Fifteen

 worddrunkfool@aol.com

 I am fifteen.

Fifteen is nowhere.

I am nowhere.

Last period, Friday, and Ms. Ramey's teaching us logic.  I'm killing time, mastering the art of the syllogism.  "Silly jizm," I scribble, then quickly erase.

There's a party at Cassandra Mitchell's house tonight, and everyone will be there.

I'm not going.  I wasn't invited.

I am no one.

The bell rings and thirty sophomores pour out of Room 232.  Ms. Ramey stacks her books and lets out what sounds like a sigh of love.  It could be exhaustion.  It could be gas. "Have a nice weekend, Aidan," she manages, locking the door behind her.

Aidan.  That's me. Je suis. Soy yo.  "See you Monday, Ms. Ramey."  

Fifteen minutes later, I'm home.  "Home," I think.  "What a concept!"  

Home is where the heart is.

I cannot find my heart.

Where am I?

Don't get the wrong idea.  I live here, and it isn't bad at all.  No tyrannical father, no manic mother, no uppity sister, no seditious little brother.  The refrigerator is stocked and there's art on the walls.  We've got Digital Cable, and a library, and from my bedroom on the third floor I can see across the backyards of a neighborhood where nothing at all could ever go wrong.

Nobody's home, which is just as well.  I'm a fan of silence.  I think sometimes that I can touch silence, smell it even, like leather or Auntie Colleen's body wash.  Mother will appear in an hour, Dad an hour later.  They'll sit down with Old Fashioned's to watch Jim Lehrer, then Mother will whip up something tasty, yet sensible.  She'll call me down to dinner, and for half an hour I'll smile and beg off their reasonable questions.  It's been like this for a while, now.  I can see the hurt in her eyes, the confusion in his, but the smile seems to have enough reassurance in it to ward off tears or phone calls to shrinks, or even a friendly tap at my bedroom door.

I know what you're thinking: with millions starving in Botswana, how can this little shit complain?  I mean, you're thinking: there's that deformed kid with the incurable genetic disease, and you don't hear him bitch and moan!  He's all twisted with pain and he's got about a year to live, and he writes happy poems about hope and sunshine and sends them to Oprah, for God's sake.  

Okay, okay.  You're right.  I'm insufferable.  But I guess since nobody can suffer for me, I'll just have to do it myself.

 II

I'm up in my room, the door locked despite the fact that I'm home alone.  I'm staring at myself in this freestanding mirror my mother bought at an antiques fair - stationed in my room to torture me in style, I guess.  I tilt my head, scrunch my brow, flash that toothy smile.  I stick out my tongue, proud that it can tickle the end of my nose, my very long nose, my Modigliani nose.  "He'll grow into it," I once heard Mother tell Grandma Bea. I'm not a patient guy, and I just wish it all had fit to begin with.  My glasses are pretty slick, though, make my purple eyes look dangerous under that wayward shock of black hair.

Then it's off with my shirt.  And my Dockers.  And my Joe-Boxers.  I'm naked.  Just thinking the word gives me chills.  

And what a spectacle I am, naked.  No abs, no lats, no delts, no glutes, biceps, triceps.  No six-pack - not even an empty can.  I look like 130 pounds on a 5 ' 11" frame is supposed to look.  I look like Jesus on Calvary.  Like one of those hollow Jews in "Night and Fog."  Not Cassandra Mitchell's type, I'm pretty sure.  Not Joey DiMarco's or TyRon Vaughan's.  If I were any skinnier, I'd be invisible.  Check that: I am invisible.  

Now this is not where some spider bites me in the ass and I get huge and telepathic and save the world.  Nope, I passed on that screenplay.  I can blink fifty times and the mirror never wavers in its conclusion: this boy puts the skin back in skinny.

I told you about my nose?  Well, at the end of my matchstick legs with knobby, perpetually bruised knees, two enormous feet protrude.  16 EEE, baby.  When the kids at school aren't busy ignoring me, they're disparaging my proboscis or tripping deliberately over my feet.  I guess it's hard for them to ignore the obvious, all things considered.

But I digress.  Or rather I avoid.  What they haven't seen, what they cannot know because I've never let them, what would really freak them out is just now starting to unlimber itself between my legs.  My penis.  My cock.  My dick.  Shit, this story is as much about my dick as it is about anything.  It frightens me.  It screams to be set free.  I am fifteen, nobody, nowhere, and my dick wants to run away.  I can't let that happen.

Lighten up. All boys have them, you demur.  True dat.  I've skipped the locker room entirely since I first became aware of my dick, but it only takes a few strategic clicks on a search engine to validate the theory in the present.  Mine is bigger.  This mirror doesn't lie - at least it hasn't yet.  

It's hard in my hand now.  I point the shiny red head, unsheathed, at the window, at my computer, at the face laughing in the mirror.  I make machine gun noises.  I shoot at the world like some trenchcoat mafia flasher, then twirl it with my right hand, then bend over to kiss it with the very tip of my tongue.  I'm seriously pumping now, teasing, then squeezing, breathing for two, joyous and desperate.  They're in my room now, Cassandra and Joey and TyRon, urging me on, swaying to my mad little sonata.  "God, Aidan, you're so fucking hot…fill me up, Aidan…give it all to me."  Then I'm being kissed, and it's not Cassandra, but Joey, and I don't care at all, because I'm not about Cassandra anyway, she's just there for show, I'm about all the Joey's in the world, and this one wants my humongous dick more than her tight pussy, and, whoa Daddy, just stay on it, suck it hard, oh yeah, and after I cum, I'll deal with the fact that I'm miserable, fifteen, and gay.  Pearls run down the mirror.  Tears run down my face.  I always cry when I cum.

 III

Mother's home.  I've cleaned up the mess and washed my face.  I feel okay, and the mirror doesn't look back when I pass it.

"Hi Mother."  She's putting away groceries.  I make a move to help.

"Are you feeling okay, honey?  Your eyes look puffy."

"I just woke up.  Took a nap.  I feel fine."  Now she'll ask about school.

"Did you get that composition back?  The one on The Crucible?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"And I did fine. Mr. Barrows says I'm a rhetorical prodigy."

"I wish you'd let me read some of these papers.  But I'm not going to beg."   Actually she's being sweet here, not pushy at all.  She majored in English, and I guess she'd like to know if any of it rubbed off on me.  "Okay, so maybe I will beg."

"Please, Mother.  I can't stand to see a grown woman grovel."

"Aidan Michael Maguire.  I don't know what to do with you."

"Just keep doing what you're doing.  I'm not complaining."

As my Dad launches into his monologue, I realize that I've never seen him naked, or at least not since something like that would have registered. He's talking about a senior partner at the firm being diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and suddenly I start to giggle.  He shoots me one of his patented "how dare you" looks, and I mumble, "sorry, I was thinking of something else."  I tell myself I'll find a way to check him out, even if it means hopping in the shower with him.  Who knows, maybe I'm adopted.  Or maybe this potbellied windbag who gave me my surname is hung like a water buffalo with balls the size of honeydews.  And I can't help it: honeydews crack me up, and I'm overcome once again by mirth.

"Son.  I wish I knew what was so hilarious."  

"No you don't, Dad."

"I don't understand you at all, Aidan.  I don't understand you at all."  The exaggerated repetition is supposed to be my cue to cut my losses.

"No you don't, Dad." Mocking.

"Well, I do understand one thing, young man:  why you don't have any friends."

"Byron! That's quite enough."  Good old Mom.

He's finished.  And you know, he's right.  "The trout was delicious.  May I be excused?"  They both nod and look away.

 IV

Sometimes I slip out late, after the folks are down for the count.  Don't get your hopes up: I never stray too far from the manicured byways of the Glade.  Mostly, I just like the night air, the way it hides me from myself.  If this were a movie, I'd probably break out a flask of Vodka, light a butt, and strike a lonely poet pose, but the only thing I've ever drunk is Peach Schnapps, and I'm not sure nicotine would be good for my asthma.  And then, Reese Witherspoon would materialize from the shadows, and she'd know by my pout that I was miserable and by my silence that I was a tough one.  She'd start to say something, and I'd put my fingers to my lips and tell her,

"Don't frighten the night."  

"Aidan?  What the fuck are you doing here?"  I nearly fall off the picnic table.  "It's 2:30 in the morning."

Once I get my breath back, I manage to counter with the obvious: "I guess I could ask you the same thing, Billy."  Billy Nolan, my neighbor and classmate. Once, during freshman year, he asked to see my notes on Athens and Sparta.  I obliged.  He returned them promptly, told me they were awesome, then ignored me for 18 months.

"I was at Cassandra's, you know.  The party."

"Oh. How was it?"

"Dude, it rocked.  Her folks were nowhere.  They had two kegs on the deck and another in the rec room."

"Still going on?"

"Nah.  Neighbors called the cops, yada, yada.  I heard Joey DiMarco passed out in Mrs. Mitchell's bed.  Dropped a lit joint and set the bedspread on fire."

"Wow.  Sounds great.  So why are you here, I mean?  By the creek."

"I don't know, Aidan.  I was supposed to hook up with that junior Meghan chick, but, like, when the party got busted, all bets were off.  But anyway, I asked first."

"I have a rendezvous with destiny."

"What?"

"I like it here."

"Aidan, you don't party much, do you?"

"Not with Cassandra, I don't.  Wouldn't want to ruin my reputation."

