Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 03:35:52 -0500
From: jpm 770 <jpm770@gmail.com>
Subject: Joe College, Part 7

First came the fucking car service that I shared to the airport with two
girls from New Jersey who lived on the hall upstairs from us.  I thought
that I'd probably do some mild flirting during the ride, just to boost my
ego and make us all feel good, but by late afternoon I was tired and hoped
that they'd be the same way.  Instead, they were close and giggly and loud,
excited to get home to their parents and high school friends and old
boyfriends.  They were coated in perfume or shampoo or hairspray or whatever
the fuck it is that makes some girls smell like a mix of flowers, fruit,
powder and rubbing alcohol.  By the time I stumbled out of the car to the
airport curb, I'd smelled enough.

My 6 p.m. flight was delayed so long that we didn't board until about 8:15,
and then when we taxied out to the runway, the pilot came on the speakers to
say that we were number twenty-six for takeoff.  In that stale air, I
convinced myself that I was coming down with a flu.

The flight was bumpy, so I couldn't sleep.

When we got within the New York perimeter, we circled New Jersey and
Northern Pennsylvania for what felt like hours before they finally cleared
us for landing.  As the plane descended over Brooklyn toward LaGuardia, I
looked out my left-aisle window to the Manhattan skyline, at which point I
felt an addict's exhausted relief at coming home.  I hadn't lived in the
city since I was three, when my parents had their second son, my dad made
law firm partner, and everyone decided we should move from the Upper West
Side to Westchester.  Even so, I was kind of crazy about the city.  I hadn't
seen it since the towers had been knocked down about 11 weeks before.  I
should have felt sad and reflective, but I guess I was just happy to see all
the lights on, with everything still busy, bright and overwhelming.

(Right -- because what you want is the part where the college freshman
freaks over 9/11.  The crazed-by-global-affairs chapter isn't happening
until later, so don't get ahead of yourself with the excitement.)

By the time I finally got out of the goddamn plane and walked through the
fucking terminal -- feeling like the smell of DC-10, like old coffee and old
upholstery and carpet from an old shitty van, like all of that was gassing
out of my pores -- I wanted to lie down on my parents' couch for 48 hours
and sleep.  I was sweating the sweat that stress gives you even when you're
body's cold.

My mom and my eleven-year-old brother waited in the terminal.  She seemed
excited to see me.  Evan wore a hooded sweatshirt with my school's name on
it, which was nice and flattering, but in my nasty mood, I wished he didn't
try so hard, because sometimes that just made it worse.

"Is Dad in the car?" I said.

"No," she said, sounding weary.  "Your dad's been at depositions in Chicago
and woke up at four this morning.  He's sleeping at home.  We didn't find
out how late you were until we got to the airport.  So we've just been
waiting.  It's okay, though.  I'm just glad you made it."

They had been inside LaGuardia for at least four hours.  Even though my
reflex was to be annoyed with them, and it was compounded a few times over
by my hours in airline hell, the image of Evan and my mom sitting silently,
flipping through magazines and crosswords, eating Burger King for dinner
while they waited to see me, forced me to disarm.  *That* was loyalty.

My high school friends were out in the city that night.  Rick and Sanjay,
and Andy Trafford and Danielle, probably a bunch of others, had been
planning to meet somewhere downtown, where they'd get into an NYU bar or
someplace in the East Village that would turn a blind eye to eighteen year
olds.  When my mom drove over Triborough and I glimpsed at the Midtown
skyline and the condos on the Upper East Side, I felt angry that I wasn't
down there with them.  I was so tired that even if it had been possible, it
wouldn't have been possible.

They'd been leaving me voicemails over the course of the night, sounding
increasingly drunk and excited, recommending that I should come downtown to
hang out no matter how late it was, and suggesting that I was a pussy if I
didn't.

Even if I could have made it, I was going to be up too early the next
morning, because my parents had decided that we'd spend Thanksgiving at the
apartment of my dad's best friend.  They'd known each other since law school
and were partners at the same law firm.  This guy, Phil Epstein, had a son a
couple years older than me and a daughter still in high school.  My parents
were close to that family, and I'd known the kids forever, but we weren't
really friends.  The relevant Thanksgiving detail was that they lived on
Central Park West just north of Columbus Circle, in the kind of place that
you'd imagine a Wall Street lawyer owning.  The apartment had a view
overlooking Central Park and the balloons of the Thanksgiving Day parade.

