Part One:  Requiem Aeternam [Eternal Rest]

"Who was he, really?" said Justin. "I mean, I know he was your teacher and all that, but there must be something else to bring us all this way. I can't imagine you sucking-up to any teacher. No way." 

The rain spattered on the windshield as we sat, parked in the lengthening line of cars forming in the funeral home parking lot, young men in dark topcoats directing traffic and escorting guests to the front door under umbrellas. The only thing worse than a funeral is a funeral in the rain. 

I had told him part of the story, how John Brigham had been my professor, my mentor, and my friend during the dark days at Penn State, how he had helped me identify my talents and apply them to my future. But there was more to the story, much more. 

"Shouldn't we go inside?" He continued when I did not answer. The time had come, I guess. We had waited outside rather than confront the hoard of strangers. The soupy organ music would just annoy me. 

"OK, let's go," I said, pulling up the collar of my suit as I opened the door of the rented-Lexus. Justin got out and ran ahead, stopping under the portico. 

Stepping into the quiet of the foyer reminded me of his office that day. It was like a gallery, beautiful objects he had collected from all over, they actually distracted my eyes from his face. I had seen him from a distance mostly, in COMM 320, Introduction to Advertising. The youngest professor I had ever seen, the most open and friendly, I lowered my guard a little and joined the throng of students around him. Now in his office, just the two of us, the last vestige of formality was gone. "Just call me John," he said as he glanced at the re-worked homework assignment, I showed him. The conversation was washing over me like waves, he really wanted to know about me, what I thought, what I felt. I finally got around to why I had come, to ask if he had any jobs for students. My scholarship barely paid the bills and my current job in the Waring Dining Commons just gave me some spending money but nothing to put on my resume. 

And that's how it started, the working together, the grant to study how eyes scan pictures, and what attracts the viewer. Remembering how I looked at him that first time, I already knew what attracted me. 

The funeral liturgy began. Out of the corner of my eye I caught Justin's profile mouthing the responses, a good little Episcopalian choirboy, acolyte, familiar surroundings here for him, 140 miles from home. Turning, I studied his face, knowing the profile by-touch, the curve of the soft lower lip, the hair on his forehead. 

"Turn more, directly toward the wall. No smiling. Just look thoughtful." John was sketching me, shirtless, with a bright light shining from behind, not just a collector of art, but an artist himself. "Shoulder back a little." His touch made me startle, then conform back into the new position. I could hear the scratch of the pencil, the rapid whisper of his shading, the silence as I knew he was looking at me, studying me, over and over again. I wanted to see it. I wanted to see myself through his eyes. And then it was over. As I buttoned my shirt, he showed me the sketch, the curvature of muscle, the sheen of skin captured in pencil on paper. My skin felt as if his pencil had actually traversed every square inch. "Let's go get some dinner," he added hurriedly before I could comment. He called Carolyn. "I'm working late," he said," so I won't be home for dinner. Kiss the kids goodnight for me." 

"For none of us liveth to himself." The priest droned on. I HAD lived unto myself those first two years at Penn State. Sure, I had friends, roommates, classmates, co-workers, but I had pretty much kept to myself, comfortable in my own company. No risk. No attachments. No expectations. 

Walking back from the College Avenue sub-shop, we were headed back to his office in Carnagie. But as we approached the building, he suddenly diverted my path beneath the twisted trunks of the rhododendrons that writhed from the foundation of the building up to the second story windows. The foliage formed a canopy overhead and a visual barrier to passers-by on the sidewalk bathed with pools of light. We stood there a moment, silently, as a couple came around the corner of the building and passed within feet of us, unseen in the darkness. We could see them; they could not see us. Then, without a word, he dropped to his knees in front of me and pressed his cheek against my upper thigh as his hand unzipped my pants. No underwear blocked his searching fingers, and he was surprised at first. He swallowed my cock before I could even get hard, and he worked it hungrily. My knees almost buckled and I reached for a trunk to steady myself. My muscles tensed as I heard voices approaching and I watched in near panic as a group of guys walked by only a few feet away. John seemed unaware of their presence even though they were laughing and joking. I closed my eyes hoping it would make me invisible. But he continued until I shot, almost silently. When he had swallowed my cum, he rose and stood face-to-face. I knew it was my turn. But as I gripped his shoulders to kneel, the lights came on in the office window behind me, suddenly bathing us in light. We dropped to the ground like dead bodies, trying to avoid detection and laughing hysterically at our foolhardiness. He finally silenced me with his hand over my mouth and I kissed it. 

"Thou hast set our misdeeds before Thee, and our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance." 

We hadn't touched more than a handshake since that first night, but now we were on our way to New York City, the first chance to present the research results to the funding advertising agency. New York was the place, he told me. He had worked there before coming to State College. It is where he met Carolyn. It is where he decided to teach rather than "prostitute himself", his words. 

Together we got into the great king-sized bed at the Michaelangelo. I had never stayed in a hotel like this before. I remember wearing my Aussie Rowers as sleepwear, feeling so odd compared to my normal nude sleep-habit. He wore his underwear. And I remember waking up in the middle of the night, suddenly aware in the dim light through the heavy curtains that he was not beside me, but instead was seated naked in a chair watching me sleep. "Are you OK?" I asked. No answer. I thought perhaps he had fallen asleep sitting there. And then I heard him crying softly. He had not touched me that night, I learned later, NOT because he didn't want to, but because he DID. The proximity, the availability, the implied willingness were all too much for him to endure. He got dressed and went for a walk at 4 a.m. and after worrying about him for several minutes, I feel asleep. The next morning, it was as if nothing had happened. 

"A dedicated family man, husband and father." The eulogy now. Had he been more like a husband to me? or a father? Neither, really. He was like a big brother, loving me sometimes unconditionally, then competing with me or criticizing me to make me better. Ten years seems a lot older when you're 21. He seemed to sense it too, but he seemed young for his age, at least when he was around me. 

He had told me that Carolyn and the children would be away for a few days, off to visit the in-laws in Connecticut. He had invited me to the house that evening, presumably so we could spend some time together outside of the office. I had been to the house many times before. He included me as a member of the family, like the oldest son, much older than his eldest. Carolyn liked me because I helped with chores, raking, gardening, even painting, and she could get John to do anything when I was there to help but I sensed that she was jealous of his time with me. When he and I were together in a room, no one else mattered. 

I walked to his house that night expecting to sleep with him. Well, more than that. But the house was dark and the car was gone. At first I thought he might be waiting for me in the darkness, but there was no answer to my knock. I knew where the key was hidden, so my first inclination was to go inside, to take a shower, and to be ready in his bed when he arrived. Instead, I decided to sit on the stone wall outside the kitchen windows in the back yard to wait for him to return. I heard the car drive into the driveway and saw the lights flash into the yard. The slamming of three doors made me thankful that I hadn't take that shower. As the lights came on, I saw the whole family, John and Carolyn, John Jr. and Jamie, traversing the kitchen as I sat just outside. I left without letting them know I was there. Later, I found his message on my answering machine, a change of plans, no trip, and an apology. 

"He was a giving man," the priest continued.  Justin is learning more about him. 

The BOOK. He gave me the book, at lunch that day, a blank book that he had filled with his handwriting, drunk and sober, I could tell. They were messages to me, things he seemed unable to tell me in-person, a way for him to chat with me when I wasn't there in the wee hours of the morning when he sat-up alone, thinking. He handed it to me that day across the table as a farewell, I suppose. 

I have it here beside me as I write. I kept it after throwing it away several times. On the first page it is inscribed "To Brian as a token of my love. All the things I've said, or couldn't say." 

I can't share the entire book with you. Justin read it cover-to-cover when we got back to Pittsburgh. But a few lines will show you why he wrote it. 

"I have some things to tell you that will be useful someday, or may make you think about yourself in a different way, or may help you to know yourself better, or me better." 

"It is reasonable that one who has problems with which he cannot deal would seek the help of someone wiser, someone older, or someone trained to analyze, discuss, and resolve these difficulties. You have none of these qualifications. But you have a maturity beyond your years, a degree of responsibility unexpected for one so young, a willingness to listen, a life of tragic events, and a pair of eyes which have a deep sadness and understanding. Perhaps they are a fraud, but they make me willing to share the innermost depths of my existence. I look at you and share a deep sadness that transcends age, background, and experience." 

His "poems" were the most compelling:
"Look at me sometimes and speak with your eyes what is in your heart. Give me smiling reassurance when a fleeting doubt of my self-worth sweeps over my face.
Speak to me sometimes about our friendship. Don't make me ask, or try to refrain from asking.
Be there when I need you. Don't pull away when I am quiet or sharp with you.
Show that care by trying to help because you are the only one who can. Touch me sometimes. I crave that touch, not much if you find it hard, but some physical sign of our special relationship. Give me a few moments of intimacy. I can survive on a few moments; I can thrive on a day together.  I try not to ask too much, but friendship pre-supposes the asking. If I can't ask you, whom can I ask?" 

"Sometimes I wonder when you will read this, if you will ever read this. Perhaps the writing of it is enough to meet MY needs. Someday perhaps you will understand why I did what I did."] 

He also gave me a letter of recommendation "to whom it may concern" and he told me he could not see me again, something about a quote from a Pennsylvania Dutch saying "Loving and not having is harder than rocks." He left me sitting at the table. I watched him leave the restaurant and walk quickly up busy College Street. And I never saw him face-to-face again. Oh, I saw him from a distance, in the procession at my graduation, but I never went to his office or home again. Carolyn probably wondered why or perhaps she knew without being told. 

The painting was my graduation present. It arrived shortly after graduation without a note. I still have the painting, a self-portrait of himself, naked, looking older than he really looked, perhaps to accentuate the difference in our ages. Or perhaps he was trying to express the guilt he felt in a physical way. I see him every day, frozen at an age younger than he is now, 9 years later. 

"Grant all who mourn a sure confidence in thy Fatherly care." Justin was kneeling now. I missed the beginning of the prayer. But his fingers reach over for mine, just for a second, as he heard those words. 

Fatherly care? The words ring hollow. I felt more love from this man than from my own father. And even his love wasn't strong enough to keep us together. 

The service ended. Before departing, the guests were invited to kneel beside the open casket for a moment. I thought Justin would wait for me in the back row, but instead, he joined me. Kneeling side-by-side, I realized we had never knelt together before. 

He looked older than I remembered, but that was understandable. But I had remembered him with a smile and twinkling eyes. Instinctively, I opened the clasp of the bracelet, the cowrie shells, and placed them just inside the rim of the casket. Justin's eyes followed the bracelet. He always fingered the smooth shells as we lay side-by-side after sex. And he had asked about the bracelet several times. 

