Chapter 3

Nathan Monroe, or "The Stain" as my friends eventually came to refer to him due to my inability to remove him from my life, strolled in unannounced, without cause or concern, four years after I uprooted myself from New York and headed south. His self-confidence swung like a wrecking ball when we met, almost laughable had it not had such an intoxicating effect on me. The novelty of his swagger faded, but for a long while, I couldn't let him go. Once I did, he decided he couldn't let me go. There was a fleeting toxicity that hovered over our relationship like a cloud, a dense fog that could be seen but never touched, sensed but never acknowledged because it was hard to tell whether it was really there or not. At first, anyway.

Before Atlanta was even a sparkle of a thought, my degree in marketing from City College was put to use in a similar fashion as most undergraduate degrees, assistant-managing a Banana in Midtown Manhattan and partying at the clubs that became synonymous with New York City nightlife in the nineties. But the city changed after the towers fell. That's what it felt like to me—a seismic shift characterized by mourning and grief, beige and gray. Everything turned backward over the course of a day; jobs and families and earthly existence flipped upside down. Entire lives became unrecognizable in a matter of hours. The city, which to me had always been a source of life—of energy—was suddenly different, instantly sad and uninspired. Not that I didn't understand the shift. A piece of us had been stolen, something most of us took for granted, something most of us didn't know was there. But once it was gone, the emptiness was suffocating.

Personally, I didn't know anyone who died that day. Everyone in the city knew of someone who'd been affected though. And being around all that sadness affected me, depressed me. Trudging downtown felt like walking in quicksand. No longer could I suffer the cold winters. That first one did me in, the wind and the rain and the gray skies beating my spirit to a pulp. The faces of strangers on the train looked washed-out and tired, heads hanging and eyes vacant. It was almost as if the creativity had drained from the city through the holes left in the ground that day. There wasn't any excitement left. And the mayor's careless reign of terror didn't help.

I had to get out and go somewhere else, where the isolation and loss didn't hang overhead like a black cloud in the sky. I could see light around the edges, but no matter how hard I ran, how fast my legs moved, I could never get out from under that fucking cloud after that cataclysmic day in September all those years ago.

So, I sent out résumés—everywhere—and eventually got called for an interview in Atlanta. As it was explained to me during that initial discussion, jobs were plentiful, and good talent was hard to find. Perfect. I started working as a team manager at a flagship store for a luxury brand at an upscale mall. I found a cheap one-bedroom apartment in Midtown that cost me a third as much as I'd been paying for my studio in New York. The job could be stressful, but it was easy to sell designer clothes to rich housewives with nothing but time and dealers with nothing but cash. My team consistently hit their sales goals, and I made a ton of money in bonuses. Three and a half years sailed by quickly, and life was fun again. Alex, Calvin, and I went out to the clubs a few times a week, dancing and partying and sometimes hooking up with hot strangers, as one does in those situations.

2006

Avenue was packed. It had to be three o'clock in the morning, and the DJ was on fire, elevated in that dark booth atop a short stairwell in a corner of the dance floor. Pounding bass lines and heavy percussion occasionally made way for stabbing synths or melodic vocals. There was such an energy, even an urgency to the moment. The crowd on the dance floor was in sync, and the vibe in the place was heady and carefree. People were giddy and excited to be out, excited to be alive.

Standing on the line for the bathroom, leaning against a dirty, sweat-soaked wall in a dark, cavernous hallway behind probably ten other people all waiting for a stall, a tiny baggie of coke burned a hole in my pocket. Heavy bass surged from the stacked speaker boxes surrounding the dance floor, vibrating every object not secured to a surface, including my internal organs. The cartoonishly large mirror ball that hung from the ceiling even seemed to shake with the kick drum. It was our crucifix, our altar, our deity, and we'd been worshipping for hours.

