On Forgiveness

It’s the end of the year, and I’m a little thoughtful of late. So if you’ll allow it, I’d like to compose a couple of meditations on forgiveness.

1.

When I first moved to this part of the country, on Scruff I met a kid from Brooklyn that I liked very much. We’d had similar sexual awakenings growing up, and compatible tastes in the sack as adults. He liked to put his ass in the air for older men, and I’ve always had a taste for young men with daddy issues to work out. We hit it off online and made plans to meet, but as with so many encounters on the apps, it never seemed to happen.

He would be nearby and available when I was in a meeting. I’d be knocking around the city solo while he was at work. He once arrived when I available in my sleepy suburb for a work event, but he wouldn’t be free from that get-together until an hour when I’d be teaching. Both of us took these criss-crossed impasses with a good humor—but I think we both found them frustrating.

Finally came a time when we both seemed to be available. I was sitting in a coffee shop in the city with nothing to do for several hours; he had a day off work and was hinting heavily to me that he might be available. But as we were catching up with each other in chat, he shared with me that he’d had a brief relationship that ended badly when he’d discovered his boyfriend had concealing a trash heap of lies. I’d gone through my own travails with Cory the year before, so in commiseration I shared with the kid an abbreviated version of that mess—how I’d developed a relationship with Cory that he’d eroded with lies, and how Cory had vanished after leaving me with both a dire care of syphilis and a need for immediate medical attention.

I thought I was consoling this Brooklyn boy by sharing a tale similar to his, one of feeling foolish after wool had been pulled over my eyes. Instead, I freaked him the fuck out. I had syphilis, he wanted to know? And I wanted to sleep with him?

No, I told him. I’d had syphilis. Well over a year ago. I’d gone to the doctor. I’d had shots. I’d had several blood tests since. I didn’t have syphilis any more.

Nuh-uh, he told me repeatedly. That’s not the way syphilis worked. Once you had it, you had it for good.

I was kind of confused. This Brooklyn kid wasn’t stupid. I mean, he had a college degree. He worked for a company that attracts the best and the brightest. He should know better than to think syphilis was incurable. I mean, he was on PrEP, which at least showed some degree of sexual education. But nope. He kept insisting I was unclean—his word. That he couldn’t sleep with me, since I’d had (or, in his mind, since I had) syphilis.

I didn’t put up much of a fight. He was convinced. I was disappointed. I’d been called dirty. Confused and ashamed for no good reason, I wished him luck and tried to put him out of my mind for good.

Life’s too short, guys. Attempting to convince someone to want you, when it’s plain they won’t, is one of the biggest wastes ever of your time. Just don’t do it.

Still, I admit I had pangs. I’d see the kid online in the couple of years that followed. Each time, that flicker of recognition when my eyes landed on his smiling face would result in me sighing, remembering his insults, and moving on. I’d feel momentary anger whenever I saw him on. I’d wonder how could anyone so educated be so dumb, and hurtful. Whatever. It was just one more person against whom I’d have to harden my heart. What’s one more person. Right?

Something happened late last year, though. Out of the blue I got a message from this Brooklyn kid. He wanted my forgiveness. He said he’d been stupid and ignorant. He realized he’d hurt me with his words, and he wished he hadn’t. He didn’t expect me ever to respond to him, and he certainly didn’t expect me to want to get together with him after what had happened, but the guilt of how he’d surely made me feel weighed heavy on his mind. He was sorry, and he apologized for it.

For a moment I experienced a savage stab of satisfaction. I don’t mind admitting it. Who doesn’t enjoy a good told you so? Fucking right he’d made me feel badly. Go guilt! But you know, that feeling evaporated almost instantly, along with all the ill-will toward this kid I’d been building up over the years. He’d done the right thing. He’d apologized, and his apology was sincere and unmotivated by anything but a wish to put things right.

All is forgiven, I wrote back. Tapping out the words lightened my spirit. I laughed, even. It felt good to forgive. My heart felt lighter; all the sour feelings I’d worked up over this boy turned to sweet. They’ve stayed that way ever since.

Forgiving this kid—just letting it go—felt good. For a short period of time, after being weighed down by resentment and upset, forgiving him made me feel weightless. I don’t let go of resentments easily. Given a reason to, though . . . it was as if the incident had never happened.


2.

