Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 16:38:20 -0500
From: David Buffet <tightserve@hotmail.com>
Subject: Alpha Male -- Chapter 19

A Note from the Author:
	Thank you all for the tremendous email response this story has generated.
I'm truly overwhelmed by your compliments, and love hearing your ideas,
musings, suggestions, and ruminations about the characters and plot!  It's
quite rewarding, actually, to know that the "boys" are seeming as real to
you as they seem to me. I'm delighted to correspond with you about the
story, and other topics.
	There is one request that a number of you have made, however, that I'm
going to have to respectfully refuse:  a variety of people have asked if I
could notify them separately when I post new chapters.  I apologize, but I
cannot.  You'll just have to look for the chapters on Nifty along with
everyone else.
	While it is important to me to respond to each and every email I've
received -- and I've done so! Interacting with real live people is far more
important than interacting with fictional characters -- given the volume of
response, I just don't have the time to send out posting announcements.
Again, I am sorry, and I hope you don't find this too inconvenient.
	Finally, a private note to Kyle, who offered to proof-read for me:  idiot
that I am, I accidentally deleted your email.  Could you resend a note, so
that I can have it for future chapters?  Thanks!


Chapter 19:  Reflections
	When the alarm rang, I got up, swallowed three aspirin, close to a quart of
grapefruit juice, then went back to sleep.  When I awoke again, it was just
before noon.  I was shaky, but had slept through the worst of the hangover.
I slowly showered, slowly did my ablutions and quickly drank another three
glasses of water.  Walking over to the cafeteria, I got myself a cup of
coffee, and joined the boys where they were shooting the shit after lunch.
	"A Bowie knife," said Evan.
	"Liar," called Matt.  "Poster of the Girls National Soccer Team."  There
was laughter, and a vote.
	"What's the question?" I asked.
	"Year alone on a desert island.  What would you bring with you?"
	They were playing 'Liar', one of their favorite games.  A question was put
on the table, and each of the boys had to answer it in turn.  After teach
boy offered an answer, the other players challenged him as a liar, and
supplied the answer they thought the guy *really* should have said.  A vote
ensued, where the rest of the players decided whose answer was more
appropriate.
	"Brad," said Evan.  "You.  What would bring with you if you were alone on a
desert island?"
	"Ummm..." he said, "a year's supply of toilet paper."
	"Liar," said Adam.  "A mirror."  The boys laughed.  Adam won the vote
unanimously.
	"Steve," said Brad.  "You."
	"I would bring...a fishing rod."
	Three of the boys screamed liar at the same time, two more calling out,
"bullshit!"
	"Book...."
	"...Book..."
	"...Book."  Each of the five said the word almost simultaneously.  There
was hysterical laughter.  Steve called on Matt.
	"One of those spear-gun things."
	"Liar," said Doug.  "A teddy bear."
	"Oh, fuck you!"  Matt said, laughing.  Doug won the vote.
	"Okay," said Matt back to Doug, "your turn then."
	"Easy," said Doug, "A VCR."
	"Oh, GAWD!" Matt cried in delight, "I don't even *know* where to begin on
that one!"
	No one could come up with a better answer, though.  To general jibes and
laughter, the boys concluded that Doug really *would* bring a VCR to a
desert island.
	"Dan.  You."
	"Ax.  Build myself a house and a high bar."
	"Bullshit," said Brad.  "Handcuffs."
	"No," said Steven, "a lap dog."  There was general discussion, and Steven
won the vote.
	"Adam," said Dan.  "You."
	"Nothing.  I'd make what I found into what I wanted."
	The boys were generally satisfied with his answer, and nodded among
themselves in agreement.
	"Liar," I heard a voice saying.  All the boys turn to look at me in
expectant silence.  "You'd bring an extra pair of underwear."
	Adam smiled and his eyes twinkled.
	The vote went against me.  I lost the battle but won the war.
	"You're up, champ," said Adam.  I looked at him.  He was all the way across
the table from me, but still so tremendously present.  The hairs on the back
of my neck stood up.
	"I'd bring a mirror, too," I said.  "A broken mirror."
	"Liar," said Dan.  "A Thesaurus."  There was laughter and comment as there
always was, but I heard little of it.  Only one sentence caught my ear.
Adam said, "I agree with Mark."
The vote was seven to one, but I got the one that mattered to me.  Adam had
smiled at my answer.  It was not the evil, asymmetric smirk of previous
days.  It was the easy, inclusive smile he had offered Doug when they were
joking at the parallel bars.  And, of course, he had called me by name.  Had
he ever done that before?  Why did it mean so much to me that I had pleased
him?  I actually got hard knowing that I had.
