[ 4 ]
When we pull up to the apartment, I have to listen to Charlie complaining about a cramp in his stomach. I tell him to sleep it off but he insists on drinking it off, as I made the mistake of telling him that I didn’t like my roommate’s choice of beer—which happens to be Charlie’s favorite too, apparently. “Please,” he begs me, then fakes a pain in his belly. “Ugh. Please. I need some healing. The beer’s gonna do my body and my mind good, please, please.”
I might have more than one reason for saying yes. And I do.
When the door shuts behind him, he seems to forget all about the beer and walks around my place, looking at everything. It bothers me, the way he looks at everything. “Is this you?” he asks stupidly, picking up a framed graduation photo.
“No, that’s my gay twin.” I swing open the fridge, poking around leftover Chinese and half-empty sauce bottles looking for the beer.
“Well, your gay twin is hot.” He sets the picture back down, keeps drifting around the room. “Where’s your roomie?”
“He’s busy statutorily raping a girl for the weekend.” I’d finally gotten ahold of Trent on the car ride here. He wanted to hear all about the date I had. Then, after I told him, he wanted to know why I was such a prick to such a perfectly nice girl like … what’s-her-name. I ignored the lecture and told him he could stay there for the weekend; I wouldn’t be needing the car. To say he sounded relieved is an understatement.
Maybe I should’ve lied and said I needed the car. Thinking about what he’s doing to that girl—things he should be doing to me—makes my face red and my cock stir.
An hour later, the TV hums with the applause of a game show, the air conditioning unit grumbles tiredly at the window, and I’m doing the last thing on Earth I’d expect to be doing: throwing back beers with Charlie.
“Oooh my,” he sings after guffawing at something I said about a girl we both knew in high school. “That bitch crazy, tellin’ ya. Did I mention she tried to sell me popsicles?”
“No. Hmm, I like popsicles.”
“So do I,” he says, his eyes going big. “I’m pretty sure it was on a grape creamsicle that I learned how to suck my first cock.”
I laugh hard. Too hard. For some reason, I sorta want him to think I’m drunker than I really am. The couch can sit about four people, yet Charlie and I are puddled in the middle of it, much in the same way Trent and I usually sit. It’s a mind-fuck, really, that tonight I’m sitting by someone I could make a move on.
But for all my bravery, I’m just not that brave. “This is why no one talks to you,” I say after I’m done laughing, hoping my words sound naturally slurred. I’ve kicked back three beers; I need at least eight more in me before I’m actually drunk. “All you talk about is sex. You’re gross, Charlie.”
“And you ‘straight’ boys don’t talk about sex and pussy and how many ways you can bend a girl over a table? Puh-leeze.” He grabs another can, cracks it open, chugs, then says, “I’m downright tame compared to you horn dogs. What the hell am I guilty of? Dancing too much at the bar? I got life in me. This is my life. Fuck you for making me feel like I shouldn’t live it.” He chugs the rest, crushes the can in his fist, throws it over the back of the couch. “I should warn you, with regard to the amount of alcohol I’ve consumed tonight, I had a head start at the bar.” He hiccups.
I’ve been nursing the same can for the last thirty minutes. I don’t think he’s noticed. “It isn’t easy to just … be yourself in this town.”
“It isn’t possible,” says Charlie, like he’s correcting me. “You grow up being told what you gotta be by your parents, because they can’t just let you be what you are. Then you’re made fun of, beat up, shoved around by your peers in school. Then you meet some jackasses in high school who tell you who you are, then also proceed to beat you up for it, emotionally or physically, both count as bad. I should warn you I’m drunk.”
“You already did. But I never perceived you as a guy who … isn’t himself. You’ve always just been …” I try to think of a nice way to say it.
“The town fag, yeah, whatever. You think that’s not a role in itself? Half the time, I don’t even feel like I’m me. Are you ever really you, Benny? Even around your roommate? Or your buddies, or … or that sweet girl you totally failed to woo at Kegs?” His eyes go wide and his face takes a sudden yellowish color.
