Second You Sin Page 4

  Yet, in the end, through her seductive manner and sheer force of wil , Barbra took those men and she made them love her.

  That’s the power I wanted. I, too, grew up around boys and men I desired and couldn’t have. Straight boys who dazzled me with their easy athleticism, broad shoulders, and confident strength. My seventh grade science teacher, Mr. Smith, with his carrot red hair and the pale blue eyes; Adam, who played soccer and lacrosse and who cut a swath through the neighborhood girls wider than the Lincoln Tunnel; Richard from the debate team, whose fierce intel igence and prematurely deep voice made me sign up for that club despite the fact that any kind of argument gave me a stomachache.

  But at the top of my wish list was Tony Rinaldi, who lived just a few houses down the street. I sensed Tony had a thing for me, too. It was nothing I was certain of, and it wasn’t enough to embolden me to take action, but sometimes I’d see Tony looking at me in a way that seemed kind of . . . hungry.

  Take a bite, I’d think, but he never did.

  Even though I was three years younger than him, he always let me hang out with him. I was a cute kid, but short and slight, and when the other kids would tease me, Tony would run to my defense. He’d rumple my hair or pat my butt, and I’d swear that his hand lingered a second longer than it should have.

  Sometimes, we’d play-wrestle, and I felt that if I shifted just so, if I only had the nerve, I could turn the hold into an embrace.

  I was sixteen when I made my move. It was a hot summer day and we were hanging out in his room.

  Earlier, we had been swimming in the aboveground pool in his backyard, and we stil wore our bathing suits. He was lying on his back, his hands behind his head. The position made his biceps look bigger, exposed his vulnerable armpits. I could smel his sweat mixed in with the scent of the cheap sunscreen his mother bought at CVS. We’d been baking in the sun and I felt heat rising from him, like the radiant warmth of a just-fired clay pot.

  There was no seduction, no finesse. I didn’t offer to rub his back or tel him a dirty story or suggest we find some porn on the Internet—al strategies I’d previously considered.

  No, one minute he was asking me if I wanted a soda and the next I was lying on top of him, pressing my mouth to his while grinding myself against his crotch. I heard moans escape like smoke around my lips.

  I wasn’t sure if the sounds were his or mine.

  I’d spent years trying to build up the nerve to do this, but when it happened, it took no thought or courage at al . It just happened. It felt inevitable, like fate, like fal ing, like giving in to gravity.

  Soon, my hips were grinding against something hard in his shorts, something hot, and something that, at the time, seemed impossibly big and getting bigger by the second. I was on him for maybe a minute when I felt his strong arms wrap around me, flip me over, and then he was on top, humping me, holding me, making me crazy.

  He growled like a bear and threw back his head. I felt a flash of fear—was he mad at me? Did he hate me now?

  “I didn’t,” he began. “We shouldn’t . . .” But even as his words tried to murder his feelings, he humped against me, his bigger body making me feel safe and surrounded, sexy but a little scared.

  “Just this once,” I panted beneath him. I wrapped my legs around his butt and pul ed him closer, feeling wetness on my thigh where his excitement leaked on me. His eyes opened wider, and for a moment I saw he didn’t know if he was going to pul away or dive in.

  A smal shift of my pelvis and my hands slipping into the back of his bathing suit seemed to make up his mind.

  His head ducked to one of my nipples and he latched on, teaching me for the first time just how connected those brown nubs were to my crotch. It was my turn to growl, and when I did, Tony looked up at me and smiled. I knew he had never been with a guy before, but he’d had plenty of girls, and I think he was pleased to see that on this new playing field, al his old moves stil worked.

  “Please,” I said, my voice smal and weak and winded. “Please.”

  I didn’t know what I asking for, but for the next three hours I got pretty much everything he had to give.

  It was heaven.

  We had a few unbelievably hot and passionate weeks together, in which it wasn’t uncommon for us to sneak away three or four times a day for sex. It was al good until one day, after an explosive fuck that left us half dead and blissed-out in each other’s arms, Tony told me he loved me. It was the happiest moment of my life, and had you asked me right then, I would have told you we’d be together forever.

