Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2008 13:29:48 -0400
From: jpm 770 <jpm770@gmail.com>
Subject: Joe College, Pt. 2

For a long time Andy Trafford was the only person who knew I was gay, and
the only guy I'd done anything with. That one night in the summer of our
sixteenth year gave me a mental library of jerk-off material. I was a
healthy young man in my mid-teens. Conservatively average my jerk-off rate
to 2.5 times a day, and in my last two years of high school we're
approaching 2,000 masturbation sessions stemming from one incident.

In the end, maybe Andy spared me an upper-middle class "Brokeback Mountain"
fiasco stretching into my middle age, or maybe he just lent me enough
confidence that when I arrived to college I didn't spend the first couple of
years paralyzed.

Whatever thanks I came to owe him, our first encounter had left me in a
state of constant lust and denial. Sometimes that energized me, but most of
the time it thwarted me. I wouldn't let our rapport return to normal, even
after my icy behavior broke. We didn't have the same easy, quick
interactions. When I was with him, even in a large group, I found myself
glancing his way. My heart picked up. I'd get slightly aroused, which
surprised and embarrassed me. To counterbalance that, my demeanor with Andy
became formal and ill-at-ease, as if he were an older relative that I didn't
want to offend.

Hold out until after graduation, I thought. Push this shit aside and focus
on the things that matter more, I thought -- like your SAT score, your
admissions essays and your jump shot.

A few weeks before commencement, with our college decisions made and just a
couple of AP exams left to resolve, the situation began to decompress. There
was a house party when Harvard admitted our friend Sanjay from the wait list
(the bastard) and after some beers I tackled Andy on the back lawn. I was
goofing around like I would with any other friend, but the beers made me
courageous and I badly wanted to touch him, just to feel what it was like to
press him against me again. We wrestled sloppily in front of a bored
audience. I threw a little wood safely inside my jeans. Andy put his hand
against my face and shoved me off of him. Later that night the two of us sat
around a patio table with a group, where we made eye contact and smirked.
Eventually he rolled his eyes and shook his head. Instead of being
unsettled, I laughed.

Andy had been waiting all along.


* * *

After commencement and the graduation open houses, Andy organized a weekend
at his parents' beach house. Like my own dad, Andy's father is a partner in
a large Manhattan law firm, except that Mr. Trafford bought a beachfront
plot on Fire Island back in the 80s and constructed a weekend house when we
were in elementary school. If you've never lived in New York, you might
equate Fire Island to a gay resort, which isn't exactly the case. A couple
of the island's villages cater to a gay population, but the island is a
strip 30 miles long, with the gay communities just part of it.

Andy's beach house put my own family's Vermont cabin to shame. The living
room has a big fireplace and sixteen-foot ceilings, with tall windows facing
south to the Atlantic. There are six bedrooms and two tiers of decks
overlooking the beach and surf. I have great memories of childhood trips to
that house, which I made two or three times each summer going back to when I
was a little kid. Andy's dad would hold me on his shoulders as waves came to
shore and washed over us. The island has a ban on cars and motor vehicles,
leaving everyone to travel by foot and bicycle after the ferry trip from
Long Island. As a kid, visiting had the feel of a complete, whimsical
escape.

Thirteen people came to the house for our unsupervised party -- seven guys
and six girls. We caravanned from our homes in Westchester County, then took
the ferry out to the island, arriving at Andy's place late in the afternoon.
Conspicuously, nobody picked rooms, and our luggage sat piled and organized
in the kitchen.

Andy and I weren't the only two with outstanding concerns toward each other
-- we were just the only ones completely undercover.

A few of us threw on our swimming trunks and ran to the water. In mid-June
the Atlantic stayed chilly, and a cool breeze blew off the ocean. Andy and a
couple of the girls took charge of grilling dinner while a group of us
played football on the sand. I made out the shape of him, with a beer bottle
in hand, leaning over the balcony railing and watching us from a distance.

People started drinking at dinner. Through older siblings, theft from
parents, and bribing shady-looking strangers at strip malls, we built a
collection of light beers, specialty beers, hard liquors, Boone's Farm and
schnapps. We were 18 and legally adults, but an air of the illicit
underlined that entire weekend, especially for the girls. I'm not sure who
said what to whose parents in order for all of us to be there; the mere fact
of our collection was an accomplishment.

