Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3
I almost didn't choose M. There was another man I was talking to, a hot older daddy in town on business. Nice dick, big shoulders, hosting in Times Square. I couldn’t tell if he was gay or what. M was much younger than the daddy—late twenties, probably—and definitively homosexual. A hung vers bottom, according to his profile and confirmed, at least in part, by his pics. He’d been texting me here and there for weeks; his gentle insistence suggested stamina, among other qualities. I wanted to see the daddy more, but when M cleared his afternoon for me, I headed to Bushwick.
I dressed with care. I made sure that everything I needed—poppers, condoms, ear pods, gum—was in my little bag. When the G train arrived, I stepped through the sliding doors and found a wall to put my back against. Book neglected, I spent the ride deliberating. The train is my favorite place to be uncertain, and I was still uncertain about M.
There were, of course, the risks of fucking another bottom. Then there was the possibility that M wasn’t even properly cute (in the single blurred face pic I’d seen, he was wearing sunglasses). But I’d been wanting to hook up with more gay men around my age. Not that I avoid them, but I do shy away sometimes, a disinclination that I noticed didn’t have anything to do with desire. Doing this thing that I didn’t strictly want to do, but that I believed would be good for me, had begun to feel important. Can you do that? I wondered as I walked the long transfer at Metropolitan/Lorimer. Take a man like a vitamin?
The apartment door was already open when I reached the landing. M surprised me with his handsomeness. Dark, curly hair. A deep voice, with something of a lisp. Tall, lithe, polite. His apartment, which I surveyed while he got me the glass of water I wasn’t going to drink, was clean and well-organized (hot). His book collection told me that told me we likely had friends in common. On his bed, we dithered over his doorstop biography of Robert Moses, finding reasons to touch each other.
It mostly felt good: uncut, layered with delicate petals of skin that periscope in your hands, the glans bright like a star. When it didn’t feel good, I kept it to myself. For a long time, we moved our bodies around, mostly at his signal, talking very little. I could feel our wordless negotiation for submission, waiting for the other to take control before taking new initiative. Please don't cum inside me, I said. It’s usually a command. Of course, M said. All over my belly and chest, a little on my face. Mind if I smoke? He had Marlboros. I didn’t ask for one. We chatted. I got up to find my clothes before he finished the cigarette.
What’s under desire? I imagine a skeleton, picked clean by passion. Now that we were finished, and I was dressing, did M feel there was something wrong with him for wanting me? Do I1? (I'll never pass. Is that sad2?) If he doesn’t ask to see me again, will it be because I was a bad lay, or because the box had been ticked? (But hadn’t I been ticking a box, conducting this exposure therapy on myself?)
M pulled on his pants, walked me to the door, and kissed me goodbye. It was crisp outside, the end of spring. I was still uncertain, but even uncertainty yields information. For example: what I sometimes feel is different from what I always know, which is that desire is not an ethics. For another example: uncertainty is part of desire, its shield and core and residue. Unfortunately, despite having enjoyed someone’s body and company, sometimes you don’t fuck again for no reason at all.
Find me on Twitter and Instagram. Get my second novel, X, right here.
I do, sometimes.
I think so, sometimes.
“What’s under desire? I imagine a skeleton, picked clean by passion. “
So, so good. 💜