Earlier this year I wrote about Peter, a kid whose online life had been entangled with mine for years. The essay was one of my more depressive entries; I catalogued how Peter and I had planned to meet again and again, only to have something gum up the works. Earlier this year we’d finally made our first firm date, and then the day of, he rapidly canceled it, set it back on, canceled it again, changed his mind, then finally canceled. At the time, I tried to remain philosophical about the rejection, but when Peter disappeared for weeks immediately after, for the first time in all the years I’d known him, I felt used and abused.

A couple of months after that I saw Peter and his boyfriend together out on the town. The overwhelming sadness I felt I wrote about in the essay ‘Butterflies and Boners.’ I wrote the entry knowing that, as Peter had been reading my blog for years, he was likely to encounter it. Knowing he probably would kept me honest. I didn’t jiggle with the facts. I wrote what I thought was true, and fair; I wrote not meaning to be hurtful, but to reflect my own sense of hurt. I wrote, and poured out my heart, and in return I got a lot of very supportive comments from readers, and a very little bit of closure.

The incident soured me, though. For a very long time after that night in which I encountered Peter and his boyfriend, I didn’t feel like dealing with all the bullshit men were putting me through, just to get my rocks off. Furthermore, I didn’t feel like engaging in any social media at all. Boys were stupid. Men were stupid. People were stupid. I wanted none of it.

This mini-depressive episode didn’t last. Apparently I can only go without sex for so long. I was still in a sensitive place, though, when a month after I shared ‘Butterflies and Boners,’ I got a text from Peter. I would like to see if we have a connection still, he said. I don’t think I want to start with a sexual contact. I’d rather start over a drink, or coffee, or lunch.

What had been a mild depression instantly coalesced into a white-hot furnace. WELL WELL WELL, I raged internally. LOOK WHO’S COME CRAWLING BACK.

I’d read the text mere seconds after I’d received it, and all I could really think was that if Peter had been nervous about sex with me, he could’ve said so at any point in the previous five years. In fact, many times had I urged him to consider meeting me just to chat, only to have him drag me into his fisting, fucking, and breeding fantasies. I stared at the screen for a minute and tried to think of what to say. I wanted to reply with Guess you didn’t read my BLOG ENTRY, MOTHERFUCKER.

Only, you know. In a classy way.

I was still staring at the text when I got the follow-up. I suppose I should’ve read your blog before reaching out.

Mild understatement, that. Angrily I ground my teeth and read on.

Peter wrote, I also suppose I’m glad to read our history from your perspective. It’s not shocking in an “I had no idea I was treating you like that” way - I was very aware - but it’s shocking and different reading it laid out over the course of a few minutes than it is having done it over days and years.

Reading these words, part of me softened. I’d tried not to be harsh to Peter in that essay; I’d attempted to assign as much blame to myself for my lack of good sense as I did him for his youthful heedlessness.

I read on. I have not treated you with respect. Outside of the moments we’ve texted, I haven’t treated you with kindness either. I am sorry for how I yanked you around when it came to actually meeting, and for how I treated you by disappearing.

Oh. He was apologizing.

My skin had felt on fire, my heart had been pounding with a pent-up anger I hadn’t even been aware I was feeling, but his simple words cooled me down. Peter went on to say that he understood if I never wanted to see him, and if that were the case, he’d never bother me again.

My eyes skipped over his last offer. He’d apologized. Peter had apologized—and handsomely. It hadn’t been one of those ‘I’m sorry if I hurt you’ half-apologies. He’d owned up to what he’d done, and expressed his remorse.

And you know what? I felt better. I felt fucking amazing. And I knew in my heart that I couldn’t hold any animus against Peter any longer.

I was finally able to compose a response. I note and appreciate the apology of your last text. Please know that although I think about our relationship with sadness, I bear you no ill will. I meant the last part with all my heart. Hurt as I’d been, Peter’s attempt to make things right were just what I needed.

I forgave him there and then. I wasn’t ready to drop everything and run to meet him, not at that moment—and I told him so. But I thanked him sincerely for apologizing, and told him we’d talk again.

Peter did the right thing, that day. He’d wounded me more deeply than the kid from Brooklyn ever could. His apology, though, let me start healing. Once again I was able to drop a burden of resentment of which I wasn’t even aware I was carrying. The rest of the day, the rest of the week, the rest of the year was happier and lighter because of it.

It takes a big man to make a sincere apology. I know when I try to be half the man Peter was that day and attempt to make amends with those I’ve wronged, it’s never easy, and rarely straight-forward. That he was able to do so after the shock of seeing his actions held up in my mirror speaks volumes to his integrity. Life manages to find endless fresh ways to make me hurt, I wrote in ‘Butterflies and Boners.’ But life manages to find endless ways to help me forgive, too.

