Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2013 21:49:16 -0500
From: jpm 770 <jpm770@gmail.com>
Subject: Joe College, Part 22

Joe College, Part 22

"It must be frustrating that you don't write as much as you used to,"
Russell said.

He'd invited me to dinner that night in December, which, for Russell, meant
going to a bar that served food.  The fact that I still wasn't old enough
to get served didn't bother him.

"That's your fault," I said.  "Now I spend all of my time editing freshmen.
 But, like, at this point, trashing people who like Kelis and jizzing over
The White Stripes has gotten predictable."

"Fuck your youthful cynicism," Russell said.  "You never get tired of
jizzing over The White Stripes."

"Probably not," I said.  "White Stripes, Black Keys."

"Is that about race?"

"Race, like, permeates society."

"I don't hear music in terms of race.  I like Elvis and Dave Matthews," he
said, lighting a cigarette and swallowing a quarter of his pint.  "I don't
have hipster tastes."

"You have moronic tastes," I said, "but basically, I'm on your shitlist
because I don't write enough."

"Fuck you, you're not on my shitlist," Russell said.  "You get your pages
in on time and your work is never sloppy.  I'd give you a blowjob just for
that.  Do you know the shit that I get from the sports boys?  At least once
a week, I'm rewriting one of their articles at two in the morning."

"Give me a cigarette," I said.

"How much does it piss you off that they banned smoking in New York City?"
he said.  "What a fucked-up, pussy country this is becoming, with the
goddamned nanny state, and these fucking health nuts.  This country was
founded on three things: tobacco, whiskey and unprotected sex."

"And slavery," I said.

"Only in the South.  And they banned that, too!  Politically sensitive
cocksuckers."

"You shouldn't talk like this in public," I said.  "Somebody might overhear
you, and then you'll get protested again."

"Thanks for bringing me back to my original point," he said.

"Why you love slavery."

"Why you need to write more," he said.

"I mean, I obviously like it.  Maybe I could do some movie reviews or only
pick artists that I like."

"I'm thinking of something else," Russell said, smoke slipping out of his
lungs, leaning forward gesturing toward me with both hands, like a tarmac
worker guiding an Airbus to the gate.  "Our columnists always suck.  Ever
since I was a freshman.  They're a joke.  A token conservative who writes
talking-point horseshit, a fat girl who writes about the crisis of date
rape," he rolled his eyes to go with his air quotes, "and sexism in the
media, a douchebag who pisses everybody off about Israel and Palestine, an
earnest minority, and blah blah blah.  And then every so often one of these
geniuses concocts grandiose shit about nuclear proliferation or social
constructs of family or moderate Islam -- shit they know *nothing* about --
and do you know what I do?"

"You have unprotected sex with them."

"No, they're the one's fucking me, daily and raw, in long, pretentious
strokes."  He made a masturbation gesture for longer than comfortable.

"Yeah," I said.  "I can't remember the last time I looked at one of the
columns past the headlines."

"And you read everything."

"Even stories on women's volleyball," I said.

"Pervert," he said.

"Can I cover women's volleyball?"

"You dirty, dirty pervert," he said.

Russell planned to fire the newspaper's columnists and replace them with
his slate, which was to include me, Russell himself, and a half-dozen
others. "We're not the Times," he said.  "We're not the Wall Street
Journal.  No one wants to read a twenty-year-old psych major getting
sanctimonious about America's struggle toward equality."

"Man, you should have seen this thing Eddie Caserta tried to write about
Foucault and Jessica Simpson," I said.

"Don't distract me," Russell said.  "We're going to not be fucking
celestial.  Funnier, more campusy.  Rip the provost and the trustees, go to
a student government meeting and make Charlie Curtis look like a
douchelord.  But also stay away from that `Sex and the City' shit.  You
ever get online and look at the papers at Penn or Texas, and it's horny
shit-for-nothings pontificating about hook-up culture and roommate drama."

"Dude," I said, taking another cigarette, "I could never come up with
something original once a week."

"Of course you can," he said.  "If you of all people can't come up with
four or five hundred words once a week, all of us are fucked."

"Every time you compliment me, it's like, I need lubricant."

"Fuck yes, handsome," Russell said.  "And I'm not even making eye contact."

* * *

And part of what happened was my photo.  When I showed up to get the
headshot snapped, the photographer sent me and my gray hoodie home, saying
to come back in a white dress shirt.  She posed me against a brick wall and
commanded my face through a range of expressions.  My top two buttons
undone, my lips curled to a slight smirk, eyes looking into the lens.  She
shot my jaw at the proper angle of defiance, like I wanted to fight you and
then kiss you on the mouth, you son of a bitch.

* * *

Russell wanted columns to have running titles.  He thought of it as good
branding.

We pondered some cliches -- Regular Joe, Average Joe, Cup of Joe -- and
joked about a name like Joseph's Stallin'.

Joe College isn't a great title: just more apropos than the other options.
 Anachronism from a lost time where a young man played football in a
leather helmet and snuck a flask of gin in his jacket pocket before he left
to pick up his girl for a dance at the DKE House.  Joe College took the
train home to Allentown, picked up the sports pages to read about Joe
Lewis, tried not to knock the communal spittoon, and assumed a junior
management position at the factory when his varsity days ended.

* * *

Because of how they designed the pages, the paper ran self-promoting ads to
fill corners of open space.  Once or twice a week, they ran an ad, usually
a couple of inches squared: READ JOE COLLEGE EVERY THURSDAY, with my
sexy-beast headshot, my full Christian name in eight-point type.

READ JOE COLLEGE

* * *

My first couple of efforts were shit.  My inauspicious beginning was a
lament about MTV's abandonment of music videos and political reporting.
 The second was a contrast between boy bands and The Rolling Stones circa
2004.  Pathetic, desperate stuff, not at all what Russell wanted, even
though he was decent enough not to tell me that.

