According to the guidebook in his suitcase there were supposed to be only two gay bars in this unfamiliar, famously pursed-lipped, inward-fixated Corn belt city, and after dinner Joshua had sought out one of them. Sent on business he was alone here and had a hankering to find a local for a conversation and maybe a laugh thrown in, but the place he had found, a mile or two distant from the city center, hadn’t, after a couple of Perrier’s and lime, buoyed him. At the bar a smiling man with a receding hairline who said he was a teacher joined him. They had tried to chat, but when at one point the man had regarded him appreciatively up and down, as if to say, “Well, how about it?” Joshua, untempted, decided it was time to leave, handed the man his card, expressed his regret with a grin, this being a lie, and walked away.

Now he pushed the paneled wooden door, stepping into the night, and let the door close on the spiky, insistent hammering from the juke box (“That’s the way I like it, uh huh, uh huh.”) that he and the possible pick-up at the bar had had to shout over. In the open he took in a deep breath and filled himself with the generous, early autumn coolness. He could still hear the pounding from inside, but it was irrelevant now, not even a nuisance. He paused beneath the floodlight above the door that supplied a peninsula of brightness on the threshold, and he relished for a moment the sense of open possibilities stretching away after the bar’s enclosure. Across the street was a small, urban park, his rental car parked beside it. He could hear the rustle of leaves as a breeze touched his cheek. He closed his eyes and let it tingle. (Tomorrow the business appointment: no sweat.)

All at once his reverie fled; his eyes snapped open. His ears picked up a menace somewhere close by, a human sound lurking in the bay of one of the several store fronts aligned with the bar entrance, all to the left of where he was standing and each in a shadow cast by the light over the door closed behind him. The sound came again, a voice indistinct but unmistakably a snarl. Joshua was able to make out “fucking” and “die” and “faggot”.

This has never happened before, to others, yes, never to him. The awareness of mindless hostility paralyzed him, the threat of bricks flying at him, knives thrusting, baseball bats, and someone hidden in the darkness, maybe even several someones, strangers who didn’t care who he was were about to …what? He was not going to be able to deal with this; he would, oh god, succumb. He would surely suffer injuries, be humiliated. He could turn about and escape into the bar, away from those guys, most likely a gang with baseball bats in their hands or chains of filed-down screwdrivers. Waiting for him. Inside again he could have someone call for the police. Or he might find allies, a group to come outside with him, assembled for mutual protection. These were the prudent choices that swept through his mind as he stood under the light and surveyed the dark. But, instead, heat was arising in him, in his throat. Over-laying the fear came cold indignation, outrage and desperation to confront the mindless, murderous malevolence seeping toward him out of the night air. His eyes teared and his fingers curled and pushed into the palms of his hands: fists. “Damn,” he thought and then, escaping him, he yelled it, “DAMN!”

Those days his parents were yet to buy one of the newly available color TV sets. In the evening his father had turned on the switch in anticipation of the heavyweight title fight between Floyd Patterson and some upstart challenger from the Midwest, another black man who was mostly unheard of. “This oughta be good,” his father said placing himself before the set.

How? Why? Joshua wondered but didn’t ask. Weren’t the two black men strangers? He was aware that there was an aspect of professionalism about boxing, but did the two men actually dislike one another? Did they hade each other? Didn’t one or the other maybe fear getting hurt? What was so good about that?

His mother stepped into the living room from the kitchen and seated herself where she could watch the set but from a distance. Joshua accepted his father’s implied invitation to enjoy the coming contest and took a place beside him on the floor, cross-legged.

The television camera was panning the packed crowd, and from the set came the rumble of its eagerness for the spectacle to start. They too expected this was going to be good, and the rumble advanced to a roar, with waving, whistling and cheering, when Patterson, his expression imperturbable, appeared.

