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The condoms started it.
I mean, I’ll be honest. What teenage guy hasn’t gone through that rite-of-passage, nervously buying Durex from the drugstore, hoping no one he knows sees him? So I’d had one or two in my wallet for a while, just in case. You never know when stuff might happen. It’s really the responsible choice. You don’t want to wake up the morning after meeting a great girl who inexplicably likes you and find out you’ve got crabs. Or a kid.
But then this box showed up in my underwear drawer. Which… okay, maybe those were the ones I bought, although I was pretty sure it was a different brand. And then I found one tucked into a pocket of my bag… Could they belong to someone else? Who loses their condoms in someone else’s bag?
And then Dante was poking his toes around the glovebox in my truck and: “Oh, safe sex,” he said, plucking out yet another box. “Good thinking.”
“Those are not mine.”
“Possession is nine tenths…” He gave the little packet a shake. It didn’t make a sound. “Trying to give me a hint?”
“About what? What do we need condoms for?”
Dante shrugged. “Our parents seem to think we do. You’re not the only one who’s started seeing these little critters breeding all over the place. I found some in my swim bag. I told my parents I tried to use them to keep my penis dry, but it just didn’t work. Plus the lifeguards at the pool didn’t approve.”
“You’re serious?”
Even while checking my mirrors, I could sense Dante’s stare. “No, Ari, I didn’t actually try to go swimming wearing nothing but a condom.”
I whacked his arm. “I mean that our parents are doing this.”
“Who else? The condom fairies?” Dante leaned back, crossing his long legs up in front of him on the dashboard. “My mom would say it’s a typical parental reaction. On the one hand, they understand we’re becoming sexually active adults. On the other, they want us to be safe.”
Parking the truck meant a mist of sand temporarily rose up around us. I snapped off my seatbelt. “Is this to do with AIDS? Because they’ve got to know-”
“I’m sure they do.”
“And neither of us is getting pregnant.”
Dante looked down. Patted his perfectly flat stomach. “Probably not.”
“So what, then?”
“It’s just one of those things,” Dante said. “They want us to know that they know. Or…”
“Or?”
Dante shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Or what?”
But Dante had already opened the passenger-side door and hopped out of the truck.
The truth was I kind of knew what he was getting at, because that thought had occurred to me too. And if it had occurred to me, it would have occurred to our sometimes-too-supportive parents as well. Ask any kid what gay guys do together and he’ll tell you. But we hadn’t been doing that. We hadn’t even discussed it. Not that we hadn’t been having sex. Just not that sex.
At least, I was pretty sure we’d been having sex.
Whenever I’d imagined losing my virginity, I’d assumed it would be with a girl, and I’d assumed I would know roughly what I was doing. They showed us diagrams at school. You even have male and female machine parts. When a man and a woman love each other very much, the man’s penis goes in the woman’s vagina and – SHAZAM! – virginity lost forever.
When two almost-men love each other very much, though, it seems they spend a lot of time lying in the flatbed of my truck.
It hadn’t happened the first time, because then we were still pretty focused on just kissing and being with each other and saying true things like “I love you.” But we started bringing blankets and lying back there, talking, reading, making out. And then we were up against each other, arms around each other, and I could feel it. Feel him. And I knew he could feel me too.
Okay, back to the diagrams. You’d think that being with someone who has the same basic parts as you would be easier. I didn’t need to look at any diagram to figure out that Dante had a dick and balls just like I had a dick and balls. And unlike all those mysterious parts of women that you’re supposed to find, or that might not even actually exist, I knew my way around a dick and balls.
But getting hard in your own bed or in some awkward public situation was nothing like getting hard while pressed up against someone else’s body, and definitely nothing like feeling that other person getting hard too. At the same time, though, it was a relief and a huge ego rush. “So you really do like me,” I said, and Dante laughed. “I really do.”
I took my shoes off, then, and Dante was taking off his jeans and shirt, so I took off my jeans and shirt, and I was thrillingly nervous and convinced that we were going to do it.
“Do you know what the hottest thing in the world is?” Dante asked.
