Leopard

I woke up that restless Sunday afternoon with my dick hard. I wanted to go to the bar. It was one o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. Jonathan and I had gotten away from Texas and school exams to party it up in New Orleans. Jonathan tried to ignore my sharp punches to his back. He had just gotten back to the hotel at nine o’clock that morning with some trick. I really didn’t get to see his face, just his youthful naked body walking across the room frantically searching for his shirt. I watched him, dick hard put on his pants, no underwear, and his dick half full like he wanted more or got off on me peeking from under the covers. I wanted to touch it. I was frustrated. An entire weekend and I still hadn’t gotten off. It wasn’t that I didn’t have many chances. I often found myself playing the role of logical chaperon with my friends. I guess it was my forced biblical upbringing. I had too many rules. I wanted to lose them all. I woke up that morning and decided pretended innocence was dead. I was going to fuck. I didn’t care where, it was New Orleans, and they sold liquor at church.

I hit Jonathan again, but he wasn’t budging. I teased him he probably needed to rest his ass considering his trick’s dick looked exhausting. He laughed and pulled the covers back over his head. I decided no witnesses.

How does one-- get off, on a Sunday at two in the evening was the challenge. I didn’t have enough money for the bathhouse. Beside, it was too obvious. I decided to head to the bar “Raw.” I was there the first night. A very seedy, dirty bar. The men stacked up on each other in the backroom with their dicks out. It was like I imagined the 70s truck stop bathrooms to be.

I got dressed. I yelled at Jonathan I was going to get lunch. He flipped me off. The bar wasn’t far from the hotel. I walked into the bar that suddenly looked like nighttime when the door closed. I knew I had the right place.

I told myself to make eye contact. No time to be shy. I ordered my mandatory rum and coke --especially forced with blacks. Sipped fast to get a quick buzz. I decided two tequila shots would probably do the job better. I was suddenly nervous. And then I saw him when I slammed the second tequila shot glass on the bar. He was watching me.

I grabbed my frustrated dick. Looked for a pocket for sleazing. Was anyone in the bathroom? I kept watching him. I’d never cruised before but figured it was probably like that time my uncle’s lifetime roommate took me fishing when I was sixteen years old. He kept watching me. I never had such a hard dick. I figured it was just patience. I got like three fish that awkward Saturday morning. It was about how much I wanted to get off with him. But he never touched me.

I wanted to be touched so I didn’t lose eye contact. I tried to pretend like I was older, Like I cruised all the time but I was only in my junior year in college, barely twenty one. He didn’t seem too much older than me but more confident. I imagined he also woke up frustrated. IT was the last day until reality and responsibility wouldn’t be ignored any longer.

I saw him walk closer to the bathroom. It was free. It was perfect. It was private, no bathtub urinals. It had a door that locked. It was perfect.

I ordered another weak rum and coke and walked over towards the bathroom. I didn’t have time for games. The look in my eyes were demanding, “or we fucking or not?”

Circled. We circled. Picked up his scent. Lifted up my shirt. Grabbed my frustrated dick. He grabbed his frustrated dick. I smiled. I nodded. He walked into the bathroom. I followed. No words. No names. No back stories. No who the fuck are you or what you do for a living. No I want to see you tomorrow. No, nothing.

Against the stained wall he unbuttoned his pants and took out his dick. Grabbed, I did first. It was that leopard underwear. He was wearing leopard underwear. The clash of a hard dick sticking out of a leopard bikini was so trashy I could have never imagined it.

********
Fucking is like hunger --a prisoner banging on the heart making it race cuz the dick wants what it wants and is a clever bastard. We didn’t even kiss. Didn’t think about it. He unzipped, displayed his dick, I sat my rum and coke on the sink and lowered myself to the floor to pray with my mouth opened. It was Sunday. I don’t usually suck dick. Never really cared for it, but some dicks deserve attention. I like that he was tall. I liked that his body was exercised. But the hotness in my stomach and head blinded the need to capture the moment. I just reacted. I don’t know how my pants got around my knees. I don’t remember pressing my stomach on that cheap wall. I don’t remember sticking my ass out. I do remember the penetration. Smooth and fluid. His dick was a considerable size. I do remember him kneeling and opening my cheeks. I do remember him spreading them with his warm hands and his watch scrapping my right cheek. He filled his mouth with as much spit as possible and flooded my insides. I liked how the mucus felt blended in with my sweat-- the heat of my lust opening the door to host. I do remember the penetration. I do remember wanting it. I didn’t fight. I was relaxed. Maybe it was the newness of the tequila shots working its magic.

So in that bathroom, against that cheap role, I arched my back and he fucked me. No pretty way to put it. It was the repetition of moans and an eager dick trying to calm that monster in him. It was that act of stubborn baby that need exhaustion by rocking it seductively until it spit up the milk.

*********

“Are you okay?” I was more than okay. I was liberated. I needed a moment to figure out where I wandered. It wasn’t like I didn’t follow him.

“I think I spilled my drink.” I laughed. He looked at the floor of the white plastic cup tipped over on the floor that used to cradle rum and coke. His pants were around his ankles.

“That’s not all you spilled.” The stranger said firmly like teasing an ex-lover. I turned from the wall. I glanced down what seemed like his casual dick hanging like a tree branch that got a plastic bag caught covering its mouth. The black tuxedo condom they were handing out on bourbon street found it use.

“Can I have you underwear?” I asked before I thought about the question

“How old are you?” I tried not to look like that was a stupid question to ask after the fact.

“I’m old enough.” I guess that was two fucks from being a virgin.

“You can have them, only because you are so damn cute.” The stranger pulled the underwear that had been pulled down beneath his knees to his ankles, toward his pants, taking his shoes off, and then pulled passed his feet until he was completely naked except his black socks. No shirt, no underwear, just socks. I wanted to fuck again.

“I want you to put them on.” The stranger held the leopard underwear above my head. like dangling meat over a dog, waiting him to beg for it.

“Okay, what do I do with my underwear?”

“Leave them on the ground. Let someone know you were here.”

THE MILKMAN

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Rose baiting

Nervous Boy looking at the test

Didn’t study

Coyly whispered

“How do you make it bloom?”

I said

Cheat it like bullied high school freshmans trying to lose virginity

And maybe let him piss on that hole somebody told you

Mistakes

Every summer grandma used to make me dig up the yard

For fall roses

Patience I learned

Some things are not to be now, but the possibility

Of a future

The journey

Cultivating flesh flowers

First time I got fucked it hurt like hell

I rushed it

Which humbled and then apologized

The first time I fucked him

Should not have rushed it, funny how we begin with ourselves

Sensitivity is just lessons learned

Cultivating

Layers of trust

I started with small toy, the medium, then large

I kept pushing it

Maybe because I saw that guy in that place swallow a 12 inch dildo

And I’m competitive, said I could do that

It made my dick hard and mouth salivate

The day I became a dog, woof

cuz

didn’t like the fact there may be somebody having better sex than me

nervous boy

trying to pretend he wasn’t making the rules

so I told him to push it out

get rid of his bullshit

and Let me witness the labor

Testifying

His inner ass

his church

The temple, I want to pray and then wreck it

So let me preach

So I told him let me understand how you became so nasty

Who was your first?

How were you sexualized?

Getting the answers like flipping to the back of the geometry book

And it’s not like fucking

The opposite

Nobody is the same except pornography

Scripted

So I told him

Don’t’ be pissed cuz you don’t know you

It isn’t the key, his hand

it’s your mind

you must guide me

or I will hustle you

what are you reproducing?

Cheating his own body

Subtitling his soul

Nervous boy looking at the test

I said

you haven’t decided the lock

If it was so easy everybody would be doing it

kindergarten

give me the key

if confused

always go left

Courting the petals of rosebuds

Then you lay back and let them admire

Your beautiful trophy

cheap liqour

so i went out last night. nothing new. but i hate going to the black clubs because of the liqour. well, the black gay clubs, especially fireplace becaue of the liqour. it's like they get the cheapest liqour they possibly cane give niggas. and those niggas don't understant why they get so damn angry.

i am from the ghetto. SA town. i never consumed malt liqour because it rots your stomach. I remember Cisco and how i threw up for days after drinking one bottle. I think there should be a ban on what type of liqour people can be served.

