Textual Relations Read online

  Eventually, and with great reluctance, I pulled back. My chest heaved as I struggled to draw air into my lungs, but my body demanded more of him.

  “Henry?” Asher was as breathless as I was, the panting sound of his voice making my chest constrict. I’d done that. He was turned on because of me. It was intoxicating.

  “Yeah?”

  “What was that?” There was no judgment behind his question, just genuine confusion.

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly, and before I could think too hard about it, I added, “but I think I want to do it again.”

  “You’re absolutely sure this is what you want?” His voice sounded thin—strained.

  I didn’t need to think about my answer. “This is what I want.”

  “Oh, thank god.” Asher exhaled hard, the air rasping out of him. “I haven’t been able to get you outta my head, not since that first night… not touching you was fucking killing me.”

  He kissed me again, pulling me to him as his mouth covered mine. Gone were the tentative touches and gentle kisses. This was all-consuming, and I was desperate for him. It was as though I’d lit a candle, only to discover too late it was dynamite. There was no extinguishing the flame now, and even if I could, I didn’t want to.

  Asher was an argument in favor of divine creation—everything about him had been designed to make me want him, and when he rolled me beneath him, pinning me to the blanket with the solidness of his body, I realized I’d never been as turned on as I was in that moment.

  And we still had all our clothes on.

  He trailed kisses across my jaw and nuzzled against my neck, his hands pulling my shirt up at the same time. Cool air caressed my stomach as he sucked and licked the tender skin behind my ear. I gripped his shirt, holding him to me, sounds coming from me I swore I’d never made before.

  “You about broke my heart when you told me you weren’t gay,” he whispered, his voice gravely in the dark.

  For a fragment of a second, the question materialized in my head. Am I gay? Do straight men make out with other men in the middle of the forest? Probably not, but beyond that, I had no answers and no basis for comparison, either. But then it didn’t matter because he was kissing me again, and all that mattered was that he didn’t stop.

  I was achingly hard, my cock straining against the inside of my zipper, and when Asher shifted, palming the ridge of my erection through the stiff fabric, I couldn’t hold back the moan that escaped. I bucked against his hand, needing the pressure. Completely out of my mind with lust, I didn’t care how desperate I seemed.

  “I wanna suck you.”

  "Oh god," I gasped. His words conjured a mental image of exactly what that would look like, and in that instant, the whole thing was dangerously close to being over.

  “If this is too fast, you gotta tell me,” he said softly. “I know this is new for you.”

  Although the rational side of my brain was reeling with the implications of what this all might mean, I didn’t care.

  He traveled down my body, my shirt rucked up around my armpits. His mouth left a hot trail over my already overheated skin. I forced my hips to stay planted against the ground, even though my first instinct was to rut up against him.

  I was operating on pure instinct, my limbic system in complete control. As he tugged my pants down, I closed my eyes and tried to picture a woman hunched over me, all smooth hair and soft curves. But the scrape of Asher's stubble against my thigh, the width of his palms against my hips as he applied gentle pressure to keep me still, the rumble of his groan—there was absolutely no mistaking him.

  The woman I’d conjured disappeared like smoke in a windstorm, and then all I could conceive of was him. The new image in my head, Asher as he licked a fat stripe up the stiff ridge of my erection, had me nearly coming apart.

  I didn’t want to examine what that meant yet, that the image of a man on his knees over me was more appealing than a woman. In the back of my head, I knew what it meant, but there would be time to adjust my thinking later. For now, all I could do was feel as Asher took me in, the head of my dick sliding across the roof of his mouth, all the way to the back of his throat.

  I wasn’t going to be able to hold it together for long, the wet heat of his mouth enveloping me in a perfect suction that made my toes curl and my fingers grip the blanket like I might float away if I let go. Forcing myself to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, I tried to keep myself under control, but it felt too good. Asher knew exactly what he was doing.

  This wasn’t like the blowjobs I’d gotten over the years. There was nothing tentative, nothing dainty about this. This was no-holds barred, balls to the wall, leave it all on the table enthusiasm.

  Nothing had ever felt better than this.

  Nothing.

  I could die right in that moment and I’d go out a happy man.

  Asher found a rhythm that made me want to climb inside him and live there forever. I was flying, the pleasure curling around me, making me ache with the need to come. I staved off orgasm for as long as I could in case it was the one and only time, but soon the pressure became too much and my orgasm slammed into me, my muscles contracting and hips lifting off the ground as I buried myself down Asher’s throat.

  He swallowed everything I gave him as he gentled his suction, then pulled off. His breath teased the side of my neck, and I turned, blindly seeking his mouth with mine. He kissed me and I could taste the saltiness of my come masking the sweet coffee taste from earlier.

  The knowledge that I was tasting myself on his tongue had my dick twitching in a valiant effort to harden again, but to no avail. I’d emptied everything I had and I’d be shocked if I could get it up again in the next week, let alone the next five minutes.

