Two men sit near the fountain in Bryant Park, one spring afternoon. Their metal chairs are pulled close; the men incline toward each other, rapt in a low-spoken conversation that cannot be heard over the plashing of the water. Anyone sitting nearby—the tourists with their Fifth Avenue shopping bags, the lone businessmen staring at their phones over a sandwich, the office women in their smart casual wear spearing takeout salads with plastic forks—might assume the men to be lovers, so cocooned are they in their own world.
They’re both tall, these men. Six foot three and six foot four. One is older, bearded, handsome in a modest way, gray at the temples and the corners of his chin. The younger, taller man has a square face with an even more sharply geometric jaw; he looks as if he’s been willed into being from soft, pale clay by a clumsy and inexperienced sculptor. When he leans back in his seat for a moment to stretch, he resembles a golem, hulking and lumbering, a shaped construction, not quite finished. Or perhaps someone might imagine him a throwback to a taller, more ancient race, a race with facial planes set at alien angles from our own.
Lazily, with his enormous hands, he reaches for a cardboard coffee cup from the table to his side. He leans in again to speak. His lips are mere millimeters away from the older man’s ear. They move, barely aspirating their message.
The older man listens. He sits back, but only slightly. Their faces are close. So close. They must breathe each other’s air; surely they feel their own heat reflecting from the other’s skin. They could kiss without moving.
Now the older man nods and stands. When he extends his arm, the younger man passes him the cup then reclines in his metal chair with his Neanderthal hands resting on his stomach. In the direction of Forty-Second the older man disappears.
He returns five minutes later. Now he proffers the coffee cup to his friend. As the young man snaps off the plastic lid to peer inside, the older man takes his seat. His errand is rewarded by a smile that transforms the young man’s face from golem to angel. The youth leans forward, whispers something into his ear, and kisses him, gently, on the cheek.
The youth raises the cup to his lips and takes a sip. It must be to his liking, for he chugs down the contents, raising the cardboard container high in order to drain the last drops. Then he leans back into his seat, letting his arm rest on its back. A cocky smirk transforms his face yet again, this time into something far less angelic. For a long moment on that cool spring afternoon, the two sit there, drinking each other in. Basking in each other’s smiles. Saying nothing and not needing to speak.
2.
I first encountered Christopher fifteen years ago. I still lived in Michigan; he was a student at one of the state universities. I need to meet you, sir, he wrote on Manhunt. You are everything I’ve ever wished for in a man.
When I told him I was flattered, he escalated his messages. I need you to dominate me. I need you to strip me, to tower over me as I'm naked at your feet. I need to soak in your urine. I need to feed on your piss, and make it part of me. I need to suck your dick and take your seed, then have you piss directly down my throat. Please say that it’s okay for me to feel the way I do, sir. I need you.
Well. I'm susceptible to being objectified, especially in such a flattering way. Christopher recognized that our distance was an impediment—and our timing was off, as he would be graduating and moving out of the state in less than three months. But please allow me to continue fantasizing about you, sir, he would beg. You are everything I’ve ever wanted, in looks and attitude.
Christopher was an aspiring writer; I was weeks away from having my first book published. I write from life, he told me, when first I asked what projects he was undertaking. I don’t write memoir, but my life feeds my fiction. Just like you should feed me your piss, sir.
The audience listens respectfully, perhaps taken aback by the explicitness of the passage. Many hold their hands before their mouths to convey an expression of deep thought, their eyes fixed on the floor, or just below the podium. I, on the other hand, am perhaps feeling too deeply the war of wills my friend is describing in his soft monotone. When Christopher reads about his character being slapped yet again after he has swallowed the trade’s semen, all I can think about is a fire-red handprint marking Christopher’s dough-colored skin; when the writer is forced down onto the bed and beaten, over and over, by the man’s angry fists, all I picture is how the bruises must have looked on Christopher’s face and body.
The older man listens. He sits back, but only slightly. Their faces are close. So close. They must breathe each other’s air; surely they feel their own heat reflecting from the other’s skin. They could kiss without moving.
Now the older man nods and stands. When he extends his arm, the younger man passes him the cup then reclines in his metal chair with his Neanderthal hands resting on his stomach. In the direction of Forty-Second the older man disappears.
He returns five minutes later. Now he proffers the coffee cup to his friend. As the young man snaps off the plastic lid to peer inside, the older man takes his seat. His errand is rewarded by a smile that transforms the young man’s face from golem to angel. The youth leans forward, whispers something into his ear, and kisses him, gently, on the cheek.
The youth raises the cup to his lips and takes a sip. It must be to his liking, for he chugs down the contents, raising the cardboard container high in order to drain the last drops. Then he leans back into his seat, letting his arm rest on its back. A cocky smirk transforms his face yet again, this time into something far less angelic. For a long moment on that cool spring afternoon, the two sit there, drinking each other in. Basking in each other’s smiles. Saying nothing and not needing to speak.
2.
I first encountered Christopher fifteen years ago. I still lived in Michigan; he was a student at one of the state universities. I need to meet you, sir, he wrote on Manhunt. You are everything I’ve ever wished for in a man.
When I told him I was flattered, he escalated his messages. I need you to dominate me. I need you to strip me, to tower over me as I'm naked at your feet. I need to soak in your urine. I need to feed on your piss, and make it part of me. I need to suck your dick and take your seed, then have you piss directly down my throat. Please say that it’s okay for me to feel the way I do, sir. I need you.
Well. I'm susceptible to being objectified, especially in such a flattering way. Christopher recognized that our distance was an impediment—and our timing was off, as he would be graduating and moving out of the state in less than three months. But please allow me to continue fantasizing about you, sir, he would beg. You are everything I’ve ever wanted, in looks and attitude.
