Sparkle: The Queerest Book You'll Ever Love (9 page)

Sparkle took a swig of wine before the story continued. “Then he did it. He took off his underwear and started to climb up the stairs of the hot tub. In just one minute, I was about to be naked with another boy, and I was, needless to say, absolutely petrified. He reached the top of the hot tub and just stood there. Never having been in one before, he wanted to get the lay of the land before he hopped in. That was just fine with me, because I was getting the lay of the land as well. And, needless to say, his land looked very layable indeed. Up close and in the lights of the tub, Bradley looked kind of sexy, truth be told.”

“Wait,” I rasped. “Fill me up.” I held out my glass, hand suddenly trembling.

Sparkle kept right on going after topping us both off. “Anyway, then he turned around so he could climb down into the tub, offering me a view of his stellar butt. It was also covered in a fine spray of blond hairs and looked hard as a rock. I had the strangest desire to just reach up and grab it and… and… and, well, I had no idea what I would do with it once I grabbed it; I just knew that I needed to grab it. And then he was in the tub and was turned around facing me. We just sat there like that for a while, getting used to the water and the newness of it. For him, the newness of the hot tub, for me, the newness of a naked boy with me in the hot tub. He said that it was
neat
and I said that I was glad he enjoyed it. Then nothing. Neither one of us could think of a single thing to say. That lasted for what seemed like an eternity, until Bradley finally said that he had better get on home before his mother started worrying. As he stood to get out, something inside of me snapped, Secret, and I screamed, ‘Wait!’, and I suddenly jumped up and grabbed his dick.”

“You didn’t!” I shrieked, hopping up and down on the couch.

Sparkle nodded and grinned. “Yup. And something like that could’ve gone in one of two ways: he could’ve been really pissed at me for doing that and beaten the shit out of me or he could do what he did and just stood there getting a boner. He didn’t look at me as all this was happening and I wasn’t looking at him either. Well, at least I wasn’t looking up at his face, but I was looking at him. Then I let go and he climbed out of the tub. I was frozen in place after that. What had I just done? Was he going to run home and tell his mother? Was he going to blab it to the entire student body tomorrow? Was I about to be the only
out
sixteen-year old boy in my high school?”

“Were you?” I asked, nearly in a pant.

“Thankfully, no, I wasn’t. He got dressed fast enough, but as he got ready to go back inside the house, he looked back over at me. Then he paused at the patio door, took a deep breath, and said that he’d like to come back over tomorrow if it was all right with me.
If it was all right with me?
Was he joking? Of course it was all right with me, and I promptly told him so. And then the butler drove him home.”

I grinned and giggled. “The butler drove him home, huh? Talk about icing on the cake.”

Sparkle grinned, too. “I suppose he was just as taken in as you clearly are, Secret. And thankfully so. In any case, the next day was Friday, and Bradley had one-upped me when we met at the end of our classes. He told me that his mother said that it would be fine if he spent the night at my house. This time, he was looking me straight in the eyes. I gulped, nodded a yes, and squeaked out a
that would be great
. Then he lit up with a smile, patted me on the shoulder, and we walked out of the school together.”

“Hand in hand?” I couldn’t help but ask, ever the hopeless romantic that I am.

“No, dumbass, not hand in hand,” came the reply. “He might not have wanted to beat me up, but that didn’t mean the rest of the school wouldn’t if they saw us like that. Anyway, to continue, when we got home, I lent him a pair of swimming trunks and he dove into the pool as soon as he had them on. Honestly, he looked like a kid with a new toy or something. I jumped in and sprayed him with a nifty cannonball. This, of course, led to the standard teenager splash fight. And that, cue the doom and gloom music, is when Lance walked up.”

“Uh oh,” said I, hearing said doom and gloom music in my head, cranked up to max.

“Yup. Oh oh,” Sparkle agreed. “See, never having seen me with another boy at our house before, he was kind of surprised to see us there in the state we were in. In any case, I introduced the two of them, but Lance was standoffish and, I could’ve sworn, jealous. After all, he was used to having me at his beck and call, and now, here I was with some stranger in our pool. He left us alone after that, but I felt uncomfortable and asked Bradley if he wanted to go up to my room and listen to some music instead. Bradley, thankfully, said that that sounded like a good idea, and so we got out, toweled off, and headed into the house. I told the cook that we would come back down for dinner later and then take it up to my room.”

