You know how some guys know how to take a sexy photo? This redhead was one of them.
When I’d arrived only a few days ago at this hotel in the neighborhood of the youth, it had been packed. Groups book it for the weekend, my dad told me; other people visiting the city see it just off I-95 and use it as a weekend stop. I mean, my Grindr had been buzzing constantly the first two days of my visit, from guys less than two dozen feet away. By midweek, though, the place is deserted. Sunday night, every parking space had been occupied. Now the only car in the rear lot is mine. Grindr notifications from men less than a hundred feet away have disappeared.
It’s the last night of my visit with my dad. I’ll have breakfast with him in the morning before I drive back home, but for now I’m back in Room 155, hitting the internet for some sex. I’ve got a couple of nibbles on Grindr, a couple more on Scruff. But no one really piques my interest until this redheaded guy on BBRT hits me up. I’ll worship that magnificent dick and let you fuck me for hours, he tells me as he unlocks his photos. I check them out. They’re great shots, artfully done. Nice physique, I notice, as I run my eyes over the photos of him flexing. His face is shown only in profile, but with that full red beard jutting out at an oblique angle from his chest, he seems attractive enough.
My big dick likes worship, I tell him.
The bigger the better! he writes back. Yours is a monster!
You able to travel? I ask. How long will it take you to get here?
He tells me he’ll be here in ten minutes. I give him the name of my hotel and the room number and run to the bathroom for a quick rinse. I pull on a tee and a pair of shorts. While I’m waiting, I decide to check out the guy’s photos again. Like I said, he knew how to take a sexy shot. The pics are obviously posed and not in the least casual, but they’re showing off his fur and muscles to his best advantage. I’m definitely looking forward to fucking this one.
I’m rubbing myself through my shorts and reading over his profile when a message pops up on BBRT. It’s the redhead. There’s no room 155 here, he says.
What did he mean, there’s no room 155? I was in room 155. I’d been in room 155 all week. I’d had other guys show up at the door with the 155 on it and knock. Are you at the right hotel?
He doesn’t answer. The mobile version of the BBRT site has a geolocation function, so I check out the men nearest me. He’s only 110 feet away. So yeah, he’s at the correct hotel. I’m in Building 2, off the back parking lot, I tell him. There’s a big sign on it that says ‘Building 2.’ If you’re at Building 1 or Building 3, you’re in the wrong building. Clear enough, right?
There’s no room 155, he writes back.
By now I’m baffled. My confused brain is entertaining possibilities that it shouldn’t. Like, did the hotel staff come around and change all the room numbers while I was out with my dad that day? Had I been staying in room 135 all along? I get up, toss on some sandals, and open my door.
155. Just like I thought.
I’m coming to stand outside Building 2, I say, as I pat my pocket to make sure I have my key card. Look for me.
When I reach the end of the hall and step outside into the cool night air, I can see that my car is still the only one in the parking lot. The guy’s probably at one of the other two buildings on the hotel property. It’s not that large a hotel, though; it never was. All I have to do is turn my head one way to see that Building 1 to the south, and Building 3 to the west. The courtyard where I’m standing is in the dead center. No matter where he might be, he should be able to see me eventually. Right?
I’m outside room 155 but you’re not answering, he’s messaged, when I look at the site again.
What the fucking fuck? He can’t be outside my room. I would’ve seen him go in. In fact, I look through the glass door and down my hallway. There’s no one there. Sighing, I head back inside. Nope. He’s definitely not there. For some reason—just because I’m half-convinced that this point that I might be going crazy—I open my door with the key card and poke my head in. Not there either.
You’re not at room 155, I tell him. I’m here.
I’m knocking at the door, he replies within moments.
While I walk back to the courtyard outside, once again I ask him if he’s at the hotel I’d given him. Room 155 is in Building 2, I repeat. There’s only one room 155. You’re not outside it.
I’m knocking at the door and you’re not answering, he says yet again.
The fact that he could be gaslighting me crosses my mind. Yet the BBRT geolocation thing says he’s only 60 feet away. I honestly don’t know what to tell the guy. If a dude is utterly incapable of finding a fucking room in a fucking hotel when I’ve given him every helpful fucking instruction that I could . . . well, I don’t know what else to do. I’m not really into sticking my dick into total morons. Feeling like I should be shutting off my phone and just going to bed, I stomp back to my room (which still is plainly labeled 155) and slam shut the door. Then I kick off my sandals and flounce down on the bed, my brain busily composing multiple messages telling this asshole exactly how to fuck off and go the hell home.
