The Opera House

Britt and Cody had rules, but you couldn't talk about them and they were always changing. This made things confusing.

Take cum, for example. They were trading hands not long after they first started beating off together. And though it was understood that they try to cum at the same time, Britt had inwardly decided that getting Cody's cum on his hand was gross. So when orgasms approached, it was hands to one's self.

Then one night it wasn't. They were lying on the living room carpet jacking each other off, their heads up against the industrial cable spool they used for a coffee table and their feet dipping under the fabric flap at the bottom of the busted easy chair. Their slim naked sides collided in little electric volts of contact, but all in all it was a typical scene at 3 a.m. in their shared apartment in the rural town of Groom, Pennsylvania. There was a newly purchased and half-killed case of Keystone beer in the fridge and a girl was being double-penetrated on the TV.

Then their heads turned and their lips touched, and the next thing Britt knew Cody was making out with him. Making out was questionable behavior, though they'd done it before—but only because their TV was broken and they couldn't watch porn, and making out helped Britt get hard. By some miracle of the male animal mind, kissing had become purely functional.

But Britt's mom had bought them a new TV a week ago, so that excuse was gone. Fortunately they'd been doing tequila shots earlier that day and Cody had eaten the worm, so maybe that forgave it, and Britt kissed right back as they writhed around, fists working overtime. Cody's tongue slid softly between Britt's lips, drawing their orgasms closer.

Thus in the space of a minute two rules had been tested—Britt was cumming and Cody was cumming and it was streaming all over their respective hands. As they broke apart and wiped up Britt figured it wasn't the end of the world—they were using the same crusty, bleach-spotted towel they'd been sharing for weeks now anyway, so what was the difference?

One lazy Sunday morning not long after, Britt (who'd woken up rock-hard, having had an intense and wholly-forgotten dream about Cody) shot a streaming rope of cum right across the golden dusting of hair on Cody's chest. Cody, (a towhead with a big cock that more than made up for his lack of self-confidence) started cumming too, and feeling turnabout was fair play he arched his hips upward and blew jizz onto Britt's bony pelvis. They'd chided each other about it afterward, then that night did it deliberately, both of them directing their spewing cocks onto each other's bodies in a mock display of satiric maliciousness.

They progressed to eating their own loads, Britt one night throwing his legs up over his head with a bold smile and a devious look in his heavy-lidded eyes. He sent several creamy shots of cum sailing into his open mouth, some of it oozing down his sparsely stubbled face; then made a show of licking his lips. Cody was appropriately shocked and fake-appalled, but next time Britt "talked him into doing it" too. Soon they were regularly blasting in their own mouths, having drummed up some nonsense about how it was criminal to "waste it" and that chicks who spit were dumb cunts who didn't deserve their cocks anyway.

Not that any girls were banging down their door. Or that they necessarily wanted them to.

***

So. How had they progressed to eating each other's cum? Oral sex was a huge no-no, and admitting an interest in it would have been tantamount to gaily gadding about with a frilly pink parasol in hand.

The lame and tortured excuse for a catalyst had been Britt's drunken shit-talking about how "My load tastes better than yours." What a con, they both knew it, but Cody took the bait like a good little guppy.

"Like you'd know," he said. They were standing in the kitchen, using one hand to suck down cigarettes and the other to tweak their half-hard dicks through their boxers.

"Whatever, dude. You know it tastes better if you eat, like, vegetables and shit, and I get those salads at McDonald's all the time," said Britt.

"My cum tastes fine," Cody said, dropping the butt of his cigarette in a beer can.

"So put your money where your mouth is. Or your mouth where my cock is," Britt said.

"Fuck you."

"You always scrunch up your face when you eat yours!" Britt said. By now he'd thrown a huge rod. It was exceptional when they found the language to talk about it, when they drew it out to the edge.

"That's cause I'm cumming. I'm like, overwhelmed."

"Bullshit," Britt said, and it was, all of it was, but when it led where it led —Britt acquiescing to his own challenge, licking Cody's load off of his slender stomach to compare and doing it hungrily ("How is it?" Cody asked. "Nasty," Britt said after he'd eaten every drop. "Told you"), then Britt jacking himself off and Cody sucking the cum off of Britt's fingers, one by one till they were clean—how could you deny it? It was filthy, and it was hot.

But you weren't allowed to say that. Once Cody had, and Britt shot him a withering look that dropped Cody's stomach like a stone in a well. It took a whole day of strained cohabitation before they were doing it again.

***

Life was momentary for Britt Laney and Cody Jackson. One moment they were smoking a joint of dirt weed they'd scraped together from errant baggies, the next they were shoving garage tools up their asses. (That was thanks to Britt, who'd broken the ass-ice after months of them doing all they could to avoid it.)

Momentary because the boys, both nineteen, were away from home for the first time and enjoying every minute of their independence.

