SUNDAY
27 OCTOBER, 1990
ISAIAH

               'How many minutes d'you reckon till one of us gets hard? I bet ten.'

Dorian snaps out of his dissociation.

He let me stay in his dorm over the weekend so I could rest until my flare calmed. I spent all of Saturday sleeping and eating only fruit or a piece of bread here and there, knowing I wouldn't be able to keep anything else down; though I'm sure all of House Perses know I stay here, running to the floor's shared toilets to throw up every hour might breach their hospitality enough for at least one to report me to staff. When Dorian came back this morning, he brought four plastic containers of leftovers from Sabbath prepared by his family cook, Jabób, who ironically lives only a few blocks away from me in Lower Halsett where the Polish sector borders the Caribbean one.

Now, well-fed and thoroughly showered, I feel perfectly healthy — well, as healthy as I ever do. Fatigue, that constant chaperone, a mock father figure, is always present in the periphery. Disregarding the past week which doesn't count because I was crying the first night and drugged delirious the other two, this is the first time we're sharing his bed since we've started to kiss.

Desire can't be crammed back into its straightjacket. The ceiling becomes a projector screen for memories and neither of us can find the plug. His lips on mine, mine on his, mine between his teeth, his hand at the back of my neck, my grip on his uniform tie, his fingers twisted in my braids, my name on his tongue.

If the tension won't go away, what choice is there but to welcome it?

I glance at him with a stifled grin. 'You don't wanna bet? Nice! That means I automatically win.'

Dorian mouths replies he never finds the voice to speak. I hear them nonetheless: Why would you say that? Don't say that! You can't win when I never participated. We haven't bet on anything, what are you winning?

In psychic unison, we turn onto our sides to face each other over the infinitesimal distance. A tremor palpitates in my chest. Is it my heart?

'I'll probably need to go home tomorrow...'

Sensing my anxiety, Dorian reaches for my hand.

He shifts our fingers one row so that his thumb falls over mine and my pinky is last, feels it out a moment, and moves back. Then he lifts my fingers straight and plants his palm over mine. My fingers are half a centimetre longer than his, as they have been for the past three years of him doing this.

Still, Dorian smiles at the sight. 'I like how perfectly our hands fit together.'

Blood rushes to my cheeks but he does me the mercy of pretending he doesn't notice. 

With his free hand, Dorian inches forward to pluck my Star of David from the mattress. I watch him thumb the silver for nearly a minute before I reciprocate, because what should you do when someone you love caresses your relationship with God than do the same?

But Dorian's chain is much shorter and his pendant is tucked under the ridge of his collarbone. There's no avoiding the brush of my fingers against him. You have such beautiful skin.

'You have such beautiful skin.'

The back of my neck burns. Though we both know the weight of being Black in a European country, we've never expressly spoken about the violence with which treat our own features and the submission to the belief that we can be smart and we can be skilled but we can never be beautiful. I haven't believed that for a long time. I haven't believed that since I met him. I don't think he believes it anymore either.

Still, saying it out loud turns out much more intimate than I was prepared for.

Dorian toes the arch of my foot. 'You do too.'

I offer a compulsory smile.

'You do, Shay.'

'I know. Yeah, I know.' I do know, logically. And yet, emotionally, I can't shed the thought my skin is but another testament of God's abandonment. 'But, you know... if I'm literally shedding colour, that's gotta be a metaphor for suttin.'

'You read too much poetry.'

I agree but press on still. 'Ain't people always saying everyting happen for a reason, it's God's plan, and all that?'

'Then Her plan was to give you beautiful skin.'

Eye contact with him is rare enough that when he does offer it, like a gift, it's all the more profound. Times between are long enough for me to forget exactly how beautiful his eyes are and rediscovering them never gets boring: so impossibly dark, framed by the longest eyelashes I've seen, and extended by crow's feet.

'Okay,' I whisper.

When did he move so close? His breath tickles my cupid's bow. 

Our eyes meet only to flutter shut and slowly, we kiss, pull back to share a glance, and kiss again. He tastes of chamomile tea.

Breathless when I pull away, I'm already too delirious to fight a grin. 'Told you — ten minutes.'