It was the last thing I wanted to do, and it turned into a kind of a culture
shock.

When you're in college, you're only around people your own age, and the idea
of parents and families, and old people and kids, starts to seem foreign.
Sam Frost pejoratively called it "real people world."  Three months, and my
life had revolved around funny, vulgar arguments with Sam Frost; Thursday
nights getting off with Matt Canetti; getting wasted on weekends; writing
album reviews for the school paper; and trying to be the smartest boy in
every discussion section.  And then suddenly my ass is getting rolled out of
bed at seven in the morning after I fell asleep at two, and I'm packed into
my mom's SUV with middle brother Rob (who hates me, who I don't like either)
and happy Evan, and my dad (who's been litigating some awful securities
case, who's just glad as balls to have a day without clients and chaos) and
my mom with her book of Times crossword puzzles.  And I don't shave, because
fuck you, and we're driving down to the city to spend the day with the
family of another goddamn lawyer and of course traffic and parking are
chaotic because of the parade, and I don't give a shit about a giant
inflatable Snoopy balloon, but I'm trying not to be an asshole or even a
little passive-aggressive, because I recognize they're not doing this to
spite me.

Then I'm stuck handling these boring questions from people in their
mid-fifties about how I'm liking school and whether being in the Midwest is
an adjustment, at which point I get defensive about my college choice and
find myself speaking bullshit like, "It's in the Midwest, but the town kind
of reminds me of the Village.  There are a lot of people there from the
City."  There are others in attendance with kids around my age who go to
places like Princeton, but to places like Emory and Lehigh, too, and I
convince myself that they think I'm weird for turning down Dartmouth and
Penn (which I'm convinced they know all about) and are just pretending to
think it's interesting.  When the big balloons passed the window and people
gathered to watch and comment, I made a point of hanging back.  I chugged
coffee, feeling bitter and hungover, even though I hadn't had anything to
drink since the Saturday before.

All I'd wanted was to sleep in late.  Maybe entertain Evan by throwing a
football on our back lawn while he talked about sixth-grade basketball.
Have an early dinner, take a nap, hang out with my friends that night while
we watched football or a DVD.  Instead, I was trapped being polite to a lot
of people who didn't have anything to do with me.

In the early afternoon, Andy Trafford called my cell phone.  I didn't pick
up.  He left a voicemail asking if I was doing anything that night.  I
didn't want to think about entertaining Andy, so I ignored his call.
Between the parade and dinner, most of the party took the elevator down and
walked around Central Park.  I hung to the back of the group.

"Thanks for putting up with this," my dad said, dropping alongside me.  "We
didn't really think about it.  I've just been busy as hell, and we didn't
want to put together something big.  I should have thought that maybe this
wasn't the first thing you wanted to do."

"Whatever," I said.  "I just hate talking about myself and having to answer
all of these questions."

"You're a good sport."

"At least the Park is nice," I said.

Our group had made its way to the Sheep Meadow.  When you get into an open
vista in the Park, you feel like it's the bottom of a valley of tall
buildings.  There were a lot of families with their kids, spilling out from
the parade, maybe walking over to the zoo.  My dad complained to me about
being a lawyer and rubbed the side of his face in discomfort.  We passed
what looked like a quartet of gay guys in their thirties, which made me arch
my back and give them an angry look; at that moment, the sight of them
triggered disgust in my heart.

Eventually, I ended up dozing on the corner of a couch in the crowded living
room of that apartment.  At dinner, I made a point of turning down a glass
of white wine (my parents wouldn't have cared, but it seemed like I needed
to make a point) and when the day wrapped at around seven, I slept in the
car ride back to my parents' house, with the grease of my forehead leaving a
smear on the passenger's side window.

It occurred to me that I could call Matt Canetti to commiserate.  If anybody
would have shared my tired frustration, it was probably him.  But he was in
Boston with his own family, and probably his own irritations to deal with,
and the conversation would have been too much of a nuisance to be worth our
time.

*    *    *

The next night I was drunk and exhausted, walking in the East Village after
the last trains left Grand Central, waiting out the night to get home.  My
lips felt chapped and the cigarette habit that Matt Canetti was imparting
left my clothes stinking and a scorched-broccoli flavor in the back of my
mouth.

