NOTE: This chapter brings freshman year to a close. If Joe graduates in four years, we're already a quarter of the way through! This chapter also takes us past the 60,000-word mark, which is longer than a lot of proper novels, so don't stress if it takes awhile to update, even though I appreciate the interest. Lastly: thanks, guys (and, oddly, girls) for your e-mails. I don't usually send detailed replies, but some of your impressions (the sane ones, I mean) affect what I write and how I write about it. I appreciate it.
Joe College, Part 9
This happened in mid-March, and I remember that because I was still recovering from the damage I did to myself on St. Patrick's Day (48 hours later, and I was wobbly) and I'd recently gotten my mid-term grades, which left me in a state of high self-regard, with the slight exception of an intro poli sci exam, about which I was pissed because I was convinced that my T.A. was arbitrary and had it out for me besides. But I digress.
I'd gone solo to a coffee house. When I was assigned a novel I usually went to a coffee house. I sat at a little table to overcaffeinate, looking up every 10 or 15 pages to watch strangers and ponder their futures.
I was reading Hemingway half-heartedly, dog-earing pages and indiscriminately underlining. A few tables away, there was this guy who looked familiar, but I couldn't place him. He was a tall guy, very good looking -- probably either Jewish or Italian. He was sitting with a friend. They had books and notes on the table but it looked like all they did was talk. I was trying to place the guy. I wondered if maybe he'd gone to my high school, or if he'd caught my eye in a big lecture hall, given that he was hot.
There was something in his manner that made me think he was gay. I know that can sound stereotypical, and I don't mean it like that -- it's something to do with neck and shoulder posture, and the way the arms move in conversation. There are social science papers on it -- whether that stuff is a cultural cue to other gay guys or part of a deeper behavioral component. But I digress.
He caught me looking at him, and even though he looked good and all, I really wasn't thinking about it like that. I tried to decide how I know him. After he caught me glancing over, he was onto me. He said something to his friend. The friend looked over at me. They said something to one another. I shifted uncomfortably and made a point of looking away. I looked back down to my book, feeling a little too stressed to concentrate. I knew those guys were talking about me and that I'd landed on their radar.
The stranger pulled up a chair and sat at my table.
"Hi," he said.
"Hey, dude," I said, making my voice deep and vaguely confrontational. "Do we have a class together or something?"
"Not that I know of," he said. "We met for a few minutes at a party one time. You're Joe, right?"
"Yeah," I said, "and shit, dude, I must've been hammered off my ass or something. I hope I didn't say anything fucked up. You looked a little familiar, but I couldn't place it."
"You're friends with Matt, right?" It was something about how he said the word friends. "Matt Canetti? Skinny guy with a big vocabulary?"
"Yeah, I know him. We drink together once in awhile."
"I'm Kevin. We were at a party in the fall. Kevin Berger?" The guy I'd spotted talking to Canetti at a house party early on, in my nervous, doubt-filled weeks when I knew Matt was gay but didn't know what to do about it. "I'm good friends with Matt. He can be an interesting guy, right? If interesting is the right word."
"Yeah," I said, pausing. "He seems like a smart, funny dude."
"Yes, he does seem that way." There was something in the tone. He knew everything. That I was playing it understated and vague seemed to amuse him. There was a little condescension in his voice. "And you know he's gay, right?" Kevin said.
"Yeah, but-"
"He was kind of my first boyfriend," Kevin said, "not that that should matter to you. He's just a friend now. We meet up once in awhile. Just, like, socially. Nothing physical. Not that any of that would matter to you."
He wasn't being a dick, exactly. It was a style of conversation. I think he meant to be friendly. I didn't like it. It's rare for me to have a temper. It busts up maybe once every two years. Right then, I felt it wanting to break out. My face probably turned reddish.
"Sorry," Kevin said. "I know you're studying. I just recognized you. Are you in the middle of something?"
"Yeah, man," I said. "Sort of."
"Look," he said. "Matt's kind of an interesting person about certain things. Or everything. And I know there are times when he can be, like, aloof or difficult. But don't mistake that for not caring, okay? He's just made up differently than other people."
I stared at him blankly.
"Let me ask you this," Kevin said. "Does he ever start talking about, like, politics, or, like, public policy at weird times?"
[This made me laugh a little, in spite of myself. There'd been one incident where I'd been trying to go down on him. In the middle of that, he started talking about fucking energy policy and oil cartels, and alluded to the movie "Network." I stopped immediately. "You are insane," I'd said to Matt. "What are you even talking about? Why are you talking about it now?" "Nothing," Matt had said. "I just thought you'd be interested in hearing about it." ]
"Yeah." Kevin drew out the word. It was like he'd been reading my mind. "I tell him not to do that. It can't be a compulsion. It's too planned. He thinks he's being clever, even though it's really, really lame."
