Prose On Your Tongue

I have a dream of Nes that night, for a couple of nights, actually, and if they weren't so perfect and if he wasn't so loving in each and every one I would've thought it was real. I remember that mouth, all red and wet, whispering sweet nothings against my skin before dipping in to take a taste of my prose-filled tongue. We lied back on my bed, in the middle of my dark, quiet room, and I listened to the way he slurped, hummed, whimpered, taking in all of me and admiring each piece carefully before moving on to the next. We're fully clothed, but we're still naked and dangerously vulnerable, jumping from a cliff like that and expecting to be safely caught like the fools we are; though that's the best part about love, the best part about taking wild and daring chances, knowing there's a high probability of being too dependent or getting your heart brutally beaten, but doing it anyway, because - come on - it's love, it's more beautiful than anything in the world, but also so, so deadly. It's a bargain that almost always ends badly, but it's a bargain we were willing to take every single day we woke up and thought, I love him. I love him so much.

"You," he told me, and that was more than enough - so much more than enough. A baby kiss to his neck sent his eyes wild, flaring, pupils blown wide for me. "You're just -" he breathed a little wow at the end, tipping his head back and twisting his lips into an excited oh when my kisses pressed harder into his skin, painting him with red and purple.

I woke up every time things got too much and too far from reality, because I realized every time that it will never happen, it was all wrong, so my mind brought me back to the dawn of day. It hurt the first couple of times I woke up with a painful throb in my chest, but the more it happened the less it hurt and the more I just felt a hollow numb. It was pathetic - I knew that. Thinking about somebody you can't have so fucking much ambles along the border of creepy, of scary, and this was the worst thing to sit in the middle of class and go over in your head: his lips, his golden brown head, those goddamn freckles that sprinkle across his pert, sloping nose.

My AP Lit class basically became AP Tanner 'Nes' Bradford and How Much Daniel Wesley Wants Him class. I can barely pay attention to what Mr. Larson is trying to explain about analyzing poems, because by the end of his lecture there are sketches and messily-written stories all over my notebook page and little to no actual notes. Blinking tiredly, I gather my things and pack them into my bag, standing up with small struggle; my knees are a little wobbly and I woke up that morning strangely exhausted, although I went to bed pretty early the day before.

After saying a polite goodbye to my teacher, I join the swarm of students heading to their next class, just sort of following the crowd. Once I turn the hallway I see Bee and Sam standing awkwardly by the entrance of the girl's restroom, lifting their backpacks up to let others squeeze by and move along. She's excitedly telling him something, eyes dancing, while he looks a little uninterested, but entertaining her anyway with brief, sharp nods. This time I feel more inclined to make my presence known, so I haphazardly cross the hall, muttering, "excuse me, please," to any shorter peer I happen to have an embarrassing run-in with.

Bee notices me by the time I get close enough for her to grab the straps of my bag and pull me close. "Hey," she shouts to me over the loud chatter filling the hall. "How're you, Dan?" I smile and say I'm fine while she drags me in a hug and stands on her tippy-toes - even as tall as she is - to properly wrap her lean arms around my neck in somewhat of an embrace. She smells of her usual expensive perfume, faint, but strong enough to count for something; it smells nice and familiar and I can't help but inhale quietly before she lets me go.

"Are you coming to my house party Danny, or are you gonna hang out with that twig-lookin' girl again and ditch us?" Sam asks, a playful glint in his eyes, but I know he's not entirely joking.

I shake my head. "Nah - I'm not hanging out with Lulu," I clarify, sending him a look to show my distaste in his nickname. "Is the party gonna be big?"

"Only some other close friends," Sam shrugs. His eyes wander to the thinning crowd beside us as he speaks. "Like Tom - you know Tom, don't you? - and Patrick and his crew." He looks up at me again. "That's not too wild for you, is it?"

Bee elbows him and tries at a smile, but we all know she can't be mad at him long enough for it to count. "Stop making fun of my Dan. Sometimes we all like to jus' relax, y'know?" She looks at me for back-up, but I feel too unfamiliar with their little squabbles to actually interject.

Sam gives her this grin that he saves only for her and wraps an arm around her shoulders, pulling her in, and she struggles, but not hard. "I'm jus' playin', Bee. Stop bein' so protective of him; big boy Dan can take of of himself." They both share a look, and suddenly I feel they're not really talking about me anymore as much as they're sharing their weird little moments. I take this as my chance to leave, and I clear my throat with finality.

