The Skin of Things

CADE

I am watching a video with me and Simon. We made it driving across the country. It was his idea. We were in New York, visiting his cousins, and we were on our way to his sister in California. We had been together for a few months, and it was right after Simon said, “We should do interesting things. We should push the envelope if we want to keep things fresh.”

 But this is why I loved him. We met when he was working for the mayor. This town is such a strange place. Every one is on a different level of evolution, but no one’s really very evolved. We have a gay mayor. He’s even got a husband. They had a wedding at the Episcopal church downtown during Pride Week, then waved at the town from a float. This doesn’t change the fact that when I walk into that school, kids are always calling each other gay, and you know it’s an insult, and you know they don’t know what it means. But then they’re also black and they call each other the N word, and I don’t know what that’s all about either.

 When I met Simon he was in grey dress pants and a red dress shirt, a vest, a tie. Very proper, and very proud. He was the image of a gay progressive Democrat, and we talked about a little bit of stuff, but it wasn’t until one night when I was playing with my very occasional band at the Pub that we talked again. I didn’t notice him at first. His hair was a little in his face. He was sporty looking in a v necked snug long sleeve tee and black jeans and he said, finally, “We should go out together.”

 The first time we went out he introduced me to single malt Scotch and said he knew he was a dork for that and for smoking a pipe. We were in the Oyster Bar next door to the Pub, where there were pipes and hookahs, and I took out my cigarettes.

 Simon said, “I guess gay marriage is great, but does it seem like we’re just trying to be like them? Trying to catch up with the straights? I don’t want to catch up with anyone, and I think they’re behind, not us. We ought to have something more.”

 “Like what?”

 “I don’t know,” he said, “But not like what already is.”

And so I am sitting here, watching this video, and in the video there is a camera already set up so that I am watching Simon fucking me. I am lying on my back on the bed, and he is kneeling, licking his lips, his blond hair falling into his face, and a small handheld camera in his hand as he films the close up of my face. He offers for me to film him.

 “No,” I say, “you just do it.”

 To me this is the beginning of our relationship becoming what it became. But it is not the first tape. The first film was when he set up a camera while we were driving across Ohio, late into the night. He starts sucking my dick, and he was good at it. He was amazing. I’m surprised when, driving, I’m about to come. Later I watch it. His face sweating as he crams my dick down his mouth, my voice sounding panicked as I say, “I’m about to come. I’m about to come.” His cheeks bulging, his mouth moving, my own penis, looking like someone else’s, spewing a geyser of come, his mouth coming down on it again, lifting to watch another geyser as I hear someone who is me moaning. And then he moves away, opens the window, and spits and, in the night, my semen spews across the back window like so much snot or bird shit. At the time I felt drained, and like I’d had the best blowjob of my life. Looking at it now, I’m not entirely sure how I feel. I would be lying to say I felt completely happy, but I’d really be lying to say I felt bad.

“If you meet anyone,” Simon said, “and you want him, you should have him.”

 “You want to do that?”

 “Yeah,” Simon said. “I think we should do what we want. Push all the envelopes. Sex parties. Threesomes. Meeting other couples. I want to be free.”

 And then Simon said, “I want to be free with you.”

 After that we are in an open relationship, which essentially means we have to use condoms all the time. We set up the rules. No, we don’t have to tell each other if it just happened or talk about it. We can assume it happened if one of us comes home late, but we don’t really have to say anything. Simon comes home late all the time, but then he always did. I feel like its all a lot of energy. I mean, I don’t want to sound lazy, but the whole reason you get a boyfriend is so you don’t have to spend every night on Grindr looking for someone else to screw. Four weeks after Simon has made the announcement that we are in an open relationship, and he comes home very much later, I finally get up, go to the Wal Mart parking lot and get blown by someone. Again, it’s one of those things where I would be lying to say I felt good or particularly liberated for doing it, but I’d also be lying to say, in the dark, in that parking lot, with that guy down on his knees for me, I wasn’t relieved and didn’t enjoy the release.