"Fuck you.  You think you're so cold."

"I'll have to take that as a compliment."

He gives me the same look I got from my father at dinner, only this time - maybe it's the auroral chill or maybe it's just the strangeness of it all, me and Billy talking - it gets to me.  

"I'm sorry, Billy.  I guess you know I'm not so hot with the small talk."

"Whatever.  I just wanted to check out the path by the creek.  I didn't know I'd run into you.  Later."  

He takes a few steps down the slope and into the shadows.

I call after him.  There's a catch in my voice. "Come on, Billy.  Stick around.  I'll shut up, I swear."  

He stops, waits a few seconds to turn back.

"All right.  You're fucking nuts, you know."

 V

He hates me.

I want him.

God help me.

"I suck, Billy.  Okay.  Is that what you want me to say: that it sucks being me?"

"Damn, dude.  Touchy, touchy."  He flicks my earlobe with his middle finger and I cringe as if he's about to pummel me.  "Don't be so bitter.  I'm just trying to make conversation."

"No, I mean it: I suck.  I've been waiting for three years to tell somebody.  Sorry it had to be now and sorry it had to be you."

"Jeez, Aidan.  I mean, where does all this come from?  I just wanted to know what it's like to be good in school.  You know? Research the unknown."  He's actually smiling, satisfied with his joke.  I can't stand it.  I can't think of a single wiseass thing to say.  I can get out of anything, just ask my parents, but I can't get out of this moment.  He's got to know that I need space.  And suddenly I realize that desire feels a lot like claustrophobia, that if I want to breathe again I'm going to have to surrender. The night is starting to spin, so I look down at the ground and shake my head, and puke up the truth:

"I'm gay, Billy."

It's just a word, I know, but to me it sounds like a curse.  Sticks and stones and all that shit.  But it tastes terrible on my tongue, like gunpowder or bile.  Okay, I think, so Jack and Will are good with it, and the Queer Eyes with their relentless hip, and the whole freakin' ten percent saying it loud and saying it proud.  Not me.  I don't want a hug from Dr. Phil.  I'm old school.  It's trauma.

"No shit?"  He doesn't punch me and he doesn't run, if that's what you're thinking.  He doesn't move an inch.  It's like I told him my shoe was untied.

"No shit.  You can go now. Tell the world.  I'm sure they'll be fascinated."

"Would you shut up, Aidan.  Stop being such a fucking baby."  I know it sounds stupid, but it feels good to be called out.  "Besides, this bench is as much mine as it is yours.  So just be a nice faggot and shut up.  You walk around like you're the only one who knows shit.  Well I got news for you.  You don't know a damn thing.  But you're gonna find out.  Now.  Follow me."

 VI

Billy asks me to shut up, so I shut up.  He asks me to follow, so I follow.  We're walking down streets I've known all my life, yet I feel like I'm in Bangkok or Brazil.  The dogs bark in French, and bats swirl around the lampposts.  Eden Glade is sleeping, but the dark things are out in force.

And suddenly we're in his backyard.  "Wait here for a second," he whispers.  

The Glade was born in the late fifties.  Some intrepid developers, a Nolan or two among them, identified paradise in the woods across the river, 40 minutes from downtown, and got to work.  They flushed out most of the vermin and dug up Indian bones and gave the wealthy frontiersmen exactly what they always wanted: security.

They didn't bargain on the Russians, however.  During the Great Fear, some of the Glade's early settlers decided that the only truly safe place was underground, so instead of gazebos or fountains or crystalline pools, they built bomb shelters.

Well, the Russians never came.  The shelters were sealed or simply forgotten like elderly relatives. Most of the young ones had no idea their swing sets were hammered into hallowed ground, that once upon a time their childhood games were due to be swallowed up by a mushroom cloud.

"Voila!" says Billy.  The flashlight casts crazy shadows on walls lined with shelves.  32-ounce cans from a bygone era wink at me like shrunken heads.  

"This is awesome."  I'm fifteen again.

"My family never talks about the shelter.  Specially since 9/11.  When Uncle Paul died, I guess they realized how stupid it was.  Anyway, I've always known where the keys were.  I figured since they didn't want any part of it, it could be mine."

"You come down here all the time?"

"Yeah, pretty much.  It beats the crap out of a tree house."  

He starts to light candles.  The room - several discreet spaces, really -takes shape before me.  Billy has rescued a sofa and an old LazyBoy.  In the middle of the floor is a mattress, covered with what look to be clean blankets and pillows.  I wonder how many of his friends have been down here, smoking bones, drinking warm beer, and hatching ridiculous plots.

"It's like a fort, Billy.  Check that.  It is a fort."

"I'm not ten anymore.  I don't need a fort. Sit down, Aidan."

"Sure.  This where you bring Meghan Whatsername?  This where it all happens?"

"Nope."

"So what's the bed for?"  

"Sleeping."

"Yeah, right."  

"Don't believe me, then.  This is my place.  You're the first person I've ever brought down here."

That has to mean something, but I'm not thinking so hot.  The bed looks like an invitation.  It looks like a giant mouth open to receive a kiss.  "I'm honored."

"How honored are you?"  Shadow-flames jump up and down on his lovely face.  The perpetual smile is gone.  "How honored are you?" he repeats, though I don't think he intends for me to answer.  "Take off your shirt, Aidan."

"That's okay.  I'm not hot."

"Take off your goddamn shirt.  Please."

"All right."  I pull off the Polo and fold it gently beside me.  

"Take off your glasses."

"Billy, I'm blind as a fucking bat."

"Bats have sonar.  They don't need glasses.  Hand them over."

I'm feeling crippled and overwhelmed.  Dead air and candlelight have sucked all the blood from my brain.  I'm going somewhere I've never been before, and I don't have a passport, and I don't speak the language.

"Billy," I squeak.  "Are you gonna hurt me?"

"I don't think so.  Take off your pants.  And your shoes."

"Billy, I told you I was gay.  That's all.  It just slipped out. I'm still Aidan."

"And I told you to shut up.  I know what I'm doing."

I untie my laces and slip off my sneakers.  I unhitch the belt and slide off my Levis.  I think I'm wearing the Bart Simpson boxers, but I'm afraid to look.

"Nice boxers.  My cousin goes to U.V.A.  God you're skinny."

So this is it.  I thought it would be Joey or TyRon or Stuart.  Bashing the fag.  Teaching him a lesson.  Reminding him of his terrible inadequacy, of how lucky he is that they're going to let him live.  Or Father Poricier in the sacristy with sick blandishments.  Or some sweet-talking dude in the alley behind the Odeon.

"How does it feel, Aidan?  All that stands between you and naked are those stupid Cavalier boxers.  Tonight's about the last step.  I want us to take it together."

Off comes his shirt.  His khakis.  He's wearing briefs, goddamnit.  Billy's wearing briefs.  The world is a blur, but I'm thinking to myself that I won't be raped by a boy in briefs.

"Aidan?"  My name sounds like a song, like the invocation of a deity.  "Come here.  Come to me, Aidan."  Now I am sure that I am safe, because Billy is crying, and I know that crying boys don't hurt each other.

 VII

So this is foreplay.  Staring with hot hands.  Listening to the sweat.  Exploring.  It's not at all like the videos, I think.  A kiss lasts forever, or at least until it's time to breathe again.  Tongues battle on.  We clean each other's teeth, recently stripped of orthodontia.  I keep after Billy's ears, and he keeps mussing my hair.  Looking into his eyes from a distance of eight inches, I feel like the world's tiniest astronaut gazing at continents on the big blue marble.  There's so much here to keep us busy that we haven't even gone down there.  I'm still wearing my boxers; Billy's still wearing his briefs.

Now we're on the bed, and I'm the one telling Billy to take them off.  He stands over me, and I watch as he pulls them over his distended cock.  He reaches to cover up, and I say, no, let me look, please, let me look.  It's not huge, but it's lovely, perfect in every way like the boy it belongs to.  There's a bubble of pre-cum oozing out of the slit in his dickhead.  He's circumcised, as I guessed he'd be, and that flaring glans looks like a gumdrop from heaven.  You want to scream at me now, in my ecstasy, tell me to get on with it, cut the crap, but I'm telling you that I have proved the existence of God.  Mere physics could never design a body like Billy's.

"You, too, Aidan.  I want to see you, too."  This is communion, and his voice, like mine, is hushed, even reverential.

"Oh my God," he murmurs when he sees it all.  I know he's been sensing it, but there's always a hundred miles between the imagination and the truth.  For the first time in my life, I am controlling it.  It belongs to me like my terrible mind and my awkward heart, a friend in need.

"Yeah.  Who'd a thunk it?  But you know what they say about guys with big feet."

"Oh my God."

"Touch it, Billy.  I promise it can't get any bigger."

We're back on the bed, checking each other out.  My fingers walk on his brown and sweaty chest like the first man on the moon.  His dick points straight up like a beacon in the night.  I kiss it - but only to acknowledge it.  I know there's time now, time I didn't used to have.

Billy's conducting his own private examination of my penis.  I don't think he knows what to do with it yet, which makes two of us.  He's clearly intrigued by its heft, by its floppy-hardness (so different from the solid onyx I am kissing).  And I have to guess that he is mystified by my foreskin, the way he slides it too gently over the crown and back, as if it might tear away in his hands.