Christopher was an aspiring writer; I was weeks away from having my first book published. I write from life, he told me, when first I asked what projects he was undertaking. I don’t write memoir, but my life feeds my fiction. Just like you should feed me your piss, sir.
I’d laugh, flattered by his sexual banter, and try to steer the topic back to more high-minded things like the love of writing we both shared. Somehow, though, he would always end up begging for more photos of my dick. I’d find myself hardening to his dirty talk, and allow him to flatter and cajole me.
After his graduation, Christopher moved back home, deep in farm territory. We kept in touch, vaguely, on social media. I followed his adventures abroad as he moved to Eastern Europe to teach, and to work on his novel; I cheered for his success when he began to review other people’s books online. From time to time, he’d send me quick messages. I still think of you. I visit your Manhunt profile just to look at your photos, and dream about that hard cock filling me with your piss, he’d say.
I’d ask how his novel was coming. Fine. But not as fine as your engorged meat would look spewing its urine all over my skin.
I moved to the East Coast; Christopher remained in the midwest. But then one day I received a message. I’m coming to New York, he told me. My novel is being published. Can I meet you?
Could he meet me? Of course he could meet me, I told him. I offered to take him out to lunch, to celebrate. We made a date of it, at an upscale pizza restaurant that’s a favorite of mine. Over lunch we talked—literary things, at first. His struggles with his editor. The excitement he felt over his first novel’s publication. What lay in the future for him.
His novel, he told me, was of a young man’s strange, erotic journey from Milan to Minsk—or at least, that’s as much of the plot I could absorb, as when he explained it to me over pizza, under the table the sole of his foot pressed insistently on the hard bulge in my pants. His was a tale of dark, sexual obsession, anyway, based on a relationship he’d experienced while he’d lived abroad. “It’s about an aspiring writer teaching in Eastern Europe who falls for . . . well, I guess you could call him rough trade. The man is older and straight, but willing to let the writer suck his dick when the writer pays enough. The writer follows . . . well, I guess you could call it stalking . . . he stalks the straight man around Europe. The climax is when the straight man beats the writer and steals all his money after making him perform oral sex.”
“And this novel—it’s based on a relationship of yours,” I said later, after lunch, as we exited a Starbucks and began strolling up Fifth Avenue in the direction of the public library. Christopher agreed that it was. “How closely based?”
“Closely.”
“Was the real other man older, and straight?”
“He identified as straight. He was older.”
I thought for a moment. “Did you pay him?”
With a wry grin, Christopher admitted, “I paid him a lot.”
“Did you . . . follow him around Europe?”
“I stalked him.” I’d avoided that word and its negative connotations, but here it was, out in the open.
I looked sideways at him, then. I had one last question to ask. “Did he beat you? Please tell me you didn’t let yourself get beaten.”
He shrugged. “My stories are from life. I live my stories.”
He hadn’t answered my question. Then again, he had.
I attempted to change the subject. “What’s your next book to be?” I wondered.
Again, he shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll have to live some more and see.” He, too, was anxious for a shift in topic. Hands in his pockets, he nudged me with his shoulder. “I really like spending time with you. Don’t go yet. Let’s sit somewhere and talk for a while.”
I nodded, feeling the warmth between us. “I’d like that a lot. Bryant Park’s up ahead. Want to find a table and sit for a while?”
“I want more than that.” But he skirted the library with me, and together we found a table near the fountain.
3.
It’s a year after our lunch. I’m sitting in an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, near the back of an assembly of chairs. The store would be closed in another ten months, but that news is yet to come. Tonight it’s abuzz with patrons. Perhaps forty people surround me, listening attentively to Hilton Als introduce Christopher with fulsome praise for his newly-released novel. Hilton Als. Award-winning critic Hilton fucking Als is introducing my friend, I think, glowing. How amazing a journey is that?
Christopher takes the stage. He towers over the little podium, an ungainly giant looming over a child’s prop. He acknowledges Als, nods at the audience to thank them for their applause, and clears his throat. In a halting, quiet voice, he begins to read.
I recognize this passage immediately. I haven’t read it yet, although the book was auto-delivered on publication to my Kindle a day or two before. I recognize the premise because Christopher described it to me the previous spring. The American writer and the scowling object of his obsession are alone in a room. The dark-featured man unbuckles his black market 501s and shoves the American to his knees. He forces the American to taste his dick, its foreskin ripe from piss and unwashed juices. Hungrily the American obeys, but some impulse impels him to pull away. The man in the 501s seizes the writer’s wrist so violently that the American cries out in pain. A slap across the face. Another. Through tears, the American parts his lips to finish what he started.
After his graduation, Christopher moved back home, deep in farm territory. We kept in touch, vaguely, on social media. I followed his adventures abroad as he moved to Eastern Europe to teach, and to work on his novel; I cheered for his success when he began to review other people’s books online. From time to time, he’d send me quick messages. I still think of you. I visit your Manhunt profile just to look at your photos, and dream about that hard cock filling me with your piss, he’d say.
I’d ask how his novel was coming. Fine. But not as fine as your engorged meat would look spewing its urine all over my skin.
I moved to the East Coast; Christopher remained in the midwest. But then one day I received a message. I’m coming to New York, he told me. My novel is being published. Can I meet you?
Could he meet me? Of course he could meet me, I told him. I offered to take him out to lunch, to celebrate. We made a date of it, at an upscale pizza restaurant that’s a favorite of mine. Over lunch we talked—literary things, at first. His struggles with his editor. The excitement he felt over his first novel’s publication. What lay in the future for him.