Joshua wondered: how much money was it worth to hit another guy really hard while letting yourself take the same kind of punishment? Why would anybody enjoy watching that? He looked up at his father whose fingers were spread tight on the arms of his chair, his mouth open slightly, his lips sucked inward. The boy Joshua stretched his legs out and now lay full length on the floor. He watched the two men pummeling each other from above his chest and between his toes for a while. Yes, there was a cruel skill in it. But then he got up and quietly disappeared into his room.

Only a few seconds had passed. The hater hadn’t opened up again with his curses, but where could he be lurking? Joshua agonized that he was lacking the heart of a warrior: he had to be cautious, to pivot slowly, to locate the points, if there were several, of danger, and now he was sure he had spotted him, partially hidden, sure enough, in the recess of a store front. There appeared to be no gang; whoever it was, the guy was alone. But if he was so bold, why was he skulking there, hidden in a shadow?

“Okay, now I see you,” Joshua said to assure himself, but in a loud whisper so the guy could hear it.

As a challenge it was enough to make the creature step into full light, but it was not the slob he had expected, no pug-nosed, uncouth, unshaven clod. Instead, the guy appeared to be younger and about his own height. And lean. But his enemy was muttering again, something unheard, because his own voice roared: “You fucking dope, you miserable CREEP!”

This pressed the guy’s trigger. At several yards` distance the hater was now lurching forward, and in the same instant Joshua registered that the guy advancing toward had no weapon in his hands.

So much the better. Joshua was trembling, and the sweat he had felt under his arms was turning to chill. What was welling up in him as the guy narrowed the distance between them and astonished him and caused hands to shake was the sudden lust to abolish him, to take this stupid creature and grind him to dust.

Recalling this weeks and months later Joshua had only a blurred vision of the sequence of what followed next. The young man, rushing closer, raised his arm as if to strike. Joshua saw his opponent was off balance, and without waiting to see if the hands were fists, he crouched and, taking a half-step forward, seized the hater’s writs in his own right hand and, bending further, spun about, lifting the guy off his feet. It was a basic movement he had once learned in after hours in high-school and never forgotten.

In the BANNER, the school weekly wherein Joshua sometimes turned in a report and was listed on the masthead there appeared a notice that the track coach proposed taking a few boys to train in an after-school judo class. Why the young man who also taught trig and advanced algebra had volunteered to do this was anybody’s guess. Someone sneered “It isn’t real fighting.” “Oh,” Joshua answered, “Really?”

There was a preliminary selection; the coach whose name was Duquette was willing to take on only seven freshmen or sophomores, and when twelve showed up at the gym the first afternoon, several would have to be eliminated. But Joshua had been on the junior varsity long-distance team and had an inside edge. Somehow he was accepted into the seven elect, and this surprised him. “I thought you’d want somebody with muscles,” he told the coach who held an MA in math from Michigan and hand a long slender beak of a nose, chilly blue eyes and a crew cut.

“Wrestlers need muscles,” Duquette said whose manner was crisp as his figure was sinewy, “I don’t and you won’t. But first of all you hafta learn to fall down and get up again. Fast.”

Falling down and arising began immediately after school, its duration was two hours on Wednesday, and it went on for a semester. As with the track team – which Joshua now dropped, grateful for the lesser need for running out of breath, all seven were unsmilingly called by their last names and praise for achievement was meager. Yet there was a certain wild thrill in tricking an opponent off balance, then off his feet, and Joshua, to his astonishment, discovered a fierce joy in knowing, if he wanted to, could actually do damage without much exertion. He looked forward to Wednesdays when he and Duquette and the other judo neophytes developed a gruff camaraderie arising from their very fewness in number.

“You don’t go in much for friends, do you?” the coach said one afternoon, the calm remark with no preamble, coming out of nowhere, catching him unaware and without an answer. It was a question not even his parents had ever thought to ask.

They were alone, the rest of the group now in the shower, shouting and laughing. “All of you in the class seem like loners, especially you.”

Joshua did have interchangeable companions, boys he played cards with, went to the movies or dance with. But friends…!

Seeing the discomfiture he had caused, Duquette murmured, “You don’t have to answer. Really. But seeing you all every week makes me wonder how you kids are all going to turn out, that’s all.”

