Back to Life Ch. 01

Nights were becoming days, at that point in my life. Sleep until three, not even know because I threw the alarm clock away weeks before and curtains blocked out any possible light source. My childhood room felt like repression and angst compared to my dorm; instead of half-naked guys walking in front of my door with wish-fufillingly thin towels stretched over their thighs, or, late at night, just cupping their dicks with a rag and sprinting to their rooms because they forgot a towel entirely, I got my mom trying to coax me into her kitchen of sorrows with waffles and some sort of truth-serum syrup.

The bed was too empty around me, I think that was it. Not that I sleep around at school, the opposite really, but I had gotten used to sleeping with someone else in the room, at least. Or waking up with a massive hangover surrounded by other people, even if we were all perfect strangers. But I'd just wake up to nothing, no one's body or belongings to indicate that I wasn't alone.

See? The only way in that house was by inhaling a big bag of teenage bullshit.

///

I'd only been home a day when my mom sprung a party on my ass. A few old friends showed up, but mostly the house was pregnant with overzealous family members and family "friends" who were there to see if I failed or became a heroin addict. I think the latter qualifies as failing, too, though. As a present, a few of my friends promised me an "after party-party" where more than lightly-spiked punch was available. I almost cried at the sentiment, and then realized that I might have a problem if a day of sobriety was a harrowing experience.

After my friends left and the neighborhood watch dissipated, my dad went to bed early, citing his work schedule. One down, in my mind. A few family stragglers were talking in the living room when I went upstairs to get ready for the after party. Cologne, a comb through the hair, nothing too taxing. When I came back down, I slipped out into the backyard to sneak a smoke in before I tried to tell my mom that I was leaving.

Drag after drag, I kept hearing all of them laughing in the living room and people in yards all around me doing something loudly, whatever it was. Saturday and all. After another cigarette to accompany my sudden, acute loneliness, I slipped back through the door and tried to gauge how much I smelled like smoke.

"Pretty obvious, if you ask me."

I jumped at the voice, a deep-toned whisper. Gerald.

He did his sloppy smile to show he didn't care and pulled me into a big hug, probably the only welcome-home hug in history that's been masturbated to; his hands, a little bit rough but not in a bad way, accidently grazing my upper arms, his entire chest meeting mine dead-on, our necks helixing around each other, part of his leaving mine red from his light brown stubble, his Adam's apple thumping against me just once as he swallowed. He pulled away but we stayed close as we talked.

Handing me a piece of gum, he asked, "So, where you going tonight?"

I took the stick and popped it in my mouth, chewing on my cheek to punish myself for wanting nothing more than to fuck him at that moment.

"Hannah's throwing me an after-party-party."

He chuckled. "Yeah, this was sorta destined to be... nice." He laughed again and set his hand on my shoulder. His face got serious, meaning he was joking around. "Don't you go drinking and driving now, young man."

I turned my face and leaned against the wall, doing my best dramatic posture. "But all the cool kids are doing it."

He took a step closer, face still serious. "Aug, if the cool kids were jumping off a cliff, would you do it?"

His hand went onto the wall quick, blocking some of my hallway view. I couldn't tell if he was still playing around.

Dick hardening from all the close proximity and what counted as witty banter back then, I ground my ass against the wall to reduce how obviously erect I was. And then I realized that I wasn't a horny kid anymore, but a horny young-adult.

Standing up straight, to make my tent impossible to miss (and his eyes did travel down and snag on it for a few seconds before carefully meeting mine again), I curled my hand around his bicep and grinned. "Depends on the view, I guess."

///

After I told my mom that I was going to meet some friends and I packed my bags for that massive guilt trip, I left for Hannah's; the entire night I was either hating myself for touching Gerald or pissed that I wasn't allowed to like a guy who wasn't technically anything at all to be, besides my aunt's ambiguously sexual husband. And even then, she hadn't even met him until I was eleven or twelve. Fourteen years older isn't patently insane, in the grand scheme of things. Right? And then; you're trying to FUCK YOUR UNCLE, self, the shame!

The party was okay. Most people left after we made plans to meet up again; Hannah and Bryant were already passed out on the couch and Michael was binge-drinking vodka koolaid because, as he put it, "I'm a light sleeper."

