Revenge #2

We’d fucked like dogs in heat two days before. It had been a session in which Rock Star blew an explosive five-day load all over my chest, face, and his pillows. After that, the pressure’s off for the week. Today’s supposed to be a cuddle day—one of those mornings when he and I get together with no particular sexual agenda.

Sometimes on a cuddle day we lay naked in bed beneath a thin blanket, letting the air conditioner roar over our bodies as we talk. Sometimes we drift into a morning nap that lasts until the noon sun breaks through the skylights above.

Sometimes, like this morning, we make out like kids in a split-level basement party after school. Our dicks grow hard as we hold and paw each other. He tries to climb on top of me; I push him down and suck on his long shaft as he studies me with dark eyes covered by even darker hair. Finally, he swings around to lay his head on my thigh. His mouth wraps around my dick. He comes that way, masturbating with my shaft in his throat while I fondle his balls and gently rub on his nipples.

We’re in a tangle afterward. Sweaty. Smelling of each other. The dog’s curled in furry beige lump at the bed’s head, protecting the toy he’s held in his mouth for the last two hours. “You know what I liked?” says Rock Star, from where he’s using my stomach as a pillow.

“What?” I rumble. My eyes are half-closed. It’s a sleepy, lazy, wonderful moment.

“I liked those photos of you sent to me. The ones of you in college.”

“Oh gawrsh,” I chuckle. I was camera-shy for my first four decades. Of the handful of photos I have from my college years, I only have a few digitized. I’d texted Rock Star three, one day, to lift him out of a bad mood after work. One was of me dancing with a female professor at a costume party. Another was of me on the Jamestown ferry, my eighties Paul Young mullet made even more poofy from the wind. The last is of me drenched and glistening and soaking wet from a storm, laughing like crazy from the exhilaration of the driving rain and the wind.

At the time I thought of myself as a hideous creature that should’ve been living under the bridge the Billy Goats Gruff traveled. Now, with time, I see why so many men wanted me. I’m fresh-faced, and sunny, and smooth-skinned. I was beautiful then, and never once gave myself the credit. “You look so . . . you in them,” he tells me.

And I know just what he means. My hair’s less crazy now, my face bearded—but my smile’s the same, as are my eyes. I still laugh in the same half-self-conscious way. Take a high-speed camera and capture shots of a speeding baseball at two points in its trajectory and you’ll see it from different angles; the markings vary, the stitching transform. But it’s still undeniably the same. “Thank you,” I say, feeling shy. Then, in a more assertive tone, I add, “But I was all bottom then. You wouldn’t have been as crazy about me.”

“Re-ally,” he says, intrigued. I tell him in brief about what a slut I was in college and before, and how it wasn’t until I’d graduated and begun graduate school that I was introduced to topping. He listens with amusement, as if I’m spinning some unlikely fiction. He sits up in the bed and props himself on my naked chest. “Does that mean you want me to fuck that hole of yours?”

“Oh yeah,” I say, snickering a little. “That’s what it means, all right.”

“You want me to flip you over and show you my sex-ay top moves?”

He’s teasing, but I play right along. “Yes sir,” I tell him. “I want you to show me your sex-ay top moves right now.”

He’s shot only a few moments before; there’s no chance he’ll be hard enough actually to do anything. I’m amused, though, as he roughly grabs me by the shoulders and flips me onto my stomach. He straddles my ass and flops his cock against my crack. It’s not turgid, but it still has enough residual blood in it to make it hefty. It spreads my cheeks as he pushes his weight into me. “Well first,” he says into my ear. “I’d make love to you, all sweet and gentle.” His long, long hair hangs down and tickles my bare back. I feel the heat of his breath on my spine, followed by the wet lick of a tongue. He plants kisses on my shoulders that make me sigh. “And then. . . .”

Rock Star gives one of my buttocks a heavy wallop. He waits for my reaction. It’s been years, but I’ve been spanked and paddled by pros. That spank I barely felt. I look over my shoulder and peer at him with one of my eyes. “Was that it?” I ask.

Without warning he grabs the top of my skull. Shoves my head into the pillows so roughly that I exhale and lose my breath. Begins pounding my ass with his pelvis. He’s giving it a real battering, too. His dick flops around heavily, bludgeoning my ass. “Then I say, Take it, little bitch!” He jackhammers me into the mattress while he wrenches my head back and forth by the hair. The dog looks up mournfully from his pillow.

I can barely breathe, but I start laughing. I can’t stop, either. The hilarity of it hits a chord deep inside, and once struck, it won’t stop jangling. “You are crazy,” I tell him.

“Then I’ll pull out and give you some relief,” he says. He pulls his pelvis away from my body. I feel the tip of his dick dangling just above my hole. The air conditioner pushes coolness over our sticky skins. My laughter has subsided into giggles, but they keep on coming. I know it’s not over.