The pill I'd ingested earlier that night was hitting me in waves, crashing into me in that dense crowd of people every few minutes, begging me to let go and dance harder. The loose fabric of my baggy white T-shirt clung to my chest as though it was afraid of being abandoned in such a dark, frantic place. Beads of sweat caressed the tips of my hair before dripping onto my forehead, trailing wet lines down my face. Staring at the painted black wall in front of me, attempting to steady my focus, I downed half the bottle of ice-cold water I grabbed from the bar on my way to the bathroom before lifting the hem of my shirt to wipe at my brow. The dark hair covering my chest and abdomen was briefly exposed. I didn't care. It was hot, and half the guys in the club had lost their shirts hours ago.

I wiped the excess water from my lips. The hem of that stretched-out T-shirt was still in hand, and the line for the bathroom continued snaking its way down the hallway when I saw him. Tall and thin—and fit—he was a pretty boy, maybe a few years my senior. Sandy blond and well put together, he exited the bathroom with another preppy-looking boy-next-door type. Tall and Thin's hair was short but wavy, his eyes deep and features sharp. His arms were subtly muscled and framed perfectly by the blue-and-orange striped tank top he wore. As they breezed by me in that narrow hallway, a look of privileged importance about them, the blond pretty boy looked directly at me and winked, slowing time to a crawl. It was like in the movies when the crowd parts and two people in love see each other from across the room, and everything plays out in slow motion for a few seconds. I'd never experienced anything like that.

As the two of them passed me by, continuing their strut toward the dance floor, Tall and Thin slowly turned away, and time sped back up. And that ass in those khaki shorts… damn. I watched him walk away until they disappeared into the fog and neon lights encompassing the mass of people on the sprawling dance floor of that raucous club.

I continued looking in their direction, my lips parted, still gripping at the hem of my T-shirt, still rolling hard. A sweetness lingered in the air from his cologne. Never did I think I had a type. After a failed attempt years before, I'd consciously decided that relationships weren't my thing. But I didn't discriminate when it came to hooking up. If a guy was cute and semi-interesting or hot and not interesting at all, I wouldn't be turned off by hair color or ethnicity. A dick was a dick, in my mind. But that guy—that confident, elusive, sandy-blond guy—that may have been my type. Boy-next-door, country-club-chic, never-been-told-no Harvard crew captain; whatever it was, he was it. I quickly turned to follow him, to find him, losing my place on the line. The bump I'd planned to put up my nose no longer seemed so important.

Searching for him in that writhing crowd of a thousand people wasn't going to be easy, but it was my mission. I felt like I had found my calling. I remember running into Alex and Calvin on the dance floor and handing off the baggie of coke before telling them I'd see them later. They knew what that meant. When I found someone I was attracted to, I tended to make things happen.

It only took me a few minutes to find him dancing with the other pretty boy and four others, each one of them as plucked, stitched, and clean-cut as the last. Was one of them his boyfriend? Did it matter? If they were open to it, I could have gotten down with a three-way. My confidence boosted by the wink he'd carelessly thrown my way and the MDMA in my system, I pushed through the crowd until I was right behind him. His friends paid me no attention. Why would they? It was body to body on that dance floor, and spatial reasoning had no place at Avenue.

Leaning in, I grabbed his hips from behind and spoke bluntly into his ear, "I think you forgot to say hello back there."

He turned to face me, still dancing, smiling a lazy smile. He was clearly a few drinks in, but something was keeping him alert. Coke? Crystal? Who was I to judge, considering the abundance of chemicals coursing through my own veins?

"No," he replied with a cocky smile, almost annoyingly assured. "I figured you would find me at some point."

I cocked a half-smile as we embarked on an allegorical dance, dancing as we moved, moving as we danced. His voice was even and masculine. We were the same height. I liked that I could look directly into his eyes as we spoke.

"They always do," he continued with a smirk.

Had he been anyone else, I would have had to keep myself from slugging him, but he was so fucking cute that all I could do was laugh. I should have known then that he wasn't any good for me, but I was horny and intoxicated. I took another sip from my water bottle. "I'll bet they do."

