This is an excerpt from a new book I am working on. Everything happens just as I say. Mostly. Photo Credit: Tom Bianchi.

When I was 18 I spent a few weeks in Fire Island at my friend Patrick’s father’s house. Patrick’s dad was gay. He was an art dealer, but there were rumors he was also a thief, or a gangster, I once heard he was smuggling guns for revolutionaries or cartels.

Patrick wasn’t my boyfriend but we used to fuck. We were young and horny and if we weren’t getting high or drunk or sticking our dicks in each other we were fighting over books and Heidegger, Marxist theory and how magic manifests in our lives.

Patrick was tall and athletic, curly black hair and green eyes, he had a long fat uncut dick and a fat ass from soccer and swimming. To this day I still jerk off thinking about Patrick.

I loved lying in bed with him, or sneaking out to the pool in the early dawn, still high as fuck and wanting more, or onto the beach, talking all night, holding each other, taking turns fucking each other, making out and telling each other our dreams.

We both wanted so much back then.

At 18 I wanted to fall in love, to fuck the world, to rise as high as I could, and then to freefall as deep as possible.

I never told Patrick that one night, while he was out dancing, I stayed up drinking beers with his father. I never told him that I ended up on my knees, on that kitchen floor, sucking his father off, and that once in a while, when we were alone, his dad would sneak into my room and fuck me, whispering in my ear that he owned me and that my ass belonged to him, and that I was right where I was supposed to be: pinned to the earth by his big dick.

One Saturday night I had stayed out at the club after Patrick had gone home. The night was beautiful: warm and balmy, the sky that endless sparkling brilliance that only happens in my memories, the world lit up in fire.
I was high and drunk and all around me men danced and laughed. They grabbed me and kissed me, holding me tight, whispering I love you and I need you. We fucked right there on the dance floor, stomping our feet and howling up into the sky: screaming out our names as loud as we could.

It was 1987 and we were dying: all around us, our friends and lovers, our community, were getting sick and dying.

But on that night, for those few minutes we raged against the inevitable, against the loss and the fear and the despair: we danced, and we fucked, and we howled until there was nothing left: just the ecstasy piercing the night, elevating us, reminding us that we were human, that we were alive: on that night the world was full of magic and possibility: and we were full of love.
I decided to walk home along the beach. At one point I cut through a path, through a grove of trees and dunes. In the dark I heard men laughing and moaning and I stepped off the path, into the trees, in search of adventure.

It was like stumbling into a magical ceremony: a coven of witches: a circle of warlocks. In the trees, hidden from the walk way, a group of 20 or so guys stood around passing joints and bottles of wine, taking turns fucking this stunning muscle guy bent over a large tree trunk that must have found its way to the shore from the depths of the ocean.

Sitting alone on a rock was a dark-haired boy with a thick beard. He couldn’t stop watching as men took turns pounding themselves into the muscle guy.
I sat on the rock next to him. He told me his name was Adam. He was getting his PH’d in Theoretical Physics and was on the Island for a wedding.

I offered to split a tiny blue pill I found in my pocket with him.

“What is it?” he asked me.

“I have no clue,” I laughed. “But it makes everything really fucking beautiful.”

We made out on that rock and he told me how the world was not how it looked: that the physical world was a deception, a lie, but that the truth was there, hiding, playing a game with us: calling out to us.

“You can see it if you really look. Out of the corners of your eyes. Reflecting in the surfaces all around us.” He took my hands in his, his lips brushing my lips: I felt my heart quicken, my dick was so hard it hurt. “You and me. This separation: it’s a lie. There is nothing between us. You and me, we are connected.”

We ended up leaving the coven of fucking magicians and walked to the edges of the world, the ocean dark and stunning, the moon a sliver of gold. He kissed me and told me that he believed that we were endless beings: infinite and forever.
He kept saying those words to me: “We are infinite and forever.”

When the sun began to rise he told me he had somewhere to be.

When we kissed goodbye I felt what he had said to me: infinity and connectedness: I felt forever.

Later that day Ryan and I walked home along the beach from the gym. Ahead of us was a wedding: a man and a woman standing on the edges of the ocean. When we got closer I saw the man was Adam.

For a moment our eyes connected, and in his were a kind of pain and sadness I didn’t understand at the time: they were full of loss. And then he looked away, to the woman he would marry.

When I told Ryan he said,

“Everyone is so fucked up.” He took my hand in his, leading me away from the Ocean and Adam. “Fucked up and beautiful. We’re all locked in this crazy madhouse together and the only way out is through it. Till the fucking end.”

“Yeah. Till the fucking end.”

I still can’t escape that feeling of magic. Of something larger than life happening to me. Those moments, our bodies pressed together, the taste of his breath, the smell of him: I can’t escape that feeling that we knew each other. For who we really were.

At least for a few moments.

“We are infinite and forever,” he said to me.

I feel it. 32 years later. I can feel the way those words became a part of me. Defined me.

32 years later I can feel what it was he was saying to me: that there is a magic in this world, a purpose and a meaning, it is burning right here in front of us. It is ours if we choose it.

Infinite and forever. Burning bright and strong.

I can close my eyes in this moment, here and now, and still taste him: I can feel the warmth of his skin, the timbre of his voice.

And I can feel every man I have ever loved. Every man I have ever fucked. Every man who has ever been inside me: I can feel us all, in these moments, howling like mad men at the night, raging against the future, running full speed from the past, desperate and mad and in love.

Connected.

Thanks for reading. If you want to read more, go check out my book, Accidental Warlocks, on Amazon. Support queer artists!