Where the Boys Are, page 12
But hey, it’s no use crying over spilled sperm. Some sage pointed out that the very best rock and roll was made when you were eighteen—no matter when you were born. Nope, things aren’t what they used to be. And they never were. Still, I can’t help but wonder whether, in some globally warmed future, some aging pornographer will look back on the Arctic Monkeys and cruising Craigslist with the same unforgivably sloppy sentimentality I reserve for the Velvet Underground and wild nights at the Boot Camp.
I know, I know. The struggle for queer liberation comes down to much more than a furtive blow job in the dark. Of course, of course. And times change. New HIV treatments have brought some of us, like lecherous Lazaruses, up from the brink of the grave and back down on our knees. Folsom, despite its annual S/M street fair, may be a pale shadow of its former raunchy self, but the Castro is vibrant again, even if there’s a Pottery Barn hovering above its now-unaffordable precincts. Guys still gather for group fucks at places ranging from the Citadel to the Faerie House. And if barebacking and crystal meth are inviting the Angel of Death to stick around for a while, if desperate men still search for love and find ashes instead, if an endless quest for penis can be, in point of fact, rather problematical…well, there have been quite enough threnodies, thank you very much. Too many, in fact.
Because even now, even at the very moment you’re reading this sentence, somewhere or other in San Francisco, two men who have just met are naked before each other, erect, and for one long orgasmic moment, everything is, for them, joyful and beautiful and right.
Same as it was at the Boot Camp on some long-ago dark, wild night.
HALF-LIFE
Dale Chase
It’s something the doctor says. In with admonishments toward better habits, good diet, and reduced stress comes a throw-away line that jabs me like another needle. “While you’re at it,” the doc says as he turns to leave, “take a look at what’s underneath.”
He doesn’t wait for a reply, probably because he knows men are reluctant to explore the underpinnings, especially when it smells down there. I shut my eyes and feel the ooze begin to rise. The heart monitor takes note with a faster beat.
ICU is not a good place to be at forty-eight. Captive with mortality, the pain of both the heart attack and emergency angioplasty still fresh, I am caught in a muzzle of gratitude and fear. Dr. Robbins says I’ve “stabilized,” assures me the worst is over, yet as I lie here and allow what’s underneath I almost want to laugh because stable I will never be.
Relax, I tell myself. Rest. Recover. I try to let go of all thought and for a few seconds it almost works but the audible beep of my heart reminds me this isn’t some leisurely summer afternoon and who in hell can relax when his heart has failed?
My mind is always too busy and maybe that’s part of the problem, that hit-the-ground-running that starts when I open my eyes each morning. It never really lets up unless I focus on something—usually work but sometimes other things. Men, actually. Men. A familiar twinge rolls from spine to crotch and I remind myself to stay calm even as my hand slides down between my legs.
My wants are clear yet complicated. From the distant past I call up the weight of a cock on my tongue, the feel of the thing as I trace the shaft and finally close around the knob to suck. I pull on my limp dick as the climax replays but I don’t get hard. I know it’s the heart thing, trussed up as I am here with wires and machines, full of blood thinners. So stop thinking about it. Maureen will be here soon with plans for my recovery: low-fat diet, long walks. I see us on the nature trail, side by side in our fleece and it’s a cold fall day but then my butt is up and he’s got his dick in me, fucking my ass, and I’m creaming in the sheets and going ballistic, begging him to do it, Fuck me, fuck me—
“Mr. Cahill?”
My eyes pop open, my breath catches. A nurse stands over me, the bedside beep having summoned her. “What are you feeling?” she asks. “Are you in pain?”
I can’t speak. My chin quivers because I can’t tell her I’m in the middle of a mind-fuck and would she get the hell out.
“Mr. Cahill,” she says, alarm in her tone.
“No, I’m fine,” I manage. “Bad dream. It’s nothing. I’m fine, really.”
“Are you in pain?”
“No.”
But I am, of course, awakening here in the ICU. Before, it was something undefined, skating along on a cushion of malaise, but now there’s a smell down there and I crave it deeply.
