INTRODUCTORY NOTE: Long wait, I know, but this installment is practically its own novella. It's got something for everybody: Booze, golf, guys' dongs, Sunny Delight, Isaiah Berlin and a special guest appearance by boobs. Hope you enjoy, and see you in 2018 for Joe College, Part 11.
Joe College, Part 10
My dad said that he needed to inoculate me.
He said that everybody makes bad decisions and has to confront deviant compulsions. He said that we shouldn't judge ourselves based on unhealthy lifestyle choices so much as by whether we choose to overcome them.
He was talking about wanting to go to law school.
One of his good friends was a partner at the large corporate firm where I spent the summer after freshman year working as an intern. He's known me since I was a baby. We went to lunch at a diner on my first day. It felt more like a social visit than the start of a summer job. He asked about my classes and friends and talked about what he studied in college and how he was in a frat. When I told him, in a style sounding like apology, that I didn't plan to be a lawyer, he smirked and looked at the ice in his glass.
"I know," he said. "So does your dad. He thought it would be a good idea for you to spend time in an environment like this. Just get a little structure. We thought it'd lend some perspective for when you're making decisions two or three years down the road. Not everybody is meant to be a lawyer."
"Yeah, but he knows I don't want to be a lawyer."
"You won't do the work of a lawyer," he said. "You'll hang around and see some stuff.
For most of June, I got up at 7 a.m. to dress in a suit, take the train to Grand Central and walk to the firm. It was summer of 2002; some of the hangover from 9/11 still floated in the city. I walked through Grand Central and passed National Guardsmen holding automatic weapons and wearing body armor.
At a law firm, the first thing you notice is that everyone dresses the same, nobody looks happy, and nobody is attractive.
I sat surrounded by file folders and boxes of papers. Some days paralegals asked me to help. It meant moving boxes from shelf to shelf, or occasionally tagging documents with consecutive number stickers. One day I alphabetized printed e-mails by the senders' last names.
It was 20 percent brainless scutwork and 80 percent surfing the web.
By July, I stopped wearing a suit. I walked in wearing khakis and a button-down. I arrived at 10 and left around 5. On the train ride in, I thought about Nick Carraway and Gatsby, even though my situation felt nothing like that. I sent hundreds of personal e-mails a day.
Once in awhile I met my dad near his office downtown. He could take long lunches. We'd go to a restaurant near the Seaport with outdoor seating.
"This job sucks," I told him. "I'd rather, like, be a counselor at a day camp."
My dad laughed. He wore expensive sunglasses. He looked like a dork, but in those sunglasses, it was like he thought he was Warren Beatty or shit.
"It's not like you had anything else to do. I wasn't going to let you sit around the house all summer, smoking crack and playing video games with Evan."
"There's, like, middle ground between crackhead and corporate law," I said.
"All liberal arts majors think about law school," he said. "You probably will, too. Put this in a drawer and think about. You should get a Ph.D or be a journalist. Take a trip around the world. Write a novel. You've got all kinds of options ahead of you. Don't feel like you need to limit yourself."
At this point, some of you might think that I'm spoiled, and I can't mount a very credible defense against that. I mean, I'm not the most self-aware motherfucker, but I'm not one-hundred percent oblivious.
And I know I'm a dick sometimes. I guess this could be a heroic story about a young man immediately embracing his gayness and finding pots of gold at the end of the rainbow, but that would be lame and boring for all of us, and it's not how real life happens, at least when it's interesting.
I digress.
Here's something I've noticed with my high school friends, but much less so among my college friends and other people I've picked up along the way: All of our fathers hated their jobs. They were partners in corporate law firms, investment bankers, or held jobs in private equity. I don't understand what most of them do. They were all miserable. They worked a lot of 12-hour days and weekends. At one point in their lives they cared about civil rights or the great books or world travel. They probably pictured themselves as future statesmen or novelists. They did well in college and attended prestigious grad schools, got married, had kids and bought nice homes.
Then they hated what they did for a living, and it made them feel good that their kids wouldn't end up in professions like theirs. If you work too much and dread your days, you don't worry about your kids growing up with a lousy work ethic or turning spoiled -- you worry about them becoming career-driven, self-loathing, Type-A psychopaths. It's how people ended up in tennis camps, sailing camps, Christmas trips to Rome -- and also how some ended up cokeheads in their 20s with a record of DUIs. In a way, it's all the same. It's all leisure as status -- it's not real fun.
I mean, I never gave a shit about most of that stuff. Traveling doesn't get my rocks off (it's one long scavenger hunt) and I never gave a shit about clothes or cars. My brother Rob fit the type and sometimes it seems like Evan goes down that path, but if I can credit myself with a small thing amid all my bullshittery, it's that my needs have always been simple: I liked books, bands, sports and video games. Everything else was background. Until I got to college, it never occurred to me that certain of my material and life-trajectory aspects were so privileged. I mean, they were, but it's a matter of context and what you know. You took jobs to keep from being bored, to hang out a little, to have money for illicit purposes; it wasn't for basic needs or college savings.
And then everybody's kids went to fancy colleges: all the ones who went to Penn hoped to get into Wharton undergrad, and the Harvard ones wanted jobs at McKinsey. They'd go to Wall Street banks or private equity firms, or go on to law school, doing nothing work on behalf of nothing, no happier than their fathers, and the cycle would repeat.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about this in a woe-is-me way, or trying to imply that I rebelled against anything. I'm talking about this because as early as junior high, I sensed that there were situations where people declared themselves, chose a way of life that they thought was good for them, and found themselves locked in forever. They were presented with Option A and Option B: Option A was lucrative, prestigious and miserable; Option B was a vague bundle of everything else. I grew up around people with a lot of material comfort, but they weren't at ease with who they were. These things I understood vividly, and I think it's part of why I tended to wrestle myself to death. Conforming could be miserable and reassuring at the same time; going out on a limb could be frightening. Growing up, I think that I managed to fit in while tacking to my own interests, in an in-it-but-not-of-it kind of way. Making a too-bold move -- of coming out as gay, of going to a certain category of grad school, of making the wrong career move -- could lock you in and send you down a path you ultimately didn't want.
I'm just offering this by way of observation: My dad would wake up at seven, take the train down to the city, come home around eight or nine on the early nights and later than ten on many nights, traveling for days at a time to attend arbitrations or work on depositions, representing clients he didn't give a shit about on behalf of legal causes that I suspect disgust him. He pours his life into work that he hates, and that doesn't amount to anything. It shades everything he does and the way that I was raised. True, it wasn't getting black lung in coal mines or working in a limestone quarry, but it wasn't a life I'd wish on smart, decent people. Sometimes it sucked for me, but it truly sucks for him. He's always been nice to me, and nice to my brothers -- even Rob, and Rob doesn't deserve it. The only times my dad lost his cool with us is when we acted like dicks. He's always encouraged me to pursue my interests. He loves my mom. He likes literary fiction, Thomas Jefferson, modern art, ancient Rome and basketball. Sometimes I picture him unboarding a plane with a rolling suitcase behind him and a disputed contract under his arm. He would have been happier teaching A.P. History and coaching the J.V. basketball team. It would have been a great life for him. Thinking about that makes me so sad.
My high school friends Rick and Sanjay were around that summer, but Rick went to school at Penn and Sanjay went to Harvard, and they had a lot of friends in the city. I met their groups a couple of times, but it felt like they spoke a language of inside jokes, and I wasn't hip to them.
It probably would've been the same if they'd been around me and my college friends. I felt vaguely condescended to, as the underachiever who dissed Penn and Dartmouth for the Midwest.
Andy Trafford didn't have a job and none of his Berkeley friends were from around the city. It seemed like he spent a lot of time reading and golfing and lounging at his pool.
Every time I saw him, my dick felt Pavlovian chub. It wasn't going anywhere. The chemistry had wilted. Part of it had to be that Canetti had imprinted himself on me. The last couple of times we messed around before breaking for summer, something new had been clicking. It had gone from being fun and comfortable to something pretty hot. It wasn't a loyalty thing (I don't think he would've cared) and it wasn't like I thought I was in love with Matt (not really) but the idea of hooking up with someone else felt like a letdown. It wouldn't be as good.
