The Skin of Things

“Oh—YES!”

Sweat dripping into his eyes, hands planted on the surface of the wooden dresser that banged against the wall, Ezekiel slammed into Don over and over again.

“Oh!” Don gasped. “Oh, God!”

His face flushed, and damp with sweat, he reached behind him, running his hand over Ezekiel’s damp head, running it down his back, pulling him in.

“Fuck me,” he whispered. “Fuck me!”

Ezekiel shook his face and growled something, fucking Don harder.

Ezekiel chanted between a gasp and a growl: “Jeees… Jesus! Jesus fuck Jesus Fuck Jesus..”

Until Ezekiel rose up on the balls of his feet and, with a shout, came.

“That’s not like me at all,” Ezekiel said when they lay side by side in bed later.

After they had fucked, after they had made love, and gotten off, and spent themselves and were exhausted, Don lay beside him and said:

“It’s not me either.”

“No, I’m not just saying that.” Ezekiel seemed to be mildly irritated, or at least confused. “I’m so cautious. I’m so… I take things slowly. God… I go to church. Only, I don’t know since we’ve started talking, it started with talking, and then when you said you wouldn’t mind going to bed with me. I… I’ve been so fucking horny for so long. It’s been a long time since I was with someone. It’s just like… I didn’t have any control.”

Don just lay there listening to him.

“And then,” Ezekiel continued, “You’re just so fucking hot. You really are, you’re so beautiful. Guys must fawn all over you all the time, and you didn’t hold anything back. It was too much.”

Don was red.

“You’re making me feel sexy again.”

With the first hint of a sly grin Ezekiel lay back in bed and said, “Well, you are sexy. All the time.”

“Is any gay guy sexy all the time?” Don said, leaning up over him. “Because half the time I just feel like an awkward loser none of the right people are looking at.”

Ezekiel laughed lightly, and his gaze turned inward.

“I know what you mean. I… I just really was lonely. You know? Not just horny. And I was looking forward to getting to know you and everything. And now maybe we’ve fucked it up.”

“Why?”

“Because of this.”

“God,” Don said, lying on his back, “we’re not straight, you know? It’s not the same. It can’t be the same. We’re…. It’s not that many of us. It’s no one to show us how to do it, or what’s right. Or what’s wrong. I mean, I planned to do a little something. I wanted to have a little sex. I didn’t plan on like… Everything we did, but…” Don put his hands up in the air like he was groping for the right word.

Ezekiel said, “Everyday of my life I am so fucking responsible. I am. I’m the good son. I was the chief altar boy at Mass. I’m always the person I’m supposed to be. But I have needs. Apparently more than I thought I did.”

Don grinned, nodding his head.

Don turned to him. “Why can’t we be friends? Why can’t we be whatever we wanted to be? Why… If you’re good, and I’m good and you’re lonely and upstanding and I’m lonely and upstanding, maybe we needed this. I think you did. You felt like you did. I needed it to. And we didn’t hurt anybody.”

“When did you know?” Ezekiel said.

“Hum?”

“That you were different?”

“Gay?”

“Yeah. But, that’s what it is really. You’re different. You don’t fit in.”

“Don’t you always know? Don’t you know at five, or six? Not the sex thing? But the different thing. Certainly. And then I have a cousin, and he has a boyfriend.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Don said. “It’s not that uncommon. They’re in their thirties, but they’re into each other like teenagers, and it made me kinda curious and…”

“Horny?”

“Yeah,” said Don. “So I knew. Other guys would talk about girls. But I knew.”

“The first time I was with a guy,” Ezekiel began, “I guess he was gay. He said he was straight but, I guess he must have been gay too, and he asked me if… I’d do stuff with him. I just did it. I don’t want to go into it right now. But… I mean whenever he asked I’d just do stuff to him, or he would do stuff to me. And it wasn’t really abuse. I don’t guess. He didn’t force me. But, I always felt like shit when it was over. And I’m tired of feeling like shit every time I get finished messing with a guy. I want it to be… My choice.”

“And this time?” Don said.

Ezekiel said, “This time it feels just right.”

Cade had sat in the car, waiting for Calypso to leave. As he left, Cade thought how attractive he was, how he would have fucked him and was a little surprised that the two of them had stopped at mutual blowjobs. After Calypso’s car had pulled off, Cade debated going in, but there was no place else to go. Except Simon’s, and that was the opposite of everything he wanted to do.

He drove to Taco Bell and back, and ended up in Don’s apartment, the two of them sitting on the porch before each other with nachos between them.

Donovan asks himself if he believes Cade has been sleeping alone all this summer. He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t really care. Those first few weeks when he was in love with Cade, his love for this man ruined his chances of getting laid anywhere else. And then there came the time when he and Cade were having furious sex, and after Cade left to find himself, Don decided he was too old to be a pining virgin. Things happened. That was the best way to put it. But when Brian came, that old love that was such a good love, he was primed. The truth was, far from good love sating you, it only made you want more. Even a letter from Cade saying he was coming home could not keep Don from contacting Calypso.

“Right now,” Cade states, “I want us to sort of just rediscover what it was to be friends. See if we can live that way.”

Part of Donovan Shorter wonders if Cade can smell the sex in this house, if Cade knows he was naked with Calypso only an hour ago.

What Donovan says, though, is, “That’s a good idea.”

END OF PART ONE

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