“Don’t vomit on my couch,” I request of him as politely as I can.
“Puh-leeze,” he manages to say, cocking his neck. “I’m a tank. I can rest the down of these. I can—I can down the rest of … What the fuck did I just say?”
Then he leans into me, his cheek pressed against my shoulder. I’m suddenly very aware of how fast my heart is beating. I feel the weight of his face on my shoulder, pressing into my side. I’ve never done anything with a guy before. I’ve never had a guy—especially a gay guy—this close to me, this close to doing something to me. All these years I’ve been waiting by Trent’s side like a sad puppy … and I might get my first break from Charlie. Is this really happening?
He burps, then wipes his mouth and sits back up. “Sorry,” he says, though I totally don’t want to accept his apology for anything. “Sorry. I’m clearly as think as I drunk I am, know what I’m sayin’? Heh, heh.” He reels his head, sighing.
Lean into me again. Please. Please lean into me. “You can crash here if you want.”
“Mmm,” he moans, seeming to consider. That is, if he heard me at all. He leans back into the cushions, shutting his eyes. The TV drones on and on, I’m not even paying attention.
At the beginning of the night, I was more annoyed about Charlie’s existence than I was about my forced date. Now, Charlie is suddenly the indubitable center of my focus and desires, the only person in the world who can supply what I’m demanding, the source of all my hidden thrills and secret needs and pent-up cravings, years-long in the making.
I shift my weight on the couch, then allow my shoulder to press into his when I lean back. As if by instinct, I spread my legs a bit, the crotch of my jeans out in the open. I’m hard, I know it, just with the anxious thought, with the excitement, with the anticipation, the possibility that I could be touched by another guy. I let the can rest in my hand on one side of my body, and let my other hand rest on my belly, out of the way.
Nothing there to stop Charlie from having his way with me.
After what seems like an eternity, he moans again, as if trying to form a word. Then I hear his head shift, as if he’s looking, as if he’s noticed what I put out in front of him, the temptation.
Please be tempted. I lick my lips too, just in case he’s looking at my face.
“I’m really drunk,” he murmurs, slurring. His voice is so close to my ear that I feel chills run down my body, goose bumps brought to life along my arms. He whispers something else that I can’t distinguish, and then he shifts his weight.
His hand drops onto my thigh.
I resist the gasp that tries to come out of my mouth. My heart is hammering so loudly it’s a wonder he can’t hear it … it’s a wonder it isn’t shaking the floorboards loose beneath my feet. I have never wanted something so badly. It isn’t even Trent. He’s not even Trent and yet my entire body is squirming beneath the skin, craving another man’s touch, craving the attention, craving the closeness.
Touch me, I’m begging him. Move your hand. Touch me.
His hand begins to slide. Slowly. Slowly. Glacially. It might take him an hour to make it from my thigh to my crotch. I will wait that entire hour, holding my breath. I don’t move an inch of my body. Not one muscle flinches, not even my bone-hard cock. It’s like a hunt, and any sudden movements can scare away my prey. Touch me. Grope me. Be inappropriate. Don’t be noble. Don’t be careful. Touch me.
Touch me.
He keeps sliding his hand. He reaches my inner thigh. I fight an urge to squirm. I fight another urge to moan. I struggle with all my might not to twitch or feel ticklish.
I wore my tight jeans today. Every graze of his fingertips is like touching my skin. I might as well be naked, thighs spread, with the misbehaving hand of Charlie tracing my leg and sliding ever-slowly between them.
Touch me.
Grope me.
His weight on the couch shifts more and I feel his shoulder digging into mine. Then, to my surprise, I feel his mouth on my chest. His mouth. The button-down blue plaid shirt I’m wearing clings to my skin, and when he puts his mouth on my pec, I feel his warm touch as though he were using tongue.
His lips move. My toes curl.
I’m so hard I’m leaking.
