A Wrong Turn

The end of my first week in a new city with a new job and I was exhausted. Relaxation topped my list of priorities; I did not want to make my own dinner or have to clean the dishes. I hoped that one of my new coworkers might ask me to join him or her for a Friday night meal, but everyone skedaddled out of that office, and at 4:30, I was alone. I organized my desk for Monday and turned off the lights.

As I stood in front of the Brady building, I took a good look around for the first time. To my left and in front of me the buildings were much taller. To the right, shorter buildings and more trees seemed to dominate.

It was too early to eat, so I decided that a quick trip to the craft store was in order. I knew the store was to the north, so I turned left and headed that way. I had learned to knit when I was young; a skill my maternal grandmother taught me. A skill my father beat me for doing. (He also broke my knitting needles.) So I did it in secret; I found it relaxing. I spent way too much time trying to decide which color to get. Needles were on sale for fifty percent off, so I got a new pair of 5mm bamboo. I decided to do a scarf for winter, something easy so I could watch TV or listen to music.

It was dark when I walked out onto the street, and I was sure I headed in the right direction. I knew that I had seen a Thai restaurant near my apartment, but somehow, the area kept looking less and less familiar. As I passed in front of a place that was actually named Kelly’s, I decided to go in, possibly get a sandwich, a drink, and directions to my apartment.

I noticed right away that there were only men inside. Some of them were drinking at tables, and a few sat at the bar. None of the men seemed to be interested in talking to one another; they all had their eyes glued to the TV. The sound was on, but it was barely audible. The closed captions kept those interested in the announcers up to date. I asked the barkeep if I could get a bite to eat, and he offered hamburgers, cheeseburgers, or a BLT.

Choosing a BLT and a Coke, I took a seat at the far end of the bar, away from everyone else, and a perfect spot to keep my eye on the entire place. It didn’t take long for a sandwich, a can of Coke, a glass with some ice, and a napkin to be unceremoniously dumped in front of me. I kept watching the customers of the establishment as they drank their beers and watched the TV screens. There was little conversation, and even the people sitting at the same table seemed to have no interest in each other.

I had asked the barkeep for the fastest way to get back to my apartment, and he had sketched a little map. It seems that in the darkness, I had turned north instead of south. (I also found out later that the craft store had their registers on the west side of the store with an exit, and I had come in on the east side.) With my way home mapped out, I relaxed and sipped on the rest of my soda.

About then, a man about five foot ten (there was a height measurement scale next to the door) walked in. His blond-brown hair was short on the sides and a little longer on top, and he had scraggly bangs. His hair is what I noticed first. He took a look around the place and then sat at the other end of the bar. He didn’t even look my way. The barkeep asked him what he wanted, but I didn’t hear his answer.

What I did hear was one of the men, from the table closest to the TV, scraping his chair against the floor as he got up. His Green Bay jacket fell to the floor. He walked over to the bar with determination. “What the fuck are you looking at?”

The new guy seemed confused, and he just looked at the man.

“I saw you eye-fucking me, faggot,” the man growled.

“Hey! None of that,” yelled the barkeep.

I’m not sure why, but I felt compelled to help. I stood up and moved quickly to the two men. “Hey, bro, I didn’t see you come in.” I put my hand on his shoulder.

“Fucking queers.”

“Let’s get out of this place,” I said, looking directly into the eyes of the confused man. I knew that even if Mr. Green Bay was sent back to his seat, there’d be tension in the place. I put my hand on his shoulder and guided him toward the door, and we went out onto the sidewalk.

“Are you OK? What’s your name?”

“Victor. I’ll be fine. Thanks.” He leaned against a metal lamp pole and heaved a sigh.

The barkeep came out to us. “I’m sorry about that. We don’t tolerate that behavior. I’m going to tell him to leave, but I didn’t want him to come out here and bother you.

Victor just stared at him.

“Thanks for that. We’re going to be going.” I put my hand on Victor’s elbow. “Let’s go this way.” Victor followed along. I noticed that he seemed rather sad. “My name’s Patrick,” I told him. “I’m new to town, so I haven’t made any friends yet.”

Victor smiled. “You made one tonight. I thought that guy was going to beat the shit out of me. My heart’s still beating fast.”

“Yeah, he was kind of big, but you seem to be in pretty good shape.”

“I’m not flabby, but I really don’t have a lot of strength. He would have pulverized me.”

