Close Too Close (9 page)

2.

Jewel sees the boy on Bancroft. He thinks to turn away, but Jewel shakes his head smiling.

‘Walk with me,’ he says, almost touching the boy and then not. ‘I don’t bite.’

South on Hillegass, and after Derby, a park spreads itself out and down. In the corner near the toilets that no one except the homeless people use is where Jewel takes his shoulder. The boy turns, and his mouth catches up so quickly that Jewel knows he was waiting for it, hoping for it.

‘Do you know why?’ Jewel asks when he lets up. They are holding hands on one side, the other side free.

‘Because I want it,’ the boy says in his honeyed voice. Everything about him is honey, his skin, his hair, his eyes, his Bengali accent blended into Berkeley cool. When Jewel scrunches his eyes, the boy himself is a molten blur.

Jewel laughs. He knows it takes a pair to say it like that, the other way round. To say it out loud. To make it real.

3.

When Jewel kisses the boy, he knows it’s the right thing. In the now, here, this world anyway. The boy’s tongue is like air on silver. Jewel feels it oxidising him, turning him into someone else. Someone who wants. Someone who feels. He straightens, lifts the boy’s arms, presses his wrists to the wall. The boy’s head jerks forward, their mouths colliding. He has all the time in the world. He can kiss him all night and the age after.

‘Fuck,’ the boy whispers. ‘Fuck.’

Jewel pulls him in, hand splayed on the back of his head. He imagines the light trying to find a way between their bodies, failing. The boy holds on to him like he’s drowning. Jewel is torn between hating the boy for his submission and wanting nothing less.

‘Is this what you wanted?’ the boy says, his voice hoarse, clever, clear.

The question slaps Jewel back to attention.

4.

The boy is standing close, too close. Jewel feels the charge building. Soon, the space between their hands will be nothing more than a live wire. Before this can happen, the boy jumps ahead. His pinky hooks with Jewel’s and Jewel’s heart jumps into his mouth. It’s dangerous, this touching in such a public place, surrounded by everyone who cannot know what’s happening behind Jewel’s back. His face is burning, but he cannot, will not, pull his hand away.

His thumb starts on the inside of the boy’s wrist. It slides up to the centre of his palm and pushes into the soft hot, his other four fingers splayed on the back of the boy’s hand. He holds his hand in this way, in a way the boy cannot hold back, can only be held, in a way that says you’re mine, not I’m yours.

SUMMER

5.

When the boy dances, there’s nothing Jewel likes better than to watch him. He looks like one of those temple statues on Russell Street, arms rigid and liquid at the same time, feet deliberate precise light. Trance playing on the boom.

‘You were such a fag,’ Jewel says inhaling that first sweet drag.

The boy stands still, his eyes sideways watching Jewel.

‘Such a beautiful fag.’

‘There were no daughters in my family,’ the boy says, ‘much to my mother’s grief. So I had to do the needful. I had to learn how to dance.’

Jewel feels caught in his gaze, like he can’t go anywhere, not even behind him, without those eyes following. He puts down his smoke, stands up, tries to follow the molasses motion. The boy’s arms come around him, cup his elbows, hip checked, his hands lingering. Jewel feels himself fitting into the pose, the pose fitting to him, a bodily click.

‘Stay,’ he says to Jewel, walking away.

Now Jewel follows him with his eyes. Willingly, he thinks.

6.

Jewel is listening to the boy tell him a story. In the story, Jewel blindfolds the boy. So Jewel blindfolds the boy. He uses the boy’s scarf. It smells like incense.

‘Patchouli? Sandalwood?’ Jewel taunts.

‘My mother gave it to me, before I left home. But maybe you don’t want to know what happens next.’

‘What happens next?’

‘Next you fuck me,’ the boy says.

Jewel kisses him, all mouth, no hands. His hands are putting on the condom.

‘Then,’ the boy says in between kisses, ‘all your friends fuck me, one by one, while you watch.’

Jewel pauses and looks at him. He shakes his head, squeezes the tip of the condom briefly.

‘You’re harder than ever, aren’t you?’ the boy asks.

It’s true. Jewel kisses him once more and enters.

7.

The boy is asleep in the chair, naked as the heated day. Jewel has no chance of carrying him to bed, so he stands by the chair and looks out the window. Darkening, and all he sees are the two of them against dirty glass. Twined and tired, the boy looks younger than ever, despite the years he has on Jewel. His head is against one arm, the other arm down the inside of his thigh, as if drawing a curtain.