We played touch football in the afternoon, which involved people's brothers
and guys who'd graduated high school a year or two ahead of us.  I made a
point of not bringing my middle brother Rob, even though guys from his class
were there.  After that we went to Rick's house to figure out a plan.  I'll
spare you the boring details, points of contention and phone calls, because
the result was six of us catching a train down to the City and then taking
the subway to Broadway-Lafayette.  It took less than twenty minutes to find
a half-empty bar on Second Avenue that didn't seem skeptical when six of us
walked in and ordered a round.

In terms of keeping in touch, I hadn't been as diligent as the rest of
them.  Of course Andy was out in Berkeley, but the rest of them were a train
ride apart from one another.  Rick had taken the Acela from Philly to Boston
to spend a weekend visiting Sanjay at Harvard.  They seemed to know each
other's friends and hook-ups.  I'd been too sloppy to do more than send back
two- or three-line e-mails asserting that things were fine, without any
supplementing details.  Rick wrote once seeming to suggest that he wanted to
come out to catch a football game, but I'd demurred, indicating that maybe
next year would be easier.  I didn't know anything about the girl that Rick
was hooking up with, or even that he was hooking up, or that Sanjay was
basically at war with his roommate.  Those things seemed to be common
knowledge for everyone else.

Andy Trafford was the only one of them who I talked to with any regularity,
and mostly that was about his sexual frustration.  Once every couple of
weeks we had a conversation that involved him crassly expressing a wish to
ejaculate in the company of male cock, and then pressing me for dirty
details about what I was doing with Matt, which, in turn, prompted me to
utter variations on the phrase "fuck you."

"Just, like, e-mail me a picture of him," Andy once said.

"One, I have no pictures of him, and second, even if I did, absolutely not."

So seeing Andy that day, knowing that he knew what he knew and having done
all of the things that we did, left me kind of on edge.  The only two gay
guys I knew enough even to talk to were Matt and Andy.  Matt was completely
compartmentalized, but Andy wasn't.  Andy was the only link between dude
fixation and the easier parts of my life, which was great when it was just
the two of us, but otherwise made me want to steer clear.

And I guess I really wasn't at ease with that.  I mean, I don't know what I
thought he was going to say ("Hey, guess what?  Joey's a homo!") but that
didn't stop my imagination.  What I wanted that night was just to sit around
with friends who I'd known for 10 or 15 years, away from Matt Canetti and my
issues and everything else that was preoccupying me at college, and I guess
Andy's presence made that hard for me.  Even if he didn't say anything, he
was just a reminder of the things I wanted to shut out, if only for a long
weekend.

What I did to make it easier was drink, and I drank a lot.  I think I drank
my first pint in 20 minutes and built momentum from there.  I leaned my
chair back against the corner of a wall, feeling some sweat cold on my
forehead-

"-and I guess I'm not a math person," Danielle was saying, "which makes it
really hard.  I mean, I'm sure you remember how hard it was for me in A.P.
calc-"

"-uh huh-"

"-and this is just killing me," she said.  "I mean, I'm a smart person,
right?"

"Yeah, of course."

"It's just that I feel so stupid.  It's not what I'm good at."

"I wouldn't worry about math."

"College is turning out to be a lot harder than I thought."

"Yeah, but I mind it a lot less," I said.  "I've got a Shakespeare class
where we basically do a different play every two classes, which is tough,
but I'd rather bust my ass on something that's interesting than study things
I never cared about."

"You seem really calm."

"I'm just tired," I said.  "It's weird being back."

"You've sort of fallen off the face of the earth," she said.  "We were
talking about that on Wednesday."

"Aww," I said, "I'm sorry.  I've been pretty busy between classes, and I'm
trying to do some work at the paper.  The social life's been pretty
demanding.  I guess I haven't been hurting for stuff to do."

"I was saying that you have a girlfriend," she said.

"There's all of that, too," I said.

"Your love life was dead at the end," she said.  "I didn't really get it,
but I know you were more stressed out than most about getting into schools."

"I was just having fun hanging out with you guys," I said.  "I'd gotten some
things out of my system and there really wasn't much more left to offer me.
Like, Rick thought it was kind of funny to date freshmen and sophomores, but
I thought all those girls were idiots."

"God, I should have taken your attitude," she said, "instead of wasting my
time worrying about-"  She made an ugly face and moved her head in
Sanjay'sdirection at the other end of the table.  She took a cigarette
out of my
pack.  "Whatever.  He's one of my best friends now.  It was just stupid of
me to put so much into him when I knew he wasn't interested."