By eleven at night, voices were raised to antic levels of excitement, as if
we were finally and truly celebrating the end of a battle. One of the girls
-- Bethany, 5'2 and unhealthily skinny -- had become sick and passed out on
the couch. I sat on the deck in sweatshirt and khaki shorts, sharing a
blanket and a cigarette with a girl named Danielle, who had hooked up with
our friend Sanjay in the past and was hoping to do so again that night.
Cigarettes were new for me. When I was a varsity athlete in three sports --
cross country, basketball and baseball -- I treated my physical condition
seriously. Post-graduation, smoking was an act of rebellion against the
scheduling tyranny that organized sports imposed on my high school years. I
pledged that I would not lift weights or run once that summer, and
cigarettes signaled my determination in this project.

Danielle and I were talking sentimental about our friends and the seemingly
imminent departure for college. Andy stepped out and joined us.

"I like this song as much as the next guy," he said, "but the chorus is
killing me."

Through the screen door, "Laid" by James was playing: "Ah, you think you're
so pretty," our friends inside enthused, followed by a round of lung-busting
screeches and gravelly screams. Danielle doubled over in drunk amusement,
dropping cigarette ash on our blanket.

The ocean's white noise gave us a volume license where neighbors were
concerned. It would take more than sing-along screeching to disturb anyone.

Danielle finished the cigarette. The three of us stayed on the porch until
Danielle complained that she was getting cold. "I think I need to go back
inside," she said. "If you want another cigarette I can get you one."

"Nah," I said. "I'll hang out here with Andy for awhile."

"Why? Are you guys going to smoke up?" She turned to Andy. "Did you bring
pot?"

"Yeah," he said, "but it's not for tonight. We'll save it for tomorrow."

She kissed him on the cheek.

"C'mon, dude," I said once Danielle closed the sliding door. "Let's go for a
walk."

"I knew it," he said. "You've had something up your sleeve all day. I could
tell."

"Yeah, my forearms," I said, "but that's not why we should go for a walk."

"This is a set-up. I know it," he said. "You're going to kill me and dump
the body in the ocean. Or maybe you'll just pull the rug out from under me
and hurt my feelings again."

"Nah, man," I said, and glanced through the door to our laughing, screaming,
dancing friends, just to make sure no one else spied me in a moment. "That's
not what I want to happen at all, but I guess it's what I want to talk
about. I'm so sorry for that, man. I've felt like shit over that." By nature
I don't get serious -- not about my own life, at least, not where emotion or
wounding is concerned. "Seriously, man," I said, "we'll just walk out for a
second, just down to the water and back. I don't want to head out of here
without being at peace with you, and I don't want anyone else to walk in on
the middle of me saying ridiculous stuff."

"It's okay," Andy said. "I was going to go with you anyway. I don't think
you'd actually kill me. Not on purpose."

He slapped my shoulder. We walked barefoot down the wooden stairs and the
public path leading to the beach. It was overcast; we didn't have moonlight,
and the only other house with lights on at that hour was hundreds of yards
away. The sand was cold between my toes. We stood close while we walked.
With other guys, I wouldn't have put so much importance in that.

"I guess," I said, my voice sounding pinched and high, "that I feel like
I've needed to settle up with you for a long time is all, and I'm sorry if I
handled it-"

"Look, man, I appreciate where you're going, and I don't mean to cut you
off, but check that shit out," he said, pointing eastward down the beach.
Alarmed, I looked out and squinted my eyes.

While I stared down shore he grabbed the back of my neck and pulled my face
down to his. He planted a kiss on my lips, just a dry kiss, but he held the
back of my head tightly, such that our noses pressed together. My instinct
told me to pull away, but after two tenths of a second, my nervous system
went to butter. When he pulled his lips from mine I stared, arms motionless
at my sides.

"You see what I did?" He looked like he'd scored a brilliant argument at my
expense. My boner was blocking my voicebox, yes, but I was otherwise so
surprised and giddy that I lacked the free neural pathways necessary for
communication. "I just said to myself, 'Fuck it, who cares,' and so I kissed
you. Running the risk that you'll turn to stone or a fucking pillar of salt
and not speak to me for the next eight or ten weeks, but really, we'll be
gone soon, so what's the worst that can happen."

"Yes," I said. "That was good."

"You articulate bastard," he said. "I'm actually pretty interested in
hearing what you have to say, it's just that I already know that you acted
like a motherfucker, just like I know you've been tormenting yourself for
the fact that you're pretty gay. We'll go over all that later, because I
need to talk about those things too. I just thought it would feel great to
kiss you, which is something I've been wanting to do for a long fucking time
now. Nobody said I've got good taste."