They'd met after their first semester at VyoTech, the local technical school where they were studying to become auto mechanics. By spring they had moved into a unit in the Opera House on Market Street. The Opera House had been just that in Groom's late nineteenth-century heyday, when the river and railroad between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia had sent industry and the town's population booming. At some point the block building was gutted and sectioned off into apartments that hadn't been renovated since 1962, but who cared when you were paying $350 a month for a two-bedroom place? Not the landlords, that was for sure.

They were friends—best friends, and that was the extent to which they could admit to their relationship. They knew what faggots were and knew that they weren't faggots. There were faggots in town; older guys, boyfriends apparently, who owned a house on Spring Street—Clitter Schreve, their townie friend and fellow gearhead, had pointed it out.

At first Britt had thrown a lot of fag-talk around, but that ebbed, mainly because Cody didn't play up to it. Cody may have been confused but as far as he was concerned what he and Britt did was their business, and what the faggots did was theirs. As long as Britt thought the 'twain should never meet, he'd think the same.

It got a little tricky once they started blowing each other. It began as a natural progression from feeding each other loads of cum—Cody would sit on Britt's scrawny chest, his dick close to Britt's open lips, and it was only natural that his cock head should bump against them. So Britt started wrapping his lips around the head of Cody's cock—made it easier to catch his cum, anyway, and it wasn't like you were chugging a cock past your gag reflex like some gutter whore.

Cody did it in turn, just like he did anything once Britt implicitly allowed it. They found it felt even better when the other used his tongue a little, nursing the head between his lips like it was a nipple or a lollipop. Then Britt went for broke and slid his mouth all the way down Cody's big dick, and it was cool, no big deal —so Cody began taking all of Britt's small one.

The rules regarding this were subtle and amorphous. It was okay to swallow a dick the whole way every once in a while, but bobbing the knob too much was suspect. Head movements were to be kept to a minimum. All of this was under the guise of eating each other's loads, so if you were using your mouth to help that along, fine. If you were sucking to suck it was not fine.

Their asses were the demarcation point, the event horizon. But from the beginning their buttholes were engaged, squinching and releasing so exquisitely as surges of pleasure swarmed through their bodies. The act of throwing their legs over their heads, warm holes exposed to the cool air, had been an unspoken but key element to what made the self-facials so exciting.

It happened one night after they'd been doing beer bongs in their apartment with Clitter Schreve and another townie, who both eventually left to find crank. Britt and Cody fell into an old-school joint jerk-off, stroking each other's cocks on the living room floor with big drunken smiles on their faces, the newly quiet apartment offering a giddy sense of promise and sexual release.

Cody had expected the usual—maybe some making out and then quasi-blowjobs. But Britt suddenly let go of Cody's dick and began tending to himself, intently watching the porno on the TV. Cody got worried, wondering if he'd crossed some invisible line.

But something was up—Britt was beating off and making it last, drawing it out longer and longer. Cody's back started to hurt from leaning against the couch, so he hoisted himself up on to it. That was when Britt swung his legs over his head, almost as if he'd been waiting for Cody to move, to give him an aerial view of his spread-wide ass.

"Man, I can't wait to feed myself a load, you know?" Britt said. He ran his hands up and down his back, feeling up his sinewy thighs, then his butt. Cody's tool was recharged—he could sense a boundary being tested. Britt was cupping his firm butt in his hands, and then his fingers were dipping into the brush of brown hair running down his crack toward his butthole. Cody had been keeping one eye on the porno for good measure, but then Britt's fingers were definitely massaging his hole, touching it in little jabs that he'd couple with a grunt. When Britt wet a finger in his mouth, it could no longer go ignored.

"Dude, what are you doing?" Cody said.

"Can't help it man, feels too fucking good. You gotta try it."

"No way," Cody said as Britt brought the slick finger to his anus. He pressed it in. "Oh man," he said, looking up at Cody from his contorted position. "It seriously feels amazing."

Cody thought I'm drunk enough, and got back down on the floor. He swung his blond-haired legs over his head, parting the thick cheeks of his hairless butt, thrilling to the feel of exposing that most sacred and profane of orifices. He wet his finger just like Britt had done, and brought it to his light-pink hole.

The sensation wasn't entirely new—he'd done it surreptitiously in the shower a couple times—but doing it with Britt was immeasurably different. It was always these moments that were the hottest, when they were doing things they said they'd never do. Britt had an engine grease-stained finger pushed all the way in his butt, then two, and Cody matched him finger for finger and stroke for stroke. Their simultaneous orgasms came like thieves in the night.

And so the ass became the focus. They devoted hours to fingering themselves, then sticking anything up their butts that they could find. Sharpie markers, screwdriver handles, an empty tequila bottle. To grease up they used a bottle of Lubriderm Cody purchased for $4.99 at Groom Pharmacy down the street.

A week later Cody, risking ridicule, bought a butt plug from the highway porno store.

"What the fuck is this?" Britt said, turning it around in his hand. Cody explained it, and then they tested it out on Britt, whose enthusiasm swelled along with his cock.