He moves his mouth again. I feel his chin graze my nipple. Is it safe yet to let out the gasp I’m swallowing? Is it safe to acknowledge what he’s doing to me?
His hand, which had stopped moving on my thigh, begins once again to slide, almost startling me. It draws closer to my crotch, up my inner thigh, drawing closer and closer while his mouth works on my chest, suckling my pec.
Charlie gets bolder. He brings his other hand to my chest and, slowly, carefully as if trying not to wake me, he undoes the top button of my shirt. Oh god. I feel the tightness of my shirt let go, just with that one button. He runs his wicked fingers down, releases the next button. The tightness drops again, my pecs closer to falling out. Oh god, it’s happening. My heart is pounding. My whole body is quaking, aching, and ready.
He moves his hand yet again, works off the next button, and my chest spills out. Fuck, fuck, fuck. His warm breath brushes across my pec, across my nipple, and I release the subtlest of sighs—I can’t help it. I’m suddenly not so sure I want to help it.
Maybe I should tell him … but what would I say? I crave my roommate? I’m only doing this with you because I can’t have who I really want? I’m straight by all definitions of lifestyle, yet hungry for a specific kind of intimacy that only another man can give?
When his mouth suckles my nipple, all my thoughts are lost, and I drop open my mouth, overcome. His tongue works my nipple so expertly that it feels like a blow job. It might as well be, for all the mind-blowing effect it’s having on my cock, which throbs and leaks in my tight jeans.
As if responding to said tightness, his hand moves again. This time, it reaches its long-awaited destination, the fingers running slowly across the bulge my cock is making in my jeans. Oh god. Fuck, fuck, fuck. It’s like he knows exactly where my cock is without even looking, as his face is pressed into my pec, his mouth latched to my nipple like a suction cup, and his tongue just won’t stop. His hand expertly traces my cock through the jeans, up one side, down the other, up one side, down the other.
It’s driving me insane.
Then the activity at my nipple stops. He lifts off my chest, then withdraws his hand. It is so abrupt, I flick open my eyes and turn to him, startled. He’s looking at me with a strange mixture of guilt and excitement in his eyes. What happened?
“Sorry,” he slurs, hiccups, then repeats, “so sorry, Benny. I didn’t mean to—”
“Huh?” I say, stupid as ever, unwilling to acknowledge what he was doing to me, even now, even in my current state.
“I’m drunk. You’re drunk. We’re such a mess, the b-b-both of us.” He burps just then, guttural and bassy. Then he wipes his mouth and, after a moment of thought, adds, “I don’t want to take advantage of you, Benny. You’re a good guy. I could’ve beat those fuckers up myself, but you came and acted like some knight in shining armor and like … I’m a big sucker for the knight in shining armor, okay? And I’m lonely. And you’re here. And—” He loses his words, staring at me expectantly.
Why can’t I just say it? Why can’t I tell him to keep doing what he’s doing? He’s waiting for permission. He wants permission. Here I am, a block of muscle and fear, a big tangle of hunger and needs. Didn’t he just feel my boner? Doesn’t he get that I want it, too?
Why do I have to say it?
“You’re a good guy, Benny.” He reaches up, which excites me for a second, until I realize he’s doing my shirt buttons back up. One, then two, then the top button.
My cock is throbbing. My insides, whimpering.
“W-What’re you doing?” I finally get out, sounding as stupid as I feel. “W-What do you mean?”
“I’ve overstepped a bit. I took advantage of you.”
He puts a hand on my shoulder, patting me, then thinks the better of it and just gets up from the couch.
No, no, no, no, no.
“Wait,” I blurt out, getting up, watching him as he walks to the door. “Wait, Charlie. I told you, man, you can crash here. I trust you. We’re cool, right?”
He stops at the door, looks at me hard, his hungry eyes drawing a path from my crotch to my face. Then he says, “To be honest, I don’t trust myself.”
After he leaves, the only sound I’m left with is the pounding of a heart against my ribcage like some sickly, starved prisoner begging for release.