The shape of the earth, p.1
The Shape of the Earth, page 1
Lenny is managing a failing bookstore and struggling to keep his promise of fidelity to Dave. He flirts relentlessly with grad student Ian until he discovers that Ian’s ambivalence masks something personal and devastating. Caught up in a whirlwind of sex and lies, Lenny and Dave’s relationship spins out of control. Lenny clings to Dave’s unassuming manhood in hopes of keeping himself grounded, but when another seductive stranger becomes too tempting to resist, Lenny and Dave face the ultimate challenge.
Praise for Young and In Love?
“[F]ast and explicit and honest…I have to recommend this one on the uniqueness factor alone.”—Love Bytes: LGBTQ Book Reviews
“The narrator, Hardy, is enviably young, enviably self-absorbed, and enviably attractive, frolicking with hot man after hot man…Any gay man will find this short book an entertaining, arousing read.”—Jeff Mann, award-winning author and teacher
The Shape of the Earth
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The Shape of the Earth
© 2019 By Gary Garth McCann. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-63555-392-5
This Electronic Book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
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First Edition: March 2019
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editor: Jerry L. Wheeler
Production Design: Stacia Seaman
Cover Design By Melody Pond
By the Author
The Man Who Asked to Be Killed
(A Few Good Books Publishing, 2014)
Young and in Love?
The Shape of the Earth
Acknowledgments
A version of part of Chapter One appeared as the story “The Shape of the Earth” in The Q Review (2011), reprinted in Off the Rocks, vol. 16 (Chicago: New Town Writers, 2012).
A version of part of Chapter Two appeared as the story “The Best I Can Do Under the Circumstances” in Best Gay Love Stories 2005 (Nick Street, ed., Los Angeles: Alyson Books).
For this book and for Young and in Love? I’m indebted to editor Jerry L. Wheeler for helping me toward my goal of writing fiction that readers will never be tempted to skim.
For my husband, Todd
1. The Danger of Buying Underwear
Dave comes out of his den when he hears me in the kitchen. We kiss, and I ask about his overnight trip to Fresno. His panel went well, he says. “Five people in the audience, but I’ll get a paper out of it.” He’s up for tenure next year.
As we eat, I tell Dave about helping a new guy at work—Ian—carry his drunk, obese mother to bed after I gave him a ride home because his car wouldn’t start. I’m nervous. I hired Ian in August, and it’s January. I’ve kept Ian a secret because my fantasies about him are so sexy. Maybe I’ll say I hired him in November, if Dave asks. Or maybe I’ll say Jane hired him, and I’ll go off on a rant about how hiring is supposed to be my job.
Dave doesn’t ask.
After we clean up, I sit on the living room floor and listen to sitar music through headphones while staring at a candle. I once thought you had to smoke a joint to be mesmerized by a flame.
Taking off my headphones, I slip to the doorway of Dave’s den. The room is warm from the ceiling light and the high-intensity desk lamp. Stripped to his navy-colored briefs, he leans over his laptop. He’s working on another paper he hopes to get published. I want to kiss his muscular neck or ruffle his brown hair, boyishly full at thirty-two. Instead, I tiptoe back to my music and candle.
When I go to look at Dave again, his den is empty. Seeing light in our bedroom, I lean in through the doorway. He lies on his back atop the green comforter on our high double bed, our only antique. He drapes his forearm over his eyes. His square jaw is clenched.
“You look worried, cowboy.”
As though he doesn’t hear me, he remains still—large unmoving feet, long still legs, tensed torso, his hand behind his neck contracting his biceps into a bulge. He bites his lip.
“Do you want a cup of tea or something?” I say.
Lifting his arm from his face, he raises his legs and pulls off his underwear in a backward S motion and pitches it against the closet door. Like a dog on its back, he displays his egg-sized testicles while his penis sleeps on his belly. I watch it come to life and bounce against his midriff.
“I want you to come here and fuck me, Lenny.”
I am Man. I could beat my chest and roar it. I’m Tarzan, Superman. I’m the naked Olympic fighter with fists raised as I and my opponent step into the ancient earthen ring. We fight with full erections, and the crowd cheers and hungers to see who will have an erection when we finish, which swordsman will still have a sword. I feel it all in my dick, feel every manly thing the word embodies. I am man enough. I am so much man, my manhood hurts with exquisite pain.
We lie kissing afterward. Each whispers more than once that he loves the other. I’m a normal human being again, back from my foray into super manliness. Just me here, folks, Lenny—the guy who’d sooner run than fight.
Dave gets up and crosses the hall to the bathroom. He pisses and pads into his den to work more. I lie listening to the late Thursday evening traffic rush past our house. Living on a busy street isn’t bad. We’re not enmeshed in neighborliness, as we might be otherwise. We exist in a private world, a world that couldn’t be more perfect.
* * *
Ian grins at Rosie and chews coconut cream pie with his mouth as wide open as he can without spewing it all over. We stand behind the bookstore’s service counter, Ian’s neat white teeth glistening with saliva and looking handsome to me despite the glob of cream, custard, and crust.