I thought he was going to make some scientific joke. But he sat down on the blanket and said: “You getting hard in those shorts.”
It was uncomfortable, is what it was. But I could see what he meant, because I could see him too: that thick bulge at his crotch. And it was different from seeing him naked at the pool. Different even from seeing him naked here. Now, in this moment only, there was something still hidden but so obvious to see.
Dante wriggled out of his boxers, and he could have been some kind of nude model lying there. Apollo or an Argonaut. I stepped back up into the truck and knelt down and just touched him, because the moment seemed completely unreal. “Here I am,” I thought, “with my hand on Dante Quintana’s dick.”
It felt nice. Hot and soft, and iron-stiff beneath. More or less like my own, except I couldn’t feel what it felt like, being stroked. But now I could watch Dante, hear Dante. I took off my shorts.
I might have done anything Dante asked me to do in those moments. We kissed and stroked and discovered each other, and eventually my hand was on Dante and Dante’s hand was on me, and I came while we were still kissing, in this desperate, sudden burst of pleasure that went right through me, totally different from when I’d touched myself in the shower. And I was about to apologize, except Dante was gasping, my hand still stroking him, and then he came too, and it was just about the most beautiful thing ever, Dante tensing up, crying out my name, and his dick pumping out come over my hand. He lay back, moaning, hand stroking his own chest, his hips still moving.
“Jesus,” I said.
Dante smiled.
We did it again after that, maybe twenty minutes later, and I could’ve done it every twenty minutes all night long if our parents wouldn’t worry and I wasn’t a little bit concerned about friction burns maybe happening after the twelfth or fifteenth time.
Was that losing my virginity, having someone else make me come? Maybe. It sort of felt like it, and neither of us could pretend to be very innocent afterwards, when I went home and scooted straight into the shower before my mom could see me, jamming all my clothes into the washing machine behind some sheets.
And then, obviously, there was the other thing.
Going to high school, listening to boys shoot the shit about all the stuff they’ve done (or actually probably haven’t done), you’d think blowjobs were the absolute best thing in the entire world. But they’d talked like beer was the second best thing and, okay, I liked beer. I liked taking a chilled six-pack out to the desert with Dante and drinking a couple. But it could’ve been Pepsi too. It didn’t rock my world the way just holding hands with Dante did. Or lying there staring at the stars.
“Beer is not a transcendent experience,” Dante said once. “At least not with this alcohol content.”
There was pot, of course, and scarier things. But they were all expensive and dangerous, and Dante was already unzipping my pants.
“Are you sure you want to?” Other guys made the whole thing seem pretty demeaning for the girl – or whoever was doing the blowing. Sucking. Whatever. And I guess I have to admit that sucking another guy’s dick wasn’t something I’d have jumped at the chance to do. But Dante just rolled his eyes at me and, okay, fine, I was super clean because we’d just come from the pool and showers, and holy shit the moment Dante’s mouth was on me I knew what a transcendent experience was.
Hands were nice. This warm, wet heat was incredible – and that was before Dante figured out the rhythm of really sucking and moving, and his tongue. I sank my fingers into his hair. I wanted to watch, watch his head move, watch myself between his lips, but even thinking about what he was doing was going to make me come really, really quickly. So I laid back and watched the stars and just felt it, all of it, the noises I was making seeming like they came from someone else completely, because I’d never sounded like that before. And then I really was going to come.
“Dante…” I said in a gasp, but he kept his mouth on me while I came, while my hips jerked into him and I felt so good I could barely worry about choking him, couldn’t even get myself together enough to ask after I’d finished crying out “Oh God, Dante, Dante!”
And eventually Dante licked me off and sat back on his heels, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and reaching for his half-empty bottle. “That was fun,” he said.
I eyed him. Sometimes it was really hard to tell when he meant it. “Yeah?”
Dante smiled. “Yeah.”
“It didn’t taste really bad? Really weird?”
“Well, I eat a lot of things that taste really weird. And anyway, it’s you, Ari. Nothing about you is bad.”
