Own Me

Chapter Three

"When you make music or write or create, it's really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you're writing about at the time."

-Lady Gaga

♔ Chapter Three ♔

I woke up on the mattress the next morning.

My first thought as I pushed myself out of the thin, stained sheets was that the guy had probably already gone, and who could blame him? No one really likes waking up beside another guy, let alone a stranger, and a rent boy. So it surprised me when I turned over, rubbing at my sleepy eyes, and found him lying there, still sleeping.

My eyes bulged in my sockets when I realised that he'd stayed. When I tried to get up off of the mattress, his hand was still holding mine. Without realising it, I yanked him upwards and he was awake in seconds. It took him a few moments to register what exactly was happening. I could see the cogs turning in his head, when his eyes twisted around the room, over the bed, and landed distinctly on me, and he realised exactly what had happened last night.

It was the first time I noticed his appearance. He was slim, but well-fed, and kind of sweet looking, almost like a lost puppy. His hair was a short and messy brown, flaking upwards, and his eyes an unfathomable and earthy hazel.

"Did we?" he asked, slowly releasing his hand from mine. That was the first time I noticed his Southern U.S. accent.

I nodded. "Yeah. We did."

To double check, he peeked under the covers and found that he was still naked, just like me. Then his eyes fell onto his clothes, scattered aimlessly over the floor, and back onto me as I stood there, blatantly bare.

"Shit," he cursed. "I don't... I mean, not ever... I don't do this kind of thing. Like, at all." He was stammering, probably because I was the first guy he'd ever fucked, I was guessing. That was usually how it worked. They'd get so hammered that they either didn't care who they were sleeping with, boy or girl, or they felt free enough to let themselves give into their deepest and innermost queer desires. I wasn't sure which he was, but if I had to guess, I'd say the latter.

"We were drunk," I heard myself saying. I got up from the mattress this time without shame, and started pulling on my old ragged clothes right in front of him. When I turned, his eyes were staring at me, or more like directly through me, glazed over. For some reason, he looked like he was about to cry.

"I was a virgin," I heard him whisper. That certainly surprised me, although it shouldn't have. I'd taken quite a long list of virginities over the years.

"You certainly didn't fuck like a virgin, I'll tell you that much," I joked, trying to lighten the mood. Maybe, through his eyes, I seemed like the bad guy. I'd swooped into some house party and lured him into a bedroom to steal his virginity. Obviously, it didn't go down quite like that, but it was too late to be taking it back now. And I hardly ever regretted sex, so to me, it didn't matter that much.

"I didn't..." he stuttered, fumbling over himself as he stood up, hiding his naked body with the filthy sheets. "I didn't, uhm, you know?"

I raised an eyebrow. "What?" I was playing dumb. "You didn't take it up the shitter?"

He nodded shyly, his cheeks blushing a bright red. It made me smile, to see how vulnerable he was. To see how he just allowed random strangers to see those vulnerabilities, when I'd been holding mine inside for the better half of a year, trying my hardest to drink and fuck away the pain.

"Yeah, you did. You fucked me, then we switched, and I fucked you. You loved it at the time."

I watched his entire face shrivel away and drop. His body fell back down onto the mattress, his head dropping into his hands, and he started to cry.