Best Gay Romance 2012

Me and Justin Thulon grew up together in a little town called Bolt, Texas, about thirty miles outside Arlington. Little ol’ place. I mean, there couldn’t been more than five hundred or so people lived there (and it ain’t done nothing but shrink ever since then). Me and Justin were next-door neighbors, so it was natural we took up with each other. Beginning at nine years old we were buddies and did everything together. Went fishing. Rode four wheelers. Played little league football and baseball, too. But we liked fishing the best. It was a way to get away from other folks and be to ourselves and talk about things or just not say anything at all and enjoy that.

But it didn’t last for long. Well, not long enough. When I was twelve my daddy announced we were moving to South Carolina because he was taking a new job. He had family there too. In fact that’s where his mama and daddy were living at the time, so we would be moving close to them. Daddy said he had found a job there on purpose because he wanted to get back close with his mama and daddy. They were getting older and were not in the best of health, and they needed him. Well, I didn’t have anything against that. But I sure didn’t want to leave Bolt, because leaving Bolt meant leaving Justin Thulon, and I couldn’t stand the thought of that. I even asked Daddy if there wasn’t any way I could stay in Bolt and live with Justin and his mama and daddy, but Daddy shook his head firm in response. No way. I had to go to South Carolina with them. So I went.

But I didn’t like it. I cried and cried all the way out there—I was a twelve-year-old boy just sniveling and going on so much my mama turned around and threatened to whup the tar out of me right there in the car. But all I could think of was Justin and our good times together. Man, you should have seen how far me and him could jump them gullies on the four-wheelers, and us little fellows and all! We’d fly like birds and just scare the yellow tee-tee right out of our poor mamas. There was the fishing. The sports. The jokes we played on girls with rubber snakes and plastic lizards. The way at night we’d lie under the great big Texas sky and make patterns out of the stars with our fingers. We’d decided we were brothers in a way, not blood brothers, but brothers of the heart and spirit, although I am not sure that’s the way we worded it back then. But it was the way we meant it. And we vowed always to be buddies and brothers, and then, durned if my daddy didn’t go and get that job in South Carolina and make me be the one to break our promise.

Well, the years passed in South Carolina. I got used to things. Me and Justin talked on the phone and sent emails and text messages and such, and then all of a sudden communication quit between us. I got involved in high school football and baseball; I dated girls; just the usual stuff in teen years. And I reckon Justin did the same. And when you get busy it’s awfully easy to lose touch with people, even your best friend and brother of the heart and soul. That’s what happened, and pretty soon I turned eighteen and was out of high school and in college. I attended a small community college in town but had plans to go to the big school in Columbia eventually.

One day in spring I was leaving my statistics class, headed for my car, when who do you reckon comes roaring into the school parking lot on his big Harley-Davidson but Justin Thulon? That’s right. He came in with a roar, doing wheelies and turning that hog round and round so everyone would see him. That was his style. Show-offy. Grand. Big. Just like you’d expect of somebody from Texas. He landed that monster right at my feet and through his black Ray-Bans, said to me, “What’s happenin’, partner?”

Well, that just all seemed too crazy to me. I needed an explanation. He told me to get on back of him, and I did, and he roared us out of that parking lot and cut up and down main streets and side streets until we came to an apartment complex just a little ways out from downtown, a brick place with two stories and cement columns and cement steps. He cut off the engine of his hog and held out his arm in a dramatic way. “That’s my residence now, Brandon Bobo. That’s my abode. My castle.”

He led me up the steps to his apartment and into the place, which had some unopened boxes on the floor and such. He was still unpacking. He closed the door and held out his arms again, this time to receive me in them. I went to him. We hugged big and long. I stepped back. In all the crazy confusion of his arrival, I hadn’t noticed the physical change in Justin. I mean he was buff! My eyeballs just bulged out at how muscular he had gotten. When we were growing up and all, Justin had always been skinny and had stayed that way up to the time I left Texas. Now he had big shoulders and a wide chest and guns with healthy looking veins. This was all apparent through his blue T-shirt and the black leather vest over it. He had grown him a little goatee too to go along with his moustache, and he kept his light brown hair cut short, almost military style but not quite a buzz cut. All in all, he was pretty impressive.

