Eden

That old sex thrill ran through him when Frey heard the truck roll up to the road a little ways off, saw the red lights glare and then go out, heard the door crash, and saw the form of him, not too tall, obscured by the dark, make the low dip into the yard which was below the level of the road, screened in by a hedge, and walk the way up to the door.

     In the dark living room, Frey opened the door before the man could knock. He was, by his account, twenty eight, so barely a man, still a boy, and they were almost the same height, though this stranger was a little taller.

     :”Hi,” he said, his voice a little high and breathless.

     “Good evening,” Frey said.

     They were seeing each other, if only dimly. The young man closed the door behind him. They stood in the dark, doing nothing, and then Frey said, “Do you want anything? Like… I’ve got water…” because this seemed like manners, but Frey had no intention of giving up his beer.

     “No,” said the stranger, and his voice was still high and breathy. Frey knew at moments like this, men got afraid, maybe changed their minds, maybe thought you were afraid. The young man said, “You nervous?”

     Frey lied because he thought it would be better.

     “A little,” he said.

     “Yeah,” the young man said.

     Frey went to his knees, and unzipping the boy’s pants and yanking them down, he pulled the boy’s cock into his mouth.

     “Oh…” the boy made a murmur, and Frey began sucking him, feeling his penis, once flaccid, begin to lift, to fill his mouth, to become firm, tonguing the head of his penis and the thickness of the long shaft, feeling more and more of it. The boy lay against the door, lifting his head and moaning, and then pushing his hands to Frey’s head which he’d shaven a day ago. Frey held the boy by the hips and this stranger fucked his mouth. Grasping his dick in his hand, catching his breath, Frey said, “Do you want the bed?”

     “Yeah.”

     Frey took him by the hand, and they weaved through the short maze of the darkened house. He had already pulled the curtain over the window, blocking out the moonlight, and in the darkness of the room they feverishly undressed and came together, and now Frey understood what this man had meant. This desire, this need was easier in the dark,. He needed to kiss a man and be held by a man and hold him so close, so intensely that he might bruise him. Men were such different creatures. On the bed, they kissed and humped, moaned and sucked in every way could.

     “I want you to fuck me,” the boy said. He was asking, not demanding, and there was a tenderness and a need and a decisiveness that could only have come in the dark.

     He had already eaten him out. He had already been unable to keep his face from the tight roundness of his ass, the intimate space inside of this boy while he clung to the bed post. They had nothing like lubricant. In the dark Frey had used his saliva, spat into him before pressing his stiff penis inside of him. They had moaned together at that moment, fusing into something like one, the tightness of this boy and the stiffness of Frey. Neither of them spoke or made noise at the moment of entry, at the soft rocking together. While they fucked in the dark, only occasional breaths escaped.

     “Come inside of me,” the boy pleaded, and almost as soon as he had pled, Frey felt something loosing inside him, felt his breath go high, a high song escape his lips, his hands fly up, his whole being seized in his cock, and he flooded him. As he shot inside of him, the boy rose up, his ass clenching on Frey’s cock, pulling him in deeper, pulling every drop of seed from him. It didn’t stop, as Frey trembled, spilling, his knees buckling in the dark, he felt like he was dying, like he would never be free of this coming, of this spurting into the tight heat with which the boy held him. He had spat on his hand and reached around to stroke the boy’s thick dick so that, as Frey came, thick and slick he felt the boy’s semen on his hands, on his bed sheets, groaning, shouting, both of them unashamed of their helplessness. The two of them collapsed, exhausted and wrung out.

     For a long time, like shock victims, they did nothing but tremble, stop, tremble again and breathe. This is what sex was supposed to be, Frey thought when he could think at all, when his soul wasn’t still flying about the tilting room.. This is why men feared it even though they wanted it and needed it. This feeling of being crushed and half destroyed, this aching and this dissolving after the orgasm.

     They lay like that. Thighs and limbs sprawled together, sweaty rag dolls abandoned by come. Frey heard his companion swallowing, breathing shallowly. He heard him say, “Is it alright if I don’t leave right away?”

     “I don’t care.” Frey was still breathing heavily. “I need a cigarette, though.”

     He was about to get up when the young man said, “I’ve got Newports in my jacket.”

     Frey’s eyes had adjusted for the dark. Climbing up out of the bed the young man was medium, blond, no… redheaded, like the cashier from the shop, white and narrow, his ass soft round hills.

     The boy, white against the grey darkness promised, “I’ll be right back.”

