With a skill learned in the making of many low budget movies, Logan ripped away Jonathan’s shirt without snapping the buttons. Up until now, Jonathan had been confused and disconcerted, but it was so simple. Lust was so easy. He had wanted this. He’d wanted it the moment Logan came walking naked out of his father’s bedroom. There had been ridicule and jealousy and scorn in it, and all of those things veiled fear. There was fear in being so close so often to Logan, and the power of sex that accompanied him. He could not make the first move. He couldn’t. But he could bow to Logan’s will. He had to. Logan was a god. The thought of being with him would always be there.
When Logan tugged at his pants, Jonathan kicked them off and felt his underwear tugged away harshly, His dick came up harder and bigger than it had ever been. Like a miracle, with a light touching of the hands, Logan was naked too, and then he was fitting Jonathan’s legs about him from where the younger boy sat on the sink.
“A condom,” Logan muttered.
“No,” Jonathan said, tremulously.
“Huh?”
“Come inside of me.”
“Ahright,” Logan breathed.
He opened the medicine cabinet behind Jonathan and muttered, “I’ll be goddamned. This will do.”
He pulled out a small viscous bottle of mineral oil and then a moment later Jonathan felt Logan’s hand in his ass, now his fingers penetrating his asshole. It felt so good and then there was a grunt and a time of almost pain when they fit themselves together, when Logan pressed his cock inside of him. It was thick and blunt. Jonathan’s eyes watered.
“I’ll go slow,” Logan whispered. “I’ll go…”
And then Jonathan began to ease onto him. It wasn’t that it felt good. It was just that this was the pain he needed. Slowly they began to find a rhythm and Logan picked him up, moved him around and slowly began fucking him against the wall.
In times of sex, in times when Jonathan played the slut, he liked to have profound thoughts go through his head. In the Dhammapada the Buddha said one moment of deathlessness was worth more than all the moments in life where no one experienced transcendence. This moment of moving fiercely together, of the moment when he saw Logan’s face full of some type of terror while tears came to his own eyes, was the eternal moment. He squeezed his thighs tighter around Logan and ran his hands up and down his back, down to his ass, pulling him in. He needed to own Logan. He needed to be united to him. In the end, in great lifting, desperate pumps, Logan sobbed, “Oh, my—
“Gawwwwwwwd,” Logan rasped, losing strength, almost dropping him. Jonathan felt Logan ejaculate inside of him. He felt it dripping from him. They fell to the floor, and still ejaculating, Logan fucked him some more.
“Fuck me,” Logan charged him in a low, almost defeated voice, getting on his hands and knees, putting his round, firm ass up for Jonathan.
Jonathan couldn’t believe how sore his ass was, how thoroughly penetrated he felt, or how hard his cock, still on the verge of coming was. He took the mineral oil, and rubbed it on him, then in Logan, and slowly he began fucking him. They both moaned with a noise like surrender and then, very quickly, Jonathan felt himself spilling. He felt so helpless. He felt almost like he might die. He collapsed across Logan’s perfect back, his penis still pumping inside of Logan Banford’s perfect ass. They lay like that for a long time and then slowly Jonathan rolled off.
Logan cleaned up the bathroom and made sure Jonathan looked presentable again. He straightened his tie and looked in the mirror, satisfied, and then he led Jonathan out of the bathroom.
In the basement, Logan said, “Are you alright?” before they walked up the steps into the kitchen.
“I…I guess,” Jonathan said, shakily.
“I don’t think we should ever do this again,” Logan said.
“No,” Jonathan said, though he wasn’t sure if he agreed.
Back upstairs things between them were odd. Logan had just gone off to talk to Sheridan, and Kenny was coming toward him, merry faced.
“You disappeared for a while!” Kenny laughed.
“Yeah,” Jonathan tried a laugh.
“Ey,” Kenny said, in a low voice, “you alright? You look worse than the Affrens, and they just lost their mother.”
“Kenny, I don’t know if I’ve ever been alright in my life.”
“That’s pretty heavy,” Kenny told him. “I don’t know if I can ease your existential dissatisfaction, but I was just wondering if you’d ever like to go out. Me and you. A real live date? If you’d like that.”
