FOUR: COOKIE

Theme Song: Happy Ending, Avril Lavigne

“You are in a crudsy mood,” Scott stated.

     “It happens.”

     “Not to you,” Scott said. “It happens to ordinary people.”

     “Well, how nice of you to say I’m not ordinary.”

     “I don’t think you could be ordinary if you wanted to be.”

     “I wouldn’t know, “Felix tried to laugh. “I’ve never wanted to be ordinary. But, eh…Maybe one day I’ll have to be.”

     “That’s a…” Scott shook his head and said, “Don’t you dare be ordinary.”

     “I may not have a choice.”

     Scott screwed up his face. “What’s that mean.”

     Felix shook his head and said, “I don’t know that I really want to talk about it right now.”

     “Are you sure?”

     “Soon I will,” Felix nodded. “Just…. Not now.”

The first sustained conversation Joey ever had with Felix began with, “How do you feel about bisexuals?”

     Joey was working on Felix’s radiator, and Felix said, “Huh?”

     “Well, you said you were gay, but how do you feel about bisexuals?”

     “That is a truly odd question.”

     “I mean, like, do you believe some people are bi? Do you believe in bisexuals?”

     “I believe in them the way I believe in unicorns, dragons and griffins. They exist somewhere—usually in a fantasy novel—but not in this city.”

     “Oh,” Joey seemed rather offended.

     “Bisexual is just a nice word for a gay man who knows how inconvenient men are and prefers to be seen with women.”

     “Well, maybe sometimes,” Joey said, turning to finish bleeding the radiator. “But I think there are some real ones.”

     “I never met a woman married to a bisexual who said she was happy about it, and I never met a man who said he was bisexual who was happy with a wife.”

     “But—”

     Having begun his tirade, Felix continued, “Bisexuals are just homos who really want kids and can’t handle other men.”

     Joey, in his jeans and workshirt, his ball came turned around folded his arms over his chest looking grimly at the radiatot and then at his toolbox.

     “Did I say something?” Felix began.

     “You’re very smart,” Joey said. “But you’re sort of harsh.”

     Felix did not wish to pursue this. After all, no matter how good looking the young maintenance man with his broad shoulders and the line of beard around his jaw was, he didn’t really know him, and he had other things to do than learn about his sexuality. But he couldn’t help himself.

     “Are you telling me you’re bi?”

     “I am bi!” Joey said more loudly than he meant. He covered his mouth, looking a mix os savage and adorable.

     Felix wanted to say something sweet, accepting or compassionate, but what he ended up saying was:

     “Your poor girlfriend.”

He also remembered a day six years earlier, when he had been thirteen.

    Thomas Frushour was a defender on the LaCrosse team and that day, after practice, as they were going to hit the showers, he clapped Joey on the ass and said, “Good game, Flowers.”.

    “Thanks.”

    These days, Joey took a long time getting to the showers. One of the boys at school had gotten an erection in the shower, and from then on everyone called him Woody. Joey didn’t want to earn that name, and the way he was feeling now, anything could happen.  Frushour was still talking to Coach even though Joey had taken his time, going back into the school, pretending to look for things, hoping to come to the showers when everyone was done. Scott would be here soon. He didn’t want to keep him waiting.

    “Ey, Flowers wait up!” Frushour said as Joey was walking with the equipment bag.

    Joey did, and Frushour was carrying another sack. They headed into the comparative darkness of the gym, and then the greater, cooler, darkness of the equipment room.

    “Can I ask you a question?” Frushour said while they were stacking equpiment.

    “Sure,” Joey said, trying to sound nonchalant.

    “Alright. How come you don’t shower with everyone else?”

    “I do.”

    “No, you don’t. Not anymore.”

    Well, why lie?

    “Remember Woody? I don’t wanna be Woody Two. My body’s weird.”

    Frushour laughed and said, “Everyone’s body is weird. Woody just got caught, and nobody likes him, poor fucker. Does he have a real name?”

    “Isn’t it Brendan?”

    Frushour nodded. “It might be. You afraid of getting boners and getting caught?”

    “Yeah,” Joey said, feeling a little dizzy. “Something like that.”

    “Hold on,” Tom Frushour said.

    Joey did.

    Frushour reached into his shorts, and pulled out his cup. Joey was instantly jarred, and then Tom Frushour stuck his hands back in and started rubbing himself. Joey wanted to look away. He wanted to be away. He wished he hadn’t come here. This was what he wanted to see. This was one of his web porns. Under his cup his own penis was going heavy.

    “See,” Frushour said, suddenly pulling out a penis that was large and full headed, stiff and thick in his hands.

    “No big deal.”

    Joey was hard. His mouth was dry, and his body was trembling.

    “Yeah...” he remembered saying.

