“Have fun,” Nora said. “Just like old times.”
Carver breathed out a laugh. Everyone filed out the door to the grounds. He watched them go through the windows, then looked over at Scott, who was extending a Fender J-Bass to him.
He took it. “What are we playing?”
“Just noodling around,” Scott said. “And thanks. I was going to ask that kid to do it, but he was a little overeager, he kept dropping shit. I figured, you know, you’ve at least played bass for me before.”
“For you?” Carver put the strap around his neck and adjusted it. “I think I played basswithyou?”
Scott shot him a grin — a genuine one that made his eyes crinkle. “Right. And you weren’t bad.”
“Not bad? I think I was pretty good, dude.”
“You were impressively technically proficient for how little time you had to learn.”
Scott had put together a band the spring of their sophomore year and lined up a few local gigs mostly through charisma alone, then got in a pitched artistic dispute with his bassist andlost him. Carver, hearing about this, offered to learn in time to play the gigs. He’d played violin as a kid and didn’t see what the difference could possibly be. He still didn’t. Besides a few details like size, the instruments made similar demands of him.
Scott fingered the guitar again, tuning it, then added: “You weren’t the most passionate musician, I might say.”
“So?” Carver roamed the stage aimlessly, waiting for directions.
“Just your playing felt a little, uh, studied.”
“Itwasstudied. I’m not a musical person. I was doing you a favor.”
“No, I know.” Scott peeked at him from underneath dark eyelashes. “I mean, I didn’t want it to just be a favor. I kinda did hope it might be a good outlet for you.”
“Outlet for what?”
“I don’t know. Latent creative passions.”
“I don’t have latent creative passions. Not everyone is creative.”
“Yeah. I guess not.”
“I did like playing loud,” Carver offered.
Scott grinned. “That’s an outlet too.”
His large, calloused hands were moving up and down the neck of the guitar with a speed and ease that made Carver queasy. He willed himself not to watch, but he was fixated. The modafinil — the same drug they gave fighter pilots so they could stay awake for twenty hours in the cockpit — was pressing his brain to his eye sockets with howling urgency. Look at those hands. Imagine them on you, recall his teenage fumbling and imagine what he could donow. As good as it had been, imagine how good it could be. Imagine him squeezing your thighs and throat while you writhe in brainless ecstasy. Imagine one hand a lovely vice around your dick while the fingers on the other work their way inside you and rub you out of existence like marker offa whiteboard. Imagine the hands pinning you down and never letting you up again, freeing you from all earthly madness.
Carver was getting a little bit hard again. Luckily his stimulant erections were usually transient. He stood behind the bass rigid with mortification, forcing his chattering mind to go blank. His dry mouth had flooded with saliva.
Scott looked up. “Alright, I’m ready. Let’s hit it.”
Carver nodded, grateful for a distraction. As the blood moved upward out of his dick, his frantic need subsided and shame rushed into its place. There was a greasy, tender note of gratification in the shame, but mostly it just made him feel low, and it made him resent Scott. It would be one thing to just fuck men. In the Roman tradition, Carver felt like he would struggle with this shit less if he only ever wanted to take the active role during sex, if there were nothing passive in him. He resented that men like Scott could dismantle him into submission, and he resented Scott for being the one to awaken this part of him.
Carver remembered fantasizing about Scott’s fingers the same way during band practice twenty years ago, wanting things he had no words for before the two of them had even kissed. In his teenage fog of hormones his desires had been even more extreme. He wanted Scott to tear him apart like a pack of wild dogs. He wanted things that the women in porn said they wanted, things no one else ever seemed to want in real life, which contributed to his shame. At sixteen Carver had wanted an ecstasy so pure and terrible that it would rend him asunder at his moment of orgasm, killing him and sending him directly to heaven.
Scott started to jam, filling the reception hall with warm and romantic chords. Muscle memory took Carver over, and after some musical throat-clearing he accompanied him effortlessly, his fingers moving on autopilot.
The kid who had been helping Scott earlier came back out of the hallway office he’d disappeared into, grinning. “Sounds great, man,” he said, when Scott stopped.
“Nah, I’m getting buried,” Scott said, setting his guitar down and starting to move the amps.
“Well, the bass should be behind you, right?” the kid said, pointing at Carver without taking his eyes off Scott.
“I was,” Carver protested.