Then there’s a knock at the door.
Fuck.
I’m still simmering with anger when I yank at the knob. “I guess I had the wrong room,” is all he says by way of apology.
“You think?” I say, trying to keep my hostility tamped down. But I don’t stop him from entering.
It’s not until he’s in the little vestibule, with the light from the bathroom on him as he began to strip off his clothing, that I really notice what he looks like. This little redhead has all the components of the guy in his photos, but it’s as if they’ve all been tossed in a box and reassembled in a decidedly unflattering way. Sure, he had the bushy beard, but it looks more like a unkempt mess, scraggly and wan, than the proud bush of his photos. Yeah, he was a ginger. But his hair wasn’t the sexy, vigorous red it had been in his pics. More like weak carrot juice, really.
His muscles—well, he didn’t have any. His chest was furry, yes. I imagine how, if he posed in a certain way that pushed out the flesh, and how, if he cropped his photos artfully (which he had), he might look from certain angles as if he were well-built. I could see how, if he bent a certain way and wore clothing that obstructed parts, he might give the illusion that he had an ass. And though his profile from the side was handsome enough to appear in all his photos, when looked at from the front, the guy’s face made me want to flinch. If Jesse Tyler Ferguson were to have a scrawny, ugly little buck-toothed brother that he had to hide for extended periods in a basement room whenever People or Us Magazine dropped by for interviews . . . well, this guy is what he’d look like.
You know how some guys know how to take a sexy photo? Occasionally it’s because they’re so far from sexy that they learn to feign it.
Oh god. He’s stripped to his underwear. After all those back-and-forth messages and the anger and the Yakety Sax-scored antic chase around the hotel, I was going to have to through with this fucking encounter. God damn it.
Fine. Whatever. It wouldn’t be my first time to close my eyes and think of England. Since he’s already dropping his drawers, I hook my thumbs beneath the elastic of my waistband and yank down my shorts. My dick flops out. It’s only half-hard at this point—and I know, why even that erect when I’ve just been through ten minutes of sex farce staging?—but still, at half-mast my dick is pretty imposing. I’d like to say that the redhead’s eyes bug out when he saw it, but quite frankly, he already has bug eyes. They just bug out even more, and it’s not exactly a pretty sight.
“That’s fucking huge,” he says.
Tell me something I don’t know, googly-eyes, I want to tell him. Instead, I order, “Turn around.”
He obeys. “How big is that cock?”
“Eight inches.”
“It looks way bigger than eight.”
My dick responds by swelling and jumping. Fucking traitor, I thought in its direction. I rubbed the guy’s flat ass and tried maneuvering him so that butterface of his was pointed away from me.
Scarcely have my fingertip rubbed the guy’s hole than he yelps as if I’ve bitten him. Startled, I straighten up. The dude is pulling on his briefs. Groping for his polo shirt. “What’s up?” I ask.
“You’re too big,” he tells me, scrambling in his clothes as fast as he can. “Your profile says once you’re in, you don’t pull out. That thing is going to wreck me.”
I realize that I’m a split second away from actually protesting his departure. Then I swallow my words and rally. “That’s right!” I say, realizing that he’s solving my problem for me. “I’d ruin it for life!”
“Fuck, I’m tempted,” he says, staring at it. For a moment I’m worried he might change his mind. But no, he pulls on his sneakers, thank god. “Nope. Too big. Sorry. Can’t risk it. Bye.”
No worshiping of my dick. No fucking for minutes, much less hours. Just a rush of air and dust and a quick slam of the door. Like the Roadrunner escaping from Wile E. Coyote, he’s gone.
It’s not the best way to close out my time in room 155, true. But better a night jacking off in solitude, than a duty fuck with the one Weasley brother that Ron was too embarrassed to introduce to Harry and Hermione.
Monday, June 18, 2018
Monday, June 4, 2018
Return to Room 155
“Dude. That was the best sex I’ve ever had. In my life. Ever.”