This became a daily sort of thing, something that, just turned thirteen, Joey feared and thrilled. Every day there was some variation of going into the equipment room, and Thomas Frushour exposing himself, and then them hitting the shower. By the time they got there it was no one but Joey and Frushour, and in the shower Frushour would wash himself the way those guys in the college porns did, touching his nipples and stroking himself into erection then laughing it off. Joey laughed it off too, not understanding what was happening, unable to stay away from it.

One day in the equipment room, Frushour just said, “Would you like to suck my cock?”

    It wasn’t mean spirited, just an offer. Joey looked for an angle. Was he joking or was he really offering?

    Frushour said in a tender voice. “I like you, Joey. You’re a good guy. I just wondered what it would be like if you sucked my cock.”

    “Have you...?” Joey’s words fled and then his voice fled too, drying up. “Did you ever... do it?”

    “Wanted to. Saw videos about it. I could do it to you when you get done doing it to me.”

    Joey wasn’t in his cup, and now Frushour laughed and pointed out Joey’s groin.

    “Woody,” he murmured.

    “Don’t say that,” Joey said, embarrassed and jittery, hard and trembling all at once.

    “I’m just playing, Flowers. See,” he said, dropping his shorts, “I’m the same way.”

    And then Joey dropped to his knees, but Tom Frushour said, “No. Not right here. Further back behind the basketball cage.”

    Joey got up quickly and almost tripped to the cages where the basketballs were. The basketballs were on one side, the volleyballs on the other and they made a little dark cul de sac in the empty school.

    And then suddenly Tom’s cock was in his mouth, he was taking it deep in, and pulling it in and out, licking the head, devouring it, and Tom was muttering, “Oh... ah... oh...” his voice was high and pleading, and his hands went for Joey’s hair, and then fell, lifting up and down, helpless. Joey opened his eyes and looked up, Joey thrusting to the darkness. Tom’s face was beautiful, with a dimple in his chin. His hair was shaved low. He came up and put his hands around Tom’s face, then kissed his mouth.

    “No, Joe. Not... that,” he said.

    And then Joey went back to sucking Tom’s cock. It was so huge and so tender and so hard and so slick and.… was this what sucking a pacifier was like? Why did this feel so good? And then Tom’s body rocked, and before he could pull Joey away he was coming. His semen dripped out of Joey’s mouth, down his chin, onto his tee shirt. It dripped in a thick rope on the floor.

    “I’m sorry, Deej,” Tom said, leaning against the wall. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

    Joey wanted to lick Tom’s penis clean. He wanted to kiss him again.

    Tom said, “Okay, now it’s your, turn, Joe.”

    Tom was a couple of years older and, if anything, democratic. With gusto he went to sucking off Joey, and Joey cried out and planted his hands against the wall. He was afraid to touch Tom, to put his hands on Tom’s head the way Tom had done to him, but Tom reached out, and pulled Joey’s hands to his scalp, guided them in rubbing his hair and his shoulders until he was confident in doing it himself. It felt so... fucking... good.... Joey was surprised when he was coming, but he caught himself and tried to pull out of Tom’s mouth. Instead Tom pulled him in deeper, and he moaned as he emptied his load in Tom’s mouth as Tom pulled away licking the shooting semen from the tip of Joey, sucking him even when he was finished.

    When it was over they sat side by side, and Tom frowned then laughed, wiping his hand off.

    “I just put my hand in jizz. I don’t know if it was yours or mine. It doesn’t fucking matter.”

    By now Joey didn’t wait for his brother. He just took the Number 6 to Colby and Howard whenever he was done.

    “Now, Joe, I’m going to kiss you. I don’t know why I said you couldn’t do it to me. I was scared, I guess. But that was dumb. After we just did this.

    “It felt so fucking good,” Tom said as an afterthought. Joey was scared of speaking.

    “I don’t know what was better, sucking you or getting sucked.”

    And then he kissed Joey. They kissed for a long time before heading to the showers. And then Joey headed home.

“Whatever happened to Tom?” Felix asked Joey a few mornings later, when he had invited him over for coffee.

     Joey raised a finger and took a sip of coffee.

     “That is for later.”

     He looked at the clock on his phone.

     “I need to get back to work.

     Felix opened his mouth and Joey said, “Thank you for the note, and I’m really not angry at you. And maybe you’re even right.”

     Heading to the door, Joey suddenly stopped and said, “Can I come by later?”

     “I guess,” Felix said.

     “And hang?”

     “I’m too old for us to hang.”

     “That’s crazy. You’re not old at all,” Joey had said. then he left.

Now as they sat on the couch that Monday afternoon, Joey said, “You’re not telling me something.”

     “Cause you know me so well?”

     “Don’t make fun of me, Felix. You’re… different. Scott was right.”

     “Whaddo you mean Scott was right?”

     “He told me he talked to you, and you weren’t yourself.”

     “Maybe.”

