Best Gay Romance 2012, page 12
I search through one of Eric’s photo albums until I find the pictures from Florence.
One of me was taken on a narrow, winding road leading up to the youth hostel. I’m standing in the middle of the road wearing denim shorts and a light blue T-shirt. No shoes. I hold a bottle of mineral water in one hand, a plastic bag in the other. Eric took the picture. I’m in it. But I don’t remember.
I continue my search. And so I find a picture I do remember, a moment I can recall.
We reached the Gare de Lyon in Paris two days after we left Florence. My fever had vanished. I felt good, and happy.
We borrowed an apartment in Montmartre from some Swedish friends, and it became our Parisian base camp.
On the fourth day of our stay in the French capital we visited Centre Pompidou, the cultural center. It was warm, close to forty degrees Centigrade, although it was almost evening. Going up the escalators—enclosed in marvelous Plexiglas pipes that climbed the façade like some giant caterpillar—sickened us somewhat.
When we reached the top floor Eric talked ravishingly about the architecture. He stopped to look at some detail. I passed him and walked on toward the open terrace. I walked up to the metal fence and looked down on the old, slightly inclined square. The heat was not that palpable anymore; there was even a breeze up there. A few blocks away a church bell tolled seven times.
Then Eric called out my name. I turned and looked at him. The wind was softly blowing his hair about as he snapped the picture.
The rain pouring down in my backyard is strangely warm and there is a light smell of brimstone. We are waiting for the next clap of thunder. But, still, the only sound coming through my open window is of heavily falling rain, and almost drowned by that mighty sound are three tolls from my church’s bell. It is late, almost midnight. A single, flickering candle on my sofa table is trying to subdue the dark. Its small flame lights up the orange petals of a gerbera nearby.
You are lying by my side, Daniel. It’s the eighty-second day of our mutual journey and you tell me something about your mother, something about your family. You tell me of trips you have taken, places you have visited. You describe scents and environments, forms and patterns, and I travel with you as the rain keeps falling.
Earlier tonight you were sad. You talked of us—you and me and everybody—as temporary visitors in a room, a room in which we were born, in which we live and die, while the room itself stands untouched, unchanged. As if our selves—our lives, our experiences, our loves—mean nothing to this room. And so you were sad because it all seemed so paltry, while I tried—and still try—to make you, make us, look upon our limited time here as a challenge to experience something exciting and significant.
When the light has died and the rain has ceased I tell you about Eric. Afterward I lie listening to your breathing, Daniel, sharing your scents and the warmth of your body. Underneath my hand your heart is beating. Outside, the church bell tolls one.
“Sometimes when we’re together I can feel Eric’s presence, as if he’s here,” you say. “As if he is still around in some way. As if he wants to give us his approval, his support. Can you feel it too?”
And so we make love once again.
And so the journey continues.
Translated from Swedish by the author.
PROM KING
Rob Rosen
Ten years back, Jack was the prom king, Lisa his queen. Of course, he had other admirers, other queens, so to speak, eyeing him from afar (and a-close). Yours truly, to be exact. Though I was always more like the jester than royalty, skimming the edges of his court, catching stolen glances when he wasn’t aware, bringing a smile to his face when he allowed my lowly, non-football-player presence.
Yes. Bitter, table for one. So sue me.
Anyway, he called me Chuckles, way back when. Though my name is Chuck. Didn’t matter much, really; he could call me whatever he wanted to, just so long as he called. Day or night. Night especially. Of course, that, sadly, never happened.
Except that one time.
Mmm.
See, besides being the class clown, I was also something of a braniac. Straight-A student, debate team and chess club captain. Nerdy chic, I liked to call it. Not that anyone was all that eager to tack on the chic part, but still. In any case, I was surprised when he called and asked (begged) me to come over to help him study. Seems his football scholarship was hanging in the balance. He needed at least a C in biology in order to keep his grade point average where it needed to be.
