"What's this?" Min-cheol asked witheringly. He had that way with words in English, his crisp pronunciation rendering them sharp as swords. Added to the fact that I was out on a Tuesday, it had been raining out and the smell of alcohol was wafting rather inelegantly out of my mouth, all in all I had successfully driven my husband to annoyance. Then he looked behind me, and lifted his brows even higher.
"Hi, Michael," Timmy greeted him. Ah shit, I groaned inwardly as I hung my coat, drenched from the rain.
"Min-cheol," my husband corrected. I felt his eyes turn on me, glaring at my back as I bent down to undo my shoes. For some reason my shoes were uncooperative, and I lost my balance and sat down on my haunches right there at the threshold.
"Min-cheol, help me please." Min-cheol sighed and bent down, which looked funny because of his tall stature. Then he lifted me up like I was a small child, and I looked up at him and smiled. "Thank you, hyung," and proceeded to kiss him full on mouth, alcohol smell be damned, right there in front of Timmy. We made out for a minute before Min-cheol remembered where he was, and more importantly who we were with, and pushed me away gently.
"You're inebriated."
"Oh, you and your big words."
"Come I'll bring you to bed. Tim help me please."
They carried me all the way to my bed, our bed, well technically my bed because it came out of my salary, that and most of the furniture of our house. The house itself, the mortgage, the bare bones, all that was Min-cheol though. The bed was warm and inviting, and I promptly curled up like a porcupine in hibernation. It took a few tries to get my socks and pants off, but in the end I was safely encroached in the bed.
In the middle of the night I came too, delirious and thirsty. Min-cheol was not in bed beside me. I reached for the bedside table where we always have a tumbler of cold water and took a swig. The door was slightly open, and there was a soft murmur from the direction of the living room. Shadows were running in the dark hallway -- the TV was on apparently -- and the murmur grew louder as if deliberately masking something. I turned at the corner and took a look at the living room.
The TV was showing a scene from Game of Thrones, the part where everyone and everything got blown up to smithereens. Min-cheol was sitting on his usual seat, naked except for his favorite white briefs. His thighs, tree-trunk thick, were open wide in an inviting man-spread, the light flashes from the TV playing with shadows to accentuate his tall bulge. His body was perfect masculine musculature, etched by relentless hours at the gym. His eyes were glued to an apparition in front of him, slowly writhing in the dim light of the TV.
Min-cheol and me, we met when we were young. He was in fact the neighbor's son growing up. His family migrated from South Korea for his father's job, something in marketing I never could make any sense of. But Min-cheol was proud of his father, and proud of his Korean heritage. He still made time for Korean holidays, even after he came out and began dating me. It was still funny to remember how we used to have huge rowdy fights as children about stupid things but could not stop our hands on each other once puberty was done wrecking havoc on our bodies.
I was his first man. I never had to come out in his sense of the word, I always knew I was different from the other boys. I never realized the looks and the stares of the Korean son next door were of longing. Our ships kept missing each other, but one summer he confessed to me, came out to his family and began dating me all in one fell swoop. He did not just came out, he truly burst out of his closet.