I had a few inches on him, so I needed to lean down in order to kiss him
properly. This time when we kissed I inched ahead and parted my lips. First
the wet interiors of our lips slid, and then Andy flicked his tongue against
my mouth in a pair of short licks.

"Dude, why do you taste like fruit?" he said.

"Danielle has Schnapps, and I drank some with her."

"You taste like cherry, Joe."

"I think it was sour apple or something."

Andy leaned forward to kiss me again. He rubbed his tongue on my lower lip.
"Yeah, you taste like sour apple and cigarette. Fucking Danielle." With his
next kiss, he kept hold of my lower lip in his mouth. He tugged at it
lightly with his teeth. I held my hands over his shoulder blades and hugged
his body against mine. Andy liked this. The tension of his bones and
muscles, and the heat of his body, felt good in the chill air. I leaned into
him with my hard-on. He sighed through his nose mid-kiss, which I myself
liked, the feel of Andy breathing on my upper lip. He emitted a short,
whimpering sound and rested his head on my shoulder. Our saliva evaporated
cold on the skin around my lips.

"We need to be roommates tonight," Andy said. "I'm taking the awesome room.
I don't care if I have to throw cold water over Sanjay and Danielle, that's
going to be my room."

"Sure, man," I said. "I'll room with you."

"You'll still have to look at me and speak to me for the rest of the trip,
and possibly for the indefinite future, too. I know how hard that will be
for you." He squeezed the top of my ass and pulled me against him. "Do you
think you can handle that, or will you act like a retard again?"

"I'll be able to handle it. I'm better now."

"I bet this isn't the conversation you thought we were going to have."

"I thought I was going to apologize a lot, probably even cry for awhile, and
tell you why you're the greatest guy ever and I acted like a dick."

"So you lost your shit after it happened. Maybe we should be lucky that all
you did was avoid me, and that we don't live in the Bible Belt, where maybe
you would have done something nuts." He reached his hand into the top of my
shorts until his fingers were at the head of my cock. "You could have talked
about it. We've been good friends since we were five. It's not like I was
going to make fun of you or try to out you to anybody." He pushed his hands
deeper into my shorts fondled my dick with a couple of fingers. I was
leaning hard against him with my arms still wrapped around his shoulders.
"Christ, you're leaking pre-cum like crazy, dude. We should probably stop
for now." He looked back at the house. "I'm scared that you're going to
shoot your load right here, or else that someone will come out and see us,
or that you'll have to walk back through the house with a boner that won't
stop."

Andy suggested that I stay outside and collect myself. He'd go ahead of me,
with a report that I'd become sick and was walking it off. It'd give me an
excuse to run upstairs, claim dibs on the awesome bedroom, and crash for
awhile. Andy wasn't sure when he'd be able to join me given hosting duties
and the intensity of our drunk friends, but he'd jump away at the nearest
chance.

It took awhile to deflate my hard-on. I walked in front of the ocean and let
the waves run up to my ankles. At best I expected Andy to grill me like a
prosecutor, and then begrudgingly accept my apology. He was too socially
smooth to reject me outright or cause a scene, but I wouldn't have blamed
him if the response had been unimpressed. Instead of all that angst, I
hugged myself at the shoulders and laughed at the cold seawater that rose
past my ankles

I walked back to the house, brushed the sand off my feet, and retrieved my
bag from the kitchen.

"You're looking rough, killer," said my best friend Rick. "I think you need
a shot of Jack."

"No shots," I said. "I just puked up my burgers outside."

"You haven't even been drinking that much. When did you become such a puss?"

I muttered and walked past him. They were all too drunk to notice that I was
faking, and given how intensely Andy had surprised me, my balance and body
language were sloppy in their own right.

Andy wanted the two of us to take the room with the king-sized bed, private
bathroom, and skylight. It had windows facing out to the ocean and a little
private balcony. I dropped my luggage, stripped down to my boxers and
T-shirt, turned on the TV, and waited.

Sometime after two, Andy came in with his bag over his shoulder. He locked
the door. "They're pissed that we're taking this room, but fuck 'em," he
said. "Host's prerogative. They're all too drunk to think through anything."

I was reclined back in the bed, soft under covers. Andy's appearance and his
grin gave me a quick hard-on. Speech wasn't coming smoothly for me. He
brushed his teeth and removed his contacts, then unbuttoned his shirt. I
watched the outline of his abs and ribs and chest muscles through the
shirt's opening.

"It'd be more romantic if you undressed me," he said, as he dropped his
shirt, "but you're already in bed and looking pretty comfortable." He
dropped his shorts. Through white boxers, I could see that Andy's dick
already was at full mast, too.

