Page 9 of Dance of Defiance

“You keep saying that.”

“I’mnot,” I spit viciously.

Val glances at my crotch. “Does your dick know that?”

“Look—”

“No,youlook,” he snaps, slapping my pointed finger aside and crashing into my personal space, crowding me against the wall, something new flickering in his eyes. “I don’t know what the fuck you think you’re doing here, Roman,” he hisses. “But you need to get the fuckout.”

I start to protest, but he shakes his head. “These are not good people,” he hisses. “Get the fuck out now, and I won’t tell my brother you were here.”

I frown. “Why would you do that?”

My breath chokes as he crowds right into my space again, his chest against mine, the heat of his body radiating against my skin, and his lips inches from mine. “Because,,” he growls quietly, “you’ve got a nice dick that I’d like to play with again someday.”

My whole world goes still as that zapping, twisting, throbbing sensation snakes around my heart and my very soul, andsqueezes.

“Pretty sure he wants to play with me, too.”

He takes a step back as my entire brain function short-circuits, sparks flying everywhere as I struggle to swallow.

“I—I’m…” I shake my head, my eyes locked on his. “I’mnotgay, Val,” I hiss.

“Yeah, well…”

That sound—that samesoundas before—escapes my throat and tumbles pathetically over my lips when his hand cups my cock through my pants.

“Next time,” Val murmurs, winking at me, “maybe make sure you and your dick are on the same page. Now get the fuck out of here. Seriously.”

3

VAL

When I was eleven,in one of the few foster homes thatdidn’tmake me want to tear off my own skin, my foster mom read me Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”.

That’s the poem that starts “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood”. We’ve all read it. But it stuck with me forages.

I found myself gravitating to it a few years later, when I realized I quite liked the idea of grabbing a guy and kissing him on the mouth. I also liked the idea of doing the same thing to a girl.

Then I got older and realized I could have both.

Separately. Together. Mix and match, plug and play however you want.

At first I was confused. Liking guys made me gay, right? But what if Ialsoliked girls equally?

Enter bisexuality, stage left. I’m not really a fan of labels, but goddamn I love that one, because it’s me in a nutshell—and not just the sex part, or the orientation.

I don’t want to trot out some clichéd shit like “there are two wolves inside me”. If there’s one thing I've never wanted to be, it’s a cliché. I’ve fought my entire fucking life not to be “the orphan”, or “the amnesiac”, or “the queer.”

But therearetwo sides to me, at times playing the same game and steering me in the same direction, and at others almost ripping me apart in their need to seek different horizons.

On the one hand, I’m fun Val. I like to party. I won’t say no to a drink. I love—I mean goddamnlove—fucking. Orgasming and coming inside a hot mouth, a tight ass, or a wet, milking pussy is just about the single greatest feeling I’m pretty sure a human being is capable of.

Well, thesecond-greatest feeling. The absolute greatest—and I’ll fucking die on this hill—is dance.

Ballet, to be precise.

I don’t know what it is about it. Partly, it’s the precision and the rigorous discipline involved. There’s also the history and tradition of it and how being a dancer makesyoupart of that history and tradition. I fucking love the way we still use pretentious French words for the steps that are ten times harder to say than “jump” or “twirl”. The way the teacher stands in front of the rest of the class because it used to be King Louis IV standing there.