The nurse fusses over me a bit more, then retreats with a skeptical eye. Don’t think of men, I tell myself, and then Maureen arrives.
She is loving and attentive; I am receptive and appropriate. We are well practiced, after all. As I listen to her news I think about a cock in me. My hand is still on my dick.
She stays the afternoon, then tells me her friend Jan is taking her to dinner to cheer her up. I am enthusiastic because I do care. I also want her gone.
When I’m alone, dark coming on, I carefully revisit my life but Maureen trails along like some little sister and I allow it for maybe a minute, because I dare not give it more than that, what it would be were I unstuck. I see the cock; I see myself turn and bend. When I get out of here all I’m going to do is fuck.
Next day I’m moved to the cardiac care unit where I’m attended by a handsome young Latino who has no idea I’m interested in what’s in his pants. While he tells of a brother-in-law also felled with a heart attack, now fully recovered and stronger than ever, I keep my hand on my dick, which gives me a modest thrill. The situation is amusing in a depressing sort of way.
Convalescence is an awful word, old sounding, but that’s what I descend into. Recovery is no better, tainted with addiction. Whatever, the six weeks are long and tedious as I confront my life without the escape of work. Maureen is efficient, as I knew she would be. We embark on the low-fat diet, we walk and walk. We talk more than ever—about the kids, the house, life in general—and it’s as we reach the three mile point on the trail one day and turn back to retrace our steps that I allow that I don’t want this life anymore. It’s not a bad life but it doesn’t have to be a bad life, just the wrong life. Like I detoured early and never got back to the main track. A half life rather than a whole.
Maureen is talking about our oldest son, Andy, who’s in his second year at USC and I’m agreeing but the long-suppressed part of me inches toward the ooze. When a jogger approaches, in his thirties maybe, in shorts and tee, my body awakens and for the few seconds he passes I consider what’s in those shorts. My dick starts to fill and I want to bare my ass here and now and do it. Fuck me, for god’s sake, fuck me. When he’s gone I switch back on automatic, become more animated with Maureen.
I haven’t fucked her since the heart attack and she understands and I play on that even as I jerk off in the shower to thoughts of sex with faceless men. I see a line of hard cocks. When one finishes, I bend for another.
Middle of week five I give way. While Maureen plays tennis I sit at the computer and wade into possibility on Craigslist. I’ve always kept myself from such indulgence so I know this is part of the heart thing, mortality reordering priorities, but who cares in the face of the offers? Some are more demands—Come over and fuck me right now. I free my dick as I read, work myself to a frenzy and spray jizz into a wad of Kleenex.
Returning to work has a surreal quality. I experience a disconnected some-other-guy feeling, accepting welcomes as I make my way to my office. Like a third-party observer, I become acutely aware of every move, every gesture. Opening a drawer I note my hand is the one I wrap around my dick to get off. Starting my computer, I think of the bounty of Craigslist. At the ten o’clock sales meeting I accept kind words, jostling fun, but as I try to reconnect with what I do for a living I still feel once removed. I also find a certain relief at being out of this particular loop; nobody expects input from me due to the long absence. I fix my eyes on my notepad and tell myself to role-play for a while, act my life until I get the hang of it again, but then I hear a familiar voice. It’s Tim Silvey, the new guy. I slowly look up.
Tim is single, thirty-two, and gay. His sandy good looks and quiet energy captured me from day one and have since kept me stuck like some bug pinned to a board. He’s got a wonderful warm low-key sort of animation, highly personable and thus a born salesman. Everybody likes him. As he speaks of business I experience an awful rush. My heart begins to pound, my cock to stiffen, which forces me to admit this is where my near-demise began. I want this man so much it’s painful. I look down at my yellow lined pad where my hand grips the pen in near desperation.
Sweat breaks out across my forehead as Tim cedes the floor to others. A spirited discussion of sales strategy ensues and where I’d usually jump in, I retreat. My mouth goes dry; my throat starts closing up. I rise, excuse myself with as much calm as I can muster, keeping the yellow pad in front of me to hide the erection. In the bathroom I hurry into a stall because I want privacy but once there I’m lost. Is it my heart or my mind? Am I terribly sick or terribly well?