So yeah, I guessed that was a nice way of saying it tasted pretty terrible. But I sat up too. “I want to do you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!” Why would Dante be so eager to suck me off and think I wouldn’t want to experience that, to help him feel the way I’d just felt? Did he think I wasn’t as good at being gay as he was, just like he thought he wasn’t as good at being Mexican? Both of those seemed just as stupid.
Honestly I was more than a little nervous. That might’ve been the first time Dante had ever done it too, but Dante knew things. It was like the way he was in the pool, like he belonged there, like he’d known how to swim instinctively instead of needing anyone to teach him.
But hey, here was Dante’s dick. Dante’s penis. Nice and smooth and warm in my hand as Dante lay back on the blanket. Maybe the best thing to do was to avoid thinking about how Dante pissed out of this. It wasn’t much different to doing it with a girl, and guys everywhere did it to girls. And Jesus I was already thinking about it way too much. The important thing was it was Dante. Not just some kind of random body part, but Dante. Directly linked to every single other part of Dante, all of which I loved. I’d have spent half an hour sucking his elbow if it made him feel good. Which was an even weirder thought.
And when I did start kissing the tip, started letting him slide into my mouth, he just tasted of skin, maybe a little sweat, maybe a little pool chlorine. Is this what I taste like? I thought.
“Hey,” Dante said, “that’s good, just slowly, okay?”
I could do slowly, as Dante’s hips moved with me, but it was weird to have my mouth filled up with him, and I was scared to graze him with my teeth, or to have him hit the back of my throat and make me gag. Throwing up over your best friend’s – boyfriend’s – dick is probably not the worst thing that could ever happen, but it’s right up there.
But Dante kept talking, kept reassuring me, kept guiding me through it… to the extent it got kind of annoying. I’d got the hang of things, I thought, but Dante was still talking, like my Dad teaching me how to drive: “Check your mirrors, signal… second gear, Ari, remember to brake – not so hard!”
I lifted my head. “I think I’ve got it, okay? Stop talking.” And maybe I sounded a little irritated, but Dante shut up.
All I really wanted was for him to feel good, and the way he was moving, the way his breathing was getting a little short, it probably did feel pretty good. When he’d been doing it to me, I couldn’t really imagine how it could be anything but good. But the feedback I’d been getting had turned into subtleties, and Dante wasn’t coming. Shouldn’t he have been coming by now? How long had it taken me?
I lifted my head again. “Dante, why aren’t you talking?”
Dante raised his eyebrows. “We have got to improve the communication in this relationship,” he said. “Maybe I’ll bring along scorecards next time.”
It actually got kind of easier after that, because I figured out that I wasn’t being judged, that there was no panel of experts rating me on technique and artistic flair. Even Dante didn’t know much about it. We were both discovering each other – and ourselves – together. The whole point was to relax and enjoy it. Who has sex to get all stressed out and angry?
And Dante coming in my mouth wasn’t bad either. I mean, it’s not as if come tastes so great, but it’s not as if that was the point. The point was it felt incredible to have made him come, and to think again about how amazing it was to have him in my mouth and feeling him at this beautifully intimate moment, and how much he had to trust me, just as I’d trusted him.
“My jaw kind of hurts,” Dante said, when we bundled up under the blanket, sipping the last of our beer. “I wonder if there are exercises you can do.”
“Maybe just practice sucking on bananas,” I suggested.
“Popsicles. Who sucks bananas?”
“Or we could just try this a lot more.”
We did try it a lot more, and I got to really enjoy it, both having Dante go down on me and lying there, sucking on Dante’s dick. It made a lot less mess than the handjobs, and it felt nicer, and it was more intimate… It was also a whole lot gayer, and I did think about that too, but doing gay things had never been the point with me. It was all about doing things with Dante. And even if there was something in my head wired the same way Dante’s was wired, I couldn’t imagine doing this, or anything like it, with another guy. Or with a girl. I’d never been halfway close enough with anyone else, the way I was with Dante.
And yet, the night Dante brought it up, the night of the condoms, I still wasn’t on the right page.
“You really want to do that?” I asked.