I didn't want to say anything. It's true that maybe I felt some relief in hearing someone else talk about Canetti. It's true: he was weird, in ways that I generally found awesome, but weird enough that I didn't know what the eff his angle was, and there always seemed to be an angle. And seeing that the only gay guys I knew were Andy Trafford and Matt Canetti, there was a little bit of comfort to be talking to a gay dude who I hadn't fooled around with. But I didn't know this guy Kevin or what he was all about. Talking about myself with strangers isn't something I like. It always feels like a test.
And then there was this: What the fuck? Canetti was talking to people about me? About me and my gayness? In one sense, I had a sense of the writing on the wall. At some point, I was probably going to have to own up my interest in boners. On the other, I'd done a pretty good job of compartmentalizing myself. I had Canetti and then I had all of my other friends. I'd put myself through a ringer during senior year of high school, but once that passed, I wasn't beating myself up over my issues with dudes. Matt had never pressured me about coming out. If we were out together and ran into one of our friends, he handled things smoothly and diplomatically. If he'd been telling people that we were together, I'd have a new set of complications to deal with.
"And Matthew loooooves to be liked," Kevin said. He held the note with his fingers, like he was playing a violin. "He meets new people at a party or at an organization meeting, and he's so outgoing and friendly, and he seems so cool and nice and accomplished. And then you hang out with him in a different setting -- drinking or whatnot -- and he can be sort of aloof and standoffish. I think he's scared of being judged or rejected."
"Look, dude," I said, "I'm not really sure what you're getting at. Obviously you know him better than I do, but it seems a little weird to be talking about someone like this."
"It is what it is. I'm sorry I interrupted," Kevin said. "I guess this is a little pushy of me, huh?"
"A little bit," I said. "But whatever."
"Just save yourself some frustration and take my word for it," he said. "Just know when to take him seriously and when to ignore it. It'll take you awhile. He's basically an extremely nice guy, and obviously, he's fucking brilliant. And, you know, I think he has a pretty high opinion of you. You've been, like, drinking together for about five months, right?"
"Yeah."
"Drinking with him." Kevin smirked at me. "I'm pretty sure that's longer than he's gone drinking with anyone. So, you know, there's that to consider, too."
I shrugged and didn't make eye contact.
"If you ever want to talk about it, look me up and drop me an e-mail. B-E-R-G-E-R. I'm the only Kevin Berger in the directory."
"Let's go check out this one house," Sam said. "It's got 10 fricking bedrooms and a huge front porch. We'll have amazing parties."
"Only 10 bedrooms? How many people are you up to?"
"It's, like, 15," Sam said. "I figure, what I'll do is, tell some of them that they'll have to share bedrooms with each other and they'll freak and drop off the list."
"How many bathrooms?"
"Like, four? I'm not really sure."
"As long as girls have their own," I said. "I don't want to share a bathroom with chicks. What a nightmare."
"Well, you're not interested in sharing anything with chicks," Sam said, "so bathrooms shouldn't be any different for you."
And, like, POW!
I should have been surprised that it took Sam so long to make a comment like that. It's not like anybody was fascinated or even intrigued by my apparently dormant love life, but once in awhile the topic surfaced. Sam was scampering and eager for some kind of girlfriend, tirelessly upbeat when he got shot down, and even occasionally successful. There were a couple of girls he'd gone on four or more dates with before it dropped off -- every so often I'd advise him to tone down the eagerness. Chris Riis had his makeout sessions at parties, and a couple of our casual friends had their hook-up girls. I must have seemed asexual to them.
There were girls in our dorm who were into me, I know. A couple had tried to tap Sam for inside information, which he'd handled with surprising tact.
"It's not something I'm looking for," was my standard line. "I'm, like, trying not to go underwater with classes and I'm trying to write, and I'm having a fucking blast." Plus, I had a running excuse: that sometimes I tended to get manipulated by girls. I never want to hurt their feelings but I'm not looking for something serious. Like, one day a girl is blowing you, and before you know it, she wants to cuddle or sleep over, wants you to call to see how she's doing, and then she wants to show you off to her parents. "Slippery slope," I'd say. "Either you're ruthless with girls, or else they get out of control with their emotions. Unless you want to get married or don't mind messing with their heads, you always lose in the end."
All of this was true, based on my high school experiences with girls before Andy Trafford came into the picture.
When you're guarding the closet and conscious about it, sometimes you read double meaning when there is none. Once in awhile Sam used the phrase "your boy" in reference to Canetti, which freaked me out and set off bells until I noticed that he used the phrase in reference to many people.
And so he says, "you're not interested in sharing anything with chicks." For a couple of seconds I freaked and froze. I wanted to fight back and shoot down the insinuation. I stopped myself.
"I don't want to wait twenty minutes in the morning before some chick, like, gets done moisturizing."
"I want to moisturize some chick," Sam said. "Only hot girls will live with us."