On the way over to the gym, Matt fell in next to me.
"Sleep well, amigo?"
"Yeh.  Thanks for helping me out last night."
"What happened?"
"Just had a little too much."
"A little?  You passed out in the middle of a sentence, practically!"
"Well, thanks anyway."
"No prob, amigo.  You were cute."
"You're pretty cute yourself."
Once in the stands after cleaning up, Johnston walked over to me.
"Where were you this morning?" he asked.
"Not feeling very well.  Sorry about that."
"Are you getting sick?  Stay away from the boys if you're getting sick."
"No, not sick.  It was something I ate last night, I think."
"Something you ate?"
"Yeh."
He was silent for a few seconds while he surveyed me.  "I see," he said.
"Okay.  Just make sure the next time, you don't eat it.  Or if you do, don't
eat so much of it so quickly.  You got me?"
"Yes, sir.  Sorry.  It won't happen again."
Alone again in the stands, my thoughts turned to my recent experiences.
Matt was certainly right - the guy could kiss - of that there was no doubt.
I was having more success getting close to him than I had before.  That was
surely a result of my attempt to present myself as seeing the world as he
saw it.  Adam clearly had a great deal invested in control.  He enjoyed it,
he expected it.  For me to disagree with his assessment of me must have been
unnerving for him.  It was easier this way - with me acting as if.  It was
better.  I could study him more effectively if we weren't always at odds.
I spent the afternoon in thought and convalescence, not necessarily in that
order.  My notes were at best spotty.  I wouldn't really be able to use
them.
After dinner, I sat on the lawn outside the dorm.  The breeze of the day
before had picked up to a steady wind.  A front was about to come through.
Thunderheads fought each other for dominance in the darkening sky.
Drunk.  It was so unlike me.  I hated the feeling, not to mention the
aftermath.  What had possessed me?  Why run to that?  I was getting used to
Adam having his perverse way with me - what about the most recent
incarnation of his strength had caused me to flee to oblivion?
When it began to rain, I retreated to my room and Garcia Marquez.  Would I
never have a chance to finish that book?  It seems the answer to that
question was no.  Fifteen minutes later, there was a knock on the door.
"C'mon in," I called, marking my place in the book.
It was Eric.  He stood in the doorway, hands shoved coyly in his pockets.
"It's okay," I said, "you can come in.  I won't bite."  He walked forward,
closing the door behind him.
"You got a couple of minutes?"
I smiled.  Eric was so completely ill at ease with his needs.  I wondered
if, during the school year, he apologized to his girlfriends before he
screwed them.
"Sure," I said.  "You want to talk?"  I don't know why I enjoyed baiting
him.  There was something about him - the power in his massive biceps and
triceps contrasting with his boyish discomfort, his total physical grace
unable to counteract his emotional fumbling.
"I was wondering if you could help me out again..." He could not bring
himself to say the words.
"Oh?  What do you mean?"
He shuffled his feet, looked at the rug.  "You know.  Like last time."
I took pity.  Arising, I walked up to him and, standing before him, reached
out to stroke his chest.  He caught my wrist in his hand before I could make
contact, and lowered it down to his crotch.  Okay.  His denial was bordering
on pathology.   Still, I had screwed up on the job that morning and this
was, of a sort, part of the job description.
I sank to my knees, and unzipped his shorts.  He was wearing loose boxers.
I fished his dick out of the fly and tested its weight in my hand.  A really
nice dick, actually.  It was quite veiny, which made the skin on the outside
loose and bumpy, despite his clean circumcision.  As it began to swell, the
veins became more pronounced, complimenting the dark olive skin with a
bluish hue.
As he had the first time, he placed his hand behind my head, and drew me
onto his dick.  I held onto his calves for balance, enjoying the feel of
their hairiness.  He began stabbing my throat with his cock as it grew to
full length.  He was neither gentle, nor subtle, nor imaginative.  The whole
thing couldn't have taken more than five minutes from hard on to
ejaculation, which was again, to my gall, on the floor.
"Thanks," he said to the doorknob as he reached for it.  On his way out, I
saw him walk past Adam's open door before mine swung shut.
What a bozo, I thought.  He wants to get off, but then chooses to do it in
the most unsatisfying way possible.  He had no clue what he was missing.  I
felt mildly bad for him.
I cleaned myself up, and returned to my book, but it was to be another day
like Sunday.  There was a second knock on the door.
