Best Gay Romance 2011, page 3
“Don’t be hard on me for that,” she said. “I thought we could make a go of it, Felix and me. We could be platonic, even, if he preferred it that way. We’re very, very fond of each other, you see. It might have worked. For many people, even these days, it still does. But then I met you. I thought, four days ago, or five, whenever it was, seeing you with Felix… It was nothing the two of you did, or said to each other. But I kind of knew. I told myself I’d imagined it. Then yesterday… Well, yesterday the truth was just too clear. I know you scarcely exchanged a glance all lunchtime, being considerate, I suppose, to me. But when you did…the static filled the air. I was glad he told me about wanting you at the front of the church with us…I mean, with him. It’ll be easier for him now when he’s ready to tell me the rest.”
My thoughts were a maelstrom. “You’re going to marry him,” I said. What I meant by that, exactly, I don’t know.
“No,” she said. “Not now. It’s you he loves. He doesn’t need to say it. It’s just so. You love him too.” I was too stunned to speak. She said, “I’ll leave you in peace now,” and walked away.
We hadn’t used the word love to each other, Felix and I. Not up to that time. God knew, we’d both wanted to, but we were scared of it. To say “I love you” is a very daring thing. But that changed that evening, as everything changed that evening, out on the lawn, once I’d freed my head from the embraces of his kilt.
We continued our lovemaking in his bed. Getting away with a blow job on the lawn when we were both fairly fully clothed was one thing but, though no one had ever come out, or peered through a window at us, during our nightly garden whisky talks, we thought that stripping naked out there might be a bit foolhardy. And there were always the midges to be reckoned with. Safely tucked up, we both came more times that night than we’d done in the nights before, Felix spurting deep inside me, me emptying myself into him. Felix joined to Jonty, Jonty joined to Felix. The words I love you came from Felix, came from Jonty, and came and came again.
Nearly a year has passed. The countryside is wearing its diamond and emerald spring look again.
I went back to my parents’ a week after the funeral but only to collect my belongings. I never delivered another package for the Royal Mail. But if I ever thought that managing a big estate was easy work, well, I don’t think that now. It’s incredibly tough, and you have to get up…well it doesn’t bear thinking about how early. But if Felix is here for the night he has to get up early too. He goes off to Glasgow, by car to Dumfries and then by train. (It takes forever.) And if he’s not here for the night, then I’m with him in his rather narrow bed at the Glasgow student flat. I’m not going to go on and write more paragraphs about how beautiful he is, how good sex is with him; about his gorgeous cock and the sweetness of his character and disposition. You can reread the descriptions of him I wrote earlier if you want to and change the tense to the present as you go along.
We see quite a bit of Rhona—and her new man, Callum, who’s a hunk. They’re good friends of ours. As for Lolli, she didn’t take advantage of the rent-free house in the grounds in the end. She’s also found a boyfriend—if you can call anyone of fifty that. They’re in London most of the time. But when they come to Scotland they stay with us at Endes. We’ve eight bedrooms, after all.
On the rare occasions when I’m not with Felix, and I’m not working hard around the estate, negotiating with tenants, replacing fence posts or whatever, then I write. And Felix, when he comes back, however tired he may be after a long shift on the wards, will read what I have written and, if I’m lucky, approve.
LIBERTY! FRATERNITY! SEXUALITY!
Tyler Keevil
He was one of the last to arrive, drifting through the door like a leaf or scrap of paper. I don’t know why he made such an impression on me. It wasn’t like there was a shortage of girls in that writing class. Some of them were hot, too. But beautiful girls were common in my life—I picked them up at frat parties every weekend. This was different. I’d never seen a beautiful guy before. He reminded me of a river dryad: shocking blue eyes, curling blond hair, delicately shaped throat. I stared at that throat, and those eyes, until our teacher arrived.
“Hello, everybody.”
She was a hoary-headed woman with small breasts and big hips. Taking her seat at the head of the table, she scattered a mess of books and pens and notepaper in front of her.
