❄ BOBBY’S CHRISTMAS By Jeremy John Illustration by Zero (Ed Hartley) Remembering Christmas with Bobby. I was eighteen then and he was nineteen but looked a good twenty-one enough to get into bars sometimes if it weren't a Saturday night. I had just run away from home the year before and Bobby was my first roommate. Of course he'd been on his own since he was fourteen and his old man threw him out for beating up some cop. But/trusted Bobby. He was my pal. Bobby's Italian. Good looking as hell. Even his scars I would dream about peeling off and chewing on like red vines. He was strong, you'd be crazy to fuck with him; he did a year for manslaughter and they let him out early 'cause he was Catholic and swore to never be bad again. Shit, sometimes he'd just cry like a baby and how could you not just give him any damn thing in the world that he wanted. I was taller than him, but he always seemed so much bigger than me. And he was hairy like some mythological beast, which made him always seem like a man and me just a little boy. I still don't have to shave more than once or twice a year, and that's more for the ritual than the effect. But Bobby didn't care. He said he liked me when I was naked 'cause I was so naked and he always had, so it seemed, that damned sweater all over him. Course I liked his sweater and touched it whenever I could; but aren't things always like that, that you go around wanting whatever it is that you don't already naturally have. And now Bobby is altogether out of reach, but when Christmas rolls around I just can't get him out of my head. He was my best friend, and so he still remains. It was just two days before Christmas that Bobby dragged in a tree. It looked like he pulled it up out of some vacant lot, but I didn't say that, just how nice it was to have a tree. He got stale little crescent rolls from the deli where he worked and we painted them up with tempera paints with faces and stripes and stars. Bobby painted tits and pussy hair on one and we hid it behind the tree as though anyone ever came to see us anyway. The apartment we shared was made for just one person. I slept on a cot, which was also our couch in the one room, and Bobby was on three cushions that he'd arranged in a row beneath the window in the alcove that was supposed to be our kitchen. We ate on a milk crate in my room, and the shower was four doors down the hall. It was dirty, but Bobby put neat ads and magazine pages he'd stolen all over the walls and it looked really cool. I often wish I were back there, my arm around Bobby in his underwear as we huddled

close to the one peeling vertical pipe that supplied our only occasional heat. We were always warm. Christmas Eve I smuggled in several presents while Bobby was down the hall showering. One was small and easy to hide beneath my covers. A medium-sized gift I stashed behind some cereal boxes in our one cupboard. The big one I hooked to a coat hanger and lowered out the window; attaching the other end to a wad of electrical wires, I shut the window and prayed it wouldn't rain. When Bobby returned I pretended that I was asleep. I didn't want him to have to give my anything, so I didn't want him to know that I had gotten gifts for him. He came busting through the door in nothing but his towel and oxblood penny loafers. When he saw I was in bed — breathing like I was dreaming — he got quiet and stepped out of his shoes. I watched his towel unwrap in the delicate moonlight as he started massaging his hair dry. The fur under his arms, on his chest, down his stomach into his crotch seemed like mere shadows from the places that the moon illuminated. He was a very handsome man and would make a damn pretty catch for some lucky Italian bitch someday. He took such good care of me; l would have loved to have had him as a father. Too bad I wasn't Italian. Whenever Bobby stepped in from the shower I could smell him even from my bed. His skin would be still steaming with heat, and the traces of soap left in all those hairy places. I always loved the way he smelled, even when we'd run together in the park and his tee shirt would get wet and dark in all the same places that his hair grew. That night I just lay in bed smelling him like he was there under the covers with me. I could see the crevice of his moonlit but slip silently beneath the old quilt he slept with. I could almost feel it against me, those cheeks, like a cat, pale and soft, purring. In the morning I awoke first. The package that had been out all night was safe and dry. I arranged it with the other two neatly under the tree. When I went to sit on Bobby's bed I had a bowl of cereal for him and a plate of bacon. He told me to reach in his duffle bag and pull out a loaf of Christmas fruit bread that they gave him at work. We painted each slice with a quarter inch of butter and fed each other, laughing like kids. "Hey Bobby," I interrupted, serious, "I think that I heard Santa tip-toeing down the hall last night. It looks like he left some presents for you. Check 'em out." "You goon," Bobby socked me, "I think Santa mighta left this silver box in my duffle for you. Check it out." Somehow, now I was really embarrassed. It's easy to give presents, but to be getting one from Bobby ... Not that I wasn't happy, I was ecstatic. I started laughing at the inscription: "to Dave my best roomie and buddy, I luv you Robert." I laughed to not cry. I quickly gave Bobby the biggest present. It was still cold so I explained how it had hung out the window all night. I watched his strong hands tear into the papers and pull out a