His hands found their way to my waist, and he pulled me close, the moisture from my shirt dampening the fabric of his tank top. He grabbed the bottom of my tee, forcing me to raise my arms as he pulled it up my torso and over my head before handing it back to me. We continued to dance, and I tucked it into the back of my waistband to free up my hands, never breaking eye contact. We exchanged sly grins.

"I'm Brandon!" I felt like I was shouting at him. The music was loud, but there was a volume at which one could get used to speaking in a club like that. It wasn't enough to noticeably strain a voice in the moment, but the morning after, it would feel as though a pack of menthols had been chain-smoked the night before.

"What?" he asked, shouting his response back to me as he removed his tank top.

Good. It wasn't just me.

I leaned in closer. "I'm Brandon."

"Nate," he offered in return. His naturally smooth chest and khaki-covered hips rubbed against my own as we gave in to the music. The group of friends he never bothered introducing me to danced and gossiped nearby, though they'd tightened their circle after Nate joined me in our own rhythmic frenzy. The air in the club was thick, and our hands explored each other's warm flesh, slick with perspiration. The building seemed to be bouncing, and the atmosphere smelled of too much cologne and cigarette smoke, of sex and sweat. One was either really turned off or really turned on. It was one of those rare, perfect nights when everyone seemed to be on the same page. There wasn't any noticeable drama, no arguing, no fighting. Just dancing. Freedom.

Suddenly, the melody of the song the DJ was playing dropped out completely, and we were left with nothing but the sound of a drumbeat, hard and driven. The dance floor lights went dark, and the crowd was left to gyrate in the blackness, an occasional strobe briefly illuminating the space. The DJ played with the beat, weaving in random vocals from another track. It was tribal at first, then more trancelike as the tempo was slowly pitched up, whipping the crowd into a frenzy for nearly five minutes.

That game he played with the music, with the crowd, drawing out the beat, slowing it down and speeding it back up, teasing us with a vocal that never quite materialized, it reminded me of Junior at the Factory back in New York. I only got to go a few times before it closed, but it was like nothing I'd ever experienced. It was legendary. It was magic. There weren't any rules, and the people went mad for it.

"Drumbeat… Drumbeat… Drumbeat…" the voice echoed repeatedly, louder and clearer each time it emerged, at some point overtaking the urgency of the beat itself. The tease of a vocal was maddening and perfect, a lead-in to what would become a spectacular memory made. "What was that song that was playing when we met?" one of us would ask years later. "I remember it like it was yesterday," the other would respond. And just as we couldn't take it anymore, as the crowd screamed and howled in anticipation, as the fog continued to rise around us and the strobe ascended to a seizure-inducing pace, the track we'd been anticipating finally landed as the beat dropped out and the vocal, no longer just a hint, came screeching in, moody and dark and brassy. "Sometimes… the sound of goodbye… is louder… than any drumbeat…" And just like that, the beat pounded back in, and the lights began flashing as the dance floor went mad.

I probably should have taken that musical message as a warning, heeded its imposing irony and walked away while my spirits were still high. But Nate's hands, one on the small of my back and one slowly finding its way to the back of my neck, gripped me forcefully as he pulled me into him. Our lips, slightly parted, met for what I'm sure was a sloppy kiss exacerbated by inebriation. But at that moment, it felt sexy and perfect. His mouth tasted fresh, not at all tangy or stale like the club kisses I was used to—too much vodka, too much Red Bull, one too many cigarettes.

We made out for a moment, and once our lips parted, Nate spun me around and wrapped his arms around me again, his fairly defined pectoral muscles pressing against my back. The heat radiating from his body felt necessary. I reached back with one arm and pulled his hips closer to me. He was hard. I could feel the bulge of his cock pressing against my ass through the denim of my jeans. My body reacted to his excitement. The thought that I could turn someone on just by dancing with them was, in turn, a turn-on for me. He kissed the nape of my neck playfully, erotically, which only caused my erection to grow firmer. He then did the same to the back of my ear.

Fuck. A soft kiss to the ear was just about more than I could handle. I turned my head slightly to address him. "You wanna get outta here?"

