Anime! © 2001 by Christene Yost revised 16 June

  "Ah, I'm looking at some yaoi sites," Josh said rubbing his hand on his spiked up, gelled blond hair. His heartbreaking blue eyes glanced away from the screen. "Yaoi is about boys getting it on with other boys. It's Japanese anime stuff. The biggest fans of this  stuff is teenage girls."

 "Not surprising," Pete said, his hazel eyes sparkling under his glasses, "Some of the characters look like girls dressed up in men's    clothing. Girls with big hair and flat chests."

"Maybe girls like this stuff cause it appeals to their inner lesbian," Josh teased, "Think of it. Heroic boys who are just so pretty with  their long flowing hair. They go to battle against either monsters, or sexy villains who are supposed to guys, but they look like  sissy-girls, too. Intimate, sexy clinches. Often times, the hero has a fuzzy, cute toy animal sidekick. I mean what girl wouldn't love  yaoi?"

"Why don't they look at yuri sites? Where girls get it on with other girls?"

  "Lesbians are scary to closeted lesbians," Josh said carelessly. He grinned at the object of his desire. A slender guy who had a    penchant for colorful Hawaiian shirts. The first time he saw him sitting in the New Orleans city library, Pete was at a table  reading the novel, "War and Peace." He had him pegged as a swishy, effeminate fruit. He just knew he was obviously beneath his notice. On closer inspection, he noticed the bones in Pete's face seemed to leap right out at him. He reminded him of a model   wearing a Giorgio Armani suit on a page he saw in "Esquire Magazine." One of those full lipped, androgynous, boy models with their skinny bodies blatantly swallowed up alive in some grownup's clothing, wearing a suit which they would never have chosen to  wear. Wearing it, for the price they were being paid. A model who was catchy eye candy used to seduce distinguished older men,  like his honorary "Uncle" Andre, who habitually wore such suits. And also, Josh thought to himself, he's eye candy to horny young    guys like me!

  He headed over to the table where he was sitting. "Like the book?" he had said, fully expecting Pete to reply in a shrill, campy  voice, flapping his wrist around, he knew the type. Swishy, swish, swish, faggoty, airhead, swishy boy. Instead he was pleasantly   surprised by the peaceful, low voice connected to those biteable, firm, luscious lips. Lips which were hungering for someone to  come along and take a hard bite out of them. To his further surprise, he ended up having a half an hour conversation with the guy about Russian literature. Whoa, it was like the guy knew all of the novels written by the all star line up team of his favorite Russian  novelists: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Ibsen, all of them. He's smart, handsome, a winner, wrap him up. I would take him home to meet my mother if I had a mother.

   He ended up giving him a ride in his vintage 1985 Jaguar. It had its engine rebuilt to be a "bad boy". Once he was in Pete's  comfortable middle class home, he heard the mini version of his autobiography. Pete had been going to a high school at a divinity  school named Saint Lawrence's. He had been studying for the priesthood. He knew he was gay, but he hadn't wanted to act out   on his sexual desires. He decided he was going to submerge his desire to be loved by another man by becoming a lover of the   world's so-called least. He was going to be a missionary priest in a third world country, maybe working in a Uganda orphanage   with kids dying of AIDS. It was all going to be so romantic. He was giving up his urges to love the boy next door, or maybe the   boy down the street, or a guy he hadn't met yet, to love with a pure passion only one man for the rest of his life. That man was  going to be none other than, Jesus Christ. He ended up getting expelled, when he admitted to his advisor what he was. The irony  of it all, he had been a virgin at the time this happened. Much to his confusion, he was asked to leave the seminary. He still felt imaginary emotional skid-marks on his butt from being tossed out of his dreams. His parents had shocked him by being understanding.

 Josh remembered hugging him that night, comforting him over the hardships he endured with certain Born-Again Christians at the    public high school he was now attending in the working class part of town. A school miles from where Josh's upscale private   Catholic high school was. Josh also remembered looking over his shoulder as he hugged Pete, then looking down at his his rear,    thinking, Hot Cha!

