Eden

The first time he came to Javon was when his father Jason came to visit and gave him a hundred dollars, then left. He had been used to Jason being like that all of his life, but suddenly his heart cracked. His mother was dead. He had never known her, and his father had no time for him, not really. And he had cried till his eyes were red and his face was hot. He didn’t want Frey to see him like this. He didn’t want to feel ungrateful for Frey’s love. He had washed his face in cold water and gone upstairs to Javon’s room.

“What is it, DJ?” Javon had said, sitting up.

At the time, DJ was fifteem and Javon was sixteen. DJ had wanted to say all of these things to him, Instead he had come into the room and shut the door behind him

“DJ?” Javon had said, his voice uncertain, “are you alright? Are you okay?”

DJ had stood there for a long time, still staring, before he said, “He doesn’t love me.”

Javon was about to say, “Who?” but he knew it was Jason and Javon said, “You should leave that motherfucker alone. You know he’s ridiculous, and you know that Uncle Zay loves you. You know that.”

“You love me.”

“Of course I love you. I wouldn’t have you standing here in my room looking crazy if I didn’t love you.”

As if he is too hot, as if his clothing is too much, DJ struggles out of his clothes and stands there naked.

“What the hell, DJ?” Javon says. “What are you…?”

DJ climbs onto the bed with him. Javon doesn’t tell him not to. Suddenly, DJ kisses him, and Javon doesn’t fight it. He opens his mouth to DJ’s, to his tongue, to the urgent press of his lips. To his hands. He lets DJ pull up his tee shirt, and Javon moans a little, struggling out of his shorts. They’ve never discussed this and probably won’t discuss it again.

“Is the door locked?”

“Yes,” DJ says almost as if Javon is stupid. He says it desperately. He says, kissing him hard, “Nobody’s home.”

Javon feels like bees are buzzing in him. He feels light, like he’s about to float away. He doesn’t feel like this is strange, but he also doesn’t feel like he’d expected this either. He didn’t imagine this when he woke up this morning. He didn’t imagine lying hurriedly on his back, or DJ kneeling over him. Even five minutes ago he didn’t think of spit and thick phlegm and his cock head in DJ’s hand and DJ kneeling down over him. He didn’t think of the shock and the tightness and the change on both of their faces, the strange tightness and heat, the look of pain on DJ’s face as he fitted Javon inside of him, as he began to ride him in the close heat of the little upstairs bedroom of Isaiah Frey’s house. He is pleased to be mounted, to give himself ot DJ, to let DJ work out something on top of him, grinding down and grinding down, pleased to be taken and shaken. But in the end he must have his moment too, for if it’s only DJ’s moment, if it’s only one sided, it’s a kind of rape. If all of this is predictable, and it’s only DJ riding him, then it isn’t quite sex. With a grunt he turns him over, pressing him against the bed, pressing him so that DJ’s knees are past his head, so that sweat is dripping down both of them, and Javon’s nostrils are filled with the smell of ass and armpit and teenage boy cologne and funk, and he is filled with his own desperate lust, his own grinding and pumping and pumping, stifled groans and curses, oh fuck oh fuck, oh shit, panicked oh jesus, the fiery heat mounting like the rising mercury in a thermometer, the explosion, the expression of relief like a screaming kettle and the shout from his own mouth while he erupts inside of DJ, while he feels himself tilt and turn dizzily, pumping out nut and nut and nut, collapsing into DJ’s arms, passing in and out of a consciousness neither of them returns to until the sun is lower and more golden in the sky, and the room is filled with funk and shadow, and they quietly unfold limbs, separate damp flesh, lay side by side, and contemplate showering and changing into fresh clothes.

In a way it never stopped being like that, something between shock and surprise, being taken out of himself into something he wasn’t entirely sure about. But then, Javon supposed, this was sex. There was a thrill in never quite knowing if it was right or wrong. Sex belonged to another world. Even at three in the afternoon it belonged to the two o’clock in the morning world, and there was small wonder why so many people were afraid of it. In fucking, you weren’t the you other people knew.