“The cook?” I couldn’t help but ask.

Sparkle shrugged. “The cook, yes. Anyway, she said that she would just bring it up to us, and then Bradley and I hightailed it up to my bedroom. For once, I was truly glad that my parents had beaucoup bucks, and not just because they were out of town and I was mostly alone with Bradley, but mainly because I had a lot of cool things to show off to him.”

“Besides a chauffeur and a cook,” I interrupted.

“And a limo and a mansion, Secret. Yes. In any case, he jumped from one thing to the other like he’d never seen such things before. From the television to the telephone to my games, ultimately flipping through my albums. And that’s when I knew that I’d found Mister Perfect. See, he knew every one of the records I had in my collection and was really jealous that I had both Pat Benatar albums and Blondie’s
Plastic Letters
and even Andy Gibb’s
Shadow Dancing
. He chose one of my Berlin LPs before we hopped on the bed together and sang along with Terri Nunn to
Sex (I'm A...)
.”

“Love that song!” I shouted.

“Fab-u-lous,” he agreed. “Anyway, by the end of the album, we were exhausted from laughing and singing, and, just in the nick of time, the cook came up with our dinners. I forgot that I was nervous until we were forced to take a break and eat. I mean, so long as we were rowdy and loud, I felt relaxed, but as soon as silence overtook my room,
POW
, I was a wreck again. This was made even worse by the fact that we were sitting so close and our arms and legs kept touching as we ate. I never realized before then just how small a single bed was. Then, when we were done eating, I flicked on the television and we watched Entertainment Tonight and made fun of Mary Hart’s hair.” He sighed and shot me a crooked grin. “Love, Secret, was in the air.”

As was my hand, asking for another round. “Please.”

He poured and the story continued. “By the time eight o’clock rolled around, we’d pretty much exhausted all the possibilities for anything entertaining on television, so I jumped up and popped a tape in the VCR, then went over and turned off my bedroom lights. As I turned to get back in bed, Bradley was taking off his pants and shirt. He said that he was making himself comfortable. As if I cared why he was taking off his clothes in my bed, right? I mean, he could’ve been on fire, just so long as he was getting undressed. I, of course, being the good host that I was, followed suit and also took off my clothes, jumping into my bed with nothing on but my Fruit of the Looms and a smile.”

“Hot” I managed.

“And about to go scorching,” he amended. “So there we were. Alone, undressed, and in bed. Now what? All of this was new to me. I’d managed to catch
Parting Glances
on HBO, but even that couldn’t have prepared me for this. Thank God the movie I’d selected for us was funny, and, after a bit, both of us got decidedly more comfortable. Each time we would start laughing, we would bump arms or legs. Well, somewhere in the middle of the movie, we managed to be completely side by side and touching each other, and guess what?”

“What?! What?!” I shouted, almost spilling my drink. Almost.

Sparkle giggled and shot me a grin. “Yours truly had a hard-on. I looked down to see if it was noticeable or anything and, well, you’ve seen me in that state before; of course, it was noticeable, but even more noticeable was Bradley’s. And that’s when I also realized that Bradley wasn’t watching the movie anymore. Not knowing what else to do, I grabbed his now straining basket. Secret, this may surprise you, but I’ve never been more terrified in my whole entire life. Still, there was no turning back at that point, and I had no idea how to go forward. I was probably just lucky that Bradley was seventeen and more mature than I was, because he took complete control of the situation. Thank God, because we would probably still be in that bed fumbling with each other’s undies if it was left up to me. In any case, he rather deftly had us out of our underwear in about two seconds flat, and, before I knew what hit me, we were making out. Honestly, there have been many, many men since that night, but that’s about the only one that I can remember like it was yesterday. I’ve never felt so utterly alone with just one guy before. The bed and the room faded into nothingness and it was just me and Bradley, naked and hard.

“Yeah, been there done that,” I interjected.

