“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.” ― Rumi
Naked and clean
I summon him to our bedroom
to roughly, lovingly fuck me.
Aaron points out that I never call it “making love”.
He’s right of course,
but he’s wrong at the same time.
Fucking is better.
Fucking doesn’t pretend or lie or hurt.
Of course this wasn’t always true…
02 Michael
03 Jeff
Chapters listed out of order,
like an extremely gay Quentin Tarantino movie.
My cousin Jeff was the first person to make love to me; that’s how I remember it. Perhaps that’s a beautiful lie, but it felt like the truth then and it still feels that way now. I’d been fucked many times before by my cousin Michael; with him it was almost every weekend for something like a decade…but in the shadow of religion, a republican president and a “gay cancer”, our activity was both eager and desperate…and then quickly denied: a game with no winners.
We usually went to great lengths to not be discovered, yet there were select occasions of great daring and risk. On one occasion we spent a night with my family, he and I under a blanket on the living room couch, our hands gripping a penis, not our own. I know why I did that, but why did he? Still…it never felt real. Even our friendship felt manufactured and maybe it was as it seemed quickly forgotten.
In the beginning, we were thrown together by circumstance…and then everything fell into place with no need for explanation. That part of our pairing up was as natural as could be. We knew we wanted to play and we did. And we knew by listening to what others said that this was a secret, so we didn’t tell. We didn’t talk about what we wanted; it was just understood that we did. We played together naked, in the woods, or in a cornfield, in a hayloft or inside our uncle’s camper equipment… The bitter cold of Michigan winter couldn’t prevent us or conquer our instinctual lust… We just moved deeper and huddled together for warmth as we shed our clothing. His breath was fire on my skin. I remember his scalding cock in my mouth while icy air burnt me… And having just penetrated me…the taste of him overrode everything else.
But then something would happen. A sermon at York. An obscure news report on GRID. The sighting of a gay neighbor who I knew on a primal level was the same as me, clearly suffering from the whispered blight that even then reminded me of Poe’s “Red Death”. I would look into this neighbor’s face and I believed I was seeing my own future demise. Most people didn’t know how it was transmitted…you were gay so you got sick. And I knew I was gay. For me it was an identity. For me, I knew early on that I’d rather be who I was and be damned, than live a lie and be saved. For me, gay was what I was. For Michael it was merely an activity that he could call off anytime one of these deterrents revealed themselves to us. And he did call it off. He called it off forever. Many times.
Our lust was stubborn and would return and so our natural attraction morphed into a game. First there was a kind of role playing. We’d play “Lord of the Jungle” in the woods, beyond a field, behind his house: Tarzan never had it so good. He mock raped me dozens of times. He was a monster and I was a very satisfied victim. There were other encounters with lurid set pieces. Our childhood play dates were decorated with impromptu bondage gear. Willow trees were shackles. The shaded forests became our stage, with props from junk yards or stolen from our family homes. We were barely out of diapers and already we were porn stars; if someone had filmed us they would have been arrested. It was like we were acting out a scene in a movie, which invariably led to sex – only if it was a scene from a movie…if it was a game…then somehow the sex didn’t count and we were not gay…and we were both immune to disease & sheltered from damnation. Despite how crazy that sounds, it allowed us to continue our activity. Until something else frightened him and we couldn’t play that game anymore. Then it was Truth or Dare. Then it was pull a piece of paper out of this hat and do what it says – and the majority of those paper instructions were as far from innocent as we could make them. For years after this I thought this constant need to find a reason that would let us have what we wanted was a flaw of his, but I see now, writing this, that we were just children that knew what we wanted while the world around us did everything it could to try to stop us. It was the world that fucked us up while we strove to find pleasure in each other’s company. Still…he seemed content with the lies that allowed us this time, while I resented them more and more.
Random details and facts weave in and out of my mind.