We were sitting in the bed of my truck with the blanket and beer and books laid open in front of us, and Dante shrugged. “I’d like to try it. We’ve been trying everything, right? We’re teenagers. We’re supposed to try things out.”
“Not everything,” I said. “Not shooting up heroin.” Which, honestly, I was more curious about than this. Mainly because – before you got addicted or overdosed or whatever – everyone was pretty unanimous in saying it felt good.
Dante scratched his forehead, right where his hairline started. “If you don’t want to, you don’t want to.”
“I just don’t get why you want to.” It was pretty much a no-brainer for me. Gay or straight, who wants anything shoved up their ass? “Just because some guys do it…”
“Because it feels good. Because we’d be even closer to each other.”
“I bet it only feels good for the guy on top,” I said. “And even then… Dante, you can’t seriously think it’s normal to put your dick inside someone’s butthole. We all know what comes out of there.”
“Yeah? Do you know what comes out of vaginas, Ari? Babies.”
I poked him with my toes under the blanket. “That’s different. They’re designed for, you know, two-way traffic.”
“What about your prostate?”
“My what?”
“Your prostate.” Dante took a gulp of beer. “Look, it’s not just good for the guy on top. You think anyone would do it if it was?”
Dante knew a lot of weird things from weird places, but this time I had to ask: “How do you know that?”
“Because… Because I thought before I suggested it to you I’d better try it out. With a dildo, I mean. Not another guy.”
“A dildo?” That has got to be the most ridiculous word in any language. “Where did you get that?”
“From a store.”
“You went to a sex store? Dante, those places are filled with perverts!”
Dante clapped a hand to his mouth in mock-horror. “Oh my God, Ari – you mean someone might think I’m… gay?”
That earned a much harder poke to his thigh. “I’m serious. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
He grabbed my big toe. “You’re the only one giving me bruises. Anyway, I tried it out. And it was kind of okay, you know? If you just relax, take your time, use a lot of KY. It felt really… It felt like something I’d like to do with you.”
I took a long drink of beer, because I seriously needed a few moments to gather my thoughts about this. Like I said, it wasn’t as if I’d never thought about it, but anal sex – which also was about the most unattractive term ever – had never seemed romantic or intimate to me. It made me picture two guys rutting in an alley somewhere. And all those schoolboy jokes about one guy not being able to walk for a week.
“I’d never want to hurt you,” I said.
“That’s what I’m saying. You wouldn’t. And you’re a lot warmer than the dildo.”
Smaller too, I’ll bet. “I don’t know, Dante. Maybe it’s better if you try it on me first.”
“Really? You want me to?”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
Dante set down his empty bottle and scooted over to sit next to me, his arm hugging my waist. “I’m not going to get hurt. And I think we can both agree I’m a lot better at relaxing than you are, yeah? It’ll be nice, really… really making love.”
Making love. Strike three for things kids giggle over in the schoolyard. Except when Dante said it, it sounded like the best thing in the world. The thing I really did want, even if all we’d been doing in the last few weeks had been making love too, in a way.
“Plus,” Dante said, “I promise everything will be one hundred percent clean. Or ninety-five percent anyway. And you can use one of the gajillion condoms our parents are forcing on us. It’ll be even cleaner than straight sex.”
His smile couldn’t help but make me feel a little less stressed about the whole thing. “Okay,” I said. “But we have to do this in an actual bed this time.”
Getting rid of my parents that weekend was almost too easy. “Dante and I have to watch some movies for a school project on Friday,” I said. “Really loud movies. For hours and hours. Maybe you guys could go out for dinner?”
That Friday evening I could imagine the way they were sitting in some nice restaurant, talking about how cute it was for their son to want a romantic night in. But at least they were gone… even if I was really nervous that they might have forgotten something and come back early. Or what if the food was bad? What if the power went out?
Of course Dante had just shown up, made small talk with my mom, told them to have a great time, and jumped naked into my bed. “Hey, springy!”
I brought beers in too. I’d made sure I had some towels and extra sheets in case I really needed to clean up before Mom got home. And then I locked the bedroom door, because oh my God if my parents needed to walk in on me doing anything with Dante, it definitely wasn’t this.
