Mirrors of Narcissus (22 page)

“Adventures?”

“That night I showed you that area behind the football field. I knew about it all along.”

“I see.”

“Don’t think I was ‘deceiving’ Christine in the usual sense. My homosexuality is a part of me which has nothing to do with her, and there was nothing she could do about it.”

“So that’s why your relationship wasn’t working. For the longest time I couldn’t understand it. You seemed so perfect for each other. Now I understand.”

“It wasn’t because of any failing in her. Rather, it was a failing in me. I should have known myself better. Then I wouldn’t have had to put her through what I did.”

“I supposed it couldn’t be helped.” His expression went a little blank.

“So. I suppose that changes things a bit, doesn’t it? I mean, to know that your best friend is queer.”

He focused his eyes on me. “I don’t see why it should. Remember what you said about my being uncircumcised? That it was just another idiosyncrasy, like having red hair? That’s the way I feel about homosexuality. Some guys have red hair, some guys desire boys, so what? There’s room for everybody in this world. We can be friends, Guy. I always want to be your friend. What exists between us goes beyond all this. And what’s more, I’m sure Christine will also accept you as you are.”

“Even the fact that I love you?”

He turned away and brought his hand up to his face, covering his eyes. For a moment, he stood in that pose. Then, impatiently, he shook his head and brought his hand down again. There was a look of utter helplessness in his eyes.

“But why did you fall in love with me? I just can’t understand it. I mean, I did nothing to encourage it.”

“It’s nothing you did. It’s just for being what you are.”

“I feel—I don’t know what to feel. Honored? Happy? Flattered?”

“Scott, I know it’s something you can’t understand. Maybe to you it’s grotesque, a cruel joke nature played on me. But for me it’s hard reality. And the fact that you are hetero and out of reach doesn’t diminish my love for you in any way. In fact it might be what’s fuelling my passion. And that’s the tragedy of it. I love you as a guy, knowing you’re completely heterosexual, knowing you can never share my feelings.”

“Surely there are enough gay guys out there looking for friends, for lovers.”

“Yes, but none of them are you. There’s only one you, and that’s just my point. You’re the guy I’m in love with…have been in love with ever since I first set eyes on you. You’re the only boy I’ve loved from my heart. It’s a feeling I’ve never had for a girl. Can’t you understand? The only time I ever felt it—” Here my voice was in danger of breaking. “Ever since I can remember, I’ve been looking for someone like you. And now when I finally find him, I can’t touch him. Sure, there are gay guys out there—you’d be surprised at how many there are, secret and otherwise. I found out this past year in college. But they’re not for me.”

He just shook his head helplessly again. But I knew I had moved him by my plight. There was a soft, sympathetic look in his eyes. He wanted to help, and maybe there was still a chance for me to save everything.

“I was afraid you’d hate me forever if I confessed.”

“Don’t worry, Guy. I can rise above silly prejudices. You know me better.”

“I know. But it’s been so hard on me not to know for sure how you’d take it. I’ve been so lonely with my secret, Scott. Sometimes I felt like I was going crazy. Do you think I wanted to be like this? Do you think I enjoy falling in love with guys who’ll never return my love?”

He gazed at me in some alarm, his focus shifting anxiously from my right eye to my left eye, and back. “Don’t worry, Guy, it’ll be all right.”

We were looking into each other’s eyes with a desperate hope. I felt such a compassionate tenderness in him that I wanted us to stay like that forever, knowing that if I moved even slightly, his image would shatter.

“Let me kiss you again, Scott.”

“No, Guy. Don’t.”

“Please, Scott. Just this once. Will you let me?”

Again, he looked so helpless, so guilty, that I almost regretted what I was asking of him. And then he nodded.

5

Before he could change his mind, I moved my face closer to his and kissed him again. At first his lips resisted mine, and his eyes were shut tight. For a while I kept my lips pressed against his, not kissing. Then, when I felt his lips soften, I made my mine more mobile, and his lips responded, tentatively. But his eyes remained determinedly shut tight, as if trying to will away this reality. Undeterred, I began making my kisses more lubricous still, and suddenly his mouth, as if of its own accord, began greedily pushing itself against mine. He had caught fire and his movements became passionate.

His response surprised me a little, coming after his earlier coolness. Perhaps in the emotional turmoil following his confession, then mine, the kiss was even a relief for him, a balm. I felt a little guilty at making him do something so contrary to his nature, at using the emotion-filled moments following the confessions to get my way. On the other hand, he might be merely doing it out of friendship for me, out of pity at my hopeless love. In any case, the kissing was getting me sexually aroused.

My own actions became much more passionate. I pulled away from his mouth and kissed his cheek, then his mouth again, then his eyes. I put my hand up to his chest and felt his heart hammering. Gently, I began caressing his breast with my palm, rubbing in slow circles. As I glanced down, I noted that the towel wrapped around his middle had lifted slightly where his penis had raised its head. His body, at any rate, was responding, if not his mind.

I dropped my hand down onto his erection.

His body stiffened. “No, Guy. Don’t.”

“Scott, I’m not gonna hurt you. Don’t you understand? I need it right now. Don’t make me beg for it. Please.”

