[ 7 ]
I can’t sleep.
I close my eyes and dream Trent is trying to dance with me, pushing his hips into mine and gripping me the way he grips the girls. Stop, I try to tell him, shoving him off, knowing he’s fucking with me. He drunk.
Stop.
Then, his mouth lunges for my face. He’s trying to kiss me and I shove at him, but can’t push him away far enough. Stop trying to kiss me, the dream-version of me says while the dream-version of him keeps reaching.
He laughs drunkenly in my face. I even feel the heat of his breath as if it’s there. He grips me harder, suddenly having all the power and strength of the world in those hands of his.
He always had that power.
Even in my dreams.
It doesn’t matter what I do. I push his shoulders, his mouth seems to grow closer. I push his hips, they grind me harder. Harder. That’s the key word: harder. My cock grows and grows, and it isn’t wholly pleasurable.
I’ve never hated a boner more than I have tonight. Every tossing and turning in the bed runs my hard-on along the sheets, stimulating it worse, tickling it, sending shivers up my spine that I resent.
Stop doing this to me.
He never stops.
Then, when the struggle is almost too much to bear, I turn and find him just staring at me, almost hurt. He asks me something, his lips moving, and I don’t understand. What? He asks again, but I still don’t hear him.
Does he really want to kiss me? Have I had it wrong all along?
The rhythm of the music is a heartbeat. The walls bend inward with each beat, synchronized. It scares me. My heart races.
What are you trying to say, Trent?
His mouth grows closer.
Does he really want to kiss me?
When I open my mouth to finally accept his, he shoves a sock in it.
I wake up in the darkness of my room, alone, and Trent isn’t there, neither the real one nor the imaginary. I stare down my body, my sheets forming a huge teepee with my boner pointing at the ceiling fan.
“I’ve had worse dreams,” I say out loud, miserably.
Deciding I can’t sleep at all, I drag myself out of the room in just boxers and gym shorts and a white tank. The subtle titter of voices on the TV draws my attention, surprising me. Trent’s still awake? I come to the living room and find Trent leaning back in the middle of the couch, his feet propped up on the coffee table and the remote hanging in his left hand.
He’s asleep.
I listen to the calm ins and outs of his breath. His eyes closed, his lips slightly open, he looks so … adorable. I envy his peace. I can’t remember the last time I fell asleep at his side while on the couch.
I miss that so much.
I’ve wanted nothing but to fall asleep with him, curled up, his arms draped across me carelessly. Maybe when we’re asleep, he’ll absently put his leg over me, hugging me like a fireman’s pole, with his face nuzzled into my neck like a pillow, not even minding that I’m a dude.
Why can’t guys be like that? I don’t even need him to be gay. I just want him to comfort me. We’ve been through a lot. We’re closer than most brothers who are related by blood.
Why do guys have to be so … afraid? Why can’t they be more …
All these struggles bring me to the end of the couch. When I get a full look at him, I realize he’s only in his boxers. I see the tattoo he got when he turned eighteen, a big scorpion on his shoulder. His boxers are black and hug his thighs—which makes the wood inside them show all the more. I stare at it, surprised. His legs somewhat spread, his arms across the back of the couch, his slender, toned body painted the bluish glow from the TV, I find myself completely entranced.
I’m such a fool. I fall in love every single time I see him. I fall in love over and over.
I lower myself to the arm of the couch, watching Trent, listening to him breathe. My heart is literally jumping out of my chest, yearning for him.
Why do I like him? He’s not even always nice. But … he includes me, most of the time. He’s kept gravitating back to me over the years. I’ve always been there. I’m dependable. Even in college when I was sure he’d make a hundred other friends, he seemed to only bother keeping my company. What if there’s something there? What if …
What if …
I put my hand on the back of the couch to brace myself, misjudge where it is, and slip off the arm, landing clumsily on the couch, halfway into Trent’s lap.
I freeze. I don’t move a muscle. I turn to stone.
Trent fidgets, his breath changing for a second, and then he resettles in the same position, his legs outstretched and apart, feet on the coffee table, and his arms still over the back of the couch. He’s still asleep.
Still asleep.
And here I am, a hand on each cushion to either side of him, hovered over him with my face an inch from his crotch. His hard cock, tenting his boxers, threatens to poke me in the eye. Ever so fucking slowly, I turn my head, looking up at his face.
His eyes are still closed, his mouth still hanging partway open, and he breathes slowly, in he breathes, a long moment, then out he breathes, a long moment, then in …
My heart is racing so hard. I feel a certain dark inspiration brewing inside me from my night with Charlie. What he did to me … the excitement I felt …
What if Trent has just been … waiting? What if he’s awake right now, pretending to be asleep? What if …
What if …
Balancing all my weight on one hand, I lift the other and, so, so, so, so gently, I take a pinch of his boxers between my fingers.
I look up to check his eyes. Still closed. Still asleep.