  I’d have made a lousy fortunetel er.

  Not soon after that, I felt Tony pul ing away. Two weeks later, I got an e-mail in which he told me it was over between us. We had to be “just friends.”

  If there are two more deadly words in the English language, I haven’t heard them.

  Plus, he broke up with me by e-mail, which is just wrong.

  I spent the next few years getting on with my life. I finished high school, went to col ege, started hustling, dropped out of col ege, and never entertained the possibility of fal ing in love. The closest I came was Freddy, but that affair was doomed from the start. I built wal s around my heart so high that not even Rapunzel’s prince could have scaled them.

  Tony came back into my life this summer, when he turned out to be the chief detective investigating the death of my friend, Al en Harrington. After insisting that he was married and not interested in me in “that way,” we were sleeping together again within a week.

  That was months ago and things hadn’t progressed much since. Tony loved me but didn’t know if he wanted the “lifestyle.” He was fresh off a painful divorce and didn’t think he was ready to make any commitments or major life decisions. He couldn’t imagine a future without a wife, kids, and a house in the suburbs.

  But he loved me. He did tel me that.

  As much as I sometimes wished I didn’t, I loved him, too.

  At his insistence, we had an “open relationship.”

  He told me he wasn’t sure if he could ever give up sleeping with women, and I didn’t want him to. I didn’t real y care where he stuck his dick when I didn’t need it, as long as he was safe and came back to me in the end. So to speak.

  I remember watching a documentary about a group of AIDS activists in the 1980s cal ed Act Up. I fel in love with those boys and girls. Their energy, their commitment, their Doc Martens . . . they were my heroes. I wished I’d been around to march alongside them.

  In my heart, though, I wasn’t real y a political person. I didn’t real y want to Act Up. I wanted to Settle Down. With Tony. But every time I brought it up, he acted like I was proposing we restage the Stonewal riots.

  Tony grew up in the same world I did, but he took the more conservative values a lot more seriously than I did. Hey, he became a cop, right?

  Somewhere along the way, he learned the inherent contradiction some straight people maintain to justify their fear of homosexuality: Either they hate us because we’re so different from them—

  shameless hedonists who just want to have kinky sex and take drugs—or they hate us because we dare to be like them, wanting legal unions and the right to raise children.

  Damned if we screw and damned if we marry.

  No wonder Tony was so confused.

  We saw each other as often as Tony could get together. Which is to say, not enough. Tony’s work as a homicide detective frequently cal ed him away.

  That I understood.

  There were lots of times, though, when I knew he wasn’t working but he stil couldn’t see me.

  Sometimes, he’d mumble a halfhearted excuse; more often, he’d just avoid talking to me. I assumed he had dates those nights, with women, but that was part of our deal. So I dealt.

  What else could I do?

  Besides make myself irresistible, I thought. I got to work.

  6

  Love in the Afternoon

  I got home, showered, shaved al the usual places (fac
e, chest, bal s, butt), liberal y applied a handful of Aveda Rosemary Mint Body Lotion to my skin, and rubbed some Jonathon Product Dirt Texturizing Paste into my shaggy blond hair to give it a little body and shine. Not bad. I ran my fingers through my do to loosen it up a bit, so that it would, every few minutes, fal into my eyes.

  I knew Tony liked brushing it away when it did that.

  I finished with a splash of Tom Ford for Men behind each ear, a cologne I didn’t real y love, but Tom Ford was so crazy sexy that I felt better every time I wore it.

  I threw on some low-slung 7 For Al Mankind jeans and a tight old Abercrombie T-shirt. Tony was a total nipple man and I knew he’d like the way mine poked through the thin fabric of the worn cotton.

