For Dave.
1.
I was 16 when my sister Cat asked me to keep a secret. She’d invited a guy over for a date while our parents were out. It wasn’t the first time she’d ever done that, and she was old enough to do whatever she wanted, so why the big deal?
The guy, she explained, was twenty-four, a full six years older than her. But that was just the beginning. He lived in the projects, outside our blue-collar neighborhood, and had a bit of a “reputation”, as she put it.
“He has kids,” she said, grimacing. They were eight and nine.
“Are you kidding?” I asked, doing the math.
He was having sex and making kids when he was my age, a stark contrast to my own sex life, which consisted of vague thoughts about the Six Million Dollar Man or Ryan O’Neal when I jerked off.
He didn’t have custody, she added, and didn’t have to pay support, because the mom was old — in her 30s — and made a lot of money. It was the kind of mitigating factor only Cat would come up with, even then. But there was one more thing: “He’s Indian. Not India-Indian. The other kind.”
I winced at her choice of words, but was relieved she didn’t put two fingers behind her head to mimic feathers.
“Jesus, Cat,” I said. “I don’t know who they’re gonna kill first, you, him or themselves.”
She asked me to not tell, having forgotten that you don’t share your secret before you’ve negotiated terms.
It gave me an odd and unfamiliar power over my older sibling. I didn’t care what she did, even if I had a naive jealousy of the attention boys gave her, hearing their breathy making out on the other side of the wall. I wouldn’t have told if she’d never brought it up. But once she handed me leverage over her, I couldn’t help but use it.
My terms were simple: I wanted her to order a pizza, and I wanted to be in the living room with them when they watched TV. It wasn’t much as negotiations go, but I was hungry and tired of being exiled to my bedroom when she had her boyfriend-of-the-week over.
When Dave showed up I didn’t see what the fuss was about. He wore a t-shirt and shorts and had a basketball at his hip, like he’d just left the playground. But he wasn’t even as tall as me at 5’9″, though he was twice as wide.
Planted on the carpet, I turned back to my book. At least there’d be pizza.
Dave asked what I read (Jaws) and if I played basketball. (I did not.) Or any sports? (Also no.) His broad shoulders shifted as he leaned in closer, despite all my answers being no. I noticed he was built thick all over, wide necked, full chested and sturdy legged.
Instead of giving up, he crouched down to my level and shifted to other topics. His aviator glasses caught the light as he tilted his head. Did I like Battlestar Galactica? (Sure. (For the cute actors.)) Did I like comic books?
Yes, I said, bracing for mockery. A boyish grin spread across his face, and he told me Conan was his favorite. It made sense. He was built a little like the comic book hero, despite his gym teacher brush cut and tinted glasses. Not the great seducer I’d expected, but maybe not so bad.
It was probably the first conversation I’d had with what he was: a young man.
Dave and Cat ordered a pizza, and we watched TV, them on the couch, me on the floor. Chico and the Man was on.
Dave wasn’t shy about making moves on Cat even with me sitting at their feet. I could tell there was some over the shirt action and some serious necking. More than I think Cat usually did, I thought, or she got to it faster. Either way, every now and then she’d nod my way to remind him there was a kid present.
That’s how it was in the 70s.
By the time The Incredible Hulk came on, Dave had one leg draped over Cat’s, the other resting near me. His thighs were hairless, tanned a deep coppery color, smooth as silk. Fine hair dusted his shins, and his calves were square and solid as bricks. A bluish vein snaked down, disappearing into red-banded tube socks.
Hearing their smacking kisses, feeling the occasional brush of his calf against my shoulder, I felt something hot and unfamiliar rise up in me.
2.
After that, I started to notice Dave in the neighborhood.
He was a fixture at the playground that bridged our neighborhood and the projects. I’d spot him playing basketball with cool Black guys, the armpits of his t-shirt dark with sweat, working harder to keep up with players a head taller than him.
But he had an easy strut and an effortless physicality with the other guys. He’d pat them on the back or they’d pat him, slapping palms with his usual grin, saying, “My man.”
He had an easy way with girls too. He drove a yellow T-top Camaro, with one muscled arm resting on the door. Sometimes I’d see him pull over to talk to a pretty girl on the street, and I saw how they’d leaned in to flirt in a back and forth code of words and body language I could recognize but not decipher.
It seemed a miracle he’d only gotten some lady pregnant twice.
Maybe those girls were just Dave playing the field, because he and Cat dated on and off for a while. I guess they were fooling around too, but she was on the pill though, so who cared?