  I could hear the rustling of clothing, and then he leaned over me, his knuckles grazing my belly as he stroked himself. The rasp of skin over skin and the ragged sounds of his breathing was all I could hear as he kissed me breathless. I swallowed his cry as he came against my overheated skin.

  Asher pulled back and I heard him grunt as he flopped down next to me on the blanket. The night air blew across his come, cooling on my stomach. The urge to rub it into my skin came over me, but instead I pulled the corner of the blanket up and wiped away the wetness.

  “That was…” I had no words for what that was.

  “Yeah.”

  Apparently neither of us were particularly eloquent after orgasms. My head hadn’t stopped spinning yet, and as I closed my eyes, I felt Asher slide his hand into mine. I curled my fingers around his and gave a little squeeze.

  I didn’t know what was happening between us and what it meant.

  All I could think was what now?

  Asher dropped me off at my place a little after two a.m. The street deserted, I didn’t think twice when he walked me to my door, leaning into me with one hand braced beside my head to kiss me again.

  This time, unlike our first good-night kiss, I didn’t hesitate. In the hours we’d spent making out in the middle of the forest, responding to Asher had become second nature. His kisses left me dizzy and disoriented, but not in an unpleasant way.

  He said good night, and I watched him walk away, realizing belatedly I could have invited him in. It was late, though, and probably for the best that I had some time and space to sort out what had happened.

  I shut the door behind me and locked it before padding to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. It was warm inside my house, summer’s heat right around the corner, but hot tea always helped me straighten my thoughts. If it hadn’t been for the Indonesian gold black tea I’d discovered the year I finished my undergraduate degree, I don’t think I’d have made it through grad school with my sanity intact.

  I filled the biggest mug I owned and carried it to the chair near the window in the living room. I wasn’t ready to sleep yet. My mind was a squall of thoughts and memories, and I didn’t know which to address first. It was overwhelming, and so I opted to replay the
evening, image by image, indulging in the best parts more than once.

  Did everyone who went through a sexual awakening feel this way? Why had I always identified as a straight man? Was it that I was lacking in that much self-awareness? And the thought I might harbor attraction for men was so foreign? Maybe it was that our society tended to lean toward the heteronormative and I’d never thought about it. Then again, I couldn’t remember a time from my childhood where I’d felt infatuated with a girl. I hadn’t had normal crushes like all the other kids in my class, but I’d always chalked that up to being so socially awkward that adding another element of chance for embarrassment had been too much for my adolescent brain to handle.

  But then there was the bigger question… If I wasn’t straight, then what was I? Gay? Bisexual? Was there some other label out there that fit me better? There was no denying my response to Asher, though. Physiological and emotional both left no uncertainties about my attraction to him.

  By the time I’d finished my tea, I still hadn’t come up with any answers, and so for lack of anything better to do, I got ready for bed and climbed in.

  Cognitive dissonance was running roughshod over my brain. For the second time, as a direct result of kissing Asher, I spent another sleepless night tossing and turning and trying to untangle the mess of thoughts that had snarled themselves up.

  “Hey, Henry, you got a second?” I looked up to see Megan standing the doorway of my office.

  I set my pen down on top of the paper I was grading. “Sure, what do you need?”

  She walked inside and closed the door behind her before coming to lean against the side of my desk. “I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  “What?” I looked up at her, momentarily confused as to what she’d asked me. My brain still felt like it was melting out of my ears, but that was a common symptom of having sat through a departmental meeting.

  They were mind-numbing even on the best days and absolutely unbearable on the bad. This one had been particularly tedious, lasting a full ninety minutes longer than it had been scheduled for.

  “I asked you if you were okay,” she repeated, her arms crossed over her chest in that I-know-exactly-what-I’m-talking-about way she had. “You don’t seem yourself. And you kinda look like shit.”

  I did my best impression of a man who wasn’t going through a delayed revelation of his sexuality and smiled as genuinely as I could. “How thoughtful of you to point that out. I’m fine, though.”

  “Are you sure? You seemed distracted during the meeting.” She plopped herself down into a chair. “Not that anyone can make it through one without slipping into a daydream or two.”

  I nodded. It didn’t appear she was going anywhere anytime soon. Usually I welcomed a visit from Megan. Enough time had passed since we’d broken up that any residual awkwardness had long since dissipated.

  I regarded her and thoughts of Asher swam to the front of my mind. If anyone would understand what the hell was going on with me, it would be Megan, but the thought of admitting to her that I had been seeing a man… it felt like a betrayal somehow. I don’t know if I thought she would feel deceived, or if I wasn’t ready to have her delve that deep into my psyche yet, but I felt the need to guard my secret.

  I took a breath and hoped she wouldn’t see right through me. “Maybe I am a little distracted. I have a student who confided something, and I’m not sure what to tell him. He’s going through something and came to me for advice. Maybe you can help, actually. After all, you are the resident expert on this sort of thing.”

  “Sure.” She smiled and I suddenly felt a thousand times more nervous that she was going to see right through me. Perhaps this had been a mistake, asking for her opinion, but in for a penny…

  “He says he’s spent his entire life under the assumption that he is straight. He’s never had reason to question his sexuality, but recently he’s met a man he’s attracted to.”

