If my story were a TV series, this chapter would start Joe College, Season 2; if it were a fat 19th Century novel, it would be Joe College, Book 2. Since this format doesn't allow for those kinds of clean breaking points and transitions, please allow Sam Frost to reintroduce me:
"You tardy, tardy cocksucker," he said.
- HOW SAM FROST ENRAGED A LADY TRAFFIC COP.
He waited at the airport curb in the Jeep he'd driven from Toronto. I had two bags slung over my shoulders and a dense package-taped box in a cart, which I steered with my knees.
"Dude, help with one of my bags." I was sweating and felt like a shoulder might dislocate.
"Lazy twat!"
Sam's verbiage drew disapproving looks from Midwesterners at the airport pick-up. It was embarrassing. He trod away from his jeep and lifted a bag from my shoulder, hugging me in a way that almost sent me and my bags toppling backward. It was a forceful, shoulder-to-shoulder hug. As we were loading my belongings into the back, a lady traffic cop came around the front corner.
"Can you not read?" she screamed, so loud that it startled me.
"Pardon?" Sam said.
"Can you not read?" she shouted. "No standing, no pick up!" She pointed at a sign. I noticed the red curb.
"Sorry about that," I said to Sam. "We were delayed during takeoff-"
"No time for talking!" screamed the lady traffic cop. "You have ten seconds or it's a three hundred dollar ticket-"
"Oh, fuck it!" Sam shouted at her.
"Let's just go," I said, slamming the back door and darting up toward the passenger side.
I feared escalation -- that Sam would say something more obscene or offensive, or abruptly shift the Jeep and injure the lady traffic cop (I mean, she was just doing her job) but he pulled away without incident.
"Fucking bitch!" Sam said.
"Well," I said, "thanks for picking me up."
"Oh, not a problem," he said. "If I got a ticket, I would've made you pay, you wealthy, petulant fuck."
I was a few steps too tired and stressed to fight in the way Sam undoubtedly had been missing. Plus, the retard was playing an Offspring album on his CD player, which annoyed me to distraction.
"You know you're the last one here, right?" Sam said.
"Yes. Thanks for your drunk-dial last night."
"Not a problem. You were missed."
"That's, just, like, so fucking sweet of you that I can hardly stand it."
"Your sarcasm is noted and disapproved."
"Do we have beer at the house?
"Yes, but what we mostly have had is Mr. and Mrs. Riis helping set up. Which in one sense is annoying as balls, because it means no drinking or other ribald activity. On the other hand, they keep buying us loads of shit. We have dishes and towels!"
"Dishes and towels are necessities."
"No fuck," Sam said. "When I left, Chris and his parents were leaving to buy us a grill and to get Chris curtains for his room. Isn't that wild?"
"How's Chris?"
"Chris," Sam said. "The renaissance of Chris Riis continues."
"That sounds like a disaster," I said. "Renaissance how?"
"He's all grown up. Doesn't dress like a golf caddy anymore. Has a new haircut. Lost some weight. Must've been running without you."
"As soon as he wears hipster T-shirts or takes the Lord's name in vain, I'm sending him home to mom."
Sam laughed as he said, "That guy is so getting laid this year. I'm not worried, because if he starts getting too cocky, we'll just make him cry."
When we got within a few miles of school, and parts of campus and the town peaked out between the hills and trees, I felt buttery in my heart, the way that I did when I landed back in the City and saw the skyline from the airport runway. It's like I spent the summer forgetting how much I loved it. Suddenly Offspring's moronic music didn't sound so bad. I did my best to recall the house we'd rented and decided that as soon as we pulled up, I'd run out and tackle the first friend I saw.
- HOW I REMEMBER MEETING KATIE, AND A DIGRESSION ABOUT OUR HOUSE.
Small moving trucks and mini-vans lined our street. Scatterings of parents helped load belongings into houses. The air smelled of hamburgers on a grill and it sounded like pretty girls listening to Jack Johnson songs. On our front porch sat a foxy red-headed girl who I remembered as Katie from Chicago.
The girls we were living with, I knew, but hadn't spent a lot of time with. They were Sam's aspirational girls. From what I'd observed, he wasn't likely to get anywhere with them. Katie from Chicago: red hair and freckles, built like a swimmer, more like the chick from That 70s Show than the South Park gingers. When Sam's jeep pulled into our short driveway she smiled and waved.
"Hi!" she said, her voice high and lilting, her face beaming at me like I was her old friend. When I stepped out of the car we hugged like we missed each other. We said how good it was to be back and we talked about our summers. Her comfort was such that I wondered if we'd shared a moment or two of platonic, forgotten intimacies during late, drunken nights.
She held up her bottle of yellow Gatorade. "I'm so drinking Country Time and vodka," she said. "Don't tell Mr. and Mrs. Riis. They're such sweethearts. If they knew I was buzzed they might cry."