John had brought it back as a gift for me when he went to Hawaii shortly after our encounter in the rhododendrons. He said that we would go there together someday, to live and work and grow old together. It was a symbol of commitment, of permanence. I had never removed it since he put it on me. At first it reminded me of eternity and later it reminded me to be wary of permanence. 

My eyes met Carolyn's as I turned from the casket. She looked older, too, but her eyes brightened momentarily in recognition and then she looked down as if she remembered more. I nodded to the boys. 

We walked across the parking lot to the car. The rain had stopped, but the air was damp and cold. "He loved you, didn't he? And you loved him." I shook my head almost imperceptibly. "I knew it, from the first time you told me about him, despite all your glowing words about how he helped your career, you're still pissed-off at him, aren't you?" I didn't need to acknowledge the obvious. 

The family was still inside, presumably saying their goodbyes while the funeral procession waited with the motors running. "I'll be right back," I said as I got out of the car again. A few minutes later, he was listening to loud music as I walked back across the parking lot. I could hear it with the windows closed. How different from the reverent boy of a few minutes ago...playing imaginary drums on the dashboard. I simply turned it off when I got in. 

The procession to the cemetery was long and slow. Professors get to know a lot of people, apparently. Justin sat silently, wanting to ask questions, but knowing I would tell him when I was ready. 

"Rest eternal grant him, O Lord." At least he is at rest. Such inner turmoil, brought to a screeching halt. Such promise and talent, stilled. Such love, strangled. Is there any good that can come from this? 

Standing in the back of the crowd just outside the cover of the tent, Justin and I felt our shoes sinking into the soggy soil. Nothing to do but endure it. I reached into my pocket and retrieved the bracelet and I pressed it into Justin's hand. A sign of permanence? Perhaps. An indication that I will be, to him, what John was to me in those tumultuous days of 1992? I think so. He clutched at the bracelet as if he understood. “We’ll share it,” he murmured. 

Part Two:  In Paradisum [In Paradise]

The prayers at the graveside droned on, then finally ended. As we sucked our shoes out of the mud we heard the minister saying "Carolyn has asked me to invite you all to the house afterwards for refreshments and reminiscences." Justin gave me that look as if to say "Should we?" but he looked away when I didn't respond. 

In the car, waiting for the other guests to wend their ways between the puddles in the cemetery roadway, I thought about how my life had changed after my mentor-ship with John Brigham...the feelings of rejection and frustration...the inability to focus on my schoolwork...the avoidance of the hall outside his office...the humiliation of going back to the dining common to ask for my old job. 

Justin sat there, fiddling with the unfamiliar sound-system controls, but not turning it on. He knew enough to wait...to not ask questions...and occasionally glancing my way, trying to read my thoughts. 

Leaving the somber cemetery, I abruptly turned out of the line of cars...toward the campus, away from Carolyn's house, away from her fussy, catered hors d'ouvres and non-alcoholic punch, away from the house full of strangers who would wonder who we were and who would ask leading questions. They would wonder who Justin was, and how could I explain? Instead, I headed for one of my old "haunts"...where John and I would eat on nights we worked late...Vesuvius, a local pizza parlor. Justin's eyes kept repeating the same question he'd posed earlier, so I finally spoke-up - "We'll eat first, then decide whether to go to John's house, or head back to Pittsburgh. I'll show you the best pizza in Pennsylvania." His face brightened in that sunny glow..."Better than MINE?" he asked, which made me smile for the first time today, because his attempts at making pizza usually resulted in something so excessive, one could barely lift it. 

Irony-of-ironies, we sat in the same booth where John and I had shared out first meal 9 years ago, framed in the front window. Just when the memories triggered by the funeral began to subside, more memories prompted by food emerged. The student-painted murals of phallic Towers-of-Pisa and ruins of the Forum still whispered the conversations we shared. 

We sat there, across from each other, shoulders hunched over the pizza, but eyes looking up intensely at each other...sharing ideas, jokes, and mental acrobatics. John told me of his research...how it would revolutionize advertising, how it would use form and color to direct the viewer's eyes to evocative, attractive, and even sexual images...how subconscious, primitive instincts could be used to strengthen product memories...how the eye could be teased to engender desires. I knew it worked...instantly...and my enthusiasm fed upon his, and his on mine, until we were ready to prove it together. 

He treated me like a partner after that...an "equal" despite the difference in our ages. We struggled together through problems in the research...and we celebrated the successes. Friday afternoons, after his class, we would spend together over drinks and nachos...not at one of the beer halls along College Street, but at the Nittany Lion Inn. He introduced me to Black Russians, and they became "my usual." And he would keep them coming while he listened to me. No one before had ever paid that much attention to what I had to say; but his eyes locked onto mine as he sipped his martini, leaning toward me across the table. His long fingers stroking on the cocktail napkin as if he was itching to reach for my hand. Or he propped his chin on his fist and studied me like a fine painting. His eyes caressed my face. 

Suddenly I caught myself looking at Justin in the same manner. Rather than deal with his beauty and openness, I focused instead on his manners. 

Have you ever seen Justin eat pizza? Here is someone who can handle the panoply of silverware at a formal dinner or can balance an hors d'ouvre on the edge of a small plate...but hunched over a pizza, he eats like a savage... two hands, ten fingers supporting a sagging, blistering-hot slice, then rolling it lengthwise and opening his smiling mouth so wide that he could suck Chad Douglas. "Did you play football here?" he asked, knowing full-well that Penn State was one of the powerhouses of football in those days and that I had merely run cross-country in high school ("the sport for loners and perfectionists," the coach said). But he was carrying the whole conversation himself, so I could excuse the chatter. "No," I said. "Patterno wouldn't let me on the team, even after I blew him in the locker room." Justin ignored the joke and went on, "I wish I could see what you looked like when you were a student here. I mean, you musta been cute wearing your white apron while ladling gravy over mashed potatoes. God, I can't imagine you studying in the library." Those realistic images flashed through my consciousness as I quickly relived my entire undergraduate years. "Can I see where you usta live? Where you dropped that sofa out of the 7th story window? I remember that story. And the..." He went on and on reminding me of my foolish indiscretions. He had an incredible memory when it came to details of my past. His eyes sparkled...pleased with his own joke that I had missed, but I couldn't avoid smiling anyway. Now I know how John felt on those evenings when I poured-out my past, my present, and my future to him....and asking him questions about himself. 

"And where did Lindsay live?" ...he continued his interrogation. Lindsay Peterson. I met her the same semester I met John...in Porter's Art Appreciation class. She laughed at my quips starting with the first lecture, and by the third lecture she had moved from the seat in front of me to the one beside me. We said that Porter's class met the weekly need "to see cock" of the sexually-deprived girls and homo-guys. Every lecture, slide after slide, included dangling penises from every angle. Lindsay began timing the appearance of the first cock...the record longest delay was seven minutes. And she probably did more than any other person to immortalize my quip which turned into a mantra (and probably still echoes in that lecture hall)..."Peter Porter peeped a peck of porky peckers..." She was also the one who dared me to sit in the center of the banked lecture hall, with my knees spread and wearing my baggy-legged shorts and no underwear. Porter lost his train of thought and spilled an entire tray of slides. (Never dare me to do something!) I still remember his voice resounding through the hallway behind me as I left. "MISTER kinney...dangling your bait will not improve your grade even the slightest BIT!"...with the emphasis, subconsciously on the word "bit". 

We left Vesuvius and crossed College Street to enter the campus. Re-living the past, I walked with him straight to Carnegie. The notorious rhododendron bushes were gone now, their place filled with newly planted azaleas and a modern bench. We sat. The memories flooded back...that first time that John held me here...my fear of being detected...my hesitancy to respond to his touch. I had been relatively inexperienced, with just a few friendly dalliances in high school and the knowledge that I was attracted to men more than women. I was curious...I wanted it to happen...but it made me uncomfortable. I could never make the first move in those days...never initiate, for fear of opening myself to ridicule or worse. And sitting here in front of Carnegie, I felt as if I had gone back in time...with the old taboos and hesitancies. But it was time to put the past behind me. John is dead, but I am not. I reached over and took Justin's hand...such a simple, innocuous gesture by today's standards...and so ridiculously formal, considering I had fucked his ass on numerous occasions. But here in this place, in public, it seemed like a giant step for me as I wrestled between past and present. Justin's fingers tightened on mine as an acknowledgement of the moment...and he asked about John. 

"Tell me more about him, Bri. Why is he so important that we came all this way to a funeral where you don't know anyone? I've asked you this before...on the drive to State College...but you answered with stories of work and advertising. Surely there's more. Our first trip together, and you take me to a funeral? Why are we here? Why am I here? Why did you bring ME here?" 

There wasn't a lot more to tell, actually. For a relationship which deepened over a period of eight months, there was surprisingly little sex. He embraced me fairly often in the privacy of his office or the work-room...he watched me undress before he sketched me...he would occasionally caress my shoulder or thigh as he positioned me...he kissed me as he kissed his children...and he fucked me only once, in a motel, after more than his usual number of martinis. It was wonderful because it was my first time, but it was otherwise utterly unremarkable as a sex-act. And as I lay in his arms afterward, I could feel the guilt and regret creeping into his body like the cold of that room. He hated that part of himself. And I asked myself, lying there, if I had encouraged him or enticed him to do something he had not wanted to do. We lay there silently for almost an hour...trying to think of what to say to each other. He finally arose and, taking my hand, brought me to stand face-to-face in the dim light....a deep blue light from the motel's sign, if I remember correctly, streaming in through the partially-closed venetian blinds. "That's been waiting to happen, hasn't it?" he said, not assigning blame or responsibility...as if the act itself had motivation and purpose. He looked older at that moment...not the youthful, lusty face I had watched over my spread knees as he penetrated me...but fatherly and protective. "Are you OK?" he continued. He always asked me that...after I recounted a painful memory, or shared a disappointment, or listened to his nurturing advice...I could anticipate those words before he spoke them. I'm fine," I lied, forcing a smile. Could he see it in the shadow? 

"I'll tell you about him on the way home...but now it's time to pay our respects at Carolyn's house. The crowd will have thinned by now." 

Driving out of State College to the northwest, approaching the hills, we are headed toward the hardest spot for me to visit...John's home. Although there had always been a quiet discomfort when I visited, it had been the closest thing to a traditional family I had experienced so far...and they included me in all the traditional holidays and family celebrations. He and Carolyn had bought a 150-year-old farmhouse close to Philipsburg, a fairly long commute by the standards of most PSU-faculty, but distant enough to acquire a fairly large piece of property. He had walked the perimeter with me that fall. On our walk, he had quoted (from memory) Frost's "The Road Not Taken"... 

