The guy’s screen name is DannyK. Beside the livestream, a message board scrolls viewer comments. There’s a beep when someone posts and a ding when someone tips. Supposedly, hot twinks get rich off this, though Jake’s never seen anyone clear more than fifty an hour. A hell of a way to grind out a living. He can’t fathom jerking off that much. Three, four times a day he’ll do, but every hour, eight hours a day? You’d get sore. Or bored. Maybe not bored. Jake can’t imagine getting bored of sex.
The kid tugs and tugs until Jake finds himself hard. He looks up. Thad’s watching.
“Seriously?” Thad says. He stands. He slips his notebook into his pocket and leaves the room.
Jake shuts his eyes. The laptop’s warm on his stomach, cool where the machine’s fan blows air across his skin.
He was sixteen when his father caught him masturbating. Masturbation alone, given their faith—Southern Baptist—and their church—the Church of the Glorious Redeemer, West Memphis campus—was bad enough. But Jake wasn’t just caught masturbating, he was caught masturbating to porn. And he wasn’t just caught masturbating to porn, he was caught masturbating to gay porn, a sin-packed trifecta that pretty much guaranteed him an eternity of pitchforks and fire.
His father didn’t beat him, not that time. Instead, he opened Jake’s Bible. The Bible had been a birthday present, Jake’s name embossed in gold leaf on one leather cover corner. Bible between them on the bed, his father led him through a dozen passages. He skipped Song of Songs, opting for passages condemning sexual sin. His father was versed in apologetics, and they got into the Greek, the multiple interpretations of arsenokoites. They talked David and Bathsheba. The Onan story got a lot of play.
His father admitted that boys Jake’s age had urges. Still, he must never act on them. No alternative was offered, merely the acknowledgment that, from time to time, Jake might mess up, at which point his only hope was to beg forgiveness and pray that God would make his boners go away. His father also assured him that he wasn’t gay, merely confused.
Jake wasn’t confused. In middle school, a friend had shared his stepfather’s videos. The women in the movies did nothing for him. Instead, he found himself watching the men, then watching his friend. “Don’t watch me,” the friend said. “Watch them.”
By high school, he’d had many crushes, though none he’d acted on until a youth group camping trip and the tent he shared with Sam McIntosh. All they’d done was kiss, but the next day, Sam went to their youth leader, Mr. Doug. The boys were the same age, same standing in the church, but no matter. Sam repented first. Jake had “made him do it.” Sam was forgiven, rebaptized, cleansed. Jake was all but excommunicated. No more youth group. No Wednesday nights or mission trips. He could accompany his parents to church on Sundays, nothing more. His mother cried. His father beat him, then didn’t speak to him for weeks.
Months later, when Jake turned eighteen, he was sent to the three-day Arizona camp staffed by old queens pretending that they weren’t. He heard testimony after testimony: God could intercede. God could make you straight. The scales could fall from your eyes, and just like that, you’d be really into boobs.
Jake tried. He took part in every ceremony, answered every question, sang every sparkly, halo-making song. He wanted to be a good Christian. He wanted to make his father proud. He wanted to love and to be loved by God.
Jake opens his eyes. Onscreen, DannyK’s still going at it. The chat thread scrolls by, stuffed with images and GIFs. Beeps and dings like crazy. Someone types: Go, dawg, go!
Jake’s lost his erection. He slaps the laptop closed. From the kitchen, he hears Thad’s mother on the phone.
The bedroom door opens, and Thad pokes his head in. “They’re on their way home,” he says. “Michael’s fine. Just stitches.”
“Good,” Jake says. He’s never cared much for Thad’s brother because Thad’s brother’s never cared much for him, but he wouldn’t want to see the guy hurt.
“You might want to dress for dinner,” Thad says.
Their eyes lock. Jake won’t apologize for his sex drive. Still, he feels bad. Thad’s good at guilt. Jake’s good at feeling guilty.
Thad’s stomach brushes the doorknob. That shirt. The hemline used to reach his crotch. Now it rides his waist. With Thad, everything’s skinny but his gut. Muffin top. It’s noticeable enough that, more than once, walking through Brooklyn, Jake’s caught eyes on them, expressions that seem to ask why he’s with Thad.
Thad backs out of the room and shuts the door.
A thunderclap. Jake doesn’t look outside. He doesn’t want to see the police boats, the lake. He checks his phone. A text. Marco.
Tomorrow’s a mistake. He shouldn’t go, and knowing he shouldn’t go, he will.
Blame curiosity. Blame fate. Blame Facebook. When Marco IMed him and said he lived in Asheville, and when, a week later, Thad’s mom called, insisting they visit the lake before month’s end, the timing seemed too providential to ignore. Asheville awaits, an hour away. Only a matter of getting Thad on board.
Every open relationship has boundaries, and theirs are these: Always together. Only if both are comfortable. Never if it’s an ex.
A kind of mantra: Always. Only. If.
For two years the rules have served them well. Thad wasn’t crazy about the open part at first, but Jake won’t have it any other way. He won’t have strictures imposed on him, not by church or any man. Better to be a fuckboy than an altar boy. Better to suffer one bad night than regret the torment of what if.
Marco’s different, though. Not only is he an ex, he’s Jake’s first time, first love. With Marco, just lunch can’t possibly mean just lunch, can it?
Tomorrow? Marco’s texted. We still on?
We’re on, Jake texts. He hasn’t mentioned Thad. He texts a string of x’s and o’s, goofy enough for built-in deniability should Thad raid his phone, but bold enough to mean something to Marco if there’s something there to mean.
Jake stands and slides the laptop into his bag. He slips on boxer briefs and pants.
Outside, the wind makes maracas of the trees. Beyond the trees, the lake is wavy, and the boats have left the bay.
He drops to the floor and searches for Thad’s pen, which he finds under the desk. The pen isn’t a nice one. It’s a Bic—white-barreled, black-tipped, the kind that comes cellophaned in packs of ten. Thad will write with anything, a quality Jake finds endearing. And annoying. He caps the pen and returns it to the desk.
A little time until dinner. Really, he should do something productive. He went to the trouble of getting his oils through security, brought the material safety data sheets, though in the end he hadn’t needed them. The woman at security hardly noticed the tubes. “Paints,” he said, and she let him continue to his plane. Turps and mineral spirits wouldn’t have made it through, but he can siphon gas from the lawn mower if he needs a thinner. He has a pair of canvases and pushpins for the pushpin/trash bag trick to get the canvases home wet. He has brushes and a palette. He has his collapsible travel easel. Minus palette knives, he has everything he needs.
He also has a secret.
Jake Russell, the toast of Bushwick, Frank DiFazio’s youngest client, the man Artforum called a New Symbolist for the Twenty-First Century and an American Munch, hasn’t finished a painting in six months.