“It’s okay,” Joshua stammered at length. He nodded for emphasis and put on a grin. He was both embarrassed and flattered.

“You’re a good kid, Joshua,” the coach said, and with his right hand reached out and, still without smiling, tousled his hair. “You’ll do okay.”

Until the end of the judo course and then until the end of that year Joshua would imagine the two of them in his darkened bedroom, holding each other, embracing.

A school judo team never developed, Joshua never receive a display letter in the school colors for his mother to sew onto a sweater.

Joshua clenched his teeth and held his breath as he felt the weight of the young man’s thorax as it was jerked onto and over his back, and suddenly as he let go of the wrist he had clamped, he registered that the guy had said or grunted something just before, maybe “Ah” or “Ouch”. Or could it have been “Don’t.”

But now his enemy was lying on the ground, on his side and not getting up again. In fact, not stirring.

Joshua was panting. He had no sense of triumph, at least not yet. He was intent that the young man not rise and menace him again. A quick study showed that, no, he had not been carrying a weapon, no knife brass knuckles or club. For a moment he was safe, yet this only increased his rage: what right did this guy, an utter stranger, have in coming at him like that? How dare he? For a moment he wanted to kick him with all his strength, and again and again until he heard the ribs crack from it; then, just as quickly came the reflex: Oh my god, I don’t do things like that! Less than five minutes before he had been sitting complacently, mellowly, mindlessly at the bar, chatting with that guy what-was-his-name, like a tracit prelude to a hop in the sack, and the next thing was the fiery job of wanting to hurt somebody, a stranger and a good-looking one at that.

With his enemy sprawled at his feet and now showing signs of stirring, Joshua could relax: he was not going to be hurt, no bleeding, no black and blue spots to stare and glower at in the mirror and explain away, no humiliation, but conceivably even something to brag about when he got home (Oh yeah, I did it, it wasn’t all that hard, you know, and, after all, there was only one guy, but then would you believe it, he was actually…), and he visualized going over the details with somebody he would have met for the first time, somebody with whom he could mesh romantically, a potential lover, some soft-spoken guy, taciturn, crew-cutted, lean of course. He would be modest about tonight’s victory, and then the two of them would tell each other of their lives, their pasts and futures merging.

Before turning away to his rental car Joshua examined the figure of his fallen opponent on the ground who had outstretched a hand and was pushing down with it in a slow attempt to get up. Coolly Joshua set a foot on the rising shoulder and gave a shove to keep the guy down. The young man grunted, and now Joshua pushed with his shoe to turn him onto his back. There was blood on his blond hair, and in the light from the street lamp it gave him a dashing, heroic aspect. He has a tall brow, unthuglike, a straight nose and firm chin. Joshua mutely noted these good looks, but was still glad to have hurt him, at the same time content that the young man wasn’t dying. Who now said. “Shit!” and groaned again. Joshua descended to a crouch to look at him more closely, ready to spring to his feet should the need arise. To his surprise he picked up the faint smell of freshly laundered cotton from the sweatshirt, and was surprised again to hear the young man say, “Help me.”

Reacting to this Joshua rose to his full height again. “What?” he howled. as much to himself as to the figure on the ground at his feet, “What? You were gonna lynch me a minute ago, and now I’m supposed to help you? Have I got that straight?”

He waited. From the sidewalk came: “I’m hurt.”