"It just sticks in there, huh?" Britt said, reaching back to feel it.

One afternoon during a break between classes he took Cody out in the woods beside the shop. Yanking down his coveralls, he showed him the red disc of the plug handle pressed up against his butt. He'd kept it in all day.

Later Britt came home with a double-ended dildo, a gesture so enormously suggestive (the thing was shaped like a giant mutant veined cock) he was compelled to say, "Don't tell anybody about this." As if, as if.

Cody had more difficulty stuffing it inside himself than Britt did (all in all Britt had seemed more adept at taking things up his ass, though both pretended not to notice this). But they had many memorable sessions on the couch and on the floor, ass to ass, banging each other in the butt, working in tandem, separate but equal.

***

The weather started to cool. Cody left town one morning to help his brother move some gravel. When he got back Britt was gone. Several hours passed and he didn't return.

Cody tried to ignore Britt's absence, but by 5 a.m. it was painful and obvious. He felt weird—he was mad at Britt, but he didn't have a reason to be. He supposed he was worried about him, but that was stupid—Britt could take care of himself.

He lay on his bare mattress in the dark, ringed by dirty clothes, cigarette cellophanes, and empty beer cans. He wondered about this place he was in, the Opera House. Maybe he was lying where the auditorium had been. He imagined a woman on stage, her voice rising to the rafters and filling the space with overbearing sound, the audience taking it in with devouring ears and hungry souls.

Whatever. It was gone now. The lady underneath them was yelling at her kids. The guy next door sold heroin. Anything else was history.

***

Britt rolled in at noon the next day, Clitter Schreve in tow. Cody desperately wanted to ask what they'd been doing all night, but there was something about the way Clitter looked at him that made Cody go back to his room and shut the door. Britt and Clitter started hanging out a lot, sidestepping Cody like he was a pizza box they were too lazy to take to the dumpster. Cody felt hollow.

One night he made Velveeta Shells & Cheese and offered some to Britt, who ate sullenly at the table. Some wall had been erected between them overnight and out of nowhere Cody could see.

Afterwards Britt had a beer and Cody joined him. They watched TV, talking more as the beer kicked in; then they were swigging whiskey and getting colossally fucked up. Cody was on the floor packing the bong. He dropped some weed and was picking it up when Britt kicked him over.

"Hey!" Cody said, laughing like it was playful. Britt had the ghost of a smile on his face. He kicked him down again. Cody grabbed Britt's leg and pulled him off the couch. They wrestled, drunkenly but seriously, knocking into furniture and using all of their muscle to hold each other down. Britt got Cody facedown on the floor and went for his boxers, tearing them off to expose his bare butt.

Cody felt violated. He grabbed Britt's thigh, then his waist, and flipped him over so hard he knocked the wind out of him. He pinned Britt's hands and yanked his sweatpants down. Britt's hard dick slapped against his stomach. Cody stared at it. He looked to Britt who had his head turned to the side. After a moment he reached out to stroke it, like they used to do. Britt endured a minute of this, then flipped on to his stomach.

Cody was confused, but he put a hand on Britt's ass and Britt backed up to meet it, so he kept it there. He got one dry finger inside him, and Britt was still gyrating his hips, face to the floor, silent. Cody stretched out on top of him, humping his dick against Britt's fuzzy crack, the head of it catching on his hole. Then Britt was adjusting his ass, and the head of Cody's cock went into Britt's asshole, and Britt backed up to take more, the pain of being fucked dry somehow bearable for him. Maybe even necessary.

Cody barely remembered cumming inside of Britt, but afterwards he saw that Britt had cum too, seemingly without touching himself—there was a wet stain on the carpet, like a bad dog's mess.

Cody rolled off and lay on his back. He was beginning to drift off when a red bomb exploded in his face.

He opened his eyes to see Britt's fist coming at him again. Britt, who'd awoken tangled in Cody's limbs only to stumble to the kitchen and finish off the bottle of whiskey, crunched him square on the nose. Hot blood poured into Cody's mouth. He got his bearings and pushed at Britt, who toppled easily. Cody stood up, blood dripping on his socks, on Britt, who was rolling on the floor like some useless thing, waiting for Cody to kick him, punch him, fuck him—wasn't it all the same?

Cody staunched the flow of blood from his nose, wiped himself up with a T-shirt, threw a different T-shirt on his bare chest, and left.

The streets were dark, the lights on Market Street blinking yellow. He wandered, addled, until the sky started to brighten. He found himself in front of the queers' house on Spring Street. Like all the other houses it was dark and quiet. He stepped into their yard and crept through the wet grass along the side of the house. He looked into a window.

He hadn't expected to find them awake, but they were. One man was standing and one was sitting at the kitchen table. Cody had enough time to see that one of them, the smaller one, was pouring two cups of coffee, had enough time to think that they may as well be from another planet before the two men met his eyes.