"You're not, like, moisturizing any hot chick who lives with us. This won't be Real World-Las Vegas. These girls aren't Trishelle. If you're living with hot chicks, you'll only feel worse about yourself after they shoot you down and have their boyfriends hanging out in the house."
Hit him where it hurts.
I walked with Sam to the house. It was about ten minutes off campus. The landlord had a Middle Eastern accent. Two beat-up couches and some lawn chairs were on the front porch. There was a long living room with worn-down brown carpet and posters of Budweiser boob girls on the wall. A pool table was in what might have been intended for a dining room. The linoleum of the kitchen floor had a yellowish tobacco tint and I could hear it stick lightly to the soles of my sneakers. There was a faint smell of incense and cigarette. The sink overflowed with dirty dishes.
"Unacceptable," the landlord muttered. I'm not sure what exactly he was referencing -- there were at least a few options. "And there is parking in back," he said, pointing through the window to a gravel rectangle that could fit three or four cars.
"Wouldn't that be nice if we have cars?" Sam said. "We could go on canoe and kayak trips on weekends."
"I'm not getting into boats with you," I said.
"Hater."
There were some bedrooms in the basement and a couple on the ground floor. We followed the landlord upstairs, with the steps creaking a little under our feet.
"If I go in on this," I said to Sam, "I get the biggest room."
"You're going in on this and you'll like it," Sam said.
"The biggest room is upstairs," the landlord said. "You'll see. You seem like nice boys, responsible. Not like these now."
He probably thought that only because of Sam's English accent.
He showed us the second-floor rooms, and then there was a small spiral staircase that led upstairs. The landlord knocked the trap door and then pushed it open. It was an attic that had been renovated. The ceiling was low and sloping (I would have to crouch if I wasn't walking down the center) but it had a lot of floorspace and a skylight. There'd be room for a couch and a TV and a coffee table, plus all the usual stuff. The place was bigger than a lot of Manhattan studios.
"This," I said, "will be my room."
"What if there's a fire?" Sam said. "How will you escape?"
"No fire," said the landlord.
"No fire," I said.
This was all Sam's project, and I was happy to defer as his plans expanded from renting a five-bedroom house to a seven bedroom, with the added news that he'd extended 15 invitations (was he serious?) to our future housemates. But I wanted that room, goddammit.
When we got downstairs he started calling around to our friends to see whether they could come out to see the house -- the people that Sam considered his core group. Chris Riis; a pretty girl from New Jersey named Elaine; a tall, pot-smoking Indian kid from Texas who went by the name Trevor. A few of the house's current occupants were around, and our landlord seemed to regard them with scorn.
"You clean the kitchen before move-out," he angrily told one of them.
"We will," said an overweight dude who hadn't shaved.
"And clean it good. Security deposit," said the landlord.
"We'll get it all cleaned up after graduation, Samir. Don't worry."
"Samir!" said Sam. "I'm Sam!"
"I know!" said the landlord. "We have the same name! That is why I like you."
We left that day with a lease. All we needed was signatures and a security deposit. I'd leave that to Sam to sort out.
"Everybody living together should be fun," Chris said a few days later, during what had become our twice-weekly sessions at the gym, most of which avoided the dilemmas of frontal nudity in the locker room.
"Did you put your signature down?"
"Last night. You're stuck with me now."
"Cool. Sam's been weeding down the list pretty quickly."
"It might be weird, guys and girls living together, but as long as everybody's cool about things, I guess it'll be okay. I haven't told my parents about that part yet."
"We're all adults. I'm sure it'll be fine."
"I don't think they'll care so much. If one of my sisters had tried to live with guys it probably would've been an issue for them. My mom and dad will want to drive down and help us set up," Chris said. "They're pretty good like that."
"We'll hide the girls from them," I said.
"Ha. I think they'd be more nervous about Trevor. Not because he's a minority -- that's not a thing with them -- but because he's a drug addict."
"I mean, dude, he's not a drug addict. Not even close. He smokes a little weed. He probably smokes about as much as I did in high school."
"Seriously? You don't seem like somebody who'd do that. I've never seen you on drugs."
"I mean, Jesus Chris" -- Sam created the phrase to show exasperation and it stuck -- "number one, pot is different. Cocaine and ecstasy fuck you up, but pot enhances things and goes away. In high school it was easier to get weed than booze so I smoked more often, and plus, I'm busy with other stuff here, so I haven't thought about it. Maybe having Trevor as a housemate will change that."
I stopped and noticed. Shit, when did Chris Riis get up to 30-pound dumbbell curls?
"In any event, Christian," I said, ominously, "once your parents are done helping us move in next fall, we can break in the house by getting you stoned."
"Sorry, bro," said the asshole. "Brothers only."
I hated myself for standing on the front steps of a fraternity house, looking on with contempt and embarrassment while girls in spring shirts danced on the front porch to the old, shitty Snoop Dogg song that came through the window. Bros with red Solo cups were loud and cocky and hammered.
