The City of Rossford

FIVE

EDUCATION

“I DON’T WANT TO GO to the bedroom,” Chad told him when they were in the middle of it, frenzied and hot and kissing each other. “I want us to be right here. Like remember a long, long time ago? I had come back from Christmas break, and we were new, and you were so into me you had me on the table. I want it like that.”

Bryant was already caught up in it, and he hadn’t felt breathless like this in a long time. He hadn’t felt the need to say to hell with the music playing, or let’s not turn off the lights. He hadn’t felt bad and wicked and wild in so long, and they were already half naked.

“Take off my clothes,” he breathed while Chad embraced him from behind. “Take em off and kiss me when you do it.”

It was all hot and all like it once was, and the lights of the tree blinked large in their side vision, the music a clumsy counter rhythm as Chad led him to bureau, pressing himself against him, feeling the warmth of his body, the heat of his perfect bottom, the smell of him, the iron smell of his breath, and the fierceness of him as Bryant turned around and kissed Chad’s mouth savagely.

“Right here?” Bryant said, planting his hands on the bureau.

So it happened right there, Chad’s face in Bryant’s hair, his hips tight on his lover’s, Bryant gasped at the pain of Chad full in him, pulling him in as he closed his eyes and he felt himself harden at the hardness. He reached behind and felt the firmness of Chad’s ass, the softness of its light hairs. He ran his hands up Chad’s back, planted his hands on the bureau. Chad’s hands came down on his, Chad’s arms were linked with his, their bodies pressed together, fusing tighter.

“Oh, my God!” Bryant gasped.

“It feels so good.”

Chad didn’t say anything. He just moved inside of him, he just filled him with that dull sweet ache and Bryant reached behind him to hold Chad firmly to him. Chad’s fingers came to his mouth, and Bryant sucked on them. He moved with his own rhythm, causing Chad to gasp, to shudder, to be taken over by something from the hot inside of him.

Neither one of them said anything. They just moved like that. They just moved like that against the wall until with shock and surprise they exploded.

“We haven’t done something like that in so long,” Chad said when they lay side by side in bed. “I think I actually forgot how good it feels when we’re together.”

“Its not like we don’t make love,” Bryant said.

“But not like that.”

“No,” Bryant agreed, still throbbing, still feeling Chad in him. “Not like that.”

“Why don’t we?” Chad turned over on his side.

“Whaddo you mean?”

“I mean I’m afraid we’re turning into that old gay couple people make fun of. We sit around in our nice place, listen to good music and drink wine with our pinkies turned up.”

Bryant chuckled.

“I’m not even being funny. We’re turning into Chad and Bryant.”

Bryant sat up and looked at him.

“We are Chad and Bryant.”

Chad sighed and turned around.

“That’s not what I mean.”

Bryant opened his mouth, and then he closed it and put his hand on Chad’s shoulder.

“I do know what you mean,” Bryant confessed before saying: “Just… tell me the truth?”

Chad raised an eyebrow. And then he raised himself up.

“Do you think I’m old and boring?”

“No!” Chad said. “I think we, you and me run the chance of being old and boring. I think I’m old and boring. I am constantly boring myself. And…”

Bryant waited for him to finish.

“When I went to college for three years I just fantasized about you, and then when we finally started everything was so exciting.”

“Everything was terrifying,” Bryant said. “That was a terrifying time for me.”

“Yeah, but you went through it. We… You say we make love. And we do. We eat soufflé and then we make love and, oh, that’s nice, dear. It’s so refined. But we used to… We used to fuck, Bry. We used to do all sorts of crazy shit. I used to give you head in your office while students walked by and now that I can give you head anytime I want to… I don’t. We don’t. We don’t do anything exciting.”

Bryant didn’t say anything. He wanted Chad to get it all out.

“I told Sean we should think about buying a house so that we’d be more settled.”

Bryant chuckled painfully.

“What?” Chad said.

“Chad, honey, that’s the most boring thing you’ve said all night.”

HOW IT HAD ALL BEGUN was Noah had come to the county children’s center to help Kirk Stanley who volunteered there much of the time.

“These kids have seen more pain than you and I will see in a lifetime,” Kirk had said.

Noah just looked at him.

“They taught you that line when you came here,” Noah said. “They taught it so well you forgot they taught it to you and now you think you made it up.”

Kirk didn’t answer, but the fact was Noah had a hard time believing any of these kids had experienced the pain he had. Maybe something close, but he knew all about pain. Which is what he said.

“Then you’ll be especially good for them,” Kirk told him. “The truth is I feel inadequate half the time, dealing with these kids.”

