Lightning Bolt

My Dear X.,

When I think about you this week, and I think about you often, I think about lightning bolts.

I know you might not read this today—you're off on the other side of the country, traveling and enjoying yourself—but I wanted to write about you on your special day. It's one of the few gifts I can offer.

We chatted for nearly two weeks online, you know. You discovered my blog at the height of Hurricane Irene, and sped through it as if you were racing. I enjoyed your brief notes along your journey: the quick shout-outs for the entries you enjoyed, the questions, the observations. You made me go back and read some of my own stuff, just to keep up. It was an experience that rekindled an enjoyment and appreciation for the last year and a half of writing. Thank you.

When you sent me photographs of you, they literally took my breath away. That first image is branded on my brain. You, sitting on the very edge of your mattress, naked, legs spread apart, your fat dick hanging down between them as if it were too heavy to stand. Your waist is so narrow that it appears to be an optical illusion; your shoulders are broad and muscular. Your skin is dark and as shining as the accidentals on a grand piano.

And above it all, peeking out above the phone camera you're aiming at a mirror, was that smile of yours. That inviting, sweet-faced smile. More than the dick, the waist, the chest, the long legs or the lanky arms, that smile did it for me. I had to know you. That's why last Wednesday, on a day I had to venture into Manhattan anyway to see a friend's play, I arranged with you to have my hair cut.

The train from Connecticut was crowded. The subways from Grand Central to the West Village, more so. I had a few minutes leisure to collect my thoughts at a noisy Starbucks on Eighth Avenue, and then I made my way to your salon. It was what I expected, a large and industrial place with modern fittings. Beautiful views of lower Manhattan from windows that stretched from the floor to the ceiling that, on a sun-soaked autumn day, showed off the city like a jewel.

Then you walked in, all loping legs and angular arms, skinny and long-limbed as a fashion designer's fantasy sketches, your T-shirt hanging off a shoulder. Your smile at the sight of me lit up the room. I don't even remember how I got to your chair, on the floor below.

But I do remember the lightning bolt on your right arm, the creation of ink and skin that ran from your elbow to nearly the wrist. You played with my hair, washed it, massaged the scalp, and trimmed away too many months' worth of overgrowth. All the time, that blue-black jagged bolt, looking as if it should be the logo of some superhero from a child's comic book, danced around my head. I watched in the mirror with my long, wet hair coiled on top of my head as you began to cut. Lightning—the symbol of raw power, sure, but also of a precisely-focused energy. Just like your hands as you removed the straight razor from its leather case, folded it open, and began to trim.

I loved watching you work. Carefully you'd partition my overabundant tresses. Then, after stretching them sideways between your fingers into a thin layer, the razor would do its work. Skritch, skritch, skritch. The sharp edge would dance through the wet locks with a precision I couldn't measure, though I could see it reflected in your eyes. Your lips moved silently as you cut, as if you kept going some internal monologue about what you were seeing as you cut. This wasn't the typical haircut I was used to, in which in a flat fifteen minutes I was shorn and done. This was the work of an artist. A sculptor. A man at the top of his craft, who knew what he wanted, and wanted it done well.

I'd already known I could trust you with my hair. But when I saw that look of intense concentration and focus in your eyes, I trusted that I could relax completely. I let the lightning bolt do its work.

Then afterward, when I'd admired myself over and over again in the mirror, and you'd collected your bag, we stepped into the tiny elevator together. The door closed. You turned. Your arms surrounded me as your palms pressed flat against the back wall. You brought your face close, so that I could smell the hair-product scent of you. As I'd hoped, your lips closed over mine.

For eight stories we kissed as we descended. I knew that your lips would be as soft and sensual as I'd imagined. I knew that you'd leave me breathless after. What I didn't know is that you'd taste so damned good. Like vanilla, and honey, and the promise of something more to come.

We separated only when the door slid open, what felt like an hour later. You loped out with your arms and legs working confidently. I stumbled behind, dizzy and short of oxygen, feeling like a schoolboy, and blinking as if it might clear the fog in front of my eyes. It didn't.

We jostled together on the uptown train, pressed body to body by the crowds. I could smell you that entire time. I kept thinking, I've just made out with that man. I tried very hard to get Aerosmith's "Love in an Elevator" out of my mind. It didn't quite work.