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth. 

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same. 

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference." 

Perhaps this was prompted by his totally accidental sighting of me sitting with Lindsay twice the day before...first sharing a bear-claw at the HUB, and then later, with our heads together, smiling at a raunchy joke. He explained how he had made decisions at the crossroads of his life that could not be rescinded now...that new choices could take him in somewhat similar directions to paths he had rejected, but never to the same ultimate destination...and that he tried to make each new decision without regrets. I knew that this path led back through the woods to the house and to Carolyn and the children...and that the first embrace in the rhododendrons and the most recent in the aspen grove were simply forks in the path that led only to diversions. He put his arm around my shoulder as we walked through the deep blanket of leaves, encouraging me to choose a different path than the one he had chosen. He never spoke to me of Lindsay, but I had seen it in his eyes that day as he watched our innocent play. 

I made a decision. I chose a path...or perhaps I forced him to take a path that he had not intended. I pulled back, away from him...emotionally and physically. Even though I could still feel the intensity of his love, I knew it was tearing him apart inside. "Detour...this path is closed for renovations." I missed a few days of work and didn't answer the phone. I ignored the message in my mailbox. I stayed away from all my favorite places knowing he would be there looking for me. I knew I couldn't stay away forever, but I needed space...and time. 

"Blue Ball? There really is a town named 'Blue Ball?" Justin had been studying the map for lack of anything else to do as we drove through "The Happy Valley." 

"Don't take me THERE," he beamed with that toothy grin that always makes me smile. 

The crowd had thinned. The few remaining cars were parked haphazardly over the yard. Entering through the kitchen door, I glanced furtively out the kitchen window, half-expecting to see my younger-self sitting in the darkness, looking in on a now-fatherless family. Carolyn looked tired, but she took my hand almost as if to say "We have both lost him...you and I." I had lost him first. 

The dining room was still painted the blue-gray color that John and I had applied that spring day. He loved the quick work using the roller; I specialized in the detailed painting of the trim and window mullions. "What a team," he said as he "accidentally" dripped paint onto my bare shoulder. Even in common household chores we worked well together. My fingers brushed the cool plaster as if it were his skin...as if he were still there. 

"There are some things he left for you...in the studio," she continued. "And there is a whole pile of sketches and pictures you might want to go through. Take whatever you want." I knew which ones she meant. She paused, not knowing what to say after that. I quickly introduced Justin who, as expected, said just the right thing to a grieving stranger. Turning, I faced John-Junior, the youthful image of his father...and, to my shock after a quick calculation, I realized that he was only 11 months younger than Justin. But the contrast between the two was dramatic; he was a wan, shy young man...younger than his chronological age. After a few words of condolence, Justin and I turned toward the French-doors that led across the terrace to the old barn. John had reserved the loft as his studio...his inner-sanctum...his retreat...his "Paradise" he called it. Climbing the stairs, Justin was immediately struck by the contrasts....the bright sky-light, the modern furniture, an open, airy quality...a sharp contrast to the antique furniture, low ceilings, and fire-lit interior of the main house. It reminded me of John's Carnegie office, expanded 20-fold. I could still distinguish his scent from that of the barn dust and painting solvents; scent-memories remain forever, perhaps...a few molecules of his sweat or his Calvin cologne could still arouse me. 

It was clear that Carolyn had invaded this territory to which she had been denied access all these years. It looked more sparse and more "arranged" than when John was in-residence. She had apparently already thrown away any vestige of his "other life"...the cabinet where the porn videos were stored stood open and empty. But she had saved the drawings and a few paintings. They were stacked neatly on the worktable, some in portfolios, a few in frames. I knew what I would find there. His landscapes had been dispersed to friends...but the nudes were here for me to find. Justin reached them first. He thumbed through the first folio quickly, exclaiming softly as he viewed each one. "Brian, you were beautiful," he murmured...catching his use of the past tense and changing it to 'are' in the next breath. There they were - the sketches and finished drawings of me he had done those long years ago. Carolyn couldn't destroy them, even though she must have hated them. And as I searched through the pile, I found pictures of other boys...obviously not myself, with different body types and hair colors. Carolyn had wanted me to find these too....the silent witness to the last eight years. My breath caught as I realized that each of us, in our own ways, had not been alone. 

Beside the pile was a small package wrapped in brown paper with my name in his familiar, bold printing. It was still sealed. Even in death, his wish had been respected by Carolyn. The size felt familiar, and I knew what it was before I opened it...a second volume of his writings to me. It is painful to read it, even today as I write this, but he speaks to me as I was then and as I am today. The first book had contained the love-letters of a budding relationship...up to the point of its collapse. This flyleaf read "To Brian. Volume 2. A goodbye." 

The first page. "I am learning to do without you. A moment at a time...each moment getting easier by a tiny degree. Each hurt, each disappointment develops a scar that dulls the hurt of the next disappointment...the next rejection...the next insensitivity to MY needs and MY feelings. The roller coaster ride of our relationship has become more exaggerated...the crushing valleys...the euphoric peaks with fleeting glimpses of what we once had. ... We stand at the crossroads of dead-ends." 

I closed the book, first noting that it was only half full. The world's longest suicide note, perhaps? 

The car jolted down the long driveway, worn to muddy ruts by all the visitors. It was time to return to Pittsburgh...and the present. I would never return to State College. Nothing would bring me back now. No reunion. Reuniting with whom? No nostalgic memories to re-live. There is only sadness for me there now. I acquired the knowledge and skills I needed to get that first job in advertising. But those things were, surprisingly, the least significant molders of my future. 

A middle-class boy tasted the good life of art and beauty and the things that money can buy. 

An unsure boy, who used self-deprecating humor to gain attention, let the assertiveness and cutting cynicism takeover again, as they had in high school, hiding the insecurity and self-doubt. 

I learned that, sometimes, the thing we seek most desperately turns-out not to be what we had expected. Love's ways are hard and steep, and when his wings enfold you, the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you...and his voice can shatter your dreams. "For even as Love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth, so he is for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, so shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth." * 

I learned that my lithe, fit body could get me the pleasure that feeds upon itself. I discovered that the eyes of men can caress almost as sensuously as their hands...that to be desired satisfies the desire in myself. But some of those lessons were still to come. The trip from my junior-year back to Pittsburgh, which I was about to re-trace again in reality, had changed me in ways that Justin could only glimpse from a vantage-point in the present. 

By-passing the town, we headed directly for Route 220. Justin fingered through the folio which I had tossed into the back seat...and eventually he reached for the package. He had watched my face as I read those few pages and his curiosity was aroused. I could see him in my peripheral vision, watching to see if I would object as he slipped the book out of its loose paper wrapping. The sun had set; it always sets early in these deep, diagonal valleys, but the sky was light enough for him to read. He turned pages quickly, scanning rather than reading. His brow furrowed; he glared at me with angry eyes. I met his gaze, then turned back to the road. Was it jealousy? Did he think that, because I cannot proclaim love, I have never felt it? Did he think he was the only person who had ever loved me? 

This road, from State College to Pittsburgh, represented to me the changes that had occurred within me after my mentor-ship with John. Now I would take Justin on that journey. The first stop was Altoona. 

Part Three: Dies Irae [Day of Wrath]

The valley widened as route 220 approached Altoona, known to Penn State students as "the Armpit of the United States," but it was the closest medium-size city to claustrophobic, rural State College. It was the place to go for serious shopping, weekend entertainment, and, for a small minority of the student population, anonymous sex. 

It was along the path of our return-trip to Pittsburgh. We had skirted it on our trip to State College much earlier this morning, when all thoughts were on my destination and the funeral. But now all of that was the past...I had left my past there, buried in a standard grave...and all ties were severed now. But there were still some bodies to exhume and some demons to exorcise. 

Things had changed rapidly after the break-up with John; I felt alone and rudderless... looking for something, but I didn't know what...numb from rejection, regretful for anything I had done to hurt him, guilty for having pulled-away. I can remember lying in my dorm room, in the dark, clutching my own torso and vowing never to love again...the chances of getting hurt were too great, the chances of a lasting success were too slim. "Love hurts" I kept saying to myself. "The peaks are just the tops of roller coaster humps...get ready for the plummet." A coldness set-in...like the numbness. I knew that the only person I could depend upon was myself. No matter how perfect I made myself...in appearance, intellect, or capabilities, ...I could only satisfy my own needs. Not Jack's. Not John's. Certainly not Lindsay's. 

"Are we stopping?" Justin felt the car slowing as we approached the intersection, and it had jarred him from partial sleep. "I've gotta pee." 

"No" I said. "I'm going to show you one of my college "haunts"...where I actually learned a few things I've taught YOU already." He looked confused. "You can pee there," I added. 

There were no gay bars in State College in 1992...at least none that I could find from scanning the phone book or reading the newspaper want-ads. To someone who had hidden his sexuality in high school, the prospects of making the first-move toward someone of unknown preference was daunting. I had been beaten-up for the mere appearance of being gay (but you know that story), so it was almost impossible for me to let someone know about my sexuality without knowing theirs first. There were only two solutions: to make myself available and wait for someone else to approach me; or, to find a gay bar where the sexual preference of the patrons was almost a certainty. The closest gay bar was in Altoona. I found an ad in a sleazy tabloid newspaper. And I vowed to go there. 

"Rumors" was a complex of gay-related entertainment. Calling it a "complex" is perhaps too generous; it was a somewhat-sleazy gay bar, with a back room, a small arcade of video booths mostly for anonymous sex, and a small 30-seat "theater" which showed videos on a large screen TV. The clientele was diverse...from college guys like myself to older guys looking for a cock to suck or an ass or mouth to fuck; some just wanted to jack-off while they watched. 

My first visit was like a rite-of-passage. I had driven there in my beat-up car as fast as it would go, but when I got to the parking lot, I sat there for almost half an hour watching guys come and go, getting-up my courage. Sitting in a car like that is an invitation in itself, I learned later, which explained why the same guy kept walking by, pausing at the window, and then moving on. Finally I saw someone my age go inside and I followed him. The place was dim and smelled of beer and sweat. A TV over the bar played a small-scale version of what was showing in the theater...and a young guy was being fucked at both ends, I remember...quite an introduction to hardcore gay porn. Most of John videos had been beautiful scenes of young boys together, but this scene was raw, vivid, and graphic...domination and punishment...and I didn't know where to look. When I looked at the patrons, I realized that many of them were looking at me, which made me uneasy...I was an outsider, a newcomer. I finally studied the liquor bottles behind the bar...and I kept glancing up at the video...he was being held-down now and fucked by another man with a larger cock. 

