I didn’t go to church on Sunday. It wouldn’t have been appropriate. I knew what I was going to do with Michael, and whenever I know I’m going to sin, I do it anyway and I pretend God doesn’t exist.
This habit has always made my guilt and self-loathing worse, but maybe it has also preserved me. Without a little sin in my life, I would have died a long time ago.
Michael arrived on Monday, later than usual, two hours after my run. I was showered and dressed, seated in the family room. When I heard his tires on the drive, I thought, for the second time, he’s like a kicked dog. My ex-wife’s alcoholic uncle had kicked his dog and the poor creature had loved him anyway and came when he was called.
I didn’t want to hurt Michael—I wanted to be gentle and good to him—but I wasn’t the right person for gentleness and goodness. I hated myself too much to begin to know how to be good to someone else.
But I knew that Michael only wanted me, the same way I only wanted him, and so we were locked together in this cruel situation.
He let himself in on a wave of nervous energy. I had to quietly admire his bravery. It couldn’t have been easy, stepping into my house that day.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said.
My presence on the couch threw him. He approached, stopped halfway, and looked toward the kitchen. I was usually in the kitchen. He was usually on the couch. I could see the gears spinning in his head. Was he supposed to go to the kitchen?
“Have a seat.” I gestured to the cushion beside me. There was no need to keep him at a distance anymore.
He plopped down a few feet away.
“What are you reading?” He glanced at the book on my lap.
“John Muir. Heard of him?”
He shook his head.
“He was an outdoorsman. A conservationist. A little bit of a philosopher, too.” I tossed the book onto the coffee table.
“I can see why you’d enjoy that.” He focused on his laptop, typing busily.
“You must have pages of notes by now.”
“I guess.” He stopped typing.
“Any progress on the profile itself?”
“Uh ... no.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
I could always tell when he wanted to laugh, or when some awkward thought was crossing his mind. He did a terrible job of concealing his emotions.
“Tell me,” I said.
He sank deeper into the cushion and cringed. “When you ... well, when ... I mean, I did write one line, on my desktop at home. It was a joke.” He couldn’t look at me. “It was after our first meeting. After ... when I thought you fired me.”
“Well, now you have to tell me.”
He opened and closed his mouth, and then he typed out a line and turned his laptop toward me. At the top of an otherwise blank document were the words Caleb Bright is a son of a bitch.
I laughed so hard my eyes watered.
On the edge of my vision, I could see him staring at me like I had sprouted a second head. Apparently, I had been more of a monster than I knew.
“Inspired,” I said when I caught my breath.
He smiled apprehensively. “I was mad. It was stupid.”
“No, no. I was very rude that day.” The humor faded from my expression. I lapsed into thought for a while, about that first meeting with Michael and the ones that followed. “More than that day, really. It was hard for me.”
His fingers became very still on the laptop.
“My girlfriend. I’m moving out. I told her.”
I looked at him sharply. “Told her what?”
“Oh, not—no. I told her I wanted to end it, that’s all. I’d never ...”
My violin and bow were still on the coffee table. I rose and lifted them and began to pace. “Are you sad? About the breakup.”
“Not really.” He shrugged. “Three years is a long time, but it hasn’t been good for a while. I mean, it was sad to do, but ... actually saying the words felt like a formality, you know? Like declaring the thing dead.” He decompressed visibly as he rambled about the split. He told me how they had agreed on shared custody of the dog, and how he would get most of the appliances because she was keeping the house. It was a relief, he said, and he thought that Nicole, after her initial upset, had seemed relieved, too.
I nodded and listened, moving to and fro.
I wanted to press the tip of the violin bow to his throat and run it down to his navel. My God, he was beautiful.
“Then I’m glad,” I said once he had finished speaking. “I didn’t want you to do something you would regret.”
His head came up. “Do you ... have experience with that?”
“With regret, or with doing something?” I chuckled and placed the violin under my chin. “Well, either way, we’d be getting ahead of ourselves if we talked about that.” I played for a while as a means of distraction. It was easy to lose myself in the sound of the bow singing over the strings, and I didn’t want Michael asking more questions about regret. Sometimes, he was much too perceptive.
I played a favorite hymn, “Wondrous Love,” and a few secular songs, “Greensleeves,” “Hallelujah,” and the second movement of Antonin Dvorak’s Serenade for Strings—that last one, shamelessly, for impressive effect. It worked. When I lowered the violin, Michael was staring at me in a trance.
“Come here,” I said.
He obeyed, as if I had charmed him out of his basket.
