What It's Like

I don’t know what to do when he sits and watches me cook like that. Does he have any idea how much it unnerves me? Does he think this beer is going to help? Does he think he’s going to get into my pants with this shit? I didn’t think there would be any problem moving in here, thought he was just some guy that I made friends with at work and he had a spare room and I had nowhere to stay and I come home last week and he’s got some guy across my fucking couch, his head all bobbing up and down and not a reaction, not one pause or anything when I came in. He had to hear me. I’ve got a million fucking keys. The guy saw me. But then he just closed his eyes again. So things have been a little weird around the apartment, yeah. Just a little weird.

I look at the cucumber I bought. I mean how can I even touch that thing while he’s looking at me?

“Eric, what’s the problem?” he asks.

I don’t answer him. It should be completely obvious what my problem is.

“Eric, what’s the problem?” he repeats.

The problem, I discover, is that I can’t look at him anymore. I want to turn around and yell at him, but I can’t. I hold the cucumber up, hoping that his little mind can get from that to what I’m referring to.

“What’s wrong with the cucumber?” he asks.

I wave it around a little more, then in a stabbing motion, finally, in a move forgotten since the twelfth grade, pumped it into the back of my fist with the index finger out.

“Oh! We didn’t do that on your couch, man.”

“No!” I finally pipe up. “Why didn’t you tell me you were gay before you let me move in here?”

“You didn’t know I was gay?”

“Why would I?”

“Everyone else thinks it’s obvious.”

I finish chopping the red pepper that I’d roasted over the open flame on the stove, sure that it was going to slip from the tongs and he’d watch me bend over for it, and set out the tortillas.

“Fuck everyone else! How the fuck would I know? You think I look for that kind of thing?”

He laughs and I’m ready to smother his face in the tortilla.

“Eric.”

“What?”

“No one thinks you’re gay, alright?”

“’Cause I’m not.”

“I know. So shut up about it.”

“Everybody in the world’s gonna think I am now though.”

“No they’re not.”

“I like women, alright? I might bring one over here sometime and they’re gonna take one look at you and they’re gonna think I like dick.”

“Did you ever hear the saying about protesting too much?”

Why am I cooking for him? I put the slices of mozzarella carefully over the peppers and start chopping the cilantro.

“Eric,” he continues, “if you keep telling me how not gay you are again and again I’m going to start thinking you might be.”

“I’m not.”

“Stop telling me that.”

“But I’m not.”

“Alright, well since you keep bringing it up, why aren’t you gay?”

I sprinkle the cilantro evenly over the cheese and get to the clove of garlic.

“Why aren’t you straight?” I ask, figuring I’ve got him there.

“Because I like cock. I like the look of it. I like men’s bodies, strong backs, straight shoulders. I like their asses in the right pair of pants and out of them. I like to make them come, and I like the taste of it. I like-“

“That’s enough! Jesus, you’re making me sick.” He is making me sick. I’m a little dizzy, swaying over the garlic, afraid to use the knife.

“That guy last week, Eric, he wanted to taste his own come in my mouth so I didn’t swallow it. I swished around in my mouth a little and then let it slide off of my tongue into his. He-“

“Cut it out, Stephenson, I’m gonna throw up!”

I’ve put the knife down because I feel like I can’t control my hands. The smell of the cheese comes through the garlic and it’s menacing, drugging.

“He blew bubbles in it before he swallowed it. Then I turned him over and drilled him hard. Oh yeah, I lied. We did fuck on your couch.”

I close my eyes because the room is turning a little yellow-green and a vision of that night and Stephenson on my couch appears, the guy he was with under him while I was in the kitchen, shaky hands, doing the dishes.

“Eric, you can look at me, you know.”

“Stop talking.”

“Turn around and look at me and I will. I still don’t believe you didn’t know.”

I turn around and fuck up immediately. I look at his pants before I look at his face. Why did I do that?

“There, I’m looking at you. This is me looking at you and telling you that I’m going to move out this weekend.”

“You’ve got a hard on.”

And I do. I know it. He gets up and walks over to me. I’m thinking about where I would put my hands on a guy and then try to get that thought out. I can’t walk away. I can barely stand here, leaning against the counter, my hands wrapped around it to keep me steady. He’s coming at me, that ridiculous bowl haircut that I’ve been making fun of for weeks. He’s coming at me, the hands that put mail in my in-box are reaching out for my cock. He’s coming at me, the head that was bobbing over some strangers thighs is right in my face. The thought of that scene skips over the nausea for the first time and hits me straight where it really meant to go, a hot wave over my body. He touches me in the middle of it, and I fall on the floor.

“You want to know what it looks like, Eric?” he says. I have no capacity to answer. He stands straighter and undoes his cargo shorts. They drop. He’s got a bulge where I still expect a simple V shape. That’s his dick in there. I imagine what it tastes like before I can stop it. I lay my head back on the floor so I can’t look anymore. He simply moves forward, over me, his ankles on either side of my chest. He pulls his underwear down below his balls, a dark blue pair of boxed briefs that make his thighs look like a gladiator’s. It’s out, over me, straight and hard in his hand. Enormous. Undeniably beautiful.

“What do you think?” I don’t answer. He steps off to the side and lets the underwear drop altogether, kicking it toward my face. “Here’s what it feels like.” I’m petrified, but he makes it easy for me. He goes to his knees and unzips my pants and pulls them off with, admittedly, very little help on my part. He looks at my underwear and smiles. “Tighty-whities,” he says. “Straight boy.” I can take a lot, have taken a lot, but something about him making fun of my underwear pisses me off on a deep level. I scramble away from him and stand up. He’s still got his hands hooked in my underwear, though, and he yanks on them. Then there is his mouth, warm, alive, full of ecstasy and evil. I let him. He stops.

“It feels like that,” he says, “but there’s more.”

There is cold then, a firm cold thing between my thighs. I’m so confused I forget to stop him when he spreads my legs. The firm cold thing is between my asscheeks.

“What is that?” I manage to put together.

He shows me the cucumber and takes the cooking spray from behind me. He sprays it and, smiling more than I think I’ve ever seen him smile, slides it through the back of his fist, the index finger sticking out. I make a move to get out, but he stops me with the flat of his hand simply on my stomach just below my navel. The cold, now slippery, cucumber is slipped between my asscheeks again. It twists at the entrance. I can feel every part of it, sweet, cunning, thoroughly jarring and authoritative. His lips slip over my cock again as he makes a push from behind. I can try to avoid it, but it would only be to enter his mouth deeper. I give up all power. I let him have me, let him teach me what I’ve always wanted to know.

“Sweet Jesus,” I say.

The cucumber is plunged further in, a steely invader from another life. I’m impaled on it. He can twist me and move me with it now, like I’ve got a handle. He does, forces me to grind in his mouth. Then he begins to pump it and I’m useless, Jello for bones, a sack of nerves where a man once was. I feel all of it, each flick of his tongue another pressure bomb, each push of the cucumber another grounding, painful swell. It’s there then, unstoppable and whiplash-fast, an orgasm of heights I’d never imagined, a can of pleasure syrup bursting all over me. I’m pulling his hair and screaming for all my life over him, my legs only holding me up because he’s pressed into them.

He stands up and shows me my come on his tongue. He closes his mouth and gives me an offering look. I’m confused and still somewhere outside of these four dimensions so I look at him quizzically. He shrugs his shoulders and visibly swallows.

“That’s what it’s like,” he says, and leaves me in the kitchen to rub my face until I can find the strength to pull my pants and underwear back up. I look at the knife and the garlic and decide that I’m not hungry anymore.