I give my fingers a gentle tug. The fly to his boxers moves a smidge. I give it another tender pull, sliding it. I hear Trent’s breathing give a start, as if affected by something, and then return to its normal rise and fall. When I tug the boxers just a tiny bit more, suddenly his cock slides out of the fly, popping up as if it just burst a hole through the fabric.
His swollen, rock-hard cock … inches from my lips.
I look up to check my victim again. Eyes still closed. Lips still parted. I listen to him breathe a few rounds before I turn my attention back to Trent’s dick. Is this really happening? I ask myself, I ask all my dream selves who were in this situation before, who have lived this over and over again.
Except they’ve never really lived it. Because I’m living it. Because this is not a dream, and Trent’s cock is in my face, and there are real consequences if he wakes up.
I’ve been afraid most of my life. Can’t I, just this one time, be brave?
I open my mouth, daring myself. It’s just right there. It’s right there in front of me. Right there. I stick out my tongue, reaching, like an experiment.
My tongue touches the tip of his cock.
Tongue still touching, I twist my face to look up the mountain of my best friend. Eyes still closed. Mouth parted. No reaction.
I let my tongue slide. The whole pad of my tongue rests along the tip of his cock now, like the palm of a small, warm, wet hand. I dare my tongue to move.
His cock jumps.
I stop, twist my eyes to look up, frozen in place with my tongue latched on.
Eyes still closed.
I run my tongue down the length of his cock, slowly, slowly, then run my tongue back up. After seeing hundreds upon hundreds of boys do this in porn videos, it’s my turn. I let my tongue slowly bathe every inch of his tall, swollen dick. Slowly, slowly up one side, then slowly, slowly down the other. His dick grows more and more wet, slicker, smoother as my tongue traces its length over and over and over again. He never opens his eyes.
I’m in gay heaven.
The next time I reach the tip of his cock with my tongue, I pause, taking another glance up at his beautiful, peaceful face.
Here goes nothing.
I part my lips wider and, slowly, I take his cock into my mouth.
Nerves I didn’t know I had are waking up.
At first, I just accept the tip of his cock, closing my mouth around it like a popsicle. I think suddenly about Charlie and the girl he told me about on this couch, the popsicles she’d sell. I’ll take a cocksicle instead, please.
It might be my imagination, but I think I hear his breathing quicken. I hesitate, waiting, hovering with my mouth wrapped around the tip, wondering if I should go further. Give me a sign, I beg him, horny, insane, desperate. Give me any sort of sign that I can go on.
I barely slide a bit more in, taking another millimeter of his cock. His breath quickens. It’s not my imagination. Whether he’s dreaming it or not, some part of him is aware of what’s happening.
He wants it, I tell myself.
I take another inch, my tongue sliding, my wet lips sliding, his cock like a rod, firm and unrelenting and pulsing with need.
Can I satisfy that need? Me and my lips and my tongue?
Trent breathes a bit differently now, the more I take in. I hear his throat opening up, his breathing lighter, his breaths getting closer together. Trent’s cock is in my mouth and his pleasure is at my mercy.
I’m in control.
The power I have with just a tongue, with just lips. If I knew I had this power before …
I go the full length of his cock, swallowing it all. I hear him moan. I HEAR HIM MOAN! Fighting my gag reflex, I twist my mouth up and down his cock slowly, the entire length of him. Little Trent, pulsing, throbbing in my eager mouth.
Suddenly his hand drops from the back of the couch, lands on my head. Is he awake? I can’t look up to see him, his hand now gripping the back of my head. Oh my god, I realize. He woke up and he’s guiding my head now. He’s guiding my head on his cock.
He wants it.
Inspired by his touch, high as a kite on the drug of want, I work his cock in my mouth with the commitment of an engine. He moans now, even louder. His breaths are raspy and quick. He’s getting close, he has to be.
Just when I think he’s going to shoot, something horrible and hard knocks me in the side of the head, and everything turns into dots and flashes and stars.
I’m on the floor, grabbing my head and looking up, the room spinning, confused.
“WHAT THE FUCK??” Trent screams, standing over me.
I blink away whatever it was that hit me, blink the world back into focus. “W-What?” I sound innocent. I sound confused. I sound hurt. “W-W-What happened?”
“WHAT THE FUCK!” he repeats. He doesn’t put away his cock, which drips with my saliva.
I’m lost for words. Did something happen? I’m completely confused and disoriented. The room spins, my lips are wet with drool and my roommate’s staring down at me with the fury of a volcano.
“I’m … I …” I sound so stupid. I form a sentence to say, then let it stick in my throat, terrified.
“You were sucking my dick,” he says, eerily calm suddenly. He points at it, as if it’s necessary to indicate what he’s talking about.
I shake my head, my first impulse being to deny it all. Then, mouth hanging open stupidly, I say, “I was confused. I’m still drunk. I … I was …” I slap a hand to my forehead, out of words.
He doesn’t say anything, frozen in place, a finger pointed at his still-hard, still-dripping dick. It still pokes out of his boxers like a middle finger, flicking me off. Even the way he’s pointing at it is like flicking me off.
