Flirt

“Come on. Let’s go see some skanks!” I yell in Jerry’s ear.

“Mitch, I’m just not really into strip clubs.”

“That’s because you’ve never been in one.”

“I’ve been in a strip club!”

“Skanks! Skanks! Skanks! Skanks!”

Jerry’s been really flirty with me lately, more than with the other guys. It took us all by surprise when they first sent him to us. We tore him up for weeks, little comments here and there, a few limp wrists in his direction, but then I guess he just charmed us to death, all of us. And our first real job, a three-alarm five kids on the west side, he was the strongest guy there, the smartest, the bravest. We saw him carry a little girl to her mother, and even though their house was gone, and they were petrified, he had them all laughing. The mom kissed him on the cheek and cried about something he said, squeezed his hand and looked at the rest of us the same way. After that, he was one of us, the most popular guy at the station, really. And something I thought I’d never see? When he flirts, we flirt back. Fucking insane.

I don’t think he’s, well I know he’s not completely gay. I’ve never seen a man flirt so efficiently and so effortlessly with a woman. All he has to do is ask them one question about themselves, anything, listen to the answer, make one little joke about it, preferably insinuating that they’re secretly naughty, and they’re hooked. Maybe this is just how he relates to people. Maybe all he knows is flirting. This morning, I woke up to him kissing me on the forehead again. It’s a little uncomfortable, especially with morning wood.

“Fine, whatever, but if you try to pay for something for me, I mean anything, that’s it. I’ll leave.”

“Fine, let’s go.”

“No lap dances.”

“No.”

“No private dances.”

“No.”

“No coochie in my face.”

“No.”

“’Cause those girls gross me out. They’re really just mean and just… gross.”

I hold the blackened out door open for him. He enters in front of me, strutting, to prove he can, and takes a table near the front, the end of the catwalk stopping at only a respectable distance from us. A girl is there, spinning around a pole in the bottom half of a bathing suit. The music, a techno remix of “I See You Baby” by Groove Armada. She’s taking a literal interpretation of the song, shaking her ass each and every time it’s suggested, from various angles, one of which is completely spread eagled face down on the floor.

Jerry watches her and bites his lip.

“You doing alright?” I ask him.

“Yeah, fine.”

“I mean really, you should be taking notes.”

“What?”

“What you should be doing at the firehouse.”

“I knew you all were watching me slide down that pole,” he says, and delivers it perfectly, not a wince or a grin. I’m happy he’s relaxing anyway. What I don’t acknowledge, but what does pop up in my mind at this moment, is an image of Jerry slipping down the pole, his shirt raising against the brass. Unaccountably, it stirs me a little, and I look back up at the girl, who looks right back at me.

The waitress comes by.

“Hi,” I say, “I’ll have a Seven and Seven and Jerry will have a….” I turn to get his order, but almost whack him in the face with my chin. He’s leaning over me, holding my armrest.

“What kind of beer do you have?”

She goes over the list, Jerry nodding in front of my face the whole time. I sit up in my chair, as far back in the seat as I can get. “I’ll have a Corona,” he says, and puts on that wide smile that he reserves for children, management and service employees. The waitress melts to my left, an involuntary smile crawling up her beautiful neck to her cheeks. Going back to his seat, Jerry pushes against my right thigh for balance.

“And two shots of Jack Daniels,” I say to her when he’s out of earshot.

She nods and walks away.

What’s there to say about a strip club? You’re there, looking at women doing things they wouldn’t normally do, you keep up a banter with the guys you’re with about anything but the stripper, you drink, and before you realize it’s happening, you’re staring at a girl, moving in slow motion, incredibly turned on, a hard on in your pants like red steel, and the only thing to do then is leave.

It can’t be like this with Jerry, though I thought it would be. I thought if I could see the guy in him, see him down a beer and make a joke about the difference between a circus and a sorority house, the flirting would seem to stop. Even if it went on, I would know that it was okay. It was a bonehead, macho bullshit idea that I would expect out of anyone but me, but here I was trying it, and it wasn’t working. We’re such good friends, but somehow, the idea of talking about sex with him has been put off so long, it seems unnatural. Like talking to your great-aunt Lucy about who’s hotter, Katherine Heigl or Angelina Jolie.

The shots and drinks come, along with some hope. He looks at them and smiles at me, apprehensive, but picks his up anyway.

“To coochie!” I announce, only loud enough for him to hear.

“To keeping it out of my face!” he answers, just as loud.

We drink, and the burn and warm nausea is offset by the Seven and Seven. After the first drink is downed, he loses his ability to ignore the show altogether. After the second, and another shot, he’s looking at me as much as the girls. After another round, I don’t care. I order a lapdance for myself, though she offers one for Jerry at half-price, I jump in with a no, just me, thanks. He watches it like a movie, looking at me, looking at her, looking down, then at my face and hers. He might as well be shoving popcorn in his mouth.