The first time I…

Blood, shit and a lot of cum is what I remember about my first time. I was sixteen, a couple of weeks from turning seventeen, and he was twenty-three, in the army and an asshole. Well, I didn’t learn he was an asshole until after we fucked.

Anyway, what happened was, I was trying to be grown. It was the beginning of my senior year in high school, and I had already been out for about a year, but I wasn’t doing anything serious. I went to just a couple of parties, had a first kiss, been to the club, so it wasn’t like I was totally naïve but still new.

The night I met him, I was out with my best friend who had just recently graduated from High school that past May, joined the army and was now finished with basic training and about to be shipped to Korea for two years. My best friend at the time was fucking gorgeous, lean and pretty, so you can imagine hanging out with him that night I was getting no attention. I didn’t like that at all. I was still young, hadn’t really fully grown into my looks, so in a way I was use to being his shadow, the one everyone referred to as his “ride”, that is until Vincent (his real name) came into the picture and swept me off to the bar.

I was already on my second rum and coke, watching my best friend giggle and caress against every cute guy in the club, but Vincent changed everything. When he whispered in my ear if he could buy me a drink, I automatically thought he was just trying to use me to get to my beautiful best fiend, but me being me, an opportunist, I wasn’t going to turn down a free rum and coke. We walked over to the bar, I confidently ordered my third rum and coke at age sixteen like I’ve been doing it my entire life and he paid for it. When I was about to walk away with it, he grabbed my hand and pulled me back close to him. I was now looking into his eyes and a little confuse. Of course me being the bitch I can sometimes be, and totally insecure, I violently yanked myself away from him, and told him I wasn’t my fucking best friends’ messaging service, so if he had something to say to him, he needed to do it himself, and thanked him for the drink. When I tried to walk away the second time with my free drink, he grabbed me again and pulled me closer to him, this time he was smiling. I wasn’t. I looked him up and down, and he was cute, especially when he smiled, and he was taller than me, which I liked, and young, but not younger than me. I asked him what he wanted, and he deviously said “you.” Well that changed everything. I don’t know if it was the alcohol or the fact that someone was paying attention to me, but suddenly I felt like dancing. I pulled him to the dance floor, and my stomach was feeling hot, and my head kind of light, but the music moved my soul. We danced so close, hip grinding close, and when I could feel him rise, I would pull away because it made me rise, but he kept pulling me back, like a wave in an endless ocean, overflowing and out control and I just knew I was going to drown. We were dancing, dicks hard and sweating, and then he took off his shirt and wiped the sweat off my forehead. I guess it was a romantic gesture or a ploy to hook me, because there we were, him bare-chested, the streaming lights hitting every curve and muscle in his six pack chiseled stomach and I found myself falling, to my knees, well that would happen a couple of hours later. When we were talking, I think I told him I was nineteen years old and a student at the University, and I know he told me he was in the army and just turn twenty-three, so he had no idea when he was licking my belly button later, that he was committing a felony.

I don’t remember how it happened, I think he told me I should come back to his apartment, to talk, and it wasn’t like it was a school night, or that I had a curfew, because I didn’t. I was living with my older sister, after just recently moved out of my grandmother’s house because the bitch was ruining my social life.

I don’t remember being nervous, but excited to talk. I thought in a way I had found my soul mate, someone who saw me in spite of my best friend’s beauty, and wanted me, not him, but me!!

Vincent was so charming and classy. He kept telling me that I was beautiful, and was laughing at all my jokes. We talked about so many things that I can’t remember, but it all came to a silence when he asked me “ Are you a top or bottom?” I didn’t have an answer and told him I didn’t know. He kissed me. The heat from his lips numbed my body, and I found myself crushed underneath him, kissing him back, wanting him as much as he wanted me, out of control, and knowing from the raging fire brewing at the bottom of my stomach that I wasn’t going to refuse anything he asked of me.

Slippery naked and spread out on his bed, I knew I was way over my head but I couldn’t stop. His hard chiseled naked body was pressed roughly against mine, and I could feel the weight of his hard dick on my back, which poetically blended his sticky tongue in my ear, biting and caressing and abusing my weak spot, and then moving to my neck, like a snake, onto my back and down it’s empty river, stopping at the small of my back and biting gently. I was laying so still, not wanting to disturb the groove, wondering what he was going to next, and that is when he moved into a part of my body that was so intimate, that no one before him had ever visited, especially a man, and Vincent was man, musk, facial hair and everything. What he did next, I didn’t even know men did that to other men.. He placed his warm hands on my ass and spread the cheeks apart, leaving the middle vulnerable and sensitive to the stale breeze in the air, before he buried his face down there and stuck his tongue in. I was so sensitive and could feel everything, his lips, his tongue, his smile, and the hotness of his breathe, the heaviness of my breath, him spreading me wider, and biting gently with his teeth, me purring and try to fight it, try not give in, try to not show pleasure, try not to feel like a bitch, his bitch, but I was losing and my moans were the evidence. He turned me over and started attacking my nipples. My right nipple has always been my favorite but he was on my left, making me want him more, so I moved his head to my right nipple and he smiled because I was now participating. I was touching him back. I pulled myself off the bed and started kissing his neck, rubbing my hands across his stomach, very innocent until he took control back and stuck his dick in my mouth. At first I refused, because he was so big; I mean really big, porno star big. It was thick, long and black, and in my mouth, it filled me up, making my jaws weak. I tried for a couple of minutes but it was too much, so I pulled him out of my mouth, his monster, and it feel heavily still erect and very wet with my spit. He turned me back over on my stomach, this time kissing even harder, touching deeper, and we were moving so fast, like a hurricane, and I found myself spinning. I remember thinking to myself that he was never going to get that monster inside of me, so I must’ve thought about him fucking me, but I wasn’t ready. He was so big, at the least 11 inches and thick. It was going to hurt. I remember thinking when he was down there the second time, him and his tongue penetrating into my black hole, that I knew he was going to try and I was gong to let him, but I had faith it was never going to happened. What was supposed to happen, was that he would give up after a couple tries, tell me that I was too tight and that be the end of it. I wasn’t worried.

He pulled out a brown bottle with fluid in it and asked me to sniff it. I saw him do it, so I did it and didn’t ask any questions. My head suddenly went very light, and I felt really hot, like I wanted him inside of me, and before I knew it , and much to my chagrin, this surge of unbelievable pain went soaring through my body and I cried out like a wounded animal, because he was inside of me. He told me to relax, to stop screaming but it was hurting so fucking much and he kept pounding and I tried to be silent, to let it just happened, so I bite my bottom lip and took it like a man.

I felt him when he shot. I mean, I really felt him and haven’t felt a man do it the same way since. I felt the pressure, it building up, and then him exploding inside of me like a fireman’s hose. I felt it, all him oozing out, and it was like thunder and then rain, flooding my insides. Yes, I was in pain, but for those seconds, I felt euphoric, a certain sense satisfaction, that my body was capable of creating such a storm and it seemed worth it, that is until he pulled out and I was empty again, except for his waste.

When it was over, I remember laying there thinking so many things. I was happy it was over, I was also happy that I pleased him. I kept thinking that I was officially gay and not a virgin in any sense of the word anymore. I also remember how quickly the room went cold. He was no longer smiling, but stiff and withdrawn as if he just emptied his soul in me. He kept going on about how I couldn’t spend the night and how he had to get up early in the morning and how he doesn’t do relationships. Just moments before he was saying that he was going to worship me, that he was going to call me just to tell me how sexy I was and all of that bullshit I obviously fell for. I remember asking to use his bathroom because suddenly I had to shit all the cum his just shot of my ass. It was painful, the bathroom and when I went to wipe my ass, I saw the blood, shit and cum.
It was staring back at me, the fact that I didn’t use a condom. I remember leaving quickly and him telling me that he was going to call me and he did, like two weeks later. I remember driving home, feeling ashamed and used. He didn’t even try to get me off, he didn’t even care. I remember getting into the shower at home and crying. because I was still dealing with so much, still coming to terms with being gay and facing the reality that I might’ve just fucked up my life. The irony is that after all those years of sex education from the time I was in elementary school, in one brief second of passion, it was all so quickly forgotten. It took me two agonizing years to get tested. There wasn’t a day I didn’t think about it. I finally built up the strength to get tested, and I was negative. I never really trusted men after Vincent. I learned quickly the cruelty that comes with “living the life,” that there are too many asshole out there who don’t give a fuck about anyone else, just trying to get their nut and don’t care who they use or what they got or give, and no one can be trusted and the simple fact is: if you aren’t responsible to yourself, you can’t expect anyone else to be!