It’s the last day of the year. Tomorrow begins a new slate. I ask these questions of you, if you’ve read this far.

To whom might you apologize?

And who in your life, without grudge, might you forgive?

His Heart. My Heart.

“Let me wrap my legs around you.”

I’ve got the man’s ankles resting on my shoulders, the soles of his feet nearly parallel with the ceiling as I drive into him. I thought he was comfortable. Apparently not. We pause in our gyrations so that he can adjust himself. His hips lift with my assistance; I poke the pillow further beneath the small of his back. Finally, he’s at the angle he prefers.

His hairy legs embrace me. The warmth of his muscular calves against my hips contrasts with the cold indentations his heels make against my ass. What matters most, though, is that molten point of connection between us, that locus where raging cock meets hungry hole. As I resume my pistoling in and out, I can tell he’s more comfortable. The flats of my hands press into the mattress on either side of his shoulders. Our eyes lock in their glances, perfectly aligned—mine blue, his a dark and liquid brown.

“Fuck me,” he says, speaking my name.

“I love fucking you,” I tell him. For reply, he groans as I slide back in.

For long moments, the only sound is the soft squelch of my dick as it slides in and out of his wet hole. “You know how I feel when we get together,” he at last replies.

“Tell me.”

His expression softens. He can’t. Not in words. Instead, he pantomimes. He lays his hands over his chest, one atop the other. Twice, he lifts and drops them. His heart. Then he presses those hands onto my breast. My heart.

He’s handsome, this one. Of course he is. He makes a full-time living as an escort. Daily he hauls himself to the gym to remain in peak shape. His closet is filled with expensive clothing tailored to show off his physique; he keeps himself groomed at all times. He’s the epitome of the Italian Stallion, and every time we’ve met, he’s been considerate, courteous, prompt—everything he promises his clients.

I’m not a client, though. This encounter is strictly off the clock. For one thing, the Stallion never
bottoms for the men who hire his services. He doesn’t kiss. He saves some things for his private sex life, as he’s entitled. But I know he works for months and months and months, pleasing other men, without ever once getting what he needs. Then, when he can’t stand it any longer, he reaches out to me.

His head is lolling. I can tell he’s enjoying himself, but I ask anyway. “Does that feel good?”

He bites his lip. Nods.

“Do you need me to stop? Are you sore?” I’ve already left two loads in this hole this evening. The last time we met, this was the point he gave out—midway through number three. So I’m a little solicitous about his comfort.

The Stallion shakes his head with emphasis. “Nuh-uh. Please…don’t stop.”

“Everything tonight is for you, you know,” I tell him. My voice is low. Intimate. Pitched for an audience of one.  “I love fucking you, like I said, but you know what I love even more?” His eyes bore into mine as I speak. I can tell he adores me at this moment. He shakes his head once again. “Making you happy.”

His eyelids close slightly, almost imperceptibly, as he releases himself into my words. I feel his hole open at the same time; the muscles that had begun to clench and resist after so much pummeling now relax. Loosen.

“I love knowing that for one night—just one night—you get to enjoy what you need. What you want.” I pull out of him and look down at my dick, shiny and glistening in the dim bedroom light. There’s a savage satisfaction in my expression at the sight. He grunts when I shove my entire length back inside. “I like giving you permission for one night—just one, long night—to be selfish. To take, instead of to give.”

“God, you understand me so well.” His words are a whimper.

I look him dead in the eyes again. “I love doing this for you.”

His hands reach up to cup my head. I allow him to pull me down. His neck cranes; his lips meet mine with a lingering kiss. “Thank you.” He sighs. “You are so handsome.”

I murmur my thanks.

He must have seen an upward, dismissive flicker in my eye, though. He speaks my name. “You don’t get it. You are so handsome. That face. That jaw. That bone structure. Those eyes…they get so intense when you…oh fuck…when you fuck me.” I’m not crazy about praise. I know later, when I write about this evening—and I will write about this evening—I’ll edit four-fifths of the compliments he gives me, simply because recalling them will make me uncomfortable. “You have such a good heart and such a god-damned beautiful face. Dude, you just don’t know, do you.”

I’m still thrusting when I reply. “I’m comfortable with who I am,” I say, truthfully.

