Coming Out: Elliott and Bruce

A man brought our pizza to the table. “Can I get you anything else?” he asked.

I looked up at him. “No, I think I have everything I need right here.” I smiled at him and then at Elliott. I took a sip of my drink. “You get the first slice.”

“But my half is on your side,” he said.

“Maybe you should be sitting on this side, then.” I bit my lower lip.

“Or we could just turn the pizza,” he laughed.

I reached up and turned it. “Yeah, that was easier.”

He took a piece; I took a piece. I started to think about what he’d just told me. Should I tell him what happened to me? I felt that I could trust him. I took another bite. “My mom and dad yelled a lot when I was a kid. They yelled at each other and then they’d sit on the couch holding hands and kissing. I always thought they were mad at me. I never knew the right thing to say.” I started to feel a little nervous; although, I had no reason to.

“So, things were rough for you growing up?” he asked.

“My parents never beat me or anything like that, and I never went hungry, and I had clean clothes. Lots of people have less.”

“I suppose so,” he nodded.

We ate the next few pieces in silence. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt safe with Elliott.

“You said that your parents took care of you physically. What about emotionally? And you don’t have to answer; I just want you to think about it. Sometimes questioning things that happened to us and coming to terms with them helps us grow in ways we don’t always realize at the time. It isn’t always about sharing things that we keep secret.”

“I don’t know. Maybe that’s part of it.” I started on my third slice. “Love comes in many forms. My parents didn’t love me in the way I would love my children. I guess that means that they didn’t love me the way I wanted to be loved. But I’ve accepted that they loved me in the way that they knew how.”

“You’ve accepted it?”

“In my head I have; isn’t that where acceptance starts?”

“What about in your heart?”

“Well, Elliott, hearts don’t think logically, do they,” I smiled. “They can agree with your brain one minute and get emotional the next minute. I’m not sure hearts can be trusted to make decisions.”

“I hope you’re not disappointed to know that my heart has made a few decisions today. One of them, my dear Bruce, is that I like you.”

“My brain has decided that you have a good heart, and it likes you, too.”

“Then we each made a friend today.”

I nodded. “When I was in middle school, I started to notice that the other guys were talking about girls all the time. I was worried that I wasn’t, so when I went for my yearly check-up, I told the doctor, and he told me that some guys are just slow developers.”

As I said this, Elliott’s face went sort of blank. He stopped chewing; he didn’t take a sip of his drink. He studied me.

“I, uh, I…” I tried to tell him the next part, but my mouth got dry. “But then I started noticing one of the guys in the class ahead of mine.” My heartbeat became louder and faster. “I started to think about him all the time. I kept wishing that he would want to spend time with me and be my friend. I wanted to tell him but I was scared to tell him. I didn’t know what to do, and then one of the guys who was kind of a friend started talking about telling one of the cheerleaders that he thought she was hot, and he said she ended up having sex with him.”

I took another sip of my drink. I felt a twinge in my hand.

“I wondered whether I should just tell him; I wondered whether I should tell my parents. I was so afraid that people would hate me if they knew. I hinted to my parents that I knew someone at school that seemed to like guys rather than girls. I was hoping they’d say something positive. One day I told my parents that I’d heard kids talking that a ninth-grader had been seen kissing another boy. My dad said, ‘It’s too bad those fags can’t be determined at birth so they can kill them before they contaminate the good kids.’

“I knew then that I couldn’t tell them the truth, but I still wanted William, that was his name; I wanted him to love me.”

I looked up at Elliott. I’d just told him I wanted another guy to love me. Should I tell him the rest? Did I tell him enough? He reached over and touched my arm. That made me want to tell him all of it. I swallowed hard and took a deep breath.

“One day at the end of lunch, William came up to me and said, ‘You need to meet me after school. You were staring at me. If you don’t meet me, I’ll tell everyone that you tried to suck my dick.’ I was terrified that he’d caught me looking, but I was worried that if he told people that lie, people would believe it, and my dad would kill me.

“I met him at his car after school. ‘Get in,’ he said, so I did. He said, ‘You’re not the first guy to look at me, you know. Most of them wanted sex with me because I’m so good at tennis and baseball. I was told it’s like girls who want to sleep with rock stars. Is that what you’re after?’

“I told him that it had nothing to do with sports. It was because he was handsome and sexy. He said something like, ‘Shit, I was hoping this would happen.’ He said he thought I was attractive, too. He told me he was always dreaming about fucking me. He said that he thought about it when he jerked off. I cannot tell you how excited I was. Then he asked if I wanted to go to his house. He told me that no one was at home.