At that point in his life, Andy may have had less body fat than any other
guy I'd ever see naked. He ran and swam so much, it seemed like every time
he moved, cords and muscles tensed visibly beneath his skin. His navel was
pulled into him; his hip bones stuck out just slightly. The sun had freckled
his shoulders and upper arms, and left a slight, dusty tan on his skin.

He posed long enough for me to swallow a good look of his disrobed torso and
the outline of his cock pressing against the top of his boxers, then he
threw himself onto the bed.

Andy's his mouth was all over mine. The one previous time we fooled around,
I was frightened to look him in the face and hadn't wanted to kiss him,
since the idea seemed too gay. Now it seemed like his tongue was intent to
do battle against mine, and I was happy to give him the win. We breathed hot
breath into each other's mouths. He paused mid-kiss with his lower lip
pressed against mine and his tongue soft in my mouth, and just held it for a
couple of seconds. I opened my eyes and looked down at his face, and held
tight at his lower back.

After our aerobic kissing, Andy extracted himself. He got on his knees. He
pulled up at my white T-shirt, and I lifted my arms until it slipped off. We
hugged each other bare-chested. He wrapped his legs around mine and put his
hand over my chest. Through the layers of our boxers I felt his penis hard
and loose pressed at my thigh.

"I'm testing you," he said. "I want to make sure that you're not going to
freak out again. So far, so good. You're making eye contact. You seem to be
having fun with the kissing. Doesn't seem like you're having a nervous
breakdown."

"I missed you a lot, man."

"That's all your fault," he said. "I didn't go anywhere, and I missed you
too. Until you tried to wrestle me a few weeks ago, I didn't think this
would happen again."

He'd been lying on top of me, but then he slid off, lying curled at my side,
both of us still in our boxers. He kissed me below the ear and at the neck.
He pressed a finger against my nipple and rubbed it in a light circular
motion then reached down and pulled down my shorts. I lifted my hips and
looked at the seven-incher rising out of my black bush of pubic hair, and
kicked down my shorts.

"Man, Joey, you sure do have a lot of pre-cum," he said. He stroked the
underbelly of my cock, as if it were a pet that might bite. He put his
finger over my purplish dickhead and spread my pre-cum over it.

"Is that not normal?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said. "I do it too, just not as much as you." He shifted
his hips so that I could see the wet spot in the center-top of his red
boxers.

"Do you want to take them off yet?"

"You can go ahead," he said.

I slid them down by the hems. My face was over his stomach as I dropped his
shorts. His dick plunked against his belly with a slight slapping sound.
Andy arched his lower back, his dick pink and quivering and tense, as if he
were fucking the air. I was crouched sideways over him, with my dick and
butt in profile. He placed a hand on the cheek of my ass.

"Have you been doing squat thrusts or something?"

"Ha. Noticeable?"

"I remember it pretty clearly from last time, and I was checking it out
after every practice last fall, so yeah, I guess. Looks good."

I straddled over him above the hips. My balls draped onto his and the bases
of our dicks touched. Andy covered his eyes with his elbows and laughed.
"Shit, you have the potential to make some guy at college really happy," he
said, "as long as you stay cool."

"I'll be better," I said.

He tugged at my arm and pulled me back down next to him. We laid parallel
with my dick against his hip. He gave me a quick kiss on the lips. His dick
was about the same length as mine, but it looked huge and hot rising out of
his thick copper-colored pubes. For awhile we just laid there like that, lit
by the lamp next to the bed. Turned on as I felt, lying with his body nudged
next to mine, my mind somewhat clouded, and I felt myself starting to doze.
A girl's laugh sounded from the hallway.

"God, you are fucking hot, though," Andy said softly. "Maybe I'm just a
sucker for your face."

I put my face at the crook of his neck and shoulder and sniffed in, kissing
him at the shoulder. I slid down and sucked on his nipple, rubbing my tongue
around the circumference. He arched his back and moved his hips up and down,
again fucking the air at some invisible body. His body looked so good, and
he was so un-self conscious about showing it off, that the sight of his dick
and hips thrusting at nothing was a huge turn-on. I licked the palm of my
left hand and pulled softly at his cock while keeping my mouth at his
nipple. Andy moaned and held tight at my shoulders, then rubbed his hand
through my hair like he wanted to mess it as severely as possible.

"Keep going like that and I'm going to cum," he said.

"Do you want to cum?"

"Just keep going."