     “Is it Scott?”

     “Yes. Partially.”

     “What about the other part?”

     “I don’t want to talk about the other part,” Felix said. “But I will tell you about Scott.”

      “Is he… is it about the black eye?”

     “He didn’t tell me how he got it. He just had it when he came over here Saturday night. And he wouldn’t say anything about it. I let him stay with me and didn’t ask any questions.”

     “It’s so cool that you know my brother,” Joey said.

     Felix nodded.

     “You know what he needs?”

     “Huh?”

     “A good girlfriend. A nice woman to take his mind off of Jen.”

     Felix looked at him with mild irritation and Joey said, “What?”

     “You all really don’t talk. Do you?”

Felix stopped writing and picked up the phone.

     “Hello?”

     “Its me.”

     “Ey, Scott.”

     “Are you excited?”

     “About what?”

     “About our date, goof!”

     Felix didn’t feel anything like a goof, but he said, “Yes, I am.”

     He had been about to say, “I forgot,” but didn’t think that was a good answer.

     “Are you staying the night?”

     “I could,” Scott said.

     With Scott he had what he could only have had once with Ben in those days when he just wanted someone to love him. Scott would lay in the bed beside him, holding him while they fell asleep.

     “What are you doing right now?”

     “Writing. Trying to finish an article.”

     “I shouldn’t keep you.”

     “No,” Felix said into the phone, his palms resting on the hot keyboard, “You shouldn’t. But I don’t really have the heart to stop you.”

Saint Kasimir’s was a K-12 school divided in two, the high school separate from the grammar one. Because Joey was skilled and smart, he had been allowed to take Latin at the high school even though he was thirteen, and to play Lacrosse there. Tom was a sophomore. His house was about four blocks over, a large red brick Colonial with classy furniture out of a magazine, and he was an only child. His mother was relaxed.

    “I’m just going to give you boys a twenty,” she drawled almost like a Southern belle. “You can order what you want from the pizza place.”

    “How’s that sound, Joe?” Tom asked.

    Joey nodded. “That sounds cool.”

“You know what I was thinking about?” Tom said while they were watching porn on his computer.

    “When the pizza guy was here?”

    “There was this one porn I saw, where this pizza guy comes to the door, and he just gets on his knees and starts just like, sucking the man off, like going at it like a fucking pump, just sucking him. And then the guy jizzes all over the pizza guy’s face. And I thought... fucking hot. That would be fucking hot. To do... You know?”

    They watched a little porn where this body builder, who in a way reminded Joey of Tom, had this little watermelon. He was sitting there just smoothed over in oil, completely naked, completely hot, Joey thought, and there was a little hole in the watermelon, and so he started fucking it. He was doing it slowly, moving the fruit up and down on his dick, and his eyes went all stupid. His jaw got slack. And then he put it on the floor and slowly, he began to fuck the watermelon. Tom kept on rewinding it as the guy was about to come, as his hams went taut, and he shot into the fruit.

    And then his hand was in Joey’s lap, and he started to stroke him.  Joey had been waiting for this to happen, and Tom rewound the video to the beginning, to the naked man masturbating, and then getting down to fuck the watermelon, and then ejaculating inside of it. And then the man on the video was eating out of it, and digged out of the watermelon, licking his own semen, and then he was fucking the fruit again, and by then Tom had Joey’s shorts off, and his underwear around his knees and he was the same and then, just like that, Tom said, “I’m gonna fuck you now. Alright?” more like he was clarifying a fact than asking a favor.

    He put Joey down on his knees, and then Joey heard a squirt of something, and a click from the computer and voices from a new porn.  And then Tom caught him by the hips and he felt Tom’s penis at the crack of his behind. It felt so good. It pressed in and tried to find the hole and still it felt good and it felt good pressing in a bit, and then Joey gasped. Tom squirted some more... lotion he hoped, and slid in, making the walls of Joey’s anus ache. He wanted to catch his breath, he’d never felt such pain. But he moved around it, fitting Tom in, and then, with a rhythm, Tom Frushour began fucking him.

“So,” Scott said when he called that night,” I need you to tell me what the deal is.”

    “The deal is,” Felix said after a moment, “writing does not support me. The rest of life supports my writing, and that was why I wanted to earn my doctorate so very, very badly.”

    “And you will.”

    “I won’t,” Felix said, shaking his head. “I just got the news. My program’s lost its funding. I’m done. Right now. Today.”

    “Fuck!” Scott swore, curling up on the couch beside him “What are—?” he cleared his throat and said, “ugh.”

    “You were going to say, ‘What are you gonna do?’”

    “I was,” Scott said. “But I didn’t.”

    “So, see,” Felix said, “I could very well end up being one of the people you see everyday who started something, but couldn’t finish and ended tending a bar. Which isn’t a bad thing. If I bar is what you want to tend.”