Our house was a longtime college rental, and it wasn't as immaculate as a Tri-Delt sorority house, but it wasn't bad, and the condition was better than I remembered from my walk-through with Sam the prior spring. The cigarette-scarred pool table remained in the dining room, but the dirty dishes were gone, the linoleum had been scrubbed clean and the posters of Budweiser boob girls had been stripped from the walls. The carpet was still worn and the couches had seen losses of innocence, but it was no dump.
Because my bedroom will see much activity (PG and otherwise) for the remainder of this story, let me disrupt my slight narrative momentum to describe it. It was the only space on the third floor, in what might have been an attic. To get there, I took a metal spiral staircase from the second floor, which led to a trap door that didn't lock or latch. The room was huge -- three or four hundred square feet -- but the ceiling was a liability: seven feet high if I walked straight down the middle, but at a steep triangular angle. If I wasn't walking down the center of the room, I'd hit my head, which I did frequently in the succeeding three years. Fortunately, beams of polished wood ran the length of the ceiling: no loose nails would impale my skull. There were windows at either end and a skylight. Brown carpet, beat down and soft. The bed sat at the far end, a lumpy mattress on an old metal frame. Aside from a chipped wooden dresser, it came with no other furnishings. The room had a slight but undeniable odor that came from generations of incense and other smoke.
As for me, I arrived with almost nothing. Clothes, a laptop computer, fresh sheets and a comforter, a few favorite photos and a box packed tight with CDs and necessary paperbacks. Unpacking took less than 20 minutes, as I stacked my CDs and paperbacks in a corner and jammed rumpled clothes in the dresser. I made a mental list of belongings I'd need to acquire. In the succeeding weeks, I'd set up with a futon (moving a couch up there would have been impossible) and a papasan chair (ditto for a Lazy Boy) and a beanbag. I'd get a TV and a small, cheap sound system. By October, that room was golden. It was as good as having my own studio apartment.
In the early-September heat, though, the empty room was stuffy and without air conditioning. I opened windows on either end, put on a fresh T-shirt and went back downstairs.
I was the last to arrive: the Sunday before Labor Day. Everyone else had been there since at least Friday. There had been parties the night before, and a home football game the prior afternoon. When I was booking my flight back to school I hadn't thought of the things I'd be missing.
Who else was I living with? Please indulge me some more blunt exposition. There were seven of us: me, Chris, Sam and red-headed Katie; Trevor (briefly mentioned in Chapter 9) the tall, scrawny guy who liked jam bands and kept a bong, the son of Indian parents who emigrated to Houston from Bangalore before he was born; Jessica, five-foot-two, from a South Jersey suburb of Philadelphia; and the third girl, Michelle, an athletic-looking Asian girl from a Detroit suburb who, I later learned, received her name for fact of being born in the state of Michigan.
Aside from Chris Riis and Sam Frost, I didn't know any of them well. They were Sam's friends. We'd had drunken nights together during freshman year, enough for me to think that they'd be acceptable as potential housemates. On that day in September of sophomore year, I thought of myself mainly as living with Sam and Chris, with a few others hanging around.
Of course it wouldn't work out that way. Luck and circumstance throw you together with people: you get dragged to a fraternity rush party and you end up knowing Matt Canetti, or you walk a drunk kid back to the dorm and end up friends with Chris Riis.
At the time I moved in, I didn't know that I'd end up, like, fucking loving these people and would in later years fly cross-country to go to their weddings and birthday parties. Mostly, I wanted them not to suck.
- HOW I REMEMBER MEETING GLEN AND BARBARA RIIS.
I was sitting on the front porch with Sam and Katie, drinking our fake, boozy Gatorade and listening to a portable radio, when Chris Riis and his parents pulled up. You know what I thought of Chris's looks before. It would be dishonest to claim that there hadn't been a fistful of nights in my life when I wearily, guiltily jerked off to him. In freshman year, part of Chris's charm was his awkwardness: the sneakers and khakis, tucked-in collared golf shirt, the old-fashioned haircut, the imperfection of the barely-noticeable extra pounds. The attractive guy who was completely clueless about how to use it.
Over that summer, Chris Riis had gotten objectively hot. Instead of looking hesitant and slightly frumpy, he announced himself as tall and blond. He didn't have the slightly unkempt, young Republican haircut with a part. It was shorter, consciously mussed and gelled. He wore cargo shorts and a T-shirt that hung loose on his shoulders. More than that, he'd lost the vestiges of his 19-year-old baby fat. He wasn't exactly lean, but he didn't look physically undisciplined. His chin and his cheeks were at sharper angles. His dimples weren't innocently adorable as much as they were sexy. His mouth didn't have the kind of hangdog, lower-lip pout that I'd associated with him. He carried a couple of bags in his hands, and when I moved for a handshake, he put his bags down and gave me an arm's length dude-hug instead.
"Glad you finally made it, dude."
"Nice to be back," I said. "What boy band are you auditioning for?"
When he blushed and stammered, I felt like an asshole for busting his new cool-guy routine, but was reassured that even if he'd taken an effort to appear smoother, it was the same Chris Riis. "You know," he mumbled. "Figured that I couldn't give you guys ammunition to call me Peter Brady all the time."
"No, you're Bobby," Sam said.
