More than anything, he thinks, he wants to be done with it. With all of it: the parsing out of why Mark wants this; the dissecting of what prevents Paul from having Mark’s confidence; the infinite permutations of what if and how about; the millions of outcomes that he can’t stop himself from imagining. He just wants it all to be done.
The song switches over to “Second Hand News” and, in what Paul will later remember as one of his more graceless maneuvers, he leans over and shoves his tongue down Alcott’s throat. He’s not sure if the drugs and alcohol have blunted his ability to appreciate nuance, or, alternatively, if this is just the way things are, but he’s surprised to detect very little difference between drunkenly kissing Alcott and drunkenly kissing Mark. There’s the same eager pressure of lips, the same frantic exploration of tongues and teeth. Paul feels a hand work its way up his knee, and then his inner thigh, before Mark gently pulls Alcott away and starts to kiss his neck. Paul’s initial impulse is to cry out: Here my boyfriend is, sucking on another man’s Adam’s apple! But then he remembers that approximately two seconds ago, he kissed Alcott—that, when it comes right down to it, Paul started all of this—and so to stop Mark midhickey would be to betray a level of inequitable jealousy that, while very real, even Paul is uncomfortable voicing. So he lets Mark continue exploring Alcott. He lets him peel off Alcott’s jeans and kiss the inside of his thighs and wiggle a few fingers beneath the elastic band of his underwear. Unsure of what he should be doing during all of this (moaning, even though he’s not the one being touched? Providing Mark with some canned suggestions, some encouragement? Neither strikes him as the right option), Paul struggles to take off his own pants and, after nearly falling onto the coffee table, finally kicks them to the floor. He’s impressed by the gusto with which Mark is presently inhaling Alcott, and tries to remember a time that his boyfriend gave him such an enthusiastic blow job. But this leads him back into that same murky jealousy he’s trying to convince Mark that he’s shed, and so instead of focusing on how Alcott’s head is thrown back, or how his eyes are closed, he tries to think of something else. He wonders, for example, if anyone would like a glass of water.
It’s Alcott who eventually pulls him into the fray, grabbing Paul by the back of his neck and shoving his face toward Alcott’s crotch. At first it’s crowded: Mark’s still attacking Alcott’s dick, so Paul awkwardly maneuvers himself onto the floor in order to get himself within tongue-length of the action. Once he’s there, and once he’s found a position that’s not too uncomfortable on his knees or lower back, he does his best to emulate Mark’s vigor—or, actually, to surpass it. Now that he’s got part of Alcott in his mouth, and now that Mark’s chin is knocking against the top of his head, he becomes quickly aware that, unlike most blow jobs he’s given, this one has turned into a fierce competition. His mouth too stuffed to actually say anything, Mark lets out a low, performative groan, and Paul realizes that he’s yet to make a sound. Does Alcott now worry that Paul’s not enjoying himself as much as Mark is? Does he think that Paul looks at licking his crotch as some kind of chore?
He frees his lips for a moment.
He says, in a voice an octave lower than normal: “Your balls taste great.”
Mark grinds his knee into Paul’s ribs to shut him up, then comes up for air. Paul hears the wet pop of lips against skin; his vision limited to Alcott’s groin, his inner thighs, the light hair sprouting on his belly, he assumes that Mark has resurfaced to kiss Alcott, leaving Paul to continue the job at hand alone. And so Paul does: with Alcott now totally fair game, he gets on his knees and swallows as much of him as he can, determined to best Mark’s efforts. He’s doing well, he thinks, taking special care to avoid the little faux pas that characterize Mark’s oral abilities (too much spit, not enough hand. Teeth). That’s not to say all this isn’t strange, because it is—it’s really fucking strange—but he’s doing what he can to make the most of it, to enjoy himself.
Behind Paul, Mark uses one hand to tilt his hips up and the other to press down hard on his lower back. Before he has time to turn around, he feels pressure against his ass and then an unmistakable and familiar jolt of pain.
“Jesus, Mark,” he says. “A little—”
But Mark just pushes Paul’s face back down.
Although he’s currently too preoccupied to at least consciously consider such things, later Paul will reflect on this moment. He’ll wonder, primarily, about what’s going through Alcott’s mind. If he considers himself an intruder, or more of a guest star. If he’s turned on by observing, firsthand, the cruel and subtle intricacies of Paul and Mark’s relationship, or if he’s too wholly consumed by pursuing his own pleasure to notice the finer details.
Right now, though, there’s no time for that. Right now, he’s too busy focusing on the irregular pace at which Mark is fucking him.
He’s thirsty. He should have gotten a glass of water when he had the chance.
There’s a silence in which all he hears are the strange, squishy sounds of sex. Then: the first four chords of “Gold Dust Woman.”
“Come here,” Mark says, pulling out of him. Paul starts to stand, but Mark holds him down. “No. You stay where you are.”
Mark repositions himself farther down along the couch, where he watches with a sort of crazed possession as Alcott slips into Paul.
He’s concerned about the condom situation (namely: there isn’t one), but it also gets him off, in that shameful way he imagines most gay men experience when they realize they’re flirting with the thin boundary between sex and death. So he tries not to think about it; he tries instead to concentrate on noticing the differences between Mark and Alcott’s styles, their ways of finding and losing rhythms.
But then it stops. Before “Seven Wonders” even reaches the bridge, Alcott pulls out and crawls up to the couch, where he sits next to Mark and starts jacking off.
“Come on up here,” he says to Paul, and Paul does. Because, really, what other options are there?
He doesn’t know how long they sit there. At least through the rest of “Sisters of the Moon,” and the entirety of “Family Man.” Occasionally they’ll reach across a leg and touch one another, but mostly they touch themselves. No one actually climaxes—among the three of them, not a single person comes. Rather, at some point during “As Long as You Follow,” Alcott says that he’s got to piss, and excuses himself. Five minutes later, when he still hasn’t returned, Mark goes in to check on him. He comes back moments later and tells Paul that he’s fallen asleep.
“He’s passed out naked on his bed,” he says, dryly.
Paul bites his lip. “Well, that doesn’t mean we can’t finish…”
Mark scratches his left knee. He doesn’t smile. “I don’t think I’ve got it in me,” he says. “Must be the drugs.”
“Oh.”
Paul looks down. The hair on his lower abdomen and thighs is coated with sweat and lube. Suddenly he wants, more than anything, to be clean.
Coming over to him, Mark digs through the heap of discarded clothes for his underwear.
“Get up,” he says. “Help me make up the couch.”