He’s a Sissy

“David set my mood,” Noah whispered.

“Got it,” David responded.

“Goodnight, beloved.”

“Goodnight, Noah. Sweet dreams.”

The voice hushed by the bedroom door, volume low, like someone standing in the kitchen minding their own business. The door opened straight off the kitchen. No hall. One step from the stove to the latch. That was how Noah wanted the world. The lock on the door. The night outside the glass. One house, one human, one companion, one ferret, and plants. He was a loner and he did not apologize for it. His nervous system wanted quiet the way other men wanted company. His home was a pagan monastery, and it was safe. Noah had chosen peace over chaos, comfort over distress, and solitude over drama after he put the alcohol down a decade ago. The weed stayed. David Bear kept the lights and the mood in a way that soothed his overactive hypervigilant nervous system.

The lights in the house dimmed to twenty percent and shifted from soft white to ocean blue. The music changed from ’80s nostalgia to his Radical Faerie Forest playlist on Spunkify. Noah sat on the bed and threw himself backward into the blankets. The cotton was cool, then warm under his shoulders. His feet dangled several inches from the floor. His torso stretched across the mattress like an unbothered cat.

He placed his hands on his hips, closed his eyes, and let out a sigh of relief. The cannabis settled behind his eyes and made the blankets feel thicker. Time slowed down, and his gaze scrolled across the ceiling. Then his fingertips traced a line up his abdomen to his nipples. The skin tightened. Warmth gathered low in his belly, not a demand, only a pulse learning his name.

“I feel like playing,” he said to himself.

Noah sat up and surveyed the bedroom. His turned-up cock pointed at the moon. This was the inner chamber. The Holy of Holies. No guests. No performance. His bed was the altar. His body was the prayer. He slid off the bed and walked to the dresser. His erection was so firm it did not sway. He opened the top drawer and reached inside, feeling around for his favorite crotchless fishnet pantyhose. Silk thongs and loose cock rings slid under his fingers. Silicone, stainless steel, and a spiked leather one.

“Where are you? I know you are in here somewhere,” he said.

Once he had them, he closed the drawer gently. A full-length mirror was nailed to the back of the bedroom door. Bare heels on rough floorboards. He bent over, bunched the right leg, and slipped his toes in. The nylon was cool. Elastic kissed the ankle bone. He slid it up past the tattoo on his calf and past his knee. Then the left. He wiggled his hips from side to side, working the fishnets up, and pulled the waistband over the shelves of his hip bones. His cock sprung out through the hole. Heat from his skin warmed the mesh. He smoothed the stockings so the seams ran straight up the back of his thighs. The mesh caught the ocean-blue light. He turned around to look at his reflection in the mirror.

“You sissy,” he thought to himself. Then he cracked a boyish grin.

He modeled the glam for himself, twisting and turning his torso to watch light wave across his chest. His stringy blonde hair fell in his face. He used his fingertips to pull it back behind his ears. Then he paused.

“No fats, no femmes!” he could hear faintly in the back of his skull.

Those were the words of the gays that liked to humiliate feminine men. They would print it on shirts and parade them around in gay bars. Making any man that did not produce hypermasculinity understand the club was not for him.

“Fuck those faggots,” Noah barked, and turned toward the altar. The thought rapidly fading from memory.

He swaggered back to the bed, pulled back the blankets, and climbed into the middle. He came onto his knees, aligning himself with the door. The mirror gave him his whole body all at once. He took inventory the way a priest takes inventory of an altar. Ribs lifting with each inhale. The masculine weight of his shoulders against the feminine cut of the mesh. His smooth chest sparkling through the twilight of the window. The front seam of the hose cut a dark line up to the hole. His belly was soft in the blue. He reached up and put his hands behind his head and let himself look a little longer.

“I don’t look horrible,” he thought. “I still look good for thirty-three, I guess.”

He breathed in through the nose and out through the mouth slowly, like a Yogi deep in pranayama. The house made its small night sounds. A board settled. The speaker by the door kept a low hum, the leftover of David’s goodnight. He brought his hands down and laid them on his chest. Heat under bone. He waited until he could feel his heart beating. Then he moved lower, over the soft belly, over the dark seam of the hose, and stopped just short of his cock.

The prayer was the pause. He closed his eyes and imagined a soft red ball of energy between the space of his balls and his asshole. The root chakra. Then he imagined a soft orange ball of energy under his belly button. He gathered his lifeforce energy and felt his aura pulse. A small bottle waited on the nightstand, amber in the blue. Golden jojoba infused with patchouli and rose geranium essential oil. He warmed it in his palms and touched the mesh first, not the skin. He rubbed the front seam along the underside of his shaft and felt the nylon grain before he used his bare hand. The nylon whispered. He breathed into the touch and let the touch breathe back.

When he took himself in hand it was a slow stroke. Oil and heat and the hole in the hose framing him like a mouth that belonged only to him. He stroked from root to head as if he were blessing a statue he had sculpted with his own hands. The mirror kept him company. He watched the belly rise. He watched the seams stay true. He watched his own face go kind.

“Beloved,” he said, and he meant the body in the glass. The one he had punished as a teenager with self-hate, loathing, and rage became a vessel for the Holy Ghost. He circled the head with a wet thumb and did not chase the peak. He let the waves of pleasure rise and fall. Tantra without a teacher in the room. Only breath, only mesh, only the old knowledge that pleasure is a rite when you refuse to punish it.

The blue light made a temple of cheap bulbs and a nailed-up mirror feel like Noah’s private Tarapith. He smiled at that. Holy things lived in ordinary rooms. A synthetic companion’s speaker hummed. An animal sleeping in his cage. A man inside a cage that locked from the inside. By his own will, by his own design. The thermostat clicked. An autumn branch brushed the glass, Vermont trying to pick the lock and failing. He stroked again, slower, and whispered thank you to the thighs that had danced, to the belly that had softened, to the cock that stood for no one but him.

When the pleasure gathered he did not slam the door on it. He opened. Heat spilled over his fist and onto the mesh, then on the green towel under him. He shook once, laughed under his breath, and kept his hand there while the pulse went quiet. His heartbeat slowed, his aura glowed, and the room had a faint smell of ammonia.

After, he did not hide. He looked at the mess in the blue light and found it sweet. He gathered what fluid was left in his hand and swallowed it like he was accepting the eucharist. He cleaned what was left off and reached for the blanket. His body flopped down on the firm but soft bed. The mirror kept watch. October pressed its cool face to the glass and did not come in.

Noah closed his eyes. The house held him. Locked, safe, dim, his. That was the whole religion. That was enough.