We cleared space off the couch. His folks had come with him from Bolt with a U-Haul to help him move. He said he just decided he wanted to be back close to me, that he missed me, that he was tired of Texas, and he was old enough to decide if he wanted to make the move. His mama and daddy weren’t thrilled about him wanting to move so far away, but what could they say? He was eighteen. A legal adult. He didn’t have a job yet, but he was scouring the want ads. Did I know of anything? I told him I had a work-study job at the school helping out in one of the administrative offices. He wanted to know if I could get him one. I laughed and told him he had to be enrolled in school first before he could apply. That made him frown, which made me laugh again. Justin was no fan of higher education. He was lucky, he said, to have gotten a high school diploma.

Our talk went on like that for a while. I asked him if he had left a girlfriend behind in Bolt, and he said no, he hadn’t been seeing anybody steady. “Just playin’ the field.” I told him it was the same for me, that I had other things on my mind right then, and other goals. We wound up back at the college to get my car, and then we went over to this Mexican restaurant in town for supper. It was nothing like the TexMex you could get in Arlington, but it wasn’t bad. I had the enchiladas rancheros, and Justin had a plate of steak fajitas. When we got done with supper we stopped by the house, so Mama and Daddy could see Justin, and they were just as shocked and happy as I was that he had moved to South Carolina. It was late by the time all the talk was through, and Justin was heading out the door for his apartment when he stopped me at the door and whispered, “Why don’t you move out of here and in with me? There’s room. And you’re old enough to be on your own, don’t you think?”

It was a thought, one I turned over and over in my head in bed that night and one that kept me from getting a good night’s sleep. But that wasn’t the only thing. I couldn’t get over how good Justin looked, just popping out with muscles and everything. Another thought occurred to me right out of nowhere, one I hadn’t been looking for that surprised me: I would have loved to have seen the shape of Justin’s muscles outside of his clothes. Naked. Head to foot. Wow, that idea just knocked the breath out of me. Where had it come from? I tried to shoo it away and go to sleep, but I couldn’t. In fact, the desire got more and more dirty. I could see Justin not only naked but touching himself. Yeah. One hand was squeezing one of his nipples, pinching the tip, and the other had hold of his dick, and he was giving it a good, hard jerking too, making his whole body shake and his face bunch up in concentration, just like the dudes do in the porno flicks. And pretty soon he was emptying his load into the air, just spurting white juice all over the place. Again I tried to get the image out of my head. And I found myself just soaking wet, man—I mean, just hot from head to foot, and drenched. Had the fantasy of my buddy pulling his pud got me into such a state? That worried me.

I got out of bed and went to the window and stared out at the dark. Didn’t think of anything. Didn’t want to. But my hands thought for me. They unbuttoned my pajama top, whipped it away from my arms and let it drop to the ground. Then they went for the bottoms. Pulled ’em away from my hips, pushed them down my legs, until I was at the window stark naked, or almost. Then it occurred to me how close Justin was: just a few miles away, not hundreds or even a thousand. He was right across town in his new apartment, probably as naked as me. My hands found my dick hard and standing straight up, touching the windowsill. I moved some till the head ran into the window itself, and I began to rub it back and forth. I was tracing Justin’s name into the windowpane. I grabbed hold of my dick, and a wave of tingly heat shimmered over my skin. I closed my eyes and thought of me and Justin together like this, naked, coming close, each taking the other into his arms, embracing, running our hands over each other’s bare skin, arms, chest, bare butt. The image got me so excited I jerked my dick the way I’d pictured Justin jerking his, going at it real hard, playing with my tits the way he had in my fantasy, moaning, until I couldn’t take it anymore, and the white stuff just hopped out of me and hit the windowpane, one, two, three shots of it, big globs running down the glass. When the good feeling had passed and I was calm again, I took my dick and smeared it in the goo, again trying to write Justin’s name.