I’m not tooting my horn here, but I’ve heard the sentiment before. Often, honestly. I believe the words every time—it’s not a compliment most men toss off lightly, is it? I mean, sure. I consider the source. Sometimes I know it’s coming from an inexperienced twink who’s had maybe, what? Ten men in his hole? Or from a married guy who grants himself the luxury of having man-to-man sex once a year. I get it from guys whose weekly sex life consists of tame mutual masturbation sessions with their equally vanilla boyfriends, who’ve snuck out for a ride on the wild side. Honest to god, if I don’t hear that I’m giving someone the best sex of his life, I feel like it’s my fault for not putting in my best: after all, if you’re not giving your all when you hook up with a guy, what’s the point of fucking?
Hearing that you’ve given someone their best sexual experience—hearing it from anyone—is a huge compliment. Hearing it from a little bareback slut like this one, though? Fucking priceless.
This kid had hit me up before my journey South to visit my dad. He was cute—a bearded little Latin furball in his mid-twenties with a hairy butthole liberally photographed accommodating dicks in a Whitman’s Sampler of shades and sizes. He was friendly, attractive, and available most of the nights of my stay. I don’t usually plan extensively with guys in the weeks prior to a trip; the effort always backfires. Guys disappear, schedules change. This kid, though, seemed sincere about meeting. I gave him my phone number. He texted me on my drive down to see if I was still interested. We set a tentative date to fuck the second night of my stay.
I was mildly surprised when he actually followed through and hit me up that Tuesday evening while I was out to dinner with my dad. We still on, I hope? he wanted to know.
I’ll be back at the hotel at 9:30, I told him.
Do you have poppers?
I did not, I told him. He’d have to bring his own if he wanted those.
You have lube? What kind?
My tickle of annoyance (what, me providing the hotel room and the big dick wasn’t enough?) grew into an itch when it turned out the lube I’d brought with me—a small squeeze tube of water-based stuff, easily packable—apparently wasn’t good enough for him. There was a specific silicone-based brand he wanted, and he suggested I head to a CVS to find it. Now, admittedly, there was a 24-hour CVS a half-mile up the street and over a hill from the hotel. But it was an extra trip I’d have to make before heading back to the hotel to shower and get ready. I agreed to it, anyway. But it’ll have to be 9:45, now, I warned him.
The CVS excursion was more of an adventure than I cared to have. I couldn’t find the specific lube the kid wanted, though he’d sworn the drugstore carried it. In fact, I could only find one silicone-based lube, and another lube container had leaked all over it. When I and my sticky hands got to the front counters, a homeless and/or mentally ill man was screaming at the two female cashiers because they’d dared to ask him if he wanted to contribute a dollar for whatever the heck charitable cause for which they were raising money that week. He stopped yelling at my approach—the fact I’m six-foot-three probably had something to do with that—and scrambled to the parking lot to yell at the sky. I volunteered to stick around to wait for the police to arrive after the cashiers rang me up, as it was clear they were both uncomfortable about being there by themselves with the crazy guy on the other side of the sliding doors.
It was not, to summarize, a quick trip to the druggist. I got back to Room 155 only about a minute and a half before the Latin furball showed up. I apologized for being harried, and told him that the store hadn’t carried his preferred lube. He looked at what I’d bought instead and curled his lip, but that was the last we talked about that before fucking like dogs.
Afterward, at three in the morning, when the kid said that the sex was the best he’d ever had in his life, my opinion wasn’t that far behind. The sex had been phenomenal. It had started slow and romantic, making out and getting to know each other’s bodies. I’d propped his hips up on a pillow and gone to town eating his hole. The first fuck lasted for close to forty-five minutes as I kept driving into him in position after position, tossing him around like a furry little rag doll on the cheap hotel mattress. He’d shot spontaneously, without touching, as I bred his tight little ass. Then we kept going.
Two loads, three, four loads, before I took a break at one in the morning. Every time I banged one into him, he’d shoot. The second time he jacked onto his stomach as I pile-drove him into the headboard. The third and fourth loads, he shot again without touching—something he said he’d never before done. We talked for a while, then he climbed on me, kissed me until I was hard again, and sat down on my cock to milk out a fifth load. That’s the point when he told me he’d never had better sex.
The sixth load was unplanned; I was trying to get him up and dressed and out of there, but he was so fucking cute I couldn’t help but force him down on the mattress so he could take the last breeding of the night. He was too spent to attempt to match my donation. Finally, close to four, I managed to get him out the door. I had to take my dad to the dentist at 10, I told him. I needed at least a couple of hours of sleep.
