Brandon was in the driver’s seat of my car. I was in no shape to drive. I clutched the brown paper bag in my lap, its contents of a full bottle of tequila and two six-packs of beer cold against my thighs. I thought of the broken bottle and splashed wine on the concrete pavement—where Brandon must’ve dropped it when he caught me from my drunken collapse—and I felt bad. We hadn’t been able to find the same Mexican wine during our stop at the liquor store.
“Sorry again... I mean... I didn’t want this to be like... this...” I said quietly to him as I stared at the road in front of us, the night shadowing around it.
“What do you mean by ‘this’?” he asked, glancing over at me with a smirk. “You make it sound like this was such a big deal...”
From his cocky little tone, I knew he was playing with me again. But I didn’t mind. He chuckled to himself and reached for the stereo, turning it on. The song started from where I had left it, and it unnervingly spoke my thoughts out loud in his voice.
Why aren't you shaken?
Send back in time
Graciously taken
Oh, you're too kind
And if the answer is no
Can I change your mind?
It was the bridge of the song, the crescendo hitting, and the vulnerability—again so evident in his melody—touching me in places I couldn’t locate in myself.
Until the boy beside me began singing along to the final verse.
“We’re all the same.. And love is blind.. The sun is gone.. before it shines.. And I say, if the answer is no, can I change your mind? If the answer is no, can I change your mind?”
The song ended and he turned off the stereo, but his voice still clung to the air around me. Brandon took his eyes off the road for a moment to roll his eyes at my staring face, my mouth gaping at the timbre and lush fullness of his voice—that sang in harmony with the track I had been listening to fanatically before meeting him.
“You really need to stop listening to this shit,” he chuckled, obviously amused. “I’m flattered, but... it’s pretty lame having to sing along to myself.”
I was still enraptured. No words at all were forming in my head.
“So where shall we go from here?” he asked, encouraging practical reality to seep back into my awareness, though his words seemed to imply something I was afraid to fully pick up on.
“Where’s your car?” It hadn’t occurred to me before.
“My band-mates dropped me off and kept on driving... I knew you’d take care of me.”
Why did the boy insist on speaking in riddles?
“I have an idea...” he interrupted, turning off the road we were on. “Let’s drive along the coastal route... There’s a place around here somewhere that you just gotta’ see.”
I nodded, leaned back in my seat, and wished he’d turn the stereo back on. I wanted to hear him sing again, whether it was through the dashboard speakers or from his lips. I made mental notes to ask my assistant to book me tickets to every single show his band would ever play from that day on... I wondered how much it would cost to buy them from their record company... if that was even possible... My mind continued to roll around with random thoughts that were connected only by him. But my final barely-lucid thoughts before my eyes closed were of Illyas and the boy’s wife. Thankfully though, sleep spared me from where those would lead.
A cold nudge on my arm stirred me. It was pitch-black outside; inside the car there was only the dim illumination coming from the dashboard. Brandon had a can of beer offered, the mouth of the bottle of tequila pressed to his lips as he drank.
“Ahhh...” he sighed aloud, chasing the tequila with his own can of beer. “God, that feels good.”
I accepted the beer and drank—if only to attempt to feel the pleasure that he seemed to feel from it.
“Where are we?”
“You’ll see in the morning. It’s too dark out right now... Just do me a favor and not take any strolls by yourself in the middle of the night. Don’t want you... falling... or something.”
He was excited with his little secret; it showed on his pursed lips that fought back a grin.
“I picked you up a tape from a gas station while you were asleep... but apparently you don’t have a cassette player with your hi-tech little car stereo...”
“I want to know about you and Illyas.”
Brandon smiled at me from a sideways glance and chased another shot of tequila with beer.
“It can’t wait till I’m sloshed, can it?”
I smiled back and shook my head. It wasn’t clear why I needed to know so badly, why it kept coming up in my mind even though there was so much else about the boy I wanted to know.
“How did you meet?”
Brandon leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.
“Well... We met in high-school. He was a senior when I got there... And I... I saw through him when he passed me in the hallway one morning. He was with his jock friends, a whole bunch of beefy morons who were slamming lockers as they walked and... He was doing it too... knocking books out of the freshmen’s hands... When he came by me though, he kinda’... slowed down... and there was something in his eyes that...”