"Yeah, but I know somebody here. He told me to come meet him."
"Who's that?"
"Uh, Matt Canetti?"
Whether the name brought a slight smirk or it was in my own paranoid imagination, I'm not exactly sure. The guy at the front steps pinched his lips and shook his head.
"Canetti knew this was closed," the guy said. "Brothers only."
He was a big guy, that fuck.
I'm sure that my SAT score was significantly higher than his, and that I was much more attractive than he ever would be, even with Slim Fast. From his reflexive stubbornness and condescension, I thought that I wanted to kill him on the spot.
It was late April and there were only about three weeks before the schoolyear ended for exams. As of that afternoon, I had no plans. I called Canetti to see if he was around.
"Look, Joe, I'd love to," he said, sounding sincere, "but we're having a party at the house tonight, and these seniors, they're leaving soon, and I've got a lot of people that I'm close to in that class. It's kind of like, when the clock starts running out you want to spend time with these guys before they're gone."
"That's cool," I said. "I understand."
He paused. "Well, let me tell you, I think it'll be a really rocking night. They don't like letting in guys who aren't brothers, so when you get there, just tell them upfront that you know me. It shouldn't be a problem. If they give you a hard time, call me and I'll let you in."
"Nah, man," I said. "I don't want to make things difficult."
"Fuck it. It's not a problem. Come, get drunk and dance with hot girls. Everybody'll think you're straight."
"And then some meathead frat-tard gets pissed because he sees me dancing with a hot girl and knows I'm not in the frat."
"That rarely happens. Just swing by and call me if you need me."
I called him. He didn't pick up. It was spring of 2002, before texting caught on.
I stood on the sidewalk across the street from the frat house, feeling myself growing pissed. Getting into the party itself, I didn't give a shit about. It was the tone and contempt of the frat guy at the door ("brothers only") and the humiliation of sulking away. Sam had a date that night, and I could have figured out what some of my other friends had going on, but suddenly, I wasn't in the mood. I was fucking angry.
I stalked away craving a cigarette, walking past houses of roommates with grills and friends.
Saturday nights in college, when the slightest things seemed filled with opportunity and the potential for joy: I wasn't in the mood for any of it.
My phone rang. It was Canetti. He couldn't hear me. He stepped away from the crowd. I felt like hanging up -- not because I was angry at him. I didn't want to have anything more to do with the situation.
"Aw, Joe. I'm sorry. Can't believe that dickhead wouldn't let you in."
"Fuck it, man. I don't give a shit. Skanky girls dancing to shitty Snoop Dogg, dicks talking about brothers. I can't take it."
It's probably the first time he'd heard me sound like that. He missed a couple of beats.
"I didn't know they'd be like this." He sounded uncomfortable. "At some of these parties it's not that big of a deal, but they're being hardasses tonight."
"It's okay, man. It's not really my scene."
"Well." He paused. "Where are you now?"
I gave him the intersection.
"Look. Just wait there for a few minutes."
And my heart sort of melted, like, awwwww.
"Stay at your party, man," I said. "These guys are your friends. I can hang out pretty much any time."
"Just, like, give me a few minutes to figure things out," he said. "A bunch of these guys are just gonna wasted and get laid. These parties are kind of fun but I've been doing it for three years."
"Ridiculous. Stay with your friends. I'll, like, entertain myself."
"Shut up, nerd," he said. "Hold on and wait."
I stood lingering by a stop sign. It was still early in the night. The drunk, happy strangers, I wondered where they were heading and what their nights had in store, and if any of them should be my friends.
It was a longer wait than he'd indicated, and I was on the verge of saying fuck it when I saw Matt walking up the street with a small entourage in tow. He and a girl had their arms around each other and were laughing; I may not have been interested in hooking up with her, but she was recognizably hot, the kind of girl that summons fear into guys. There were seven people with him -- three guys and four girls. They all looked happy and a little drunk.
He introduced me to them. Three of them were his frat brothers. A couple of the girls were introduced as their girlfriends.
"We're just going to grab a bunch of beer and hang out at my place," Matt said. "Some other people might stop by."
This hot girl Matt was with, she introduced herself as Erin. She kept her arm around Matt's shoulder. Matt said she was one of his best friends. I'd heard him talk about an Erin before but hadn't paid close attention.
"C'mere, Joe," Erin said. "Walk next to me."
She put her arm around my shoulder and pulled me close to her. Her arm was smooth and firm against the back of my neck. She was between me and Matt, the three of us close together with our arms locked. At first I felt stupid walking with a stranger like that, but then it seemed kind of nice.
"Why did you decide to take off?" I said.
"I know half of those boys," Erin said, "and I wasn't going to give them what they were looking for. I only went to get drunk with Canetti."
