“Miss you,” said Howard. He touched the back of David’s hand for a moment.
“I think I’ve been in love with you,” said David, understating his case somewhat.
“I think I can say the same.” Howard’s voice was soft, almost breaking. “But what is love without loss? Nobody wins with love. If you are born to love you are born to lose.”
David looked at Howard’s glass of whiskey. “Sure you’re okay to drive?”
“To love is to lose. Love is loss. That’s all.”
David finished his drink and got up. “Have a safe journey,” he said, then smiled wryly. “I must love you and lose you now. See you again some day. Actors’ paths always cross and recross.
Hope so anyway.”
Howard stood up and they embraced and kissed for quite some time. None of the people around them batted an eyelid. Then David rumpled Howard’s hair, turned and left the room.
He would miss the gentle touch of Howard in the night, miss the rumbustious thrusting of his cock inside him, miss spearing Howard’s sphincter with his own cock, miss his sweet warm breath when they woke sometimes in the small hours just to kiss. He didn’t know where he would find such a love again, nor how nor when. But he’d learned at least in which direction he should be looking. And how to recognize it when it next appeared.
GAME BOYZ
F. A. Pollard
T
he guy had his eye on me long before we met.
Of course, I didn’t know that. At the time, I was busy kicking Greg’s ass at
Street Fighter
.
The summer after high school, before I was due to start at Riverview Technical College, Greg and I shared an apartment together downtown. I had graduated at seventeen, had just turned eighteen, and had always been the smallest and weakest guy in my class. Greg was a year older and had been my buddy since elementary school. He stuck up for me, fought fights for me, palled around with me when no one else would. In exchange, I did most of his homework and all of his papers, effortless because I was smart and bored. School came too easily for me, but my parents weren’t aware enough to bump me up a grade. When they finally figured it out, my guidance counselor advised them that it would be a social struggle to skip, that I would miss too much of the curriculum. Whatever. When my voice changed my looks changed, too, matured; bullies quit picking on me and girls started noticing me. Socializing was less of a problem, but I still stuck with Greg. We double-dated, lost our virginity on the same night in the same car, Greg in the front seat and me in the back. He changed girls regularly. I met Kristen near the end of eleventh grade and started going steady. Now there was no more homework to exchange for Greg’s friendship. So I kept dating her to put Greg at ease. To prove myself.
Because while I was out with Kristen or when I jerked off in the shower, I thought about boys. Mostly Greg.
Not that I was in love with him. But I was horny, and he was the most available male, the most familiar guy in my tiny bubble of a life. I knew his habits and his smells, the way he left his shirttail hanging out of his pants. The way downy hair was sprinkled along his neck. The hard feel of the muscle in his shoulder when I pressed against him.
Our passion was arcade video games, and there was one place at the mall that had a bunch of refurbished machines from the 1980s and 1990s. I was good at some, but Greg was better at most. Sometimes we played together, but normally I just watched him. Those were the times I lived for because I would get into the game, almost doze a little, and rest against Greg, pushing my shoulder against his and smell the tang of his armpits or the odor of the stale shirt he had pulled out of the dirty clothes and covered with five-dollar aftershave. This physical closeness would last as long as his game did. I always encouraged him to play
Galaxians
because that was the one he was best at, and as long as he had ships in play, he would let me lean on him. When he finally lost, he would smirk and shove me away and say, “Get off me, you faggot.” I would smile and roll my eyes. But he never discouraged me, and as soon as he was playing again, he’d let me press against him. I think I flattered him with my attention, my devotion. As long as I had a girlfriend and was fucking her, it was okay. As long as it was just a game, as long as I never let him know I had a hard-on the whole time.
As long he never found out that he was the reason I took so many showers, Greg didn’t mind me playing a fag.
That day, after I beat him at
Street Fighter
—he always tried different characters, but I perfected the use of Chun-Li’s lightning kicks and usually won—I tried to talk him into
Galaxians
. But he wanted to play pinball, so I went over to play
Gyruss
. I was in the middle of a bonus round when someone behind me said, “They come out from the bottom and split.”
The voice was rich and masculine and gave me chills. I turned around and he said, “You’re missing the bonus.”
When I saw him, I didn’t care. He had black hair gelled up in spikes and skin like silk, smooth and unblemished. My gaze ran the length of his throat to his chest; the first few buttons of his charcoal gray shirt were open, revealing a delicious, slight swell of muscle; he wore a shiny double-edged razor blade on a chain. I glanced down to tight black pants, appreciating his firm body and a quality of dress and self finer than the regulars at the arcade. Looking up, I saw his glittering eyes: eyes so dark that they looked black, as if they were all pupil, eyes fringed with long, black lashes. And holy shit he smelled good.
By the time I recovered, it was too late to save the game and I lost all my ships.
“Sorry,” he said. “Thought I was helping.”
“That’s okay, I was losing anyway.”
“No, you weren’t.” He put tokens into the machine and said, “I’ll keep my mouth shut this time.”
I couldn’t believe this guy was hanging around me, talking to me. And I didn’t want him to leave. “Why don’t you tell me how to play the bonus rounds?”
And he said, “Okay.”
