The Old

“That was a wonderful concert,” Alease declared.

“We need a night away from the kids every once in a while at least,” her husband said, his eyes not leaving the road as he squeezed her hand.

“Looks like we’ve still got the magic, Mr. Goodson.”

He smiled at his wife and kissed her quickly.

“Did you ever doubt it?”

That night the traffic lights on the rainy streets made red and green glowing patterns on the asphalt. Jack Goodson was driving home with his wife from the Aragon, and he stopped to let the man in the parka cross the street. As the man was crossing, suddenly he fell on his back.

“Oh, my God,” Alease murmured.

As the man trembled on the ground, Jack got out of the car and cried, “Alease, call 911! I’ll see what I can do.”

Alease nodded as her husband stepped out into the rain while the lights of the SUV flowed yellow on the street mixing with traffic lights, and other drivers slowed their vehicles to move around them.

“Sir,” Jack said, “are you alright? I can’t even see your face. Say, we’re going to—”

Jack made a startled noise, and pain exploded in the back of his head as he fell in the street and the man who had collapsed, now with the metal stick in his hand, jumped up, laughing and ran across the street into the night. Through the thick pain, Jack heard his wife calling his name, but he could not get up, not just yet.

“So, we had sex,” Erika said.“And it was the best sex I’d had in a long time. Of course, it was the only sex I’d had with someone who wasn’t Jordan. And I forgot what it was like to be with a man whose body I actually like looking at. He looks so good. I mean, look at him.”

Erika took out her camera and showed a picture of a man who looked much like every other man she’d dated and said, “Isn’t he beautiful? But Vera’s dad just moved back into town and I’ve got to stop myself from fucking him because good things never happen when I’m with that man, except Vera, but aside from that—good things never happen. And that man just got out of prison anyway. So, but anyway, it’s all about Mike now.”

“Well, I’m happy for you,” Lewis said, and he almost meant it.

“When am I going to meet that man of yours? I mean, meet him again?”

“I suppose you could stay a bit. He’s going to be here soon.”

“Well. I’d like to, but Mike is saying he wants me to come over.”

“Doesn’t he live across the state line?”

“Well, it’s only an hour and a half trip.”

“You mean one way?” Lewis said neutrally.

“If you could just be there for the sex. My God, the man’s so big he kind of hurts me. Have you ever been with someone so big it hurt?”

“Yes,” Lewis said. He wondered if Erika was asking about Chris, but he didn’t like to talk about Chris and bed. Their love was personal to him and not an object of discussion. God knows there had been plenty of men before Chris who were completely up for gossip.

“He stretches me so bad I can hardly walk. The whole next day I could just feel that man in me. I mean he really damaged my pussy. But I needed to have some more. You know what he said the other night?”

“Huh?”

“He growled, ‘This cock is yours!’ I mean he was like, ‘This cock is yers!” And oh my God it made me shiver. I let that man fuck me sideways.”

She drifted off on a reverie and then, returning to herself, said, “And the shadows on the wall of our doggystyle! I’ve never been able to see that, but just being able to see the reflection of yourself. Oh, my God, and the way he makes it clap when he’s… ”

Erika crossed her legs.

“I want to be a good friend and stay, but I don’t know if I can. I need to be with that man again.”

Lewis hated the way some gay men talked about sex as if it just weren’t very important. As if it was a low thing. He wondered, if Chris didn’t stay here every night, what would he do to be with him? But then, being with Chris was a lot more than the sex, he told himself. No, the sex was a significant part of it, and wouldn’t Chris think it was funny when he repeated this story to him later?

“I don’t begrudge you,” Lewis said. “I think you ought to go. What you’re in is new, and you deserve it.”

“Thank you so much,” Erika was forking around the last of the Chinese food and she said, “I’m not going to eat the rest of this. Do you just want to keep it?”

“Thanks. Yeah.”

“Can I use your bathroom before I go?”

“Absolutely. Toilet paper’s in the closet across from the door.”

While Erika got up, Lewis wondered if he’d gotten fifty words out, or if he trusted fifty words to come out. There was so much on his mind, so much to say, and it wasn’t that he didn’t wish to tell Erika, just that it took far too long to process it and express it. She was so here, there and everywhere and now the toilet was flushing, and she was coming back in, and she kissed him and said, “Are you going to walk me out, friend?”

