This story contains descriptions of sex between a man and a boy. It is entirely fictional; would I do something illegal? Of course not.
Mario and Me
I don't know how people do it who can't take a nap in the afternoon. To take a nap, you need a nice couch and a private office, of course. An office with a phone you can turn off and not answer and nobody will think that's unusual. An office where, if someone knocks on the door and you don't answer, you know they won't think it's odd and they won't try to barge in. To sum all that up, you need to be a professor.
Which I was, at a large urban public university. Now I'm at a larger, flagship university. I'm not going to say how long ago this story took place. Suffice it to say I was in early middle age (middle age, they say, but--how many 110 year old men do you know?), and HE was not.
Back to the couch; of course, if you have such a couch in such an office, it can be put to other purposes. I did so. There were several blissful/tragic years of the relationship with the Chinese guy, the one encounter with the black guy with the scary-huge dick, the few months with the diva Malaysian guy. I guess I've always liked color more than non-color, although none of us would want to be truly "white." That would be my official description.
None of that felt like cheating on my wife. It was exercising my other half, and never interfered with a truly happy marriage. And yes, it was about half and half; can't stand gay guys who avoid dealing with it by calling themselves bi, can't stand people who think bi's are all conflicted gay guys. In my case, bi means bi, thank you very much. But this story isn't about the hetero side. It's about Mario and me.
The sauna in the men's room of the gym at the university was a good place to go fishing. It was the only place I had tried in that community. As with any fishing hole, you didn't always get a nibble, and sometimes you pull up one ugly catfish, but every now and then..... This story is about something that started one of those times.
This was in July. Like many urban universities, this one had a lot of programs for inner city kids, which meant blacks, Latinos, some poor whites. Most of the regular students were gone for the summer, so these kids dominated the space. They would go to classes all morning, then they had gym privileges and the arena floor would be packed with a rainbow crowd from noon until mid-afternoon. High school and a few junior high school kids, the guys all playing basketball and showing off for the girls who congregated in clusters here and there, looking at the guys but trying not to look as if they were looking at the guys. The girls were hot, too, but let me not get distracted from the game board on which this story played out. You could run around the track that circled the basketball courts, pretending to watch the games, really watching the lithe young bodies sweating, moving..... nearly every game was shirts and skins, and you always rooted for the skins.
It was rare, however, to see one of these kids in the showers, rarer still to find them in the sauna. Not that I didn't always look, always took longer in the shower and sauna if I knew these beauties were in the building. I always wondered what it meant to find that rare brown skinned boy sweating away in the cedar box with a bunch of white haired, white skinned professors. You often could not find out however, because the crowd would not thin out until you had to leave, or the boy had to leave, and so the question remained unexplored.
I had done my shower/sauna/shower cycle, maybe even more than once, with no luck. Not many people in that part of the building at all that day. So I was drying off in the area between the showers and sauna, getting ready to dress and leave. Around the corner from the lockers comes this guy: dark brown skin, about six feet two inches, maybe three. Close cut hair, a really handsome, open face with big eyes, full lips, broad nose (but not too broad). He's got on only this pair of cut-offs. His eyes flicker here and there surveying the scene... I'm the only guy there, the showers are otherwise empty... and he swerves gracefully into the sauna, letting the cedar door close shut behind him. OK, I had kept the whole area under surveillance, so I knew he was alone in there. I didn't want to just rush right in, especially when I had clearly been drying off. Would he notice that? Would he think about what it meant that someone dried off and THEN entered a sauna.... sort of like he had other reasons for sitting around and getting hot?
At that point I still had deniability, so I didn't worry too much. I gave it a few beats, then opened the door and went in. The lights were low, but it wasn't really dark. He was sitting directly facing the door on the top shelf, and he had removed his shorts. He was completely naked on the hot cedar planks. "Hi," I said, nodding. "Hi, how's it goin'" he replied. I stepped up to the top shelf also, but to my left, so that when I sat I had a view right across him. I spread my towel on the planks and sat down.
These scenes are all the same and they're all different as we tip-toe our way toward truth or consequences: "Sure is hot in here today," I began.
"Yeah, sure is," he said. Pause.
"My name's Lance," I said, half rising and extending a hand.
"Mario," he replied, doing the same.
"Mario... that's a nice name," I said. "Were you working out?"
"Yeah, hoops."