Sure enough, he starts mock-pounding me again. Every thrust brings stars to my eyes. His hipbones are so pronounced and sharp that they have to be bruising my backside as he slams into me, but can’t stop laughing. Full-force, now. I’ve got tears in my eyes. “Yeah, rippin’ into your daddy ass,” he growls. “Your boy gettin’ his own back. Turning daddy into my bitch, bitch!” His mouth is next to my ear, just as mine is when I plow into him. “Maybe I’ll shove you up against the wall, lift up a leg, make you chew on the plaster to muffle your yells while I pound the shit out of your daddy ass!”

“Okay!” I say amenably.

“It’s going to be a fuckin’ bloodbath!”

He pushes himself off and rolls me over. I’m still chuckling, deep from the gut. I can’t tell if I’m breathless from his weight, or from my amusement. “You are a deeply, deeply silly man,” I tell him, trying to sound grave.

“Then I’ll take those sheets, all covered with blood from your daddy hymen, and sell them to a New York art gallery for a buttload of money,” he says. “It’ll be my art installation. I’ll call it. . . .” He pauses to think.

“Revenge,” I suggest. “No, Revenge #2.”

“Revenge #2,” he agrees. “By Daddyfucker.”

He can’t help himself either. A single snort rips through his rough, tough would-be top’s facade. He collapses next to me on the mattress, and tickles my ribs. We both erupt into renewed giggles.

Our arms entwine around each other. Our lips meet. We kiss, still laughing like little kids, and disappear beneath the blanket to enjoy each other while there’s still time.

Mine

There’s a long and twisting flight of stairs to take to Rock Star’s wing in the house where he lives. As softly as I try to tread, my rubber soles against the shiny varnish on the wooden steps echoes like gunfire, every time I creep up to his room.

Every time I open the door at the summit, I never know what’s going to lie behind. I’ve swung it back to find him dozing beneath the sheets, his long hair spilling over the ivory comforter like an inky river. I’ve stepped through to find him on all fours wearing nothing but a jock, head in the pillows, hole begging for attention. I’ve been pulled by a wet and slippery hand from the threshold into the bathroom adjoining, to entwine with his soaked limbs beneath the steamy waterfall of the shower head. I never know what to expect. It’s like opening the door on an old Mystery Date board game—only there’s never a dud.

The air in the stairwell is as hot as still as the summer weather outdoors. When I step through the doorway, I’m almost directly in front of his window air conditioner. Rock Star is nowhere to be seen. There’s no sound of running water from the bathroom. He’s not arrayed on the mattress for my pleasure. Then my senses kick into overdrive as I sense someone behind me; the shock of knowing someone’s over my shoulder is colder than the air conditioner’s blast.

It’s Rock Star, my brain tells my body. Don’t worry. But it’s too late. My skin has erupted into gooseflesh; the microscopic hairs on the back of my neck are standing straight up. My heart starts to race from the unexpected surprise of having him sneak up on me. Then it pounds simply because I feel his hands on my shoulders, his breath beneath my hairline.

I start to turn, to take him into my arms. “Ssshh,” he says, arresting my twisting motion. “Close your eyes.”

“What?” I laugh.

“Just ssshh. Keep your eyes closed.” When he whispers, it stirs the already-alert hairs on my nape. They tingle and send chills down my arms, along my spin, around my sides and down to my cock. It stirs in my shorts. I feel the brush of something against my face. When I open my lids, I see him lowering one of his bandanas over my face. I smile, and close my eyes again. He tightens the makeshift blindfold, and knots it in the back. “Can you see?” he says, moving from one ear to the other.

When I peek again, I can. The bandana is light in color and hangs over my nose. I can look down the bridge and see him steering me in the direction of the bed. “No,” I tell him, closing my eyes again. “I can’t see.”

“Good,” he tells me, stopping me short of the mattress. I feel it press against my shins. “I’ve wanted to do this for a while.”

His voice is soft. He holds me on my biceps; his hands are warm on my arms. I relax. I trust him. I let him do what he wants.

I feel his hands undo the buttons of my shirt. I let him pull it from my arms. His palms run up and down my rib cage, warm where the air conditioner cools my skin. I feel him unbuckle my belt, tug on my shorts. They’re too big for me as it is; he doesn’t even have to unbutton the fly to make them fall to my ankles. One after the other he lifts my feet, removes my shoes and socks. I’m naked save for the blindfold.

For a few moments his hands seem to brush over all the parts of my body. My buttocks, between my thighs, my belly, my chest. His fingers trace circles over my shoulders; I feel his kiss against my cheek. “I love you, and want to make you feel good,” he says, as I feel his mouth on my nipple, my abdomen, at the crease of my pelvis. “I have to give back a small portion of what you’ve given me.”