Joshua shouted again, this time making sure the guy would hear every syllable: “I don’t know whether I’m getting through or not, but this is the ‘fucking queer’, the ‘godamn faggot’ whose ass you thought you could kick in – and wouldn’t it’ve been just great if you could have! But get this, you shithead, at this second I could kill you and watch the blood and walk away and never look back. Have a drink over it. Are you getting this?” Even if this had no visible effect hearing his own anger out, nothing to worry about now, calmed him: he had the guy pinned down with words, even if it wasn’t true. He wasn’t sure he could kill anybody, not even this guy, and it would have been impossible for him just to walk away after doing it. Glaring down at him now, Joshua’s conscience was tweaked: the “shithead” was too appealing a specimen, too pretty, even just sprawled there in his lean helplessness. Suddenly absorbed Joshua’s stare too in a Grecian conformity of line the way shoulder, neck and jaw were all to chastely aligned and joined, and it was a charm to imagine how they would work together if the blonde head, once erect, were to turn to him and say something, say anything. And he recalled that fresh laundry smell. The young man was trying to push upward again, this time with both hands, and Joshua could hardly miss the silent rage and frustration on his face at having been bested in the contest: in the young man’s slitted eyes the hot tears were coming out. Still standing, still wary, Joshua said, this time quietly, “Can you get up?”

Joshua had taken his foot off his chest and now stepped back. The stranger rolled to one side in order to support himself on one elbow. He coughed and said, “Please don’t leave me here.”

He had a long nose, slightly arched. Joshua saw no blood dripping from the nostrils and felt relief. Not shouting now he said, “If I had a bulldozer, I’d roll over your whole family.”

“Shit! Help me.”

“Stay where you are. I don’t trust you.”

“Please. Get me outa here.”

“You want to know something? Your really are some kind of cute. What are we, buddies now?”

Here the stranger pushed himself to a sitting position, not quite upright, head between upraised knees, one hand pressed to his skull.

Joshua turned away, feeling released. It was over. The rental car was close. After several steps he turned again. “Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere.” He was so scrubbed-looking. The hand on his head was nicely shaped. Long fingers. “Just get me out of here.”

Joshua stood motionless. His former fury abating, finding himself actually thinking it over, this outrageous plea, but in no hurry to shorten the distance between them. The choice was his to walk away without another word or…what? Abruptly he said, “I can drive you to an emergency room.” He immediately regretted having come out with this, letting himself in for legal complications maybe. Then: “But if you start in again…”

The young man shook his head and muttered, “Ouch!” Then he said, “I promise.” And now for the first time he managed to tilt his head as if to survey his opponent of a few minutes before. Unmoved, still uneasy Joshua reached out a hand and when the young man took it he tugged bringing him to his feet.

“Shit, my head hurts.”

“Yeah, and you’re bleeding and you’ll get it on my rental car.”

The young man was not letting his hand go. The feel of the hand was damp and warm, and it was seven or eight-year-oldish, but it melted the leftover hostility. Disgruntled at himself Joshua resolved to hasten the stranger to the closest hospital and leave him at the door. He grunted and jerked his hand away to point in the direction of his rental car. It was not far. The young man needed no support.

Once seated beside him in the front seat, staring blankly ahead, the stranger reached into a rear pocket to pull a clean linen hankie which he applied to his head. In a low voice he said, “Don’t take me to the hospital.”

“What’s this? Are you saying you’re not hurt now?”

“I know but…” He shook his head which obviously caused him pain.

Joshua had moved the car out into the street, leaving the bar and the site of their fracas behind. He said, “For all I know you might have a concussion.” Into his mind came again the thought of a lawsuit.

“I’m not that bad. Really. Don’t drive to the hospital.”

That did it. Joshua pressed down on the brake. “Okay, you can get out at the next street.” He said with finality.

“Please no, not yet.” Joshua was turned toward him, the stranger still focused into the distance, but he had to sense the annoyance in Joshua’s hard stare. Then he said, “Can I go to your place?”

Joshua pulled the car to the curb and stopped. He had only a vague idea of where they were in the unfamiliar city, where the nearest emergency room might be, how to find his way back to the motel. There was no one on the street, not even dog-walkers. A nearby street light gave offered a sentry-like glare through the windshield, and when the stranger turned his face toward him, Joshua could study half of a brow, nose and chin, the other part of the portrait indistinct in the dark, a study in facial highlighting. With his deep set eyes and narrow longish nose he was an item, no doubt of that. But Joshua’s voice came out sharp again.

“Am I hearing you right?”

