Excerpt from "For The ♥ Of David"–A Novel in Progress

Some of my long-time readers may have wondered why I haven't been as engaged in writing my blog this year as I was last year.  Well, the reason is because I've spent most of my writing time working on a novel, which I've titled For The ♥ Of David.

I've decided to share an excerpt of my novel with you, from Chapter 20. Please keep in mind this is still a work in progress and requires a good deal of ongoing rewriting and editing. But I couldn't be more excited to give you a peek into the story that's occupied my mind, life, and heart for almost three years.            

My hope is that, by the time you finish reading this excerpt, you'll want to know more about Brian and David, what brought them to this point in the story, and what happens to them next.

Be aware this excerpt contains some sexual content, which is critical in the telling of the story but which may make some readers uncomfortable.  Please use your discretion accordingly. 

I hope you enjoy this excerpt from For The ♥ Of David.  I welcome your constructive comments or feedback.

***

Afterward, David drove us home.

On the sixth floor, the elevator door opened, and David got out.  We talked for several minutes, about nothing really–as usual, he did most of the talking–and I held my finger on the button to keep the door from closing.

Then, David got back on.  "I'll ride up with you," he said.  "No use holding the elevator."

Moments later, the door opened on the sixteenth floor.  This time, David stayed on, and I got out.

Again, he kept talking.  It's not that he had much to say, he just went on about whatever came into his head.  

When it looked like we could be at this for some time–that is, when I realized he didn't want to be alone–I asked him, "Would you like to come in?"

"Oh, no, no, I have some things I need to do," he said, gesturing to downstairs.  He looked at me.  "Well, as long as you're offering."

In my bedroom, I changed into a T-shirt and sweatpants.

"Would you like something to drink?" I asked David.  He said no, he was still full from dinner.

When I walked into the living room, he was laying on the sofa, his head resting on a side cushion, his long legs folded beneath him.  I'd never seen him like that, at his place or mine.

"Do you want the TV on?" I asked, sitting down on the sofa at the end of his feet.

When he shrugged and didn't answer one way or the other, I turned it on and lowered the volume.

I picked up the latest issue of Architectural Digest from the seat cushion to my left and placed it on my lap.  David looked up.  "I saw that at the store today," he commented, but he added he hadn't bought it yet.

All I kept thinking was, who is this David?  In all the time I'd known him, he'd seldom settled down longer than a few minutes at a time, instead bouncing around, dropping snide, obscene, or sarcastic remarks like small bombs, calculated to get attention and laughter from those within earshot.  The David to my right was an impostor–low-key, serene, even vulnerable.  This version confused the hell out of me; I didn't know what to make of him.  

Idly, I paged through the magazine and glanced up at the TV.  From time to time, I turned to David, but he didn't look at me.  His gaze stayed on the TV, the audio low and muffled, and I watched as fatigue slowly overcame him, and his eyes began to close.

Several minutes later, he turned around on the sofa and faced the back cushion.  His legs still bent into him, he reminded me of a child, home sick from school.  

"Are you cold?" I asked quietly.  "Would you like a blanket?"

He shook his head.

For some time, we went on like this.

Then, unexpectedly, David stretched out his right leg and rested it across my lap.

I stiffened.  What the hell is he doing? I asked myself.  

Apart from pecking lightly on the lips and embracing quickly whenever we got together, we'd never touched each other.

Sometimes, when we'd been out for a walk on the seawall, the back of his hand had brushed against mine.  One recent, warm evening, I counted this happened five times.

"Don't read anything into it," David had cautioned me, when he sensed I thought something funny was going on.  "It's just an accident."

Five times?  

Holding the issue of AD above my lap with both hands, I looked down at his bare, hairy foot on me, then over at him, calmly and quietly resting at the opposite end of the sofa, his eyes closed, his body motionless.

Still, his foot freaked me out.  Should I say something, I wondered, ask him what the hell he thinks he's doing, tell him to move it?