His novel, he told me, was of a young man’s strange, erotic journey from Milan to Minsk—or at least, that’s as much of the plot I could absorb, as when he explained it to me over pizza, under the table the sole of his foot pressed insistently on the hard bulge in my pants. His was a tale of dark, sexual obsession, anyway, based on a relationship he’d experienced while he’d lived abroad. “It’s about an aspiring writer teaching in Eastern Europe who falls for . . . well, I guess you could call him rough trade. The man is older and straight, but willing to let the writer suck his dick when the writer pays enough. The writer follows . . . well, I guess you could call it stalking . . . he stalks the straight man around Europe. The climax is when the straight man beats the writer and steals all his money after making him perform oral sex.”
“And this novel—it’s based on a relationship of yours,” I said later, after lunch, as we exited a Starbucks and began strolling up Fifth Avenue in the direction of the public library. Christopher agreed that it was. “How closely based?”
“Closely.”
“Was the real other man older, and straight?”
“He identified as straight. He was older.”
I thought for a moment. “Did you pay him?”
With a wry grin, Christopher admitted, “I paid him a lot.”
“Did you . . . follow him around Europe?”
“I stalked him.” I’d avoided that word and its negative connotations, but here it was, out in the open.
I looked sideways at him, then. I had one last question to ask. “Did he beat you? Please tell me you didn’t let yourself get beaten.”
He shrugged. “My stories are from life. I live my stories.”
He hadn’t answered my question. Then again, he had.
I attempted to change the subject. “What’s your next book to be?” I wondered.
Again, he shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll have to live some more and see.” He, too, was anxious for a shift in topic. Hands in his pockets, he nudged me with his shoulder. “I really like spending time with you. Don’t go yet. Let’s sit somewhere and talk for a while.”
I nodded, feeling the warmth between us. “I’d like that a lot. Bryant Park’s up ahead. Want to find a table and sit for a while?”
“I want more than that.” But he skirted the library with me, and together we found a table near the fountain.
3.
It’s a year after our lunch. I’m sitting in an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, near the back of an assembly of chairs. The store would be closed in another ten months, but that news is yet to come. Tonight it’s abuzz with patrons. Perhaps forty people surround me, listening attentively to Hilton Als introduce Christopher with fulsome praise for his newly-released novel. Hilton Als. Award-winning critic Hilton fucking Als is introducing my friend, I think, glowing. How amazing a journey is that?
Christopher takes the stage. He towers over the little podium, an ungainly giant looming over a child’s prop. He acknowledges Als, nods at the audience to thank them for their applause, and clears his throat. In a halting, quiet voice, he begins to read.
I recognize this passage immediately. I haven’t read it yet, although the book was auto-delivered on publication to my Kindle a day or two before. I recognize the premise because Christopher described it to me the previous spring. The American writer and the scowling object of his obsession are alone in a room. The dark-featured man unbuckles his black market 501s and shoves the American to his knees. He forces the American to taste his dick, its foreskin ripe from piss and unwashed juices. Hungrily the American obeys, but some impulse impels him to pull away. The man in the 501s seizes the writer’s wrist so violently that the American cries out in pain. A slap across the face. Another. Through tears, the American parts his lips to finish what he started.
The audience listens respectfully, perhaps taken aback by the explicitness of the passage. Many hold their hands before their mouths to convey an expression of deep thought, their eyes fixed on the floor, or just below the podium. I, on the other hand, am perhaps feeling too deeply the war of wills my friend is describing in his soft monotone. When Christopher reads about his character being slapped yet again after he has swallowed the trade’s semen, all I can think about is a fire-red handprint marking Christopher’s dough-colored skin; when the writer is forced down onto the bed and beaten, over and over, by the man’s angry fists, all I picture is how the bruises must have looked on Christopher’s face and body.
Finally when, in a sudden turn-around of feeling, the trick pleads like a boy with the writer to forgive him and never to abandon him, I have to struggle against the impulse to fly to Eastern Europe and track down this son of a bitch, especially when the last thing his fictional counterpart does is to rifle through the writer’s wallet before stalking out the door with both the writer’s promise and his cash.
At the conclusion of the reading, Christopher raises his head. His blue eyes peer out at the audience as if surprised we’re still here. He thanks us with a hasty nod. An employee of the bookstore asks people to line up for the book signing.
I already own an electronic version, but I intend to buy a physical copy of the novel so I can have it autographed. I’m near the back of the line. There’s only one woman behind me, in fact, glancing at her watch. Patiently I wait as closer to the table I draw. I don't talk to anyone else in the queue. I have plenty of time to observe Christopher as he signs book after book, and makes casual chat with each person who’s come out to see him. I get the impression he’s genuinely surprised at the attention. He makes eye contact with everyone as he hands back their inscribed copies. From time to time, he graces them with one of his goofy grins, or with a trademark dazzling smile. Those smiles animate his crooked face.
At the conclusion of the reading, Christopher raises his head. His blue eyes peer out at the audience as if surprised we’re still here. He thanks us with a hasty nod. An employee of the bookstore asks people to line up for the book signing.
I already own an electronic version, but I intend to buy a physical copy of the novel so I can have it autographed. I’m near the back of the line. There’s only one woman behind me, in fact, glancing at her watch. Patiently I wait as closer to the table I draw. I don't talk to anyone else in the queue. I have plenty of time to observe Christopher as he signs book after book, and makes casual chat with each person who’s come out to see him. I get the impression he’s genuinely surprised at the attention. He makes eye contact with everyone as he hands back their inscribed copies. From time to time, he graces them with one of his goofy grins, or with a trademark dazzling smile. Those smiles animate his crooked face.