The boy wakes up. In one slow move, like he is born to do this, he turns and languishes against Jewel. He stays like this, cheek against bare thigh, not taking him into his mouth, only breathing next to him, waiting. Fire breath, teeth bared, mouth shaped to swallow.

Jewel watches their reflection. He says, ‘Vision of loveliness.’

‘Would that it were more than that,’ says the boy, making Jewel look down.

Before he can say anything, the boy shrugs and when his mouth makes contact, Jewel feels it like a loss.

8.

His hand always starts at the boy’s face, the angular rise of his cheek, the eyelashes L’Oreal thick. He presses the flat of his hand against the square of his jaw, and waits for the boy to turn into his palm. When he does, he kisses him.

His hand always starts at the boy’s cock, the baby soft foreskin, the spring hair. He encircles the base, palm flat, fingers hiding everything but the growing shaft. He waits until he can just see the head, dew ruby, egg in an egg cup. When he does, he kisses him.

Sometimes when Jewel touches the boy, he can’t imagine anybody else. Not just touching anyone else, but he can’t remember that anyone else exists. Even his own self dissolves and every memory he ever had goes along with it. It is only the touching that remains, out of body, out of time.

MONSOON

9.

The party howls outside. The boy is leaning against the bathroom sink facing Jewel, arms folded. Jewel takes his elbows and turns him around. The boy places his hands on the counter, straightens his elbows, looks in the mirror at Jewel. Jewel unbuttons the boy’s jeans, pushes them on down. He isn’t wearing anything underneath. He unbuckles his own belt and pulls the boy’s hips back into himself hard. Skin to skin. Cock to ass. Hand to head, pushing down.

Someone bangs on the door, but Jewel is pulling away even before that. The boy’s eyes narrow. Light bursts from his mouth.

‘I don’t want none but kisses,’ Jewel says.

The boy turns around, pushes him against the wall. Jewel can see their reflections, hoar and sepia.

‘I’ll give you what you ask for,’ the boy says kissing him, the light still emanating. Jewel swallows the shining, each kiss, fear disremembered.

‘Even if it’s not what you want.’ The boy’s mouth moves to his cock, wet on wet.

Jewel comes in a minute flat and pulls the boy up to kiss him. The banging has started again. How long have they been in the bathroom? A second? An hour? He kisses him again, and again.

‘I want,’ he says, come and the boy’s sweet on his tongue, ‘Nothing else were true.’

10.

The boy is angry. Jewel knows it. He also knows he can’t say anything because it would only make things worse. Instead he picks on him. He leans across the boy’s bare lap and gestures to the coffee table.

‘Your shite were everywhere,’ he says, ‘You can’t put nothing away.’

He knows the papers are for him, that the boy went looking for them. The boy pushes him off, as Jewel knows he will, and starts cleaning up.

Jewel leans back and away and flicks another flame, ‘Did you call your mother?’

The boy stops for a split and then keeps going.

Finally, Jewel pulls the last straw and says, ‘I gotta go.’

The boy fights with himself not to react, but when Jewel moves to stand, he does too. He takes Jewel’s arm and then his throat, pushing him back down. The motion is fluid, automatic, as if ordained. So then the next thing that happens, must.

The boy is crying as he pushes at Jewel, between serrate kisses. Jewel is telling him not to. It’s only the beginning, Jewel is saying, knowing it to be the truth.

‘There is no beginning,’ the boy says, his tears running into his wet mouth. Jewel licks the tears as they come. ‘Only what comes after.’

‘Then this were what come after,’ Jewel says, putting his hand on the boy’s heated body and then on his own. ‘This.’

‘This.’

11.

The boy wakes Jewel in the morning with a blowjob. The curtains are drawn, the sheets wrinkled and stale. He starts up slow, lips closed, just touching. Then he takes Jewel’s cock into his mouth like butter won’t melt. He rolls the head around in his mouth, presses it up down sideways with his tongue. When it starts to swell, he lets go, kisses off into the insides of his thighs. Jewel is still asleep, but now his dream is weighted and wet. When the boy takes him back into his mouth, he sucks harder, wider, tongue down the base, up the back seam, hooking under the hood. Jewel’s dreaming is fizzed, ready to pop. He wakes up not sure if he’s ready to piss himself or come. He wakes up knowing release is all that. Give it to a man, and the rest is in his hands. Gladly.

THE DRY SEASON

12.

The first time isn’t like a firebrand up his ass. It’s like a fire engine, and Jewel is the fire. The boy stops when he cries out.