Rosie laughs and makes a face. “Que puerco!” Ian thrusts out his pie-covered tongue, curving its tip to the cleft in his chin. Rosie rolls her caramel-colored eyes to the ceiling. “Gross, Ian! Such a child!”
Ian glances at me from between dark lashes. He looks away, silhouetting the ragged edge of his coal-black bangs. “Lenny doesn’t think it’s gross,” he says.
I’m surprised by his flirting but figure he’s playing the straight guy who knows the gay guy’s attracted to him. Ian’s in the homophobic stage some guys go through before coming out. I have such a mental hard-on for him, I’m willing to play along.
“Lenny’s no judge,” Rosie says. “Lenny thinks you’re so hot, he’d eat out of your open mouth.” Rosie puts her arm around my waist and body-bumps me. A junior at Cal State, she’s large-boned and shapely, with light brown skin and auburn hair piled high in a loose bun. A friend of hers dated Ian and dropped him because he didn’t screw her enough or didn’t screw her well enough. Rosie became discreet when pressed for details.
I grin and slip my arm around her shoulders. “You’re in a festive mood, Rosie.”
She cackles. “Jane’s daughter-in-law will kill her before their ship gets out of harbor.”
Royal Books’ proprietor, Jane, leaves tomorrow for a Caribbean cruise with Chip and his wife. Chip’s the younger of Jane’s two USC-lawyer sons, the one my age, a fact Jane loves to remind me of when she tells me about the rich and successful things her sons are doing. I could do rich and successful things if I inherited a small fortune from my grandparents.
I glance at Jane to make sure she didn’t overhear Rosie’s remark. Blonder than I, Jane wears a yellow Shetland sweater with yellow skirt and heels. She never wears the same outfit twice, never the same shoes. A small country could eat on the money Jane spends for clothes. She fingers a pearl choker around her scrawny neck as she bends the ear of a greeting card salesman eating pie with us, pie I brought to celebrate Ian’s twenty-fifth birthday.
When everyone says they’ve had enough, I carry a tin with a third left to the refrigerator in the stockroom.
Just past three, I follow Ian’s handsome butt, in gray khakis reaching deep into his crack, to the stockroom and through its swinging door. He takes his time card from the rack and punches out.
“Why don’t we finish the pie before you go, Ian?”
I don’t expect enthusiasm because Ian doesn’t want to appear to like me. I open the refrigerator and take out the pie tin. With a plastic knife, I halve what’s left and maneuver the slices onto paper plates. As we dig in, Ian leans against the wall with one knee raised, the sole of his black sneaker flat to the Sheetrock.
We watch each other eat. He opens his mouth, exposing a partially chewed mass. I smile and open my mouth, exposing the same. We chew with slow, exaggerated movement and swallow. Ian forks more pie. Slipping his fork into his mouth, he looks at me with purpose. I move closer, and we kiss, our tongues sliding into sweet globs of pie. I straddle his knee, pressing my erection against his raised leg. He shoves me backward. I expect to see someone at the stockroom door, but no one’s there.
We stare at each other as we finish our pie.
“I’ll check,” Ian says, taking the book from her and turning around.
I follow Rosie behind the service counter, her hips swaying in a long, brown sweater that clings to her jeans. She stops by the cash register, and I continue into my office and pick up the phone. Dave calls me on Royal Books’ number because Jane forbids staff to use cells.
“Dave.”
“Sorry if I interrupted something,” he says.
“You didn’t interrupt anything.”
“I forgot to mention Robert’s having a party tonight. I figure we’ll go?”
“Sure.”
Robert heads the literature department at Cal State. He’s like a doting gay uncle to Dave and me.
“How’s your day going?” Dave says.
“Ordinary.” I hear guilt in my voice, but Dave wouldn’t. I listen to him blow off steam about the dean insisting he change a student’s fall grade while my mind flits to being sued by Ian for sexual harassment. Through my office window I watch Ian hand a copy of the Grand Canyon book to Rosie. Getting a boner, I turn from the window and gaze at my wall calendar, a snow scene of Yosemite on the page for January. The calendar was among Dave’s Christmas gifts to me.
* * *
Pixie-sized Robert spots us from across his living room. His vibrant gray eyes smile from baby-soft mottled skin as he makes his way around and between his chatting guests. “Hello, boys. Fashionably late, I see.” His voice is playful, raspy. His hands dart out from the sleeves of a baggy maroon cardigan, landing on our forearms. He offers a cheek to be kissed. A shock of hair swings out from Dave’s forehead as he leans to oblige Robert. I glance to see who I know among the middle-aged academics, the group nearest us moaning about recent political outrages. I’m startled to spot Ian in a circle of grad students across the room. Ian’s working on an MA in comp lit. I know he took a class from Robert, but I’ve never seen him at Robert’s house. On Ian’s arm is a willowy brunette with hair down to the small of her back. She’s dropped him off at the bookstore a time or two.
Ian doesn’t see me. I look away, but his blue-black hair and long-sleeved red T-shirt glow in my peripheral vision. “What’s the matter?” Dave says.