I felt the hand on my shoulder and it made me jump. "Want a drink?" It was the bartender returning from some errand; I hadn't noticed the bar was unattended. "You're new?" he asked. I exhaled as I relaxed from the startle, "Yea, my first time...here," I said. He smiled as if he knew my secret. "Well, look around," he said. "There's an arcade and a theater...and the back room for other "entertainment." He raised his eyebrow on the last word, and I caught the gist of it. "Everything's free, except the booths and the booze. What'll you have?" I bought a beer...and posed like a beer commercial on the barstool. But once I started sipping it, my nervousness made me drink the whole thing in a few gulps. The scene had changed on the video now...young guys in a locker room, familiar territory for me, so I decided to follow the sign for the Theater. It was smaller than I expected...and not totally dark. There were only three guys there, so I took a seat in the second (of five) rows...and I studied the screen as if I was watching a first-run cinema. I had been seated for only a few seconds when a guy stepped over my feet and sank into the seat next to me; it was the young guy I had seen entering the bar earlier. I almost felt relieved, as if we had a bond in common. He looked at me, then down into my lap, then into his own lap, and finally at the screen. I glanced down to see if my fly was open, but when I looked back, he seemed intent on the action...three guys in the shower, soaping their bodies...and eventually stroking their cocks. His hand, which had been draped across his crossed knee, suddenly dropped into my lap...and nearly scared the shit out of me. His fingers didn't move. They just rested there on my inner thigh...but they burned through the denim of my Levis like hot coals. I didn't want his hand to leave, but I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. So I just sat there like a statue, frozen in indecision. His other hand crossed his body and it gripped my wrist, placing my hand over his cock; I could feel its hardness through the fabric and I moved my fingers slightly to feel its size. And then he looked at me again...but this time with a question on his face that I couldn't interpret. I knew he wanted something sexual, but I wasn't sure what he expected me to do. Frustrated, I got up quickly and walked through a door beside the screen that led into a hallway. He followed me. I heard his footsteps behind me on the tile floor. He grabbed my shoulder from behind and pulled me to a stop, spun me around, pressed me against the wall with his forearm, and then his torso. And he kissed me...not the kind of soft kisses that John had used, but a hard, demanding kiss that made me weak. My knees almost buckled. Sensing my motion and putting both hands on my shoulders, he pushed me down to my knees. He quickly unbuckled his belt and opened his pants, letting them fall to his knees. He was wearing no underwear, so his hard cock hit my cheek in the narrow hallway. "Suck me," he said under his heavy breath...and as I opened my mouth to reply, he shoved it between my lips before I could say anything. I had sucked John before, so I knew what to do; John had actually taught me the fine-points of fellatio and how to suppress my gag-reflex, . But this guy wasn't interested in my skills...he just wanted a place to ram his cock. Suddenly another man turned the corner from the direction of the theater, and then another. I tried to break the contact and get up, but the guy's hands flew to the back on my neck, holding me down and forcing me to take more of his shaft. With my face buried in his groin, I couldn't see much...but the other men were urging him to fuck my face...slam his dick into me...their words echoed in the short hallway. And then it was over. He slammed in one last time and I felt his cum surging into my throat; I was gripping his hips for support...and then he was gone. I slumped against the wall, reeling from the intensity of this abbreviated sex-act...and I knew that I had been initiated into a new sub-culture...random, anonymous sexual encounters for lust, not for love...for release, not for expression. I squatted there for a moment, tasting the remains of his cock and his cum in my mouth...then stood and found my way back to the bar. 

"Enjoy yourself?" said the bartender, noticing my dazed look. He probably thought I had jacked-off in the theater. I started to say "Some guy just..." "It happens," he interrupted. I drank another beer, and then left....but I knew I would come back. "Friday night's the best night," he said as I got up to leave. I nodded and almost smiled...then headed for the parking lot. 

The taste of that encounter lasted for a week. At unexpected moments...in-class, in my room, in the gym...his flavor would return, perhaps just a memory or a few molecules of his pheromones...but it was a sustained, repeated reminder of that first visit. 

The second visit was easier...and the third...and the fourth. I began spending Friday and Saturday nights there, returning to my room in the wee hours. By watching other patrons, I learned the moves. By patrolling the back room, I learned the techniques, the positions, and the slang. An open door on one of the video booths was an invitation...a few quarters-worth of privacy...and the sounds of live-sex intermingled with the soundtrack of the porn videos. I studied the videos as seriously as I attended my college lectures. And I was slowly recognized as someone who could give a good blow-job or shoot a substantial load into another guys throat...and they learned my name...and eventually gave me the nickname "Breaker." (I got in a fight once at Rumors, and broke a guy's wrist.) The sex was raw and impersonal, but I found it satisfying, in a way...no promises, no expectations, no regrets...no responsibilities other than hygiene and safety...no ties...no need to feel anything but pleasure. Sex divorced from love. Physicality cleft from emotion. It sometimes seemed like a rut; I got tired of blow-jobs from the same guys. But, in the dark, all mouths felt the same. 

"What is this place?" Justin asked as we entered the parking lot. "It's the gay-boy University," I said as I slammed the shift lever into Park. "You've seen me at my best, now meet me at my worst. Here's where I got my MBA, 'Master-of-Blowjob Administration'." 

The bar was full...more so than I remembered it ...the music was louder...and the bartender was younger. It smelled the same. The memories came flooding back as we sat in one of the booths where the "spectators" sit...and I stepped to the bar to buy us drinks. No one would question his age here. As I turned to return to the table, I saw another guy moving in on Justin and cut him off with a "Back off! He's taken" and slammed the beer bottles onto the table. I had forgotten how "fresh meat" draws the predators. 

I began to tell him the story of this place...how important it had been...and his face wrinkled in what I interpreted as concern. "What's the matter?" I asked defensively. "I really gotta pee," he repeated..."but I didn't want to interrupt you." I knew I didn't want him going into that bathroom alone, so I led him to the room with a metal trough in the center...and the memory-image from years ago of that blond-boy lying naked in the trough being pissed upon by four guys flooded my memory. I had joined them that night...to be one-of-the-gang. "Get it over with," I said as I unzipped my pants. Justin followed obediently. "You even piss differently when you're here," he observed." 

When we returned to the table, I told him more about this place and its memories. "Do you want to see the theater where it all began?" I asked. "Sure," he said...and that began the tour of the entire place. Not much had changed...better technology in the arcade, a projection-screen in the theater...but the seats and cum-stained carpet were the same. Back at the table I told him the details, matter-of-factly, as if I was describing someone else. He looked surprised at times...concerned at others...but he laughed appropriately at the stories of my "education." He asked questions, innocently sometimes and teasingly at others. "Did you go home with guys?" "Did you ever do THAT?" (pointing at the video of a hunky guy in a sling.) "Did you take it up the ass?" he questioned...and I replied with a simple "Sometimes." We drank our beers, leaning forward to hear each other over the loud music and locking our gazes eye-to-eye as if to cut-out the other patrons. That was my intent, at least. 

I carried the remains of my third beer as we exited to the parking lot. This place represented my low point, I suppose...things I'm not proud of. As if to finally close this chapter of my life, I suddenly pulled-back and "pitched" the bottle against the black, windowless brick wall of "Rumors". The contents splattered in a perfect star-burst, then dripped down in rivulets. I surprised myself at the intensity of my feelings for this place; "Fucking Hell-hole," I murmured to Justin who was wide-eyed at my violent outburst. 

Back in the car, he said quietly, "Are you sure you want to drive all the way back to Pittsburgh? I mean, it's over an hour and it's been a long day,...and you've had two beers." He did sound like a public service announcement sometimes, but I knew he was right. "I don't need to be at work tomorrow morning, so it means we can stop. That's a good idea," I said, knowing full-well that, for him, it meant another night together. 

Together in the king-sized Ramada bed, he propped his head on his hand and lay beside me in the dim light listening to me talk. He has that way of cocking his head that says "Tell me more"...and I obliged. 

"So, did you always go there for sex?" he began. 

"For awhile, until I found a few other places like it...but then I learned that I could find what I wanted right on-campus, or nearby...without the drive." 

I told him about finding my own apartment for my senior year...actually, just a few rooms over Lou Massa's garage...but I had my own entrance, a place to do simple cooking, and the privacy I wanted...just a mattress on the floor and a place to study were all I needed. Mr. Massa was retired, and spent most of the winter and spring with his daughter in Florida, so I just kept-up the main house, cut the grass, and paid minimal rent. 

I told him how I could get guys to make the first move simply by making myself available. I would go jogging in Orchard Park wearing my Aussie Rowers and stop in the public toilet there...or cruise the Nittany Mall. On occasions, I'd go to the Seven Mountains Rest Stop and just sit in the car, and soon someone would approach me. The campus offered the best opportunities with guys my age, however...the area around the Bell Tower at night or the locker room at Rec Hall were great places to get noticed. And even if no one approached me, I enjoyed the looks of admiration from guys, as hesitant as I was to make the first move. 

The biggest change occurred, I suppose, when I started using the exercise room at the Natatorium to keep in-shape. It was such a cruisy spot, I learned to "read" the looks...to make the glances...to say "go for it" with my eyes...and eventually to make the approach. The memories of most of the guys have faded into oblivion...some as soon as the next day...but the first guy I brought home is still a vivid memory. 

I had practiced the approach in-my-mind for a week after I had seen him the first time in the circuit-training room in the White Building. He was a little shorter than I, but with more muscle and definition, and he wore soft cotton exercise shorts with the nicest pouch in the front and a cut-off t-shirt that showed just a promise of his abs. His thighs had the lovely slant of a developed Sartorius. His blond hair was long on-top, and it stuck-out at odd angles when it was damp from his sweat. We watched each other exercise, often following each other around the circuit...or even skipped stations to exercise side-by-side. No words, just a nod. But I knew he was interested. He often licked his lips absent-mindedly as he waited for me to finish the pec-machine...and more than once, he came back to wipe-down a machine after he had used it, while I was getting it adjusted to my size and strength. I could feel his heat as he stood next to me. He wiped the machine, but his eyes were on my body; he was caressing the machine as if it were a muscular torso. A nod, a knowing smile...for over a week, that's all we exchanged on an almost daily basis. 