Chris's parents exited their maroon minivan with more bags. A tall man in glasses, pushing 60, said that he was Glen, Chris's dad. He was built like a former lumberjack and had a strong handshake. Dr. Glen Riis smiled and gave me a pat on the shoulder, but he was distracted by tasks at hand.
His mom didn't start with a first name. Instead, she hugged me and gave me a peck on the cheek. "Great to finally meet you, Joe." Her syllables bounced enthusiastically, and like her husband, she spoke with a milder version of the Midwestern accent I knew from the movie Fargo. Her hug was a mother's hug: unselfconscious and sincere. I could tell that she was the kind of mom who made good cookies and once liked having all the neighborhood kids over after school. I imagined that she was awesome around Christmas. Immediately, I wished she was my own. "Gosh, I've just heard so much about you, and we were waiting at the house for you to come in from the airport -- flight delays, huh? -- and eventually we decided, 'Shoot, let's go run some errands and maybe we'll get back in time.' You probably don't know this, but in our family you get credit for Chris having such a great freshman year at college."
"Oh, man, Mom," Chris said. "She's exaggerating."
"Well," I said, trying to come up with a clever line that would settle down the unwarranted enthusiasm, "I guess I do my best to make sure everything's great?"
"Oh my God," Sam said. "You would like to think that."
"You stop it," Mrs. Riis said to Sam, pointing a finger. I could tell that the two of them had a rapport, and that she liked him anyway.
Barbara and Glen Riis met at our college as undergrads, and then continued on campus while Glen went to medical school. All four of their kids had gone there, Chris being the last in succession. They had season tickets to the football games; on away days, they hung a giant school flag over the garage door. And they kept buying stuff for our house. They'd gone with Chris to a big-box store, and returned with more kitchen supplies, a vacuum, a grill, a couple of papasan chairs and food to make dinner.
- HOW I REMEMBER MEETING TREVOR AND WHY CHRIS RIIS COULD NOT GO TO LIBERTY UNIVERSITY.
During the unloading, housemate Trevor pulled up on his bike, slightly sweaty from a soccer game. When I went to shake his hand, he made the same move as Chris, giving me a distant hug.
Apparently, and despite my visible hesitation, we would be a very huggy household.
"Glad to see you again, brother," he said.
I don't mean this to sound essentialist, but for a long time, there was something odd about an Indian guy with a Texas accent.
"Likewise, likewise." I grinned stupidly, not knowing what to say. I suck at faked friendliness. "Things are looking good."
"Can you believe all this stuff they're buying for us? I want them to fucking adopt me, I swear."
"No swearing around the parents," Katie said. "Chris said they'd hate that."
"They can't hear me," Trevor said, "and besides, they're so nice. Chris might be overstating just because they're his."
"Do you think they'd buy alcohol for us?" Katie said.
"They'd withdraw Chris. Send him to Liberty University."
"Never. They're psycho about this fucking school. Chris said they put it in their will."
"Shut up."
Sam shrugged.
- HOW I REMEMBER MEETING MICHELLE, AND HER PREFERENCE OF BEHEADINGS OVER GENDER ROLES.
Housemate Michelle arrived later. She was a tall Asian girl; she was beautiful. Maybe about 5'10, with long legs and hair halfway down her shoulders. Fit -- she looked like an athlete and wore shorts that showed muscles. You could tell from her facial expressions and her body language that she had tomboy aspects. Her forehead was sweating, and she carried in each hand overflowing plastic bags from the textbook stores.
I was prepared for another weird hug, but instead, she put out her hand. Finally, a handshaker. "Hi, Joe." She, too, had a slight Midwestern accent. Her enunciation was polished and friendly, almost like a newscaster. "Great to see you again."
"You too. You were fifth floor, with the Degas poster on the wall."
"Oh my God, good memory," she said. "I don't even remember you being there."
"Just once," I said. "Sam and I picked you up for a party."
She flung herself down on our front porch couch, and proceeded with a brief, energetic rant. She explained that the campus bookstores were "out of control," and that some of the parents "are flat-out psychotic." She turned to me, gesturing with her hands. "I don't want you to think that I'm a complete nerd. Like, the Asian girl who's only into studying or whatever, because I can party, but I want to take classes that I like." She explained that she went to the bookstore with a print-out of ten classes, and spent a half hour debating herself about whether to take a class on Victorian England or a class on France from the revolution through Napoleon.
"The English history prof is supposed to be amazing," Michelle said. "She got turned down for tenure at Harvard so she's here now. She's supposed to be brilliant. But there are, like, eight different books assigned for it and they look really dense. Plus, I don't think I like social history. I think I like political and legal and military history."
She looked like she expected an answer.
"Yikes," I said.
"The problem is, the classes conflict, and the prof for the French history class is apparently a hardass. He gives C's and D's. But there are only four books for it, and they're totally up my alley. I mean, I don't care about gender roles in Victorian England. I want to read about wars and beheadings. Am I right?"
"Definitely the right call," I said. "Who wants to read about agrarian reform when you can get Robespierre and Waterloo. Liberty, equality, fraternity."