When Jonathan didn’t say anything, Kenny continued, “I know I’m a bit older than you, and I’m not good at the whole dating thing, but—”
“Yes,” Jonathan told him. “Yes, Kenny, I’d like it a lot.”
Logan sat on the porch, drinking a beer. He wanted to leave. After all there was really no reason for him to be here. Except, there was Jonathan by the car, talking to Kenny. He had brought Jonathan here. He couldn’t just leave him.
“You know what that’s the sound of?” Someone spoke to Logan. He turned and looked up. Butter colored hair sticking up a bit, stroking his small brown goatee, Ruthven Meradan answered his own question.
“It’s the sound of you being left out.”
He sat down on the porch beside Logan and said, “It’s the sound of two people coming together, and you knowing that you’re not one of them. Click,” Ruthven added with a chuckle.
“Are you drunk?”
“No, man. Wish I was.”
He was looking after Kenny.
“Are you in love with Kenny?”
“No,” Ruthven said.
“I like fucking Kenny. Kenny’s fun to stay with. He’s easy. I’ve been in love before. That’s not easy at all. Besides, Kenny was always hung up on Brendan. Real polite about it, but you could tell he was.”
“And were you hung up on Dylan?”
“For a while,” Ruthven answered.
“And then?”
“And then it didn’t make any sense.”
“You think it’s that easy?” Logan challenged.
“Yes. When you know. When you really know it’s over, you’re not hung up.”
Logan shrugged.
“You hung up on your little friend Jonathan the way you were on Sheridan?”
“I like Jonathan a lot.”
“It’s like snapping two Legos together. It fits. Snaps nice. But you need more than a nice snap.”
“Is that…” Logan began. “Are you talking about sex?”
“That and other things. People aren’t Legos. You just can’t stack ‘em and all. You gotta fit. You gotta go into each other.”
“Alright, you are drunk.”
“Look,” Ruthven said. “I’m gonna tell Kenny to take Jonathan home, and you and me are going to see if we like each other or not.”
Logan looked at him.
“Why not? Right?”
Logan watched as Ruthven got up and went to Kenny and Jonathan who were talking by Kenny’s car. He had smoothed off the back of his jeans and Logan watched the shape of his ass, the way his jeans fit, the almost feathered wings of his California surfer hair. Also the little bit of worry in his face, the age betrayed. How old was Ruthven? About twenty-four. He looked, like most people who stayed out in the sun, a little older than he was. Ruthven said a few words to them, and then shoved Kenny in the shoulder and returned to Logan.
“That’s it,” Ruthven said, jamming his hands in his pockets. “They’re gone. It’s just us.”
“WELL, THAT WASN’T PLANNED,” Adele told her brother.
“No it wasn’t,” Tara agreed.
Dan came into Adele’s house looking most un-priestlike. He was in khakis and an open knit shirt, and since that time when he had kissed him, before Fenn had left for the monastery, he could no longer think of Dan as he had come to know him, as untouchable.
“Are we talking about how Tara invited Tom and Tom invited Bryant?”
“Look,” Tara said, “I’m tired of being blamed for staying in the apartment with Tom.”
“No one’s blaming you,” Fenn said wearily.
This wasn’t exactly true.
“However,” he continued, “I am more than a little miffed that Tom would show up to this house with Bryant Babcock. Are they still sleeping together?”
“Do you really want to know?” Adele asked him.
“Know what?” Layla said, entering the kitchen.
“Know when little girls should mind their business,” Adele said, but Fenn said, “Know what a special niece I have,” and he got off the stool, lifted her up, and kissed her.
“Have you met Todd’s boyfriend?” she asked.
“Todd’s what?” Fenn said.
He put Layla on the ground.
“Oh, yeah,” Nell said. She tapped Fenn on the wrist and said, “Look out there. They’re almost happy together.”
Fenn did not want to look out there. Instead he said, “Almost happy?”
“I was less than happy when I was married,” Nell said. “Why shouldn’t Todd be almost happy?”
