Dangerously Happy (9 page)

When had I stopped trying to thrive, rather than exist day to day in a state of deaf, dumb, blind numbness? A dozen memories, moments, choices came bobbing to the surface of that stream of doubts winding around all the belly-tickling images of those recent hours with Dario. Giving up the dream of attending a fine arts college and getting a degree in music because I’d caved in to my dad’s pressure to get a BA in software development. Letting my college girlfriend talk me out of joining the Peace Corps after graduation because she was dying for us to move in together. Almost completely abandoning my efforts to write and perform the music I really cared about, in favor of joining mediocre bands because somewhere along the line I’d accepted hanging out and drinking beer as the pinnacle of social bliss.

By the time I was back on the freeway, heading toward Dario’s for rehearsal, I was high on the certainty that I was awake and aware for the first time in years, and that starting that night I’d stop drifting through my own life like a leaf in a stream, passive and powerless.
I didn’t know what different choices I wanted to make. The important thing was that starting right then I wasn’t going to let my dad’s ideas about what a “real job” was, or guilt about abandoning a relationship that had already limped along months after its expiration date, or fear of being left out of a band that sounded like an inferior copy of a hundred other LA bands dictate my fate ever again.

For once, I’d rushed out of the office the minute the weekly status meeting ended, and gotten right on the freeway, hoping to get to Dario’s before the other guys. But of course at that hour the freeway was a parking lot, so in the end I only got there fifteen minutes earlier than usual, and like always, I was the last to arrive. True to his word, Dario acted completely normal. As if we hadn’t been upstairs touching and kissing and licking and fucking each other ten hours earlier, he gave me the old, polite smile and casual, “hello,” and without getting up, told me there was beer in the fridge and to help myself. I tried to act normal, but just seeing him sitting there, taking the pipe when Steve passed it to him, I didn’t dare really look at him because I was sure my expression would give everything away. Hoping to hell I didn’t sound as weird and nervous as I felt, I said, “Thanks, man,” or something equally bizarre, and went to grab a beer. I wished the other guys would get off their stoned, lazy asses so we could rehearse, because there was no way I could keep my shit together sitting around in a cozy little circle chit-chatting. Dodging danger, I went and got my guitar, and quietly practiced the new piece I’d played for Dario the week before. When the guys decided to stop getting stoned and start rehearsing, I played the piece for them. I wasn’t all that surprised that they didn’t have the same enthusiasm as Dario for something so far from our usual repertoire. Over in his armchair, I’d noticed Dario listening while I auditioned the song for the group, and now he was watching, listening to the guys’ limp response. From all the way across the loft I couldn’t tell if he was giving me a small smile of empathy, or smirking in disapproval of the group’s timid attitude about stretching our range. Actually, I think his expression was completely neutral. As if our agreement about keeping the thing between us secret meant he couldn’t even have an opinion about the band’s cold reception of the song that he’d expressed so much admiration for.

After rehearsal, we all hung out, and when the pipe got passed my way I took a hit, and when the pipe came around again I took another. Stoned, I was calm and still and quiet. While the others talked and joked, I absorbed the sights and sounds and smells courting my senses—Dario’s patient smile as Jamie and Tom endlessly debated the plausibility of a zombie finding its way into the food cart elevator of an airplane, the yeasty smell of the beer I was sipping intermittently, the fizz of it on my tongue, the zen chime of the intercom and Dario’s baritone voice, sexy even when he was handling a transaction with the delivery guy, the mingled sweet and spicy aroma of the Hawaiian and the sausage and pepperoni pizza we’d ordered from the indie place down the street, the flex of Dario’s angular jaw as he chewed, the motion of Steve’s animated hands while he gave a long explanation too elaborate to follow of how he would escape a city overrun by zombies in which he was the lone survivor. The contours of Dario’s pecs and nipples under his gray, long-sleeved T-shirt. Dario’s dark eyes fixed on Tom, fixed on Steve, fixed on Jamie, and never fixed on me because he was being careful for my sake. Eventually, when the collective buzz had more or less worn off, we left, and I went to my car, and the rest went down the street and around the corner to Tom’s car. I turned on my car, turned on the radio, and without releasing the parking brake I texted Dario and asked if I could come back up. He answered within a few seconds.

We smoked a little more. Fooling around and fucking stoned was incredible. Transcendental, to steal Dario’s word.

“
You were staring,” he said when we’d been lying there silently holding each other for a while in post-orgasmic bliss.

“
Hmmm?”

“
After rehearsal. You must have been pretty stoned. You were staring at me. I don’t think you realized.”

“
Oh. Sorry.”

He laughed. “I don’t mind. I could feed off you gazing at me like that all night long. But it might not fit too well with your plan of silence and secrecy.” His fingers combing through my hair was delightfully sedating. Did I even care if everyone figured out something was going on between us? In that blissed-out moment I couldn’t imagine what the suggestion of something sexual happening between me and Dario would trigger in me. My veins flooded with endorphins and testosterone, all I cared about was the feel of his body pressed warm and close against mine, and that sensuous, tranquilizing touch of his fingertips meandering through my hair.