We never ejaculated together, Michael and I, which seems odd in retrospect. Sucking dick and a series of penetrations was enough for us…until the last time, but that was much later. Really, for much of it we were too young and too uneducated to know what we were doing. We just closed our eyes and felt our way.
Michael told me he saw the movie “Lucas” in school. Clearly aroused, he excitedly told me “they talked about it.” So much excitement over the mere mention of dick. The first time I saw the film I jerked off, more excited by Michael’s excitement than the actual movie.
We never used the word penis. Dicks were what we had and craved. Never cocks, pricks or one eyed trouser snakes. We knew the word fucked but that seemed too forbidden; humping is what we called it. We never rimmed (though I craved it) and we never kissed, which oddly, I never wanted from him. We never humped face to face and I didn’t even know it was possible yet, though when we discovered 69 it seemed like we’d found heaven.
Looking back on it now, we were kinkier then in our innocence than anytime later in life when I knew what I was doing. Exploration was commonplace with no guilt or shame. Water Sports were common. Enemas were a laugh and joke. We attempted sounding with thorns. And though we didn’t ejaculate together…indeed I wouldn’t ejaculate for several more years, I’d argue that orgasms were definitely had.
Michael wanted to bring others into our game. Other boys. We fumbled once or twice with inviting friends of ours but I always resisted the idea and was happy when such invitations failed. I sometimes wonder what these men now remember of these sordid failed attempts at seduction. And I never played with anyone else until Jeff. I swam naked with several other guys but I was never that interested in touching them, though I did like seeing upperclassmen naked in the showers at the school pool. I had crushes on other guys, or men rather…they were almost always older than us. Some of my crushes were confusingly antagonistic. Jason, who was my best friend, never played with me, which never bothered me in the slightest, though we actually spoke about sex and masturbation (a word he introduced me to). He also spoke about his ejaculation in passing, before I’d achieved my own, which I did not disclose at the time, though I may have told him years later. I played it straight with him though I’d been taking dick for years. And he was movie star cool when I finally did come out to him years later, in 1993.
I suppose there were near misses. There was the boy I met in Kentucky, who asked me to, wept when I refused (out of an ill-timed devotion to family values and a random crush on a member of the opposite gender), but came to hug me goodbye when we left the campground. There was a boy on one of the Great Lakes. Mark seemed interested, but somehow never was. I’d wake up, naked in bed, with Mark there in my room and he’d talk to me about things as if I wasn’t exposed and throbbing.
The night with Jeff felt more natural; felt more real, and consequently, more brave. It felt like a turning point. Maybe because looking back, he had seen something in me and pursued it; something of value that Michael seemed all too quick to deny. Both were ardent horny youths, but Michael seemed to imbue our encounters with a shame that I feared would stain my sexuality forever after. Jeff didn’t have that. Jeff was good and smart, familiar yet completely mysterious, extremely attractive and advanced. He forged ahead, came back for me, in a sense of sexual brotherhood… Sharing his secrets, gently urging me on and bringing me to a new place I barely dared imagine. We were the same. Finally, I was where I was meant to be.
Jeff was the first man to cum inside of me, but really it was the kiss that changed everything. It seems like my life is defined by a series of kisses… In the end (no pun intended), though Michael fucked me more times than anyone else, he was maybe just a horny straight boy getting off with me and loathing himself for it. It was fun until I started breaking the rules and enjoying it. I would dare him to let me fuck him, and then he would dare me to let him fuck me. Apparently you’re not gay if you’re only having someone fuck you on a dare. Things changed when I openly wanted to be fucked by him. With Michael, wanting broke the rules. It’s fucked up when honesty is a deal-breaker, and our dishonesty was the rule that I broke. I said what I wanted instead of using our secret, protective code which had saved us from an angry god who hated gays and killed them in increasing numbers. But with Jeff, wanting was required and rewarded. Honesty. I craved it. Jeff, with his words and his honest desire made me hunger on a level I’d never reached before. And the way he touched me, well…
Jeff was a completely different animal.
Written by Jason Wright
August 2016