 They'd been more or less dating ever since. Pete had the center stage in all of his wet dreams, all right, so he had a little  competition from this rap star, he sorta liked, but what the hell he mostly had center stage, right? And there were a lot of wet   dreams due to Pete's unreasonable hang-ups concerning some dirty minded acts Josh was sweating to try out with him.

"Josh," Pete said, waking him up from his memories, "The gay and lesbian group at my school is having a get together at  Starbucks. Want to come along with me?"

 "No, no, you are kidding me right? What the hell for? I mean, like, are you all going to be spending the whole night whining about  being gay? Talking about gay marriages? Hell, when my folks broke up over dad's affair with Leo, dad took his stuff, father took  his stuff, no big deal, life went on. Why get legally married? It blows. I mean, Christ! No thanks. I got a football practice to go to.  Thank you very much. Thank you, God, " he said stretching, " And take off that sulk on your puss. You know it's up to me when I   out myself. I promised you my freshman year of college, I'll do all that bonding stuff with the community. Give me a break, just  growing up with two gay dads got the shit beat out of me in middle school. It took me forever to be accepted as one of the dudes. I like being a popular jock. Like why should I trade my place in the pecking order to be a pariah, right? Do you want all my football   buddies to go screaming out of the locker room cause they think I'm going to jump their bones in the shower? Give it a break. "

 He thought of his fathers' friends, Henri, Christov, and Leo. None of them were practically politically active. They were too busy  chasing down their lives. Sure, they did off, way off, Broadway plays about gays, but so what! It's not like they did anything else.  His dad, Louis, and his "uncle" Andre when they ever thought of politics, which was like when didn't they think of politics, thought   along the lines of a global scale. In fact, his dad was on a mission in Macedonia, routing out rebel forces. His father Daniel, the   good liberal of the family, was active in the upkeep of a homeless shelter for runaway gay kids. He was currently living with his   father, Daniel. He really could not stand his dad's new boyfriend, Leo. He helped his father out with the shelter. He considered  himself to be a decent enough guy. So, what more did the world want out of him! His life scrutinized! He didn't want to be outed,  not yet, not in high school. Besides, he still wanted to experiment before he took a stand on his life. He even got a girl knocked up  when he was sixteen. He wanted to live his life as privately as possible. No way did he want his life to become a big social issue.   Fuck that. When he went to college, he was determined to party hard, doing everything his extended family told him he was too     young to do yet. Uncle Andre preferred he try out one of the rent boys he employed, rather than doing risky business with   strangers. No thank you, rent boys were too, too renty! He was going to hit all the gay bars, go to bathhouses, run amok, amok,  amok, picking up cute guys, and maybe a couple girls. Once he discovered what he really liked to do, he was going to latch on to it for dear life. Right now, aside from some past fleeting encounters with girls and boys, he hadn't really done anything in terms of   what he felt was being a wild man. The relationship he was now in with Pete was the longest in his life. He had toyed with the  idea of becoming a graphic artist. Naw, not enough possible money. Perhaps, a computer consultant. Hey, great if you want your   eyes to rot in your head staring at a screen all day. Nope, he was going to get his "uncle" Andre to get him a job as gopher to a  diplomat in an exotic country, and live his life to the peak. He developed a sense of purpose: if he just lived his life as selfishly as    he could, using proper precautions, there would be no limit to the excitement he could cram into each day and night he lived.

 "Right, don't go to with me to Starbucks," Pete said tensely, "You know Josh, I think you should go home. I really have to study for my math test. I'm not going to an ivy league college on a football scholarship like you. I need to do well on my SAT test so I can get into a good college too. Rich as your folks are and you get a scholarship."

  "Hey, hey, you can the rich kid stuff, I earned it, brat!"