“He would have had the two of us to take on.” I smiled. “I saw you when you came in. You looked as if you were searching for someone, but I didn’t see you doing anything that should have upset him.”

“I wonder…”

“What?” We continued walking down the street.

“The truth is that I was supposed to meet someone there. He was going to be wearing a green jacket. But I didn’t see anyone in a green jacket, so I thought he might be running late.”

“That guy had a Green Bay jacket, but he wasn’t wearing it. Had you not met the guy in the green jacket before?”

“No.” He hesitated. “I met him on adam4adam.com.” Victor clenched his teeth.

I don’t think Victor meant to out himself. He grabbed the fingers of his left hand with his right. I wanted to put him at ease. He was the first person I’d met that I was actually having a conversation with. “So you’re gay, too?”

Victor dropped his head and watched the sidewalk in front of his feet as we kept walking. “Yeah.” It was more of a mutter. Then stopped and turned to me. “You’re gay?”

“Yeah.” I tried to say it as if it were no big deal.

“I can’t believe it,” said Victor. “I’ve been here for about a month, and I haven’t met anyone I could really talk to. I’ve been so lonely, and I've been horny, too, and I thought maybe I could meet someone online. I’ve been talking to this guy for about a week. Well, chatting with him.”

I understood how he felt.

“The guy online, his name was Steve, he wanted to meet almost right away. I did too, but I was nervous. Maybe that wasn’t the best way to meet someone.”

“I was on there for a while, before I moved here. It just seemed like a place to meet people for a hook-up, not a place to meet friends. And who knows, maybe that Steve guy got cold feet. For all we know, maybe the guy with the green jacket was the same guy, and he was using you. Yelling at you to look big in front of his friends. Either way, he’s an asshole. It could just be a coincidence. Your online date guy could have had something come up that kept him from getting there.”

“I had hoped to find a new friend tonight.”

“I think you did. I just met you, but I like you.”

“And based on what you did, I know that you’re a special guy. Not many people would do that for a stranger.” There was a pause in the conversation, but neither of us felt compelled to try to fill it. “Hey, I’m hungry. What do you say we grab a bite to eat.”

“Are you up for some Thai?”

“I’ve never had any,” he laughed.

“Then that’s what we’re having.” Again silence as we walked.

We stopped at a corner, and Victor pushed the button for the crosswalk. “Thank you. Thank you for everything.” He reached over and pulled me in for a hug. Our heads bumped just slightly. “Oh. Wow, you smell really good.”

I turned to look at him. He was watching the signal on the other side. His face was in profile, and I saw a smile.

We sat across from one another in the Thai restaurant. We had a seat in the back corner, and Victor seemed to love the Tom Kha soup. I studied his face. His dark eyes seemed just a little too close together. His left eyebrow was higher than the right. His ears seemed to be about an inch too big, and they stuck out just a little. His nose was the perfect width for his face, and it was straight until the very tip where it angled out just a little. His lips were just a little too thin, and they weren’t even, and when he smiled, his right side lifted up more than his left. While his lower jawline was straight, it was thinner than it should have been for the size of his head. The dimple in his chin was off-center, a little to the right. He was so attractive that I wanted to jump over the table and start kissing him.

When he finished the soup, he nodded approval. “I liked it; I liked it a lot.” He reached his hand across the table and touched my fingertips with his.

It was time for some serious questions. “So what kind of work are you in?”

His demeanor seemed to change. “I wash dishes.” He looked down at his soup bowl.

“You say that as if you’re ashamed. Don’t be. That’s honest work, Victor.”

“I work for my brother-in-law. He runs the restaurant. He doesn’t think it would look good if I were a waiter. Nepotism and all that.”

“Where is this restaurant?”

“It’s the Snooty Pig over on thirty-fourth.”

“I’ve heard of it,” I lied. “I hear they have impeccably clean silverware.”

Victor looked up at me and stared for several seconds. Then a smile crept across his cute face. “You’re being silly. I moved here to work in a forensics lab. I’ve got an Associate’s Degree in forensics. But before the place opened there was some sort of corruption investigation involving the company. The job disappeared. I’ve been staying with my sister and my brother-in-law and trying to decide what to do. My brother-in-law asked me to help him out.”

The waitress brought Pad Thai and Pad See Ew to the table, and we shared it. “I think what you’re doing is fine,” I told him.

Putting his fork down, Victor looked straight at me. “Maybe all this has happened so I could meet you. Maybe you’ll think I’m weird, after all, we just met, but I’m the happiest right now than I’ve been in months. Do you think the last hour could be a foretaste of what’s to come? I mean, for us?”

