Gay Man of my Dreams

I may or may not have lost my virginity to a gay man. He may or may not have been my first love.

It’s not like I was desperately head over heels can’t live without him gonna die without him in love. And it’s not like he was flaming flamboyant fashion slave stereotypical fudge pounding gay. He just liked the cock; so we had at least one thing in common.

The thing about Dustin, he was beautiful. Beautiful in that slightly dirty hippie move to Portland and clean up beaches and smoke lots of pot kind of way. He was beautiful in a wear lots of t-shirts and don’t cut your hair or shave your beard kind of way. Dustin was long and lean and his eyes were blue—clear, summer sky over Lake Michigan blue, and when he looked at you, he looked in to you. You know that look, the one that hooks into the pit of your stomach and pulls, or fire-cracks straight down to your groin and you feel that slight pounding twinge and ooooooh. Yeah, that look.

When we were growing up across the street from each other, before he knew he was gay and before I knew what an orgasm felt like, Dustin and I would watch each other. Like, when we were both out in our front yards at the same time and it was hot and summer and you were always sweating in the sunshine. I’d stand there in my bathing suit with the hose, spraying down our dry, sun-baked grass, or my dry, sun-baked brothers, or the dry, sun-baked little kids I babysat. And Dustin would sit on his trampoline, shirt off, reading a book. Or he’d kneel over on the lawn, pulling weeds out of the flowerbeds with his mom. And I would stare across the road, imagining the sweat collecting between his sharp shoulder blades and wonder what it felt like to kiss him. And he would stare across the road, imagining the sweat pooling between my breasts, and wonder how it felt to have a pair.

That summer, the heat just hung, thick and wet. You could feel it when you breathed, settling into your throat. I kissed Dustin a lot that summer, tangled my fingers in his shaggy hair and wracked my bony hips against his on his trampoline. It was always dark, after midnight, but never any cooler than the sticky days. Our bodies slipped and slid against each other’s, sweaty chest against sweaty breasts. I was fifteen and he was sixteen, and I couldn’t figure out why he never tried to have sex with me, why his fingers never found their way into my shorts, why our trysts on the trampoline involved only kissing and writhing and once—only once, his penis in my mouth (which lasted about thirty seconds and never happened again, until I graduated high school and conquered my fellatio phobia).

I called him my boyfriend and he called me his girlfriend and we didn’t have sex. That summer turned into that school year and I still called him my boyfriend and he still called me his girlfriend and we still did not have sex. And it seemed like he was afraid of my vagina. But I wasn’t particularly worried about it, as long as I had a boyfriend, a cute one. As long as someone was kissing me.

But then that school year turned into the next one, his senior year, and I still called him my boyfriend and took him on family vacations and went on his, and we snuck into each other’s beds in the middle of the night, but we didn’t have sex, and he was still afraid of my vagina.

“What gives, Dustin?” I groaned, frustrated and sweaty, the night after he’d been accepted to the University of Michigan. I’d spent almost an hour between his sheets, trying to take his boxers off, and he’d spent almost an hour artfully avoiding me.

“What do you mean?” He asked, sitting up and scratching his head, his fingers disappearing into his long, tangled hair.

I rolled my eyes. No longer was I the fifteen-year-old girl, happy to satisfy while remaining unsatisfied herself. I was seventeen, and smarter, more observant. I’d seen the way my boyfriend looked at the guys I worked with when he came to my restaurant, the way his eyes tightened with longing, the way his pupils dilated at the sight of their lean muscles and playful smiles. He didn’t look at me like that. He never had. I was beginning to suspect…something.

“I WANT TO HAVE SEX!!!!” I whispered loudly. “WITH YOU!!!!”

Dustin’s eyes widened and he sat up, the covers gathering at his waist. The moonlight through the window slid across his chest as it heaved. He looked at the wall, at his “Labyrinth” poster, then out the window, then at his hands, his bookshelf; anywhere but at me.

“Why don’t you want to have sex, Dustin?”

He said nothing.

“Dustin?”

“FINE!” He shouted, and I slammed my hand over his mouth. “Fine,” he whispered when I took my hand away. “Let’s have sex.”

So we did. And it was terrible. Limbs in all the wrong places, skin making strange noises where we rubbed together, and I didn’t come. Which is normal. But neither did he. Which isn’t so normal.

But we stayed together. And we had regular, bad sex. He graduated in June and we stayed together through the summer. The night before he left for Michigan, we lay on his trampoline together. It was the end of August and the nights were cooling off. We held hands and stared at our feet. We’d talked about whether or not we’d stay together when he went away to college, we’d talked about it all summer, but we’d never reached a conclusion. I was expecting him to break up with me, to give me the standard “We’ll be so far away from each other” speech that all my friends had gotten from their older boyfriends.

“I need to tell you something,” he said after we’d sat in silence for a while.

“I know,” I said. “We’re breaking up, aren’t we?”

He nodded.

“Because you’re going to Michigan, and I’m staying here, right?” I looked over at him, chewing my lip to keep the tears away.

He shook his head. “No, not because of that.”

This, I wasn’t prepared for. “What?”

“It’s not because of that. The distance doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Just shut up for a second and let me talk, would you?” His voice was wound tight in his throat.

I shut up, tilted my head back and looked up at the sky, and felt hot tears sliding down my cheeks.

“It’s just…” He paused, for a long time. Then, he pulled my chin, turned my head toward his face and looked right into my eyes, ice blue lasers locking in on me. “It’s just that I’m gay.”

My vision went white, then black. Little red lines danced across Dustin’s face and swirled around in the trees above our heads. My ears buzzed and whined, high-pitched and loud. “What?” I said, my body swaying.

Dustin tightened his grip on my chin. “I’m gay,” he said.

“What?” I said.

“I. LIKE. GUYS.”

He let go of my chin and I let myself fall onto my back, the impact bouncing both our bodies on the trampoline. I was quiet for a long, long time. Dustin lay down beside me, rested his head against mine and sighed.

“Are you really gay, Dust?” I asked after a while.

“Yeah,” he answered. “I’ve thought about it a lot. I definitely want to have sex with guys.”

“Me too,” I said, and we laughed.