William J. Mann Read online

  Once outside in the sharp salty sea air, Luke turns abruptly to face me.

  “So,” I say awkwardly, “will you be looking for work here?”

  He doesn’t answer. He’s suddenly in my face, his lips on mine, hot, wet, slippery. He kisses me. Oh, man, does he kiss me. But I don’t kiss him back. I’m too stunned to do anything but stand here, allowing myself to be invaded by his tongue.

  He pulls back, the suction of our lips actually popping when we break contact.

  “Wow,” I say.

  He’s looking at me again from under his long thick boylashes. Ecstasy? Maybe. Tina? Quite possibly. But then I dismiss the idea. Luke’s eyes don’t have the typical hardness of tweakers. “You want to get out of here?” he asks.

  “I—I—well, it depends on where you want to go.”

  “Upstairs. To my room.”

  Thank God he has a room. I couldn’t take him back to the guesthouse that I manage with Lloyd. Too many guests hanging around, plus Jeff would probably be there and he’d want to meet him, and then—well, let’s just say it’s never been a good idea to introduce my tricks to Jeff. They rarely remain my tricks when that happens. Besides, Ann Marie and J. R. would be out in the backyard grilling tofu burgers on the barbeque…no, it just wouldn’t do.

  So I let Luke take my hand and lead me out of Tea Dance and up the wooden steps to the bank of motel rooms that overlooks the pool. He fumbles for a key and lets us in. The room is dark, the drapes pulled. It’s chilly, smelling of air-conditioning and cigarettes. I don’t get much of a chance to look around because suddenly Luke is pushing me down on the bed. Literally. His hands on my chest, shoving me backward. I topple over, flopping down onto my back across the shiny bedspread. Then he’s on top of me, kissing me again. This time I manage to kiss him back.

  We pull at each other’s clothes. His shirt is already off, so all I need concern myself with are his jeans. They slip off easily. He’s not wearing any underwear, just a seven-inch boner that’s already engorged and raging. After all, he’s twenty-three.

  He finally gets my shirt off. Looking down, he seems pleased enough by what he sees. He slaps my pecs with his palms and grins widely. Then he turns his attention to my shorts and briefs. My own dick is plump with excitement but not yet at full attention. After all, I’m thirty-three.

  “Nice tat,” Luke says, fingering the starburst around my navel.

  “Thanks,” I say, in a husky, unsure voice.

  Luke drops down on top of me again. “Henry,” he says, lips pressed against my ear. “I want to put sliced peaches on your chest and lick them off you.”

  Now, there is just no answer for a statement like that. I don’t even try.

  He’s off me once more, jumping like a naked bunny in the half-light, popping open the small refrigerator against the far wall. I hear the snap of a Tupperware lid. Then, not expecting it, I feel the coldness of the peaches on my chest. I gasp. Luke pays no mind, rubbing the fruit into my skin with the balls of his palms. My nipples perk up immediately at his touch and the coldness of the peaches. My nipples are quite sensitive: it’s like they’re little dicks. Luke senses this, leaning down to lick them. I shudder in pleasure. Then his tongue travels up to the hollow spot under my Adam’s apple, where some of the peach syrup has gathered. He laps at it like a kitten.

  Is this really happening? We make eye contact, Luke and I. Such soul-filled eyes gaze at me from under those long lashes. I make a sound, close my eyes, and roll back my head. His tongue is incredibly nimble, darting down between my pecs, licking up the peaches, teasing my nipples. I can sense that my dick has finally responded fully. Next thing I know he’s on it, giving me the best peaches and syrup blow job I’ve ever had.

  I pull him up to me. I don’t want to cum. Not yet. He lies on top of me, our torsos sticking together from the syrup.

  “Damn,” I say, and kiss him.

  And then, in that moment, Henry Weiner comes back.

  I flip Luke over, pinning his arms against the pillows with my hands. My mouth moves down to conquer his ears, his neck. It’s Luke’s turn now to squirm in pleasure. I continue licking and kissing along his smooth torso, his skin so tight, so flat, so young. I make love to him with a passion that’s been too long bottled up, that bursts out of me like champagne released on New Year’s Eve. I move down his legs, making him tremble when I lick the inside of his thighs. I take first one foot then the other and massage them with my tongue.

  No more thoughts—no more conscious ideas. I’m inside him now, the bed is squeaking, I’m pumping and pushing and he’s moaning and crying and everything is tingly and sparkly and who the fuck knows what time it is.

  Or where I am.

  Or who this boy under me is.

  Silence.

  Blackness.

  “Henry.”

  A voice from somewhere.

  I open my eyes.

  I’m collapsed on top of Luke, breathing deeply in and out.

  “Henry, dude,” he says under me. “That was fucking awesome.”

  I pull up slightly, looking down at him. Our skin still sticks together. Cum and peach syrup.

  “Man,” Luke says, “how’d you get so good?”

  I smile. “Age has some advantages.”

  “Man, you were rockin’.”

  I slide off him. The boy sits up, reaching over to a side table to light a cigarette. I don’t like cigarettes, but say nothing. It’s his room.

