Repost: Without Words

(While I'm visiting my dad this week, I've taken the liberty of putting up a couple of past favorite entries. I hope you enjoy this one from 2011.)


When Spencer pads into the bedroom, his body is still steaming from the shower. With the hall light behind him, throwing his body into silhouette, I can see trails of vapor rising from his skin. He stands there for a moment, a faceless shadow with its weight shifted to its right hip, as he waits for instruction.

I say nothing.

After a moment he takes a step forward, and then another. He lifts his right knee to rest it on the mattress, next to where I lie. Then his hands press down on the bed, next to my shoulders. He leans in, and brings his mouth to mine. “Hi,” he says.

I haven’t seen him in a week. I’d driven him to the airport before the Thanksgiving holiday; he’d only arrived back home this afternoon. It’s been a long week of saving up my juice for him, all for this reunion. When he kisses me, softly and sweetly, my dick begins to harden. I lift my neck to reach him all the more easily, and use my hands to pull him in for a kiss that’s deeper and harder. “I missed you,” he whispers.

I shake my head, and say nothing.

He notices this time. “What’s the matter?” When I don’t reply, he brings his other leg onto the bed and straddles my body. “Did I do something wrong?”

I’ve already decided not to use words for the fuck. They seem too easy for this evening. He’s susceptible to what I say to him. I show him instead, by pushing him around, down onto his back. Simultaneously I roll so that I’m on top. Across the bed we tumble. His legs rise into the air and wrap themselves below my shoulder blades. I can feel him hook his heels over my spine. My prick is stiff and swollen now. The head nudges against the boy’s hole. His own dick leaps and spasms against my sternum as now I kiss him. My tongue drives into his mouth; my hands hold down his thick biceps. Helplessly he squirms beneath me, trying to press his dick harder against me, to give it the relief it craves.

“Say something,” he begs, when I lift my weight from him.

I don’t obey him, though. Instead, I push his legs up and rest his knees on his shoulders. My middle finger probes his lips, then forces its way into his mouth. He sucks on it instinctively, like a baby. When I remove it, slick and cool with his spit, immediately I use it to toy with his ass lips. His hole is hot and moist from the shower he’s just taken. The tip and first two joints slip in easily, causing him to gasp. I could fuck him so easily, right now.

But not quite yet. I kneel down beside the bed and let my mouth dive in to that sweet gap between his legs. From bottom to top I lick the hole, letting the scruff of my beard rasp against the exposed tenderness with every lap. To punctuate the pleasure, I alternately nip his cheeks with my incisors, or blow a column of cool air onto the wet skin. Every time, they bring him hushed little thrills.

I’ve been denied the ass too long for much foreplay. He’s not sucked me; I’ve barely eaten him out at all. My dick demands, though, and my dick gets. I rub some moisture on it with my fingers, and thrust forward. Instinctively the head finds the hole. He opens up, craving me. I don’t hesitate to sink all the way in.

He’s warm, and wet, and his hole is as smooth as I remember. His hips grind at the depth of me, and then he sighs, content. “This is what I wanted,” he says. “Didn’t you?” I still don’t answer. Instead, I pull out. He protests. Even in the twilight darkness of the dimly-lit room I can see his eyebrows furrow, concerned that he’d perhaps said or done the wrong thing. “What?” he asks. “What do you want?”

I show him what I want. I yank him to his feet and I shove him against the wall. His hands reach high and press hard against the plaster, as if he’s holding up the entire second story. In this position, his dancer’s ass pushes out, full and heavy, two meaty handfuls that I separate as I push back into him. He slumps forward; his head and body hit the wall with a heavy thump. “Fuck,” he moans. Then, “Fuck me.”

That’s one command I’ll obey. I was going to do it anyway. I thrust deep into him and pull out again, over and over, relentlessly assaulting his hole. I’ve been in need the entire time he’s been gone. I’m not pausing for niceties now. I don’t even think the boy has a sense of time, or place as I pound his ass. He’s lost in some private ecstasy. The side of his face presses against the wall. His eyes are closed. Though he lets out little animal moans, he seems barely conscious. If I turned on the lights, I wouldn’t be surprised to see drool running from the corner of his mouth.

When I reach around for Spencer’s dick, it’s a stiff wet stub jammed against the plaster at an uncomfortable angle. I wrap my hand around it, and the thick inches respond. I spit into my hand once more and spread it along his dick’s length, jacking him as hard as I’m fucking. It only takes him thirty seconds before he’s rasping like every breath hurts. His back aches. I feel his dick throb in my palm as he shoots. He leaves his load on the wall, where it begins to drip onto the floor in multiple wet tracks.

I rip out of him, making him yelp. Then I shove the boy onto the bed so that his hips hang over the edge, and push his legs into the air before I shove in again. He loves to be fucked after he shoots; if anything, he’s more open and relaxed after the tension in his dick is dispensed with. The angle at which I’m fucking him makes him tighter than I’ve ever felt before. It feels as if I’m entering in a way that pounds the very root of his dick and keeps him hard even after he’s blown. His jaw drops. He roars. The sound he makes is long and unending and seemingly without breath or pause. It’s the sound of a tornado at full volume, or of a train’s horn as it approaches down the tracks at top speed. He yells. And yells. I’m glad the windows are tightly shut.

Whatever spot I’m hitting does it for him. Although he’s still leaking stray semen from the load he blew onto the wall, he’s hard again. I use his dick as a handle as I continue to pound that internal pleasure button. I’m getting close myself, just listening to his pleasure.

When I shoot, it’s with a mighty grunt. I drive into him and hold it there, silently spasming. He knows me, though. He knows when I’m coming, and holds me in him, his hands clutching at my hips. He wants it deeper, and then deeper still. “Please breed me,” he begs. “Please. I’ve wanted it so much. I haven’t been able to think about anything else. Please give it to me.”

The load’s large. I haven’t shot since the last time I saw him. I can feel it oozing out around my meat and dribbling down both his crack and my nuts, shortly after I’ve finished jerking and shaking. He sighs, and whimpers, and sounds for a moment as if he might cry. Then we both negotiate our way onto the mattress and rest there, still connected, dick-to-ass. “Amazing,” he whispers, running his fingertips through my beard. “God, that’s amazing.”

I still say nothing. I pull his fingers onto my lips, however, so that beneath he can feel the smile I’m wearing.

On Spencer

I can’t evade thoughts of Spencer, this week. It’s been a year and three months since I last saw him mere days before he moved to Europe to finish his education and pursue a career. A year and a half earlier, I’d left him to move to the east coast. But oh, during that long year when I was alone and trying to sell my house to make that move, he and I were inseparable. For the better part of a year he slept in my bed, ate the meals I made just for him. He returned my kisses. When we made love, he surrendered completely.

How can I escape Spencer? His presence lingers still as a tall and broad-shouldered apparition who wanders through my life with proud and graceful steps. I see him sprawled on my sofa, his toes pointed to the ceiling as he practices in the air the nimble legwork he picked up in ballet practice that afternoon. I see the books he gave me on the shelf by my bed, every time I rise in the morning and right before I crawl into the sheets after dark. Every time Spencer watched me dole out dried mackerel flakes to the cats as a treat, he’d wrinkle his nose and exclaim, It smells like a Korean whorehouse in here! I say aloud the same words now, almost nightly, as I divide up a palmful of the stuff.

I still have an old bottle of his lotion beneath my bathroom sink, left over from before the move. There are some days I’ll sit on the edge of the tub, pop the cap, and remember his scent. Just for a moment, though. Then I attempt to stuff the hundred pounds of pain I’ll feel back into the seventy-five-pound container that’s all I have for it, and attempt to ignore the overflow.

Originally I’d intended to write something sexy this week, but my plans went off the tracks over the weekend. I was already having one of those frustrating days when nothing’s absolutely wrong, but everything wasn’t really going my way. If I set something down, it was certain to spill or tumble; if I looked for milk in the fridge, the carton was sure to be empty save for a teaspoon. The clock stopped. All the batteries in every remote conked out. The mail contained nothing but bills. Then I sat down with my laptop, opened up one of my personal pages of social media, and saw that Spencer was getting married and staying in Europe.

I’d suspected it was coming. He was finishing his program this month and hadn’t made any noises about coming home or about what he’d be doing after he was done. Instead, he’d moved into a new apartment with a new roommate. He’d made a couple of vague posts that sounded domestic. I wondered if he was seeing the guy with whom he’d moved in. I didn’t ask, though. I didn’t want to hear the answer.

To find out that he was planning to marry the guy, though, came as a shock. After all the mild disappointments of the day, the news hit me in the midsection like a baseball bat. I sat in my chair for a minute, stunned. Then I had my first, genuine reaction: Well, good for him. I’d managed to run across his announcement just moments after he’d posted it. My congratulations were the first he received.

I hit return. I bathed for a moment in all my memories of Spencer—the nights of lovemaking, the evenings watching television, the long snowy days when we cuddled beneath blankets and talked into the night. I let it all flood over me, losing track of the real world as every sense and sound and relived joy roared past. Then I came to, and numbly thought, Well, that’s that. This time, though, it felt as if I had to pack away two tons of sadness with only the same old seventy-five pound container.

All week I dragged the remnants behind me like Jacob Marley’s chain.

I keep going back to the moment when I found out, and parsing my reaction. I was genuinely glad for him. Spencer is amazing, and talented. I want him to be enormously happy and successful; he deserves to be with someone who understands and wants him and who can take care of him in a way I couldn’t—in a way that doesn’t have an expiration date built into it, anyway. He needs that. I was happy for Spencer first, and mournful for myself second. That’s the absolutely correct order.
Spencer was unexpected joy during a dismal time in my life. He made a dark year not merely bearable, but wonderful. Special. I’ll never stop loving him for the light he brought into my life, or for the laughter and passion we shared in equal amounts.

We were both lost boys when we clung naked to each other. Now he’s been found and taken home. Still, I think neither of us will entirely forget those cold nights made warm by being in each other’s arms. Nor will I ever be rid of his shadow as it tiptoes through my life from time to time, reminding me of the beautiful dancer who once, for a time, was mine.

Sunday Morning Questions: Mix Tape Edition

Anyone remember mix tapes?

When I first started buying popular music, back in my late teens and early twenties, it became important for me not only to listen to the music I collected, but to share it with the people I cared about. My first real stereo was a system I bought straight out of college, from Sears—I know, real top of the line audiophile stuff. It was affordable, though, and I bought it because it was perfect for my needs. Not only did it have a turntable for my burgeoning collection of LPs, but it had a dual cassette tape deck. With high-speed dubbing, no less. Double tape decks were rare in those days. The high-speed dubbing was almost unheard of.