Mama and Daddy weren’t crazy about the idea of me moving in with Justin. I didn’t think they would be. They loved Justin and all, but they knew he wasn’t the most responsible human being in the world. Too fun-loving. They worried he might not get a job and would stick me with the bills while he just played around. I told them I thought he had changed, even though I didn’t have one bit of proof of such a thing. It was just that I wanted to live with Justin, to be as close to him as possible, and I didn’t really need their permission. I was over eighteen. Still, I wanted them to approve. I told them that I’d look out for myself. I wouldn’t let Justin or anybody else hoodoo me.

But after I settled in with Justin, I wondered if they didn’t have a point, because Justin sure didn’t seem in any kind of hurry to get a job. Oh, he didn’t bum money off me or anything. He seemed to have his own cash. I’m not sure where he got it, but he paid his share of the rent and the utilities. I was just worried that money, wherever it came from, might run out in a hurry. The bulk of it he spent in socializing. He wasn’t twenty-one yet, but that didn’t stop him from going out to some of the local clubs, the ones in town and a little bit out of town. He couldn’t drink, but he could go in and shoot the bull with total strangers. A lot of bull. Justin was a master of bull-slinging, and sometimes he went too far and got other folks mad. He had opinions about everything, whether he knew anything about it or not, and he liked to show off and talk real big. I guess he figured that was a trait of being from Texas. He was always like that, even when we were young boys, and he was all the time getting into fights. Most times I didn’t accompany him because I had homework. But on the weekend a couple of times I went with him, and I saw him in action, just a-bragging or putting some other fellow down, and he got this close to getting into a big-time fight with some big-time boys. I warned him about it, but he shrugged me off, said it was all just for fun, and he could handle some drunks if he needed to.

But what really got on my nerves was when Justin stayed home. Then he would lounge around in nothing but his underwear, and it was awful hard for me to keep from staring at him. He was awesome, just this solid block of smooth tanned muscle! He would sit in the den watching TV, his legs spread, and sometimes, almost like he wasn’t thinking about it, he’d reach down and dig into his crotch. I don’t know if he did it on purpose or to get my attention, but it was awfully distracting. We lived in a small apartment with only one bedroom. Justin slept on the couch, all the time promising he’d get a rollaway bed. There’d be times I would stay up late doing homework at the little kitchen table, and I’d glance at him on the couch in the dark, sleeping in nothing but those BVDs, and I swear on a couple of occasions I’d see him playing with himself. His eyes looked to be closed, but there was no mistaking that motion! I’d eventually have to get up and go in the bedroom to study.

Well, one Friday night, Justin decided he wanted to go out. He asked me, but I turned him down again. I had a big chemistry exam that following Monday, and I had to get in all the studying before then I could. He looked at me like he couldn’t believe I would turn down a chance to go barhopping because I had to study. He just thought that was the most pathetic thing and told me I was letting life pass me by. It pissed me off some, and I let him know. I told him I was studying to be something and didn’t want to end up a no-count bum like him. Well, that pissed him off, and he left, cussing me under his breath. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings or anything, but I was stressed out from studying and didn’t feel like putting up with anybody’s shit, you know?

I worked so hard that night I fell asleep at the kitchen table with all my books and papers underneath me and almost didn’t hear the doorbell ringing. My head shot up. I looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. Through blurry eyes I saw that it was three thirty in the morning. The buzzer kept sounding. I got up, all groggy, to answer it. I opened the door, and there stood a police officer, a young guy in his suit and hat and with his gun belt on and everything.

And he did. He said Justin had been at the Look-Out bar that evening and had gotten into some kind of argument with another man. They were going at each other with fists, although about what the police didn’t yet know. The bar manager told them to get out. They did. But the fight resumed in the parking lot. They cussed each other and finally went to hitting. The other fellow pulled out a gun and shot twice. Both shots hit Justin in the abdomen. He survived the trip to the emergency room but died once they got him on the operating table.

