Chapter 33 Ringing In the New Year
Adam found his way to the Habana without incident.
Matt gave him a tour of the room, where Adam dropped his bag and called his parents to let them know he had arrived safely.
“I promise,” were his last words to his parents before hanging up.
Matt wondered what the promise entailed but put it out of his mind. They had dinner reservations at Gushers.
They were dancing at the Copa now. (Adam was dancing. Matt was “Weebling.”)
The place was crowded—not only the dance floor, but the surrounding tables as well. It was 11:19. The big screens mounted to the walls flashed the countdown to New Year’s: 40:32, 40:31, 40:30…
Adam was short, 5’7”, 5’8” tops, which Matt would once have said wasn’t his type. The guy weighed maybe a buck thirty-five. He had a slim, swimmer’s build, which was—Matt’s type, that is.
Compact, skinny queens were no novelty, Matt knew. He had seen at least five already that evening. None were in Adam’s league. It was Adam’s face that set him apart. It was his aura that made him catnip to Matt, the kryptonite that made Matt weak in the knees.
During dinner, Matt had repeatedly lost the trail of their conversation, being so absorbed in Adam’s features. As with the first time they met, Matt had felt like he was sitting across from a grown-up Christopher Robin—the cleft chin and piercing hazel eyes separating the man from the boy.
Adam had fair skin, with a dusted stripe of freckles that started at his lower cheeks and rose diagonally to join at the bridge of his nose. It was a chevron of tan sprinkles, an echo of war paint on a Lost Boy.
His thick hair would best be described as dark brown, but included strands from every hue between tawny and chocolate. It was at least half an inch too long.
This was hair that would never know male-pattern baldness, a mass that could be roughly shaped but never tamed. It was rock star or starving artist hair. Add glasses in twenty years, and it would be absent-minded professor hair.
Adam danced like he was in Neverland (James Barrie’s version, not the Michael Jackson one), forever young and carefree, whooping around a bonfire, celebrating something, anything—howling at the moon.
This was a different Adam than the guy who had shyly picked at his dinner, who had seemed overwhelmed, who self-consciously tried to hide the scar on his left wrist, whose eyes were tinged with sadness.
The song ended, and the dancing paused.
Bella took the stage. She was emceeing the night’s countdown.
Earlier she had performed her unique blend of stand-up comedy, gameshow, and singing.
It was a quality act. She deserved to be a star as much as Colton deserved to crash and burn.
And if Bella could climb to success atop the ruin of Colton’s dreams, so much the better.
It would be the only positive contribution Colton had ever made.
“All right fellas,” Bella addressed the milling crowd on the dance floor. “Who can tell me what’s next?”
Several guys shouted unintelligibly.
“That’s right,” Bella said. “Skivvies! The New Year’s tradition here at the Copa is that the last thirty minutes of dancing is “skivvies only.”
Bella gave a wry smile. “As if you boys need a head start on getting naked!”
Laughter.
Matt and Adam exchanged nervous glances.
“Listen up,” Bella said. “There are a few rules.”
“#1: Skivvies and shoes are the only clothes allowed on the dance floor. Anyone who doesn’t want to participate, please clear the floor.”
“#2: Staff is handing out paper sacks as I speak. Strip down and put your clothes in a sack.”
“#3: Staff are also carrying sharpies and staplers. Write your name on your sack, staple it closed—the paper one, fellas, not the one between your legs, and hand it back to the staff member. What’s Bella’s rule?”
“MARK YOUR PROPERTY!” the crowd roared.
“That’s right,” Bella said. “Mark your property. And if you’re worried about someone stealing your dance partner, mark him too!”
Laughter.
“Back to the rules,” Bella said.
“#4: This is a respectable establishment—until midnight at least. No nudity. If I see a single groundhog peeking out of its burrow, its owner is gonna have a lot more to worry about than six more weeks of winter!”
Loud groans.
“#5: Last one. You have 5 minutes to strip down. The music starts again at 11:30 sharp. Anyone on the dance floor wearing anything more than skivvies and shoes after that point, will be shown the door.”
Adam grinned at Matt. “I’m not ready to stop dancing. Are you?”
Matt shook his head. He could not contain his glee at the chance to see Adam in his skivvies!
They hurriedly stripped, stuffed their clothes in the sacks, marked the bags, and stapled them shut.
Matt’s chest tightened with ache at sight of Adam in his white Jockeys and Nikes.
His nipples were small and pink. His chest and torso were bare except for a small treasure trail that snaked from his belly button down into his briefs, thickening as it went. His legs were the definition of perfection! Downy, brown hair against a pale canvas.