I loved that system. During grad school I would spend entire nights in my apartment in my parents’ basement, sitting on the cold tile floor cross-legged while I made mix tapes for my friends. I’d choose songs that not only they’d like, but that I was pretty sure they’d never heard before—songs for which I had a lot of enthusiasm. On my electric typewriter I’d type up the names of the songs and the artists, and then I’d make some custom art. Usually it was a chunk of a New Yorker cover, which when snipped down to fit in the cassette case would be colorful but abstract. Then I’d lovingly send them off to my best friends and hope they loved the mixes as much as I.

Over the years the typed inserts became computer-printed; a couple of years later, I burned my first mix CD. Even the concept of ‘burning’ a CD was exotic at first. The phrase brought to mind images of a blacksmith’s forge, and using a pair of white-hot tongs to pull a shiny CD from the flames so I could hear the sizzle when I plunged it into a horse bucket of cool water. The last mix tape I made was for Spencer, shortly before we parted ways. It was a thumb drive with a dozen mp3s on it.

But the thing is, people remember those mix tapes. I have friends who mention long-forgotten songs I sent them decades ago, and who’ve talked about all the love I put into those gifts of music, from the thoughtfulness of the song choice to the New Yorker artwork in which they were wrapped. One of my oldest friends recently went through all the tapes I’d given him over the years, and bought digital copies of all the songs from either Amazon or iTunes, so he could keep them as playlists on his computer. Those little gifts mean something, years and years later. That makes me smile.

Spencer used to go to sleep to a set playlist of songs on his iPod. He’d chosen them to lull him gently into his dreams. During the year when I was living on my own, trying to sell my house in the midwest, he was spending most of his nights in my bed. After he’d taken his bedtime shower and slipped into bed, steaming and warm and wet, we’d make love and drift into slumber in each other’s arms. The last memory of would have, most of those nights before I nodded off, would be of his strong, muscular arm reaching over me to my clock radio, so he could turn on his iPod and start that playlist.

It lasted for nearly an hour and a half. I know the first four songs well. I wouldn’t recognize the latter hour if you played it for me. I’ve always been deeply asleep by the time it played. The last night before I left Michigan for good, at a going-away party thrown in my honor, Spencer sat next to me as my guest of honor. We held hands beneath the table. Before the night’s end, he slipped back to me the thumb drive I’d given him a few weeks before. It held his Sleepytime mix.

You know, I still listen to it. There are nights when I can’t sleep. I keep a pair of earbuds by the bed. I keep the Sleepytime mix on my phone. I’ll plug in, turn on, and listen to the songs Spencer cultivated, the songs to which we fell asleep month after month, night after night, holding each other.

And little by little, I drift off, comforted. I still haven’t heard the back end of that mix during my waking hours. I’m not sure I care to. But I do know it’s the mix tape that means the most to me. It always will.


Let’s get to some questions from readers before I start bawling. If you’d like to ask something, come on over to formspring.me and ask what you’d like. If you’d prefer to email me, just put ‘Sunday Morning Questions’ in the subject line of your email. My address is in the sidebar. I’ll answer anything, trivial or not, so long as it’s not too invasive of my privacy.


Do you ever fantasize about being forced to "service" a dominant stranger?

I do. My twist on it, though, which I’ve shared several times, is the fantasy of being forced to service a dominant bottom, as a top.

I'm not convinced the bottom for that task exists in real life, though.


thanks for your blog, i'd never have the courage to be out there,too much catholic guilt, your blog is my guilty pleasure, thank you sir

If you are so burdened that even reading about someone else having sex makes you feel guilty, my friend, I think it's time to do something about it.

I never look at my sex writings as prescriptive. I don't set words to paper as a recommendation of how anyone else should live his life. My acts are my own, and that's how they should remain. No one should push themselves past their own natural levels of comfort with any sexual exploration.

However, sex is a blessing. If you're religious, I don't know how you can justify to yourself that God made such an abundantly beautiful world with so many wonderful things . . . and yet believe that sex is supposed to be an awful act, a torture, a torment, or something that only a man and a woman approved by a representative of the church may do solely for procreational purposes. That's just not the way this world works. Religion might try to regulate sex in order to keep its adherents in line, but sex was given to us for pleasure, and for us to make connections with each other. It's a true gift. Not a source of guilt.

So if reading a sex blog brings you pleasure . . . enjoy it without guilt. Start with that leniency, and move on to others. You'll be a happier person in the end.


What's the last fun thing you bought for yourself?

A rice cooker. Does that count? If not, I buy myself video games on a fairly regular basis. The last one I purchased was Game & Wario, I think. Oh, and I bought some nice dress boots for myself last week. They’re classy.


Some of your fans (me included) lust after you, do you lust after anyone in the world?

Hmm. I think all my readers know I’ve had some pretty serious (and by serious, I mean goofy) crushes on various pretty bartenders. Long-term readers might remember I had a serious case of hotpants for my backyard neighbor, back in Michigan. (No, that’s not a euphemism. I wish it were.) I manage to work out my lusts on available asses on a pretty regular basis, so instead of burning with lust for various people, I just get schoolgirl crushes on random guys who delight my eyes.


What's the dumbest thing you’ve ever done to impress somebody and what's the dumbest thing anyone's ever done to impress you?

I once bought a rose a day for someone I wanted to woo, when I was in college. I thought it was beautiful and romantic as a gesture, but after about three days I realized it was coming across as creepy and stalkerish.

Most of the stupid things people have done to impress me have also leaked over into stalker territory—guys who follow me around the city, or who bombard me with hand-written notes—or who send me frantic instant messages the minute I get online, or who keep calling many times repeatedly over the course of a day—say they're doing it to show their devotion, but it's the kind of behavior these days that makes me wish I had a restraining order.

Gratitude

There’s a billboard I see in the South Bronx every time I take my commuter train into Manhattan. Right before we clatter over the bridge into Harlem, it looms over the squat brick rooftops. On it is a single word, in all capital letters: GRATITUDE.

I’ve noticed the sign many times during my trips back and forth from the suburbs into the city. Never before had it come so sharply into focus as last week, when I seemed to see every detail for the first time. The sharp serifs of the letters. The rusts and oranges of its construction. Its one-word message—or maybe it’s a warning—rises from a background of confusion and clutter, like so many messages do. But it’s there among the rooftops and the water towers, rising above the graffiti and the junk yards and the boarded-up windows, waiting to be seen.

On that day, that one noun threw everything into focus.

I’d gotten a message from Spencer, the young dancer who had been so much a part of my life in 2010 and 2011, when I was living on my own and trying to sell my home to rejoin my household on the east coast. We were constant companions then. We spent every evening together, watching movies and television. He shared my bed, nights. We fucked constantly; I had my hand inside his ass many times.

For a spell Spencer was mine, and I was his without reservation, without straying. Then my house sold, and the bubble burst, and we went our separate ways.

I loved Spencer. I still do. From time to time he’ll send me one of his poems. When I read beyond his images to discover messages of lost affection and of separation, I’ll spend most of the rest of my day fighting back tears and trying to pretend to the world that nothing is wrong. Whenever I’ve thought of him, and of how I had to leave behind his face, his beautiful body, and his sweet presence, I ache inside. It’s a genuine, deep-down hurt that never seems to lessen in intensity. The wound has widened as more and more time passes.

Even as I wax sentimental about our relationship, I have to remember this: we both knew from the start that its duration was limited. I also have to keep in mind that the moment I left town, Spencer started to get his life together. He’d had aspirations before; what he didn’t have was direction. Within the month after I left the area, he landed a job teaching ballet at a local college. He moved out of his parents’ house and into his own apartment. He began choreographing pieces that had existed only his head, when he’d tell me about them.

When I left, Spencer started becoming the success I knew he could be. My departure was the nudge he seemed to need to venture to the edge of his comfortable nest and contemplate taking wing.

Then he went and landed himself a graduate school scholarship abroad. That's a definite honor, and just the beginning of something big in his future. School starts this week for him. He needed to spend a week in New York City, last week, to expedite the red tape for his visa. He texted me upon his arrival and suggested that we get together in the city his last day there. I suggested lunch. Sure, he texted back. Or maybe we could just get a hotel room or something.

My heart ached at that message. I stuck to lunch. I don’t think I could’ve stood rekindling a physical relationship with Spencer, and then having to give him up for another two years.

So there I was, commuting into the city, dreading the meeting. I mean, really dreading it. All I could think of were the tears I wanted to cry whenever I think about Spencer, and the tears that were certain to follow when I said goodbye to him a second time. I thought about the potential awkwardness of meeting an old lover after a year and a half, and of the things he might say to me and the hurt I might feel. I wondered if we’d outgrown each other—or worse, whether upon meeting again we’d discover that we’d never fit as well as I thought we had. I worried about how I’d react if I had to hear that he’d fallen in love with someone else.

In short, I’d fretted and sulked and backed myself into a mental corner over this meeting. Finally I’d decided that I was going to endure it with a smile on my face, but that I wasn’t likely to enjoy it, under any circumstances.

Then over the Bronx I saw the billboard with its message. It caught my attention as we jostled over the trestles. GRATITUDE. The word made me think. It made me remember the tenderness I had for the boy when we were together, and how determined I’d been at the time to enjoy the sweetness of our time together without worrying about the future. I remembered how hard I’d fallen for him, and how fast. I recalled the love I had for him during the best times, as well as at his most frustrating. I thought with fondness of how I could buy a refrigerator full of groceries for him on a Monday and have it empty by the end of Tuesday night.

I reminisced about how I’d introduced him to Doctor Who and how we’d watched the entire new seasons together, snuggled under a blanket on my sofa with the cats, and how he’d excitedly outlined the plots of all his favorite anime series to me. I thought about how he used to kiss me, and the hunger his body and his touch aroused. I thought about how he used to gasp at my cock inside him, and of the aroma of his just-soaped skin when he would join me, steamy and still wet, from his shower at night.
I thought about all those things that made him so precious to me during those months together, and as the train sped into the dark tunnel that leads to Grand Central, I remembered how we’d clung together like lost boys in the dark of my old house, in an embrace so tight it felt as if we’d never let go of each other.

I was grateful. I was so grateful. And I was so happy to have had him in my life.

In the Starbucks in upper west side where we’d agreed to meet, I saw the back of his head when I approached the door. I knew it was Spencer immediately, even from a distance. My heart skipped a beat at the sight. When I stepped inside, stood in front of him, and held open my arms in an embrace, the last of my doubts fell away. I was nothing but happy.