I slowed the pace and squeezed tight at his cock. My thumb muscle was
beginning to ache. I was lightly dry-humping at his tight, lightly haired
thigh. My pre-cum lubricated my movements against him. My face and chest
were sweating now, and I felt him sweat against me. It smelled good right
then. I took my mouth off of him and put my head at the side of his chest; I
could hear his heart under his muscle and bones. Otherwise the sound was of
our breathing and the wet, squishy friction of my spit-licked hand against
his cock.

Andy made some quick thrusts of his hips before he shot off. "Oh, fuck,
Joe," he said, hugging tight to my head. His cum shot hard out of him, high
up his chest, almost to where my face rested. The second shot went almost as
far, and the third and fourth dribbled out of him. I picked up the odor of
Andy's jizz, something like a chlorinated pool combined with mushrooms.

"Do you want me to get something to clean it up?" I said.

"Ah, fuck it," he said, pulling my face back up to kiss me. My chest pressed
on his; Andy's cum was slick on my chest and I wasn't even grossed out by
it. The notion made me feel even hotter, if anything. He held onto my hand.
I pushed my face against his until our teeth clicked, our eyebrows touched,
our noses pressed at each other. My free hand, I rested at his lower back,
then down to cup the left cheek of his smooth, toned ass. Neither of us had
shaved that day, so when we kissed my black stubble scraped against his
auburn stubble. I wondered if this sanded down our faces, and if the next
morning we'd meet our friends looking like we'd scrubbed with sandpaper, and
I didn't even care. Their hangovers would impede them from questioning.

"Dude." He pulled back from me with his lips full and his dimples drawn. "I
might try to go down on you. What do you think?"

"When I'm nice to people and make eye contact with them, I get blow jobs."

"That seems like a good first lesson," he said. "I know it's not romantic
for me to announce it this way, but I'm not sure what it'll be like. I might
stop right away."

"Like, 'Oh, balls, Andy's fellatio etiquette is for shit.'"

"Shh," he said. "Somebody might hear you."

"They're all too drunk that they wouldn't remember it in the morning."

"Shh," he said. "Just shut the fuck up while I try."

He already was sliding his body down mine. Even though he'd already shot,
his hard-on was still in effect. He put his face even with my dick, pulling
the erection away from my body, practically putting his eye up against it.
Looking it over, he was still jerking himself off, lying on his side with
his hips facing toward me. He put his closed lips against the base of my
cockhead and flicked it with his tongue. Even that preliminary gesture felt
better than I thought, and it sent a tingle down my hips. He parted his lips
and took the top of my dick into his mouth, working it over with his tongue
for a few seconds. I breathed through my hips and lifted my hips off the
sheets. Andy pulled harder on his own dick while he kept wrapping his tongue
around the top of mine. He began to thrust his own hips; his stomach muscles
clenched and unclenched.

"Is that okay?"

"Yeah, feels great, man," I said. "I can do play-by-play if you want."

"Shh," he said.

He slid my rod back into his mouth and continued his own intense
masturbation. He moved his head to the side, rubbing my dick at the inside
of his cheek. The spark he caused ran down from my stomach to the end of my
dick. My neck felt weaker. I kept my eyes on Andy's dick, pink and wet and
sensitive, his pubes looking matted up and tangled around it. I let out a
tense, shaky sigh, and felt a tremble down my thighs.

"Now I'm fucking your dimple from the interior," I said in a voice meant to
mimic a sports commentator's.

He interrupted the blow job to laugh. I looked down to his smile, and the
purple, spit-shined head of my cock that he held next to his face.

Practically without warning, a line of semen shot out of me. "Fuck!" I
shouted I arched my back and lifted my hips from the sheets. The involuntary
sharpness and intensity reminded me of getting tickled. I thrust my hips a
couple more times and watched the rope of jizz stretch out of my dick. Andy
pumped at my penis, rubbing the semen that hit his thumb against me as a
lubricant. Even though I'd just ejaculated, his continued rubbing felt
great. "Sorry man," I said, laughing, "I didn't know that was coming."

"That was just, like, spontaneous?"

"I didn't know it was about to happen."

Feeling the need to clean myself off, I leaned over and wiped my chest and
stomach with the nearest available cloth, which happened to be Andy's boxers
lying on the floor next to the bed. "Guess my mom won't be doing my laundry
this week," he said. I tossed the boxers halfway across the room. Andy held
my hand again and curled up next to me. We were full-boned, but it was late
and we were both pretty exhausted. Plus, it just felt nice to wrap around
with him like that. I gave him a nice little kiss on the cheek, which segued
to a peck on the lips, and then a few minutes of making out, before I faded
off and went to sleep with him.