“Well, Victor, you’ve certainly elevated my dopamine levels.”

“That’s awfully nerdy of you to say. I know that’s a brain hormone.”

“It means I’m really attracted to you.”

“You are, Patrick?”

I nodded.

He smiled. A few moments later, he squirmed a little in his seat.

“Are you OK?” I asked him.

“I popped a boner,” he told me under his breath.

I whispered back, “I’ve had one since you started eating your soup.”

During the rest of our meal, we tried to steer the conversation away from anything that could swell the manhood we kept in our briefs. I put my name and number on his phone, and he put his in mine. I snapped a few pictures of him. He did the same. We were just leaving the restaurant when I received a notification that it would start to rain within ten minutes. We said good-bye even though we both admitted that we didn’t want the evening to end. We stood awkwardly for a moment and then Victor hugged me. I felt my dick swell again. I reached up to grab his head with my hands and poked him with one of my knitting needles. I dropped that hand, but pulled him with the other and kissed him so he would never forget what my lips felt like.

He stepped back. “I feel like I’m falling in love,” he said and turned to head home.

“Text me when you get there,” I demanded. Then I started back to my place. I hoped he wouldn’t get caught in the rain.

* * *

When I got to my tiny apartment, I brushed my teeth, took a shower, and crawled into my bed. The mattress was right next to the window, and with the lights off in the room, I pulled the shade up and looked out onto the street. A few drops smacked the window, but it was light. I wondered how far Victor had to go before he got home, and I hoped he would stay dry. I tried to read a chapter in the book I usually read before going to sleep, but I kept wondering what he would have said had I invited him back to my place.

I kept reminding myself that he had not brought any overnight bag with him, so he wasn’t planning to spend the night away from home. He didn’t seem to be the kind of man who slept around. I wanted a guy who was monogamous, who played safe. I didn’t expect a virgin, but I did want someone, who like me, had been selective with partners. Other people may view sex as just playing around, but for me, it was something special, a shared event between people who cared for one another.

I wondered whether I should text him and decided against it. I asked him to text me when he got home safely.

I realized that I needed to pee. I drank way too much tea with my meal. On the way back to bed, I grabbed the yarn and needles and cast on 30 stitches while occasionally glancing out the window. I started a 2x2 rib, and I had done about five rows when I decided to do the entire scarf in that pattern. I wondered whether the color would look good on Victor.

The chirp from the phone startled me. The text from Victor read: “Got home a few minutes ago. Kids are asleep. Sis and Bill watching TV. In bed. U still up?”

Me: “Still up. Looking out the window. Only sprinkles here. Waiting for your text. Did U get wet?”

Victor: “Not really. Just misty. Had the best time with U. Didn’t want it to end.”

Me: “When do I get to see U again?”

Victor: “Work until 2 tomorrow. Off on Sunday.”

Me: “Spend the afternoon, evening with me?” Should I push it?

Me: “Night, too?” Please don’t think I’m a slut.

Victor: “I love it. Yes.”

Me:

Victor:

Me:

Victor: “Going to sleep now so I can stay up all night tomorrow kissing U”

Me: “Sleep well”

I was surprised at how fast I fell asleep, but I woke up in the middle of the night with a nightmare. Victor and I were on a little boat in the middle of huge waves. No land was visible. I thought we would capsize and drown. When I woke up, I discovered that I’d left the blinds open, and it was pouring rain. The occasional thunderbolt lit the sky. I found it interesting that my mind had already put us together to battle the elements. I closed the blinds and grabbed the extra pillow. I held it against me and imagined that it was Victor.

I could not believe how good I felt when I got up the next morning. The apartment seemed to be darker than it should have been for eight o’clock. I looked out and saw that it was still raining. The weather forecast told of a day filled with rain, occasional thunderstorms, and gusty winds. It didn’t sound like a day to take a ferry or to head to the beach.

My phone chirped, and I saw that Victor had texted me just before six this morning. “At work, can’t wait to C U. Weather is shit. Want to binge-watch Star Trek, Star Wars, old sci-fi, Ben-Hur? Your choice or something else. Off at 2.”

My imagination saw me snuggled next to him watching movies on TV, a perfect solution to a rainy day. I thought for a minute and texted back, “Old Sci-Fi sounds fun. I’ll take care of food, popcorn, drinks: soda, tea, water (other?), snuggle blanket. Anything else?”

