The Skin of Things

As Donovan, fully forty, stood in the shower with Brian, washing his back, turning around to let an old friend and very old lover administer to him before he left town, Brian said, “And was that your Cade who called last night?”

“He’s not my Cade, and just because he finally writes a letter doesn’t mean I belong to him.”

“Well, no one said you should. But if he isn’t your Cade, he certainly doesn’t seem to be anyone else’s. Listen.”

“Huh?”

Brian smacked Donovan’s ass, and Don turned around in the shower while the taller man, his salt and pepper hair plastered to his head, looked down at him.

“When he asks you to do something, do it. I know how you look on him.”

“And how is that?”

“The way you look on me. Only I’m going to be gone in a half hour.”

Cade thinks:You are my home, he will say. You are my home.

I am not at that age anymore where I can be fucked by a nice boy and walk away unscathed, walk away not feeling wounded when he disappears and connection that could have been is cut. I am tired of roaming. There is the road sign that says Wallington, ten miles out, and here is the key you left me in my pocket, and I will come home tonight. And maybe you will be asleep. I will not wake you. I will not even presume to come to the bed. I will stretch out on the couch and sleep. I am coming home.

(Kokobeam):I think it would be a wonderful idea if you and I got together.

(Calypso): Haha glad you think so.

(Kokobeam): I really do. Crudely put, I'd love to get on my knees for you.

(Calypso): I definitely wouldn't mind that. A little fun every now and then is definitely cool by me.

Only every now and then?

Haha I don't get out much.

A shame I believe in fun whenever possible

We'll have to arrange something What all are you into?

I'm into putting my head between your legs and making long circles with my tongue while I lick your balls and run my tongue up and down your gooch for starters.

Donovan is online with Calypso, the young and slightly hesitant artist he has been talking to for quite some time. Tonight, after a long time of talking shit and missing connections, he is finally coming over.

When Calypso arrives, he is in snug brown pants, and his well muscled arms come from a shirt that is also brown in the high moonlight. He is thin, red bearded, and handsome, blue tattoos like ivy leaves go up and down his arms. He comes into the apartment, and quietly they move about looking at Don’s art, murmuring about life until, at last, Don, also known as Kokobeam, puts his hand on the red head’s thigh. The man looks to him, and Donovan unzips his pants, and then moves to his knees and quickly begins to suck him, taking in the fleshy shaft of his cock, pressing his tongue to the tender V under the head of Calypso’s cock while the white boy moans, Don’s own head moving up and down, then around in circles while Calypso closes his eyes, grips the side of the bed, and arches his neck, staring blindly at the ceiling.

In the midst of such pleasure, neither man hears the door opening below, or quiet feet coming up, or the door to the very living room opening. Neither sees the tall traveler, home from roaming, from finding himself.

Cademon Richards will later remind himself that Don is not Penelope and he is no Odysseus. Before he sees anything, Cade hears whimpering in the dark. By the moonlight, through the open windows, he sees the white back of a man about Don’s size, sees him curled up, his buttocks flexing as he pushes and pushes, sees Don’s dark legs curled around him, sees Don’s arms reaching about the man’s waist as, mouths full, they struggle and moan and, occasionally swear. Cade’s hands slip into his shorts. He doesn’t leave. He leans against the door. As one of them groans and one of them mutters, mouth full, “Oh… fuck…”

Watching their sixty nine Cade can’t stop touching himself. At the same time as Don grapples to pull this man deeper into his mouth, Cade feels like he is the one shamed, exposed, a little jilted, still full of lust. As they both moan and stagger, and Don and Calypso’s bodies shake, Cade stops himself from making noise the surprised noise, shudders, shakes, feels his cock jumping from him like a fish, spurting into hands now slick with hot come.

Dazed and amazed by his reaction, he steps back to slowly close the door behind him, heading down the stairs to sit in his SUV, stuck to himself. He pulls off his shorts, then his underwear and wipes himself down with a bottle of water and an old tee shirt, then waits until the man leaves. Cade needs to make a better entrance. He knows this is his punishment for being gone so long, for fucking Joseph, for getting fucked by Simon before he left. For blowing a trucker in Michigan, for being totally without resolve though he is always deeply in love.

Donovan remembers being seventeen, oneevening dressing three different times. There were things he knew would just be silly to wear. He wasn’t going to wear a tie, for instance. But it was winter, and he was walking. Well, he couldn’t wear that big, ugly, puffed coat. He wished he could drive. He wished he’d called Antonia and asked her to drive him. But then he’d have to explain. Well… He’d just take the moped and wear the pea coat with the face mask. That would look hot, and keep him warm. He thought about cologne, and then thought against it. Then he thought that spraying it lightly on his clothes, on the thin checked shirt over his under shirt was a good idea.