  I also straightened up my bedroom. When Tony and I first got back together, my crazy mother was living with me after she left my father for not cheating on her (you had to be there). In one of the few ways that my mother doesn’t resemble a vampire, she didn’t need an invitation to enter my home . . . in fact, after conning the superintendent of my building into letting her in, she moved into my bedroom and displaced me to the couch.

  Now that I had the place back to myself, Tony and I were no longer consigned to the sofa, with its thin mattress and creaky springs.

  It was one of five thousand reasons I was glad my mother had reconciled with my dad.

  I kept the TV on as I got dressed, more for the company than because I was watching any particular show. The LCD was tuned to The Real Housewives of Boise when the volume shot up violently. A commercial. Don’t you hate the way they always play ads louder to get your attention? This one was particularly obnoxious.

  The soundtrack was a children’s chorus singing

  “God Bless America” over a shot of a Norman Rockwel family seated at dinner. A square-jawed dad, a pretty but medicated-looking wife, and two smiling children passed around a bowl of potatoes and chatted animatedly. Suddenly, the shot froze and the music stopped in a discordant screech. The picture of the perfect nuclear family ripped in two and a deep-voiced narrator began speaking.

  “Homosexual activists want to redefine the American family.” The shot of the “perfect family”

  was replaced by video of S and M revelers at a gay pride parade and bearded drag queens clinking martini glasses. The narrator continued. “But do we real y want our children raised in a society that encourages every kind of behavior? Or do we stil believe in the basic values of decency, morality, and faith?”

  Cut to a tal , gray-haired Midwestern-looking gentleman in a blue suit and a red tie. He had the unremarkable good looks and slightly empty expression of a Sears underwear model. Which is to say, he resembled Mitt Romney.

  “I believe in an America that tolerates everyone but that maintains its core values. Good people can get along without giving in. One woman, one man, one marriage, one family, one America. I’m Jacob Locke, and I approved this message.”

  The narrator came back on to intone, “This message was paid for by Locke for President.”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a Jacob Locke commercial, but I always felt compel ed to watch.

  With his unthreatening attractiveness, flat Plains accent and mild-mannered approach, Locke was the kind of perfectly nice Nazi I was most afraid of. While no one thought this robo-bigot had a chance at obtaining the Republican nomination, his campaign was wel financed by Evangelicals trying, at the least, to force the Republican party to the right.

  I was glad Tony wasn’t there to see the commercial. I had enough trouble getting him to commit without the help of craven politicians playing to their constituents’ basest prejudices.

  Tony arrived around six. Every time I unlocked the door to find him there, it was like opening the best Christmas present ever. He looked delicious, wearing dark blue jeans, black boots, a black turtleneck, and a black leather coat. Tony had a straight guy’s sense of style (which is to say, bad) but he had an eye for the classics. Son of a bitch probably would look good in anything, though.

  “Sorry,” I said as a greeting. “I didn’t order any incredibly handsome men today. Maybe next door?”

  Tony grinned and kissed me. “How you doing, baby?” I stood at the door just to watch his confident stride as he walked into my apartment. He plopped himself down on my sofa and patted his lap.

  “C’mere.”

  I settled in like a cat. “You smel good,” he told me.

  We kissed a little more and I felt him getting turned on.

  “Mmm,” I said, wiggling my butt. “That for me?”

  “Maybe later,” Tony said. He looked at me and narrowed his eyes. “What’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been crying,” he said tenderly. He brushed a strand of hair from my face. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s a long story,” I told him.

  “Al your stories are long, Kevvy,” he answered.

  “Smart guy. OK, you asked for it.” I told him about my day, from Wil em’s peeing on me to Randy’s accident to my trip to the hospital.

  “Poor baby,” Tony said, kissing me on the head.

  “Is Randy going to be OK?”

  “They don’t know,” I answered. “He almost died.” I wondered if I should share Freddy’s theory but decided against it. I didn’t want Tony to think I screamed “murder” every time someone around me got hurt.

  “Why didn’t you cal me?” Tony asked. “Especial y once the police got involved. I could have helped.”

  Because I don’t get that much time with you, I wanted to say, and I didn’t want to waste what little I do on this.