“Sweetheart,” I say helplessly. We’ve had this conversation before. “You give me so—ah.” I lose the train of my thought as I feel his mouth nuzzle my balls. I try to resist reaching out to guide his head. He wants to be firmly in command here. “You always—“ I sigh as I feel him part my legs, run his hand down my taint to my hole, then back to a sensitive spot at the very back of my balls. “You always—fuck.”

He’s got my member in his mouth, now. In one rotation of his tongue it grows from half-mast to fully erect. “I love this cock,” he tells me. “It’s the perfect cock.”

“You—“

“Shut up,” he says.

I shut up. Very gently he turns me around, only to push me so that I land on the bed. I feel his hands on my thighs. Roughly he parts them, and goes back to his sucking. Rock Star’s mouth is sweet, and soft, and warm; it’s an ideal combination for oral sex. When I try to lift my hands and stroke his hair, he pushes them back down again.

“My cock,” he says, letting my dick drop with a wet slap onto my abdomen. “Fuck whatever you want with it, but it’s my cock. Belongs to me,” he growls. I can tell by his tone of voice that he’s seriously aroused. It’s the tone of a man in serious heat, who can’t think of anything but flesh and pleasure. “Whose is it?”

“Yours,” I say, weakly. I know that if I looked at my dick, it would be raging and red. In his clutch it strains. I like the sensation.

“Mine,” he agrees.

I whimper, and sink back into the pillows.

I hear the lube before I feel it, when the plastic bottle clatters against his nightstand. His weight shifts, and suddenly he’s slapping on cold fluid and warming it with his hand. My dick points to the ceiling; I feel him position first his feet, and then his knees on either side of my hips. I feel the pressure of him as his ass seeks to locate my tip. His large hand wraps around my shaft to hold it steady. Then he’s lowering himself onto me, and I groan. “Please,” I beg, when he stops halfway.

He’s teasing me. Squeezing with his hole, moving up and down in the most minuscule increments possible. Making me want more, but denying it. “Whose dick?” he asks again.

“Yours,” I say, in more strangled tones. I try to reach up to him, but he shoves away my hands. As punishment, he pivots up and off my dick. I make sounds of frustration in the back of my throat. But then I hear him applying lube to himself. He’s back on my dick, sliding this time all the way down to the bottom.

“I’ve been thinking about this dick all week,” he grunts out as he begins riding up and down. “I’ve been wanting this dick all week. And you’ve been keeping it from me.” He’s rocking his hips up and down at the base of me, grinding my dick like it’s some kind of toy. He’s tight. He’s always been tight. But today he’s latching down on me with a firmness I didn’t expect. He’s implanted on my dick, and plainly isn’t coming off until he’s done.

I don’t care what he says. This fuck isn’t for my pleasure—though let’s be honest, I’m getting a lot of pleasure out of it. It’s all for him. He’s treating me like his plaything, and it’s turning me the fuck on to be used like that. I can tell he’s slicked up his own meat and is beating at it furiously. When I take a little peek down my nose and under the kerchief, I can see his hand flying up and down over his dick.

“Asshole,” he says, shoving me by the forehead backward. “Cheater. Stop trying to look.” Before I can apologize or protest, his mouth is on mine. His kisses are hard and relentless. I want to grit my teeth and punish him; I want to flip him over and pound the fuck out of him just to show him who’s boss. But part of the sweetness of this scenario is that he’s the boss, here. He’s the one who has the power—the power to excite, the power to consummate.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“You better bet you’re sorry.” He’s back to riding me in smooth, sinuous movements. His hips slide, snake-like, back and forth. “Fuck. Maybe I won’t let you juice me.”

“Please,” I say. My throat is already parched; my lips feel cracked and dry. “Please let me.”

“No,” he says, like a querulous child.

“Please.” I’m begging.

“No. Not yet.” He’s going faster and faster, seated on the stiff locus of pleasure that’s my dick. When I get too close, though, he clamps down; he stops. He takes me to the edge, again and again, but never steps over.

Then he shoots. I don’t know it’s happening until I hear his gasps, hear the sound of him crying out and feel his nuts bouncing up and down on my midsection. Then I feel hot splashes of liquid as he covers me in his seed. He’s making sounds I’ve never heard from him before—hoarse and guttural, from deep within his core.

The rocking subsides. He’s still astride me, but he’s leaning on my chest, breathing heavily. Recovering. I’m almost afraid to break the hush, to speak and interrupt the patterns of his breathing. So I lie there, waiting for him to tell me what’s next.

“My cock,” he finally says, giving me a vise-like squeeze with his ass muscles. Then I feel his mouth cover mine, and his chest press against my own. The seed he’s spilled glues the two of us tightly together. “All mine.”

I’m happy to let him have the last word on that topic.

The Other End of the Telescope

We rode into the city together, Rock Star and I. At the train station he rested his head on my shoulder, his lids heavy with sleep. On the train his long hair covered my shoulder and arm like a cape as he dozed all the way to Grand Central. His dog lay between us on the seat, his head in my lap. At Port Chester and Rye the dog sat up to observe who boarded the commuter train. Most of the time, though, he joined his human companion in a deep sleep, both them using me as a pillow.