Brandon sighed, finishing his beer and twisting at the cap of the tequila.
“Well... I... I grew up pretty religious... I had always felt though that...” he paused, took a couple more swigs of tequila and cracked open another beer. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this... Why do you want to know, Matthew?”
Because I love you. I want to know you. I want to know what he gives you. I want to know why he loves you. Why you love him... Why you’re married to a woman...
“I’m curious,” I replied.
“I was curious too, you could say... I have an older brother... and his friends... well, there were two of his friends who used to... They let me touch them. In my brother’s room, when he wasn’t around, they’d... they’d watch me get hard while I stroked them off. And well... I was a kid... and I didn’t realize then, that when they told me how wrong it was to be a ‘faggot’, how I was going to go to hell and all... I didn’t realize they were just afraid I’d tell someone about them, you know?”
I nodded, too entranced with the boy’s story—and the fact that he was sharing it with me—to relate what he was saying to my own childhood.
“So I used to pray every morning and every night that I wouldn’t be a ‘faggot’... And I... I used to steal my brother’s porn mags to stare at tits and, you know... to stare at girls and... make myself like them... I never could get it up though, flipping through those magazines. Not the way I’d spring a stiffy when I watched my neighbor wash his car without a shirt on...
“So I kept praying... I stopped looking out the window into my neighbor’s yard... I stopped watching sports ‘cuz I kept looking at the guys’ crotches... Then I started... I couldn’t help myself, you know? I... One day I was staring at a picture in my bible... It was my favorite picture... a picture of Jesus... with these beautiful beautiful blue eyes that stared right at me and... was okay with who I was. His long brown hair looked so soft and... and his chest was bare... muscular... And I looked down and I had my hand down the front of my pants... It freaked me out, you know? I was like, twelve years old, and I was scared shitless.
"I tore the page out and hid it from myself... Swore to myself I’d never touch my... never touch myself again... Then I saw Illyas that first day in the hall. He didn’t look anything like the man in the picture, but... he glowed, you know? And I saw myself in him... when his eyes and mine met... But then he grabbed me by the collar and asked me what the fuck I was staring at. From that moment I only had eyes for him... I became obsessed. I cut out his pictures from old yearbooks in the library.. I stalked him around school.. I... I waited around the boys’ locker room to sneak looks at him when he showered after football practice...”
Brandon had a distant smile on his face, his eyes now closed again, his head leant back in the headrest.
“I kept a scrapbook under my pillow... but I never let myself... jerk off or anything, even though I would get rock-hard just imagining the way his package looked in his crotch, under his jockstrap, under his jeans..... One day I got up the courage to leave a note in his locker... I still don’t know why I did it... But that night... It was the first time I put a dick in my mouth... I was fourteen, petrified of what I was doing; petrified this jock was going to beat my ass into a pulp... There were horror stories, you know? Of fags getting tricked into something and... they’d get bashed so bad and left naked in the middle of the football field or the girls’ locker room... But I couldn’t help myself with Illyas. We were under the bleachers in the middle of the night... It was freezing... but...”
The boy sighed. “I really loved it.. having his cock between my lips. I loved it more because he had hit me... And... he did something... I can’t bring myself to just say it, but... he did something that... for a moment washed everything off my shoulders. And without even touching myself I came for him...”
Brandon had finished nearly a third of the tequila, but I wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol that gave him his blush.
“He fucked me that night... Right there... Threw me on the grass on my hands and knees, and pressed his beautiful cock up my ass. I begged for it... but it hurt so much that I thought it was my punishment for being a fag... I almost passed out... But then I felt him against me... and to feel his body against my back... when he got closer to his orgasm... to feel him reach his hand out for my dick—the first time anyone had ever touched me there, the first time I had felt a hand on me in two years... The way he made me feel that night... I don’t know... It was electric.
“I knew that day that I’d do anything for him. And god knows he’s put that to the test... The things I’ve done for him...” Brandon sighed deeply again. “But it was always really for me. And he knew it too... I got off on his play of strength... Sometimes it still feels like he’s only the prick he is because he thinks that’s what I come back to him for. Sometimes it feels like he does all these fucked up things to keep me in whatever way he can.”