He responded by pressing himself into me more firmly, making me feel his hardness. I understood that nonverbal cue quite well.

"You need to tell your friends you're leaving?" I asked.

"It's fine. I'll talk to them tomorrow. You?"

"I already told them."

"Presumptuous of you."

"Not that presumptuous." I smirked. It made me feel good that I could meet him on his level with arrogant comebacks. He simply responded by rubbing his hand down my chest to the front of my jeans and grabbing my dick. I responded by grabbing that hand and leading him to the exit.

Five quick blocks later, a hastened journey of urgency filled with playful games of grab-ass and hey-keep-your-hands-to-yourself, and we stepped through the front door of my apartment. Before I could even flip the light switch, Nate grabbed me and shoved me backward against the living room wall, attacking my mouth with his.

Shedding our shirts, we made out just long enough to leave me wanting more. He kissed his way down my neck and chest, lifting my arms to gently bite at my nipples and nip at the flesh between chest and armpit. He breathed me in and ran his fingers through my chest hair. Making his way down my torso, my abdomen, he seemed to relish my body. I certainly wasn't going to stop him.

Hastily unfastening the polished brass buttons of my jeans, he looped his fingers into the waistband of my briefs and yanked them down my thighs, along with my pants. My hardening cock jumped up, and Nate wasted no time taking my length into his mouth. I moaned out loud from the shock of feeling his warmth envelop me. Futilely attempting to grasp at the wall behind me, I eventually rested my hands on the back of my head. It was something to hold on to, anything to stabilize me, I thought, my hips jutting out toward Nate's face as he drew me into him. His hands wrapped around the back of my thighs as he pulled me into his open mouth. I steadied myself against the wall and let him take control. He was good at it.

Minutes passed as he pleasured me with his mouth, his tongue, his throat. I lost track of time in his grasp. But at some point, he pulled himself off me, standing up and shoving his tongue back into my mouth. I accepted it without question. As we made out, he unzipped his shorts and pushed them down his thighs, kicking them off along with his shoes. I took that as my cue to drop to my knees and taste him just as he had tasted me.

His cock was pretty. I guess I'd expected nothing less from a pretty boy like him. He was cut, neatly trimmed, average—maybe slightly above average. It hardly mattered; I never was a size queen. Taking him in, I gave him what he wanted, swiping my tongue across the swollen head each time I pulled back, tasting the saltiness of his precome as I gripped his lightly furred thighs. The little body hair he had was silky and wispy, so different from my own, which grew thick and coarse. I went down on him for a few minutes before he grabbed me underneath the arms and pulled me back up, using his foot to push my pants the rest of the way down my legs while I kicked off my sneakers. He seemed to be a worthy partner in the realm of physical manipulation.

He then turned me around and pressed me against the wall with the full weight of his body. It was a bold move on his part, but I was prepared. I usually was if I knew I'd be going out. My warm cheek touched the cool wall. It was a welcomed sensation, like the feel of a cool pillow against one's flesh after a long, tiring day at work.

"Can I fuck you?" he asked with that confident voice, already knowing what my answer would be. It seemed almost ceremonial to ask. He struck me as the type to simply take what he wanted when he wanted it.

"You got a condom?"

His weight left me, and I immediately missed it while he shuffled around on the floor behind me, trying to pull a condom from the pocket of his discarded shorts. I stayed in position, and a moment later, I heard a wrapper tearing and Nate fidgeting around, trying to unroll the latex sheath onto his erection. I pushed my hips out and spread my legs for easier access, steadying myself against the wall with my hands.

"Lube?" he asked, slightly winded.

"It's back in the bedroom. Just spit on it," I impulsively answered. I was eager. I wanted him inside me five minutes ago. He spat on his hand and rubbed it over his cock, slicking it up the best he could before gripping my ass firmly, pulling my cheeks apart, and spitting directly onto my opening, using a finger to massage the natural lube into me. The pressure was uncomfortable at first, foreign and awkward, a necessary hurdle to clear. It got better, easier the longer he worked on me, opening me, readying me for something more satisfying, more paramount.