I decided that, if I wanted him, I could make the first move. His interest was too obvious to be mistaken. The room was crowded that night...everyone waiting for stations to become vacant...jostling for space. We had both done a first circuit of the equipment and were partway through a sweaty second round. His damp hair was plastered to his forehead and his thin shirt clung to his torso in places like a coat of paint. As I finished the deltoid apparatus, he was leaning against the wall, watching me in the mirror; I felt his eyes caressing my body. It was time to move. I stripped off my damp shirt, draped it around my neck, walked over to him, and slumped against the wall behind him, close enough to lean forward and say (in my most sexy voice), "My place...my way." He turned quickly, as if surprised, and looked at me with an expression I have seen hundreds of times since then...that look of relief at being picked, the flared nostrils of arousal, the raking of teeth over lips in anticipation, the sharp inhalation of mild fear. He nodded wordlessly and headed for the locker room. We changed clothes in separate areas, but he finished first and came looking for me with his gym bag over his shoulder. I liked his eagerness. Outside he spoke for the first time. "I don't have a car. Where do you live?" "Just a ten minute walk," I replied as I touched him for the first time...a firm hand on the shoulder of his jacket which guided him in the right direction. I barely remember the conversation...and I don't remember his name. Suddenly after a week of silent nods, he was a font of conversation...classes, his major, his dorm, where he was from...I only wanted one thing from him now, and it wasn't talk. As we walked, I began to feel the power of what I had just done. He was coming with me because he wanted me. And he was doing it on my terms...no questions and no negotiations. I could do this. 

At the top of the stairs, I unlocked the door quickly and preceded him into my apartment. Once inside, I spun around, gripped him by the front of his jacket, pulled him inside, and closed the door. I pressed his back against the wall using my chest against his. "You want this, don't you?" I challenged. He felt my hand slide between us as I gripped my cock through my levis. "Yea, man," he said in a way that let me know he meant it. I unzipped his jacket and shoved it off his shoulders. "Get those clothes off," I said...and he started undressing in the dim light from the street lamp. 

He stripped to his underwear, then straightened up. "Don't stop," I said as I stood in the shadow and began to remove my shirt. He could hear my levis hit the floor as he slid his briefs down his thighs and let them fall to the floor. I stepped into the light wearing only the tank-top I had worn at the gym. "Oh, man!" he whispered as he stepped forward. I put my hand on his chest...feeling his heart beating and his heavy breathing...and I held him a foot away. Reaching down, I felt the cock that had been hidden in those short, and I wasn't disappointed. He was already reaching tumescence; it swelled in my palm. I stepped a little closer and brought my shaft alongside his, holding them side-by-side in my open palm...then gripping and stroking them together. I could feel his body sag a bit from the stimulation and he inhaled sharply. "I can't believe this is happening. I mean, I've wanted you from a distance...watched you workout...and here we are..." he said as he closed his eyes and tilted his head back exposing a throbbing pulse-point in his neck. His pecs hardened. His jaw tensed...his mouth opened slowly as I stroked our cocks together. 

"Okay, on your knees," I said quietly, dropping the tough-guy approach and deciding to see how far this guy would go. I released our cocks and he fell to his knees on the hard floor letting his hands trail-down from my shoulders to my waist as he guided his face to my swaying shaft. One touch of his lips for positioning, and then he swallowed almost all of it in one lunge...hungry to experience my unwashed taste. I stood with feet apart, swaying gently front-to-back with my fingers in his wavy hair. His hands slid to the backs of my thighs as he tried to take more. Oh, such a good mouth...and so different from the furtive, desperate blow-jobs in the public toilets. He was preparing it for more; he was working hard to please me. When John had sucked me, it had been an expression of love; this blow-job was a promise, an invitation, a desperate attempt to earn more. I felt the back of his throat...hot and tight...contracting on my mushroom-tip. 

"Now onto the mattress," I said, pressing his head off my rigid cock. He lunged forward again, almost unwilling to let it leave his lips completely. I pulled him up by the hair and guided him to the mattress with a jumble of blankets that I swept away with one foot. He settled onto the bed on his back, looking up at me from the floor as I stripped the tank-top over my head rapidly and threw it into the corner. Looking down at him, at my feet, I felt that a boundary had been crossed. I was no longer John's little secret...or the schoolboy learning "the ropes" of gay sex. I was in-charge now....able to get what I wanted...able to take what I wanted...and I wanted HIM. 

I sank down between his legs which I spread with my hands, kneeling to taste his cock for the first time. I gripped it, first in one hand, and then with both hands, as I licked the tip with my long tongue like an ice cream cone...encircling the head, tracing the soft tight skin below the overhang, then licking up over the top to pause long enough to explore his piss-slit. His pre-cum was already percolating down his nicely-formed cock as I wrapped my lips around the tip and slid downward, letting my accumulated saliva lube the way. He moaned, almost as if he was in pain...but it trailed-off into a shuddering whimper. I felt him tremble in my mouth, ready to shoot; too bad for him....it could have lasted longer. His firm abs tightened more as he arched his back...and then he lifted his arms, reaching out to grab me as the convulsions began. He gasped with each explosion. I pulled off a bit so I could taste his cum before I swallowed it; I had learned to savor the different flavors over several months at Rumors. It gave me a feeling of power to make him lose control...to reduce him to his animal instincts and autonomic responses. As I lifted my eyes to him, his cock still planted in my mouth, I could see the facial expression of utter ecstasy...eyes rolled back, jaw sagging like a pre-Raphaelite painting. His abs trembled uncontrollably as he finished; I sucked the last few drops with harder suction and cleaned up any drips that had escaped my lips. 

I crawled upward over his torso until my balls rested on his pubes. "Now your ass is mine," I hissed in his ear. "Think you can cum again?" His eyes opened, almost in-fear, and he shook his head "yes". I smiled, lifted my torso to an upright position, and slid my arms under his knees. I hefted them to my shoulders, like lifting a barbell, as I slid his ass along the bare mattress. Off to the side of the mattress was a large jar of Vaseline. I leaned to one side, reaching for it and twisted his torso in the process. He thought I wanted him to roll-over, and began to lift himself with his arms. I straightened up and shoved him back down flat on his back with a hand on his chest. "You just lie there,...I'll put you where I want you," I ordered. He looked stunned and overwhelmed. "It's yours, Man," he murmured softly. 

I unscrewed the lid and dipped my thumb full-length into the contents, then dropped the jar behind me. With his knees over my broad shoulders, his ass was lifted, spread, and exposed. Briefly, I ran my other hand over his crack, feeling for the hot-spot, then directed my thumb to his tight sphincter. "Take it easy, Man...I don't do this often." He was no virgin, that was obvious. His ass positioned itself to take my thumb. Pressing against his hole, I slid inside to the first knuckle, then rotated my wrist so my fingers pointed upwards to grip his dangling ball-sac for leverage. I could feel him simultaneously fighting my thumb and trying to open-up to take it. 

"Aaaaahhhhhhhhh!" he exclaimed as I pressed in as far as it would go. His body arched in reflex; his fingers clenched on the mattress cover. I rotated my wrist 180-degrees to spread the lube in his colon, then withdrew slowly, letting him expel me. I wiped my thumb on his semi-rigid cock; we'd use what was left as dick-lube. 

Now I was ready to fuck him. The urge to dominate, to use him, to satisfy my basic instinct, to shoot my load deep into his jock-ass...all of these took over as I gripped my shaft like a weapon, positioning the head in the small well outside his sphincter. He tensed as he felt my size. A thumb is one thing; a fully-engorged cock is quite another. He reached out again to grab me...to prevent me perhaps...but I lifted him higher, avoiding his grasp, as I swayed forward forcing the head into his hole. 

"NO, Man, NO!" he cried, but I was already partially buried in his ass. The tightness and heat burned my cock-head. Pulling out now would just delay the inevitable. I gripped the fronts of his thighs, bending him sharper at the waist and driving in another inch. He was thrashing now from side to side, definitely in-pain...so I gave one final thrust and drove it home...filling him with my pulsating cock-meat...skewering him on my fuck-pole. After one heaving convulsion, he settled down, adapting to the fullness. I could feel his muscles contracting on my shaft...trying to expel...trying to adjust. The fingers of one hand toyed with his nipple, as if to distract himself from the pain with some self-administered pleasure. I remembered briefly my own first-fuck with John...then purged it from my memory. 

I didn’t tell Justin the entire story as I related it here,…just enough to reach his arousal-point so that we could fuck before sleeping.

Part Four:  Lux Aeterna [Perpetual Light]

The first sensations... the sound of a fan... the feel of unfamiliar sheets against my hip... a softer bed. 

Unusual darkness... Unrecognized surroundings... The moment of panic, when I realize I'm not in the loft, like falling in a dream... re-living past experiences... opening eyes in strange surroundings...like a string of sensory explosions. 

Waking up in a new house as a child; we moved so often... sleep-overs at Mikey's house... my dorm rooms at Penn State and the apartment... waking up with strangers in beds that smelled of sex... hands still tied to the headboard, sometimes... drug and alcohol stupor... an overnight bus-trip, with a man's hand stroking my cock through my levis as I woke up; I can still feel his hand there, five years later. 

The images came flooding back like drum-beats before I could regain my bearings. Waking up in unfamiliar surroundings has been a terror since childhood. 

A motel room. A large bed. I rolled over and my shoulder bumped an object...someone's forehead...Justin's forehead. The memory of yesterday finally began to reassemble in my consciousness...the trip to Penn State, the funeral, the visit to John's home, the sleazy bar in Altoona. And here we were...together in a strange bed smelling of sex...but I remembered last night. 

He slept so peacefully. His chest rose and fell in slow regularity; his eyes moved slowly behind closed lids. [ I watch him sleep whenever I can. It calms my restlessness.] But we couldn't lounge in bed all morning. The Lexus needed to be returned to the rental agency by noon and we still had a couple hours to drive. 

So I placed my palm against his cheek and let my thumb trace his eyebrow softly. His lashes opened and his gaze locked onto mine as if he knew I was there all the time...and the smile broadened like a sunrise. "You were fucking-fabulous last night," he murmured with his first words of the new day in a soft, unused voice. "Maybe you were reliving a past fuck or something...but you were all over me. We've never used so many different positions in one night." He rubbed his ass absent-mindedly as if checking to see if it was still there. 

"We need to go," I said throwing the blankets off him. He snuggled closer for warmth while looking up at me. It was almost impossible to deny him what he wanted when he asked with only his eyes like this. I enfolded him in my arms and rolled him up atop my chest, trapping his legs in mine; he didn't struggle but, instead, spread like a blanket over me. I arched up to kiss him, but when I broke the kiss, he took my face in his hands and looking down at me intently...questioningly. 

"Your body is here, but your mind is somewhere else," he said, gazing into my eyes. 