"Yeah, but you guys had fun.  You love the fabricated drama."  I lit her
cigarette.  "Besides, I wouldn't say that he wasn't interested.  He was just
pragmatic."

"God, that's your entire personality in a nutshell.  'He was just
pragmatic.'  You're so going to law school-"

"Yeah, then fuck me with lawn mower.  Never."

"That's what my brother said."

"My dad's a lawyer.  I know how awful that is."

Rick yelled from the other end of the table: "Cocksucker!" He pointed at me
and then at one of the open pool tables.

I have problems with competitive situations.  I can't play poker or card
games or things like Monopoly -- I get too pissed off when a move works out
poorly.  (Even now, I can't gamble because of the ways I emote.  The one
time I played blackjack in a casino, a stern pit boss or security official
or somebody like that addressed me after I screamed the word fuck and
pounded a fist on the table.)  Rick and Andy both had pool tables in their
basements, which meant that they were significantly better than I was, and
it drove me sort of crazy.

Andy and I played against Rick and Danielle.  I had an easy shot on the five
ball that tapped the corner and rested on the edge of the hole.
"Goddammit!" I shouted.

"Nice to see that some things don't change," Rick said.

"Fuck!"

"Don't worry.  It was a tough shot."

"Don't patronize me," I said.

"I'm not going to touch your balls," Rick said.

"They wouldn't do you any good," I said.

"I'm not going to even glance them," he said.

"You'd send his ball into the hole," Andy said.

"It never gets old."

Later that night Rick walked up to the bar with me.  "I mean, I don't mean
to sound earnest and shit, but you've been fucking hard to communicate
with."

I was wasted by then.  It made me feel guilty.  I said that I'd be better.

"Nah," he said.  "I was starting to wonder if maybe something was going on,
if you were failing out or something fucked was happening."

"Not yet, motherfucker," I said.

The bartender brought our pints and I fumbled for money.  I was drunk enough
that I had to concentrate to see the 20 on the bill.

"Like, my sister had this friend who went to MIT and had kind of a nervous
breakdown in her freshman year and another friend that got kicked out for
dealing hard drugs out of his dorm room, so weird shit happens when people
get to school.  It's all okay, right?"

"I've just been, like, distracted and absentminded.  But otherwise, I'd
describe things as being great to very great."

"Okay, cocksucker.  This was my one chance to be sure."

"Yes, I suck, as everybody's making clear tonight.  I'll try to be better."

"Delicate little flower," he said.  "I'm not being totally serious about the
drug comment."

"I know," I said.  I tried not to spill beer on myself as we walked back to
our table.  "If I think I'm going to flunk out or start dealing drugs from
my dorm, I'll look to you for advice, counsellor."

*    *    *

The last train left at 1:53 in the morning, which would have had us at our
parents' houses at about 2:45, but also posed the problem of transport from
the train station, since we were all much too drunk to drive and even those
of us with at least one lax parent would couldn't justify a wake-up call at
2:30 a.m.  At a little after one, there was a quiet consensus that fuck it,
you only live once, and that we'd stay out and chance it with trying to
persuade a cab to take us back.  I was so drunk that it seemed like all I
did was hit the men's room and smoke cigarettes.

I felt a leg under the table brush against mine.  I glared at Andy and
stomped the foot closest to me.

"Goddamn it, fucker!" Sanjay said.  "What was that?"

"Sorry," I said.  "I thought you were Andy and that you did it on purpose."

"Jesus!"  Sanjay pulled back in his chair.  "Also, you can't stomp Andy and
fuck up his running foot."

"But that fucker," I slurred, pointing a finger at Andy, who made a
surprised face, "is just trying to, like, provoke and incite me."

"Cool it with the aggression," Rick said.

Andy was laughing at me.

I scowled at my empty glass and stayed quiet while they made fun of me.  I
take my lumps; I'm often an idiot.

About 90 minutes later we were outside in the cold trying to find a cab.  I
leaned against a brick wall for support.  Danielle shivered and wrapped her
face in a scarf.  Andy put his arms around her shoulders to keep each other
warm.  They looked like they a couple.

We needed at least two cars.  Rick tried to negotiate with a cab to take
some of us home, but the driver asked for exorbitant fare and had a
belligerent attitude.  Rick shouted profanity at the driver as he sped away
without us.