I would do almost anything to have him smile at me that way.
Finally, after a long half-hour, it’s my turn…and he beams when he recognizes me. My heart beats a little faster as I draw near. By now, I’m the actual last person; the woman who’d been behind me had given up, fifteen minutes before. “Oh my god,” he says, rising. We lean over the table and hug. When he realizes there’s no one else left, he abandons his post entirely and walks around to join me. “I did not see you in the audience.”
“I’m so proud of you,” I tell him. I hope he knows how much I mean the words. I cannot think of anyone of whom I’ve been prouder.
He leans in close. “What you should be proud of is that massive cock of yours,” he murmurs directly into my ear. “I need to feel it sliding down my throat. I need it pissing directly into my gut.”
I laugh, but I’m a little taken aback by the deflect. I've just gotten over the abusive sex scene he’s shared with the bookstore patrons. It's a little shocking how swiftly he shifts gears from modest author to sexual aggressor. But of course, he’s lived with that scene for a long time at this point; he’s written and edited it, and edited again, and has reviewed the story after his copy editor has done her job. The tale's raw to me, but at this point rote to him, I reason. I know how the cycle of publishing renders the written word overfamiliar.
He’s still murmuring into my ear as he scrawls something into my book and hands it back to me. “I wish I could have you over tonight, so you could open my throat with that enormous dick, but I’m staying at Jason’s.” He nods in the direction of an Asian-American young man his own age, who’s chatting with a group of other late twenty-somethings near the entrance. I recognize him. He’s another author. “I don’t think he’d appreciate me worshiping that fat dong and letting you hose me down with that horse-stream of piss in the middle of his living room.”
I look at the book’s title page. Christopher has inscribed my name, and followed it with the words, What I want to say won’t fit on this page. Thanks for coming. Christopher. What in the world is that dedication supposed to mean, I wonder? The words sound handsome enough. Yet do they really mean anything?
“Hey,” says Christopher in my ear. “A bunch of us are going to grab a drink.” I perk up. Perhaps an invitation is in the offing. I deflate just as quickly when he continues his thought. “Maybe after my friends and I are done, I can catch up with you again and we can go somewhere.”
“Where, Christopher?” I ask. I probably sound more testy than I intend, but I can’t help myself. The group of young people waiting nearby have begun shooting questioning glances our way. Clearly they’re anxious to start their revelry. Some of their faces I’ve seen in Christopher’s social media. A few are authors with one whole book apiece to their names. They’re the hot young voices of LGBT letters today, or something like that. Hot in a literary sense, anyway. There’s not one I’d swipe right on. “Where exactly would we go?”
Okay, so I’m not part of his elite inner social circle. Am I such a troll I can’t be asked out for drinks? Why am I not even introduced as a friend? Is it my age? Am I dressed badly? Am I an embarrassment? How? I’ve got more writing credits to my name than all these whelps put together.
He’s trying to smooth over the situation. His voice is sweet and soothing in my ear. “I don’t know. Maybe you could hang out somewhere on your own and then meet me late, near the bar. We could find a parking garage or something. An alley. I don’t care. I just want to get that cock of yours down my throat. Then you can finish me off with your piss. Come on. Say yes.”
As he hisses his serpent’s song, wearing a smile all the while, I’m staring at the dedication he’s written. What I want to say won’t fit on this page. What I want to say, right now, can’t even come out of my mouth.
Finally, after a long half-hour, it’s my turn…and he beams when he recognizes me. My heart beats a little faster as I draw near. By now, I’m the actual last person; the woman who’d been behind me had given up, fifteen minutes before. “Oh my god,” he says, rising. We lean over the table and hug. When he realizes there’s no one else left, he abandons his post entirely and walks around to join me. “I did not see you in the audience.”
“I’m so proud of you,” I tell him. I hope he knows how much I mean the words. I cannot think of anyone of whom I’ve been prouder.
He leans in close. “What you should be proud of is that massive cock of yours,” he murmurs directly into my ear. “I need to feel it sliding down my throat. I need it pissing directly into my gut.”
I laugh, but I’m a little taken aback by the deflect. I've just gotten over the abusive sex scene he’s shared with the bookstore patrons. It's a little shocking how swiftly he shifts gears from modest author to sexual aggressor. But of course, he’s lived with that scene for a long time at this point; he’s written and edited it, and edited again, and has reviewed the story after his copy editor has done her job. The tale's raw to me, but at this point rote to him, I reason. I know how the cycle of publishing renders the written word overfamiliar.
He’s still murmuring into my ear as he scrawls something into my book and hands it back to me. “I wish I could have you over tonight, so you could open my throat with that enormous dick, but I’m staying at Jason’s.” He nods in the direction of an Asian-American young man his own age, who’s chatting with a group of other late twenty-somethings near the entrance. I recognize him. He’s another author. “I don’t think he’d appreciate me worshiping that fat dong and letting you hose me down with that horse-stream of piss in the middle of his living room.”
I look at the book’s title page. Christopher has inscribed my name, and followed it with the words, What I want to say won’t fit on this page. Thanks for coming. Christopher. What in the world is that dedication supposed to mean, I wonder? The words sound handsome enough. Yet do they really mean anything?
“Hey,” says Christopher in my ear. “A bunch of us are going to grab a drink.” I perk up. Perhaps an invitation is in the offing. I deflate just as quickly when he continues his thought. “Maybe after my friends and I are done, I can catch up with you again and we can go somewhere.”
