Harry and Kate and Michelle

The thing about getting world-spinningly, consonants-destroyingly drunk is that you can recognize the exact moment you start to sober up because it is also the exact moment you realize just how drunk you have been, which manifests itself more often than not in the reintroduction to your world of the concept of confusion. One moment ago, Harry reasons, it must have made perfect sense to him to be naked in a dorm bed identical to his own save for the teal, not gray, sheets, kissing (he realizes now, to his chagrin, it is probably a little closer to slurping or even licking) the lips and ears and general facial area of one girl whose breast is in his hand, while - and he has to double and triple check mentally to be sure this is the case - another, different girl works her determined if currently uncoordinated hands, one on his cock and the other, he discerns from (he hopes) discreet glances downward while the kissing girl makes her hot-breathed way down his neck, on the kissing girl's cunt (a word he picked up from Sharon, he remembers with the non-verbal clarity of the drunk, who studied art history and had freckled arms), arched slightly above his torso so that the hairs on his stomach react to the minute shifts of her inner thighs; this must have seemed normal until just now when he regained the vocabulary to explain to himself what he is doing.

Now it seems perplexing but delightful and, on the whole, not something to be questioned, he not being the questioning sort. His questions are logistical, usually beginning "Do you want me to..." or "How about if we..." and the bigger questions, like "How did this happen?" he is content to meditate on as expressions of wonderment rather than concerns needing to be addressed. He has his hands full with their soft backs and their breasts slick with sweat and trying to make sure they have as good a time as he is. His new self-consciousness in the face of elbows on hair and figuring out angles that don't leave anyone out and trying to focus enough to kiss one unsloppily while still fingering the other one adequately, all while distracted by his hard-on and their hands, may be a step down from his previous disconnected bliss, but he figures it is more than made up for by the ability to remember this part the next morning.

When the three of them are done, the girl he first noticed, or re-noticed, at his cock, whose name he is pretty sure is Kate, says, "I'm going to go wash up," and puts on a robe and shower shoes and leaves. She is short and plump with black hair and straight bangs and she walks like every step is a decision she is wholly confident in. He thinks this was her idea. This is after all her room, unless she stores robes in the other girl's room.

The other girl is sitting on the edge of the bed, picking at her lips, rubbing her big toes against each other. He thinks her name is Michelle. She has a green ring in the top part of her ear. Her body is shoulder blades sticking out like the rest of her left them behind when it hunched over, angles like in the paintings Sharon used to show him in her textbooks before she found someone she wanted to actually date. He has spoken to Gelena three times, never longer than ten minutes and only online, since August when he left for California.

He says, "Hey."

She doesn't move but says, "Hey back."

He thinks he should ask her if she had a good time. She seemed to but now she seems like someone who didn't. He says, "So where are you from?"

"New York."

"City?" She nods. "No shit, me too. Where in New York?"

"Upper East Side."

"I'm from Chelsea." She still isn't looking at him. Gelena didn't cry when they said goodbye. He didn't want her to, and he didn't want Sharon to stick around, but he's drunk and he wants Michelle to look at him. "So why'd you come out west for college?"

"Parents. Specifically getting away from them." She says it in a way that makes it clear he will never understand. He thinks about the fact that she likes girls.

"So how long have you and Kate been a thing?"

"Since freshman orientation."

"Do you guys do this whole invite a dude to join in thing often?"

"She's wanted to for a while."

"Was that your first time with a guy?" This is the wrong thing to say. He doesn't know her. His head is starting to ache. He should get some water but he doesn't want to leave her alone or he doesn't want to run into Kate in the hall or he doesn't want to stand up.

"Yeah."

"Shit. I mean, if I'd known..." The worst part is if he had known he probably wouldn't have changed anything. Maybe he did know and he's already forgotten.

"Known what? I mean there isn't anything to know. It was my first time with a guy just like it was your first time with two girls. The first time that counted was a long time ago."

What there is to know is that Kate likes boys more than Michelle likes boys. He wonders if Kate knows, or cares. He wonders what his first time that counted was, and what Michelle is remembering or trying to forget. "So do you like it out here?"