Dorian only draws me back in. He brushes his thumb over my eyelid so I have to shut it and kisses the inner corner. Though a little confused, I don't resist as he hoists himself onto his elbow and nudges me onto my back so he can repeat the process on my right eyelid.

Next, he kisses the base of my nose, then uses the left corner of my mouth as a pivot point to get to my earlobe. It's only when he tilts my head back and his lips latch onto my adam's apple that I understand he's kissing my vitiligo. Dorian tugs down the collar of my jumper to find my jugular notch.

Pushing himself up — when did he climb on top of me? — his eyes find mine again. They're even darker than I'm used to and all the more tender for it. 'Can I take this off?' The question is exactly like everything he says to me: direct but loving. My "yes" is so tangled into oxygen I'd be surprised he's able to identify it if he was anyone else.

But he isn't anyone else. Of course, he understands.

He peels it from me. I watch in amazement as he folds it and stretches to place it on his chair instead of tossing it on the floor. Before I can mock him for it — a roundabout reminder of how much I love him — his attention is on me and I forget everything but his lips on my skin.

He kisses every daub of pale skin he can find: my elbows, both my ring fingers and my right pinkie, the place triangled by my shoulder, collarbone, and armpit until he's intercepted by my ribbed vest.

He pushes up the garment just enough for it to untuck from my pyjama trousers. 'And this?'

'Please.'

The vest joins the jumper on his chair, just as neatly folded. I'm surprised he knows how to fold clothes. His wardrobe is a mess.

His thumb traces the green remnants of Tuesday's bruises below my ribs. 'Do they still hurt?'

I shake my head. The healing wounds make me twice as sensitive to his touch only in good ways.

'Are you in pain?'

'No,' I say, and for the first time in possibly my entire life, I mean it. Pain has no presence in my body now, not the memory or the fear of it. 'I feel good.'

Dorian smiles in the sheepish way he does whenever I compliment him, which is exactly what I'm doing. Reassured, he picks up where he left off.

His Star of David tickles my stomach as he kisses his way down my chest, along the happy trail of vitiligo until he's blocked again. With his breath fanning on my damp skin, he looks up for confirmation. I can't find my voice in my parched and panting throat so I hook my thumbs into the waistbands myself, pushing them as far as I can without sitting up, and he understands to finish the job.

My trousers and boxers — which are both his, his clothes he lets me borrow as if they were mine, the thought of which makes me so horny and happy and smitten — are folded over the back of the chair before he unceremoniously kicks the duvet to the floor. I'm left entirely naked on the bed, save for my durag which offers few lifelines we can use to back out and claim this meant nothing.

Like most teenagers, I spend what might be an unhealthy amount of time masturbating — more than more teenagers probably, considering there are several times a week I masturbate purely because in the seconds after orgasm, pain seizes to dominate my body and sometimes that's the only method I know to find even a blink of relief.

I don't expect his hand to feel so different from my own when it wraps around me. My entire body shudders. I almost cry out when he lets go a moment later.

Dorian digs out a strip of condoms and bottle of lube from his dresser and returns to the bed. He twists open the lock, but before he can pump any out, I snatch it from him.

I have only to glance to recognise it as the very same I bought for him three years ago, partly to poke fun at him, but mostly because I didn't want him to feel any shame in pleasure or pleasing himself and giving him a bottle of lube was the best way fourteen-year-old me could express that.

'Dorian...' I raise an eyebrow over the bottle. 'Do you ever wank?'

With the bed barren, he's left to iron out the wrinkles in his boxers. 'Not really. It's not that I have issues with it. I just don't... ever get around to it. Where am I supposed to find the time?' He withdraws into his shoulders in a way reminiscent of a tortoise retreating into its shell. 'I only think about it when you're around and I can't masturbate with you right next to me.'

'Yes, you can. I wanna see.'

He flings me a look that means: you're just saying that because you're my friend. Or maybe: because you're always saying nonsense to provoke people.

'Tonight, though, I wanna have sex with you.'

The sentence isn't out of me before, like Adam cast from the garden, I become ashamed of my own nakedness. With the lube bottle still in hand, the apple of my sin, I wrap my arms around myself and stare at the dents in the carpet.

Have I transgressed, misread the situation? This may well be fun and games to him and now I've made it far too real. There's no retracing our footsteps back to friends surrendering to hormones because there's no one else around. Like a character in a children's cautionary tale, I turn around to discover I've strayed so far from the path, there's no sign of it. That's what you get for getting distracted by collarbones and chamomile.