It was Doug.  I was genuinely glad to see him.
"Hey, stud!  How'ya doing?"
"Okay," he said.  "You feelin' better?"
"Yeah, much.  Thanks for asking."
"No prob, dude.  You okay enough for a little action?" he asked coyly.  It
was so cute - these massive men so embarrassed about sex.  Granted, it was
gay sex they were embarrassed about - I'm sure they had no such reticence
when it came to girls - still, their shyness at broaching the subject was
adorable.
"For you, stud, any time."
"Cool!" he said, animatedly.
"So, what's your pleasure?"
"Well," he said, returning to coyness, "I could really use a fuck if it's
okay with you."
"Okay with me?!" I effused, "I'd be delighted to fuck you!"
"Oh, ummmm...no," he said, haltingly.  "I don't get fucked."
"I know you don't, stud," I said, sorry I had made a joke I could have
foretold he wouldn't understand, "I know you don't.  I was just having some
fun with you.  I'd love it if you fucked me."
Doug grinned the wide, sloppy grin of a little boy.  "Oh, yeah," he said.
"I get it.  Good one."
I stood up and walked over to him.  Draping my arms over his strong,
insanely wide shoulders, I went to kiss him.  He pulled back uncomfortably,
took hold of my waist and held me at arms length.
"I'm really sorry, guy, but I don't do that.  That okay?"
"What?" I asked, a little confused.
"I don't do that," he repeated.
"Right.  What?"  I then realized what he was saying, and interrupted myself.
  "Oh!  You don't kiss guys?"
"Yeah.  Sorry, man."
"I'm confused.  You gave me a hand job the other time."
"Yeah, well that's just polite."
"Pardon?"
"I mean, if I'm getting off on you, what kind of asshole would I be if I
didn't help get you off too?  That would be kind of shitty, wouldn't it?  My
ma taught me better than that."
I laughed.  "Your mom taught you to give guys hand jobs?"
He laughed too, realizing what he had said.  "No, dude!  My ma taught me to
share.  My *brothers* taught me to give hand jobs."
"Really?" I asked, shocked.  "You used to give your brothers hand jobs?"
	"Sure," he said.  "Didn't you?"
The straight world totally mystified me sometimes.  I would *never* had
considered having sex with my brother.  Even at the age of twelve, I knew
what that would mean.  And yet, straight boys - the same ones who probably
taunted the weaker kids at school for being "faggots" - had no compunction
about sharing a good cum.
"Did you do that a lot?"
"Of course," he said.  "What, you don't have brothers?"  I answered with
silence, which he took for affirmation.  "Oh.  Too bad.  Brothers are great.
I got five of them.  We grew up on a farm.  I was the oldest.  Three of us
in one room, three in the other.  There was nothing else until I could
drive."
"So you had sex with them?"
"Naw, dude," he said, "not sex.  Just hand jobs, that's all."
"And no kissing?"
	"Naw," he laughed, "that'd be fruity."  Then, realizing what he said, a
look of horror came across his face.  "Shit, man," he said, "I'm sorry.  I
didn't mean you..."
"That's okay," I said, "I know what you mean."  And the weird thing was, I
did.  I, the consummate political activist - QueerPowerMan himself! - had
absolutely no problem with what Doug had just said.  He really *hadn't*
meant to offend me.  He had, as far as I could tell, no problem with my
being gay, and despite the curiously parochial notion that so long as he was
the one that inserted, he was not gay as well, his faux pas was, I deemed,
more a result of his socialization than any deep-seated homophobia.  I could
not seem to hold it against him - this kid who thought it would be rude not
to get off the gay boy while he fucked him.  This kid who, not the brightest
bulb in the marquee, was the constant butt of his peers' jokes, yet loved
them dearly, and laughed with them when he finally got it.
"It's okay," I said again, gently and with humor.  "I carry off fruity
better than you do anyway."
"You're all right, guy," he said.
"So are you, stud."  And with that, I tore off his shirt.  Doug laughed at
my forwardness.
"Can't keep your hands off me?"  It wasn't a challenge.  He wasn't
suggesting that as a gay man, I was turned on by all straight men.  He was
joking with me in the same way he joked with the rest of the boys.  He was
treating me as a friend.  He was accepting me into the fold.
"You kidding?" I said, infecting my voice with as much awe, adoration, and
lust as I could.  "Big he-man like you?  What self-respecting homo wouldn't
melt at the sight of those rippling biceps?"