"Um. I do, yeah. The weather's great, I like the school. I mean back east it's probably snowed already. But sometimes it's like..." She moves her hand like she's trying to find the words in the air or touch someone who's not there.

"You wish you could go back." That doesn't make any sense. They both can and will go back, in a few weeks. He isn't even drunk enough anymore to think he's being significant.

But she looks at him then with eyes like she's about to kiss him but with a different hunger, and she rests her hand on the bed and shifts her body towards him. She opens her mouth but doesn't speak.

He lifts his pounding head, waiting to learn what she heard him say and maybe what he was trying to say.

She says, "Do you--"

And then Kate walks in and says "Hey" and kicks off her shoes before tipsily hitting the bed between him and Michelle, and Kate takes Michelle's hand with what looks to him like real sweetness, and he yanks on his pants and goes to get a drink of water, telling himself whatever she was going to say couldn't have been that important, anyway; the words of the drunk never are.

Paul and Enid

He knows she is just about everything he could ask for.

She is so patient with him, never telling him to get over himself even when he knows he should (which makes it so much easier to do), and so empathetic, always thrilled for his happiness. His victories are her victories, his angst her angst, and vice versa, but they aren't myopic in their attachment like some couples at their school; they lead their own lives that they share with each other openly, as though telling her he got an A on a calculus test, listening to her indecision over whether to take a paying job to save for college or apply for an internship in a publishing company, calling her at lunch when she's home sick, every communication presented gently or eagerly or lovingly were a gift, their delight in listening to each other's stories unfold like the delight of unwrapping presents from someone who always knows what to buy. They love so many of the same things - Impressionist paintings, twentieth-century poets, Roman Polanski movies, drinking smoothies while sitting on grass, rivers (Sometimes, she had told him on their first date, shyly, afraid, as she would later confess, that what she was about to say would make him think she was kind of a freak, I feel more at home staring out at the Hudson River than I do in my own living room, and he had said, Like the river knows you, somehow, and she had said Yes, exactly like that), detective stories, books about the twenties - and the things only one of them love (ice skating and comic books for her, modern dance and the Mets for him) the other goes along with, eagerly, in love at least with the other's enthusiasm.

She understands his sense of humor, really understands it, catches his references and picks up on the sarcasm that leaves even his family confused, bounces her own wit right back at him instead of giving him a blank look or, worse, laughing just to try to make him like her, which a few girls at school had done before they had started going out. They can have entire exchanges with the tiniest shifts of their facial muscles - no one can make a quarter-inch eyebrow-raise say did he say what I think he just said and if so, is he aware of how pretentious it made him sound? like she can. They are attuned to each other without being addicted to each other. They are each other's first kiss, first love - and he loves her so much it strikes him as miraculous and startling - and first tell, each always the first to hear the other's news, good, bad, weird, or just new.

So of course she is the first one he tells. How could he do otherwise? It would be a betrayal, and he is already going to hurt her so much.

After saying they need to talk, he considers giving some sort of preamble, explaining that he's been questioning for a while the difference between how he looks at her and the way he looks at Thomas when he drops his pencil in chemistry, telling her about the conversations he's sat through silent about the merits of the female form, wondering if he was just a late bloomer or if he would never bloom in that way, clarifying that she wasn't a last-ditch effort or an attempt to prove anything, she was just herself and he had liked her from the first in a way he had never liked someone, and he loved her now as he had never loved anyone, and his love for her had been so overwhelming it had taken him a long time to realize what it wasn't and would never be.

In the end, his nerves abandon him and he just says, "I'm gay." She knows him; she will fill in the rest herself.

But not right away, he knows. She stares at him and her big green eyes start to fill up with tears behind her purple square-frame glasses. "Oh God," she says, and then, "You - did - I mean I know it doesn't work this way but - did I - ?"

He says, trying to sound comforting but finding it difficult to speak, "No, no, of course not. Of course not, Enid. You're great. You're wonderful. You're like - " and his own voice cracks because he is feeling too much now, his fear and her pain and their love - "you're like the greatest thing that's ever happened to me, you're the coolest person I know, and - and I love you, okay? I mean I'm sorry," - he is babbling now, having lost the battle to say the right thing and just desperate now that even if everything is ruined she knows, she has to know, she must - "I'm sorry about this, and I'm really sorry if this is like the last thing you want to hear now and I understand if you feel weird or, I don't know, if you're mad at me and never want to talk to me again, but I love you and I'll always love you, and I know it's not like how you thought or how you wanted and - I - but it's true. I love you."