"Oh, OK. Yeah, you look like you do work out a lot!" and here I allow myself a frank appraisal of his body. He's muscular, but not really ripped. It's as if he's had a growth spurt that outstripped some basically good development. Little hills and valleys of a 6-pack, and pads of chest muscle but nothing really outstanding. Yet still, your basic healthy, thin, athletic young black guy. His penis is large and lying straight and still between the two long hills of his thigh muscles. His arms are straight at his side, palms flat against the cedar boards, torso more or less straight.
"Yeah, HAVE to! Coach gets mad if we don't," he replied grinning widely. He began glancing quickly over at me, then straight ahead, back and forth like that.
"You play ball at school?"
"Yeah."
"Where is that?"
"North," he said, naming a local high school.
"Oh, OK.... well, yeah, you sure look like you work out," I repeated. "You here for classes this summer?"
"Yeah, all morning."
"Oh, OK. So, you must be... what, eighteen?" Now, that might have been the turning point. Or was it telling him twice how much it looked as if he worked out? Or was it my steady gaze right at him? He looked straight ahead and, in retrospect, might have hung his head just a bit.
"Yeah, I'm eighteen..... So," and he turned to look at me in sort of a pointed way, "you married?"
"Yeah. Got two kids." He nodded at that information. "I guess I should ask you," I said, "got a girl friend?"
"Yeah."
"Got any kids?"
He chuckled and shook his head vigorously, "Naw, nothin' like that!" More silence. One of his legs began to bounce just a little, a steady thrumming of nervous tic.
"Man, it's really hot in here," I ventured again. "You're likely to burn something sitting right there on the wood like that."
"I know it!"
"I could unfold my towel, want to share it?" That did it. There was silence, but you could hear the tumblers of the lock clicking into place.
"Uh... Naw, I'm here with a couple of friends.... they might come in."
I nodded. "Well, I think I'll rinse off and come back in."
"Me, too," he said. We both left the sauna to shower. It was pretty clear to me that he had the beginnings of a hard on. We each stood at a nozzle a few feet apart, but it was also clear that we were both looking at each other pretty frankly the whole time. I turned the shower off and moved back to the sauna. He gave me a "wait a minute" sign with his hand and padded off toward the lockers. I sat back down where I was in the sauna and a few minutes later he re- entered, this time wearing his cutoffs.... perhaps to hide an erection?
"Do you work out a lot?" I asked.
"Yeah, I do, every day. And hoops..."
"I guess your girlfriend must like it that you work out." He grinned and nodded. "Keeps you in good shape for sex with her, eh?" He chuckled, stretched a little, twisting his lithe young body, settled back looking at me quite directly. His leg was vibrating again. "You sure you don't want to share this towel, it's really hot," I said.
"Let me.... let me see if my friends are back," he said, and left the sauna again. A couple of minutes passed, and he returned.
"I found 'em, told 'em to go without me," he said, as he sat. His leg was really bouncing now, and he kept glancing at me, then straight ahead, back and forth.
"Listen, it's really kind of hot in here anyway," I said. "I've got a private office, air conditioned, we could...talk....and not be disturbed. You want to come to my office for a soda?"
A long pause. "Uh, look, this is none of my business and I don't mean to be rude, but... are you gay?"
"I'm bi," I said. "How about you?"
"I'm bi," he said, looking straight ahead.
"Want to come to my office?" I repeated.
"Sure."
"I'll meet you in the hallway by the 'cage,'" I said. We both left the sauna again and rinsed off, this time appraising each other with full knowledge of what was about to happen. You wouldn't find him in a muscle magazine, but he was a real-world nicely built guy, well muscled.... I felt lucky that things were developing this way.
What did he see when he looked over at me? This I could never figure when I landed a younger guy. I would NEVER go for somebody like me. I mean, I think I'm good looking, but I'm middle aged, a tad overweight and although I exercise every day you could never say I was muscular especially. Balding, gray hair..... But I've learned not to ask that question. You never know who you are to somebody else such that they want you. Was I this guy's dad, maybe an absent dad? Was I his coach, maybe another middle aged white guy before whom he strutted naked every day after practice in the high school locker room, a guy he struggled to please and to earn the approval of? Was it my gray hair? My white skin? What was I bringing to him in exchange for his good looks, slim brown body, and youth? You just never know. Better to take the gift of the Love God and not question. And I was secretly delighted, just tickled, that this handsome young guy was willing to come to my office with me.