Curled up on the recliner, drunk enough to realize I couldn't drive but not drunk enough to take the risk, I could feel Gerald against me. That second our calves touched when we hugged, the scritch-scratch of his leg hair against my lightly fuzzed legs, the heat of it all. After looking to see if they were all asleep, I crept to the bathroom like a hunchback, embarrassed of my erection.

///

Laid out on the floor, tile obscenely cold against the exposed part of my lower back, dick in hand, my thoughts didn't once stray from Gerald.

Like I said earlier, I was jacking off to a hug; true, but let's move past that; I wasn't dissecting that interaction for it's individual moments, eroticizing that gesture, but relying on those little bits of information-the prickly hair, the smells, the slight sheen on his lower lip as he grinned- to cull an old memory from my small bank of personal whack-off material.

///

It was my eighteenth birthday party, not much different from the sudden homecoming party earlier, down to the people invited for my dad to make feel jealous and the actual party planned later in the night by Hannah herself.

I was about to leave, saying my goodbyes to my mom and grandma, who busied themselves by talking about how angry they were that my aunt couldn't make it to her only nephew's eighteenth birthday party, when Gerald walked in and said his own goodbyes, only when he hugged me, he told me to come to his backyard (across the street) for a small birthday present. Confused, hopelessly turned on, completely turned off because my Grandma was sitting right by me, I left in my car, drove down the street and snuck back up, going through the side gate.

Gerald had a cigarette in one hand and a sports drink in the other. When he saw me he snuffed out his cig and stood up; I remember almost laughing at how romanticized he looked in the moonlight, his hair shades lighter, his amber eyes twice as "gently smoldering", the tight form of his body defined by shadows spewed onto his clothing. He went for something under a chair and set it on the cast-iron patio table that we both hated equally ("A table with holes in it? Really?").

"Now, before you open this, you have to-"

I jumped a few times and started our comedy routine.

"Tell every other adult- shit, I'm an adult now!- that you, specifically you, gave me whatever that is inside that tall bag that's supposed to be a secret, given the backyard rendezvous and all?"

He blushed and for a second, I thought it was because I made him angry- but then I remembered that rendezvous are generally romantic. And then I felt like the dumbest, creepiest teenage stalker.

He grabbed for the bag and reached in, bringing out a small box and a bottle of wine.

"I know that you're going to Hannah's and there's probably- there's obviously going to be other stuff," he set the bottle on the table and gestured for me to take the box. "that's whatever, no one's expecting you home anyway, but the wine..." he looked to it meaningfully and I got more flustered, wondering what the hell he was doing. "Save that for something, you know? My dad gave me a bottle of good wine when I turned eighteen and told me, 'You can drink it like water tonight, or you can wait until it means more than a drink.'." beat. "I drank it that night, but that's not the point."

We both burst out laughing and the tension fell to its usual level.

///

We talked for a while, sat on the patio listening to music. That's how it always was; we spent time together doing nothing at all. I opened the box and a small roll of bills sprung forward.

I looked to him, surprised. He waved it off and said, "Safety cash, in case you're ever in a bind, or whatever."

I shoved the cash in my pocket and jumped up to hug him- hey, at that point, I was taking the physical contact I could. He tried to stand in his chair but we connected so suddenly that he fell back, bringing me with him. His hand was on my lower back, warm, maybe lingering. He took a breath, and in that breath I could see that he wasn't going to push me off or laugh this away- if I didn't.

Stop-motion: force my face closer to his, my hands gliding from his shoulders to his ribs, pressing harder, needing more evidence that we were both real and happening. His lip quivered, just once, and in that second I saw into him, sensed that this was the time.

I mashed my lips against his and let his tongue poke and pry into my mouth while I raised his shirt- not to take it off, just to see him in the flesh, intimately, just once, not from across the pool as he dove in or, god, that one time he didn't know I was awake and walked though the living room in sleeping pants that the remnants of his morning wood undulated against, those sleeping pants that ran so low that I could see that the fine hairs on his belly trickled into a heavier coat near it's loose elastic rim.

His stomach twitched as I laid my fingertips against the smooth skin just under his ribs, the muscles calling the place home making my jeans a denim prison. I reached for the button but he stopped me, and for a second I might've died on the inside, but he unbuttoned me himself with the hand that stopped me while using his other hand to direct me to his bulge.

I silenced the part of me that just wanted to look at him, that wanted to lie with him and talk about nothing and fuck it, go on walks on the beach and shit; that would never happen, and every second was one that he could freak out and run into the house.