"I'm right here...with you," I murmured. "I admit yesterday was hard for me...the funeral and all, but..." 

"You wouldn't be human if yesterday was easy, Brian. Funerals are like that. Was it going to that club?" 

Perhaps I winced a little. "Partially. That's a part of my life I'm not proud of...but my intent was to show you more of what's inside me...so you have to take the bitter with the sweet,...if there's any sweet there." 

"I was just gonna ask you where you hide the sweet- stuff, but I think I know the answer to that." He ground his groin against mine as if to indicate. " I don't feel that it was bitter, Brian. I've always wanted to understand how you ended-up where you are, and this trip has given me a lot of insight into that process, despite your hesitancy." 

"Some of it I'm not proud of," I repeated. 

"Yea, well who doesn't have things in his life he's not proud of? I know I do." (Somehow I could just imagine Justin's huge hidden secrets...cheating on a Latin test or forgetting to write a "Thank you" note?) "What is it that makes you feel less than proud? Your relationship with John, or what you did later?" 

"Both, I guess." I was suddenly reluctant to discuss why I had brought him on this trip in the first place, but the determined look in his eye made me continue. "I wanted his love so badly, I encouraged him even after I realized it couldn't go anywhere...a train-wreck just waiting to happen." A broken family, and I had shown-up with a crowbar.

"I've stood on that track many times with you, “ he said.  “I was sure you would never want me as more than a casual fuck...and I was madly in-love with you...deeply, passionately. It's a feeling I know very well...hopeless rage. " 

"Well, I raged, that's for sure...totally fucked...turned my anger against everyone...even you sometimes." I hadn't realized that until that moment. 

"No, you've never raged with me. You tried to run-me-off with indifference, but I saw through you." 

"But you never saw me like the images I shared with you yesterday....the most desirable stud in Pittsburgh...on his knees in the filth..." The smell of the bar's backroom came back to me now as a sordid memory. 

He clenched his fist on my chest. "The sleazy side of you? Get fucking real! Well, the most desirable stud in Pittsburgh had to learn it somewhere. In a sick way, I'm grateful for that filth because so much of what you bring into our bed you learned somewhere else. I knew nothing until you touched me, Brian. You gave feeling and touch to my desires." 

I nodded, remembering that first time in the loft. "You were such a novice. You didn't know shit!" 

He laughed, admitting it. "I can't imagine you EVER being as clueless as I was. But how do you know I wasn't just playing the "virgin" for your benefit?" 

"You were nervous as Hell...and as tight as a fist..." 

"Not tight for long, thanks to you. Turned me from a tight-end to a wide receiver in one night! You deliberately intimidated me...made fun of me. Maybe you wanted me to run." 

"I intimidate every trick. Just to keep 'em at arm's-length. It's my style..." 

"So you fucked this one up, Kinney." He stretched out his arms to mock me. 

"Apparently." I rolled him off onto the bed. "But you say you 'luv' me...you hardly know what that means." His brows lowered, but I continued. "If you had loved before and been hurt before...then I'd possibly be able to accept your feelings...but that night, you would have loved anyone who rimmed you and fucked you." 

His eyes flashed dark suddenly. "You say it with such sarcasm...as if my love has to satisfy some definition or meet some requirement to be worthy. I have known you FOREVER." He reached for the pillow as he spoke and slammed it at me. "Fuck you!" And he scrambled out of the bed and started to get dressed. 

We both were quiet as we dressed and headed for the car. No thought of breakfast. As we left the motel and headed for the highway, Justin was silent, staring straight ahead and chewing on his thumbnail. I finally spoke. I realized we couldn't go all the way to Pittsburgh like this. "I didn't mean to minimize your feelings. But look at it from my perspective. How many times can you tell a boy he's a 'worthless piece of shit' before he begins to believe it? Lick his perineum; he'll confuse lust with love. Just a little real love from someone and he'll crave more. Just a little praise of his 'prowess' and he'll find new ways to please. Praise his appearance and he'll sculpt himself into Adonis. Give him a little attention, and he'll become a demigod. I've been there...I've loved the attention...I've loved the power of having someone want me so badly, he would have destroyed his family and career for me..." 

Justin interrupted "You know he loved you...he told you in those damned books...but I tell you directly to your face. Why is his love genuine? Because he almost sacrificed so much? But my love is less genuine just because I have less to risk? Why is it 'love' when it happens to John, but for me it's some kind of physical fixation?" 

He didn't need to remind me. I knew the list of sacrifices he had made...to be himself, to be with me. He had made the sacrifices that John had only hinted at. I couldn't look at him because I was driving...but I didn't want to look at him at that moment. "Because that's how everyone treats me now...the body, the prowess, the reputation..." 

He wasn't listening to me. "It's because you don't think you're worthy of my love. It's not a defect in the gift, it a defect in the recipient. It's because you think that all you have to offer is your fucking sexual expertise. News flash! I can get laid anywhere. It's YOU I love, Brian...what's inside...your soul...your brain...not just your cock." 

I let his words sink-in. "Justin, how can I feel worthy of the love you offer me? I'm a heartless bastard...just ask anyone." 

"You're already worthy, Brian...you just can't accept that fact. And let me tell you how heartless you are. You were so heartless, you agreed to give Lindsey a baby despite your reservations. You were so heartless, you've supported Gus and you've even given-up your parental rights when you felt it would be in his best interest. You are SO heartless, you kept coming back to me even when you feared I was a stalking brat..." 

"You ARE a stalking brat," I laughed, because it was true. 

"...shut up..." he inserted quickly, without a change in the tone of his voice, not missing a beat..."and you have no clue what you've done for me. You saved me from my father. You supported YOUR father, although he didn't deserve it. And you've saved Mikey a thousand times..." 

"I guess to feel loved, you have to love yourself well enough to think there's something worth sharing." The words came out before I had even parsed them. 

The silence echoed in the car for many seconds. "Yea, you SUCK," he finally said unconvincingly. 

"For so long, that's all I've 'owned' worth sharing...my desirability, my fuck-power...
but I'm getting older. The beauty thing is getting harder and harder..." 

"Bingo! Meanwhile, if you can't see what's worthy about you, then slip into my skin and look at yourself from my perspective. The first thing you'd have to do is to get past the beauty. It's still there, but you think the beauty is all there is. Do you think I'm beautiful, Brian?" 

"Of course. From the first moment I laid eyes on you, looking for love on Liberty Avenue. But I'm always attracted to guys with good bodies, fine eyes, a type of grace that is indescribable..." 

"And I looked at you, and I told Daphne later, 'I have seen the face of God, and his name is Brian Kinney.'" 

"Yea, yea," I said, "you probably heard that from one of the boys in the back room who had God's cock up his ass one night." 

"The boys in the back room have never even SEEN your face...not your real face. They've focused on your dick. They never see your real beauty." He paused, letting me think about the face I wear like a heavy iron mask. "But somewhere along the line in that first fuck, some little bell went off in you. I remember." 

While I hadn't been able to remember his name at the time, I had the strongest sensory memory of that moment. "Remember when I said you'd always see my face when a guy fucked you? Well, at that moment, I looked down at you and I saw my own face, thirteen years ago, looking up at John....scared...trying to please...afraid it would hurt...it was the look on YOUR face that did it." 

"You were a wonderful first lover...gentle and caring and hot. I have no complaints about the physical side of it." He smiled, probably remembering last night. I smiled too. 

"But I remember how John's attraction to my body turned into more...the tougher things to deal with." 

"Yes, Brian. Just as my attraction to your body turned into more...and, believe it or not, admit it or not, your attraction to my body has turned into more....and you are terrified of it." 

"All that love-shit...it never lasts. People change. What is great now will become last year's fling in a little while. You'll meet someone your own age...someone with whom you can explore..." 

"How do you know??? Except for that "thing" with John and your weird relationship with Mikey, this is your first experience with caring too. And guess what? You are my own age, emotionally." 

"If I weren't driving, I'd..." 

"I can still run faster than you." 

That made me laugh. "Not with my cock up your ass, you can't!" 

"Promises, promises." ("Brat!") We both laughed, just to break the tension. "Brian, tell me something..." 

I nodded. I had to give him credit for standing up to me and holding-his-own in this emotional duel. I paused, then added, "OK. No lies, no distortions,...just the truth as I see it ...you deserve it." 

Justin thought for a moment, formulating his question like a young lawyer trying to "nail" the case. I could feel the wheels turning. "If we went back to that club and I got down on my knees on the sticky linoleum and I stuck some trick's dick down my throat, how would you feel about it?" 

"It makes me sad to think about it...to think you'd sink that low when I'm nearby..." 

"Yes. But John was NOT nearby, was he? You had pulled back, and he had severed the relationship...and you had no one. And you would have done anything to put a Band-Aid on the pain. Sex is a great Band-Aid." 

"He was hurting too. I caused it...some of it." My thoughts turned to the journal he had given me, filled with that hurt and his attempts to deal with it. As if reading my mind, Justin picked up the second volume from the back seat. "Brian, would you ever write the kind of journal to me that he wrote to you....and then would you make sure that I read it?" 

"Just like John, I write poetry for YOU when you're not around. But I never show it to you." I had never revealed my poetry-writing to anyone. It was a compulsion when emotions overflowed...something I did because I couldn't avoid it. 

"You've got to be kidding me! You do? And you never share it? That is so fucking selfish!" He seemed hurt. 

"Most of it I throw away. I know how hurtful it can be. John's writing was so beautiful, but the underlying pain was evident despite clothing it in phrases worth of poetry. " 

He clutched the book in his fist and waved it in front of me as I drove. "John's writings are a vindictive, hateful weapon used against an innocent, young man full of self-doubt and angst. They are truly cruel." 

I released the wheel with one hand and tried to grab the book. "But the books are beautiful. He was such a good writer...and he could share his emotions, when I couldn't even understand mine." 

"He didn't share them with you when you needed them most,...when you could discuss what was happening. He wrote his messages to torture you when you were no longer able to talk to him about them." 

"That wasn't his intent," I countered. 

"Yes it was," he insisted. 

"He wrote them because we couldn't be together lots of the time...he wanted me to know how he felt." 

"He loved you? He was ready to make huge sacrifices? And he couldn't find time to discuss his feelings for you? I don't think so. He was riddled with guilt, and he never forgave you...or got over you. The second volume makes that clear. He wanted to punish you. And he did. And he still does, from the grave." 

"Punish me? For what?" 

"For making him love you so hopelessly." His words had a ring of finality. 

I waited for a few moments, gathering my thoughts. "Hopelessly...how I feel sometimes..." 