"Exactly. I told myself there's no way I'll get a C or a D," she said. "I may not be the most brilliant person, but I'm pretty sure that I won't screw up that badly."
Michelle's rambling might make you think, "Whoah, what a psychotic nerd," or, "Whoah, those classes sound awesome, I wish I were still in undergrad so I could take classes like that," but as Michelle talked, I thought, "Whoah, this is the chick version of Matt Canetti." She was high-energy and assertive, but not in a way that I found overwhelming. I need people with strong personalities and clear terms; I'm never sure what to make of people who hang back too much. Immediately, I liked Michelle, and thought to myself that if I'd been straight, I would have married her someday.
Chris and Sam bickered about constructing the grill ("Dude, have you ever even done this before? 'Cuz I have." "Just because you have fashionable hair now doesn't give you a license to get fucking uppity.") while I got drunker on Katie's secret vodka/Country Time concoction. Chris took charge of making dinner once the new grill got working. We had burgers and Diet Cokes on the front porch with Chris's parents. They left the house around 8 o'clock. They'd drive home the next day. Mrs. Riis hugged me good night ("In case I don't get to see you in the morning, it was so great to finally meet you," she said, "and hopefully we'll see you the next time we're down for a game.") and they made plans to meet Chris for breakfast the next day.
"Sorry again about that," Chris said, when their mini-van pulled out of the driveway. "They don't mean to be, like, intrusive."
"Are you kidding?" Sam said. "I love Glen and Barbara."
"Glen and Barbara are the tits," Katie said.
Sam, being nineteen, was of legal drinking age in Canada. During his drive from Toronto to school he'd charged a few hundred dollars worth of alcohol -- bottles of cheap vodka and good whiskey, cans of Natural Light and Labatt Blue. He'd hoarded it in his closet while Mr. and Mrs. Riis were around. He brought down a case of 36 warm cans and set them on our front porch. It was still too early for going out. Every second house seemed to have people on the front porch grilling with beers with music playing.
- HOW I REMEMBER MEETING JESSICA AND WHY SHE'S NOT LIKE RUTHIE FROM REAL WORLD: HAWAII.
My seventh housemate was Jessica. She rolled up around 8 p.m. She was with three other girls. They were drunk and giggly and shrill. We heard their approach from a block away. Before walking up to the porch, Jessica held the railing for balance. "Oh. My. God. I am totally wasted." She and her three friends had spent the last several hours at the Alpha Omega fraternity. They were dressed for guys, in low-cut shirts, lots of cleavage and exposed upper arms. They were fit and tanned from the summer.
Jessica noted my presence: "Hi!" she squealed. She nearly lost balance mounting the top of the stairs. She staggered toward me. I stood so that I could hug her. She leaned on me too much when she hugged, not because she was flirting, but because she was too drunk to balance. I guided her shoulders to posture.
She turned to her three hottie friends. "Guys, this is my awesome new roommate Joe. Isn't he cute?" Her intoxication drew out a Philly accent. "He just got moved in today. Are you guys totally wasted, or what?"
"No, we're just starting," Trevor said. "Go drink water and sober yourself, you drunken frat tramp."
His voice was goodnatured, but I was startled by the epithet. It was the kind of remark that I've known to make drunk girls cry. Instead, Jessica crashed on Trevor's lap. "Whatever, dad," she said, one arm around Trevor's shoulder. "Don't feel jealous."
"Dude," Trevor said to her, "your dad gets jealous when you're with guys? Just wow."
She put her hand over Trevor's mouth, then sat up with a start. "Oh my God! Dads, moms. Are Glen and Barbara gone?"
"Left about an hour ago. We can drink and swear now."
"Do you find Glen sexy, Jessica?"
"Uh, guys, that's my dad ..."
"Glen was very sexy for an old guy," she said. "Chris, you have sexy genes." Still sitting on Trevor's lap, she messed with his hair. "Who wants to go to a party?"
"What kind of party?"
"It's a bunch of guys from Alpha Omega who have their own house. They live over on Orchard."
"Oh, fuck no."
"What the fuck is up with you and the frats now?"
"Did you get a brain transplant over the summer?"
"I personally will evict you from this house if you start bringing frat tards over."
"Ugh," Jessica said, getting off Trevor's lap. She straightened her shirt.
"She's just drunk," Katie said to me. "She's not usually like this."
"Stop talking about me like I'm not here," Jessica said.
"I'm so making fun of you in the morning," Katie said. "It's like Ruthie in Real World Hawaii."
"But clothed."
"So far."
"This isn't that bad. She's not like Ruthie in Hawaii. She's very conservative when she's sober."
"She's going to be so embarrassed about herself in the morning."
"Oh, fine," Jessica said. She stumbled into our house to find her three hottie friends. They'd gone inside to use the bathroom and do whatever else hot chicks do when they're drunk and excited.
"She actually can be quite serious," Katie said.
"Oh, you fucking prudes," Sam said. "Cut her some slack. It's the first weekend back and she can get wasted all day if she wants. It's not like she's getting boned by the homeless for crack."