Hence the call. The ask. The beg.
“I’ll be right over,” I eagerly replied, nearly breathless, and then quickly hung up. No way was I giving him the chance to change his mind.
“That was fast,” he said, not ten minutes later. He was standing in his front door, wearing track shorts. Oh, and nothing else but a smile that shot a spark through my belly before ricocheting from one end of my body to the other.
“I, uh, I don’t live that far away,” I replied. Not that far if I drove eighty miles an hour, that is. Which I did. Red lights be damned.
His grin brightened, shaming the sun as it made its gradual descent that evening. “Cool,” he said, showing me in, the door clicking behind me, causing my heart to skip a beat. And then suddenly I was in the lion’s den. Well, the living room, really, but you get the picture. “Thanks again for coming over,” he said, jumping on the couch, muscles flexing, belly taut, offering the faintest peek up his shorts before he got comfortable. Which made one of us.
“No problem,” I said, trying (failing) to keep my voice from quivering. “I was studying for the same exam anyway.” Sort of. I mean, I already had such a high grade that even if I bombed the exam, which was highly unlikely, I’d still probably get an A. In any case, I sat across from him and plopped my books down on a coffee table. It was then I noticed the silence. “Parents not home yet?”
He shrugged. “Late night at work. As usual. Just us, dude.” His sapphire-blue eyes bore into me, causing a swarm of butterflies to flitter madly about in my gut. He scratched absentmindedly at a dense pec, his index finger running through a smattering of curly blond chest hair.
I gulped and flicked open my textbook, willing myself to look away from him. See, I’d secretly been in love with Jack since the first grade. Head over heels. And now he was nearly naked and alone with me. Alone! I gulped again at the thought of it. Though perhaps this was the reward for my years of patience. And endless, albeit solo, jacking off to visions of him in my head. Amazingly, the visions couldn’t even begin to compete with the reality. And there went that third gulp and the reason I had to look away. Mostly.
“What do you need help with, Jack?” I asked.
He sighed. “All of it,” he replied, glumly. “Science just ain’t my thing, Chuckles.”
English didn’t seem to be faring all that well, either. “Okay, let’s just do the highlights then and hope for the best.” My sigh echoed his, especially when he patted the seat next to him. The king was calling his dutiful subject to his side.
I paused, suddenly terrified, but joined him just the same. Not that my heart wasn’t pounding a thousand beats a minute and my jeans weren’t getting tight around the crotch. But the studying would be easier if we were next to each other, I reasoned. Plus, I could stare at him that way. Sideways, I mean. Eyes glued to the mound beneath the silk shorts. At the love-trail that meandered to his belly button. At his hairy thighs and boulder-dense calves.
Naturally, I gulped again.
Nonetheless, we really did study, my knee bumping his, my finger sliding against his hand as I pointed to something in his textbook, my shoulder pressed up tight to his shoulder. Seriously, it was enough to make a randy eighteen-year-old go over the edge. Where I precariously teetered for well over a couple of hours. Until we reached the chapter on anatomy.
He handed me a list of all the major body parts, external and internal. “Mister Peters said we’d need to know all of these. Their locations and their functions.”
I scanned the list and quickly quizzed him. He failed like an alcoholic’s liver. Like a smoker’s lung. Like an impotent’s willy. Meaning, Jack didn’t know his ass from his elbow. Better still, Jack didn’t know jack. “Did you miss that entire week of class, dude?” I asked, face tilted his way, those eyes of his again locked on mine.
“That was the week we made it to the state championships,” he explained. “My mind was elsewhere.” He grinned and shrugged. “Don’t suppose a good game of Operation would help us, huh?”
Again I scanned the list. “Nope, no mention of a funny bone.” I shrugged. “Go figure.”
He stood, shorts bunching in all the right places. “Just show me then,” he said. “Point and explain. On me.”