We spent three more days at that beach house, two more nights sharing that
room. Nobody suspected a thing. After that, we had eight weeks before
leaving to our respective colleges.

* * *

Andy was one of my best friends going back years, and despite the intense,
short-lived sexual chemistry, I never stopped classifying him as more than
that. The physical stuff made us closer, and we were probably more into the
intimate affections -- the making out and sleeping on each other -- than
other guys go through at first, but at no point did I quite think of him as
a boyfriend, or consider myself in love with him. He'd forgiven me the
coldheartedness I directed to him after our first night together, but my
previous standoffishness left a ceiling for his confidence in me. In the
weeks before leaving our hometown for college, the two of us had a blast.

Neither of us worked that summer. I have two younger brothers -- Rob, the
fourteen-year-old, and Evan, the eleven-year-old. Rob was away at camp in
Maine, but I was assigned to drive twenty minutes every day to retrieve Evan
from his day camps for soccer and swimming. Until around 4 p.m. on weekdays,
I was a free man. Mark came to my parents' house most weekday mornings.
Sometimes we hung out in the pool like normal, or sat around and played
video games, but most of the time we were upstairs in my bedroom, or down in
the basement on the couch in front of the TV. He was really into affection,
and I guess we both were. He curled and cuddled against me; he liked having
his arms over my neck and shoulders, kissing at my neck and nuzzling his
nose at my chin. I loved the attention, I admit, and it didn't take much for
either of us to get turned on to the point of blowing our wads. We talked
while we hung off each other, mostly about our friends, or bands, or
speculating about what could happen in college.

Andy would move across the country to Berkeley. My destination was in the
Midwest. Lower-rung Ivies had accepted us both, and the premier ones
rejected us. Stanford and Berkeley had always been Andy's first choices, but
Stanford nixed him while Berkeley sent the golden ticket.

I was deciding between Dartmouth or Penn until I made my visits. Those two
campuses proved incredibly irritating, and a dark horse won my heart.

"I can foresee you getting impatient with too much structure, and with more
time around sort of high-strung kids from the Tri-State area," my guidance
counselor said. "All of your finalists are superb schools. Toss out the
rankings and go where you'll be happy. Too many people find themselves
miserable and perform poorly because they picked schools that were terrible
matches. Unless we're talking about Harvard or Yale -- which are almost
impossible to refuse -- this is more like dating, where chemistry and
intangibles count for a lot. Doing what you want is always the best plan."

As usual, my parents thought I was making my decision more complicated than
necessary: "You said Penn seemed miserable," my mom said, "and you used the
phrase 'Potemkin Village' for Dartmouth. That was a proud moment in my life.
I don't know why we're still talking about it. You know where you want to
go, and I want what you want, so go. I've said all along that the Ivy label
is overrated, but you thought I was just trying to make you feel good in
case of rejection."

So I made my choice and never looked back.

What wasn't to love about our life during that summer? I was a free man
about to leave for college, with an adorably attractive guy who liked to
strip down and roll around in my bed while we were safely home alone.

"I was thinking about something the other day," Andy said to me in early
August, following a duel with my boner. "Remember what Slaton said after
that game where you scored 28 points or whatever?"

The previous January, the varsity basketball team played a country day
school from near Scarsdale. They crushed us. They came from one of those
schools that -- in addition to drawing the five-figure-tuition crowd
fighting for admission to Harvard -- ran a renowned basketball program, the
kind that recruited kids from the Bronx with athletic futures at Division 1A
programs. We were down 32 points at the half; the only realistic goal was to
end the game with our heads held high.

I wasn't much of a basketball player -- a small forward competent off the
bench, I could be relied on for a couple rebounds and assists, about six
points a game, and stability at the free-throw line. This made me content.
But in the second half of the game against that country day school, with our
defeat assured and their greenest juniors and a couple sophomores on the
court, I elevated to a different place. I'd made a pair of field goals in
the first half, but suddenly I was possessed. I couldn't miss! Shot after
shot rolled off my fingers in wicked arcs, and (plifff!) nothing but net. I
was barely aware of my teammates' enthusiasm or the crowd or the momentum
behind what I was doing -- fueled by instinct, detached from the outcome,
feeling no passion, it was like I tapped into an unused part of my brain, a
new trick of the meditative religions or whatnot.

"Dammit, Joe," our coach, Mr. Slaton, said afterward, "if you were this
great when it mattered, I might even like you a little."