"This is pretty cool.  I mean, you're ginormous, and I didn't know that, but you're not cut, and that's really cool."

"It's all I've ever known.  I don't even know if it's cool."

"It's cool, Aidan.  I mean it's not like I've known that many dicks."

"Slut."

"I am not."

"Ho-Bag."

"Am not."

"Okay, my vestal virgin.  Do you want to suck it?"

The answer is immediate.  He opens his mouth and swallows the head.  The delirium of his tongue swirling around my foreskin and burrowing in my pee slit distracts me from the damage his incisors are wreaking on the frenulum.  

"Billy - Stop - Please, " I say, and I start to laugh again because I now know that reason is just a minion in the service of ecstasy, and because I know that I never want him to stop, never, never, never.

He doesn't pull away in time, though I'm guessing he understands at some pre-conscious level what he is up against.  A few jets go down his throat.  A couple of spurts wind up on his tongue.  One blob drips comically from the tip of his nose.

"I'm not sure I like it."  Then he wipes the cum from his nose with his index finger and places the dollop like a communion wafer on the bed of his tongue.  "But I guess I could get used to it.  At least it doesn't taste like chicken."  And there's that smile again, the one I think I love, the one that convinces me God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.

"How big is it?" he asks, as if this is the next logical question.

"I don't know, Billy.  But I'm guessing it's a keeper.  Sounds funny, but until tonight, it's been my enemy.  I mean, not really, but I've always treated it like a retarded little brother.  Fuck, all the porn books say it's awesome to have a big dick - but that always happened to the other guy, the one who winks at me every time I hit bearsntwinks.com."

"You're bigger than TyRon.  Bigger than Coach Hiller. You're the fucking King of Dicks, Aidan.  And you know what?"

"What?"

"I'm gonna take care of your dick forever."

"Why, Billy," I croon in my best magnolia drawl,  "I do believe that was a proposal."

"Yeah, so it is.  And I'm gonna take care of you, too, genius boy."

"He likes me.  He reeeeeaaalllly likes me!"

"Yeah.  But you better shut up about it.  I could hate you in five seconds."

"Oh!  So strong!"

"Fuck you, Aidan.  Four.  Three."

"Yes, Billy.  I'll shut up.  I know.  I talk too much."

"Two."

Then I do to him what he did to me, and I think he likes it.  I think I've got a gift.  It's like I've been sucking dick for years.  I can go all the way down his shaft without gagging.  I can sense exactly when he's about to explode, and squeeze.  When he cums, I drink it all, and it doesn't matter that it's pretty nasty, because it's Billy, and at this moment I'd drink Drano for him.  And when I look up at him, half-smiling, half in tears, I know the answer to the riddle.  It's nature, Billy.  It's nature.  Such wonder cannot be anything else.

VIII

And they lived happily ever after.  The End.

Yeah, right.  It's The Day After the Day After, Sunday evening, and I haven't heard from him.  Of course, I haven't called either, haven't messaged, haven't hustled the three blocks to the Nolan's and rung the bell.  

IX

For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover

 X

XI

We two boys together clinging,

One the other never leaving -

Fulfilling our foray.

 XII

I think it's all because Billy came along, which must sound like a non sequitur.  But how else can I explain that I've just taken my place at the far urinal in the bathroom behind the Food Court and am emptying my bladder of the Big Gulp I drained to celebrate the end of exams and my sophomore year?  How else can I explain to the bald guy to my right that this is not business as usual?  How else do I account for the fact that both of us have finished peeing and neither of us is in any rush to get out of here?  I step back an inch and flash my dick.  He looks impressed and licks his lips. I give my dick a few exaggerated tugs.  His eyes cross and he whistles.  I smile - not for him, but for me, for a battle joined and the promise of victory.  He smiles back, a smile I've never seen before, but which I know somehow I'll see again a thousand times.  Then I put my dick away and march out the door, leaving the bald guy to wonder what might have been. Billy came along, that's what it is.  Billy came along and now I'm powerful.  Watch out.

"You look like the cat that swallowed the canary, Aidan," my mom says.  I love it when she goes quaint on me.

"What do you mean, Ma?"

"You know, satisfied.  Happier than usual."

"I suppose.  School's out and all."

"Footloose and fancy free!" The old girl's on a roll and I'm enjoying it.

"Yeah.  It's pretty groovy."

"Mock me not. I was in junior high in the '60's, and I never, ever heard anyone say that word. Not 'til Austin Powers, at least."  

"Sure, ma.  Whatever."  

"Aidan, you know I hate that expression.  It's so defeatist.  So cynical.  All these kids saying they just don't care.  What's with that, anyway?"

I'm thinking this is a rhetorical question, so I don't answer.  She can't handle any silence longer than five seconds, so she forces the issue:

"Aidan?  Cat got your tongue?"

"Ma. You got cats on the brain. Anyway, I'm still busy digesting the canary."

"You are impossible.  You really are."  Not impossible, I want to tell her.  Unlikely, perhaps.  Crazy, maybe. Love will do that to you.

Leave it to my dad to fuck up any kind of moment - not that he has a clue about such things.  He's brought home "company," a partner named Bledsoe and his wife, and my presence is solicited.  He is straight out of Men's Health.  She's tight, blond, and frosty - an Abercrombie girl on her farewell tour.  Her eyes don't laugh when her mouth does.  I'm guessing she's early 40's, my mom's age, but she's got this Paris Hilton thing going on, and it's scary.  I don't know why, but she winks every time she asks a question of me.  

"So, Aidan, you're in the International Baccalaureate program at Whitman?"  Wink.

"Yes ma'am."  Oh my God!  I haven't said that in years.  

"What's your favorite class?"  Wink, wink.  

"English, I guess."

"Oh, you do look like a reader!  Gordon," she asks her husband, "do you think we'll ever get Tyler to open a book?"  I'm thinking Tyler must be their son, and knowing what I do about Mendel and fruit flies, I'm guessing he's really cute and sparky, a made-for-TV kind of kid.

"No way.  Byron," he says, looking over at my pop, "what's your secret?  I can't get my boy to stay home for five minutes.  He's gotta be out there, you know, chasin' skirts."  And I swear, the dude winks, too.

Chasin' skirts.  I want to tell him that I consider the objectification of women a moral crime.  But I cut him some slack because he's a guest, and besides, old guys say that kind of thing, have been saying it since Fred Flintstone.  

"What about you there, sport?  Cherchez la femme, mon ami?"  Uh oh. Gordon's more literate than I thought.  And he's a litigator, like my pop, except that he looks like he runs double-marathons between depositions.  The man really wants me to talk about skirts.  

"I take Spanish."  Maybe that'll crush him.

"Well, you know, las señoritas, las chicas." His meaty hands sculpt the universal hourglass.  "What's the story, boy?"

"Gordon, honey.  Leave Aidan alone.  He's not in court, you know."  She winks conspiratorially, and now I'm really feeling bad.  Mom's busy in the kitchen, and I know Byron's never going to rescue me.  Three superballs of sweat race unimpeded down my side.

God, I'd love to blow this moment up.  I want to stare down my dad and the inquisitors and unleash the truth.  Tell them that I'm homo-sexual, queer as a leprechaun, a faggot flambé, a dick-sucking, butt-humping fairy straight out of Neverland.  Tell them that my girl don't wear skirts, he's more a Jockey's kinda girl, and what's more he's beautiful, drop-dead gorgeous, and I love him like the sunrise and the wind.

"I'm not seeing anyone at the moment."  The lie sneaks out like an SBD.

"Hey, little man, there's all kinds of time.  Not to worry.  Now Tyler. That's another story!  I'm frankly worried, I am."  Funny thing though, I see pride, not worry on Gordon's Marine Corps face.  As for good ol' dad? Well, he looks anxiously towards the kitchen, and if I'm not mistaken, he's regretting the night he forgot the condom.

"Yeah.  I've got the whole summer ahead of me."  And, God strike me dead, I wink at them.  It's the best thing I've done all day.

 XIII

The first time I jacked off, my guy didn't even have a face.  Or rather, I didn't let him have a face.  In desperation, I may even have tried to put a girl's face on him, which didn't quite work, what with the hair on his calves and that inescapable dick between his legs.  Still, I remember him talking to me, though he didn't have a mouth.  I recall that the whole time I was stroking furiously he was telling me how awesome I was, at which point it occurred to me that his voice was just my own little tenor echoing in my head, and that, in fact, his legs were my legs, and the swinging dick was mine, too.  I didn't know who Narcissus was then, but damn, the first time I jacked off it was not only by myself, it was to myself.

I didn't know anybody else, really.  It didn't make sense to jack off to Brad Pitt or Heath Ledger - fat chance they'd ever be in my bedroom.  And the boys at school didn't know I was alive.  I wasn't exactly loaded with options.

Now, it's Billy's face front and center, beaming down at me through dust motes in the sliver of moonlight slicing through the blinds.  He's whispering in my ear.  He doesn't want to wake the spiders, he says, and I laugh, it's such a stupid image.  When he tickles me I squeal like the little piggy that went to market.  "Ooh, you've got such a pretty cock, Aidan," he teases. "I could play with it all night." And then his hand slides the foreskin back as far as it will go, and pulls it back up and over, back up and over, squeezing the head for an eternal second, then letting go.  I'm being touched by an angel in a very sensitive place, and boom, no warning, I explode all over my own goddamn right hand.  I bring my cum-stained fingers to my lips and rub the sticky elixir all over them.  "Oh, Billy," I murmur to the shadows.  "I couldn't wait for you to come, so I guess I had to cum for you."