  She was quiet for a moment. I knew that look in her eyes. This was the look she got when she was intrigued. I felt nervous and excited at the same time that there might be some sort of explanation for my sudden infatuation with muscled biceps and the scent of wood shavings.

  “You know as well as I do that human sexuality is a complex thing that often evolves as the person matures and changes. A student realizing they have feelings toward someone of the same sex is more common than you’d think. Many of them are away from home for the first time. Their worldviews are expanding.”

  “This is, uh, a mature student. Early thirties, I would say.”

  I wanted to kick myself with how transparent I was. Deep down, maybe there was a part of me that hoped she would figure it out. Going through my own sort of sexual revelation had been more isolating than I would have imagined, and Megan knew me better than anyone.

  “That might be slightly less common, but certainly not unheard of.”

  “In your research, have you come across someone who switched sexualities later in life?”

  She leaned forward, her brow furrowed. “You can’t think of it as switching sexualities. That’s not how orientation and attraction work.”

  I knew that, but it was difficult for me to explain my own behavior given the frame of reference of my field. “This is more your area of expertise than mine. The majority of my work revolves around reproductive fitness as a motivator for sexual attraction. Homosexuality is a Darwinian paradox.”

  “I think you’d be surprised if you dug into the topic a bit deeper.” She leaned back again, crossing her legs and folding her hands in her lap. “There is some new research that is linking female reproductive fitness to homosexuality in males. As for this specific case, there are multiple factors that determine who we become, as you well know. While sexuality is based in genetics, environmental factors can play a role in the expression of sexuality.”

  She was slipping into her psych-prof mode, and I watched with fascination. When it came to specific areas of study, Megan was one of the most passionate people I’d ever met. She prided herself on being one of the leading experts in the country on interpersonal relations. I wanted to grab a pen and start taking notes. Instead, I sat forward in my seat and listened as intently as I could.

  “Without knowing any details, I would hazard a guess that your student has adhered to the heteronormative pair-bond paradigm and suppressed at least a portion of their sexuality in order to conform to societal norms or familial obligations. Alternately, it could be that they lack self-awareness and are only now becoming more open to their own sexuality.”

  “That certainly could be it.” I nodded, processing what she was saying. “So, what would you suggest he do?”

  “That’s a very individual question, and ultimately that’s going to be something he needs to decide for himself.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek, considering for a moment. “I thought you might say something like that.”

  She uncrossed her legs and stood, smoothing out the wrinkles in her skirt. “Human sexuality is an incredibly complex thing. Researchers have spent centuries trying to understand, and it is possibly the most heavily researched topic in psychology today, but ultimately, on a less academically minded level it can be very simple.”

  “How so?”

  “If your student likes this man, then he should be with him for as long as it makes him happy. Forget everything else. Forget the supposed-tos and the inner turmoil of the what-does-this-mean. If a relationship brings him joy, then he doesn’t need to know anything else, does he?”

  I blinked. Was that all there was to it? Could it really be as simple as that? Megan seemed to think so, and I trusted her judgment implicitly, but it went against every instinct. I felt the need to analyze and offer explanation, but perhaps that wasn’t necessary.

  I’d spent much of my life tackling problems from an academic perspective, but in the short time I’d known Asher, he’d proven that much of life cannot be experienced that way, that events are meant to be lived and not scrutini
zed.

  Maybe I wasn’t ready to tell the people in my life that this budding—whatever this was—was with a man. But maybe I was ready to let go of the need to explain and experience being with Asher for a little while.

  “Thanks, Megs.”

  She grinned and looked at me, her gaze catching mine and holding me, eye contact locked for a moment. “Anytime. And if your student needs to talk, my door is always open.”

  My conversation with Megan had me feeling slightly more at ease. I logged on to my computer, and pulling up the directory, I searched through thousands of journal articles. I devoured one after another, the citations leading me to more and more and more until I’d spent most of the day drowning in research.

  I came out the other side of it with a headache and a renewed sense of acceptance. I’d never held the belief that there was anything wrong with people who fell into the LGBTQ category. To be honest, I’d never given it all that much thought because I’d never realized that I, too, belonged there.

  I still had questions, and I was positive more would crop up the longer I mentally wrestled with the concept, but for now, my academic curiosity was satisfied enough to let those questions go and see what happened.

  Asher was the first man I’d ever been with, but considering the way he made me feel, I needed to shelve my reservations and see where the relationship went. It was early, and too soon to be making plans beyond the weekend, but I’d never felt like this before.

  My relationship with Megan had been good. Comfortable. Warm. Reassuring. All the adjectives I’d previously associated with deep and lasting love, but after giving in to my desire for Asher, I finally realized what had been missing between us all along.

  Passion.

  Two days passed and I didn’t hear from Asher. He’d said he would call, but the more time that lapsed, the less sure I felt about how things had gone. He’d seemed as interested as I was, but Lord only knew I wasn’t the most proficient in reading signs and signals, and with this I was a fish way out of water.