Andy pulled out his cell phone and dialed the car service of his dad's law
firm.  He requested three cars.  One thing about our dad's jobs, they all
had outside car services that supplied fleets of drivers and black sedans.
My dad took the train down in the mornings, but most nights he was
chauffeured home in a black car.  I had a card with the number, too, but I'd
only used it a couple of times.  If I'd called for cars and charged it to my
dad's work account, he probably would have just shrugged it off.

"Dumbass.  Why'd you get three cars?  We only needed two."

"But there are six of us," Andy said.  "That's pretty tight."

"Glad your dad's paying and not mine," Rick said.

"Your dad's a fucking banker.  He can pay for it more easily than mine."

Danielle whispered in my ear:  "I hate these fucking, 'Your fancy dad is
fancier than my fancy dad' conversations."

About ten minutes later, the first car came.  Danielle and Sanjay left
together, and right after that, the second car came.  Rick and our friend
Ethan got into the second car.

"I'll take care of drunk retard," Andy said.

"Are you sure?" Rick said.  "I know how to handle him better.  If he gets
annoying, just punch him in the knee."

"I usually punch him in the face," Andy said.

"Later, fuckers," Rick said.  "Call you tomorrow."

I stood shivering as we watched the car drive south on Second Avenue.

"Okay," Andy said.  "Let's go."

"Where's our car?"

"I didn't call us a car yet.  Let's go have another beer."

"Dude," I said, "I'm fucking exhausted, and I'm wasted."  I thought to
myself that I could all asleep on the sidewalk if I lost enough dignity to
lie down.  "I need to get home."

"I'm not going to, like, take advantage, if that's what you're worried
about."

"I don't want to think about that other stuff right now."

First I went into a bodega and got a large cup of coffee.  The hot paper cup
warmed my hand.  I needed the caffeine.  Then we went into a bar that had
only a couple dozen people inside.  An old Ukrainian woman in a wig poured
drinks.  It was a quiet crowd with hipsters and neighborhood types, but the
jukebox was loud, playing something by The Replacements.  Andy got us two
bottles of Miller Lite.  We sat on stools in an empty corner by the window.

"I can't drink this," I said.

"Drink coffee then."

"Fuck, I'm tired."

"Where are you going to sleep?"

"I would've gotten in the car with Rick if I knew you were going to fuck
around like this."

He drank from his beer and rolled his eyes.  "No you wouldn't."

"I bet I would've."

"Fuck you then," he said.  "You're there running around with some fucking
hot boyfriend-"

"No no no.  Don't say that so loud.  That's not what he is."

"Yeah it is, that's what he is, and I'm sitting around doing nothing, so at
least I get to sit here with you and live vicariously."

"What time do the bars close again?"

"Four, and it's not even three."

"My mom's going to kick my fucking ass."

"What's crazy," he said, "is that you started all of this, not me.  You were
all, 'Hey bro, feelin' hot in your sleeping bag?' and then I was, 'Duh.'"

"Shut up, dude,  Why are you going over this again?"

"Because I'm, like, wasted and wound up," he said, "and there's still this
kind of crazy thing -- right? -- that you had this idea that I, like,
trapped you, and it's all my fault.  Really it was you, like, all horned up
and not getting to sleep and deciding it was time to do stuff."

"Having this conversation makes me want to vomit."

I did sort of want to puke.  It was that feeling of the blood vessels
getting tight in your nose, your face was too warm, and the air indoors went
down heavy.  This was before the smoking ban went into effect, and
everything in me seemed to be sponging up the toxins of the smoky bar.  My
mom would complain about my clothes stinking.

"Someday somebody's going to kick your ass," he said.  "I hope it's me."

I pressed the side of my face against the window just to feel cold.  My
torso was full like a beer barrel.  "I'm not on a sitcom," I said.  "You
can't say something cute and then I'm giggly.  I am conflicted, and dark,
and tortured."

"No you're not.  No one's who's *actually* conflicted and dark and tortured
says that they're conflicted and dark and tortured.  That's just your
melodramatic way of acknowledging that you're retarded."

"I'm a complete and total retard.  The whole situation is so completely
retarded that I'm out of my mind."  The air in that bar weighed five pounds
per cubic foot.

"I agree with that," Andy said.

"I keep thinking to myself, 'Why me?'  It's not like I'm into fashion or
hairstyles or how colors look.  I never gave a fuck about girly shit.  I'm
like," I paused.  "How. The. Fuck. Did. This. Happen."  That's how I said
it.  "This was not part of my plans."

"No.  You can't plan for wanting dudes' cocks."