Playing with Fire

This story is for my friend William Hall, R.I.P

The newspaper read: “Decomposing and naked as the battered knife used to shit his throat was how they found him. His head hung on to his neck by a pissed off joke of flesh. He was tied to a chair with a brown indoor extension cord – hands snatched behind him with gray duck tape like wild hair forced into an unnatural ponytail. His body was twisted like beaten clay. His black decaying wounds still wept blood. But his face, a frozen human gargoyle screaming last echoes of pain. It was his sister who found him. A death ghost she will remember until cancer stopped playing with breasts. His murderer showed no mercy. He died horribly.”

I woke up to find Roderick’s story in paper this morning. I can’t say I was surprised. I always knew that kid end up murdered.

The night of his demise, his mother would say at the funeral that she couldn’t sleep. She said she kept dreaming about blood. Buckets and buckets of blood. In the morning she tried to call him but he didn’t answer. After two days, she begged his older sister to drive the 100 miles to his apartment and go check on him. Roderick had been known to disappear for days without word. The sister waited another two days. She got to his door and knocked, but there was no answer. She knocked harder. Still nothing. Suddenly, she could barely breathe or speak. She felt nervous but didn’t know why. Her hands shook when she put the key in the door that Roderick gave her for emergencies. She would say when she turned the doorknob her soul went cold. First there was the smell, then the horror of the sight. Roderick was home but silenced. He was there. She had found him.

The last time I saw Roderick he was in the hospital after being stabbed when he refused to pay some trick he picked up on the street. He told his family he had been robbed. I knew the truth. Of course he was very cavalier about the incident, making jokes but I could see sadness in his eyes. I was afraid for him, even if he figured himself invincible. Roderick liked testing his luck. Too many times I received a frantic call from him in the middle of the night to come pick him up from somebody’s ghetto. He never gave details. It was always something with Roderick. Maybe it started in high school. First there was Buck, Roderick's first waterfall. Even if he could smell the rotting broken bones and souls shattered on the jagged pretty rocks below, he still couldn’t help but jump. The temptation to get closer too something unattainable was too strong, like a moth playing with fire. I can’t say it was his fault. Buck could be a tease.

Buck was on the high school basketball team. He had hoop dreams, wanting to grow up and play professional basketball for the Lakers or the Bulls, but he really wasn't that good. He just looked good in his uniform. Buck and Roderick took advanced Anatomy class together. Buck was Roderick's partner when they had to dissect a cat, slice through the feline's skin and bone, rip open its chest and detach the heart to show to their teacher. They got an "A." For Roderick, Buck was so tall and sporty, always licking his lips and grabbing his dick. Buck had this way of looking into Roderick's eyes, shamelessly flirting while asking personal questions like if Roderick was a virgin, then he’d lick his lips again, or if Roderick ever had his dick sucked, of course by a girl he would say after a deep pause and smile. Roderick tried to avoid Buck's questions. He didn’t like keeping his eyes silent. He didn't know if Buck was playing games or not. Buck would say things like, "You're so pretty. Shit, I know if I was a girl, I go out with you. I may even give you some," then Buck would smile and lick those lips again and grab his dick. At night, alone and naked, it drove Roderick wild. Roderick started to become obsessed with Buck. He started going to all of Buck's basketball practices and games. He started following Buck home. He would do anything just to get closer. Roderick joined the photography club so that he could get a camera and take pictures of Buck. He would masturbate to those pictures. Eventually fantasy wouldn't be enough for Roderick, so he decided to make him and Buck real. Loneliness and a stormy afternoon caught Roderick and Buck alone in the boy’s bathroom. As usual, Buck greeted him "Wha up pretty boy." Roderick liked it when Buck called him pretty. In that boy's bathroom, it was like a fantasy for Roderick. He was wearing his Gap khakis, a pink polo button up long sleeve with a green v-neck sweater over it, looking preppy as usual. Buck was in his basketball uniform: sweaty jersey, gym shorts, Nike tennis shoes and letterman jacket. Of course, licking his lips and grabbing his dick. Roderick couldn't resist the temptation. Buck had been haunting his dreams for too long and he needed release. He walked over to Buck and whispered almost tearfully in his ear, "Can I suck your dick?" Buck quickly turned to him, and for a moment, there was a look in his eyes, almost a window, but it quickly shut. Eyes turned mean and widened, hands balled themselves into fists and Buck hit Roderick hard in the stomach. He called Roderick a "Faggot" and spit on him. Buck stormed out of the bathroom. Roderick laid there on the bathroom floor, not crying, but smiling, because he had gotten so close to Buck's lips, almost made contact, that when Buck hit him, he came.

After Buck, Roderick would be called names: "sissy" "Faggot" "deep throat." He didn’t seem phased. He also didn’t stop him. Eventually, a year later at a party he found Buck drunk and had his way with him. It turned out Buck was gay, but Roderick didn’t want him anymore.

I never understood Roderick. I hated hanging out with him because he liked playing games. He knew straight men were sensitive about their sexuality, but he liked toying with them. He liked pushing buttons. We would be riding down the street, and if he saw a cute thuggish boy, he’d stop the car in the middle of traffic and circle. He would press his solicitations until the boy picked up a rock and hurled it toward the car. In college he would cruise the Athletes showers until one day he was attacked but the school newspaper made it out to be a gay bashing. Roderick didn’t care for people’s feelings. It didn’t stop him. He used to get online with his older sister’s picture and pretend to be her. He would lure guys to obscene places like cemeteries or contruction sites. He sometimes would meet the guy. I don’t know how he never got hurt real bad. That kid was always playing with fire. Roderick acted as if rules didn’t apply to him. And then he started liking them rough. He liked them street trash. He was a good looking kid with a good job, graduated college magnum cum laude but refused to date anyone with a high school diploma. He would say that he wasn’t attracted to gay men. He wanted a man who wasn’t gay. I didn’t understand it.

Roderick found a new game. It started out very innocently, a product of lonely Friday nights at home surfing the Internet. He found a website of pictures of convicted felons, mostly rapists and murders. It was just a hobby. He said he was attracted to the danger in their eyes. He eventually ran across a website for Prison inmates looking for pen pals. He convinced himself that he was just curious. There were three guys before he met Red. There was David who was slender like wild grass blowing in the wind and dark skinned. David went to prison at age eighteen and did seven years for drug procession and car theft. David was very attractive, almost too attractive for Roderick. Roderick was getting older and started to learn the lessons, so with David, he took things really slow. They wrote letters back and forth for awhile, and eventually Roderick started accepting his collect calls, and when David got out, Roderick set up a meeting at a nearby hotel. Things worked out well. Roderick tried to get David a job, but it seemed that David didn’t care too much for working. Roderick paid for everything thing, their trips to Cancun and the Bahamas, their dinners, and even put David up in temporary apartment for a month, before finally deciding to move him into his home. As soon as David got inside, things started to fall apart. Roderick came home from a business trip that ended prematurely, to find David in bed with another man, getting fucked. It wasn’t that David was in the bed with another man, because Roderick knew and expected David to be unfaithful, but it was the fact that David was the bottom that Roderick couldn’t handle. He called the cops immediately and had David removed. One morning he walked to his BMW and found all the windows to his car knocked out and tires flatten. Roderick decided that it was just a sign that he needed a new car, so he bought a Range Rover.

Roderick would say that he was looking for something more dangerous. He said he often had fantasties about being raped. He joined bondage clubs. He was looking for something devasting. I would ask him about his childhood, if he was abused and he would say that he had the perfect childhood. He had a stay at home mother and a father who never missed a birthday or baseball game. I didn’t understand it.

After David there was Tyrone. Tyrone was in for drug procession and aggravation with the intent to kill. Tyrone didn’t stay around for too long, because Roderick moved him in too quickly, and one morning he woke up with his television, DVD player and wallet gone. That was the end of Tyrone.

