Strings Attached (12 page)

He’d been lying awake for some time, waiting for the blanket of sleep to shroud him. He lay naked on his back under the sheets, clasping his fingers behind his head, already feeling the delicious ache in his flexed biceps from this morning’s workout. He yawned, closedmouthed, pulling the pungent sea air through his nostrils, then popped his eardrums as he expelled it. Turning his head toward the French doors, he squinted at the white glare of the full moon as it hovered big as a searchlight over the twisted iron of the balcony railing and threw flat, cartoonlike shadows on the carpet and along the walls of his bedroom.

The house was silent but for the crash and fizz of the waves on rocks and sand. Farther away, a siren mimicked itself as the plaintive wail echoed off the palisades walls and skimmed out across the bay to the open sea.

He sighed. Nights had always felt lonesome. Apparently it didn’t matter that he was in Ballena Beach now instead of Fresno.

He thought about school. Neither Ellie nor Reed had shown up today, which he’d expected; he was lost in Geometry, which he’d also expected; Carlo hadn’t shown up for their class, so he missed the test they’d both studied for. He hadn’t expected that. Had their conversation at the end of the evening killed their fledgling friendship? He’d need to call him in the morning to see if they were still going to the party together. Otherwise, maybe Arthur could drop him off.

He blinked up at the ceiling, then checked the clock on his nightstand. It was already Saturday, and he had nothing really planned for the coming day but a driving lesson with Arthur, and Ellie’s party in the evening. Nothing terrible was pressing, so why couldn’t he sleep?

He’d awakened hard and sweating after midnight just like, he figured, every other seventeen-year-old male did on occasion. And even now, some two hours later, his aching erection still tented the sheet covering him. Of course, he knew how to relieve himself in a matter of minutes. He’d done it hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times since discovering how at the age of thirteen. But he hadn’t yet allowed himself to do so since his arrival here. In fact, he was terrified to do so. He told himself he wouldn’t think about it, wouldn’t picture it, wouldn’t even touch it until he knew he could do it the
right
way. And he made a deal with himself: when he couldn’t stand it any longer, he’d indulge himself only in the dark; he didn’t want any visual reminders of his fascination with the male anatomy. Otherwise, if he violated his code, he’d spend tomorrow and the next few days in a state of self-hatred, dreading his “date” with Carlo for the Halloween party as well as every future moment in that torture-filled locker room.

He’d known for years that he was attracted to guys but figured it was something like his mother’s addiction; if she’d only nipped it in the bud early enough, nothing catastrophic would ever have happened. So that’s what he was determined to do:
nip it in the bud.
And find the right girl—that magical combination of beauty, sexiness, and intelligence that could make him forget any disturbing urges and help him become the man he dreamed of becoming, especially since being handed all but one of the pieces to the dream-life jigsaw puzzle.

But who? Ellie was gorgeous, there was no question about that. But she was also wickedly bitchy, and they had no chemistry between them. Reed, on the other hand, was beautiful and seemed to be giving off interested vibes. She’d even referred to him as “cute.” And he couldn’t remember anyone mentioning her boyfriend.

There was no question now that Reed fit the bill, at least for tonight. He could allow himself some pleasure by thinking about her; it might even start things rolling for the coming evening and maybe even beyond.

He reached down, grasped himself, and began picturing her deeply creased cleavage, imagining those lovely soft breasts naked as he made circles with his fingers around her hardening brown nipples. He saw her mouth open and her tongue slither out to lick the insides of his cheeks, then draw his tongue deep within her mouth. He could almost hear her whimper as they kissed.

He saw himself kiss her nipples, then slide his tongue down the center of her belly toward the space between her legs. Her stomach muscles tightened and flexed, and she drew in sharp breaths as his mouth crawled like a horny snail down the centerline of her body.

His hand moved faster under the covers, and his breathing quickened. With relief, he discovered he had no difficulty imagining her tight belly, her firm hips, and the wetness between her legs waiting for him, craving his hardness. He was a man now; he could do manly things. He would mount her forcefully yet gently, but not before pleasuring her the way women loved.

