The problem with Savannah was she didn’t deceive herself. She never said she was going to do a thing unless she did, or unless there was a good chance that she might do it. As wonderful as the idea of “going back to school” was, and she could afford it, she remembered what most of her friends did not. That they had been in no way academic and for them school had been nothing but a chore.
So Savannah chose to read a lot instead.
She had quit her job and was working at her aunt’s boutique, spending money out of her account. She’d thought of moving into her own house, but instead moved into the carriage house behind her parents. She lived in their wearing the hell out of her housecoat, drinking wine and reading whatever took her fancy. One day she very well might go back to school, but for now, it was the library she was in love with.
She had started wearing her glasses again, black square framed spectacles, and taken to wearing men’s clothing, clothes which wouldn’t any men including Adam, who things were currently slow with. She’d been busy attracting bad men for the first part of her life. Now she wore baggy jeans, fat woman sweaters, a thick scarf around her neck because summer was slow in coming. She didn’t have her hairstyle beyond the regular process, it was back in a ponytail like those black girls that got brought up around white people and didn’t know how to maintain their shit. She had left go. She had reduced. She did not give a fuck.
So when there was a hand that caught her book bag, she jumped.
She spun around and saw, to her surprise, looking down at her with a bright smile, a tall thin man with blondish brown hair, skin not quite as dark as hers, gray eyes and a five o’clock shadow.
“I need you sexy again,” he told her. Things had been going so… dully for them.
“I need you sexy by seven,” Adam Bannerjee said, “And I’ll be sexy for you, and we’ll have a long talk about…”
“Sexiness.”
“Oh, that too. But mostly about everything.”
Savannah thought a moment. “Everything… is a good topic,” she decided.
Almost as soon as it was over there was that pulling away, like Silly Putty. Sully was right back inside of himself, and was going deeper and deeper inside, pulled away. Having gotten what he wanted, the desire slaked he felt in a hurry to leave.
But he couldn’t leave. That was rude. There were a lot of things Sullivan Reardon could handle about himself, but rudeness was not one of them. So when it was over he lay there just a little bit, to be decent, and then crawled out of the bed and began to get dressed again. The sun was still up because the days were lengthening now. He’d get home for a bit. After it was over he always felt funny. He didn’t want to be around his friends, and he didn’t want to be alone. The only other option was here, but that wasn’t a very good choice either.
“It could be better if you let it,” Justin Reily said, sitting up in bed, cocking his head on his fist.
Sully, who was buttoning his jeans and had reached for his tee shirt looked at Justin.
“You don’t let go,” Justin told him. “Not till the end. If you let go it could be better. If you weren’t so guilty and angry all the time.”
“I’m not...” Sully didn’t even finish the sentence as he pulled his tee shirt on.
“Was it Chris Powers? Was he your first? Do you think about him?”
“No,” Sully said, becoming irritated, wanting to leave Justin more and more.
“No he wasn’t your first, or no you don’t think about him?”
“No, I don’t want to talk about this with you.”
“Why? Not talk about it with a fag like me?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Why can’t you admit that you are a fag like me?”
Sully’s jaw hardened, he said, “I am not like you.”
“You are like me. You came to that pool room wanting to see me again and again. You didn’t stop me that first time. Look at me.”
Justin knew what he looked like, didn’t he? Justin crawled out of his bed and sat there naked, his legs open. His sex crawled out of the black hair between his thighs, his thighs like faun’s thighs, brown with the growth of black hair running down them. He was slight and small and perfect. Why didn’t Sully like him? Why was Sully getting hard looking at him?
“Why do you have to be so… depressing?” Justin said. “Why can’t this just be fun? I’m not the love of your life. Why do I have to be?”
Sully’s mouth was dry.
“We just did this, and you want to do it again?” Sully said.
“And you don’t? The problem with you is you don’t know who you are. I think you think that there’s some sort of point system, or that you get to be bad for just one hour a day, or just once a day and then you move on with the rest of it. Or that your friends have to know everything about you, or approve everything you do.
“Me, I don’t have that many friends and they know just what I am. Why can’t you just let go? Are you going to get some kind of reward for just getting it once, and you only want to be sucked off. You don’t even want to let go. There’s so much and you don’t want to do it, you haven’t even done it.”
“How do you know I haven’t done it.”
