Sunset Park

By Santino Hassell

A Five Boroughs Story

Raymond Rodriguez’s days of shoving responsibility to the wayside are over. His older brother wants to live with his boyfriend, so Raymond has to get his act together and find a place of his own. But when out-and-proud David Butler offers to be his roommate, Raymond agrees for reasons other than needing a place to crash.

David is Raymond’s opposite in almost every way—he’s Connecticut prim and proper while Raymond is a sarcastic longshoreman from Queens—but their friendship is solid. Their closeness surprises everyone as does their not-so-playful flirtation, since Raymond has always kept his bicurious side a secret.

Once they’re under the same roof, flirting turns physical, and soon their easy camaraderie is in danger of being lost to frustrating sexual tension and the stark cultural differences that set them apart. Now Raymond not only has to commit to his new independence—he has to commit to his feelings for David or risk losing him for good.

For the Millennials.

Raymond

WATCHING A
movie with my brother and his boyfriend was like watching the first few minutes of a gay porn video. Coy setup bullshit, complete with lingering looks and sly smiles.

If I kept a log of the number of times Nunzio slid his hand up and down Michael’s thigh, I’d finish a three-hundred-sheet pack of loose-leaf paper.

“Are you paying attention to this documentary
you
turned on? I could be watching the fight right now.”

Michael tore his gaze away from Nunzio, all distracted and dick-addled. “Huh?”

“Are you watching this motherfucking movie—”

Nunzio brushed his lips against Michael’s neck, and Michael grinned like a teenage boy getting his first blowjob. You’d think they hadn’t been banging eighty-seven times a day for the past five months.

“—or what?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh my God.” I quit paying attention to their lame flirtation dance and unfolded myself from the armchair. “Never mind.”

Was this what newlywed syndrome was like for gays? Mad dick grabbing while watching lame-ass documentaries relating to revolutions in countries I knew nothing about? Or maybe that was just what happened when you got saddled with a gay big brother who was also a nerdy history teacher.

“Well, this has been great, guys, but I’m going to go smoke.”

Nunzio perked up.
Pothead.
“I’ll come up and chill later.”

“Just brush your teeth before you put your lips on my pipe.”

Nunzio’s baby blues twinkled, and I couldn’t contain a guffaw. I’d grown up with Nunzio and had spent as much time with him as I had with my own brother, but unlike Michael, Nunzio wasn’t shy about sex talk and innuendo. The fact that Nunzio never censored himself or cared about other people’s opinions were the reasons I’d latched on to him as a kid.

“Not that pipe, you gross bastard. Bad enough I know you’ll be down here slobbing his,” I said, nodding at my brother.

Michael cringed but said nothing. To this day, he hadn’t recovered from the knowledge that I’d stumbled upon him being a slutty bottom boy multiple times during the two decades of him mistakenly thinking he was being discreet. His embarrassment was a constant source of teasing. Because making him blush was funny, and because I was still not over the fact that he’d expected me to judge him about being gay.

“Have fun and be safe, children. Slather your cocks well.”

Not waiting for a response, I jogged upstairs to my bedroom and tried to figure out what the hell to do now that I wasn’t stuck watching depressing shit about dictators and military law. I’d received three invitations to go out—a house party in Astoria, some people drinking in Bushwick, and my friend Chris had asked me to meet him at a club on the Lower East Side. At nine o’clock on a Friday, the club was the most appealing, but driving into the city required a level of energy and ambition I would not be able to muster in the next couple of hours.

I sat on the bed, fiddling with my herb grinder, and my phone chirped three times in quick succession, indicating a text message. The bright flashes were erratic enough to give me a seizure. The damned thing spent more time buzzing and lighting up than I did. A quick glance at the screen showed the Facebook profile picture that popped up every time David texted or called—him making a kissy face.

David: Did you tell him?

David: Are you out?

David: Call me! I want to know how it went!!

I ignored the messages and decided to get well and truly lit. It was more of a necessity than companionship in the form of exchanged text messages.

The last couple of weeks had been an exercise in summoning my nearly nonexistent patience. I needed to come down from the peak of aggravation I’d been so close to, but everything in my life was toppling like dominos.

After losing both parents in less than a year, I’d tried to get my act together and behave like a real adult; tried to become a contributing member of society. It had gone well for a while, but bad habits were hard to kick, and I’d wound up in the place I’d found myself in so many times in the past: being expected to do things I didn’t want to do because it would “pay off” in the future, and wanting to quit when people told me I wasn’t doing those things correctly. Maybe I gave up too fast—shit, I knew I gave up too fast—but it was easier than being constantly informed that I was a screwup.

Not that any of that would matter once Michael found out I’d been fired from my first job. A job where I’d made good money and contributed to the household expenses that were now solely our responsibility. He was going to be so pissed.

The “I do not care, leave me alone, I do what I want” mental chant started up again, but it was harder to float my conscience on that these days. At twenty-five, I knew it was time to step up and quit depending on Michael to handle everything. If only it wasn’t so much work.

My phone started emitting seizure-triggering bat signals again.

David.

David: Omg, I know you saw that message. It tells me when you read them, you jerk.

I frowned.

Raymond: is that why you made me download that dumb app?

David: Yes.

Raymond: stalker

David: Well, maybe if you would reply to my messages, I wouldn’t have to coerce you into things.

Raymond: why dont you go coerce someone into sucking your dick and leave me alone

The message earned me a barrage of violent emojis, so I tossed my phone to the far end of the bed.

I’d met David a little less than six months ago, but he’d managed to become an actual friend instead of just an overbearing twink tagging along with me to visit Michael in rehab. David wasn’t anything like my usual crowd of friends, but as far as yuppie white gay guys from Connecticut went, he was an okay person.