"At a certain point you want to chill with the people you like," Matt said, "not cheer while a freshman from Connecticut pukes up foam."
"Personally, I like it when freshmen from Connecticut puke up foam," said one of his friends.
"God, look at me walking between the two of you," Erin said, tightening her grip around our necks. "Every girl passing by must be so jealous of me."
I'm sure that it made me blush, first, to be complimented by a girl as hot as Erin; second, because maybe she didn't know I was gay and would want to hook up with me; third, because if she tried, I wouldn't want to hook up with her, and everybody would feel awkward about it.
Being with hot girls messes with your head, even when you're gay.
We stopped at a party store a couple blocks from Matt's apartment. I said something about wine coolers and then had to clarify that I was joking.
There are certain parties that stick out in your memory. I don't mean the crazy ones, where someone gets wasted and commits an act that leads to self-injury or busted drywall and then you all laugh about it later when you're wasted. I mean those parties where everything lines up exactly right. I'm not going to bore you with a long build-up and introduction to a bunch of people who appear once in this story and never come back, but I'll tell you that everyone Matt brought back to his apartment that night was nice and outgoing and well spoken. They were seniors and juniors and everybody had known each other for a long time. It was different than hanging out with my friends, with the plan to get drunk quickly and then see what happened. Maybe guys having girlfriends lowered the intensity -- I'm not sure. But when we were sitting around Canetti's apartment with bottles of beer and old Springsteen playing on the stereo and a cool cross-breeze going through the living room, it all felt unexpectedly perfect. They were nice and they liked me; I thought that I loved them.
More people trickled in, but attendance peaked at about sixteen -- something like that. A guy came in with a guitar over his back. People brought more beer. Canetti didn't smoke inside when he had guests over, so from time to time, a few of us stepped out to the concrete balcony to light up.
I went outside for a cigarette with a read-haired guy named Charlie.
"You a senior?" I said while he lit up.
"Nah. Just a junior, thank God." He had a Midwestern accent. "It kills me to think that I have to graduate one day."
"You could just, like, stay forever."
"I wish." Wind blew away our smoke. "There's just something about this place, you know? If you ever talk to people who go to Penn or Harvard or Northwestern, they like their school. It's not the same."
"Yeah, I hated my visit to Penn."
Charlie smirked. "Sorry you ran into trouble at the door tonight," he said.
"No worries. I didn't mean for anybody to leave."
"This was the back-up plan all along. It just move the clock up a couple of hours."
"So." I wanted to perpetuate the smalltalk. "You're pretty good friends with Matt, then?"
"Yeah," he said. "I think that's accurate. We were in he same pledge class. He's been, you know -- not to get too cheesy -- but he's been a really good friend. He's a great guy."
I told Charlie about how I'd showed up to their frat house in September and hung out with Matt that first night. "We just, you know, ended up keeping in touch afterward," I said.
"Matt collects a lot of good people," he said. He gestured inside through the sliding glass door. "You should make sure you keep in touch with him."
"Yeah, no, we know each other pretty well."
Charlie took a drag from his cigarette. "He's been a really good friend to me, man," Charlie said. "I was going through a rough time about a year back. Just dealing with a lot of shit and didn't know how to handle it, and he helped set me straight with it. He really cares about his friends."
I nodded seriously and didn't ask any follow-up questions. I didn't want to a drawn-out conversation with a stranger about about his parents' health scare or the time he got pulled over for a DUI or something else messy and personal.
He volunteered anyway. Apparently he was one of those people who can't help themselves.
"You probably know some of this," Charlie said, "but at the end of our freshman year, Matt came out to a lot of guys in our frat. He's a confident guy but you could tell that he was nervous about it. I don't think he told literally everybody individually, but he went around to a lot of us, just person to person, and sat down and talked about how this was something he'd been dealing with, and why he'd kept it to himself and why he thought it was right to tell everybody now. When he was almost through, he talked about how he hoped it wouldn't affect our friendship and how there wasn't any reason that things needed to be different. He said this thing, basically, 'I'm still just gonna get hammered and go to games. It's not gonna change anything.' Which in retrospect is self-evident, but the way he handled it kind of blew my fucking mind.
"And, you know, I was dealing with the same shit, and I had no fucking idea how to handle it. I was a fucking basket case. The idea that I'd ever come out seemed fucking insane." He looked at me like he'd decided he'd gone too far. "Suffice it to say, I was messed up about it. Sometime last spring I was hanging out with Canetti and we were hammered off our asses. I told him about it, just as a friend, and even though I knew he was gay and open about it, I was still scared shitless. He started saying some stuff and I didn't want to hear it, so I bolted off. He let it go and then a couple weeks later he brought it up again. Like, he tracked me down, and was like, 'Dude, chill. I'm not going to tell anyone and I don't care. You're making yourself sick over it. Whatever you're putting yourself through right now, it's not worth it.' We went out and walked around for awhile. He talked me off the ledge, so to speak."