A few months later, Cat announced they were moving in together. Her arguments to reassure our parents — that he’d gotten his GED and was going to college, that he had a part-time construction job — did not win them over.
“College for what?” our father asked, his tone clawing for some path that might salvage some respectability — maybe a lawyer, or at least an engineer. When told social work, he sighed. “Oh Jesus.”
In the end they said they would help pay her rent for a flat in the neighborhood, above an old silk screen shop. That way she’d be nearby, and our mother fretted about where they’d end up otherwise, her tone suggesting she meant: not drifting closer to those people from the projects.
Dave moved his bed, TV and stereo and weightlifting bench from his studio apartment and brought his books and weights.
He and Cat furnished the place with secondhand chairs, a threadbare sofa and bought some mismatched glasses and plates from Goodwill.
It made our parents cringe, but their disregard for convention, their living together, the obvious sexual heat of it all was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.
Cat liked whatever music was popular, but Dave’s albums were by singers and bands I’d barely heard of: Al Green, Parliament, the Ohio Players, Barry White, and the Love Unlimited Orchestra. One of his favorite songs was Catfish by the Four Tops. I thought they were an old-fashioned band, but I must have been wrong, because the lyrics included the line “she makes my nature rise”. Dave started calling my sister Catfish.
In what would have been the dining room Dave set up his weight bench, right in the middle of the room. His barbells and weights were against one wall, under a poster of the Austrian bodybuilder, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Against the other was a bookcase made of planks and plastic milk crates. Dave’s school books were an unexpected mix — politics, history, human sexuality. In the crates were his comic books — Conan the Barbarian — and his collection of Playboy and Forum magazines.
I knew even our father had a couple of Playboy magazines stashed away. But Dave’s were right out in the open.
Another difference: They had friends who dropped in unplanned, something my parents would never dream of, to hang out and play Scrabble. They were mostly other couples, similarly situated, from our neighborhood or the projects, and Dave’s friend Richard, who worked at his school. Cat said he always brought the best pot.
When they did, I played along, passing joints as they came by, planning my next double word score. They called me Matt, not Matty. Sometimes Dave would call me my man, the words caught in his throat after a hit, his breath then releasing, slow and easy, in a way that made my briefs go uncomfortable.
For my 17th birthday, Cat made a cake from a box — the first time she’d ever acknowledged any milestone in my life that I could recall.
She and Dave gave me a book, Watership Down, which Dave must have picked out because Cat wasn’t much of a reader. They also gave me a key to their place, so I could let myself in whenever I wanted.
It was shaping up to be the best year of my life.
3.
With school out and nothing to do, I often hung out at Cat and Dave’s place. She’d gotten a job at a convenience store, and he had his construction work and school, so I often had the place to myself.
I could look through Dave’s porn magazines at leisure, seated in their secondhand armchair, my shorts open. The photos were of women, but there were a few men too. And stories. Stories about a whole adult world of casual sex I wanted to be invited into.
It wasn’t only the magazines. In Dave’s copy of Pumping Iron, there was a quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger that made me harder than the porn. “When a homosexual looks at a bodybuilder, I don’t have anything against that. I probably would stare the same way if Raquel Welch or Brigitte Bardot walked by. If I see a girl with big tits, I’m going to stare and stare. The same is true with the homosexual — he’s picturing the bodybuilder and picturing what he would do with him. Sometimes girls are attracted to your body; sometimes homosexuals are.”
In my fevered imagination, I thought if I could get my hands on Arnold’s chest, he might not mind. He might even be flattered. Even using the word tits to describe a man’s body made my dick leak precum. And if Arnold could be so casual about that kind of desire, who else might be?
One day I snooped in Cat and Dave’s bedroom, looking for signs of sex. In the bedside table I found a jar of Vaseline, and in the corner of the room a pile of Dave’s worn clothes: his sweaty t-shirts, crumpled white briefs, jockstraps.
I brought the Vaseline and one of Dave’s worn sweaty t-shirts out to the comfy chair to read porn magazines.
That day I returned to The Life of a Stud — about a guy who had sex with countless women, and in one installment, another man.
The words blurred as I stroked my erection with a Vaseline-slicked hand, the wet smack echoing the explicit acts I was reading: The Stud’s cock, which in my thoughts was Dave’s, being expertly sucked by another man, followed by its forceful entry into the man’s ass. With the soft weight of Dave’s t-shirt on my chest, my other hand explored my own body.
