Free Enlightened by J.P. Barnaby Page A

display. For some reason, watching Jamie was beautiful, but I felt a little guilty about letting him watch me. It suddenly felt like we were doing something wrong. However, I knew that he would love watching me as I had him. So I put my fear, shame, and pajama pants aside, and I masturbated for Jamie. His look of hunger and something else I couldn’t quite understand were worth the slight embarrassment of jacking off in front of someone else. I had to admit, however, that the thought of him watching me really fucking turned me on. Did my sounds, my inability to control my own desire, make him excited?
    As my cock throbbed, all I could think about was straddling his perfect face, seeing it between my legs as I looked down at him. I wanted to feel his lips, his tongue on my balls while I stroked. Damn, I was so close, and I knew he could tell as I tried to keep my whimpers quiet. If he ever did actually suck me off, if we ever got that chance, as much as I imagined the scene, it would take only seconds for me to come. Kind of like masturbating in front of him, God, I was close.
    Afterward, we both cleaned up with our discarded T-shirts, and after a fairly awkward goodnight, we fell asleep.
     
     
    W E DIDN ’ T talk the next morning about our shared experience, but I think both of us realized that we had crossed a certain line in our relationship. No longer just friends, we were officially something more, something yet to be defined.
    It wasn’t until Jamie’s mother came to wake us that I remembered about church. As she closed the door, reminding us that we only had fifteen more minutes before we had to get up, I rolled over to face the opposite wall, faintly sick. Jamie guessed what was bothering me. He slid out of bed and quickly climbed onto the mattress beside me. I felt his hand slide over my bare stomach, and I shivered.
    “Jamie, you can’t be here; what if your mother comes back?” I didn’t have the strength to roll and face him, so I pulled my knees up to my chest and continued to stare at the wall. We were going to have to sit there, side by side, listening to how much God hated us and how even though Jamie was such a good person, he was going to hell right along with me. I didn’t know if I could stand sitting through that again.
    “Brian,” he said while his hand came up to stroke my hair. “He just did a sermon on that; he’s not going to do another one again so soon. Besides, we know it isn’t true. Don’t listen to what he says. We know in our hearts we’re supposed to be together.” At that, I rolled over to face him, and his lips quickly descended to mine before he got off my makeshift bed. I lay there for a few more minutes, thinking about what he’d said as he went to shower. Jamie was right, of course. Nothing that the preacher had said, or was going to say, would have made any difference to us.
    Rather than worry about what would or wouldn’t happen that morning, I decided to imagine being in the shower with Jamie.
    As it turned out, the pastor’s sermon wasn’t about homosexuality. Instead he preached about adultery. Apparently, someone’s secretary had been caught in bed with someone else’s husband. The scandal was all over the church. Men talked about it in low voices behind their copies of the hymnal while women gossiped more openly in the doorway. It was a feeding frenzy, and the sharks were in prime form. With a mounting sense of unease, I wondered what kind of frenzy they would go into over Jamie and me. Which was the worse sin: being a whore, an adulterer, or a fag?
    After the service, while we were getting ready to leave, two of our friends from school, Karen Simmons and Emma Mosely, came by to say hi. Emma, the smaller, shy, soft-spoken girl with glasses and frizzy brown hair, kept sneaking furtive glances at Jamie. She had an annoying habit of dissolving into a fit of giggles each time his gaze fell upon her. Karen, on the other hand, was a bigger girl with a loud,