Naptime. The girls were asleep downstairs. Allen and I, in a lazy state from a lunch of chicken nuggets and french fries (the girls' choice), were sprawled out next to each other on the couch, yawning and gazing at the TV.
Just another rainy Sunday afternoon playdate. Allen and I had been doing this for the past two months, giving ourselves a chance at a moment of peace while the girls play with each other, on days when his wife and my girlfriend were scheduled to work.
We met through our women, in fact, though the two of us instantly hit it off. Allen, freshly thirty like me but looking as fine as I had in my early twenties, liked to work out together. Sometimes we all got together to drink and, like me, he was quite the partier. Lately, though, all these activities had taken a back seat to child rearing. Playdates were the only time we really got to hang out.
Allen, wearing nothing but a pair of nylon running shorts, his smooth and muscular body sinking back against the couch, flipped through the channels until he came to a documentary about the turn-of-the-21st-century rave scene in North America.
I'd been there, back when I was a senior in college, taking ecstasy and liquid acid and throwing myself into the sweaty throngs of young bodies dancing the night away without a care in the world. I missed those days, those wonder years of peace and prosperity. Mostly I missed the hot tattooed guy I'd made out when I was candyflipping one hallowed Halloween rave evening.
We'd carried on a pretty torrid and passionate affair, and I explored my burgeoning sexuality with him from top to bottom before I got scared about the whole thing and scurried into a relationship with a Social Sciences major from the local girls-only liberal arts college. One year later beget our bouncing baby girl, and my hunky tattooed trick (with the eight-inch dick - I know because we measured it once) fell into the deep, red, velvet-lined recesses of my memory. I still had some semblances of my youth - all of my hair and my macho, cut body - but I'd went from living on the edge to living in the suburbs of Chicago. It left something to be desired.
Allen adjusted his golden-haired legs, spreading his thighs until his knee rested against mine.
"I went to one of those once," he said.
"I went to a lot of those."
"Yeah? They were too expensive for my taste. I dug the scene though. Kinda freaky," he said, lowering his eyebrows and curling his soft pink lips into a scandalous smirk. It nearly gave me a hard-on, that look. In the lazy Sunday afternoon air, though, pretty much anything gave me a hard-on.
Just then, the documentary started talking about the mutability of sexual desire that was present in the rave scene. They could've been talking about my life. Interspersed with the commentary were a few shots of boys kissing other boys. I waited with baited breath to see how Allen reacted.
He let out a low whistle.
"See what I mean?" he said, nudging my thigh with his. "Freaky."
"So that's the kind of freaky you were talking about..." I was chiding him and testing him at the same time.
Allen shrugged.
"Never say never, man," he said. "I messed around with a guy once back in the day. Didn't scar me for life or anything. In fact it was pretty fun."
"Wow," was all I could say.
"What about you, you ever mess around with a guy?"
"Yeah, I have. Before I met Susan, I mean."
"You like it?" he said, sitting up next to me. The house was still as still could be.
"Yeah," I said, the word coming out raggedy on my breath.
"That's cool," Allen said, smiling. There was no doubt what was going on here. The trick was getting one of us to say something about it. We watched the TV, on which was a commercial for an antidepressant.