    “You’ll find something,” Scott said, but his voice sounded hollow. Then he said, “You’ll do something. You’ll do whatever you want. You’ll make it work. I believe that.”

    “Good,” Felix said. He smiled suddenly and Scott touched his ear.

    “Look, you don’t believe it, but I do.”

    Felix nodded.

    “Do you want me to stay with you tonight?”

    “If you do I feel like I’ll get all weak and shit and…”

    “So what?” Scott interrupted him. “What’s wrong being weak when someone cares about you?”

    “There’s really no point in being weak.”

    “When no one’s there for you,” Scott agreed. “I get it. But I’m here now.”

    “How can you be?” Felix demanded. “You can’t just be here all of a sudden. Two weeks ago you weren’t in my life. But now… But…”

    Scott kissed him on the cheek.

    “Alright,” Felix nodded his head. “Stay the night.”

ONCE Joseph Flowers had read a blog where a man was describing the first time he’d been fucked in the ass. Whne it finally happened to him, Joey remembered that it had been happening a while before he knew it was going on, and then it had been hurting a while before he knew that it hurt. Tom had gone further than he needed to, not knowing what he was doing, not using enough lube, not trying to hurt him, but not really knowing any better, enjoying the unexpected pleasure too much Joey imagined.

    But then the truth was, even when it was uncomfortable, even when it was too much, in a way he not so much enjoyed it, as needed it. Needed the on-his-hands-and-knee-ness of being bent over and fucked in Tom Frushour’s room. He needed the right-now-ness of it. There was no past, no consequence, no reflection. Just the moment right there where Tom was pressing into him, harder and harder, and then the grunting, and Tom cursing, and Joey knew Tom had ejaculated inside of him.

    When Tom pulled out of him, Joey went to his side on the floor, feeling a burning deep inside of him, squeezing himself together, feeling weirdly opened and strangely exultant about it.

    “You all right, Joe?” Tom said.

    Joey didn’t say anything. He just lay on his side, and Tom said, “I’ll jack you off. Suck you off. Make it worth your while.”

    Apparently Tom felt guilty.

    “I’m gonna suck you off, Joe, all right?”

    And he did. Joey was already erect, and he was burning down there, a little raw. Tom’s mouth was on him, sucking him. He could hear Tom gulping and swallowing on his cock.

    Joey was in the opposite place of Tom. Joey, who could admit that he had been afraid of many things, was afraid of nothing right now.

    Here he was, on his side, jeans and briefs pulled down, Tom sucking his penis like a hungry baby, sucking for some life, Joey giving it to him in a body twist of orgasm, flooding his mouth. And how come it felt so good if it was a sin? How come this openness in his ass despite the ache and the burning, felt good too?

    And then all the questions were gone, and he received the sex blessing. A moment of thoughtlessness, a moment without judgment. A place of pure experience. Sensation without story.

“Guess what I’m on my way to do?”

    “See your kids?”

    “See my kids. And Felix, I’m bringing them down here next week. Do you mind meeting them?”

    “Scott, I think they might mind meeting me.”

    “Nonsense. Kids love you.”

    “How would you know that?”

    Scott suddenly sounded cross and he said, “Do you not want to meet my kids?”

    In fact, Felix did not want to meet Scott’s kids. But the tone in Scott’s voice made him say, “Of course I do. I just… I tell you what, We’ll watch Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea.”

    “The who in the what?”

    “You’ve never heard of it? Spartakus and Arkana? It was on Nickelodeon. They lived under the earth. Arkana had a big crazy ass hat—”

    “I don’t know what the heck you’re talking about.”

    “I don’t know if I can be with a man who doesn’t know who Spartakus is.”

    “You’re kind of fucked up, you know that?” 

    “Well…. Thank you.”

    “I gotta go. And… when I get back—”

    “When are you getting back?”

    “I’ll be back tonight. I want to learn more about this Spartakus.”

    “Um,” Felix murmured, “if you didn’t know about him by the time you’re twelve, its probably too late now.”

THERE WAS A limit to Thomas Frushour’s love. Tom had no interest in being sodomized, and didn’t offer his ass up to Joey. Once Joey asked, and Tom said, in a gentle way, “I don’t know if I want to do that, Joey.”

    “But you do it to me.”

    “But you enjoy it,” Tom said.

    Joey wanted to protest, but realized that he did enjoy it. Even that first time when there had been discomfort and pain. When it was over, Joey kept sitting on the toilet waiting for something to come out. Still, he thought there was some lack of logic in Tom’s argument, only he couldn’t point it out.

    Meanwhile, for the rest of that year, up until Joey was fourteen, he continued to have a relationship with Tom Frushour. It left the equipment room and went into Tom’s house at sleepovers, or sometimes when his parents were away. It never occurred to Joey to have Tom over to his house. The fact that Tom wouldn’t let Joey fuck him sat in Joey’s head, a ghost of the knowledge that things were not equal between them. But Tom was two years older, after all, and in everything else, sexually and otherwise, Tom was equal, or at least as equal as Joey could have expected him to be.