My third try was headlined "Howard Dean does a kegstand."  Dean had lost
the Iowa caucus to John Kerry, and I, like, everyone else, felt devastated.
 (Michelle actually cried that night.)  And I still think that this column
was fucking good, man.  The premise wasn't Oscar Wilde (just Howard Dean at
a college house party) but my execution was spot on, with hallmarks that
you might recognize: addressing the reader directly, in a cocky,
confessional, conversational prose.  At the end of the column, the partiers
look on in horror as John Kerry hooks up with the hot girl and Dean passes
out on the front porch: The sincere party guy who everyone loves took it
too far and embarrassed himself; the rich kid who nobody likes walked off
with the hot chick.

I knew that I'd hit my trick when I checked my e-mail before class the next
morning and had a half-dozen messages from strangers.  By the end of the
day, I had about 30 e-mails.  One just said, "typical liberal faggot" and
meant the epithet in a generic sense.  Online, my column was linked on a
couple of blogs -- not to any big-traffic sites; just small places where
sad Dean fans commiserated -- which, again, didn't make me Nick
motherfucking Kristof, but I was psyched nonetheless.

The response was addicting.

In the next weeks, I found myself thinking up ideas, throwing them away,
jotting phrases in the middle of studying or even when drunk and hanging
out.  Parts of my brain no longer belonged to me.  I could not summon these
voices or kill them when they came -- these phrases, ideas, images, they
announced themselves, and it didn't seem to matter whether I was drunk or
sober, overcaffeinated or on the verge of sleep, alone or in a crowd of
hundreds.

I had battled into my voice.

* * *

That February, from the 60 resumes that I'd sent over Christmas in search
of summer internships, I found myself on the phone with a music magazine in
New York.  I did two twenty-minute phone interviews and gave them the
requested reference -- limited to Russell, and the phone number of my dad's
buddy, the law-firm partner who'd set me up with an internship back in the
summer of `02.  After 48 hours of distraction and anticipation, the kind
where I couldn't sleep until five in the morning or focus on a word in
lecture, I got a call asking if I'd be one of four interns that summer.

It didn't matter that the decision was made by a pair of staff writers
who'd been given a task that no one else wanted.  Barely trying, my future
had come into shape.  I'd become Michael Lewis, or maybe Tom Wolfe
ingratiating myself to the next Ken Kesey.  My indispensable voice would
account for an era, I imagined as I couldn't fall asleep.  I resolved to be
kind of a big deal.

* * *

"Now that your picture's all over the place, you must be terrified that
somebody's going to out you," Matt Canetti said.

"Nah," I said into the phone.  "Nobody knows."

"Nobody except for the dozens of homos who saw you go berserk at that house
party last spring."

"Yeah, right," I said.  "Nobody would remember that."

"I was there and I wasn't very drunk," he said.  "Trust me, it was
memorable."

"They'd never put it together."

"You're, like, typically delusional," he said.  "I grant you that they
might not ever out you because they might not give a shit, but that doesn't
mean that they're idiots.  Not everyone is as demented and
compartmentalized as you."

* * *

It seemed like Matt called me at the worst times, but there weren't good
times for his long, digressive conversations.  I was studying, at the
newspaper, drunk or working out.  Calls to my parents, I mentally scheduled
in a 10-minute window when I was walking from the newspaper to the house.
 Half the time neither of them was home anyway.

Matt mostly called when he left work, during his own walk home from the
Hill to his apartment.  He relished any detail about my classes, house
parties, boring shit in campus politics.  Even if he missed me as a person,
what he mostly missed was college.  If conversation ended too abruptly, I'd
call him back later, at 10 or 11, but by then, he was worn down.

Even now that we were away from each other, we rarely said anything direct.
 I suspected that he didn't want me to know how much he hated his job.  His
immediate supervisor was a Yale Law grad in her 30s whose competence and
efficiency he doubted.  He never expressly said that he wasn't getting
substantive work, but it sounded like his tasks focused on office
logistics.  I'm pretty confident that when he'd gotten the job a year
before, he pictured himself drafting legislation, sitting in the back row
of committee meetings and advising the Congressman.  Instead, he was
another body.

* * *

He reached me on a Saturday when there was snow on the ground and rain that
froze when it hit the sidewalk.  Trevor and some of his friends were
watching college basketball in the living room.  I'd gone upstairs to study
in my room but I wasn't inspired enough to read.  I alternated between
half-completed efforts at masturbation and occasional glances at a Chris
Farley movie running on USA; the two distractions had nothing to do with
each other.

"Do you ever hook up with that guy Wally?" Matt asked.

"Nah."

"You should."

"Why?"

"Because he was cute and you liked each other."

"I was drunk and he was there."

"He seemed like he'd be a bottom," Matt said.  "I bet he'd let you, like,
sodomize him."

"Gross.  I don't want to have this conversation.  It creeps me out."

"Who else can you talk about this with?"

"Andy Trafford?"

"You don't have that kind of relationship with him.  Anyway, isn't he still
doing study abroad in Italy?"

"Yeah.  How do you know that?" I said.

"You told me a couple weeks ago, dumbass, but I knew already.  You know
that we e-mail a little."

"Yeah, that creeps me out, too."

"Everything creeps you out.  `Don't drink coffee!  It creeps me out.'"

"Shut up."

"`Don't buy bread!  Bread creeps me out.'  Your column should be called Gay
Joe Is Creeped Out."

"You're being annoying."

"You know you miss it."

"Yeah," I said, "you know I do."

"Don't worry.  I'm never going to hook up with your high school boyfriend."

"Actually, I'd probably like that," I said.

"Liar."

"No, I just mean, it'd be nice for you both.  You're both good people."

"Half the time you say the opposite of what you mean, because that way,
nobody will think you care.  So you say you don't want to hook up with
Wally even though you do, or you say that you'd like it if I hooked up with
Andy, even though you'd probably hate that more than anything, not because
of jealousy but because it would be something that excludes you, and you
hate being excluded.  You don't want anyone to know that, so you're all,
`Go ahead!'"