After Tyrone, there was Omar, who did ten years for bank robbery. It turned out that Omar got addicted to crack in prison. Roderick didn’t mind except that Omar dick wouldn’t get hard. It was because Omar was a crack addict that Roderick never moved him in. He kept him in cheap motels, often visiting and finding him with other crack addicts. He eventually got bored of Omar and his limped dick.

Finally there was Red.

The story Roderick didn’t know was that Red spent most of his life in the system. Red first murder was when he was just 15 years old. He shot a man in a nightclub. He did a couple of store robberies after getting out in his early twenties before eventually strangling his fiancé of ten years later.

I remember the last time I spoke to Roderick, he was so happy. All he would talk about was this guy he met off the Internet. He said at first he thought he made a mistake because the guy was at least two times his size, but he said he was a teddy bear. He would go on about all the sex they were having. He said Red fucked him like a prison bitch. I told him to be careful. I decided to leave Roderick alone. I figured him to be suicidal. There were times when he could be so sweet. When I lost my job and couldn’t pay my car note, he took care of it for four months. He didn’t even want me to pay him back. He was a good son. He loved surprising his mother with exotic vacations or jewelry. Most people thought the world of Roderick. Most people didn’t know about his other side.

The police gave little details on his final moments. They just said it wasn’t a force entry because the assailant locked the door when he left. Roderick car was missing, so was some money and jewelry. I can’t understand why anyone would want to kill him like that. I tried to warn that boy. His mother didn’t even know he was gay. The media made it out to be that Roderick met some street thug off a well known “down low” sex website, of course making the story trendy. The case went unsolved. How an ex-convict went missing I’d never know. His poor mother didn’t think the police did enough to find Roderick’s murderer. She didn’t understand that to the police Roderick was just another black fag who got himself murdered. Black Fags go missing often and then found in back of trunks, stuffed in trashcans or in pieces. Jeffrey Dahmer killed a lot black homosexuals and nobody went looking for them. I try not to believe that Roderick brought it on himself. Some of us just like playing with fire.

Ode to my red jockstrap

I like slipping the fire on
As much as I like removing the heat
Beads of lust tickle smooth toned skin leaving unbreakable intention
I’m naked, red jockstrap on the floor giggling

I like the reflection
As I walk by the mirror
Call it vanity
Red jockstrap so damn arrogant
Some wear power ties
I wear my red jockstrap under my corporate uniform
Gets my dick hard in meetings thinking about it
I want to fuck my boss
Have fantasies about him bent over his desk, legs spread
I unzipped my Banana Republic slacks, slide my red jockstrap to the left, and let the frustrated intention breath
Slide into so swiftly, no lube, just sweat and his musk
Get home, and still smell him in my red jockstrap
Didn’t that happen yesterday?
I blame it on my red jockstrap

Coming out of my underwear

I discovered my hard dick at twelve years old in the Sunday newspaper, the middle section, between arts and entertainment and the metropolitan, the part that fell out and spilled onto the floor if held incorrectly. It’s the part only important to bored housewives, the consumer section, filled with coupons to get ten cents off green peas or a bucket of chicken free if you buy a cake and large soda. I learned to read when I was four years old, or at least I learned to recognize certain words, so I anticipated the Sunday paper for the cartoons because I liked the funny colorful faces, but it wasn’t until I was nine years old that I started paying attention to the department store advertisements: average looking people wearing average looking clothes that were half off for some dead President’s birthday. Maybe it was just curiosity, maybe I was looking for a new toy when I first opened one of the department store advertisements and flipped passed the pictures of dull jewelry, plain looking women looking bored, little boys and little girls trying to appear happy, towards the back, where at first rugged men posed in khakis and business suits, but as I flipped further, the clothes lessen, first to short shirts and jeans, and then finally, the men’s underwear section.

As I stared at the page, I felt different but I didn’t know what it was, the heat, why my stomach felt uneasy, why my heart quickened and thrust in its cage, why I stopped and studied strange men with defined lumps for a stomach, hard nipples, smooth slender arms, and muscular legs protruding confidence. Their glistening almost naked bodies were curiously appealing but it was the underwear, not so innocence that clung to masculine hips like a tightly gripped fist hiding a secret. It was the same mystery of neighbor’s Ken doll, how I stripped it bare hoping to find something I needed, but there was nothing, just smoothed over lust. Staring at the page, it was different than the Ken’s doll, no longer plastic but flesh and alive and seemly calling me to its rabbit hole. I found myself touching the page with my left hand, and my right hand suddenly with a mind of its own slid itself down my pants, and as I ran my twelve year old hand across glossy teasing hoping to absorb a feeling, find its secrets, I realized that I was different, and the discovery frightened and excited me.

I wasn’t like most growing boys; I wanted underwear for Christmas and my birthday. I loved going shopping with my mother so that I could gently pull my hand from her when she saw a pair of shoes or purse she had to have, and sneak over to the men’s section. It was there that Sunday newspaper came alive, not just men in one type of underwear but men in various type of underwear: bikinis, thongs, briefs, boxer briefs and jocks. I liked the Designer labels because the models were raw with sweaty slippery skin and seductive penetrative glances. I started buying my father underwear for his birthday and Father’s day. My mother thought it was strange for young boy spending two months of his allowance to get his father a Calvin Klein mesh bikini or a leopard thong. I would ask her why it was strange, hoping she would reveal the secret I was so longing to hear, but she’d just smile as if she knew that I didn’t know what I was doing like a baby cursing manically, just repeating what he heard. My father was a military man, hardly spoke and demanded quiet children, so when I handed him his birthday and father’s day presents wrapped in the Sunday cartoons, he’d open it casually, shake his head in disbelief and throw the box in the trash. It was exactly what I wanted him to do. And when everyone was sleep, I would sneak from my bed, rummage through the trash, pluck out the box and dust it off. I would sneak back to my room and with a pair of plastic scissors I cut the picture out and place it at the bottom of my drawer. My allowance increased as I got older, and I had a part time job with the church cutting grass and also delivered the paper in my neighborhood, so soon my father’s presents became cliché, a tie with a frog on it or a coffee cup that said “world greatest dad” and I started buying the underwear just for me. I also bought me a lockbox to keep my hobby protected.

When I was a sophomore in high school, my mother started needlessly interrupting my life. She was bored, my older sister started college and my father had been shipped off to Korea to train soldiers to be sent to the Gulf War, so it was just us and she had no job. I stayed in my room with my door closed and demanded to be left alone. She didn’t. One weekend she decided to invite her sister and her rowdy kids to come visit us. She didn’t even ask or warn me. I just heard the door bell ring, screaming, and suddenly two cousins I hadn’t seen since I was five years old were sleeping in my room. Derrick and Derek were fraternal twins and a couple of months older than me. They barely looked like brothers. Derrick was short, stocky and insecure about both so he overcompensated by being extra belligerent. He was a red-blooded thug. Derek his younger brother by two minutes was the complete opposite. He was tall, slender like a slice of grass and almost as fragile. Derrick voice filled a room but Derek often whispered if he spoke at all. Yet, Derek was Derrick’s sheep. He followed his older brother blindly often to juvenile detention centers or getting kicked out of schools.

I somehow managed to avoid all human contact even at school. I had no friends and felt comfortable living in my head with my science fiction books, underwear hobby and the television. All that changed. My mother felt I needed to hang around other boys my age. She didn’t understand other boys my age didn’t like me. She didn’t understand that she was offering up a seductive rabbit to ravenous wolves that liked to play with their food before they killed and ate it. I somehow had managed to avoid the bullies at my high school and my mother moved two of them into my room. The twins didn’t read books. They brought with them a bb gun, basketball, football, and a stash of porn.

At first I tried to fit in. I tried throwing the ball around with them. I tried staying up all night watching violent movies like Scarface and The Godfather. I tried to seem interested in their dirty magazines. I’d watched the two twins sit up late at night and flip through their stash of busty women in bad lingerie and even worse make-up, how the heat in their underwear would rise but mine stayed cold. I didn’t play sports nor did I care about Hustler and Playboy magazines. It was the first time I was around real boys. I somehow managed to avoid gym. The twins seem so free with their bodies. If I was taking a shower, one of them would just walk in and start using the bathroom. They seem to know no boundaries. I slept in my pajamas, they slept in their underwear. They always seem to be almost naked around me. It confused me. I wondered if all boys were like the twins, so free with their bodies. They figured we all had the same equipment so it was no need to hide it. I encouraged such thinking.