Two greasy fingers found and probed the tight ring of my ass. A sigh escaped my lips. “Fuck.” The magazine slipped from my grasp as my focus narrowed to the insistent pleasure between my legs. The more I pushed, the more yielding my ass became, welcoming the gradual insertion of one, two, then a third finger that thrust rhythmically
My other hand continued stroking. With Dave’s scent on my chest, I had fleeting images of him between my legs. Each thrust of my fingers sent a fresh surge of clear precum slicking my already sensitive cock, a sensation that mingled with an unfamiliar pressure. That pee sensation was an unwelcome distraction, but the pleasure was too intense to interrupt.
Even as the pressure built, I remained locked in the rhythm of my fingers thrusting, my hand stroking. I didn’t care if I pissed on the secondhand armchair, on myself; the feeling was too powerful to interrupt.
Then, the unexpected happened. Instead of the hot rush of urine I anticipated, my cock erupted with a thick jet of cum that landed with a distinct splat against Dave’s shirt and across my chest and shoulders. The next surges burst in arcs through the air to land on my stomach, followed by a pulsing flow that ran over my fist. I’d cum before, but this was a tidal wave.
I wiped myself off with Dave’s shirt and retreated to the bathroom.
While inside, I heard Dave and Cat returning home. I quickly shut the door —- only then realizing that I’d left my shorts and the Vaseline in the other room. There was a gentle knock on the door and my heart beat in my ears.
“Matt,” Dave’s hushed voice called. “Hey man. Open up.”
I cracked the door an inch, standing there in just my underwear and t-shirt. Dave’s wide grin greeted me.
“Thought you might need these,” he whispered, sliding my shorts through the gap.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, burning with embarrassment.
“Don’t worry, man,” he added, with a friendly wink. “We’ll take longer next time.”
I figured he had discovered the Vaseline too, but I trusted him to keep my secret.
4.
The summer went on that way, hanging out at their place, reading Dave’s magazines and jerking off with his Vaseline and worn clothes. I suppose I must have left greasy fingerprints on some pages, despite my efforts not to. A telltale sign of which stories got me off.
Dave always left the new magazines on top, and the Vaseline always seemed to replenish, as needed. I read through his school books too, especially the sections about sex. One said men having sex with men was a normal part of the range of sexuality, and that men might sometimes experiment with other men. That didn’t make them homosexual.
Of course I wondered if Dave ever had tried sex with another man. Or if he ever would.
Until then, the men who played in my imagination were handsome movie and TV stars, often blonds with chiseled features, slim hips and furry chests.
But Dave was built more like old-time muscle men you’d see in black and white photos, short and thick. When he’d pad around the flat in just a towel after a shower, I could see his brick-colored nipples on his rounded chest, and that his torso was hairless, but for a few stray curls beneath his belly button, leading down to his covered pubes.
By midsummer, the image of Dave toweling off after a shower, the curve of his bicep flexing as he reached for a record, even the memory of his calf brushing my shoulder, had become a constant hum beneath my thoughts, a persistent ache in my imagination.
Dave discovered a little ceiling door in their hall that led up to the rooftop, so they invited their friends over for the 4th of July to watch fireworks. Cat cooked some sides, and Dave and I took turns climbing the pulldown ladder, carrying their little hibachi grill, charcoal, hamburgers and hotdogs and beers.
I followed close behind Dave to get an eyeful of his blocky calves and thighs, the same way I stole glances of his biceps swelling when he lifted his weights. There was nothing hidden from view, but I relished the chance to see him so close, my own gaze unobserved.
Cat’s burgers were meager and took longer to cook than planned. There weren’t as many sides as our mom made on the holiday. But there was beer and pot, and their friends were there, which made it the best 4th I could remember.
Dave wanted WBLK on the radio, but Cat insisted on the station that was playing Elton John all night for the holiday. Are You Ready for Love was on when Dave dropped down on the blanket next to me and crossed his legs.
“Hey, what are you doing about school?” he asked.
I guessed he meant college, which I’d been putting off. My parents hadn’t gone, and Cat sure didn’t. Even if I knew what I was supposed to do, there would still be the question of how to pay for it.
Dave gave me some tips, told me about which financial aid I could get, especially if I went to the state school. “You’re a smart kid,” he said. “I think you’d like it.”
It all sounded a little dubious, but I nodded a lot, looking over at Cat talking with their friend Richard, laughing. I wished I was having that conversation, whatever it was, rather than this one.
During the fireworks, Cat curled up on his lap, next to me. Everyone’s eyes were on the sky, but my gaze was drawn to Dave’s face, illuminated by the bursting colors. His cheeks glowed with reflected light.