I didn’t get a text back right away, but I knew I wouldn’t. He was at work. I decided to run to the grocery store, or the “market” as they called it around here. I got enough to keep up stocked with food and drink through Sunday. I also got a small bottle of rum and one of whiskey. I didn’t know if he drank, but I was prepared. Just a little before one, I had a snack and went back to knitting the scarf. My apartment was spotless. Condoms and lube were hidden near the head of the bed. I didn’t want to pressure him; I just wanted to be prepared.

I put on some music and began working on the scarf. My phone rested on the window sill, and I glanced at it from time to time. The dark sky continued to threaten more rain. I kept knitting.

About ten after two, my phone chirped. A text from Victor. I was smiling just to see his name on the screen. “Heading home to get movies and my bag. Will call when close.” A few minutes after three, the phone rang. Victor told me he was just a few blocks away. I went downstairs and onto the sidewalk to make sure he didn’t walk past. I saw him a little way up the hill and began to wave. He spotted me right away and waved back. With that little gesture, he wiped away months, maybe years, worth of loneliness.

Before long, we were snuggled on the couch watching ‘When Worlds Collide.’ I’d seen it when I was a kid, but I had forgotten the name of it. I loved it when the little boy was rescued. I hated that the doctor was thrown over for the pilot because I thought the doctor was much better looking. I wondered if any gay people were rescued at the end.

Victor pushed the eject button on my player and then wiggled so he could whisper in my ear. “I know we just met, and it’s too soon, but I like getting fucked. I’ve only done it twice, and I knew the guys really well. And, maybe it’s too much information too soon, but I want to tell you everything.”

“Well,” I whispered back. “I’m glad you can trust me. I don’t think guys should fuck until the fourth date. If you last that many dates, then I think you have a chance for more, but honestly, you’re so cute and sexy that I want to go to bed with you on our second date.”

“So we need to wait until tomorrow?” Victor sounded sad.

“No, silly. This is our second date.” I kissed him. I sucked his tongue into my mouth and played with it using my tongue.

“Fuuuck,” he exclaimed. “No one’s ever done that to me.” He immediately rolled around, undid my pants, and began sucking my dick through my underwear. I got hard almost instantly.

Victor looked up into my face. He was so adorable. I wanted him, and I didn’t want to wait. “Do me,” he said. “Put your dick in me.”

I grabbed his shoulders and pushed him back on the couch. I pulled down on his pants as he pushed down. He jerked them off and spread his cheeks with his hands. I pushed the elastic band of my shorts and underwear down and used spit to wet his hole. I pushed my dick into him without a thought other than how much I needed to be inside him.

“Fuck me. Fuck me hard.”

I began to piston in and out of him. He gasped and grunted, “Fuck, oh, yeah, shit, and give it in random order. His ass felt so warm and wet and tight. It was unlike anything I had imagined. I leaned forward and kissed him. He licked my chin, and I slammed into him and came. I was breathing really hard and I relaxed my arms. As I came to rest, my chest against his, my dick plopped out of his ass.

“Wow,” he shivered. “That was fucking great. I can feel your fish swimming inside me.”

I laughed.

“No, I mean it.” His face became stern and serious. He reached between us and pushed on his lower abs. “They’re right there. They’re swimming upstream. They’re trying to get me pregnant.”

I raised my eyebrows. It was completely involuntary. I tried to keep a poker face.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I got pregnant from our first time?” He smiled.

Victor was unhinged. I began to wonder how I could get away from him.

“Oh, oh, it feels like little pinches. Your sperm are trying to get in. Oh, yeah,” he smiled, “I think one of them did it. Patrick. This is so exciting. Patrick, you should see your fucking face. I’m shitting you, man. I can see the sweat break out on your brown.” Victor started to laugh. “You so fucking bought that I had lost my mind.”

“You fucking shitwad,” I said, and I started laughing, too. “I’m glad you liked that so well, because I ain’t fucking you again.”

“You know you are.”

“Nope. I’m going to take a shower and wash your shit off my dick.”

“That’s not shit; that’s cum.” He grinned.

“I’m sending you home.”

“No, you’re not. You’re going to take me into the shower with you, and then we’re going into your bed to fuck some more.”

I turned and pushed my index finger into his chest and took a deep breath. “Hell. You already know me too well.”

He kissed me again. “Let’s call that our first argument. We can have make-up sex after the shower.”

I shook my head. “No, we’re going to have make-up sex in the shower.”