We met in the hallway after getting dressed, and walked almost in silence the short distance to my building. I did ask him along the way, "You ever done this before?"
"Uh... naw, just once or twice at Musclebuilders," he said naming a local gym franchise. Interesting.... how much could one really do in such a public, mainstream place. It wasn't a bathhouse or anything like that. Was I getting a same sex virgin?
I took the back way in, and fortunately the hallway to my office was deserted when I let us in. I shut the door behind us and moved one of the chairs in front of it, just in case. I put a box of tissues on the coffee table in front of the couch. As I was doing that he prowled restlessly around the office, and then he saw it. The picture of my wife. Did I mention that she is black? A second marriage, much better than my first, to a white woman. He stopped dead in his tracks.
"Who is this?"
"My wife." I hadn't mentioned her color to him because it just hadn't been relevant.
He let out sort of a single, barking laugh. "Does she suck your dick?" he asked, with a new, hard edge to his voice.
"Yes, sometimes," I said. "Want to sit here?" I indicated the sofa. "Want a soda?" He nodded yes, and I got both of us one from the little refrigerator I kept in the office while he sat. I gave him his, and then sat down right next to him. We both pulled long swallows from the cans. Then I settled back and put my left arm around his shoulder and began to knead the tense muscles in the back of his neck. He closed his eyes, a couple of beats passed, and then he exploded.
Setting his can down on the coffee table, he wheeled around and over me as I sat on the couch, both legs straddling my lap and hips. Bending down he attacked my mouth with his, his tongue pushing in past my lips and gyrating furiously inside my mouth. With another hand he grabbed my crotch. I was nearly helpless under the onslaught, but I held on to his thighs and hips. In a minute he stopped and rocked back; it seemed as if he had come to the end of his plans, the last of his repertoire of foreplay, and wondered what was next. Maybe he really was new at the whole sex-with- guys thing.
"Stand up," I said, which he did. I switched off the lights in the office, then asked him to removed his shirt, which he did, standing quietly, waiting. "I'm going to give you a rubdown," I said, and moved behind him. I began kneading the warm, soft, chocolate dark skin of his neck, then the strong muscles of his shoulders. Working my way firmly but gently I passed the rounded muscles where the shoulders curve around to the arms, then the long slopes and valleys of muscles down his arm to the hard-sinewed forearms. He had that beautiful muscle contour you find in black guys, muscles just dancing and rolling with each other in perfect harmony. I tore off my shirt and came around in front. I worked the pads of muscle on his chest, definitely present but not overly developed, tweaking his nipples as I passed down across a slightly developed six pack. His navel wasn't quite an outie, but harbored a little knot of flesh considerably lighter than the sweet chocolate brown of his skin. He stood there accepting these services passively.
"Undo your pants," I said, doing the same with mine. I let mine fall, then reached to his and gently tugged down pants and underwear in one move. My average sized penis was sticking out, while his bounced out of his garments and poked straight ahead. Are black dicks bigger than white ones? Well sure, I think so. Why deny it? I can think of at least one good evolutionary reason for it, that it's a highly vascular area that disperses more heat the bigger it is, and heat dispersal is a good thing in Africa. Whereas my modest organ was designed for shriveling up in the cold winds of Germany. But that's the professor in me talking. At the moment, we were two guys with hard-ons that batted against each other. I took him into a tight embrace, but avoided kissing; his technique was just way too sloppy. I moved back around behind him and began kneading his hard butt muscles, and was starting to run my fingers into the ass crack when he whispered urgently, "Don't put your dick in my asshole."
Interesting. I was becoming more sure he was a same-sex virgin. It was real unlikely I'd just put my dick to his anus and push, both of us standing up with no lubrication or anything, but maybe he thought that was how it was done. "OK," I said, but continued kneading his high, tight, upward- rolling black-man's butt. "Um.... I really just want some sucky," he said, again, nervously.
"OK," I said, "lie down," indicating the couch. He stretched out on it and I lay down on top of him, our dicks grinding together. We were both too excited for this to go on for long, and uncertain of how to make our way through this "first time with each other" territory. Soon I slid off of him onto my knees on the floor, with him laid out like a feast on the sofa before me. I kissed his chest, nibbling his nipples, then licked my way down his abdomen. I nuzzled in his nice, plush bush of pubic hair for a while, then slipped around the rampant dick to lick his scrotum. I sucked each heavy testicle into my mouth--they really were quite heavy, potent engines and full of little black baby- makers. Then back to the purple black dick, which I licked up the bottom side, tonguing the underside of the lighter reddish-brown head.... and then took the whole thing into my mouth.