His hand was jerking madly back and forth now, and he threw the bedsheet aside so as not to get it wet. The shock of the cold night air tensed his naked body, and his skin erupted in goose flesh. His body and mind were consumed with the pleasure his hand was giving himself. He knew it wouldn’t be long.

And as his cherished climax approached, so well-deserved and wholesome with images of heaving breasts and lipsticked lips, Reed’s curvaceous waist morphed into Coby’s rippling abdomen, his mushroomed manhood aimed obscenely at Jeremy’s gaping mouth. He imagined with delicious panic the sensation of his tongue making contact with the exquisitely molded flesh as he took him down his throat while watching the marbled thighs flex with ecstasy, then scissor crazily with pleasure. He was ambushed by visions of Coby’s crooked smile, Coby’s heroic chest, Coby’s sculpted ass, his own feet in the air as Coby grabbed his ankles and mounted him face to face with blond stubble scratching madly against brown, Coby’s drooling spit as their tongues twisted against each other’s as
Coby slowly entered him…

Jeremy’s toes curled, and his back arched off the bed as he gasped and locked his wrist and streaked his torso with sperm.

And it was over.

It took him a minute to catch his breath. His chest heaved as he peered down the length of himself and saw that in spite of the frigid nighttime air, he was covered in perspiration that glistened silver in the moonlight. Then he watched numbly as the puddles on his chest turned clear, then trickled onto the sheets.

He hopped out of bed to clean himself in the bathroom. He snapped on the light and snatched some tissues from the box on the counter beside the sink, then carefully wiped the evidence from his cock and stomach and chest as he checked his face in the mirror.

Did he look as queer as he felt? He was approaching his eighteenth birthday, and the problem wasn’t going away.

“You are a
faggot,
” he whispered contemptuously to his reflection in the mirror over the sink, wincing as
the word
caught his ears.

“You are a goddamn fucking faggot.”

He threw the clumped tissues into the toilet and flushed it, switched off the light, then tiptoed his way back into bed, shivering. He buried his head under the stack of pillows and tried to push out the roaring waves outside, but it made no difference. He flipped over onto his back, then his side, then his belly, then back again. He sighed. He asked himself,
Why was being gay so bad? After all, Carlo was, and he seemed OK.

But he knew why it would never be OK for him. Every movie or TV show or commercial that depicted a cheerful dad, a fashionable mom, and their normal, self-assured kids bit him like a snake, sending bitter poison from his heart up through his spinal cord to his brain and down through his body to his arms, hands, and feet.
I’ll never have any of that
was what that snake was made of. And when it bit, its teeth took days to let go.

He’d learned long ago to avoid the greeting card aisle of the supermarket; the categories held little relevance to his life, and their captions made him furious. Once, while in a particularly black mood, he’d stopped to read through the categories he’d never buy:
For Dad, For Grandfather, For Grandmother, For Sister, For Brother.
And he wondered,
Do people really feel this way about their family members?
But the ones that really pissed him off said things like
God Bless You, Mother, on Your Birthday,
and
A Mother’s Kiss Is Sent from Heaven.
He sure as hell would never buy those. And neither, apparently, would he now have any use for the final three categories:
For Wife, For Son,
or
For Daughter.

He switched on his nightstand lamp and tumbled naked out of bed, then made his way to the nearly empty closet where he kept his shoebox of mementos up on the top shelf next to the sealed one belonging to his mother. He slid his from the shelf and lifted the top, then found what he was looking for: the only picture he’d ever seen of his father and him, taken at the beach just after he’d been born. He hadn’t looked at it in years.

He held it under the lamp on his desk while studying his father’s image and decided he’d been stunningly good-looking, even by today’s standards. And with him, Jeremy, just a typical fat baby, eyes bugged and mouth slack. His shirtless father beamed at the camera, holding him by the armpits so his legs dangled in the air, diaper threatening to drop onto the sand. Had his mother held the camera, or had it been Aunt Katharine?