“Where, Christopher?” I ask. I probably sound more testy than I intend, but I can’t help myself. The group of young people waiting nearby have begun shooting questioning glances our way. Clearly they’re anxious to start their revelry. Some of their faces I’ve seen in Christopher’s social media. A few are authors with one whole book apiece to their names. They’re the hot young voices of LGBT letters today, or something like that. Hot in a literary sense, anyway. There’s not one I’d swipe right on. “Where exactly would we go?”
Okay, so I’m not part of his elite inner social circle. Am I such a troll I can’t be asked out for drinks? Why am I not even introduced as a friend? Is it my age? Am I dressed badly? Am I an embarrassment? How? I’ve got more writing credits to my name than all these whelps put together.
He’s trying to smooth over the situation. His voice is sweet and soothing in my ear. “I don’t know. Maybe you could hang out somewhere on your own and then meet me late, near the bar. We could find a parking garage or something. An alley. I don’t care. I just want to get that cock of yours down my throat. Then you can finish me off with your piss. Come on. Say yes.”
As he hisses his serpent’s song, wearing a smile all the while, I’m staring at the dedication he’s written. What I want to say won’t fit on this page. What I want to say, right now, can’t even come out of my mouth.
Minutes ago I’d felt so proud of this kid. I’d reveled in every decibel of applause he’d wrung from his captive audience. I’d been proud of him for years, since he was a college student, through his adventures abroad, from the time he got an agent to tonight, the publication of his first novel. Every step of the way, I’d been the beaming father figure urging him on.
Now, though, I sting from the snub. Certainly I was never central enough in his life to be Christopher’s mentor, but by any definition, I was a colleague. We were players in the same game. In that moment, though, something struck me. Every interaction we’d ever had, when I would try to talk with him about writing, he’d always drag the conversation back around to my cock. I’d accept the flattery, smile and laugh it off and try again to converse like a peer. He’d ignore anything I said and beg for my piss.
To Christopher, I wasn’t an avuncular compatriot in wordsmithing. To Christopher, I wasn’t even—and the realization hurts—a friend. To Christopher, I was a big alpha cock. I was a bladder of warm piss. I was a dark sexual obsession to someone who collected sexual obsessions like Pokémon.
You don’t pull your sexual obsession out into the light for others to examine. You don’t invite him to some noisy Brooklyn brewery with your fancy friends. Sexual obsessions lurk in dark alleyways, waiting to waylay a successful author on his way back to his buddy Jason’s sofa on the night of his ultimate triumph. A sexual obsession pushes a bright young genius on the cusp of wild literary success to his knees in a parking garage stairwell, to drench the writer’s pressed jeans and crisp, ironed shirt with a mighty gush from his fire hose dick.
I live my stories was my friend’s credo. To Christopher, I was a character in some plot he was formulating—a minor shadow in some potential future novel about a sensitive young writer with a dangerous sexual need for degradation. I wasn’t a friend or a colleague. Not a mentor. Not an advisor. I’d never be someone he turned to for advice, or for kudos, or for a sofa when he visited the city. Fuck, I wasn’t even a real person. I was merely an actor in the drama he was concocting in that oversized cranium of his. A bit part player with a severely limited role, at that.
“I need to get back home,” I say, and stammer out something about the last trains back to the suburbs.
His eyes measure me for a moment. The light in them flickers out. His smile vanishes. “We’ll catch up,” he tells me.
I nod, and shove my second copy of his novel into my bag as blindly I stumble past his friends for the door.
4.
What does it mean, to live one’s stories?
I’m sitting on a bench in the Borough Hall station, waiting for the train. A whole section of century-old tiles have fallen from the mosaic overhead; what remains reads BOROU ALL. I’m glad, this late at night, that no one’s around to see me. My face must be poker red after my conversation with Christopher, minutes before. Shame, from not being good enough, for not being highbrow enough to hobnob with the likes of Hilton Als and the smart literary set. Embarrassment, for assuming my friendship with Christopher was something substantial. Anger, for time wasted. Despite my self-pity, though, I can’t stop thinking about this question.
I write a lot about my life. I chronicle what happens to me. I resurrect memories from the past. Arranging experience into memoir, sharing oneself with others, are noble arts I think. I look for stories in the time that’s passed, the people I’ve met, the conversations and encounters that fill my days. I try to make sense of the ebb and flow of coincidences, to discern patterns among the tangles time weaves as I dance through it. When I sit down to sort my life into sentences and paragraphs, I’ll use literary techniques in the distilling; I’ll condense conversations, I’ll streamline the action. But I hew true to what happened, I don't much alter things that were said or hide feelings I experienced.
Now, though, I sting from the snub. Certainly I was never central enough in his life to be Christopher’s mentor, but by any definition, I was a colleague. We were players in the same game. In that moment, though, something struck me. Every interaction we’d ever had, when I would try to talk with him about writing, he’d always drag the conversation back around to my cock. I’d accept the flattery, smile and laugh it off and try again to converse like a peer. He’d ignore anything I said and beg for my piss.
To Christopher, I wasn’t an avuncular compatriot in wordsmithing. To Christopher, I wasn’t even—and the realization hurts—a friend. To Christopher, I was a big alpha cock. I was a bladder of warm piss. I was a dark sexual obsession to someone who collected sexual obsessions like Pokémon.
You don’t pull your sexual obsession out into the light for others to examine. You don’t invite him to some noisy Brooklyn brewery with your fancy friends. Sexual obsessions lurk in dark alleyways, waiting to waylay a successful author on his way back to his buddy Jason’s sofa on the night of his ultimate triumph. A sexual obsession pushes a bright young genius on the cusp of wild literary success to his knees in a parking garage stairwell, to drench the writer’s pressed jeans and crisp, ironed shirt with a mighty gush from his fire hose dick.
