NOTE: Thanks for your patience, guys. I knew I wasn't going to maintain the pace I had when this started, but the gap was long and this chapter is pretty short. On the other hand, the next couple of sections have been outlined and partially written (they originally were going to be parts of this chapter) so hopefully we'll have another installment before 2009. Thanks for reading and for all of the e-mails.
Joe College, Pt. 6
With trips to Europe, M&Ms and bungee jumping, a little bit leaves you wanting more, and I guess that's what I was feeling after I started hooking up with Matt Canetti. I was aroused for about 80 percent of my days, sleep included. When Sam finally shaved off his scruffy beard, even he looked vaguely cute, in an E.T. sort of way. I wasn't selective about what I liked. The criteria included the following: roughly 5'10 or taller; general physical fitness; short hair; and a moderately attractive face, including straight teeth and no heavy acne. With that as my starting point, roughly one in five guys was capable of distracting me from whatever else I should have been thinking. I walked around campus in steady apprehension and arousal. In discussion sections, I found myself angling for seats next to guys I considered attractive. Innocent behavior started to seem like flirting.
"Dude, sorry to bother you, but any chance I could make copies of your notes after class?" whispered a cleft-chinned guy in a backward baseball cap. He smelled like Trident.
He'd missed a couple of lectures. I'd noticed, because I started sitting two seats away from him, as if by coincidence.
Afterward he followed me to the library and spent a few minutes photocopying my notes. We talked about football. I was convinced that he was flirting with me. He rolled his long-sleeved T-shirts up to his elbows. He had strong forearms. I made eye contact and asked boring questions about his weekend.
When he thanked me and said he'd see me later dude, that was it, and I spent the next ten minutes rethinking our conversation to make sure that my remarks weren't overt or stupid. No, I thought -- I was safe.
It still made me nervous to go into the next lecture and see how the hot stranger reacted, but he took his seat, pulled out his notebook, and didn't act out of place. That was all there was. Aside from a brief conversation about shared nervousness before the final exam in December, I never talked to him again.
I only saw Matt Canetti on Thursday nights. He was a busy guy with a lot of friends. He had obligations at his frat, which he swallowed down grimly, and the occasional parties there, about which he was more enthusiastic; he had a title with the College Democrats, and I don't remember what it was; he was intense about his classes and spent his weeknights studying in libraries and coffee houses. When I was with him in public, at least once a night somebody came over to say hi to him. Matt moderated his tone to draw in whoever it was -- he made himself sound like a frat guy, an activist, an armchair intellectual or a flirtatious ambiguously gay guy, whatever the situation demanded.
"Do you think they think I'm your boyfriend?" I said to him.
"Why?" he said. "Is that what you think you are?"
"Nah," I said, blushing and stammering. He shoved my shoulder. "I don't think that. I just didn't know if they think that."
"Probably not. I hang out with a lot of people."
"I know. I was just wondering."
"Let me tell you a story. The first guy I really went out with was in law school. I was a freshman and he was 24. He was pretty hot. I'd messed around with some dudes but hadn't really dated anybody. All I did was meet up with guys, mess around with them, get off, and not want to talk to them again. Sometimes I didn't even return their e-mails or messages afterward. How toolish was that?
"So one night I was sitting alone in the coffee house reading 'Invisible Man' for an African-American lit class and checking this guy out. It was spring and late in the semester, and he was in a T-shirt and khaki shorts reading one of his boring-assed law books. I just kept looking over at him. He must have noticed because after, like, an hour he just sat down across from me and started talking about Ralph Ellison, and immediately I started sporting wood. Then I got up the nerve to start flirting with him. He took me back to his place and I slept over that night. It was the first time I ever slept over with a guy -- I think before that, it was just two hours, max. But he took me home and I slept over, and after that I try not to just hook up and quit."
"Why'd that end?"
"It ended because I was 19 and he was 24," Matt said. "He was about to go to New York to work at an international law firm and I was going back to Boston to try to get into bars with a fake. I'm sure it wasn't the greatest fit for him. But still, we'd, like, go out to dinner and hang out in public and not just get off. That's when I figured out it was more fun if it wasn't some random, guilty thing that you do just because somebody's body is available. So that was good."
"What's that have to do with me worrying about what your friends think?"
"Nothing, I guess. God, you're so into structure. I'm just feeling talkative."
We put our books into our bags and started walking toward his place. Somebody on the sidewalk yelled Matt's last name.