And, you know -- I was kind of embarrassed about the way I acted around Andy. All of my weirdest, most neurotic tendencies broke out. I'd behaved like an asshole around him and felt guilty about it. We both knew that. It gave him an upper hand.
One Saturday morning he picked me up to play golf. I hate golf. "Just nine holes," he said.
"Is that some kind of euphemism?" I said.
"You'd like to think so."
It was my usual specialty: hitting balls badly and muttering self-hating profanity as they bobbed down the rough. I was at my most inept and rude when I held a golf club, truly.
While we were out there, Andy started telling me stuff. In March he'd started hooking up with a guy named Pete, who was half-Japanese and grew up in Sacramento. The look on his face was one of those expressions I might've had when I first started out with Canetti. He talked about how cute and smart the guy was; he made it sound like the most amazing thing to happen to him, in a nonchalant and determinedly understated way.
They'd met at some kind of gay student-group meeting, and even though my first instinct at hearing that was to say something dismissive about those organizations, I held back. When Andy described it I felt a mix of envy and dismissiveness.
At one point over the winter I made an effort to walk past a meeting room in the student union where that kind of organization was getting together. I'd been sweaty palmed. My heart throbbed pain in my neck. I told myself that I was sixty-percent set on walking in, and by the time I was close, I was twenty percent, and by the time I walked past the room and feigned a casual glance up, I convinced myself that they weren't my kind of people.
"A couple weeks before exams I started coming out to my friends," he said, cheerful and casual.
"Wait, what?"
"Everybody was like, 'That's cool, man.'"
"Just like that?"
"It was way easier than I thought. It took, like, ninety seconds."
"Yeah, but you go to Berkeley. Everyone there is either gay or a pothead."
"Whatever, dick," he said. "From what I remember, you're not exactly at Bob Jones University. You're school's about as lefty as they come."
"Not true. Brown, Oberlin, Wesleyan, Berkeley-"
"Oh, Christ."
"-Ann Arbor, Wisconsin, Sarah Lawrence, Bard, Vassar." I paused. "They always say Cambridge is a liberal city but I don't hear that about Harvard and MIT. Thoughts?"
"Typical Joey," he said, "always trying to change the subject and show off in order not to look like a pussy." I thought about throwing my putter, just to make a point. "You know I'm trying to be, like, slightly serious," he said.
"Yes, yes. Balls. Tell a few people you like the male penis and suddenly you think you're Martin Luther King and shit."
He slugged me in the arm. It was fairly hard. The punch left a bruise.
"Ouch! Why'd you do that?"
"If you have to ask, I'm not going to tell you."
He coolly sank a putt. I missed the cup three more sweary times and reminded him that I suck at golf.
"Anyway," he said, "people were really cool about it and it felt fairly good to get it off my chest and that's all. I thought maybe you could learn something from my own experience. Obviously, that's giving you too much credit."
I acted sullen and deferential over the next hole, like a little kid looking for forgiveness. When I realized that I was being childish, I said, "I'm sorry if I blew that off. I didn't mean to do that."
"Yes you did, asshole," he said. "If you make it sound like I'm the weird, self-righteous one, it's an excuse for you to ignore your own situation and never do anything about it. What about the hot frat boy you've been dating for, like, eight months? How does he put up with you?"
"I think he understands," I said.
"Have you ever asked him?"
"No."
"You are such a puss," he said.
"Look, fuckface, you know how I act when I'm playing golf." I threw my club to the ground, for emphasis.
"You know something, retard? About thirty percent of the time you're funny, thirty percent of the time you're infuriating, and the rest of the time, you're mildly tragic."
I kicked my stupid golf club.
"So, I don't want to make this awkward," Matt said to me over the phone in mid-July, "but my internship wraps up at the beginning of August. I'm going to take a train up and spend most of August at my parents' place. I was thinking that I haven't spent much time in New York, and if you're around and available, I thought that'd be cool."
Being away from my college friends sucked. Your friends from high school are always special, but they filter through parents and structure. Friends from college, they're your whole life. You lived with them, you partied with them, you took classes with them and you worked with them. That summer, I don't think a day passed where I didn't miss them. Sam and I sent long messages of vulgarity and brutal mockery; Chris sounded flattered whenever he heard from me, so I got full reports about weekends at the family cottage and dinners at his aunt's house, and workplace travails at a restaurant where he waited tables. There were another dozen or so people -- dorm friends, future housemates, friends from my work on the college paper -- who I swapped messages with throughout the week, about the details of our jobs and living back with our parents and our travel plans.
Canetti was working as an intern at a non-governmental org in D.C. It had to do with foreign aid. By the time I got to my desk in the morning, there was a link in my inbox to whatever issue caught his eye that morning and that set the topic for the day. We'd swap 60, 80, 100 e-mails. They were funny and lofty, aggressive and digressive. I printed a bunch of them and kept them in a folder. I still have them. If I thought they'd translate, I'd copy in an excerpt, but they wouldn't, so I won't.
I weighed his suggestion and hesitated.
"Sounds perfect," I said.
"I could just hang out in the city for a day if you want," he said. "I don't want to crash and mess up your parents' schedules."
"They don't care. Just ignore my brother Rob. He's a prick."
"So I hear."
"And, like, we shouldn't fool around in my house or anything. Just to be safe."
"Sweet. We'll fool around in the yard."
I laughed nervously as the scene unfolded. "No."
"You'll be singing a different tune when I'm there."
"Possibly."
My own internship ended on the last Friday in July. A week later I met Matt Canetti at Grand Central, in front of a Hudson News, like I told him. He swaggered up with a massive rolling suitcase. He chewed gum.
"Shit. How much does that bag weigh?"
"It's got a summer's worth of clothes plus a bunch of books and shit," he said. "Shipping costs are a bitch."
We took the 5 train down to my dad's office near Wall Street. I was going to leave Matt's bag with my dad. He'd take it home with his car service, and Matt and I could hang out in the city unencumbered. My dad wanted to say hello to my friend, so we waited while he got off a conference call. My dad came out and shook Matt's hand. They made smalltalk. My dad indicated interest in Matt's summer gig. It probably was sincere.
This should've been a big moment -- my dad meeting the guy I'd been going out with for most of freshmen year -- but he had no way of knowing, Matt wasn't about to hint at it, and I didn't think of it like that at the time. Matt put on his most ingratiating persona, the cheerful and outgoing banter that reeled me in at the beginning. Matt talking to my dad wasn't that different than when he talked to one of my friends at a party.
"Keep him out of trouble," he said to Matt, pointing at me.
"Joe keeps everyone else out of trouble," Matt said.
"I have a hard time believing that," my dad said.
The rest of the afternoon had a Ferris Bueller quality. We went to the Guggenheim and walked around Central Park, then took a train down to SoHo and played Abe Froman at a restaurant. After that we walked up Broadway to the Strand Bookstore. Matt left with a half-dozen books -- crazy non-fiction about shit like the French Revolution and colonialism.
"Is your mom expecting us for dinner?" he said.
"She hates cooking," I said. "Maybe we'd miss some Domino's."
"Cool," he said. "So we can just kind of hang out, walk around."
"Let's go get drunk somewhere," I said.
"It's not even five."
"Prude."
"You take New York for granted," he said. "I want to stay outside and watch people."
We went down to Washington Square Park and sat on a concrete bench facing the fountains. A couple of dudes beat on plastic buckets as drums. European tourists took digital photos.
"How much did you miss me?" Canetti said.
I snorted. "As if."
"That's okay," he said. "I missed you too."
"Well. Thanks."
"You're welcome."
"Yeah." I paused. "I guess I missed you. I missed you."
"I only hooked up with one guy this summer," Matt said, "and that was because I was pretty drunk and the guy was really hot."
"Yeah?"