Fenn had seen, from the corner of his eye, someone very tall and very blond, a little silly looking. He left after a time and Todd came in with his arms outstretched.
How can I be angry? I’m thirty. He’s twenty-one? Twenty-two? How can I be angry?
He hugged Todd, but the hug was light. Last time he’d been with this boy, Todd had been kissing him. Todd had been hitting on him all this time, and the moment he disappeared for a few weeks the boy had someone new! Well, not that he was seriously going to go off with Todd. But this just proved so much. About him. About men. Better to be alone for a time.
“It’s good to see you, Fenn,” Todd said. His eyes looked like he was trying to put so much more into that sentence, but Fenn had just seen the blond boy.
“It’s good to see you too.”
Fenn went to sit at the kitchen counter.
“Did you have a good trip?”
“It would have been better if it lasted. But Dan dragged me back. And now, here in the backyard, two people I hate, and no one I’m ever going to love. And God, doesn’t that sound pathetic?
“Well, maybe it does,” Fenn answered his own question. “But it’s the truth.”
“No one to love?” Todd said.
Fenn looked at him.
“That’s what I said,” Fenn said.
“What about me?”
Fenn, on the bar stool, looked up and said, “What about you, Todd?”
Todd had begun to swing from the lentil of the kitchen entrance, the black line of hair growing from under his navel down into his shorts exposed. He wore a tank top that read Saint Barbara’s Basketball, and he hadn’t shaved in days.
“What about you taking a chance on me? That Tom isn’t worth crying about anyway.”
“Firstly,” Fenn said, lifting a slightly drunken finger and putting the drink down as the storm door opened for Adele and Nell, “I am not crying over anyone. Trust me.”
Adele raised an eyebrow, and then left. Nell grabbed the relish and Todd waited for her to depart. He came down from the door post and approached him. “I mean I just think you like me a little, and I already told you I like you a lot.”
“See, I don’t know where you came up with that. I don’t know when you decided that I was your destiny. Your dream man. Especially when I saw that blond thing you came with.”
“Oh, he’s not serious.”
“Then I have even less respect for you.”
“And you don’t have to be a dream man. We don’t have to dream, Fenn.”
“Stop that. And stop using that… voice.”
“Is it sexy?”
“It’s stupid. You’re—”
“I’m not stupid.”
“No, but you are a child.”
“I’m twenty-one.”
“And I…” Fenn began, “am… not.”
“I love older men.”
“Hold the fuck up, I’m not that much older.”
“But you keep saying you are.”
“I just…” Fenn started over again. “I just think it’s not a great idea. I think—”
“Hold on,” Todd said.
And then suddenly, Fenn’s face was in Todd’s large hands, and the boy, Todd had always been a boy to him, had pressed his wet mouth to Fenn’s. His tongue touched Fenn’s and for the first time in a long time of prickly resistance, Fenn Houghton gave in.
When Todd pulled away, Fenn resumed: “I …Think… that… You are…”
“Whaddo you say?” Todd say.
“I still say no.”
Todd shrugged. It wasn’t a real shrug. It was a high school shrug like ‘I don’t care’, when really you care all too much. Fenn wanted to call him out for that, to say, “See, that’s why we can’t have anything.”
Have anything.
Why, for this brief second, in the aftermath of Todd’s kiss, did having something seem a little believable?
“Todd,” he said as Todd was walking away.
Todd turned around.
“What I should have said is not now. Whatever is later, not now.”
Todd came back and approached him.
“It has nothing to do with you. Or almost nothing,” said Fenn. “I don’t want a boyfriend like Tom.”
“I’m not like Tom.”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant I don’t want to be in a serious relationship with someone who is a soulmate and all of that. And I just don’t see how we wouldn’t be that.”
“It could be light. It could just be fucking.”
“Okay, no it couldn’t,” Fenn said. “Cause that’s not us. I mean, it’s you and it’s me, but together…” Fenn shook his head. “That’s how you know something’s real. I mean with you and me even just fucking wouldn’t be just fucking. You’re in love with me.”
“And you’re not in love with me? Just a little?”
Fenn took a breath.