green and brown twill walking cap like they wear in Britain. "Let's warm this sucker up/' he joked and popped it over his exposed dick, "how d'ya like it, Mate?" "Perfect fit," I laughed, "I was afraid it wouldn't be big enough." Timidly I added "Do you like it?" "I love it!" he exclaimed, rising to his knees to show off that the hat now hung on his rising pecker. "So does Peter," he added. He laughed and put the hat on properly to show me that he really did love it. I was now face to face with a disturbed and restless penis, naked as Bobby's smile, big and inviting. I quickly reached for the middle-sized present but he grabbed my hand back. He placed it right on his peter and said, "You don't have to be afraid of Pete, he don't bite. Except when he's mad." He started laughing but I was serious now. I didn't know what he meant, or what my appropriate response would be. I just sat there like a mute ninny holding on to his hot pulsing appendage, feeling his heart beat into the palm of my hand, the veins like snakes writhing in a sheath of burning satin; I was trembling, unable to let go, afraid of Bobby's eyes. And I started crying. I don't know why. But Bobby had never seen my cry; I wasn't Italian like him, we just didn't cry where I grew up. So Bobby immediately took heart and melted over me without saying a word. He wrapped his strong hairy arms around my waist and pulled me into him. I could taste his breath like warm milk sucking into my nose and mouth. His chest pushed into my left shoulder and my other hand reached into the air for something to grab on to. He took it and placed it with the other on his beefy dick. Then he kissed me. Like a mother first, so soft I almost thought it was just a breath of air, then pressing the sugared flesh of his lips fully into mine, but sideways so they fit tightly into each other as his warm tongue invaded the privacy of my face. I kept crying and he kept tonguing me; I let my tongue wander into his cavern and he sucked it all the way in until I couldn't retrieve it. Then he pushed it back and forced it to submit to his grand blade. And we both tasted the salt of my tears as they slid between our lips. I was trembling so hard that I let go of his prick. I pushed him away and leaned back into the wall. The next present was meant to be a joke and it now seemed really stupid, but when I tried to take it back he grabbed it from me. "Hey, I believe Santa left that one for me," he exulted as he ripped it open. It was meant to be a joke. I went into this dirty bookstore on Eighth Street and bought this pink candle that was shaped like a dick, the wick coming out of the slit where we pee. It didn't have balls; it was just a big fat phallus. It was a joke. "A joke," I apologized, "I... I thought it was funny." I felt fragile. Like glass.

"I like it," Bobby said in all earnestness. "It looks like yours." With that he touched my dick, holding it so tight I could now feel the frightened beating of my own pulse — or was it the pulse in his hand — throbbing hot blood that inflamed my virgin member. I instinctively reached forward to kiss him, but found instead a cold wax model intruding through my lips. I reacted in fear but Bobby grabbed me and pushed me into his pillow, placing his own mouth to my penis and pushing the wax idol into the crack of my buns. As my dick enraged further my anus opened naturally to let the smooth paraffin figure glide easily in. My brain was in a panic, but my body seemed all-too willing, dilating and offering its treasures to this roughneck hoodlum that I so thoroughly trusted. I loved Bobby, and that was that. I was his to do whatever he wanted with, and I knew that, safe in our nest, whatever that was would be good. His lips brushed up and down on my pole. As he curved them in to cover his teeth I could feel the stubble of his chin whiskers scraping me underneath. He pulled the candle out until it felt like I was taking a shit, I contracted, then he pushed it in even further until a shot of light bolted up my spine. I wanted his face and I pulled on his hair but he wouldn't release me. We went on like that for some good while when I realized that my eyes were closed and I was missing so much of what now could be mine. I pulled on his shoulder and he instantly circled the bed with his body until his legs were straddling my face, his knees just over my head, the fur of his great legs pressing against my cheeks and forehead as his own swollen gland dipped right into my gasping mouth. I gagged and gagged and each time he withdrew for just a moment, then he banged it right back into me until his heavy balls were squashing against either side of my nose. Up and down they bobbed and bounced like puppies jumping for a butterfly. My gagging had given way to gulping. The perfume of his body was dripping from his pubic nest onto my face, into my eyes and nose. I could taste and smell him like I had never imagined that I would, sweet and brown-smelling, like a tobacco shop, or the redwood chip beds that they put the kittens and dogs in the pet store. There was fur everywhere and I wanted just to inhale until every morsel of him was filling up my insides. Then he pulled away. He swung back around, but this time to kiss me again. His hand continued to manipulate the candle, which now felt like liquid fire. He pulled my legs onto his shoulders and pumped the thing until I thought that I would explode inside. When he pulled it all the way out, I heard myself moan; he entered it back and pumped even harder. But this time there was more weight behind the pump, his legs were whapping into my butt and his balls were slapping against my upturned spine. The candle (ay beside us and I realized that it was his dick inside me, that part that I was so afraid to touch, now hot and swollen in my gut, sliding up into my bowels until it churned away at my breakfast. He pulled my face to him and rammed in his tongue, as though they might meet — his tongue and his dick — somewhere in the middle where all that heat was spreading. I