“We should have an actual movie night sometime,” Dante said. “With popcorn. Maybe some vintage horror films.”
“Yeah, we could do that.”
It felt sort of strange, getting undressed and getting into bed with Dante. Because this was what my parents did every night… except they probably kept some clothes on, or at least I hoped they did. But it felt really right too, and I guess that’s how a lot of things were between me and Dante: strange but right.
Despite everything we’d been doing, everything we’d already done, this still felt different. I still felt nervous, like we’d never even kissed before. But Dante took my head in both of his hands and kissed me, and I settled against his body, every inch of it familiar, and kissed him too.
“This is kind of like building bookshelves,” I said. Once I’d got the first word out, talking didn’t seem so awkward either. “Part A goes in part B.”
“Watch your fingers and ensure zero parental supervision,” Dante laughed.
We held each other under the blankets, just being close, rubbing and stroking and feeling each other. Feeling Dante’s ass. Had I ever been turned on by butts, even when they belonged to girls? But wow, it did feel good. In that eerily soft, smooth way almost all of Dante felt, that let him move through the water with such elegance. Once you got past that childish idea that all butts everywhere were just hilarious, it was pretty nice to touch him there, feel those crazy swimmer’s muscles. And it was pretty nice feeling him doing the same to me, hands brushing over my back, down the backs of my thighs…
“So… how do we do this?” I asked. Joking about bookshelves was fine, but actually I’d have appreciated some detailed instructions. Probably you could get VHS tapes in the kind of stores Dante had got the dildo from, but I wasn’t going to suggest that.
“We just… do stuff.”
Dante still smelled like the pool, even after what he’d assured me were two really long and in-depth showers. He’d been training heavily for some important meet, and anyway I was pretty sure the pool water and its chlorine scent got into your blood after a while. His hair was still damp, down at the roots where it pressed against my chin as Dante moved, reaching for me.
I’d been thinking about some things being natural and some things not, but being there, wrapped up in Dante, made me think more about how everything was natural with him. Everything was easy, even if it was awkward too, because Dante was right there with me. Mysteries suddenly weren’t mysteries anymore. Or they were, but we were in them together, walking hand-in-hand through the labyrinth.
“We don’t have to,” I said, when all the kissing and stroking was getting to a pretty serious stage, at least so far as my body thought. “I mean… this is good too.”
“Don’t you want to?”
“Yeah, I want to,” I said, and realized that I actually did mean that. “Where’s your bag?”
It all seemed kind of clinical, the lubricant and the condoms, but they were reassuring too. Look, we planned this! We’re being careful!
Dante was fluffing up my pillows and moving them, kicking away the blankets down to the end of the bed. He lay back down again with a happy sigh, and even in the half-light of the room every single inch of him, every line of muscle and bone, was so incredibly beautiful to me that I forgot what I was doing. And then it came back to me, because why else would I be sitting there holding a condom packet and a tube of KY?
“You want to turn over?” I asked.
“Not really.”
I looked at him, his legs parted, hips resting on one of the pillows, hand lightly playing with himself. “Yeah, but…”
“Come here.”
For once in our relationship, I did it without arguing, or pausing to wonder what was going to happen next. So it was just me lying over him, half on him, kissing him, his arms around me, the hard soles of his feet moving over my calves… And that, just that, was almost better than anything we’d done before.
Dante kissed my chin. “Maybe just your fingers first?”
“But… can we, like this?” I’d always imagined one guy face down. “I mean, does it go?”
Dante glanced down, between our bodies. “I’m pretty sure it’ll go, Ari. And I want us to be like this. I want to be able to kiss you.”
I wanted to be able to kiss him, too. For this to be something about us, something we were sharing, not just a box to tick off on the list of “50 Things Young Homosexuals Must Do”. I just wasn’t really sure how everything fit together. But things started to come together – at least in my head – when I put a glob of lubricant on my fingers and reached down and touched him there, where I’d never touched anyone ever. And then, as Dante breathed out and raised his hips against mine, I touched him inside too.
