2018

All night they made love, Jack and him.

Jack had felt stupid when they had snuck in at 12:30, creeping around the darkened penthouse as though they were high schoolers and Karen was Jack's mother, afraid they would wake her and he would be sent home.

And so they held hands, and Jack guided him through the maze of the pitch-black parlor, pressed him silently against the closed kitchen door to kiss him, wrapped his arm around his waist to pull him up the stairs.

When they reached Jack's bedroom he reached for the light switch but changed his mind, pulling his hand out of its midair reach and instead placed it on the small of his lover's back, drawing him in towards his own body.

Moonlight was the only illumination in the room, its gentle light falling across the four poster bed in a sort of bowed rectangle as the lovers tangled themselves before it, swam in it. First a sweater was pulled off, lips found their way from pec to pec, hot and wet against shivering skin.

The belt was the next to go; pulled off in one seamless motion as a hand grasped around its desired target. Rough kisses followed the curvature of a spine. Twin moans escaped strangers' lips.

Denim brushed Jack's knees, grazed his ankles before being discarded from his body altogether. He flexed his feet under the ministrations of his partner, his hands familiarizing themselves with new skin and curves.

And then it was just skin on skin - two filaments of heat and desire brushing and touching and caressing and throbbing. Jack succumbed to the leadership of this other, allowed himself to be turned over so that he was lying face down on the soft sheets. He felt the man hovering over him, and automatically extended his arm towards the top drawer of his mahogany nightstand.

He was surprised to find the little cardboard box empty - he thought he still had one left. Maybe Karen had stolen it for use of her own. Maybe he had miscounted. It didn't matter now; his night was ruined either way.

"Stop," he commanded.

"What?"

"I don't have any condoms."

"Who cares? I'm clean."

Silence. His body was begging to be entered; his heart needed the reassurance that he was desired. So he believed. And he trusted.

After ten minutes, it was over. Jack felt weird, like a machine that had a flaw - it still worked alright, but there was something just a little…off about it.

Ninety-eight minutes later, he rolled over for the last time, sighed into the quiet night air. He reached his left hand out to grasp the hand of the one who had just had him, all of him, but it wasn't there.

"I've got to go."

His voice came from across the room. Jack heard the whoosh of a zipper being pulled up.

"Why?"

Slight hesitation, then:

"I just have to."

"You know you can spend the night; Karen won't throw you out when you come down to breakfast in the morning."

"I really think I had better get going."

"Let me at least walk you out."

Jack slid off the side of the bed and pulled on his boxers as he heard the bedroom door being opened. Why was this guy in such a rush?

Again, they ambled through the house in darkness. Jack wasn't leading this time, he couldn't catch up, and a couple of times he heard a small collision and an utterance of "shit" before they reached the front door.

"Thanks, for everything," Jack cooed, leaning his head against the edge of doorframe. The glow of the fluorescent lights of the hallway bathed them in a grotesque, false illumination. The other man moved uncomfortably, tried a smile that was more like a grimace.

"I'll see you."

And that was that. There was no kiss, no lingering look of longing. Disappointment and wonder crept into Jack's mind as he watched him disappear down the hall, step into the elevator at the end of the corridor. What had happened to make this guy so eager to leave?

Jack was startled to find that the door back into the penthouse had closed behind him in his daze. He tried the knob, only to find it locked. So he stood there, jiggling the knob and gritting his teeth and clenching his sore ass and shivering in the air conditioning. And suddenly, he was crying.

He cried out of frustration for not being able to get back in. He cried about the way that man had just treated him, like he didn't matter. He cried for Rosario, who could have let him in right now if only she hadn't been spending this weekend with her daughter in Queens. He cried for Karen, for the baby she'd never have. He cried for Will and Grace, whose friendship had dwindled to the point that they didn't even see each other on holidays. And he cried for reasons as yet unknown to him; for the future, for his aging body, for his hopeless habit of jumping from guy to guy without ever attaching to them any emotion, anything real.

And then Karen was in front of him, standing in the doorway, shock and confusion written all over her sleepy face. And she pulled him in from the disgusting green-white light, into the warmth of their home, and she turned on the light and it was once again his sanctuary.

She hugged him, she wrapped him up in her arms, but she didn't ask why. She didn't ask why he was crying or what he was doing out in the hallway, all alone, in his underwear. She only said "I love you, I love you Jack."

Nothing seemed wrong in the world when his hands stopped trembling and he used them to tilt her face up to his and he kissed her lips. And she let him; they both knew it was wrong but so, so right at the same time, and there was nothing either of them could do to stop it. So they kissed. It wasn't like the kisses he had shared with the man earlier, it was soft, and sweet, and loving, and gentle. And real. It was real.

He must have been tired, because as he closed his eyes and let her breath mix with his, his mind began to wander into dreams. He pictured them laying together in warm sand, talking and laughing, saw them spinning cotton candy on Coney Island, and heard Karen's voice singing sweetly in his ear. It was like they were one consciousness, she and him. So alike that they were the same, they were one in a perfect world. There was nothing sexual or lustful about it, but a warmth and peace filled his heart and he sighed into her mouth.

They slowly broke apart and he looked down at her sweet, porcelain face. Her eyes were still closed as though she, too, felt like she was in a dream and she didn't want to wake up from it. When her eyelids finally did flutter open, he swam in the golden-brown pools of her irises, and he knew. He suddenly knew what true, pure, untainted love felt like.