We haven't done anything wrong, biblically — not yet. But if we go any further, we'll fall into sins the Talmud rules unforgivable in any circumstance, yehareg ve'al ya'avor: sins any Jew should die rather than transgress. There'll be no coming back from that.

'Me too,' Dorian says. 'I want to. With you.'

He picks up the condoms, pinching them between his thumb and index like something repulsive. I got those for him too though those were more self-harm than anything altruistic. I gave him the tools to find someone else so when he would, I could say I saw it coming.

He glances at me, lip curled. 'We're supposed to use one, right? That's what they say. I mean, I've never kissed anyone else but...'

'Safety first,' I say in imitation of my driving instructor and Dorian laughs, releasing enough of the tension from my chest for me to add, 'And if it really means we won't feel nuttin, then maybe this will last longer than five minutes.'

I grab the condoms from him before disgust sets his face like that permanently.

'I hope seven,' I say. 

'Why?'

'Dunno. Seven's a nice number.' I shrug to lead him astray into I'm speaking rubbish to fill the silence. 'Seven minutes in heaven.' Seven minutes in heaven until we're forever outlawed.

Dorian caresses my calf with his free hand. 'I prefer eight.'

Just like that, he swipes all my anxieties away.

It gives me the courage to ask plainly: 'Are you sure?'

All he says is, 'I love you.' I understand without him needing to say it: there can be nothing sinful when it's you, when it's us, things must have been lost in translation because I can't believe God would ever consider this sin. I wouldn't want to do this with anyone else. I've only ever been looked at as prey but to him it's prayer.

I kiss him, tenderly, deeply. I'm so grateful for him. I'm so saturated with love for him I can't contain it and it cascades out in breathy giggles against his lips.

'Do you want to...? I mean...?' Dorian glances at the condoms, too embarrassed to ask.

I don't hesitate for a second. 'I want you inside me. But I want to be on top.'

The bed seems to have shrunk and we manoeuvre around clumsily to get Dorian out of his boxers and sitting against the wall so I can straddle him. He grimaces when I take the condom out of its foil, an expression identical to the one when he sees any food that contains aubergine.

'Are you sure? Cause if it feels gross, we–'

'It's fine. I just don't want to touch it with my hands.'

'So I'll put it on?'

Dorian nods. I barely touch him before he's fully erect and I can roll the condom on.

'All good?'

'All good.'

Dorian feeds two pumps of lube into his palm. He drops the bottle and it thuds against the wall like a battering ram. We both cringe, suddenly reminded of where we are, and though half of the dormitory goes home over the weekends, the other half is still here. We listen for approaching footsteps for at least a minute before we dare to breathe.

I flatten my tongue against the roof of my mouth to silence myself when he takes my cock in one hand and loops the other around my waist. He massages the bump of my tailbone once before he moves lower at the same as he strokes me, then faster, and I have a vague thought that God bless his piano genius because I'd never be able to move my hands at completely different speeds and directions at the same time. But then his fingers slip inside me and I lose the capacity for thoughts of any kind.

I don't know how long he goes on, but by the time he stops, I'm slack against his chest. My scalp burns under my durag but my arms have lost their bones so I can't pull it off.

Sliding out of me, his hand moves up to massage a knot between my spine and right shoulder. 'Are you ready?'

'More.' I'm sore from his fingers alone but it fades quickly. It's less an ache and more a longing to be filled again, to never be empty. 'I'm desperate.'

'You'll tell me if it hurts, right? Or if you're tired.'

'I will.' 

But it won't hurt. I know what it's like for it to hurt and Dorian couldn't be farther from it.

'Though if I'm tired, you just gonna have to do the work, and you can't be cross with me because I'm ill.' I lick the sweat behind his ear before I compose myself enough to push upright. 'You tell me too. If you don't like it. You don't have to like it, I don't think everyone does. It's okay if you don't.'

Dorian nods.

Finding the lube bottle, I pump once on his erection. We're both transfixed as the bead slips down the condom. Then, I pump four more times in rapid succession and he looks up at me.

'Safety first,' I deadpan.

We clamp our palms over each other's laughter. 