Something rattles the window.  I'm too awake to be dreaming and too sleepy to be awake, but I'm sure of it:  something rattled the window.  I look at the clock on my bedstand and it says 3:15. The semen has long since crusted on my belly so I figure I must have been drifting for some time in that soft chamber between tomorrow and forgetting, but the rattle is real and persistent.  In horror movies, they always turn on the light.  Instead, I put on my glasses and walk naked to the window in the darkness, pull up the blinds, and there he is, twenty feet below me, his arm cocked and ready to fire.

I don't think he sees me yet, because he launches a handful of gravel right at me.  At that precise moment I lean over and turn on the lamp at my desk, and suddenly I am framed and haloed in all my glory.

He sees me now, calls me down to him.  I turn off the lamp, slip on my boxers.  The stairs are carpeted, though my folks couldn't hear me anyway, closed off in the master suite.  For some reason I think of bringing him a slice of the raspberry tart my mom made for the Bledsoe's, then decide that he's not here, in my backyard, for a midnight snack.

"You sleep deep," Billy says.  "And naked."

"Well, I wasn't expecting any visitors."

"I've been here about 20 minutes.  I was about to go."

"Billy?  Why didn't you just call?"

"I don't know.  Because it was two in the morning, I guess."

"I mean earlier.  I would have been right over."

 XIV

 XV

 XVI

 XVII

I leave Billy sleeping and slip out into the morning.  It's only 7:00 AM, but the air is hot and heavier than chowder.  I tell myself that I'm happier than I've ever been, that I should be singing in the shower, waiting in the steam for my boy to pull back the curtain and join me.  Instead I'm in a funk, a blue place.  I can't shake the sense that I've lost something important - though I can't for the life of me figure out what it is.  I'm not a morning person, I guess.

I buy a USA Today at the Starbuck's on Charles and sit down with a Grande Latte like some Monday businessman to study the news.  Bombs and bluster in tidy paragraphs.  And a photo that makes me smile and lifts the fog like the hand of God. Two brothers on the National Mall holding up crudely lettered signs decrying gay marriage: GOD CREATED ADAM AND EVE, NOT ADAM AND STEVE one says.  The little boy, maybe 10, is grinning broadly at the camera.  His sign says: NO SEX IS BETTER THAN HOMO SEX.  Out of the mouths of babes, I think.  The older boy is another story.  He doesn't want to be there, I can see it in his eyes.  He'd rather be anywhere else, if I know him.  It's like he's trying to tell me not to blame him for the stupid sign. His mother behind him is church-drunk and raging; his father is at the office shuffling microchips, hating faggots almost as much as he hates himself.  NO SEX is what he gets.  My money is on it.

I wish I could pull the older brother out of the photo and sit him down beside me, tell him how it really is for Adam and Steve, regale him with stories about last night. I wouldn't spare a single detail.  He'd shake his head.  He'd furrow his brow.  There'd be a longing in his heart and a lump in his pants.

"What did you and Billy do last night, Aidan?" the boy asks, sipping his Mocha and leaning in conspiratorially.

"We made love," I tell him.  I draw out, then bite down on the word love, making it sound more dangerous than a strafing of f-bombs.

"No sex is better than homo sex," he chants.  "No sex!  No sex!  No sex!"  Three times, like Dorothy's heels.  But he doesn't send me back to Kansas.

"We made love, Sign Boy.  We bathed each other in sighs.  We gave each other a world of kisses.  We sucked each other's dicks, and then, because I finally decided that I could, I fucked him."

"In the butt?"

"In the butt, Sign Boy.  That's how Adam and Steve do it."

"That's sodomy.  That's not love.  That's a sin."

"So you say."

"The Bible says, Aidan.  Look what God did to Gomorrah."

"Do I look like a pillar of salt?  Huh?" It's probably not the right story, but then in my house we're not too big on the Old Testament

"In the butt? Really?"

"In the butt."

"Did it hurt?"

"Yes, I think it did."

"You told me it was love."

"So I did."

"I'm confused."

"So am I, Sign Boy.  So am I."

"Can you love someone and hurt him, too?"

"Billy cried.  But I think it was from too much joy."

"That doesn't make sense, Aidan.  My mother was right: homos are nasty people."

"It's a paradox, Sign Boy, a bloody paradox."

"What?"

"Hasn't anybody ever given you a present and it was completely unexpected and you liked it so much that you didn't know what to say so you cried?"

"Oh."

"Or you slammed your knee into the asphalt playing basketball, then bit down hard on your on your fingers to kill the pain?"

"I see.  I guess."

"Well, that's the paradox."

"Aidan?"  He wants to go back to the shallow end.  "What does sex feel like?  You know, the way you and Billy do it.  Homo sex.  I gotta know. I gotta know so I can tell the guys on my block. Is it worth it?  I mean, that my folks get all psycho about it."

"You really want to know?"

"Uh huh."

"The details?"

"Yes please."

"Now we're talkin'.  Now we're talkin'."

"God loves you Aidan.  You know that?  He hates the sin, but He loves you."

"Shut up, Sign Boy. God doesn't hate anything.  He doesn't have time to hate because He's so busy loving.  Don't give me this crap if you want to hear about last night."

"Sorry.  I guess I sound like my mom."

"It's okay.  Now listen."

"Aidan?  How old are you?"

And in that instant I remember that in three days it'll be my birthday.  "Fifteen. For the moment."

"Wow.  For fifteen, you're really old."

"And you're not really real."

"I know.  I'm just a boy in a photograph holding a sign.  But you're talking with me, so that's got to count for something."

"Shut up, please.  Or I'll send you back to the Supreme Court and those self-righteous cretins.  Now, do you want to hear about it or not?"

I feel Sign Boy's hand brushing against my cheek and the tears start to gather in my purple eyes.  I try to pull him close to me, but of course he isn't there, never has been.  It's all about me figuring things out. I hope I wasn't talking out loud.

And suddenly I realize I haven't lost anything at all except the last toys of my childhood.

 XVIII

What Billy and I did in that motel bed defied logic and gravity.  It was art and war and prayer.  It was a ballet of pain, a pas de deux with switchblades.  And as I fucked Billy I heard voices from outside the room pleading with me to stop.  As if I could.

I turned the bedside light on.  I needed to look at Billy, to read the real story behind blue eyes.  Glassy with desire, they told me only, "I trust you Aidan."  

I spent half an hour preparing him, my lips exploring every ridge and cranny, my tongue a divining rod.  I tasted the sugar of the bubble bath and the salt of his boy sweat.  I jabbed at the little pucker with first one, then several fingers creamy with lotion, hesitant for a while, then bolder as I learned to read the special Braille of lovers.  Billy would buck a bit, then go stiff, close his eyes, then open them again as if to remind himself of the journey we were about to take.  

"Now," he whispered, and I thought to myself: making love doesn't need a soundtrack.  It doesn't really want epic moans and groans and screams to waken the living.  It really needs silence and patience.

Billy slid himself to the end of the bed and pulled his legs back over his shoulders.  I tucked a pillow under his butt, stared at the glistening dime-sized hole that was my destination, then down at my lathered, swollen dick, its moist red head poised inches from the gateway.  Inches.  Guys talk about inches as if they were Microsoft shares, as if with a couple more they'd never have to worry again about anything.  They don't know.  At the moment, I'd gladly settle for less, for a happy little-boy dick that I could drive recklessly into the waiting dark.

"Now, Aidan.  It's okay now." Then I pulled back my foreskin and pushed against the tiny pucker.  Miraculously, it gave for an instant, then abruptly spit me out.  "It's okay," Billy whimpered.  "Don't stop."  And I pushed a little harder this time, lodging the head within the warm walls, afraid that any sudden motion might elicit such a cry that I'd never be able to follow through.  

"Oh my God, Aidan.  You're in me."

"Not quite Billy.  Does it hurt too much?"

"No.  I mean yes, but -" and again we were in that place due north of the last word.  I pushed a little bit more, then suddenly I felt him push back even harder, but this time instead of expelling me, he pulled me in deeper.  Another stunning paradox.  Then I withdrew a few inches and reloaded, feeling again my dick being sucked all the way in by a magnificent vacuum.  Now I was buried in Billy's ass, and we found a fascinating rhythm, and I managed to forget that I had to be killing him. Soon I was driving into him, conscienceless, my balls slapping time against his butt cheeks, pulling way back then plunging to the hilt where I'd linger in his grip for the longest second.  Back and forth, mixing speeds, churning, pistoning, I was a fucking natural, an engine of fate, energy transmogrified, primal and eternal.

And when I couldn't stand the pleasure any longer, I pulled out my dick, and shot thick, ropy globs all over Billy's tummy.  Billy pulled me on top of him and we lay motionless in the mess of our love for fifteen silent minutes.  He was crying, Sign Boy.  Billy was crying.  But they were tears of joy, I promise you.

"Where'd you go, Aidan?"  Billy's awake now, propped up in the bed, his hands clasped behind his head.  

"I couldn't sleep.  I don't sleep so well."

"You pissed off about something?"

"Not at all.  I get this way."

"You're tough on yourself, you know that?  You gotta learn how to chill."