“Do you want to try?” I offered the violin.
“It won’t be any good,” he mumbled. His chest was rising and falling heavily and I was out of patience. I put down the instrument and reached for him.
“You still have your jacket on.” I pushed it off his shoulders. He tried to help, struggling against the canvas-like material, until it fell. He smelled as if he had put some effort into smelling good, and in place of his usual graphic tee he wore a plain black shirt. I brushed a hand across it. “Don’t change the way you dress for me.”
I got down on my knees very deliberately. I wanted him to know that I wanted this, and that I wasn’t acting on a whim.
I kissed him through his jeans and he sucked in a breath. Already, he was completely hard. I cupped his balls and found his head and I mouthed at the shape of his shaft. He stuttered out my name almost immediately.
“What is it?” I sat back on my heels.
“Can I lie down?”
His legs were trembling, his knees locked, and his hands were fisted at his sides. I stood up quickly. Without a word, I climbed the stairs to the loft and he followed.
He stopped beside my bed.
I had to tell him to go ahead before he crawled onto the mattress, then turned over and scooted back awkwardly. Lying down, he looked no more comfortable than he had standing up. He gripped my comforter with both hands, turned aside his head, and squeezed his eyes shut as if he were about to endure torture.
I knelt over his legs, rubbing his crotch. His legs spread slightly and I rubbed deeper into the seam. I watched his face, rapt, as little spasms of pleasure parted his lips and made his eyelids flutter.
“Are you okay?” I said.
He gave a tense nod.
“How is this?” I found his head again and massaged it.
“Good,” he gasped.
When I started to undo his jeans, he sat bolt upright.
“You don’t have to,” he said. “You don’t have to do that.”
I frowned at him, my brow furrowed. “I want to. You have no idea how much I want to.” My hands were burning where I had touched him and saliva was gathering in my mouth. “Michael, I want to,” I repeated quietly.
I unzipped his jeans and he reassumed a posture that made him look somewhat in pain. I knew, without a doubt, that I was the first man to do this to him, and that knowledge made me tremble.
I opened his fly enough to get at his boxers—boxers, as if he were a teenager—and pulled out his erection. A surge of shame rolled through me as I lowered my head. I was starved for it. I took him into my mouth and sucked hard and fast, plunging him so deep into my throat that I gagged. He came suddenly, almost instantly, in one thick jet.
He shuddered and pushed himself up again, a mixture of horror and confusion on his face. “I’m s-so sorry. Fuck.”
I swallowed and let him slide out of my mouth.
He was shaking his head, his face vividly bright. “I ... I’m not used to it.”
In the way of embarrassment, I don’t know which cost him more—coming so quickly or admitting that he wasn’t used to oral sex.
“Don’t apologize.” I tugged down his jeans and boxers, past his hipbones, and began to kiss his pelvis, abdomen, and stomach, breathing in the musk of that private area. I dragged my teeth across his skin and sucked gently, avoiding his sensitive cock. I couldn’t control the tremor in my limbs as I moved over him. I pushed his shirt up around his armpits and licked and kissed his chest, kneading with my hands. “Beautiful,” I breathed, my nose against his sternum. “Michael ... so beautiful.”
How had his girlfriend kept her hands off of him? And how would I, when we needed to work on the insufferable profile?
He stiffened again. I was kissing his ribs when I felt his arousal prodding at my stomach. I wrapped a hand around him.
“Try to hold it this time,” I whispered in his ear. “Try to give me this. Do you understand? I need it for a while.”
His eyes drifted open and he nodded.
I went slower the second time, stroking and kissing. I sucked on his balls and licked him up and down. When I took him into my mouth, though, I lost control again, forcing him deep, hard, and fast.
“Please.” His voice was ragged. “Cal ... slow down.”
For the first time, he released his death grip on the comforter and touched my hair. I shuddered and eased him out of my mouth.
Saliva and cum rolled down my chin.
A large, sticky patch was growing in my boxer briefs, and my dick was aching, but I liked the pain. I had no intention of gratifying my desire.
“Good,” I mumbled. “Pull.” I reached up and closed his fingers around a chunk of my hair. He got the message. Whenever I started sucking too hard or fast, he tugged at my scalp. Then I would back off, panting, and pick up again slowly.
We went on like that for as long as he could stand it. I made my throat sore with his head. Every time I gagged on it, he convulsed and yanked at my hair.
Finally, in a strained voice, he said, “I need to now.”
I looked up his body and caught him watching. His gaze was unfocused, murky, and sweat glistened on his face. I closed my eyes and made him come.