And now she starts crying in earnest, wordless and into herself, tears falling into her lap, and he sits in helpless hurt. She takes off her glasses to wipe her eyes and out of habit he reaches for her cheek, then stops himself with his hand lingering on her face, not wanting to draw away but not sure whether to continue. She looks at him then, and leans into his shoulder and he puts his arm around her, brushing his fingers through her hair slowly and waiting for her breathing to quiet. Finally she leans back, puts her glasses back on, and says, "Promise you won't run off with some hot boy and forget all about me?"

He is smiling before he has fully processed what she is saying. "I won't if you won't."

She sniffles and smiles. "Never. Bros before hos, right?" She puts her hand on his.

He squeezes her fingers. "Chicks before dicks."

She sighs. "This is going to be weird for a while."

He says, "I know."

"I love you."

"I know."

She leans against him, and they sit in silence. It will be weird, but he isn't worried. They will make it through this. The two of them fit together; how could they let each other go?

Enid and Paul

She knows he is just about everything she could ask for.

He calls her as much as she calls him, and she never gets the sense he's doing it simply because he feels it's his boyfriendly duty. He calls her when he has good news, when he's in a funk, when they didn't see each other much at school that day, and sometimes just to chat (this last in particular makes Abby sigh with envy; Thomas never calls her at all). Their conversations don't have any awkward pauses and sometimes go on for hours; even falling half asleep because they've been talking until three in the morning is just one more thing to laugh about.

And they are always laughing. He has the smartest sense of humor she knows, always sardonic and witty but never mean. She loves telling him about her day because his asides always make her feel like her life is not so mundane, like maybe it is even worth talking about, and even the worst parts can be worth laughing about. Nothing clears her insecurities faster than his gentle sarcasm, delivered with his arm around her shoulders; he is the only person she knows who can make her laugh while she's crying, and he'll literally wipe her tears with his thumb when she's done. And he laughs at her jokes, too, usually with his dry smirk but every now and then--and she loves these moments best--with a full smile and his eyes crinkling and his hand over his mouth like he's embarrassed by how much louder he's being than usual.

She loves him, and she loves telling him that even though sometimes it still makes her blush, and she loves hearing him say it back because he doesn't blush at all, he looks her straight in the eye and she knows he's not just saying it to get in her pants like her mother always warned her about because he hasn't even tried to get in her pants. She knows how different this makes him from most seventeen-year-old boys. She knows it borders on the miraculous that they've been dating for six months and he hasn't even brought up sex, because he really cares about her as a person. He's barely even tried to get to second. This means he respects her intelligence. He doesn't think with his dick. He is practically a saint.

She knows how amazing it is that he would rather go out than stay in and make out all the time like most couples she knows. This is one of the ways in which they are so well-matched: he loves walking around neighborhoods they know, taking the subway to neighborhoods they've never seen, rollerblading along the Hudson River, going to restaurants where the waiters barely speak English, people-watching in Tompkins Square Park, sitting back-to-back under trees or, when it's too cold, in her living room, and reading poetry to each other (he loves Frank O'Hara and Elizabeth Bishop; her favorites are E. E. Cummings and T. S. Eliot), eavesdropping on strangers in cafes, going to plays and musicals and concerts, everything she loves to do and wished for a boy to do with.

But sometimes she thinks, guiltily, that she could do with a little less going out and a little more making out. If she didn't kiss him whenever she saw him in school, they would barely ever kiss at all. She's always wanted to take it slow, but she wonders if maybe there is such a thing as too slow. It isn't that she doubts that he's attracted to her; he's always calling her beautiful and complimenting her clothes, her jewelry, even her shoes (her shoes! How many boyfriends even notice shoes?). But she's attracted to him, too, and sometimes she wants to slam him against the wall and pull his shirt off and kiss him on the lips and other places too, his neck and his shoulders and the side of his face, and drag her hands along his sides and down to the waistband of his jeans, and unbutton them and--do something, though she's fuzzy on the specifics and she blushes if she thinks about it in too much detail; she (secretly, knowing that most guys would go straight for this step and more, knowing that she wouldn't want most guys, she wouldn't want any guy but this guy) wants him to turn around after she reads one of the love poems of Cummings, take the book out of her hands, and kiss her, pushing her down onto the couch, pressing his body onto her, not just reaching up to her bra but unhooking it, taking her shirt off and kissing a trail from her ear down to her neck, down to her chest and her stomach and...