"I don't chill, Billy.  I don't know how.  Maybe you can teach me."

"That's a laugh.  Me teach you anything.  You're so fucking smart it's scary."

"Yeah.  I scare myself all the time, the places I go."

"Last night?  That scare you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because it did."

"Why, Aidan?"

"You sound like Sign Boy."

"What?  Who?"

"Never mind.  It's an inside joke."

"Aidan. There's no more inside jokes, you know.  We're in this thing together."

"I know that.  I just don't know a lot of other stuff."  I roll onto the bed next to him, and pull him clumsily to me.  "Billy Nolan.  I don't know what I'm doing here in this motel with you. I have no idea where we're going next.  But at this moment, I can't think of any place I'd rather be."  I brush a stray blond curl from his forehead and kiss him like the good father I never had.

"You know, Aidan.  I'm never going to forget last night."

"I hurt you, didn't I?"  

"Not so much."  But he winces at the memory.  "It would've hurt a lot more if you had told me no."

"That's what I thought.  Not that I was thinking."

"You're really too big, you know.  It's gonna take some getting used to." Then he jabs my ribs and with a smile as wide as tomorrow, he tells me he's going to return the favor, and I better not be a baby about it.

Homo sex is so much better than no sex.  

 XIX

 

 

 XX

We're sitting on a bench outside the Baltimore Aquarium.  The sun has pretty much set. Ribbons of neon stripe the empty harbor. Billy takes my hand and guides it to his heart, pounding in his chest.  It's the most intimate thing either of us has ever done, and the tourists just walk past us, past two boys touching in the twilight.

 XXI

We're curled up together on a nearly empty Greyhound, two hours out of Baltimore, somewhere in West Virginia.  I looked into New York and I looked into Boston thinking that's where runaways always run, where they can disappear on a dime, where there's cheap food and possibilities and crowds of people equally lost.  But then I told myself that was too obvious, that our parents would probably think to look for us there, having been urban children once themselves.

It's dark back here, just some floor-lights along the aisle.  Billy's had my dick in his hand for about 15 minutes, just caressing it, playing with the foreskin he's never had.  It's not really intense or anything, more playful than sexy, and unless he decides to go to work with his mouth, I'm probably safe to think.

We have tickets to Louisville.  I've never been there of course, but it sounds all right.  Billy says he thinks it'll be like Asheville, where his cousins live, and I ask him if that's a good thing, and he shakes his head and laughs.  “If you like hillbillies,” he says, “but it's got mansions and stuff.”  Louisville might as well be Latvia for all we know, but I'm guessing there's plenty of places to hide.

“What day is it?” Billy asks, still clutching my dick.

“Saturday night.  Why?”

“I thought so.  It just doesn't feel much like Saturday.”  I wonder if he's thinking what I'm thinking: that suburban boys can't fathom a life without Saturdays.  All of a sudden, here on some anonymous interstate, it occurs to me that we have no training for this.  It's like the “Survivor” episode they'll never show, the one in which the rich boys from The Glade have to get by in the big city without cell phones or credit cards.

“How big is it, Aidan? I'd really like to know.”

“Louisville?  About half a million, I think.”

“No, stupid.  Your dick.  Your pe-nis.”  The way Billy says it, it sounds like something you wouldn't pick up with a Kleenex.  But pick it up he's done, displaying it like an offering at mass.

“You're not going to believe this, Billy, but I've never measured. I swear.”

“Bullshit. You're right.  I don't believe it.  I measure everything.  My biceps are 14”.  My chest is 38”.  My room is 12 x 16.  My dick, measuring from on top is 6.35”, 16 centimeters, totally normal according to stats.”

“Gosh, Billy, I'm learning so much about you.  Like that you're O.C.D. And commendably hung.  Well, I guess I already knew that.”

“So, how big is it? Really. Don't dodge. You can tell me. Inquiring minds want to know.”  He's stroking and it's growing, and this just isn't the place.

“What, Aidan?” Billy asks, working in earnest. “You don't like what I'm doing?”

“No.  I like it.  I really like it.  But tomorrow's my birthday.  I almost forgot my birthday.”

“Sweet sixteen, eh?  It's not all that different. It's not.”  He abruptly pulls away from me and goes quiet.  He does this all the time.  Goes into a little room in his head, locks the door behind him. Locks me out for a bit.

My mom must be freaking.  She's huge on birthdays, a real ceremony junkie. I see Byron standing by her side, massaging her shoulder, reassuring her, but not convincing her that I'm all right, wherever I am.  I wish I could call her, tell her I'll be back soon enough, but they've hired a detective, I imagine, and they've tapped the phone, and even if they haven't, I don't think I'm brave enough yet to tell them I'm in love with the neighbor kid on Sunnymeade, the blond boy whose uncle died on 9/11, and it's not just a phase, and I think if I didn't have him, I'd just give up, and all the toys in the world would break.

 XXII

 XXIII

 XXIV

 XXV

I'm too tired to sleep.  I can't stop replaying the last 24 hours.  I'm fucking Billy as if it's my last minute on Earth, so lost in the prodigious instant, so determined to greet eternity I forget that someday soon a hundred lonely men in Indianapolis and Des Moines will be cumming all over our little apocalypse.  Every time I close my eyes I'm besieged by neural storms, explosions of lightning and serotonin.  In the distance I hear Kenny's incredulous whistle and those unforgettable words: "I've never seen anything like that in my life."  And I imagine that somewhere out there in the fog and neon my mother is looking for me, her eyes hollow with regret, her mouth quivering, begging me to come home, her only child.  I wonder if she'll still want to hold me when she realizes exactly where my desperate heart has taken me.  "My son, the porn star!"  It's really not that funny.

Like most little kids, I was in thrall to some strange bedtime rituals. First, I'd arrange my plastic dinosaurs in chronological order on the bedside table, triceratops first, then these sharp-clawed pterodactyls, then Stanley, the stupid stegosaurus, then T-Rex and the raptors, then the saber-tooth (who wasn't a dinosaur), and finally the hairy Neanderthal that looked a little like Uncle Terrence after a fishing trip.  Then I'd put on my jammie top, but not the bottoms, never the bottoms - a pervert in training, I guess.  Then I'd read exactly one page of whatever book this second grader might be making his way through.  These missions accomplished, I would turn off the light and begin my prayers, oddball utterances that had nothing at all to do with the Holy Spirit.  I'd stare up through the fuzzy darkness at the ceiling and pronounce the great words I'd heard the day before: diesel, lilac, adagio, Cabernet, portfolio, foundling.  Most of these were my mother's words, and as I invoked them behind closed doors, I'd close my eyes and invite her warm hand to sweep the hair off my forehead.  That last word was my father's.  I didn't like it so much, but it stuck with me, like certain ugly words: rebate and mortgage and facsimile.  I imagined stumbling upon this creature in the forest, half puppy, half pony, a timid little herbivore afraid of everything - the foundling.  Father didn't know I was listening (he should have realized from the start that I'm always listening): "Sometimes I swear the boy's a foundling," he said from behind the evening paper.  "Shut up, Byron," my mother commanded, and I never heard it again.  Maybe Father was on target I now know, lifelong devotee of the dictionary.  Maybe I really was a foundling, delivered in swaddling to torment the childless suburban couple that took him in on faith alone.  Maybe my real parents are still out there somewhere.  Maybe they're wondering what became of the boy they left in The Glade.  

Well, Byron, the little bastard's grown up.  And he's left the way he came, a stranger even to himself.  Feeling momentarily sorry for myself, I slide away from Billy and turn to face the wall.  I don't want him to wake up and find me crying.

 XXVI

"Damn, Aidan, check out that horse!"  

"The Six.  Look.  He reminds me of you!"  Billy's grinning like he just hit the Power Ball.

The Six, Punkin Pie, has popped a boner you could see from Cincinnati. It sways between his fragile legs like a Gatling on a swivel.  Two matrons in sundresses are also staring, high-fiving each other like cheerleaders.  Punkin Pie doesn't seem to notice the attention he's drawing, which may be the most important difference between the species.  

"Funny, Billy.  Why not just tell the whole world?"

Then he whoops, at nobody in particular, "Aidan's bigger!  Aidan's bigger! You got nuthin' Number Six!  Nuthin'!"  And he's flapping his arms and whooping, circling me, a beautiful blond savage in extremis.

The sundress ladies turn around.  A couple of dredlocked railbirds look up from their Racing Forms.  I close my eyes tight, a little kid making himself invisible. I pray they can't see the blush of shame through the brilliant sunshine.

I want to throttle him.  I want to rip his eyeballs out.  But mostly I want to hold him close and kiss him in front of the whole world.  

We're at Churchill Downs, of course, home of the Kentucky Derby.  We know nothing about the sport, and we can't bet, but after yesterday, we need to be outside, to be kids for a while.  

"I'm just playing, Aidan.  Just having fun. They don't know anything."

"Whatever."

"Don't be mad.  Be proud."

"Just shut up, okay.  I'm hot.  Let's get a snow cone."

"Sure, Aidan."  He reaches over to put his arm around my shoulder, but I push him away.  Then, he brushes his hand across my cheek, pausing for an instant to touch my lips, and says, in a whisper that echoes in my soul like the Hallelujah chorus: "I love you, asshole."