He extracted a promise from me to meet him Wednesday night. He didn’t have to ask me twice. My dick was still three-quarters hard from having so much good ass when I crawled into bed and turned out the lights that I couldn’t wait for the upcoming day to be over.
And this is where my trouble began.
The kid’s texts that afternoon reeked of puppy love. He wanted me, he said. He needed more of my sperm. He loved my dick. He couldn’t wait to see me again. I was the best. Did I already have a boyfriend? Did I want a houseboy, LOL, because fuck, I was perfect and he needed me all the time. His chatter was all very sweet. Tired as I was, and even though I had very serious worries that maybe I’d worn out my dick the night before, I was genuinely looking forward to that night.
I was back from dinner with my dad and sitting in his living room, tapping on my phone and watching him mutter in agreement with MSNBC, when the kid texted again. I don’t have a car and don’t have any way to get to your hotel tonight.
I asked him what happened to his car. He’d had one the night before. He’d even mentioned something about stopping to get gas.
That was my work car. I only had it last night. I guess I can Uber to you.
Don’t be silly, I told him. I was going to leave my dad’s at nine-thirty again; I could make a detour and pick him up.
That would be great! I guess I could walk home after. It’s only two and a half miles.
I’ll drive you home after, too, I wrote. Okay, so now I was playing chauffeur. It wasn’t what I’d expected, but the sex had been a-fucking-mazing, and a little informal livery service didn’t seem like a bad trade. Honestly? I thought I was doing a nice thing in offering. He accepted.
It’s going to cut into our time together, though, I warned him. My dad has an early appointment in the morning and I REALLY need to get some sleep, since I didn’t have any last night. So with the driving we’ll probably only have an hour and a half for sex.
It was about nine when he finally texted again. I blinked at the message. I don’t have any poppers, he said. Sorry, I guess the sex tonight is canceled.
It was at that moment that all the good feelings I’d had about the kid, all the warm and fuzzy lingering memories, evaporated. The pickiness about the lube should’ve been the first red flag, honestly. I know some guys feel that water-based lubes get sticky and dry . . . but they can be replenished, and frankly, I’ve never had anyone complain about lube during the actual sex with me. Lube is the last thing on my mind. My dick produces plenty of lube on its own, thank you very much.
Furthermore, I’d made what I thought was a very generous offer to transport him back and forth to his place, even though I really didn’t want to, and even though it was going to cut a good half-hour out of the roughly two I could afford to spend with him. The night before, this same kid had told me I was the life-changing sex he’d never experienced in his life. Now he was giving up a second shot at the Best Sex Ever because his poppers had run dry? Fuck that noise.
All right, I texted back. Take care then.
I was in my car at nine-thirty, driving back to the hotel when the kid texted again. You can pick me up and drive me to this bookstore where they sell poppers, he said, naming the vendor’s closest intersection. I recognized the cross-streets. This place was clear across town—a half-hour drive and a bridge toll. I didn’t reply.
He texted a couple of minutes later, when I was back at the hotel. I’m dressed and ready. When are you picking me up?
After wrestling for a minute with how politely to word my baffled response, I finally stabbed out on my phone, I’m kind of confused, because earlier you told me we weren’t meeting without your poppers, so I just came back to the hotel and got in bed..
No, I still want to meet, he said.
But you literally texted me, ‘I don’t have poppers, sorry, the sex tonight is canceled.’ Maybe you can understand why I thought that the sex tonight was, you know, canceled.
I thought you were going to offer to drive us to the bookstore where I could get poppers, he wrote back. Then we could have gone to your place and had fun.
There’s all sort of things I could’ve blasted at the kid at this point. Poppers aren’t what make good sex. Everything that had happened the night before ignited because the kid and I had seriously been into each other—the romance of it, the intimacy, none of that had poured out of a tiny brown bottle.
Sure, I was tired. My lack of sleep probably contributed to my short temper. But the honest-to-god truth that still to this day makes me shake my head with disbelief is that despite the kid’s obvious ecstasy the night before, despite his delight in the best sex he’d ever had in his twenty-six years, ultimately he wanted his poppers more than he wanted me. I’d made some nice gestures in order to see more of him, and any good will I’d intended vanished when he’d basically spat on them.
You told me tonight was canceled, I finally texted back. So tonight is canceled. I’m already in bed. Good night.
Throughout the following day the kid sent me message after mopey message.
I fucked up last night.
I guess you hate me.