I nodded off in the distance, through the trees to the lines of houses across the street. There were sounds of girls laughing and the bass coming out of a house party.
"Shit, dude," he said. "I guess my only point was that if it hadn't been for him, I'd still be drowning in it. Whatever."
I looked serious and understanding. I wasn't totally processing what he was saying. It felt awkward, listening to a stranger acknowledge something so personal.
"Sorry, man," Charlie said. "I didn't mean to get all serious and shit."
I smoked and nodded. This poor guy had turned embarrassed.
"It's cool, dude," I said. I smiled and slapped him on the shoulder. "I'm glad it all turned out. It's a good ending, like you said."
I glanced through the sliding glass door. Canetti was on the couch laughing. Hot Erin hung off of him. They looked like a couple. Canetti looked pretty hot at that moment, smiling big and saying something funny, his legs bare under khaki shorts, the hood of his sweatshirt hanging behind his neck. He caught me looking at him and probably caught the seriousness of Charlie's body language. Matt made a mock-serious face and cocked his head like a Spaniel. I smirked and lifted a hand. He winked and pointed his index finger in my direction like a gun, then pulled the trigger. I mimed a Matrix motion.
Matt hopped off the couch and sprung outside to his small concrete balcony. When he opened the door, the music inside came out ("And your papa says he knows that I don't have any money / And your papa says he knows that I don't have any money") and Matt staggered tipsy. He put his arm around my shoulder in a brothers-in-arms way.
When he touched me, I started feeling all warm and tingly and embarrassed. I could smell his shampoo and his clothes on him. He felt warm and good and in that moment I badly wanted to kiss him and touch him or something.
"God, you both look so serious," Canetti said. "Get more beers. This was supposed to be a party."
Charlie laughed and said something self-deprecating. Matt took the cigarette out of my hand and took a drag from it.
"I don't think I wanna know what you geniuses were talking about," he said. He blew smoke in my face. I didn't mind.
"Texas Chainsaw Massacre," I said. "It's based on a true story."
"More beer," Canetti said.
Late that night, sometime between three and four, there were about eight people left in his apartment. Some dude had walked into the party with a guitar over his back, and by this point everybody left was drunk. A joint had passed around the room. The guitar kid broke out his instrument and started playing. In my memory, he was pretty good. It started with a white-boy rap of Skee-Lo's "I Wish" while he strummed out his guitar. It was hilarious and weird, and the whole performance felt joyful and unexpected. The night should have been winding down at about that time, but the energy turned. Some of us were shouting the words with him.
People started requesting songs from the kid with the guitar. It was the kind of music that I'd probably dismiss now as too bubble-gum: Dave Matthews ("I see my hell is a closet and I'm stuck inside") and Jack Johnson ("Cause no one, no, not no one likes to be let down") and David Gray's "Babylon," but in the moment it felt perfect, and I'd sacrifice my current hipster cred by acknowledging my love for those songs because of that night: Stuff White People Like, et cetera.
I sat on the carpet with my back propped against the couch. The air smelled a little like weed and incense. Canetti sat next to me. Hot Erin was stretched out on the couch behind us. She had her hand on my hair. She tapped a finger on my skull with the beat of the music. It was cute and funny and I didn't mind.
Then Hot Erin pushed my head to the left, so that it was on Canetti's shoulder. ("It seems to me that mayyyybe, it pretty much always means no.") I let it sit for a second and then straightened my posture. A minute or two later she did it again. Canetti laughed a little. He jostled me gently with his elbow. A couple of his friends looked at us, in a way where they thought that something kind of sweet was going down, but they didn't want to acknowledge it and turn it into a moment.
The guitar kid kept playing: It don't even matter where you're waking up tomorrow.
I let go.
He touched my hand. His palm was a little sweaty. He whispered something like, "You okay?" and I muffled a mmm-hmmm. A couple minutes later, hot/friendly Erin patted my head from behind. I didn't turn around to face her, but I smiled.
As you well know, I wasn't out to anybody. Trafford and Canetti were the only ones I'd talked about this with, but I didn't even like to talk about it. The weird conversation with Kevin Berger: that didn't count. I'd never told anyone that I was gay; never given a hint in front of other people. Without any plans, I was sitting in a room with my boyfriend (?!) letting him hold my hand, leaning against him in front of a couple of his fraternity brothers, the treasurer of the College Democrats and other honored guests, while a sophomore from Detroit or Cleveland or someplace like that covered Bob Dylan.
This went on for awhile. Eventually Matt put his arm around his shoulder and squeezed me. Nobody was staring at us. It wasn't a big deal.
Through the door to the patio, you could see hints of light in a gray sky. The party had gone all night.
The guitar kid stopped playing. There was talk about going out to breakfast. Canetti took his arm off my shoulder and stretched. There were empties of Bass and Molson and Coors all over Matt's kitchen.