“Why don’t we introduce ourselves?”
It was just like preschool. We took turns, going around the room.
“My name’s Kim. I’m majoring in English lit…”
“Hi. I’m Sakine. I just finished The Incredible Lightness of Being…”
There were six women in the class, the teacher, and us. He looked completely at ease, but I was in agony. I didn’t want to introduce myself. I hated that kind of thing.
“Hey,” I said. “I, uh, play tight end on the varsity football team.”
Polite nods were the only response. I dropped my eyes. The room seemed to have shrunk so that the walls were squeezing my sides, the roof pressing down on my shoulders. I was the big, stupid jock—too big and stupid to fit in the class. I sat, flushed and hot faced, and missed the next few introductions.
Then it was his turn.
“I’m Tad,” he said. He had a high, sweet voice. It wasn’t masculine, but it wasn’t quite feminine, either. “I’m studying English.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “I’ve never written anything before, but I’d like to start.”
He flashed a shy smile. Everybody smiled back, accepting him. Why couldn’t I have said something like that, something open and honest and real? For the remainder of the class, as the teacher ran us through some writing exercises, I found myself sneaking surreptitious glances in Tad’s direction. I couldn’t help it. It was the way he moved, I think, even when he sat still. His gestures were languid and natural, like a free-flowing mountain stream.
I was more like a hunk of rock.
Saturday nights we partied.
A bunch of us from the football squad would get decked out in our team jackets and crash the nearest frat party. We’d pay our five bucks and guzzle beer, then hit on sorority girls in hopes of getting laid. Successful nights ended in drunken sex back at our dorms. A night of failure meant slinking home and jerking off to piles of well-thumbed pornography.
“All the chicks look the same to me these days,” I said.
I stood with Kevin, our quarterback, to one side of the makeshift dance floor. A glistening disco ball threw colored leopard spots over frantically wiggling bodies. None of us ever danced. We stood drinking our beer from plastic cups, peering at female shapes through a haze reeking of perfume, sweat and testosterone.
“You need to experiment,” Kevin said. “You can’t stick to meat and potatoes.”
“I’ve tried a lot of stuff. It’s not that.”
“You tried hoovering?”
“No, I haven’t tried hoovering.”
“You should.” He burped under his breath and blew it out the side of his mouth. “A good hoover makes any lay worthwhile.”
We both shut up as a blonde appeared on our radar. She was a classic sorority clone: fake and bake tan, caked layers of makeup, cleavage spilling from a low-cut top. I was vaguely aware that there were other women in the world, real women, but I was convinced they all lived in Europe or Quebec City. Until I got there, my options seemed limited. The blonde strutted past us, then glanced back at Kevin and flashed a pornographic smile.
“She’s up for it,” he said.
He ran a hand through his hair, freshening the spikes. The gesture was identical to the one he used before we broke from huddle, when we were preparing to run an important play.
“Look,” he said, slapping me on the back. “Have a few more drinks and go find Sarah, huh? She’s been begging to fuck you again. I’ll see you at practice tomorrow.”
I watched him go after the blonde. She didn’t put up much of a fight. Pretty soon they were grinding away and sucking on each other’s face. I knew I’d have similar luck if I could muster Kevin’s enthusiasm. Sarah was around somewhere. I felt a vague twinge of excitement in my abdomen as I imagined being hot and naked and sweating with her. Then I thought of the sticky aftermath: the dwindling erection and the oily condom full of frustrated semen, and the hideous attempts at small talk. I wasn’t drunk enough to make the leap into absurdity. I chucked my beer, still half-full, into the garbage and wandered back to my dorm. I flipped through an old copy of Penthouse I’d been given for my nineteenth birthday, lazily eyeballing the familiar contours of two-dimensional female flesh. Nothing doing. I couldn’t even get wood. Instead I got out my notebook. I was supposed to hand in my first story on Monday. I didn’t have a story. I didn’t have an outline. I didn’t even have an idea.