Yet, however hard I tried, the harder I failed. It was clear that we couldn’t be friends. I was just too flimsy for their taste. I didn’t like the unsolicited punches in the arm, twisting of the nipples or sometimes sneaky blows to the nutsack. I complained about everything. The twins decided they didn’t like me and made it very clear they were going to beat the shit out of me the minute we were alone. I hated my mother. I hated her more when she decided to take a spa day with her recently re-discovered sister. I was left alone with Derrick and Derek. Three hours later I had locked myself in the bathroom because Derrick had gotten out his BB gun and shot me in the arm while I was washing dishes and again in the back of the neck. I was scared for my life. If I had gotten access to a phone I would’ve called the police. I decided to stay in the bathroom until my mother returned. I was going to show her my blood and demand their eviction. It was Derek, suddenly the kinder of the twins, who begged for me to come out of the bathroom. He promised that his brother was sorry and wouldn’t do it again. I ignored him. And then I heard a loud scream, Derrick screaming for Derek to come see what he found in my bedroom. I immediately knew the bastard somehow opened my lockbox and found my hobby. I snatched open the bathroom door, not caring for my life anymore but the secret I had promised to take to my grave. And just like I thought, Derrick had found my stash of men, cut out pictures from underwear boxes and Sunday advertisements. It was almost three years worth, the older pics beginning to fade and tear at the edges, the newer pics shimming in their glossiness. “He’s a real faggot,” Derrick laughed. I knew immediately what he meant. I liked men more than just friends. I wasn’t as horrified as I imagined I would be, because finally my heat had a name which meant I had an identity and there were others like me. I raced over to my bed, swung at Derrick and hit him in the face and knocked him off the bed. He stared up at me with intense surprise, his nose started to bleed and when I went to hit him again, Derek caught me, but not to hold me down, but stopping me from killing his brother. Derek helped me put my secret back in its box. Derrick ran out the room.

I thought he was going to tell. I thought as soon as our mothers returned Derrick was going yell at the top of his lungs what he found, but he didn’t. He stayed quiet. Yet, he didn’t say another word to me the rest of their trip, and I didn’t know if it was because I’d hit him so hard or because I was gay. He even stopped sleeping in my room. He slept in the living room on the floor by the big television. At first Derek also slept with him, but one night I heard a knock on my door. I opened it and there was Derek standing there in his underwear and his heat. His underwear was the domestic kind, the ones that came six in a box and the same color. His underwear hung from his narrow waist, a delicate cotton white, almost transparent, with a yellow strip, the elastic band a couple of more washes from retirement. “Do you want to?” I could barely breathe. I knew what he meant. Derek didn’t say much, but when he did, he got straight to the point. It was the first time I realized his face, so young and gentle, his eyes a shimmering hazel, his curly brown hair, he wasn’t drop dead gorgeous but comfortable. In my next breath, as I mouthed the word yes, he was no longer my cousin, tormentor, he was now my lover. He grabbed my waist and kissed me as he pushed me into the room. I closed the door and locked it. We didn’t even speak. I usually slept in a t-shirt, underwear and a pair of old shorts. Derek pulled my arms up and slid my shirt off. And then he unbuckled my shorts and they fell to my ankles. I also found myself falling to Derek’s nipples, then belly button, and finally the tip of his impoverished underwear. His stomach was so small, soft and flat like a deflated balloon, not at all like the pictures of the men on the underwear boxes who stomachs look as if it was chiseled from marble. At the tip of Derek’s underwear, there was a faint sense of must, he was sixteen years old, and his pubic hair seemed new, almost wet. I slid Derek’s underwear down, and it was so natural, had never done anything thing like that in my life, and I found what had been missing in the pictures, his dick. It was no longer just heat, but flesh on a mission. It stood before not defiant or cocky but almost vulnerable and begging for touch. I grabbed it with my right hand and squeezed, like I had squeezed my own, and I felt Derek’s body slightly convulse, and he pushed his pelvic towards my face, I opened my mouth, at first tasting the tip with my tongue as if sticking my foot in a water to see if it’s warm and safe before I plunged into the deep end, and then I slowly slid Derek’s hard dick in my mouth, past the tongue and towards my throat. He wasn’t even in for two minutes before he unloaded; his knees buckling like a fallen horse. He pulled his underwear up and left my room. I swallowed what he left behind in my mouth.

***************************************
The twins and their mother left the next day. I didn’t say goodbye or saw Derek again. I did steal a pair of his dingy underwear from his bag. I also noticed that a couple of pictures from my treasure chest were missing. A decade and half had past and I’d forgotten all about Derek. I wondered what happened to his life. I wondered what type of man him grew up to be. Did he have a mustache? Did he get fat? Had he learned to last more than two minutes in bed? I did hope at least he gotten better underwear.

Sleep No More

(I must warn you, this story is very freaking long. I thought about cutting up into three seperate acts,but I think keeping it continious substains the flow.)

There is only one true philosophical problem, and that is suicide. –Albert Camus

Think about your own life. Think about how you’re fucked up. What would you change? I shot myself. I shot myself in the heart because love don’t love nobody. At least I was aiming for the heart. At the time, I thought it would be romantic. It wasn’t. It was horrific. It was loud. Gunfire loud. I took a pillow like they do in the movies to muffle the sound but it didn’t silence. I pulled the trigger. I didn’t even feel the bullet enter my body. I just felt wet afterwards. Very wet.

I wasn’t trying to kill myself. It was so damn complicated. I decided that I needed a vacation. I wanted to see if I was happy. I wanted to see if god would let me die. I know how its sounds, crazy. We are all just freaks, torn souls, flowers pulled from their roots trying to do the impossible, survive without water. Think about your own life. Think about how you’re fucked up. What would you change?

I guess the first question, why did I pack the gun if I didn’t plan to kill myself. I only remember needing a drink. It all seemed so anti-climatic. I went straight to the Crazy Chicken liquor extravaganza. I was craving Vodka. In the parking lot, I mixed the orange juice and Absolut in my car as I scanned my surroundings carefully to see if anyone was watching. I felt nervous. My mind was trying to warn me of something, but I couldn’t hear over the tantrum screaming of my demons wanting to rampage. The first sip was instantaneous. The vodka separated from the orange juice and crashed on my tongue. It was destructively orgasmic. I felt the earthquake throughout my body. The convolution was a jailbreak-- the deranged prisoner free as hotness sprinted down my throat leaving tracks of fire. The second sip wasn’t as dramatic, more supportive, but defiantly not the star. The more I drank, the more I was reminded of that hate. I hate everything. I got old. Too many things change. I didn’t like change. I remember scoring the bag of Tina. I remember getting the hotel. I remember getting high and drinking. I remember pulling out the gun. I remember the trigger. I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I was just testing God to see if he would let me die. I know how it sounds. Think about your own life. Think about how you’re fucked up. What would you change?

Broken hearts break razor-sharp. Unfinished hearts haunt like ghosts who didn’t die peacefully. Even as I lay dying, my heart wouldn’t let him go. Because, the second I jumped off his cliff, I wanted to live. My last thought was of him. I saw him bathing in a river of light. I was there with him. He told me to put my head underneath the light, to let it drown me. I tried to explain to him that if I put my head under the pool of light I would die. He said to trust him. So I did it. I let myself drown. I pulled the trigger. I didn’t die.
******************
The beginning. I wasn’t looking for love, anything but love. Aging parti Boys like me: heartbreakers, living fast to die young, conflicted, self-destructing, soulless --were to have and not to hold. Boys like me were outside the radar. The world had forgotten about boys like me. Boys like me were doomed.

