Shiny! (7 page)

Once he’d made that realization in middle school, he figured he had two choices. The first was to pine away for some sort of idealized woman he’d never get. The second was simply to enjoy the life he had.
He’d had a couple of relationships in college, but somehow it just really didn’t seem worth the effort. There was dating, and even the women who spoke nerd also seemed to want him to speak romance—he couldn’t do that. He’d
tried
—“Gee, I had a really nice time. Your lips are perfectly plump, like Liv Tyler’s in
Return of the King—
that sort of turns me on!”—but that mostly got him a little smack in the arm and an “Oh Will!” and then, usually, sort of a sad pity fuck. If he heard the words “It happens to everybody!” one more time, he was pretty sure his penis would turn in a resignation card and the only action it would ever see would be his usual trips to the bathroom.

But as he turned the pages of the book, he realized his penis had stopped signing papers and was back in the game.

He turned one page, and there was a lush, happy young woman showing lavish attention to a healthy-sized cock. He felt a decided throb down south, and he shuddered and ground into the towel a little. Okay, yes.
Yes
, that did something to him! He turned to the next page, where two women were tonguing each other’s clits.

And his penis started pulling paperwork out of the desk again.

Wait! Wait! Dammit, this thing has some more men in it somewhere—here we go!

A man and a woman together. She was on her back, holding up her knees and spreading herself as wide as possible for deep penetrative sex. The man—thickly muscled chest, tightly muscled ass, a cock that stuck out of his body like a staff of justice—was plowing that field, and hello! Penis alert! We are
fully
engaged!
Completely
interested! Sex alert, sex alert, sex alert!
What else can you look at? Something’s finally happening here!

Will turned the page, and there, in full-color, glossy, two men, beautiful, glistening, muscular men, curled up side by side, sucking each other’s cocks to the back of their throats.

The next page featured a close-up of the bottom guy holding a gigantic cock in his hand and closing his eyes against the white spatter of come across his face.

“
Gungh
—”

Will’s hips pistoned against the towel and all careful plans evaporated. He shoved his hand under his stomach, grabbed his cock and squeezed, and then convulsed, eyes closed, knees coming up and flopping him to his side, as his body tried to make up for a twenty-eight-year backup of orgasms in one go.

He lay there gasping for a few moments and then closed his eyes and let every feeling, every emotion, plummet back into his body.

He started shaking, but not in fear, or disgust, or denial, or any of the things he might have expected if he ever thought about it.

No. He was shaking in pure, undiluted, unadulterated, untainted
joy
.

“Sex,” he murmured. “God,
that’s sex
!”

His hand was still wrapped around his cock as he milked the last of his orgasm unconsciously, and now he closed his eyes and allowed a cavalcade of every beautiful man, every actor, every movie star, every sci-fi/fantasy hero, he had ever admired to parade naked behind his eyes.

He started with most of the cast of
The Lord of the Rings
,
by height, starting with the shortest.

His cock was partially erect by the time he got to Pippin.

By the time he got to Legolas, he was hard again.

When Aragorn came striding through his brain wearing crotchless leather chaps, he rolled over and looked at the picture book again. Oh yeah. That’s it. Will and Aragorn locked in that merciless sixty-nine and Will’s face covered in come.

Booya!

T
WO
HOURS
later he changed his sheets and took another shower. He thought about wanking off in the shower, but by then his penis was sort of drooping and raw and saying things like,
For God’s sake, give it a break, buddy. I’ll keep working if you keep feeding me!

He felt shaky and spacey and light-headed—

And very, very happy.

T
HE
FIRST
thing he did when his house was back to normal was call his mother.

“William, are you all right? Denise has been calling here every hour to see if you’ve come by.”

“How did Denise get your number?” he asked hazily.

“I think she stole it off your phone—she kept saying, ‘But don’t tell Will I called.’ What’s the deal with you two? Last time we talked, you weren’t dating her.”

“I’m not,” Will said, focusing on this, at the least. “I’m gay.”

There was a pause, and he realized what he had just said. To his
mother
.

