That’s Lily, Terry says. At our knees, a morose old dog gazes up and a little to the side, as required by canine politesse.
Hi, Lily. I add prosody to my voice for her benefit, but I don’t offer my hand for her to smell. Though I like dogs, I’m afraid of most of them.
Come on in, says Terry. He has the kind of smile that people call toothy: big, friendly, imperfectly impressive. He’s wearing blue sweats and a grey hoodie. Lily, of course, isn’t wearing anything, not even a collar. I follow them down the long, narrow hallway.
The apartment is very gay, which sets me at ease. Playbills with bottle-necked chanteuses, flyers with slogans and pink triangles, a Target rainbow or two. Even when I’ve fled his apartment in anger, a gay guy has never made me feel endangered. Not yet, anyway.
Terry sits on the couch. Although our messages had been terse and transactional, I heed an instinct and climb onto his lap.
When Terry unzips his hoodie, there’s no shirt underneath. That's what I came for, I say, plunging my hands into the thick, white-gold fur. We laugh. My smile is toothy also, I think. The patterns of his body hair remind me of my stepdad; I realize they share other physical qualities in common. Wuh woh, I think. But it’s fine. My parents divorced when I was five and went on to date and remarry for years on end. I refuse the implications. It’s just not my problem.
Terry is a really good kisser, but I can tell right away that he’s going to be lazy, even though he picks me up and carries me to the tiny bedroom. The bed seems ill-equipped for such a big man—it’s larger than a double, but hardly a full, if such a size exists—so I doubt he has a live-in partner. I spend most of my time there on top of him, which is among my least favorite positions. Terry says if he gets on top he’ll cum faster, which I believe, but…one remembers the charms of younger men at times like these.
The sex is fine, though the kissing was better. I call him daddy a few times, sort of by reflex. On paper, it works: he’s bald and bearded; in his Grindr photos, he was bulky but defined, though in person his abs are not visible1. Although he is the right age, size, and presentational masculinity, daddy doesn’t quite suit him. Terry is too much like a person to me, as well as slightly too effeminate. Perhaps what I mean to say is that I’m not afraid of him. When he gets on top of me, I watch him move, the light from his desk lamp catching the fur on his shoulders, chest, belly, thighs. Maybe fucking straight guys is the only thing humiliating enough to make me feel helpless in the way I want to.
You want me to breed you? Terry asks, his forehead shining. Gay guys usually don’t ask, in my experience. That’s an area where straight guys tend to be better.
No, no...I mean I do but...
He pulls out and cums on my stomach. We kiss and hug. It’s nice.
Then we talk. Like me, Terry is from out West. He has lived in New York for almost 20 years and works on a big pharma account for a cancer drug. Their marketing budget is $700 million, which seems impossible to me. Even so, I find it all very boring, probably because I also work in advertising. But Terry is so big and cuddly and warm and furry that I want to stay awhile.
Still. After 15 minutes, I get up and dress. Terry pulls his sweats on and walks me to the door. I’d love to do this again, he says. Lily is there—where had she been?—wagging at my feet. I’ve passed the test, I think. I take the stairs to the street and dance to the train.
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I don’t notice until Terry points it out. I’m annoyed by his sheepishness, and by the feeling that he was trying to deceive me with an “imperfection” I didn’t care about in the first place.