So when I met him in that place, he was supposed to be just a fuck. I wasn’t looking for love. And they say when your life is about to change, it’s nothing special, that day was nothing special. I arrived at the bookstore, paid my five dollars for a fist full of coins for the video booths. I hardly ever used those coins. If I wanted to just watch porn, I would’ve stayed home. I wanted sweaty flesh. Bookstores were all the same. I loved the hunt. I loved the second the bored clerk pushed the button to let me in the back, into the darkness, how I would tighten my baseball cap on my head and pull it down on my eyes. That buzzing sound separated the worlds. On the outside I was somebody’s brother, son, co-worker or even father. But on the inside, I was nothing but a hard dick, a sloppy hole, a steamy mouth or gentle sticky hand. On the outside, I was a uniform but on the inside I was just naked. On the inside, behind those dark walls, I was only my waistline, my youth, masculinity and eagerness to please. The second I was behind the door, on the inside, I became a predator or prey. It was on the inside that I felt the safest, maybe because I didn’t have to be anything but a body. Maybe because I knew the hunt. I didn’t have to be a personality, just flesh. I didn’t have to be happy. I didn’t have to be nothing. On the inside, I’d immediately go the bathroom and do a hit of Tina. I’d then sip from my one liter coke bottle filled with rum and coke. I’d sniff my poppers to remind me of my aching lust. I’d lube up my hole just in case. I’d avoid the mirror.

The hunt was always the same. It was to appear available but not desperate. I hadn’t been on the inside for more than five minutes when I saw him. He was standing against a wall. He had his hood on his head but raised his shirt when I walked by to reveal his flat stomach. I circled him three times before he spoke.
Sup with you.
Nothing.
You trying to get into something?
Basically.
So what's up?
Not much.
You come here often?
Does it matter?
What’s in that coke bottle?
Holy water.
You trying to get fucked up?
I’m already fucked up
It seemed like a stupid question. I didn’t pay attention to his face. I kept my eyes on his stomach, looking for a rise in his red sweatpants. I didn’t like talk. I found that talking in that place confused people.
I want to fuck.
You have to take your clothes off first.
You want to come to my crib?
And why would I do that, when I'm already here?
What is your name?
My name is Sean.
You didn’t ask me my name.
I don’t care. And what if I want to fuck you?
I don't get fucked.
Everybody gets fucked one way or the other. Besides, we're already here.
I don't just be fucking anywhere.
And why did you come here?
I don't know.
You live in DC?
I live in Maryland
Should've guessed.
Where do you live?
Close.
We could go to your crib.
My place is crowded.
I started to walk away. He already had asked one too many questions. He didn’t need to know about my life. Yet, I stayed even when I noticed that I was being cruised by another guy who grabbed his dick so that I could see its print. He was an older guy, a little heavy, not the type I’d immediately give my time, more the desperate type when I couldn’t find anything else, so I decided to entertain my new prey.
What does that mean?
It means I don't live alone.
And?
And you look threatening, with that whole young black male thug channel five news look.
Looks can be deceiving.
I didn’t say I didn’t like it.
You're not afraid of me?
Should I be?
I ain't going to do shit to you.
I was hoping we do something.
I don't usually do this.
Do what?
Get down like this.
He stared to bore me. I hated the down low type that hyper masculinity bathed in pain and secrecy that killed souls.
I'm not going home with you. We fuck here or we don't fuck at all.
I ain’t going to do nothing to you.
Now you begging.
I ain't begging.
You're ruining my buzz.
Why you tripping?
What are you promising?
You won't be disappointed.
Heard it all before.
I'm gonna go.
He seemed nervous. I thought to myself maybe it was his first time, that he was a bookstore virgin. He didn’t understand the rules.
Take a sip of this.
Damn that shit is straight liquor.
It has rum in it. .
And you're drinking like its water.
You smoke weed?
You trying to get me fucked up?
I'm just trying to get you to relax.
You got condoms?
And lube, so relax.
Do you always get this fucked up?
Yeah.
Maybe you should think about slowing down.
No.

We found a booth and locked the door. The rule was only one occupant per booth but no one ever followed that rule. I really didn’t like bookstores because there was no privacy. Strangers had driven holes in the walls and doors to peak and steal glimpses of what they failed to get. I preferred bathhouses. That place was a dump, might as well been fucking in a dumpster. Sober, it was even more depressing that’s why I had to get fucked it. The floors were always sticky with spilled liquor, used condoms, spit and men abortions. The booths were gutted shack houses, barely hanging onto their hinges. But it was dark and I guessed that’s what black men who hid their faces and eyes with baseball caps or hoods wanted. It was also cheap, didn’t cost more than a fast meal. They were other places, better places, but the city was DC, and the other places were white, and for some reason Black men liked the darker and trashier back alleys. Black men, the trendy down low, who left their girlfriends and wives at home to read the latest E. Lynn Harris book. Nothing about that place or life was romantic. Just desperate. In the winter, in that place, they sometimes didn’t even turn on the heat. The owner was of course some white fat fag who didn’t care about niggas. Niggas took over the place sometime in the early nineties, instead of shutting it down, he raised the price. That place took money from mostly black hands or white men looking for the big black dick and treated everyone like shit. The clerks were always rude, never had time, acted like they were better because they were on the outside. Ironically, that place, in their advertisements were the typical chiseled white men in white jockstraps, but in reality that place was filled with black faces, timberlands, chronic, nappy hair and musky funk. That place didn’t respect us, knew that too many of us were just looking to release shame. They treated us like niggas who were fags. But I guess that’s what we wanted, to be invisible, voiceless, not cause any trouble or bring attention to ourselves. That was the life that some black gay men barely owned. That was the life that I barely owned like renting furniture three times its price cuz I had bad credit.

We started slowly. I pulled out a small bottle of lube from my pocket and wet my black hole again. I let him put his cold hands on my stomach. He unzipped and let his frustration breath. I liked for a man to undress me after he has undressed. I liked to see and feel his solid erection rubbing against me unapologetically. I liked to see the physical manifestation of how much he wanted me. And from the size of his raging bull in his red jogging pants, he wanted me like the thirsty dreamed of water. He let his pants fall to his ankles. He was an eager nine inches. High and feeling invincible, I just watched him. There’s something very virginal yet corrupt when I am fully clothed and the other was naked. I let him take off my shirt first. I whispered in his ear to go slow, because the worse part of me was romantic and loved the production and illusion of intimacy. He leisurely slid my shirt over my head, temporarily arresting me in darkness. The smell of my own musk and citrus cologne passing my nose served as a quick aphrodisiac. I was now shirtless. He pressed his warm body against mine. He kissed my neck, and then slid down to my nipples. My nipples had always been the most sensitive part of my body. He played with them like a little kid with his favorite toy. I let myself relax. He ran his hand over my crotch and then grab for my hand to hold his. It was almost romantic. He unbuttoned my pants and slowly slid the zipper down. I felt the vibrations of every ridge. Just like him, I wasn’t wearing any underwear. I arched my back inwardly so that he could place those cold masculine hands on my waist. He let my jeans fall to my knees. I felt primal. I was ready for him to drown me with his wicked intentions. Tongues and hands became drunk with heat and search for even hotter hidden places. My dark sexy body twisted and moaned. He directed my body to bend over. His frisky curious tongue devoured my sensitive manhole with intense unapologetic aggression. I found myself digging into the dingy wall with my stumpy nails, feeling the pendulum swing of heat. I was free. I wanted him to fuck me. I was begging for him to fuck me. Instead, he decided to flip the script on me and flipped me over like a rag doll. He positioned my body so that he towered over me. The look in his sultry eyes told me that he wanted to feel the moisture of my steamy rum and coke mouth on his throbbing precumming dick. I obeyed. My mouth was salivating, dripping with spit, as I sucked him. He was so hard. I loved it. I let him drive his dick into the back of my throat. Spit overflowed, slippery and wet, my mouth hot and inviting, slow than fast than slow again. I could feel him want to give in, because his knees were weakening and the storm in his eyes had silenced for rain. But we weren’t finished. He casually pulled himself out of my salivating mouth. I stood up, a little dizzy, feeling salacious with adrenaline and ready to give my body to him to do with as he pleased. I quickly sniffed my poppers letting the fumes thin my blood and relax my muscles. He pressed me against the wall again. He spread my legs. Touch was sensitive. I felt ever inch, fingerprint, hair follicle, breath and thought. He kissed the back of my neck. I felt slippery. He slapped his dick on my ass getting it as hard as it was going to get. I sniffed my poppers again. I closed my eyes. I had been pressed against that wall so many times as if I never left it. He inserted himself. I knew the feeling well how the snake slithers passed the slippery doors and dance. I rode the friction. I softly moaned. I sniffed my poppers. I spread my legs wider. I arched my back. I rode the friction. The high from the poppers made me start hallucinating and I felt as if I was sinking into that wall. I could see my reflection. I could see the ghosts of black boys like myself who’d been fucked in that same booth now gone. I sniffed my poppers. I begged for him to go deeper. I was safe. In that booth, I was safe. I didn’t have to be anybody, do nothing with my life, and just get fucked. Twenty minutes later, “Oh nigga, you gonna make me cum!”