He shuffled over to the gilt mirror hanging on the wall, then examined the man in the photograph while scrutinizing his own features. Their faces shared the same heavily lidded eyes that narrowed into squints when laughing, the high cheekbones set off by hollow shadows underneath, twin ruler-straight noses, and square jaws with identical clefts. They even had similar mouths, which relieved him, as he was self-conscious about his full lips as well as the slight gap between his two front teeth. Their similarity was striking; now that Jeremy had matured—and cut his hair—he figured they could have passed for brothers.

He held the picture in his left hand and began petting it slowly with his right. Over and over again, he drew his palm slowly over the photograph of his father holding him. He reminded himself that touching the glossy paper might ruin it, but he didn’t care. The simple gesture inexplicably calmed him, momentarily assuaged the lifetime of feeling like an orphan.

“If you were here, we could spend time with each other,” he whispered to the image as he stroked it. “We could talk about everything that’s going on, and you could handle Mom and give me advice on what I’m going through.” A great sadness swelled up from the deepest part of him, and his throat knotted. “You could teach me how to drive and help me with my swimming and tell me you’re proud of me and that you’d be there for me and love me no matter what I did or who I was.” Tears streamed down his cheeks as he continued pawing the picture, simultaneously feeling both unexpected relief and embarrassment from what he was doing.

Then he collapsed onto his bed. His body heaved with sobs as he held the photograph to his bare chest, biting his pillow, while wails of grief for all that might have been gushed forth. But almost immediately, he began to feel ashamed and stupid, so he quieted himself, afraid someone would hear him and think he’d set himself on fire or cut off a toe. He lay hiccuping and sniffling for a while, then finally drifted into an exhausted sleep.

Two figures ambled along the moonlit beach, bare feet sinking into the wet velvet sand, squishing in between toes, relaxed strides leaving twin trails of skidded footprints; one man-size, the other tiny. Waves slapped the shore while rustling palm trees swayed and tossed their shaggy heads. A waterfall thrummed in the distance.

“I’ve been looking all over for you,” the young man said to the little boy, his voice deep and sonorous, like he was inside a cave. “I was worried. I was afraid something bad had happened.”

Jeremy looked up at the smiling face of his father and marveled at how beautiful and crystalline his skin was in the moonlight. He glowed actually, as if he were lit inside by a million tiny white Christmas lights.

“You’re here. I can’t believe you’re really here,” he replied excitedly. “All this time I thought you were dead.”

“I know. But what’s important is that we’ve come together finally. That’s what counts.”

Jonathan held his son’s hand, a miniature copy of his own. He grasped it gently, and the boy squeezed back.

“But where were you?” The small face blinked up at his father, the hair blowing atop his head reflecting silver moonlight.

“I’ve been here all along.”

“Where?”

He laughed as he bent down, lifted Jeremy by his armpits, laid him gently over his right shoulder, then maneuvered his crooked arm under the boy’s behind so they could have their faces at the same level. He turned so both looked across the black nighttime sea.

“I’ll tell you someday. But now, I want you to see something.” He raised his arm to point skyward. “Up there.”

Jeremy searched the inky sky. “What is it, Daddy?”

“There, Jeremy. There is the Father’s Star.” His pointing hand stretched away from his body until it hovered far over the water, like a kite riding a brisk summer wind. “Make a wish, my son.”

Jeremy then spotted it—a glistening speck high above the horizon that dimmed all but one of the lesser stars around it, pulsing pink one moment then silver the next. It was simply dazzling and somehow magical. Seeing it called up pleasantly mysterious feelings, like a scent from his childhood that he couldn’t place. He stared at it and let the sensations inside him swell.

“It’s
beautiful.
What’s it mean?”

“If there’s something you need, you wish on it, and it’ll come true.”

“Is that all I have to do?”

“I’ll tell you the rest in a moment, but something’s wrong. Tell me.”

Jonathan bent over and dropped his son onto the sand, then caressed the hair on his head. As he did so, Jeremy was transformed into a young man. “I want to be…a real man. Like you,” he said, now eye to eye with his father. “I’m afraid I’ll never be one. I don’t know how. And you’re not here to show me.”