The truth is, I don’t mind it at all. I should have the willies, but I don’t. It’s like we’re finally getting somewhere, Jerry and me, like we’re finally going to know each other. I pay her by hand when she’s done, exhale and turn to Jerry.

“So, you can’t touch them, right?” he asks.

“Right, but they can touch you.”

“And do they, I mean, usually?”

“They would touch you, I guarantee it.” I smile at him, to see if the compliment hit. It did. He smiles back, and toasts me, the round of shots that had been forgotten on the table.

“To lapdances,” he says, and lets a cackle out into his whiskey. He finishes it, pops it down and kisses me on the cheek while I’m still swallowing. I’m blushing. The hard, simple notion of kissing him back rises in my mind. I slap it away, but a drunk slap, no follow-through and no idea whether I made contact or not. Nope, it’s still there.

Another round and another girl asks Jerry if he’d care for a lapdance. He says no, but he’ll pay for one for his friend Mitch right here. You don’t mind, do you, Mitch? It’s kind of fun, right?

She’s a very cute girl with very fake tits and a silent kind of motherliness about her. She looks over at Jerry a couple of times as she moves above me. His chair is right up against mine now. She reaches over to stroke his cheek. He looks at me when she does, not flinching, but letting his mouth open. I put my right hand on his thigh.

“Do you want to kiss him?” she asks in my left ear.

“Yes.”

As soon as I say it, I know it’s true. Probably had been for a while. The strippers were for my distraction, not his. She moves my hand up to his crotch and I feel it, hot and loose and hard in his pants. My hand flinches, but she holds it there. Jerry inhales deeply and looks ahead of him, shaken, then at her, scared, finally at me, petrified. I look back at him and let my eyes coast down his body and back up at his face. His eyes, his velvet eyes falling into mine. The girl lets go of my hand and smiles at me, kisses me quickly but deeply on the mouth and slides off of my knees. Jerry goes for his wallet and I take my hand off of him, but I see it as he leans back for an angle in his pocket, a thick bulge that no longer fits in his pants.

He gives her a few bills of some kind, leaves forty for the waitress and says, “Let’s go.”

In New Orleans, in The French Quarter at least, there are no alleys, no inlets, no doorways, nothing that isn’t closed off by a thick iron gate, nowhere for a man to kiss a man, to feel a man’s cock against him. He looks around after a couple of blocks of wandering and kisses me anyway, up against a wall under a fire escape, Jerry’s tongue and lips, his hand on my chin, arm holding mine down, those things that it never occurred to me to want, though I did. I have. I do. We hail a cab and get in, apart from each other above our chests, below, my hand around him through his pants, my thumb pressed into the tip. Crossing Canal Street, into downtown, through a traffic circle with a statue of a man on a horse, under an underpass to St. Charles, trolley tracks and trees, restaurants, liquor stores, beautiful houses, ugly new buildings, our driver silent as we are, Jerry’s hand pulling at my thigh. We stop. He pays the driver. We stumble out. His apartment, a third of an old house. He opens the door to his place, lets me in and pushes me to the floor.

We’re breathing through a little space formed between the ends of our lips, the sides of our noses pressed against each other, a numb feeling building in my legs.

“Have you ever fucked a man before, Mitch?” he asks, quickly unbuttoning his shirt and going to mine.

“No.”

“But it’s everything you hoped so far, right?”

He’s done it, hooked me just like the girls. I laugh, and he goes in on my neck. Just where it meets the shoulder, he bites, and I unbuckle his belt. He turns onto his back and takes his pants off, his cock hitting his stomach with a flopping noise.

“In my bag, under the sink and fucking hurry.”

I get it, put it next to him and go down on him, shoving him into my mouth, his hand smacking the bag repeatedly. “No, shit, I’ll come, I’ll fucking come…. I want you up here, come on, Mitch, put this on and fuck me.” He hands me the condom and I put it on, never completely taking my mouth off of him. He hands me the lube and I kneel up, over him, my fingers wet and in him now, never thought it would be so easy, his back arching and his thighs back in his hands. Little squeaks out of him.

“I’m ready. Come on, I need you.”

I press my cock down, pushing his knees to my chest and enter him slowly.

“That’s it,” he says, “more.” I go in further, slippery but squeezed. “Yes,” he says. “Good good good good, oh fuck!” I’m pumping a little now. The muscles in his neck pull against themselves. Me, I’ve never felt anything even close, just trying really hard to keep going, to feel this, to see this man I’ve spent so much time with bent against the floor, teeth clenched. I’m grinding into him, watching his dumbfoundingly pretty face change, feeling him change. “Oh shit,” he says. “I can’t stop it, it’s… it’s… oh fucking MITCH!” He slowly rises and shakes against me, a few pops of come out of him, his knees digging into me, his eyes closing.

I come into him like a concrete block hitting the ground and bouncing, then kiss him on the cheek, charmed like a man who’s just been dragged into a fire and carried out.