    One night Tom called Joey up and asked him if he could come over.

    Between the old house and Tom’s house was a stretch of pine lined road, a litle country where the northern end of town was yet to be developed. Next came the slightly larger and newer houses of East End where Tom lived.

    “Just come on in,” Tom had told him over the phone. “My folks are gone.”

    Joey parked his bike on the new black asphalt driveway, and he did just come in. He called Tom’s name, but Tom didn’t answer. He went into the kitchen, which was built over the garage on a bridge connecting the lower level to the top level of the house, and he poured himself a glass of orange juice, drank half of it, and then went up to Tom’s room.

    He heard noises, but they didn’t make any sense. Not because he didn’t know what they were, but because he knew exactly what they were. It made no sense for them to be coming from Tom’s room if Joey wasn’t there with him. They were loud and whimpering, Tom’s voice was at least.

    And then he must have gathered up his nerve, and he went in there and there was Tom who wouldn’t be fucked, wild hair tousled and pulled, being fucked, by a slightly older guy, a guy with a little diamond stud earring, and slick sweat, like someone from one of the twink porns. His eyes were spaced out with the joy of fucking, and Tom’s red face looked out and saw Joey, and there was no shame. There was just this desperate motioning with his hand.

    Joey came into the room, half dizzy. The guy fucking Tom stopped. The world seemed to have stopped. Nothing made much sense, even less sense than usual.

    “You Joey?” the guy said.

    He nodded.

    He pulled out of Tom, and Tom whimpered while this guy sat on the edge of the bed with beautiful thighs and chiseled chest. He must have been seventeen or eighteen, and Tom was lying on his side, curled up and not in control. He said, as the guy took out a lighter and lit a marijuana pipe:

    “This is my cousin, Cage.”

    Without any explanation of himself, Cousin Cage, letting smoke leak out of his mouth and nostrils said, “Tom says you like to fuck. I’d been telling him I’d like to try out a three way or somethin’ like that.

    “You cool with that?”

    Joey thought that this boy with the buzzed body, with the light brown hair on his face and brown lashes, with his hazel eyes, was the most beautiful guy he’d ever seen, that he definitely wanted to have sex with him, that this was so cool, like something he’d seen in movies, and the smoke, leaking slowly out of his nose.

    But when he looked at him, Joey realized with complete clarity that this definitely was NOT cool with him. That he did not want to have sex with two people at once, who were related to each other, who were.... there was something wrong with all of this.

    But he did not say no.

    The next day was the first time that Joey ever felt like he was a horrible person. During the whole dizzying affair with Tom Frushour he never felt guilty. He had the sense not to run around telling everyone or anyone for that matter, but he never felt like there was something at the root of him that was bad, that was tainted. But that night they had seen the same porno clips he had seen and, apparently, had imagined him as the boy in the middle, the one who was being fucked in the ass by one, sucking the other, while they talked over him and smacked his ass and said, “You like that, bitch. Don’t you? Bitch likes to suck that dick.”

    That was something he didn’t live down. He didn’t live down the fact that he hadn’t been forced into being disgraced, but he’d consented anyway.

What Joey kept chasing around was the question of identity. What was he to Tom? He felt betrayed. He was angry, but the anger was directed toward himself. Who would have done what he did? Who would have let it happen? Who would let their boyfriend do that to them. But then Tom was not his boyfriend. When had Tom ever said, “I love you, Joey,” or when, in all the times when he was down on his knees, sucking Tom’s dick, had he ever thought of asking, “Do you love me?” Had he ever asked for some type of assurance? Even now, a few years later, Joey didn’t know what to call Tom. He had imagined that things were equal between them, but when he was seventeen Joey looked back and saw it differently. Tom, latently gay and unable to admit it, had seen someone a little younger he could experiment with, and this person, Joey, had offered no resistance, had let Tom do everything he wanted, and had done to him everything he wanted with no messy questions, no, “Are we gay?” or “Are we a couple?” just simple capitulation to all of Tom’s sexual whims.

    There was no reason, Joey realized, that Tom should have told Joey, “I like to have sex with my cousin,” or that, “me and my cousin talk about you and having a three way with you.” In fact, knowing Tom, there was no reason Joey should have been surprised by anything about him. What Joey was surprised about, though, was the level of his own stupidity. 
    After it was over, and Joey was lying there almost bored by the sight of Cage’s thick and magnificent dick which just sat there while Cage knelt on the bed, smoking pot, AJ offered him a toke that Joey refused.

    “I’m not gay,” he said. “I just like to do this now and again.”