Afterwards they sat there, paired off like their friends but for me and Richard, under the full moon as Elton John sang Bennie and the Jets.
I felt an ache of longing for some kind of union I couldn’t yet name.
5.
Cat was fickle. She always had been. And by the end of summer she was picking Dave apart — his work schedule, his new classes, his endless basketball games with friends.
“He’s not a man,” she’d say, “he doesn’t even shave.” As if his smooth, boyish face was some kind of moral failing.
He should be more like his friend Richard, she said, get a “real job,” wear proper button-down shirts and pressed khakis. As if Dave could ever live like that. She couldn’t understand why Richard even bothered with someone like Dave.
For a while, she’d loved being called Catfish, or just Fish. By the end of August she’d soured on both, along with that song Dave loved.
Once when Dave tried to entice her to dance to it, she turned away in a pissy mood. Dave tried to laugh it off, turning to me instead. “Come on, Soul Train,” he said with that infectious grin of his, pulling me off the sofa.
My heart hammered in my chest as he pulled me close enough to feel the strength in his arms, the firmness of his chest. When the Four Tops hit that line, “makes my nature rise,” our bodies pressed together. I pulled back quickly, wondering if he’d felt the mound in my crotch.
As Cat cooled on Dave, my desire burned hotter. My once secretive actions became not just reckless but painfully obvious.
I found excuses to “accidentally” open doors when I thought he might be changing. One night, orchestrating a water spill beside Dave, I ran the kitchen towel along his muscular thighs while “helping” clean up, claiming to check for splashes. Before I could reach higher, he snatched the towel from my hand to wipe himself off.
Changing tactics, I joked about how Cat once said he’d “fuck any hole.” I longed for it to be true, and to test his response. Instead of the confirmation I wished for, he said in a flat tone he didn’t think it was funny.
It was the same tone he used the time we watched Burt Reynolds movie in which a seemingly queer character was mocked. When I pointed it out to gauge his reaction, he said he didn’t like that kind of thing.
I jerked off into his t-shirts and underwear, leaving them unhidden on top of his laundry. I stole his jockstraps, hoping he’d wonder who wanted them so badly.
I didn’t understand it then, but I suppose I thought if he could see how desperately I wanted him, he might consider me. Maybe swapping out my sister for me. If he was as lusty as I imagined, how much difference could it make what hole he fucked? And if he couldn’t equal my desire, surely mine was enough to bridge the gap.
His friend Richard would stop by sometimes to smoke pot with Cat and hang out. He was nice enough, and his looks reminded me of John Ritter from Three’s Company. He always had a triangle of chest hair showing at his collar.
He’d listen to Cat’s complaints about Dave but would unfailingly defend him. “He’s so smart. So adorable,” Richard would say. “Like a teddy bear. You just want to cuddle him.”
It never bothered Cat that he took up Dave’s defense against her complaints, but something about the way he talked about Dave stirred both jealousy and recognition in me.
“Don’t you think it’s weird?” I asked Cat once. “How Richard goes on about how great Dave is?”
She shrugged. “Maybe he’s in love with Dave. I always figured him for a queer.”
That word hit me hard. Cat said it casually, without malice. It was just how she talked. But it cracked open something inside me. I’d desired so many men but had always thought of it as something I did, not something I was. That one day I’d wake up normal.
But when she said it about Richard, who was grown up, fully formed, I felt the same chill as when reading a passage in Watership Down: “All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.” It wasn’t just a fleeting aspect of my teenage years. This was who I was. Who I would always be: a queer.
6.
I began my senior year with a newfound confidence. I’d been using Dave’s weights when no one was around, doing crunches and push-ups, and was surprised to see changes — subtle enough that no one else would notice, but encouraging enough to keep me motivated.
I met with the guidance counselor about college, and although I was late in the process, he mentioned there were still programs for which I might be eligible, especially if I considered a state school. I didn’t know enough to know the difference and said, yes, sure.
I heard about the Sony Walkman and asked for one for my birthday. It was a new luxury, an extravagance my parents weren’t used to, but you only turn 18 once. I wore it everywhere, and I must have had a little rhythm in my step one day, because Dominique, one of the cool Black girls, asked what I was listening to.
Ready to be mocked, I held up the foam earphone for her to hear Grace Jones’s La Vie en Rose. My musical tastes had moved on from my early lessons from Dave. She laughed, but not at me. Not the way I expected.