Still breathless and grinning, I collect the excess lube from the base of his cock to lather into myself before I lift off his lap. Dorian's head thuds against the wall but he forces himself to stay focused, to wrap his fingers around me and pump me until I'm too lost to pleasure to be nervous.

'"The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it".'

He recognises the quote and shuts his eyes the way he does when he's exasperated. Dorian never rolls his eyes. The realisation gives me the sudden urge to cry.

And I do, one or two tears that blend into my sweat. Because I'm so in love with him. Because I wouldn't want to do this with anyone else. I haven't wanted to do this with anyone else. I must tell him this at some point because he says it back. Unless it happens telepathically like so many of our conversations after eleven years of devotion.

It takes me a moment to recover when he's fully inside me. Maybe more from the thought than the physical sensation — All of him, inside me. I'm so full. Full of him.

Don't tell me this isn't what God intended.

Once I have adjusted, I start to move. My heart pulses in my throat, but somehow also in my thighs, my chest, and my cock, as if I suddenly have five hearts in my body.

Six. Six hearts.

Somehow Dorian manages to shuffle away from the wall with me on his lap. Slipping his fingers under my bent knees to open them, he wraps my legs around his middle and the change of angle sinks him so deep into me that white swallows my vision. I dig my teeth into his shoulder.

My sweaty thighs glue to his hips. His skin is so impossibly soft from the shea butter he massages on every day, unlike my own which is flaky and ashen though he doesn't seem to mind as he grips my thighs, my waist, my back, pulls me so firmly against him, we might fuse into one being.

For once, I'm grateful for my body. I feel him everywhere — in my fingertips and the soles of my feet, on my tongue, coated with sweat from his shoulder, over the soft skin on the inside of my bicep where he places a kiss and the firmer muscle of my thigh that he clutches onto. I feel him everywhere and I don't want to exist without a body anymore, because then I wouldn't be able to feel this.

This divine pleasure that grows like a ball of light in my chest until it's so large it's not inside me, but I'm inside it. The bubble expands and expands and expands. It fills the room and bursts. My body convulses. I bite his shoulder.

Some distant part of my mind is aware of Dorian's fingers digging into my thighs as he trembles with his own climax. He falls against the wall, me a puddle on his chest. I fall asleep for anything ranging from seconds to weeks, nudged back to consciousness by the steady caress of his fingers on my spine.

From beneath the haze, rises the unmistakable smell of sex. We're sticky with sweat, lube, and my come — not at all the blood a murderer can't scrub clean from his hands, these are the nectars of fruit God blessed in Their garden.

Without sitting up, without looking, I brush my hand up Dorian's face to clasp the top of his head like I've done countless times during our play wrestling. Was it inevitable they build up to this?

'We should shower.'

As inviting as the thought of shutting our eyes and drifting to sleep exactly as we are, we'll regret it if we don't wash now. The morning bustle of returning pupils will take one look at us and see sparks that declare we had sex last night.

Dorian hums.

'We can't sleep on this sheet,' I add, as I slowly become aware that it too is wet with lube. Luckily, since he can't stand the thought of using the bedclothes the school provides, Dorian has his own clean set.

'No.'

'We should lay down a towel next time.'

'Yeah.'

'Man of many words, aren't you?'

Dorian just sighs as he continues to trace my spine. 'I liked that. The biting.' It's obvious he's still high from his orgasm because Dorian would never say something so blunt with such nonchalance.

I nip his shoulder. 'Freak.'

Dorian slots our mouth's together. The kiss is lazy and consists more of us exchanging oxygen than lips or tongues.

'I love you, cuz.'

'I love you, Shay.'

There, in his arms and in his mouth, I decide that, no matter what anyone ever tells me, I'll never believe this to be a sin. This isn't sin. We're holy.

Notes

Yehareg ve'al ya'avor: (lit. "Let him be killed rather than transgress"). Jewish religious laws that an observant person should rather take their own life than transgress. These are idolatry, murder, and sexual misconduct (incest, bestiality, adultery, and homosexuality*).

* The topic of homosexuality is a debated one within Judaism and interpretations of Jewish texts as the original meaning may have referred exclusively to paedophilia. Still, most Orthodox communities will interpret any homosexual sex as a forbidden act.

"The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it": Quote from the Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde.