I was weirdly titillated when I learned that Malcolm lived in a neighborhood in a far-away part of the city where people with money lived. When I asked for his phone number he replied with it right away. I called, first blocking my number by dialing *67 like a prank-calling teenager, and, though I felt his gayness was audible, it wasn’t too bad, and I found I truly liked him.
We talked for a long time about all sorts of things. Then, around 1:00 a.m. he invited me to his house. I still feared he might be a lunatic because who else would invite a stranger to his private residence in the middle of the night. Though I was deep into a cycle of same-sex mania, I was exhausted, so I asked if we could just jack off on the phone together.
“Sounds good, Sam,” he said. “It’s late and I’ve already got my dick out.”
“So do I,” I said, as if we had just discovered an unexpected commonality.
After we came, I hung up and found I didn’t feel horrible the way I usually did after a sexual attack. I hadn’t actually touched anyone but myself. It was nothing but fantasy. No one had officially sinned or done anything wrong. I found, too, that the pressure had been released somewhat. I didn’t feel compelled to spend the next day finding someone else to have sex with. When Malcolm emailed early the next evening asking if I’d like to come over, I ignored it for several days, replying later that I had been out of town and rarely checked that particular account.
We never met in person, but talked on the phone with some frequency after that. We spoke about what was going on in our lives, and as time passed, we even talked about other men — the ones I saw very rarely, and the ones he connected with more frequently. I felt a twinge of possessiveness at the thought of Malcolm having sex with anyone other than me, but I could never quite work up the nerve to meet him in real life. He was twenty years my senior, and he listened to all my stories and anxieties as if he knew exactly what I was going through. Every time I made what seemed to me to be a completely bizarre confession, he replied, “That’s pretty normal, I think” or “That’s understandable.”
At some point, he began a romance with someone he’d met. At first the man only wanted to come over and give Malcolm rim jobs while jerking him off. But after several visits consisting of the same spectacular — per Malcolm — tonguing, they slowly graduated to kissing and then talking. Malcolm and I continued to chat regularly while they were dating, the two of us jerking off over the phone and eventually over online video chats in which I’d point the camera at my body and never allow him to see my face. After watching each other come in grainy, jerky video, we’d say good night, both correctly taking for granted that as soon as we’d shot our loads, the call had reached its end.
The expiration of the rim job champ’s lease precipitated their impulsive cohabitation, an event that unfolded during one of our many lulls in communication. One day I received an email from Malcolm that read:
“Dear Sam, I wanted to let you know that Ron moved in with me. (Crazy, I know.) I won’t be able to talk late at night anymore, and I can’t have you calling whenever you feel like it. I’ll miss our wee-hours chats, but we can still find time to talk if you want, and you can always reach me via email if you need me. I hope you’re well. Malcolm.”
I hadn’t heard from him at all since then, though I can’t say I missed him terribly. I had been having a parallel relationship with the cop all along, just talking and getting to know one another, until, unlike Malcolm and I, we had met at last.
Before reading Malcolm’s email, just seeing his name in my inbox, I suddenly felt as if, now that the cop had abandoned the playground, some great cosmic seesaw had tilted, revealing Malcolm on the other end in his place. He wasn’t the one I wished to see, but maybe he could be the key to something. It seemed impossibly strange that I hadn’t consulted him sooner. I hadn’t told him about my desperation and sorrow or asked his advice about what to do next. I’d always believed that people appeared in my life at precisely the right moment, and here Malcolm was again. He’d be the one to help me come up with a plan for how to prove my love and get the cop back.
Of course, the cop and the kid were on yet another in a series of long weekend getaways, which they seemed always to be taking. Before the kid, the cop never took vacation days. He had been hoarding them apparently, waiting for the right teenager to blunder into his life.
I opened the email from Malcolm.
“Dear Sam, Long time, no talk. I hope you’re alive and well. I miss you! I’m alone in a hotel room in a strange city called Boston, Massachusetts. Have you heard of it? I had three or four drinks at the bar downstairs, and now I’m getting ready for bed. It’s a whole hour later here. I’m in a fancy penthouse suite, which is my new home for three months or so while I whip this place into shape and help them relaunch after — I’m not allowed to tell you, don’t ask, I really can’t say, stop pressuring me — a (smallish) bedbug infestation and a (largish) black mold problem. Based on my first meeting with the staff today, I’m pretty sure most of them are brain damaged from the black mold exposure, but I can’t fire any of them for fear they’ll sue. You know, the usual! Anyway, I’m away from home for a while, and am only going back for occasional weekends, so we need to catch up. I’m going to bed now, but call whenever. I don’t know anyone here, except for the brain-damaged employees. Save me, Malcolm.”
I tried phoning him, even though the email was from hours earlier, but got no answer. I left a long, hyperactive message on his voicemail, trying to summarize the events of the past several weeks so speedily that I probably sounded more like a meth addict than the victim of a broken heart.
I sat down and elaborated in a pages-long email about the cop, the kid, and my heartbreak, crying as I typed and then signing off, “I’m literally crying as I type this. Sam.”
14
THE FIRST TIME I ACTUALLY ENTERED A BOOTH WITH someone else, it was a couple. They gave me a look in the main room, the fluorescent tube lights glowing down on us from the high ceiling. They must have given one another a look too, to agree upon me, and then they gave me the look together. They seemed sexually serious in a way that I wasn’t, as if they belonged to that class of people who devote part of each paycheck to the pursuit of sex, who devote rooms of their house to it, who join clubs and groups devoted to their favorite type of sex, who get tattoos pertaining to their sexual penchants and partialities, who have a special wardrobe that enables them to live more fully in the world of their fantasies. One of the men was wearing leather pants and a dog collar. The other looked muscular in denim and a work shirt. He had severe and asymmetric facial features. I pictured him as the oddball on some construction crew about town, while the other probably spent most of his day in a large dog kennel. Still, they were sexy in their way.
A friend once told me that when faced with a situation in which violence or sex might occur one should always try not to smile. A guy comes up to you on the street and starts asking you strange questions. You feel like he’s sizing you up. Maybe he’s going to mug you or hurt you or just fuck with you. It’s the instinct of most people to give the guy a smile, or to let out a short laugh and say, “What is this, buddy?” My friend says that’s the worst thing you can do. He says you should do just the opposite. He says to treat it like what you think it might be from the beginning. Somebody fucking with you on the street is no reason to smile.