thought I would explode and then realized that I already had, all over our stomachs, clouds that rained warm rain down the sides of my belly and ribs. Bobby kept pumping away until his breathing almost stopped. I was afraid that something might be wrong — I had never seen another man have an orgasm. He sort of screamed and tears came out of his eyes. He heaved into my now tightened ass, his own round ass tensing and forcing every cell of meat that he could deep within me. I almost laughed, but I caught his nose in my mouth and sucked it as he collapsed onto me. He was such a giant then, and such a baby as well. God, I loved Bobby. He was so sweet, so sexy, so willing to make things my way. We just did a little rearranging to keep his dick inside me as I gave him my last present. It was a ring that was fourteen-carat gold filled with a big glistening tiger's eye in the center. He started crying again and bit my lips. He said it was our wedding ring and that he'd never take it off. I spent fifteen dollars on it and I wanted it to be the best thing that he owned, but I never expected all this to give it such meaning. I was so happy. And when I finally opened his gift — a gorgeous silver Timex that he had inscribed "I luv you Bobby" — I thought I was gonna die. I joked and put it around my dick and balls and he made some comment about it always being time for sex, but then I put it on right and kissed him until I was afraid I'd suck the life out of him. He got hard again and fucked me some more, never coming, just playing as we kissed and admired our beautiful gifts. Later that evening, after we had whiled away the day in bed and at the park, fixed soup and grilled cheese sandwiches with bearings cranberry jelly, Bobby brought out some chocolates that he confessed he had stolen—borrowed, he said — from his job. He placed one inside the opening of my ass, just at the edge, bit the end of it off and sucked out the liqueur and cherry inside, then pushed what was left up in me. When he had done the same with a half-dozen pieces he got so hot that he started pumping me all over again. This time he fucked me from the back while I grabbed onto the pillow with my hands and mouth, on my knees, my butt up in the air for Him. Chocolate ended up spewing out all down both our legs, all over his balls, all over his sheets. We spent the rest of the averting licking off the parts that we could — I loved the feel of his sticky hair in my teeth and against my tongue, the sweetness of the candy with the salty mellow flavors of this body. When the penis candle had burned all the way down to the plate it was stationed on and we figured that everyone on the floor was locked away for the night, we wrapped up in towels and crept down the hall for our first shower together, jerking each other off With soap while he finger-fucked me and chewed my tender tits. It wasn't until some weeks later that Bobby surprised me one night by sliding his own pre-lubed asshole down onto my prick. As if I never would have thought of such a thing, my guru initiated me into the fine art of satisfying someone else's hole. Pretty soon we'd spend long nights trading off on each other to prolong coming just as long as we could. I even got quite aggressive once I had my and developed some confidence with my own body. I came to crave the push and bounce I would get from those marvelous furry mounds of muscle that Bobby wore at the base of his spine. It thrilled me to feel our two sets of balls clanging together beneath us like bells in a church tower, hot and dripping

with love. I loved being inside him as much as I loved to feel him burning his channel through my dark spaces, his monkey breasts rising over me as I surrendered all my thoughts, needs and wants beneath him. He was my best friend. Looking back now, he was my first — and best — lover. I eventually came out West, as all fair-haired youths must; Bobby remained for a time in that cold and bleak room on the corner of 2nd and St. Marks. But soon he was called by his own Catholic instincts to marry, and then — for some reason I never did hear — to enlist. That was during Vietnam days, and I eventually got a letter from his wife that I had never met that Bobby had been killed in action. Twelve years later I hang a single heavily lacquered crescent roll on my lover's and my tree. The old Timex I no longer wear, but it sits in guarded safety in a beautiful tortoiseshell box on the mantle. Our tree is splendid with hand-blown ornaments and antique German angels, the house abounds with the lush odors of mouthwatering Yuletide cuisine — my lover is a quite renowned chef — and I love Steve, I really do. I love our life here in Mill Valley. But I have never been able to replace the taste of Campbell's tomato soup and a grilledcheese on gooey white bread, and nothing has ever turned me on more than the smell of Bobby's dirty sox or his hot flesh as he ran in from that grimy old apartment hall and into my tiny dry bed and always opened arms. And no Christmas will ever be as warm, nor gift as gracious and meaningful as that charming December 25th Bobby and I spent fucking, giggling and enjoying our simple wonderful irreplaceable hours of love. *