I tell you, the next few hours were like a bad dream. I can’t possibly explain in words how I felt. It was like some wild animal had got loose in my insides and was just gnawing away. That police officer told me I’d have to go down and identify the body, and I’d be the one to have to tell Justin’s family and all that, and the only thing I could think of was, We argued, me and Justin. He left here mad at me, and I didn’t get to tell him I’m sorry! Man, you would have to look in a baby carriage to find something that cried as much as I did. Oh, I did. Right in front of people. It didn’t matter. That was my best friend on that cold slab in the morgue. That was my brother, and more, in that casket in that little church in Bolt, Texas. They had him all dressed up in a suit and tie, something I’d never seen Justin in, and his face shone so shiny and bright, I almost leaned down to kiss it.

Well, some time passed, but the hurt from losing Justin was still pretty tender. He stayed on my mind all the time, 24/7. It seems everywhere I went I could see him, and these were in places he had probably never even been. It occurred to me in a sorrowful way that while Justin lived in South Carolina we had not really done the things we used to do growing up as boys in Texas—play sports, go four-wheeler riding, or fishing. And I thought, I’ll dust off my rod and reel and head to the water and catch a big one for ol’ Justin.

My granddaddy owned some land outside of town, with a pond. I didn’t know if there were even any fish. But it didn’t matter. It was just the idea of being outside in the warm, wonderful, sunshiny weather, the grass green as a frog’s back, the breeze coming cool off the blue face of the pond. I lay back in the grass at some point and closed my eyes. Right away I saw Justin—the naked Justin, the way I had pictured him that night in my bedroom at home: naked and muscular and sporting a big ol’ boner in front of him. It seemed obscene in a way thinking about him like that and him gone and all, but I couldn’t help it. And pretty soon I saw myself with him, naked too, us coming together, embracing, and this time something more—kissing. Hungrily, our mouths just fierce for each other, our hands going crazy up and down each other’s body. The image got me all tingly. My hands went down to the crotch of my pants. I was hard. I rubbed myself. I shouldn’t have. It seemed, well, kind of sacrilegious. Then I had an even crazier idea. I stood up and took off my clothes. That’s right! I got naked as a jaybird in the great outdoors, not a stitch on. If somebody came along, I’d say I was about to go skinny-dipping. But really I didn’t care. This was for Justin, I figured. I lay back down in the grass and brought up the image again of me and Justin going at it and played with myself, jerking myself really hard. It felt good but hurt too—the idea of something that never would be. I moaned and cried too, the tears rushing down my face while my right hand went crazy on my dick. I called Justin’s name over and over while I watched in my mind how we loved each other with our hands and our mouths and our dicks. I got real close to coming, right on the very point, when I heard a voice over me: “Damn, Brandon, I never knew you were hung like that, boy!”

My eyes flew open. I let out a holler. The sun blinded me a minute till I shielded it with my hand. And there above me stood…it couldn’t be him, but who the hell else could it have been? Justin Thulon! Right over me. Naked as I was. Dripping wet, the pond water flashing over his skin like diamonds and rubies. He smiled down at me and pointed at my dick. “Of course I never got a chance to see you when you were grown, now did I?”

“I reckon there was a little bit of unfinished business that had to be taken care of.” And then he quit smiling and the humor left his voice and he went down to me right there on the ground, taking me back to the ground with him with one of his huge, smooth arms. He didn’t say any more. He leaned over to kiss me. It felt real! It felt like a man’s mouth and a man’s moustache and goatee. It sure tickled like one. His tongue flicked out of his mouth and danced on my lips a minute before moving down to my hard and sweaty nipples. He sucked one and then the other, bit them, then let his tongue do its little dance on them again and went on. He circled my navel with his tongue, and pretty soon he reached my crotch, where my dick stood hard and heavy like some flagpole in the middle of things.

“So damn big,” he repeated in a breathless voice and then licked it like he had everything else. He was thorough. He didn’t let one inch of my dick escape the swipe of his tongue. Pretty soon he had the head in his mouth and he was pushing his face down the length of the whole shaft the best he could. He choked and came back up then went down again. This second time he held the thing longer and tickled the head with his tonsils. I just squirmed on the ground and dug one hand in the grass and the other into his beefy shoulder. He bounced up and down on me with his face, taking in as much as he could. His free hand wandered over my balls and farther down. He even played with my feet a minute. Then the hand crept back up and found its way between my legs.