    Tom was chuckling behind Joey. Joey could almost see Tom, naked, reaching across him for the pipe. He had a moment upon a moment upon another moment of clarity.

    This Cage was a sad person and so was Tom, and so was he if he kept this up, this skulking. If enjoying having sex with your male cousin on a regular basis and being a seventeen year old having three ways with a fifteen year old and a fourteen year old boy didn’t make you gay, what did?

    And what was Joey to Tom? Certainly any hazy idea of being a boyfriend was dead right here on this bed.

    One of the Frushour cousins lightly farted, and it left the earthy smell appropriate to Joey’s discovery.

That was the end of Thomas and for high school he ended up at Calverton High where Scott had graduated eight years earlier. He joined the football team and when Molly Taghon introduced himself to her, he was so convinced that guys were a bad idea that he never thought he would be with one again. He was sure the experience of Thomas Frushour had burnt him and so, Homecoming weekend, when he was fifteen, he fucked Molly on the football field after the game and entered the world of proper sex, the world where boys went with girls and didn’t end up with the things happened to them that had happened to him. That old memories and desires would assert themselves, that he would eventually seek out the attention of other boys now and again he had not foreseen. Molly wore his jacket, and by junior year she wore his ring. Things did not work out with them, and this left him free to meet boys. Once, when he and some guy in a trailor park were sitting up naked on his sofa, the guy asked him, “So, how does this whole bisexual thing work out.”

    “It’s like the best of both worlds. Why limit yourself?”

    He’d been with this guy a year before, the same time he’d broken up with Molly, and the sex had been so hot, so passionate, so UNSAFE, he had refused the guys calls and not answered his emails ever afterward. He couldn’t go back to the feelings that had opened up. And then, one day, after he had been hired at the Marion Arms, he was laying out a white tarp and spray painting the walls of a corridor when Felix came walking down the hall and he apologized, “You can come around. Just let me move this right out your way.”

    “It isn’t necessary,” Felix said, “I’ll just walk downstairs and come back the other way.”

    “Are you sure?”

    Felix had stopped, because he knew the boy. He had to think a while and get up close to him and then he realized he had seen him naked, on Adam4Adam with the screenname: Orange Hat and the tagline: When you see me, say you know what the Orange Hat is for.

    “Absolutely,” Felix said, and when he came back around, Joey said, “I’m Joey,” and Felix said, “Felix. Pleased to meet you,” and doffed his fedora.

    He wasn’t going to bring up orange hats today.

When Max was fixing the drain, Felix came into the kitchen with its black and white check pattern and saw Max’s legs hanging out of the sink.

    “Joey not here?”

    “Joey’s downstairs,” Max said, his voice echoing from under the sink.

    It had been a month since Feli met Joey, and he had hoped to see him again.

    “Um,” Felix said. “Well, that’s too bad. Tell him I saw him the other night.”

    “Where?”

    “Just tell him, Felix said, “I know what Orange Hat means.”

   

By the end of the day there was a knock at the door and Felix wasn’t surprised when Joey was standing there looking jumpy and amazingly hot.

    “Whaddid you mean by…. Orange Hat.”

    “I mean I saw you on the net. I saw your—”

    Joey put a finger to his lips and pressed inside the apartment, closing the door behind him.

    “You can’t say shit like that?”

    Felix raised his eyebrow.

    “Were you trying to make me feel weird. Or embarrassed?”

    “No,” Felix said. “I was trying to tell you I want you.”

“I feel like this is the second time I’ve opened the door to you and you look like hell,” Felix said, letting Scott in.

    Scott entered the apartment, and Felix went to the kitchen and brought back water. Scott sat down in his business suit, looking much the worse for wear, and Felix sat beside him.

    For  a long time Scott stared at the wall, and Felix said, “I spent all day doing my resumé,  and I applied for an online teaching job. I think I might get it. But even if I do, the pay is not very good.”

    Scott didn’t say anything, and then Felix said, “I don’t have children or a spouse. I just have me, and I’m afraid that I’ll end up being someone who gets rid of all of their dreams and ends up being just what everyone else is.”

    Felix stopped because he saw Scott’s eyes filling up with tears.

    “Scott, it’s just a…”

    “We’re so fucked,” Scott said, suddenly, tears running down his cheeks. “We are so fucked.”

    And then the hard place behind Felix’s eyes melted, and he felt tears stinging his eyes.

    “I’m not going to get my kids, Felix. I’m not. This divorce… it’s gonna cost me more than I have… I’m not going to be able to….

    “Are you a Christian?”

    “What?”

    “I know you go to church,” Scott said. “We took the kids to church. But like… are you really a Christian?”

    “If I am, I’m a very poor one,” Felix said.

    “Me too,” Scott said. “Maybe if I wasn’t then God would help me out a little.”

    “I don’t think it works that way,” Felix said. “I’m not sure God’s like that.”