 XXVII

Paranoia sets in on the bus ride back to the motel.  Everybody's looking at us like we're escaped convicts or multiple amputees.  An enormous black woman with a DKNY bag stares a hole in me, and when I smile to signal we're okay, really, just headed back from the track, she shakes her head as if to tell me: "I know what you up to, boy, and I don't like it one bit, no sir."  A Latino man pulls his little girls closer to him.  I wonder if I've stepped in dog shit or if a crusty booger's hanging from my nostril.  Then I get it.  Billy's dozing in the window seat, oblivious to the whole awkward scene, his left hand planted squarely on my crotch.  I must be too exhausted to notice and too crazy to care.

Evening in a strange city doesn't hold many options for boys on the run.  Back in the Glade, the cool kids would be tapping kegs by the pool.  The nerds would be gathering in somebody's basement to play Halo.  Cassandra Mitchell would be lying in wait until her mother passed out, ready to hop into some senior's Viper, her fake ID the ticket to a wonderland of clubs.  Privilege has its luxuries, chief among them that nothing much ever goes wrong.

But ten o'clock in downtown Louisville is another story.  The only action is in the shadows.  Grotesque shapes peer out at us from the alleyways.  The silence is punctuated by muffled laughter and bottles smashing into asphalt.  I think about crossing through Memorial Park, but the little boy inside my head tells me there are monsters in the bushes.

"Let's go back," Billy says.

"Yeah.  There's not much going on here."

Two blocks from the Shedrow, I hear footsteps keeping pace behind us.  Then a voice.

"You shouldn't be out here, fellas. Bad hombres, homes. Everywhere."  It's Mr. Ubiquitous, and I wonder how long he's been tailing us.

"I know, Kenny.  We're headed back.  No party here."

"Well, you're definitely wrong about that, my man.  But the parties aren't for you. Nothing but trouble this way."

"Thanks for looking out for us, really.  And thanks for the extra cash."

"You earned it.  That was fucking unbelievable."

I don't know what to say to that, and Billy, I'm learning, withdraws like a sea turtle at the first sign of a shark, paralyzed and mute.  Kenny's cool with it, though.  He must be used to protracted silences.  The glow from a nearby streetlamp etches canyons on his cowboy face.

"There's more if you want it, Anthony.  Bobby, too. Y'all are naturals, true performers."

What good would it do to tell him it wasn't a performance?  What the camera caught was real, mysterious, unique - love in flight. A blind man could have seen that. "Not really.  Beginners luck."

"I'm not an idiot, Anthony - or whatever your name is.  I know what I know, and what I know is boys fucking. I'm a goddamn PhD in that department."  For the first time I hear something like menace in his smoky Kentucky drawl.  "You guys love each other.  You might as well be wearing a sign.  We don't get a lot of that at the shop, trust me.  It's okay, homes.  It really is.  Fuck, it's better than okay.  It's bee-you-tee-ful."

"You don't know," I say.  "You don't know."

"Whatever you say, kid.  I make porn.  You make love.  I don't judge, except that y'all did what you did better than the pros.  Vernon rushed the unedited clip to BeauTown.  They were all over it, like they struck fuckin' oil in the parking lot.  That's got to get you psyched."

Billy tugs at me. He's not going to make it much longer. "I don't think so, Kenny."  

"One more shoot, that's all we're lookin' for.  You tell us when.  We'll make it right.  I'm talking two grand - professional wages. We'll put together a little script, shoot outdoors, maybe. Hell, I know boys who'll work it out for fifty and a nickel bag."

"I'm really tired.  Me and Bobby need to sleep."

"Sleep, then.  I'm not stoppin' you.  I'm the good guy, remember.  Trust me."

We make our move to the motel.  Kenny keeps pace.

"I'm not queer, Anthony, whatever you think. Not that that matters. But I don't think there's a man on this planet wouldn't ditch his bitch to spend an hour with y'all.  And the great thing is, you don't even know it.  You don't have half a clue. That's fucking amazing. Later, homes."  

Kenny disappears into the night.  He'll be back, I tell myself, like a serpent to the garden.

 XXVIII

He knows he's hurting me, but I guess I deserve it.  I've brought him here, after all, to this promontory at childhood's end.  He isn't quite ready yet, he's trying to tell me.  He wants to spend an hour with little boys and pretty schoolteachers, and goddamn it, he doesn't want to fuck them for all the money in Texas.

When I get up to pee, the red digits of the alarm say 7:30. Billy's still out for the count, his deep, regular breathing accented by a comical fanfare of snorts and pops. Eight hours of sleep, and I feel much better, definitively alive and kicking.  I brush my teeth and rinse the night out.  I stare into the mirror and I recognize the face, the one, since Billy, I've grown to appreciate

I run a hot shower.  I've never been a singer - modesty gets in the way - but under the pulsing spray, I find myself lip-synching to the Shins, the last CD I bought in my former life:

But I learned fast how to keep my head up 'cause I

Know there is this side of me that

Wants to grab the yoke from the pilot and just

Fly the whole mess into the sea.

 XXIX

Billy says sheepishly, "That would be I."  

He puts his hand on my bare knee and lets it linger there for a few awkward seconds.  I like him, just the same.

Billy must be feeling more comfortable, too, because he asks with startling candor, "What are me and Aidan going to be doing?"

"Well, I've, uh, seen your talents.  I'm going to try to, uh, build a story around 'em."

"What kind of story, Manley?"

"Just a frame, my boy.  We'll improvise around it.  No lines to learn, if that's what's troubling you."

"No.  I'm just kinda curious.  Me and Aidan are new at this."

"That's fantastic, Theodore - "

"Billy."

"Billy.  Ou sont les neiges d'antan?"

"What?"

"Nothing.  Just an expression. I knew a Billy once.  Not nearly as pretty."

"Where are the snows of yesteryear?  Francois Villon." I interject, regretting it almost immediately. "Sorry.  I'm always playing Jeopardy."

"Not at all.  Let's just say, my actors aren't usually so widely read.  But what they lack in depth, they make up in length."  He's laughing broadly again, and I can't help it, I really like him, this man who's in charge of my immortality.

Billy's getting restless, drumming Chopsticks on the coffee table.  I'm sensing all these allusions are kind of dampening his enthusiasm for the project.

"Manley, we're really new to this.  It's not easy."

"It's never easy, laddie. Even for the ambitious airheads in the company stable.  Hell, most of them aren't even gay.  They're just broke and willing.  We did a shoot the other day with this African-American gentleman, goes by Booker Ten, and it took the fluffer 20 minutes to prepare him for the first scene.  I was more embarrassed than he was.  The story in his eyes had nothing to do with fucking."

"What's a fluffer, Manley?" Billy wants to know.

"Guy gets you going, boy.  Jacks you or sucks you 'til you're hard. Paid by the hour.  Not too sexy, huh?"

"Oh," is all my boy can think to say.

"We don't need fluffers.  I promise."  I sound braver than I feel.

"Of course not.  Of course not."  And again he withdraws for a second, trying to remember a time before fluffers.  "Look, I really don't want to sabotage my business.  But you guys aren't what I expected."

"Mr. Pointer, we're good.  Really.  You saw how we did it.  Kenny told us."  Billy's mind is made up that we're going through with this.  Theory into practice.

"Oh no, Billy.  You've misunderstood.  I'm just trying to give you the chance to back out.  No hard feelings from the boss - and no more visits from Kenny."

"No.  We're here.  We want it."

Manley looks at me for confirmation.  "Aidan?"

"Yes.  Let's do it.  Let's give 'em something to talk about."  I can't believe how stupid I must sound.

"Okay.  Okay.  But it's not going to be a blaze of glory.  There's, uh, stages in the process.  But I think you can count on one thing. I'm going to do everything I can to make it good for you.  Shit, you've got me sounding like a schoolteacher.  We can't have that."

I thought the "stages" were over when we signed the papers.  Not quite.  Manley ushers us into a waiting room, complete with vending machine and TV monitor, then disappears with his clipboard into one of the offices.  Billy's watching trailers for BeauTown productions.  He's checking out the competition.  I'm trying not to watch - and failing miserably. They're showing scenes from "Blasts from the Past: American Dude Ranch" - not one of Mr. Pointer's, unless he's uncredited.  The guys are all buff.  They wear tight '80's-style Levi's when they're standing by the corral, and Speedos when they're by the pool.  Apparently, if I understand the plot, a wealthy gay rancher has employed all these cowboys to tame the wild mustangs he's brought in from the surrounding hills.  The mustangs look like the lead ponies Billy and I saw at Churchill, and the cowboys all have perfect teeth and talk like Management students at U.K.  

When the mustangs are asleep the place really comes alive. The cowboys, fresh from the sauna (this is one of those gay ranches with all the accoutrements), turn into wild horses - an irony even Billy can appreciate.  Before you can say "howdy pardner," these untamed desperadoes start going at it in a big way.  Images of the mustangs bucking against the sun are spliced into multi-angled shots of the men going wild.  The actors are all hard as rocks. The screen swirls with deadly close-ups of dicks being engulfed and buttholes being domesticated and sperm flying into the firelight (it's summer, but there's definitely a fire).

"Oh shit, Aidan," Billy says.  "Mr. Pointer was right. We're not what they expected."

"That's not us, true dat.  So, we outta here, mon?"

"No.  Mr. Pointer won't do that to us."

"I hope not.  Did you see that guy with the tattoo on his dick?"

"Yeah.  What's with that?"