"So how did it happen?  I guess it's better than coming down with ball
cancer, of course."

"Boy," he said, "do I ever feel sorry for your boyfriend."

"That dude's even crazier than I am," I said.  "He smokes ten packs of
cigarettes a day and talks like a Marxist.  It's all, 'Blah blah blah, I'm
going to my frat party now, and military-industrial complex can suck my
balls.  Tristes Tropiques is the tits.'"

"Seriously?"

"God.  Yes!  Will you just call us a car so we can go home and stop talking
about this?"

While Andy was dialing, I put on my coat to go out into the cold clean air.
The outside air weighed significantly less.  I breathed it in like I was
drinking water.  My eyes and throat felt better.  I wanted to expel the bar
smell.  I inhaled through my mouth and exhaled hard out of my nose.  We were
somewhere on First Avenue near Houston.  A cold breeze made my eyes water.

Andy almost lost his balance when he walked out of the bar.  "10 minutes.
Car 532."

"I want to walk around the block and not, like, stand still."

We passed guys with girls and groups of drunk guys and an old man escorting
an old dog before bed.

"But you," I said, "you, you'll be totally okay.  You're way better than I
am.  I'm smoking too much and drinking too much and studying too much.  It
seems like I spend, like, almost all of my time arguing with my friends.  My
friend Matt just kind of found me, but I don't even know what the hell I'm
doing.  I still don't know what's going on.  Like, even when I get horny, I
still feel like I wish it would all go away, and I feel like an idiot that
it doesn't.  It's kind of embarrassing.  I feel pretty embarrassed by it.
Don't you?"

"Nope," he said.  "I've got nothing to be embarrassed for."

"You're lucky," I said.

"Just shut up.  Sorry that I got you talking like this."

"What it fucking is, it's that all I wanted to do was come back here and
just kind of crash.  I just wanted to hang out and see everybody and not
think about this shit.  Instead I spent yesterday getting hauled in front of
every fucking fat lawyer over fifty, and then tonight you got started with
the entire shitshow.  Congratulations.  You got me."

*    *    *

And then we were on the Bruckner Expressway going north through the Bronx,
sitting in the back seat of a sedan that smelled like fish and cigarettes,
being driven by an Eastern European.  We sat at opposite edges, like
fighting siblings separated for the duration of a car trip.

I caught Andy glancing over.  I was too drunk to be horny and I was
completely annoyed with him, but I couldn't help it: I got boned.  When I
kicked him softly in the lower shin, pushing at him with the sole of my
sneaker, it was like a junior-high flirtation.

"Stop," he said.

I kicked again.

"Quit it."

I did it again.  He kicked back.  We jostled below the knees.  Then it
stopped.  He reached his hand over to the edge of my coat.  I decided that
the driver wasn't paying attention to us and that if he was, he couldn't see
anything.  Andy held onto my hand at the wrist.

"When we get to your parents' place," I said, "I'm going to get out for a
second.  I've got to take a piss pretty bad."

"Are you going to get out for just a second, or do you want to crash there?
Nobody there will notice or care."

"I bet Rob is sitting up in my parents' living room hoping that he'll catch
me coming home drunk, and then narc on me."

"Your brother really is a huge asshole," Andy said.

"Let's, like, decide when we get there."

But we didn't really decide.  When we were there in the back seat, with
Andy's arm kind of outstretched, I pulled it over a little more and held his
hand against my hard-on.  Andy signed the receipt while I jumped out of the
car and ran to the side of the Traffords' house.  I urinated against the
exterior with half a boner.  My semi had things all fucked up, so I was
pissing horizontal in a difficult-to-manage spray.  Andy came over to get me
as I finished up, my dick still hanging out over my jeans and probably
visible in partial silhouette.

He didn't touch it then, but he watched as I put it back into my boxers and
zipped up.  He took a couple steps closer, with his beer smell and
clumsiness, and held my hard-on from the outside.  Our bad balance almost
sent us tumbling.

Andy fumbled with the keys and let us inside.  We tiptoed to his room.  With
the bathroom door closed, Andy tried to take a leak while I rinsed with
mouthwash and rubbed a wet washcloth at my face.  I could smell my face
being cleaned of bar odor.  He was half-hard, too; he watched me scrub my
face while his dick hung out.

Sometimes I can't tell if every dude around me is an exhibitionist, or
whether I'm just a prude.