I guess you never want to see me again.
You’ve probably found hotter boys to fuck.
It was great meeting you. I fell hard for you, but I guess I’m a loser who fucks everything up.
Don’t worry, I’ll pick up the pieces. I always do.
I was so busy with my last day of errands for my father, though, that I didn’t get a chance to reply until late in the day. You did fuck up last night, but mistakes don’t make you a loser. If we ever meet again, I hope that meeting me will get a higher priority over hunting for poppers.
He immediately sent back a hundred excuses. He has panic attacks. He suffers from anxiety. He thought I wouldn’t mind driving from the northern border of the city to its southern border at ten at night for poppers because I seemed like a nice guy. He’s used to feeling mistreated so he assumes everyone’s going to mistreat him. He wanted everything to be perfect. Poppers are his security blanket. He’s trying to learn to love himself. Oh god. Everything he said was a mess of contradictions and had very little to do with anything that actually had happened—outside of his own head, that is.
You know, all you really had to do, I told him eventually, when I was tired of the excuses, is say, I’m sorry. I made a bad judgment call. Those are the words I’m not hearing.
Nor was I likely to, without that kind of prompt. If my name were Rush and I’d been a bottle of poppers . . . maybe then I’d be high enough in the hierarchy to get an apology.
I don’t have any illusions about the sex I have. I don’t expect a random encounter in a hotel room—rambunctious as it might have been—to turn into an eternal love affair. I don’t cherish the illusion that good sex with me, or even fan-fucking-tastic sex with me, is going to win me a spot on the top shelf of someone’s bureau of cherished memories. The sex that two men (or three men, or thirty) can be life-altering. Eye-opening. It can pierce the soul and shake the foundations of one’s life. But it’s sex—and it’s ephemeral, and meant to be savored while it’s happening and honored in the days and years that follow. Sex is sweet. It’s important. Yet it’s delicate. Impermanent. Fleeting.
Anything that fragile can easily be damaged beyond repair. Trample on it, be too selfish with it, and watch those momentary good feelings dissolve like tissue in the rain.
I’m not tooting my horn here, but I’ve heard the sentiment before. Often, honestly. I believe the words every time—it’s not a compliment most men toss off lightly, is it? I mean, sure. I consider the source. Sometimes I know it’s coming from an inexperienced twink who’s had maybe, what? Ten men in his hole? Or from a married guy who grants himself the luxury of having man-to-man sex once a year. I get it from guys whose weekly sex life consists of tame mutual masturbation sessions with their equally vanilla boyfriends, who’ve snuck out for a ride on the wild side. Honest to god, if I don’t hear that I’m giving someone the best sex of his life, I feel like it’s my fault for not putting in my best: after all, if you’re not giving your all when you hook up with a guy, what’s the point of fucking?
Hearing that you’ve given someone their best sexual experience—hearing it from anyone—is a huge compliment. Hearing it from a little bareback slut like this one, though? Fucking priceless.
This kid had hit me up before my journey South to visit my dad. He was cute—a bearded little Latin furball in his mid-twenties with a hairy butthole liberally photographed accommodating dicks in a Whitman’s Sampler of shades and sizes. He was friendly, attractive, and available most of the nights of my stay. I don’t usually plan extensively with guys in the weeks prior to a trip; the effort always backfires. Guys disappear, schedules change. This kid, though, seemed sincere about meeting. I gave him my phone number. He texted me on my drive down to see if I was still interested. We set a tentative date to fuck the second night of my stay.
I was mildly surprised when he actually followed through and hit me up that Tuesday evening while I was out to dinner with my dad. We still on, I hope? he wanted to know.
I’ll be back at the hotel at 9:30, I told him.
Do you have poppers?
I did not, I told him. He’d have to bring his own if he wanted those.
You have lube? What kind?
My tickle of annoyance (what, me providing the hotel room and the big dick wasn’t enough?) grew into an itch when it turned out the lube I’d brought with me—a small squeeze tube of water-based stuff, easily packable—apparently wasn’t good enough for him. There was a specific silicone-based brand he wanted, and he suggested I head to a CVS to find it. Now, admittedly, there was a 24-hour CVS a half-mile up the street and over a hill from the hotel. But it was an extra trip I’d have to make before heading back to the hotel to shower and get ready. I agreed to it, anyway. But it’ll have to be 9:45, now, I warned him.
