Lover Boys Forever (25 page)

We sit next to each other and eye up the hotties at Brawney’s. It just happens to be military night at the bar and the place is wall-to-wall Marines and be-all-you-can-be men. Half of the male patrons are in green chamo. The other half are civilians who sport military buzz cuts that make them look like war heroes even if they aren’t. Beefy men with Marine tattoos carry longneck bottles of beer. Navy guys are dressed in all white, but every dude in the place realizes that these men are not virgins. Lady Gaga plays on the jukebox. She sings something about Nebraska. The night is young, and no one sneaks into one of the corners for a blowjob. This will surely transpire as the night grows weary, though. In fact, the bathroom will probably be filled with queers by midnight, and an orgy will take place. The steamy bartenders clink glasses together with freshly poured cocktails. The bar is loaded with a bunch of queens, shoulder to shoulder.

We see Mr. Redhead seated at the bar between two military hunks that probably just came back from Afghanistan.

Red makes eye contact with my delicious husband.

Coop winks at him.

I raise my beer to the guy.

Before I know it, Red, with his six foot frame and Texas cowboy accent, makes his way up to our twosome.

Coop buys the steer a Rolling Rock, and I check the find out from head to toe, approving his cowboy build.

I ask if he has a military background. Red says he does and rattles off something to do with the Air Force.

Coop steps up to my side and holds me against him. He whispers in my ear, “This is the one we’re taking home.”

A laugh escapes my lips.

My sidekick winks at me. The look he shares with me says remarkable endearments: We are lovers forever. You and me, guy. Just the two of us. From boys to men. Let’s get the game started and play with Red. Let’s have fun tonight … like we always do, of course.

“You fell for me first,” I said to Key. “Everything about you was glazed with fluffy emotions like those horrible Lifetime movies or harlequin books”

We circled each other in our bedroom like Walt Disney birds, preparing for brunch with the Queens of Willow Street, Vince and Kyle, our Sunday morning dates for the last gazillion years. Our preparation dance was a queer musical of sorts with a lot of primping, hair gel, hair removal, tucking, flattening, and poking. The only thing it was missing was a song out of
Hairspray
, I believed.

“
Was Lifetime even around then, Robby?” Key asked at my right side. Both of us stood in front of the mirror in our
Architectural Digest
-styled bedroom. We were in nothing more than our boxer-briefs, aging together in a simple life: the real estate agent and the writer. He was still thin at forty-seven, but he didn’t really look like a young Nicholas Cage anymore. I had gained a few pounds and was starting to look like my mother – God forbid! Key could eat the Bakery on Potomac and not gain a pound. I used Weight Watchers and gained twenty pounds. He still sported those sultry green eyes that melted me twenty years ago. I surmised often that they were magical: pools of intimacy, unrelenting dreams of spending his life with me, and tender. He still worked out. I liked to shop on-line. He remodeled the kitchen. I wrote another book:
Skin Artist
.

“
Yes, Lifetime was around then. But Bravo wasn’t … nor was the Internet.”

“
They didn’t have sexting or Ipads or Tom Toms.”

“
Or the term green.”

“
Lady Gaga was a baby and Bill Clinton was President.”

“
You mean Hillary. She ran the government back then. Balls to the wall, baby. Every queer wanted her to be the President.”

“
And then came Monica Lewinski ... literally.”

“
That delicious whore. I loved her. She knew how to treat a man.”

“
You know how to treat a man.”

“
You’re just trying to get in my pants again.”

“
You know all my little, dirty secrets.” He turned and faced me, wrapped his arms around my waist, drew our bare chests together, and kissed my neck.

I knew he wanted sex; he loved sex in the mornings.
“Although your invitation to seduce me is flattering, we can’t make love because we’ll be late for brunch.”

Key pulled his lips away from my neck, breathed in my skin, and said,
“The Queens of Willow Street will understand.”

I shook my head.
“The Queens of Willow Street are bitches and will be pissed off. You never want to ruffle their feathers.”

He left out a sigh of disappointment and pulled away from me.
“In 1994, you would have jumped all over my invitation to boff me.”

I rolled my eyes.
“That’s when I had a drinking problem.”

“
And cocaine.”

“
Yes, that, too.”