  Grabbing Pete's foot, he started to lick the cloth of his gym sock. Trying to pull his foot away, Pete growled, "Now, you're being    sick and seriously weird!"

"I love the smell of your gym sock, mmmm, tastes good," Josh laughed, his slender, athletic, runner's body quivering.

 "Stop it. Tickles!" Pete grunted, while Josh nibbled at his heel. "I'm not kidding, I got to study."

  "Oh, whatever," Josh said, dropping his foot.

Pete grumpily went back to his math book. He thought of Ray, a guy in his math class, at the high school he was finishing his  senior year in. He was using the urinal next to the one Ray was using. Sure enough, Ray was staring at him.

 Pete had blushed. His eyes were arrested by Ray's manly equipment.

Ray half patted, half stroked the tip of his cock before he zipped up. He strolled over to Pete. Every nerve in Pete's body was going off like the Fourth of July. It was gangbusters time!

Before a word was said , they were joined by another guy, a linebacker. Ray who happened to be a quarterback, turned to the  straight guy, ignoring the fag guy. They both left together, leaving Pete weak in both knees.

Sure enough, Ray called him that night, asking if him if they could get together. Stressing the world "together."

Casual, secretive, sex anyone? Pete thought to himself. He wished he could say, "I have a boyfriend. You don't know him, he goes  to this posh private school. He scored a touchdown last week. He's a great guy. I, I really care about him, I guess you could even  say, I'm in love with him. No, I'm not for certain how he feels about me. His name? Josh Blue. Maybe, the three of us can hang   out together. I know you'd like him." Instead, he hemmed, hawed, and coughed, knowing Josh didn't want him to say anything about him to others. He then squeaked into the phone, "No thanks."

 Josh watched his lover's tense face struggle through the reading of the math page he was on. He loved him. He hoped he loved  him. It would be the greatest tragedy of his life, if he didn't love him. He wondered if he would still love him after the wild first  year of college he was planning on, or if that love would peter out into a friendship where they were best friends like forever and  ever.

 He scooted over to Pete, grabbing him by the back of his shoulders, whispering in his ear, "I love you."

  "The other ear didn't hear what you said," Pete said, feeling tingly.

 "I love you," he whispered into the other ear.

 "The other ear forgot what it heard. And this ear thinks it didn't hear you right," Pete said, "Look Josh, I really have to study," he   said, leaning away from him

Reaching his arm around him, Josh grabbed a sketchbook off his desk. Reaching his other arm around him to grab a pen so he had him trapped, he said, "I'm going to draw a yaoi anime. It's going to star you and me," Josh said quickly, "When we have kids."

  "Kids?"

 "We'll adopt, like I was adopted. I'm going to produce my own anime, television cartoon series," he quickly drew two anime  figures. "This is how the story line goes, Josh-Fuuma saves Pete-Kakyou from the evil Monster-Chan. Who kept him as a, a, sex   slave."

 "This is meant for our kids?" Pete said dryly.

"Don't interrupt my flow of creative thought processing. Now, Josh-Fuuma cuts the Monster-Chan in little, bloody pieces. Then, he   tears the grateful Pete-Kakyou's clothes off. Next, Josh-Fuuma gets out the lubricant."

"Lubricant?" Pete said suspiciously.

 "A jar full of Vaseline. Lots and lots of it. And then, gently, with great love, worship, and adoration for Pete-Kakyou, he" Josh said wistfully, thinking of Pete's cute, little rear.

 "He gets his arms pulled out of his sockets by Pete-Kakyou, and then Pete-Kakyou dutifully goes back to studying. Josh you know I don't want to do that yet."

 "That's not how the yaoi ends," Josh said smiling, putting his hand half on the hem of his Hawaiian shirt, with his palm resting on  the waist band of his jeans.

 Pete swallowed, his stomach feeling queasy with arousal. His scrotum started to tighten. "Tell me, " he said faintly, "tell me, using  lots of details, very slowly, tell me how the yaoi story ends."