"That's your hobby."
After a few minutes of sitting, Jessica abruptly concluded that she was too drunk to keep going out. Her hottie friends left to party on. Trevor and Katie knew of a party and talked about going, and there was some kind of party by people I knew at the school paper, but we decided to hang back at the house that night. I was tired from my flight and slightly overwhelmed trying to figure everybody out and how they fit together.
I realized pretty quickly that Trevor, Katie and Jessica had been tight during freshman year, which is why Trevor calling Jessica a frat tramp hadn't fazed her. They lived together on a mixed-sex hall a few floors above me and Sam. Sam and Trevor had met playing on a dorm soccer team. On nights when I was studying, chilling with Canetti or hanging out with people from the school newspaper, Sam apparently had ingratiated himself into their clique. I mean, it's amazing how you can spend a lot of time around a person while being oblivious to what happens elsewhere in his social life. Trevor, Katie and Jessica had a lot of common friends, and over the course of the night, their conversation slipped into references about pieces of summer gossip -- somebody getting ticketed for a minor in possession, somebody who'd decided to rush a frat that fall, somebody who broke up with her boyfriend.
Katie and Trevor had the poise that you sometimes see in people, and which I completely lack myself: the ability to be friendly and familiar without seeming forced. Maybe actors and politicians are like that. I didn't know them but they made me feel like I did. They were funny and unpretentious, but not vulgar and confrontational like Sam. They weren't showy -- just at ease with themselves, and attractive and engaging and nice.
- HOW CHRIS RIIS DID STUFF WITH A GIRL.
I sat on the end of a couch next to Chris.
"What was shaking this summer?"
"It was okay," he said. "It was nice being home. I told you about most of it in the e-mails."
"It's nice to be back though, right?"
"Yeah man," he said. "It's awesome. I missed it a lot."
"It was good being in the City but it wasn't like being here. I forgot how much I love it. When Sam was driving me back from the airport and I saw the top of the Memorial Tower and the library from the freeway, I felt, like, awesome."
"I was walking through the quad yesterday afternoon with my mom and dad after we got out of the football game. They were talking about all of these places and things that happened when they were here. Some hippie guys were out playing frisbee in front of the library, these girls out sunning themselves, and everybody looked so, like, calm. Like, happy and good. You see these freshmen walking around with their parents and seeing everything for the first time."
"You feel almost nostalgic for things that haven't happened yet."
"Yeah, exactly that," he said. "You're pretty good with words sometimes."
"I do my best," I said.
"But yeah," he said. "The summer was good." He lowered his voice a little so that others couldn't overhear him. "I was hanging out with this girl for the last six weeks."
"Oh, nice," I said. "Pretty hot?"
"Yeah. I didn't know her in high school. She was a couple of school districts over. She goes to Michigan State now. I was working a few nights a week at this restaurant. Maybe she was kind of interested in me all summer." His pronunciations were slow and embarrassed. "Then we started hanging out. We didn't do anything that bad, but it was pretty nice."
"Nice going, slick." I elbowed him in the ribs. He laughed with his head down, apparently flattered by my compliment. "You'll get a girl to kiss you eventually."
"Oh," he said, earnest, "I mean, we did that-"
"Yeah, I know. I'm just kidding."
"And a little more than that."
"Dude, I was joking."
"But not much more than that."
"I get it. Christ, no need to be so explicit in describing your sex acts." I paused. "Anal?"
"Shut up, man."
From down the porch, Sam threw an empty beer can and hit me in the knee. "The two of you, cease your fucking whispery canoodling this instant."
I hurled the beer can back at maybe three times the velocity of Sam's toss. It hooked past his head. I was about to respond with a taunt of my own, but my cellphone buzzed in my front pocket.
Matt Canetti's name was on the screen.
- HOW I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO BE OUTED.
"Yo," I said.
"Yo," Canetti said, in a timber that was trying to mimic mine. "You back?"
"Back and better than ever."
From down the porch, Sam said, "Oh, for Christ's sake."
"Typical," Canetti said. "You wanna go to a party tonight?"
"Not tonight," I said. "I'm hanging out with the housemates. I'll catch you soon, though."
"Cool, cool." It sounded like he didn't want such a transactional conversation, but I'm sure he figured out where I was and who I was around, and understood. "I'll catch you soon."
When I hung up, Sam said, "'Back and better than ever.' Sweet Jesus. Who was that?"
"Just Canetti. He told me to say what's up."
"Wait," Michelle said, abruptly excited. "Canetti, as in Matt Canetti?"
"Yeah," I said. "We all met him last fall when he was trying to recruit us to join his frat. Why?"
"I know him from College Democrats," Michelle said, enthusiastic by a mutual connection. "He's a really impressive guy, and super nice."
"Yeah," I said, maintaining total composure. "He's an interesting dude."
