Changing Your Algebra

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Close parentheses. Whew! That had been annoying me. You know I’m drunk when I forget to close the parentheses. Remember, kids, don’t drink and blog. This message brought to you by BADB (Bloggers Against Drunk Blogging).

So I’m home today, taking a sick day, because — well, because I was feeling sick this morning. Anyway, now that I’m sober, I can write about last night.

I’d called Wes a few days ago to see if he wanted to hang out some night this week. We decided on Wednesday. I wanted to do something low-key and inexpensive, so I suggested we just hang out and make some dinner and rent a movie. Okay, who am I kidding? I didn’t just want to do something low-key and inexpensive. I wanted to get into his pants.

We decided that we’d hang out at his place and use this coupon for a free Domino’s pizza, which was part of a welcome packet I got from the U.S. Postal Service after I moved into my new place.

So, after making sure I looked good — clean-shaven, wearing my contact lenses, my pull-over shirt tucked into my jeans — I walked over to his place, just five minutes away.

He came down to let me in to his apartment. He was wearing a white undershirt tucked into a pair of jeans. He looked great and totally sexy.

We went up to his apartment, and it was the first time I’d been there since the end of August. I can’t believe it had been that long.

From the get-go, he was plying me with alcohol. He offered me something to drink, so I had a beer. He did, too. We hung out for a while, talking and so forth. We wound up talking about porn for some reason. Wes told me he didn’t like porn. How could you not like porn, I asked? He said it’s because the guys are so ugly. “Yeah, in straight porn,” I said, “but not in gay porn.” It turned out he’d never seen gay porn before. Wes has never seen gay porn! Can you believe it?

I could feel sexual energy going on. I mean, we were talking about gay porn. But neither of us was really acknowledging it.

We ordered the pizza. He put on a long-sleeve shirt over his undershirt and we walked down to the local market and got some salad, then came back and turned on the TV. Soon the pizza came, and then he offered me another beer (which I took) and we settled in for an evening of pizza and salad and TV.

He has a two-person couch and an easy chair with a footstool. I went over to sit on the two-person couch, but he, disappointingly, sat in the easy chair across the room. Darn.

We watched “Dawson’s Creek” (or “Dawson’s Crack,” as Wes calls it). Jack the Gay Guy was having problems balancing his boyfriend with his fraternity pledge duties. After that, we watched “The West Wing,” which Wes had never seen before. He liked it.

By this point I think I was on my third beer.

Then we watched “South Park,” which neither of us had seen in a long time.

Now I was on either my fourth drink or my fifth drink. I think it was my fourth. It was a Jim Beam and ginger ale.

I knew where I wanted to take things.

“So, be honest,” I said to him. “Do you think I look better with the goatee or without the goatee?”

“Oh, no question, you definitely look better without it,” he said.

We were sitting in our respective seats again. “So what’s been going on in your life?” he said to me.

So I wound up telling him about the Piano Man and how I don’t think I’m really into him, and how I’ve decided that if I meet a guy that I want to date, that’s great, but in the meantime (hint, hint) I’m totally into just having fun with people. I said, “I mean, take you and me. You and I have decided we don’t really want to date each other, but like, I still think you’re totally hot.”

He told me he still thinks I’m attractive, too, and he said he’s decided he just wants to have to fun with people also. Actually, it turns out that he met someone in a bar a few weeks ago that he’s really into — they both like cars and sports and he’s cute and whatnot — but Wes isn’t sure he wants to be exclusive with someone yet. Wes, one must remember, has even less gay experience than I do. He’s 27, like me, but he really only started acknowledging his gayness in the last year or so. He had a fraternity brother whom he used to fool around with, but he’s never really had an extensive relationship with someone.

We got up so he could fix us some more drinks. He poured me my second Jim Beam and ginger ale and he poured himself his second vodka tonic.