“My sister is a nurse at the hospital.”

Joshua kept looking at him, saying nothing as he explained that his sister, even if not on duty, would hear how her brother had come in bloody and needing treatment, then she would ask questions. At this point Joshua interrupted, “So can’t you lie?”

“It’s my sister!”

Without actually saying so, he was telling Joshua that he trusted him more than his sibling. Joshua explained crisply that he had nothing in his motel room to dress a head wound with, nothing to relieve leftover pain, but at length he let himself be talked into starting the car again. The stranger directed him to a nearby convenience store that sold gauze and adhesive tape. In the illuminated aisles Joshua kept his mouth shut as he inspected the patient. The blood, while still visible on his broad temple, was at least no longer flowing. Okay Joshua thought, okay, okay, clamping his upper lip between his teeth as his eyes roamed over the young man’s narrow frame. Just relax he thought as he inspected the drying discoloration of the grey sweat shirt where the blood had dribbled.

“Isn’t it about time for you to tell me your name?” Joshua said, adroitly letting the guy proceed ahead of him as the two moved toward the cashier.

“It’s Craig.”

“My name in Joshua. And now aren’t you going to say what a pleasure it is to meet me?”

Craig paused and turned, eyebrows raised in faint surprise. Grey eyes. “Listen, okay? you’re really decent. I guess I don’t deserve it, do I?”

“No, but now seeing you in the light I decided I’m the forgiving type.”

“Yeah. really,” the young man named Craig said, from which it was impossible to tell how much conviction was in it.

With the car’s engine humming down the nighttime street Joshua opened again. “I might as well tell you – and it may or may not be a surprise – I get mad when a guy like you calls me a ‘fucking faggot’, but the fact is, that’s what I am. Some time ago I decided that’s me, I don’t mind being one. It’s not all of what I am, but… well, anyway… As for you though, I’m wondering what side of Crazy Street you live on.” He let this sink in. “Craig, that’s your real name?”

“Yeah.”

“And I’d figure you’re in college. And in some fraternity.”

“I’m in a dorm.”

“And all the guys in the dorm swear how they hate fucking faggots. Am I right?”

“Yeah, some.”

“And now for the first time you’ve actually gotten to meet one. I’m wondering what you’re going to tell them. If you ever do.”

“My family…” Craig began, broke off and ended lamely with: “We all go to church.” He was going to let it go at that.

“And you learned about fucking faggots in Sunday School?”

“I never used that kind of language, those words I mean. Bad language is a sin. I did it once and got punished. You punished me.” And with thinned lips he added, “It’s okay.”

God, are we ever different! Joshua thought. But what he had just said was, all the same, a hint that there was some kind of content, or soul, residing inside him that would fit the bloodied blonde hair, that chaste brow and splendid nose, those smooth hands. A church goer! Feeling older, wiser and sadder, Joshua wanted to solace him, reassure him. No, he wanted to fondle him.

Craig knew how to get to the motel. Joshua parked the car in front of door 17 and with the key in the lock said, “We’re here to fix your head. I’ll put your head under the shower for a minute or so, apply a bandage, call a cab and send you on your way. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

Craig gave out a throaty “yes”. Inside he dropped onto the green bedspread to watch docilely as Joshua turned on the shower, who waiting for the water to temper, reflected once more on how he had let himself get into this, the sound of splashing water reassuring him that, in an odd way, all was well. He signaled to Craig who obediently stepped into the bathroom, bent over the tub and let his head get wet.

“A long time ago I read someplace that water is supposed to be a symbol of the holy spirit. I suppose you know that, though.”

“What?”

In a moment Joshua turned off the shower and the two of them seated themselves side by side on the bed. Eyes closed, the young man was motionless as he submitted to his head being stroked lightly with a towel. Beneath the gray sweatshirt Craig had on the predictable white T-shirt which appeared to be freshly laundered and beneath this, skin. Within easy touching distance was the curve of his shoulders, his tight chest and the taper of his back, but Joshua kept his hands at his task. After a minute he lay aside the towel. “Feeling better?” he said.