She and her friends took pity on me, telling me I needed tighter jeans and a better haircut. I followed their instructions with exacting precision, nearly giving my father a coronary when I told him I needed money for Jordache jeans. “A hundred dollars for jeans?” (I think my sister had softened him up by then.)
When I came to school in my designer jeans and a short feathered cut the girls looked me over, arms folded across their chests. Dominique shook her head at her handiwork. “Fierce.”
They tried to teach me to dance, but there were limits to my adaptability. In the end they were satisfied that I could do a respectable Bus Stop for a white boy.
Years earlier, seeing Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett looking impossibly sexy and happy on a People magazine cover. I finally had the confidence — and music — to try it myself. I cut a pair of jeans into shorts, paired them with a cut off t-shirt that showed my flat belly and the first hint of abs and set off for the park by the lake near our home.
I started too fast and found myself quickly winded, so I alternated between walking and running. I was relieved that no one else was there to witness my awkward first session, only me and an orange rust colored sports car. After I ran past it, the car revved and pulled alongside me, gradually matching my pace. It was a low to the ground car, with every window down.
Eventually, I slowed to a stop and glanced over. The driver was older — mid-thirties — with light brown hair and a mustache, wearing a snug T-shirt and mirrored aviator sunglasses. I pulled out my earphones and asked, “Is something wrong?”
“Just enjoying the sights,” he replied coolly. “What’re you listening to?”
“Just music,” I answered. It was Prince’s I Wanna be Your Lover, but it was none of his business. I replaced my earphones and resumed running. I expected him to drive off, but he maintained his crawl alongside me.
After a while, needing a break, I slowed to a walk. “Hey,” he called, capturing my attention.
“Yeah?” I responded.
“I’m Paul. What’s your name?” he said, one arm resting casually on the car door, the other on the steering wheel, Donna Summer’s voice playing softly on his car radio.
“Matthew,” I replied.
“Nice. You want a ride, Matt?”
“No thanks,” I answered, confused. I was clearly running, or trying to. Why would I want a ride?
“You’re not scared, are you?” he prodded. Every kid knows not to talk to strangers, especially not to get into their cars. But I wasn’t a kid anymore and didn’t want to come off as childish. And I was tired of running. He revved the engine again as if to emphasize, “Are you sure?”
With only modest reservations I climbed into the car, and he drove off. His jeans were tight as a second skin, like the station manager on WKRP. I waited for him to ask directions, but instead, he pulled over in a secluded area and parked. After scanning our surroundings, he turned to me.
His hand found my crotch, and I stiffened. “Feels like a big fucking cock,” he remarked.
“What?” I asked as he unzipped me.
“Just relax,” he said, and bent down.
When I came, I grasped at the car seat and his back. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
7.
Having made some friends my own age and being busy with college planning, I spent less time with Cat and Dave. That was my convenient explanation. But the truth was less promising: things between them had grown more tense, and being around them was increasingly uncomfortable. The nesting days were over.
Cat made accusations about other women, one in particular that she described with words too ugly to repeat.
“The blacker the berry the sweeter the juice,” Dave replied, the words sliding out like a practiced joke. But there was an edge beneath the casual delivery.
Everyone knows that expression now, but that was the first time I’d heard it. My imagination ran wild, thinking about Dave, his tongue, his cock, the way he’d grin with pleasure, wishing it was with me.
But one day my fantasy collided with reality.
School let out early for a teacher training and I thought I’d stop by their place with my free afternoon, to check out any additions to Dave’s porn magazines.
On the way I spotted Dave in an apartment doorway with that woman Cat complained about. I didn’t need to hear their conversation. I’d seen enough of Dave’s moves with Cat to recognize them. The way he leaned in, his signature grin, his whole body speaking the back and forth language of seduction. I lingered until he noticed me. His whole demeanor changed in an instant. Caught.
When he showed up at their place a few minutes later, I didn’t waste time: “I saw you. Outside. With her.”
He didn’t deny it. Just sighed. “Man, don’t tell Cat, okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I asked. “She’s my sister.” (Even then, I knew my outrage wasn’t about familial loyalty.)
“Fuck, man.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Things with Cat… it’s complicated. We don’t even have sex anymore. Let me handle this.”
“Does she ‘make your nature rise?’” I threw his own song lyrics back at him. I could hear Cat’s bitter accusatory words coming from my own mouth.
He heard the edge in my tone. “Man, don’t you get on my case too. Your sister does that enough.”
“It’s not about her,” I blurted before I could stop myself.
“Who’s it about?”
“Nothing.”