All things in due time. She has everything that really matters to her, and she wouldn't trade it for anything. She wouldn't trade him for anything. And indeed there will be time, time for all the visions that creep into her head unbidden when calculus is too boring or she's trying to fall asleep. The two of them fit together; how could they let each other go?

Lydia and Liam

He is saying something about the book he is reading. They are sitting on his couch and they have been talking for several hours and Ross is at a math teachers' conference in Colorado and she doesn't miss him and earlier when they were outside they took turns shouting out words they saw written on buildings or advertisements on the tops of cabs or headlines and now they are sitting on his couch and a thunderstorm started a few minutes ago and he is saying something about the book he is reading and she can only half pay attention to him because she wants to kiss him and she can read the air well enough to know that he would kiss her back and neither is allowed to kiss the other and the worst part is that they are going to anyway. The thought of Ross's face if he found out makes her want to throw up but not want to stop herself. The fact that Joanne would never speak to her again makes her want to cry but not want to stop herself. The fact that Ross has never been anything but sweet to her, has never so much as raised his voice even when she has, is smart and a good person and attractive and devoted to her, makes her want to inflict Inquisition-style torture on herself but not want to stop herself.

If she were a better person, she would stop herself, or perhaps she wouldn't even want to. At the very least, she would have sat in the armchair, not on the couch. She used to be a good person. Maybe some day she will be again. Who knows? Today she is not a good person. She finally understands the idea that sinning in thought is morally equivalent to sinning in deed. The betrayal has already happened. She almost tried to stop it. She introduced him to Joanne. She was genuinely happy for them when they started dating. She reminded herself how grateful she was for Ross. She stopped seeing him if Ross couldn't join her. None of that counts. She is neither stupid nor delusional and she has known for a long time that she was allowing it to happen, halfheartedly trying to ignore the flirting, the blushing, the getting drunker than usual to excuse her touching him, the way cops turn a blind eye to rich kids doing drugs.

A better person would not have seen him while Ross was out of town. A better person would have sat in the armchair. Today she is not that person. Maybe she never was.

It isn't that he's handsome, because Ross is handsome too. It isn't that he's kind, because Ross is kind and gentle and sweet. It isn't that they can talk for hours, because she and Ross do talk for hours, every day.

It's nothing so understandable. It's that they interrupt each other and don't apologize. It's that he takes long strides when he walks. It's that when he's excited about something, his words start tripping over themselves and he holds his palms to her, fingers straining, like he's trying to toss her the idea physically. These things don't matter. It doesn't matter that Ross always keeps his dignity and speaks quietly and rarely curses. It doesn't matter, the difference between feeling appreciated and feeling special, the line dividing love and passion. What matters in life is that Ross loves her and treats her well. What matters right now is that he was saying something about the book he is reading, and then she nodded and said it made sense and she'd love to read it, and he said he'd lend it to her when she was done, and he looked her straight in the eye when he said this and now neither of them is saying anything and she is wondering which one is going to break first.

She is going to vomit if she delays the inevitable any longer. The sin has been committed. She leans close to him slowly, he watches her through half-closed eyes. He doesn't move to join her or to stop her. Their lips touch, slightly parted. His eyes are still open, his lips are still.

She misread him. She wants to crawl into a hole and never speak to anyone again. She jerks away, blushing, mouth dry, trying to figure out how she can apologize for this. She looks at him so he can see in her eyes the apology she can't put into words.

He looks at her. He doesn't look angry.

She starts to say something, she doesn't yet know what.

He kisses her.