“I always thought you had the cutest damn ass, Brandon,” he told me, once he’d let my dick go. I spread my legs so he could explore me further. He had his middle finger between my asscheeks and was wiggling it into the crack. He had trouble getting into the hole right away, but pretty soon he was finger-pumping me and sucking my dick again at the same time. It was all too good to believe. It had to be a dream, but it felt so real! It felt selfish too, me getting all that pleasure. So I worked myself around on the ground so that I had hold of his thick dick and was sucking it too. It was the first time I had ever done it. I was sure I was no good at it, probably not putting the kind of pressure on him that made him feel good. But I tried. And he moaned and told me it was good. And he must have been right, because it wasn’t long before he called out to me that he was about to shoot off, and sure enough, almost as soon as I had him out of my mouth, he was firing long strings of cum into the grass. His body tensed up then released. But he never stopped sucking me until I felt my own climax coming on. I told him so. He took me out of his mouth and jerked me real good. And then the most intense feeling went through me, coming up through my nuts into my belly to the tips of my nipples, and I fired my stuff into the air and onto Justin’s hand. It was the best thing I had ever felt in my life.

I lay on my back. Justin worked between my legs with his mouth and hands to get me hard again. When I was hard enough, he squatted on me, lowering himself down on my dick. It went in easy, which made me wonder how many dicks had been up his butt, or if this easiness was on account of his being a spirit and all. It didn’t matter. He rode me like I was a bronco and seemed to enjoy every minute of it. He had such a sweet smile on his face the whole time, with his eyes closed. He jacked himself hard and played with his right tit, squeezing and pinching the tip, till I took over the job for him. He looked so…well…beau-tiful, riding me like that and smiling. The sight of him put as much of a feeling in my heart as it did my dick.

“I love you,” I told him as he bounced away. “I love you, Justin Thulon, and always will, no matter where the hell you are or what the hell you are. No matter.” And the tears just streamed down my cheeks and blinded me for a little bit. But through the shimmer I could make out Justin nodding and smiling even wider. Then he grunted and whimpered, and my hand and belly were soaked with his white stuff. And at the same time the switch turned on in my balls and the tingly feeling was rising up in me. Justin knew it and clamped down hard on my dick to get the most of it. And I bucked on the ground and twisted and cried out until I had every last bit of that hot stuff out of my system.

Justin fell on me and embraced me and I hugged back, and it was the best feeling I ever had. I held him so tight, just damned and determined he wouldn’t get away again. I wouldn’t let him! He kissed my face and ruffled my hair and rubbed up gently against me so our bodies were stuck together with sweat and goo. The wind came gentle off the pond. The sun was warm gold on our bodies. There wasn’t any way I wouldn’t nod off to sleep with so much goodness and comfort around me. And that’s what I did. I slept.

When I woke, my arms were empty. “Justin?” I called out right away and sat up. I looked around. He was nowhere. I stood, still naked, and walked around looking for him. Nothing. I went to the edge of the pond and stared into it, wondering if he had gone back there (if that had been the place he’d come from, that is). But there was only water and silt and a stray bass or two shooting through the coolness. My heart was heavy. I sat on the ground and put my head in my hands and started to cry again. It had all been a dream, the whole thing. A sweet dream that seemed so real. But now it was gone. I’d never really touched Justin or tasted him like I had always wanted to.

I fell back on the grass and looked up at the sky, and through my tears I saw something really peculiar. Hot almighty! And I’m not making this up, I swear. I’ll swear it on a stack of Bibles and my own dear mama’s grave that I saw what I’m saying I saw. In the sky, which was otherwise blue and clear as could be, there were words written in heavy white letters, like they had been made out of clouds, and they said this: TO BRANDON WITH LOVE, JUSTIN.