“You got a hot date or something?” Dad popped his head in the bedroom.

“Something,” Don said with laugh. Dad didn’t push it. Don didn’t know what he would have done if he had.

Then he was off with a lightness of heart, whizzing through the old professorial houses of Colby Street, and out onto Twychenham, remembering the directions to the apartments.

There were no street names, just letters. D5 and D6, and you had to find D8-5, some nonsense like that. He’d been given very detailed directions. He whizzed around a little frustrated, and a little cold before he arrived at the newly built D9-5, and a few minutes later, on the second level, a door came open and there he was. Taller, better looking than in his pictures. Even with his glasses. His blond hair was spiked, and he had a very straight, upright bearing, like a professor in training. He was wearing a green canvas coat like English men in the moors did in those BBC movies.

“Shorterwriter?” he said.

“Zeketastic?”

Ezekiel Anders grinned.

“You wanna take my car? It’s the Land Rover over there.”

“It beats my moped.”

“All right then,” Ezekiel said, offering a nervous smile. He led Don over to the Land Rover, taking his keys out, and there was a little siren sound as he unlocked Don’s door first, and then climbed in. They sat together.

“I’ve got roommates,” Ezekiel explained.

“I know what you mean,” said Don.

Ezekiel turned around as he pulled the stick shift, and they reversed from the parking lot, swiveling out through the graduate student apartments to Mason Road.

“Okay, now, you’ll have to direct me,” Ezekiel said, “because you know this town better.”

“Just go straight down Mason,” said Don, “until you get to Arabella. It’s the second light. Then you go north. Everything is up north.”

Jerkily, the Land Rover turned around and then leapt down the road. Neither of them said anything, but Ezekiel slipped his hand into Don’s, holding it firmly.

“So,” Don said after they stopped at the light on Arabella. “We could go to a coffee shop, or dinner. Or… what would you like?”

“I think I’d like…” Ezekiel began, paying even closer attention to the road as his sweating palm gripped Don’s more firmly.

“You said something about we could get a motel room?”

Ezekiel didn’t betray any expression. His light turned green and, jerkily, they turned left, heading north.

Don placed his hand on Ezekiel’s thigh. He stole a look at him and then, looking away, let his hand go higher. Ezekiel seemed shaky and nervous. If he wasn’t lying, and he seemed not to be, then Ezekiel was ten years old than him.

“I was thinking—” Ezekiel began, and then gasped as Don’s hand went higher.

“I’d like that,” said Don. “A room.”

“You get the room from tonight until noon tomorrow,” the woman was saying.

So much of his younger sex would take place in these motel rooms with slightly older, and then increasingly younger white men.

Looking around, Don thought this had to be the most sterile Motel Six in the world.

“Yes,” said Ezekiel, handing her his credit card. “This is my brother-in-law, Giles. We’ve been out on the road all night. From Georgia.”

The woman nodded as she handed him a receipt to sign.

“Ice is over there, and there’s a continental breakfast served in the morning, but I-HOP is right down the street. With a Dennys and Burger King.”

“Oh, thanks, we don’t know this town at all…” Ezekiel lied.

From the corner of his eyes Don observed him. They were the same height, though Ezekiel might have been a little thinner, and he was very pale. His hair was reddish gold, Don saw that now, and he had very long hands. His eyes were a nice blue through his brass rimmed spectacles. Under his coat he was wearing a fawn blazer over a white shirt along with some dark pants. He didn’t have a tie on though. This Ezekiel was one of those hot dorks you saw in the movies who, once they took off their glasses, would be beautiful. But he talked too much. The secret to a good lie was to say as little as possible, and the secret to a good liar was to be one only when necessary.

On their way to the room, going up the jangling metal steps, they caught hands tentatively. Then Ezekiel unlocked the door, and opened it with a grunt. Don came in and shut it behind him.

Ezekiel stood there face to face with Don. He cupped the boy’s face in his hands worshipfully.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said.

Don’s face turned hot.

Ezekiel sat on one of the twin beds like someone studying something rare. He looked very much like a PhD candidate right now. He stroked his chin.

“We should take this slow,” Ezekiel was murmuring, as if to himself. “I want to be so gentle with you.”

“I don’t want you to,” Don heard himself saying. “I don’t want you to be gentle at all.”