That particular earworm vanished, though, once we hit the streets and began walking to an eatery in Hell's Kitchen. Talking to you face to face was a luxury. I haven't made many friends since I've moved to the east coast. I felt as if I'd known you for years. Being able to ask questions without having to type them, without having to wait for an indefinite internet reply . . . well, I wallowed in it. I probably asked you too much, went too deep, nosed around more than I should. But you didn't mind, and gamely replied to everything I asked.

"Let's walk," you said, after I'd gotten the tab. I tried to match my step to yours as we navigated northward, weaving past tourists and shopkeepers and open cellar doors, uneven sidewalks, and local residents with puppies on leashes.

"Not that I'm inviting myself," I said carefully, "but how far is your apartment from here?'

You turned to look at me then, eyebrows raised. "Where else do you think we're going?", you asked.

The answer made me happy.

X., you were so worried that I'd find your apartment messy. It might have been. I don't know. I didn't have eyes to notice. At some other time I might investigate your wall of CDs, your movie collections, the books you had stacked on your desk. Maybe then I'll check out your midtown closet space, your bathroom, and evaluate your real estate deal. Maybe I'll give the shelves the white glove test then.

All I know is that afternoon, in the couple of hours before my friend's play, all I had eyes for was you.

You lay me down on the bed, soft, your eyes boring into mine. Then you straddled me. I remember sighing and raising my lips to meet yours. My back arched as you slipped your hand beneath me to draw me close. My cock strained in my trousers. We kissed, deeply and without inhibition. You grunted with arousal whenever my tongue entered your mouth; I sighed and stirred whenever you would press your lips to my neck. Wide awake though I was, that long make-out session made me feel sleepy, as if I were immersed in the best dream ever. I never wanted to wake up from it.

We kissed like teenagers at a basement party, desperate and hungry, as if that was all we knew how to do. Sometimes you lay atop me. Sometimes I weighed you down. Most of the time, though, we lay side by side on your bed, the sounds of the city just outside your sunny window, our limps tangled as we pressed our bodies tightly together. Your hands slipped beneath my shirt, touching my back, my sides. I stroked you softly, my fingertips eliciting sighs with every pass.

But we didn't undress. I was afraid to unleash your cock, honestly. I knew if I did, I wouldn't be leaving your apartment until late, late at night—and I'd promised to see that play. I teased you, though. I moved down your body to the place where your pants leg bulged, and felt the enormous, hard meat underneath the frayed denim of your jeans. I worked it with my mouth, feeling the thick width, the incredible length. I saw your jaw tighten and clench as you pushed hard against my face, trying to get relief.

Then you flipped me over, and put your mouth to my butt, through my pants. Through the layer of gray cotton and the trunks underneath, I could feel your breath, hot and moist, on my hole. Again my back arched as you grabbed me and pulled my hips to yours, so that you could grind against my ass with the hard length in your jeans. You pushed me down so that my face was in the pillow, and rotated your hips so that they nailed me to the bed.

I wanted you inside me, then. It's tough for me to admit. But it's all I could think about, through the haze of my waking dream. I wanted you to be part of me. I wanted to surround you with warmth, and wetness, and to make you feel a fraction as good as you were making me feel at that moment.

But we kept our clothes on, and our dicks in our pants. I think we both knew there'd be no turning back, if they were unleashed.

Leaving your apartment was one of the hardest things I've done. But you were sweet to walk the eleven blocks with me to the theater where my friend's play was taking place—and it afforded me a few more precious minutes to get to know you better. And then, when we parted, you did the unexpected. Right there in the middle of 42nd Street, a block from Times Square, in the last of the daylight, as tourists and theatergoers milled around in search of their destinations, you took my shoulders in your hands, looked me in the eyes, and kissed me. Slowly. Softly. Deeply.

I felt an electrical charge passing between us when our lips met for a final time. A lightning bolt. Everyone could have been watching, or no one. I didn't notice, either way. All I knew was that as good as you'd made me look, earlier that afternoon, nothing could compare to the way you'd made me feel.

You were gone when the daze finally faded from my eyes, and I made my way inside to the play. But that smile, X, the smile you left on my face? That didn't disappear for hours. And whenever I want it, all I have to do is reach down deep inside, think of your handsome face, your gentle touch, and the sweet taste of your kisses, and bring it back up again.

I hope when you read this, you smile, too. Happy birthday, my dear X. Having met you makes me happy.