It was distracting at first, knowing I had this hot guy right behind me, almost touching me. I imagined his arms sliding around me, his wet lips grazing the back of my neck, his warm breath wafting into my hair, his erection grinding against my ass…
“Whoa,” he said, as my ship blew up on the first warp.
Concentrate. I had to concentrate or he would go away. I had to play well and give him something to watch. So I did. I focused and listened to his tips about where the enemies would come from. I made it through the Jupiter bonus round before I lost my last ship.
“That was some great playing,” he said as I entered my initials. I had the number four high score.
Brushing past me, he put more tokens into the machine and started to play. He was good, really good. I watched him swinging his ship around, tapping the fire button, handling the joystick like this was the only machine he ever played. I lost myself in the game, and I leaned against him. I’d known this guy for fifteen minutes but somehow it didn’t matter. I eased my chest against his back, the way I sometimes did with Greg, only this was so much better. This felt right, this felt safe, this felt like the culmination of so many loose ends in my life, the high point I’d been living for. He didn’t shove me off; in fact, unless I was out of my mind, it felt like he shifted closer, fitting our bodies together. I closed my eyes and drifted in the perfection of the moment, breathing him in like sweet perfume. He didn’t smell like Greg at all. He smelled like clean sweat and fresh soap and hot sex. He smelled like all my fantasies rolled into one. I could see him naked above me, the mix of his flavors on my tongue and the supple grace of his skin in my hands and that voice like hot fudge sauce pouring in my ears, telling me everything he was going to do.
His back straightened.
My eyelids flew open as my heart gave a jolt, and I stepped away to adjust my cock. I watched him bump me down to fifth place to enter his initials into second. The same initials were first and third and fourth:
ZEN
.
“
You’re
Zen!” I was awed. But he didn’t seem to notice.
“Zen. Short for Zeno. It’s Greek.”
His elaboration warmed me, as if he had shared something deeply personal.
“You want to come outside with me?” he said. “I need a smoke.”
“Okay.” I looked back where I had left Greg but didn’t see him; he was my ride home. “Sure.”
Zen pushed out through the emergency exit, and it surprised me that the alarm didn’t go off. “It’s been broken for three months,” he said.
A cinder block hallway led to another door that opened to the darkness of an alley behind the mall, where delivery trucks could pull up to the stores.
“You smoke?” he said, shoving the pack at me. I shook my head and watched him pull out a cigarette, put it up to his lips, flick his lighter.
“Shit,” he said.
Then everything fell out of his hands and he gripped the sides of my face, sealing his mouth against mine. His lips were soft and moist, and I opened to his tongue, feeling him take possession of me, pressing his chest against my own.
I had an immediate, aching hard-on as he shoved me up against the wall. Every inch of my skin blossomed for him. My entire body was an erection. My mind glowed white, the world blanked away, and everything in the entire universe was him kissing me, nothing except him kissing me and the feel of his hands as they left my face and tugged at my jeans, jerking at the zipper.
His fingers were like magic and I came in his palm, swallowing a cry and biting down on his lower lip trapped between my teeth. He shuddered against me, his sinewy body pinning me so hard to the brick that I almost couldn’t breathe.
“Fuck,” he said, slumping, and pulled his other hand out of his own pants. I put my arms around him, and we rested together, inhaling the cool night air.
“Fuck,” he said again, more softly, and touched his mouth with the hand that had taken me. He looked at the blood from where I had bitten him, then slid two fingers between his lips. As he sucked on them, my cock stirred again.
“Do you walk around like this all the time, hot and begging for it?” he asked, wedging himself against me. His breathing was short and sharp, and he slipped his hand into my underwear, this time looking into my eyes.
He pulled my hand toward him and my fingers closed around the erection in his pants. I kneaded him through the fabric while his hand moved along my cock, doing me the way I would do myself. I leaned in to kiss him, drew his tongue into my mouth, and tasted my come in his spit, the blood still on his lip. I licked it. He stopped kissing me and sobbed softly as he ground against my hand. His reaction made me come again, hard, and I felt our hearts pounding and our blood pulsing in sync. I kissed him and kissed him, and his mouth moved against mine again and his strong, thin arms came up around me and crushed us together.
He broke the kiss to hook his thumbs into the waist of my jeans. “You’re so fucking hot,” he said. “I want to keep making you come”—he was peeling away my pants—“over and over”—and dropping to his knees.
I closed my eyes and relaxed against the bricks behind me. I’d died and gone to homo heaven. I reached for his head to guide him as I felt his lips, slick and soft.
“Motherfucker!”
The word hit me like a fist. I wrenched my neck and saw Greg staring at me, a mix of horror and revulsion on his face. I was frozen for an eternity, feeling only Greg’s glare and Zen’s mouth with nothing in between. Until Greg spun on his heel to leave.
“Greg,” I said, shoving Zen away. “Wait.”
But when I took a step, I tripped over the tangle of my jeans and fell forward, smacking the asphalt with my hands. “Shit.” Shards of rock and grit drove into my palms. It smarted, but I got to my feet and yanked up my jeans, fastening them as I broke into a run.
I pulled open the door and almost slammed into Greg in the middle of the cinder block hallway.
“Give me your fucking keys,” he said. His face was hard and he spoke through clenched teeth.
“What?”