"He was a college Republican type. He goes to Vanderbilt and was interning for a Republican Congressman from Florida. It was a party and he told me how I didn't seem typical for a gay guy. He was so fucking nervous, it was obvious. Once in awhile guys say that and it's because they're a little ignorant and are trying to be nice, but sometimes that's their, like, scared way of saying they're interested. He was this kind of strapping guy with freckles and blond hair and a hot accent. So there was that."
"Cool."
"Does that, like, make you uncomfortable?"
"Not unless you got herpes or syphilis or shit."
"Ha," he said. "We didn't do that much. The way I think of it, it was even a public service. Flip a hot Southern Republican to the team. Now he'll go back to Vandy and lust after his frat brothers. It was more of a political act than a hook-up, when you think about it. I was causing social change."
"Courageous."
"I know," he said. "But mostly I just thought about you."
"I didn't hook up with anybody," I said.
"Stuff must not be so hot with your ex-girlfriend from Berkeley."
"No, I told you before. It's awkward now."
"Well, that sucks. You really should have gotten yourself into an 18-and-over gay bar. Just to see what it's like. Even if you went in for 15 minutes and left without talking to anybody. It would've been good for you. Demystify things. We should do that tonight."
"Nah," I said. "I just want to hang out. I don't want to go do that yet."
"Pussy."
"I know. It's just, like. I just don't want to do that. Let's try and go to a normal bar."
He liked making me squirm, but I knew that if I sounded earnest or genuinely uncomfortable, he'd leave it alone, which he did.
The day had been hot but not too muggy. Matt was wearing dark khaki shorts and a plain gray T-shirt. You could see the outline of his shoulderblades under the shirt. I'd forgotten how skinny he was. Earlier in the day, when we'd been walking around Central Park, some drops of sweat had clung to his shirt, but there wasn't any sweat on it now. A warm breeze went through the park, and when a fat man lit a cigarette, the smoke blew our way. I said to Matt that he hadn't been smoking all day. He said that he'd probably have one as soon as he had a beer.
Andy Trafford knew that Matt was coming up to visit me, and had turned mildly chickish about it, like he wanted to bait me into expressing giddy excitement. On the phone, he kept using the word boyfriend, like he was trying to get me to confirm the word. I knew he wanted to meet Matt, and that his intentions weren't to goof on me -- that he genuinely wanted to meet him. He mentioned it three or four times, and I demurred with variations of maybe.
Matt and I made it into the first bar we tried, someplace on First Avenue not far above Houston. I'd drank in the city before, and it still had a risk and excitement for me: you wanted to pick a bar that didn't suck, but it couldn't be too popular, or else you'd get caught for not having ID. You wanted a dark place with an old bartender and a young clientele with tattoos, and definitely not bars where guys wore ties or the women dressed to get screwed, because those places had tougher standards. Matt was 21, obviously, but I didn't have a fake, so these considerations were high in my mind. We sat down in a corner with pints of IPA. A couple of drinks in, Andy called. I let it go to voicemail.
"Your parents?" Canetti said.
"My girlfriend from Berkeley."
"Fun. I'd like to meet her sometime."
"She'd like to meet you. I think she's, like, moderately excited."
"What's she up to?"
"She's around." The feminine pronoun was making me laugh. "I don't know. She's probably up in Westchester."
"What's so funny?"
"Her," I said.
"You're weird. I'm sure she's a nice girl. Her parents must be proud of her."
Andy called again about a half hour later. I answered my cell: "What?"
"What's up?" he said.
"Nothing."
"Are you with your friend?"
"Yeah."
"How are things?"
I looked at Matt as he lit a cigarette and smirked. "Fine," I said. "He says he's excited to meet my ex-girlfriend at Berkeley."
"Ha!" He shouted the word. "Is that how you described me? That's fantastic."
"Something like that at first, yeah."
"That's pretty awesome. I had no idea you thought of me that way."
"Don't be a tool."
"Are you drunk?"
"Nah. We're in the East Village having a couple beers."
"Good deal. I thought I'd just check in and say hey."
Matt spoke up: "Tell him to meet us. It's not like this is shaping up to be a night of love. As the Ramones play on the jukebox."
It was at least 90 minutes later by the time that Andy took the train to Grand Central and made it to the bar -- maybe about 9 p.m. It was a Monday and the bar didn't have a crowd. Andy was always happy for an excuse to go into the city, and I knew that he was excited to use his fake ID. It appeared that he'd scrubbed up and carefully took care of his hair, like he wanted to look good for going out. When Andy and Matt said hello to each other, and shook hands, they both looked cute and clean and happy, even if Canetti was drunk and had just finished a cigarette.
"I'm the girlfriend from Berkeley," Andy said to him.
Late that night we were in the kind of bar where bras hung from a clothesline against the wall. A couple of wasted girls from the clientele danced precariously on the bar. I feared for the dancing girls. They looked drunk and uncoordinated, and though the bar was of standard height, it appeared needlessly hazardous, like their undulating thighs and arms risked unbalancing the girls and sending them neck-first to the floor. The bar was popular with tourists and douchebags from Jersey. It wasn't a strip club or anything like that, just a shitty dive bar with a gimmick, and it stunk of equal parts cigarette, piss and beer.
We'd been to other bars, with stops in between for slices and ATMs. I'd stopped drinking beer and moved on to water.
"How did we end up here?" Andy said.
"Shut up," I said. "We can drink here. That's all that matters."
"I kind of dig it," Canetti said. "People being people, especially when they look like idiots."
"I'm scared that one of those girls is going to slip off the bar," I said. "What if they break their neck and die? I don't want to see that shit. Poor girl."
"Whatever, grinch."
"Drunk chicks get to have fun too."
"You were complaining that we ended up here. I was just pointing out that I don't want those girls to get hurt. Safety concerns."
Something in my words or delivery made Matt almost double over, which made Andy think it was hilarious too.
"They're not even that hot," I said. "They're not ugly, but they're not that hot."
"Just having a night in the city and cutting loose," Matt said.
"Stop trying to sound straight," Andy said. "You're, like, with your only two gay friends. You don't have to pretend to rate the attractiveness of girls."
"I'm just saying. Their looks make it weird. I don't want anybody to get hurt."
Sometime later a girl exposed her breasts to drunken cheering. She was skinny. I hadn't seen real-life boobs since sophomore year of high school, when I was trying to convince myself that they had potential to be interesting. Maybe they were fine breasts to an objective observer, but they looked pale and flabby and anatomically freakish.
Shit, I was so not attracted to girls. Guys in the bar whooped and cheered for the span of seconds that she revealed herself, Matt and Andy included.
"She only did that because she craves attention," I said.
"Stop being a downer," said Andy.
"It's not like you're going to get up on the bar and whip it out," I said.
"You'd probably like that."
"Not really," I said. "It's not big enough for anyone to notice."
"That's no way to talk to your girlfriend from Berkeley," Canetti said.
"She's heard worse from better," I said.
I wasn't black-out drunk, or puke drunk, but the kind of drunk where it hurt somewhat to sit still, where I felt myself sweating even though I wasn't hot. Matt got up to take a piss and get a beer. When he was at the bar waiting, some girl started talking to him. He was smiling while he waited for a drink, sort of flirting with her in a neutered way, and I thought to myself something along the lines of how goddamn cute he looked. What I remember distinctly was that Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds" played on the jukebox, with its alternating excitement and begging. And, you know, Matt had this big Adam's apple that somehow looked attractive on him. When he laughed and responded to whatever it was that this girl said, the Adam's apple bobbed up and down, and it looked really hot to me. It made me think of getting a blowjob from him.
Andy was talking at me, some kind of excited gibberish. He waved his arms.
"You're not listening to me!" he eventually shouted, karate chopping our table for emphasis and making the pint glasses rattle.
"No. What?"
"Sunrise from the island," he said. "We'll call my dad's service for car, and we'll get out to Fire Island and we'll get the morning's first ferry and we'll watch the sunrise from the beach and stay at my parents' house."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"God!" Andy said. He landed his fist on the table. It sent an empty pint glass toppling sideways. It rolled off the table and shattered on the floor. Concerned onlookers glanced over.