The first kiss is like a knife in her stomach. She kisses him harder, leans into him, twists her fingers into his hair, trying to twist the knife further into her gut. The more she kisses him, the worse she feels. Good. That much at least is at it should be. He pushes against her until her back is on the couch. He lifts his legs to straddle her. She feels the knife dissipating. She struggles to hold on to her guilt. He unbuttons her blouse. She fails. He pulls off his shirt. She can feel his heart beating like crazy. She can feel the warmth from his groin. She's never been so turned on so fast. The one thing she can still keep in mind is that Ross would be shattered if he knew. The one kindness she can hold on to is to make sure he never finds out. As much as she might want to confess, the guilt will be her own burden. She will carry it around and it will tear her apart and she will let it, because she does love Ross, if not as well as he deserves. This is the last thing she can do for him: to shield him with her whole self from a blow of her own making.

Harry and Sharon

He doesn't understand his good luck.

It's not that he hasn't hooked up with girls before; he's even had sex with two of them. It's just that he always attributed his high batting average to the necessarily low standards of females his age: he wears deodorant, he needs to shave and "forgets" to just often enough to give himself (he sheepishly likes to think) a look somewhat rugged and therefore almost manly, he is tall and not quite too thin, he doesn't shuffle when he stands still, his hair is shaggy but too short to put in a ponytail (which he would have the good sense to avoid even if it weren't), all of his pants reach past his ankles, he doesn't wear brightly colored polo shirts, he has dimples, and, most importantly, he can make eye contact with people, even girls, for prolonged periods of time without looking away or getting sweaty palms from the strain, and while all of these things combined to make him seem like an unusually desirable specimen of his sex, he was never deluded enough to think they were in any way special characteristics; he just figured that his peers were missing so many of them so often as to render most of them completely unacceptable until their twenties, at which point they would catch up, the playing field would get more level, and hopefully this wouldn't bother him because maybe by then he would have found an actual girlfriend of longer than five months.

But she is already in her twenties, and she probably knows a lot of men in their twenties, and she is here with him anyway, naked in her bed in her tiny apartment, having just had sex. Great sex, even. Really great sex. They're not exactly snuggling--she doesn't strike him as the snuggling type--just lying close together, him on his back, her on her side propping her head up with her hand, his arm loosely draped around her shoulders. She is gazing slowly from his face down his body and back again, as if not only appreciating his body but celebrating her own ability to bend it to her whims. He doesn't particularly mind. He likes her whims.

"What are you thinking?" she asks. When she says it, it doesn't sound like pillow talk; more like the college interview that landed him here for the first time three weeks ago.

"I'm wondering what the fuck you see in me." The nice thing about sex without romance is he feels free to speak honestly, since neither of them is invested enough in the relationship to start inventing ideals for the other to feel unspokenly obliged to live up to.

She smiles, a slow, private smile. "And why's that?"

"Because. You're like, so fucking hot it's like, a joke." He likes all the usual things about her--a face somewhere between girl next door and Hollywood starlet, a marvelously grab-worthy ass, breasts that hang slightly more than they perk in a way that strikes him as dignified--and stupid things too, like the way her hair sticks to her face when she starts to sweat, the freckles across her collarbone, the way her skin seems more connected to her actual body than in girls his age, even though it's probably looser. "And you're like, a super smart grad student and shit, and like, twenty-four, and I'm like practically just a kid." He also likes that she isn't shy about her age.

"Are you complaining?"

"No. God, no. Just. I don't know. Curious, I guess."

"Hmm." She drags her finger up and down the middle of his chest. "Well, you're beautiful. You can go much longer than most guys your age, or mine. You're a quick learner."

This is true. While he wasn't totally ignorant before, knowing all the things a good sensitive boy who cares--and he has always cared--about a girl enjoying herself is supposed to do, such as giving oral without making a face and not asking her to swallow, now he actually knows what to do with his tongue once he's down there; she has never answered his eager queries with "You're doing just fine" unless she meant it, and her commands, while gentle, are specific. And while he knew that there were positions besides missionary, the fact that these extended beyond woman-on-top and doggy style came, it must be said, as somewhat of a surprise.