Or should I say nothing and let him leave it where it was?  It wasn't hurting me.  In fact, I had to admit it felt kind of good, satisfying.  I was happy David felt at ease enough with me to make himself comfortable.  For a moment, it seemed as though we were a couple, settling down for a quiet evening at home together.  I hadn't felt that way in years.  Maybe I never had.    

I put the magazine down on the sofa and stared at the TV, seeing nothing, taking in the sensations of being so physically close to David, to another man.  I did not touch his foot.

Then it moved.  Its toes curled and began to press into my lap.

I looked over at David, wondering what was going on.  Perhaps he was adjusting his position, making himself more comfortable, nothing more.  He continued to face the back of the sofa–his eyes closed, his face expressionless, his body still–while his foot moved as though it were separate from the rest of him.

It became increasingly active, beginning to rub me through my sweatpants.  I felt my penis stir. The rubbing continued for several minutes, his foot applying increased pressure, becoming more purposeful in its task.

I looked down at what was going on in my lap, dumbstruck.  I did nothing.  I couldn't do anything, I felt paralyzed.  

To look at David laying so peacefully, you would have thought his foot had a will of its own.  Who knew what it's intention was, what it was so determined to do?

I learned soon enough.

In a few minutes, his insistent toes found their way not only under the loose waistband of my sweatpants but also of my shorts, and they were moving downward.  They made contact with the head of my partially erect shaft, and with that sweet spot just below. All the while, I stared at what was happening in my lap, wordlessly allowing it.  

Still laying down, his eyes closed, his face without expression, David shifted onto his back, as if moving in his sleep.  In that position, he was able to use his large and index toes to grasp me.

I was stunned and mute, waiting to see where this would end.  When it became clear, as I looked down at my bare, erect dick, and at David's toes, stroking me up and down, I found my voice.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

I'd awoken the old David.  All at once, he leapt from the sofa, bursting into laughter as though possessed, scaring the hell out of me.

"Pretty talented foot, huh?" he asked between whoops of laughter.  I watched as his hands began to unbutton his shirt.  "Looks like someone's up for fun tonight," he continued.  "Literally."  As he nodded at the bulge in my sweatpants, he tossed his shirt on the sofa, opened his belt, and unzipped his pressed jeans.

I watched in horror.  His getting undressed unnerved me.  I'd never seen his body naked, covered in all that revolting fur he'd laughingly compared to Grover, from Sesame Street, that first time we'd talked on the phone.

How had our evening together, starting off so peacefully, and with such promise, turned into this?  I felt as though the room around me was spiralling out of control.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.  I told him I'd been sitting on the sofa, relaxing, minding my own business, enjoying the evening together, when this foot began doing things I didn't understand.  "I had nothing to do with this," I said.

"But you didn't say anything, did you?" David asked.  "You didn't stop me.  You knew as well as I did what was going on, and you did nothing."

"I was too shocked to do anything."

"Oh, what a pile of shit," David said laughing.  "Just admit it–you want this as much as I do."

"No.  I don't," I objected, shaking my head.  Seeing David wearing only his boxers then felt foreign to me, inappropriate, even disgusting.  "Just because I have an erection doesn't mean I want to have sex with you."  I realized how contradictory that sounded. "You're the one with the 'talented' foot, rubbing my crotch, remember?  Not me."  

Still laughing, David bounded for my bedroom around the corner, his underwear now off, his erection bobbing in front of him.  I heard him crawl inside my bedding, all the while giggling like a little girl.  

"You have this all wrong, you know?" I called from the living room.  The laughter in the bedroom continued.  "You might as well get out of my bed," I added a few moments later.  "We're not having sex."

The idea of getting into bed with David, let alone being intimate with him, mortified me.  Seeing him naked for the first time turned me off, not on.  I couldn't imagine touching him without becoming physically sick to my stomach.

Besides, David was a friend, not someone I'd considered having sex with–at least not since the first time we'd met (and even only slightly then).  I'd heard about sex between friends, and how close friendships had been ruined that way.  Being intimate with David would change everything.  How could it not?  