"What," he said, smiling, flexing his arms and making muscles for me, "these
old things?"
"Baby!  You make me wet!"
Doug laughed out loud as I took off my own shirt.
"Shit, dude," he said, "you sound like snatch."
I led him into the bedroom.  He unfastened his pants while I went for the
lube.
When I turned back, he was standing before me naked.  And quite a sight he
was.  Big square trapezius muscles triangulating his neck, big square
deltoids capping his shoulders, big square pectorals pushing out his chest,
big square horizontal slabs of abdominal muscle slatting the trapezoid of
his lower torso.  And all softened and mellowed by the thin but perceptible
layer of padding that ran, uniformly, under his skin.  He was a study in
Euclidean geometry.
Smooth except for the light trail of brown hair which led from his navel to
his pubic bush, his skin oozed vitality, youth, exuberance, and the kind of
frat-boy dufusness that on most was hideously unappealing, but on him, a
natural turn-on.
He stood, gently stroking his tool, which was already hard.  Its head flared
out from the shaft like an arrow pointing up toward his chin.  He kneeled on
the bed, and waited for me to lie down before him.
"Not this time, stud," I said.  "This time, I do all the work.  You just lie
back and enjoy."
"Really?" he asked, his eyes twinkling with delight.  "Cool!"  He turned
over, lying on his back on the bed.   I straddled him.  I slathered a good
bit of the lubrication over my ass crack and into my hole, then brought
myself down onto him, riding across the top of his dick as it lay against
his stomach.  A little foreplay for the sheep dog.  He may not kiss, but
that didn't mean he didn't deserve a few hors d'ouvres.  He responded with a
grin as my perineum slid back and forth across the underside of his dick.
"That's nice, dude," he fairly purred.
"Thanks.  I aim to please.  Listen, can I ask you a question?"
"Sure, man.  What?"
"Do you and Adam ever do it?"
"Do what?"
"You know - hand jobs, fuck, whatever.  Sex."
"Me and Adam?"  He was surprised by the question, as if I must be crazy even
to ask.
"Yeah.  Ever jerk each other off?"
"Fuck no!" he laughed.  How could I even think that, he was clearly
wondering.
"How come?"  I made sure the friction on his dick was enough to keep him
well aroused, but not enough to make him lose himself in the mania of sex.
"We're straight."
"Adam's straight?"
"Of course.  You thought he was a fag?"
I smiled at the word.  Doug had no idea that from his lips the word might be
offensive, and because he was so clueless, it ended up not being so.  I was
completely confident that if I asked him not to use the word around me, he'd
agree and, furthermore, feel awful for having offended me.
"Well, I never really thought about it.  I just kind of assumed he fucked
everyone, you know?  Just whoever was around when he got horny."
"Adam?  Shit, that's hysterical," Doug said, then, seeing that I was serious
in asking the question, added, "sorry.  Didn't mean to piss you off.  I'm
always thinking the wrong thing too."
This boy had a golden heart.  True, it was in the body of an oaf that was
completely untarnished by twenty years of societal insistence on political
correctness, but it was genuinely kind and gentle.  I got the impression
that he would rather catch a fly and set it free outside than kill it.
"No, Adam and I never did anything," he explained, carefully and slowly.  "I
wouldn't want to, and neither would he.  Adam's one of the coolest guys I
know."
"What do you do when he calls you into his room in the evenings, then?"
"Talk about routines, a little, then laugh."
"Laugh?"
"Yeah.  Adam's like the only guy I know who likes my jokes.  I tell him
jokes and he laughs with me."
"Not at you?"
"Naw.  The other guys laugh at me.  Adam laughs with me."
"Does it bother you when they laugh at you?"
"Naw," he said, "I'm used to it.  I'm not the smartest guy on the planet,
and I know it.  I don't care.  I'm good at other things."
"Was it Adam who helped you realize that?"
"Yeah!" Doug said, amazed.  "How did you know?"
"Just a hunch, stud," I said, and returned to concentrating on making him
happy.  I was stroking his dick with my perineum now, starting with pressure
at his balls, then sliding slowly, languorously, up the shaft to his glans.
>From there, I would rise up a bit, breaking contact, and retreat back to the
base of his cock.  On every third stroke or so, I would add a lateral
motion, zig-zagging left and right a bit to cause his dick to slide slightly
across his abdomen, increasing the sensation he was getting by doubling the
surface area receiving friction to front and back.  Periodically, I stopped
mid dick, and quivered, bouncing up and down on him.  Despite my efforts to
keep him below the threshold of mounting urgency, precum began to dribble
out of the wide slit in his large, rubbery head.