There was a long pause. Brandon seemed lost in his own thoughts now, his eyes glazed over with liquor and feelings I couldn’t read the first syllable of. I waited for him to continue, not wanting to bring him back from wherever he had left for in his head. But after awhile I couldn’t take it anymore. I found my voicebox.
“Why… Why didn’t you… What happened? Why didn’t the two of you…” I tried, but couldn’t get the questions I had to form themselves into coherent words.
“I wanted things Illyas couldn’t offer me….. See, I come from a large Mormon family. I wanted children. I still do… So while he was off fucking girls to prove his masculinity to himself, I fell in love with one. A girl… There was nothing sexual about it, we just… got along great and… we had fun with each other. We still do. She understood me, cared for me… We were like best friends… Illyas never caught on to what was happening. At the end of his senior year, he got a scholarship offer to play football for Notre Dame. It was all he used to talk about… playing football for Notre Dame… It was his dream college when football was concerned… He asked me to go with him. He’s always had his daddy’s money, and he promised he’d take care of me… I never doubted it for a moment. But I… Tana was… She… I told Illyas I couldn’t. And he turned down the scholarship, thinking he’d wait for me… that I’d graduate high school in three years and… we’d go to college together.
“When he found Tana in my bedroom one day… he lost it. Broke down in front of the both of us… cried his heart out… screamed at us… at me… When he left I… I didn’t follow him.”
We had finished the first six-pack of beer and Brandon was fumbling with the cardboard packaging of the second one.
“Illyas doesn’t know… that Tana and I split up after he ran off to California, that I tried tracking him down for a year before I decided to settle. And even then… I never stopped looking. His family refused to tell me anything… Their beloved football star and only son… heir to the fucking family fortune… By the time I found him I was dropping out of college… Illyas doesn’t know how I worked two jobs just to buy a Greyhound ticket to L.A. All he knows is that I pulled up on his driveway one morning and greeted him—after all those years—by getting on my knees and giving him a blowjob right in front of his main gate…”
I remembered the morning on Illyas’ driveway, where I had been on my knees while Illyas told me his side of the story about the boy with the saccharine sweet voice.
“Sex has always been our common language, I guess. We’re both too goddamn afraid of… saying something we mean.”
Brandon’s jaw was tightly clenched, relaxing only momentarily when he put the can to his lips and emptied its contents into his gut. I finished the can I had been nursing throughout his story and placed my hand over his. The boy flinched slightly but didn’t pull away. I adjusted myself in my seat and leaned forwards, my face falling into his lap and grinding into his crotch. Again, he flinched but did nothing else. Getting my knees up on my seat, I undid his belt quickly and pulled down his zipper, anxious and afraid that he’d stop me.
He didn’t. And I bowed my head forwards and reached into his pants for his soft penis. Just as my fingers grazed his bare skin though, he stopped me. My heart sank as I let him drag my hand away from his open fly, my entire body crippled by my want for him and my embarrassment for attempting to act on it; I kept my head bowed. To my relief and slight surprise though, I watched as the boy’s hands moved to the sides of his waist, hooking his thumbs under his belt and lifting his hips to pull his pants down over his ass. Then he leaned up against me as he pushed them off his thighs and past his knees. With his body again so close to me, I took in the sound of his delicately quickened breathing, the sound of his throat swallowing deeply—as he leaned back into the seat again. His dick was still limp in his lap, but was now exposed to the stillness of the air surrounding us. In the dark I could only barely make out its soft, tender shape, its circumcised head… but when I slipped him into my mouth I immediately recognized the velvet smoothness of his cock.
His moan was almost inaudible above me as he put his hand lightly on my head. He tasted clean and sweet; he smelled like soap and a light perfume of male skin and musk. I breathed him in deeply and danced my tongue caressingly over his cockhead before letting his dick slip out of my mouth to be replaced with the flesh of his scrotum. His thighs quivered and parted just enough so I could tongue both his balls towards my hunger; I rolled them past my lips and around in my mouth, his cock hardening against my cheek. And amidst the fog of my mind, I realized what I was doing.
What was I doing?
“Don’t stop…” he whispered through an exhaled breath, his fingers on my head applying the slightest pressure as they slipped under tufts of my hair. His other hand reached beneath me and rested on my upper thigh, the politeness of the courtyard—from earlier in the evening—displaced by a hint of urgency.