“Keith?”
It’s Tim and I don’t know what to say. I can’t even acknowledge myself and maybe that’s most telling.
“You okay in there?” he asks.
“Yes,” I rasp.
“That doesn’t sound okay. Is it your heart or maybe some anxiety? I can understand that, six weeks away then dumped into barracuda central. C’mon, come out of there, talk to me.”
I am seated because it’s what you do in here unless you’re jerking off, which I did a lot those last weeks and oh god this is hell. I am coming unglued but my dick is still hard and that’s how they’ll find the body. “Well would you look at that,” one paramedic will say to another. “Dick still up and him gone.”
“Keith,” Tim says. “I’m not going away.”
When I don’t respond, he tells me what I need to hear, what I have needed to hear since he first walked in the door three months ago. “You know, I feel it too. The attraction is mutual, okay?”
Mutual. I seize on the word, my mind undone. Mutual masturbation, mutual fund, our competitor Provident Mutual. The word runs laps inside my head until I unlatch the door. Tim pushes it open but doesn’t join me. “Everybody’s concerned,” he says, which is not what I want to hear and he sees this. “Especially me,” he adds.
“I want to go to my office,” I tell him. “Forget the meeting, just be quiet for a while.”
“Sure. Can you get up?”
I look into warm brown eyes. “I don’t know. Pretty shaky.” Except in my cock where my entire blood supply has apparently pooled. Sex is the last thing I want right now but tell that to a dick. Tim takes my arm, I rise to him, and we stand there in the stall doorway for a few seconds, allowing the thing that exists between us. It’s the best I’ve felt in six weeks.
I splash cold water over my face, rejoice in reinvigoration. My breathing calms; everything settles. A limp dick has never been so welcome. Tim remains nearby and as I mop up he suggests we meet for a drink after work. “Sit and talk awhile.”
“You know I’m married,” I blurt.
“I know.”
“Okay then.”
We work in Walnut Creek, an upscale suburb twenty miles east of San Francisco and five miles north of Danville, the even more upscale bedroom community where I live. “How about La Tapitia?” Tim says. “Great margaritas.”
I nod. “I’m sorry about all this.”
“Don’t be. It’s okay. See you at five?”
“See you then.”
“You okay to get back to your office?”
“Yes. I’m surprisingly fine.”
He smiles, gives me a playful punch on the shoulder, and leaves. I make my way to my office, joking with concerned coworkers that I should have known better than to start with a sales meeting. In my office I shut the door, sit at my desk, and turn toward a view I seldom notice: Mount Diablo with greater Walnut Creek at its feet, elevated BART tracks cutting in front, cars down on Main Street. It all looks new.
Gradually I embrace what is happening even as I’m not sure exactly what that is. Meeting Tim to talk, yes, but what about? Is he getting me off-site so I won’t make a scene when he tells me he doesn’t date married men? Or men he works with? Is he going to explain how he’s a San Francisco guy who happens to work over here so his life is more there than here and I’m just too suburban? Or maybe he has a lover. Oh shit, I never thought of that but then I never really thought at all. Resist was all I ever did. Partner. That’s what it is now. Maybe he’s got a partner and they fucked this morning and he’s not about to do the middle-aged married guy.
It takes minutes to make myself miserable and the rest of the day to talk my way out of it. When I head for La Tapitia shortly before five, I feel an exhausted kind of elation, which is probably best.
Tim is already there, pitcher of margaritas in front of him, and when I sit he pours me one. As we lift our drinks he says, “Welcome back.”
A waitress materializes. “Can I get you gentlemen some appetizers?”
Tim looks at me like we do this all the time. “Chips and salsa?”
I nod, realizing the girl thinks were a couple. This makes me giddy, embarrassed. I break into a smile.
“That’s what I like to see,” Tim says. “You feeling better?”