Michelle probably wanted to talk about him more, but I said that I had to hop to the men's room, which was true. I took a little longer than normal to wash my hands (lavender softsoap courtesy of Glen and Barbara Riis) and thought for a moment. My new housemate knew Matt Canetti; she almost definitely knew he was gay. It's possible that while I was gone, she'd mentioned that fact, which would have come as a surprise to Chris and Sam. Chris wouldn't have suspected anything, but Sam knew that I hung out with Canetti pretty frequently. This information would pique his interest, and with Sam in a moderately drunk state, there was potential for it to rapidly fall apart.
Fuck, I thought to myself: I was about to get outed on the first night of sophomore year.
On the fifteen-foot walk from our front bathroom to the porch, I was prepared to meet any question with casual ignorance, complete nonchalance, and a small touch of confusion.
But the conversation had changed. We all were getting drunk and attention spans shortened. Michelle had moved to sit next to Chris. Everyone else was laughing about the fact that Jessica had passed out in her chair, her head hanging heavy on her shoulder.
- HOW A SMALL PARTY BROKE OUT ON OUR FRONT PORCH; HOW WE MET THE NEXT DOOR GIRLS; WOMANLY DELICIOUSNESS; A LYRICAL ANALYSIS OF O.P.P.
Do you ever find yourself getting drunk, only to realize that several hours have passed without realizing it? We stayed on the front porch all night. Clumps of freshmen walked past, on their way to frat parties a few blocks away. We heard the chattery din of a house party down the block. The temperature was in the 60s and from time to time I stepped barefoot off the porch to rub my feet on the cool dewy grass between our house and the sidewalk.
Around midnight, a guy stood woozy at the base of our steps: "Hey guys," he said. "You guys seem pretty chill and cool. Can I have some beer?"
I expected Sam to tell him to fuck off, but instead he was invited up. He was a freshman who separated from his friends at a frat house and was now somewhat lost on his way back to the dorm. He had a Southern accent and wanted to talk about nothing but football and our school's sophomore quarterback.
Next door, a group of girls drank Franzia out of the box and listened to CDs. A couple of their boyfriends were there. Our house and theirs seemed to eye each other with friendly curiosity. Trevor called for them to come over. At 1 a.m. there were seventeen people on our front porch. The girls next door were all seniors ("You guys will buy kegs for us, right?" "Oh, definitely! We should have a combined party!") who'd been friends since they were freshmen. I don't think I'd be exaggerating to say that they kind of gravitated to me and Chris. They introduced themselves to us in succession.
We were having a halfway boring conversation about majors and internships when I noticed Jessica wake up from her sleep, amble to the porch railing, and retch overboard.
"Oh no," I said.
"Poor Jessica," Chris said.
Katie, though drunk, rose to the occasion: "We'll be fine!" Katie steadied Jessica by the shoulders as Jessica still leaned forward on the porch, waiting for a few more fermented curds to chuck out of her and into the bushes. Katie looked so confident and pretty; I wanted her to take care of me if I messed up.
"That," I said to Chris, "was exactly what I did for you last fall."
Chris, who was drunk, said, "You'll probably have to do that again someday."
"It's why we live in society instead of chaos," I said.
Jessica's face was sullen and bleary. As Katie guided her into the house, Jessica looked like she might cry. "This is so humiliating," she said, slurring and gurgling. "I'm so, so sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am." She covered her face in shame.
"And that's exactly what you were saying last fall," I said to Chris.
"Jessica and I are basically the same person," Chris said.
"When she sobers up, you should probably fuck her and marry her," I said.
"And you and Katie should probably do the same thing, since you're obviously the same."
"Everybody gets to marry each other," I said. "Actually, it'd be a disaster for something like that to happen. Intra-housemate incest makes everything fall apart."
"Why is that a rule?"
"Dude, haven't you seen Real World? As soon as housemates have crushes on each other and start fooling around, the entire thing crashes and burns. The next thing you know, people are making out with strippers to inspire jealousy and screaming at each other in the bathroom. Girls cry and throw things. Guys pork slutty bartenders. It's a law of nature."
"Can we get that on a T-shirt?" said one of the Next Door Girls.
"I should write that into a poem. A proper, full-frontal poem."
Inside, Katie fed water to Jessica and tucked her into bed. Trevor went in, took up his bong, and smoked up with a couple of the Next Door Girls and one of their boyfriends. The lost freshman chattered to Sam Frost about the school's sophomore quarterback and problems in our secondary. Naughty By Nature played on a mix CD. As it got later and parties died down, people walking past our house looked up. I remember feeling like that the year before, how the night would end and you'd be heading home, only to see that other people were still out, carrying on and having fun. I believed that whatever I might be up to, people somewhere else continued to enjoy each other. You want to be a part of that.
"I love this Franzia," Chris Riis said. "I don't usually like wine, but it's the most delicious thing I've ever tasted."
"That's the most womanly thing I've ever heard you say."
"There's nothing womanly about deliciousness," Chris said.
"That needs to be on a T-shirt, too," said one of the Next Door Girls.
"We could start a T-shirt business," I said.
"We'll call the company Womanly Deliciousness," said the Next Door Girl.
"Yum," said Chris.
"Womanly Deliciousness sounds like a synonym for cunnilingus," I said.