"Hey Canetti, are you going to Brennan's party tomorrow?"
"Most definitely."
"Hey man," a guy said to me. "I'm Brian."
I said my name.
"How do you know this asshole?" he asked me, thumbing at Matt.
I paused.
"Joe came to one of our rush parties and decided not to pledge, but we hang out once in awhile anyway."
"Poor Joe," Brian said.
They talked for a couple minutes more as Matt lit a cigarette, then slapped hands and parted ways.
"I think he probably guessed what we're up to," Matt said.
"Why do you say that?"
"I just know," Matt said. "For future reference, if you're concerned about people thinking that you're gay over me, you probably shouldn't fumble around like a blind mute whenever I run into one of my friends.
That makes them think you're either a social retard or a repressed homosexual."
When we were back in his apartment, I had my hands down the front of his pants as soon as he closed the bedroom door. I undid his front button and held his dick between two of my fingers. I pulled it out of his jeans half-hard. It drooped out of his fly.
"God, you're so gay over me, it's unreal," Matt said.
The time before, I jizzed in my jeans when we were just making out. I'd been lying on top of him. We were both fully clothed and I started pressing down on him, and then it happened, just like that.
"If you were looking for an excuse to take a pair of my underwear, you just had to ask," he said later when he gave me a pair of his shorts to replace the damp ones I'd messed up.
Anyway, yeah: jizzing on him, making out, blah blah blah. Too horny, too hyper, couldn't sleep, jerking off whenever I was alone. I kept the boxers he gave me and sometimes held onto them while I jerked off.
Seriously -- I still have them in my underwear drawer, even now, which is somewhat embarrassing to acknowledge, but I guess there are dumber things.
He called me the Sunday before Thanksgiving.
"Are you up to anything tonight?"
He didn't hang out spontaneously. Our Thursdays were planned over e-mail a few days in advance. When I made other suggestions, he had superseding obligations.
"Well, Sunday night football, but otherwise, no," I said.
"It kills me to be earnest like this, but I was just thinking about you," he said. "James flew out this afternoon so we can just hang out in the living room and be gay for each other and not worry about it."
I was sitting around with Sam, who bitched about "American football" and pretended to understand less than he probably did. We had exchanges like, "No, it's not just a bunch of guys falling and then waiting. It's incredibly complicated. You can study schemes for a decade and not totally understand what's happening unless you're on the field." "I can take your word for it but I have no idea what you're talking about. It's fat men falling down." Then I shouted profanities about hating soccer. This kind of conversation made Sam happy.
If Sam was suspicious that something was going on with Matt, he didn't signal it. He had drunk nights when he didn't come home, either. One morning he woke up on a stranger's couch with a coffee-table bong a foot away and a fat guy sleeping on the other end; he'd been in an unfamiliar neighborhood and got lost trying to walk home while still drunk and high. If anything, I think he was slightly jealous from a misapprehension that Matt had favored me to get wasted and pal around with, but Sam chalked up any snub to his own assholishness: "I never should have called that bastard a fucking Trotskyite, or whatever it was. Tell him that Sam says what's up."
When I got off the phone I told Sam that I was going to go get drunk with Matt. "Thank God," he said. "That means I can stop watching fat men fall over."
I chewed a piece of gum on my ten-minute walk. When I got there, his ashtray was full and the apartment smelled like cigarette smoke. Copies of The Economist and The Nation were piled up on the coffee table. He liked cold weather, so a sliding glass door was cracked open, letting the below-freezing air slide inside.
He wore big, black-framed glasses. In them, he didn't look like enough of a dork to be Clark Kent, but without them, he didn't have the build to be Superman. They were too blocky to make him look like a hipster, but they suited his face too well to make him look like a nerd. He took them off before he gave me a brief but effective kiss.
"It's like a grad student's brain had diarrhea in your living room," I said.
"I know," Matt said. "I'm bored. Half my friends have already left for Thanksgiving. I don't even have homework to do."
"Might as well chainsmoke and read about energy policy and shit."
"Exactly."
"Lucky for you that I'm around to be your back-up plan."
"Stop fishing for compliments. You want me to be all, 'No, you're not the back-up plan,' and then you'll, like, French me with passion, and probably shoot your load in your jeans again."
"That sounds about right."
"I've got it all figured out," he said.
"I'm not bad for a back-up."
"Shut up with trying to make me say something nice. It damages both of our credibility."
I Frenched him with passion.