"We're not in Kansas anymore, Billy."

"We're in Kentucky, stupid."

"Yeah.  I get them confused." And then I'm thinking about April in the Glade, about a time in my life when I cried every afternoon and the big freestanding mirror in my bedroom recorded a tragedy in the making.  And I'm thinking back to that night in the shelter, when, with nothing at all in my heart except a need to be held, Billy rescued me.  And I tell myself, watching the dudes of the Eight-the-Hard-Way Ranch decorate each other with bodily fluids, that I still want nothing more than to be held by someone who loves me.  Jesus turned water into wine.  Pretty good, but just a special effect.  Loving Billy, loving me - now that's a miracle.   

XXX

 

There are no second acts in American lives.

Scott Fitzgerald

 

Bullshit!

Aidan Michael Maguire

 

 

            About twenty minutes later, Manley ushers Billy and me from the waiting room into another, smaller room off the main corridor.  He's carrying a laptop and a bottle of Dasani, more reporter than cinema auteur.

            "Make yourselves comfortable, boys," he says, pointing to a semi-circular couch.  The room is windowless, and despite the hum of the A.C., it feels tight and airless. He pulls up a folding chair next to the end table, fires up the laptop, and inserts a disk. 

            "I don't normally work like this," he says.  "But then again, this isn't a normal shoot.  Tell you the truth, I've got butterflies.  Been a long time since I cared enough to feel nervous.  You guys okay?"

            "Yes," I say, though it doesn't quite sound like my voice.

            "Sure, Manley," Billy adds, but I don't believe him.  He's shivering or trembling, I don't know which.

            "What I said before, I meant it.  I only want to do this if you're ready.  You tell me no go, it's no go.  I shake your hands and send you back to wherever you came from."

            "Why, Manley?" Billy wants to know.  "You've seen us.  You've seen all kinds of shit, I'm sure."

            "That's the problem: I've seen too much shit.  It's pretty much all shit.  Not you guys.  Not you."

            He clicks PLAY.  The images on the monitor are stark and unforgettable.  Two punk kids mugging for Vernon's digicam.  Manley pauses on a kiss.

            "Look. That's not porn.  That's something else.  It's not Art exactly, though it's got this Las Meninas thing going on.  Timeless. Frozen moment. Suspended animation. It's not porn, I know that much."  Manley's voice trails off as if he's aware that he's talking to himself.

            "Hit PLAY," Billy offers.

            "Silly boy."  Manley's bright smile opens the room up. He releases the image, and suddenly Billy and I are watching ourselves go at it, an epic instant replay of the other day's madness, a tangle of sinew and sweat bathed in a golden light two shades too dark for nature.  There's no soundtrack – just Billy wheezing next to me and Manley choking back a sob.  I don't want to look, but I can't tear my eyes away.  Billy's holding on to me. It's like we're trying to land through wind shear.

            Mercifully, after a few minutes, Manley stops the show.  "That's not porn," he says for the third time. "Vernon couldn't have known it.  He's just a technician.  He was in the right place at the right time.  Lightning in a bottle, the motherfucker."

            "What's wrong, Manley?"  Billy, child of light, is sensitive to the darkness.

            "Nothing's wrong, Billy.  That's what's wrong.  Your little audition is the perfect storm.  I can't watch it as a director.  There's nothing left for me to do.  I guess what I'm thinking is, you guys have already made the movie I've wanted make all my life."

            "So we'll do a sequel!" Billy exclaims.  "It's not like me and Aidan are one and done. Shit, we're just figuring it out. We can do it better.  Like T-2 or the second Matrix.  Like the Godfather."

            Manley's laughing, of course, in that twinkly, avuncular way, but I see him in a place Billy's never been to, a place he'll never have to visit if the gods decide to smile on him.  I'm in it, of course, and I'm just 16, but then my heart's always been old. I understand these things, this nostalgia, or whatever it is.  The bird on the wing.  The way my childhood keeps waving goodbye from the back of the bus.

            "No, boys.  I don't think so. Doesn't feel right."  Manley clasps his hands behind his head and sighs. "Thanks just the same.  I mean it."

 

XXXI

 

            Billy and I just sit there, not sure what we're supposed to do next. For the moment, Manley's not going anywhere.  He looks stunned, wounded, as if we'd just run over his dog. 

            Then it's my turn to weigh in.  "Manley?  Please lock the door."

            "I don't think so, Aidan.  Really.  I appreciate the offer.  We wouldn't be filming in here anyway. We'd be using the set rooms. They're wired. The stuff's all there.  Outside shooting we do on the boss's farm in Lexington."

            "Lock the door, please," I repeat. This time he obliges. "Okay, so we're not filming. I'm good with that.  I'm better than good.  I'm relieved, actually."  Billy pulls away from me in confusion.  I grab him and pull him back.  "But we owe you, man.  And besides, I like you. You're a . . . you're a nice person."  Wherever is this little speech coming from?  I'm not usually so sentimental.

            He coughs a bit, then catches his breath. "Well, thanks, laddie.  I don't hear that too often around this place.  I mean, fuck it, I don't ever hear it. But y'all don't owe me a damn thing.  If anything, I owe you boys.  I guess it's never too late for an epiphany.  The child is father of the man and all that jazz.  So just how strange is all this shit?"  I suppose he intends this question rhetorically.

Suddenly, I leap up and unbutton my shirt, throw it on the floor like I'm some junior varsity Chippendale.  Without pausing for dramatic effect, I slip out of my shorts and fling them against the wall.  I slide down my boxers and kick them viciously to the side.  I'm naked, of course, my already swollen dick arcing out into space like a lunar probe. 

"It's all too strange, Manley.  Too strange." It doesn't sound like me talking.  I'm using this sexed-up voice I didn't know I had in my arsenal.  "The movie's for all the guys, I guess.  The guys out there.  The bad daddies and the pervs. I want to do this for you, Manley.  Just for you. An offering.  A blessing. For the vault.  For posterity.  For the movie you never got to make."  I must look like the biggest fool on the planet, but I'm going to go through with it.  I'm going to seal this moment in amber so Manley can take it home with him to put next to the bedstand Bible and the picture of mom. "Billy," I exhort.  "I love you.  Now take off your clothes!"

            My boy is freaked, but he obeys.  When he is naked, I pull him towards me so that our bodies are aligned.  Even in my madness, I'm conscious of symmetry, of the contours, a sculptor posing his models.  Our kiss is protracted, tautened tongues parrying.  I feel Billy's boner mashing into mine, but I'm not quite ready to release him. I steal a glimpse at Manley, still seated, shaking his head.  He's seen it all, but he's never seen this.

            Then I go to my knees, a supplicant at the altar.  I take Billy's cock in my hand, caress it like a holy icon, squeeze a drop of communion juice from the gumdrop glans.  I trace the circumference, round and round, gently furrowing the dark circumcision scar with my index fingernail.  Billy's going apeshit, moaning and groaning and laughing, his muscles twitching and contracting, in full seizure mode.  My breath upon the peehole could make him explode – I'm that powerful. I could will him to orgasm, abracadabra, with a flick of my tongue.  But then, power is also holding back, as love is waiting – forever, if need be.

            "Jesus, Aidan.  What the fuck?  Where's this coming from?"  Billy's not mad, trust me, but he's trying to regain a bit of relinquished control.  Not gonna happen, I tell myself.  Not gonna happen.

            "I love you, fool.  I love you more than I love God."  That's not something I've ever thought, that I could love a boy more than God, and it's certainly nothing I could have said aloud.  But in this little chapel at the porn studio, I'm testifying to the rapture, to the absolute surrender of the heart to a force greater than life itself.  I stand up and bury my tongue in Billy's waiting mouth.

            "Oh Lord.  Stop!"  This time it's Manley under my spell.  He can walk out any time he wants, but he doesn't want to, not really. "This can't be good for my heart."  At least he's still laughing, though I'm hearing tears in his quivering voice.

            "Come here old man.  Come here.  Aidan and Billy can fix you right up.  Your heart's gonna love it."

            He approaches like a naughty schoolboy to the teacher's desk, embarrassed in the extreme, but curious beyond measure to find out what awaits him.  Billy defers to me.  This isn't in any playbook he's ever studied.

            He doesn't resist when I yank down his pants. I guess I know why Manley did porn.  He has a magnificent penis, an old man's penis, veiny and thick, and balls that hang low in their hairy sack.  He's not as long as me, that'd be freaky, but he's fatter, and like me, he's uncut.  I jack him a few times and he's as hard as he's going to get.  I open wide to take him in, vaguely aware that he tastes different than Billy, a little mustier, a little riper, more organic.  I suck up on his foreskin, pulling it back over the head, then pinch it tight with my teeth.  He shudders and grabs my shoulders for stability.  I hold his throbbing dick in two hands, look up into his frightened eyes, and say, "better?"  Then I'm back at it, oblivious to the pounding my throat is taking.  Miraculously, I'm breathing fine, no gag reflex, no hesitation at all in my ambition to give this man something to remember.  Manley is sweating, convulsing, speaking in tongues.  He could stroke at any second, I think, but he's too far-gone to care, and I could call it euthanasia when the cops came.  I go down to the root, bury my nose in his pubes, then slowly pull back until just the head, again hooded, is in my mouth.  I feel the surge burst from his aching balls and travel the length of his shaft, and precisely at that instant I set his dick free.  He squirts my face a couple of times, then several more thick droplets ooze out.  I take his rapidly deflating cock again in hand, and lick him clean under the foreskin.  Again I ask: "better?"  This time he says, no longer hiding the tears, "much better.  Much better."  The child indeed is the father of this man.