  “Actually,” I tell him, “I was a professional.”

  Luke gives me a quizzical look, blowing smoke over his shoulder.

  “I was an escort,” I explain.

  “Cool,” he says. “For how long?”

  “A year or so. Then for a while after that I was kind of a quasiprostie, billing myself as a ‘sacred sex’ bodyworker.”

  Luke grins. “In other words, you rubbed their shoulders and then jacked them off.”

  I roll over flat onto my back, looking up at the ceiling. “Sometimes it was a lot more than that. It was all about reaching spiritual catharsis through physical sensation.”

  “Sounds hot,” he says, nestling up beside me.

  “It was.”

  “Well,” he says, running his hand down over my slimy pecs and stomach, “you sure have the body for it.”

  For the first time since my orgasm I’m conscious of my body. I roll over onto my side, pull my legs up a bit. The kid just complimented me, but I don’t think he meant it. He was just being kind.

  “I used to have an awesome body,” I tell him.

  “You still do. Great pecs, great arms…”

  “No, no, I used to be really in great shape. What’s weird is that for most of my life I was just this scrawny kid…”

  I stop. I don’t want him to think I mean like him. He’s nothing like I used to be. He’s beautiful. Tight. Lean. I was—well—I was scrawny. No other word for it.

  “I didn’t have the ease with my body that you do,” I tell him. “I didn’t carry myself the same way. You’re hot. I was just—scrawny.”

  He’s not buying it, I can tell. Doesn’t matter. I know it’s true.

  “Anyway,” I say, “then I started working out and suddenly I had this body that guys were willing to pay to have sex with. It was—well, a really heady time.”

  “I imagine,” he says, exhaling smoke.

  “But nothing lasts forever. You try to keep up, you try to continue going to the gym with the same devotion. But things start happening. You get busy. You get pulled in a million directions.” I pause. “You get old. You get tired. You get fat.”

  Luke barks out a laugh. “You are not using those words to describe yourself, are you, Henry?”

  “I just mean that—I’m not in the shape I was five years ago. The bodyworking is finished. My other job got pretty demanding and that takes up most of my time now.”

  “You mean the guesthouse?”

  “Yeah, it’s really—” I stop, and look over at him closely. “I
never told you I manage a guesthouse.”

  Luke grins, cuddling up next to me again. “I have a confession to make. I saw you there the other day. What’s it called? Nirvana? Anyway, I was thinking of getting a room there, but you had no vacancy. But I thought you were hot, and so when I saw you today I had to make a move.”

  It’s another statement for which there is no answer. At least none that I can think of at the moment. I just look at this boy, this beautiful boy, next to me. He thinks I’m hot. He smiles, reaches across the bed and stubs out his cigarette, and leans in to kiss me again. Ignoring the acrid taste of tobacco, I kiss him back.

  “I gotta pee,” Luke says, breaking gently free.

  He stands and heads into the bathroom. In seconds, he’s back in the doorway, tossing me a handtowel. I catch it. It’s wet. “You might want to get that peach juice off yourself,” he says.

  I laugh. “Thanks.”

  Wiping my torso, I can hear his loud stream of piss hitting the porcelain.

  “So what made you decide on spending the winter in Provincetown?” I call into him.

  “Just thought it was a good place to find myself, know what I mean?”

  I just grunt in reply. People have lots of romantic notions about Provincetown off-season, but I’ve lived through some of those bleak winters, when everything closes up and most of the residents who are left are either drunks or twelve-steppers. Very few in-between. “Well,” I say, wiping up the last of the cum and the syrup, “you ought to come out to the guesthouse. Maybe I can find you a room.”

  “Really? That would be awesome!”

  “Sure, after Labor Day the crowds die down and then—”

  My eyes catch the corner of a book sticking out from under the bed.

  A book that seems familiar.

  “And then what?” Luke calls.

  “And then—well, maybe we can—get you something more permanent than—” I can’t resist. I reach down and pull the book out from under the bed. I look at the cover.

  It’s what I thought.

  The Boys of Summer.

  By Jeffrey O’Brien.

  I slide the book back under the bed as Luke flushes and heads back into the room to flop down beside me again.

  I turn and give him a tight smile.

  “That would be great,” he says. “To get a room at Nirvana…I could help out, do chores, that kind of shit.”

  “Well,” I tell him, “I don’t know for sure if we’ll have any rooms…I’d have to check with the owner. I’m just the manager…”

  “Mm, so handsome,” Luke says, ignoring me as he kisses me, his mouth minty fresh. He must’ve gargled with Listerine in there. “You are such a stud muffin, Henry.”

  I pull back, gently. That damn book has made me even more defensive than I was before.

  “So.” I’m trying to get a hold on Luke’s eyes, but he’s averting them. “Enough about me. Tell me about you. What romantic notions have you heard about living here at the end of the earth?”

  He shrugs. “Nothing really. I don’t know anyone here.”

  I can feel my lips hardening, tightening. “Gets pretty isolating in February and March, you know.”