"And also." She pauses. He thinks the smile looks--sad? Wistful? But the lines of her mouth haven't changed. "You don't pretend to know more than you know. Guys my age have lost that. Some of them even lost it at your age. They think they know fucking everything, and they know enough that for a while it's not a problem, but after a while it makes you feel anonymous, because you don't have anything to add. Like they could be showing off for anyone, and you should be grateful they chose you. Don't ever get like that, kid." She rests her palm between his hipbones. He feels himself starting to get hard again. He moves his thumb along the freckles on her collarbone. "It's a shitty way to live."

He thinks she's not talking about just sex anymore, and he wonders about who was like that, and how they could be so stupid to do that to her of all people, and if he's supposed to ask, or even allowed to, but then she's back to sex, her smile definitely curving up wickedly this time, saying, "Plus, guys your age barely need to wait before going again." She leans in to kiss his neck and he starts to shift his body towards her, but she pushes him back down and straddles his knees, slowly moving her head closer to his pelvis. He figures if she had wanted something from him just now, she would have asked; she always has, and he's always tried his best to provide. With this kind of luck, trying is the least he could do.

Paul and David

Paul is aware that there are worse things than being in love with your heterosexual roommate. Sometimes, when he can't sleep, he lists them, seeing how far he can go without invoking genocide (last time, he started at "being in love with your heterosexual roommate who has a girlfriend" and drifted off somewhere around "being in love with your heterosexual roommate who has a girlfriend with whom he has noisy sex on the nights he isn't noisily cheating on her with a string of other buxom blondes or whatever it is straight boys like, while you are failing all your classes and also your house just burned down, leaving you a penniless orphan. With herpes"). Other times, he mentally composes hate mail for the Dean of Housing, for sticking him in a tiny room with a boy who looks and, if his sports scholarship is any indication, plays like one of those Brazilian soccer gods, yet isn't a meathead. He is, in fact, so not a meathead Paul occasionally wonders if he might in fact be gay, before chiding himself for stereotyping and reminding himself that God doesn't love him that much. If the fact that David broke up with his high school girlfriend in October is proof, in Paul's world, of the existence of God, his heterosexuality is proof of God's cruelty.

Today David had a game in which he scored the winning goal. Paul goes to all of David's home games and some of the away games, because David has always attended his orchestra concerts (eagerly! He likes classical music! Enough to have an intelligent conversation with Paul about the pros and cons of the conductor's interpretation of Beethoven's Second!) - and, if he is being completely honest, because sometimes (like today) David takes off his shirt. Usually, Paul tags along to the post-game celebrations, but today, he found himself unwilling once more to drink himself numb as girls flock to David like frat boys to a keg. David, still smiling his slightly crooked, slightly dazed, ludicrously dimpled victory smile, had called out, "Hey Paul! You coming tonight?" Paul, thinking I wish, had begged off, citing more or less truthfully a beast of a psychology paper.

So Paul finds himself sober when David stumbles in at two in the morning after taking about two minutes to work the lock on their door, still missing his shirt. Paul supposes it's currently littering some girl's floor and finds himself overwhelmed with a disturbing desire to find this girl and punch her in the face.

David sits on Paul's bed, very close, smelling of sweat and beer. Paul wonders that he still finds him attractive. "Heeeey, Paul-boy. Whatcha readin'?" Paul shows him the cover. "Fuck! I fucking love The Brothers Kara-- Kaz-- Klezmer--"

"Karamazov."

"Yeah. Fuck. I fucking love that book, man."

"Yeah, you lent it to me."

"I did? Fuck. Fucking good book."

"How was the party?"

"Fucking... party. It was. You know?" David is very drunk. Paul is not sure he has seen David this drunk. "Same fucking party, same fucking people. Good times, but I was like, fuck man! I wish Paul was here. And then I was like, hey! I know where Paul is! So I can like, go to him!" David sounds inordinately pleased with himself for this idea. He puts his arm around Paul's shoulders and leans in. "So now I'm here. On your bed. With my best friend! Paul."

Paul glances up at the ceiling. This is because I left the Church, isn't it?

"Seriously," David insists, though no one was protesting. "You are like, the greatest fucking guy." His face is very close to Paul's. Paul can see the outlines of his muscles gleaming artfully in the light of the reading lamp. David's nose is touching his cheek. "Remember that time we stayed up talking about how fucked up religion made us?"