“This is a good cigarette,” Frey said, lying on his back and blowing smoke to the ceiling while he watched the cherry glow red. He pointed it away from the boy, toward the wet paper cloth they’d put on the bed between them.

     “Why thank you, sir,” The young man said, with a little laugh.

     “It’s strong as fuck. You said Newports?”

     “Yeah. Reds.”

     Neither one of them spoke for a while, and then the redhead said, “I had to get out. I couldn’t go home. At least not right away. I couldn’t stay home. You know?”

     “I do know,” Frey said. “I know so much I got on a train and came here.”

     “Right,” the boy blew smoke out of his nose, and then Frey said, “Do you have a name. So I don’t keep calling you ‘him’ or ‘the guy’ in my head.”

     He laughed again and said, “Rob.”

     “Alright, Rob. Well then, Frey. Or you can call me whatever.”

     “Frey,” Rob nodded and ashed his cigarette. “Cool.”

     They were quiet a while, then Rob said, “What did you come here for? Or do you leave town a lot and meet guys?”

     “I… Well, if you must know, my ex committed suicide and they found his body in the river today.”

     “Oh, fuck!”

     “Not really,” Frey said.

     “What?”

     “I lie a lot,” Frey said, negligently. “What really happened is that someone I loved, still love, who I thought one day I would be with, has found someone whose one day is today, and they are getting married. I didn’t know I thought we’d be together one day until now. When I realized we wouldn’t be. Isn’t that crazy?”

     “No,” Rob said. “And to tell you the truth, your first story was better. That really sucks. I’m sorry to hear that.”

     “He wasn’t even really my boyfriend,” Frey said. “Not really.”

     “But still.”

     “Yeah,” Frey supposed. “I guess. So I just came out here to clear my head.”

     “That’s deep,” Rob said.

     “You could have killed me,” Frey said, suddenly.

     “I had thought about that,” Rob said. Then he said, taking another inhale, “Not the killing you part. I thought, ‘Here I am, going to meet this guy, and he could kill me or something.’”

     “But you came.”

     “And you invited me.”

     “What is it with us?” Frey said. “You hear about it happening. Guys who get killed, found out. They say it was a gay hate crime, but you know he was going to hook up or something and got his head chopped off. What is it?”

     “Whaddo you think it is?” Rob said.

     “You’re asking a question you can answer yourself,” said Frey.

     Rob shrugged and Frey turned on his side. “That’s too easy.”

     The cigarette glowed bright orange with Rob’s intake and then, exhaling, he said, “The need to bust a nut? You think?”

     “Nope,” Frey said. “Cause you can do that safely by yourself and lots of people do.”

     “I just needed to be with someone,” Rob said.

     “That’s it.”

     “I needed to be with someone. And I even needed… the danger. The danger of meeting another person. Sex with yourself is always… you know how it will turn out. It’s always good. But… To be with someone else. Just the whole someone else. To be touched by someone. To touch someone. That’s why we do it.”

     “Then why do they do it?”

     Frey crushed out his cigarette.

     “Who do it?” Rob said.

     “The men who kill you. Or the ones who come here, fuck, and then go to Confession or block you or hate you or never speak to you again? Or the men who talk to you online for three weeks and then stop, or decide they’re tired of you. Or any of that? The assholes. Why do they do it? Why are they assholes?”

     “Huh?”

     “While you think about it,” Frey said, rolling out of bed and standing up on his feet which hurt again from the long day, “I’ll go get some beer.”

     When he came back and sat the beer on the bed, Rob said, “Shit, and cold too!”

     He pushed his cigarettes over toward Frey in the dark, and as Frey heard the beer crack open, Rob declared, “This is turning out to be quite the night.”

     Frey had lit his next cigarette when Rob said, “Because it’s a need.”

     “Huh?”

     “You asked why. Because it’s a need. We act like it’s a want, but it’s a need. The need to be touched, to feel, to fuck, to be fucked. It’s a need. And guys don’t like needing things.”

     They drank and smoked in silence and Rob said, “Can I use your bathroom?’

     “If you can find it.”

     In the dark, Frey lay on his back and listened to Rob pissing. It was a long stream, and when it sounded like it had ended it began again, and then after the flush, the running of water. Frey went into the bathroom next, and when he came back, Rob was lying on his side. Without asking, they linked their bodies together, touching testing, dozing, at last, making love again, this time with less inhibition, this time, touching tasting, biting even, sweating, shouting out, exploding until they passed out in the night, until the room was filled with sweat and funk and man and must, until the house was filled with their shouts, their moans, their cries, until they lay in each others arms, exhausted, aching, at peace.