When we were back into his room he didn't go crazy making out with me or
anything.  He took my cock out of my jeans and my boxers and pressed the
underside of my penis up against his.  Andy unbuttoned his shirt and tossed
off the gray Berkeley T-shirt underneath.  It was nice to feel out his
leanly muscled torso after having gotten used to Canetti's skin and bones.
I pressed my hands against the ridges of his abs and his ribs.  I lifted off
my sweater and T-shirt so that our skin could touch.  His skin wasn't as
smooth and silky as Canetti's was, either -- he sweated a little more.
There was more texture to Andy's body.

But he felt warm and comfortable and good, and after having gotten used to
Canetti's sort of masterful calculations while hooking up and fooling
around, it was simple to fumble with Andy, our cocks shoved up against each
other while we both grinded clumsily, his balls flopping around on mine.

Andy came pretty quickly, of course.  He hadn't hooked up with anybody since
he'd last seen me in mid/late August.  If he'd been dry-humping a mannequin,
it probably wouldn't have required more than five minutes for him to spray.
He groaned drunk and sloppily right before he let go, the first line
of jizzflying hot and sticky up my chest and all over comforter, the
second and
third landing on my hips and his sheets.  He kicked off his jeans and then
pulled down on mine.  He started giving me head.  The sound of his lips
sucking and smacking at my cock, like he was attacking a lollipop or blowing
up a difficult balloon, got me turned on.  I'm not sure whether Andy had
gotten better at blow jobs from before, or whether he was just enthusiastic
after a three-month dry spell, but whatever it was, it worked.  He jerked
himself off while he tried to take my shaft as deep into his mouth as he
could.  He made a gag reflex as the tip of my cock tickled at the back of
his throat.  Then he carefully pulled back.  His tongue ran over the slit of
my cock, slow and patient, like he was trying to absorb what he could as I
felt my pre-cum rise out.  I inhaled hard through my nose, and instead of
smelling cigarettes, it was the coppery scent of Andy's cum on my torso and
a whiff of whatever product was in his hair.

I whispered to him that I was going to cum.  He took my dick out of his
moth, and rubbed it tight and slow in the circle of his index finger and
thumb.  While I slowly fucked his hand, he took one of my balls into his
mouth.  When I came, it was pretty hard, too -- much more projectile than
should have happened at 4:30 in the morning while wasted and dehydrated.  If
Andy had aimed my rod higher, it probably would have hit my face and my
hair, but instead it sprang up benignly, leaving a line running from my
solar plexus down to my navel.

This was enough for me.  It was late.  I was tired.  The familiarity was
cool and everything, but I wasn't the man coming across an oasis in the
middle of the desert.  I stayed hard and let Andy check out my dick for
another 10 or 15 minutes before my body started to hurt from lack of sleep
and excessive alcohol.  It was Canetti's trick, and I got out of bed to put
on my boxers and T-shirt, checking to make sure that Andy had locked his
bedroom door before I did.

"Are your parents going to wake you up in the morning?" I whispered.

"No," he said.  "I told you, it's not big deal.  They'll probably make you
stay for breakfast.  Isn't that awesome?  If you were a chick, there'd be
all this drama, but they'll just assume that you crashed my room and that's
it.  Fuck, I wish we'd figured this out in eighth grade."

"Enough with the retrospective bullshit," I said, turning off the lights.

I woke up a couple times in the morning because Andy was leaving his
fingerprints on my dick.  I let it go for a couple minutes before shoving
his hands off.

*    *    *

Sure, I stayed for breakfast, because Mrs. Trafford had donuts and made a
great omelet with bell peppers, sausage and mushrooms.  When I was fully
dressed, she couldn't even tell that I smelled like her son's body fluid.

That night we hung out at Rick's place, shooting hoops in the cold of his
driveway, then watching a DVD.  Neither Andy nor I acknowledged anything
weird, and I found myself enjoying the conspiracy.

His family spent Christmas in Paris, and we wouldn't see each other until
the following summer.  In between, Andy would enjoy a first male hook-up
with somebody other than me, at which point, he was cleared for takeoff, and
had better things to do then aimlessly ponder my genitals.

When my mom hugged me good-bye, she again noted that my jacket reeked of
cigarettes.

I'd gone from being weary and relieved about getting home to weary and
relieved about getting back to campus.  The first thing that greeted me was
Sam Frost and Chris Riis sitting in new beanbag chairs, playing video game
hockey with cans of Molson Canadian next to them.  Whatever it was I came
back to, I was glad to have it.