“Guy, I can’t. Damn it, you don’t know how difficult you’re making it. I like you so much. Please don’t do anything which will make me change that opinion of you.”

“Scott, this is something outside of me, outside my control. I know how I must seem to you, I see it all too clearly. Don’t you know how wretched I feel? You of all people should know. Don’t make me beg for it.”

“No, Guy.”

“Scott.”

I slipped my hand under the towel and gripped his dick. He caught his breath. Perhaps he hadn’t realized how aroused he’d become.

My boldness was fuelled by a deep despair at my sense of imminent loss. Or was it that I felt this desperate action would save the ideal relationship we’d had for so long, which was soon to dissolve? At any rate, I knew that the guilt he felt about sleeping with Christine had weakened his position with me to the point where he was no longer able to protest even the most insolent assault. This was the proverbial once-in-a-lifetime chance I couldn’t pass up. Everything I’d engineered came down to this sweet moment, freighted with the feeling of doom.

For a long time I just kept my hand resting on his dick, allowing him to get used to having it there. I would have to play it very carefully. This was the point toward which my whole life had been leading; after this I could die feeling fulfilled.

His eyes were closed again, and I could hear his breathing come faster. There was an expression of slight apprehension on his face, but apparently his anxiety wasn’t enough to quell the basic physical pleasure that my touch had brought him. Keeping my hand on his dick, I kissed him again on the lips. I wanted this precious moment to last forever.

In silence, he awaited my first move, curiously unresisting.

I let go of his dick and reached up to undo the knot at his hips, then slipped the towel off. It slid down to the floor with a slight rustle and Scott was fully exposed.

Dropping my hands to my sides, I gazed in silence. His dick, perhaps because it wasn’t fully hard yet, was smaller than I’d expected. It hung, semi-tumescent, angled slightly downwards upon his right thigh. This was my first chance to really examine an uncircumcised dick. Its skin was brownish in color, slightly darker than the skin on the rest of his body. The foreskin covered the entire glans, making the tip look like the mouth of a drawstring purse, with a puckered crease for an opening. The glans was only suggested as a mound under the skin, hidden with the rest of the shaft. The underside of the penis was prickled with individual hairs, as were the balls, which hung loose in their wrinkly sacs.

“Oh, it’s beautiful,” I whispered. “You’re wrong to think it’s ugly. It’s the sexiest dick I’ve ever seen.”

It rolled a little, as if in response to my words.

“Oh yes,” I said. “This is a dream come true. God, I’d love to see you with a sexy hard-on.”

Again, it stirred, and began to grow in size, swelling out sideways at first, slowly and lazily, then raising its head upward in clumsy jerks.

“Oh yes.”

Unable to resist, I reached across and took it in my hand. It twitched a little at my touch, as if shying away. Gently, I pulled downward on the shaft, drawing the foreskin off the glans. As the brownish skin slid effortlessly away, the exposed head emerged shiny and pink. It was glistening. With the glans freed, it was just like any circumcised dick, just like my own. I placed my finger gently on the pee slit and the shaft became even more engorged, and stiffened upward with spasmodic twitches.

Scott’s eyes remained closed.

“Oh yes!” I whispered.

His dick was up hard, pressing stiffly against his belly. I began touching it more boldly now, running my fingers along it, delighting in its hardness, nudging my thumb against the sensitive underside of the glans, encircling the rest of the shaft with my palm and employing a smooth stroking motion.

It got harder and harder with each stroke, swelling up huge, huger than I’d ever imagined—big, beautiful and hard. The glans was swollen purple, and appeared to be pulsing from within, to the beat of Scott’s passion, ready to burst.

My own dick was hard, as it had been ever since I’d first started kissing Scott. All my inhibitions gone now, I snaked out of my shirt and pulled my jeans off. When I slid the waistband of my undershorts down, my dick sprang up and slapped hard against my belly.

I looked at Scott. He was gazing down at my erection.

“Look, Scott, our dicks are the same. Exactly the same.”

I moved my body closer to his until our dicks were nuzzling, head to head. I let my glans kiss his, pull away and kiss again, and continued to tease him with these dick kisses until I myself could stand it no longer. I pressed my lower body against his, so that the shafts of our dicks were flat against each other, standing up straight and parallel. Seen like this, we were of a size, the same length, the same thickness, the same color, twins in a mirror, reflected.

Leaning my upper body back a little, I reached down between our bellies and gripped both shafts in one hand and began stroking them together.

For a while there was no response from him, only the sound of his breathing. His eyes were closed again. But in my palm his dick was like an iron rod, and my caresses were making it harder and harder. I watched his balls gradually shrink up into tight, compact nuggets, then retract until they were hugging the base of the shaft in one round lump. The glans was twitching rhythmically, in involuntary response. I looked up at his face.

He had caught fire and was no longer master of his emotions. His expression had become slack and he was responding to my stroking with soft, rhythmic little grunts.

This was what I’d been living for. This was what I wanted: to be able to watch at firsthand the face of the boy I loved as he was getting his pleasure. Much as I would have loved to go down on his dick and suck him off, this pleasure was even greater.