In addition to being my basketball coach, Mr. Slaton taught AP History, and
he loved me. I laughed at the comment but he gave me a look that wasn't
entirely joking. He wanted me to hear something, at least as pertained to my
athletic performance: I was great when it didn't matter, lackluster when it
did, and diffident in the clutch.

I'd done this before: gone four-for-four in a doomed baseball game (varsity
shortstop -- my fielding was consistently good) but struck out with the
game-tying run on third; made a quick trio of three-pointers when we already
were up by 12 with just a couple minutes left. I was even a little proud of
my fickle performances, like it was one of those charming quirks or symptoms
of non-conformist genius. Personally, I *like* that A-Rod puts up huge
numbers over a season yet infuriates Yankees fans by not being heroic on
demand -- as if somehow that diminished his excellence. My own unevenness
was never premeditated. I certainly never under-exerted for a game. It just
came in extremes.

"You more or less admitted before that you decided to discipline yourself
and wait until after graduation," Andy said, "like that somehow makes sense.
Basically, you ran out the clock until you thought it wouldn't matter. Now
you should probably wait until retirement before getting touched by another
dude. Too many other obligations between now and then. Cut down on the
distractions."

* * *

At this point you might be suspecting that my family was religious or
conservative, or that there had been a childhood incident that left me
uneasy about my sexuality. In reality, my parents were lapsed Catholics,
politically progressive and open-minded; the only childhood scars were on my
shins.

We lived in a small town in Westchester County just north of New York. It's
a commuting suburb for investment bankers and Wall Street lawyers. People
were well-off but not ostentatious -- bizarrely, while we were growing up,
my friends and I considered ourselves gritty, relative to peers in
Manhattan, Scarsdale, and the more high-pressure suburbs of Long Island. We
didn't drive sports cars to school or have permanent house staff or anything
like that, so we believed that we were relatively blue-collar. In reality,
our lifestyles were more a reflection of parental reticence about how you
displayed affluence.

Our high school had a well accepted gay-straight alliance, and a half-dozen
kids in our graduating class of 150 had -- either tacitly or explicitly --
come out of the closet. I'm sure they had rough social moments, but I don't
remember any of those kids being serious outcasts or openly bullied. The
word "fag" wasn't uttered openly or in formal company -- in most crowds it
go the same response as the N-word. I grew up in a culture that couldn't
have been more supportive of gay kids.

The anxiety about this part of my life came from someplace different, and so
far as I can tell, was all internal. I hadn't grown up thinking of myself as
gay, although there had been many times -- maybe going back to fifth grade
-- where I felt a vague closeness with certain of my male friends, always
the ones who happened to be athletic and good-looking. There had been
moments when I liked touching them, not in a sexual way, but throwing my arm
around their neck at odd moments or wrestling around with them. This hadn't
aroused me -- it just felt warm and good. I liked holding onto them and the
faint smell of them. Early in high school, there had been times when I
turned self-conscious and clumsy around certain upperclassmen who were
considered popular and good-looking. I suppose part of my reptile brain had
been attracted to them, and my consciousness wasn't sure how to behave with
that.

When Andy and I found each other, the photo stopped being fuzzy, but even
then, it made no sense that I could be attracted to other guys. I treated it
like any part of our body or personality that we can't control and won't
embrace -- a bad temper, a predisposition to seizures, a genetic disease. I
began with the denial and then moved to anger: What had I done to deserve
this? I couldn't think of an upside. I associated homosexuality with
weakness and with people on the margins; they were punchlines on sitcoms and
Jay Leno monologues; awkward, promiscuous disasters with interests far from
my own. The gay world didn't have anything to do with me or my life, I
concluded. I liked sports and read biographies about generals and
presidents; I liked winning things, and occasionally breaking stuff. I
wanted to be an all-around guy, an alpha. What mattered most was that I was
taken seriously, that I won when I wanted to win, and was liked by friends
and strangers.

Add to that the sense that I'd be letting people down. My parents loved me
and were proud of me. My middle brother Rob and I had always been in
conflict (and not necessarily in the nature of a rowdy sibling rivalry) but
my youngest brother Evan tracked my life with more enthusiasm than I did.
After my sporting events, his voice frequently was hoarse; if I sat down
while he watched TV, he went to lengths explaining what I'd missed. He would
find small excuses to talk to me and hit me with questions about school,
sports and movies. That kid loved me and idealized me, even in the times
when I didn't deserve it. How's an eleven-year-old kid going to deal with
the news that his older brother is into guys' boners? I wasn't about to find
out.