"You used to be smoother than that," I said.
"That wouldn't have happened if you'd been listening to me. I blame you."
Elvis's weird, overwhelming voice still thundered out of the jukebox. I have a small soft spot for Elvis even though I've never owned any of his songs. It was the earnestness that migrated into wild melodrama, the sincerity of his delivery. No major American figure in pop culture is less aware of his irony.
"Because I love you toooo much, babyyyyy," I mouthed with the jukebox. Andy crouched on the dirty floor, attempting to collect shards of pint glass without cutting himself.
When we were in the car out to the ferry on Long Island, I cracked the window so that a strong wind blew in my face. The parkway was empty at 4:30 on a Tuesday morning. I complained about wanting Gatorade and a toothbrush.
"We can go to the general store in the morning," Andy said.
"Do you already have Gatorade in the fridge?" I said.
"Not sure. Water. Probably beer."
Around this time, practicalities and panic set in. We didn't have changes of clothes. Presumably, my dad had brought Canetti's bag back to the house, but now it was past 4 a.m. and all they knew was that Matt and I were out in the city. I mean, I was 19 and had been away at school for a year, but when my mom woke up and realized I hadn't come home from the city, she still might get wound up. Odds were good that I'd either be passed out at that point or too drunk to talk to her.
"Do you have contact solution at the house?" I asked Andy.
"Obviously."
"What are we going to do about clean clothes?"
"God, we'll put them in the laundry while we're on the beach. Stop acting like a little bitch."
"Hey, Andy," Matt said, "do you have skim milk and not two percent? Because I really need skim milk, and not two percent. My name is Joe, and sometimes I act like a nerrrrrrd."
"Joe can't drink orange juice from concentrate. Fresh squeezed only," Andy said.
"But he'll drink orange-flavored Gatorade," Matt said. "And Sunny Delight."
"Sunny D!" Andy shouted. "He love Sunny D."
"And he only gargles with Listerine," Matt said. "Never Scope."
"Joe flips out when he sees Scope. It offendeth his eyes."
"Hey, Andy," Matt said, "I hope your bedding is made from real goose down, not that synthetic shit. Joe can't slumber properly unless he sleeps under authentic goose down."
"Joe's sleeping habits are for you to put up with, not me," Andy said. "Does he ever kick you while he's asleep?"
"Fuck, all the time," Matt said. "It's like all of his dreams are about soccer. Or punting."
"Yeah, assholes," I said, "rip on me for being the practical one."
"Your sleep-kicking is practical?"
"I'm not talking about the kicking, and I didn't even know that I did that until now, so stop yelling at me about it."
"Nobody's yelling at you, princess," Andy said.
"Yeah, nobody's yelling," Matt said.
"God, I knew this would happen if the two of you got together," I said.
"Yeah, Andy and I get together, and all of a sudden it's, 'Sunny D this,' and 'Sunny D that.' You should like that. You're the one who loves Sunny D."
"I don't even like it that much. I only mixed it with gin that time because it was the only thing around."
"So you admit that you like Sunny Delight," Matt said.
"I like Sunny Delight. I like Capri Sun. I like Tropicana. I like Kool-Aid."
"Mmmm. Kool-Aid. With sugar?"
"Yeah."
"Yum."
"I like it all," I said.
"That's right you do."
We floated off the parkway and were dropped off at the ferry landing. The first ferry to Fire Island wouldn't leave until 5:30 in the morning, which left us with a 45 minute wait. A couple of ferry workers were on the pier, but we were the first prospective passengers and the ticket window wasn't open. What must have sounded like a bold, exciting proposal a couple of hours ago -- sunrise on the beach! freedom! -- ended with us drunk and exhausted, with a long trip still ahead. Matt had been up early the morning before to make his train up to the City. Only Andy, with his life of leisure and more cheerful disposition, seemed awake and alert. Matt and I dozed next to each other on a wooden bench.
I might've slept on the ferry ride too, but there was a cool breeze and the trip was just 30 minutes. My eyes felt dry. Even after we unboarded -- three of the few who didn't appear to be on the early-morning ferry for employment-related reasons -- there was still a long walk, about a mile down the paths and boardwalks that cut a grid over the island. There was light by then. A couple jogged past us and said good morning, their shoes striking drumbeats on the wooden planks. It felt freakish, to find ourselves reeking of beer and cigarettes, staggering through the swaths of vacation homes owned by affluent childbearers. I'd never felt so exhausted. Every step felt like an exercise of discipline and calculation.
My phone vibrated. "Fuck!" I said. "It's my dad!"
It was 6:15 in the morning. Birds chirped and there was faint light but the sun hadn't crested over the horizon. My dad was probably just getting up and reading the Times. My half-shrieked exclamation seemed to amuse and wake Canetti.
"Hello?" I said.
"Joe?" His voice was deep and scratchy.
"Yeah."
"Everything okay?"
"Yeah. I'm with Andy Trafford and my friend Matt."
"Why didn't you make it home?"
"We're at Andy's place on the beach."
"How did you get to Andy's place on the beach?"
"We used his dad's car service and then took a ferry."
"Joe?"
"What?"
"Listen carefully."
I didn't say anything.
"If you ever use my firm's car service the way Andy uses John's car service, I will kick your ass." He said it with bluster. "Also, if something like this happens again, leave a voicemail on my work account. It'll be easier for everybody."
"Is Mom mad at me?"
"She's still asleep. I know you know you'd rather get this call from me than from her."
"Yeah. I guess."
"I thought that something along these lines might happen."
"Yeah. I know."
"Is your friend Matt keeping you out of trouble?"
"I mean, God, it's not like we're in jail or the hospital."
"Be good," he said.
We got to see the sunrise from the beach after all, but it felt like the Pyrrhic victory of a senseless endurance test. I collapsed on the porch of Andy's parents' place, lying in a cushioned lounger, my arms cool in the August breeze. Andy walked down to the water and let the waves rush up to his calves. Matt sat in the sand, bleary and exhausted, staring out at his surroundings.
I fell asleep outside on the lounge chair. Around 8:30 a.m., I woke alone and staggered inside, then passed out on the couch. Maybe around 11, I zombied myself upstairs and took out my gummy contact lenses. Andy slept in the master bedroom. I found Matt in a guestroom. I was too hung over to be horny. The whole house was built to be bright -- skylights, big windows facing the shore. It was a terrible place to be hung over. I kicked off my jeans and got into bed next to Matt. It was the first time I'd touched another guy's skin since we parted ways for the summer three months before, but I was dry and heavy all over my body. In bed with him, I just covered my head with a blanket. He wasn't awake, barely aware enough that he put a hand on my arm and went back to sleep.
It was about 2 p.m. when I got up. Matt wasn't in bed with me. I gargled some mouthwash and went downstairs. It smelled like coffee. Matt sat outside on the deck dressed in yesterday's clothes, staring at the water while Zeppelin played on the classic rock station from Long Island. Unshaved, he wore a pair of awkward, feminine-looking sunglasses, which probably belonged to Andy's mom. His clothes smelled like cigarettes from feet away.
"There's no orange Gatorade. No Sunny D, either," Matt said. "Andy went to the store to buy some supplies. He called it the general store."
"That's what they call it out here."
"I thought Fire Island was supposed to be super-gay."
"Not here. That's a different part of the island. Too far to walk."
"You would add that last part," Matt said. "Too far to walk. As if you think I wanted to follow my gayness, not hang out on the beach."
"I wasn't, like, implying anything. I'm hung over. Don't heckle me when I'm hung over."
"Go get some coffee. Andy said he'd buy some stuff for breakfast."
Instead, I went down to the empty beach in my jeans and T-shirt and launched headfirst into the waves. This was one way to shake myself awake and start the day. I submerged in the saltwater for a few seconds. The water felt cold and the waves pushed hard against my back. After a minute or two, I walked out of the ocean, my jeans soaking and water dripping from my shirt.
"Slick decision," Canetti said, when I walked back up to the deck. "Now your clothes are going to be soaked for the day."