A family of four sat across the aisle. The two girls bounced in their seats at the sight of the dog, but soon they were too busy looking at the speeding landscape outside the window to pay his sleeping form attention. The husband and wife, though, regard us with smiles; she spent a long time gazing at the sight of my hand in his, of his cheek against my shoulder, of the warm and comfortable tangle of human and canine limbs on our seat.

She thought we were a couple. They all do, when we’re together in the city. When Rock Star and I walk down the street—or rather, when Rock Star and I run after the dog on the street, pulled by his lead as he lunges from one potential pee spot to the next—Rock Star looms over me with a hand around my shoulders, or around my waist, or his fingers intertwined with mine. Of course they think we’re a couple. Maybe we are.

The first time he did this, I automatically pulled away. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

I struggled with the words. I grew up in a time in which public displays of affection between men were inconceivable. The taboo is deeply branded into my psyche. I can’t overcome it automatically, even though I know I ought.

“Are you worried you’ll get beat up?” he said. Then, with his arm encircling me, he pulled me close for a hug and a kiss to the top of my head, right in front of a mass of tourists emerging from the subway to see the Empire State Building. “Sweetheart, I’ll be right there to protect you.”

So of course, now I let him hold my hand as we walk down the street. I melt when he does. Even my huge mitts are tiny in his palm. I always feel like a child when he slips his grasp around mine. I feel taken care of.

When we stopped at the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park to get the dog some water and to share a lemonade, he had me sit with the dog on a bench and wait for him. He returned with two giant iced lemonades and three ice creams—two for us, and something called a Pooch-ini for the dog. We relaxed in the dappled shade, trying to eat the frozen concoctions before they melt into nothingness.

He told me a story while we ate. He’d visited a bar with friends one night, several years back. An older man tried to pick him up. That part doesn’t surprise me. Rock Star has a look that draws glances. Men and women alike stare at him as he strides down the street on his impossibly long legs with his hair billowing out behind him. They wonder if he’s a Somebody. I can see how they’re taken aback at his beauty. And when we’re together, and he’s whispering in my ear or clasping my hand in his, I see them staring at me, too. Some of them have envy in their eyes. I’ve always imagined that they’re wondering how a guy like me can land a Rock Star.

But the point of the story wasn’t that he had to suffer some random come-on. The hapless older man was named Bert. He sounded like a paunchy old-timer with faded looks and a conviction that he’d have to pay for the time of anyone as attractive as Rock Star. When Rock Star’s friends began to roll their eyes and snicker at the guy behind his back, Rock Star defied their expectation that he’d join in the derision. Instead, he left his friends and talked to the man for a long time, then spent time dancing with him on the floor. They didn’t have sex, but Rock Star generously gave up a portion of his evening simply to make the guy feel more attractive, and less alone. He does things like that.

When he told me this story, I sat there and thought to myself, Oh shit. Am I a Bert?

Because that’s what our brains do, isn’t it? It didn’t matter that we’d spent hours together that Saturday summer morning acting like boyfriends, that we’d kissed and hugged and held hands in front of total strangers from Bryant Park to Madison Square. It didn’t matter that he’d bought my train ticket and surprised me with ice cream. I’d had a hundred and seventy pounds of sheer good fall into my lap—two hundred and ten, if you counted the dog—and I allowed my happiness to be upset by a tiny grain of black doubt. Try as I might to banish bad thoughts, they kept assailing me. I was no match for Rock Star’s comeliness. I was too fat, too old. Too sheltered. Too ugly to be with him.

I tried to dismiss all nonsense from my mind. Mostly I did, as we ducked into one air-conditioned shop after another. But sunny as the day was, shadow still lurked close to the horizon. The doubt that for six months I’d been some kind of contemptible exception, a pity fuck, a charity case, kept trying to eat away at my happiness.

Later in the day we went to an art gallery run by one of his friends. An artist was taking portraits there all afternoon with a camera that was over a hundred years old. She’d pry off the back of the wooden contraption, insert a modern portrait studio plate in the back. The camera had no lens, or perhaps had one that was very primitive (I was too busy with the dog to listen to the entire lecture); she had to control the exposure length herself, manually. Well, Rock Star wanted his portrait taken. I didn’t, but I accompanied him and the artist outside, as we moved the heavy camera and its wooden tripod from the upstairs gallery onto a creaky old elevator and out onto the street. We wandered for a few minutes while the photographer attempted to find the right light and the right spot to take her portrait. Then when finally she settled Rock Star into a seat on a cement pillar, I stood back and took snapshots of her preparing him for a photograph.

