this?”
Stunned, suddenly made ashamed of my own innocent and natural sexual impulses, I stopped and let his shrinking cock tumble from my mouth. In the four years Alan and I lived together, we had made love more than a thousand times. Never before had he questioned the propriety of priapic pleasure. Then again, never before had we decided to break up—as we had yesterday—with only the logistics of who got to keep what and when to schedule the moving men's arrival to be worked out.
I touched his shoulder to answer him, then withdrew my hand. Overnight, the rules had changed—but we hadn't clarified just what the new rules were. He had told me it would be a month before friends moving to Denver would vacate their apartment so Alan could move in. It made no financial sense for him to leave my apartment to stay at a hotel or with other friends in the interim. Besides, I didn't want him to go, and he was still my best friend.
Last night we had cried together, mourning our relationship that lacked the mutual mandate to continue. In four years there had been countless good times, some admittedly terrible times, much laughter and the kind of warm feelings that couldn't dissipate overnight.
The problems that caused us to break up were not sexual in nature. In fact, we had been compatible and easy-going lovers. Until this morning, sex had been an unquestioned source of pleasure, somewhat routine, but always satisfying. Our forays into erotic variations had delivered less satisfaction. What can you say about a man you seduce in the bath and who, upon leaving the tub, steps on and breaks his glasses? Only that he's sweet and clumsy and your heart goes out to him in a sentimental way that he doesn't always appreciate.
And that, I suppose, was the crux of our problem. After years of bending over thick textbooks, stifled by the poverty of graduate student life, Alan now held a well-paying job where people looked up to him. He wore expensive suits. He didn't want to be a sweet and clumsy puppy anymore. Lean and mean, the Lothario of the Eastern seaboard was more the fantasy image he gravitated toward. No more Mr. Monogamy (yet the ethos was there to the end—an open relationship would not suffice, a break-up was the license required for philandering to ensue). Suddenly Alan had become a freedom fighter in his private war against commitment, hurling his first Molotov cocktail last night. And the smoke had not yet cleared.
Looking at him in the early morning light, I felt a reprise of last evening's tears coming on, but I fought the impulse. My woman's tears had nearly drowned him, he'd shouted at me yesterday. So be it—no tears. Compassion and understanding weren't welcome guests at this moment, either. Toughness, decisiveness—those were the operative emotions in this new lexicon of leaving.
I sneaked a glance at his penis. It was semi-erect, making me think that even though he had one foot out the door emotionally, desire still lived at this address. Action was called for.
With a courage that was enacted rather than genuinely felt, I assumed a familiar position, my head resting on Alan's shoulder, a thigh sidled between his legs, my hand cupping that twin-sacced, hormone-pumping station that was the probable cause of our problems. I gave his cock an affectionate squeeze. It hardened perceptibly; he shot me an uncertain look.
“Yes, we
should
be doing this,” I informed him.
He wavered. In his mind, I imagined, were all the logical reasons why we should institute a hands-off policy for the coming month. As of last night, we'd “officially” broken up; we needed this time to get accustomed to the idea of no longer being a couple; after making love for more than four years, there was something seedy about simply fucking for physical release; he wanted out—and the biological imperative of the act would send him off in the opposite direction.
A moment's more indecision, and
I
would be ready to hurl my belongings out