"Nah," I said, taking off my T-shirt and spreading it on the rail. I unbuttoned my jeans. "I'll just put on a pair of Andy's swim trunks and find an old T-shirt upstairs." I pulled down my wet, heavy jeans and stood outside in my dark-blue boxers. "This was a good way to wake up."
And I did feel better, if slightly cold from the water and a breeze.
"I'm not going to lie," Canetti said. "It doesn't suck seeing you looking like this. You're not, like, ugly in wet boxers."
"You should go swimming," I said. "It'll wake you up."
"Yeah, but right now, I'm just starving," he said. "I'm not going to do anything until I get some breakfast."
Upstairs, I found a pair of Andy's board shorts. The fact that Matt had been checking me out had me at half mast. I looked down at my dick and swiveled my hips, letting it slap side to side before I pulled up my stolen swim trunks and let it calm down.
Andy had bought a couple bags of overpriced groceries and was trying to cook bacon and eggs.
"Look, Joe!" he said. "They had your favorite." He held up a bottle of Sunny Delight.
"I don't know how this joke came up that I love Sunny D, and why you tools think it's hilarious."
"What's hilarious is your umbrage and your overdramatic denial of how much you like it."
I took a bottle of Gatorade instead. It was sweet relief.
"Why are you in my swimming suit?"
"I went swimming in my clothes and and needed something to wear."
"That sounds about right," Andy said.
Matt was still sitting outside, smoking with coffee and watching the waves.
"Matt's a pretty fun dude," Andy said.
"Thanks. He's not bad."
"He, like, looooves you. I can tell just by the way he looks at you and talks about you."
"Stop being a seventh-grade girl."
Andy cackled. I couldn't tell if he was being serious or trying to get a reaction out of me.
"Seriously, though. He seems like a good person for you. He's a little weird in some of the ways you're a little weird, but in a smoother way."
"Fuck you with your Oprah bullshit," I said. "That's not how I roll."
"Exactly my point," Andy said.
Andy wasn't a great cook, but at that point I was starving, and the sunnyside eggs and rubbery bacon were the antidote to everything.
We swam for awhile. Matt wore a spare pair of swimming trunks, but he was skinny enough that they sagged on him, even with the drawstring tight.
"I mean, I know I'm skinny, but I'm not that skinny," he said. "My waist is 30 inches."
"The elastic gets warped," Andy said. "I think some of these have been around the house for ten years."
Canetti had a dark tan already. I could make out lines of bright white skin just above the waistband. Me, I had to douse myself in sunscreen. Andy was freckled all over his shoulders and upper back. Looking at him, I decided that I had an edge on him in at least one category: less long-term sun damage.
Andy and I bodysurfed with the waves as they came in. Canetti did his best, but the force of the waves pushed him under. Every time he rose from the waves, he tugged up at his swim trunks.
"You know how to swim, right?" I said to Matt.
"I was on a swim team for part of high school," he said. "It was the last time I was much of an athlete, and I wasn't even very good then."
"It somewhat shows," I said. "I didn't know you could smoke while breaststroking."
"Don't make me take you down," Matt said.
"I could throw you. Like, literally throw you."
Andy's hair hung over his forehead. He pushed my shoulder. Andy sunk whenever a wave came in, letting it roll over his head, while I leaped up on tiptoes and let the waves push me up. Matt was smily. From 20 yards away his teeth looked super-white. I could see his shoulderblades and collarbone and the outline of his ribs. Canetti looked like a Ryan McGinley photo.
It wasn't a private beach, but it was difficult to get there, and unless you had a house on the island, you probably weren't out, especially on a Tuesday. An old couple appeared to be with pre-teen grandchildren. A middle-age couple was on the beach in chairs with blankets. The guy was heavy and wore what looked like a speedo (Germans?) but they stayed out of the water. We didn't exactly have the beach to ourselves, but over the full horizon, I could spot about 18 people.
Alone with my two friends, so few others in sight. The sun at my face and shoulders and salt on my lips. It felt glorious.
I wanted to express this joy, and since Andy was closest, I dunked him. I grabbed him into a headlock and pushed him forward. His head went under. His skin felt smooth and slippery. I've always appreciated the density of another guy's head and the texture of a wet scalp. He slid out from my grip right as a wave overcame us. He grabbed me back, put his arm around my neck and throat, holding me against him before he plunged backward and both of us went underwater. It wasn't a horny thing, but his skin felt good; his body heat in the seawater felt good. I put my arm around his chest. He still had his arm around my neck, but I was able to loosen his grip enough that, with the bouyancy of the water, I situated him onto my right shoulder like cargo. The way his body lined against me, I could feel that I was giving Andy a little bit of a stiffy. I let go of him, and he flopped back headfirst into the water, his knees against my back and his arms touching my legs.
"You're too rowdy," Andy said. "I could have drowned."
"Don't be a pussy," I said.
Matt was coming back toward us. "Don't dunk me," he said. He kept his distance.
"Nobody's immune," Andy said.
"But he's so skinny, it's not fair," I said. "Asymmetrical warfare. I could just kind of throw him around if I wanted."
"Stop saying that," Matt said.
"Kinky," Andy said.
"Or abusive," Matt said.
"The only person around here who gets abused is me, and that's just verbally."
"Poor baby."
"You know you love it."
I must have sort of loved it, because I had a hard-on inside my swim trunks. It was mostly from touching Andy. I wasn't super horned; it was just a lot of skin. The ensuing banter and Matt's proximity didn't help. I was concerned that one of them would move to shove me under and in the jostling that followed, I'd probably be revealed, so I kept a safe distance.
"These trunks are too loose," Matt said. "I don't want anybody to think that I'm mooning."
"There's nobody here to see it," Andy said.
"I'm going to go up on the beach and put a shirt on," I said, trying to adjust myself under the water. "I think I'm starting to burn."
I faced away from them, feeling my stiffy wilt toward respectability but keeping myself hunched down as I approached the beach, just to keep safe. Andy had left our clothes in the laundry before we went out to swim, so my T-shirt was still sopped in the laundry machine. I threw it all in the dryer and wrapped an extra towel around my shoulders. Before I went back outside, I grabbed some sunscreen, a couple cans of Miller Lite, and a Stephen King paperback.
Matt and Andy stayed in the water. I curled up in the sand with one towel under me and the other around my shoulders, and proceeded to fall asleep before I was halfway through my beer. I'm not sure how long I was out, but when I came awake, it was that kind of dry, stiff, dehydrated feeling that happens when you've been under the sun. Matt and Andy sat on the sand in front of me. They'd dug trenches with their hands and packed what looked like the start of a crude sandcastle.
They didn't know that I'd woken up. Their backs were to me. Andy had a light dusting of sand on his shoulderblades, like he'd been powdered down with it. He even had defined back muscles. I don't know if he'd gotten more strident about going to the gym or I'd never noticed before, or what. You could make out the muscles in his shoulders and his triceps, the notches in his spine, even the tops of his glutes above his waistline. Andy's blondish-red hair was slightly damp, so they hadn't been out of the water for that long. Matt, in his stupid saggy trunks, while he sat in the sand, half of his white ass hung out, stark against the tanline of his Italian complexion.
They were having a nerdfest conversation about Senate races and how much they hated George W. Bush. Matt probably was happy to have a new audience. I picked up some loose sand and leaned over toward Matt, letting the sand out of my fingers and down the half-open back of Matt's swimming suit. An ample amount of it seemed to slide into his asscrack.
He didn't physically react. "How did I know you were going to do something like that?"
"It was the obvious choice."
He peered back at me, pathetic with a towel wrapped around my shoulders. He didn't look pissed. "I'd throw some sand in your face, but that would bring me down to your level."
"Whatever. I'd just throw you."
He stood up, hosting his trunks. "And now I've got sand all over my balls," he said, then trotted back out to the water. He swam to chest level, then maneuvered off his swim trunks, working them through the water and then wringing them out in the air.
"He's so naked right now," Andy said.
"You must like that," I said.
"He's all yours."
"I know. You can still like it."
"I sort of like it. He's sort of hot."
