was it "men's room phobias"?). The results were singularly unsatisfying: I got lessons in etiquette, but nothing at all to tell me how to pee confidently in public. And God knows, it's not exactly something I could ask my folks about. Or Mr. Barrows. Or my clergyman. So whenever nature happened to call, I took it in a stall. Until today, that is.
I think it's all because Billy came along, which must sound like a non sequitur. But how else can I explain that I've just taken my place at the far urinal in the bathroom behind the Food Court and am emptying my bladder of the Big Gulp I drained to celebrate the end of exams and my sophomore year? How else can I explain to the bald guy to my right that this is not business as usual? How else do I account for the fact that both of us have finished peeing and neither of us is in any rush to get out of here? I step back an inch and flash my dick. He looks impressed and licks his lips. I give my dick a few exaggerated tugs. His eyes cross and he whistles. I smile - not for him, but for me, for a battle joined and the promise of victory. He smiles back, a smile I've never seen before, but which I know somehow I'll see again a thousand times. Then I put my dick away and march out the door, leaving the bald guy to wonder what might have been. Billy came along, that's what it is. Billy came along and now I'm powerful. Watch out.
"You look like the cat that swallowed the canary, Aidan," my mom says. I love it when she goes quaint on me.
"What do you mean, Ma?"
"You know, satisfied. Happier than usual."
"I suppose. School's out and all."
"Footloose and fancy free!" The old girl's on a roll and I'm enjoying it.
"Yeah. It's pretty groovy."
"Mock me not. I was in junior high in the '60's, and I never, ever heard anyone say that word. Not 'til Austin Powers, at least."
"Sure, ma. Whatever."
"Aidan, you know I hate that expression. It's so defeatist. So cynical. All these kids saying they just don't care. What's with that, anyway?"
I'm thinking this is a rhetorical question, so I don't answer. She can't handle any silence longer than five seconds, so she forces the issue:
"Aidan? Cat got your tongue?"
"Ma. You got cats on the brain. Anyway, I'm still busy digesting the canary."
"You are impossible. You really are." Not impossible, I want to tell her. Unlikely, perhaps. Crazy, maybe. Love will do that to you.
Leave it to my dad to fuck up any kind of moment - not that he has a clue about such things. He's brought home "company," a partner named Bledsoe and his wife, and my presence is solicited. He is straight out of Men's Health. She's tight, blond, and frosty - an Abercrombie girl on her farewell tour. Her eyes don't laugh when her mouth does. I'm guessing she's early 40's, my mom's age, but she's got this Paris Hilton thing going on, and it's scary. I don't know why, but she winks every time she asks a question of me.
"So, Aidan, you're in the International Baccalaureate program at Whitman?" Wink.
"Yes ma'am." Oh my God! I haven't said that in years.
"What's your favorite class?" Wink, wink.
"English, I guess."
"Oh, you do look like a reader! Gordon," she asks her husband, "do you think we'll ever get Tyler to open a book?" I'm thinking Tyler must be their son, and knowing what I do about Mendel and fruit flies, I'm guessing he's really cute and sparky, a made-for-TV kind of kid.
"No way. Byron," he says, looking over at my pop, "what's your secret? I can't get my boy to stay home for five minutes. He's gotta be out there, you know, chasin' skirts." And I swear, the dude winks, too.
Chasin' skirts. I want to tell him that I consider the objectification of women a moral crime. But I cut him some slack because he's a guest, and besides, old guys say that kind of thing, have been saying it since Fred Flintstone.
"What about you there, sport? Cherchez la femme, mon ami?" Uh oh. Gordon's more literate than I thought. And he's a litigator, like my pop, except that he looks like he runs double-marathons between depositions. The man really wants me to talk about skirts.
"I take Spanish." Maybe that'll crush him.
"Well, you know, las señoritas, las chicas." His meaty hands sculpt the universal hourglass. "What's the story, boy?"
"Gordon, honey. Leave Aidan alone. He's not in court, you know." She winks conspiratorially, and now I'm really feeling bad. Mom's busy in the kitchen, and I know Byron's never going to rescue me. Three superballs of sweat race unimpeded down my side.
God, I'd love to blow this moment up. I want to stare down my dad and the inquisitors and unleash the truth. Tell them that I'm homo-sexual, queer as a leprechaun, a faggot flambé, a dick-sucking, butt-humping fairy straight out of Neverland. Tell them that my girl don't wear skirts, he's more a Jockey's kinda girl, and what's more he's beautiful, drop-dead gorgeous, and I love him like the sunrise and the wind.
"I'm not seeing anyone at the moment." The lie sneaks out like an SBD.
"Hey, little man, there's all kinds of time. Not to worry. Now Tyler. That's another story! I'm frankly worried, I am." Funny thing though, I see pride, not worry on Gordon's Marine Corps face. As for good ol' dad? Well, he looks anxiously towards the kitchen, and if I'm not mistaken, he's regretting the night he forgot the condom.
"Yeah. I've got the whole summer ahead of me." And, God strike me dead, I wink at them. It's the best thing I've done all day.
XIII
The first time I jacked off, my guy didn't even have a face. Or rather, I didn't let him have a face. In desperation, I may even have tried to put a girl's face on him, which didn't quite work, what with the hair on his calves and that inescapable dick between his legs. Still, I remember him talking to me, though he didn't have a mouth. I recall that the whole time I was stroking furiously he was telling me how awesome I was, at which point it occurred to me that his voice was just my own little tenor echoing in my head, and that, in fact, his legs were my legs, and the swinging dick was mine, too. I didn't know who Narcissus was then, but damn, the first time I jacked off it was not only by myself, it was to myself.