“And you’re telling me this now? Over the phone?”

“Well, it came up in conversation,” he defended himself. “You don’t sound surprised.”

His mom sighed, and he could imagine her, graying brown hair pulled back into a scrunchie, sleeveless white shirt tucked primly into neutral-colored safari shorts, soft body neither disguised nor enhanced. She had a square face too, and a sort of sweet, womanly jaw and mouth. Will had no idea why she hadn’t remarried after his father passed away. Will had been in college at the time, and his mom had grieved and then recovered. Although she wasn’t terribly beautiful, she looked
approachable
,
and when Will had been dating in school, that was all he’d ever wanted from a girl.

Apparently
approachable
didn’t mean stupid.

“Will, my darling, my angel, the light of my life—I’m actually relieved you’re gay. You really weren’t all that excited about women, and I don’t like to think about you lonely.”

Aw. Will’s mommy loved him. Even big boys needed to know that. He smiled a little and picked the freshly opened can of Dr Pepper up off the end table for a healthy swallow.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “I—you’re not even a
little
bit shocked?”

“No,” she said firmly.

“I don’t even know how our family feels about this,” he told her, wondering about her parents and his father’s parents and—

“Don’t tell them,” she said, her voice dropping into grim territory. “Nobody but you and me needs to know.”

“Oh.” Well, it wasn’t like he talked with his grandparents much anyway.

“How long have you known?” his mom asked curiously, and he smiled and looked at the clock.

“About three hours now,” he said dreamily. “Best three hours of my life.”

Was it possible to hear silent laughter?

“Well, then,” his mother said, her voice choked, “you obviously still have things to do!”

“Well, no, I’m sort of done now—”

“I gotta go, sweetheart!” She hung up before he even had time to tell her about the job.

That was okay. His next phone call to Denise didn’t go nearly as well.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call you back,” he said once she picked up. “I knocked over a guy’s garbage can, and then he took me out for a beer.”

“Why’d he do that? Was he trying to sue you?” Denise and both her parents were civil attorneys—it was a natural place for her mind to go.

“No—we were commiserating. He’d lost his boyfriend, I lost my job—you know, making each other feel better?”

“You went out with a gay man?”

Will sighed, thinking about Kenny’s pointy face and his lean, fit body and the sort of soulful way he’d looked Will in the eyes a couple of times the night before.

“It wasn’t a date,” he said, disappointed. “But maybe, after we get to know each other—”

“Will—
we’re
going out! You’re not gay.” She said it like it was a fact, but really, neither thing was true. He pictured her power walking through her upscale neighborhood by the American River, wearing a jogging suit and trainers that cost a week’s worth of his salary. It was Saturday—she’d be taking the five-mile route before she went back into the office. Her brown hair would be pulled back severely from her face, and she would have a sun hat on at a ruthless ninety-degree angle to keep her nose from getting any more freckles. The freckles had fooled him, at first. They’d met while waiting for their cars to be serviced, and he’d thought she looked approachable. As it turned out, she just had a lifelong abusive relationship with the sun.

“We’re not really going out,” he apologized, remembering the tepid kisses that had been more like pecks on the cheek that had landed wrong. “My bad—you’re a pretty girl and I kept telling myself it should happen. Now we both know why it shouldn’t.” God, was he being an asshole? He never knew with Denise. She said she appreciated directness, but he
was
straightforward about his life circumstance, and she’d spent the last four months telling him how to change.

“You’re
gay
!” she shrilled, and he pulled the phone away from his ear. “How in the hell do you know you’re gay?”

He smiled a little to himself. It was sort of private information, but he figured he owed her a little after the last four months. “Because when I look at pictures of naked men, my penis goes off like a roman candle,” he said frankly, and that was when she hung up.

It was an embarrassing conversation anyway. Will was sitting there, looking at his phone in total befuddlement, when he saw the e-mail icon go up by one.

He opened his phone and there was Kenny’s e-mail, asking him to send his files on the planet of Calandra, and suddenly the day was much less confusing.

He had a goal and a way to achieve it.