I live my stories was my friend’s credo. To Christopher, I was a character in some plot he was formulating—a minor shadow in some potential future novel about a sensitive young writer with a dangerous sexual need for degradation. I wasn’t a friend or a colleague. Not a mentor. Not an advisor. I’d never be someone he turned to for advice, or for kudos, or for a sofa when he visited the city. Fuck, I wasn’t even a real person. I was merely an actor in the drama he was concocting in that oversized cranium of his. A bit part player with a severely limited role, at that.
“I need to get back home,” I say, and stammer out something about the last trains back to the suburbs.
His eyes measure me for a moment. The light in them flickers out. His smile vanishes. “We’ll catch up,” he tells me.
I nod, and shove my second copy of his novel into my bag as blindly I stumble past his friends for the door.
4.
What does it mean, to live one’s stories?
I’m sitting on a bench in the Borough Hall station, waiting for the train. A whole section of century-old tiles have fallen from the mosaic overhead; what remains reads BOROU ALL. I’m glad, this late at night, that no one’s around to see me. My face must be poker red after my conversation with Christopher, minutes before. Shame, from not being good enough, for not being highbrow enough to hobnob with the likes of Hilton Als and the smart literary set. Embarrassment, for assuming my friendship with Christopher was something substantial. Anger, for time wasted. Despite my self-pity, though, I can’t stop thinking about this question.
I write a lot about my life. I chronicle what happens to me. I resurrect memories from the past. Arranging experience into memoir, sharing oneself with others, are noble arts I think. I look for stories in the time that’s passed, the people I’ve met, the conversations and encounters that fill my days. I try to make sense of the ebb and flow of coincidences, to discern patterns among the tangles time weaves as I dance through it. When I sit down to sort my life into sentences and paragraphs, I’ll use literary techniques in the distilling; I’ll condense conversations, I’ll streamline the action. But I hew true to what happened, I don't much alter things that were said or hide feelings I experienced.
What I don’t do is to manipulate my life and the people in it in order to achieve a outcome that suits a story I want to craft.
Tonight, I suspect Christopher does.
I don’t deny chasing stories when I can. Two roads diverge in a yellow wood, and chances are I’ll take the one that looks like it might yield a tale to tell later. I am always wanting to see what happens next, and next after that. Christopher, however. I now had a mental image of Christopher as a giant, looming over a drafting table covered by scale stage set models—one maquette decorated like a bookstore with rows of metal folding chairs arranged in rows, a cut-out cardboard podium from which juts a bent paper-clip microphone. Small paper cut-outs represent the people; all but one sport blank faces. The exception, standing in the back, has a penciled-in beard.
Another maquette. This one of a dark alley. Christopher slouches a duplicate of the tall bearded paper doll against a concrete wall in the shadows; he arranges a spotlight above upon the even taller stand-in for the youthful writer who hesitates in a pool of white light and casts a long shadow, as he pauses at the alley’s black mouth. A third, earlier scale model sits to the side: a city block. A classical building, a library twin lions guarding its staircases, has been erected from foam board and glue at one end; behind it, a park with a large square of green open space and a miniature baroque fountain. The same two cut-out miniature men sit close to each other at a table nearby.
Had Christopher, in each scene we’d shared, taken me like a paper doll and trotted me exactly where he’d wanted me? To him, was I nothing but the dirty old pervert in his own bildungsroman? I suspected so. I am but one of many real-life sexual obsessions, fodder for future tales along the lines of his first novel.
In the quiet sanctity of that subway station, I wondered about the other people in Christopher’s life. How far had he gone for his art? Did Christopher use his smiles and sheer will to keep his hustler returning for scene after bitter scene? Did he calculate exactly how many euros to withdraw and leave in his wallet, the one night he knew it would be plundered, weighing a theoretical balance between satisfying his so-called straight lover without breaking his own bank account? Awful as it was even to think—did he practice in his mind just what cruel words to speak aloud, to compel the man to strike him?
If any or all these things were true, is that the only difference between high art, and mere chronicle—the author’s manipulation?
I could be overreacting. I draw out my phone and pause before thumbing out a text to Christopher. I'd like to talk sometime. Maybe this week, while you’re still here?
Perhaps he’s not at the bar yet, or his author chums are boring him, for he writes back almost instantly. How about you talk while I’m between your thighs with your big dick in my mouth.
That’s not really a conversation, though, I tell him.
If you come in my mouth, I might be ready to talk.
My thumbs stab out a reply. It seems as if the only part of me you find desirable is between my legs.
There’s a moment before he writes back. I guess I’m accepting it will never happen, he says.
A train announces its impending arrival, first with a distant horn and the rattle of its cars, and then with a gleam of its headlights piercing the black depths of the uptown tunnel. I stand. During the moments the train pulls into the tunnel and draws to a stop, I tap out another message. I'm enormously flattered you seem to find me sexually magnetic. If you were to set out to seduce me in person (and we had a place to go), you'd succeed. If you perceive resistance, it's only because I prefer my sexual encounters to arise from the moment, rather than adhere to a predetermined scene. It's not from lack of attraction.
I hit send, and wait. I wait for a reply all the way back to Grand Central.
I wait for it on the commuter train home.
I wait for a reply all the next day, and the whole week he’s in town.
Three years later, and I’m still waiting.
I was a paper cut-out in a maquette that refused to stand where placed, a disobedient actor who turned down the bit part he was offered. I haven’t heard from Christopher since.
5.