I pumped my head up and down as he began breathing more heavily, his hands grasping my back and one arm. The slightest up and down rhythm in his hips started to match my cadence. The penis was much too big to take in entirely, but I did what I could, and it evidently was fine with him. "Oooooo, yeah," and "do that!" and "Oh, yeah, do that thing" were repeated over and over. His rhythm increased, and then he cried out, "I'm coming." I don't know why I didn't take it then, I'd have had no objection, but it seemed as if he expected me not to, so I removed his penis from my mouth, grasped it with my hand and began pumping just as he shot out a spray of white semen all over his chest and abdomen. I slowed down as another and then another slug of cum shot out, and then it was over.
He was lying on the sofa on his back, breathing heavily, as I turned to look in his eyes. What I saw surprised me: tension, fear, maybe anger? "Listen man," he said, tightly between gasps for breath, "don't mess with me. Don't you tell nobody, for real.... I'm for real, man, you just stay right here, don't do nothin' and don't go nowhere....." on and on in this way for maybe a minute. Kneeling on the floor by him still, I just looked at him. "OK," I said, laughing a little in wonder and disbelief.
"Why you laughin'?" he asked, tensely.
"I.... I don't know where this is coming from," I said. "I'm not going to hurt you. Look, I like you. Nobody's going to do anything to you." It was then that I was dead certain he had never had this kind of intimacy with a man before, and that doing so had broken lots and lots of rules he had learned in his life. He had taken a plunge, and was now fearful of a host of consequences that had been whispered to him since he was a boy. "Come on," I said, "let's get dressed. Nobody's going to hurt you."
He sat up and began dressing. I gathered up pieces of our scattered clothing from the darkened office floor, handing him what was his, putting on what was mine. Putting on my shoes, I sat down on the sofa next to him, where he was nearly clothed. Then he surprised me.
"Didn't you want to come?" he asked.
"Well, yeah, but it didn't seem like you were in the mood."
"It don't matter."
"Well.... I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do."
"I don't mind. It don't matter."
Nonplussed, I thought about it for a minute. Then I stood up and dropped my pants and underwear again, pulling off my shirt once more and stood right in front of him.
"Seems like you came already," he said, wiping away great gobs of precum that had gathered there. My penis had certainly wilted during the previous confusing minutes. He bent down to it and took it into his mouth, sucking it. It came right back.
I held his head in my hands, enjoying the scratchy texture of his close cut hair, fondling his small ears, as he sucked and I rocked back and forth. It was naughty of me, but I didn't tell him when I was coming, I just grunted, pushed, and started flowing. He quickly pulled his head off of my penis and wrapped his hand around it, turned his head to the right and spat my semen out on the sofa. Turning my dick in the same direction, he let it spout out its white gobs onto the same place. He kept his head turned, looking intently at the gathering islands of goo on the couch fabric. Was he seeing his first white man's semen, was he surprised that it was the same color as his?
"Was that good?" he asked, a little anxiously, when I was finished. I leaned down and kissed his forehead. "That was very good," I said. Then I dressed again and we restored the room to order.
"Well, that's was nice. I'd like to do it again some time, but it's up to you. You know where to find me," I said, feeling it was important, given his recent reticence, to leave him in control of the process.... even though I wanted nothing more than to follow him home.
"OK," he said, and slipped out the door.
The next day, about the same time of day as all this occurred, I taught a summer session class down the hall from my office. "I'm in 210" I put on the door, with an arrow pointing the right way, just in case... just in case. Fortunately, I was team teaching the class. I took the first half. My colleague had begun her part of the class and I was sitting around the seminar table, facing the closed door to the room, when I saw a dark face float briefly in the wire-crossed window of the door, then disappear. "Got a student" I mouthed to my colleague, who nodded pleasantly as I moved quickly to the door.
Closing it quietly behind me, I saw Mario going down the stairs to my left. "Hi," I said.
"Oh, hi," he said, "I just stopped by. You're teaching, go ahead," he said.
"No, no, the other teacher will take over," I said. "Let's go talk."
