Best Gay Romance 2013 (4 page)

“That's always going to be a problem. Not much we can do about it.”

We both smiled, and Ivan gave my cock and balls a squeeze and me a kiss before he headed out the door.

I lay on the sofa listening to the rain fall before eventually pulling my hand off my cock, and then I set out candles on the altar, crossed my fingers and toes and prayed to the stars and the universe that Big Ben would give me a call, invite me round to his place, fuck me silly and then punch me in the head.

He called as soon as I lit the last candle, and the clouds cleared and the sun broke through.

I'm not sure why I said yes, when my real life proclivities—just like my porno predilections—tend toward the very first movements, toward intention and nothing more.

I floated up Spencer Street in the rain, uphill, upstream in the downpour, aware of my surroundings, of the lines laid out across the landscape of the city—tracks, footpaths—of the flashing orange lights on the green and yellow trams, of the colossal oversized-egg-carton roof of Southern Cross Station, of the umbrella-wielding mobs. I kept inside my own private rectangle, upright on solid ground, watching the lines intersect and diverge, diverge and intersect. Serpent trams hissed and rattled.

Ben lived at the top of a tower at the bottom of Latrobe Street. I looked at my ugly face in the mirror as I went up in the lift, smiled at the devil in it and at my crooked nose. You'd think I'd recognize the guy I saw, but he was always an interesting stranger with a confused look.

Big Ben answered the door in baggy sweatpants, shirtless, with a serious case of bed head that suited the young, thick, brute. He was about as wide and thick as I was tall, and a good foot and a half taller. We sat on his balcony while he smoked a cigarette that almost disappeared in a hand the size of a dinner plate. It looked like a little redhead matchstick.

The rain had stopped, but his balcony was wet. While he
smoked, I tended his potted plants, a veritable garden—herbs and tomatoes, flowering shrubs, poinsettias and even a couple of frangipani. I couldn't help but do the gardening thing.

The sky had turned purple, the temperature had risen and something was brewing in the sky. I leaned on the air-conditioning unit next to Ben's giant body while he watched me, cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, and wished I could push pause at that exact moment. He breathed out the cigarette smoke, which hung in the air like a cloud far above my head. I watched it circle and storm like the clouds just beyond the balcony rail, then saw the big fella begin to lean his dark scruffy face toward mine.

I'm not sure when it started, this pulling back, this desire to stop everything at just that moment. It's much more beautiful, though—the pending moment. So I looked at his thick lips, breathed in the air (rainfall, frangipani, cigarette smoke, recent sleep, a young man's breath, neck sweat), negotiated his unshaven jawline with my eyes (big as a sisal doormat as it got closer), saw out of the corner of my eye his big hand flick a cigarette over the balcony rail before starting on its way toward my waist or my crotch, saw his lips opening, saw the tip of his thick tongue, breathed his recent sleep scent again and sensed my cock stirring in my jocks. I watched it all and felt it inside me, smelled it, saw him moving in slow motion, his red lips, the red ember of his cigarette tumbling over the side of the balcony.

I think it's safer to stop there and somehow more satisfying. It always has been, in my life. There's no free-fall that way, only solid ground, and it all felt very solid just then, in the big man's grasp, on that balcony in the sky. I paused for one more beat, watched the purple clouds moving behind Ben's shaggy brown mane, and then the storm started. He landed a kiss and we breathed the same air, his mouth tasted like sex, and I felt
it inside me and at the tip of my cock, and then the cyclone started.

I swear to god that's exactly what happened. His bucket-sized heart beating against my chest, my own heart filled like a bucket, my cock knocked against his through my jocks and jeans and his tracksuit pants.

And then Ben punched me in the head just like I thought he would, the big giant. I saw a flash of light and my head exploded. I should've known not to climb up into the giant's lair looking for the golden egg when I knew he wanted to go toe-to-toe with me, to tell me what an ugly fucker I was.
Now why'd I have to go and do that?
I thought as my knees buckled.