"Mmmm," he said, "that's great, dude."
"Yep," I replied, "and that's only the beginning."
"Cool!"
I started to center on the top of his dick, rubbing, with the engorged tube
of flesh below my balls, the sensitive junction between head and shaft, just
under his piss-slit.  I moved forward a little, so that his head was closer
to my pucker.  Now, rather than forward and backward gliding motions, I was
able to minister to him merely with slight rotations of my hips.  His dick
twitched appreciatively, and every once in a while, a twitch coincided with
a particular attitude of my hip to raise his cock slightly off his torso,
and poke against the ring of muscles in my sphincter - a periodic and
unexpected delight for both of us.  He began to rotate his own hips
sympathetically with mine - not, I think, in an effort to choreograph the
action, or to set up a counterpoint to my movements, but in the instinctual
need for motion that begins to take over as the blood begins to boil with
sexual desire.
"You ready, studman?"  I asked.
"Born ready, dude," he said, then added, "take it easy when you put it in,
though.  I don't want to hurt you."
He had been careful the last time he had fucked me as well, watching my eyes
as he entered me, looking for signs of pain, relaxation, and acceptance.
Such a conundrum he was!  This boy who would spend hours at the dinner table
talking about "gash" and "pussy" worried about hurting his partner with his
dick.
"Okay," I replied.  "You just let me do it."
"Cool."
I continued to rotate my hips, working the head of his dick closer and
closer to my hole.  When I felt I had had it centered, I began a series of
quick gyrations whose effect was to push his dick into my hole - enough that
he could feel the pressure, but not enough that it would open the ring of
muscles, which I held tightly squeezed.  I had a surprise in store for this
gentle bear - one that I expected he would remember for a long time.
Keeping the pressure of his dick head against my asshole, I raised up,
angling his cock away from his body until it was held vertically by my
closed sphincter.  It wanted to flip back to horizontal, the slipperiness of
the lube helping it to do so.  The balancing act took concentration - enough
pressure to keep his dick in place where I wanted it, but not enough to open
my hole to it.
But I was successful.  They might have been masters of the still rings,
princes of the parallel bars, viscounts of the vault, but I was definitely
the duke of dick.  Not all gymnastics are done on the floor, after all.  I
was as talented in my venue as they were in theirs.
"Ready?" I asked again?
Doug just looked up at me expectantly, waiting for me to slowly push down,
acclimating myself, in time, to the girth of the head of his dick in my
tight hole.  Instead, in one swift and unexpected move, I opened myself up
to him entirely, and sank down completely, impaling myself on him to the
root.
"Holy fuck!" he cried as his head pressed back, involuntarily, into the
pillow.
I stayed down on him, luxuriating in the feel of him in me.  Granted, a week
ago I would not have been able to complete that move successfully.  But
after all the fucking I had been getting at the camp, I had regained some of
the control and stretch I had lost in the months of drought I had endured
before.
Rather than begin an ascent, I sat on him, pressing down into his pubic
bush, and began to rhythmically squeeze and relax my sphincter on him.
Combining this with a timed distention and contraction of my front abdominal
muscles, it began, as I knew it would, an internal coital undulation which
traveled up his dick to where it finally caressed his arrowhead, buried deep
within me.  It was a trick I had learned reading one of the Indian tantric
epics, one that tended to make me somewhat of a hit at parties.
His jaw dropped as his head ground back into the pillow, his eyes shut
tightly in ecstasy, and a guttural, primal, indecipherable moan escaped him.
  Still, lost as he was in the bliss I was helping him achieve, his hand
moved up to reach for my own desperately hard cock.  I grabbed it by the
wrist, and taking his other wrist in my other hand, pinned them over his
head.
"No you don't, stud," I whispered, "this is all for you."
Bent over him, now, I had further leverage and a good angle at my disposal.
I pulled off his dick far enough to feel the flare of his head begin to pull
at my ass ring from the inside.  I left it there a moment, squeezing,
relaxing, squeezing again, while I bounced almost imperceptibly up and down,
driving the bottom of his head again and again against the firm, tight ring
of muscle.  Then, as suddenly and completely as I had the first time, I
swallowed him whole again, gripping him with all due diligence and force.
Down upon him again, I gyrated left then right, feeling the different angles
cause his dick to reach new and happier places within me.  Up and down
again, this time to vibrate in quarter inch thrusts aimed at the base of his
dick.