“Chris Powers is gone. He’s not here. It doesn’t matter what you did with him, but I envy you. God knows I’d like to do some shit to him. When I realized he was bi—”
“Change the subject,” Sully snapped.
Justin shrugged and smiled coyly.
“The bottom line is, there’s more we could do. And you’re just getting pissed off and frustrated not letting yourself do it.”
Sully didn’t say anything. This was true. He’d just walk out of here feeling proud, and there was nothing to feel proud about, thinking he’d had some form of dignity, but he didn’t. He’d just be frustrated He did think about all the other things they could do. He was always checking off his thoughts. He was always pushing Chris out of them. Chris had come to him and Sully had put him away. He was always putting out of his head the idea that he and Chris could be doing these things. But Chris’s love hurt more than the game he and Justin played. Why didn’t he go wild with Justin? Justin was inviting it. Justin would be gone in a few months. Justin’s family was gone right now.
“Or are you afraid of God?” Justin said.
“No.”
“Do you think God’s going to punish you?”
“I don’t even believe in God.”
“Then what’s holding you back? I do believe in God and he’s not holding me back.”
Sully sighed. His heart was thumping. It was pounding against his rib cage like that first time, and he began to unbuckle his jeans, but Justin said no.
Justin pointed to his crotch. His penis was rising up, thick, bobbing, and turgid from the black cloud of hair.
“You never did this,” he said. “Not to me. Why don’t we start here? Why don’t you find out how good chocolate bars taste?”
The white angel on Sully’s right side told him how insulted he should be. But the devil was sitting under his belly and Sully knew the devil was right this time.
“I’m getting undressed anyway,” Sully told him, and pulled off his clothing quickly. When he was naked he crawled on his knees a few feet to Justin, who sat on the bed waiting.
What Sully hadn’t been ready for was how he would feel. No matter what he chose to do, he knew there was a scripted set of emotions he was supposed to have, and their actual presence or absence in the wrong place was as shocking as anything else.
In all his previous contacts with Justin there had always been someone else in the room, and the someone else had been unwelcome. Balliol, Chris, God, his mother, himself. Sullivan Reardon looking at Sullivan Reardon saying, “Oh, my God, how could you let someone do that to you?”
But this time whoever was there, and people couldn’t stop coming into the bedroom, ghost, phantoms, strange fantasies, Sully ether ignored them or roped them in. He couldn’t believe how good a dick could taste, and then he realized that he’d done this to Chris several times, but that was just between him and Chris, in the middle of their long nights in a deep relationship. This wasn’t a deep relationship. But he couldn’t stop pulling Justin in. He couldn’t stop tasting him, his balls, rubbing his face in the moist hair between his legs, tasting his thighs. Justin guiding him all over. He tasted Justin’s ass, rubbed his face along the cheeks then up and down his legs, kissed his belly sucked on his nipples till Justin’s cried out, made the other young man’s hands clasp and unclasp in his hair, sucked Justin’s throat, felt Justin’s hands on his torso, seizing up, opening felt them on his ass, scratching his back as Sully gathered him up in a ball and set to fucking him. He kissed Justin’s throat again and again as Justin kissed his. He sucked on Justin’s mouth the way Justin sucked on his. They were in a slow twisting bind, in a dance, rocking silently on the bed. Then Sully was sucking him off again, slowly until he felt all of Justin’s body tense, Justin spill in his mouth. Justin slick and hot in his mouth. Sully, involuntarily, coming, spurting, he didn’t know where to or how far.
They slept, abandoned in a tangle of limbs, unafraid of each other’s bodies, of the scents of flesh and skin. The day turned to night, and they awoke slowly, Sullivan on his back while Justin positioned himself on top of him, took Sully, for the first time, into his ass, pumping on him, making Sully gasp, push back, gasp the bed sheets, moan, black out, come. During the whole process pictures of Chris came back, not the perfect football player in the red and white uniform, not the Chris pushing him out of his house all frantic, not even the Chris on his bicycle, looking into his window before riding away graduation night. But Chris slack jawed and full eyed, Chris moaning, the Chris that he had sex with. It was easier when love and desire mixed together in the dark with that one person you had that unique relationship with. You didn’t call things anything, you just gave in. Giving into love and lust were the same thing. He and Chris had been parts of each other. to Sully that was the sacred thing. He could do everything but let Justin in. But we wanted it. He’d wanted it for a long while, and Justin taking him in so greedily made Sully get up. Sully put Justin on his back. Just wasn’t used to that. It made him nervous Justin liked being fucked better than fucking. His dis-ease made Sully laugh at the same time it made him desperate.