It was another pause moment, the bright white light, the sound of something popping, and the brief flash of pain before my body collapsed and blood flowed. I thought of Ivan, his big chest under his blue-striped tie, his blue eyes; thought of the time I got hit by a cricket bat at school; thought of my own fear of everything, of my inability to get really close to another man; and then the blood poured more, a lot of it, and I tasted it, and Big Ben caught me in his full-size arms.

Only a few minutes later, I woke up in Ben's bed, inside his arms, my startled head against his slab of a chest, my neck cradled by his tender left hand. He was a gentle nurse, cleaning up my bloody head, my angry eye.
Ouch
. It was only then, looking up at his chunky head as he looked after me, that I started to work out what had happened—he'd saved the hailstone that had clocked me, and he showed it to me before chucking it out the window.

“Won't be needing that,” he said, winking at me.

Big Ben had a heart the size of a bucket, and he was filling
me up with love. He tended my wound and we had a tender fuck and the big fella pumped me full of big love, while the rain continued to fall.

Outside the city was in chaos, we heard nothing but sirens and alarms. Ben was gazing at me sideways with a curious look on his face.

“And I thought you were a dog before!” he said, giving me the once-over, pausing at the damage. “You're a sexy fucker, and those bruises just help to make you look better. You got some character, you ugly bastard.”

I laughed, kept laughing while I dressed, looking at my purple face in the mirror. Ben caught my eye a couple of times and winked.

“Sexy,” he said.

I was still wobbly, and the world was blurry, so Ben offered to walk me home. Feeling tenderized, I said yes.

We had to splash through knee-high water part of the way, under cataracts and around broken glass, and at one point the big fella threw me over his shoulder like a rag doll while he waded through waist-high water up Clarendon Street. A kayaker passed us by just then, and we gave each other a wink and a smile, appreciating the other's choice of transportation.

It looked like the drought was over, and I was pleased to see Melbourne this way, liquid, underwater, softer.

We waded through thigh-high water just to get into the lobby of my building. The lift was out, so we climbed seven flights of stairs to my apartment. My balcony garden was destroyed, my terra-cotta pots broken and scattered, soil twirled in an eddy, mixed with a world of brilliant white hailstones and thousands of bright, shredded emerald leaves.

“It's a mess, but it's kind of beautiful, innit?” Ben said, watching the mess swirl in the wind.

He left me with my bucket on the balcony, to salvage my plants.

Ivan found me on the couch later, nursing my throbbing head.

“What the fuck happened to you?” he asked as soon as he came in the door, shoes and socks off, pants rolled up to his knees.

“God gave me a big punch in the head.”

“What the fuck?”

“A hailstone the size of your fist clocked me.”

He's a doll, my Ivan, and he fell straight onto the couch where he could hold me in his arms and plant a kiss on my damaged head, inspecting it up close.

“You're going to have a serious black eye.”

I told him it was killing me and he insisted on the hospital, but I was more obstinate than he was and instead we curled up on the sofa. He told me that I should probably get stitches, and that I would probably have another scar to add to the map of ruin across my forehead, cheeks, chin.

“No one can say you don't have a lot of character written all over your face,” he said.

“Good thing you've still got your movie-star looks,” I said, and pushed myself farther into him.

We stayed like that, pouring love back and forth while the rain landed outside, until night fell.

I eventually asked Ivan to turn the television on, with the sound down. Lying in the blue TV light, I was comforted by the sound of the rainfall and even the sirens outside. Ivan's face looked serene and beautiful in the muted light, and I took pleasure in watching it until I fell asleep in his arms.

The next time I saw Ben, he was bigger and shaggier than ever, and he circled me just like before. The rays of his smile fell upon my heart, filling me with delight. We were on the banks of the Yarra, as before, though the river was thicker and muddier this time, after all the rains. He circled in close to get a look at my face, at the purple- and mustard-colored bruise surrounding my eye.