I tried to turn away but he caught my arm. “Matty, come on. We’re probably done anyway. Just give me a chance to do it right.”
His grip on my bicep was firm, and I looked up at the pleading in his eyes, his ask for some grace.
And in that moment I could see it: he knew.
My clumsy attempts to touch him. My more awkward efforts to engage with him on his own sexuality. The t-shirts of his I’d jerked off into. The stolen jockstraps. He knew all of it.
It wasn’t that he didn’t see the signals. It was that he just didn’t want me the way I wanted him.
His voice had softened, but something in me had hardened.
“Fine. I won’t tell,” I said, still turned away. “If—”
I’m not proud of what I said next, of how I repaid all his kindness to me this way. In my defense, I was 18.
“I want to blow you.”
This is the hardest part of a negotiation: the long wait after you’ve made your offer, when the air is so dense with self-doubt you can barely breathe. With time, you learn to wait it out.
But it made a twisted kind of sense: I’d kept him a secret for my sister, now I’d keep his secret from her. And he’d keep mine. All we needed was to agree to terms. These were mine.
Years later, I’d try to reconstruct the moment he agreed, his expression, the exact tone of his voice. This is the thing about lingering on the past: With each retelling, our memories are subtly reshaped by our wishes and fears. Like a well-worn record, the fidelity diminishes with each repeated play.
Maybe it was just a transaction. Maybe we owed each other something.
Maybe he just thought: free blow job.
It was the ’70s, after all.
8.
I’d learned from the blowjobs I’d gotten from Paul in the park and was eager to use those lessons on Dave. He sat in the comfy, worn armchair where I’d gotten off so many times, his shorts off, shirt on, stroking himself to an erection as I watched, my breath caught in my chest.
I tentatively placed a hand on his coppery thigh, finally feeling the solid, smooth muscle I’d longed to touch for so long. My other hand unthinkingly wrapped around my own full blown erection.
His cock wasn’t the giant I’d imagined, barely longer than mine — maybe six inches. The most mundane measure for something so desired. His black pubic hair was finer than I’d have guessed, framing the base of his erection as it grew harder. To my eyes it was perfect.
I gulped and slid my hand between his and his thickening erection. He met my touch with a slight shift and relinquished control. The first cock I’d held other than my own, I worked it slowly, getting a feel for the different size and shape, the greater girth. My mouth watered in anticipation.
I pressed my tongue at the base and lapped up to the piss slit, repeating the motion, each pass more confident than the last. I enveloped the head with my lips, tonguing and licking it. Turning my head, I took more of him in, swallowing as deeply as I could manage.
I worked the length of his cock in my mouth, each downward glide a deeper commitment, each return to the tip a promise to take him again. Recalling Paul’s technique, I tried to generate enough saliva to ease the sensitive head into the opening of my throat, and then further.
His cock and my desire fought my gag reflex, but as I did, I felt Dave’s body tense and then yield with a soft, “Oh fuck.” In that moment, I knew if I could do that again, deeper, I’d have him.
My efforts grew bolder and my self-consciousness faded. My snorts and watering eyes didn’t matter — not to me, and not to Dave. He let his hand rest lightly on my head, guiding my movements as I tried to encompass the full length of him. His breathing grew heavier with each successful descent.
Maybe he was used to this kind of dedication. Or maybe he’d longed for it.
A choked cough forced me to break contact, but even as I pulled back, my hand continued to work on his slick cock, now generously lubricated with my spit and his precum.
I swallowed him again, determined, and when my throat protested I shifted to his balls, mouthing their soft weight before returning to his cock. When I had to pause, I kept pumping the base with my fist, my mouth never leaving his head and shaft for long.
The better I got, the more he eased into his own pleasure, sighing, “Oh fuck, yeah.” His responses deepened from soft sighs to moans. Soon, his hips began to subtly rock, matching my rhythm. “Don’t stop… don’t stop,” he gasped, the pace of his hips increasing. “Just like that.”
He thrust forward, a grunt of “Right there,” escaping him, and I swallowed deeply, pushing past my limits.
My gag reflex overwhelmed me that time, forcing me to break away, bleary-eyed, a glistening thread of saliva connecting my lip to his wet cock.
I wiped my mouth on my forearm, but before I could go down on him again his own hand took over working his slick cock. His breathing quickened to shallow pants as he pumped into his fist. “Fuck yeah… fuck yeah… FUCK—” he choked out, his hand now mirroring the urgent rhythm of his hips.