"Yes. Hopeless. No future. We all feel hopeless sometimes, Brian. It's not unique to you. I've felt the hopelessness. But when you smile at me in that guarded way, or you put your head on my shoulder, or just pull me onto your lap, I know the world is capable of being conquered." 

On that note, we drove mostly silently the remainder of the way to Pittsburgh. After returning the Lexus, we drove to the loft in the Jeep. The familiarity of the Jeep and the city made us feel somehow more relaxed...although there were still issues to discuss and settle. 

After putting a few things away and pouring a drink, I stepped up behind Justin at the computer, placing my hands on his shoulders. He was typing something, but he closed the screen as I approached...something he didn't want me to read, perhaps. 

"Let's talk," I said. He looked stunned. He was the one who had been pressing the issues. He had guided the conversation in the car. I, on the other hand, had struggled with the issues, opened up my doubts, and generally made a mess of things. So he was surprised that I wanted to resume....but I owed it to him. 

I pulled him to his feet, and we sat on the LeCorbusier lounge chair, close enough to touch, but not close enough to be a distraction. 

"So where do we begin?" My mind was flooded with things that needed saying, but they were entangled with the things that had already been said on the drive to Pittsburgh. 

"Oh, we began a long time ago, Brian. Perhaps we should just resume where we left-off...where the conversation got too close for comfort," he said in that calm, adult way he uses when he knows he's right. 

I looked into his eyes, like I had that first night, and I saw his love radiating like a beacon. If I could only be a mirror to redirect it back at him. ""How could you love such a fucked-up mess?" I finally managed to murmur. "There's no happiness loving me...only despair and hurt and..." 

"But you bring me happiness,..." he replied, smiling and shaking his head in mild disbelief that I could say such a thing. "...because this fucked-up mess loves me, whether he knows it or not, whether he'll acknowledge it or not, ...he loves me with such clarity and such intensity that I feel chosen out of the whole faggot world to be happy. Yes, I have the despair and the hurt with you, Brian...but you always redeem yourself, and do you know why? Because you can't let me go." He paused and fixed his gaze directly into my eyeballs. "Your life is not empty anymore...and that scares the shit out of you." He refused to continue, demanding that I say something or sit there in silence. 

My mind raced back over all the events of yesterday. "I can't shake the ghosts...the hurt...the memories...the past mistakes. I thought taking you to State College would show you, indirectly, how hopeless this was...you'd see me for the fucked-up mess I am." 

"You succeeded in one thing." He reached for my hand. "You showed me the "old you"...the forerunner of who you are now....the mistakes you've made...but it only made me love you more, because you're so much better than that. You can't ditch me, Brian. I won't let you." 

"You can do better." I couldn't look at him. 

"So can you," he shot-back..."but that's tough shit. We're stuck with each other. It's chemistry." 

"I can't change the past. I can't change who I am." My intensity rose to match him. 

"Don't change it. Outgrow it. Surmount it. Reject it. Defeat it." His voice rose with each challenge. 

"I've tried. I can't." There was finality in my voice. 

The expression on his face clouded-over like a sudden summer storm. He slid off the chaise and started digging under the desk for his shoes. 

"Where are you going?" I said. "What are you doing?" 

"I'm leaving. Fuck you! You won't even try." He had tears in his eyes as he faced me defiantly. 

"What can I do?" I tried to convince him to stay without knowing how to do it. 

"You went to college! You figure it out!" 

"They didn't teach me how to unscramble the brain of an 18-year-old boy." 

"I'm the same age you were when you first met John." His eyes flashed. He was off by a year, but I wasn't going to quibble at that moment. 

"Tell me what I can do." It was the first time I had indirectly asked him for help. 

He turned quickly, grabbed the two volumes of John's writing on the desk, spun, and threw them at my feet. "Get rid of this poison! Let go of the guilt...and the past." 

"But this is beautiful writing...a declaration of love..." I bent to pick them up. 

"It's a punishment," he shouted. He turned to leave, and over his shoulder added, "Until you understand that, you'll never be free to love someone else." The door slid closed with a loud bang. 

The loft is always a quiet place unless the music is throbbing. The thick floors and brick walls keep out the sounds of the other residents and the city. The openness of its design lets sounds dissipate before they can bounce and be heard. Its openness also makes it feel empty. 

It felt particularly empty now...as the echo of the door-slam reverberated only in my imagination. I put the books back in the nightstand where volume one had resided. I poured another drink; I shuffled papers. The computer screen caught my attention because it was the last thing he was doing before the cataclysm. I could snoop in his computer files, I suppose, to reinstate his presence here...but we had an unspoken agreement about that. I picked up his shirt from the floor. We had a spoken agreement about that; I refused to pick-up-after-him like his mother...but I folded his shirt and smelled it before I put it on the corner of the bed. The scent made me numb for a moment. 

He was here...even when he wasn't here. His toothbrush in the bathroom...his food preferences in the refrigerator...his art on the walls...his shampoo in the shower, although I'd noticed he had switched to mine lately. He lived here now. A part of the place. 

I retrieved volume two; I hadn't had much of a chance to read it. Opening to an early page, I read: 

"I gave you a purpose and direction...and you flourished. 

I gave you my family, the love of my children, my home as a refuge...and you visited often enough to work your way into our hearts, but then you didn't come anymore. 

I gave you my love, my caring, my concern...a gift which I have shared with very few...and you could not love in return. 

I gave you all I could give...myself...but you didn't have time. 

You asked me to let you go, and I tried...but you stayed to remind me of what cannot be." 

That wasn't the way it happened. That wasn't my recollection. It was because I loved in return that I broke off the relationship...not that I couldn't or wouldn't love. 

"No promises, no apologies, no regrets." The words kept running through my mind. There are sometimes regrets WITHOUT promises. Personal regrets, involving only myself. Failing others was bad enough...but failing to meet my own high expectations of myself was even worse. There was honor in trying and failing. Failing without trying was the greatest failure. I had promised Justin nothing, but I was failing him anyway. 

The urgency to "trick" must originate somewhere in my body other than in my brain. By the time my consciousness was aware, the need was fully aroused. A knee-jerk reaction to personal distress...impersonal sex. What did Justin call it? A Band-Aid? No, more like an artificial kidney or limb-prosthesis, making up for some serious defect, rather than just a protective cover-up. The need to be with someone...anyone...became an all-consuming compulsion. I dressed in the "uniform" and headed for Babylon. A Sunday afternoon...not my usual. 

Would Justin be there? I put the thought out of my head. Well, not entirely...because I knew how he would feel about my fucking someone else as a defense mechanism. Using their desire as a substitute for my own self-worth. He would be there. I just knew it. 

The music pulsed; the lights flashed. This place was the same every night of the week. He stood at the balcony railing talking head-to-head with a fairly unattractive guy. If he saw me, he didn't acknowledge it. I climbed the stairs and took a position beside him...and just leaned against the railing, looking over the crowd. He sensed me before he turned. His conversational voice, elevated above the surging music, suddenly took on a harshness. 

"Look for something?" he asked. "You know where to find it...downstairs, not upstairs." 

"I want you to come home," I said. I suddenly realized that his return was more important than the sexual gratification. 

His nostrils flared perceptibly. "Why should I? Nothing's changed." 

"I can't do it alone," I said softly. He could read my lips if he couldn't hear me. 

"Do what?" he said coldly. "Suck your cock and twist your nipple at the same time? You're the sexual gymnast. Practice and you'll make the Olympic Team." 

"You told me to destroy the books," I replied. "I think I'm ready to try...but I need you beside me...to watch me do it. If I tried to do it by myself, I'd just hide them and you'd find them someday, and I'd feel like a fool. I need for you to witness it." 

He turned without smiling, realizing my seriousness, and he excused himself from his conversation. Without a word he headed down the stairs and toward the door, parting the dancing crowd for me to follow. He looked taller from behind for a moment. 

The sun was setting as we climbed the steep oak stairs leading to the roof of the loft and we opened the hatchway. That's the advantage of living on the top floor...access to the roof where I can grow a few smokeable plants, have a private tanning area, and do some outdoor cooking and dining. The pink arch of the sky looked like the roof of a mouth above the jagged teeth of Pittsburgh's skyline, ready to eat her offspring. On the way up I had stopped to retrieve the two volumes. We each carried one like some sacrificial offering. 

I lit the gas grill and we stood silently for a moment watching the flames flutter. Justin was beside me...his arm around my waist as if to hold me there unable to flee. He turned his face upward to me, telling me wordlessly that it was time to begin. I opened the first volume, tore out the first page and read the first line out-loud as I touched it to the fire. "To Brian, a token of my love. All the thing's I've said or couldn't say..." The flame crawled up the page leaving a red-edged, blackened, crumpled skeleton of a page crackling on the ceramic briquettes. 

Page 2. "Why this book"... It curled like a dying spider. 

Page 3. "Sometimes I wonder if you will ever read this." The last line, "immune to anger and pain," was the last to be consumed by the flames. 

Page 8. "I love to touch you, to hold you..." I held the page too long before releasing it and it singed the hair on the back of my hand. 

As if on-cue, a church somewhere in the distance began tolling the Angelus bell...a call to prayer, an announcing...but, in this case, a tolling for the dead. 

The brightness of each page's flame lit Justin's face with an intensity that increased, then decreased...a rhythmic appearance from, and a return to, the darkness. His skin glowed golden in that momentary light...and the sight of him suddenly gave some purpose to this ritual burning. Even the darkest words, on paper, could light the face of Truth. 

When I had finished volume one, he handed me the second one, then slipped behind me with his arms around my waist and his face peering around my right shoulder. 

The first page. "To Brian, Volume 2, A Goodbye." I felt Justin tense as the heat bathed his face. The brightness outlined his profile in contrast to the darkness. As each page went up in flames, I felt a gentle squeeze...an affirmation. 

Page 26. "I loved you once because of what you did...the facets you added to my life..." I turned my face to kiss him while trying not to burn my fingers. 

Page 30. "Interesting changes in my life..." ...words to a song (by Peter Allen) which were meaningful to John. 

Page 32. "Your reasons for leaving were honorable...selfish, but honorable." A man's vanity tells him what is honor; a man's conscience what is justice. Flaring fire, like reason, lighting our darkness for a few seconds. 

The last pages went more rapidly. The tearing became a rhythmic motion; I stopped reading them aloud. The last pages were blank. He had never finished his condemnation of me...or himself. It would have continued had he lived. He chose to end it the only way he could. At the end, I burned the leather bindings. The smell, like burning flesh, put an end to the sacrifice. I turned off the gas. The darkness was total now...as dark as it ever gets in a city. A breeze scattered a few of the black ashes; I could hear them rustle. Standing under the arch of stars...alone....together....a peaceful quiet. 