More than that, there was the moment when he found himself doing things he wouldn’t normally do, when the next day he would wonder what kind of person he was. And on those next days he was disconcerted. He was something that wasn’t quite ashamed, but certainly not proud. And then Javon thought, well who needs to be proud? Who needs to be certain if they’re good or bad? Often he didn’t know what he was. When he and DJ had woken up the other morning, and it was barely morning, just a lighter dark blue in the night sky, and they were naked in the back of the SUV, and the sounds of the breakers on the beach could be heard, he asked himself, had they really done what they had done out on that beach? But surely they had. Here they were, even if they hadn’t discussed it. And then, after what they had done, those two guys had walked away, just as surely as he and DJ had walked up to them.

And now here they were again, and here Javon was, his face to the carpet, while this nervous and at first angry man fucked him into the floor, while he felt him moving in him like a piston, felt him at first enraged, and realized the rage wasn’t against him, but against so many things, and Javon had turned around, and the same way he had done DJ years back, now he left it be done to him. Now he realized he wasn’t being done to at all, his knees nearly around his head, he pulled Pat into him, and pushed his hands into Pats thick, smooth hair. He held him more than a mother ever held a child, held all of him, let him work out all of his need and come to him again and again until shuddering, Pat came, came all over his stomach, came so hard slickness was on Javon’s chin, on his neck, on the place between his breastbone, trickling down the valley between his pecs.

Making love is a tame word. It covers up fucking. There’s nothing wrong with fucking. But there are two types of it. Three really. There is the one that is simple masturbation, where a man will lift your legs and turn you over and do whatever, just as if you are a blow up doll and he is trying to find the best way to unload in you. There is no you. No blow up doll was ever a you. This is masturbation.

Then the other two, both made of the same phrase, “Take me.” One is the angry demand, the battering into, with the silent, “You will.” The forced, “Take me. Take me.”

The last is the request, the need, the please. The please take me, take me, take me. Take this longing. Take this nakedness. Take this naked body. Take my dick. Take my nut. Take the me that no one else can see. Take me at my weakest. Take me…

Whenever Javon fucks he feels this way, thinks he owes this to whomever he’s fucking. At the age of nineteen he knows some people like all three types of fucking, some people only know the first two.

The third is the only one he ever has time for.

The third is Pat lying half conscious in his arms.

While Pat is fucking him, Javon sees beyond Pat’s head to DJ and Pat’s friend, Rob’s brother. That night in the hotel they made love in the half light, and very often they make love, but how could he possibly see it? Now he can see it, sex from the outside. See the lamplight and the sweat glistening on the roundness of young biceps, the quad muscles, his buttocks, that sexy muscle at his hip. His eyes are closed, his mouth is half open. DJ’s head is turned to the ceiling, his brown hair sticks up. Beads of sweat are on his forehead and drip down his face. His hands are on that guy’s chest, Rob’s brother, with the curly red hair, whose eyes are looking up enraptured while DJ rides him, Javon understands. He knows what it’s like to be ridden by DJ. To be his horse, his lover, the pillar of fire and hard dick inside him.

But for the most part he only has room for Pat, his black eyes blinking, licking his red lips, his curly black hair damp, the look like he is falling asleep, or swimming across a channel, or climbing a mountain, breathing with purpose… fighting some battle,

Yearning

Straining….

Eyes opening, throat moaning…

Coming.

“I feel safe here, and I’m not saying I usually feel unsafe, except maybe that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Pat says.

He turns over in the large bed he shares with Javon. “I haven’t felt safe with another person in a long time.”

“What about him?”

“Josh?”

“Yes, him.”

The him is directed to the dark living room where there is just snoring happening, where there was sex on the sofa and beer drinking and now only snoring, and shitty music is quietly playing.

“But it’s different,” Pat said.

“I used to love his brother,” Pat said.

“This Rob… that my uncle’s with.”

“Yes.”

“Well…” Javon said, and that was all he said.

“I wronged him, Rob. Josh knows that, He hated me for a while, And then, well, we started doing what we do.”

“And what is that?”

“I don’t exactly know.”

And then Pat said, “And what is it you do with that DJ?”

Javon shook his head and said, “I don’t exactly know either.”

They both laughed quietly, and after a while it was Pat who said, “But it’s love, right? I mean, some type of love. It’s love, right?”

Instead of answering, Javon turned over and said, “Look, in the morning I’m leaving to find my uncle, and I’m taking that passed out fool in the living room with me. If you want to come and make your peace with Rob, that would be great.”

“I don’t know,” Pat says.

“Didn’t you say you just quit your job?” Javon says. “It’s not like you have anything else to do.”