"That's not correct.  I love being excluded."

"You get neurotic when people go to dinner and don't invite you."

"I don't want to miss anything good."

"You should, like, sodomize Wally and then write a newspaper column about
it," he said.

"No."

"That's how Thomas Friedman does things."

"I'm prettier than Thomas Friedman."

"True," he said.  "Whoever airbrushed your jawline, I hope you paid them
well."

"So are you going to come up and hang out in New York this summer?" I said.


"Are you going to come down and hang out in DC?" he said.

"Nah," I said.  "DC is muggy and boring."

"True," he said.  "Maybe I'll go up to the city and just hang out with Andy
and not tell you."

* * *

I didn't tell Matt that I ran into Wally a couple of times that year.  At a
block party in September I was in line for the keg with Trevor.  Wally
appeared in front of me, grinning, and rapped me on the shoulder.  He was
with a giggling girl.

"Hey Joe," he said.

It was so incongruous seeing him that I didn't know how to respond.  Even
now, I still have a tendency to assign people their categories -- party
friends, work friends, gay friends, college friends -- and not fully
consider them in other respects.  Wally was a totem that I associated with
Matt, almost as if he'd graduated with him.

"Hey," I said, dazed. The girl with him giggled.

Apparently unoffended, he said, "I'll see you later," and walked away with
the flash of a smile and a pert eyebrow.

"Who was that?" Trevor said.

"I don't know if he's from the newspaper or if we had a discussion
section," I said.

"I think he likes you, dude," Trevor said.

"Who doesn't?" I said.

In November, Wally pulled up the chair next to me in the library reading
room.

"What are you reading?" he whispered.  I could smell the mint on his breath.

"Walt Whitman," I said.

[Long enough have you dreamed contemptible dreams,
[Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
[You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of
your life.

"The king of the gays," he said.

"I guess," I said, thinking that he was being reductionist.

"Did I make you uncomfortable at that party?"

"No," I whispered.  "I was just confused."

"Abby thought you were hot and I told her how I knew you," he said.

"Who's Abby?"

"It doesn't matter," he said.

"I'm sure she's nice."

"She's a sweetheart."

"What are you studying?" I said.

"Ugh, astronomy.  So annoying.  I need my science distribution."

"What's your major?" I said.

"English."

"Me too.  You take anything with Kavanaugh?"

"Um, yes.  She's wonderful."

"I'm in Max Steiner's seminar on America before modernism."

"That must be brutal."

"He's intense but he's kind of a genius.  Maybe even more than Kavanaugh."

"But he gives D's."

"If you're lazy, yeah, but he really respects smart people.  He doesn't
fuck around."

"I'm not that smart," he said, trying to be funny.

"I'm sure you're not entirely retarded," I said.

"Maybe not," he said.  "Maybe we can get coffee sometime.  You can tell me
about Walt Whitman."

* * *

It's nice, being flirted with.  When I walked home from the library, I
thought that I'd e-mail him in the next day or two.   I missed Matt; I
needed a new gay friend.  Wally was still cute.  I wouldn't sodomize him,
no, but unguarded company could be nice.

Once I got home, I was distracted, and I thought about it the next day and
was distracted, and then I played out what would happen if we met, all of
the reasons we wouldn't become friends and why I shouldn't hook up with
him, all of the ways that he would have fallen short of Matt as my
designated gay friend, how I'd be able to walk all over him, the discomfort
of a stranger's yearning and emotions, and the concern that if I encouraged
this guy, I'd never be able to shake him.  I'd get hang-out e-mails for the
rest of college when my social life was already so overstuffed that I could
barely prioritize.  A few days passed and the concept of Wally seemed
stupid.

I mean, I could barely handle Chris.

* * *

And Chris could barely handle himself.

In his senior year, my buddy Doug rented a house a block down.  He lived
with four of his frat brothers.  I liked them all.  Doug managed the sports
section by then.  We must have spent 20 hours a week together.

One of Doug's housemates was a six-foot-two former high school quarterback
from a suburb of Charlotte.  Jamie Calmet had high cheekbones, hard
forearms and tight jeans; he'd gotten into Duke and UNC but ultimately
wanted to go out of state.  He was better than hot, and because he wasn't a
dick, he seemed more accessible than he actually was.

I mean, he's a really good dude.  He works in finance now.  We hang out
once in awhile.  We've gone to Dylan shows on back-to-back nights, and a
couple of months ago Sam and I went to his engagement party in Tribeca.
 He's getting married to a hot Asian girl next summer.  I suspect that
they're too young and attractive to get married and that it will end in
divorce, but what do I know.

Back then he was only a party acquaintance. Jamie was personable, slightly
soft-spoken and unquestionably straight.  If you were talking to him at a
party, his eyes looked past you while scanned the room for the hot girls.
 He wasn't a player, he was just a dude with unlimited options.

But if you were talking to Chris at a party, and Jamie was there, Chris's
eyes scanned the room for Jamie.  They first met the weekend before classes
started in September.  We were grilling on the front porch and I invited
Doug and his housemates over.  Chris's behavior was a small revelation.
 When talking to Jamie, he struggled to make eye contact and utter complete
sentences.  Then he got wasted and made a mess.  It was like the start of
freshman year.

"What do you think of Jamie?" I asked, after the syndrome was well underway.

Annoyed.  "He seems like a good guy."  Defensive.  "Why?"

"No reason," I said.  "He's kind of hot, though."

Disgust.  "If you say so."

"You don't think so?" I said.

Impatience.  "I told you, I don't notice that kind of thing.  I'm not that
way."

Of course he wasn't.

"Just don't embarrass yourself," I said.

I knew how much that comment would bother him, but then I immediately
regretted it.  I didn't even say it in a confrontational, snarky way --
slightly quiet, concerned for his welfare, patronizing, yes, but not, like,
mocking.  He glared and curled a lip but didn't have a reply ready.