  “I didn’t want to bother you.”

  “It wouldn’t have been a bother,” Tony said. “Next time, cal , OK?”

  I nodded.

  “So, how do you know this Randy?” Tony asked.

  Tony’s question wasn’t as straightforward as it seemed. The first time I told him I hustled, he cal ed me a whore and left me. He later grew more accepting, but it was stil a sore topic. I was actual y surprised he was as cool with it as he was.

  As an accommodation to Tony, I promised him I wouldn’t have insertive sex with any clients. That meant they couldn’t fuck me and I couldn’t blow them.

  Actual y, this didn’t hurt my business as much you might think. Most of the clients who come to me through my booker, Mrs. Cherry, have more . . .

  elaborate fantasies.

  I knew if I told Tony the truth, that Randy and I had met when we were hired as the raunchy entertainment at a private party, it would remind Tony of what I did for a living, which I always tried to avoid.

  On the other hand, I real y don’t like to lie. Plus, with my attention deficit disorder, I always forget what stories I’ve told to whom, which leads to nothing but heartache, trust me.

  I decided to try and evade the question.

  “I met him at a party,” I said.

  “What kind of party?”

  “A bachelor party?”

  “Who got married?”

  “Two guys. You don’t know them.”

  “Two guys can’t get married.”

  “They can in some states,” I lectured. “And in some countries, too. These guys had a ceremony in Vermont but the bachelor party here.”

  “What’s a gay bachelor party like?” he asked.

  “Probably like a straight one. A lot of booze and strippers.”

  Tony pul ed me closer to his chest. “Did you like that?” Tony asked. “Were the strippers as cute as you?”

  Considering that the strippers were me and Randy, I had to answer that one careful y. “They weren’t as hot as you,” I answered, truthful y.

  Tony ran his hands over my bel y. “Flatterer. Think you’re smooth, huh?” His hands ran under my shirt and brushed my chest. “Mmm, you are smooth.”

  I moaned and rested my head on his shoulder. He ran his fingers over my nipples. I gasped.

  “You like that?” he said, his voice hus
ky. I felt him hard against me.

  “Yeah,” I whispered hotly in his ear.

  He stood up and effortlessly took me with him, carrying me into the bedroom.

  “Then you’re gonna love this,” he promised.

  If I had to choose between the sex with Tony and the cuddling afterward, it would be hard to say which was better.

  OK, there’s one of those lies I hate to tel . The sex was better. But the cuddling was real y special, too. I never felt as safe and loved as when I lay in Tony’s arms.

  In the afterglow, Tony brought up our earlier discussion. “Maybe two guys can get married,” he said, “but what’s the point? It’s not like they can have kids.”

  “Of course they can have kids,” I answered.

  Tony’s eyes widened comical y. “They can? I thought you told me you were on the pil .”

  I punched his arm. A Nerf bal hitting hard steel. “I know lots of guys who are raising kids together.”

  “OK,” Tony said. “I’m a cop in New York City. I know that. I see al kinds of families. But it’s not real y fair to the kids, is it?”

  I looked at him like he was crazy. “Are you kidding? Kids need parents who love them. What difference does it make what gender they are?

  Studies show that adoptive parents are often better in a lot of ways than parents who have kids the old-fashioned way. When two guys overcome al the obstacles and stigmas of a hostile society to raise children together, you know it’s because they real y want to. It’s not like they wound up as parents because of a drunken romp in the backseat of their car.”

  “Al right, al right.” Tony threw his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t mean to start a debate. I just think a kid needs a mother and a father, that’s al .”

  “I want to have kids someday,” I told him.

  “Yeah, right.” Tony laughed. “Mr. Party Boy is going to become Mr. Mom.”

  In the few months that we had been together, Tony had come a long way in admitting what he wanted from me. Stil , al this talk about children was too soon for him. Maybe it always would be. But it didn’t seem like a smart fight to pick now. For one thing, I needed better ammunition.