The Old

Out on the porch, Lewis said, “It’s kind of nice.”

“But not as nice as you thought it would be?”

Lewis shrugged and he said, “Give me one,” as the man took out a cigarette.

“By the way, I don’t even know your name.”

“It’s Chris, and you still haven’t told me yours.”

“Lewis Dunharrow.”

“How distinguished!”

“Isn’t it though?” Lewis made a flip of his hand and gave a mock bow.

“Well, Lewis Dunharrow, I’m Chris Ashby, and I hope you like Pall Malls,”

“I spent my twenties smoking Pall Malls. I hope Erika’s fine in there.”

“Wasn’t she talking to that transvestite friend of hers?”

“I think they’re transsexuals now.”

“Well,” Chris shrugged, taking the lighter from Lewis and lighting his own cigarette. “she’s a big girl. I feel she’ll be okay for a while, and why shouldn’t you have a fun time out here?”

“Because,” Lewis said looking at the bonfire the wind blew up now and again in the porch that was walled in and lit orange by the flames, “I didn’t expect to have any sort of time. Still, I’d rather be on the other side of that wall, going out to the Lake.”

“We could do that,” Chris said, exhaling, and then he said, “I’m probably being way, way too forward.”

“I don’t really mind that,” Lewis said. “Most of the time men aren’t forward enough. I feel like half the time people don’t really want anything. All these men, they don’t want anything. Not even to get laid. No one has much of a will. You hit a guy up and ask what he’s looking for, and it used to be you pretended to be insulted if he said all he was looking for was sex. But these days he’s not even looking for sex. He’s not looking for anything. It’s as if the world is this great big yawn.

“You know what I told Erika tonight? She said she was looking for something great to happen, and I said I thought that was false hope. She said she lived her life on false hope, and I think that’s amazing. I think that’s why I love her, because no matter what, she’s hoping things will always turn out different and good and… I’m starting to think maybe that’s wonderful.”

“That’s not wonderful,” Chris differed, ashing his cigarette, and now Lewis could see the cleft in his chin.

“That’s actually kind of stupid.”

Suddenly Lewis began to laugh, to laugh so hard he coughed and Chris turned to him, grinning.

“See, I’m kind of an old crank.”

“You’re not old,” Lewis said.

“I’m old enough to be a crank,” Chris said, “and I can see you’re old enough to appreciate it.”

Lewis thought of asking how old Chris was, and then realized he didn’t really care. He looked like he might be in his twenties, but that didn’t make much since. There was something not twenties about him, and Erika came out now, her red hair highlit in the bonfire surrounded by people smoking, and Chris said, “Would you like a cigarette?”

“Oh, I gave all that up,” Erika brushed it away. “I’m trying to be healthy now. Eating right, not drinking. I feel like I spent so much of my life on pills and stuff. Do you know, the other day I ran into this man at work I’d known a long time ago…?”

“What do you do?” Chris asked.”

“I’m a tattoo artist.”

“Oh,” Chris looked at her arms and said, “Well, that makes sense.”

“Though I didn’t do my own of course. I feel like you’re not the kind of man who would want ink, but who knows, a lot of people do.”

“No,” Chris said, “it’s not really my thing. But,” he prompted, “the man at work?”

“Oh, yeah,” Erika remembered the story she’d started. “I had known him before.”

She turned from Chris to Lewis. “On my twenty second birthday I got all depressed and took a whole bottle of Xanax to kill myself and then, later that night, high as fuck, I went to this man and we had sex, and I know he wasn’t entirely right and he knew I was high and under the influence, and I’m not entirely sure if that was rape or not.”

When Lewis said nothing, Chris’s eyes narrowed and he said, “I feel like if it wasn’t totally rape it was rape a little. I feel like in this world most of us get at least a little bit raped.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Erika said.

“Say,” Chris said, stubbing his cigarette out and dodging the spark that had flown from the bonfire toward him, “I was about to get your permission for something.”