* * *

The next time we were at a party with Jamie, Chris was conspicuous about
not talking to him.  He avoided me the whole night, too.

* * *

A week later I stepped out of another party, going to the front porch for a
cigarette.  Chris was with Jamie.  They were talking about workout
routines, which -- I mean, for fuck's sake.  Chris halted when he saw me,
staggered on a syllable. He scowled in defense and drew his shoulders back.
 I said hey as I walked past, fiddling with my lighter.

Later that night:  "You know, fuck you for trying to make me feel bad for
making friends with new people," he said.

"Whoah," I said, "you know I wouldn't do that."

"You think you can control me," he said, "so when I'm just, like, talking
to someone else, you try to make it something it's not."

"Whoah, dude," I said.  "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're a liar," he said.  "You're a liar and you manipulate people."

"Hey.  No," I said.  "Meeting people and hanging out is what it's supposed
to be all about.  I'm not, like, going to make fun of that."

"Like I need your permission," he said.  "Like you know what it's all
about."

I was prepared to talk him down, to embarrass myself if he needed that, but
he was drunk and staggered off into a crowd.  I *knew* he was drunk but the
look on his face and the edge in his voice disquieted me.  I told myself
that it was good to see him assertive -- he was so unhealthily willing to
please, even when it didn't make sense -- except for the severity in his
voice.  My party mood disappeared.  I just wanted to go home to my futon
and play GTA and fall asleep.

A little later, Michelle asked me if something was wrong.  No, I said, I'm
just tired.  She seemed to take it at face value and then asked me if I was
sure.  I smirked and nodded my head to the bass of the music.  Yeah, yeah,
I said.  I'm good.

I left by myself twenty minutes later.

* * *

The next morning Chris was hungover, drinking coffee and eating a bagel.
 The tired cheerfulness in his voice didn't sound like an act.

He looked so disheveled and vulnerable.  I wanted to do something like sit
next to him on the couch and, like, cuddle with him, spend all afternoon
wrapped up with him and napping while he slept off a hangover and I caught
up on my sleep debt.  I'd had a couple of days like that with Matt, when
he'd exhausted himself and took a day off from organizing things and
chattering.

It's possible that he'd been so drunk that he didn't remember.  Drunk shame
is the worst.  You wake up with that crimson fog, not sure how much you
said or how much you merely felt, knowing that your personality had gone
places it shouldn't and hoping that no one would hold it against you.  For
all I know he'd been lashing out all night, and he woke that day confused
and mortified by himself, not knowing whether his embarrassment was real.

* * *

"I'd only do this for you," he said a night later, not looking me in the
eye just before he guided my dick into his mouth.  He almost took it all
in, almost to the back of his throat.  If he didn't give head as well as
Matt, it was maybe more of a turn-on because I knew what a big deal it was
for him.

"You're so good," I said to him, my fingers in his hair, looking down at
the sight of his bare ass arched upward, cleaved in the air.  "You don't
know how good you are, I promise."

When I came he was above me, kissing my neck, air between our torsos while
he was on his knees and elbows, his hard-on glancing against my stomach
while I jerked myself with one hand and kept the other at the downward arch
of his back.

* * *

"Chris has a weird man-crush on Jamie Calmet," Katie said.

"You think so?" I said.

"Do you see how he acts when Jamie is around?"

"Don't give him a hard time."

"Oh, I know," Katie said.  "I'd never tell him this.  He's so sensitive.
 Do you know how sensitive he is?"

"I'm pretty aware."

"It can be painful," she said.

"It's hard to even make fun of him."

"I'm not making fun," Katie said.  "I'm, like, totally perplexed.
 Sometimes I wonder if he's gay."

"Seems unlikely," I said.

"Chris is so hot.  Like, he's full-on, totally hot.  He never hooks up.  He
freezes completely with girls but has elaborate complexes with guys."

"Dudes can be shy, too," I said.

"No, this is more than shy.  It's at least deeply repressed," she said.
 "Do you ever talk about it with him?  What do you guys even talk about?"

"Movies, sports, books now.  Video games.  Classic rock."

"Guys are so frustrating," she said.

"No.  I told you this before.  It's boring.  Guys never, ever talk about
relationship bullshit."

"But what if Chris is gay?"

"Seriously, Katie."

"Just accept the premise, for the sake of argument.  What if he's gay and
he's completely tortured by it, and that's why he's tense all the time?
 Wouldn't that be awful?  It's, like, tragic.  Like Anthony Hopkins in The
Remains of the Day."

"Chris is not gay," I said.

"Does he ever mention girls to you?"

"Yeah," I said.  "He has a thing for Britney Spears in the Hit Me Baby One
More Time video."

"Oh, yeah," she said.  "I've heard that like a thousand times.  That's his
go-to.  That video's like a century old now."

"It was early in his adolescence," I said.  "Things make a big impression
then."

"Like, you never talk about it, but you *definitely* hook up," she said.
 She made this assertion so casually and confidently that I almost denied
it.  It also immediately relaxed me, because she wasn't about to steer
discussion toward me.  My own complications hadn't registered.  And then I
felt weirdly proud and confident, that I had this baseless reputation as a
secret ladies' man.  "I mean, you don't date, but you definitely hook up."

"Who do you think I've hooked up with?" I said.

"Uh, Samantha?  Allison Peters?  What's her name -- Mindy Barkley?"

I kept my face blank.

"See, exactly, and that's just from our, like, party circle.  You have all
of these other cliques.  Who the hell knows what else you're up to, fucking
Joe College."

Blank face.

"Chris, though, does nothing.  Doesn't it seem like he should be with some
cute Midwestern girl, and they'd, like, hold hands on the couch and go to
movies and seem super-embarrassed the next morning when she slept over?"

"Maybe that's not his type."

"Exactly.  Maybe *you're* his type.  Maybe *Jamie Calmet* is his type.
 Because that's the other thing, the way he seems to idolize these guys,
and they happen to be of a similar look and personality type."