Sully put him on his back, and took him in gently. At first he forgot it was Justin. He wanted it to be Chris. He closed his eyes and put his hands on Justin’s chest. He took him in. He made him hit that spot. Sully rode him and heard Justin whimpering under him.
When he opened his eyes it was Justin. Justin was beautiful. It was a miracle. For the first time he could love him. Maybe there were different types of love. He didn’t have to pretend this was Chris Powers. Justin was plenty beautiful, plenty wonderful where he didn’t have to pretend he was someone else. Since the early part of the ear he’d wanted this, and so he took it. He took it again and again until Justin came, and then until Sully spasmed and his hands flew up from Justin’s chest. He nearly flew off of him. He was coming violently. He didn’t know where he was shooting. He was flying. He had let out a tortured gasp.
They were panting together side by side in the bed. This deep thrumming comfort was coming all over Sully, pulsing from his groin all over his body, making him feel good. He imagined it pulsing into Justin. He pressed his body against Justin’s who pressed his body back to him. Maybe this was something like love.
“No one,” Justin began. “No one...” he tried to start over again, but he just kept panting, and licking his lips in the dark. “It never happened to me before...”
Sully didn’t say anything. Justin’s fingers linked in his damp hair. From deep inside of him the goodness still throbbed. Most men didn’t believe they could be touched there, didn’t know how good it felt to be touched there. It throbbed on. Sully shuddered.
“See how could that was?” Justin’s voice was still a weak whisper. Justin turned to him.
Sully nodded, but said nothing.
“So is it on or off between us?” Justin asked.
“It’s on,” Sully said. “Definitely on.”
He thought awhile. He didn’t want to break the moment, but they might as well clear this up.
“Only, let me come to you. Don’t come to me. And… Let me call you, all right? I’m not you. This isn’t my life, totally. Not yet. I need time.”
Justin didn’t smile, but only because he was too tired and, strangely, too satisfied to smile.
He just caressed Sully’s arm and said, “Agreed.”
When it was over, he didn’t know where to go. Mom wouldn’t be worried about him, so he didn’t have to be home anytime soon. It wasn’t like earlier in the day when he didn’t want to be anywhere or around anyone. He couldn’t believe how he felt, walking down Burrow Street, the last of the light still in the sky, the warmth of the June day still in the June evening. Sully swung his arms in the air. He was supposed to feel bad. All his life, the way he’d been brought up, there had been nothing to prepare him for what he’d just spent the afternoon doing, or to prepare him for the fact that he didn’t feel horrible about himself. He kept waiting for the feeling to come. Maybe it would when he was around his friends, but he didn’t want to be around them at the—
No, that wasn’t true. All of a sudden he wanted to be around Tommy. He couldn’t tell Tommy about this. He didn’t think Tommy would tear him down. He didn’t think anyone would tear him down, but there was something happy in Tommy. Tommy knew what joy felt like. Maybe getting saved was like...
Indulging in promiscuous gay sex?
Shut up! a part of Sully shouted back at himself.
For a moment, he stood still on Burrow.
“Well, there’s the truth,” he murmured.
Everything did have a price. The price of this thing was not to dwell on it too much.
He didn’t know that Tommy would be home or not, but it was a good chance that he was, and he lived on Dowager, which was close to Justin’s home on the South End. Maybe Tommy could even give him a ride back so that Sully didn’t have to take a bus.
It was only a few blocks south, on the other side of the overpass, but as soon as you went by Bellamy Street, under the overpass, things went down hill. Monclova Strip grew wider and cars rushed back and forth. On either side were motels and long trailer homes. Old complexes. It wasn’t a ghetto. Not quite, and it was even entirely safe, but Sully was aware that he wouldn’t want to wander here too often.
Why am I here now?
It was getting a little chilly and Sully wondered why he’d been in such a rush to see Tommy. Why had that seemed like a good idea? He was nowhere near his house and only vaguely sure of which bus to catch to return.