"You taste like ashtray," I said.
"I guess I should go brush my teeth." He returned minty fresh and dropped down next to me on the couch. He pressed my hard-on through my khakis. "I feel like we should watch a gay porno or something," he said, "but I can't stand them. The acting's always terrible. Nobody looks like they're having fun. Two out of three guys have weird faces or overly effeminate mannerisms. Sometimes you see things like butt-pimples or razor burns, and almost all of them shave their pubes.
The gays have fucked-up tastes."
"Turn it to football and shut up."
"Promise me you won't shave your pubes."
"It's not on my list of things to do."
"I just wanted to be clear. I find that kind of thing distasteful."
"I don't want to have a conversation about pubes. Pubes are weird. Stop being weird."
"Stop being sexy," he said. We'd made out a lot by then, but every time, when it started, I was surprised all over by how good he was and how quickly it took down my guard. It was like getting pulled into a book or a movie, where the time breaks up and you're not paying attention to anything that isn't in front of you. This was true even when Matt tasted or smelled like ashtray.
"I'm going to kiss you so impressively that you shoot it in your clothes again," he said, cupping a hand over the shaft inside my khakis.
"No. It's, like, unsanitary, and I can't keep going home in your boxers."
"Premature ejaculator." He drew down my zipper and undid the button. I think he was mostly interested in my capacity for pre-cum. He slid my khakis and the orange polka-dot boxers halfway down my hips so that my dick and balls were out. I glanced down to regard my cock resting back against the bush of black pubes that Matt apparently considered inviolable. He pressed down against the tip of it with the palm of his hand while he pressed down on me with his body. He held onto one of my hands. My pre-cum made his palm glide lightly against the underside of my dickhead. When he made his signature move, so that our tongues were tangled up while our noses and chins pressed against each other, I started pushing my hips against his palm in a slow rhythm. I hadn't shot my wad since I was with him the Thursday before; it shot out like silly string. We ended up with my semen gelled up in his shirt and pants-front and on the hem of my shirt.
"Sorry," I said.
He lifted his shirt over his head and threw it over the coffee table. "It won't leave a stain." He paused for a moment as if considering himself and then said, "Fuck it," getting off the couch to pull down his jeans and his boxers. For some reason, he left on his white socks. His curving boner bounced in the air, leading outward like some kind of dowsing rod.
I took his dick into my mouth. At first I pressed the tip of it against my lips, like it was chapstick, and then took in the head of his cock. Giving oral was weird for me; I never knew if I was doing it right. I'd tried it out with Andy (who was pretty easily pleased) but only once before with Matt, a couple weeks before, and then I did it briefly, self-conscious that he might drop a smart-assed comment on me.
I was still on the couch, dressed with just my hard-on hanging out. I think some of my cum was starting to drip down onto the couch. I sat up and took off my shirt. I wasn't planning, so I used it to wipe up my chest, conscious about any more getting on that couch, and Matt's roommate James having to deal with it later -- even if he didn't notice, guest sperm on a couch seemed like bad karma.
"Am I doing it okay?" I said.
"Yes, it's fine," Matt said. "Stop worrying if you're doing okay. It's fun and it's fine, and when you get nervous, it makes me nervous."
I held on with his cock a few inches from my face. I couldn't help feeling sloppy and self-conscious. My own saliva was on my chin and cheeks. I held his cock in my mouth again, trying to get myself comfortable with it. He was right, he didn't pre-cum at all, so when I had the tip of his dick at my tongue, the taste was totally neutral.
He held his hand atop my head and push his fingers against my scalp.
"It's nice that you don't have dandruff," he said.
I took his cock out of my mouth. "When you say weird shit, it just makes me want to stop whatever I'm doing and fight back."
"That's okay," he said. "I like it when you fight back. You don't have to try to be slick and sexy or whatever."
"I'm cold."
"I'll go get a blanket."
He scampered off to his room and came back with his comforter around his shoulders, his white socks still on and his half-hard dick flapping in front of him. He dropped the blanket over my head. I pulled up my boxers and kicked down my jeans. Matt got under the comforter. Because the air in his living room was freezing, once we were both under the covers, his body and his skin felt that much warmer when it was up against mine. I pressed my nose against the skin behind his ear and felt out his bony shoulder.
"Since you were fishing for compliments before," he said, "I'll just tell you that you've got a really hot face. You've got a nice body too, but I never really know what to do about that."
"There really isn't anything to do about it."
