Studs: Gay Erotic Fiction (15 page)

My mind ran through about a million different scenarios. The only one that made sense was that Jimmy had found the gun, or stolen it, and he wanted me to keep it for him. I don’t think I really knew my limits back then, not so that I could rationalize them, think them through to myself and know for sure what I’d do or wouldn’t do, but I knew without having to think about it that I wasn’t keeping a gun in my apartment. I shook my head, started to say as much, but Jimmy stopped me.

“Just a quick shot through the shoulder,” he said. “I heard that’s the best way. Might mess up my arm for a while, but it heals quickest and won’t hit anything too vital. You know?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake—”

“No, really,” he said. “It’s not a big deal. I read up on it. Through the shoulder. Minimum damage, minimum pain. Afterward I head down the street, call an ambulance from some pay phone.” He looked me in the eye, something he didn’t often do. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anybody how it happened.”

“People will hear it, Jimmy. The neighbors.”

He laughed. “In this building? In this neighborhood? Nobody’d even call the cops.”

I sank a little, defeated. Jimmy was probably right. There were two crack houses on the block, and right in my own building there were three rooms on the top floor reserved by a pimp I never saw but whose girls sashayed up and down the stairwell all night long. One of the girls had overdosed the previous month, leaving a vomit stain on the hallway carpet, probably the only mark she’d made in life. A few weeks before that, one of the johns had been beaten to death with a tire iron. In a strange way, I’d started to consider it all normal, take it in stride. I’d stopped calling 9-1-1 after the first couple of times I heard gunshots because, the times I’d called, the cops hadn’t shown up for hours. Sure, Jimmy was right. Nobody would care, nobody would call.

But in the time it took to understand this, I understood a lot more, too. I could figure out Jimmy’s motivation easily enough—to him, the gunshot was just another version of the dragon tattoo—and I knew he was smart enough that he’d probably been using me for a long time, building up trust, trying to get to this very point. I was thinking, that’s what the handcuffs were about, the fisting, the cigarette burns. And, no, it wasn’t about the sex, at least not entirely. In the space of about a minute, I had a hundred sudden revelations like that, and one of those was the fact that I couldn’t see Jimmy anymore. This was the end of it, one way or the other. I knew I couldn’t do what he’d asked.

He saw it in my face, I think. His body made a move like he wanted to argue his point some more, but he didn’t say anything. He stood up from the bed, went to the living room. Shadows on the bedroom wall told me he was getting dressed, packing the gun away. He opened the door and left.

 

This is the part where I’m supposed to tell how I saw Jimmy sometime later, showing off his gunshot wound to all the boys at Koessler’s. How he’d gained their respect because he’d finally proved that he was a real man. He’d be telling a story about how he got it. Maybe he’d finally get the story straight this time. Moral: Jimmy Dragon had learned his lesson. Or maybe the guys would laugh at him because he’d given three different versions. Moral: people never change.

Or then there’s the tender ending: I tell how he came back to me after he’d found somebody to give him that shoulder wound, and how he couldn’t make it to the hospital, and he was full of regrets about trying to be a show-off, and he died right there in my apartment, in my arms, with me giving him whatever absolution I could. And then I cried or whatever, washing away his sins with my tears. Moral: everybody needs forgiveness, redemption, love.

But that’s not what happened.

Long story short, I never heard from Jimmy again. He left like he had in high school. I never heard his name mentioned. The guys at Koessler’s forgot him right away. I thought about him sometimes, mostly at the beginning, right after he’d gone. I wondered if he’d accomplished whatever it was he wanted to accomplish. I doubted it. From time to time, after that, something would remind me, and I’d stop and think about him. I’d be reading in the paper that some Tibetan monk was making a once-in-a-lifetime visit to our city, and I’d think,
Where’s Jimmy
? Or I’d hear about a farming accident, where somebody got an arm cut off by a threshing machine, and there it would be, the thought:
Whatever happened to that guy I used to know? Right, that one with the tattoo?

