I let him take off my shirt, and he lay his weight against me again, as the hair all over his body pierced my skin when we kissed. I felt that strum of desire like my desire for all men, but not the desire for only him, and I thought maybe we should stop, but I didn’t know how to say that, didn’t want him to be disappointed in me so I focused on that desire, the desire I felt for all men. I thought he would like it if I touched his penis, so I did, and he moaned. I felt both desire and nothing when he touched mine. I knew enough to know that he wanted me to do more, so I slid down the bed and took him inside my mouth, but I didn’t know I would smell his sweat, didn’t know his hair would tickle my nose while I tried to hold on and he told me it felt so good as I bobbed faster up and down.

“Don’t go too fast,” he said. “I don’t wanna come.”

That was when he slid me back up the bed and lay on top of me again, rubbing up and down against me, and I thought maybe this wasn’t too bad.

“I wanna fuck you.”

Matt tried to flip me over with one hand, but my body wouldn’t let him.

“I don’t think I’m ready,” I said.

So he let me suck on him until he came, and when he asked me how I wanted to come, I told him to lie on top while I jerked myself off, as I closed my eyes and dreamed of Gavin’s body when I expelled the desire inside me.

“Do you want me to walk back with you?” he asked when we were done.

“I’ll be fine,” I replied, though I wished he invited me to stay, wished I would have wanted to say yes. On the walk back in the even cooler air, I wondered if I would ever be ready, before I entered the Yard and spent a sleepless night thinking not just about what I had done but what my body didn’t want to do.

Matt and I slept together two more times, once after a BGLSA meeting and another time late at night when he knocked on my ground-floor window. Each time he wanted to fuck me, and each time I wasn’t ready. Each time I asked if we could hang out, and each time he said yes but didn’t call. So the fourth time, after he knocked on my door again late at night, once again tried to guide the back of me against him then reached for my head when I resisted, I realized I would never let him fuck me and turned on the halogen lamp beside my bed.