else?” you asked with so much heartache. Like you were drowning in it.
“Yeah. Of course. I’m sorry for asking.”
You grabbed my hand suddenly and squeezed. “Please, don’t be sorry.”
“Okay,” I said cautiously. Everything about that conversation felt stilted and strange. But exciting too. Another glimpse into your mysterious past, one that you all but hid from me. And why? Maybe you were trying to protect me. Or you were ashamed.
We talked about other things, mostly me trying to fill the silence and lighten your mood. But the knowledge that you’d had a lover who passed away, one whose death was so painful that no one ever spoke of him… it bothered me.
Later, in the theater, as we sat together in the dark auditorium and watched Bruno dance the role of Apollo, I glanced over to see you were crying. A tear trailed down your cheek and was absorbed by your golden beard. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen you get emotional during a performance, but it was the first time I felt like I understood where it was coming from. I wanted to kiss away your pain like you used to for me when I was little and fell down and skinned a knee. Instead I reached for your hand. You brought my fist to your face and rubbed your cheek, drying your eyes with my knuckles.
“This was one of his favorite roles,” you said softly, “but he never had the opportunity to dance it.”
As I watched Bruno, I felt your grief—as powerful as if it were my own—a deep longing for a life that had ended too soon. How strange that I would mourn the loss of a man I’d never known. It must be our bond causing me to feel such sorrow.
Later, I licked my fist to taste your tears. You’d been crying over him—Orlando. And I was mad at him—a dead man—for causing you so much pain.
10
Vincent
“More tongue,” Valentina instructed. “Swirl it around. Yeah, like that. Now take it in deep. Deeper.”
My jaw ached something fierce, but my eyes remained glued to the screen, trying to mimic the actor’s motions. Valentina was giving me lessons on how to give head by practicing on cucumbers. We were parked in the McDonalds parking lot, using their free WiFi to stream porn because their bandwidth was good enough.
Valentina was determined to lose her virginity before we graduated high school. I just wanted to be able to nosh a guy without making him bleed out. But even with Valentina’s guidance and a video tutorial, my cucumber looked like it was on its way to being julienned by the time I’d finished with it.
“How does that even fit in there?” I asked. The couple had transitioned to anal, and the top was freakishly huge. “What if it gets stuck?”
“That’s a trip to the emergency room,” Valentina said. “Think it’s covered by workman’s comp?”
I snickered. Then something on-screen caught my eye. “What is that?”
“What?” Her head had been turned. How could she look away?
I backed up the video and pointed at the screen.
“I think that’s a cock ring,” she said.
“A what? Pause it.”
Knowing the drill by now, Valentina went straight to Google. She relayed to me its uses, then explained to me the medical conditions of priapism and penile gangrene.
“Stop. I don’t want to hear anymore.” I shut the laptop, done for the night. That was the problem with getting our sex education from watching porn. It was not enough and way too much.
A couple of days later, I broke down and asked you if our bodies’ regenerative process included genitalia. You only smiled knowingly and assured me it did.
After that I became briefly fascinated with Priapus, the god of fertility who was known for having an incredibly large peen. Like obscenely huge. I asked Mater if she knew anything about him, and she said just as Medusa is the matron of the bloodborns, Priapus is the patron to the beastborns. And when I asked what that meant, she said they were the offspring of demons and beasts. Then she shrugged like it was no big deal. Ummm… come again?
My conclusion was that gods were freaks.
Point is, I was good at getting answers. If Papa wouldn’t tell me, I went to you, and if you didn’t know, I asked Mater. Dad was a last resort. There was always someone I could go to if I had questions, and the internet was a great standby.