There was something intimate and almost erotic about the process—even surrounded as we were by tourists and diners and heavy traffic. She had to position the camera mere inches from Rock Star’s face in order to get him into the frame. Then she spent several long moments helping him adjust his hair, or to reach out and turn his his skull a few degrees in a different direction. As always, I was struck by his handsome good looks as she took first one photo, then changed the plate to take another. On my phone, I captured several images of her peering through a pinhole in the wooden box, and of Rock Star looking dreamily off into space, his legs spread, his hands folded peacefully between them.

I wanted to remember that moment.

We had to part soon after that. I was meeting other people; he needed to get the dog to his apartment in the city. But it was funny. I had a quiet moment to myself a couple of hours later, and thought I’d send him the photos I’d taken of him having his portrait done.

At the very same instant, Rock Star messaged me. I hadn’t realized it, but when he’d been sitting there, allowing the photographer to adjust the tilt and incline of his face, centimeter by centimeter, his hands had been folded over his own phone, and that he’d been taking photos of me. In some of them I’m staring with concentration at my phone’s screen as I point its lens in his direction. In several others, I’m straight and tall, shoulders back, as I stare off at something distant, while 9th Avenue and its old historic buildings recede to a vanishing point where I stand. As I captured photos of him, and of a moment I wanted to preserve, he was doing the very same of me. Without my knowledge, he’d collected images of me the way he saw me—the way wanted to remember me.

I honestly gasped when I saw them. In those images, I’m attractive. I’m impossibly tall, and lean, and more handsome than ever I considered myself. I look strong, and capable. I look as if I’d turn heads. I flipped through those photos, which I received at the same moment I sent the ones I’d taken of him. Instantly all the shadows that had attempted to ruin my afternoon vanished. I was no Bert. Not in those photos. I was no pity fuck. No charity case. I understood why Rock Star wanted me. It occurred to me for the first time that perhaps when I caught men and women looking at the pair of us, that some of their regard might have been for me. Or at least, how radiantly I glow in Rock Star’s presence.

Two men, capturing fleeting photographs of a moment we both wanted to remember for a long time to come. Two perspectives on the same instant, each from the other end of the telescope. Maybe—I hope—we’ve fixed that afternoon for all time to come. Suspended it in an amber of our own making. Age will never alter the moment; it’s immutable to time.

Whenever in the future I look at those photos, I know my heart will beat a little faster at the memory. For I will remember that once I found this man impossibly fair, and know that in his eyes, I was equally as beautiful.

Summer Dip

The man I see the most is the man I write about the least.

Once a week, twice, sometimes three times I meet Rock Star. I know the mile-long route to his home as well as I know my own street. I’ve spent more time tramping around his neighborhood, walking his dog with him, than I have my own. Six months, we‘ve seen each other. And yet I don’t write about him much, because I want to protect him. Maybe—more than a little—I want to protect my own self. My heart has been quick to ache since the Spencer days.

But I’m writing about him today.

Meet me for a dip? he asks on my phone, which lights up with his message. It’s a blistering hot early summer morning. Barely nine o’clock, and the sun’s already baked suburban landscapes to a blistered crisp. The air’s so humid that it already feels I’m swimming. A dip sounds like just the thing.

I pull into the circular drive in front of his home and park my car in the cool of the hundred-year maple shading the portico. I can feel the asphalt cooking beneath my feet as I pass by the house’s grand front porch, and duck under the hidden little archway built beneath an attached gazebo. I emerge in the back yard, one of the highest points in our hilly locale. Below, down the hill, a hundred years ago lay farmland. Today the old barns and outlying buildings have been converted into sweet little homes, the other parcels of land divided and built upon. There’s too much of a haze this morning, but if I peered hard enough on a clearer morning, I might be able to glimpse in the distance the Long Island Sound.

Beyond a circumference of ancient hedges I hear splashing. I round the stone pathway. There’s a swinging wooden half-door breaking the perimeter of hedge. It’s open. But I stand on the threshold for a moment, simply because he’s so beautiful.

Rock Star is in the pool. He looks like a study of Christ, deep beneath the water. His arms are outstretched, his feet together and pointed, his long hair streaming down to the middle of his vertebrae. The pool hasn’t been resurfaced in some years; the bottom is patched with gray spots. The paint has darkened so much that the water looks unclean, though I know it’s not. I can smell the chlorine from where I’m standing. He’s a Connecticut messiah in a pool of deep turquoise. When he emerges from the deep, hair plastered wetly to his skull, it’s with scarcely a ripple. He blows the water from his nose, and rubs his eyes. His hands reach up to the chrome bars of the ladder, and with strong arms he pulls himself out.

I still stand there, hands in my pockets, to admire his beauty. He hasn’t noticed me. Pool water is still cascading from his trunks as he reaches for his towel. It’s not until he’s pressing the terrycloth against his head, sponging liquid from his long hair, that he realizes I’m there. Though his eyes are large—almost outlandishly so—he always gives the impression of being half-lidded. At the sight of me, a shy smile blossoms across his lips, and those heavy lids droop to the three-quarter mark. “You startled me,” he says.