Doug was beyond the place where thinking occurs.  He was in a land of need
and sensation and vividness, and I was sending him there.  Who really has
the control, I wondered, and not for the first time,  the top or the bottom?
  Who truly calls the shots?  I let the thought slide from my mind as I was
pretty close to that land myself, as his dick, at my direction, was playing
my prostate like a calliope.  But I was in control, and retained enough
presence of mind to ensure that he was held fully captive in that place that
heroine users are only able to find on their very first hit.
I began a long, slow, deep fucking rhythm, grasping his dick with my chute
as I fell onto him, offering a loose, slippery, warm, wet slide as I
retreated.  Reaching behind me, I felt first for his dick, pressing on the
engorged underside as it disappeared into then retreated from my asshole,
then began rubbing and pulling on his balls.  They had started their slide
up toward his torso, but I would have none of it, and began to gently tug
them away from his body.  This boy was not going to cum for some time.
And hold him suspended between the agony of continuation and the bliss of
release I was able to do for an insanely long period.  By the end, sweat
poured from his body as his lungs gasped for breath.  This athlete, this
model of endurance - I had him panting and begging me to let him cum.  When
I finally did, his back arched so completely he lifted me off the bed almost
eighteen inches.  He did not so much shoot as pour his jism into my body.
It was the Jonestown flood.  I could feel each electric shock of his orgasm,
each beat of his heart through the raw walls of my chute.
He stayed hard after he collapsed.  One does not recover so quickly from
such a fuck.  It was a good five minutes before his dick began to soften
within me.  I pulled off him, and fell, exhausted, next to him on the bed,
where we lay, thinking our own thoughts, finding our own ways back into our
respective bodies.
"That was un-fucking-believable," he said, after a while.
"Thanks," I replied, not bothering to open my eyes.
"Fuck, dude.  I wish you had tits and a snatch."
"Ewwww."
"Be a man," he said, then added,  "get a snatch."
I looked over at him.  He was grinning, and realizing he had just cracked a
joke, I burst out in laughter.
"Man," he said, sighing.  "Brad was right.  We should bring you with us to
the Nationals."
"Brad wants me to come to the Nationals with you?"
"Yeah.  He says you could be, like, our mascot.  He says you're too good to
leave behind.  Now I know what he's talking about."
"Mascot?"
"Oh," he said, a look of concern crossing his face, "is that obnoxious?  I
never know."
I smiled.  "Well, normally, yeah.  It would be kind of obnoxious.  But you
meant it as a compliment, didn't you?"
"Yeah!  I did!" he said, emphatically.  "It'd be cool having you around.
The guys have really started to like you."
"That's sweet," I said, truly touched by the sentiment coming, as it was,
from this particular source.
"And I can see why, too.  Man!" he said, "That was one of the best fucks
I've ever had.  You should give lessons, you know?"
"So I've been told."
"Well you been told right, guy.  You got an awesome cunt there."
Not many times a guy hears such flattery, I thought.  I should put that on
my resume.  PhD in Psychology, Magna Cum Laude, published at 20, awesome
cunt.
"Listen, Doug," I said after a few moments, "can I ask you a favor?"
"Sure, dude.  Anything you want."
I considered that.  It wasn't just a turn of phrase, I thought.  Doug really
was the kind of guy that would do anything for a friend.  I returned from my
tangent.
"Close your eyes and describe me."
"What do you mean?"
"It's an exercise.  It'll help me.  Close your eyes, and look at me in your
mind.  Then describe what you see."
"You're kind of strange, you know that?"
	"Be that as it may, I'd appreciate your doing it."
"Okay," he said, "what the fuck?"  He closed his eyes, and turned his head
back to face the ceiling.  "You're kind of scrawny," he said, then turned
back to me and opened his eyes.  "I don't mean that in a bad way, you know.
I'm sorry."
"No, no..." I said, smiling, "that's exactly what I want.  I won't be
offended.  You just say whatever comes to mind.  Describe me with whatever
words you want, and don't worry about hurting my feelings."
He shrugged, and turned his head back toward the ceiling again.  "Okay," he
said.  "Well, you're kind of scrawny.  You could use to work out.  I'd say
around 5'9", maybe 5'10".  You got brown hair and you need a haircut.  You
got green eyes that are kind of intense.  They're closer together than
normal, I think.  You got a long neck."  He shrugged again, not really
knowing what else to say.  "And you got the best cunt in the camp."
"Honey," I said, "I got the *only* cunt in the camp!"
He laughed.  "Same thing," he said.  "Same thing."