I slid a hand beneath his t-shirt, feeling the solid contours of his chest, now slick with sweat, then down to the smooth muscle of his inner thigh. His breath caught in his throat, his cock pulsed and released a hot streak of cum. I lunged forward, catching it in my mouth, going down on him to take the next surges. The heat and volume surprised me, but I swallowed it all as his body shuddered with release.
“Yeah man… yeah…” he panted, his seed coating my throat. With him still firm in my mouth, I made a soft whimper as I came in a hot rush onto the floor between us.
He let me nurse on him that way until I pulled away. A small final pearl hung from the head of his softening cock, the same cum in my belly and lingering on my breath.
9.
Not enough? Here’s another way I could tell you what happened.
After I choked, Dave began to jerk off. But instead of my usual quiet observation, I was emboldened — maybe it was my increased confidence, or just his raw arousal. I clapped my hand on his thick wrist, stopping his motion. He looked up, our eyes locked, and as his breathing the urgent need to get off subsided.
Wordlessly, I rose to my feet, my own erection heavy and dripping. I walked into his bedroom, straight to the bedside table to retrieve the Vaseline. It silently acknowledged our history, my furtive uses and his unspoken understanding.
Kneeling before him, I uncapped the jar, shaking off the faintly medicinal scent. I took a generous scoop and smeared it over his already stiff cock. A visible shiver rippled through him at my touch, a flicker of some new resignation in his gaze. Get a guy that close to the edge and anything’s possible.
I stood again, lifted by my own desire. I climbed onto his lap, straddling him in the worn armchair. Slowly, deliberately, I guided his slick cock towards my own entry. I’d practiced so much, often in that very chair I wasn’t worried I could take it. I was a natural.
With the slick tip guided to its mark, I lowered myself, a gasp escaping my lips as my insides yielded to his presence. He sighed too, a low sound of surrender or anticipation. The gradual stretch, the deep filling, the act of surrender to his cock in me — I never imagined it could be so liberating.
I rose slightly, the brief absence of his full length leaving a hollow ache that intensified the sensation of completeness as I sank down again, feeling the solidness of his entirety driving into me, filling me utterly. “Yeah,” I breathed, my hands finding purchase on his shoulders.
I rode him, and he let me, his hips gently rocking with me. My pace quickened, and my hand instinctively found my own slick cock, the rhythm of my strokes mirroring the pummeling inside me.
I felt him begin to thrust beneath me, deeper now, making me tremble. His hands gripped my sides, holding me and helping to guide my descent. “Oh fuck,” I groaned, the friction building towards an edge I’d known before, in that very chair.
Looking down, my glistening hand pumped against my erection, so close to his chest. Even through his shirt, I could visualize the solid expanse beneath. Then it happened.
“FUCK,” I roared, the first wave of cum erupted from me, followed by two more powerful surges that splattered against his shirt. My body shuddered with release as the rest of my load flowed out, down my hand and onto him. This time, the shirt of Dave’s I came on was one he was wearing.
I pushed myself up on shaky arms, leaving him sitting there, his hardon still throbbing and slick.
“Fuck me,” I demanded, the words raw and breathless.
He looked up with a heat I’d never seen exposed on his face before. A bead of precum glistened at the tip of his cock as he shifted, weighing his unspoken choices.
I moved to the sofa, on my back, my legs spread. He knelt before me, one knee on the cushion, stroking himself, his eyes running over my body. He wiped his hand on his shirt and then pulled it off, tossing it aside.
His initial entry was slow and deliberate, but I was more than ready, and the long, slow slide of him filling me stole my breath. He withdrew slightly, and I grasped his hips, pulling him back into me, restoring my feeling of completeness.
He found his rhythm, driving into me with a newfound urgency, one arm braced on the back of the sofa, the other wrapped around my leg at his side. As he rocked within me, his pace shifted from exploratory to eager.
“Fuck yeah man, fuck yeah,” he moaned, his voice low and rough, his eyes downcast. His hand gripped my leg as his thrusts deepened. My own cock grew harder, its slick head slapping against my belly in time with his movements.
Looking up at him, his bicep flexing above me, his chest heavy, the brick-colored nipples tight, I could see he was made to fuck. Older women. Younger girls. Me. And he looked magnificent doing it, like a young bull.
His hips rolled, finding deeper terrain within me with each thrust. His grip tightened as his tempo increased, the slap of his hips against my ass filling the small room.
There was a sharp intake of breath, a guttural groan, “FUCK!” He slammed into me with such force I thought I’d cum again, and I felt him swell inside me as he released his load.