“Uh huh.” By this time it was obvious that Craig was a person of few words, these being usually monosyllabic.

It was time to apply the purchased gauze and adhesive tape. Joshua knelt between Craig’s open knees. The patient lowered his head and remained passive as he was being worked on.

“What are you going to tell your pals at the dorm?”

“I have to think, Maybe nothing.”

“Are you in a dorm at all? Do you go to college at all?” Joshua’s next thought was that he had let his curiosity go too far. “Never mind.” He applied a patch of gauze to the dried head wound, and while Craig held it in place he wrapped more over his flat ears with their nautilus interiors and around his blond head, finishing was a neat little knot. “The guys in the dorm, do they like you?” How do you ever really know, about being liked? Dumb question!

“I mean, do you like them?”

“They’re okay,” Craig said cautiously, “I guess I like them some.”

“Anyway, I’m finished. You can go now.” Hearing this Craig made no effort to stand.

Still kneeling, his face a foot away from the young man’s elegant nose, Joshua said, “I’d sure like to know what’s wrong with you. I mean I wish to hell I could figure out what’s wrong with you. I mean I wish to hell I could figure out what’s in your head.” Is there any word I could say and you’d know I mean it, and the you’d know I’m real. Or maybe you could come out with something for me to hear, and I’d have to say, God, how right you are Craig, my friend.

The white of the bandage encircling his head, Craig now raised his eyes and met Joshua’s. Slowly a half-smile came out, a kind of welcome, an invitation. Neither moved. Joshua said softly “What if I said I’d like to like you?” Sensing this was the wrong thing to say, he looked away and came to his feet.

Craig whispered, “What do you do in the bars?”

“I mean, like dance around, kiss, take off your clothes, what?”

“Well now, let’s see. I’ve been groped a couple of times. And when I had a lover we’d kiss when one or the other came in. I guess I’d have to say I’ve danced a lot. I still like dancing, even alone, if I can’t find somebody who looks like you. Sometimes with not a hell of a lot on, but that’s in other places, not here in this city.” He paused. The young man was staring into his lap. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, Craig, I have a nice tight ass. I show it off. I’m being flamboyant. Then, call it being just plain shameless, Craig. If I were sitting next to you in your church, singing along, following a hymnal, I wouldn’t do it. It’s like this: once in a while I have to kick up my heels, escape from the quotidian ho-hum, be flamboyant. It’s something my generally repressed gonads insist on.”

Craig gave a nod as if he understood but then declared, “I couldn’t go that.”

“I figure there are worse temptations to be lead into, but seeing that’s the last word on the subject, it’s time to call a taxi for you.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Still seated, with his legs over the side of the bed, Craig was not, however, moving. When he looked up to search Joshua’s face, he started to grin shyly, but the grin disappeared and he looked downward again.

Joshua put a hand up as if to scratch his head but did not finish the move. “Of course, there’s no hurry,” he acknowledged. He had not known it thirty seconds before.

Bending forward Craig tugged at one of his moccasins. When it fell to the floor he pulled off the second and looked up again. The white of the taped bandage, the mark of Joshua’s care, was in contrast to the young man’s tumbling hair. Joshua strode to the side of the room where the light switch was on the wall. In a near – whisper, his fingers on the switch, he said, “Is this the right move?”

The light went out.

After Joshua had dropped his shoes, taking his time, stripped to his racy-looking shorts which nobody could appreciate in the dark, inserted himself as quietly as possible into the sheets, he pulled up the blanket to cover himself and his guest who said not a word, but had undressed in the few seconds of darkness. They lay beside each other, scarcely touching.

“How’s your head?”

“Fine,” came out, hardly audible, “Good.”