“I had to look,” I say simply.

It makes him smile even more. There are times I wonder why this young man bothers with me. When I first started seeing him, he made me so nervous that I couldn’t relax. I was afraid if I exhaled, if I let down my guard, I’d discover that he had a thing for ugly old geezers, or that I was a masochistic pity fuck. It wasn’t until the end of our second month that I realized I was making him nervous as well. I still do. He drapes the towel modestly across his nearly-naked body, as if I haven’t glimpsed it before. “I hope you like what you see,” he says.

He’s sweet. I crack a grin.

“Did you bring a swimsuit?” he asks.

“Of a sort.”

“Do we have to go shopping for you?” he half-scolds. We’ve been shopping before—weekend dates up and down 6th Avenue. He’s treated me like a Ken doll in H&M, and made me try on at Zara items I have no intention of buying.

“I’m good,” I say.

I move in to take him in my arms, but he’s too quick for me—and too slippery. He steps out of my grasp and propels himself into the pool in a perfect arc of a dive. When the tips of his fingers pierce the still water, the rest of his body follows like a greased needle. He sputters when he comes up, and looks at me. “What’s taking you so long?”

I raise my eyebrows. Kick off my sneakers. Remove my footies. I drop my camo shorts onto the grass, slip the T-shirt from my torso. I’m wearing a pair of elastic-y briefs that’ll do for a swimsuit. There’s spare underwear in the pocket of my shorts, for after. Not that I really need a suit. No one overlooks the pool. We could swim naked if we wanted. “How’s the water?” I ask.

“Glorious,” he says.

I kick at it tentatively with my foot. “Christ!” I swear. “Liar.”

“What?” he asks.

I sit down on the poolside concrete. Immediately my butt starts to burn. “It’s fucking cold.”

“It’s good once you get in,” he says, swimming over to where I sit.

“I hate cold water.” I have a whine in my voice, like a whimpering Scooby-Doo.

“It feels great,” he says.

I look at him. I’m dubious.

He reaches up and puts a cold, wet hand on my thigh. I flinch. “Trust me,” he says. “Just slip on in. Come on.” He holds both my hands in his, like I’m a child who doesn’t know how to swim. “I swear I’ll keep you warm.”

I do hate cold water. Every square inch of my skin recoils at the thought of having to submerge myself in that ice bath, even on a baking hot day like today. But I can’t refuse Rock Star. I claim my hands again and slide downward, lowering myself a few inches at a time. I have to hold my breath to get it done; it’s painful going. But there I am, finally, shoulders beneath the rippling surface of the waters. My teeth chatter.

“I’ll keep you warm,” he promises again.

He pushes me against the pool’s side, so that the concrete bites into my back. His mouth is on mine; his tongue invades my mouth. Rock Star is taller than I. His shoulders are broader. He’s lean, but he’s muscled. I feel like a tiny thing in his grasp, and for me it’s a novelty. His hands are on my shoulders, his body is pressing against mine as we make out.

And for a few moments, I forget about the cold.

His mouth tastes of chlorine. His kisses are simultaneously hot and cold. Water splashes into our mouths, wets our faces. I feel his arms encircle my waist. When he pushes off from the wall and pulls me with him, I have to tip back my head to keep from swallowing when I laugh as we glide across the pool’s width. “Don’t you like swimming?” he teases.

“I didn’t come here to swim,” I say into his ear. “I came here to see you.”

His dark eyes smolder. They burn into mine. “You turn me on so much,” he says.

“Show me,” I challenge.

We swim back to the ladder. He pulls himself out, helps me when I emerge. He loses his trunks by the diving board. My sopping wet underwear joins his on the concrete. The sun will dry them both before we’re done. We’re two naked boys walking nude outdoors in the sunshine. He leads me back to the path beneath the gazebo, where it’s cool beneath the stone arch supporting the porch above. There’s grass sticking to my feet, and a curious butterfly idling around us, but I stop noticing anything save him once we’re making out in the dark passage.

His hair sticks wetly to both our skin. I stand on tiptoe so that our mouths are level. He whimpers when, this time, I shove him against the wall. His hands reach for my hardening dick. I push them away. He tries again. I make sure my meat is out of his reach. “Turn around,” I tell him.

“Fuck me,” he begs over his shoulder. “Take me upstairs and lube me up and fuck me.”

“Shut up,” I tell him.

“I need you to fuck me. I need you to own me.”

“Shut up,” I repeat. I push his head and shoulders down; he braces himself against the stone wall. Then I part his legs roughly, spreading them. Water has tamped down the hairs in his ass crack. He yells loudly when I grab his cheeks, yank them apart, and taste his hole. His yell disturbs the mourning doves nesting nearby. I ignore their low, fluttery protests.

“Fuck,” he whispers. The side of his face is pressed into the sparkling local granite.