  “That’s what I want.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “You want to be isolated from the rest of the world?”

  “Well,” Luke says, finally meeting my eyes, “I’m a writer. Or I want to be one. I think living here in the winter would help me concentrate.”

  His answer seems to suddenly make sense of a lot of things. I move back against the pillows, steadily inching away from him.

  “A writer. Interesting.” I pull my knees up to my chest. “And what is it that you write?”

  “I’m working on a novel.”

  Suddenly I want to shower. I want to get away from this kid and stand under a scalding hot stream of water and wash all this stickiness off me, in a way no puny moistened hand towel could ever accomplish.

  Luke, meanwhile, is busy rhapsodizing. “I’ve had this dream of coming to Provincetown and finishing my novel for over a year now,” he’s saying. “I just want to let my creativity flow. Release all the energy inside me. I just want to hunker down somewhere and write to my heart’s content.”

  “You’ll need some kind of job,” I say, aware of the new hardness in my voice. “Unless you’re independently wealthy.”

  He laughs. “No, I’m not. I figure I could get something. Maybe trade a room at your guesthouse for—”

  “You know, I may have spoken too soon about that,” I tell him, cutting him off.

  He seems not to notice my change in attitude. “Well, then, some other guesthouse. Or I’ll just get a little cheap apartment somewhere…”

  I laugh. My voice has moved past hard to brittle. “Cheap little apartment? Shows how much you know about this place. You can’t just roll into Provincetown anymore and get a job and a place to live. There are very few year-round affordable rental properties.” I try to smile to tone down my obvious cynicism. “I don’t mean to discourage you, but that’s the reality.”

  Luke returns my smile, and for some reason, I don’t like it. His is the arrogant smile of youth, a cocky I-can-do-anything grin. “I’ll find a way,” he tells me.

  I imagine he will. All he has to do is lift that shirt up again the way he did on the dance floor and he’ll get anything he wants.

  “I really want the experience of living here,” Luke is saying, filled with passion. “I’ve wanted to ever since—”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “Ever since you read The Boys of Summer?”

  He looks surprised. Now it’s my turn for a little confession.

  “I saw the book under your bed.”

  Luke smiles again, and again I don’t like it. “Have you read it?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “Do you think it’s a good portrait of this place?” he asks me.

  “Well, the author lives here.”

  “I know.”

  Our eyes hold. Of course he knows. Of course. That’s why he’s here. That’s why I’m here, covered in slimy peach juice. That’s why Luke cruised me at Tea in the first place.

  So he could meet Jeff.

  Story of my life. How many guys have approached me on the dance floor and asked me if I’d introduce them to my friend Jeff, who they find “just so fucking hot”? And ever since Jeff wrote the most popular gay novel of three summers ago, it’s gotten worse. Everybody’s always trying to meet him. He’s written two more books since—he’s like a fucking book-writing machine—but Boys of Summer is still the one everyone talks about.

  The afternoon’s events are now much clearer in my mind. Luke is a fan of Jeff’s. He probably came by the guesthouse looking for him. Jeff’s readers often do, wanting him to sign their books. It’s common knowledge that Jeff’s lover Lloyd Griffith owns Nirvana Guesthouse in Provincetown. Jeff’s talked about the place in several interviews. Even if somehow Luke didn’t know, as soon as he got here anyone could have told him, and also explained that Jeff and Lloyd live in the house adjacent to Nirvana. And that, working as manager and living above the guesthouse in a little apartment, is none other than yours truly, Henry Weiner—the “stud muffin” Luke so conveniently found so hot and handsome.

  Goddamn it. How could I have been so gullible? The kid’s game plan is obvious to me now: cruise me, eat peaches off my chest, and presto. An invitation to meet Jeff O’Brien. Story of my fucking life.

  “I suppose,” I say, drawing out a very long breath, “you’d like to meet Jeff.”

  “Sure. Do you know him?”

  I hold eye contact with him. If he’s playing games, he’s very good. There’s no deceit in his eyes. There’s just a reflection of my own.

  “Yes,” I say. “Jeff is my best friend.”

  “Really? Well, sure, I’d love to meet him.” He snuggles up to me, nuzzling me with the tip of his nose. “Maybe we can hang out again sometime, Henry.”

  I should get out of here now. He wa
nts Jeff, not me. Just like Joey wanted the blond goy instead of me. Just like, before Joey, Daniel had wanted someone else, and before Daniel, Shane had told me it was over, and before Shane, Lloyd had looked me in the eye and told me he could never love anyone the way he loves Jeff. Jeff—who it always seems to come back to.

  Jeff—my best friend. Who’s had a lover now for more than sixteen years, not to mention numerous part-time boyfriends all along the way—while I, thirty-three and in the shoulder season of my life, have never managed to hold onto a relationship for even a year. There are times I ask myself: is this it? Will I never have a boyfriend? I know guys who never have, who at forty, fifty—sixty!—look back and sigh, lamenting that they never found Mr. Right. It terrifies me. Am I one of those people destined never to find a lover? Time keeps ticking, and I’m still alone.