Rectangle

The young boy with alabaster skin, dark brown hair, and a long wiry physique possessed my mind and, for the time being, owned my body, too. I might've been a happily married 52-year old man of 25 years, two grown daughters in their college years, a wife who had just only returned to teaching English at the local high school, but this 22-year old god danced naked in my head when I awoke every morning, when I drove to the office, when I had lunch with the boss, when I came home and gave my wife a kiss, and when I lay my head on the pillow for sleep. He watched me masturbate in the shower; he watched me have sex with my wife.

What was his name? I never did find out. I can remember now, the rectangular jaw, the odd look of Superman in Clark Kent's clothing, his black framed glasses cutting oblique, startling lines across his face. I never did know who he was, what kind of life he had, who his lovers were. Did he sleep with men or did he sleep with women? And yet this obsession of mine grew, my need to seek him out overwhelmed me. I just had to know.

I looked for him at the gym and if I was lucky, I saw him there a few times every week. I began to go there in the morning, before work, or I'd skip lunch with my boss and go there at lunch, always leaving work early to get to the gym for the 5:00 crowd, sometimes, even in the middle evening when I should've been at home watching TV with my wife. Trying, desperately, to discover his routine, to pace my workout so that we'd hit the shower at the same time.

His wandering eye caught mine one day when we finished at the same time and headed to the locker room. He took off his clothes and headed to the showers; blood stirred in my crotch as I admired his round, white buttocks walking away from me and toward the shower. A towel wrapped loosely around my hips, I headed back there myself, gazing longingly at the tall, lean, and muscular physique -- the startling contrast of white skin and dark hair that was all in the right places. My heart began to beat  rapidly. He stood in his shower, facing the wall; I stood across the way, facing toward him. "Turn around," I demanded silently in my head, "turn around so I can see what you look like."

As if he read my mind, he turned around and I saw him, all of him, and imagined what it'd be like for my face to explore his body, how it would feel for our skin to touch, our tongues to meet. What would intercourse with this man, with any man, be like? Would it be the same as with my wife? His eyes remained shut as he luxuriated in the hot water of his shower, washing his hair and massaging his head. I could see his armpits, wondering what his body smelled like. And then he opened his eyes and gazed over at me; I looked down and saw that I stood fully aroused.

An alluring smile caught me off guard; he began to wash his own crotch with soap and a little tease; he rinsed himself off. Was it my imagination, or was he becoming visibly aroused, too? He turned off the water and started to towel himself dry. I did the same, my erection stubbornly persistent.

"How's it going?" I said as we both dried off. My voice was not my own.

"Hey," he said as he finished drying himself off. And that was it. He walked out of the shower, dressed as quick as lightning, and was gone. I never saw him again.

That night I went home and crawled into bed with my wife. "Darling," she said, "tomorrow will you stop at the grocery store on the way home from the office? We need paper towels and milk." Thus was my future inexorably mapped out for me.