We went to sit down again, but this time, instead of going over to the couch, I sat on the footstool, directly facing him on the easy chair. We continued to talk about his fraternity brother and our sexual pasts and so forth, and I oh-so-casually began easing my thigh up against his, and then resting it against his, and then nonchalantly putting my hand on his thigh, as if I didn’t even notice what I was doing. We were still talking, and as we talked, I really casually moved my hand up his thigh, and then it wound up underneath his long-sleeve shirt, stroking his chest all over, with only his undershirt in the way. The whole time we were still talking. It was so casual, like, “Hey, how’d my hand get there?” Kinda neat.

Finally we stopped talking. I stood up and I leaned down and kissed him. Bam! Electricity. This was the first time we’d kissed in two months.

It continued. We wound up on the couch, enjoying ourselves, still kissing and doing whatever and talking. It turns out that he thinks TRHG is cute, but he feels bad because he hasn’t gotten around to calling him. An at another point he said to me, “I have sort of a confession.” It turns out that a few weeks ago, he wound up calling Sean, the guy whom he openly flirted with right in front of me at the Phoenix that horrible night. They met up and wound up hooking up. Now, I don’t know if this was before Wes and I had the talk about not dating each other anymore, or after we had the talk. If it was before, that somehow feels insidious, even though it’s not. But his word choice was interesting, wasn’t it: confession. That was his word, not mine…

Actually, I was surprised at how little the news bothered me. I think it failed to bother me because Wes happened to be hooking up with me at the moment. Isn’t this what I’d wanted? Obviously, even if he was hooking up with other guys, he was still into me.

And then it happened. I started to feel really ill. I’d had too much to drink, too quickly. I got up and went to Wes’s bathroom and shut the door and I leaned over the porcelain god. My gosh, it had been ages since I’d done something like this.

It wasn’t too bad, actually. There was only a tiny amount of toxin to get rid of. It could have been worse. It was really quick, and then I rinsed out my mouth nice and good.

I walked out of the bathroom and said, dizzily, “I feel really awful… I think I should go home now.”

He insisted on walking me home, which was nice of him.

So we put on our jackets and he walked me the five-minute walk back to my building. He wound up coming up to my apartment with me.

He gave me a hug, and then we were at it again.

Kissing. Me on my knees. Down with his pants. Over to my couch, off with his shirt, off with my shirt, off with everything. Then over to the bedroom.

It was DAMN fun.

As we were rolling around, we were still talking. He wanted me to tell him dirty stories. Well this was new! He’d never expressed interest in that before. So I was telling him things. As I look back, at first it seems like we weren’t on my bed for very long, but if we did all this talking, maybe it was longer than I’d thought.

And he told me something that made me feel great. He said that Sean had had a really weird dick, not a nice one at all. And then he was totally contrasting it with mine. Complimenting me on it over and over, calling it beautiful… wow.

I guess it’s totally worth it to find a good mohel. Whoever mine was, thank you thank you thank you! You don’t know how happy you’ve made me.

Okay, I can’t believe I’m writing about that.

What did make me uneasy was that he asked me, more than once, mind you, what TRHG’s dick looks like. Sigh… fine. So hook up, both of you, as long as I can still have dibs on both of you too.

Finally it ended. I was too woozy to reach any sort of completion, but he had no trouble. Afterwards I gave him a much-needed towel. Then we put our clothes back on and we said that this was really fun and that we’ll have to do this again. And then we kissed again and he went home. Today he’s off for a four-day Homecoming Weekend at his old college.

After he left, I went online and blogged and IM’d briefly with Queerscribe and with Choire, who apparently has quite the goods on me now!

You know, I really had a fun night with Wes. There’s a lot to be said for seduction. This was my most enjoyable sex with him since the night we met. There seemed to be all these undertones to everything. And I think he and I both totally needed this. It was, like, life-affirming sex. We both seemed so uninhibited, which didn’t really happen when we were still kind of dating each other. We knew beforehand that this didn’t have to Mean Anything. We knew we were just plain old enjoying ourselves, having fun. Damn good fun.

In writing and thinking about last night, I keep coming back to an entry I wrote during the early weeks of The Tin Man. I was thinking particularly about the latter half of that entry, but now that I’ve reread it, I see that the whole thing is relevant. Read for yourself.

Wow. Fun is so great.