“
You stayed at my side … even when I was being stupid.”

“
Stupid was sometimes sexy on you.”

“
You were my rock.”

“
I am still your rock.”

His green eyes sparkled again; magic swirled in th
eir coal-black pupils. “A quickie is in motion, Key.”

“
I love quickies,” he admitted, went for my waist band, and fell to his knees, devouring my skin again.

Brunch was served at Pandora
’s Closet, a queer diner on Liberty Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh. The drive was short from our three-bedroom home in Brookline. Parking was free if you could find a meter.

Liberty Avenue was empty on Sunday mornings; young and old queers alike enjoyed sleeping in and skipping church. As usual, Pandora
’s had a line out the front door; some national television show recently visited it and called it something like tastefully simple. Key and I paid no attention to the line, walked around and through the mass, and entered; Vince and Kyle were always early for brunch and saved us a table.

“
Hold up, Robby,” my sidekick called from behind me. He grabbed my left elbow and tugged me to slow down.

I steered us to our regular table while taking in Pandora
’s Closet: a mix of Greek and Italian décor consisted of high-backed chairs, wide bar the color of sandstone, melancholic lighting; The Killers blasted down from the overhead sound system; reddish-turquoise blue tile was puzzled together under our feet. The place was wall to wall brunchers and every table was occupied. A heavy pork smell sprinkled with pepper and cilantro filled the diner. Sizzling eggs, chocolate chip waffles, and hollandaise sauce aromas also wafted about the premises. Morning-goers chatted with gleeful smiles at their tables. Some brunchers were suffering with hangovers and milked glasses of chilled water or steamy cups of Madagascar coffee while others were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

Vince waved from a window table. He was hulking, muscular, and still quite athletic at forty
-three. He semi-stood and called out like Liza Minelli, “Darlings, over here!”

His lover, a Garth Stein look
-alike male in his late forties, tugged on Vince’s left arm and pulled him down to the table. Kyle snapped his fingers at Vince and sassily called upwards, “Sit, Vince … Down boy!”

To Vince
’s left was a third individual whom I had never seen before. As I sat across from the couple, I took in the young man’s blond hair and sexy-blue eyes. The stranger’s head of hair was a ball of curls, and his smile was impeccably white. I placed his medium-sized build at maybe twenty, delicious from inside-out, and rather alluring.

Key settled at my right side; he too took in the young stranger at brunch.

Vince called across the table, “Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to our new roommate, Greer Cartwell.”

“
Roommate?” my lover questioned with raised eyebrows and tongue-wagging interest.

Kyle admitted,
“Yes. A friend of a friend’s son. Greer is from Oklahoma. He’s studying graphic design at the Art Institute on the Boulevard of the Allies.”

I reached across the table with my right hand and introduced myself. Greer
’s handshake was very much like a cowboy’s: hearty, clenching, and unwavering. Following my introduction, I turned my attention to Key and said, “This is my husband of seventeen years. His name is Key Bry.”

Greer grinned, shaking Key
’s extended hand. In doing so, he chanted, “We both have strange first names.”

“
My real name is Keaton. All the queers at this table have always called me Key.”

“
Greer is my uncle’s name. He died at a rodeo the week before I was born. A bucking stallion murdered him. My mom and dad thought it best to name me after him.”

I nodded my head and thought: Oh my. How disheartening. That is not an upbeat fact to share on a Sunday morning during brunch.

Key nodded his head. He couldn’t take his eyes off the blond ambition across from us. My husband licked his lips and seemed to drool over the boy.

With age, I learned to read Key
’s mind; an extended marriage allots for such telepathic tendencies. I knew he was thinking: He looks exactly like Robby seventeen years ago. He’ll bed the boy before dusk.

My right elbow lunged into Key
’s ribs in a playful manner. Key made eye contact with me, wildly grinned, and winked at me.

Never did Key have an affair on me, and vice versa. We were always faithful to each other, through the good times together, and the bad. We shared basic rules: heavy flirting was allowed; an ass
-grasp of a man’s bulbous bottom never hurt anyone; kiss and tell regarding everything was essential; avoid a man’s dick at all costs; always use our bottoms as exits, unless with each other. The rules worked, which kept our relationship valid, whole, and flourishing. Without such a design, Key being promiscuous and sexually needy, he would have devoured a dozen or more men during our years of partnership, which probably would have caused our love to fall apart and fully dissolve.