I’d been a fool ever to doubt how right we’d been for each other. We fit perfectly, puzzle pieces that interlocked and formed a complete picture together. I didn’t have to endure his company, that afternoon. I was free to revel in it. I took him to lunch, and listened to him talk excitedly about his plans for the future, and about his new school. We caught up on television and gossip. We laughed. We opened up.

He told me he missed me, but that my absence had taught him to appreciate what he had, when he had it. I told him, as I had in the past, that I loved him, and that I always would. I told him that he’d always have a place not only in my heart, but a place to visit when he needed a home away from home.

Because of gratitude, I was able to tell him all these things, and mean them. Hours later, when we had to part, because of gratitude, I was able to take the train home with a light heart and no tears in my eyes. My mind was already running over the memories of an afternoon that had been spent in the company of someone I love dearly.

He’s a fledgling perched at the edge of a nest, my Spencer. I’m proud to know him. I’m grateful to have had that time with him before he takes what is sure to be glorious flight.

From the Archive: Without Words

(I'm taking a blog vacation this week, but here's a favorite entry from last year to keep you amused and hopefully aroused while I'm gone.)


When Spencer pads into the bedroom, his body is still steaming from the shower. With the hall light behind him, throwing his body into silhouette, I can see trails of vapor rising from his skin. He stands there for a moment, a faceless shadow with its weight shifted to its right hip, as he waits for instruction.

I say nothing.

After a moment he takes a step forward, and then another. He lifts his right knee to rest it on the mattress, next to where I lie. Then his hands press down on the bed, next to my shoulders. He leans in, and brings his mouth to mine. “Hi,” he says.

I haven’t seen him in a week. I’d driven him to the airport before the Thanksgiving holiday; he’d only arrived back home this afternoon. It’s been a long week of saving up my juice for him, all for this reunion. When he kisses me, softly and sweetly, my dick begins to harden. I lift my neck to reach him all the more easily, and use my hands to pull him in for a kiss that’s deeper and harder. “I missed you,” he whispers.

I shake my head, and say nothing.

He notices this time. “What’s the matter?” When I don’t reply, he brings his other leg onto the bed and straddles my body. “Did I do something wrong?”

I’ve already decided not to use words for the fuck. They seem too easy for this evening. He’s susceptible to what I say to him. I show him instead, by pushing him around, down onto his back. Simultaneously I roll so that I’m on top. Across the bed we tumble. His legs rise into the air and wrap themselves below my shoulder blades. I can feel him hook his heels over my spine. My prick is stiff and swollen now. The head nudges against the boy’s hole. His own dick leaps and spasms against my sternum as now I kiss him. My tongue drives into his mouth; my hands hold down his thick biceps. Helplessly he squirms beneath me, trying to press his dick harder against me, to give it the relief it craves.

“Say something,” he begs, when I lift my weight from him.

I don’t obey him, though. Instead, I push his legs up and rest his knees on his shoulders. My middle finger probes his lips, then forces its way into his mouth. He sucks on it instinctively, like a baby. When I remove it, slick and cool with his spit, immediately I use it to toy with his ass lips. His hole is hot and moist from the shower he’s just taken. The tip and first two joints slip in easily, causing him to gasp. I could fuck him so easily, right now.

But not quite yet. I kneel down beside the bed and let my mouth dive in to that sweet gap between his legs. From bottom to top I lick the hole, letting the scruff of my beard rasp against the exposed tenderness with every lap. To punctuate the pleasure, I alternately nip his cheeks with my incisors, or blow a column of cool air onto the wet skin. Every time, they bring him hushed little thrills.

I’ve been denied the ass too long for much foreplay. He’s not sucked me; I’ve barely eaten him out at all. My dick demands, though, and my dick gets. I rub some moisture on it with my fingers, and thrust forward. Instinctively the head finds the hole. He opens up, craving me. I don’t hesitate to sink all the way in.

He’s warm, and wet, and his hole is as smooth as I remember. His hips grind at the depth of me, and then he sighs, content. “This is what I wanted,” he says. “Didn’t you?” I still don’t answer. Instead, I pull out. He protests. Even in the twilight darkness of the dimly-lit room I can see his eyebrows furrow, concerned that he’d perhaps said or done the wrong thing. “What?” he asks. “What do you want?”

I show him what I want. I yank him to his feet and I shove him against the wall. His hands reach high and press hard against the plaster, as if he’s holding up the entire second story. In this position, his dancer’s ass pushes out, full and heavy, two meaty handfuls that I separate as I push back into him. He slumps forward; his head and body hit the wall with a heavy thump. “Fuck,” he moans. Then, “Fuck me.”

That’s one command I’ll obey. I was going to do it anyway. I thrust deep into him and pull out again, over and over, relentlessly assaulting his hole. I’ve been in need the entire time he’s been gone. I’m not pausing for niceties now. I don’t even think the boy has a sense of time, or place as I pound his ass. He’s lost in some private ecstasy. The side of his face presses against the wall. His eyes are closed. Though he lets out little animal moans, he seems barely conscious. If I turned on the lights, I wouldn’t be surprised to see drool running from the corner of his mouth.

When I reach around for Spencer’s dick, it’s a stiff wet stub jammed against the plaster at an uncomfortable angle. I wrap my hand around it, and the thick inches respond. I spit into my hand once more and spread it along his dick’s length, jacking him as hard as I’m fucking. It only takes him thirty seconds before he’s rasping like every breath hurts. His back aches. I feel his dick throb in my palm as he shoots. He leaves his load on the wall, where it begins to drip onto the floor in multiple wet tracks.

I rip out of him, making him yelp. Then I shove the boy onto the bed so that his hips hang over the edge, and push his legs into the air before I shove in again. He loves to be fucked after he shoots; if anything, he’s more open and relaxed after the tension in his dick is dispensed with. The angle at which I’m fucking him makes him tighter than I’ve ever felt before. It feels as if I’m entering in a way that pounds the very root of his dick and keeps him hard even after he’s blown. His jaw drops. He roars. The sound he makes is long and unending and seemingly without breath or pause. It’s the sound of a tornado at full volume, or of a train’s horn as it approaches down the tracks at top speed. He yells. And yells. I’m glad the windows are tightly shut.

Whatever spot I’m hitting does it for him. Although he’s still leaking stray semen from the load he blew onto the wall, he’s hard again. I use his dick as a handle as I continue to pound that internal pleasure button. I’m getting close myself, just listening to his pleasure.

When I shoot, it’s with a mighty grunt. I drive into him and hold it there, silently spasming. He knows me, though. He knows when I’m coming, and holds me in him, his hands clutching at my hips. He wants it deeper, and then deeper still. “Please breed me,” he begs. “Please. I’ve wanted it so much. I haven’t been able to think about anything else. Please give it to me.”

The load’s large. I haven’t shot since the last time I saw him. I can feel it oozing out around my meat and dribbling down both his crack and my nuts, shortly after I’ve finished jerking and shaking. He sighs, and whimpers, and sounds for a moment as if he might cry. Then we both negotiate our way onto the mattress and rest there, still connected, dick-to-ass. “Amazing,” he whispers, running his fingertips through my beard. “God, that’s amazing.”

I still say nothing. I pull his fingers onto my lips, however, so that beneath he can feel the smile I’m wearing.

Snowed in at Wheeler Street

I’m one of those people who swears he likes to live his life without regrets.

It’s not entirely true, of course. The entire first half of my life seems to be filled with incidents in which I said or did the wrong thing—or more likely, didn’t say or do something when I could have, only to come to realize how fleeting that opportunity was, years and years later. All the lost people from my youth of whom I’ve written—heck,everyone in my series of Earl stories, for example—lie entombed in my memory encircled with wreaths of regret.

The best that can be said of our early years, though, is that if we’re paying attention, we start to learn from our mistakes and hopefully not make them again. Right? One of the reasons I dissect my failures is so that I can figure out where I went wrong. And I like to think I’ve gotten to a point at which I do live without regrets. Sure, there are the short-term regrets. The unkind words I say, the missed opportunities, the times when I have a fit of temper and lash out at a friend. These days, though, I’m more likely to realize what’s happening. Instead of waiting to write about it with regret in another twenty years, I apologize, or make the wrong right. I’m not perfect, but I like living with the smallest footprint of guilt possible.

I was thinking earlier this week that I do regret not having more than one life to live. There have been times in my existence I’ve wished I could simply diverge and take two paths. I want to have my current life and my current relationship, while another me goes off and lives an entirely different life. I like the life I lead. Yet sometimes, I experience an immense sadness when I think to myself that as rich as it is, it didn’t go another way.

I thought about that an awful lot, a couple of weeks ago, when Spencer started popping up into my life more often.

It started casually, when he sent me that video of him singing, unaccompanied, “Wicked Little Town”. A few days later, he started sharing some of his writing with me—some poems about loss and love that I found moving. I sat down and over the course of a week knitted him (Yes. Shut up.) a hat in a style I thought he would particularly like.

The entire time I was working away on the thing, I kept thinking about Spencer, and what he’d meant to me. I thought about the enormous quantities of food he consumed whenever he came to my house, and how I had to visit Trader Joe’s three times a week to stock up. I thought about the warmth of his body against mine when we would sleep, actually sleep, together in bed at night. I thought a lot about the sounds he would make whenever I’d open his hole with my dick or my fist.

I thought about his tattoos, about his limber legs that could grip the underside of the headboard’s top bar with prehensile strength, like a monkey’s. I thought about the little gifts he’d give me, and about the gifts I’d plan for him. I thought about the books we encouraged each other to read, and I thought about his soft lips against mine. His smell. The touch of his hand and the sounds of his voice.

And a lot of the time I thought about the perfect weekend we spent together, one blustery January when we had blizzard conditions forecast and knew we’d spent at least a couple of days holed up in our homes. He decided to spend that entire weekend with me, and we cuddled beneath a blanket on the couch in the den the entire time, talking and fucking and watching television, and only leaving the safety of the couch so I could make meals for him, or when we’d scamper upstairs and crawl between the frigid sheets together, giggling like little boys. For three days we were able to bask in each other’s company, uninterrupted, without guilt, without regret.

It really was, in my memory, perfect.

I’d finished the hat and had taken it to the post office week before last, and literally was walking back into the house from the trip when I got an email from him that read, Whenever I listen to Kate Bush’s “Snowed in at Wheeler Street,” I think of us. I love you and miss you very much.

The timing of it bowled me over. I hadn’t told him I was making him anything, much less that I’d been thinking about that snowstorm, or that I’d been on my way back from mailing his gift. We were just unusually in sync that day.