My past coldness toward Andy might originated because I blamed him for
holding the door open -- or a misguided belief that he'd changed me into a
person that I didn't want to be.

* * *

"Just shut the fuck up and put yourself in my shoes," Andy said. "There I
was, sixteen years old, been jerking off since I was twelve to that one shot
of Tom Cruise's dick in 'All the Right Moves' and Ewan McGregor's
full-frontals and every men's swimming and diving meet I can find on TV,
because I'm too paranoid to look anything up on the internet in my parents'
house. And it pretty much sucks, and I can't talk about it with anybody, and
I've got no idea what the hell to do with myself, when it turns out that
somebody I know is also into dudes. But it gets even better because it's not
just some random dude from the line at McDonald's, but you, who I've known
forever. It was like immediately I went from this bucket of shit to a
fucking treasure chest. Then you tossed it all. I just needed somebody real
in my life that I could talk to. Getting off with you would've been awesome,
but I mostly needed you as a friend. I didn't even get that, because you
were such a basket case."

"Okay, genius," I said, "but maybe you should think of it like this. Was it
worse than if nothing happened in the first place? We know I mishandled it,
and we know how sorry I am, and that we missed out on a ton of good stuff.
Still, after that, you knew you weren't alone, and now you've had a summer
of awesome blow jobs, making out and sleepovers. Plus, you held some cards,
too. A couple of words and an arm around my neck, and I probably would've
folded for you. I think that you've exaggerated the extent of my sucking."

He looked down at my face, which was on a pillow on his lap on the couch in
my basement. "You act like a bonkers little asshole sometimes," he said,
"but then, when you're affectionate, you become so sweet and vulnerable."

"God, Andy, stop making me feel like a pussy."

* * *

The college departures came without fireworks. We had another party at
another summer house -- this time in the Adirondacks -- which left me with a
hangover so wicked that Rick pulled over the car twice on the drive home in
order to address my vomiting needs.

On a less gastrointestinal note, I thereafter had a last night with Andy,
where we both shot our loads three times and didn't get any proper sleep.

"I think I'll miss your cock," he said in a moment of passion.

"What about my personality?"

"That, less so."

"Likewise, motherfucker," I said, pulling at his hard-on before kissing him
for a few minutes. "Actually, I'm pretty lucky with how this shook out. I
really love you man. Not in the gay way, just in a friend way."

"Likewise, motherfucker," he said.

A couple days later, Andy departed for Berkeley, where he would become every
gay guy's ideal boyfriend: Pleasant and outgoing and confident and kind. In
college he started running triathlons; he was immaculately groomed; he
volunteered in progressive political campaigns. He would come out of the
closet at the end of his sophomore year. Phi Beta Kappa in history, a summer
abroad in Italy.

Don't worry -- Andy will be back more than once before this story ends. I'm
not sharing his fate because we're saying good-bye to him. I just wanted you
to know how he turned out, so that every time I make a stupid-assed
decision, go days without shaving, ingest unhealthy substances, or pull an
all-nighter because I'm freaking out about nonsense, we can stop and
consider Andy Trafford our role model.

My parents and I shipped belongings to my own destination and flew into the
nearest airport. My youngest Brother Evan came along; middle-brother Rob
remained in the custody of a family friend.

My new roommate and I spoke on the phone three times that summer. His name
was Sam Frost. He was from Ottawa and had a British accent. A British accent
makes even the most pointless remark sound either insightful or gently
mocking, and in our phone chats, I found myself anxious to make a good
impression. He seemed funny, smart and considerate, but whether my
impression was accurate or just the automatic product of his accent, I
couldn't tell. I knew that Sam and his family had arrived to school two days
ahead of us, and that he'd eagerly volunteered to supply the television and
the rug and the futon.

My parents and I arrived to the new dorm room in early afternoon. We'd
already had a long day; I was bickering with my mother. The room I found was
smaller and more spartan than I expected. It was stuffy despite an open
window, and hot in the late-August heat. A small television was set up on a
dresser, some bedsheets and a comforter were scattered on the lower bunk,
and the room seemed cluttered with half-empty boxes, stacks of books and
piles of clothes.

A note rested on an empty desk, with capitalizations employed as shown here:

DEAR JOE,

If you read this, welcome to our awesome new room. I'm out to lunch with my
parents and haven't had the time to organize. Please forgive the mess.
Reorganize at your convenience. Incinerate if necessary. Look forward to
meeting and catching up soon.

Best regards, SAM FROST