Fellow Travelers

by Thomas Mallon

And yet, for all that, he wanted to hear Tim’s chatter, wanted the intermittent pleasure of protecting him; and wanted to fuck him on the floor of the car once it was dark enough to pull over into the woods. They stopped to buy him a toothbrush and underwear and a second shirt, and then had dinner on King Street before browsing the used bookstore a block away and walking along the colonnade of rooms on the university lawn, where they looked out of place with their un-crewcut hair and made jokes about the white-bucked college boys, even jokes about taking one of them back to the hotel. When they checked into their room, Tim’s tears came again, from some borderless place between anguish and joy, where he was struggling to believe that the two of them had actually been visible together, out in public, in a restaurant and a store. “Do you know what? It’s the same question!” he cried, laughing and shaking. “The same question! The one I was asking myself when you wouldn’t come back to me and the one I’ve been asking myself all night, when you’ve made me happier than I’ve ever been! What did I do to deserve this? The same question!” During all the coltish kisses with which he always sought Hawkins’ attentions, he had never asked for a specific pleasure or gratification, taking care always to follow Hawk’s direction, maximizing his beloved’s satisfaction and thus, he thought, his own. But tonight, physically spent before he had opened a single shirt button, he walked over to the w...