“You would do so well, doing what I do. I know you don’t necessarily want to. But you could set up a page tonight. I could show you where and how. And you would get so much business.”

I crack a grin. He doesn’t know I’ve sold my time before, obviously. This guy’s a pro, though. I’ve just dabbled, here and there. “You’re very sweet,” I acknowledge. “I don’t have the looks for escorting. I definitely don’t have the body for escorting.”

“You would make so much money, dude. Just by being you. Who you are. Right now.”

My cock’s reacting to the implied compliments, sure. He can sense it. He’s got to be feeling his ass widening. That button I’ve been punching with my cock has been banging my head harder and harder in this position; his legs tighten around my waist and pull me in. “Thank you,” I tell him. “Now. Stop worrying about me. This is about you.”

I spend the next few minutes showing him how much this night’s about him. I’m close to shooting, but I want to prolong the sensations he’s clearly enjoying. So I edge myself in his hole. I slow down the motion of my hips and buttocks. I pull all the way out and hesitate before plunging back in. I drag the thick ridge of my cock’s head along his chute, then rabbit-thrust near the outside, where it’s most sensitive. His legs stay wrapped tightly around me the entire time; his fingers interlink around the back of my neck. Though his weight rests on the mattress, it looks like this mass of muscle hangs from me like a sloth from a branch.

I say the Stallion’s name. His eyes open, though it takes a moment for them to focus. “May I?” I ask.

He knows what I mean. “Oh god, baby, yes,” he whispers. “Please. Please breed me again. Let me be the receptacle for your sperm.”

“For more of my sperm,” I correct.

“For more of your sperm. For all your sperm. I wish—I wish….”

I never find out what he wishes. My balls tighten. My chest seizes. I feel my cock contract and expand, contract and expand, as I unload my semen inside him. It’s a quiet orgasm. No loud cries. No spasms. Just me, shivering and shuddering while my chest rises and falls. I close my eyes and allow myself to coast on the waves of sensation, until at last I find myself beached on the warm shore of his furry chest.

“Ssshh,” he says, stroking my face with his hand. I kneel there for the longest time, nose between his pectorals, cock still balls-deep in his hole, listening to his heart beat. After several minutes, he wriggles his hips so that my dick slides out with a soft squish. He rolls me onto my back. Nestles a pillow beneath my head. Arranges my limp limbs, arms at my side, legs spread. “My turn, baby.”

“I—”

“Just relax.”

I follow his order. I feel gentle kisses from his beard tracing down my stomach, then the wetness of his lips and mouth on my meat as he swallows it whole. I’m still hard enough thoroughly to enjoy the sensations. “If you’re doing that, it’s hardly ‘your turn,’” I complain.

“You told me to be selfish. Remember? This is me being selfish.”

It’s tough to argue. I let him clean me off for long minutes as he strokes himself with his left hand and, with the right, shoves four of his fingers into his cum-soaked hole. He climaxes for the second time that night onto his own abs, though two of the jets spray as far as my nuts.

I don’t feel he’s being entirely selfish in the quiet moments that follow, as he rubs knots from my neck with one of his mighty paws. I’m finding it still difficult to protest the luxury, however. After a few moments, though, he hops up from the mattress where we’re sprawled. “Let me show you something,” he says.

“Sure.” I’m sweaty, stinky, and covered in both our juices, but I try to array myself in a semi-attractive position. The Stallion trots to the base of the bed. When he removes the veil he’s placed over the lamp, brighter light floods the room. I watch as he opens the top drawer of his dresser and pulls out what looks to my drowsy eyes like one of those seasonal tins that holds Danish butter cookies. Wait—it actually is a Danish butter cookie tin. He closes the drawer and returns to the bed, bouncing like a kid when he hits the mattress with the oversized tin in one hand. Is he planning to feed me?

He lets his nails click underneath the lid’s rim before he halts. The tin is between us; our faces are level. “I’ve never shown this to anyone before. Anyone. So.” I nod to signal understanding. After a hesitation, he pries open the lid.

The cookie container’s golden interior reflects light onto our faces in an almost cinematic way; the Stallion’s face is illuminated as if he were Aladdin, hovering over the Grand Vizier’s treasure. The gasp I let out is for real, though. The container is stacked with a massive amount of cash.

“This is what I’ve saved this year alone,” the Stallion tells me. “Above expenses. You know. Just savings.”