I would’ve pinched myself, to see if this were one of my more vivid dreams, but it didn’t seem prudent. Just in case it wasn’t a dream. Which, of course, it wasn’t. So I stood, willing my legs to hold me up. And my jean’s zipper to hold up, too, because, man, was there ever some pressure building up.
And so we started, from his cranium on down, my fingers pointing, awkwardly touching and occasionally caressing one body part after the next. He alternately nodded and occasionally giggled, if I tickled him, as we went from one biological system to the next. From skeletal to muscular, circulatory to nervous (which I was, big time), respiratory to digestive, endocrine to lymphatic, and, lastly (gulp), reproductive.
My face blushed red as I stared at his midsection. “Yeah, um,” I began. “If you were a female, we’d be talking about your ovaries, oviducts, uterus, vagina and, uh, mammary glands.” I ran a finger across his pec; he shivered when I accidentally-on-purpose brushed his nipple.
He stared at me, suddenly nervous. Clearly, these were uncharted waters. “But I’m, uh, I’m not a female,” he said, voice shaky. Talk about stating the obvious.
“Yeah, I know.” I pointed to his groin, which seemed to have expanded as much as my lungs by that point. “Then, for you, there’s the testes, seminal vesicles and the, uh, the penis.” The last word barely escaped from between my rather parched lips.
And now he was blushing, a patch of crimson rising up his neck. “Um, that organ I already know about.” He paused and slipped his finger inside the elastic waistband of his shorts. He stared down and in, and smiled.
Oh, to be so lucky. I thought to myself.
Except, then I was.
See, he paused, then looked up, my heart thumping as he again locked eyes with me. “Uh, one question on that though, Chuckles,” he said, clearly thinking of just the right words to say. “I mean,” he continued. “On the size.”
“Size?” I asked. “What about it?”
His fingers were still inside the waistband, a hint of blond bush poking out. That gulp of mine made its triumphant reappearance as he continued. “I mean, what, uh, what’s a normal size?”
I sat. My poor legs just couldn’t take the strain anymore. “You, uh, you take showers with the team, Jack,” I replied. “Don’t you know?”
Again he paused. “They’re all…they’re all soft then.”
“Oh,” was about all I could manage, since my head was about to explode. Both of them. The upper one and the lower one. “You mean, what’s the normal size, uh, hard?”
He nodded. “I mean, I’ve only ever seen mine. And you can’t tell on the Internet. Not really. And, well, I was just curious.” All this he rolled out in a matter of about two seconds, though it seemed to land in slow motion inside my head. I mean, the guy I was furiously in lust with was talking with me about boner size. And his was a mere few inches away.
Still, I persevered. “I hear…I hear six inches is normal.”
Again he nodded, quickly running from the room and just as quickly returning with, of all things, a ruler. “Six inches, huh?” And then he tried to stick said ruler inside his shorts. Which, of course, didn’t work out so well. And then (gulp, gulp, and triple gulp), he said. “Here, you do it.” And he handed me the ruler.
Well, he handed it and I promptly dropped it. Then I bent down, and when I looked back up, his shorts had dropped to the ground and his cock was jutting up and pointing just slightly to the left. I stifled a groan and, with trembling hands, slid the plastic ruler beneath his shaft. I looked back up at him. He was staring intently at me, a slight tic just above his eyebrow. “Seven and a half, Jack,” I coughed.
He grinned. “Phew.”
I stood back up and willed myself to keep my peepers off his pee pee. “Yeah, phew.”
Only, he wasn’t done with this line of questioning just yet. “What about you?” he asked.
Okay, so I glanced back down. Quickly. “What about me, what?”
He grabbed the ruler from my hand. “Your turn, Chuckles,” he said. “Fair’s fair. Unless you’re scared, I mean. Of not being, well”—he pointed at his rather lengthy schlong—“you know.”