"Don't compare me to Jamie Calmet," I said.  "I'm much cooler and
better-looking than Jamie Calmet."

"Yeah, right, Happy Gilmore," she said.

"I don't think you're accurate," I said, ignoring the slam.  "Chris is the
same way with Sam and Trevor.  He's the youngest kid.  He was always the
youngest brother, right?  And there's obviously some kind of religion thing
mixed up, even if he's not a fundamentalist.  Right?  So it's like, he's
the youngest brother, and he kind of defers to people and emulates them
because of that, and he's got a Christianity hangup with sex.  I agree that
he worries about my approval more than he should.  He's not like that just
with me.  And he's not exactly smooth, but a lot of guys aren't, right?
 Like, this criticism isn't directed at you, because I know what you mean,
but it's kind of unfair to hold all guys to a standard where if they're not
players or complete horndogs, there's something wrong with them.  It's like
you're damned either way.  Hook up a lot, and girls think you're a dick.
 Be shy or modest, and girls think there's something wrong with you, or,
apparently, gay."

"Maybe," she said.

"Right," I said.  "Don't worry about him.  Let Chris be Chris."

"I know," she said.  "It's just something I think about.  As a friend.  Not
in a mocking way."

"I get it."

About a minute later, she put her book down and said, "Just one more thing
though.  He really doesn't look up to all of you in the same way.  He *is*
significantly different when he's around certain people.  He doesn't react
to Sam or Trevor the way he does to you -- or honestly, I think, to Jamie.
 Jamie mentioned it once.  He thinks it's funny.  Maybe you're too close to
the situation to realize that but I see it all the time."

This was as sincere as Katie got when she talked to me.  She wanted me to
know that she wasn't fucking around.  I understood that she'd been debating
whether to mention this to me, and that she felt bad for even raising it.

"And I guess I brought this up in part," she said, "because I don't think
you realize that.  You kind of look out for him already, but I thought you
should be conscious of this, because I didn't get the sense that you were."

* * *

"Hey, I don't mean this in any kind of obnoxious way, but when was the last
time you went out with a girl?"

"What are you saying?" he said.

"I'm not saying anything.  I just wondered."

"Why?" he said.  "Because if I haven't gone out with a girl lately, that
means I'm some kind of freak?"

"No.  Christ.  Chill out."

He smacked my futon.  "You wouldn't ask if it wasn't a setup.  That's not
the kind of thing you'd ask."

"Okay, right," I said, "it's not a setup, I promise.  Just, you know,
somebody was asking about your dating life."

"Why is it anybody's business?" he said.

"I mean, I agree that it's not.  It's definitely not.  She might want to
set you up or something, though.  So there's that.  That's the only reason
I'm asking."

"Who?" he said.  "Is it Katie?"

I half-rolled my eyes.

"I knew it!" he said.

"People are annoying," I agreed.

"She wants to make me go out with some chick friend of hers?  Pathetic."

"She didn't say for sure.  They were just indications."

"I don't understand why it's anybody's business.  It would never occur to
me.  Like, I don't care who Katie sluts around with."

"Dude, this doesn't need to turn into a thing.  You shouldn't call her out.
 All you do is go out on one date.  Just one, with somebody we all know,
like maybe Allison Peters or Mindy Barkley.  They're fun.  Nothing bad will
happen.  Mention it to Katie before you go.  Go out once.  She'll leave it
alone."

He got off of my futon.  He'd been happily watching Almost Famous.  He
stomped a few paces, exhales flaring through his nostrils.

How else could I have handled it?  I had to give him cover from Katie but
if I told him that she thought he might be gay, he would have exploded.
 Wasn't it better to gracefully maneuver him away from her suspicions, even
if it prompted a mini-tantrum at the beginning?

"So what am I supposed to do?  Go out on a date with some idiot just so
Katie doesn't bother me?"

"These girls -- like, Mindy Barkley is really fun, right?  She's pretty
awesome.  You can spend three hours with her."

"Yeah, obviously."  As in, What was I, a moron?  "I can spend three hours
with anybody but that's not the point.  I shouldn't have to conform to
Katie's expectations."

"Okay," I said, "then don't.  You don't have to."

"But like you said, she won't quit."

"You can ignore Katie if you want.  Like, who the hell is she to try to
control anybody?"

"I thought you just said that I should go on a date to shut her up."

"I did, but only because I thought you'd want to shut her up.  If you don't
care, just fucking ignore her.  She thinks she should meddle in everything.
 You can be who you really are without worrying about Katie."

I selected the wrong phrase -- be who you really are.  He heard a code, a
taunt.  With that phrase, I wasn't talking about defying Katie.  I was
sending him a signal about me, and about my crack about Jamie Calmet.  He
saw two options: surrender to Katie and go out with some chick, or
surrender to me and admit to himself that he had a thing for guys.

"I just wanted to chill out and watch a movie tonight," he said, whining.
 "I tried to watch downstairs but I couldn't because Sam was drinking and
he kept interrupting, and then I come up here and all you do is start,
like, throwing all of this crap at me."

"Dude, just watch the movie."

"I can't concentrate anymore.  All anybody does is try to make me crazy all
the time."

"I'm sorry."

"No, you most of all.  You and Katie.  Michelle is the only one who's nice
to me now, and she's barely ever around anymore."

"I'm not trying to provoke you, man, but please, stop stressing out.
 Nobody's out to get you.  I was trying to do you a favor by defusing
Katie, and even Katie's not trying to be a bitch, she's trying to be a
friend, but it's, like, manifesting itself somewhat awkwardly.  She's only
concerned to the extent that she's trying to, like, facilitate your
happiness, and I'm only involved because I'm trying to keep you out of an
awkward situation."