    “I don’t know,” Scott shook his head. “I don’t know.”

    Felix pulled Scott to him, and as Scott began to sob in his arms, the tears of fear and loss, shame and embarassment ran down Felix’s face too. Felix held Scott’s head to his, and he wasn’t sure if he was crying for Scott or himself. In the year they had known each other before, close, laughing together, feeling affection, they never touched. But now they touched all the time and he could feel Scott, taller, broader than him, longer, crying in his arms. Suddenly Scott looked up at him and kissed him on the mouth. He did it again, and it felt right to have Scott’s mouth on his, to press himself into Scott and Scott to press into him. They held on greedily to each other’s faces, and ran their hands over their shaven heads, Felix feeling the softness of Scott’s shorn hair. They looked at each other, blinking, and Scott bit his lips, looking grim, and then he pushed Felix gently down and lay on top of him kissing him. Without words, he began unbuttoning Felix’s shirt and Felix began to pull up Scott’s. The two of them clung together. Felix scrambled from the sofa, going down on his knees to unwork Scott’s belt and Scott said, “Do we need to take the bed out?”

    “Yes,” Felix said, signaling for Scott to stand up, and when Scott did, Felix unbuckled his trousers and pulled them down.

Scott could smell coffee brewing when he pulled the blanket over his head. He pushed back the covers and thought it was decent to pull on his underwear before going to the kitchen.

    “Well,” Felix said from where he sat on the little loveseat, smoking a cigarette.

    Scott yawned,  stretched, scratched his head and went to the coffee pot. Still yawning he poured himself a cup and Felix said, “No creamer?”

    Scott shook his head and sat down in the chair at the little table across from Felix. For a long time neither one of them said anything and then Scott said, “So what now?”

    “I don’t know,” Felix said.

    “I’m not sorry about it,” Scott said. “Not any part of it.”

    “Neither am I.”

    “I know we weren’t supposed to. Not yet.”

    “You’re still married.”

    “Yeah,” Scott said, but what he meant by that Felix could not tell.

    “I’m not going to pretend I’ve never been with a married man. But I never had an affair with one. I was never sleeping with, in love with, a married man. Yesterday I was a doctoral candidate and now I am a nothing and an adulterer. Adulteress.”

    Scott looked at him with narrowed eyes and said, “I can never fucking tell if you’re serious or not.”

    “I think I start out joking,” Felix admitted, “and them I’m not entirely sure where I go.”

    “I know,” Scott began, “this wasn’t planned. I know we were supposed to wait. A long time.”

    “Preferably, when you weren’t married.”

    “And I know things just happened.”

    “Things did not just happen,” Felix said, putting his coffee cup down. “We’re both grown men. You’re too old to say something just happened, and if you are God knows I am. You kissed me, I kissed you, we took off our clothes and spent the night having sex in every position we could. That’s what happened.”

    “And like I said,” Scott said, “I don’t regret any of it.”

    “Not even—”

    “Well that part was unfortunate.” Scott frowned, “I thought it would work because it always does in porn, but I don’t really regret that either.”

    Felix grinned at him and Scott grinned back at him.

    “I’m going to kiss you now,” Scott said, standing up.

    “Are you going to put on clothes?”

    “I’d rather not.”

    “I’d rather you did not too,” Felix said.

    In his Jockeys, Scott got up out of his chair, and leaned over Felix to kiss him.

    “You stink,” Felix said.

    “I know. I should do something about that.”

    “You know where the shower is.”

    Scott held his hand to Felix and said, “Do you think you could lead me there?”

    Felix nodded, feeling surprisingly shy.

    “I could do that.”

    “Think you could share it with me?”

    “I don’t know how hot you’ll like it? If we can agree on a temperature.”

    “If I promise,” Scott clasped his hands together dramatically, “to not fight you about the water, will you get in with me?”

    Felix stood up, putting his coffee down.

    “I guess that makes it a deal, then,” he said, and followed Scott out of the kitchen.

“Hey, little bro!”

    “What are you doing here?” Joey was leaving the house, looking at his brother.

    “I was about to get some work done. Shouldn’t you be at the building.”

    Joey shrugged.

    “Taking lunch off. Wanna go with me?”

    “Yes,” Scott smacked him in the back of his head with his wallet. “And my treat.”

    Joey appraised his brother. “You look chipper.”

    “Well, you look pretty chipper yourself,” Scott said.

    Joey looked at his brother again. “You look in love.”

    “Well, it takes one to know one.”

    Joey blinked.

    “Are you in love?” Scott restated.

    “Uh…” Joey began. “I don’t know.”

    “That’s odd.” Then Scott said, “No, it isn’t. You don’t always know love. You don’t really know it right away. I was married for years, and I wasn’t in love.”

    “You can’t stop thinking about the person.”

    “You wanna wake up with them.”