That deep thrust was followed by rapid, urgent pulses as he shuddered, emptying himself within me. Then he slowly slid out, stepping back as my legs dropped, leaving an emptiness that ached to be filled again.
He stepped back, sweat gleaming on his chest, his breathing ragged. “That’s it,” he said, his voice flat with finality as he wiped his face with the palm of his hand.
And that’s what was left. Me on my back, him standing, the last pearly drop of cum clinging to his softening cock, both of us reckoning with what we’d done.
I could tell this story at least a dozen other ways. I know, because I’ve told them to myself. But in each telling, the final scene remains the same: him, his voice gone distant, saying, “You’d better go. She’ll be home.”
Nostalgia is the most unreliable narrator, and I’m a close second, especially in the things I tell myself. Whether it’s history or fantasy to me, to you it’s still just a story. Choose the one you prefer.
But this I knew: I kept his secret, and that afternoon we created a new secret, together. In some ways, that shared silence, more than the sex, was the closest we’d ever get to what I yearned for. At the time I thought that might be the most I could hope for.
10.
Dave was right. Cat left him a couple of weeks later. She’d grown tired of working at a convenience store and keeping house for a man child. She moved back home, and Dave moved on. I finished high school. Just like that, the brief knot of our lives together untangled, each thread returning to where it began.
Cat later married a guy who never turned me on at all and had a couple of kids. It turned out I was a natural at college. Law school followed, then my JD. (That took some time.) I never had a taste for being in court, preferring to operate behind the scenes with contracts and clauses.
My eventual husband and I moved a couple of times and settled in the Bay area. We’d lived together long before marriage was an option for us.
What was the rest of the quote from Watership Down?” All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies… But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks.”
I did my best.
Years after 1979, I was back home for a conference, and took some time to go see the old neighborhood. It hadn’t fared well, like a lot of old rust belt cities. My parents and Cat had moved to the suburbs a long ago, and it seemed like half the homes were for sale. In a more prosperous place, a developer would have bought them all.
But there were signs of hope. There were young families. And the silk screen shop beneath Dave and Cat’s old apartment had become a Puerto Rican bodega. I bought a pernil sandwich and texted my husband: You should see these Century Homes, so cheap I could buy one on a credit card.
He texted back: LOL. But don’t.
Five minutes later he added: Matthew. Seriously.
And then: I love you.
Later I stopped at a gay bar to get a drink. Not a dance club, but a quiet dive that played oldies.
I ran into Richard, Dave’s friend from the old days. The one who said Dave was like a teddy bear. He was, of course, older, but I recognized him instantly.
Over drinks he told me Dave had moved out of state after he finished school. Last he heard, Dave was a social worker, working with at risk kids. I was glad to hear it.
He confessed he’d been in love with Dave himself, and that Dave once let him give him a blow job. I wondered for a moment if it was true, but it was his story to tell.
I kept mine to myself.
Seeing he’d had too much to drink, I took his keys and drove him home after getting his address. I put him to bed, still dressed and sat with him for a minute, wondering what dreams were at play in his head and smoothed his hair.
I’d intended to grab a cab from his place to my hotel, but it was a warm clear night and I was restless, so I decided to walk. I put in my earbuds and scrolled through my music, passing Fiona Apple, the sainted Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, and Sinkane, until I found my one song by The Four Tops.
I had the long dark boulevard to myself and as the song started there was a flutter in my hand. When they reached she was a disco queen my spine melted and snapped back up again. By the first refrain of Catfish makes my nature rise the rhythm had me. I worked my Bus Stop moves in: strutting forward, back and then forward again. A quarter turn and clap on do what you wanna do, I wanna lay it on you.
It’s a simple dance, just drawing a line and then tracing back over it. The real style comes from your shoulders rolling with each step, and mine did, arms and hips loose. Forward four steps. Then back. And a good turn on the third makes my nature rise. Take a little pause to look good.
It wasn’t the real thing, of course. A line dance is designed to keep you in place. But I had to move on, improvising more steps forward for every step back. Or I’d never get anywhere.
I kept at it, singing under my breath. Grandma raised her on collard greens. Two steps back, three forward with cunning shoulders, strutting in the whitest Soul Train line in the world, laughing at myself under the whole of the moon.
Richard worked at a Catholic school and was still deeply closeted. He asked me to keep his feelings for Dave and his being gay from Cat. Not that she would have cared, but he should have secured my promise before disclosing. That would have been the smart thing to do.
But he was safe. Gay bars come with an unspoken confidentiality clause. And keeping secrets was an old habit of mine by then.
END