 

            The rest is pretty blurry.  It's mostly Billy and me, and when we're going at it, nothing gets in the way, not the furniture, not gravity, not our silent witness, drinking it all in.  We're acrobats, contortionists, even.  One minute I'm bending Billy over the couch, rubbing my dick furiously up and down the crack in his glorious ass, the next he's wrestled me to the carpet and is force-feeding me his own angry soldier.  This time I finish him off and swallow his offering with a resounding smack of the lips.  When my turn comes, I close my eyes, vaguely aware that two tongues are working along the shaft, that one set of teeth is nibbling away at my prepuce while another teases my scrotum.  They've got me arching my back like a Rumanian gymnast as I try to postpone the inevitable, that singular sensation any sane man would gladly die for.  Finally I can't hold back any longer and I open my eyes and look at my love and tell him now, Billy, now, and after a few gentle strokes, I shoot these big sticky bombs of eternal energy all over the place.  My dick twitches for thirty seconds.  It's another minute before I can find my voice, and then the only thing I can think to say is "Wow!"

            I'm learning that sex isn't over when it's over.  You don't just push STOP and EJECT, you know, put your clothes back on and get back to business.  It takes time for the nerves to climb back into their casings.  It takes time for the soul to stop pounding, even when the heart rate has stabilized.  I guess that's why they always show guys lighting cigarettes after sex.  There's nothing left to say, so something has to fill the vacuum.

            Billy breaks the silence.  "Manley," he asks, "who are we?  I mean, I'm not sure I know who I am any more."  Why is he asking the old man, I think, and then it occurs to me that I've got the same question and nothing like an answer.

            "Lots of kids fuck around," he says elliptically.  "Younger than you."  His eyes roll back into his head for a few seconds as if he's trying to find just the right way to complete his dissertation.  "You guys fuck around, sure.  But you're playing a totally different game.  You speak another language.  You sing a song only angels can hear.  Fuck.  Listen to the old faggot."  He inhales deeply, then exhales a sigh for the ages.  "What you are Billy, what you are Aidan, is truly, deeply, purely in love.  I've never seen anything like it.  I know I've never felt anything in 57 years like what I've felt emanating from you two.  Sounds like bullshit, I'm sure, but I think you guys are the spirit of Love itself.  And as to what you're doing at fucking BeauTown studios, well, I guess the gods sent you to teach an old cynic a lesson. I'm gonna retire tomorrow, work on a real screenplay, learn digital art, some shit like that.  I mean it. And it's because of you."

            I'm looking at this man I met a few hours ago, and I don't know, he makes me feel right again.  I see him compromised in his nakedness, gaunt, pot-bellied, knobby kneed, hairy as a Yeti and really old, and yet I know he is beautiful. 

            "Well, what do you say fellas?  I'm going to take care of some paperwork, then I'll drive you home."

            "We don't live here. In Louisville." Billy whispers.

            "I know, buddy.  Nobody who works here lives here.  It's just an expression. I mean I'll take you wherever you need to go.  Look, I know you're running.  You have to be.  There ain't a house big enough for the both of you, not in the America I know."  Suddenly modest, he slips on his pants and shirt.  He walks over to Billy and plants a kiss on his cheek.  "You're a beauty, Billy. A stark raving beauty. Now get dressed. Let's blow this taco stand."

            Then he pulls me toward him.  "As for you, Aidan, I don't know what to say.  I think I'm in the presence of greatness, and what does a nobody like me say when he's in the presence of greatness?  I don't know: maybe 'I'm gonna miss you most of all'?  Sorry for getting so Wizard of Oz on you."  He kisses me on the cheek, too, but not before he gives my clumsy dick one last tug.  "You could be a star, Aidan, but I swear I'll hunt you down and kill you if you even think of it. Get dressed and meet me in the waiting room."

 

XXXII

 

            We drive in silence through the twilight, past horse farms and roadside taverns.  Mist rises from the cooling bluegrass.  The air smells sweet and vegetal. When we hit the city limits I tell Manley to drop us off at the Denny's by Memorial Park.  If I'm hungry, then Billy must be famished.

            Manley smiles as we get out of his Eldorado, but he understands as we all do that there's nothing left to say. 

            Billy and I eat quietly and deliberately.  I order a grilled cheese, fries, and a bowl of tomato soup – comfort food for the wayward boy.  Billy orders the left side of the menu, pausing only to slurp down his Dr. Pepper and stare out the window at the traffic passing by.  If I had a guess, I'd say he's thinking what I'm thinking: wonder how things are in the Glade?  He's trying to decide if we should go home, after all.  He's thinking, as I'm thinking, that maybe they'll just let us be, that maybe our love is as mighty as Manley says it is, so strong that nobody can touch us, so tough it can withstand a thousand hostile glances.  He's thinking about school and soccer and the prom.  He wonders, above all, if he can ever be a kid again, just a stupid kid with dreams and plans and this odd gay boyfriend he loves more than life.

            "Not gonna work, Aidan.  They'll never let us."  The telepathy of love.

            "No.  Probably not."

            It's five blocks to the hotel.  The streets are dark and shadowy, but less intimidating than last night.  Billy puts his arm around my shoulder, and we weave back and forth like drunks, kicking stray cans and singing "Let's Get Retarded!" to the nearly full moon perched like an old silver dollar above the tallest trees in the park.        

I see the Lexus under a security lamp in the motel parking lot.  My mom's Lexus, Virginia plates.  There's a cop car a few slots away, and I have to believe the cop it belongs to is with her, standing watch somewhere nearby.  I don't say anything to Billy, but I know immediately I'm not going to run.  We've been caught, and I'm wondering only how it took her so long.

 

XXXIII

 

            "Hi Mom.  I guess you found us."  I don't know if Billy's more shocked that she's sitting in our room or that I didn't tell him so that we could make a run for it.

            "Darling, I knew I would, sooner or later.  We've got resources, you know, or at least that's what the authorities told us. Billy Nolan, you're looking wonderful."

            "Thanks, Mrs. Maguire.  You're looking pretty good, too."

            She's so calm.  It's like I've brought a playmate home from school.  She's going to tell us to wash up, then feed us a plate of cookies.  "I've got so many questions for you both, but they can wait.  Just tell me you're okay.  That'll do for the moment."

            "We're fine, Mom.  Really.  I wanted to tell you."

            "I made him do it, Mrs. Maguire.  Don't be mad at him."

            "Nobody's mad, Billy.  I'm just relieved."

            "Where's Dad?  Where are the Nolans?"  I'm hoping they aren't hanging around in the coffee shop, waiting to bust up the mother and son reunion.

            "I came by myself.  I told your father it was the best way to handle things.  For once, he let me make the decision.  Billy, dear, Byron called your folks.  They're still trying to figure things out but they're waiting for you."

            "Figure out what?" Billy asks.  "It's pretty obvious isn't it? They found out about me, and I decided I could do better without them.  With Aidan."

            "Honey, they're confused.  I know they love you.  We're your parents.  Of course we love you."

            "I guess you've figured out I'm gay. Right, mom?  Is Byron sulking around the house? Wondering if he should have signed me up for martial arts camp back in 7^th grade?"  This is a new tone for me.  Then again, life on the road has toughened me.  "Look. I love Billy.  He's my boyfriend.  You're going to have to get used to it."

            "Aidan.  I'll get used to it.  Your father will get used to it.  The Nolans will get used to it.  But we can't even begin to until you come back to us."

            "It's been awesome, Mom.  It's been like Huck Finn, except that the boys are faggots.  It's been a real, you know, learning experience.  Bet you didn't know I had any survival skills, did you?  I got us here, Mom. All by myself. I worked my game.  Aidan the Dork, Master of the Known Universe."

            "You can tell me all this later, darling. I want to know everything, I do. But I'm really tired, and I should talk to Officer Quinn.  Tell him we're going to be okay."

            "The cop in the parking lot?  Officer Quinn?  Were you going to have us arrested?"

            "Of course not.  But I didn't want you to run.  You're not going to run again, are you?"  She's really sad and I'm pretty tired, way too tired to run, so I say, "Mom.  It's over. We're coming home.  Tell Officer Quinn there's a happy ending.  Tell him you've got your little boy back.  And his cute little boyfriend."  For the second time today, Billy shoots me the "you're fucking nuts" look, but I know he's grateful and secretly happy.

            "Mom.  We've paid for the room.  We'll stay here.  Are you at the Shedrow, too?  Nice facility.  AAA Rated. Byron would approve."

            "No, Aidan.  I've got to find a place."

            "Well, we'll be here in the morning.  I promise."

            "Aidan?"

            "Yes." She's pleading.

            "We're fine.  We're not running."

            "I do love you, my son."

            "I know you do, Mom."  She stands and grabs her purse, brushing invisible lint from her Ann Taylor pantsuit.  She freezes for a moment at the open door, unsure for an instant whether she should close it behind her. That does it for me, that look, the look of mothers throughout time who fear they may never see their child again.  I say, "aw, just a sec, Mom," and I walk over to her and hug her close to me, stroking her back until all the sobs have dissipated. 

            We're going home.