Allan Stein by Matthew Stadler

boy to wrestling, tore my shirt, and tugged my trousers down, all the while smushing himself in acrobatic variations on and against me and whatever else got drawn into the maelstrom: pillows, sheets, clothing, and the like. His breathing became furious and uncontrolled, his brow and back wet with sweat, until, flopping me down against the twisted bedding and straddling my hips to drive his soccer-drenched open-air thighs and slobbery organ over my tummy, he let out a great fart. We both stopped, and then he laughed. I really shouldn't include this with the highlights at all, but it provides such a nice contrast to the idealized Dogan I've tried to preserve. Other contrasts: his chaste pucker when I whispered, "Can we kiss?" I don't know if he had never kissed with an open mouth, or if mine offended him, but his closed eyes and pert, expectant lips endeared him to me. I pecked his cheek and whispered "there." My alarm when, while rolling in our romp, I found myself on top of him, impressing the enormity of my body on the true prematurity of his; Dogan wasn't merely lithe or gangly or slim, he was a little boy, a nervous, pulsing envelope of flesh and growing bones whose sexual development had rushed in advance of the rest of him so that this great, potent organ was appended to the birdlike frame of a tall twelve-year-old (by the calendar he was fifteen). I had to hold myself slightly off the mattress with a well-placed elbow or two to avoid crushing him.
    Our conversation, after our last shared orgasm, lying now in the manner of spoons, Dogan in front, me behind, the boy dressed in hastily found boxers and T-shirt, me in nothing, while outside the window the city was mostly silent and dark:
    "Are you really working at a museum?"
    "Yes." (Would I ever stop lying to him?)
    "Do you have to? I mean, I thought the school gave you pay even though you had to leave and everything."
    "I prefer it. The work interests me."
    "What do you do there?"
    "I'm a curator." It felt oddly pleasant to be Herbert for a moment. "Do you know what a curator does?"
    "Not exactly."
    "I help decide what paintings the museum buys and displays. I organize shows for them—not just paintings, actually, but drawings and photographs too."
    "Wow."
    "I'm going to Paris in a few weeks, to buy some Picasso drawings for a show."
    "Pablo Picasso?"
    "Yes. You know Picasso?"
    "Oh, sure." Here the boy began singing—melodizing, I guess—in a soft whisper. " 'He was only five-foot-two, but girls could not resist his stare. Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole, not like you. . . ."
    "I don't think that's the same Picasso."
    "Sure it is. 'He would drive down the street in his El Dorado, and the girls would turn the color of an avocado; oh, he was only five-foot-two . . .'"
    "Did you make that up?"
    "No, it's the Modern Lovers, 'Pablo Picasso.' He was an artist, right?"
    "Yes."
    "Come on." He shook his body a little, like wiggling an eyebrow, only in the dark. "Everyone knows Picasso. My mom took us to the Musee Picasso all the time when we lived in Paris."
    "Of course. I'd forgotten." I let my hand turn the corner over his hip. "How long did you live there?"
    "We moved there when I was six, and I had my bar mitzvah there, so seven years." He stopped, everything stopped, while the boy evaluated the trajectory of my hand. "A little more than seven." Now he stretched his leg out slightly, enough to let the hip turn open and encourage my hand.
    "I need to hire a translator for the Paris trip."

    "You don't speak French? " Where my hand brushed his boxers, a rounded fold of cotton pushed up, one pulse and then another.
    "Not very well."
    "I speak it better than my English." We both laughed a little. I had been hired to change that fact, but neither of us ever cared or worked hard enough to change it. I drew my other hand up along the backs of his thighs, along the crease where his legs met.
    "I wonder if you could go with me, be my translator. You'd get paid very