I blow out a long sigh. “Much, thanks to you.” There’s more but I sip my drink instead. Licking salt off my lips, glancing at Tim, I feel suddenly empowered. “You know, the whole episode had a lot to do with you,” I say. “Nothing negative on your part, don’t get me wrong. It was all me…but…centered on you. Those months before, when you first arrived…”
He’s locked on to me now and I struggle for a second, then press on. “Those months were agony, trying to hold back.”
“I had no idea.”
“Well, I didn’t want you to. I mean the last thing I wanted was to be coming on to a guy who’s not interested and I wouldn’t know how anyway. God, I’m just some ruin.”
“I don’t see you that way at all.”
“No?”
He shakes his head so slowly it’s a come-on in itself. “What I do see is an attractive older guy trying to contain his desire and the levee finally gave way.”
“He nearly drowned.”
The chips and salsa arrive but we hardly notice. I’m aware of restaurant sounds—clinking glasses, the hum of conversation—but they’re mere accompaniment to what is taking place between us. I sip my drink and he does his, our eyes meeting over the glasses. I’m aroused again but for once it’s okay and I savor the feel of a dick that’s hard for the man sitting across from me.
“Want to come to my place?” Tim says.
I nod and tell him I have to call my wife. “Is that a problem?” he asks.
I don’t care if it is but I don’t say this. “No, shouldn’t be.” I take out my phone hoping she doesn’t pick up and mercifully she doesn’t. “Hi honey. Some of the guys are taking me to dinner so I’ll see you later and I know, take it easy. Don’t worry, I will. Don’t wait up.” I know I’m doing her a terrible wrong but can’t help it because what I’m going to do feels so terribly right.
Tim downs the rest of his drink, motions for the check. We are soon on the train to San Francisco, my car left in Walnut Creek. I ask Tim about his place, get him talking about the city I’ve denied myself. Question after question until I finally laugh. “You’d never know I live in the Bay Area, would you, but I don’t get to San Francisco that much. Plays, the symphony. Your world is foreign to me.” He assures me he understands.
We exit the train at Embarcadero and take a cable car up to Polk, then walk four blocks to his building. Polk Street is like a different country and I savor the eclectic mix of character and grunge. Tim lives in a well-maintained, skinny, twenties-era five-story building. It has the smallest elevator I’ve ever seen, and it’s here that he begins. He’s already hit the button for five when he presses himself to me. As we start rumbling upward, he kisses me, hard cock against mine. I open to his tongue, which is voracious, as is his grinding below. I am beside myself with arousal, humping like some mad ape when a bell rings and the car lurches to a stop. Tim pulls off like he’s well practiced at interruptions while I’m lost, caught between floors so to speak. “C’mon,” he says with a grin and I follow him about three feet to his door, which is next to the elevator. In seconds it’s opened and closed and we’re in a colorful studio apartment with a bicycle in the entry, an easel in the corner, and colorful abstract art on the walls. As he kneels to undo my pants and get out my cock, I take in the scenery, probably because where I am doesn’t feel at all real. And even when he’s got a hand on my dick I’m still oddly disconnected, watching the scene, trying to gain a foothold. I look down and he looks up as he opens his mouth. I watch him guide me in.
I shoot like some seventh-grader. Frantic as he sucks the spunk out of me, I grab his head because I have to hold on to something. I can’t help but thrust, such is the torrent. Grunts and slurping and moans and the faint rush of traffic roll into a great ocean of sound and then there’s my conscious thought, which keeps shouting, “I’m there! I’m fucking there!”
When I’m empty Tim doesn’t pull off right away. He diddles my softy, reaches under for my balls, then past them. A finger skates my hole and I flinch.
“Easy,” he says, like I’m some skittish horse. “Easy.”
He leaves my anxious pucker long enough to wet the finger, then returns, prods. I manage a yes and he pushes in, which makes me squirm and he gets the idea, sticks it in all the way, palm plastered on my ass. “Oh yeah,” he says as I ride the digit.
When he pulls out I’m totally lost. I want him in me but all I can do is flail about. “Easy,” he says again. “Undress. Get on the bed.”