"I'm gonna head to class before I'm late," I say. They glance at me, but they don't really see me. "See you guys later?"

"Yeah," comes Bee's distracted voice.

“Yeah,” comes Sam’s distant voice next.

"Yeah," I repeat, low, and then walk off before I get too sick to my stomach.

Math is whatever, as usual, and I actually have somewhat of the mind to pay attention. I try to be more active in the classroom to keep me focused; it actually ends up working, and I find myself getting a little too worked up about math and getting the problems right before the bell rings and everyone packs their things hurriedly up.

When I haul myself into the library, Lilian is already there, waiting for me. “Hey, babe,” she whispers to me when I get over, dropping down into the seat next to her. Her purple and white floral dress is vintage - she forced me to go shopping and bought it happily for $5 - and is faded from many previous uses from probably some elderly woman. It’s small, and it fits for somebody of her thin, long body type, but it sags some in the chest area and continues to prove how little breasts Lilian has, which she hates to be reminded of. “How was first and second period?”

“The usual,” I say, shrugging. She hums thoughtfully while I pull out one of my old books - another romance between a religious girl and a ‘bad’ boy - and open it to my dog-eared page. I look down and realize I’m almost at the part where she confesses that she really does love him, and they have passionate sex in the back of his pickup truck. The way the author describes it all is captivating; she doesn’t just describe how sucks her all over until she’s sore or how she grinds her hips into the movement of his thrusts, but how they feel, what they say, how they gaze into one another’s eyes the entire time and they don’t have to confess again, because their stares give it all away.

The first time I had sex was nothing like that. The girl was a couple of years older than me - she was some college student that I saw a lot at the parties Bee constantly dragged me to. At that point I was in denial about my feelings for Nes and tried to find anything to distract me from it; she was very nice, very flirtatious, and she kept trying to get my attention the whole night until she finally received it. Her name was Kaitlyn and she was a pretty girl - all big browns and a tiny voice to match tiny lips, a tiny nose, a tiny face. After a while of chatting casually with me she asked me to go up to the second floor of the house party with her and when I asked why, to which she responded with, “because,” my innocent, dense mind figured out why.

Kaitlyn mostly did all the work. She undressed completely, I blushed, and she managed to get me to take off all mine, too, and show her my lanky, undefined body. She let me touch her red-brown hair while she sucked me off and let me grope her handful of breasts while she rode on top of me, moaning like the girls in the pornos did.

I don’t know if she felt it - if she didn’t, she was pretty good at hiding it - but she let me cum on her chest anyway and gave me a lovely little kiss, muttering, “thanks for the good time, Daniel.” I didn’t think much of her after that, but I did think about that night for weeks after it happened, only fumbling nervously when Bee questioned me about where I disappeared to multiple times since then. And then I had a few more encounters with girls I only knew for the night and thought about Nes more and more until I couldn’t do it anymore; if I couldn’t have sex and enjoy it and enjoy the girl who was giving herself up to me, then I shouldn’t be having sex at all.

So that’s what I did. It was back to my hand and porn, and then, eventually, I fantasized more about reading Nes poetry from my notebooks and him genuinely appreciating them rather than grinding shamelessly against him while he gasped my name. And it was a nice change; I was tired of being so sexually driven, especially when it came to Nes. It was like I was soiling his name with my dirty fantasies, which was something Nes doesn’t ever deserve.

“You’re reading that book again?” Lilian asks, nudging me with a scowl, and I blink, startled, looking her in the face. A fond tone nips at the edge of her voice as she finishes, “you’re such an adorable hopeless romantic, Dan.”

I smile foolishly and we share a soft, brief moment, her leaning over to look at the words in the book and me watching as her hair tumbles from behind her ear and falls onto her slumped shoulders. She gets so lost in the pages that when I hand her the book to read, she absentmindedly takes it and curls over, trapped in H.W Jackson’s novel before she can properly pull herself away.

“Good, isn’t it?” I finally ask after letting her absorb the pages for a couple of minutes.

“Shaddup, boy,” she mutters, distracted, and I laugh.

There’s something about sharing books that makes me feel incredibly real.