Afterwards, I remember first looking at my watch and then at him. It was the first time I really saw his face. In the dark booth, a blue neon light flashed across his face like a short-circuited hotel sign. He fell back against the other side of the booth and opened his eyes. We were now staring at each other. On the inside, lusting, two men only see flesh - a body to use and be used. After lust, when dicks go soft and words not so easy, we were just two human beings seeing each other in harsh light for the first time. I immediately grabbed the waist of my jeans and pull them to my hips. I was ready for my next prey. I couldn’t help but look at his face. He was cute. His eyes were lucid and clairvoyant, stabbing through me like he gave birth to me. His eyes, two oval universes of complicated hazel and unpretentious. He was beautiful. I didn’t like that he was taller and thinner than me. I didn’t know he was so young. He looked like a baby no more than twenty years old. He looked so innocent. And then he smiled as too comfort me or to say “Hello, again.” I buttoned my jeans. He pulled the condom from his dick and let it land on the floor. I handed him a napkin to wipe his dick. I thought he would get embarrassed and immediately run for the door and I’d never see him again. He grabbed the napkin and wiped his dick and then placed it in his t-shirt pocket. I thought it was funny that he would leave his used condom on the floor but put the napkin in his pocket. He pulled up his jogging pants. I decided to leave.
Are you leaving?
We’re finished.
What’s your name again?
Sean? No, it’s Michael
That was weird. I’d never given anyone my real name in years. I immediately regretted it. I blamed the poppers and my head being a little light. But I was always high so I knew it was more than a slip-up.
I thought you told me Sean
I did. I lied.
So why you telling me the truth now?
I don’t know.
Well my name is Chris.
Is that your real name?
I wouldn’t lie to you.
You should.
I want to see you again?
Why?
I don’t know.
Give me your number and I will call you.
I wasn’t going to call. Bookstores and Bathhouses weren’t the stories you told your kids how I met Daddy. And I wasn’t looking for love. Anything but love. I figured because he was a bookstore virgin he didn’t know the rules. And he looked so cute and innocent, like he’d just got a girl pregnant and wanted to do the right thing. I didn’t want to upset his ignorance. I figured I would pretend with him. He pulled me close to him, reached into my pocket, grabbed my cell phone and programmed his number. I told myself I would delete it on the walk home.
You’re not going to call; I can see it in your eyes.
You don’t trust me.
You already lied to me.
Well…
It doesn’t matter because I believe in maybe.
What is that suppose to mean?
It means I have faith in you.
What, you’re some religious freak.
No. Damn you’re difficult.
You don’t even know me.
You will call.
How you figure that?
Because you won’t let me get the last sentence.
You’re funny.
He was so damn sure of himself, to be so young. And then again, I was at the point where I’d decided everyone knew the answer but me. He opened the door and left. I swear immediately I felt changed. I missed him. I fell back against the wall and smiled. It was instant. I didn’t know what it was at first, but I knew I wasn’t the same. After all the men, all their lines and lies, he felt new. Usually at a place like that, I liked to come undone. I liked to get fucked and abused until my hole was sloppy and overflowed with stench of cum. I liked turning my back to the wall, with my pants down to my ankles, sniff my poppers and just be used. I liked the concrete on my knees. In that place, I didn’t want to be beautiful. I wanted to be ugly. I liked to get so numb and fell no pain and no sense of identity but be completely hopeless like the spit, spilled liquor and men’s abortion on the floor. In that place, I wasn’t looking for release. Sex for me had always been empty. I never really enjoyed it. I’d fuck ten men in one night and still want more. I would stay on my knees until they bled and still want more. I’d take dick in the ass, mouth, hands, face, between the thighs, threesome, gangbang, S&M and still want more. I could never be satisfied. I just needed to exhaust my body. After he left me, I suddenly wasn’t hungry anymore. I didn’t feel like the hunt. I decided to go home. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Shit, my life was already complicated enough.
*************
I was thirty-one years old and drowning. I had been questioning my existence. It was like a huge gush of wind had pushed me into the deep end of the pool and I couldn’t swim. I was struggling, choking on panic as frantic hands tried to grab the edges but slipping. I didn’t even know if I wanted to live--and that’s fucked up when you’re drowning, not knowing if you want to live or not. I could never stay sober enough time to make the decision. The days began to blend into each other. I was getting older against my will. I didn’t believe in anything. No self-preservation. Just destruction. I had been questioning. I realized my plan to die at twenty five years old like James Dean, young and tragic had failed.
********************
I had to make a choice. I was questioning my existence. I tried to make myself forget about him. I waited an entire week before I decided to call. I just wanted to talk. I hadn’t had a real conversation in years. I thought about him a lot. I couldn’t get him out of my mind. And I tried to get clean. I found myself writing his name. Even when I touched myself, his memory only appeared. I tried to think about other fucks, but it always came back to him. I could only get off thinking about him. I wanted to know why, so I decided to call him. I was nervous. I figured he’d forgotten all about me. I figured he wouldn’t answer the phone. I dialed his number one night on my way back from the gym. I prayed that he didn’t answer. I prayed that he pretend like he didn’t know me and hang up the phone in my face. I prayed that he’d be cruel, so that I could awake from fantasizing about him. He answered. I tried to be nonchalant. I told him I was just calling because I accidentally found his number. He laughed. He invited me over to his place. I felt myself go cold. I wanted to say no, but instead I was taking directions. I was changing directions. I just wanted to talk. I didn’t want to see him. It took a subway ride and two buses to get to his house. He didn’t live in the best neighborhood. I was sober. I hadn’t had the chance to stop by the liquor store. I hoped there would be one in his neighborhood. I couldn’t find one. I started to turn back around but I was already at his apartment. I knocked on the door. I hoped he would have liquor. He opened his door. I figured in the unforgiving hallway lights he’d change his mind that I wouldn’t be so appealing outside the bookstore, or even better, he wouldn’t be as cute as I remembered. He opened his door and he was still beautiful. He was even better looking. He had on no shirt, just white gym shorts, no socks or shoes. He’d just got his hair braided by a good friend. He didn’t tell me his friends would be over. I felt paralyzed in the hallway. I had come from the gym. I didn’t even take a shower. I had on a baseball cap, wife beater, jeans and my infamous sandals. I thought he would slam the door in my face. He told me to come in and put my stuff in his room. I walked into his humble apartment, he was obviously young, and most of his furniture looked like it came from a flea market. I walked to his room and laid my bag down on his bed, tried to think of an excuse where I could leave early, and then I felt him behind me, his breath on the back of my neck, and when I turned around he pushed me on the bed, and we started kissing. He tore off my wife beater, promised to buy me another one, but I didn’t care about the shirt. In the next breath he was out of his shorts, and he was so damn hard, but I had to stop him, there were other people in the next room, people I didn’t know. He grabbed a towel, folded his hard dick against his stomach and wrapped a thick baby blue towel around his waist. He hurried outside to his friends and told them they had to go. When they protested, he apologized but told them they had to get out of his house, that he would talk to them later. I heard shuffling, some cursing, but soon it was quiet, and a door shut. I felt like a bitch who just got roses for Valentine’s day that he would put his friends out just for me. He came back to the room, without his towel, his dick still rock hard. I removed my jeans, and we attacked each other like two wolves in the wild. I’d missed him. My body missed him.