"Chill, dude," Chris said. "It's only delicious wine. Your head is always so horny and in the gutter."
"Whatever. You think I'm hilarious."
"Sometimes I do," he said. "Sometimes I do indeed."
"I mean, you know what O.P.P. stands for, right?" I said as the song played on the radio. "Another way to call a cat a kitten. Five little letters that are missing. The longest, loveliest, I call it the leanest. Another five-letter word rhyming with cleanest and meanest."
"Uh..."
"Pussy and penis. Christ. Other people's pussy. Other people's penis. O.P.P. Although frankly, I can't believe they couldn't come up with a better euphemism for penis." I turned to the Next Door Girls of Womanly Deliciousness. "Chris is from Grand Rapids, Michigan. He's very innocent. Sometimes I have to explain things to him."
"There's nothing wrong with being innocent." God, that girl was digging him.
"I'm not that innocent," Chris said. "Joe just says that because I don't do a lot of raunchy talk."
"Look, Christopher, if you're going to audition to be one of the Backstreet Boys" I rubbed my hand over his gelled but messy hair "you're going to have to learn some things. Number one, dance moves, because I've seen you dance, and you dance like a retard. Number two, sexy talk. Number three, how to romance women."
"Like you're one to talk about that," he said. "I got more play than you did last year. Ha!"
"You don't know that," I said. "Just because I wasn't making out with random girls when I was sloppy doesn't mean that I was deprived of play."
"Can Deprived of Play be a T-shirt?" he said.
"No," I said.
"No," said a Next Door Girls of Womanly Deliciousness. "Deprived of Play just makes you sound weird."
"Might be an okay name for a band, though," I said. "One of those bands like Sum 41 or Blink 182, about suburban guys who think they're punk."
"Then that is what I shall call my rock band," Chris said.
"You mean your fricking boy band."
- THE FOUNDING CONVERSATION OF UPSTAIRS CREW.
Things started to wrap up a little after 3 a.m. I'd been awake for 20 hours. It was funny to think that I'd woken up to my mom shaking me in bed and reminding me that I needed to finish packing, then ate waffles with my parents and my brother Evan, the three of whom later drove me to the airport and hugging me good-bye.
My bedroom was too hot and stuffy to sleep. I decided that I'd take my pillows and comforter and crash on the living room couch, since a cool cross-breeze ran through the ground floor.
Chris and Michelle had bedrooms on the second floor. Chris was leaning against Michelle's doorframe, and the two of them were talking.
"Don't tell me you're moving out already," Michelle said, apparently in reference to the bedding over my shoulders.
"The attic is stuffy," I said. "I'm sleeping on the couch."
"Michelle and I were just talking," Chris said.
I sat on her bed. Already, she had her semester's books stacked and organized, and a printed calendar of her class schedule. Her mattress was far superior to mine. I wanted to fall asleep in her bed.
"Like, how well do you know everybody in the house?" Michelle said.
"I mean, we know Sam."
"But not everybody else."
"Not that well," I said, "but I wouldn't sweat it about Jessica. She's not actually like Ruthie from Real World."
This made Michelle laugh; I'm still not sure if Chris knew what I was talking about.
"No, it's not that it at all," Michelle said. "I just noticed that Trevor, Katie and Jessica are good friends. And you, Chris and Sam are good friends. And I kind of know Katie and Jessica, but we're not close, and I kind of know Sam. Basically, last spring, Sam came up to me and talked about the house. From what I could tell, everybody seems great, but I'm slightly worried that maybe I'm the odd girl out in between the two groups."
"I was just telling Michelle how she seems awesome and shouldn't worry about it," Chris said.
"Dude, totally," I said. "It was just my first day back and I was psyched to see Sam and Chris."
"Nobody did anything wrong. This didn't come up because I was freaking out."
"You have the most comfortable bed in the world," I said, leaning back.
"Plus," she said, ignoring my comment, "you two seem pretty approachable."
"The three of us are the Upstairs Crew," Chris said.
"That's right," I said. "Upstairs Crew is super-elite."
"I know," she said. "We're going to have to share a bathroom."
"Are you going to survive sharing a bathroom with guys?" I said.
"I figure that if it gets gross, I'll just use the one downstairs."
"I tend not to be gross," I said, "but who am I to know for sure? None of us truly knows ourselves."
"Just flush, and we'll be cool," she said.
"Dear God. I'm not an animal."
"I grew up with brothers," Michelle said. "I get along with guys. I'm not worried."
"I don't want to sound too excited," Chris said, "but I'm psyched for Upstairs Crew. Not having Sam swearing or anybody's pot smoke or Jessica's throw-up."
"Ugh, poor Jessica."
"Just as long as we don't carry Upstairs Crew over anybody's head," Chris continued. "We don't want them to think that we're snobs."
Even though there hadn't been much logic to our room assignments, I already was deciding that this would work out well. From what I could tell, Chris and Michelle were a little more thoughtful and restrained than some of the others. With Sam and Trevor taking the basement rooms, and Katie and Jessica on the main floor, we'd probably arranged ourselves by demeanor and routine without planning it that way.