Even as I said this, I was confused about my story.  I'd forgotten the
original conversation with Katie.  In my head, I wasn't lying to Chris.  I
was a terrific method actor.  I'm not trying to be cute.  I found myself
truly believing my background story about all of this

My poor, overwhelmed, confused friend.  It wasn't the last time that I
thought he would have been better off if he'd never met any of us.

* * *

Now I look back on this and realize what an asshole I was.  I thought that
I was protecting Chris but really, I was protecting myself.  I didn't want
any suspicions.  Combine Katie's theory about Chris with his blow-up over
Sam's drunk wisecracks, Michelle's apparently dormant theory about my own
sexuality, and the evidence would come into place.  To my knowledge, they
didn't have those kinds of conversations with each other.  Sam was an
amusing entertainment to the two girls, and Michelle and Katie, even though
they got along, they came from different planets.  Katie will tell a
stranger to fuck off if she's in a bad mood; Michelle was gracious and
mature, even back then.  Michelle would have known better than to kick
around personal speculations with Katie or Sam.  I don't think there were a
lot of late-night chat sessions about me or Chris.

I mean, I fucked up here.

I should have let Katie continue to think that Chris was gay.  He trusted
her.  If he'd gotten to the point of wanting to talk to someone, he would
have picked her.  I didn't need to lurk like an avenging angel, controlling
what people thought about Chris or how he conducted himself.

There should have been a story where he got blackout drunk and tried to
grope Jamie Calmet, or where Katie knew he was gay and waited it out.  He
would have had to confront the question.

If I hadn't been so intent on showing off my savvy and control -- paranoid
about any slight hint that life existed beyond bros hanging out over Grand
Theft Auto and going to football games -- there would have been a story
that turned out cleaner and easier.  As you figured out a long time ago,
this isn't that story.

* * *

He didn't tell much much about his dates, but he got off on the attention.
 It wasn't a sexual thing.  There were nights when he came home, walked up
to my room, and took down his jeans, already hard.  I knew he'd been out
with a girl because he smelled like cologne.  He used put on cologne before
his dates, and then eventually someone told him not to.

"How was it?" I'd ask.

"It was, whatever," he'd say.

Chris could handle approaching a girl and asking, "Do you want to go see
Hellboy this weekend?"  He liked taking them to movies, but if there was
nothing he wanted to see, hanging out at a coffee house -- or after he was
21, a bar -- would be okay.  It must have been weird for these girls, but I
think that Chris's looks gave him a lot of leeway.  He probably did a lot
of listening, which gave them the misapprehension that he was taking a
deeper interest in their lives.

I don't think he ever saw a girl more than two or three times, dropping
them before there was any strong pressure to get physical.  His style
changed at parties.  He no longer tended to hang off of me, or Trevor, or
Katie.  He'd sort of hold court in a corner with two or three girls talking
to him.  They laughed a lot.  He wasn't so oblivious: he had to know that
each of these girls wanted to be the one that he'd pick to go home with
him, not knowing that, if they hit the jackpot, the most they'd get was an
invitation to see Kill Bill, and that he wouldn't even share a popcorn
because he thought it was too salty.

* * *

Chris and I went to this party with Michelle, which was the kind of crowd
where other random nerds recognized my headshot.  Trevor's friends and
Sam's friends probably didn't look at the paper except to do the crossword
puzzle before lecture, but the student-government types and activists read
everything, and especially the opinion page.  Some of us imagined that we
lived part-time in a brainier, powerless version of The West Wing.

I was in a basement, filling my cup from the keg, when a guy on my
periphery, sweaty and sloppy, loudly said a version of "whoah."

"You're Joe College," said the kid with a JewFro.

"What's up," I said.

"Dude, your stuff's fucking hilarious, man," he said.

"Awww, thanks, man.."

"Are you going to be, like, a real writer when you graduate?  Like a
journalist?"

"Maybe.  That's the plan but I don't really know."

"So are you, like, friends with Marty or Dave or Brett?"

"Nah, man," I said.  "I don't know them.  I came here with one of my
roommates."

"Cool, man," he said.  "I'm Rob."

"Nice meeting you, man," I said, spilling a tranche of beer when we shook
hands.  "I have a brother named Rob."

"We're related!" he said.  "I have an uncle named Joe."

"So, like, the Soviets, and Stalin," I said, briefly getting tangled,
"there were people who called Stalin Uncle Joe."

"What?"

"Stalin's nickname was Uncle Joe."

He laughed and leaned against the basement wall.  "You're a weird, funny
cat, man."

"True," I said, hitting his shoulder.  "You too."

It was only April and not really that warm, but a night in the 60s felt
sordid after single-digit temperatures in February.  The house felt stuffy.
 Everybody was sweating.  I looked around for Michelle and her friends.
 Chris was in the kitchen talking to a couple of girls.  He wore my goddamn
orange hoodie that night.  When I walked past, he literally collared me,
hooking his fingers into the back of my T-shirt.  I spilled more beer.

"Hey," Chris said.

"Hey."

"We were just talking about you," he said.

"I'm Joe," I said, shaking the girlhands.

"Your thing about Dick Cheney was so funny," said a girl, "and I'm kind of
a secret Republican."

"I'm so sorry to hear that," I said.

"No, no, not like that, just on, like, foreign policy stuff."

"Oh no."

"Joe's, like, an Arabic scholar," Chris said.  "He's fluent.  He has very
strong views."

"I'm not fluent," I said.

"Arabic must be hard."

"My Arabic isn't that good," I said.

"We don't need to talk about politics," Chris said.

"No, that's right.  I'm looking for Michelle."

"I'm so excited to meet you," said a drunk girl.  "I always read you before
class."

I could've gotten blown by her within 90 seconds.

"That's so awesome, because who am I?  A drunk asshole, writing a bunch of
bullshit."

"No, you're hilarious.  You're so talented."

I want to say that it was annoying or that I didn't care, but these
compliments got me so high.  Campus fame at a decent-sized school was
intoxicating.  I don't know how quarterbacks or starting forwards cope,
because once every week or two a drunk, nerdy kid would recognize me, and
I'd think I was blessed and brilliant and renowned.