The CVS excursion was more of an adventure than I cared to have. I couldn’t find the specific lube the kid wanted, though he’d sworn the drugstore carried it. In fact, I could only find one silicone-based lube, and another lube container had leaked all over it. When I and my sticky hands got to the front counters, a homeless and/or mentally ill man was screaming at the two female cashiers because they’d dared to ask him if he wanted to contribute a dollar for whatever the heck charitable cause for which they were raising money that week. He stopped yelling at my approach—the fact I’m six-foot-three probably had something to do with that—and scrambled to the parking lot to yell at the sky. I volunteered to stick around to wait for the police to arrive after the cashiers rang me up, as it was clear they were both uncomfortable about being there by themselves with the crazy guy on the other side of the sliding doors.
It was not, to summarize, a quick trip to the druggist. I got back to Room 155 only about a minute and a half before the Latin furball showed up. I apologized for being harried, and told him that the store hadn’t carried his preferred lube. He looked at what I’d bought instead and curled his lip, but that was the last we talked about that before fucking like dogs.
Afterward, at three in the morning, when the kid said that the sex was the best he’d ever had in his life, my opinion wasn’t that far behind. The sex had been phenomenal. It had started slow and romantic, making out and getting to know each other’s bodies. I’d propped his hips up on a pillow and gone to town eating his hole. The first fuck lasted for close to forty-five minutes as I kept driving into him in position after position, tossing him around like a furry little rag doll on the cheap hotel mattress. He’d shot spontaneously, without touching, as I bred his tight little ass. Then we kept going.
Two loads, three, four loads, before I took a break at one in the morning. Every time I banged one into him, he’d shoot. The second time he jacked onto his stomach as I pile-drove him into the headboard. The third and fourth loads, he shot again without touching—something he said he’d never before done. We talked for a while, then he climbed on me, kissed me until I was hard again, and sat down on my cock to milk out a fifth load. That’s the point when he told me he’d never had better sex.
The sixth load was unplanned; I was trying to get him up and dressed and out of there, but he was so fucking cute I couldn’t help but force him down on the mattress so he could take the last breeding of the night. He was too spent to attempt to match my donation. Finally, close to four, I managed to get him out the door. I had to take my dad to the dentist at 10, I told him. I needed at least a couple of hours of sleep.
He extracted a promise from me to meet him Wednesday night. He didn’t have to ask me twice. My dick was still three-quarters hard from having so much good ass when I crawled into bed and turned out the lights that I couldn’t wait for the upcoming day to be over.
And this is where my trouble began.
The kid’s texts that afternoon reeked of puppy love. He wanted me, he said. He needed more of my sperm. He loved my dick. He couldn’t wait to see me again. I was the best. Did I already have a boyfriend? Did I want a houseboy, LOL, because fuck, I was perfect and he needed me all the time. His chatter was all very sweet. Tired as I was, and even though I had very serious worries that maybe I’d worn out my dick the night before, I was genuinely looking forward to that night.
I was back from dinner with my dad and sitting in his living room, tapping on my phone and watching him mutter in agreement with MSNBC, when the kid texted again. I don’t have a car and don’t have any way to get to your hotel tonight.
I asked him what happened to his car. He’d had one the night before. He’d even mentioned something about stopping to get gas.
That was my work car. I only had it last night. I guess I can Uber to you.
Don’t be silly, I told him. I was going to leave my dad’s at nine-thirty again; I could make a detour and pick him up.
That would be great! I guess I could walk home after. It’s only two and a half miles.
I’ll drive you home after, too, I wrote. Okay, so now I was playing chauffeur. It wasn’t what I’d expected, but the sex had been a-fucking-mazing, and a little informal livery service didn’t seem like a bad trade. Honestly? I thought I was doing a nice thing in offering. He accepted.
It’s going to cut into our time together, though, I warned him. My dad has an early appointment in the morning and I REALLY need to get some sleep, since I didn’t have any last night. So with the driving we’ll probably only have an hour and a half for sex.
It was about nine when he finally texted again. I blinked at the message. I don’t have any poppers, he said. Sorry, I guess the sex tonight is canceled.
It was at that moment that all the good feelings I’d had about the kid, all the warm and fuzzy lingering memories, evaporated. The pickiness about the lube should’ve been the first red flag, honestly. I know some guys feel that water-based lubes get sticky and dry . . . but they can be replenished, and frankly, I’ve never had anyone complain about lube during the actual sex with me. Lube is the last thing on my mind. My dick produces plenty of lube on its own, thank you very much.