“Nothing.” I kiss Robert’s cheek.
“I’ll put the beer we brought in the refrigerator.”
I lean down to Robert’s ear. “You know Ian Ryan?”
Robert laughs and plays at making insinuating eyes. “Melinda, my research assistant brought him. She has excellent taste, don’t you think?”
“She does. Ian works for me.”
Robert flicks his silver eyebrows. “Small world. Lucky you.”
Ian sees me, turns his back, and slips his arm around Melinda’s waist. Her sleeveless mint dress looks suitable for a wedding, as though this casual party means more to her than it should. I like her for the needy life that suggests. I figure when Dave returns, I’ll introduce him to Ian and get my nervous moment over. Dave will razz me about hiring a guy as hot as Ian, and my Ian fantasies won’t feel like imaginable realities anymore because Ian won’t be a secret. Good.
Robert pats my forearm and excuses himself to say a word to a couple leaving. I turn and head to Dave, talking to our friend Sandy by the long dining table.
“Hi, sweetie,” I shout over the music as someone cranks up the volume in the family room. Sandy and I peck on the lips. “You’re looking good,” I tell her. She’s short and always fighting weight, her red hair stylishly boyish and framing a pretty face with a clear complexion. As I bend down to listen to her, my back to the living room, Melinda passes from behind me, leading Ian by the hand. They stop at the far end of the table. While Melinda greets two women grad students, Ian picks up a vodka bottle and fills a tumbler more than halfway. I wink when he looks up. He nods hello, just barely, and pours orange juice into his vodka.
Sandy tugs my hand while I’m staring at Ian. “Let’s go out back so I can smoke.”
She leads me through the family room, between dancing couples who look too settled in life, too love-handled for partying hard. Outside, beyond a sliding glass door, the smokers spill from the patio onto the small lawn, made even smaller by dripping bamboo towering on three sides. Sandy and I stop near a round stone table, damp from fog, at the edge of light cast by the house.
A joint comes our way, and I decide one hit won’t hurt. Holding smoke in my lungs, I stare through the glass door as Melinda and Ian join the dancers in the family room. I let out smoke. “You must know Ian Ryan?” I ask Sandy. She’s the literature department secretary.
“I know Melinda better.”
“You don’t like Melinda?”
“She’s all right—a little headstrong.” Frowning, Sandy draws on her cigarette and exhales through small nostrils. “I wouldn’t do Ian any favors, babe.”
“What have you got against Ian? I like him.”
Sandy twists her mouth. “Speaking of people I don’t like, how’s Jane?”
“Away on a cruise, hallelujah!”
Sandy worked at Royal Books when I started there; Jane loved to hate her.
“You’re a patient man, Lenny. I owe you big-time for hooking me up with Robert. He’s a dream of a boss.”
“So, why don’t you like Ian?”
Sandy shakes her head and stubs out her cigarette in a wet ashtray on the table. She looks around at the other smokers and crosses her arms with a shiver. I wear a sweater, but she’s in a sleeveless blouse. I place my arm around her shoulders. “You’re cold, sweetie. Let’s go dance.”
I maneuver us near Ian and Melinda, among the crowd bumping and grinding. Sandy looks more distressed than happy. She needs a boyfriend, I figure. A son in college and a friendly ex-husband aren’t enough. I reach out and brush my fingertips along her cheeks, and she brightens.
Robert joins us as one song blends into another. I pull my sweater over my head and toss it among shed layers on a couch shoved against a wall. Robert’s eyes flit to my gray muscle shirt. In his cups on my last birthday, my thirtieth, he told me he likes thirty-year-old blonds.
“I’m not into dancing tonight,” Sandy shouts. She air-kisses Robert and me and scoots away.
As a new song begins, I face Robert while Melinda, beside me, faces Ian. Judging by Ian’s glazed-over eyes, he chugged all the vodka he poured. He raises his arms on an upbeat lyric, and I mentally trace the contours of his compact torso as his shirt rides above a navel that looks like an etching on his flat stomach.
“People are leaving, and I want to say good night,” Robert shouts to Melinda. “You and Ian dance with Lenny.”
I turn halfway to Melinda. She smiles until Robert disappears, then gives me a look that says she knows I’m admiring her date and doesn’t appreciate it. Fair enough, I think. “I need a beer.”
Slipping between the dancers, I find my sweater on the couch and toss it over my shoulder. I wonder where Dave is.
He’s not in the living room. From the hallway, I glance into Robert’s den and see Dave sitting forward on a black leather sofa, his back to me, his large hands raised in a shrugging gesture. He’s talking to an engineering professor named Brian, a young Paul Newman. Dave’s in the biology department but knows Brian from playing city-league baseball. Brian’s pregnant wife, a lawyer, is with them. I watch Dave sitting erect in a white pullover sweater, his long spine straight, his angular face relaxed and smiling in half profile. He doesn’t know I’m watching him and thinking I made a good decision when I moved to California to be with him. If I’d asked myself whether I was in love in the beginning, I didn’t ask for long.