“Snowed in at Wheeler Street” is a duet between Bush and Elton John from her latest (and excellent) album, 50 Words for Snow. It’s a story about reincarnation, essentially—about two lovers reincarnated again and again throughout the centuries, whose lives and paths cross in each, but only for a fleeting moment. Their time together is never the present, but always in the future, in a life of which their current selves will have no awareness. Until, that is, the pair finally are snowed in during a storm, and realize how many times they’ve been close each other before, and how badly they don’t want to lose each other again.

I was surrounded by people when the email came in. I had to excuse myself, take a walk, find somewhere private, and mourn for a very long and wet time.

I loved Spencer so very much. Much as I try not to think about it, I still do. When we were together, I knew that it was only for a time, and that our relationship came with an expiration date. I made my peace with that. The life I chose was the right choice for me. But oh, I think about him and wish, just wish, that there could be another me out there, giggling with Spencer and sharing his life with him, and diving naked beneath the covers to make love to him while he’s still steaming from the shower. I don’t regret falling so headlong for the boy. I don’t regret the choice I made, in moving away from him. I only regret not having the luxury to afford all the options.

But it’s nice to know he misses me too.

He’s been sending me photos of himself in the hat, which he loves. But I keep hoping that maybe one day, during a snowstorm, he’ll pull it over his head and imagine it’s me keeping him warm, like I used to. And I hope he knows how very difficult it was for me to lose him.

Until the next life, anyway.

Sunday Morning Questions: Junction City Edition

One of my all-time favorite songs—okay, probably my all-time favorite song, if you were to attempt to nail me down and I wasn't giving you a smart-ass answer—is probably "Wicked Little Town." Do you know it? I loved it first when I heard the original cast recording for Hedwig & the Angry Inch, and then loved it all the more a few years later when the movie came out.

John Cameron Mitchell gave such a touching performance in his movie that I've always loved it, and him. And when it comes to this particular song—well, I find him truly tender and moving.

I know that many of my long-time readers are still cherishing hopes that somehow I'll come to my senses and get back together with Spencer, the young man with whom I exclusively spent several months before my move across the country. It's not going to happen. But I would like to say that in the middle of this week, when I was having a particularly bad day, I got an email from out of the blue from Spencer. And he was singing this song for me.

I remember that the two of us had expressed our affection for the movie. We hadn't watched it together, though. I might have told him how very much I loved that song. It was in passing, though, and I wouldn't have expected him to know, or to remember.

And yet there he was, in his darkened room, turned a quarter away from the camera and basking in the light of his monitor, singing for me my favorite song.

Oh, how wet was my face when he was done. Before he was done. Before he'd even finished the first chorus. It broke my heart, and it made my week.

So readers, in the next few days, do something unexpected for someone who's meant something to you. They'll love you all the more for it. We need that in our little lives.

Let's get to some Formspring questions before I get too maudlin.




Do you have a library card and use it, or do you purchase books that you want to read?

I use my library card regularly, for both the check out of traditional and electronic books. i purchase books I wish to have for my permanent library, however.

These days, I do a lot of electronic book reading, whether from the library or purchasing from Amazon or Apple. After my move last summer, I learned that it is too easy to have too many books.

Do you consider yourself pragmatic?

That's a question that requires too much theory for me even to begin grappling with, so on that basis alone I'm pretty certain I have to say no.

Have you ever made a conscious effort to stop swearing/cursing? Why did you do it? And what strategies did you use to help you? Did you substitute "non curse" words for the "bad" words?

Why, do you think I curse too fucking much?

I curse quite naturally and freely thanks to parents who, despite having PhDs, both swore like longshoreman. My sibling's first word was 'shit,' thanks to them.

While I don't really give a rat's ass about cutting down the amount of swearing I do privately, I am very conscious of editing out bad language when I'm in an office situation, around kids who aren't mine, in professional gatherings, and around people I don't know. When I'm in those situations, I tend to say things like, "Oh my goodness!" instead of "Holy shit!", or "Gosh!" instead of "Fuck!"

It makes me sound like one of Wally and The Beaver's childhood chums, but there you go.

If you have a day off, and you have to spend it only around your home (not going out and shopping, eating, visiting, or whatever else you may otherwise choose to do), what sort of things would you do to fill up your day?

I'm likely to spend the morning making something in the kitchen like bread or jam or some kind of baked dessert, the afternoon reading and writing, and then the evening watching a movie or some kind of television.

Have you ever looked up a old flame online? Did you rekindle that relationship/friendship or just stalk them? How did it end up?

I don't rekindle old romances online. I do, however, stalk old boyfriends. I enjoy Googling them or finding them on Facebook and enjoying how old they look when compared to myself.

I did accept the friend request of a my old college boyfriend on Facebook. We had something of a tempestuous relationship when we were together, my junior and his senior year, but now we've both mellowed, he's gotten fat and jowly, and I get to preen when he says of my photos, "You haven't changed a bit!"

Having spent a long time in the midwest, what are your impressions of guys in the northeast? Different? Same? Do they have more attitude?

It's kind of tough for me to answer that question, because I see a lot of differences between guys even in very different regions, in this area. In the wealthy county where I'm currently living, the guys tend to be very preppy, very closeted, and really quite ashamed of putting sexual desire, even for a moment, as a priority over their careers and five-year plans. Outside this county, throughout the rest of the state, the men I've met are kind of approachable and friendly.

New York City isn't that far away, and I've actually found the men there more friendly and open than where I live. The men of New Jersey that I've talked to, on the other hand, tend to think pretty highly of themselves, but never really make a move to connect.

There are a lot of people in this congested area of the country. I'm not surprised at the diversity between them.

I am curious, are you easily embarrassed or does it take a lot to make you turn red from embarrassment? Only one thing really embarrasses me, and that would be direct, to-my-face praise. It makes me become very flustered. The rest of the time, I'm pretty much unflappable.

I do, however, turn red very easily. I turn red when I laugh, when I get angry, when I'm flustered and in a hurry. I just have that kind of complexion.

An Anniversary

I wasn't necessarily planning to write about this particular topic, but it's been on my mind all weekend. Better to get it out.

Saturday was the anniversary of the night I met Spencer, last year, in my old home state. We'd spoken online a couple of times before that and I'd kind of written him off as a flaky whore. I didn't mind the whore part. Flaky, however, I only like in pie crusts. But I was horny, and he was available, so I issued the invitation.

I was charmed off my feet by him, that Friday. When he came back the next night, I knew I wanted him in my life. Night after night he came back until our emotions were as inextricably intertwined as the impossible sexual poses in which he'd grip me with his strong dancer's legs. I loved him, and told him so. He loved me, and would whisper the words as we'd drift off to sleep together, curled beneath layers of flannel sheets and blankets and his impossible fortresses of extra pillows, while snow fell to blanket the frozen ground outside.

For months we made love and spent all our free time together. I'd like to romanticize the relationship further and say that it was simple and uncomplicated, but it wasn't—we both knew the time was coming when my house would eventually sell and that we'd part ways. That knowledge is what made the relationship difficult for us both. It made him occasionally snippy and prone to verbal digs, as he tried to separate himself from me before we were too rooted together. It made me morose and prone to guilt and doubt. I worried too much that I was doing the wrong thing by allowing him to love me so deeply.

Despite the complications, we ended the relationship on a loving high note. When my house sold after a year and I finally made plans to reunite with my family, already living on the East coast, I worried that he'd pick some kind of fight on the pretext of it being easier to part from me angry than sad. But no, he was sweet and loving and supportive until the very night before I threw my overnight bags and the cats in the car and left Michigan for good. At a going-away party given me by friends that night, he was there, sitting next to me the entire time. He'd been everything to me, that last year. I had the spouse on my right side and Spencer on the left, and it seemed right.

Sad, but right.

I'd thought this month about the anniversary a couple of times in an idle fashion—it occurred to me that it had been in November of 2010 that we'd met, and that I should check on the date at some point. I didn't do anything about it, though, until last week when Spencer messaged me. We met this month a year ago!he said.

I checked my journal on my computer. November 19th. The best day of 2010 I had, I wrote back.
Saturday he messaged me again. You're one of my favorite people. I still treasure the time we had together . . . especially those long snowed-in days. Then he closed with his love.

Well. I couldn't have asked for anything nicer.

I read it and burst into tears that I had to hide and muffle in the bathroom.

And now that I had to look at the message again to copy it, I'm crying again, though I'm having to pretend I'm not, even as fat tears scald my cheeks.

But you know what? That's okay. I said above that the relationship Spencer and I had wasn't pure and uncomplicated, but I was a damned liar. It really was. No matter what the gap in our ages, no matter that we separated, never mind the stupid arguments we sometimes had or the words we both feared to say out of fear of hurting the other—none of that mattered in the end. For a time, a blissful and wine-sweet time, we were two boys in love. We took delight in each other's bodies, in each other's whims and palates. We saw parting on the horizon from the moment we met, and yet we both threw ourselves into the deep with abandon.

There's not much purer or more uncomplicated than that.

The Dismount

This isn’t an X-rated event, but I’d like to remember it.


The night before I drove to my new home, after the movers had cartoned up everything in the house and loaded it on their truck and driven away, some of my friends gave me a going-away party. I didn’t really want anything of the sort. In fact, I’d specifically asked they not do any such thing. For one thing, they’d already thrown us a huge farewell party back in September of last year—a huge event with way too much food, a rented space, music, the works. After the spouse departed and I lingered on for nine months while I waited for my house to sell, though, I kind of felt increasingly awkward about having been to my own going-away party and never, you know, actually going.


Still, when I got to the bar and saw the balloons and the cake and a handful of my friends smiling at me, any reluctance I had more or less vanished. A good cake goes a long way toward mollifying my doubts, usually. I ate, I chatted, I grinned a lot . . . everyone had a good time.


About an hour into the evening, one of the friends who’d done the most to organize the party slid into a vacated chair next to mine. “I didn’t know how to get in touch with Spencer,” he told me. “I was hoping I could get him to come out, too.”


He’d met Spencer on one of the nights we’d come out together. “You know, I told him where I’d be tonight,” I said. “I was kind of hoping he’d show up, too.”


Spencer and I had been faithful, almost-nightly companions up until almost the end. I’d cooked for us the entire week before my last, and made him some of the gluten-free almond meal brownies he liked so much; we’d spent our evenings cuddling on the sofa and talking and watching television or videos on YouTube. The week of my move, he’d given me my space so that I could finish up around the house and spend time with my loved ones, but I’d really been hoping to see him one last time.


It was only a few minutes after that conversation that I looked up toward the bar’s back door and saw a tall young man striding in. His lips pulled apart into a wide, goofy grin punctuated by the dark, clear periods of his eyes and the two sideways parentheses of his eyebrows. My heart caught for a second. I know my face lit up. He’d come, after all.


We made room for him at the table, where he met the people to whom he hadn’t yet been introduced, and where he greeted the folks he already knew. He was popular with everyone—outgoing and talkative, he spent the evening making small talk like a pro, and joining in the singing and the toasts.


And you know, on some level I knew it was an act—or at least an effort. Spencer hates the bars with a passion. He dislikes making small talk with strangers. Sweet as he can be, he’s much more a person who thrives on one-on-one intimacy, whether in friendship or in bed, than he does on the group dynamic. But he’d come because I’d asked, and because he wouldn’t have another chance. He was determined to make me happy he had. The one thing I’d always hoped for with Spencer was a graceful dismount for us both from our relationship: a sense that we concluded our time together in a mutually satisfactory way, with no regrets for our behavior or apologies left to make. I wanted us to part sweetly, and as friends.


That was the present he gave me, the night before we left. He charmed my acquaintances and family and left the people who talked to him with smiles on their faces. He was relaxed, and natural, and funny. He was himself, at his most unfettered. And that’s exactly how I’ll be able to remember him in the future—smiling, confident, handsome, and utterly capable.


After a couple of hours, he told me he had to go. “Hey,” I said, holding him by the leg. “I want to tell you. You are the most remarkable young man I know, and I see a future filled with great things for you. Please know how much you’ve meant to me over these last months. I don’t make many close friendships. I’m grateful for having yours.”


“We will always be friends,” he told me. Then we hugged, and kissed, and I walked him to his car.


A graceful dismount is all I hoped for. He gave us that, with Olympic style.

Detente

Spencer stayed the night, this last week. We spent the evening cuddled on the sofa, eating a gluten-free almond cake I’d baked for him and watching Doctor Who on DVD. Naked he came into the dark bedroom after his shower, carrying the iPod I’d given him for his birthday in one hand. Lines of white plastic ran from it to his head. He grinned at me self-consciously as he sang along to the song playing in his ears. I just laughed, shook my head, and reached over to shut off the light.

While I’d been waiting for him to join me, I’d been reading on my tablet. I set it down onto my pillow as he dove between the covers. Like a little boy, he pulled them over his head and continued to sing loudly, before finally curling onto his left side, facing away from me. “Oh crap,” I muttered. I slid out from the bed, grabbed my T-shirt, and slipped it on. “I didn’t lock the back door,” I said.

In bed, Spencer continued singing. He hadn’t even noticed I’d left. Well, I’d be back soon enough, I reasoned. I trotted downstairs, locked the errant door, and then stopped to refill the cat’s water dish and perform a couple of other tasks. It was a good five minutes before I returned to the bedroom upstairs. When I did, I found Spencer in the darkness, midway through a happy babble about a movie he’d seen on cable the previous weekend.

“Um, do you know you’ve been talking to my iPad this entire time?” I announced, as I lifted the blanket and slid in next to his naked body.

Obviously he hadn’t. He flipped around, surprised. “Maybe that’s what I wanted,” he retorted.

“Did you, now?”

“Maybe your iPad is better company than you!”

“Uh-huh,” I laughed, not buying it. I put the device on the table and plugged it in to charge. “You like snuggling up to a computer, huh? I always knew you fantasized about being with an android.”

“Oh yes,” he snickered, warming to the silliness. “Android sex is the best!”

“I knew it. You ride human dick, but secretly you wish it were C-3PO.”

“Oh, C-3PO! So hot! Boop-beep-beep-boop-bleep-bleep-booooop!” Apparently in the dark he couldn’t see my raised eyebrows. He could, however, hear the total lack of response I had for a few seconds, followed by the jiggling of the bed from my laughter. “Wait, which one is the little trash can?”

“R2-D2,” I supplied.

“Which one is C-3PO,” then?

“The one that’s not R2-D2. R2-D2 is the one who goes boop-beep-beep. C-3PO is the gold faggy one who sounds like Roddy McDowell.”

“Who?” he wanted to know.

“Oh, god,” I muttered, pulling the sheets over my shoulders.

“Who?”

“Never mind.”

“I’m not old like you!” he protested.

“Uh-huh.”

“Who is he? Who is he? Which one is C-3PO?” he begged, shaking me and pouncing on me beneath the sheets as if we were kids at a pajama party. Then we giggled and laughed like little boys until, not very long after, we fell asleep, warm and safe in each other’s arms.

This is the sweet, safe routine in which lately Spencer and I have fallen. He’s over here five or six nights week, occupying space on my sofa and eating large chunks from my refrigerator and pantry. We share meals together. He does he laundry here, and keeps his soaps and special foods and herbal teas in my cupboards. We watch television, and look at DVDs of dance, and play video games together. We go to the movies, and out to dinner, and to the bookstore together. He brings me weird desserts from the local vegan restaurant. I buy him socks, when I see his are full of holes.

What we don’t do anymore—and this is difficult for me to admit, a difficult entry for me to write, in fact—is have sex.

I’ve been reluctant to write about this shift in my relationship with Spencer for a couple of reasons. One is the simple reason that writing things down always makes them more real, for me. I’m unwilling to codify in writing some of my own weaknesses and failures, that way.

The other has to do with my blog readers. I only have a couple of detractors who are going to be filled with glee at the news, but there are going to be many who read the words I’ve typed above and think it’s the end of the world. What Spencer and I had was wonderful, they’re going to tell me. It was special, it was romantic and hot and it should have lasted and what the hell happened that it didn’t?

To allay those responses, let me say the following, with all heartfelt sincerity. What Spencer and I have is wonderful. And special. It has been romantic and hot. We both knew from the very, very beginning that it wasn’t going to last, however.

As for what happened—well, I’m going to be as honest about it as possible, though the narrative isn’t going to show me in necessarily the best light.

I wrote once about a night I spent with Spencer in which we both seemed not to be connecting. The sex we enjoyed a couple of times after that rebounded back to normal. But then we had an evening in which neither he nor I seemed to be at our best. We’d been out to a bar with my friends the night before, where he’d performed a couple of karaoke songs. Over dinner, Spencer told me that my bar nemesis, a short rotund little dwarf who keeps stealing and butchering my songs, had hit him up online that morning, feeding Spencer lines about how beautifully he’d sung and asking him out on a date sometime.

“Why, that little. . . !” I growled.

“You aren’t my boyfriend.” Spencer announced loftily. “We didn’t pick out china patterns together. You don’t get to be jealous. Ever.”

“No?” I asked, jealous despite him.

“No. You’ve got no hold on me,” he said, spearing his sushi and dipping it in in his little plate of wasabi and soy sauce. “You’ve got no hold on me whatsoever, married man.”

It felt like a slap in the face, frankly, but I couldn’t argue with it.

That night, he came to bed, luminous by moonlight in the dark. “You really are so beautiful,” I told him, in all honest admiration.

“Uh-huh,” he snapped. Then he said, “I know you only say stuff like that because you just want to stick it in.”

You know, if I had to direct the scene for a movie that followed, it’d be like a cheesy episode of some family show—Blossom or The Brady Bunch—in which the hero keeps hearing the echos of the day as he tries to get his job done. There I was in bed that night, with Spencer’s beautiful ass in my mouth, munching away, and all I could see was the memory of his face, lip curled and sneering. You’ve got no hold on me. And then, over his other butt cheek, another vision of him, disdainful. You only say stuff like that because you just want to stick it in.

Was that really what he believed? Was that really the way he felt about me? Try as I might, I couldn’t get my head into the business at hand. When the time came for me to do something, my dick didn’t cooperate. For the first time in my life, I honestly couldn’t get it up.

I KNOW.

Somehow I played it off. I made it an ‘All About Spencer’ night and thought I did a fairly good job of covering up my inability to get an erection. The next night, though we were in bed again. While we were making out, my dick swelled to its usual proportions. Well, that’s all right then, I thought to myself. Everything’s back to normal. With a gladsome heart I began pushing all of his usual buttons—butt eating, dirty talking, and nipple stroking. My dick was still rock-hard when I growled at him, “You know I’m gonna fuck you with this big dick tonight.”

I remember the moment well. He was on his back, legs in the air, when he replied in quite a normal voice, “I wouldn’t call your dick big.”

“Huh?” I asked.

“Well, it’s slightly above average, maybe,” he said. “A little. But it’s not big. You could say, you know I’m gonna fuck you with my slightly above average-sized dick tonight, but I wouldn’t push it with big.”

I settled back on my heels, confused. Why in the world was he ruining the moment with this shit? “Do you want it or don't you?” I said, trying to keep the same lusty spirit.

“Oh yes, sir, fuck me with your slightly above average cock. No wait, give me your toy-sized cock.” He seemed mightily amused by that phrase, and started laughing uproariously. “I crave your toy-sized cock.”

It was then I realized that I’d totally lost my hard-on again. And nothing I tried brought it back.

I honestly thought something was wrong with me. When I tried to masturbate, after that night, I found myself thinking about my two erection failures—the only ones I’ve ever had in my life—and hearing all Spencer’s hurtful words in my head. (And yes, they were hurtful. Even if they’d been jokingly intended.) Then I’d find myself losing whatever sexual arousal I’d been able to muster. And I was afraid—deathly afraid—to attempt to engage in sex with Spencer, just in case all I encountered were more reasons to think that something was very, very wrong with me. I wasn’t even having erections in my sleep.

There was a period of about two weeks when I thought something physiological had gone awry in my body. I thought my time as a top man was over, kaput, finished. The second of those two weeks coincided with my trip to New York at the beginning of February. And all that time I had this battle warring in my head. Half of it was simply convinced I’d never fuck again, that I was sick and impotent. The other half was more rational and tried to reason it all away. I was tired, and stressed. I was over-thinking my failure and letting it fuck with my dick.

By the end of the week, I had gathered up enough nerve, and courage—it took both—to meet with that muscle man in his Manhattan apartment. I banged his ass just fine. No erection problems there. When I returned home, I reconnected with Scruffy and fucked four loads into his hole. Definitely no issues with hydraulics with him.

The next night, confidence riding on the crest of a wave, I responded with fervor when Spencer kissed me for the first time in bed, since the last time I hadn’t been able to get it up. When our lips met, my dick was rock hard. Oh yeah, I thought to myself. This is going to happen. And again, everything was going right . . . until the moment he whispered, “I want your dick in me. Your toy-sized dick.”

And poof. It was gone, yet again.

I broke down that night in frustration and anger. Spencer held me while I raged. When I was done, he said, very softly, “I like you for more than just your dick.”

Since then, the issue of sex together hasn’t come up. We cuddle. We sit on the sofa and watch TV with our feet or heads in each other’s laps. We sleep naked together. We just don’t fuck. As an option, it doesn’t come up.

If I’d attempted to write this entry at the time it was happening, it would have come across a huge mess of self-recrimination and fear. I haven’t had, I’d like to say, a single instance of erection failure with any other person I’ve been with, since. Or by myself.

I think the distance has given me a lot of time to evaluate exactly what factors were in play. For weeks and weeks—the entire time I was sexually active with Spencer—I slept with no one else. He was everything to me, sexually. I masturbated only twice during that entire time period; every other load, every erection, was for him. I poured all my sexual energy into one receptacle. I was deeply in love with him. I still love him very deeply. I know that Spencer was doing the same. He masturbated on his own, but all the sex he had was with me.

And frankly, I think it scared the crap out of him.

I know that Spencer has been very frightened of losing me when I eventually move away, from the first night we met; I know that even more, he feared loving me to the point he’d find me an indispensable fixture in his life. Every time we fucked—every time we made love so beautifully and so well—he was more and more at risk of needing me to a point at which he feared he could never let go.

I think I am the very first person in his young life of whom he’s known that he would eventually have to let go. And instead of doing philosophically, or giving in and going through worse suffering, he began to push me away.

I’m not entirely free of blame, here. We both conspired in the sabotage of my confidence—he pricked at my vanity and distanced himself with words. I deflated myself with my old enemies, worry and overanalyzing. I elevated him to a point in my emotional well-being that simply jibes had the power to leave me impotent. My instinct would have been to talk it out endlessly, to lay all the issues on the table and let him know exactly what was bothering me. But you know, I didn’t. I won’t. He was right about something: we aren’t boyfriends. We didn’t pick out china patterns together. One of the great things about a casual relationship such as ours is that we aren’t required to have the great big talks that tie us together further. He’s free of that obligation. I’ve got no hold on him.

Which is what he wants.

My philosophy would be balls-to-the-wall, all-in, no holds barred. If he’d let me, I’d love that boy as hard as deeply as I could, all the way to the moment I had eventually to tell him goodbye. It would hurt like fuck when we separated, but it would have been worth it.

My philosophy is not Spencer’s philosophy. He’s never experienced with anyone what we shared. He’s frightened. He wants reassurance that in two months, or three months, or six months, or a year, when I finally move out of this state, that our parting will be as painless as possible. He doesn’t want to live his life with a story that begins, Once I knew a man with whom I was very much in love, and he had to leave. The story he wants to tell himself begins, Once I had a friend. . . .

I know that he will still hurt when I go. But if a polite lie is what he wants, I will give it to him.

I love having Spencer in my life. I like our evenings together, the cooking I do for him, the meals and the entertainment we take. I love our conversations, and nights out. I like having his warm body in my bed, next to mine. These things are all great and good and wonderful. They don’t speak of any kind of failure whatsoever. Nothing positive is ever a waste. It’s all to be relished when it’s happening, and cherished to heart when it’s gone.

Yet when I think of how passionate, and how sweet, our union used to be, my heart aches. For his sake, I pretend not to notice that void I dreadfully miss. If this detente makes it any easier for him in the long run, though, I will give it to him freely, and gladly.

And he will never know how much, sometimes, it kills me.

Lost Boys

Spencer lets himself into my house at about eight at night, while I’m pulling plates from the dishwasher and storing them in their cupboards. He’s carrying a bag with his late dinner in one hand, and a small bag of laundry from the gym and studio in the other. He’s too burdened to offer me more than a quick kiss in passing as he steers himself in the direction of the dining room table. Once he’s free, he shimmies out of his coat and takes a look in the den.

When he looks at the bundle of leopard-spotted fleece balled up in a corner of the sofa, he stops and instantly assesses the situation. His head tilts. He lets out a soft sigh, suspended somewhere between amusement and sympathy. “Your Snuggie is out,” he says. “Oh dear. It’s been that kind of day, has it?”

It’s no secret that I’ve spent the last five months feeling lost. Like a small craft with a cut line, there are days I feel adrift with no course, no one at the tiller. Some days I approach my temporary bachelorhood with a sense of adventure and excitement. Others—well. All I want to do is hide beneath the comforting folds of my leopard-print Snuggie and wish the world would go away. (Shut up. I love my Snuggie.)

“It might have been,” I admit.

His shoulder slump as he looks at me. He wears the kind of expression that could make a man melt. What am I going to do with you? it reads. At the same time, it’s nothing but unalloyed affection, and the desire to make things better. He doesn’t have to ask me to explain myself. He doesn’t have to hear the words. He knows how I’m feeling, just at the sight of that hideous long-armed blanket monstrosity. When he steps forward in my direction, arms outstretched, I know it’s to give me comfort.

He wraps me in hug so strong that I can’t breathe. I feel my spine stretch, and then my feet leave the floor. Spencer lifts all six feet and three inches of me into the air as easily as if I’m one of the tiny dancers with whom he shares the stage. I laugh and protest wildly, afraid I’ll break his back. When finally he sets me down, it’s gently, so that my feet don’t so much strike the ground as approach it, caress it, and lovingly press into it, as gravity once more gives me weight.

“Turn around,” he says. He pushes me down over the kitchen counter. His hips connect with my ass. At the same time, his fingers surround my neck. Their tips dig into the muscle there, squeezing and releasing. They travel from neck to shoulders, to the round pads where my arms join. They dig beneath my shoulder blades and down my spine, teasing out and for the moment banishing the aches.

“Oh, god,” I say, giving in to his hands. I love to be touched. I love it more than fucking, sometimes. “You don’t have to—”

But he shushes me, and continues. Beneath his breath I hear the faintest of hums as he strokes and squeezes my back, soothing me with his talented, strong hands.

It’s a rare treat that continues later in the evening. When he joins me in bed, moist and warm from the shower, he spoons behind me. His pubic hairs tickle against my ass as gently he forces me to hug my pillow, and his fingers roam over my bare skin. In the darkness he silently performs his skillful ministrations, kneading at me, relaxing me in a way that few men ever try. It lasts for long, blissful moments as the both of us drowsily fall toward our slumbers, with the slow and lazy arc of a last autumn leaf descending from an empty branch.

The last thing I see before I close my eyes is the night sky through my open window. I don't notice the limbs of the tree overhanging the house, or the power lines, or the other rooftops on my quiet street. Only points of light in an indigo sky. Stars upon stars, a panorama assembled, over time unimaginable, just for the two of us. For this moment. I wish his touch, this fading kitten’s-paw sensation of his hands at the base of my spine, could be as infinite as the stars' numbers.

Spencer's breath deepens and he sleeps at last.

When we’re in the darkness together, Spencer and I, I feel like we’re two lost boys in the wood, with leaves as our blanket and only our two bodies for warmth. On the nights he spends here, we fall asleep clinging to each other. Tonight, he comforts me. He gives me an anchor when I’m adrift in the darkness, a place to moor myself, for a time.

What comfort do I give him? Some nights, it’s tough to imagine. It's not enough. But he’s here. For his hand on my waist, the rise and fall of his chest, the soft breath on my neck, this lost boy is grateful.

Domestic

In all my life, I’ve only spent the night with four people—and I’m talking about the entire night, sleeping in the same bed, not some late-night screwing followed by a pre-dawn scurrying home. There’s my spouse, of course. There was a man a little over a decade ago for whom I had deep feelings, and with whom I spent a romantic night in which he lost his virginity . . . as a top. There was a reader of mine who offered me shelter on a long drive home. And then there’s Spencer.

There’s only me rattling around my house these days, so I couldn’t begin to count the number of times Spencer has stayed overnight. He knows he’s welcome anytime; all he has to do is announce his intentions.

We have a rhythm to our evenings, now. Most nights of the week he’ll drop by after he’s finished for the day at the studio. I’ll leave the side light on and the door unlocked for him. He’ll park in front, let himself in, kick off his shoes, and come find me wherever I might be. It’s always a genuine pleasure for me to see him. Even in his winter coat and his head half-covered by one of his outlandish hats, the sight of that square, dimpled chin and scruffy jaw, those tea-brown eyes, always sets my heart thumping. He’ll shoot me one of those slow, easy smiles, and we’ll embrace, and kiss.

He’ll make himself something to drink as we talk about our days, or he’ll head to the pantry and help himself to some of the snacks stockpiled there. Some nights I prepare dinner for the both of us. I miss cooking for others. Having someone to take care of comforts me as much as it does him. I’ll stir-fry some curry noodles with vegetables and chicken and crushed peanuts on top, or I’ll grill some salmon and vegetables, or a chicken breast with rice. Or we’ll simply grab a bag of chips, a tub of hummus, and head for the den.

We watch television on the sofa, him at one end and me at the other, our legs entwined. Over the course of the night we’ll swap positions several times. Sometimes he’ll have his head in my lap, and I’ll absently stroke his hair while we watch the screen. Or he’ll pull me down so that I’m reclining on him with his big arms around me. We’ve watched our way through seven seasons of The X-Files this way, and all of Full Metal Alchemist and several seasons of silly sitcoms from Comedy Central. Lately I’ve gotten him hooked on Doctor Who. We’ll pause the playback frequently to discuss what’s on the screen, or go off on a tangent together, talking, snacking, and companionably spending the evening hours.

It’s cozy and warm, like napping beneath a warm blanket on a winter’s night. It’s a domesticity with Spencer that I know I can’t always have, but is still as sweet as honey upon my tongue. Even as it’s happening, I know that I should be storing up the sensations and the memories, saving them for lonely nights in places I don’t know.

Then ten or ten-thirty will roll around. Either he’ll stand up and stretch and announce that he should get home, or he’ll turn, give me a smile, and say, “Want a sleepover?”

My answer to that question is always yes.

This is the part of the night I like best. He’ll put his cups and glasses and plates in the dishwasher while I turn off lights. Up the stairs he’ll climb. He leaves his clothes in a trail to the bathroom—a shirt on the bedroom dresser, his jeans draped over the upstairs hall railing. Socks on the bathroom floor. Save for the one time I saw him in long johns, he doesn’t ever don underwear. He’ll turn on the shower and collect his things—he has his own face wash, his own soap and shampoo. The toothbrush I’ve given him, he’ll into the stall with him, and disappear into the clouds of vapor billowing over the shower door.

It only takes a few moments for me to ready myself for bed. I brush my teeth and take out my contacts, then leave the bathroom and slip into bed. I sleep naked. One of the great pleasures of winter for me is feeling my nude body against the soft flannel sheets, contrasted by the cool cotton weave of the pillows. In the low light I’ll wait as I listen to the sound of splashing water. It’s followed by the rush of the faucet as he turns it, and then the roll of the shower door on its rails. Through the heating vent between the bedroom and bath I can hear the soft noises he makes as he towels himself.

Then he’ll pad into the bedroom, cocking his head as he walks and giving me a goofy grin. Sometimes he’ll be wearing an athletic tank top with straps that accent his pecs and strong shoulders, and show off his big arms to their best advantage. It’ll cut off just above his round, pert dancer’s butt, which gyrates cheek by cheek as he pads to the bed. Sometimes he’ll come out of the bathroom still steaming, naked and unashamed of his body. He’ll pop his iPod into my clock radio, and start his sleepytime playlist.

Into the sheets he’ll slide, his butt snuggling firmly against my dick. We spoon together well, Spencer and I. I’ll insert my left arm beneath his pillow and let my arm hold him tightly around his chest. I’ll slip my hand beneath his tank top and run it over the firmness of his abdomen, the broad muscles of his chest, the soft planes of his nipples. Then he’ll turn his head and kiss me over his shoulder, long, slow and deeply.

“I like sleeping with you,” he’ll always say, in the softest of voices.

“I like you being here,” I’ll tell him, as I run my hand down his side, past his knife-sharp hipbone and around the soft peach-like globes of his ass. Often at this point we’ll make love. Sometimes we won’t; we’ll just cuddle, and talk in low voices.

But this is what’s vital, on the nights he sleeps over, what I really want to remember: the warmth of his damp skin against mine, like a stoked furnace. The smell of him, all soap and shampoo and astringent. The unguardedness of his voice, as we murmur in the darkness. The cat, settled between our two sets of feet. His mouth against my ear, his hands on the back of my neck. The gentle strains of music from the speakers, playing a lullaby. And finally, the heavy breathing coming from between his lips as the motion of the day slows to a standstill, and he falls asleep, protected in my arms.

It’s not fucking. But it’s important. I want to store up as many of these nights as I can, while they last. And I want to remember them in all their simplicity and beauty.

The Performance

Spencer describes himself as a lover of dance and not a performer. He doesn’t live for the spotlight on the stage, he tells me, quite seriously. He loves the discipline of the art—the rehearsals, the countless runs of the routines, the quest for perfection in a form that’s so fleeting and ephemeral. From the way he describes his passion with dance, I always get the impression he’d be perfectly happy stretching and exercising and running routines from day to day, without ever stepping foot onstage.

But oh, what a performer he is.

It’s Saturday night and I’ve forgone my usual frivolities to attend the second performance of his I’ve seen. The skies dumped four or more inches of snow on the area in the short space of time in the afternoon. The freeways were in terrible condition still. Only a single lane had been passable the entire twenty-five miles I’d driven. The audience is pretty sparse. Many of the middle-aged women who comprise the vast majority sitting in the little theater are still shivering in their woven scarfs and wooly knitted hats.

Then the show starts, and for a couple of hours, we forget about the mountains of snow outside. We forget about winter’s bite, or the long rides home we’ll all have to make. There’s just the music, the dancers, and the light and the darkness.

I’ve told Spencer many times that he has a face made for the stage. His features are sharp, but broad. Every nuance stands out on his face in the dreamy, comedic piece in which he first appears. His seated body sways with the other two dancers onstage, gyrating slowly to the bossa nova rhythms. All three move and swivel in unison, like riders on a turbulent bus, but it’s Spencer that steals all the focus. It’s at his quirked eyebrows the audience laughs, at his comic reactions that a wave of enjoyment sweeps the room. They’re emotions that would be lost on finer faces, but on Spencer’s, they could be seen in the very back row.

There’s pure joy in his stride when he leaps across the stage and lands nimbly on his foot. He uses a metal folding chair in his choreographed moves, brandishing it skyward and twirling it through the air as gracefully as any human partner. When he at last sets it onto the ground, it connects to the floor without a sound. I marvel at that kind of control. Then he’s up and over the chair, his hands gripping its sides as his legs stretch and extend in the air, then descend in a display of artistic athleticism to which I could never aspire, admire it as I may. His right palm lies flat on the floor; his right foot connects several feet to the side. His left leg and arm rise high in the air and stay there for what seems an impossible amount of time. Not once do they waver. His flesh becomes rigid, rooted to the stage, until at last on a downbeat he swoops back into the dance, part of the trio once more.

He’s breathtaking.

Two hours later, and another twenty-five miles of snow-covered roads, we’re together again. I’m naked between the flannel sheets, warm below layers of blankets. There’s a cat at my feet, already asleep. From the bathroom Spencer pads in, straight out of the shower. He’s nonchalant about his nakedness as he tosses his clothes atop the dresser. When he slides between the sheets, the temperature rises dramatically. He’s moist, but the sheets absorb the extra moisture quickly. “Hi,” he says, with a little boy’s smile.

“You were amazing tonight,” I tell him. He pretends to ignore the compliment, but I can see the corners of his mouth lift. He snuggles closer, next to where I’m propping myself up on an arm. I enthuse about his musicality, his long lines and fluid movements. Whether or not he dances in order to perform, his performance moved me, and I tell him that, too. “You make me so proud,” I finish. “You have amazing control over your body.”

“That’s not true at all,” he says, his liquid brown eyes staring up at me. “You do.”

My lips part to ask a question. Then I understand what he’s telling me.I turn off the lights, and slide my naked self down into the sheets, dragging him with me into the depths.

I have all night for this performance.

Failure

This is tough for me to write about: I failed last night.

I’d had a tough day. The winter days have really begun to grind me down and to make me feel housebound and logy. I’ve been feeling particularly anxious about my living situation, and feeling neither one place nor another. I’ve had an upswing in crazy associated with the blog—name-calling, diva fits, and outright rudeness—with which it’s been difficult to cope.

Over my first-world problems I’d managed to get myself into one of those fretting states of mind that I took into the bedroom with Spencer. I was tired, and cranky, and cliched as it sounds, had something of a headache. And to put it bluntly, it just wasn’t working for me.

Oh, it wasn’t the hydraulics that weren’t working. I don’t usually have an issue with that, knock wood. No, it was more the problem of me not being really into the moment. I was thinking more about the problems rattling around in my head than I was the beautiful boy between my legs, surrendering his butt to me. And he could tell. “We don’t have to fuck tonight, you know,” he at last muttered, somewhere down there.

And I thought to myself, Oh, fuck. It shows.

My head was even more crowded in the moments after. Nothing contributes more to feelings of pointlessness than having one’s sexual inadequacies highlighted during the act. I sighed, rolled onto my back, and breathed deeply as I tried to keep everything at bay.

As I lay there, fretting and mentally flagellating myself, it occurred to me that maybe I could do something other than thinking about myself. I did, after all, have a young man in my bed who had needs of his own. And if I wasn’t totally in the mood to use his hole, there were plenty of other things I could do.

So I did.

I lifted his head to mine and kissed him deeply. My right hand traveled over his broad chest, stroked his hairy stomach, squeezed his still-erect dick. When I pressed my lips to his nipples, my troubles began to recede from mind; by the time I had him groaning and writhing on the bed from scraping my teeth and tongue across those sensitive red buds, I’d more or less forgotten them completely.

I love to kiss Spencer’s body. I love the smell of him, the clean taste of his skin, the give of his stomach, the hardness of his hips. I love letting my lips trail from neck to navel, and of burying my face in his thick, spiky pubes. And I really love impaling my throat on his dick.

Spencer’s dick has a point to it; his head is more of a rounded triangle than a mushroom. The shaft grows gradually as my lips travel down, stretching them widest around the base. I can take all but the last half-inch without trouble. Struggling for that last tiny measurement, however, is half the fun.

Spencer gasps and moans as I suck him. This time is different from the other nights I’ve gone down on him, somehow. Usually I can pleasure him for long periods of time—and I do—but it’s pleasure for pleasure’s sake, not with a goal in mind. This time, though, he’s directing me in a way he hasn’t before. He’s thrusting inside my mouth deeper and deeper; his hand is holding the back of my neck to keep it still. My eyes water. I try to keep my throat open as his cock’s head invades it. He’s not a big pre-cummer for the most part, but now he’s dripping. I can taste it on the back of my tongue, stronger and saltier by the moment.

I was pretty sure this might be going somewhere we hadn’t gone before. I felt Spencer’s hand tapping lightly at the back of my neck as I picked up the pace slightly. It felt like the slightest of taps, as if he was asleep and dribbling a basketball in his dreams. I adjusted my lips and continued to move my mouth up and down his shaft. Sometimes my fingers would lightly stroke his hairy nuts. Sometimes I’d curl my thumb and forefinger around his hard meat and let the tight circle follow the path of my mouth.

Spencer’s breathing grew faster, shallower. I could see his stomach ripple with motion as he began to pant. The phantom tapping at the back of my head increased, and I moved with it, letting him direct the pace. I wanted to do this for him. I wanted him this way. And most of all, I wanted his seed in my mouth.

It came shortly after. “Oh my god,” he panted. “Oh my god.” He said the words over and over, like a mantra, or perhaps a prayer. Then his hips shot upward, nailing his dick deep in my throat as he shot his load. I received the sperm onto my tongue and kept my mouth on his meat until his spasms subsided, and then a moment more.

Only when he was completely relaxed did I withdraw and swallow the payload. It was strong in flavor, pungent, and slightly sweet. Most importantly, it was his essence, and I’d gotten it in my mouth. Finally.

“Thank you,” I said, easing myself to his side. I had a smile on my face, large and genuine, untouched by any of the day’s cares.

His voice was soft and distant. “Would you believe me if I told you that no one has ever sucked me off completely before?”

“I would,” I murmured back. “You told me no one had, the second day I knew you.”

“No one has,” he said, dreamily. “Until you. Just now.”

“I was there,” I reminded him.

And I was. I really had been there. Present. Willing. Thinking of nothing else but him, and his pleasure, and what he wanted.

Sometimes out of failure grow the seeds of success.

What He Wants

Spencer’s dick is bigger than mine. I’m under no illusion that I’ve got the biggest meat in any assembly of men, though I’ve usually got more than most—and more than enough to work with. Spencer’s longer than me by a good inch or so. The uppermost reaches of his scrotum begin higher on the shaft than mine do, so that from some angles, like the underside, it seems nowhere near as lengthy. But when he’s got his legs spread, and his dick pointing to the ceiling, and his head arched back and dug deeply into the pillows . . . yeah. It’s a big one.