I mashed the palms of my hands into the wall in ecstasy. The drugs only amplified the erotic sensation his fingers provided me. A radiant beam from a streetlight outside pierced through the large window just a few feet from where Nate and I were engaging in what some would call a lewd act. Thank God my apartment was on the second floor.

A few moments later, one of Nate's hands left my ass and landed on my waist while the other lined the tip of his cock up with my hole. I knew it was going to hurt—I hadn't bottomed for a while—but I was willing to work through the pain. He entered me, and I instantly felt myself wrap around his hardness. A fire ripped through the entirety of my body, and I instinctively reached back and grabbed his thigh, urging him to wait.

"Sorry," he chuckled. Thinking back, that was probably the only time he ever meant it.

I laughed a little too, partly due to the awkwardness of the moment in which we'd wrapped ourselves up and partly because we were actually having fun. We shouldn't have tried to rush it, but there we were. Nate waited a few moments before spitting into his hand again and bringing it to where he was penetrating me. Gently massaging my asshole and his cock at the same time, he slowly entered me. I tried to relax, pushing out to allow him easier access. It felt better then, and before I knew it, his pelvis met my backside. He was in me completely, and I found myself aggressively grasping at his thigh again. Only then, I was egging him on, urging him to continue.

I placed my open palms against the wall for balance, and Nate slid his hands up my frame until they covered mine, lacing his fingers between my own. Being held against the wall by his body while he fucked me in that darkened living room ignited an excitement within me. His dominance was demanding but courteous. I never once felt unsafe or taken advantage of. There was an unspoken need between us at that moment. There was reckless passion. We were living for the present, and it made me feel alive. Being submissive with him felt natural. I'd never considered myself a top or a bottom. I enjoyed both roles on occasion. But that night with Nate, I was compliant and obedient as he thrust himself into me.

My firm cock, ready to fire on command, smashed into the unforgiving hardness in front of me, a wall that wouldn't give. I held on as long as I could, but I eventually came without touching myself, uncontrollably releasing a torrent of ejaculate onto the wall, making a mess all the way down to the floor below. Nate grabbed my hips and shuddered, unloading into me just seconds after I did the same against the very structure of the building I called home.

We stood there for a moment, frozen in our embrace, slowly coming to, realizing where we were and what had just happened. Our orgasms had overtaken any residual effects the illegal substances running through our systems may have had on us. Nate's drenched forehead rested against my shoulder blade, a droplet of sweat rolling down my back. Our breathing remained labored and heavy as I stood sandwiched between my living room wall and Nate's heaving body in that unlit room, dim outlines of my furniture visible from that damn streetlight outside. It became clear in that moment how hauntingly silent it was in my apartment. It was late, and the streets were empty, my neighbors all sound asleep.

I turned my head slightly to make some kind of contact, to break the silence, but I wasn't sure what to say. I simply spoke the first words that popped into my head. "You wanna stay the night?"

It just slipped out. I didn't mean to ask him. That's not something you ask a trick to do, but I'd have been lying if I'd said I didn't want him there. There was something about his presence that made me want him around. Never before that moment had I asked a trick to stay the night, and awkwardly waiting for his response while he was still inside me was some kind of torture.

"Yeah." He paused, a slight waver to his voice. "Sure."

His reply was uncertain but hopeful. I could tell he wanted to stay but didn't want to let me know he wanted to stay. Why do we play these games with each other? A slight sigh of relief escaped me as I chuckled, "Good."

He lifted his head from my shoulder as I turned my face back toward his, and we shared another kiss before he pulled himself from my body, removing the used condom from his softening cock. That kiss was sweeter, more tender than the ones we'd shared before. The morning was just beyond the horizon, and we were no longer horny, prowling conquistadors. We were simple humans once again. Tired, simple humans with feelings and emotions. Well, one of us was. The other simply played the part well.