“Of course I am.”

On their way out Erika said, “Mike says he wants to build me a log cabin in the woods. He told me that after we had sex last night and were all curled up in his bed, and he is a construction worker. I love a man who can build. He’s thinking our kids should meet, and that could be real nice too.”

Privately, Lewis thought that Mike should build himself an apartment and get out of his grandmother’s house before talking about building a log cabin, but he kept this to himself. He walked Erika to the car and returned, going down the long hall and past the former ballroom to the elevator, then going back up the five stories and to his apartment, through the main room and into the kitchen where he flung back his head and screamed.

“Oh, hey!” Chris was opening the refrigerator and taking out coffee creamer. He cocked his head.

“Did I scare you?”

“Did you come through the back door?”

“No,” Chris said, “I actually came in through the window.”

Chris said it so matter of factly that Lewis realized it wasn’t a joke, and he said, “You’re like a bat.”

Chris shook his head, pouring them cups of coffee.

“That bat business is a myth. I just climbed up the walls.”

“Like Spider Man.”

“Yeah!” Chris snapped his fingers.

“If you can’t see why that’s scary—”

“It shouldn’t be scary to you cause you’re my boyfriend,” Chris gave him his coffee. “However, Erika was here and I was like, shit. So I waited for her to leave and then climbed in. She sure does talk a lot.”

“She does,” Lewis said, then, “And how long were you just hanging outside on the wall?”

Chris shrugged. “I dunno. Twenty minutes or so. I really wanted to shout, ‘Lewis! I’m here.’”

“You could have called. Or do you need both hands to hang on?”

“I’ve never tried to make a call and hang on to a wall,” Chris said, sitting down across from him. They were both in their spectacles and Chris said, “Ey?”

“Yeah?”

“I feel like I’m not small.”

“No, you’re six’ two.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

Lewis raised a mildly irritated eyebrow and then said, “Oh! No, you’re not small at all. You’re… more than adequate.”

Chris smiled like the Cheshire Cat and Lewis said, “Now what?”

“Well, when she was going on about Mike I thought… I just feel like you could have said that I was—”

“Really? You’re a grown vampire and you were hanging off of my wall eavesdropping—”

“I wasn’t eavesdropping!”

“You were practically hanging from the eaves. It’s the very definition of eavesdropping.”

“Well, I see your—”

“Hoping I’d tell my best friend about how big your penis is?”

“Well,” Chris squirmed. “A little.”

Lewis cleared his throat and sipped his coffee.

“I don’t like talking about you that way. This Mike or whoever he is, is just some moron who’s going to be gone in a couple of weeks. You… well, I wouldn’t talk about you that way. What we say in bed is no one’s business. If I didn’t love you it would be something different, but I do, so there.”

“I’m just being a goon.” Chris said, putting his coffee down and rounding the table to kiss Lewis on the cheek.

“I haven’t been someone’s beau in a long time.”

“Holy Little House on the Prairie, did you just say beau?”

“That’s what it is, right?” Chris raised an eyebrow.

“I forget how old you are until you start talking.”

“Fuck,” Chris said.

“Huh?”

“Fuck Fuck Fuck. Do I sound old now?”

“Now you just sound silly. Besides, that’s not even a new word.”

“Everyone thinks it is.”

“That’s because everyone thinks they just discovered sex. Say, how would you feel about Erika and her daughter coming to dinner tomorrow night with my uncle?”

Chris’s eyes opened and he gave an obviously fake smile. “Sure, I think that would be—”

“See, I can tell jokes too.”

“You’re a cruel man.”

“Besides, it’s likely you’ll never see Erika again.”

Chris raised an eyebrow.

“That sounds ominous.”

“It’s just the way she is. She comes into my life and then disappears. More and more frequently, the way some friends do. It’s more than likely I won’t see her again for at least half a year.”

While Chris contemplated this, there was a knock at the door, and Lewis murmured, “Who the fuck can that be at this time of night?”

But he went to answer it anyway.

A woman was at the door with a fevered child and she said, “He’s not waking up, and before you ask, I can’t take him to the hospital.”

“Bring him in here,” Lewis said, nodding to the bed. “Place him there. I’ll be back.”