But every now and then, late at night, when I’m alone and lonely, it all comes back. Every bit of it. And sometimes I feel like writing it all down, trying to dredge up every detail before this memory blurs into something else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I met Asa at a volleyball game on a beach in Newport, Oregon. The rain was crazy that day and the players were up against the rain as well as each other. I didn’t like volleyball; I liked to look at the guys. Four on each side of the net, cords of muscle in their arms and legs, clenched buttcheeks, and wet hair.

One guy served the ball and sent it into flight; for a second the ball dangled like a moon on a mobile, and then it struck the ground, and a second guy grabbed the ball, cradling it to his chest. The guy who’d served hit the ground on his stomach. When he stood, wet sand stuck to him like bruises, which he brushed off, smiling.

I’d had a few beers before hitting the beach. The cigarette I tried to light was a limp dick, so I returned the pack to my jeans pocket. Camel Lights, same as Dad. I started smoking when I was ten. I hadn’t worn a shirt to the beach; I was pretty skinny.

“You’re cold,” a voice said behind me.

“I’m fine,” I answered without looking over my shoulder.

“But you’re shaking,” the voice spoke again.

“It’s nothing.” This time I looked. If he hadn’t been cute I would have blown the guy off. He looked my age, twenty-seven, medium tall and slim but not bone-skinny. A hooded jacket framed his face. Green eyes. Lashes so thick you would have thought he wore mascara. Bangs stuck from under his hood, hair the color of raisins. I ate raisins as a kid. Sometimes they were all I ate.

“You like volleyball?”

“I like rain,” he said.

“Well, the shit likes you too.” I wiped my face with my hands. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“Arizona.”

“Shit. What are you doing here?”

“You know the aquarium?”

“Yeah, huge tourist trap.”

“I’ve got a one-year grant from school.”

“For what?”

“I study seabirds.”

“That’s weird, in a cool way,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Damon.”

“Asa.”

“You’ve also got a weird name, Asa, but it’s cool.” I shook water out of my hair. “I’ve got to get out of this shit.”

“Want to go?”

“I’ve always wanted to see Germany.” I was being a smart-ass.

Asa laughed.

“Seriously, German guys, totally scary.”

“What are you talking about, isn’t that a little World War II?”

“My dad’s German, and he’s a prick.”

We both got quiet. Waves came in, closer and closer to our feet. The guys playing volleyball had given up. The ball was abandoned on the beach, scabbed by sand. The players slapped each other on the back, and they smiled even though their game was ruined.

“My place is four blocks away,” Asa said. “It’d be nice not to hang out alone all day.”

Actually, I planned on heading back to a house where I crashed with some jerks from a bar. I thought I’d jerk off to some gay porn. Once in a while, I came across a film I’d done, and I’d stare at the screen thinking,
When did I do that?
Then I’d beat off focused on the other guy’s reaction to my cock up his ass, his mouth on my meat. How he liked me so much.

“I’ve got a warm shirt, a few beers, and a TV,” Asa said.

His offer was generous, so I figured I knew what he wanted.

 

Asa’s apartment was simple, living room, kitchen, one bedroom, and a bathroom with a tub and shower. In the living room, he had a sectional couch and a big-screen TV. Imagine watching porn on that. I’d never seen so many damned birds in my whole life. The entire place was covered with them: sketches of birds signed with Asa’s name, pictures of birds from magazines, posters of birds in flight, bird diagrams and bird skeletons—which kind of gave me the creeps. So delicate thin you could crush their bones with your bare hands.

“So why don’t you have any pet birds?” I asked.

“Don’t want to keep birds in cages.”

“But you work at the aquarium.”

“For conservation purposes, yeah.”

I sat on the couch. Asa had given me a shirt, but I hadn’t put it on. My nipples were hard. “Come here,” I said.

Asa sat beside me. “Hungry? I could make chicken with rice.”

“You eat birds?”

He laughed.

“What’s so funny?” I grabbed him by the back of his head, then kissed him. Asa pulled away. My dick was killing me. “C’mon, let’s make out.” I kissed him again. Then I grabbed his hand and put it on my crotch. “Jerk me off, then I’ll do you.” I moved my hips, pressing my cock against his hand. I was nervous around him, and so sex was how I’d decided to handle the situation. We’d get off. He’d like me. That was how it worked. I knew what he wanted.