Tommy lived at Monclova Terrace, Sully remembered that and he knew exactly which house, and when he turned into the street he was relieved. It wasn’t one of those trashy typical trailer parks. It had an asphalt street and everything, the trailers were painted and rooted to the ground just like real houses and all of their porch lights were on. Kids were out playing. He was relieved. It was safe here. There was a little tilted trailer, pink and white, light coming through the curtains of a bay window at the long end, 23478, Tommy’s house, he was sure. Yes, there was his truck, parked on the gravel, the light from the neighbors shining on it.
Right before he went to it, something told him not to. He didn’t know what. Maybe it was nerves. Well, yes, but why be nervous of Tommy? Because you don’t show up at people’s doors at this time of night. It hadn’t seemed like a crazy idea before.
There was a roar and a squeal of wheels and Sully turned to see a bus rolling up Monclova. There wouldn’t be another one for a half hour. Maybe an hour. Maybe not again at this hour in this part of town. There was really nothing for it but to knock on the door.
“Who the f—” a voice started, and then the voice shouted. “Ouch!”
“Have some manners!” a woman cried out. “Hold on! Hold on!”
The voice didn’t sound like Tommy’s, that first voice. Maybe Tommy’s was the house next door. What the hell was he doing here?
The door opened and Sully had to pick up his jaw before it fell out. This woman, in a frowzy negligee that must have been amazing at one point in time, couldn’t have anything to do with Tommy. In one hand she held a Dixie cup filled to the brim and her breasts were about to fall out of her dress. Her reddish hair was piled up on her head, but falling out of its binding, and in the background Sully could smell something. He... didn’t know what it was. It was burning.
“Can I help you?” the woman said brightly, but it was like she was having a hard time speaking English, like she usually spoke something else.
“I—” Sully began. “Is Tommy here? Is this Tommy Dwyer’s...?”
“Tommy!” the woman bellowed. “Tommy! It’s one of your friends!”
She looked back at Sully and chuckled.
“It don’t look like Mason!”
Then she laughed and opening the screen door for Sully said, “My, Mason, how you’ve changed!”
“I’m not Mason,” Sully said unnecessarily. “I’m Sullivan.”
The room smelled vaguely of mildew and to Sully’s left, against the wall was a large console television, the volume turned down under a picture of a blue-eyed Jesus. Tommy came out, his eyes wide at the same time Sully saw a tall skinny boy, or man, maybe a few years older than Tommy, bare chested and tattooed who was smoking, yes, that was the smell a joint, and there was a girl with dirty hair beside him rolling another one.
Tommy didn’t say anything. He bit his lip. He looked down at the other young man and the girl. At his mother. This must have been his mother.
“Well, introduce us to your friend,” the other young man said. He stuck out his hand, “I’m Philip.”
Sully pressed on a smile, stuck out his hand and said, “Hello, Philip.”
“He’s got some manners,” Philip said approvingly. “He’s got fuckin’ manners. All your friends do, Thomas. You never have ‘em over to the house.”
The girl who swung on Philip’s sinewy shoulder and said, “I bet little Tommy’s ashamed.”
Tommy opened his mouth, but from beyond the door way where Tommy had come, where most of the house, which was a shotgun trailer after all, must have been, came someone new, with a large stomach and a hairy chest, and he looked at Sully and then at Tommy and Tommy said, “This is my friend, Sullivan.”
The man grunted and swatted Tommy’s mother on her ass. He pulled her back into the hall.
“Good night all,” she laughed. “Good night.”
“Get your ass back in this bedroom and let me do some damage!” the man shouted, and Tommy looked sharply at Sullivan and said, “Let’s go out on the porch.”
Sully felt so incredibly stupid.
They sat on the porch steps side by side saying nothing and then suddenly, they could hear, “
“Oh, God! Oh, shit! Shit! Shit! Philip!”
Sully turned around for just a brief second. He wished that Tommy wasn’t his friend so that he could just sit here and watch. Sure in the shit, Philip was fucking this chick on his sofa and, presumably, Tommy’s mother was getting fucked by the big fat buy in the back of the house.
Instead of looking, Sully pretended he wasn’t concerned and said, “Why don’t we get in your truck and talk?”
Tommy nodded and when they had, Sully said, “I’m sorry, Tommy. I came because… I just wanted to see you. I should have called or something. I didn’t mean to...”
He stopped. Sully didn’t know what else to say. At least he didn’t know what else to say that could beat around the bush.