Philadelphia.
“Would it be a dumb question to ask what it is you like about sex with men?”
“Yeah,” Stef said. “But for some stupid reason, I like when you ask me dumb questions.”
A long pause, through which Jav could hear the distinctive sounds of steel and china, a spoon’s handle rapped on the edge of a pot or pan. His imagination constructed a kitchen, followed Stef from stove to fridge to sink. A dishtowel thrown over his shoulder or tucked through a belt loop, the way Jav did when he cooked. Or maybe Stef was a less fastidious chef and just wiped his hands off on himself.
“Wait, what?” Jav said. “Sorry, say that again.”
“I was saying I like the physicality of it. It’s a different physicality. I mean… Wait a minute, I can’t cook and think about sex at the same time.”
“I’m getting the idea eating is a big thing with you.”
“I love food.” Stef put a little relish between each word.
“You wouldn’t know,” Jav said. “I mean, you look like you’re in great shape.” He sank his face into his palm. Christ, that sounded idiotic.
“I have to keep that love on a short leash,” Stef said. “Ow.” A clanking clatter and some muttered cursing. “Dammit, that’s hot. Anyway. This is done, now I can think.” The background noise ceased and Stef exhaled. “So, my attraction to girls was always a soft thing. If I had to draw it, I’d use circles. Overlapping circles. Like I’m red and she’s yellow and the attraction is the oval of orange where they merge.”
“Venn diagram chemistry,” Jav said, doodling two circles on the hotel pad of paper.
“It’s always emotion-based. The attraction is soft. Like it…squishes. That’s not too sexy, is it?”
“It’s not a word I tend to throw around the bedroom.”
“Fine, it doesn’t squish, it…gives. It yields.”
“Okay. What about with guys?”
“With guys, it’s harder. And I don’t mean hard like the obvious, or hard like difficult. Hard like…”
“Squares?”
Stef gave a long hum in his chest indicating not quite. “Maybe more like triangles and hexagons. A complex thing made up of simple things.”
“Less emotional?”
“Well, not that no emotions are involved, but simpler emotions. I keep coming back to the attraction being harder. It’s a negative word but I don’t mean it like that.”
“The attraction is tougher?” Jav said. “More tenacious?”
“Yes,” Stef said, his voice rising. “Tenacious. Exactly. It can take my weight. I can push on it hard, be rougher with it. It’s not a connection I overlap or fall into. It’s something I lean on. Hard.”
“Is that how it’s always been?”
“Pretty much. I like sex with men the way I like caviar.”
“Caviar?”
“Yeah. Caviar’s great but I don’t keep it around. I don’t like it so much that I have a jar stashed in the cabinet. But when it’s served to me, I love it. Oh man, I forgot how good this is, why don’t I have this more often, it’s fantastic. Then the plate’s empty and I forget again.”
“It’s a treat.”
“But a passive treat. I don’t actively seek it out much. I wait until it comes to me. I dig caviar but I don’t have a relationship with it. Same with men. I’ve had some great sexual encounters. When I’m in the moment, I’m stuffing my face and thinking, Wow, I forgot how much I like this. But I’ve never strung together multiple encounters into a relationship.”
“I see.”
“Yet here I am,” Stef said. “Calling you every night. Letting my dinner go cold because I dig talking to you more than eating.”
“Whoa,” Jav said. “More than eating?”
“I know.” Stef’s laugh stuttered once, then he cleared his throat. “Anyway. I don’t know if that answers your question. My bisexuality is kind of literal. I have sex with both women and men, but all my serious, long-term relationships have been with women.”
“Bisexual but not bi-romantic?”
“I’m not bi-romantic, no.”
A long, taut pause swelled over the line. Long enough for Jav to get a few things squared away.
He likes me more than eating, he thought. But it’s not bi-romantic. Good. He’s a good pick for where I am right now. He just wants to sleep with me. This will just be a sex thing. Fuck buddies. Which is cool. I can figure out if I like it.
Bisexual but not bi-romantic. Maybe that’s me, too. Connect emotionally with women, for the most part. Occasionally leaning up against another man. Because I like it.
If I like it.
“You get one more question,” Stef said. “Then I’m eating.”
“When was the last time you were with a guy?”
Stef chuckled. “Funny you ask. I could’ve hooked up the day we met.”
Jav blinked. “What?”
“Wait, that came out wrong. I don’t mean with you. Not that I didn’t… Jesus Christ.”
Now Jav was laughing, glad not to be the idiot in the room for once.
“This is my goddamn fault for giving you one more,” Stef said. “What I mean is later that night, I was out drinking and this guy was making the moves. It was there for the taking, but I didn’t.”
“No?”
“I kind of had a writer on my mind. And on that vulnerable note, I’m off to get my foot out of my mouth and eat my cold dinner. Go think up some more dumb questions.”
“Call me later,” Jav said, but Stef was gone. No hostility in the empty air, rather it was the sound of shyness.
I had a writer on my mind.
A note stuffed under the door, a doorbell rung and a fast retreat down the block.
Come back, Jav thought, full of heat and questions for later. Stef didn’t call him though, and sleep was slow to come. Giving up, Jav stacked the pillows and opened his laptop, but not to write.
The light from the screen splashed on him like milk as he surfed through porn sites. First looking at women. Then, when he was good and bothered and moody, he looked at men. His mood ebbed and flowed as his eyes narrowed and widened. They lingered on one image. Got the swift hell away from another. His finger swept and clicked and scrolled, then stopped to consider before rejecting on the most petty of grounds.
Too posed. (If he wanted sculpture, he’d go to a museum.)
Too arrogant. (He didn’t like porn that broke the fourth wall.)
Too hairy. (Christ, dude, you look like a rug.)
A few times a picture or clip drew him in, pulled him up erect and curious and made him think, That’s hot. I could do that. But he found the line was fine between oh hell, yeah and oh hell, no. He’d be rapt for a rock-hard, breath-held moment, then he scoffed or snorted or winced and, nose wrinkled, he tapped out.
“I’m going to be one picky fuck,” he said, horny in the most aggravated way. Well, screw it. After twenty-three years of catering to needs, why not relish being high-maintenance? Get laid on his terms for once. Lie back like a king and get instead of give.
Of course, if that were his true goal, he could hire someone. Right now, even. Grab the phone book, turn to the Es and pay to have an escort come service him. Male or female. Or both. Why not?
Because you’re worth more.
And like it or not, these are your brothers. You were a sex worker. So are they. All of them making a living with their face and their body and their cock. They’re selling the same dream you were.
His eyes swept sculpted muscles, tattooed skin and pouting expressions. Sliding a shirt up to reveal six-pack abs. Peeling undone pants down lean hips to show a hint of what they had for the viewer. Poses he himself had struck when he was throwing down his seduction to the tune of a hundred, five hundred, sometimes a thousand an hour.
Alone in the dark with strangers, he was overcome by a profound and sudden sadness. Dad would’ve died if he knew what I was doing.
These guys are all somebody’s son. Abandoned or beloved. Thrown out or cherished. They all belonged to somebody once. Some of them belong to someone right now, and not in a good way.
He shut the laptop, dismantled the pillows and lay down, not wanting anything anymore.