"No breakfast for me," he said. "I'm wiped out."
Hot Erin, looking tired but no less hot, put out her hand for me to shake.
"Nice meeting you, Joe," she said.
"Ha. Thanks. You too."
"And I'll see you again, I'm sure." She winked at Canetti. He probably rolled his eyes.
Some banter went on for a couple more minutes. I acted like I was going to leave with everyone else.
"Yo, Joe," Matt said. "Stay here a couple minutes and help me haul these empties down to recycling."
As soon as the apartment was empty, he grabbed me around the shoulders and kissed me solid. I was like a cartoon cat seeing fireworks, because I was drunk and exhausted, but also because I'd been wanting to do that all night -- from the second I saw him walking up the street while I stood lonely under the stop sign. When he stopped he put his head on his shoulder and held one of my hands.
"Good boy," he said.
"A couple times tonight I thought your friend Erin was going to want a threesome or something."
"God, you would. You watch too much porno." Matt sighed all content-like. "She's pretty friendly and she was happy to meet you. Perv."
"She knew about me?"
"Sometimes the fact that you're not out makes things difficult," he said. "But we'll save it for another time. Just, like, come on."
He pulled me by the hand into his bathroom and turned on the shower. He started to undo the buttons of the shirt I wore, picked out with the expectation that I'd be dancing with hot chicks at a frat party. My shirt dropped on the floor. I dropped my khaki shorts down and stood in my boxers with my boner at half mast. Matt took off his hoodie and then kicked off his shorts and boxers in one move. He was already hard, with his dick pressed up against his belly. I took down my boxers and followed him into his shower.
I'd never taken a shower with a dude -- not like that -- and it felt great. Every feeling felt twice as smooth. As soon as we were both under the water, we were all over each other, even with beer and cigarettes on our breath. The warm water was running down his face and over his eyes. Every time I peeked at him, Matt's eyes were closed and the water was running down his face and chin, his brown hair matted down over his forehead. The look on his face was carried away. Seeing it made me feel hotter. He held our dicks in a fist. I held onto one of his skinny ass cheeks. Under the hot water, all I felt was his skin and bones and tendons, and his lips and mouth over my lips and mouth.
When he grabbed a bar of soap and lathered up his chest and neck, I didn't mind because it was hot to just look at him. He held onto one of my shoulders while he did, like he was keeping balance. A stream of water from the shower ran down his chest and off the base of his balls, the soap bubbles streaming down into his pubes. He handed me the bar and I kind of worked on myself a little, then turned him around. I started soaping up his back and his ass. At first I was sort of tentative, but then I was kind of rubbing the bar of soap down into his ass crack. I held it there for a second, with my finger down the length of it, pressed up against the suds and the short bristled hairs around his asshole. The top of my dick was against the base of his tailbone, and the way we were positioned, the bar of soap was between my balls and his ass.
"God," Matt said, a little like it was a defeat, "you can go ahead and check it out a little."
I dropped the of the bar of soap and pressed the end of my cock against the length of his asscrack. The short hairs that ran the length of it made a little friction against the skin of my dick. With a finger, I went down to his asshole and pressed against it, kind of massaging it in a small circle. I held him around the ribs with my other arm, feeling his flat stomach and massaging his bones. Every part of him felt warm and wet and tight. When I pressed my finger against his asshole, he breathed sharply. He held the hand I held against his stomach.
Why I was so interested in his ass right then, I'm not really sure. He was squeamish as hell about anal sex, and I could blow my wad without much prompting. Full-on fucking hadn't been an issue -- but holy shit, I really wanted to fuck him right then.
I put my hand around his dick and pressed my finger up against his asshole, pretty slightly, enough that it broke the seal a little and the tip of my finger went into him. He didn't quite squirm; he was still hard; his muscles tensed.
"I guess this is your reward for putting up with a little bit of PDA in there," he said.
My mouth was at his ear. "I don't need a reward. I didn't put up with anything." I pushed my index finger a little further into his ass. "Like, knowing you is my reward."
When he laughed it sounded purely happy. I had my mouth open at his neck, right at the base of his ear, the back of his ear against my nose. I pushed my finger in a little deeper, maybe halfway between the first and second joint. From the way he held his body, I could tell he didn't like it much, but he was being a good sport. It didn't feel soft, exactly -- not like a pussy -- but it was tight and warm and at that moment I didn't feel remotely disgusted.
"Dude," I said, "I want to have sex with you so fucking bad right now."
"Mmmm," he said, in a tone that meant no. "You're so cute."
"You're so hot."
He shifted to move a couple inches away from me. The tip of my finger puckered out of his ass. He turned around to face me, hugging me around the hips, putting both hands on the back of my ass. Our dicks pressed up against each others stomachs. In a method somewhat less graceful than my own, he pushed a finger up against my asshole.
