SIX
LIGHT
AS
A CHILD
Lynn Messing tightens her thighs around Bill while he fucks her, and the bed moves and then his body freezes. He is perfectly still as, buried inside of her, his lips parted, his eyes almost far away, almost frightened, he comes, surrendering to this intensity. It’s like that very first time when he, who had been a virgin with Dena and known no one else for the eighteen years they were together, knew he was going to have sex with Lynn. He had told himself, like a stupid teenager that he could go this far and this far and this far and it wasn’t real unless he came. And when he felt himself coming that first time he had wanted to cry. He was terrified. When he ejaculated he knew it was a sin and his body shook with humiliation as much as if did with pleasure.
Today he closed his mouth, gritting his teeth, his body twisting for the last of his climax. When it had passed over him, Bill lay across Lynn and in her, wrung out. She stroked his damp hair while his cheek rested on her shoulder.
Last night he’d felt like an absolute ass as Dena gave him his wedding ring and walked away, as his whole fucking family shut him out. And where was he supposed to go? Back to the house? Back to that superior cunt of a mother-in-law and the wife he hated? Back to his sister, to Lee looking on him with all that pity? So he drove, and he didn’t drive back to his house. He drove recklessly in the snow. Maybe, he thought to himself, if he drove badly enough he would die.
But he had gotten to Gale, Michigan before he’d died. He was knocking on Lynn’s door. She was on the second floor and had come down the stairwell to let him in. As he came through the door he kissed her and only as he parted from her, did she say, “Bill, you look awful. What’s happened?”
“Do you want me?” he’d demanded, kissing her as he shut the door with his back and locked it. “Tell me you want me.”
“I do,” she was a little disconcerted by the hunger in his eyes, the irrational set of his face, “William, I do.”
He pushed her against the door, searching under her robe for panties and jerking them down. He undid his belt and pulled down his trousers and his briefs. Lynn started as, moaning deeply, he pressed himself in her, fucking her against the door. As he fucked her rapidly, grunting, his head buried in her shoulder, she felt the grooves of the door in her back and had the distinct feeling that if she , the frustration in him her back and the hard wood against the back of her head.
“You don’t have to go back to that house,” Lynn tells him that afternoon as they lay together. “At least not right now. You don’t have to go back and deal with all of that. You can stay here if you’d like. For a while.”
In Lynn’s arms, Bill Dwyer feels like a man. When she looks at him he feels sexy and desirable, and now he feels vulnerable. He feels defeated and he feels like it’s alright to be defeated, like she sees him with all of his many, many flaws, and before this afternoon is over he’ll cry in front of her. He’ll cry while they make love like in that book he borrowed from Dave that he’d never tell Dave about, that he mocked the whole time wishing as he read it that maybe he could make love to a woman who wouldn’t be afraid of his tears, wouldn’t humiliate him as Dena certainly would have done.
“If you’d have me,” Bill says, “I’d be glad to stay.”
He pressed himself deeper into the covers, and in the pillows and the sheets he smelled Jason’s body. The first time he’d slept here he’d almost been startled by the smell of another boy. Now Russell was not sure if he treasured it or was used to it, but he treasured this room, its darkness barely illumined by strands of fairy lights, and he savored the heat of the room when the warm air pumped in from the furnace was mixed with the heat of their sex.
Russell was not sure how long ago it had been that he woke up, prepared to leave, and Jason had stirred and said in that reedy voice of his, “You’re not leaving, are you? Aren’t you staying?”
It was the Monday before Christmas. There was no school to go to. There was no place to be. He had wanted to prove to Jason and to himself that none of this meant anything, to be independent, get dressed, get up and walk out. Jason was pulling him back into his warm arms, into his furry chest, into his grown man’s body. He was kissing him with that mouth that was always fresh from chewing mukhwas.
He had gone to Jason in anger, upset and desperate. He wanted to fuck Cody again. He wanted Cody so bad, and no matter what he’d said, he couldn’t have him. So he came here. He couldn’t have gone to Ralph. That would be using a friend. He’d come to Jason, who deserved to be used, who had been banging some girl in this bed, and it was fine to him no, even excited Russell a little, to wonder if the bed sheets had been washed since the last time she was here. One thing he did know, he was the only other boy who had been in this bed. He needed to use Jason. He needed Jason’s body, his affection, his kiss, all the warmth he remembered from him.