Only, that’s not what I was scared of. In any case, I figured, why tempt fate? So, slowly, I unzipped my jeans and then pushed them to my ankles. Needless to say, my prick was tenting my briefs something fierce. “Get the ruler ready,” I coughed out, and then dropped my undies, until my cock was pointing at his and his at mine. Like two divining rods. Literally.
“Holy shit,” he whispered.
I grinned. “It’s eight inches, Jack,” I told him. “No need for the ruler. Been there, done that.” More than once, truth be told. Just to see if it was still growing.
He moved in, his pressed up snug against mine, a shock of adrenaline suddenly bursting through me like fireworks. “But mine is thicker,” he made note.
I stared down, shocked that my dick was now butting up against his. That he was so close to me that I could smell his breath, smell the musk and sweat of him. “And your head is wider.” I went for broke on that one, grabbing at it for effect. I mean, in for a penny, in for a pound, right?
His eyelids fluttered and a soft moan spilled out from between his lips. “That, uh, that feels good, Chuckles.”
My hand moved further down, jacking at his impossibly stiff pole. “And that?”
The moan grew louder, deeper. “Better.” He reached down and gave mine a tug and a stroke. “That okay?”
Gross understatement. “You get an A-plus for that one, Jack,” I rasped.
He laughed and moved in closer, closer still. Then he leaned in. “I, uh, I have a secret to tell you, Chuckles,” he whispered.
I craned my face up to his, both our hands working fast now, my balls bouncing as he stroked away. “What’s that, Jack?” I replied, also in a throaty whisper.
And then, just as our lips were mere centimeters apart, the words about to fall from his mouth, two beams of light cast brightly through the living room window. “Fuck!” he hollered. “My parents are home.” And, no, those weren’t the words I’d been waiting for. Not even close. Not by a mile.
I nearly cried, but quickly got dressed instead, sadly stuffing my steely eight inches away, while Jack lifted up his shorts and hopped on the couch, a cushion covering himself up. I jumped over to the seat across from him and flipped open my biology book, just as the mister and missus walked inside.
Thankfully, they barely paid us any attention, because by then I could barely breathe and my entire body was twitching. And Jack looked even worse, beads of sweat trickling down his forehead.
“How’s the studying going?” his mom asked, hanging up her jacket.
“Good,” Jack blurted out. “Almost done. Chuck here was just about to leave.”
“I was?” I asked, my heart breaking, shattering in a million pieces. “I mean, yes, I was.” Jack wasn’t even looking at me now, his face buried in his book, his body scrunched over the cushion, hiding his erection from them, from me. I stood and grabbed my stuff and headed for the door. “Good luck on the exam,” I said, staring back his way, dying for his eyes to meet mine one last time. Even for a second.
They didn’t. “Thanks,” he said, with nothing but a wave my way.
I waited, but that was it. Then I left, the door once again clicking behind me. Except, now we were on opposite sides of it. No more Jack in nothing but his shorts and a radiant smile. No more sapphire eyes boring into me, squeezing my heart like a vise.
What we had done together that night was never spoken of. Finals came and went. He got a B in biology. Yippee for my tutoring skills. Then school ended and he went into his future and I went into mine. Separate.
But like I said, that was a long time ago. Ten years ago. Ten long years. Time for a high school reunion. Jack was there, of course. After all, the king can always come back and reclaim his throne, even a decade later. But, alas, my jester days were over. And so I watched from the sidelines, glad at least that he looked happy and healthy. If not downright handsome as all get out. Jack was all man now, the boy long vanished. Though the smile remained, causing those familiar butterflies of mine to take flight inside my belly.
And then he spotted me, eyes locked, the grin on his stunning face going into overdrive. And, oh, how my heart lit up at the sight of it. He waved and I waved back. Then he broke away, the court shocked at his sudden departure, especially when they realized where he was headed. To me, I mean.
“Hey, Chuckles,” he said, his voice deeper than I remembered it, hand outstretched, flesh meeting flesh in an electric spark upon contact.