At the bus stop going home, I knew I was in trouble. I hadn’t had sex sober with another human-being since I was a teenager. I knew I was in trouble because I knew the feeling. It was the same feeling like the first time I did ecstasy how suddenly everything became lucid. I felt complete. I knew I was in trouble. And I kept going back. Every time I would leave him, I’d tell myself that it was the last time, but I kept going back. I had found a new drug. And Love was instant. Nobody told me it would be that fast. That anyone could fall that fast. I mean I heard of love at first sight, but I was a rational person. I had become a pro at avoiding emotion. I felt as if my life had become a bad sitcom and that corny shit wasn’t supposed to happen to boys like me. Love just infected and asked questions later. Love didn’t care I didn’t love myself. Love didn’t care I wasn’t ready. I remember one Sunday, and I had been seeing him for a couple of months, and I was lying in his arms tormented. I started thinking about shit I never worried about. I still couldn’t keep a job. I didn’t have a bank account. I had bad credit. I still didn’t own my life. I was still a fuck up and drank everyday. Nothing had slowed down or changed, except for the fact I was in love. I knew it. I’d never known the feeling but I knew I was in love. It was all wrong. I needed to wake up fast. I tried the cold showers. I was in his arms that Sunday and my mind was telling me to run because somebody was going to get hurt. I knew it was going to me. I begin to feel like a prisoner. I was lying in his arms that Sunday, watching some god-awful movie about dragons, and he kept giving away all the scenes, and my mind was screaming. I was in his arms, his right hand on my stomach, could feel him smiling and when I tried to get up to leave, run, the farthest I would get was his eyes --then it was back to his lips. His lips were magnetic, refusing to let me go. I could taste blood when I kissed him. My heart was in between his teeth. I couldn’t run, but I was going to try. And the fucked up thing about love was that it’s unforgiving. There I was in the brightest light, naked. Who was I? I didn’t know who I was anymore. Who was I? Who was Sean? First, Sean wasn’t my real name. He was my alter ego. He was someone I created to escape Michael. I kept asking myself if it was Michael or Sean in love with him. Because Sean didn’t fall in love. Sean wanted to run, but Michael wanted to stay. I told him my real name, so I knew it was Michael in love, but I couldn’t have him. There I was, in his arms, on trial. Love takes your soul to court. Can’t hide from love. There I was on the stand, naked, with the bright light illuminating all my flaws and indiscretions. I kept thinking could he possibly love me, if he knew. I didn’t even know my HIV status. I’d done too much. I never thought I would care nor have a reason to care. There were too many questions I wasn’t ready to deal with. I couldn’t imagine that he could love me back? I had accepted that I was just a fuck up. I was suppose to die tragically, that was the plan. Why was the universe fucking up the plan? I had accepted that I might end up on the streets, some crazy homeless man. Boys like me were insignificant. I wasn’t supposed to fall in love. I wasn’t worth love. I couldn’t understand my emotions anymore. And there I was in his arms, in love, knowing that it was impossible. Such a fucked up word, love. And I kept wondering how he did it. There were too many others and I never felt a thing. There were others who treated me kind and gave me things but I never felt a thing. I never loved anybody. And I kept wondering how did he do it? Like did he do some voodoo like pee in my lemonade, steal a lock of my hair, or feed me his blood in a stew? I wanted to know how he crept in my soul, so I could find a cure. I needed to take the sharpest knife and remove the feeling. I knew nothing good could come from it. I wasn’t supposed to love. I was supposed hurt for the rest of my life. I knew I needed to find a way out. And then he did what I feared most, started asking me questions.

How many men have you slept with?
Why you want to know?
Just curious.
That’s a boyfriend question.
Then pretend I’m your boyfriend.
I don't know. I stopped counting a long time ago.
How many do you guess?
You really want to know?
Don't get shy now.
Over a 1000, maybe 2000.
Damn.

I felt exposed. I never thought anybody would ask that question. I never thought I fuck one person more than two times. And he said.

I could be happy.
Be it.
I could be happy with you.
Maybe.
Maybe what?
I could be a fool.
A fool in love?
I could be a fool stupid enough to think I could be happy with you.
You could?
Maybe. Maybe not. I have to get home.
Spend the night.
I have things to do tomorrow.
. I knew from the very first moment I saw you. I was going to be your savior.
Don't say stupid shit like that.
Why? You don't want to be rescued?
Just don't. You confuse me.
You're afraid of me. I see it in your eyes. You want to run, but you can't. I got you.
Let's not ruin the moment with all this irrelevant sentiment. Believe what you want to believe. It always ends the same.

***************

At first I thought I wanted freedom from him because I didn’t want to deal with the responsibility of a relationship. I didn’t want to have to give up anything, be compromised. I knew I wasn’t ready. I was too old to change. He was too young. I had too many issues. It just wasn’t going to work. Yet, the heart wants what it wants. It started to fuck with my mind. I couldn’t cheat. I tried sleeping with other guys but I couldn’t do it. I started thinking about bills. I started thinking about his bills and us getting a better place. And then I would get so pissed. I just couldn’t just the feeling. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I wanted a life with him. I was so afraid. I knew he was just playing with me. I was like the mouse and he was the damn cat. I just wanted him to get it over with. It was all excuses. I had to pick a fight. I had to find some way to get out of it.

How did I get here again?
You keep coming back.
You really need to get some furniture. I've been having sex with you almost a year on this raggedy mattress.
You haven't been complaining so far.
Maybe I'm too sober.
Are you staying the night?
No.
I want you to stay.
Why?
I don't know.

You've gotten comfortable.
What's that suppose to mean?
You broke our agreement.
Which is?
You fell in love with me.
That's bullshit.
Yes, that bullshit.
I think you're in love with me.
That's interesting.
You keep coming back.
You're a good fuck.
And you tell me personal things.
After a couple of cocktails, there isn't anything I probably won't tell you.
You act like my bitch, complaining all the time.
Lately you've been acting like the bitch. You've gotten comfortable.
You just have to fuck things up, don't you?
You're becoming weak.
What's with the suitcase? You moving in here?
And you'd just let me?
Why not?
It wouldn't work.
You mean you don't want to try.
I don't want to talk about it.
Why do you get like this?
What?
All depressed. If you so damn unhappy, why don't you do something about it instead of bitch and complain.
I like bitching and complaining.
You like suffering.
Maybe I do.
All because your mother left you in a hotel when you were nine.
She abandoned me! She walked away and left me alone.
And that's your excuse.
Not good enough for you?

That's all it is, an excuse.
Habits are hard to break.
You are so full of bullshit, you know that? You do what you do because you're lazy. You lack discipline. You don't want to try. You've been lucky that you had people in your life that's allowed your laziness, your excuses. You ain't fooling me.
Is that your version of "Telling me like it is?"
Somebody needs to.
Heard it all before.
You just haven't listened.
You don't know me.
I think you get off on people not knowing you. Is that knowing you? And what if I do feel something for you? You're just going to walk away.
I warned you.
I ain't that motherfucker going around falling in love with every nigga I see.
And look what you fell in love with.
And what is so wrong with you?
You just don't see it, do you?
You're just crazy that's all. We can get passed it.
We? Have you really thought about what you're proposing? "We" is more than me just meeting you here at night to fuck. You're not ready.
No more ready than you are.
This isn't an argument.
So what's with your suitcase?
Don't ask stupid questions.
When?
I came to say goodbye.
Where are you going?
I don't know.
Good plan. And what are you running away from this time?
Good question.
I know this isn't the first time.
But this time is different.
How?
It just is.
And what about me?
You will figure it out.
You can't keep doing this.
Doing what?
You know what you do.
I told you in the beginning not to fall in love with me.
But I am.
That's your problem. You were warned. What did you think, that you would be different?
Yes.
Your mistake.
I don't know what to say to you.
Don’t say anything.
Who do you love?
Nobody. I don't even love myself.
I don't believe you.
I don't give a damn about what you believe. I don't give a damn about you.
I don't believe you.
I have to go.
Where?
Away.
What are you fighting for?
What?
It was a simple question.
Goodbye Chris.
Go to hell Michael.
That's how you're going to say goodbye to me.
What else am I am suppose to say. Thank you for breaking my heart. You are a sorry ass nigga and I never should've fuck with you in the first place. Get the fuck out of my house. GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE NIGGA!
I'm sorry.


It had to be that cruel. It had to be that cold. It had to be that confusing. It was the only way I knew he would let me go. I had to wear him down. I had to make him think I wasn’t savable. I wasn’t savable. After I shot myself, I knew death was real.
Think about your own life. Think about how you’re fucked up. What would you change? I would change everything.