We’re naked, and on the floor of the den, the carpet made pillowy even more by a fleece throw we’ve dragged down from the sofa. The sliding glass doors at the back of the house are uncurtained. Though the lights are low, anyone who happened to passing would see us embracing. The base of his spine is arched and raised from the floor. I’m able to slip my fingers beneath it. His big hands pull my hips harder against his own. In my childhood, my uncle used to call having sex the beast with two backs. It seemed an over-exotic allusion then, something archaic and quaint, the sort of Edwardian naughtiness whispered over cigars and port, away from the ladies.

But now I know what it means. Together we do form a beast, a writhing, squirming monster that moves across the floor in one direction and then another. The beast is hungry and seeks only its own satisfaction; it fills the air with ungodly cries and wordless sounds that would frighten the weak. Parts of it throb and pulse, angry, red. Others clutch and claw. Mouths open to devour. Eyes open, but they don’t see—not past the beast itself.

His dick is raw and pulsing, wet from the precum he drips. I feel it slide up from underneath my pelvis, and travel up my crack until it’s drooling at the base of my spine. The droplets of moisture cool there, making me shiver slightly. We kiss, savoring the sensation of our lips as they pull at the other’s.

Then his dick inches lower again. The head parts my crack. Instinctively, it burrows for my warmest part, and nudges against my hole. And there it rests for a moment.

When I feel his cock head swell, I almost pause completely. Is this what he wants?

All that fills my head for the moments following are the reasons why I shouldn’t. I didn’t clean out, inside. I’m not prepared. It’s been too long. I haven’t—I can’t—I’m not sure I could. That’s all it takes to fill my head with doubt, I realize. Nothing more than the sensation of his dick’s head, butting against me. He hasn’t done anything. Hasn’t asked me for anything. He’s just doing what feels good to him, in that moment.

I reach back, and wrap my fingers around his shaft. It swells. Beneath my hand it’s hot—hotter to the touch than any other part of his body. Gently, slowly, I rub the tip of his dick against my hole. He sighs, and shifts, and while he kisses me, his hips thrust up. Slightly. So, so slightly. Atop him, I rock forward and back to the swells and ebbs of his movements. His dick sweetly pulses against my entrance, icing it with his sticky fluids.

If this is what he wants, I will give it to him, I’ve decided.

I raise myself up enough to spit on my hand. I bring it down around his meat, getting it slick. His breath quickens; he thrusts hard between my fingers, splitting them further apart, splintering any resistance they might have. His dick batters against my pelvic bone, almost bruising it; again and again he bangs and thrusts, assaulting a spot an inch away from my hole. I only release him for another handful of saliva, which I spread on his inches until it’s slippery to the touch.

If this is what he wants, I’ll give it to him right there. And I half-wish he would.

His body jerks. Spasms wrack his frame. His jaw clenches, set and jutted like a rock shelf. I feel a spurt of juice first on my ass, and then running down my wrist. He shakes and nearly bucks me from atop him as he comes, his groans so loud that one of the cats runs from her nap on the nearby sofa.

When he’s done, I rub the cummy tip of his cock over my hole, and lower myself so that my head rests on his chest. It wasn’t what he wanted, that time.

But my mind can’t help but think about what might have been.

Connected

“I hope your house never sells.” He says it without petulance, without any of that whininess of a restless child unwilling to turn off the lights and go to sleep. The words are flat and matter-of-fact. “I hope everyone hates your house. I hope your stinky house never sells. Then you’ll have to stay here forever.”

Okay, maybe that last part sounds a little bit petulant. And the way he takes a pillow from the sofa and tosses it onto the floor, as if the sloppiness of a single cushion on the floor might scare off potential customers, is a little puerile. This is the same Spencer, however, who a little over an hour ago helped me put some final cleaning touches on the place before we went out to dinner during the house showing. He’s the one who’d rearranged the sofa cushions in a more attractive presentation than I’d ever managed. If he wanted to mess them up a little after strangers had trooped through my house, it was his prerogative.

There’s stuff I have to do after every house showing. I have to turn off the lights in the basement and close the door to my studio. I have to check the locks on the back doors, since the agents and the potential buyers they’re showing around have a tendency—unwitting or not—to leave them undone, which has made me paranoid about home invasions. I check for running sinks and open cabinets on the first floor, and then hunt for the pets to be sure they’re all right on the second. Upstairs, I turn off the lights that are making my home a beacon on my darkened street, pat the cat that’s hiding beneath the blankets, and take a moment to kick off my shoes and the thick sweater I’ve been wearing.

He joins me in the darkness of my bedroom. His hands glide beneath my armpits; I feel his hot breath on my neck and the warmth of his body against mine. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“There’s no need to apologize,” I tell him. There isn’t—not for an outburst so minor, nor for wishing our time together was more permanent. He didn’t say anything I haven’t thought to myself, more than once.

“It’s just that—”

I stop him by turning around and pressing my mouth to his. He doesn’t need to say the words. I already know.

There’s a fresh towel I’d stowed beneath the bed earlier that afternoon, when I’d learned that Spencer was planning to give himself a deep cleaning. I use my foot to slide it out, bend down to pick it up, and spread it out onto the bed before I gently settle him onto it. He sighs as I undress him, slowly, and deliberately. I fold his clothing before I place it all, neatly stacked, onto the floor. His dick, large and hard, points in the direction of his left nipple; his balls hang low, almost to the mattress.

He is so beautiful.

I kneel over him as we kiss. My spit-slick fingers are already prodding at his hole. Involuntarily his knees rise, taking his muscular dancer’s legs into the air. Slowly, inch by inch, they straight until they’re pointing at the wall behind his head. He hooks his toes on the underside of my headboard, ceding full access of his hole to me.

I still crave the taste of him, even though I know it better than anything else. I’ve carried that scent, the remnants of the taste, on my beard around my mouth for hours at a time. I’ve smelled it the mornings after we’ve rolled out of bed and he’s brushed his teeth and gone off to one of his jobs. Glorious as it is when it lingers, it’s even better when I can dive in and enjoy it to its fullest, and to make it mine. He gasps for long minutes as I eat and bite at his hole, lifting it up and out. He’s doing it so that I can munch more vigorously, so that I can gnaw at his hole and sate my hunger.

Spencer smells like soap and face wash and the cologne he wears, all at once. I could detect those aromas blindfolded in an exotic market and know he was near me, instantly. If I could bottle that scent, I would. I’d bathe in it.

He gasps when I lower his legs, turn him over and settle, crossed-legged, beside his body. His chest expands and deflates as I pull his legs apart. From the bedside drawer I pull out the tub of Crisco, which I settle at the back of his knee. My index and middle finger dip into the cool, slick grease and withdraw a glob that I deposit directly onto his hole. He gasps at its low temperature, and moans as I work the tips of of my fingers, around, around, in smooth, slow swirls. It’s like I’m icing a cake.

I’m almost reluctant to try this again. The first time I fisted Spencer we both had an enjoyable time. The second time was ill-fated. He’d had difficulties hosing himself out, that afternoon. I’d left on the lights, which made him self-conscious. He’d put on some music I found distracting. Neither of us were really feeling the mood. He limped into the bathroom after feeling ashamed and embarrassed, and I was mortified to think I’d hurt him.

This time, though, I’ve turned the lights off, so that we’re lit by nothing but starlight. His iPod sits in my clock radio, playing something low and sexy. He wants my hand inside him, and I want to be there.

Two fingers. Three. Four. Slowly I open him up, applying more grease whenever I feel the slightest resistance. My hand resembles a bird’s beak, long, pointed, and conical, as I work all my fingers and my thumb into his slick, warm opening. Spencer moves in slow motion, his arms clawing helplessly at the pillows and sheets as his hips gyrate. It almost looks as if he’s swimming at an impossibly gradual speed, just enough to keep his head over water, but not quite enough to escape the threat of drowning.

And he’s drowning now—in waves of sensation and in pure pleasure. Every rasp of his breath, every groan, every cry betrays his need. His hands blindly scrabble for the other bedside drawer, where his bottle of poppers lies. But then he thinks better of it and closes the drawer. He doesn’t need it. My knuckles stretch his outer ring to the widest point . . . and then I’m in.

“Oh god,” he cries. “Oh god.” When I say he’s crying, I mean exactly that. My hand becomes a ball, a fist that’s tight and compact inside his ass. I lean down gently to kiss the lowest point of his spine. And my free hand strokes his hair, calming and reassuring him. When my fingers trail over his face, I can feel the tears, as hot and wet as the hole I’m inside. “I want you,” he moans.

My curled fingers twist slightly, making him groan. Then I do what I know he loves—I piston my arm in and out of his hole, slightly, gently. It’s not moving any more than a quarter of an inch, back and forth. It’s scarcely more than a vibration, really—and it causes his body to react with almost violent pleasure. I can feel from the inside how hard he is. His muscles contract; the prostate bumping against my knuckles presses hard against me.

He’s still talking. “I want your dick inside me. I want your hand,” he begs. “I want you inside me so deep. I want all of you inside me. I want you to fucking live inside my hole.” His lips kiss my hand, over and over. “I need this!”

“I’m here,” I whisper to him. “You’re getting exactly what you need.”

For long, long minutes I keep up the in-and-out motion. Occasionally I vary it with twisting, or simply resting my arm and expanding my fist so that it grows in size before collapsing again on itself. He loves all these things, and lets me know. Through words. Through guttural sounds. Through the grinding of his pelvis into the towel. And by backing onto my wrist, trying to accommodate more of me.

Gradually we turn him onto his side, so that he can masturbate while I’m inside him. He seems reluctant to let the experience end—and I’d be happy to accommodate him for as long as he needs. His dick demands attention, however. As he beats it, his ass spasms. The contractions are so strong that I half-worry he might pinch off my hand below the wrist, or shatter the bones in my hands. When he clamps down, it feels as if he might reduce my knuckles to splinters and dust.

I gasp in something close to pain when he comes. My forearm feels as if it might break as jet after jet of semen erupts from his dick and flies into the air. Gradually, though, slowly the spasms subside. He loosens up again, and I start to withdraw.

I feel his hands on my arm, stopping me. “I don’t want you to go,” he whispers.

He’s not talking about me vacating his hole. “I know,” I tell him, smoothing down his hair. “I know.”

For now, though, I leave my hand inside him so that he can feel the connection. I’m not going anywhere, just yet.