"Yeah." Paul remembers that night as the night he realized, with a sinking feeling, that a boy who could make him laugh so much while sympathizing with his issues with the Catholic Church was a boy he could fall in love with, especially if he looked like David.

"That was." David is practically breathing into Paul's mouth now. "A great night." With apparent effort, he brings his gaze up to Paul's eyes and then down, Paul sees, to his mouth.

"It was," says Paul. He waits for David to continue babbling drunkenly, but instead there is a long silence during which he tries to tell himself he has no reason to be tense, and then David pulls his face close and kisses him--a real kiss, open-mouthed and hard, sloppy and drunk but still skillful, and Paul tries to think of things to do besides kissing him back but fails, and somehow Paul finds his hand on the back of David's neck, and then David swings his sweaty soccer-player body around so that his knees are straddling Paul's thighs, and his hands drift down Paul's shoulders and chest while Paul brings his hands to his waist and hesitates, wondering if he should pull--but David takes care of that, bringing his chest against Paul's chest, his hips down and he may be too wasted to make sentences or stand upright but he's as hard as Paul is and Paul realizes it is too late for either of them to turn back.

David stops kissing him to tug ineffectually at his shirt, and as Paul lifts it over his head he wonders whether in the morning this will be proof of God's mercy or further evidence of His sadism. Either way, thank You, he thinks, before David kisses him again and he stops thinking at all.

Sharon and Ezra

He was the least beautiful man she had ever been with. In her younger days (younger days, she echoes in her mind, amused at the predictability of one heading--it feels like but isn't rushing--towards thirty, as though twenty-six is old, which from the perspective of one who was recently on the other side of twenty-five it is) she favored graceful types, O they of glowing skin and slender limbs. She had thought of more than one of them that he looked like one of those boys in Rennaissance paintings whom museum tour guides always told you were rumored to have been sleeping with the painter, though the tour guide would like to emphasize that letters praising sleek thighs were not, in fact, direct evidence of any impropriety and personally the tour guide did not see why everyone had to bring sex into everything nowadays anyway.

She thought it was because sex intensified everything, burning the soul like whiskey burns the throat. The day--or, on some especially pleasant occasions, the afternoon--after sex with one of those beautiful boys the world seemed made of glass from Milan, smoother to the touch, more dazzling, more breakable and therefore more precious. In the evenings she would return to Harry, or Luke, or Ephraim, or one of dozens more--well, she thinks, at least a dozen--and make love like they were making art, admiring the strands of their hair, the feminine curve of their lips, the way their eyelashes extended past their soft profiles, the hollow shine in their eyes like glass.

He is short, he is stocky, he is hairier than any of them and his eyes are small, but they focus on her so that she feels almost embarrassed by the spotlight of his desire, his eyebrows are thick but he raises one of them in a look of such cockiness and amusement that it makes her want to smile and kiss him at the same time, his lips are thin but his laugh is so full she always joins in, and his hands are coarse but strong, gentle--knowing. She wonders if he always knew he wasn't beautiful and is somehow making up for it by projecting himself so strongly into her life that when she looks at him she sees a mirage--a beautiful man who isn't, one she wants regardless.

These mornings she walks into the world unsettled, with the feeling she can see the atoms of things magnified and vibrating, like the colors of an Impressionist painting one has gazed at too long. She notices movements she was unaware of before--leaves and garbage swirling in the wind, lovers smiling at each other before returning their attention to others, the waddling walk of short-legged dogs. She feels she inhabits more fully the sidewalks she jogs on. She smiles at strangers and is consistently astonished when they smile back.

When she returns home they have conversations that are like sex that lead into sex that is like a conversation where they are yelling with excitement and too absorbed in the swirl of their words to notice that they keep interrupting each other. She is used to leaving men helpless--how easy it is, really, once one learns the necessary skill--used to the dazed, grateful post-orgasm smiles, but this is the first man to reduce her to a trembling nameless collection of criscrossed nerves, feeling touches on her breasts down through her thighs, releasing tension from her cunt up through her throat, grasping at something that is him and is also the grasping itself. She wonders if he knows her body so well because he knows her mind, or if he simply knows how to read a woman.

He is short, he is stocky, he is not beautiful, but he wants her with his entire body, and hers is only too happy to respond.