"You're sort of retarded."
"You're sort of gay," Andy said. "You're a raging gay and you know it."
"Well, you're a raging retard."
"Go drink more Sunny D," Andy said.
When Matt was naked, it was like Michelangelo's David -- only without such defined abs and with smaller thigh muscles. He'd taken a shower; he said that his balls were still sandy. My wet swim trunks were hanging on the bathroom towel rack and the clothes were still in the dryer. I was still tired and hung over, lying in bed with a towel around my waist. Matt's dick and balls were still tight from the cold of the ocean. I guess mine were, too. He wasn't hard and didn't have a semi. His black pubes looked extra-dark in the context of the stark tan that started at his hips, and then started again halfway down his thighs. Restricted from the swim, his dick looked pretty tiny, his balls pulled tight and hairy against him.
"Lemme borrow your towel," he said to me.
"Shut up."
"Dude, I'm dripping wet and there wasn't a towel. I'm not going to walk around the house naked looking for a towel."
He was dripping wet, in fact, and he smelled like Irish Spring from 10 feet away. His wet footprints left marks on the floor. I sat up on the edge of the bed and looked at him. He knew I was looking at him, holding his hand out for the beach towel wrapped around my waist.
When I stood up my dick was already at 90 degrees in front of my hips. I pulled the towel from my waist and wrapped it around his wet shoulders. His arms were over my neck. He pulled my face up to his, hard, and pushed up to me with his lips. His tongue wrapped up against mine. I exhaled deep out of my nose.
"Fuck," he said, still dripping wet, gripping me tight around the shoulders. "Really, all I wanted was to dry off, but this isn't bad."
"Ball sand," I said.
"Fuck," he said, kind of gasping it out. "Oh, fuck."
His dick had gone from cold, wet and tiny to hot, hard and long in approximately 45 seconds. The wet of his chest and the smell of his soap stuck to me. My arms wrapped over his shoulders and his looped under my armpits and around my back. Usually, Matt liked really long kisses, but these lasted about five seconds. He pressed his lips up to mind, and our tongues clashed, and then he pulled out, like he was anxious for air. Then he craned his neck back while I kissed his big fucking Adam's apple, and he laughed, like he'd suddenly caught himself aware and was amused by it.
"Oh, fuck," he said, while I kissed and sucked at his neck
"You keep saying that," I said.
"God, how am I letting you get to me like this?"
"Like what?"
One of his hands pulled gently at the back of my hair, the other grabbed tight at my ass, just kind of gripping at it, like my left cheek was a sandbag or whatnot.
"Fuck, it was like I kind of forgot about it until you dropped trou on the deck after you woke up."
I took one of my arms down, gripping both of our dicks with it, first keeping my fingers light around their heads, sort of stroking the slit of his cock with my thumb, then taking it to mine, slickening it up with my pre-cum, then back to the tip of his, like I was trying to slide some of my pre-cum into his dick. He tugged at my lower lip with his teeth. I manipulated our cocks with my hands so that we were pressuring against each other at the undersides . Matt bit softly at an earlobe; the exhale from his nostrils slipped into my ear. When he moaned slightly the bass of it filled my ear and tickled deep in my chest.
We sort of dropped back into the bed, with me on my back and Matt's legs straddling me, his ass arched into the air while he kissed my face, pressing my hair backward. He repositioned to sit at my hips, the base of his weight pressuring my balls a little, his dick pointing straight into the air. His tanline seemed incredibly hot to me -- to the extent that he had muscle definition, the tan made his stomach muscles stand out more, until they hit the contrast of his waistline, at which point the paleness of his skin brought a clearer contrast to his black pubes and the stream of his treasure trail. I had my hands at his hips. He smirked down on me.
"There were times this summer when I'd get pretty horny," he said, "and then I'd just think about the way your face looks, and I'd cum in like five seconds."
"I jerk off to you, too," I said.
"Andy's hot. His body's, like, smoking. If I were you I would've been hitting that."
"It's too weird. Besides, you shouldn't say that." I swung his dick back and forth with a finger. "That's, like, a backhanded way of putting yourself down, like I should pick him over you. Which is not the case."
He cocked his head and smiled. "I think that's the most romantic thing you've said to me. It's actually kind of sweet."
"Well. It's somewhat true."
"I always suspected that you're a closet romantic," he said. "Among other closet things."
I plinged his dick back and forth like a pendulum. "The way you're sitting hurts my balls a little."
He shifted forward a couple of inches, basically sitting on my dick, his balls resting on my belly. I pushed toward him with my hips, pressuring my dick against the crevice between his ass and balls. I felt the spine notches in his lower back. I pulled him closer to me, and he played along, so that he was on his knees, straddling my chest, his ass arched backward, with his balls hanging a few inches south of my chin and his erect cock taking up part of my field of vision.
I still had afterburn from my hangover, tired from the swimming and the sun on my skin. My body felt content and calm and warm on the inside. I slid my hands up and down the length of Matt's inner thigh, from the crook of his knee to the band of his groin muscle. I lifted my chin, sliding my closed lips and my two-day stubble against the slack of his balls.
I took his dick into my mouth, hold of him around the lower back, my hands pressed just above the top of his butt. He stayed positioned so that he straddled at my armpits, leaning back slightly so that my torso supported some of his body weight. I don't know if my dicksucking skills had improved over time, if he was extra-horny, or if I was more into it than I was before. My lips made sloppy smacking sounds against his cockhead; the rubbery squeak of imperfect suction cups; holding his shaft halfway down, I stuck the tip of my tongue into the slit of his dick, thinking that it was where Matt Canetti's cum jolted out of him and how hot that was, working it lightly and then just letting my tongue press into it for a few seconds, squeezing him at the waist and lower back. I glanced up the length of his torso, my vision taken up by his soft smooth tan skin, his head leaned back while he moaned, the bulge of his Adam's apple sticking out from him like a tree knot. I deep-throated his whole shaft, to the point where his pubes were at my nostrils and I felt the tip of him slide at a tonsil; my gag reflex was cool but it ran hell on my jaw muscles; I wondered if that was how an anaconda felt when it swallowed an alpaca or whatever, and Canetti wasn't even that hung. I liked it, though. I liked the feel of him stuffed into me like that, my slightly sweaty forehead pressed to his slightly sweaty stomach, his hand gentle at my hair while he half-gasped and half-moaned for me. His dick slid out of my mouth, slick with my spit, and I rubbed the tip of it at my lips like it was chapstick.
He sat with his bodyweight pressuring my chest and upper ribs, his spit-slicked balls at my chin, the sweat of his ass at the sweat of my chest. I ran my hands at the outside of his legs. He touched my face.
"I wish I could, like, have sex you," I said.
"If I could do it I'd let you fuck me," he said.
"I know it's not gonna happen."
"Neither of us would like being on the receiving end," he said, "and as you know, I don't much care for being on the giving end, either."
I tugged at my hard on, Cannetti's shaft still a few inches from my eyes. I could've cum any time I wanted. I put a finger in his navel and told him to stop sitting on me. He slid off, lying down next to me, working over my nipple with his mouth, groaning slightly as he did, tugging at his boner while I worked my precum with my thumb. When he kissed my lips our eyelashes hit each other. He told me that I still tasted salty from the ocean.
My cumshot was so forceful that it jetted past my head, some of it getting on the wall and pillow, with drops of it hitting my hair and Canetti's neck and shoulders. The second shot went as far as Matt's neck, with shots three through six not going past my torso. Matt continued kissing me as he gasped and breathed tight, shooting his own load against my hip and stomach, his balls and dick squeezing against me as he used my body for friction and our lips for bonus points.
We wiped each other off with the beach towel that started this. Matt and I stayed on top of the sheets naked and hard, not doing anything to each other either, just kind of regarding our bodies and taking an occasional admiring back-of-finger swipe at a hip bone or nipple or patch of body hair. He kissed me on the cheek, squeezed me tight and curled into me. I decided that I needed to get off again. For a couple of minutes we jerked it side by side. Our cum was less voluminous on round two. The smell of our room had an undercurrent of jizz and shouldersweat.