“I love you,” he said. “And not just a little. And for the time being I’m not ready for that, so… I don’t know,” Fenn sighed.
“Go fuck some dumbass and then come back to me in a year. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You think I’m the devil, don’t you?”
“I don’t think you’re anything at all.”
“Oh, touché, touché!” Bryant Babcock murmured. He was on the back stair, away from the rest of the partygoers, in a clean white shirt, rolled up at the sleeves to reveal the dark hair going up and down his arms. He had on black round sunglasses, which Todd mistrusted.
“I don’t even know why you’re here.”
Bryant shrugged. “You know what? Neither do I. Tom brought me. That was a mistake.”
“You’re damn right it was. Why would he show up with the guy he was fucking—?”
“I’m not fucking Tom,” Bryant shook his head with mild irritation. “I’m not fucking anyone.”
“Well… neither am I.”
Bryant laughed and slid off the banister.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“About what?”
Bryant slipped off his glasses and put them in his pocket.
“About how I’m here in this corner and you’re here in this corner, and we’re both here because we don’t fit in… In there.”
“I fit in just fine.”
“Maybe,” Bryant shrugged. “But you don’t think you do. You’ve got shit inside of you.”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“I know I do, and I know you do. But, does everyone? No. Or at least not so far as I know. I don’t know a lot of people who have a hard time looking at themselves in the morning. I don’t know a lot of people who hate who they are. That’s generally my department.”
“I don’t… hate who I am.”
“But you wish you were someone else. Sometimes? Right? Someone with less baggage?”
“I guess,” Todd said.
“I’m not asking you to talk about it,” Bryant told him. “I’m just asking if you’d like to take a walk or something?”
Todd surveyed Bryant warily, and then he nodded. Todd Meradan climbed over the rail, and they set down the street.
Fenn watched them disappear. Bryant was fucking Tom, probably, and Todd was fucking whoever that boy was who had come, and now Bryant and Todd were going back to fuck each other. No getting around that. So Bryant was the dumbass Todd he had chosen.
“Fenn,” Tom said.
He knew the voice before he turned around.
“Yes?”
It was a weary, sarcastic yes, and the first thing he’d said to Tom since it had all ended.
Tom looked nervous and small and entirely like someone he should never have taken up with. His hands were fist that he kept thumping together like an idiot.
“I came so I could talk to you.”
“There isn’t anything we have to say.”
“There’re things I’d like to say.”
“Like what?” Fenn said.
Tom’s lips pursed. He looked like he was thinking hard, but nothing came out.
“Well, if that’s the best you have to offer, then I have a home to get to. And since no one here really likes you, it would be foolish for you to stay once I’m gone.”
Fenn got up and left the kitchen. He nearly shouted when Dan popped out in the hallway.
He waited to hear Tom leaving through the back door, and then said, “What the fuck! Can a man not leave me alone? Jesus Christ!”
“I’m just here to take you home,” Dan said.
Fenn put his face in his hands, not to cry, but to take a very long breath, and then, exhaling, he said. “Alright.”
They went into the house together and Dan said, “It’s looking more like a home now.”
Fenn nodded and went up the stairs, Dan following him. When they reached the top of the stairs, suddenly Dan turned him around and Fenn pulled him forward, needing to feel his hair, to pull his face down to kiss him, to feel Dan’s arms around him.
“Are we going to do this?” Dan said. His eyes were wild and his breathing was heavy. His hair was sticking up.
This was his first love. Tom had lasted not quite ten years. But before that, in winter times, on Easter breaks, he and Dan would close the door, strip, and link their bodies. Now they were taller, heavier, the smells of their bodies… deeper. They had transformed into men, and there was something raw and fiery about Dan. He could feel the heat of his flesh from under his clothes. He had to be with him. And after all, this was the only man who apparently could actually stay out of bed with other men when he wasn’t around.
For answer Fenn began unbuttoning Dan’s shirt. There was a fierce look of desire on Dan’s face while Fenn took off his shirt, and then he quickly pulled down his pants. In the hall they both stood naked before, with a brute force, Dan pushed Fenn into the bedroom, and they fell on the floor.