“Yes?” Erika said.

“I would like to step out with your friend, walk with him on the beach if you don’t mind? I promise I’ll get him home safe.”

“Well, now Lewis is a grown man, and you seem pretty respectable, so I guess that’s alright.”

She looked at Lewis.

“I feel like that would be pretty… I think the word is crappy… to just come here with you and head off with someone else.”

“If it was the other way around, and I drove you here and then skipped off with someone, though there’s not much of a chance of that—that would be different. But here this tall, gallant man, who doesn’t look like a serial killer, wants to go out with you, and you’ve got an EL pass and what the not, and if you’re okay with it, I definitely think you should go.”

Lewis took a breath.

“Well, then, yes,” he said.

Whenever he made big decisions, he made them quickly, and he said, “But I’m going to have to get my sandals from your purse and get out of these pointy shoes.”

“Yes,” Erika said, “and don’t forget your sweat jacket. It’s warm, but it’s just not August anymore.”

“WE HAVEN’T SAID a word to each other,” Chris noted as they walked down Lunt Avenue. On either side of them were the large brick or brownstone townhouses and apartments, and the moon was just beginning to shine through the thick cover of trees between houses and on the lawns.

“That’s kind of a good thing,” Lewis said. “Not that I don’t want to talk to you. Just that…” and then Lewis stopped talking, and he looked at the garden of flowers, white gardenias in the night, the roses dark and colorless, but with sweet fragrance rising on the other side of the black gate that was still open, and the path that led up to the door to the apartment building.

“You know,” Lewis continued after a while, “it’s nice not to have to say things just to fill the space. Not to... have to be entertaining.”

“I am most unentertaining,” Chris said. “I’m afraid I never go out of my way to be entertaining.”

“Well, that’s to your credit.”

Chris smiled down at him.

“I doubt that.”

They stood at the end of the street where it made a little cul de sac and led to the park before the beach. Both were that was nearly empty at this time of night.

“You hear about moonlight,” Chris said. “You know, you hear people say that’s a moonlit beach. But that, all that white light turning the water blue, all that water, that sky, how it looks like a polished bowl. That’s a moonlit night.”

Lewis stepped into the park, walking ahead of Chris.

“We can talk about it, or we can be a part of it.”

Chris followed him past the park benches and the swing set, and onto the sand, and as Lewis took off his shoes, and Chris took his off as well, Chris took Lewis’s hand in his, and then they started walking along the sand. Only half way toward the beach, where sand began to be wet and firm, Chris looked down at their linked hands and said, as if he’d never noticed, “Do you mind?”

“No,” Lewis said. “I don’t mind at all.”

In fact, it was just easier to walk that way, and Lewis walked into the water saying, “I’ll regret this.”

“Being wet? Because there are things far worse than that.”

“You know what I want to do?” Lewis said.”

“Not if you don’t tell me.”

“Go out on that pier. Which in the day would be fine, but in the night, all that way out from the shore, into the black water.... freaks me out a little.”

“I’ll go with you and we can be freaked out together.”

“I feel like not much freaks you out.”

“You would be surprised,” Chris said, “how much freaks me out.”

As they were walking out onto the pier, Chris said, “If I pushed you off the pier no one would know.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Lewis hit him, and Chris laughed, catching his arms around Lewis’s waist.

“That Erika would be at my house to kill me the next day when she didn’t hear back from you,” Chris said.

“She doesn’t know where you live. I don’t know where you live.”

“Maybe you’ll see it one day. I’m going to kiss you, alright?”

“Alright.”

They kissed, and it reminded Lewis of the first time he’d been kissed by another man, which was his first kiss. He’d never understood sex or love until Jeff, and that night when they had first kissed, when Lewis had placed his hands on the back of his head and felt the tongue in his mouth, when he’d pressed lips to lips, when he couldn’t get enough.

They stood overlooking the water, Christopher’s arm wrapped about Lewis’s waist as they looked over the lake, and then the concave coast with its skyscrapers twinkling in the night and above all of that city, the moon, careless.