His ass is cold from the water; it tastes like the pool. I know how to work this hole. When I first started fucking it, it was tight, tight, tight. Now it responds to my mouth, opens on command. I slurp on that hole, knowing my mouth must feel like lava against that chilly surface. When it blossoms under my lips, I chew on it. I rake my teeth over it. I seize the rosebud between my incisors and suck on it. He stomps at the hard dirt with his heel, like an impatient stallion. I can see his own dick, heavy and engorged with blood, swinging between his legs directly in front of me. I squeeze it roughly, not caring when he yelps.

Then I swing back that sizable rod. I suck the swollen head, run my stubbly chin up the shaft from head to balls. I chew on his scrotum, make him twitch and cry out when I suck his nuts into my mouth. Then I’m back to his ass again. Licking, chewing, opening it with my tongue as surely as I intend to fuck it wide with my dick.

He’s beyond coherence. “Please please please please. . . .” he’s murmuring with closed eyes.

I stand up, press the knob of my dick against his hole. I pause to slick it up with spit. His eyes open, full of the fear of being stretched without lube. “Trust me,” I tell him. “I’ll fill you up.” Then I shove.

This time, the mourning doves in the gazebo eaves flap and flutter with a rush of wings at the sound of his animal howl. Their alarm covers his cries of joy and relief. For a long, still moment we both pause and watch them, a half-dozen or more, as they wing heavenward into the brilliant summer sky.

No, I don’t write much about Rock Star. But I don’t want this memory to slip away, this mingling of flesh and noise with the scents and sounds of a perfect summer morning. I don’t want to forget the perfection of it, the sweetness, the feel of his slippery flesh against mine.

And now I won’t.

Open Here

Rock Star. He’s told me that’s what they call him in his line of work. It’s what I call him in my head.

He’s got the long hair of a rock star—an impeccably-conditioned mane that hangs down his shoulders to the middle of his back. Sometimes he ties it into a knot at the top of his head, transforming him into a character from an anime; one moment he looks as if he should be balancing a Stratocaster on the sharp bones of his hip, and the next he looks as if he’s going to transform into a magic-wielding shaman spouting mysterious wisdom and lightning from his fingertips.

He needs his own theme song.

Up close, when we’re kissing, his features are almost too large. His eyes are dark and the size of saucers. I could julienne vegetables with his large, keen-edged nose. His chin is as pointy as the Wicked Witch’s, his cheeks as sharp and dangerous as rocks along the New England coast. Singly, his features might be off-putting. But together, they cohere into near-perfection. I’m afraid to look at him sometimes, when we’re together. He’s almost too beautiful for mortal eyes. Mine start to water when I stare for too long, as if I’ve been gazing directly into the sun. He’s as alluring as he is dangerous.

Rock Star. It describes him perfectly.

His house is old and grand and sits atop one of the rocky hills near my home. To reach his bedroom, I have to work my way through four rooms, four doorways, two hallways, and a twisting old servant’s stair. Morning light streams in through the eastern windows when I turn the knob of his bedroom door. I’m expecting to find him beneath the sheets, sprawled naked and waiting, his hair cascading down his shoulders like a raven waterfall.

My expectations are too low. I see him on the bed—it’s hard to miss the twin highways of his calves running a course to the vanishing point between his wide-spread thighs. But he’s not beneath the covers. His head is hidden beneath a mountain of pillows; his enormous hands are stretched to the mattress’ furthest corners. And he’s not naked. His round bubble butt is encased in a pair of gray designer briefs. There’s a rip in them, strategically placed over the hole. I can see the fur beneath licking out, tempting me.

He’s taken a pen and written on the briefs. OPEN HERE, they read. One word above the hole, the other beneath.

The message isn’t very hard to decipher. I realize that I’ve been standing there staring at him for a long half-minute, afraid to end the perfection of the moment. I haven’t taken a breath. When I open my mouth to inhale, the room’s cool air pierces my lungs painfully. Again, so often as I feel when I’m in the Rock Star’s presence, I feel tears prickle behind the corners of my eyes. Some part of me, deep within, is convinced I don’t deserve this.

Earlier this year I’d been convinced that life was crapping on me endlessly. I’d had a lousy January and an even worse February when someone I trusted turned out to be unstable, even dangerous. I’d withdrawn from everything and was licking my wounds when the Rock Star walked into my life. It only goes to show—just when I was convinced that nothing could ever be good again, the wheel of fortune turned and dropped a little sheer perfection into my life. I’m astonished at the intensity with which this man desires me. I boggle when he texts me photos of himself—some nude, some dressed in my underwear that he keeps and obsessively wears. I melt when he whispers how handsome he finds me.

I’m constantly astonished how good the universe is to me, when I’m with this guy. I’m not much of a believer in traditional denominations, but brought up against this evidence of the universe’s bounty, and confronted by such effortless, unpracticed beauty . . . I’m suddenly the most devout of religious men.