"You should talk to Chris," I said to the girls, playing straight wingman
to the guy whose dick I loved sucking.  "He's more fun.  I'm, like,
competent on paper but lame in person.  Chris is awesome."

Michelle and her do-gooder friends were near the front door.  "I want to
play flip cup," I said.

"They don't have it set up," she said.

"I'm in a competitive mood."

"Yeah.  You can be annoying when you get like that."

"Chris has two girls hanging off of him," I said.

"He's a player now."

"Yeah, I guess," I said, pretending to be proud and mystified.  "It's good
for him to loosen up."

"You're sweaty," Michelle said.

"Glands."

I was bored by this party, you can tell, but I liked the attention from
strangers, and floated under the impression that additional people
recognized me but were either too polite or unimpressed to say anything.
 By 1 a.m. the party was unwinding.  About eight people who knew each other
danced in the dark.  Chris's two girls had left him.

"They seemed nice," I said.

"Yeah, they were okay."

"Kind of cute," I said.

"Yeah, they were cute," he said.  "Whatever.  It's, like, not really worth
talking about.  It's boring."

"I know," I said.  "Let's not talk about it."

We leaned against a wall, talking to each other with that posture that
didn't signal gay but that was closer than I would have allowed other
people, where we could smell the beer on each other's breaths and
occasionally sense a brush of heat from each other's bodies.  Michelle was
talking about going home, anyway, but her attempt at good-byes evolved into
lengthy conversations.  It seemed like she was networking, but for what
purpose, I had no idea.

My new buddy Rob -- the fan with the JewFro -- popped in front of us.  He
wore a denim jacket.  He seemed more sober than before.

"Hey man," he said, raising his hand to shake mine, "it was cool meeting
you, and I don't mean to be weird or anything, but some friends and I are
going to go back to my house, maybe smoke a bowl and hang out for awhile.
 Nothing crazy.  Just some good people hanging out."

"Okay, cool," I said, picturing that scene where Billy Crudup jumped from a
roof into the swimming pool in Kansas.

"So, like, if you feel like coming over and hanging out, I just thought I'd
extend the invitation.  You can obviously bring your friends if you want,"
he said, gesturing at Chris, "but no pressure.  I'm not being gay or
anything.  You just seem like a cool guy."

"Yeah, well, that's just because you don't know me yet," I said.  I looked
at Chris.  "You feel like hanging out for awhile?"

"I mean, why not?"

"Yeah."  I wasn't sure if I was excited about the possibility of new people
and getting stoned or kind of bummed that I'd have to delay my sudden
horniness for Chris.

We ended up in this real Atlantic City of a college house.  There were
these houses in college with cigarette burns and mysterious stains in the
carpets, plaster patches in the wall that covered punches and mars, tan
discolorations in the ceilings.  I know that in most stages of life, a
place like that would connote deprivation or addiction, but houses like
that were common, and the people who lived in them were always the most
untamed.  They were the places where nobody cleaned the spilled beers and
the kitchen linoleum made sticking sounds under the soles of your sneakers.

I don't remember the names of Rob's roommates or friends and girlfriends
and I never hung out with any of those people again.  There were about a
dozen of them.  They didn't know who I was but this guy Rob was eager to
make a good impression.  Within minutes of getting to the house he'd packed
a bowl and handed it to me to take the first hit.

Chris's smoking reminded me of the first night we got together, when we
were up in my room on the floor, listening to "Will Cove," how nervous and
tense I'd been when we did it.  That night alternated between the euphoria
and excitement of being with him, the belief that I'd never get off with
him again so I should enjoy it as strenuously as possible, and the fear
that he'd hate me the next day for it all.  He made eye contact with me
when he breathed in from Rob's pipe, and smirked when he exhaled and
coughed.  I imagined that he too was thinking about that night when he
looked me in the eyes, but I never mentioned it for fear of a contradiction
to my imagination.

About a half-hour after that, the night tilted.  There were a bunch of East
Coast kids in that house.  Another lesson I learned in college is that when
you get a bunch of upper-middle-class white kids from the Northeast drunk
or stoned, at least one of them will want to play Springsteen.  They
started with "I'm Goin' Down" and by the time "Glory Days" started, most of
the room was on its feet, shouting and stumbling over lyrics, dropping and
inventing words, pointing to the ceiling like we were summoning his spirit.
 This scene -- triumphant or sorry, but definitely energized -- carried for
about an hour, into the highlights of Born to Run and into some of the
deeper cuts from the 70s like "The Promised Land" and "Blinded By the
Light."

"Rosalita" triggered it.  It must have been playing that one night, that
spring night in my freshman year when I was with Canetti, at that party in
his apartment with Hot Erin and that gay redheaded guy Charlie, the one who
came out to me while we were having cigarettes on the balcony, and the kid
with the guitar was playing acoustic frat-folk songs, when Matt touched me
in front of all of those people, putting his arm around my shoulders and
squeezing me against them, the terror and confusion and release of that
moment.  It was the only time that other people would have had visual
evidence that I was down with dudes, being touched like that so casually by
the guy who may or may not have been my boyfriend but either way the only
person who I found myself fully believing and trusting.

Deja vu braces you like a moment of clarity, especially when you're stoned.
 I was shouting to "Rosalita" and people stomped the floor into tremors.
 Matt was in D.C., probably home from a bar, maybe already asleep for
hours, but there had been this moment that existed that had seemed so real
and vital, when I had been with this guy who I liked, who had made
everything better, and now all of that was gone, the thinnest memory.
 Maybe that memory wasn't even real though, not in the sense that it was
something concrete and verifiable, it was real only because of what existed
in my mind, my affection and faith in him, which isn't something that you
can ever know for sure, it exists only because you think it, and maybe all
of our memories are fictions, emotional apparition, something that only
came back when I shouted out those Springsteen lines --

"Hey," I half-whispered to his voicemail five minutes later, "I know it's
really late and you're probably asleep, but I'm with these people, and this
Springsteen song, it just reminded me of that night a couple of years ago
with that guy with the guitar, when there were a bunch of us in your
apartment.  I don't know if you remember that."  I suddenly felt stupid.
 My call had no purpose.  "Anyway, it was a good memory.  I wish you were
here.  And what's Erin up to?"  I reassured myself that my voice sounded
normal.  "Let's talk soon."