“My dreams were coming true. I told him that I wanted it more than anything. He asked me if I would suck his dick and let him fuck me. I said, ‘Of course.’ He took me to his house and up to his bedroom. He was so nice, and once inside his room, he kissed me. My dick got really hard. We took our clothes off; he told me how handsome I was. He said he liked my body. His body was like a model. Muscles in the right places.”

Elliott nodded his understanding.

“William sat on the edge of the bed. I got on my knees, and I started to suck his dick. It got hard in my mouth, and I was so excited. He was moaning and telling me how good it felt. He pulled me off and looked into my eyes. ‘I want to fuck you, baby.’ He called me ‘baby.’ I would have robbed a bank for him. I asked him to just tell me what he wanted me to do.

“He had me lay face down on the bed, and he smeared my hole with Vaseline. He told me he’d wanted me since middle school. I was so happy. Someone loved me; someone wanted me. When he pushed his dick into me, it hurt more than I thought it would. He pushed all the way in and then stopped moving. We were still like that for a minute or two, and then he started to fuck me. It felt really good, and he moaned and told me how tight I was. He lasted several minutes, and then he came inside me. I felt it. You can’t believe how happy I was to have his cum inside me.

“He was still inside when we heard a door close. He jumped up and my ass got this empty feeling. He whispered, ‘Get dressed.’ Then he threw on some running shorts and a t-shirt. He put his fingers to his lips and slipped into the hall.

“I was dressed in a flash and was grabbing my socks when I heard his phone vibrate. I looked over at it. It said, ‘So, did you fuck him?’ I picked up the phone and read through the texts. They were from his brother. He had texted his brother about my looking at him, and his brother told him that he would only have to do a few things to get me into bed. William had done just what his brother had told him. It was all about getting to fuck me.”

I saw Elliott close his eyes and shake his head.

“I cannot believe that I just told you all that. It was so much easier than I thought it would be.”

“Do you feel a little bit better?” asked Elliott.

“Maybe. Yeah. I was worried that you’d think less of me once I told you, and you listened and you’re still talking to me.” I smiled.

“Wait. You just told me something you’ve kept hidden, and you were worried about what I would think?”

“Yeah. I want you to like me.”

“I do like you,” said Elliott.

“And I do feel better. I cannot believe I don’t feel guilty about letting that happen to me.”

“Well, it wasn’t your fault. The challenge now is what you do with that information.”

“I’m going to ask you if I can walk you home,” I said.

Elliott laughed. “I don’t live around here.”

“Then we should get started,” I replied.

“Let me get a to-go box.” He went to the counter and came back with a small box. He put the slices in.

“Elliott, where do you live?”

“Over by Thirty-fourth and Covington. It’s not very fancy.”

“Is it dry when it rains and warm when it’s cold?”

“Barely,” he laughed.

“Do you want to follow me to my place? I don’t want the evening to end yet.”

“Can’t we walk side-by-side? Or do I need to walk six-feet behind you?”

“That might make it difficult for me to hold your hand,” I said.

“Where do you live? And when’s the last bus run?”

“I’ve got a car. You won’t need to take the bus. I’m near Lemon and Jordan.”

“I’m not sure where that is.”

“Then ride home with me, we can watch a movie or something, and I can take you home later.”

Elliott smiled more broadly than he had previously. “OK.”

There wasn’t much traffic on the way to my apartment. The smell of the pizza filled the car. I was surprised because the pizza had cooled down.

“I’ve never been to this part of town.” Elliott reached over and touched my leg. “How long have you lived over here?”

“I moved here after college four years ago. I’ve been in the same apartment since then.”

“I guess you like it then.” He squeezed my leg.

“I like that.”

“Oh, fuck, sorry. I didn’t even realize I was doing that.”

He apologized, and he said he did it without thinking. It had made me feel connected.

“I guess what I mean is that I’m so comfortable with you, it just kind of happened naturally.”

I nodded as I pulled into the parking garage. I found my space and parked. I got out of the car and walked to the passenger side. Elliott was already out of the car. I walked up to him. I rubbed his arm; thanks for coming. It’s this way.” I led him to my apartment.

I put the key into the lock. “Wait,” said Elliott. I turned to face him. He leaned in and kissed me. “That felt natural, too.”

I kissed him back, and I sensed his lips parting slightly. I lifted my hands to his waist. I felt a tingling sensation down to my toes. I stepped back to see that Elliott was looking at me intensely. I wanted so badly to trust him. Would I be able to?

In the next instalment, will Bruce trust Elliott and give in to his new-found desires?