At the time, I would have said I admired Roger Barry, but with the number of years I now have on my back I am convinced that it would be more truthful to say that I envied him. Even more to my discredit, I was jealous of him.
He was lean, fit, muscled. He carried his clothes effortlessly with grace, and gave style to whatever he wore. But he wasn't a dumb jock or an airhead pretty boy with charm. He had a straight A average, played soccer and tennis, was good, exceptionally good, on the cello and the guitar, and starred as Robert Browning in the Drama Club's production of The Barretts of Whimpole Street when we were in high school. He wrote his senior essay on Virginia Woolf's long and impossible novel The Waves. And it was printed in a little academic magazine called Yesterday's Modernism.
We knew each other by sight. We were both in Mr. Cavanaugh's English class and Miss O'Doul's calculus class. I was good in English, but trigonometry was a struggle for me. Roger wasn't fazed by trig, however. Unlike me, he was rather quiet in English class. Once, when Mr. Cavanaugh -- who loved to praise a good piece of work -- asked him to read an essay he'd written to the class because it was so fine, Roger declined, and Mr. Cavanaugh did not insist, but seemed to respect that.
What'cha lookin' at?
You. I was drunk.
Why?
Cause I like what I see. I was drunk.
He raised his eyebrows and snorted.
What are you drinking?
Scotch. I was drunk.
He looked at me without saying anything.
It tastes awful, I said and took a sip and felt its burn cut straight through the length of me.
He took the bottle from my hand and took a good swallow.
His right eye shut for an instant, for ein augenblick.
It's not so bad, he said. I've had worse. It's pretty smooth actually.
Like you, I said. I was drunk. Do you work out every day?
I'd like to, but I don't get the chance sometimes.
He handed the bottle back to me and then we were kissing. I was drunk.
Judy saw us and giggled.
Let's get out of here, Roger said and guided me through the kitchen door. As we walked along a narrow brick path at the side of the house, unsteadily, which bordered the lawn, he took hold of my butt, and through my jeans I felt him rubbing the place where no one had ever been. We came out onto the quiet night time street with its old trees, their branches unleaving in the early autumn.
He kept massaging me as we walked, and our bodies were pressing against each other. I was drunk. I had the distinct feeling that my skin and his had merged and were stretched over the same body, and I wanted to melt into him, to fall asleep inside of him, to have him split me open and devour me. We faced each other on the empty street in the shade of a big-branched elm tree and consumed each other with our mouths. I was spinning, my cock was stretched to a starched stiffness and I was pulling him closer to me, tearing at him, and he was drilling himself deep into me.
I want you with all my heart, I said. I wanted to rip myself open and feel him inside me.
We slipped down a small hill into an empty lot behind a hedge at the end of the street and fell upon each other again, pressing mouths together, my hands on his waist, his holding the back of my neck and taking me with his lips.
I knelt before him, my palms caressed his flanks and then lowered the zipper on his jeans. I felt his muscled chest and slid my lips over his cock.
Master, master, my master, I sang and felt the heat rush through my body and the pull of desire enflame my cock until I was rocking in rhythm with Roger's convulsions and when he came in my mouth I felt like I had an orgasm in my throat as I shot my cock inside my jeans.
We fell to the earth and lost ourselves in kisses as the waves of our explosion kept crashing against us until they began to subside. I knotted my fingers in his sandy hair, and we smiled.
I want to be an air-force pilot, he said, later in a coffee shop in Greenwich Village. I wanted to make it with him, but he was distant. We weren't drunk.
Get out of here, away from the dead present. No one wants excitement anymore, the rush of energy, risking everything for something you believe in, that you can master.
I didn't know what he was talking about. I wanted excitement. I didn't need the air force for that. I needed a certain look in his eyes as they looked into mine. That was all.
But it didn't happen. We weren't drunk. What I had hoped was going to be a repeat of last Saturday was...nothing. I felt him bored with me, and I was...stymied.
We drifted further away after that. We had nothing to say to each other, and that night in the woods...we'd been different people. It was gone.
It wasn't like he was avoiding me. It was more like he didn't know me, and the more he didn't know me, the more I didn't know him.
When he shaved his head, I felt anguish I'd never known before. I began to wonder if there wasn't something going on that was...outside the ordinary. But we lost touch with each other and it wasn't until two years later that I learned what it was.
Friday night the back room at Crazy Benny's was a mob scene. Summer was finished. Everyone was back in the city. The night was clear, the moon was full, the air was crisp. The bar was full of guys in leather, in velvet, in jeans and in suits. The place was electric with erotic energy.
I was surprised when I saw Roger at the other end of the bar, chest bare and magnificent as ever, with a leather collar around his neck, a leash attached to the collar and a guy with one of the iciest faces I'd ever seen holding the leash.
I could only begin to guess what had happened. But what stabbed me, emptied out my insides, was the vacant expression, the lack of expression, the blankness on Roger's face, except it wasn't Roger's face because Roger wasn't Roger anymore.
I still envied him.
I looked and I prevented myself from looking every time I started to look.
I got a beer and sat down at a small table with my back to them so I couldn't look, but the tension in my neck was becoming intolerable.
What are you preventing yourself from doing? He was tall and blond, and I could tell he went to the gym regularly.
Looking over there at the guy in leather with a guy on a leash.
You want a master?
I looked into my beer and made a nasal sound at the back of my throat expressing ambivalence.
He flicked a zippo and lit a joint, took a drag and offered me some. I was hesitant, but I felt unable to say no. I took a big drag and I knew at that moment that I'd always do whatever he wanted me too, and I felt like surrendering to him.
I felt shy, and I wanted to please him.
If you're not the way I want you to be, there's no reason for you to be at all.
It was, on reflection, a strange thing for him to say to me, but it didn't seem strange when he said.
It seemed true.
It was clear, simple, straight-forward, direct.
I don't play games, he said. It's going to be work on your part, but I will train you. And you will succeed because I never fail. And if you don't make it, he smiled, it really won't matter. There will always be boys who want to submit to me.
And I knew that was true, and it made me that much more dedicated to pleasing him.
Pay for the beers, he said.
I put a five on the table.
Leave it he said. I did not wait for change but followed him out of the bar. From the corner of my eye, I saw Roger's master holding Roger's mouth open and showing his teeth to a leather man beside him. I couldn't see how much money passed between them before he handed the guy Roger's leash.
As we walked along Greenwich Avenue in the empty night, the man I left the bar with put his right arm round my shoulder. I thought he was simply putting his arm around me. And with his left hand on my upper arm he drew me to him, as if to embrace me, but I felt him fasten, before I knew it, a collar of some kind, actually it felt like a chain, around my neck. There was a snap, and I backed away from him, but stopped when I felt the chain pull against my neck.
Not so fast, he said.
What are you doing? I said in panic, for I knew what he had done.
Be quiet, he said.
Wait a minute, I said.
He gave a sharp jerk to the chain.
I said be quiet, he said softly, firmly, with finality.