“What does it feel like?” I asked him.
“Like you need to go deeper.”
Maybe sliding my fingers into him felt like having me in his mouth. That weird idea of having someone else in your body. Except everyone puts stuff in their mouths all the time.
As I watched him, Dante closed his eyes, a little smile on his lips. And I just kept sliding my fingers in and out, it getting less weird all the time. Then Dante let out a big, satisfied sigh. “Condom time?”
“Yeah?”
I sat back, finding the condom wrapper, finding yet more KY, while Dante rolled back a little, pulling his legs up, and okay, now I saw how it was going to work. Good thing Dante was on the bottom. I needed to do way more stretching… And it was that thought, that idea that I’d be doing this too sometime and that I’d be okay with it, cramps aside, that made all of this a little easier.
I’d never actually worn a condom before, though. That was kind of weird. Like I was wearing a biohazard suit. Or rubber gloves.
“Don’t worry about it,” Dante said. “It’ll still feel good.”
We took it slowly, because no matter what Dante said, he still let out little murmurs of discomfort if I went too quickly, probably knowing that if he protested any more than that I’d refuse to continue completely. Maybe I’d been wrong about the dildo.
“More lubricant?” I suggested, trying to be helpful.
Dante shook his head. “It’s okay. I’m just… getting used to you.”
I guess I was getting used to him, too, to the way he felt now that it wasn’t just my fingers, and it wasn’t his mouth. So incredibly tight and hot, and I was probably imagining it, but it was like every breath and heartbeat went right through my dick, so that I was almost a part of him. I wondered if he felt me like that too. Like we’d become one person.
When he let me – and I let myself – go all the way in, we kissed, Ari’s ankles crossing around the small of my back, and we kept kissing as I moved, figuring out how far I should go and how fast. But this was… This was it. Everything after this was just going to be wonderful, because we were doing it. It. The it that kids everywhere giggle and blush about. Even if I hadn’t been a virgin for a long time, I was definitely not a virgin now.
“Hey,” I said.
Dante smiled, pushing back hair from my eyes. “Hey Ari.”
“I love you.”
“Yeah, I love you too.”
I kissed his stupidly beautiful face.
Coming in him, being in his arms while I did it, was just one of the sweetest experiences I’ve ever had. It felt like we were married, almost, like this was what married people did. And then, after I’d got Dante off too, we snuggled for a while, and glanced at the clock and thought about how my parents weren’t back yet, and Dante said: “Okay, let’s see what it’s like if I ride you.”
“A Mexican cowboy?”
“Well you’ve got at least one thing in common with a stallion.”
Maybe my parents had decided to drive around the city all night or check into a hotel, because it was seriously late by the time Dante and I pulled up the blankets and thought about going to sleep. Before, I’d had plans about making it look like we actually had been watching movies. I was going to dispose of the used condoms in the bottom of the trash, and Dante was going to go home or we’d both pretend to have passed out fully-clothed on the couch. But here we were, tired and feeling really, really good, and there was no way we were going to pretend anything.
The next morning I woke up before Dante did. Or, at least, Dante was still face-down in one of my pillows, softly snoring when I opened my eyes and disentangled myself from him. I listened for my parents and heard nothing… which was a little alarming, so I pulled on my shorts, opened my bedroom door, and looked out.
On the kitchen table were two tall glasses of orange juice, a box of cereal, and a plate of fresh sticky pastries they must’ve just bought from a local bakery. A tented note said: See you at the Quintanas’ for lunch.
I should probably have called them to say thanks and that we’d survived the night (although they must’ve looked in on us just an hour before). But I took a bite of the most sugary pastry I could find, and picked up one of my mom’s marker pens so I could add something to the shopping list on the fridge.
Dante stirred when I got back into bed. “What time is it?”
“Go back to sleep.”
“Are your parents here?”
“Shh.” I held him a little tighter. “It’s Saturday. We’re allowed to sleep in. And maybe do some other things too.”
Dante laughed. “We’re going to run out of condoms.”
“Nope,” I said, kissing his bare shoulder. “Our parents have that one covered.”