At this moment, all my misgivings and doubts had slipped away, all my guilt and anguish about being different from others, all the sordid encounters I’d had in toilet stalls, under the trees, the lying to Christine, to Golden, to the whole world, all the world’s condemnation of my queerness…nothing mattered. I was happy because my whole life had led up to this. If I had but this one encounter in my life, it would all have been worthwhile. And I knew this moment would never come again in my whole life.

I watched his face closely, knowing with a sure instinct communicated through my hand that he was moving rapidly toward the point of no return.

I continued my steady stroking, gradually increasing the speed, sometimes stopping to get a better grip. Suddenly he moaned. His whole being yearned only for one thing now—the relief of orgasm. I myself was so aroused that the only thing I wanted was to hold off my own orgasm long enough to be able to enjoy his. Though my instinct was to shut my eyes and give myself up to bliss, I kept them open to record, to remember this sight forever.

The up-and-down motion of my hand was now a blur. The violence of my stroking was making both our bodies jump and jerk.

How much longer could I hold off? It was an endurance contest of the most torturous kind. And then, his head lolled back a little, his mouth slightly open. I watched his lips curl back from his teeth at the moment he crossed the line beyond which all control is relinquished; his body was now on automatic pilot, he could only go along for the ride.

And I was taking him to the end of the ride, the ultimate end.

I felt like kissing him, but his face looked blank, with an almost death-like pallor. And then, with a soft cry he bit his lower lip hard. From below, I heard a slight rasping sound and felt sudden warmth sprinkle my chest. The first contact of his semen triggered my own orgasm, and I looked down to see my own white fuck jet up in vigorous spurts, all the way up to Scott’s chest, then lower down, onto his belly. I thought I would never stop coming. The pleasure accompanying my orgasm was excruciatingly sweet, and only slightly less pleasurable afterwards, as I continued stroking even after I’d stopped ejaculating. I wanted to stay like that forever, with the feel of Scott’s warm semen on my skin, the essence of Scott, from deep inside his body. It was all Scott, and I was thankful to be gay, that I might receive this magical distillation which was the most Scott-like part of Scott.

But he had other thoughts. I felt him stir. He made a move to turn away and I said, “Wait.” Reaching down carefully, I picked up my jeans and fished in the back pocket for my handkerchief. Tenderly, I wiped my semen off his chest, his belly, his groin. Some had dribbled down into his pubic bush. When I was finished, I wiped myself off. By the time I’d done, he’d gone over to his dresser and pulled out his clothes, had finished putting them on. I carefully folded the handkerchief and began putting my own clothes back on. Now that the heat of passion was over, I felt acutely conscious that Scott might have regretted our moment of rashness. What he’d felt couldn’t possibly compare to the absolute bliss I’d experienced.

I dropped limply to the floor and sat there for a long while on my knees, stupidly slack. I felt happy, completely happy, maybe for the first time in my life. I could almost ignore that tiny feeling of guilt playing at the edges of my consciousness like some distant lightning not part of my world, but maybe of another one, somewhere over the horizon where people spoke a different language and had different customs.

It seemed like a long while before I looked up at Scott. He was sitting on the bed. Only now did I realize that the door had been unlocked the whole time. Anyone could have opened it and caught us in the act.

“Scott?”

He didn’t respond—didn’t give any indication that he’d even heard. He looked as if he couldn’t believe what had happened.

“Was it…that bad? I mean, you don’t seem to want to talk about it or anything.”

Still, he wouldn’t say anything.

“Talk to me, Scott. What’s your reaction to what just happened?”

When he finally answered, it was in a soft, almost apologetic voice. “Well, it was just something that happened. I don’t condemn you for it, if that’s what you’re worried about. It’s finished now. Past, done with. Don’t worry about me. I won’t hold anything against you.”

He was discussing it as if I’d committed a crime, and that made me feel more guilty than ever. I knew that deep down he thought of it as ugly and dirty—something he’d put up with out of friendship or guilt. But I knew that it wasn’t sinful and dirty; it was beautiful. I knew it with all my being.

“Scott, what happened just now, for me isn’t just a passing thing. I’m still feeling the after-effects of it. The homosexual experiences I’ve had until now were so unfeeling, with people who meant nothing to me. But with you it was for the first time with someone I truly care about. What happened here just now, it was the most wonderful thing in my whole life. Nothing else even comes close. You don’t know how much it means to me. For the first time, I actually felt happy at being homosexual. It was an affirmation, almost a justification of all I ever suffered for being different from the others.”

Suddenly, he slammed his fist into the bed mattress, hard. I thought I saw tears in his eyes. “Guy, if you want to know the truth of it…what we just did—I enjoyed it. I mean, physically. And I confess—watching those guys under the bleachers the other night, I got sexually excited. So excited that I almost couldn’t sleep all night. I’m worried—I might be gay myself.” He turned to me with a look of almost terror. “Do you think I might be gay, maybe, and not know it?”

I felt suddenly very weary. “You’re not gay, Scott. You enjoyed it because it was enjoyable. There’s no such thing as a maybe gay. You’re either gay or you’re not, and if you don’t know it by now, you’re not.”