I lit a cigarette and gathered my thoughts.

"Hey, I'm kind of stoned right now," I told his voicemail in my second
call.  "So I'm sorry if that message didn't make sense.  I was just
thinking about that night.  I miss hanging out with you.  I'm not being gay
or anything.  It just all came back to me from that song and I'd forgotten
all about it.  But that's it, so bye."

I went back inside.  Throughout all of this, Chris had been sitting on a
couch, looking stoned and happy and calm.  Midwesterners don't have the
same appreciation for Springsteen.  It was about 3:15.  I sat on the couch
next to him and leaned my elbow on his shoulder, not like I wanted to jizz
on his face but like we were just bros.

"These guys' pot, it's better than the stuff Trevor gets," I said.

"It is?"

"Yeah.  Trevor must buy shit," I said.

"It doesn't feel that different to me."

"Are you bored?"

"No.  This is pretty funny.  You guys really like Springsteen."

"Do you want to go?" I said.

"We don't have to go," he said.

"I mean, I'm good to go.  We can just go home," I said.

We didn't, though, and then we were in the basement of this ridiculously
messy house.  It was something about how "Tyler knows how to DJ" and
rapping, and Rob is a rapper and Rob is a wrapper and Rob is a robber.

I must have been pretty stoned because when I listened to them, I thought
that the performance sounded good.  I thought something about how these
guys could make it big: the suburban white rapper with the JewFro and the
other suburban white kid being a DJ on his MacBook.  They connected the
computer and a microphone to some tattered speakers.  Their friends hooted
and cheered on Rob's lines.  In my memory he was a weirdly confident
performer, playing off of his friends reactions, his verses full of
graphic-but-benign sexual imagery, occasional references to getting high.
 You could picture a cleaned-up version of his routine winning a talent
show in high school or summer camp.  I mean, it's not like Asher Roth is
any good, either.

He handed me the mic.  "Dude," I said into the mic, my voice amplified
through the speakers, "I've never done this."

"Do it!" he shouted.

"Uh."  His DJ buddy on the laptop had left me hanging with a sample from
"Come on Eileen."  "Dude, this is a really tough beat to just, like, jump
into."

"Stop being a pussy!" Rob shouted at me.  A couple of his friends jeered.
 It didn't matter that they were joking.  Pushed in the spotlight, I felt
like fight or flight.  I looked to Chris, like I thought he'd intervene,
but he just tugged at my orange hoodie and gave me a look like, This thing
was your idea, Vanilla.

So the first and only time that I freestyle rapped, it was to this edited
loop from Dexy's Midnight Runners, mumbling embarrassing, hacky lines that
you'd expect from any untalented white douche pretending to be a rapper.  A
couple of minutes in, Tyler switched to the famous bassline from "Walk on
the Wild Side," the one that A Tribe Called Quest used in "Can I Kick it,"
a track that I must have played several hundred times when I was in fifth
or sixth grade.

I found my pace.  It wasn't *good,* but it was enough for these guys to get
enthusiastic.  It was 3 a.m. and the long winter was over.  Everyone was
drunk or stoned.  The basement smelled like weed.  It was not a tough
crowd.  I strung together loose rhymes and threw my body into it.  Tyler
the DJ transitioned to the sample from "Ms. Jackson."  Even easier.  I kept
going.

"Joe College, ladies and gentlemen," Rob said into the microphone when my
turn ended.  "Joe College, famous newspaper journalist and hip-hop
sensation."

I went upstairs to take a piss.  The bathroom smelled like urine.  Trimmed
pubes dusted the porcelain rim.  I decided not to wash my hands.

Chris lingered outside the door.

"Oh, hey," I said.  "All yours."

"I don't have to go."

"Oh.  Should we leave?"

"I just don't know anybody downstairs."

"Yeah.  I don't really know them either."

He reached out his arms and pulled me to him.  He hugged me.

I started to pull away because it seemed risky and he was too stoned to
know better.  But he felt too good.  Chris is still the only guy I've been
with who's taller than I am.  When I remember how it felt with him, I
understand why so many gay dudes have a preference for taller guys.  He
could feel so solid.

"I love you," he said.  "You're my best friend."

I tightened around his shoulders.  "You're just drunk and stoned."

"No," he said.  "Yeah, I am, but even so.  All the fun I ever have in life
is because of you."

"Thanks man," I said.
[he's just stoned he's just stoned he's just stoned he isn't being deep
[don't let yourself think that he's being too deep he's just just stoned
"You know I love you too," I said.

"I know," he said, leaning into me more.  "I'm sorry that I keep flipping
out at you."

"That's okay.  I can be kind of a dick."

"Yeah, I know."

I turned my face toward his head.  I pressed my forehead and eyelid against
his hair.  My nose was at his ear.  My dick was already cutting at my jeans
at an uncomfortable angle.

"Let's go home now," I said.  "I've been wanting to go home for at least
three hours."

"Really?" he said.  "We should have left."

We were still hugging.  The rest of the party remained in the basement.  It
sounded like someone was euthanizing Nate Dogg.

"I wanted to see what happened next," I said, "but I've been wanting to go
home with you for hours."

"Really?"

"Yeah," I said.  "All night all I've wanted is to go home with you."

I pressed closer against him.  He was hard, too.  I kissed his right jaw
and let him go.

We left without saying anything to our hosts.  It didn't matter, I said.
 They were fun but we'd never see them again.  Let's just go home.