"I think I appreciate a nice face more than I do a hot body," he said.
"When you smile it's like your teeth take up half your face."
"Plus, I don't have dandruff."
"That's a strong point."
"Your face is just okay," I said.
"I'm cursed by that scar."
I reached out and rubbed my finger against the scar, like I was trying to smudge out a pencil mark.
"Guys always want to touch my scar," Matt said. "Some of them act like it's an errogenous zone and stroke it and shit. Really, it's just a warning for what happens when you're ten and you're too lazy to walk a block to go in through the front gate."
"It gives you character."
"Like Tony Montana," he said.
"Do people ever call you Scarface?"
"If by people, you mean everyone who's known me since I was fifteen, then yes."
"That movie's a piece of shit anyway," I said.
"Try telling that to frat boys from New Jersey."
He kissed me some more. It was his favorite thing, I guess, and it's what he did best, but Matt always had this way of using his entire body. A lot of dudes I've been with are just cock-obsessed, which is fine, but Matt was always aware of everything that he was doing. It was enough that when my leghairs slid up against his, he did it in a way that felt hotter and like more of a turn-on than most dudes would give me by whipping it out. Or he did this thing where he pressed up at the sole of my foot with the arch of his toes if he squeezed me while we were lying down. He wanted to use all of the surface area.
We went into his room a little while later. We got off three or four times before dozing off at an early hour, sometime around midnight. Matt had this thing where he couldn't sleep unless he was in boxers and a T-shirt. Inevitably, I fell sleep without wearing anything, and came to with my face pressed at an odd corner of Matt's T-shirt. He woke up in the middle of the night and was kissing my chin while I was sleeping. My mouth felt rough and dry. Matt was in his normal boxers and T-shirt, but he was full-on hard. The bedroom was cold, which made the heat of his face and his body feel that much more necessary. Still half-asleep, I pushed myself against him, burrowed against the body heat of his chest and his legs. He reached his hand down to my boner and pressed it up against his. He coiled his arm around my head in a way that set his armpit hair against my neck. All I could see or feel was Matt Canetti. While our dry half-asleep mouths kissed, he let out a satisfied, probably involuntary groan.
"Shea Stadium parking lot," I mumbled.
"Huh?"
"Even Shea Stadium parking lot is better than all of Boston."
He pressed his hand over my mouth, firm enough that I was breathing out of my nose. "You're going to make me lose my hard-on."
"You won't lose your hard-on."
He pulled off his T-shirt so that our skin was against each other, and he pulled his comforter up over our heads, coccooning us inside . When he dropped down his boxers it was almost frantic. In the dark under the covers, I couldn't see him, but I could feel and smell him. He pressed his dick hard against my hip, dry-humping at it, gripping me tight at the ribs while he did. I moved to go down on him again.
"Joey," he said, "what the hell are you doing to me?"
I took his cock back into my mouth. Sometimes there's that kind of musky, sweaty smell on a dude, but when I went down there and kind of had my chin at his balls and my nose by his pubes, there wasn't anything like that. Matt smelled totally neutral. There wasn't any taste to him, either. I held the shaft halfway down and took the tip of his head into my mouth, pumping it in and out a little, rubbing it with my tongue and pressing it hard at the side of my cheek. I wasn't sure if he was about to cum, and I told myself that if he did, I wouldn't even care, that I'd let him cum in my mouth and would only stress out about it after it happened. I pressed my hand up his bony ribs. He held onto that hand. My other fingers were around the hairy base of his spit-slicked cock. My legs hung off the bed in the cold air of Matt's room.
I took his hard-on out of my mouth. "Are you about to cum?" I said.
"It feels good," Matt said, "but I don't really shoot my load from blowjobs."
I gave up. I moved back up and took my head out from under the covers. The cool air felt good on my face.
"No, really," he said. "I'm not being passive-aggressive or anything.
Blowjobs just don't make me cum. I need to see a face."
"That seems sort of unusual."
"Ugh," he said. "You have no idea. Don't even get me started on intercourse. Anal sex is fucking gross. Literally, I guess. I know you're new to this so it doesn't matter to you yet, but for some guys it's kind of a big deal."
"It's okay," I said. "I'm not looking to get banged or hump anybody. I don't know what I'm doing."
"Report back to me on that if we keep hanging out."
We didn't wind up getting off right then. It was close 4 a.m. I wasn't sure what he was getting at, but I was starting to understand that Matt Canetti was weird.