I needed the nap that followed. We slept almost three hours. I woke first. There was still light, but it was late-day light, just before the sun would go down. We were going to stay on the island another night. I detached myself out of Canetti's slight entanglement and looked out the window. He rolled on this stomach, his body looking tan and thin and soft, his naked butt exposed in a fetal position.
I wrapped our beach/cum towel around myself and darted down the hall to retrieve our clothes from the dryer. They smelled heavenly. No sign of Andy. I dressed myself. Matt remained naked and asleep.
Andy Trafford sat on the porch with the radio on, a pair of empty beer bottles at the deck and a paperback of short stories in his hand.
"Hey."
"Hey," he said. "You get a nap in? Among other things."
"I needed to rest up."
"It's cool. I dig him. I approve."
"I approve of you as well," I said.
"It's a circle of approval."
"We're all extremely courteous."
"Have you heard the new Dylan bootleg release? The one from the '75 tour with the Rolling Thunder Revue? It's awesome. Hard Rain is completely rocking. Almost bluesy."
"Yes, and it's awesome." I sat next to him. "I always remember hanging out in your basement listening to your parents' Dylan CDs and playing video games in, like, seventh grade."
"That's kind of when we became good friends, I know."
"You probably still suck at Mario."
"I always won at Mario and you know it."
"They call it selective amnesia," I said. "What's for dinner?"
"I bought burgers and hot dogs. We can grill out."
"Canetti will probably wake up soon."
"It's so cute, seeing you with a boyfriend," Andy said.
"You're just going to mess with my head and then I'll start doing weird shit."
"You always do weird shit," Andy said. "It's more a question of whether your weird shit is entertaining, or dysfunctional."
"Well, you'll have your own gay lover when you get back to Berkeley," I said. "His name's Peter, right?"
"Yeah," Andy said, "I don't know. We've e-mailed over the summer. Something in the tone is weird. I don't know how it's going to play out. But whatever happens, it's cool. I'm not sure if my head is in a place where I should be hanging out with just one guy for awhile. I should probably check things out. See what I like."
"What do you think you like?"
"That's a good question. I probably like a lot of things."
"Sunny D?" I said.
"That shit's just for you."
I drank Sunny Delight with dinner. They drank bottles of beer. I was starving, and they probably were too, because Matt and Andy seemed a little drunk off their first bottles. We sat outside on the deck with the radio turned up over the sound of the ocean. We ate burgers, hot dogs, potato salad in a plastic tub and a bag of chips.
Matt volunteered to clear the table and I began drinking after dinner. For the first couple of hours, or behavior was basic, even though Matt and Andy were deeper in the tank than I was. We sat at the table playing Spades under the floodlights. Andy lit citronella candles to ward off mosquitoes.
I won the card game and was met with a rustle of profanity, recriminations and accusations of cheating. Matt stood to stretch and look out at the water. It was clear out, with stars and moonlight and all of that shit. The water was visible from the deck. I wasn't paying attention when I heard the stream falling a few feet back. Matt was pissing between the rails, off the side of the deck.
"Don't do that!" I said. "You're sending your urine into clean sand. Neighbors will see."
"Dude, no neighbors during the week," Andy said.
The sound of Matt urinating flowed down until it was done. He faced us with his flaccid dick hanging through his fly.
"Classy," I said. Andy laughed at him. "It's not even big enough soft to be that impressive, retard," I said. "That's so primate."
"Humans are primates," Matt said, putting his dick back into his khaki shorts. "You of all people should know that."
"Why me of all people?"
"You have wide-ranging general knowledge," Matt said. "You're a classic Isaiah Berlin hedgehog."
"Wrong! Isaiah Berlin says that the hedgehog knows one big thing. The fox knows many things."
"Joe's one thing isn't that big," Andy said.
"Oh, it's perfectly adequate," Matt said, "and besides, I know the Isaiah Berlin fox and hedgehog categories. I said that just to test Joe, and it worked, the motherfucking smartypants."
"I don't even know what we're talking about anymore," I said.
"Ron Jeremy is the Hedgehog," Andy said.
"He's hideous. It never occurred to me before that Ron Jeremy's dick was named for Isaiah Berlin."
"This is completely off the tracks."
"Everybody is so weird. Like, so weird in their souls."
"Do you have any pot?" I asked Andy.
"And why are you asking?"
"Because these are, like, high conversations more than they're drunk conversations."
"I feel like I'm a little too drunk to appreciate the buzz," Andy said, "but to answer your question, do you want me to get it?"
"I want you to do what you want to do."
A few minutes later I lit the bowl and held the smoke in my lungs. I exhaled and passed it to Canetti.
"You know I don't do this."
"But nobody's around, and you generally don't piss off decks, either," I said. "You can do it and get away with it. There won't be rumors at school about how you're a pothead."
"You've never tired pot?" Andy said to him.
"Dude, I want to be a Rhodes Scholar. I want to be Secretary of State."
"Dude, you just pissed off a fucking deck and then let your dick hang out. Poor diplomacy."
"Ever hear of Bill Clinton?"
"You should smoke pot at least once in your life."
"Orgasms feel really great on pot," Andy said.
"I don't need pot when I have Joey," Matt said, clenching my neck with his fingers.
The comment -- the earnestness of it, or the direct reference to the two of us -- came out awkward. Quiet seconds passed. Matt picked up the pipe and regarded it. He lit the bowl and breathed in, then passed it back to me.
In the small galaxy of effects that marijuana inspires, its impact on Matt was to make him talk in a slow, emphatic stream.
"The thing that guys like you need to understand," Matt said, "is that as soon as you come out, all kinds of things are going to start happening. Like, mostly good. You'll have all kinds of opportunities that you didn't know were there. Guys you didn't think were gay are going to start to get interested. Like, other closet cases. Because you sort of defy the stereotype. A frat brother who'd never look twice at a stereotypical gay guy will find out about you and you'll seem safer to him, and he'll be interested because you're hot and masculine and don't threaten his sense of identity in the way that certain other kinds of gay guys would. When I first came out I was the kid in the candy store. It was like, these dudes kept coming out of the woodwork. A lot of them are lame and boring, or else they're sort of basket cases, and they spend the whole time freaking out about themselves and the fact that they like boners. But if you're just looking to get off for a night, some third-hand acquaintance, who's six foot three and on the crew team and has a girlfriend named Mandy, he isn't necessarily the worst way to spend a night.
"And some of your friends are going to treat you differently, but not most of them, and the ones who treat you differently, it's not like they're prejudiced against you or anything, it's like they're oversensitive about things you don't care about. They'll start to call Wimbledon gay, and then they'll stop themselves for fear of offending you and then they'll get embarrassed. Or maybe they'll be pretty surprised, and they'll ask you some very P.C. questions. Chicks will ask about your lovelife, and because you're no longer threatening to them, they'll get, like, much more emotionally vulnerable in your presence, and get attached. You'll become the surrogate boyfriend. Hence, the stereotype of girls having the gay best friend. It can be somewhat condescending, but they always mean well. In this day and age, nobody's going to call you a faggot and punch you for being gay."
"What about your parents?" Andy said.
"They said that they always knew. They were some of the easiest ones. I didn't grow up in a conservative religious household, and I assume the same is true for you guys. My dad was slightly awkward, in a nice way, but my mom was cool. It's the kind of thing you always hope your mom would say -- how she just wants you to be happy and find the person who completes you. Jerry Maguire shit. Everybody's parents are different, right? So it's hard to generalize. But if your parents were in a certain generation and are relatively progressive, they're not going to be too freaked. From talking to my friends, I feel like the biggest hurdle with them is kind of classic parent stuff. For instance, my mom is significantly more interested in gay marriage than I am. She sends me links to articles. I find it annoying. I mean, gay marriage takes an institution that's stupid but heteronormative, and then imposes it on gays. It basically takes gays and makes them Republicans. Why a freethinking person who cares for gays supports that mystifies me. But it's her way of taking an interest and trying to be supportive, so I act grateful, and I guess it's pretty cute of her."