I was already beginning to regret joining the class.
I got into the class on the strength of one story, about a child losing his father. I wrote it about my own father, without knowing how or what I was writing. My teacher kept encouraging me to write something similar, something that would help me find my voice. But I didn’t want to find my voice or talk about my father with all these strangers. Instead I handed in bizarre tales about distant planets, as far removed from my own life as possible.
The first story I handed in was a disaster.
“This language is so archaic!”
“I don’t even know what it’s about.”
“Honestly, I couldn’t finish it. I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t.”
I sat, tense and uncertain, while they ridiculed me.
Then somebody said, “I enjoyed it.”
Everyone shut up. I was as shocked as the rest of them by the notion that my story might be likeable. I was even more surprised when I realized who’d spoken. Tad was looking out the window, in a distant and dreamy way, at the rain-wet trees and murky gray skies.
“There’s some rough parts, but it’s a neat idea.” He waved his hand, as if trying to pluck the essence of my story from the air. It was about a kid who plugged himself into a video game and never came out. “It’s very Ray Bradbury.” He fixed me with his blue, unblinking eyes. The rest of the class seemed to recede. “Have you read ‘The Veldt’?”
I nodded eagerly. “That’s where I got the idea.”
A rustling of papers ruined the moment. “Yes,” the teacher said. “Genre fiction can be interesting, but next time you’d do best to hand in something with a more personal slant.”
She had to put her negative seal on the discussion, but I was used to that. I barely listened. I smiled stupidly. I was so grateful that somebody had understood my story, understood me. I wanted to reach out and shake his hand. No, I wanted to hug him. Then I wanted to sit him down and talk. He had told me my story was neat.
It was the nicest thing anybody had said about my writing.
I was even more aware of Tad after that.
I looked forward to each class, looked forward to seeing him and hearing him say pleasant things about my stories. I always returned the favor. That wasn’t hard. Everybody loved Tad’s stories. He wrote wild, freewheeling flights of fancy. He wrote about pigs with wings and the farmers that raised them. He wrote about a limbless midget who enjoyed being tossed down bowling alleys, about women who made love to corpses and about a boy whose face was one enormous zit. In that class, where everybody else composed painful confessionals about sex, relationships or dying relatives, reading one of Tad’s stories was like suddenly emerging into open air after hours of hacking your way through dense jungle.
I wanted to write like that.
Our class lasted for two hours on Tuesday mornings, from ten until noon. I kept hoping that somebody would suggest we all go out for lunch. Then I’d have an icebreaker, an excuse to hang out with Tad. But nobody ever did. If I was going to meet him, I’d have to take the initiative. It wasn’t a big deal—I just wanted to talk to the guy. But with Tad it seemed like a big deal. Each class, I got all jittery whenever the opportunity to speak with him arose: at the water fountain, in the toilets, by the photocopy machine where we duplicated our manuscripts. I hated it. It got to the point where I couldn’t sleep, or eat or do anything.
I was terrified I’d never get to know him.
After class one day the teacher took me aside. She had my most recent opus in her hands: a thirty-page epic detailing the exploits of futuristic assassins. It had gone down in class like a skydiver without a ripcord. Whatever she wanted to talk about couldn’t be good.
She said, “I don’t feel like you’ve accomplished anything this term.”
I waited, arms crossed, biting my lip like a baby.
“Everybody else is developing a voice. You keep writing genre fiction.”
“Maybe my voice is genre fiction,” I suggested.
She glanced at the first page, then rolled my manuscript into a baton so she could gesture with it while she spoke. “You need to write about something that matters to you. Then it will matter to us. If things don’t change, I’ll be forced to fail you on your portfolio.”
She offered me the baton and left the room. I held the manuscript as it unfurled like a dove that had died in my arms. Maybe she was right. I was a football player, not a writer. I was still standing like that when Tad came back, flowing along in his nonchalant way. Seeing me, he smiled demurely and explained, “I forgot my pen.”