Fuck you, Benny. That’s the message I feel like I’m getting. Fuck you.
“You knew what you were doing.” He says it so quietly, so unsettlingly. “You were blowing me.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were sucking my dick.”
How many more times does he have to say it? My forehead’s breaking out in a sweat and my face burns redder and redder. Every time he says it, the reality of what I did becomes more real. Every time he says it, I’m more ashamed.
“I’m drunk.” Despite the room spinning, I get to my feet, staggering to the left, then the right. I bring a finger to my lip, bring it into view. “I’m bleeding.”
“I kneed you in the face,” he mutters, and he doesn’t quite sound proud of it.
Unable to meet his eyes, I stare at a thread in the couch, some thread that’s been coming lose for years, some piece of that couch that’s been unraveling before our eyes for years and neither of us noticed, neither of us bothered to fix it. To that thread, I say, “I’m sorry, Trent. I’m so sorry.”
He doesn’t say anything for a minute. I wonder if he’s still pointing at his dick. Why can’t he put it away? Does he want me to finish? I ask myself bitterly.
“So you been wantin’ to do this for a while or what?” he asks.
“Fuck you, Trent.”
“I’m serious, Benny.”
His voice suggests he’s also angry and has nothing kind to say to me right now, regardless of how I respond to his harsh interrogation.
He goes on: “You been looking at my dick when I sleep? You look at me like that?”
“No.”
“I think you’re lying.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I warn him, feeling the blood rise in my neck, the ugly blood, the kind that is not the stuff of passion.
“You been wantin’ my junk this whole time? Your own friend? You betray my trust and you—you—you—you take advantage of your best fucking friend when he’s asleep? So you can satisfy your sick perversions?”
“Shut … the fuck … up.” My tone suggests that it’s my last warning.
“You fucking do this to your friend? You want me?—Is that it, bitch?”
I lunge across the room so fast, he barely gets his hands up in time. My fist makes a sweet friendship with his cheek, knocking him over. Having gripped my shirt, he takes me with him as he falls.
On top of him, his still-exposed cock slapping my thighs, I grapple with him on the floor. Twice we roll over … my back slams to the floor, then his, then mine again, then his. Atop him, I throw another fist into his face just as he calls me a name.
The next punch sends a spray of blood across the floor, staining a rug my mom got us last Christmas.
When his hands come up not to attack me, but to shield his own face … that’s when I stop. I stare down at the boy I’ve loved for years, witnessing what I’ve done to him. His hands shake, ready to grab or deflect or otherwise stop the maiming my feral fists had planned. Breathing heavy, my teeth bared, I stare down at Trent, overcome, anger still billowing out of my ears, still burning my cheeks with the ugly blood.
Trent and I lock gazes, warily studying one another through sheens of tears in our quivering eyes. His blood still seasons my knuckles.
“I did,” my mouth finally says, and I’m not even sure exactly what I mean. I did want you this whole time. I did mean to suck your cock. I did take advantage of you.
I climb off of him, finished, sick with myself. Still dressed in just a tank and gym shorts, albeit a touch roughed-up and with a speck of blood staining the tank—whether his or mine, no one can tell—I let myself out.
He might’ve said something. He might’ve called out for me, but I don’t hear it.
I leave, walking down the empty street in the dead of night, joining the cacophony of crickets. A genuine wave of reluctance seizes me, threatening to turn me back home and not let me take another step, but I push through it, forcing myself recklessly into the dark.
I don’t know how much time passes with these thoughts tormenting me, but I find the brick wall of a building and, almost politely, I crouch down and retch anything that’s inside me. It isn’t much and the most I actually do is just dry heave and groan and spit at the wall.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper to the bricks.
I half-fall, half-lean into the wall, deciding to keep my vomit company for a while, I guess. An uncharacteristic breeze wiggles down the street like a great invisible comb, sending dust into my eyes. I clench them shut and wrap my arms around my belly, hugging it tight. I better take good care of myself; I might be the only friend I got left.
After roughly half an hour of disoriented thoughts and numbness passes, I finally pull my phone out and look for my parent’s number. I find Charlie’s instead. When the hell did I acquire his number? Mr. Dancing Queen must’ve put it in there himself.
I bring the phone to my ear.
Click. “Hmmnh?”
“Ch-Charlie?” I clear my throat of phlegm or whatever the fuck builds up back there after an indeterminate amount of time spent crying and vomiting and gagging on the blood of a bleeding mouth. “Charlie?”
“Who da fuck?” I hear rustling, clothes or bed sheets or something. “Fuckin’ … 4 AM?”
“This is Benny. R-Remember me? We, umm … We went to school together. You gave me a ride home and … and I …”
“It’s four-the-fuck-A-M, honey. My ass needs ‘ta sleep.”
“C-Can I crash at your p-place tonight?”
There is a long silence. I pray he’s actually considering it. This is not a prank call, I want to tell him. I need your help. I hurt all over.
“Where you at?” he finally asks, his tone taking a slight change for the concerned.
I have no idea. “A brick wall.”
“I’ll be right there.”