Oh—and a graphic novel to produce too.

“O
H
MY
God!” Nina held her hand very determinedly over her mouth. “
That’s
how you found out?”

“How who found out what?”

Cara was coming off the dance floor, sweaty and red-faced and supremely happy. Nina ignored the sweat and stood up to move into her arms and kiss her soundly.

“That’s how Will found out he was gay,” she said, and Cara looked around her wife’s head to wink at Will.

“I’m afraid young William didn’t tell me this story,” she said, grinning. “Do I want to hear?”

“Nothing to tell, Aunt Cara,” William said—partly because she
had
already heard it before, just not in context. You didn’t get embarrassed around Aunt Cara. This was his mom’s friend, who used to sneak him maple candies when his mom wasn’t looking—wholly organic, of course. “Would you like me to get you a water?”

“Sure,” Cara said, plopping down and stealing the rest of Will’s. “Thanks! Now tell me the story!”

“Well, that was only a short part of it,” Nina said. “It was mostly lots of porn—”

“And a date with
me
!” Kenny protested.

Will grinned at him and kissed his knuckles. Kenny had never admitted it was a date before. “Of course,” he said. He looked up at Cara and said, “So, how did you know?” He’d been dying to ask, and to his relief, Cara just shrugged.

“It was the damnedest thing. One minute I was boxing tomato plants, and the next minute she was kissing my neck!”

Nina’s earthy growl took them all by surprise. “I’d been planning it for weeks. If I’d known that was all it took, I would have moved a
lot
earlier.”

Will and Kenny laughed, and Nina resumed her seat, only this time, she was holding her wife’s hand.

“Okay—so now we know Will is gay. Tell us the rest!”

Kenny sat up, probably because it was his turn to take over the thread. Will let him. He was curious to see what Kenny would say about this part; to maybe the whole rest of the world, it was really very boring.

To the two of
them
,
of course, it was like the universe realigned in assonance.

Coffee Laced With Crack

“T
HIS
IS
good,” Kenny said, looking at Will’s character bible. Will might not have felt comfortable with prose, but he had a great way of sketching a thumbnail character. “Ernie, species, hominid, furry,
not cute—
sort of like a teddy bear with DNA carved by MC Escher.” Kenny looked up from his spot on the couch and grinned at Will. “I can draw this.”

Will blinked. “Yeah? He’s sort of a layered character—I mean I know he’s only a secondary—”

“No, no,” Kenny said, opening up his laptop and booting up. He pulled his tablet and stylus out of the pocket in his lime-green case and hooked them up with a cable. “Here….” Oh geez, it always seemed to take forever for the tablet to connect. Okay. Here. His brain was whirling, and he took the stylus to the pad and started working. “Now this is just a minimal thing—I don’t know what style you prefer, more pencil lines or bigger, thicker ink lines. I like the finer lines, but some people find that cluttered—”

“No,” Will said definitively. “I like the detail you have there. Maybe some heavier lines around the eyes—make them narrow, not all big and round.”

“Oooh, yeah,” Kenny said, liking that. “No woodland forest creature eyes for this guy, he’s gonna fuck you up!”

“Or fuck you,” Will said, grimacing.

Kenny looked at the bear and laughed. “Oopsie! Maybe not so much penis in a naked creature.” He giggled, feeling completely dorky, and snuck a look at Will.

Who was giggling like a fifth-grader too.

“Oh my God!” Will said, clapping his hand over his mouth. “I hadn’t even
gotten
to their mating rituals!”

Kenny’s shoulders were shaking, but he still managed to eliminate the stray line and fill it in with sexless fur. “Well, since we want to market to young adults too, let’s stick with asexual reproduction,” he said firmly, and Will nodded.

“Yeah. That would be best. God knows kids don’t have
any
idea what sex is when they’re thirteen.”

Kenny snorted indelicately. “Then they are looking at entirely the wrong books,” he said frankly. “My fist and I were best friends by the time I was thirteen. My mother made me start washing my own sheets—she didn’t say why, but trust me, we both knew.”