Covet Thy Neighbor

give two shits about what I did when I came up here—he’d even joined me once or twice—as long as I didn’t do it in my apartment. The landlord before him would’ve evicted me in a heartbeat, though. It’d been three years since she’d sold the building to Al, and this was legal now anyway, but I still got paranoid. Old habits died hard.
    Once I was sure the old bat wouldn’t bust me, I pulled the plastic bag with the paper and the mint tin out of my jacket pocket. My mouth watered as I rolled the joint. Not for the taste of the smoke, but for the relaxation that would follow. I hadn’t been this wound up in I didn’t know how long, and the need for relief bordered on overwhelming. Desperate times . . .
    Once it was lit, I pursed my lips around the end of the joint and sucked in as much smoke as my lungs could handle, inhaling slowly so the burn in my throat wouldn’t make me cough. Holding my breath, I leaned back in my chair and rested my head against the railing. When the heat and tightness in my lungs just bordered on unpleasant, I exhaled as slowly as I’d inhaled. The smoke gathered in a thin, gray cloud above my face. When it cleared, I brought the joint up and took another long drag.
    I hadn’t done this in, I didn’t know, a few weeks? Couple of months, maybe? A while, anyway. Long enough that it kicked in fast. I stayed as still as possible while my body floated and my head lightened. Enough? Finish the joint?
    Eh, what the hell.
    I took one more deep drag, and set the half-smoked joint in the ashtray to smolder while I debated whether or not I was finished with it. Which I mostly was. But whatever.
    Closing my eyes, I just flew for a bit. One by one, every muscle in my body relaxed. The tension in my neck eased. The knots in my gut unwound.
    Embrace the apathy , Michael had once said when we’d been high as kites in high school.
    I wondered if he still smoked. Should invite him up here one of these days. And Jason too. Maybe Darren.
    Darren.
    Christ.
    A shiver worked its way through the haze of don’t give a fuck . My mind replayed a moment earlier this afternoon when I’d surreptitiously watched him walk past the shop. Head down, hands in his jacket pockets, he’d glanced in the window and smiled just long enough to do all kinds of things to my pulse. Even now, lounging in a chair, three tokes to the wind, the memory alone was enough to have the same effect.
    Especially when it triggered more memories. The first time I’d seen him. That first kiss that had come out of nowhere. “ I’m not normally so . . . ” “ Aggressive? ” “ Yeah. That . Not with someone I just met. ” “ Well, if it’s any consolation, I am. ” The sex. Fuck, the sex. “ In case you hadn’t gathered, I like tops .”
    I shivered again. So much for getting my mind off Darren.
    Getting high to get my mind off a minister. There was something almost poetic about that. Or maybe I was just high.
    I tugged at the front of my jeans to accommodate my hard-on. It occurred to me now that I probably should’ve taken into consideration the fact that weed didn’t just relieve stress: it made me horny as fuck. Usually not such a big deal. In fact, it was kind of the routine: smoke, relax, go back to my apartment, jerk off, kill a bag of Doritos, jerk off again, and then sleep like the dead for a few hours. When I woke up at noon, I’d be a new man. And I’d probably jerk off again.
    None of which did a goddamned thing to get my mind off that minister who had set up shop front and center in my brain. Instead of drifting off into the land of Don’t Give a Fuck, my mind turned into a nonstop porno, reliving every kiss and thrust. My nerve endings couldn’t quite tell the difference between reality and remembering, and erred on the side of making sure I felt the phantom brush of lips or scrape of teeth. My jeans were uncomfortably tight, and if I’d been in my apartment, I’d have resolved that problem by now. Weed up here on the roof, or jerking off down there in my apartment. Need for one outweighed the other. Though if this movie in my head kept going the way it was going, that balance would shift fairly soon.
    Door hinges creaked. I jumped as much as the weed would let me, and turned my head.
    “Hey, Al, it’s just— Darren?” I sat up, wondering why I suddenly felt like a kid who’d been busted misbehaving. Especially as I pulled my parka together across my lap. “Oh. I—” Crap .
    “Seth? Oh.