We stood there in the darkness not knowing what to do next. Endings are beginnings.... steps in a new direction after a full-stop. I had chosen a path now and we would walk it together. 

As I moved, he loosened his arms and I turned to face him. My memory of his face lit by the flames was all I needed. I bent down to kiss him...a silent "thank you." His cheek was damp; he had cried at the end. We stood facing each other, hand-in-hand, then stepped forward and embraced. 

"Brian, I..." I brushed my thumb across his lips to cut-off the words. It was my turn to speak...a time for a freed heart to finally say the words that had choked me for months. 

He felt me inhale to speak, perhaps....his lips so close to mine, our chests in-contact. I tried to speak, but my voice faltered. 

"I know," he said. "I know." 

"No, don't," I said, stepping back a little. "You always say that to let me off-the hook...and to prevent that difficult silence. You've felt my love...you've acknowledged my love for months. My saying it now, as some sort of capitulation, demeans it, I think. . I've told you many times...'actions speak louder than words.'" I slipped my hand under the front of his t-shirt and slid my fingers up along his side...warm skin against my palm. I felt his hand on my shoulder in the darkness. "Being capable of loving is so much more important than being able to say it. Let me show it the way I feel it," I continued. 

"I...I don't have a condom with me up here," he stammered softly...almost embarrassed. "But I can go back down and get one." 

"No," I said. "Stay." I slipped my other hand under his shirt and stripped it slowly up his torso and over his head. 

"I want to see you. It's too dark," I said, pulling out my lighter and lighting one of the kerosene patio torches. It sputtered, then flared into its trembling flame. He stood there, as if transfixed, while I slipped off my loafers and socks, unbuttoned and removed my shirt, and stepped out of my pants. He had seen me naked many times, but he always examined my body like an artist looking for some new contour to draw. And I looked at him, as if for the first time also. He was not a trembling, unsure boy...but a man bathed in golden light. I stepped closer again...then sank to my knees on the tarred roof and untied his running shoes. He used my head as support as he lifted each foot to let me remove his shoes and socks. His feet were as beautiful as his hands. Looking up at him now, I hooked the fingers of each hand in the waistband of his sweat pants and slid them down his thighs. His cock sprang free, already partially turgid. I had it in my mouth before his pants were totally off his ankles. The feeling of his maleness engorging in my mouth was second-only to cumming in erotic intensity. His fingers in my hair guided my subtle motions. I didn't want him to cum...just to feel me there, arousing him. 

I stood. He reached for me, palming my cock and weighing it like he was selecting a piece of fruit. "Like this?" he questioned with a slight smile, rubbing the shaft with his thumb. 

"I've thought about it," I replied. "I'm always very careful...always have been. My AIDS-test 3 months ago was clean...and I haven't had unprotected sex since then. If I care enough about myself to be careful, I care even more about your safety. If we're both extremely careful, there's no reason why, on special occasions, we can't do it as God intended." (I suddenly imagined Father Scanlan, my Catechist, tossing uncomfortably in his grave.) Justin smiled and nodded his assent. Then he stepped forward and kissed me. We embraced as equals...partners...lovers. 

"I've never done it without latex," Justin said softly. "But I've wanted to...with you." 

I broke the embrace and led Justin to the waist-high parapet at the roof's edge. We looked over the edge into the blackness of the alley. I stroked his lithe back with my hand. "Right here," I said. "No one can see us...but I don't care if they do." I stepped behind him and slid my hands from his shoulders down his arms to his wrists, positioning his hands a shoulder's-width apart on the edge. My chest touched his back briefly, and he squirmed against me. Then reversing the direction of my hands, I traversed his arms back to his shoulders then down his lats to his hips, pulling his torso toward me. I knelt and positioned his feet even further from the wall and spreading them wide. He leaned, supporting himself on straight arms, head rolling from side-to-side as if trying to speed the process. I stepped-up between his legs letting my cock slide along his ass-crack to his lower back, letting him feel how deep it would eventually go. His ass lifted in assent. I leaned forward over him then.... my chest against his back, my arms bracketing his, my hands next to his on the parapet. I kissed the back of his neck as if to say "We're ready." Rolling my pelvis downward, I dragged my cock along his crack until my slightly up-curved stiffness forced the head into his cleft. He shuddered and reached back with one hand behind my head, as if pressing there would force my cock into him. And he swayed gently from side to side as if to wedge me into him. With no additional guidance, my cockhead found that small "well" outside his sphincter...I could feel the increased warmth on the sensitive, velvety skin. He fit me just right. My pre-cum lubed him. 

"No lube," I whispered in his ear. 

"Yesss," he hissed. "I can take you. It feels like you've got enough flow for both of us."
He tensed as I planted my feet. "But not too slowly. I want to feel you in me now." 

As I began to roll my pelvis and penetrate him, the feeling of his hot sheath around my shaft was overpowering. I raked my teeth along the ridge of his shoulder, partially to divert his attention from any pain, but partly because it felt so wonderful to me. The softness and moistness of his interior...the intense heat...the pulsating tightness as he alternated between the pain reflex and the desire to open. The walls of his rectum rippled over me...not like the first time when I had to force my way in. This time his ass was swallowing me with repeated relaxation and contraction. He was not only accommodating it, he was welcoming it...celebrating it. I felt a brief flash of the old penetration/dominance urgency, but it subsided quickly as I focused on making the experience most pleasurable for Justin...and for me. It was the warmth of completeness...of one-ness...of union. 

Justin moaned softly. I felt him tremble beneath me. His head sagged as he relaxed, then arched back as I penetrated deeper. His mouth sagged open. I kissed his cheek. 

"Oooooh, you feel SO GOOD inside me," he groaned. "I never knew it could feel like this!" 

I was half-way into him when I started to withdraw a bit. Letting him adjust to the added friction. At this depth, my cock-tip raked over his prostate with the ridge around the mushroom head....and he shuddered again. 

I surged into him with another thrust as I lifted one hand from the ledge and crossed it under his chest gripping his shoulder from the front. My biceps bulged under his pit as I drew him against my chest and used my arm to piston my cock into him deeper. As more of my weight settle onto his back, Justin replaced his hand on the ledge. 

"I haven't done 'bareback' for a long time. Your ass feels SO wonderful!" I growled through clenched teeth. The last time had been with John...and I tried not to think about it. I used my abs to begin the slow in-and-out surging then; his ass gripped me tightly on the outstroke as if he were trying to keep my inside. More pre-cum made the friction less, but his tightness remained. Each in-stroke was a token of my passion...I increased the depth with each stroke; each outstroke reminded me how important he was to me...he took the initiative and gripped me, matching my passion with his. Not competing, but trading love-for-love in an intense physical way....a give-and-take. 

Again Justin tried to remove his hand from the parapet, this time to grip his own cock, but his remaining arm began to buckle, so he grabbed the edge in an attempt to steady himself. In turn, I released the ledge with my remaining hand and crossed it over my other arm on his chest, squeezing him between my upper arms and applying all my upper-body weight to his back. He rocked back and forth with the impacts of my thrusting. 

"M-m-more," he stammered, "Give me...I...harder...I need..." He ended with a moan loud enough to echo in the alley below and a few other mindless noises...brutally erotic. I felt his knees almost buckle. Planting my feet firmly, I began to lift his bent body to an upright position. As his hands left the parapet, his arms hung out to the side, elbows locked, wrists limp...a total submission...not to me, but to erotic rapture. As he reached the vertical, I leaned back, arching him over my chest as my pelvis rolled upward and he was skewered on my up-thrusting cock. His legs were shorter than mine, requiring that he either rise onto his toes or be lifted off his feet entirely. His back slid a few inches down my torso as my cock sank in the final distance. My hand slowly stroked down his soft, flattened, sucked-in belly....and I surrounded his cock with my fist, jacking him slowly. I felt his ass spasm on my shaft like a swallowing throat. In this position, my heavy breathing lifted him just enough so he rose and fell on my cock, rubbing the tip against his soft interior. 

"Breathe, boy...don't pass-out on me," I whispered...and I pressed his chest with my encircling arm. I felt him struggle for a breath, then moan again on the exhale; he was crying now and speaking gibberish. I released his cock to bring my hand to his cheek, speaking words of encouragement at the same time. "Come on, Justin...stay with me...I want you to cum with me"... and then I returned my hand to his cock and began stroking it as if it were my own. Faster, then slower...tighter, then looser...altering the touch so he was constantly aware of the pounding stimulation. 

"Cum with me," he begged, mindlessly repeating what I had just told him. "Share it with me. Fill me. I want to feel it. Let me feel it inside me. Love me." 

I fucked him harder then, using my arm to lift him and press him down onto me...using the muscles in my interior to make my cock throb deep inside him...a trick I learned in the backroom. The intensity matched my feelings... 

"Love me the way no one else ever will!" he moaned. "...the way no one else ever CAN!!" 

My hand was having its effect on his cock...I could feel him shudder, then stiffen, then inhale to moan again...and then I felt his convulsions around my bare cock, milking me with white-hot heat. His first shot hit my chin as my face hung over his shoulder. The remainder went somewhere, I don't know where...because his pulsating muscles brought me to my climax immediately. I staggered forward, almost crushing him against the bricks as I shot my load deep into his quivering ass. The impact knocked the wind out of both of us. We gasped together, fighting for breath. I kissed the back of his neck, his shoulders, his ear... as I finished filling his ass with my white-hot lava. 

Time stopped. Neither of us was aware of much for a minute or two. I can remember brushing my sweaty forehead against his hair. I remember the sensation of my hand covered with his cum, dripping down my fingers. I released his cock and brought the fingers to my lips, kissing his fluid off, and then offering it to him. He sucked my fingers hungrily as if to replenish his cum-supply. I remember some of my cum leaking out of his ass and down his inner thigh...then dripping onto my foot. 

As our breathing regularized, I kissed his neck more tenderly. Standing there in the darkness,...with flickering light casting shadows around us...I knew that we were different than before. I felt as if I had shared something, not simply delivered it. It was different with Justin... 

"You never need to say it, Brian." He was reading my mind again. Justin tilted his head back to try to kiss me, but he only managed to brush my cheek. I turned his head with my hand and found his lips. We kissed, saying more in that moment than some lovers say in a lifetime. As our lips parted, his breath fluttered against my lower lip. "I'll never make you say it...because the words would only remind me of this moment, and their inadequacy in expressing what you've just shown me...told me...would make them pale by comparison. I'll choose your love this way, anytime."