    “Even if you do you just keep thinking about it.”

    “Who you been waking up with? You’re twenty?”

    “Old enough,” Joey blushed.

    “You wanna talk about her?”

    Joey looked like he was mulling over something, and then he said, “If you want to talk about your girl?”

    “Uh…”

    “How’d you get a girl so quick?” Joey punched his brother in the shoulder.

    “Cause I just broke up with Jen?”

    “No, cause you’re so damn ugly.”      

    And then Scott fell on his brother and they began wrestling on the floor, which was how their mother found them, and they just looked up at her, grinning.

    “Really?” Mrs. Flowers said.

    “You wanna go to lunch?” Scott said to his brother who was pinned under him.

    “Yup,” Joey said.

    As they left , Mrs. Flowers heard Joey, slamming down his ball cap, insist: “You’re still ugly.”    

They were headed down the street when Joey said, “Is that Felix and Rule?”

    “Uh?” Scott looked over. “That’s definitely Felix.”

    “Let’s invite them to lunch,” Joey said, and without waiting for an answer he swung the car to the curb. Felix was looking at them in horror.

    “You almost killed us!”

    “You want lunch?” Joey said without apology.

    “Who’s paying?”

    “I’m paying,” Scott said. He looked at Rule, “I’m paying for you, Felix. Cause you asked.”

    Felix opened the back door for Rule and then slid in beside him.  He hadn’t seen fit to tell Rule anything about Scott, but wondered how much he knew. He certainly hadn’t told Rule anything about last night.

    “Did Felix tell you his news?” Rule said.

    “No,” Scott looked uncertain. “I don’t think he did.”

    “A PhD is pretty, but a Masters may be more practical,” Felix said, simply.

    “You have a Masters.”

    Felix said. “Pay attention. I walked around feeling very, very sorry for myself because I couldn’t think of a single skill I had, a single practical skill, and I realized that all an English major would be doingis working at Taco Bell.

    And then at the end of it all—”

    “I came to the house,” Rule said, “and that’s when Felix realized—”

    “In a world this ignorant, I could be a teacher! This town is full of ignorant people, and ignorance is the only thing that doesn’t bore me. I’m going to make it happen. I’m going to work at City College.”

    Joey turned around and held his hand out for a high five.

    “That’s fucking awesome. You’ll always land on your feet, Fee. I believe that. Now let’s go eat.”

    “And I’m gonna get my fucking kids,” Scott said. “I’m not gonna give up. I’m doing it. I’ve decided.”

    “Where are we going anyway?” Rule said.

    “Chinese restaurant,” Joey said. “Unless anyone objects.”

    “I just had Chi—” Rule began, but Felix said, “No one objects.”

“I always get a chicken something,” Joey said.

    “I used to just get noodles,” Felix shook his head. “We used to live down the street from a Chinese food restaurant, and one day my dad rode with the owner to get supplies. They loaded the back of it up, and when he look at the meat it was marked Grade A Dog.”

    “No!”

    “It feels like a lie,” Felix agreed. “But whenever he tells that story, he looks pretty serious.”

    “Well, I don’t care,” Joey decided as the woman brought their plates. Joey’s was sesame chicken and Felix had order the sweet and sour chicken. He thanked the hostess politely, and when she left he said,  “It’s delicious dog meat.”

    Joey pounded his plastic wrapped fortune cookie, and then pulling the plastic open, salvaged the fortune.

    “That’s not really a fortune,” Joey decided. “I’m pretty sure its more an evaluation.”

    “What’s it say?”

    “It says I have an open heart and clear eye.”

    “I agree,” Felix said. “At least about the heart. I don’t know what the fuck the eye thing means.”

    “What about you?”

    “Huh?”

    “Aren’t you going to open yours?”

    Felix shook his head.

    “I never open the cookie until after I’m done eating.”

After the waitress had brought their checks, Scott, looking like he was humoring them, opened his cookie and read, “The Mandarin word for pig is tu so…. Not a fortune.”

    He shook his head.

    When they all looked at Rule he said, “Oh!” then he read:

    “What you endeavor to do you will gain success on.”

    “Good one,” Felix said and Scott nodded saying, “That should have gone to me.”

    “And now you?” Joey said to Felix. “You’re done eating.”

    Felix nodded and pulled open the cellophane. He broke the cookie in two and Joey explained, “He always reads it to himself before he reads it out loud.”

    Scott, elbows on the table, cleared his throat and said, “How… oracular.”

    Felix pulled out the strip of paper and read: Danger! You are caught between two lovers who love each other.

    Felix’s eyes bulged. He balled up the fortune, stuck it in his mouth, swallowed it, chewed up the cookie and then chased it with the remains of the water.

    “What the fuck?” Scott demanded.

    “Cookie,” Felix reproached the cellophane wrapper, “you know too much!”