“Sexy,” he said, then turned his head to look upriver, before turning back to look at me with a big gap-tooth smile, his unkempt lion's mane surrounding his head like sunshine. He seemed more shy this time, but really pleased to see me. I liked the attention. We stopped like that in the cool autumn breeze, sharing space, smiling, enjoying the sight of each other while breathing the same air.

I took it all in: his cigarette smell, the green leaves on the trees, the muddy river, the buskers, the shape of his smile, the size of his hands, the clouds swirling behind his head.

“So we going to go another round?” he asked, looking sheepish, turning his gaze toward the painted Prince's Bridge, purple in the evening light.

“Absolutely, champ,” I said, feeling good, as though I was underwater.

“That's good,” he said, looking me up and down. “Gee, you're an ugly fucker aren't you?”

“You can't even stand to look at me, can you?”

He laughed, his thick lips parting slowly as leaned his shaggy head down toward mine.

Fyn Alexander

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was beautiful in 1885 when Queen Victoria was on the throne, and I still am, according to someone who loves me. I was paid far more attention than I deserved by both men and women, and was, frankly, rather vain. At eighteen years old I was slender with sun-colored hair that was much too long and skin like an unblemished peach.

I had grown up in the theatre as an angelic boy soprano. But, much to my chagrin, my voice changed at fourteen, and along with it, my ability to earn a living. Consequently, that warm day in May the very thought of having to attend an interview for a job I did not want at a house in Belgravia made me as sullen as a spoiled prince.

Money I wanted, a place to live I needed, but work! I wanted to cry out to God to save me. Why could I not be rich and free and live in some foreign clime where it was always warm and no one cared that I, a boy, preferred men to ladies? I favored girls when it came to chitchat, gossip and whispering about men's
bodies. But I had always wanted a man to overpower me, to master me, to fall madly in love with me and make me his own. Since I was to be a servant of sorts, a secretary, you would think I'd be happy, but no! Any master I would end up with would be either some doddering old man I did not want near me, or some nasty married gentleman who would treat me with utter disdain, if he noticed me at all.

It wasn't fair.

I suppose I must have looked disgruntled when I was shown into the study and made to stand in front of a broad oak desk whilst being looked up and down by an elderly woman dressed in black silk. She never invited me to sit. She fired questions at me while acting as if I had brought a smell of refuse into the house with me. All in all, I felt like reaching across the desk to slap her cadaverous cheek. I found my left eyebrow lifting as it often did when I was affronted. Remembering my mother's admonition before I left that morning—“Keep that haughty look off your face, darling boy. An employer will not take kindly to it”—I lowered my eyebrow and attempted to look meek.

“Your mother is on the stage? She calls herself Amethyst Swift?” Mrs. Wynterbourne asked. From her tone she might as well have said,
Your mother is a prostitute, she has sex for money with perfect strangers.

“My mother is a singer, a coloratura, and that's her
real
name.” My eyebrow shot up again of its own volition.

“And she extended the family tradition of naming infants after stones by calling you Jade?” She actually sniggered, a very unattractive sound.

I was outraged. I clasped my hands behind my back to control them. “Jade is very expensive. It is the same color as my eyes.” The first man who had ever taken me on his knee and petted me had told me my green eyes were
fit to die in.

“Is it indeed?” Mrs. Wynterbourne's eyebrows both rose perilously close to her receding hairline. “Watch your tone, my lad! Why are you not on the stage yourself? You might be better suited to that life.” She was obviously referring to my long hair and velvet jacket.

“My mother wants something better for me,” I said quietly, ashamed to admit it.

“Does she indeed? Well, I suppose the job is yours.”

“Thank you,” I muttered, taken by surprise. The sun shone through the window behind her directly into my eyes, making me hot and crotchety. I wanted desperately to get away from her. “May I see my room please? Then I can go and fetch my belongings.”