He came back up the stairs as we walked back toward my office. "I been thinkin' about you," he said.
"Good thoughts, I hope?" I asked, putting my key in the door lock.
"Yeah, good thoughts," he said, grinning shyly, as we entered and shut the door behind us.
I stepped up to him as he stood in front of a bookcase, put one hand on his shoulder and the other around the back of his head, and kissed him. Again, he pushed a violently wagging tongue into my mouth. I pulled away gently. "Kiss slow," I said, then moved in again. He learned quickly and if to this day he is giving intense pleasure to some lucky man or woman with his kisses it is because I taught him, applause, applause. Our kisses then and from then on were slow, measured explorations of each other, an intimate slow dance of sucking lips and tongues, pushing lips and tongues into the other to be sucked, running tongues over teeth. We were both breathing heavily through our noses, sharing breath, sharing spit. If I could have one of our moments back again, it would be one of those long kisses.
We undressed and I put him on the couch again. I stretched out on top of him and clasped both of his hands in mine, our fingers interlocking. I could see the backs of my white hands with chocolate brown fingers coming in between mine, lying across my skin, and I knew he saw a negative image of that from his side. I was pushing my chest up off of his in that way, pushing against his hands, both pairs of intertwined hands held right in front of us. I looked at them and at him looking at them. Our eyes met. We never said a word about it, but I know we both thought that was the most beautiful sight we had ever seen.
Breaking the grip, I cupped both hands around his close-cut hair. I couldn't get enough of feeling that crisp, sandpapery texture of hair as we kissed. I nibbled his nose with my lips, kissed his eyelids. Bringing my face around to the side of his head, I kissed his neck and ears. He giggled and writhed a little. "That tickles," he said. "Want me to stop?" I asked. "Yeah." He breathed. But I didn't, and he didn't ask me to stop again.
Going first this time, I stood up. He knelt on the floor in front of me, grasped my thighs, and began sucking. Again I cupped his head, finding the texture of his hair simply delicious, letting go only as I felt my orgasm approach. "I'm gonna come," I said, and he pulled his mouth off and began pumping me with his hand. When I came, it was a shower of white drops and dollops and it fell all over him as he knelt in front of me, decorating his dark chocolate skin with white medallions. Mario had the most ecstatic look on his face, as if he had just come himself. "Yeah!" he cried out, as if he had just scored a basket. I think that I need not have cleaned my semen off of his shining dark skin.... I think he would have worn it like a necklace if I had not..... but I did.
We switched places. It was harder for me, I think, because his penis was so much larger, but I managed. He had to say "No teeth!" a couple of times, but soon he gasped "I'm coming" and it was my turn to receive thick ropes of white semen on my shoulder, neck, and belly.
Things changed as soon as the deed was done, not as dramatically as the day before, but you could sense the difference. As we were dressing, I sensed some hurriedness in him, a need to be off. The intimacy we had just shared seemed not to last into these moments.
"Hey, do you want to exchange phone numbers?" I said.
"Naw," he replied.
"OK, do you just want my phone number?"
"Naw, that's OK. Well, I gotta go," he said, moving toward the door. I was nonplussed; I mean, we had just had our dicks in each other's mouths, and at his instigation, now he seemed eager to leave. I gently intercepted him just before he got to the door and planted a kiss on his lips. He paused, hanging his head.
"Don't fall in love with me," he said.
"Um.... OK, but does that mean we can't see each other again, or maybe hang out outside this office?"
"Ah, I gotta go," he said, and was out the door.
A few days passed. I was working in my office with the door nearly closed. There was a knock, and when I opened it, there stood Mario, eyes shifting quickly as he scanned the office. "Hi, come on in," I said, and he entered, nodding. We got down to business.
Now, don't you like a little variety? Wouldn't most people? After some passionate squirming and pushing and kissing, I got up and asked him to get on his hands and knees on the floor. I got some KY I kept in the office for the purpose, and moved around behind him.
"Don't punk me!" he whispered fiercely.
"I won't, I just want to do something nice for you," I said, slicking up my thumb. I put this to his wrinkled brown asshole, which winked invitingly at me from between the two firm mounds of his butt cheeks. Mario stayed on hands and knees, but moved one hand around to clutch my wrist firmly. He was going to keep me from "punking" him, and it appeared as if that included inserting anything at all, even my thumb, into his love canal. I did what I could: scratching at it, moving my thumb in little circles at the opening, testing his limits by pushing just a little. That did it. He moved my hand away entirely, saying "I just wanna sucky."
