and I gave his skinny body – as different from Ron’s body as the two of them were in personality – a visual once-over. I didn’t know what his ancestry was, but it looked to be Sicilian or Greek – some Mediterranean pirate stock, likely. He was shorter than me, 5’8” or so, thin, but not so scrawny as to be bony. He had almost no musculature, and his smooth chest had no definition, any more than did his soft abs. I was surprised that his chest was so smooth, given the heavy stubble that showed at times on his cheeks and neck – I had figured him to be hairy all over, but he had only a small tuft of hair halfway between his large, burgundy-cherry nipples, right at the breastbone, and a large wiry-looking black bush at his crotch.

As he walked back to the couch, his boyish ass bounced nicely in his blue-satin boxers. I saw on his lower back that he had a tattoo – no color, just a black line drawing, which appeared to be taken from a woodcut.

As he stood by the couch spreading the blanket out, I got up and walked over to him to get a closer look. “Nice tattoo,” I commented. “That’s William Blake, isn’t it? I’m not sure which one.” I don’t know beans about art, but everyone knew about Jon’s obsession with William Blake, so I took a chance.

He turned and smiled at me again, his eyes soft and lustrous. “Yeah,” he said, “It’s Blake’s “Adam and Eve Expelled from the Garden of Eden” – just a part of it, though, just the Adam figure. He gets thrown out of the garden with just a fig leaf – not even Eve to comfort him. Story of my life.” The smile had faded now, and the deep gloom returned.

I took another risk – I put my hand on his shoulder, and turned him towards me, and said softly, “You don’t have to be alone, unless you want to be.” And I kissed him, full on the mouth, lightly at first, but with increasing fervor.

We were both naked except for our skivvies, and Jon began to kiss me also, with increasing fervor, and he pulled me closer to him and wrapped his thin arms around me. But then, he pulled away, and broke the kiss, and looked up at me and whispered, “I’ve wanted to do that since you moved in here, especially once I figured out that you were gay. But I’m not in the mood for sex tonight – not even with you.”

I wondered how he had ‘figured out’ that I was gay, since I was not out to much of anyone, but I let that pass – I had other items on the agenda for the night. I looked straight into the twin pools of those big dark eyes and said, “I can understand that, and respect it – you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do – not like some other nights.”