And the drawer.

“
Dario.”

“
Yes?”

“
Can I ask a question?”

“
Anything. Always.”

“
I think I know it’s a dumb question. Ignorant or naïve or whatever. But I still want to ask it.”

“
Then ask.”

“
When you’re with other men, are you always the one who . . .”

“
Do I always bottom?”

“
Yes. If that even means what I think it means.” I was so fucking clueless.

He turned onto his side and looked down at me, smiling patiently. It took him a while to finally answer me, as if he were choosing his answer with a lot of thought. “Actually, until I met Jared, I was what they call a ’total top.’ I never let any of my lovers penetrate me. Not even what you’ve let me do to you.”

“
And Jared convinced you to let him—”

“
Jared didn’t convince me of anything, except that I was safe with him. Safe enough to be trusting and vulnerable enough to do something I’d always wanted.”

“
So now you . . . like it both ways.”

“
I don’t bottom for casual fucks. But yes. When I’m with someone I feel safe with. Someone I’m really into.”

I basked in the implication of that last remark for a few seconds. Then I asked him, “And can I ask you about the drawer.”

“
Of course.”

I laughed. “So, what’s with the drawer?”

And he laughed. “You might have to be more specific.”

“
You . . . like being restrained?”

“
Sometimes. Usually, though, it’s the other way around.”

“
Is that an important part of your sex life?”

“
Yes, in a way. I love vanilla sex. Vanilla sex can be delicious, satiating, fulfilling. But doing bondage takes me somewhere else. Somewhere I need to go sometimes. Not all the time. Not even all that often, if we’re talking about
need
. But sometimes.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. That need he said he felt. I started wondering if there was a dark side, a scary side to Dario he hadn’t let me see, yet. And I was pretty sure I didn’t ever want to see it.

“
You’ve never tried it?”

I laughed. Just the image of me tying some woman to the bed (or cuffing Dario to the bed with those restraints of his!) made me feel weird. Nervous. And when the image of Dario tying me down popped into my head it was just shy of terrifying.

“
Never wanted to try it? Even out of curiosity?”

“
Not really.”

“
Just the idea makes you uncomfortable,” he said, like he was delivering a diagnosis.

“
I guess . . . maybe it’s different, imagining doing that with a man, with you, but the idea of fucking a woman while she’s tied up, it makes me feel bad. It feels kind of like imagining beating a woman.”

A sweet, patient smile. “That’s why you don’t tie down people who don’t want it. For a little while, off and on, I was with a guy who couldn’t come unless he was bound. The more restrained he felt, the less he could move, the better the sex was for him.” How had Dario done so much in the same length of time I’d done so little? In a gentle, almost careful tone Dario asked, “And the idea of being tied down? How does that feel?”

“
Honestly?”

“
Yes, please.” Smiling.

“
Pretty scary.”

“
Bad scary? Or good scary?”

“
I don’t think good and scary go together, for me.” I waited for the look of disappointment, but he kept it hidden.
“And the other things?” I said, changing the subject almost out of fear that if I let him ponder my last answer too long, he’d realize that he was already bored with me.

“
The dildo and the butt plugs?

“
Yeah.”

“
What about them?” Grinning indulgently again.

“
You use them on your . . . partner? While he’s restrained?”

“
Not exclusively. But yes.”

“
I’m sure I’m being really naïve again, but I don’t see the point.”

“
The point?”

“
Why use a molded piece of silicone or whatever, instead of your cock?”

His grin turned mischievous. “I’d be very happy to demonstrate the point, if you’d like.” My face went hot and his wicked grin softened and warmed into a smile. “All good things in time. Meanwhile I’ll just say that there’s a pleasure—maybe more psychological than physical—going about mundane tasks with a butt plug stuffed up your ass. And it can be a decadent thrill to be down on a man’s cock, your mouth stuffed full of hard dick, and get your ass fucked at the same time. Something that requires a toy, if you don’t have a third party on hand.”

I was blushing again like a virginal ingenue in
Dangerous Liaisons
, or something. “You’ve had threesomes?”

He laughed and sort of rolled his eyes. “I’m coming off as the fucking Marquis de Sade or something, aren’t I?”

“
No.” A pretty limp rebuttal. “I guess I’m coming off like some kind of home-school refugee.”

“
Are you a home-school refugee?”

I laughed. “No. My parents aren’t even religious. But I guess they weren’t very open-minded, either.”

“
Well, my view is that you have to fight pretty hard to get past a lifetime of messages—subtle and overt—telling you it’s not okay to be you, it’s not okay to want what you want, to do certain things you might want to do.

“
Yeah.” It was like he’d been reading my mind during my drive over from the office.

“
So, will you consider telling me something?”