David also taught at Michael’s school, so he helped me keep tabs on my depressive, anxiety-ridden sibling whenever I got paranoid that he might backslide off the sobriety wagon. While nothing had happened to cause my brother to regress, Michael was my polar opposite. He took on all the responsibilities and worried too much, while I took on nothing and gave no fucks. However, since Michael’s trip to rehab, the Rodriguez ruminate-and-worry gene had activated in me as well.

I toked from the pipe, rolling the lighter between my fingers, and debated whether or not to turn on the Xbox. Shooting virtual people in World War II backdrops was usually an effective way to shut off my brain, but lately it wasn’t doing the job. Not since I’d had the “you’re a good kid, Ray, but you’re also a moron” discussion with my—former—boss, Rolly McKinney. I’d only gotten the job because I’d grown up with his now-deceased son, and now I had no idea what I was going to do since I was fresh out of job-related connections. I’d coasted on the chunk of money my mother had left, but it was starting to dwindle due to my apathy about holding on to a single dime. It wasn’t like I could take the money with me when I died prematurely like our parents.

Ugh. More pot. Stat.

My room smogged up from the smoke as the air thickened with the sweet, earthy scent of marijuana. I made a vain effort to shove open my window higher than midway. As usual, it was stuck in the frame, but I wrestled with it until the combination of my broken-ass window and the poorly ventilated room drove me to irritation. I returned to my pipe and toked so hard that a bright burst of heat consumed my chest, burned my lungs, and clawed my throat until my eyes teared.

Licking my lips and swallowing saliva failed to slick my parched throat, so I made my way back downstairs for a drink. I wondered if Michael and Nunzio had finished their documentary so I could watch UFC on the big-screen television, but dismissed the thought soon after stopping outside the living room’s archway.

They had swapped documentary watching for fucking.

And it wasn’t exactly sly fucking, either. Shirts were off and jeans were rucked down so low, there was no way they’d be able to get them back on fast enough to keep from being busted. They had no respect for common space.

At least we’d recently switched out our old, fabric sofas for leather. Easier to wipe down.

I grimaced and started to retreat, but my eyes refused to unglue from the sight of Michael slamming his dick into Nunzio. It wasn’t like witnessing gay sex was a new development. I’d seen a lot over the years—it came with the territory when a curious nine-year-old secretly follows his sixteen-year-old brother around.

Because we’d grown up in a household where no one discussed homosexuality, I’d had no idea what I was seeing the first time I’d spied teenage Michael giving head to some older dude in the park’s bathroom. It hadn’t taken long to associate the word
gay
with his actions, but I’d never recoiled from him. Getting busy with dudes hadn’t stopped him from being an awesome brother, so I’d refused to believe homosexuality was as awful as all of my dumbass classmates had claimed.

In my mind, if something got you off good and proper, it couldn’t be that bad. And Michael always seemed to be having such a good time whenever I stumbled upon his antics.

My own intrigue about sex with both men and women had started up not too long after, but my sexual experience with men was limited to porn and stumbling upon Michael getting it on. I’d seen and heard way more once Michael had finally stopped pretending to be a celibate hetero, and Nunzio had started spending half the week shacked up in our house.

That was how I knew Nunzio used to refuse to take it up the ass. But he was doing it now and looked strung out on it. And that kind of made me feel funny. In all the ways that funny meant horny as hell.

I retreated another step but wound up standing in the shadows, hidden in the archway instead of booking it up the stairs.

“Yeah, Mikey. Just like that….”

Nunzio threw his head back against the sofa, eyes shut and mouth ajar, as sharp gasps and words too low for me to hear formed on his lips. Michael was crouched over Nunzio, holding his thighs open, and thrusting into him so fast that the
slap-slap
of skin on skin completely drowned out the television. He was going hard, but Nunzio showed no sign of discomfort. Instead, he panted and dragged Michael down for a kiss that amounted to nothing more than them tonguing at each other, sloppy and wet, while I looked on like a pervert.

I didn’t usually have guilt associated with my perversion, but I’d also never been a shady voyeur watching my brother fuck the guy I’d crushed on since I was a little kid. Even in Atlantic City, when we’d been stuck in the same room, I’d rolled over with my headphones on instead of watching them make out like a couple of horny teenagers while blacked-out drunk. Sure, getting glimpses of Michael hooking up over the years had niggled at the untapped curiosity that rushed between my head and dick every once in a while, but… this was different. It was Nunzio.

The more I backed away, the less I wanted to stop watching. Nunzio getting railed was uncharted territory, and a little voice in my head kept whispering,
I wonder how that feels….
Judging by the high-pitched, frantic noises elicited from Nunzio’s mouth, I was going to assume it felt damn good.

Michael grabbed Nunzio’s chin, forcing their eyes to meet, and goddamned if he didn’t start riding Nunzio faster.

My hand dropped to my crotch, and I gave an automatic squeeze. I was so hard. Like, throbbing. There was already a damp spot forming where the tip of my dick nuzzled against my shorts. Nunzio released a low, hoarse noise that sounded dangerously like wordless begging, and the damp spot grew. It was definitely time to go.

Forgoing the journey for water, I hurried back to my room, shut the door, and stood with my back pressed against it. Even with a good amount of distance between us, I could hear Nunzio’s voice turning ragged and breathless while managing to get louder and louder. I didn’t want to know, or visualize, except I kind of did, so even after I flipped on my iPhone dock and blasted reggaeton louder than necessary, I jerked my dick with the image etched into my brain. I stood there gnawing on my lower lip and roughly stroking myself, but after a moment I yanked my hand away. Even if the fantasy was focused on Nunzio, it still felt fucking creepy since my brother had been the one banging him.