So I kneel. On bended knee I approach the edge of the mattress. My hands scoop beneath his strong, hard thigh. I pull the Rock Star back until his ass meets my face. My left cheek rests on the OP; my hands caress the EN while I breath warm air through the hole, the size of a fifty-cent piece. He smells fresh from the shower. I tickle through the hole with a fingertip. He stirs beneath the pillows, letting out a muffled sigh.

He’s perfection. This situation is perfection; he’s planned it solely for the purpose of arousing me. Of pleasing me. And I’m about to ruin the solemn stillness, this frozen purity.

Because my cock demands it.

I grab the sides of the opening with hooked index and middle fingers. And I rip the fabric. The words disappear. I don’t give a shit. All I want is access to that hole. My fingers pull apart the round globes of his cheeks. My tongue strains for his hole. When the wetness of its surface meets the half-sweet, half-metallic tang he’s hiding deep between those muscles, I close my eyes and relax into him. He groans, and shoves back against my face. I bite his ass. I want to dig in my teeth, to rip into the flesh like a hungry wolf. He inspires my carnivore instincts. I content my urge by chewing on his hole, though. I nip, and rake my teeth against the tender flesh. I suck, and grind my incisors when it puckers out. I mash my beard against the pink flesh just inside the swelling, and hope that it feels like a thousand sharp knifepricks.

He loves the abuse. Over my animal growling I can hear him gasp, and groan. His hips arch. His dick is heavy with blood, and swing down between his legs. His fingers stop clawing at the sheets. They grab his cheeks and pull them apart. Wider, wider, so I can get deep. “Take them off,” I tell him, tugging at the waistband of the ruined shorts. He scrambles to obey. “These are mine,” I tell him. “I’m taking them home.”

“Please,” he whispers, once he’s kicked the ruined cotton to the room’s other side.

“Please what?” I ask.

“Please . . . fuck me. Please. Fuck me, please.”

My dick is swollen and angry. He’s like Spencer, this one. All that beauty makes me want to fucking punish him. All that beauty makes me want to punish him, fucking. There’s a bottle of lube on the bed. I squirt some of the clear fluid onto my fingers and slap them on his hole. He gasps and shudders as I finger it it in. “So you want me to fuck you?” I growl, as I massage more of the goo onto my dick. It’s already pumping out precum. Between my spit on the hole and the wet head of my dick, it hardly needs the lube.

He starts to answer, but I don’t give him a chance. I ram home my inches. He yells—a long, drawn-out cry of resistance and surprise, but it’s tempered by relief. Joy, even. When I first started to fuck the Rock Star, he was tight. So tight I had to sweet-talk my way in. Now though, after weeks of my cock, he’s primed for me. There’s not even any resistance as I sink in to the hilt. I grunt, and feel his prostate nudge my cock head as I hit home.

He’s feeling it too. Again he’s pulling at his butt cheeks, opening them as wide as possible for me. I start fucking him hard. No preliminaries. No buildup. No sweet grinding, no gentle lovemaking. This is a fuck. It’s as close to savage punishment as it gets. Relentless pounding. He’s yelling like a little boy taking a walloping from his daddy after a misdeed. He’s flinching with every stroke, shuddering and trembling like his body’s in shock from the abuse.

The difference between this and assault is that he loves it. “I want you in me,” he pleads, between thrusts. “I want you in me. All of you. All of you in me.”

He doesn’t mean just my cock. He means me, my body, everything. My essence, inside him. I’m about to give him just that. His head is hitting the wall above the bed. He’s going to get more loads from me that morning, but this one’s the one I’m pounding in the deepest. He coerces it from me by thrusting back. His pelvis hits my hipbones so hard that I’m sure I’ll bruise. “Take it,” I tell him, as I push his chest into the mattress. “Fucking take it.”

“Please,” he says. It’s his last coherency. He starts to growl obscenities as I make animal noises. We’re both brutes in heat, beasts with only the goal of mating. When I shoot, it’s at the bottom of a thrust. He knows the noises I make well enough by now to tell when I’m at climax. Greedily his butt clutches at my cock, coaxing the seed into him. He waggles his ass, shaking my dick to grab the last drops. Then he rolls over onto our sides—while I stay inside him—until he’s sprawled over my lap. His hand grabs his dick. One stroke. Two. Three. He shoots a geyser of semen across his chest. It lands on his right shoulder. Another spurt hits his nipple. The third lands on his belly.

Panting, we sink into each other, limbs tangled, chests heaving, his hair covering me like a blanket. We lie there until I can’t tell where I end and he begins. And then his head turns. He looks me in the face, and opens his eyes. I’m overwhelmed once again by his good looks. I’ve known many handsome men in my life, but this kind of sheer beauty is rare. “Don’t forget your shorts,” he murmurs to me, as he leans in for a kiss.