Furthermore, I’d made what I thought was a very generous offer to transport him back and forth to his place, even though I really didn’t want to, and even though it was going to cut a good half-hour out of the roughly two I could afford to spend with him. The night before, this same kid had told me I was the life-changing sex he’d never experienced in his life. Now he was giving up a second shot at the Best Sex Ever because his poppers had run dry? Fuck that noise.
All right, I texted back. Take care then.
I was in my car at nine-thirty, driving back to the hotel when the kid texted again. You can pick me up and drive me to this bookstore where they sell poppers, he said, naming the vendor’s closest intersection. I recognized the cross-streets. This place was clear across town—a half-hour drive and a bridge toll. I didn’t reply.
He texted a couple of minutes later, when I was back at the hotel. I’m dressed and ready. When are you picking me up?
After wrestling for a minute with how politely to word my baffled response, I finally stabbed out on my phone, I’m kind of confused, because earlier you told me we weren’t meeting without your poppers, so I just came back to the hotel and got in bed..
No, I still want to meet, he said.
But you literally texted me, ‘I don’t have poppers, sorry, the sex tonight is canceled.’ Maybe you can understand why I thought that the sex tonight was, you know, canceled.
I thought you were going to offer to drive us to the bookstore where I could get poppers, he wrote back. Then we could have gone to your place and had fun.
There’s all sort of things I could’ve blasted at the kid at this point. Poppers aren’t what make good sex. Everything that had happened the night before ignited because the kid and I had seriously been into each other—the romance of it, the intimacy, none of that had poured out of a tiny brown bottle.
Sure, I was tired. My lack of sleep probably contributed to my short temper. But the honest-to-god truth that still to this day makes me shake my head with disbelief is that despite the kid’s obvious ecstasy the night before, despite his delight in the best sex he’d ever had in his twenty-six years, ultimately he wanted his poppers more than he wanted me. I’d made some nice gestures in order to see more of him, and any good will I’d intended vanished when he’d basically spat on them.
You told me tonight was canceled, I finally texted back. So tonight is canceled. I’m already in bed. Good night.
Throughout the following day the kid sent me message after mopey message.
I fucked up last night.
I guess you hate me.
I guess you never want to see me again.
You’ve probably found hotter boys to fuck.
It was great meeting you. I fell hard for you, but I guess I’m a loser who fucks everything up.
Don’t worry, I’ll pick up the pieces. I always do.
I was so busy with my last day of errands for my father, though, that I didn’t get a chance to reply until late in the day. You did fuck up last night, but mistakes don’t make you a loser. If we ever meet again, I hope that meeting me will get a higher priority over hunting for poppers.
He immediately sent back a hundred excuses. He has panic attacks. He suffers from anxiety. He thought I wouldn’t mind driving from the northern border of the city to its southern border at ten at night for poppers because I seemed like a nice guy. He’s used to feeling mistreated so he assumes everyone’s going to mistreat him. He wanted everything to be perfect. Poppers are his security blanket. He’s trying to learn to love himself. Oh god. Everything he said was a mess of contradictions and had very little to do with anything that actually had happened—outside of his own head, that is.
You know, all you really had to do, I told him eventually, when I was tired of the excuses, is say, I’m sorry. I made a bad judgment call. Those are the words I’m not hearing.
Nor was I likely to, without that kind of prompt. If my name were Rush and I’d been a bottle of poppers . . . maybe then I’d be high enough in the hierarchy to get an apology.
I don’t have any illusions about the sex I have. I don’t expect a random encounter in a hotel room—rambunctious as it might have been—to turn into an eternal love affair. I don’t cherish the illusion that good sex with me, or even fan-fucking-tastic sex with me, is going to win me a spot on the top shelf of someone’s bureau of cherished memories. The sex that two men (or three men, or thirty) can be life-altering. Eye-opening. It can pierce the soul and shake the foundations of one’s life. But it’s sex—and it’s ephemeral, and meant to be savored while it’s happening and honored in the days and years that follow. Sex is sweet. It’s important. Yet it’s delicate. Impermanent. Fleeting.
Anything that fragile can easily be damaged beyond repair. Trample on it, be too selfish with it, and watch those momentary good feelings dissolve like tissue in the rain.
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