I got harder at the sound his belt buckle made when I undid it- the clinkclankclink of it, the metal in one hand, Gerald's cock in the other, masked by khaki fabric. Undoing his jeans, I slipped my hand in before he could grab my dick, because I had to be in control for this part, I couldn't handle being stopped like this. And then, he was in my hand. He let out an almost inaudible moan, short, surprised, and put his palm against my neck, bringing our mouths together.

Awkwardly, he shimmied as I used my left hand to pull his shorts down a little, about to his knees, while my right held onto his dick like it was a life-or-death situation. His boxers went too, and I saw him for the first time, in my hand job-vice grip.

I kissed him again, needing him like that one more time just in case, before I spat in my hand and began running my hand up and down his cock, getting a feel for his thickness, how sensitive the tip was compared to his shaft. His dick was perfect to me; a little more than two handfuls, his girth scaled perfectly with his length, his head an angry red fading to a pinkish tan shaft until his circumcision scar, then a darker, tanner color, ending with a thick, smooth fluff of his brunette pubic hair.

He began to jerk me off too, and not lazily; we would kiss and I would grip the base of his dick, run up and down its length a few times tightly before spinning my palm on his cock's tip while he tugged at me softly and rubbed his thumb in wild circles just under the rim of my dick, both trying to make the other one go crazy. While doing this, I played with his balls, but only a little, not knowing how well he liked it, and then his nipples, which lead me to his chest, its curves, the hair on his pecs, the tightness of the abs his construction days started and he kept up with, the hair trail dwindling as it fell to his bellybutton and then reappeared under it, spreading to his thighs and obviously his cock and his big, blush-colored, symmetrical ball-sack and I tightened against him as I came over us, this sharp, never-before felt pleasure binding me against him as my eyes snapped shut and my muscles contracted and released, contracted and released, made even better by Gerald pulling at my balls hard, like I didn't even know I liked. I stifled a gasp because I didn't want to sound like a... well, fag? but then moaned, a guttural, necessary moan that ended in a whimper.

Our eyes caught and he smiled, then looked down at my runny cum, sluicing from his abs onto the tops of his thighs where they stopped, caught by his little hairs.

Without thought, I climbed off of him and kneeled, taking his cock into my mouth, or as much as I could at the time. It was oddly satisfying, the volume of him in my mouth, the feeling of each pulsation between my cheeks, his hand absently massaging the back of my head. Whatever I couldn't fit into my mouth I wrapped my hand around or licked, just trying to show it some attention.

I realized he was about to come, felt his thighs tighten around me and then release when they met my figure, saw a hand ball into a fist. I looked up to him and flicked my tongue against the tip of his dick, made sure he could see me making him come, that he could see the cum spewing from him because of me, into me. A surge of blood filled his cock's length and the last of his watery precum dripped onto my lips, ran onto my shirt, but I kept working my tongue against his glands while jacking him off; his hand stopped cradling my head and fell to my neck, gripping tightly as he released a rumbling sigh and buckled against the chair, beginning to climax but not breaking eye contact, never releasing himself from the connection we had cultivated.

His balls tensed slightly, along with his hand, and a tiny bauble of thick, white cum hit my tongue. He groaned loudly, an obviously sexual groan for all the neighbors to hear, then sprayed a string of jizz straight into the back of my throat- I gagged but swallowed it, surprising even myself, and then took his cock back into my mouth to suck the remaining spurts of cum from him, choosing to close my eyes, jerk myself off while I could still taste him, and so he could close his and enjoy the pleasure like I was when I seized against his strong frame.

As his posture began to relax I sucked on his balls and explored his body with my hands, felt the tickle of new hairs against my palms, hard nipples against my fingertips, until finally he grabbed one of fingers and set it against his tongue, sucking on it as he pulled me back onto his lap. With each strong hand he latched onto my ass and, before slipping lower in the seat and taking some of my erection into his soft mouth, gave me the most passionate kiss I've ever received, before or since.

///

Lying on the floor of Hannah's bathroom, cum splattered on my chest and forming rivulets in preparation to drip down onto the tile, I tried to catch my breath, lock that entire night back in its cage so it couldn't consume me like last time. It wouldn't work, an actual relationship, what I want from him. Not just fucking in a backyard, but talking and- I've gone over this.

Instead of lying on the cold tile in a shame-puddle comprised of self-pity, sweat and my own watery jizz, I sat up, tore toilet paper from the spool and cleaned up my mess.