"So you're saying we're not going to get married," I said.
"Yuck," said Canetti. "You know you're going to come out eventually. You'll, like, have to. You're way past the experiment stage. So you'll take a deep breath and you'll do it, and the thing is, for guys like you, Josephine, it's like, you don't have to steel yourself for anything bad to happen. It's more like, how you handle it. It's going to give you more power than you realize. You're suddenly have all of these guys at your disposal and you'll barely have to try. Like, for you two guys, safety won't be an issue, because you're both prudent and sensible. It's more a matter of keeping it in check and knowing what to do with it. You don't need to drive the Ferrari at 200 down the freeway. You can just drive it around the block and enjoy the attention."
"God, all the metaphors."
"Am I talking too much?" Matt said.
"Always," I said.
"But it's helpful, man," Andy said. "It's good to hear it."
"I'm the shepherd to so many gays," Matt said. "Like, you remember that red-headed guy who cornered you at my party? Started talking to you about how gay he is? Not, like, super-attractive, maybe?"
"His name was Charlie, right? He wasn't ugly. You shouldn't talk like that."
"God, that guy, he's a basket case. He called me a few times this summer, just because he gets so freaked. Way crazier than you two. Don't worry. Be gay."
"Like, don't worry, be happy."
"Don't Worry, Be Gay would be the worst song."
"Didn't the Backstreet Boys do that song?"
"No, that was N-Sync."
"You would be an expert on boy bands."
"Dude, all the blond singers in those boy bands are hot."
"What about the fat one?"
"I don't know who you're talking about, but not a fat one, no. Probably not the hot boy band?"
I said "Isaiah Berlin," and laughed hysterically. I almost toppled out of the lawn chair.
"Dude, who wants to go swimming again?" Andy said.
"Will you get me a beer first?" I said.
"I don't like to go swimming at night," Matt said. "The water scares me at night. I'm scared of drowning."
"Hey, Joe," Andy said, "remember summer after freshman year of high school, after my mom went to sleep and a few of us went skinnydipping?"
"Yeah, God. It was too dark to see anything, though."
"That's what you say. Remember Ben Chase?"
"Oh, yeah. That guy."
"He was so hung, right?"
"Yeah," I said. "From, like, seventh grade forward. Too bad for you he moved to Seattle."
"I wonder what happened to him after that?"
"He really wasn't that smart."
"But hot, and his dick was huge," Andy said. "I jerked off to him all the time before he moved. I suggested skinny dipping just to see him naked some more. And then he moved to Seattle."
"Do you know," I said to Canetti, feeling drunk and high and indiscreet, "who's got a huge one? Do you remember Chris Riis?"
"Your soft-spoken blond friend," Matt said. "Attractive guy. Really?"
"Yeah, it's, like, huge. Bigger than Ben Chase's."
"That's kinda hot," Matt said. "I like that guy. He's not always a smartass. Like you and your sidekick. Sam." Matt pointed at Andy. "Do you know about Joe's friend Sam? The two of them get together, and it's like asshole city. If you're ever around the two of them, duck and run."
"But back to guys with huge dicks," Andy said.
The comment hung pregnant. I already felt tawdry for mentioning guileless, innocent Chris, and I had no interest in revisiting Andy's secret middle-school crush on Ben Chase.
"Oh, fuck it," Andy said. "I'm going swimming again." He stood up and took off his shirt. His pecs and abs and shoulder muscles looked more precise when lit by flood lights and mosquito candles. Facing away from us, he tugged down his khaki shorts and boxers in one quick move. He kicked them aside and then darted off toward the water, his white round butt dashing like the tail of a firefly.
"He wants us," Matt slurred, drunk and high, "to take off our clothes and go swimming with him. But I'm too drunk for that shit, and I'm scared of drowning at night."
"Meh."
"At least in the day, if the riptide takes you, you know where you are."
"Pot makes me sedative," I said. "I can't run around like that. Just, like, want to sit and talk."
"He wants to hook up with us," Matt said.
"Nah. Just you."
"No. He thinks the three of us are going to fool around. Dudes get like that sometimes. He's a pretty hot guy. He's nice, too. Good job in fucking that one up."
"The thing is," I said, "I kind of like having it secret. I like having this part of my life that's only for me. And just with you guys. It's like, there's a part of it that if other people knew about it, it would be less real. Do you know what I mean? It's like your thoughts. Sometimes you have thoughts and if you say them, it would ruin what it means. And with this, I have this one thing, and it belongs to me, and there's nothing anybody else can say or do to change it or affect it. That makes it more personal and it makes it more real. Even when it sucks and I wish I could be normal, I'm the only one it belongs to." I took one of Matt's cigarettes and lit it. "I don't need a lot of hot, repressed frat guys wanting handjobs from me." I inhaled from the cigarette. "I don't want to be anybody's fucking shepherd." I exhaled smoke into the air.
Like some kind of kismet joke, the radio stopped playing "D'yer Mak'er," which was supplanted by Elvis singing "Suspicious Minds." Briefly, I considered mentioning to Matt how the song had lit me up in the bar the night before, but there was a point to prove to myself, so I kept my small excitement a secret.
A few minutes later, naked Andy lumbered back from the water, dripping wet, modestly cupping a hand over his privates as he passed us, water droplets lit on his skin. Still wet and facing away from us, he dressed himself. Matt and I watched him, checking out his muscled butt as he bent over to pick up his clothes, the profile of his sea-shrunk dick making a brief appearance as he pulled up his boxers.
Maybe Matt had been correct in his diagnosis of Andy's scheme. It got me kind of hard, but I was too drunk, high and tired to think about it. I stepped over to the cushioned lounger, where I'd slept away too much of the morning, and curled up in the fetal position, staring out at the night and listening to the slow cradle of the waves flushing over the sand.
A little later Matt was next to me, lying on his back with an arm over my shoulder. Air gets cold by the ocean; the warmth of his body felt good. Rolled up with my back to him, I entangled our bare feet. He was still talking and drinking and smoking, bantering with Andy, who leaned forward in a chair, facing us and jammering at Canetti about his gayness and politics and something more about Isaiah Berlin, I think. I was half-conscious and dehydrated by then; I tuned out their chatter. I hugged Matt's skinny arm for warmth.
I woke up in bed with him the next morning. I was in boxers. Matt wasn't wearing anything. I kicked my shorts down and he stayed asleep. It was nice laying with him like that for awhile.
That morning I finished what was left of the Sunny Delight. Early afternoon, we locked up Andy's house, hiked the width of the skinny island, caught the ferry back to the mainland, took a cab to the train station, rode the LIRR back to Penn Station, hopped the 7 train to Grand Central, and endured the Metro North back to Westchester. I was tired and slow, like a little bit of the previous night's pot was still in my system. The three of us were unshaven and sunburned, but I thought we looked pretty good. Women checked us out. I needed a toothbrush.
Canetti stayed at my parents' house for a couple more days. In her heart, I think my mom was pissed about my disappearing act, but with a houseguest around, she wasn't going to bitch me out, and I picked up on my dad's maneuverings to keep her chill. Neither of them suspected a thing as far as Matt and I were concerned. The doors in our house didn't lock; between the hours of three and four a.m., Matt and I would fool around in my bed, and then he'd dress and crash on the air mattress in case my mom or one of my brothers checked in the next morning. We made day trips back down to the city, just to hang out and walk around, keeping ourselves clean and sober and nicotine free, returning to Westchester at responsible hours.
Before he left for Boston and his parents, we risked about 20 minutes of making out behind my bedroom door, which prompted some behind-the-fly fumblings, culminated with Canetti jizzing in his jeans, leading to him scrambling to change his shorts before we left for the train station, his personally marked boxers discreetly kicked under my bed.
"All right, dude," he said to me, slapping hands before walking off to the train platform, "I'll see you at school in a little less than a month."
I washed them and everything, and whatever else happens in this story, I offer you this: I still keep a pair of Matt Canetti's gray boxers in my T-shirt drawer.