“Quite. Anyway, the rest of it went rather quickly and easily. Not knowing what else to do but beat each other off, that’s all we did. And with two horny teenagers, that didn’t take very long at all. I remember that moment, too, because we both shot straight over our heads and hit the wall. Even to this day, I don’t think that I’ve surpassed such distance. We both laughed about it and then laid there for what seemed like forever just hugging and making out until we both fell asleep. Honestly, I couldn’t have asked for a better first time. That is, until the next morning.”

I simpered. “I don’t think I want to hear.”

He shrugged. “You asked for it, Dear One. And here it comes. In Spades. So, Bradley and I repeated our evening step for step when we woke up and then showered and prepared to go down for breakfast. But, before we could make it there, we ran into my brother. Lance had a look on his face that I’d never seen before, which scared me half to death. He said that he’d heard weird noises the night before when he got up to go to the bathroom and again that morning when he went to shower. That’s when he figured out that it was Bradley and me having sex. He looked disgusted as he was telling us this, and, try as I might to deny it, Lance just kept calling us faggots and queers. Then he said that if I didn’t get Bradley out of the house immediately, he was going to get my father’s gun and shoot us both.”

“No,” I managed, hand over my mouth.

“Sadly, yes. And it wasn’t a hard decision to make. In other words, Bradley and I were running down the stairs and out of the house in minutes, and shaking pretty badly as we started to walk back to his house. It took about an hour to get there, with neither of us saying much the entire time. What started out to be the most fabulous experience of my whole young life, Secret, was quickly becoming a nightmare. And all the while I kept telling myself that everything would be okay and that Lance would be a good brother and never mention the events again.”

“But you were wrong.”

He nodded, frowning as he did so. “I was wrong. I didn’t make it home until it was getting near dark, figuring it was best if I let Lance simmer down a little before I talked to him. But as soon as I walked in the door, I knew that that would never happen. See, my brother and both my parents were sitting in the living room waiting for me. And, as angry as Lance looked that morning, my parents looked decidedly more so that evening. Secret, I can’t even begin to tell you how horrible it all was. Between the yelling and the crying, all I kept thinking of was how I would never get a chance to be with Bradley again. I was right, of course, because my parents, never ones for being reasonable, had things under control. Their control. They had me out of my school and enrolled in a military academy by the next day, and had the butler drive me up there immediately. There were no teary goodbyes or kisses for me. I was just up and out of the house.” Sparkle shook his head and clenched his fists. “The poor butler. He had no idea what was going on, and I for one wasn’t about to tell him. He just dropped me off at the headmaster’s house and was gone.”

“This story sucks, dude,” I told him, eyes wet, head tilted down.

“Uh huh. Sucks. And life for our family was never the same after that. I went home for holidays and for summers until I went off to college, but my parents and brother were only civil and nothing more. There were only two things, Secret, that I was quite lucky about regarding that whole nasty mess. Firstly, it was an all boy’s school they sent me to and, needless to say, there were a lot of horny teenage boys there. Bradley, it turns out, was the first in a long line of seventeen-year-olds that wanted to have sex with me. And, secondly, my grandparents had left me my trust fund, my parents having no control over it. When I turned twenty-one, I collected the loot and was out from under their reign forever. To this day, we’ve never discussed my sexuality, and my brother and I have barely said two words to each other. They let me come up here when I want to, but I think it’s more like a consolation prize. Lance gets the love and I get the use of the house in the country. Not a bad deal, I would say. So there, Secret. There is your story. Happy now?”

“No,” I said, with a pit in my stomach and a lump in my throat. “Not happy. Depressed.  Here, pour us some more wine. I don’t think I can handle this sober (as if we were even close to that anymore), especially since I haven’t come out to my own parents yet.”

“Then please, Secret, don’t let my little story stop you from doing so. You need to tell your parents who you really are. I certainly regret how my parents found out that I was gay, but I never for a minute regret them knowing. You’ll never be able to be yourself around them if they don’t know the real Bruce.” Sparkle had a point and was quite touching in making it. (Either that or that was some really great wine we were downing. I assumed, all things considered, that it was probably the latter.)