While Jimmy began to smoke and offered Russell a cigarette, he said, “So how does it work? Are you guys like… going to movies? He… takes you to restaurants.”
“No, he came to our house the night Jackie had the baby. He was with us the whole time, but that was one of the first times we went out. I mean, he goes to school with me. I see him all day, and he hangs in our crowd.”
And then Russell said, “Primarily we have lots of sex.”
“Well,” Jimmy said, “there it is.”
“Yes, Russell said. “Exactly.”
Russell was watching Jimmy’s spidery fingers, watching the smoke leave his nostrils. His cousin knew about sex. This was why he was talking to him. Jimmy finally said, “You don’t love him.”
“What?”
“There’s someone else isn’t there? Someone you really love.”
And if he’d needed it last night, then why not this morning when Jason pulled him back under thick hot covers and made love to him under the sheets?
As his arms hung around Jason Lorry’s neck and he clung to him, Russell didn’t need to tell himself that this was not love. It simply wasn’t. As Jimmy had said, his feelings toward Jason had never grown that way.
And there was someone else, but as they moved on the bed that was so solid it never shook or quaked, and Russell pulled Jason closer to him, surrendering to the heat of his kiss, he knew that that someone else and his feelings no longer mattered.
Ralph Balusik was not impressed by wealth, but he did find it interesting. Willowbrook had made a name for itself, but it was just a subdivision. It wasn’t like the Breckinridge with its brick houses, white colonials and English Tudors. Every house was a one story ranch in Willowbrook. There was nothing beautiful here.
These houses were empty. He was always surprised by this. Vanessa’s parents were never home, which is why she screamed while he fucked her. He liked the sounds of clapping, his hips to her ass as he shuttle fucked her. He loved feeling like a man and not some confused and vulnerable boy, not like he did so often. When he tugged her hair and she shouted, he felt powerful, like when he fucked girls on the football field. He only wished that he wasn’t on a first floor. Everything here was only one story, maybe two squashed stories, and this dull winding road that ended in a cul de sac. He wished he was fucking her in some tall house on Brigham Street, looking out over the bridge onto the water.
He’d been fucking her a while now, knew she was probably ready for it to stop, knew he wanted to make her come, make himself come, knew how to do it by now, but he had to be excited. He let his mind drift to what he wanted, Little Poland, fucking while he looked out of the window, grabbing her hips while she shouted, bending his knees and entering her just… yes… just so, hitting her clit like that again and again, gentle now. Quick, shallow pumps, pretending her ash colored hair was red, surprising himself by the violent knock-you-off-of-your feet of his coming as he stopped himself from shouting, “Russell!”
Cody Barnard didn’t like Jake Gillespie, but then there was lots he didn’t like, lately. He couldn’t put his finger on what wasn’t great about him, but if he had been asked to describe the tall guy who always wore prescription sunglasses, had a narrow face and an eternal five o’ clock shadow, he would say he lacked soul.
And did that mean he lacked soul too? Cody hated hypocrisy, and when he found himself engaged anywhere near it, he took a step back, took out a cigarette and reflected.
But there had been no time to reflect until now, and this was not the time for it. Business was slow at the garage, and this was why, in the back office, Cody had sat down, taken down his jeans, and let Jake Gillespie suck his cock. On his hands and knees the other mechanic said very little, just slurped away, tugging with his mouth, lavishing Cody with his tongue and working him with his hand. It was only when he stopped, mouth partially full of cock, and marveled, “It’s so fucking big,” that he spoke, and that was enough.
Cody knew his cock was big. He knew it was hard. It had been throbbing all night. He knew when he looked down and saw that red head snaking back and forth as that tight mouth sucked on him, he could have a moment of respite from this new torture. He buried his hands in Jake’s red hair and began rhythmically fucking his mouth, as he would never have done to the person he so desperately needed Jake to be.