“I suppose I should get you home, Mr. Dunharrow,” Chris said.

“You would escort me home?”

“I couldn’t think of you just getting on a train and traveling by yourself. Yeah, I’m going to take you home.”

“You don’t think you might get tired?” Lewis said. “If you go all the way home with me, I mean, you might not be able to leave till morning.”

Chris grinned and squeezed his shoulder, “I think I could handle that.”

***

They had been kissing since they’d left the beach, and just barely able to stop on the journey home while the El trained rattled over the night bound city. In the lobby and up the stairs, the two of them had stopped, Lewis pulling Chris Ashby’s face down to his. They had been making out on Lewis’s couch, and Chris said, “So what should we do?”

Four hours ago he had been in pajamas planning to go to bed early with a cup of tea, and now Lewis Dunharrow was on a sofa, in the dimmest of light, in his little living room, tangled with a long tall blond man.

He was no stranger to love, though. It was Lewis who put his hand on Chris’s thigh, and then Chris put his hand on Lewis’s and Lewis moved closer. He began to massage Chris’s thigh, and then he opened up the boy’s shorts, and started to stroke his cock through his underwear. Chris made a moan like a cat purr and leaned his beautiful head against Lewis’s shoulder, opening his mouth a little, his green eyes closing into slits. His mouth reached up for Lewis’s the same time Lewis squeezed him, and when Chris turned and thrust his tongue in Lewis’s mouth, the flat of Lewis’s hand held Chris’s balls, and they were hot and heavy in his hand.

Lewis went to his knees because he knew Chris couldn’t ask, and he pulled down his shorts and his briefs, and pulled Chris into his mouth. He was firm and heavy, large and growing larger.

“Lewis,” Chris moaned, stroking Lewis’s hair. “Lewis.”

They were both naked, moving to the bed, then on the bed, twisting together. Chris pulled Lewis’s face up. It wasn’t just head he wanted. He wanted eyes and arms and lips and tongues and kindness. He wanted to look up at Lewis in adoration and pull his face down, kiss him, press his body into this man’s

In the end he asked Lewis to fuck him, but this was easier said than done. They’d never done it before and so it was just fumbling around, but happy fumbling. Lewis was so hard and Chris had already come all over his stomach. They had stopped to relax and hold each other after this. Now Chris, in a pinch, took Vaseline and oil and rubbed it over Lewis’s swollen cock. Lewis knew just what to do. He fitted himself tightly inside of Chris who closed his eyes and moaned with Lewis’s entry. They moved together, Lewis moaning in the shock of his pleasure at every thrust. The bed shook and they laughed in their pleasure as they fucked, and then lay side by side, breathing.

Lewis thrust, his breath whistling between his teeth and then the two of them lay side by side. Now they kissed hungrily, side by side, laughing and love was there. And maybe it shouldn’t have been there so quickly, but there it was, and so Lewis opened for Chris now and lay on his back taking him in.

“Caress my ass?” Chris begged.

He didn’t have to beg. Thin as Chris looked, he was well built with healthy thighs and buttocks that longed to be stroked, caressed massaged. Lewis had already eaten him out. He thrust his finger in the boy’s ass and massaged his asshole.

“Ohhh, fuck!” Chris cried, his dick jumping when Lewis did that.

So Lewis kept doing it, rubbing his hands up and down Chris’s back, caressing his shoulders, running his hands through his hair, pulling his face down to kiss him, running his hands back down. Chris drew close to him, fitting his cock between Lewis’s thighs.

“I’m about to…” he began, his voice shallow.

“It’s okay,” Lewis said, putting his hand on Chris’s cheek.

“But I’m about to…”

“Do it.”

With a relieved groan, Chris came, and Lewis felt the load, hot and thick between his thighs. He kept pressing his dick between Lewis’s thighs until everything was spilled out, and Chris came out, the length of his cock red and wet.