As much as I'd begun, unconsciously, I see now, to put some distance between David and me, I didn't have so many friends that I could risk losing one, because we'd been stupid enough to cross that line, to treat each other like a one-night stand.

"Sure we are," David said, still giggling, although less enthusiastically now.  "Come here."

Reluctantly, I walked to the door of my bedroom and looked in.  There, in the darkness, I saw the mound of David's body under my sheets and quilt, his head on my pillow.  You would have thought he belonged there, that this was not the first time he and I had been here.  

I leaned against the doorframe, looking at the goofy smile on his face, the excitement in his eyes, and I shook my head.  I couldn't believe we'd been relaxing together on the sofa just a few minutes earlier, and now, he was naked in my bed, thinking the two of us were going to have sex.  

It wasn't going to happen, no way in hell.  I'd make sure of that.  

My thoughts turned to how I'd convince him to get out of my bed and into the living room, where he'd put his clothes back on.  Then, the boundaries of our friendship still in tact, he'd unceremoniously leave my apartment.  In the days to come, we'd be able to look at each other again without feeling embarrassed, and neither of us would ever mention what almost happened.  He'd thank me later for my level head and good sense.

"Come lay with me, Brian," David said then, opening the sheets to me.  

And, just like that, his mood changed again.  As he spoke, he was different, subdued like he'd been at the restaurant earlier in the evening, where we'd enjoyed a peaceful meal together.  A calmness had overtaken him.  He was no longer laughing, not even a giggle.

"I'm not having sex with you," I said.

But the tone of my voice surprised me.  It didn't sound nearly as determined as before. Had David noticed?  I hoped not.

"What's the problem?" David asked, his voice low and soothing now.  "You're single. I'm single.  No one's going to get hurt."  He paused.  "It's just a little fun," he added, quieter still.  "Nothing more.  It doesn't have to change anything, if we don't let it."  

When I continued to object, with less conviction than I intended, he stopped me.

"We love each other, don't we?" he asked.

I suppose we did, in our own way.  I'd never thought of it like that.  I'd never considered two close friends could love each other, probably because I'd never had a friend as close as he was before.    
  

"Take your clothes off and come lay here with me," David continued.  His voice was so inviting now.  I felt my resistance breaking down.  "You know you can trust me.  I won't hurt you."

By then, I knew anything I said would betray me.  

I paused.  I watched him look at me from under the covers and slowly stepped into my bedroom, where I'd slept for over two years, where I hadn't brought even one man in that time.  In some strange way, the room, and everything in it, no longer felt like it was mine.  

Hesitantly, I began to undress.

David had never seen me naked before either, and I didn't want him to now.  What would he think of how I looked with my clothes off?  Would he be reminded of why he told me years before that I wasn't his type–because, I discovered later, I didn't have the looks or the body or whatever it was that made him look at one attractive man one minute, and another the next?    

With his calm, reassuring voice, David told me everything would be fine.  He repeated he wouldn't hurt me, promising we wouldn't do anything I wasn't comfortable with.   

Naked, I got into bed, laying as close to the edge of the water-filled mattress as I could. My back to David, too frightened to face him, I held the covers close.  He moved toward me and wrapped himself around my body.  We were spooning, even though I didn't know what that was.  

At first, David and me naked in the same bed together was one of the most unusual experiences I'd ever had, and it took everything I had not to get up, not to flee into the living room and pretend none of this was happening.  

Still, there was something about being there with him, even in our vulnerable state, that felt oddly right, as though it were meant to be, on that particular night, at that particular time.  After all, it was just the two of us, wasn't it?  And no one would ever know what we did.    

"I'm so scared," I whispered, exhaling the words.  I couldn't stop myself from shaking.

"There's nothing to be scared of.  You're safe with me."

David held me firmly against his warm, hairy, and consoling body, saying little, focusing only on helping me feel secure.  It wasn't until some time later my teeth stopped chattering, and my body no longer shook.  

Eventually, after we'd laid quietly for a long time, and I knew I belonged where I was, I found myself willing, when David asked, to make love to him.