And I mean, shit, I'm such a weak touch that when Canetti would start making out with me, I'd fold. His face was so hot, the way it felt to have his nose pressed against my face, how he moved his lips and his tongue in this really soft and assertive way, in this rhythm like he was carrying a tune in his head. He was by far the best kisser out of anybody I've ever been with in, and as soon as he started making out with me, I think he could persuade me of anything. After about a minute of that -- feeling his dick on my stomach, his tongue kind of hugging mine while his nose exhaled onto my upper lip -- he probably could have persuaded me to anything. Even the feel of his finger resting sterile against my asshole: that felt hot, too, even though I'm pretty sure the only reason it was there was to dissuade me.
It might have been a half-hour in the shower, maybe 45 minutes -- I'm not really sure. We dried off using his towel.
"Do you want to shave or anything?" I said.
"What? No. Why?"
"Like, sometimes when we make out and you haven't shaved, my face gets chapped around the lips."
"Mine too, but we'll both live."
By now it was full-on daylight outside. We got on top of his bed. When Matt went down on me, I felt like a porn star. Gray daylight came through his closed shades. I looked down and saw his lips around my cock, the feel of the tip of my dick trimming at the roof of his mouth and the top of his throat. He was jerking himself off while he did this, furiously shaking his cock around, the tight sound of it smack at his stomach. Matt didn't look self-conscious or impatient while he was sucking me off, like he sometimes did. He looked totally into it. I pushed my hand down to his barely-damp hair, pushing it back against his scalp.
I felt the telltale bolt at the base of my balls and down the back of my spine. "Dude, I'm about to shoot," I said, my hips jerking up a little involuntarily.
He held the head of my dick in my mouth, sucking on it hard. I tried to hold back because I didn't want it to hit him.
"No, dude, seriously," I said.
He took my dick out of his mouth barely in time. I shot my wad on his neck, at the base of my jaw, the shaft pushing up against his Adam's apple. I could feel my jizz draining out of me in a couple of long rushes, then squeezing out in a couple more squeezes. My cum was dripping down his neck and chest. There was a little on his cheek and his chin.
I was down on Matt while he was cleaning up after himself. I licked the bottom side of his dickhead and pushed my tongue against the slit. For a minute or so I wrapped my lips around the head and sanded it down with my tongue. Then I took it down carefully, letting in the shaft as far back as I could fit it. I felt the hollow air in my mouth. My nostrils were in the long dark curls of his pubes. I held a hand at the back of his balls, kind of against the hair in his taint. Slowly, I drew my mouth back, letting his dick press out against my lips. I was trying to give him the kind of blowjob you see in a porno, sliding his dick in and out of my mouth sort of energetically. He held a hand in my hair. I drew his cock out of my mouth and held it against my face. The spit of it rubbed off on me. When I took his dick back in my mouth a gave it kind of a long suck. I kept my mouth slow and tight around it.
"God, you've gotten good at this," Matt said. "Like I say, man, it's like telling a story." He breathed heavy and pushed his own hair back. "Oh, fuck," he said, his voice soft and low. "Oh, fuck, man," he said. "You're so fucking hot." He said it with total lack of self-consciousness, like they came out before he could stop himself. This made it seem even better.
It gave me extra motivation. I wanted to get him off. He told me that he was about to blow his wad. I took his dick out and jerked it for a couple of seconds before he shot, my saliva working as a lube. His balls hung low and swung out when he shot. I could see the vein in the side of his dick and the veins pulsing out of his arms. It was a huge load, arcing over my shoulder, some of it glancing off the side of my head and a little hitting my ear. The view was up-close, like he world's hottest nature documentary. His cum smelled earthy and bleachy. The second stream went far, too, streaking down the length of his sheet -- the Jackson Pollack of semen.
He kissed me long and soft after it was done. His ejaculation didn't leave me as sloppy as I left him. When I moved a leg I felt some of his jizz cooling and wet on the sheets. He pulled his tongue into my mouth and sucked on it lengthwise.
I could have gone again, but I was fucking exhausted. When he stopped kissing me laid sideways next to me, with his face at my shoulder, I felt a little relieved. My head was throbbing and the light through his shades hurt my eyes.
I woke up and it was daylight out. I wasn't dressed but I wasn't hard. Matt had gotten up at some point to put on boxers and T-shirt. It could have been any time -- 11 a.m. or 5 p.m. I was disoriented and dehydrated, comfortable but a little grim, not based on shame but time disorientation and the lingering body shock of booze, nicotine and pot. I couldn't see the clock dresser on his bed stand. I thought that he was still asleep and didn't want to move to wake him. Mostly, I wanted to know what time it was.
He reached out an arm, and lifted the clock radio in the air: 12:43.
"Dude," I moaned. "How did you know to do that?"
"I don't know, chief," he said. He grabbed my arm and held it against his chest. He kissed the back of my wrist. "I guess I can read your mind."