Had Key met with Greer during his stay in the city as a student, and the two shared intimate time together, I would have forgiven him. The boy was over half Key
’s age, seemed immature, and nothing less than a vat of masculine goo in a porn star’s youthful body. Once Key banged the bottom’s bottom, I was quite sure he would return to me. I was smart enough to know that I could not provide such a body for Key’s one-night use, but I obtained other attributes that he found interesting. Things in a man-with-man marriage sagged, hair turned gray, and flesh was no longer supple and beautifully sun-beamed bronze. I was not twenty and Key knew it. There was no way in hell I could have sexually performed like Greer Cartwell, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t try. If he wanted me to balance my weight on one leg while he banged his nine-inch tool inside my rump, I was game. If he wanted me to hang from the ceiling and apply bites to my bottom, I wanted to be pleasurably bitten. Our sexual youth hadn’t vanished completely. Extended evenings of sharing flesh-inside-flesh interludes were not over. Quickies seemed to work for the both of us, which were always heated, intense, and rather effective. Our sex now leaned toward more romance, emotional comfort, and less wham-bam-thank-you-Stan stuff. Sex in our forties was more passion-driven, enlightening, and just as fun as he would have shared with Greer, but in a different way. That’s what I could do for my man; that was my intention on that Sunday morning brunch with the Queens of Willow Street and their blond and buoyant boy toy from Oklahoma.

What transpired after a round of strawberry
-cream cheese filled muffins at our Pandora’s Closet table? After many gawks and ganders at the blond Art Institute student, I was whisked away from the table. Following a long-winded tale of the young man’s mid-west history, which consisted of an underage drinking fine, numerous boy-flings, and a summer camp just for cowboys, Key whispered into my left ear, “Come with me.”

Translations in a marriage became quite easy after seventeen years of involvement with the same man. I knew when no meant yes, and I like it meant I really hate it. If he wanted to stay in for the night instead of attending one of Vince
’s festive cheese and wine parties, he took a long bubble bath. If he didn’t want to have sex, he found a Rob Rosen book and started reading it. Key’s activities were quite simple to decipher in the last few years. Not a single action could be translated without accuracy.

I knew come with me meant let me bang your rump in the men
’s room, Robby. So I followed him across Pandora’s Closet, down a narrow, semi-dark hallway, and into the men’s room.

He locked the door behind us. A fiery and heated kiss was shared, pants were dropped, ribbed plastic was applied to his nine inches of uncut dick, and I was bent over one of the American Standard sinks in a matter of seconds, obtaining the pounding of my life from my significant other.

Maybe he believed or interpreted that he wasn’t ramming his cock into me. Instead, it was Greer-rear he was swinging to and fro with. Not that I minded, though. If the young and blond artist turned my husband on, I only benefited from it in the end, literally. The ride was swift and wild, heated and intense. Everything about it was fun, unplanned, and desired to the fullest.

As seven of his nine inches slipped into my rear, glided in and out, a question surfaced between my temples: When was the last time we had sex twice in one day? I couldn
’t remember. Maybe a decade before at Ross McDwindle’s wedding; somewhere in an attic and then in a spare bedroom. Maybe longer. Whenever it was, it was simply incomparable to our motivated thrusting, grunting, and buildup of sweat that sealed us together as lovers inside Pandora’s.

The bathroom romp was quick and unyielding. Our motion was erratic and relentless. Groans and grunts echoed off the walls. The east and west friction that we designed was breathtaking. Both of us seemed to have lost oxygen at the same time, but didn
’t stop our sexual antics among all the tile and stainless steel fixtures.

“
Now,” Key chanted behind me, bucking my bottom numerous times, ready to fire his load.

“
Me, too,” I announced, stroking my cock up and down, willing it to blow.

We came together, just like always. I covered the tile floor with my white ooze
, and he filled the condom with his gunk. Clean-up was quick and rather uneventful. Afterwards, we kissed and fixed our clothes, rubbed wrinkles away, made sure our belts were fastened, and returned to our two friends and their boy toy, whom I wanted to personally thank for turning my husband’s hormones on and making him bump his body against mine.