Two men sit near the fountain in Bryant Park, one spring afternoon. Their metal chairs are pulled close; the men incline toward each other in conversation. Anyone sitting nearby—the park custodians sweeping leaves and debris from the sidewalks, the couples walking their miniature dogs, the old men strategizing at chess across the way—might assume the men are lovers, so cocooned in their own world are they.
The younger and taller of the men, his eyes blue, his lips drawn into an impossibly wide smile, leans forward so that his mouth is millimeters away from the older man’s ear. The young man’s smooth cheek grazes the older man’s beard so lightly it seems more warmth than actual touch. He inhales, then holds his breath for a moment before whispering. “I can’t take my eyes off the bulge in your pants.”
The words, barely aspirated, tickle and tease. The older man’s heart beats more quickly in response; perhaps he shifts in his chair to ease the tightening in his trousers. He wets his lips, but says nothing.
“What wouldn’t I give to have you in my mouth right now,” says the young man. It’s cruel, what he’s doing. No good can come of his promises. The younger man stays with a friend when he visits the city; the older man lives too far away to take him home. “Sucking you. Licking you from stem to stern. Slobbering over your enormous . . . rigid . . . dripping . . . fat cock.”
His cheek still tingling with proximity, the older man swallows hard. “Why are you torturing me?” His voice is low. It trembles.
They barely have to turn their heads to make eye contact. “Maybe you’re the one torturing me,” says the younger man. He rotates the Starbucks cup in his hands. “I’ve finished my coffee. But I’m still thirsty.”
The older man sits back, just slightly, enough to look his companion in the eye. Their faces are close. So close. They must breathe each other’s air. They could kiss without moving. “Are you saying—?”
“I’m thirsty,” repeats the young man, his eyes unwavering as each stares at the other.
Now the older man nods, and stands. When he extends his hand, the younger man hands him the cup, then reclines, his Neanderthal hands resting on his stomach. In the direction of Forty-Second the older man disappears. He strides toward the stone building that houses the public facilities, keeping pace to the thudding of his heart. Even at this early hour of the afternoon, there’s a line outside the women’s restroom door, but none for the men’s side.
Once within, he waves his hand beneath the faucet to set the water in motion. He rinses out both the white cardboard and its plastic lid, once, twice, sniffing to see how much of a coffee aroma is left. Then he strides to the urinals, sets the cup on top of the urinal’s ledge, and unzips. Perfunctory partitions divide the porcelain fixtures, but when the older man reaches for the open cup and brings it with his hand down into the urinal basin, the man next to him glances over. Then the stranger averts his eyes, minding his own business in his best New Yorker fashion, or at least a reasonable approximation. The older man finishes his business in the cup, affixes the lid, and strides back to the basins to wash his hands.
Five minutes have passed by the time he returns to the table by the fountain. He holds out the coffee cup, which still radiates a body temperature warmth against his hand, then sits. The younger man spreads wide his knees, pries open the lid, and peers within. When he looks back up at the older man, there’s light and heat in his eyes. He bestows on the older man one of those dazzling smiles, making the older man feel all in an instant loved, and desired, and yes—young again. As the youth sets aside the lid on the table, he leans in. “I am going to relish every drop of you,” he whispers.
He kisses his benefactor on the cheek. Surely, the older man thinks, the imprint of those lips will leave a permanent mark, hot and moist and pink.
Cup raised, the young man downs its contents. When finished, he taps the bottom of the container to release any final, reluctant drops. When he leans forward again, his breath is ranker, more acrid. “Delicious,” he whispers. “Look what you made me do.”
The older man is too flustered to reply. He’s betrayed by his pounding heart, his shortness of breath, his increasing hardness, the hormones coursing through his veins. He works his lips, but nothing comes out. Instead, he watches his young friend lean back in his chair smugly to consider the empty Starbucks cup. In his own head, he replays the youth’s last words.
Look what you made me do.
It should have been the older man’s line.
Tonight, I suspect Christopher does.
I don’t deny chasing stories when I can. Two roads diverge in a yellow wood, and chances are I’ll take the one that looks like it might yield a tale to tell later. I am always wanting to see what happens next, and next after that. Christopher, however. I now had a mental image of Christopher as a giant, looming over a drafting table covered by scale stage set models—one maquette decorated like a bookstore with rows of metal folding chairs arranged in rows, a cut-out cardboard podium from which juts a bent paper-clip microphone. Small paper cut-outs represent the people; all but one sport blank faces. The exception, standing in the back, has a penciled-in beard.
Another maquette. This one of a dark alley. Christopher slouches a duplicate of the tall bearded paper doll against a concrete wall in the shadows; he arranges a spotlight above upon the even taller stand-in for the youthful writer who hesitates in a pool of white light and casts a long shadow, as he pauses at the alley’s black mouth. A third, earlier scale model sits to the side: a city block. A classical building, a library twin lions guarding its staircases, has been erected from foam board and glue at one end; behind it, a park with a large square of green open space and a miniature baroque fountain. The same two cut-out miniature men sit close to each other at a table nearby.
Had Christopher, in each scene we’d shared, taken me like a paper doll and trotted me exactly where he’d wanted me? To him, was I nothing but the dirty old pervert in his own bildungsroman? I suspected so. I am but one of many real-life sexual obsessions, fodder for future tales along the lines of his first novel.
In the quiet sanctity of that subway station, I wondered about the other people in Christopher’s life. How far had he gone for his art? Did Christopher use his smiles and sheer will to keep his hustler returning for scene after bitter scene? Did he calculate exactly how many euros to withdraw and leave in his wallet, the one night he knew it would be plundered, weighing a theoretical balance between satisfying his so-called straight lover without breaking his own bank account? Awful as it was even to think—did he practice in his mind just what cruel words to speak aloud, to compel the man to strike him?