‘Don’t stop now,’ Jewel grits out.

‘Are you sure?’ The boy’s thighs are taut. He moves to kiss the back of Jewel’s neck and inadvertently pushes deeper.

Jewel closes his eyes. ‘Yes.’

He’s gripping the exposed piping along the edge of the mattress. The sheet has long since rolled off and is somewhere under his belly. The mattress label pasted onto the corner crackles under his arm, the sound as fragile as he feels. He will do this once. For the boy. So he can say he’s done it. So he knows what it’s like.

Even as the feeling flares and feints and flares again, he knows he’s lying. He will do everything again. Even the things that hurt the most. Especially those.

13.

Jewel swishes his belt out of the loops. It leaves the bone curve of his hips, marks the air with the opposite sine, then falls by his side. He pulls the boy’s wrists together, binds the belt around them, and then buckles it to the bedpost. The boy is helpless, liquid with laughter. Jewel’s face is still, stern. He’s playing his part even if the boy won’t.

‘Stop your laughing,’ he hisses. ‘You want a beating too?’

The boy’s laughter dies away. ‘Yes, please,’ he says, ‘With a cupped palm.’

‘You don’t get to choose how,’ Jewel says flipping him over rough.

The boy cries out and Jewel turns him back quickly. His eyes are screwed shut, his mouth slightly open. Jewel leans down to kiss him in apology. In doing so, his hip brushes against the boy’s cock. It’s hard. He grins.

14.

Jewel rounds the bed in time to the music. Pastoral harp, over the top, perfect. The singer’s voice is lazy, level, despite the hunger lyrics. The boy is sitting up, arms hugging his shins, chin on his knees. He licks his lips. It’s what he does just before he kisses Jewel, even if he’s only thinking about it.

Jewel laughs. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

He leans in close enough to see the creases in the boy’s dry lips, the faintest pock on his left cheek, lashes individual. The boy looks at him, chin still planted, hair falling in his eyes. He has a generous well-shaped mouth, lips dark and defined like they were painted on. He’s beginning to smile. He almost licks his lips again but stops himself. Jewel thumbs his lower lip out. When he releases, the boy’s mouth remains slightly open. Still he doesn’t move. For the longest time, Jewel watches him, and for once, neither of them is waiting.

AUTUMN

15.

They are lying in the back of the car, the night violet and loamy. Jewel’s arm is looped lazy around his head. The boy lies on him like an electric blanket, as they look up at the trees with their branches waving at the wind.

‘My sweet,’ Jewel whispers in his ear, ‘nothing.’

The boy rolls his eyes smiling. A leaf slaps against the car, slicks down the side. Jewel slides his hands under the boy’s trench, down his jeans. The boy judders at the cold but sucks in to let him in.

Jewel roams his hands down his thighs. Back up. Back on down. Back up again. Even when his palms finally warm, he stays clear of the centre, away from the heat. Instead he kisses the boy’s neck, sucking, licking, biting. The boy arches, his arms trapped under Jewel’s, his cock brushing past elusive hands, a fluke move, inflaming. Jewel keeps biting, licking, sucking.

‘Please stop,’ the boy says, turning to Jewel in fluent desperation, ‘Please don’t stop.’

Jewel nods. He covers the boy’s mouth with his, lets him arch into his opening hands.

16.

The boy’s head is on Jewel’s stomach, looking down his legs. He can hear his stomach talking, feel his breath like a wave under muscle and skin. His hand lazily traces Jewel’s thigh, elbow crooked around hipbone.

He turns his head up to look. Jewel is looking out the window, the one without a view, night or day. The blank light comes and keeps coming. It spreads over them, covers the bed, reaches for the warped wooden floor, fails. He looks back the other way, Jewel’s navel at his lips.

‘What do you want?’ Jewel asks, running his hand through the boy’s hair.

‘Nothing,’ the boy says. He can feel his heart. ‘Nothing I don’t have already in spades.’

17.

Jewel can feel the drip down his throat, the metallic tang, the coiling ready. The boy is dancing like the world is going to end, like it’s his last chance. Jewel doesn’t have time for pleasantries. It has to happen now. He pulls him out of orbit and into his own whirl. The boy resists. He doesn’t want to fuck like the world is going to end. He wants to dance.

Jewel jerks and he twists and falls. Grace yet. He turns him to face him as the boy tries to recover. He doesn’t want to fight. He just wants a transition. But Jewel’s energy is monstrous, manic. It washes over the room like a wave, leaving only single-mindedness in its wake.