Tim assured him that, indeed, this was how men their age met each other—“especially the ones who don’t like the apps.” He swore that Sam’s age wouldn’t be a problem, and that, in fact, the world was full of men looking for daddies （Sam cringed）， bears, and silver foxes. Sam did not believe he fit into any of those categories. He wondered what animal he was. A frightened groundhog? An extremely shy otter? Definitely something that was timid. Something hairy, for sure, because while he didn’t object to some judicious trimming, Sam wasn’t up for anything involving hot wax. At least, not yet.
At the club, the bass notes were making his fillings shiver. “I’ll get us drinks!” Tim shouted, and Sam nodded and went to stand in the corner, where, for fifteen minutes, he marveled at the beautiful boys in Speedos and N95 masks, waving their arms and singing along to Lady Gaga, delighting in the night, in the music, in their own freedom. He realized, too late, that he was staring when one of the beautiful boys approached him.
“Wanna dance?” Before Sam could answer, the boy had grabbed his arm and dragged him out on the dance floor, where, in his jeans and New Balance sneakers, Sam felt as conspicuous and ungainly as a fire hydrant plopped down in a field of lissome, waving reeds. He did his best to move with the music. The boy spun around, waving his arms in the air before attaching his backside to Sam’s midsection, leaving a smear of glitter on Sam’s polo shirt.
When the song changed, the boy grabbed Sam’s hand. “Wanna go outside?” he mouthed. Sam scanned the crowd frantically, looking for Tim, but his friend had disappeared, and the boy was tugging him insistently toward the door. Sam followed him out into the night and down into a parking garage. His ears were still ringing from the music. The night air was soft around them, and everything felt dreamlike, not quite real, as the young man unlocked a car and climbed into the back seat. Sam climbed in beside him. The boy pulled off his mask and fell on him, like he was a zombie and Sam the last meal he’d ever eat. His mouth was on Sam’s neck, then his ear, then back at his mouth. His tongue demanded entry, pressing and prodding and finally plunging as he slipped one of his hands up Sam’s shirt and tweaked his nipple. Sam squirmed away, trying not to giggle, because that had been Sarah’s particular torture, when they’d been little and Sam had displeased her.
“Ooh,” the boy breathed.
“Ow,” Sam said. The young man was undeterred.
“Hey,” Sam managed, as he felt fingers on his zipper. “Hey, could you—”
Too late. The boy wrenched his zipper down, and then his mouth was on Sam’s startled, but not entirely disinterested, penis. The young man was good at this, taking Sam’s entire length down the warm tunnel of his throat, his tongue making practiced swoops along the way. All of that would have been fine if the suction hadn’t been so insistent, quickly becoming just short of uncomfortable. “Hey, um… could you… could you please…” There was no way, Sam was realizing, that you could complain about a blow job and not sound ungrateful. He squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated as hard as he could on his favorite snippet from Pornhub. There was an older man, maybe in his fifties, with silvery hair and a beard, and a younger man, dark-haired and slender. The older man had attended to the younger with an attention just short of worshipful. He’d undressed the young man tenderly, telling him how handsome he was, how beautiful, and then the young man had undressed the older one, revealing a mat of springy gray chest hair, caressing him slowly. For a long time they’d just kissed, lingeringly and lovingly. It was like a scene from Greek mythology, like Narcissus twined around a statue of Zeus. That was what Sam wanted, that, not this platinum-haired Hoover-throated sex demon who still had Sam’s now mostly flaccid penis down his throat and showed no signs of letting go.
Finally, finally, the boy pulled off with a wet pop. “Hey, you need a pill?” he asked. “I can…”
“No.” Sam’s voice sounded sharper than he’d intended. He tried again. “No. I’m sorry. I just—I was—” He started over. “I don’t think this is what I want. Right now. I mean, maybe if we got to know each other a little better?”
The young man was staring at him, his expression as puzzled as if Sam had started speaking in tongues. “We could go out to dinner,” Sam said. “Or a drink? Or we could—”
The young man smiled, not unkindly, and touched Sam’s cheek. “You want a relationship,” he said. Which was true, except he said “relationship” the way Sam would have said “incurable herpes.” “That’s cool. Good luck.” He patted Sam’s cheek again, then turned and hopped nimbly out of the car, heading back toward the party, leaving Sam to sit there, amused and dumbfounded, trying to understand this new revelation, which was that he was interested in men, but not just to have sex with. He wanted someone to love. And now, maybe it was already too late. Maybe he’d missed his chance. He had wasted his twenties and most of his thirties being oblivious, and now it was just never going to happen.