You Came In

I was folding sweaters when you came in. I wielded the folding board like a shield around me, wanting to look at you without being seen. It didn’t work. Of course it didn’t work. There I was, all lit up under those hot lights, my thighs against a display table, just under my cock, when you came in.

It had been years, but I remembered. I remembered because we didn’t kiss. I was still straight then, or I thought maybe I could be. But I spent the day with you, ditching class. We went to the movies. We saw Austin Powers. The first one. You kept grabbing my arm every time you laughed. You laughed a lot. I laughed because you were scaring the crap out of me. I was scaring the crap out of me. I was fighting my neck, which wanted to turn and kiss you so bad it was sore.

I was about to find out if you remembered, faster than I wanted to. If I’d had any time at all, I would have borrowed something from the couture department, hiding the price tags in the seams. I would have run to cosmetics and done something about my hair. But you came in unannounced, more gorgeous than ever, and I bit my lip and folded sweaters and waited.

“Ray?”

And there it was.

“Dan.”

“I haven’t—“

“No.”

“How are you?”

“Folding sweaters. You?”

“Data entry.”

“Health insurance,” I said with a nod. You stared at me too long. You used to stare at me too long all the time. Then, when I made eye contact, it would drift to my shoulder. That day, it was just in the eye. You came in and stared at me right in the eye. You looked the same. I was actually dressed better than you, had a pocket square in, an affectation I’d been cultivating. I wanted to ask you what you thought, but I couldn’t. Affectations can’t be noticed by the affectors.

You held up two shirts, both overpriced and nonsensical. You noticed, in a laugh, that you were gay too.

“Yeah,” you said, and your eyes crinkled up on the side. The adorable difference. “Which?”

“God, neither.”

You looked down. Fucking prissy shopboy. That’s what I was.

“Go over there,” I said, on a high to tell you what to do, wondering if you’d just do it, “to the fitting rooms and I’ll bring you what you want.”

You fumbled around with the hangers, like they were crawling with lice and you had to get rid of them. I took them and touched your fingers, rolled them in my own. You didn’t flinch. I love that you’re not afraid.

I picked out two shirts that would show your form, the one that just came in that day, all the same as it was. And you didn’t know it. You never noticed how gorgeous you were.

That day, the day that we ditched class, you stared at me in the eye then too. We went to get a hot dog, some little bullshit place where the tables were as yellow as the mustard, you looked at me then. I thought you had to know. And I told myself I didn’t. I let you eat the hot dog without pushing the drip of mustard, a spike of relish in it, into your mouth.

I’ll bring you what you want.

Is that what it was? I only noticed after I said it that it could be interpreted that way. I meant, in just as much of an ego trip, that I’d bring you shirts you didn’t know you wanted. Shirts. Time is like that. Puts up barriers, imagined DMZs. Borders, once established, forgotten and eroded.

We hugged after the hot dog, and I’d never hugged you before. I didn’t generally hug after hot dogs. At the time, it was all panic and self-loathing. It took me this long to know it was a come on. I didn’t come on. I fucking ran.

I brought you the shirts. I opened the door, after a knock, and found you there, your jeans below the muscle of your abdomen, life below it, a bulge to the left. Did I imagine it? Was it just the way they bent, your jeans?

Actually, my interpretation didn’t matter. You were on me like a donkey at a salt lick. And everything that I wanted to tell you over the years, the story of my life, an “If only you knew” story, was shrugged off. This was the only way to say it, mouth put to better use kissing yours. We just hugged and kissed for ages, it seemed, though it was probably only a few minutes, your flat stomach, tan with dark hair, against my suit jacket, your arms, the hot cold of them, around me. It was the most comforting thing that ever happened to me, settled a lot of that part of my life, illuminated it, found parts where I’d exaggerated the chaos, now shown to be, well, not really that bad.

“Why didn’t you let me?” you asked me.

“I didn’t know.”

“But you’re alright now.”

“Yes.”

“Good,” you said, and you smiled. And I stopped shaking. I kissed you deeper that day, the day you came in, than I’ve ever kissed anyone before. Your hand drifted around my belt, hooked into it in places, finally pulled it hard and twisted the slack in your fist. You pulled me with you against the mirror on the wall. I saw myself kiss you in it. I saw my arms go around your sides and loosen your jeans. I saw you pull my jacket open, the wrists bent, showing the muscles in your forearms. That’s what pure sex had looked like to me for years, each foray into fucking a replacement of you. They all kind of looked like you.

“You were the first,” you said, before I could. “I’ve been looking for you in other men ever since.”

I laughed. I opened up your jeans and turned us sideways, to the middle of the floor. I pulled your jeans down to the middle of your thighs, muscular and hairy, and I saw what I’d imagined so many times in my dorm room, my hand underneath the quilt that I’d grown up with, I saw your cock, a perfect J shape. I touched it with reservation, like it would disappear if I were rough. You wrapped your hand around mine and squeezed, because you were right, I’d never do it myself.

Our lips had been apart during this transaction, our noses in each other’s cheeks. As if we didn’t know what do. We seemed to notice this at the same time and rushed into each other. We were suddenly nothing but lips and saliva and skin over ribs and our chests, at the inhales, fighting each other for room. My shirt went to a hook. My pants dropped to the floor. We were jerking each other off. Dry, but sincere. It hurt. It was too much. We went to saliva, spit at breaks into our hands. It evaporated like rainwater on sidewalks in the summer. It was replaced just as quickly.

“You,” you said, into my mouth. “It’s been you.”

“Yes.”

We stole looks at each other in the mirrors. There you were from behind, from the side, my cock in your hand. It was unbelievable that I didn’t know this would happen when I woke up that morning. All the years that we didn’t know each other drifted into triviality. We’d always been there.

I came first, it rose and fell in a splat on your stomach, on your cock, on your toes. I used it for lube and you changed in my arm, your hard jolts turned to a smooth hum. I turned you around, marched you to the mirror and settled you with two hands against it. My hand came around again and you watched. I licked the skin on your neck and jerked you off faster, watching your face go slack, your eyelids slide down. And then, your fingers curling into your palms on the mirror, the final electric freeze and petrification, followed by three slaps of come on the mirror and dripping down.

My arms came around you and we held each other up. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted,” I said. I took my pocket square out of my jacket on the hook and wiped the mirror, then you.

You came in that day, looking for a shirt, trusting someone to know what you wanted. I knew what you wanted. For the first time, I gave it to you.