His eyes shut, Joshua recalled the famously sardonic line from a children’s party: Are we having fun yet? He reached out a hand and found one of Craig’s to grasp. It felt hot and damp, but it was not pulled away. So now we’re holding hands; what’s next? He reflected that he had over time lured exquisite young men into abandoning themselves with him, yet never without feeling that, for all their human separateness, they were somewhat like himself, imagining his way into their intimacy, inducing them to let go and be as sensual as he was. Craig was, however, probably too “nice” to enjoy letting go. He rolled to his side and silently lifted Craig’s hand to rest on his lips. He found the big finger and lightly set his teeth on it without biting down. On an impulse he enveloped it with his mouth. It had an agreeable taste, salt-sweaty yet oddly sweet. And now Joshua heard him whisper, “Please.”

“Please what?”

“Don’t say anything. Just do it. Just…go ahead.”

“Just go ahead and what?”

“Just go on.”

What ensued did not last very long. It was accompanied, however, by enough gasps and half-supressed yelps from his partner to assure Joshua that he had performed well, vicariously enjoying turning Craig on, at the same time content to forget about himself, like a violinist playing a wild gypsy air. At the very end he clutched the young man and held tight until the spasms, with choking oh` and ahs, had stopped, then gently let go. Immediately his partner turned away on his side, without even a sigh of appreciation. For a short while Joshua lay, unfulfilled, fuming silently, yet recognizing he had, after all, asked for this. Still, the ardor of the preceding moments had been quenched like a horseshoe plunged into bucket of water. Then there came the thought: he could be laughing over the matter tomorrow, something to relate to friends. He heard Craig’s deep breathing: he had fallen asleep and before long Joshua drifted off too.

He suddenly awoke in eye-blinking alarm. Craig had switched on the table lamp beside the bed and was getting up. “Oh shit,” mumbled Joshua, “what’s this?”

Craig was bending down over his side of the bed and reaching for his shoes. “Stay there. I have to go.”

Joshua pulled a wrist from underneath the covers to view his watch. “It’s not even two AM,” he wailed. Almost as if speaking to himself Craig said, “I shoulda been back before this.” When he pulled straight again Joshua, now on his elbows, had an instant to admire the delicate taper of his back, before the sweat shirt came down over it. A nice back to tell somebody about.

Joshua now sat erect in bed, fully awake. “Don’t tell me lies. You don’t have to go, not at this hour of the morning. It’s just not true.”

“What?” Craig had picked up his jeans, holding the tops in his hands, the trouser ends still drooping on the floor.

“Don’t tell me you have to leave. If you want to, well then okay, just leave.”

“I never did this before.” Craig whispered. “If my mom and dad ever found out about tonight, I don’t know what…they’d kill me. They say sex is for getting married, all that.”

“Spare me. Grow up. On second thought, don’t bother.”

Still holding the tops of his jeans, his eyes open wide, Craig said, “It’s just…I only have sex when I’m alone.”

For a moment there rose into Joshua’s throat a host of bitter, throwaway rejoinders, such as: “I figure you’ve been alone all evening.” or: “How do you like living your mom’s and dad’s life?” or: “You’re a little too puny to be a sinner and you’re not much as a virgin, either.” or: “If you were a drink, you’d be half a diet Coke with the fizz gone and the ice melted.” Instead he said, “Put on your pants, Craig.” He rolled onto his back, sighed, and another thought came to him. “In the brief history of our relationship, Craig, you haven’t called me by my name yet. It’s Joshua, like in the Bible. Did I mention that? I guess it slipped my mind. Anyway can you say my name now, just once? You know, a small favor, as if we were old lovers.”

“Joshua.”

“Thank you, Craig. Take care of yourself.”

He shut his eyes until he heard the door close softly. Lingering on his back he waited a few minutes, letting his mind wander, until he reached over to switch off the bedside light. Since the young man named Craig was somehow helplessly religious, he thought he might as well closed the encounter with a prayer for him of some kind. His mind began, “Please let…” and shifted to: “May Craig…” and then: “May that guy have…”, and then, seeing he was getting nowhere, in the dark and warmth, finally muttered, “Oh shit.” and fell asleep.

 

© 2004 Klaus Westen - Contributor's Bio