As I laid back in Michelle's bad, Chris looked pretty good lingering in the doorway. He was in basketball shorts and a T-shirt dressed for bed. I was in a similar get-up. He was buzzed but not trashed. His arms looked long and limber, with the barest smattering of blond hair on his forearm and his skin still tan from a summer of golfing and hanging out on the lakes.
"Joe," he said, "let's go running tomorrow."
"Sounds good, buddy," I said. "But you've got your parents coming to pick you up for breakfast in a few hours."
"I know," he said. "I need to get to sleep."
I sat up in Michelle's bed, wrapped my comforter around my shoulders, and went downstairs to the couch before my mind wandered any further.
- HOW I GOT EXPOSED TO CHRIS RIIS'S MORNING WOOD.
I woke up to the doorbell.
No, I hadn't slept well, thank you very much. It was the couch and the unfamiliarity of a new house, plus the alcohol that was still in my system. I woke a few times in my five hours of sleep, sat up, stared at my new surroundings, and dropped back to the couch.
It was 9 a.m., and Glen and Barbara Riis were there to take their son to breakfast.
Midwestern parents wake up too early, and oh fuck.
I did a quick scan around the living room to make sure that Trevor hadn't left a bong or any other incriminating substances in plain sight.
The doorbell rang again.
Oh, fuck.
Half-empty cups and empty beer cans scattered on the front porch. I saw them through the window.
I leaped off the couch and bounded to the door.
"Hi!" I greeted the parents with the best smile I could muster after 60 waking seconds.
"Hi, Joe!" his mom said. "Big party last night?"
"Well, no, not that big," I said. "Our next door neighbors stopped by."
Dr. Riis winked at me. I couldn't tell if his smirk was sinister or amused.
"My room is really stuffy," I said. "I slept on the couch. Chris, you know, he wasn't up to anything illicit or inappropriate."
His mom rubbed my shoulder. "Oh, don't worry," she said, batting her hand like she was swiping away a crazy idea. "We had four other kids before Chris. We know what goes on."
I wasn't so sure. I laughed nervously. Chris was so uptight about them. I didn't know whether they sincere, or whether their kindness to me as an outsider would be followed by a stern lecture to Chris about how to be appropriate.
"Well," I said, still half-awake and unsure of how to handle myself, "when bad things happen, it's usually Sam's fault."
This puzzled them. Before I made any other confusing utterances, I said that I'd go upstairs to get Chris.
First, I knocked gently on his door. When he didn't respond, I opened it.
His room was warm and the air was dead inside. Chris had kicked off the covers in his sleep. He'd removed his shirt.
He was lying on his back, mouth open, breathing heavy, with a massive hard-on poking inside of his basketball shorts. As discussed in earlier chapters, I'd seen Chris naked maybe a couple dozen times in the gym lockerroom. His body was different now. When I saw him the day before and noticed that he'd lost weight, it didn't compute to me how good he'd look. His stomach was close to flat and I could see his ribs. His dick looked huge inside his shorts. Again, I'd seen his fat cock in its state of disinterest, and that had been enough to fire me up. Seeing it hard (if covered up), his was like an ICBM to my Patriot Missile. It appeared to have the length and girth of a porn star's.
The longest, loveliest, I call it the leanest. Another five-letter word rhyming with cleanest and meanest.
I was turned on, embarrassed and guilty.
"Chris!" I said, averting my eyes to the wall. "Dude!"
I went over to his bed, catching a peek down at him, and shook his shoulder. His dick bounced inside his shorts when I did this. The bone and muscle of his shoulder felt tight under his naked skin. I left my hand on his shoulder after I shook him.
He opened his eyes, groggy and confused: "Whoah," he said. "Joe."
"Hey, dude," I said, not looking at him, "your mom and dad are here to take you to breakfast."
"Oh, man." He ran his hand over his face. "What's happening?"
"Your mom and dad are here to take you to breakfast. All those beer cans and shit are still on the front porch."
"Oh, no," he said. "A problem."
"Dude, are you still drunk?"
"No." He sat up in bed, which rendered his hard-on significantly more obvious. "No. Just super tired."
"I have been in this position many times," I said with military seriousness. "It happened all the time in high school. Take a quick shower. Just five minutes. Enough to wake up. Then go downstairs. Let them do all the talking. Blame the beer cans on Sam. He won't mind, they'll believe it, and nobody'll get in trouble."
"Yes," he said, staggering out of bed, either oblivious to his stiffy or not caring. "Yes."
"I'll entertain them while you get ready," I said, and bolted out of his room.
About 20 minutes later, with the Riises safely off to breakfast and none of my housemates awake, I took a shower. I thought about Chris and the fact that our bathroom was still a little steamy by him and still smelled like his soap. Thinking about him and the fact that he'd just been standing there naked like me, probably hard like me, rubbing his bar of soap against my chest, I jerked off in seconds, leaving a trail of jism on the tile, then wiping it off with my hand.
Poor Michelle, having to share a bathroom with guys.