Before Matt handed the sharpie back to the staffer, he wrote his initials on a patch of freckled skin above Adam’s left nipple.
“Your heart is mine tonight,” Matt said.
Adam’s eyes shimmered. He placed his palm on Matt’s left pec. “Ditto,” he said.
The music started. Matt didn’t recognize the song, but other people began dancing.
Adam held Matt’s gaze. “Do me a favor?” he asked. His voice was soft.
“Sure?”
“Dance only for me. Quit worrying about what anyone thinks or how you look. Dance for me.”
Matt nodded, swallowed air.
The song was “Dance Naked” by John Mellencamp. Only Bella would have chosen this song.
Adam snapped his fingers to the beat, let his shoulders ease into it, then freed his feet to tap heel-to-toe in rhythm. He mouthed the lyrics.
Adam took Matt’s hand and pulled him into the dance.
Mellencamp’s voice was smoky, sensuous.
Adam lifted his arms in the air and spun slowly, his ass swaying like a slow metronome, his feet moving faster, tracking the counter-rhythm.
Matt forgot his inhibitions, leaned towards Adam, let his own shoulders move with the beat.
Adam smiled, beckoned for Matt to close the distance between them. He placed his hands on Matt’s hips, guided Matt into an erotic, rhythmic thrust. “Keep that up,” Adam whispered. “Maintain about 4 inches distance between our bodies.”
Adam waited for Mellencamp’s next chorus, then rotated slowly, until his back was to Matt, his arched ass bobbing to the beat.
Matt was in heaven! They were close enough he could smell Adam’s shampoo.
Could discern individual freckles on Adam’s shoulders.
And, if he strained his eyes down, he could see tiny droplets of sweat pooling at the base of Adam’s spine, catching in the briar patch of hair that poked up from his crack, then trickling down.
Their proximity—close enough for a flea to jump from one to the other—lit a fire inside Matt, a ball of molten, white-hot lust that made his throat go dry and his dick twitch like the needle on a Geiger counter.
In any other setting he would not be able to resist the urge to slide a finger beneath the band of Adam’s Jockeys and root out his fundament—as the Victorians had called it—steep his finger in the musk, and then sniff it for a cocaine high.
Mellencamp strummed his guitar, sang “I want you to dance naked...”
Matt shared the sentiment, imagined the moment, less than an hour in the future, when he would explore Adam’s body with his tongue, his fingers, and finally his cock. When they would become “one flesh” whether God liked it or not.
Mellencamp faded.
Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” began.
Adam’s arms pumped up and down, flashing tufts of pit hair that, Matt decided, would receive special attention later.
Adam was a pagan priest summoning the god of dance.
His balls—ensconced in the pouch of his Jockeys—bounced and jostled.
It was a mesmerizing sight. His downy thighs—which, mercifully, did not thicken as they neared his waist, allowed light between them, illuminating his dangling nut sack as though it were the clapper on a bell.
Matt, focused on dancing for—and to—Adam, executed his own gyrations, displayed the raw power coiled within his 6’1” frame. He doubted whether his movements were as exactly tuned to Whitney’s music as were Adam’s, but he was certain he had performed his part of the mating ritual.
In a dance that reached back to the primordial ooze, Adam had signaled that he was ripe for breeding. Matt had signaled he was the guy for the job.
Then it was midnight! Shouting and clapping and blow ticklers and noise horns! HAPPY NEW YEAR!
It was time for THE KISS. Who hadn’t dreamed of just that moment, especially a first kiss on New Year’s?
All around them couples embraced. Smooched.
Matt pulled Adam to him, placed one hand around the base of his spine, and leaned him back, supporting his upper body with his other arm. He bent over Adam, gazed into his eyes. Flecks of copper sparkled back from the hazel sea like eye-freckles, glitteringly bright.
“Kiss me.” Matt said. It was neither a question nor a command, just a statement of fact. They had both spent 17 weeks building to this moment. Pretending otherwise would be farce.
Adam’s full, bow-shaped lips parted, moist, inviting—the pistil to the stamen of Matt’s tongue, just as, later—surely—Adam’s ass would be the receptacle for Matt’s seed.
They kissed.
Matt tasted innocence and heartache. The 100-acre wood. Bonfires and boyhood. And the valley of death.
“Auld Lang Syne” began to play.
Matt pulled Adam to his feet, and they danced—no wobbling—to old acquaintance, forgotten; to drinking cups of kindness yet; to Auld Lang Syne.
They strode to their room in their skivvies, holding hands, carrying their sacks of clothes.