There was a pen on the table beside me. I handed it to him automatically.
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
I didn’t say anything. I clutched my manuscript.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get some lunch.”
We went to the Dugout Bistro on campus. It was as dark and intimate as a cellar; there were no windows and no natural lighting. Tad ordered a green salad with almonds and fresh lemon. I watched him squeeze the lemon between his delicate fingers, nursing it for every last drop of juice. His nails were painted white and turquoise, like exotic bits of shell. All I ordered was beer. Between nervous gulps, I picked at my napkin, tearing off little pieces.
“Are my stories really that bad?” I asked.
Tad put down his fork and said, “No.”
“She says she’s going to fail me. I can’t afford to have that on my transcript.” By this point my napkin was in tatters. I pushed the scraps around, arranging them like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. “I should never have joined a writing class in the first place.”
“Why did you join?” He leaned forward, propping his chin up with the heel of his palm, and treated me to his shy smile. “Aside from obvious masochistic tendencies, I mean.”
“I needed an arts credit.”
“Most of the jocks take psychology or communications courses.”
He had a point. Kevin had already slept with half the girls in the psych department.
“I guess I wanted something else,” I said. I shrugged, staring down at my hands. The fingers looked thick and awkward. “I mean, I’m sick of football and partying. I wanted to try something new. Writing seemed adventurous. That must sound pretty lame, huh?”
Tad shook his head. “It doesn’t sound lame at all.”
Our server appeared, tray propped on one hand. She had the look that usually caught my eye: compact figure, full mouth, natural hair. As she cleared Tad’s dishes I sized her up without much enthusiasm, as if my libido was running on autopilot. She pointed to my glass.
“You want another one of those?”
I glanced at Tad. I wasn’t sure how much time he had to spare.
“Oh, go ahead. Come to think of it, bring me a vodka seven, too.”
I smiled gratefully. While we waited for our drinks, he told me about the story he was working on: a postmodern fable about an animal rights activist who married his pet panther, then got mauled on their honeymoon. Like everything else he’d written, it was genius. I listened attentively, gazing into his soothing blue eyes as his words washed over me. The rest of the bistro faded slowly into soft focus, like the background in a film.
Lunch at the Dugout became our secret ritual—one that counteracted the weekly torture sessions I endured at the hands of my classmates. Each workshop, they hacked me up and spread my innards all over the table. Then they took their time picking over the spoils.
“You can’t take it so personally,” Tad told me.
But I did. I wanted to stand up for myself, only I didn’t know the words. I sat in agony as they shredded my work. Then I’d gather together my insides and scuttle over to the Dugout with Tad. The beers helped; listening to him helped even more. His words were like a cooling balm over my fresh wounds. Magic words.
“Just imagine if they all tried playing football.”
“I’d slaughter them. I’d face-mask them and slam them to the ground.”
I smashed my fist on the table to demonstrate. I was pretty drunk at the time.
“Exactly. They’d give up after one practice, after one play. You’ve already got that on them, right?” He smiled. “Besides, do you really care what somebody like Kim thinks?”
I laughed, choking on my beer.
“No,” I said. “I guess not.”
Kim was a spiteful girl, a mean girl. She had large breasts that she hid beneath thick woolen jumpers, even on painfully hot days. This made her sweat. She hated my stories. Everybody hated my stories, but she hated them most of all. She sat in class sweating and hating and waiting to make known her hate. She usually spearheaded the attacks against me.
Our next class was no different.
“I can’t believe how simple this story is,” she said, rolling her eyes. “There’s no depth or complexity to your style. You write like a child who’s just learned the alphabet.”
Usually I wilted beneath her criticism, but Tad had empowered me.
“I know you hate my style,” I said, glaring at her. “That’s all you ever say. I hate how you write, too—it’s totally pretentious—but I don’t keep bringing it up all the time.”
