The Hungry Guest
Like Dracula, I needed to be invited in, but not for the same reason.
Barry was very chill and didn’t seem surprised when I showed up yesterday at his house without even texting. He said, “Dude! Come on in! Want a beer?”
Of course I did. And something more.
We were in the same crime fiction class at the local college, currently reading Raymond Chandler who we both liked. Barry and I had talked about hanging out some time, but a bar was out of the question for what I had in mind.
Wearing our school colors of red and white, he waved me inside the mid-century ranch house that his parents had bought for him. He’d confessed when we first sat next to each other in class that they’d made the purchase so that he wouldn’t have to share a dorm or even a condo with “riff-raff.” He laughed. I didn’t, but I didn’t mind their view of our student body. They had no idea that people like them (and Barry too, of course) were sheep to my wolf.
“Gross, huh?” he said, pointing around the open living room after he closed the front door.
I nodded. The house must have come furnished because everything had a tacky nautical motif: curtains, rugs, lamps, painting, knick-knacks. I couldn’t see that as being his style; he’d never mentioned sailing or boating when we chatted after class.
“Sit, sit, sit. I’ll get the beers.”
I studied him as he padded barefoot to the open kitchen. He was blond and bland but looks never mattered to me. What mattered was that he took hot yoga off campus and had bragged before our fiction class one day about “victorious breath,” being able to keep the same steady audible breathing in and out for a whole session. It supposedly worked to calm yoga practitioners and somehow energize them too.
Barry was apparently the only one in the yoga class who could maintain that breathing and the instructor often said, “Listen to Barry.” He thought it probably pissed off the women who were far more flexible than him and could even do handstands, but couldn’t breathe the way he did.
I loved the idea of victorious breath, of breath that was a victory because I was a victor. Barry didn’t know that yet.
He brought us two Leffe beer bottles and glasses with the Leffe logo on them and I was impressed. He had good taste. And probably tasted good too.
Sitting on a couch with an aggressive anchor pattern on the pillows, we sipped the excellent beer and compared the prose style of The Big Sleep to The Maltese Falcon. He was smarter than he looked, which was I guess was like your typical high school jock.
“But that classroom really sucks, doesn’t it?” he said, shaking his head.
“It’s the worst.”
Fifteen of us, mostly English majors, were meeting twice weekly under fluorescent lights that were so bright they could have worked for torture if they stayed on all day and you were hogtied to your chair desk. The white cinderblock walls made everything worse. Our teaching assistant–the kind who wanted to be your buddy–called out “Welcome to the operating room!” every time he walked in and we dutifully laughed because he was a nice-enough guy.
Barry was halfway through his beer when he said, “I’m really looking forward to reading The Incredible Mr. Ripley. I want to see whether the movie was true to the book. Not, like, word-by-word. But the essence, the vibe.”
That’s when I realized he looked a bit like a beefy Matt Damon.
He set down his glass on the atrocious knotty-pine coffee table and said, “I want to share something with you.” And he seemed to wait for me to respond but I could wait too, and I did. He breathed in deeply before letting out a sigh that was music to me–and more. Much more.
“I’m gay.” He hesitated. “That’s why I wanted to hang out together, because I’ve been wondering if you are too.”
“Well. . .I can be.”
He frowned. “What does that mean?”
I put my beer glass down, moved to his side and said, “I’ll show you.” I leaned in and kissed his red lips softly, then hard, then forced his mouth open and he was utterly helpless.
When I eventually pulled away, sweat had broken out across Barry’s forehead and his eyes were blinking fast. He was breathless and could barely speak, just the way I wanted him. He needed to feel swept away by passion, unaware that I was actually a predator, a thief, stealing some of his air.
“Shit, man,” he said after a while. “That was awesome.”
He tried to pull me back on top of him, but even though I was rock hard, I wasn’t ready. Sex would be dessert after the meal I’d just enjoyed. I could wait.
“How about another beer, Barry?”
He grinned and said, “Let’s party!”
As he headed a bit back to his kitchen, I reminded myself not to be greedy. I had been running low lately for some reason and needed him to stay alive as long as possible until he died of “natural causes” and nobody would think I was anything more than a friend.
