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He smells funny. It’s almost like a food, like you could eat the smell. Well, I guess I am eating the smell. But it’s not like any food I’ve had before. Kind of a cheese, maybe? But darker, warmer, sweeter.

My head is killing me. It keeps smack, smack, smacking the headboard. And the headboard is hitting the wall. We’re making a lot of noise.

My eyes are watery now.

I’ve never had my mouth open so wide. It’s embarrassing. I wonder what I look like with this big mouth and my eyes all teary. I can feel my own drool running down my neck and I want to wipe it off but I can’t move my hands, my arms.

There’s a crack in the ceiling that runs from one corner of the wall, straight across but I can’t see how far it goes. The paint on the ceiling is so thick that it’s peeling. I want to pull on it like sunburn or dried foot skin.

And then the black triangle smashes into my face. I can’t breathe through my nose at all. All I can see is black.

There’s something else in my throat. It’s filling with liquid. My eyes feel swollen, like they are going to pop. My head is going to pop.

And then there is a profound subtraction. It comes with a sucking sound. The cock is gone, the triangle is gone, his hands are off my wrists. Blood rushes into my hands.

My head stops hitting the headboard.

This is more relief than I have ever known. I could sleep now. In fact, I feel drowsy.

His smile is in my face. We are nose to nose, eyes to eyes. In a small mean voice he says, “There. Still think you’re gay?”

I blink.

He pulls me up so that I’m sitting on the bed.

“You okay?” he says.

I watch the corners of his mustache turn up in a smile.

“You swallowed,” he says. “That was incredible. Just incredible. You have a hot mouth.”

There is a taste in my mouth that makes me think of alfalfa sprouts.

Neil stands up and steps into his underwear. Briefs. White except for a dark brown streak mark running up the middle of the butt.

I wipe the back of my hand across my mouth, soaking it. I open and close my mouth. My jaw feels tight, stuck. My lips are numb. I touch them with my finger. They seem to feel swollen. Like I’ve been nuzzling wasps. I need a mirror.

There is one light in the room, a bare bulb that hangs by a cord from the ceiling. Now I can see that the crack travels all the way across. I believe I could peel the paint off in one sheet.

Neil bends over and begins collecting his photographs. “Did you see this one?” he says, holding it up. It’s a shot of a black kid on a swing, swinging way up, almost out of the picture. But his eyes are looking right at you.

“Where’d you take that?” I say.

“New York City,” he says.

Everything is normal again. We’re talking about his pictures. He’s not angry with me.

I feel confused. He’s Neil again, but who was that? What happened? “What happened?” I say.

He sets the photographs on the bed and looks at me, hands on his hips. He smiles. “That was called sex. You think you’re gay? That’s what gay men do.”

His eyes do this little flashing thing. It’s like we’re kids at school both running for the swing at recess and he gets there first, sits on it and looks at me. It’s that kind of look. Beat ya to it!

“Get dressed,” he says, tossing my jeans at me. “I gotta drive you back.”

He goes over to the chest of drawers to get a cigarette. His back is to me. His bumpy spine showing through his skin. If I run, I think, I could dive into him with my hands, aim for that spine, maybe snap it. He would bend in two; snap; break.

I feel like there’s sun on my face.

I hate him so much.

He turns. “Smoke?”

“Okay.”

“Here.” He tosses me the pack.

I take one out and stick it in my lips. He comes over with his lighter and lights it. It seems sweet of him to do and it makes me not hate him as hard.

I take a drag off the cigarette. The smoke stings my lungs but in a good way. I let the smoke pour through my nostrils like a movie star.

I feel like I’ve walked through some door, into some room, and I’ll never be able to leave. I feel like nothing is the same. Just like that. Nothing will ever be the same again.