Asa moved his hand to my stomach and then rubbed my skin there in circles. I stuck my tongue through my lips before I sucked in a breath. “That’s nice.” It was. I slid my hand over his crotch. He was hard. After a minute he pushed my hand away and then curled one of his around my hip. I waited. He scooted closer then leaned his head in the space between my neck and shoulder.

“What are you doing?” I couldn’t relax.

Asa put both his arms around me.

 

A month later, I moved in. Asa had caught on to my living situation, that I crashed with some jerks from the bar, and said, “You can’t do that. I’ll worry about you.” Sweet enough, if not slightly suspicious, but after three dates, I guess you could call them, Asa had let me jerk him off, and then he’d done me, and then I’d sucked him off one day after that, and he’d just about gone nuts while I worked on him. “Jesus…Christ… god…Damon,” and when I’d finished, proud of myself, mouth full of jizz, he’d given me this look I took for supreme lust, what else, and then he’d said something like, “I don’t want anything to happen to you,” and then I moved in here with a bag of clothes and a bunch of CDs, mostly goth, angry aggressive stuff like Sisters of Mercy and Ministry.

“This is horrible crap,” Asa said the first time I played him a CD, and I’d let my eyes bulge like
Are you crazy
? What did he listen to? Some truly sappy sick stuff: Gordon Lightfoot, Carly Simon, Jim Croce, Barry Manilow, and Carole King.

“We’re like oil and syrup,” Asa had said.

Sometimes Asa was…very abstract. Like a poet or something. I wasn’t used to it, but I stuck around because I was curious or because I was better off here than where I had been before. Anyway, we got into a routine. Asa spent his days at the aquarium, and sometimes I stayed in the apartment and cleaned it; I even tried to cook but then I burnt some oatmeal and gave up. Other days, I went to the coffee shop and smiled enough to earn tips then came back and put it all on the table for Asa, except what I kept for cigarettes. When Asa came home he took a shower and then cooked us a meal. He was probably the best cook in the world. He made stuff like Ethiopian chicken, sweet and sour shrimp, and lobster linguine. Stuff I’d never had before, and so I started to put on some weight. After dinner, Asa sat beside me on the couch and read ornithology books, which was a big word for studying birds. Asa would tell me stuff: some birds ate red meat; some birds nested the same place every year; in some birds, the guy was better looking than the girl; some birds migrated; some mated for life. Then Asa told me about holding a bird in his hand while it died.

“You don’t hear or even feel it so much as you experience a sense of leaving,” he said. Then Asa shook his head. “I can’t explain it, exactly, but the experience comforted me, maybe because it was peaceful, and I constantly worry death is violent, like all this thrashing around when in fact it’s just a flutter.”

I looked at Asa then and felt afraid. I mean, what do you say? And how do you keep the relationship at a safe detached distance when the other guy
says
something like that? Basically, I changed the subject. Luckily, a horror film was on TV, and so I pointed out a birdlike man-creature tormenting a bunch of teenaged boys on the screen.

“Why do you like movies like this?” Asa asked.

I shrugged. “Been watching them since I was a kid.”

“Your dad let you?”

I didn’t look at him now.

“Let’s talk about your dad,” Asa said.

“No. I’m not talking about my motherfucking dad. Forget it.” Then I looked at him, and Asa watched me, which made me suddenly paranoid he saw too much. “Let’s fuck,” I said as a distraction, anything to get away from the dangerous stuff like talking or getting emotional. Sex was my safety net, familiar territory, something I was good at—fucking, making people happy that way.

“C’mon,” I said. “You want to.” I lifted my shirt over my head, tossed it aside and stood before him. Asa liked to look at my body. He’d tried to sketch me once. I touched my ribs, drew circles around my nipples until they got hard. “I’m horny for you. See?” I kicked off my jeans, then my boxer shorts, and then showed him my cock, stroked it, pushed the skin up and down to work out some pre-come, and then I got a little come on my finger and ate it. “C’mon, baby. I want to fuck you.” I sounded awesome, like a porn star. “What do you say, huh, let me fuck you, yeah? I love your ass.”

Asa watched me from his chair. “You love my ass?”