I buried my thoughts and my face deeper into his crotch, my nose nuzzling for his asshole as he raised his hips for me. The movement forced his balls further into my mouth, my jaw straining to take him in without my teeth grazing his sensitive flesh. The boy relieved a short expelled breath that jerked his chest roughly—and I recognized the reaction because it was mine. It was the feeling of getting closer to what you have been longing for and craving. The same shiver shook at my lungs, both of us now twitching against each other.
With my tongue I pushed his balls from my mouth and raised my neck to take in his hard cock; and in one perfectly synchronized movement—my neck lowering and his hips thrusting upwards—his full length was plunged straight into my throat, hitting the soft palette at the back of my mouth and clogging my breath. Almost immediately though, before I could even gag in response, his hips lowered to leave his cock fitting comfortably in my mouth. We both groaned. His hand on my thigh had turned into a clenched grip, his fingers digging into denim and flesh.
I lowered my face to suck on his full length again, and his hips bucked up a little to meet my mouth halfway. The sounds that were coming from him were wonderful—his breathing short and ragged, his lips letting escape soft purrs and whimpers… I wanted to watch his face as I swallowed his cock. I wanted to see the pleasure spread over his cherubic good looks, his cocky pout abandoned for an open-mouthed gasp.
“Ohh…. god….”
His hips were bucking with an even momentum against my face, lifting barely off the seat each time to slide just half of his dick in and out of my mouth. My lips encircled around his cock’s girth, a slick soft hole blowing him french kisses with my tongue on his cockhead each time his hips were lowered. The hand on my head grew heavier, massaging my skull as I sucked on him as dutifully as I could, my head occasionally twisting and leaning back into his palm to feel the pressure pushing my face back down onto him.
My mouth was watering for more, drooling over his dick and mixing with his precum to be fucked back into my awaiting hole. I sucked harder on the sweet length of his cock that his hips offered me with each thrust, the sounds of his excitement and pleasure filling the enclosed space of the car and driving me wild with thirst for another taste of his sperm.
“Ngh…. god…. I’m gonna’….”
His hips fell suddenly back onto the seat, his hand on my head pulling my mouth down with his crotch, as he ground his hips against both the chair and my face. The first string of his come hit the lid of my mouth before it was followed by spurt after spurt of his hot sticky sperm, plastering the walls of my mouth and tongue. After his last short buck into my face and its final spurt—before I even realized it was his last—the boy grabbed me by my hair and jerked my face to his, pressing his lips down forcefully on mine. His deft tongue was instantly in my mouth, slurping at his own come that I hadn’t had the chance to swallow. His kisses were reckless and almost animalistic, his tongue cleaning my throat of his sweetness, his lips sucking at the sides of my mouth, spreading a smear of his come and both our spit across our lips. Our breathing was breathless, just the heaving of our chests, my lungs threatening to explode.
He pulled away, my face in his hands. I started taking in air again, my heavy uneven breaths pounding in time with my racing heartbeat; my chest was throbbing violently. Brandon was in the same state, his eyes squinted as he grimaced to collect himself.
My knees shook as they moved slightly over the division between our seats—my upper body then collapsing uncomfortably twisted onto him, my face pressed against his heaving chest. He put a hand over my head, his fingers clutching me close, our bodies seeming to shiver as one complicated mass. The warmth of our bodies was burning, the air in the car suddenly noticed to be stuffy and smelling strongly of sex. I inhaled it all in once my lungs allowed for it, trickles of sweat rolling down my temples and onto his crumpled waistcoat.
We stayed that way for a long time; it was awhile before his breathing had calmed, awhile before my body had regained feeling. The first thing I felt was Brandon’s shoulder nudging me off him. I leaned back gradually, his damp palm sliding from the back of my head and over my ear to cup my cheek. I looked at him to be thanked by the whisper of a smile on his parted lips, that were still inhaling and exhaling in a soft wheeze. His face seemed to glitter with the beads of sweat reflected by the light coming from the dashboard.
I don’t think either of us had words for the moment. I leaned further back towards my own seat, resting my back against the door, and brought my thumbs and forefingers together to position his beauty within the makeshift frame in the air. And when he turned his eyes down, bashfully smiling the widest smile I had seen on him yet, and shaking his head chuckling at me… I made the camera in my mind click, my fingers framing the most beautiful picture that the world would never see.