Because of his smallness, because he reminded Noah so much of the little boy in Rummelsville who had been abused, Noah pointed to the kid off in the corner.

“That’s Chay,” Kirk said. “He doesn’t really come out of his shell.”

“Well,” Noah said, bucking up courage that was a little artificial. “We’ll see about that.”

He didn’t talk to him. He thought how he would never have talked to a grown up when he was that age. Chay’s inwardness, Chay’s silence made all the sense in the world. Noah just took a little chair on the other side of the room. What he counted on was that he still looked like a child. All the things he’d done, that had been done to him, had not aged him. James said he still looked like a little boy, and in his jeans and tee shirt, his hair uncut, Noah hoped it was still true. He used to hate looking like a child. Being in the business had taught him this faux boyishness was an asset, there was something visceral, something that turned men on about seeing a boy getting fucked in his ass. Noah steered away from that. Right now he didn’t want to think how his babyface was really something that had fed into the same perversion that had landed him in so many places he didn’t like to remember.

On his second trip to the center, Chay began peering at Noah, and then hiding his face, and Noah pretended to ignore him.

Kirk said, when he was leaving, “Chay just might not be social.”

“He just needs time,” Noah said. “I’ve got time.”

It was nearly a month of this, Chay turning and stealing glimpses of the boy-man nearly as solitary and small as himself, before Noah made to drop an orange that rolled in Chay’s direction.

The boy started, and you could see in his face the battle. He looked at the orange for a long time before picking it up, and then he held it a while before he stole a glance at Noah. He got up, crossed the room and gave it to Noah.

“Thank you,” Noah said to him in a voice that was shy and young and quiet.

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m Noah,” Noah said.

The boy said, “I’m Chay.”

And then after that they were friends and Chay began to tell Noah everything and Noah began to tell Chay an abridged version of everything.

“There were men who hit me.”

“There were men who hit me too, Chay.”

“My mom used drugs and now she’s gone. But I think one day she’ll be alright.”

“I was like that too. And now I’m alright. Mostly cause people loved me.”

“I still love my mom.”

“She loves you too. Even if she forgot it. Even if she can’t show it.”

“Sometimes I get scared and I can’t sleep.”

“I know. I get scared too.”

Chay had never seen James. James heard about the boy all the time, and he was certain with a certainty Noah was always amazed at, that this thing belonged to Noah and Noah had to handle drawing the boy out by himself. What James worked on was the practical end of things, being able to take a child home and then, eventually, filing papers for adoption. He didn’t share any of this with Noah. One weekend they finally brought him home and Chay met someone as even handed and parently as Noah was like a sibling. There was no way to think of James as anything but like a parent. There was none of the little boy in him like there was in Noah. There was, instead, the feeling of someone very much in control, someone who would make everything alright. And that was why, in the end, they had adopted him.

When Chay was twelve and long a part of their family, Noah went to check his e-mail on Chay’s computer and found him looking at gay porn.

“And how do you feel about that?” James said, very businesslike.

Noah swatted him.

“What?”

“Don’t do that! I hate when you talk that way and I can’t figure out what you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking…” James said, “I guess that means he’s one of us after all.”

Noah chuckled, and then he put his hand to his mouth, distressed again.

“I’m thinking all sorts of things,” Noah muttered. “Most of them don’t make any sense. I mean…. It’s what I did for years, but I don’t want my kid looking at that. But… I mean, it’s sort of natural.”

“Noah,” James said. “Can I tell you something?”

“Do I want to hear this?”

“I dunno,” James shrugged.

“I remember seeing your face on Guy’s site. Before I found you again. I clicked on because I didn’t really believe it was you. But then I knew it was. Because you always used your real name.

“Now, for days and days I thought… I can’t look at this. I can’t. It’s Noah. And I thought about looking at free clips. But then I just thought… Fuck it. I paid the money and I watched you—”

“What?” Noah’s face had been going red, and his palms sweating. Now he was completely red.

“I watched and I… had never seen you that way. I was confused. I think I was a little angry, but basically I was just so hot for you. I couldn’t deny that. I just stayed hot for you. Until I had to get up and find you.”

“That…” Noah began. “Is the most… embarrassing story I’ve ever heard.”

“No,” James almost whispered. “My point is… It’s not just something perverts watch. It’s pretty natural, actually. The boy has all these questions and curiosities.”

At last, Noah said, “I’m going to have to tell him about me, aren’t I?”

“About you, about Paul, about Casey. About us for that matter. About sex. Everything. I mean, we both will. But, really, Noah, no one is better equipped to tell a young gay son about sex than you.”