I’ve never, ever before seen this much legal tender. In movies, sure, but massive amounts of Hollywood-printed paper don't have the same impact as these neat little bundles of hundred-dollar bills. Each stack, bound by a strip of gummed paper, is probably the thickness of a cracker; he's arranged the individual stacks from top to bottom in a triangle shape.

“I mean, I know escorting isn’t something you necessarily want to do,” he says. His manicured hands pluck the top bundle. He drops it onto the mattress, and follows it with the next. “One thousand. Two.” Around the tin his fingers travel as he takes the stacks from their three-sided arrangement, then drops them atop the other. “Three thousand. Four thousand.”

I’m totally unable to react as he counts out his savings for the year in front of me. I understand he’s not showing off. He’s not flashing his money to tell me a story of his desirability, or to prove how good an escort he is. The Stallion is genuine. He’s sharing this moment because he trusts me absolutely. And that’s flattering. My dick stirs into life again at the implied compliment.

“Seventeen. Eighteen.” He pauses. “Seriously. With that face of yours? And that dick? You would be pulling all this and then some. Nineteen. Twenty thousand.”

The tin is still half-full.

I lie there in silence, head propped up on my hand, as he continues to count. Twenty-one. Twenty-nine. Thirty. Thirty-seven.

We’re near the bottom of the tin. “Forty. Forty-one. Forty-two.” There are still a few stray bills in the bottom. “And a few twenties. Forty-two thousand. I’ll probably be able to bring it up to about fifty by the end of the month.” We both look at the pile of cash for a moment. Then he begins nimbly refilling the tin in the same triangle pattern.

I’m a mixture of emotions at this point. I’m still oddly touched at his display, and the massive amount of trust it implies. I’ve never been blessed to have an abundance of money at my disposal, so the sheer amount of hundred-dollar bills is a little bewildering. Mostly, though, what’s surging to the forefront is annoyance—then anger.

Strange to admit, I know, but all of a sudden I wanted to deck the guy. Why in the world was he keeping so much cash in his fucking home? Why in the top drawer of his dresser, and in a cookie tin, of all the god-damned things? Anyone could barge into his condo and walk away with a hefty payday.

What’s more, why was he showing it to me? We’d met once before, sure, but the Stallion didn’t know me. What if I were unscrupulous? A con artist? I could be the sweetest-talking, the most baby-faced grifter, and there he was, putting the lid on the tin and shoving it back into the dresser drawer, and—Christ—walking out of the room to the bathroom down the hall right after. I hear the sound of his piss hitting the toilet. All I’d have to do is haul my naked body across the room, slide a few stacks of Benjamins from the tin into the pocket of my jeans that lie crumpled at the foot of the bed, and rearrange myself. The Stallion would be none the wiser.

I don’t, of course. If anything, I freeze more rigidly than ordinarily I would, as if afraid my body might betray me and do the dark deed I just imagined. Motionless I remain until the Stallion pads back. I’m even afraid to look in either his direction, or at the dresser, in case he reads my expression.

“Hey handsome,” he says, and then lunges at me.

Once I’m in his arms again I’m comfortable. But my anger’s still bubbling to the surface. I have to say something. The words “Haven’t you ever heard of a bank?” burst out.

“What?”

“That cash you showed me. Please don’t ever do that again. Don’t show it to anyone.”

I sound cross, and I hate how my annoyance shows. He’s wearing a smile, though, as he listens to my complaints.

“I’m flattered you trust me this much, I really am.” Is anything I’m saying getting through? “But I mean, my god. I could be anyone. I know, I know. I’m a worrier.”

Sensing my upset, he lays a hand on my chest. I catch my breath. The gesture soothes me. I sink back, breathing normally. When he's certain I'm calm, he places that hand on his own chest, between his pecs, and crosses it with the other. Pats them. Once. Twice. His heart.

Back his hands travel to my chest once more. Twice they thump. My heart.

I'm overwhelmed, though I'm not yet sure why.

“You have such a deeply caring nature,” he says. “I don’t know anyone who’s more himself than you.”

Somehow he’s turned my protests into another compliment. I feel slightly tricked, but I can’t protest when he’s being so kind.

“That’s one reason men respond to you so well. Why they would respond to you so well if you—you know,” he says. His fingers stroke my hair, brush my face, trace the contours of my collarbone. Then they travel lower. “Of course, this huge dick is another.”

I start to harden. He smiles. Arranges me into the pillows. Then he pushes wide my legs and, with desire transforming his expression, whispers, “I’m about to be very, very selfish again.”

He doesn't really have to tell me, though. I already know.