If any or all these things were true, is that the only difference between high art, and mere chronicle—the author’s manipulation?
I could be overreacting. I draw out my phone and pause before thumbing out a text to Christopher. I'd like to talk sometime. Maybe this week, while you’re still here?
Perhaps he’s not at the bar yet, or his author chums are boring him, for he writes back almost instantly. How about you talk while I’m between your thighs with your big dick in my mouth.
That’s not really a conversation, though, I tell him.
If you come in my mouth, I might be ready to talk.
My thumbs stab out a reply. It seems as if the only part of me you find desirable is between my legs.
There’s a moment before he writes back. I guess I’m accepting it will never happen, he says.
A train announces its impending arrival, first with a distant horn and the rattle of its cars, and then with a gleam of its headlights piercing the black depths of the uptown tunnel. I stand. During the moments the train pulls into the tunnel and draws to a stop, I tap out another message. I'm enormously flattered you seem to find me sexually magnetic. If you were to set out to seduce me in person (and we had a place to go), you'd succeed. If you perceive resistance, it's only because I prefer my sexual encounters to arise from the moment, rather than adhere to a predetermined scene. It's not from lack of attraction.
I hit send, and wait. I wait for a reply all the way back to Grand Central.
I wait for it on the commuter train home.
I wait for a reply all the next day, and the whole week he’s in town.
Three years later, and I’m still waiting.
I was a paper cut-out in a maquette that refused to stand where placed, a disobedient actor who turned down the bit part he was offered. I haven’t heard from Christopher since.
5.
Two men sit near the fountain in Bryant Park, one spring afternoon. Their metal chairs are pulled close; the men incline toward each other in conversation. Anyone sitting nearby—the park custodians sweeping leaves and debris from the sidewalks, the couples walking their miniature dogs, the old men strategizing at chess across the way—might assume the men are lovers, so cocooned in their own world are they.
The younger and taller of the men, his eyes blue, his lips drawn into an impossibly wide smile, leans forward so that his mouth is millimeters away from the older man’s ear. The young man’s smooth cheek grazes the older man’s beard so lightly it seems more warmth than actual touch. He inhales, then holds his breath for a moment before whispering. “I can’t take my eyes off the bulge in your pants.”
The words, barely aspirated, tickle and tease. The older man’s heart beats more quickly in response; perhaps he shifts in his chair to ease the tightening in his trousers. He wets his lips, but says nothing.
“What wouldn’t I give to have you in my mouth right now,” says the young man. It’s cruel, what he’s doing. No good can come of his promises. The younger man stays with a friend when he visits the city; the older man lives too far away to take him home. “Sucking you. Licking you from stem to stern. Slobbering over your enormous . . . rigid . . . dripping . . . fat cock.”
His cheek still tingling with proximity, the older man swallows hard. “Why are you torturing me?” His voice is low. It trembles.
They barely have to turn their heads to make eye contact. “Maybe you’re the one torturing me,” says the younger man. He rotates the Starbucks cup in his hands. “I’ve finished my coffee. But I’m still thirsty.”
The older man sits back, just slightly, enough to look his companion in the eye. Their faces are close. So close. They must breathe each other’s air. They could kiss without moving. “Are you saying—?”
“I’m thirsty,” repeats the young man, his eyes unwavering as each stares at the other.
Now the older man nods, and stands. When he extends his hand, the younger man hands him the cup, then reclines, his Neanderthal hands resting on his stomach. In the direction of Forty-Second the older man disappears. He strides toward the stone building that houses the public facilities, keeping pace to the thudding of his heart. Even at this early hour of the afternoon, there’s a line outside the women’s restroom door, but none for the men’s side.
Once within, he waves his hand beneath the faucet to set the water in motion. He rinses out both the white cardboard and its plastic lid, once, twice, sniffing to see how much of a coffee aroma is left. Then he strides to the urinals, sets the cup on top of the urinal’s ledge, and unzips. Perfunctory partitions divide the porcelain fixtures, but when the older man reaches for the open cup and brings it with his hand down into the urinal basin, the man next to him glances over. Then the stranger averts his eyes, minding his own business in his best New Yorker fashion, or at least a reasonable approximation. The older man finishes his business in the cup, affixes the lid, and strides back to the basins to wash his hands.
Five minutes have passed by the time he returns to the table by the fountain. He holds out the coffee cup, which still radiates a body temperature warmth against his hand, then sits. The younger man spreads wide his knees, pries open the lid, and peers within. When he looks back up at the older man, there’s light and heat in his eyes. He bestows on the older man one of those dazzling smiles, making the older man feel all in an instant loved, and desired, and yes—young again. As the youth sets aside the lid on the table, he leans in. “I am going to relish every drop of you,” he whispers.
He kisses his benefactor on the cheek. Surely, the older man thinks, the imprint of those lips will leave a permanent mark, hot and moist and pink.
Cup raised, the young man downs its contents. When finished, he taps the bottom of the container to release any final, reluctant drops. When he leans forward again, his breath is ranker, more acrid. “Delicious,” he whispers. “Look what you made me do.”
The older man is too flustered to reply. He’s betrayed by his pounding heart, his shortness of breath, his increasing hardness, the hormones coursing through his veins. He works his lips, but nothing comes out. Instead, he watches his young friend lean back in his chair smugly to consider the empty Starbucks cup. In his own head, he replays the youth’s last words.
Look what you made me do.
It should have been the older man’s line.
***
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