Well, there's more than one way to skin that, cat, too. This time I laid down on the sofa and had him sixty-nine me. I was surprised that he let his precious anus float above my face so invitingly and defenselessly, but I didn't touch it again. I sucked his massive balls as they lay on my face, then pushed him up and got the end of his heavy dick into my mouth and sucked. Being on top, the action was all his. He pumped lightly while at the other end he took my penis in his mouth and bobbed his head up and down on it. I came first again, moaning to signal the impending crisis. He let it slip from his thick lips and began pumping it with his hand while I spouted all over my chest and belly. He kept that position, arched over me, bobbing his hips gently until he began to come. He pulled his own penis out and let it wag over my chest and belly as I pumped it, adding his own buckets of semen to what was already there. My torso was pretty well slicked up by the time he rolled off the couch to a standing position.
We were cleaning up when he said, "I can't come here any more."
My heart twisted. "Why?"
"Well," he said, "I gotta girl friend." I nodded; I knew he'd get over THAT. "And I'm Lutheran," he said, "and this is really bad for Lutherans." It was all I could do not to smile at him, but I didn't. "And.... and I'm really sixteen," said. "You could get ten to twenty for that," he added.
Few things have been more delicious in life than to discover his true age. Let's just say I was multiples of his years. Plus, there was just something about sixteen...... It was just plain old sweet.
"Don't worry, I won't tell nobody," he added quickly.
"Oh, I'm not worried about that," I said. Would he want himself outed? Plus, he had told me he was eighteen, and nothing was more plausible. If it came to it, I'd stand him up in front of a jury and ask them what age THEY thought he was. At any rate....
"So, I can't come back."
I held him tightly, genuinely sorry to see him go. I think he hugged back, but again, it followed the general pattern of intense desire and then distance, fear, and regret afterwards. He left the office and I stood watching him go as he went down the hallway.
A month or so passed and I assumed that Mario was a thing of the past. I was in my office with the door open, talking with a former student and friend who, coincidentally, was also black. He left, and about five minutes later who should appear in the doorway but Mario.
"Someone was here earlier," he said, almost accusingly.
"Oh, Troy?" I said. "Don't worry, I've never touched him!" I said, which was true. "Um... I'm glad to see you," I said as I closed the door. "I, uh, thought you weren't coming back."
"My girlfriend and I had a fight... somethin' stooopid," he said. That seemed to explain it all for him, justified his return. Where was the church, where was the law? Well, who was I to argue. We floated into another passionate session of long, exploratory kissing, hair feeling, sucking, licking, decoration of bodies with streaks of white... and the inevitable hurried, almost sullen departure at the end. "Look," I said, "it's clear you like me or you wouldn't keep coming back. I like you. Can't we just talk for a while, or go get coffee, or maybe see a movie sometime?"
"Naw, it just wouldn't work out. I gotta go to work," he said, not unkindly but with no hint of encouragement. And then he was gone.
Mario continued to appear sporadically, sometimes weeks and sometimes months apart. How often he showed up when I wasn't there, I never knew and he never said. The last time we were together I was yearning for something different, as the usual "sucky" scenario didn't allow for much variety. Lying on top of him, I pushed my erect penis down between his legs and began humping. I kissed him long and slow, cradled his crinkly skullcap, and looked deeply into his eyes as I slid in and out of his thighs. As I picked up speed and my breathing increased, he sense what was happening.
"What are you DOIN'?" he asked, breathing hard himself.
"I'm fucking you," I said. Not entirely accurate, and man was that the wrong answer. I had "punked" him. He let me come, which I did shortly thereafter, but he cleaned up and left extra fast after that.
I saw him at the gym the next summer, and once followed him down into the showers, but he was showering with shorts on and told me he had to go to work, then he left quickly. I was embarrassed for both of us. Another year passed and Mario graduated from his high school and, as it turned out, went to the university--not unusual for urban kids trying to save money on room and board. I saw him sitting in a classroom a couple of times as I passed, and I made sure to pass by that way during future meetings of the class just to look in and see him. His glance flickered at me, but he made no acknowledgement. I saw him once at the gym and we actually had a pleasant but very brief conversation. I told him to come by anytime, but he didn't reply and he never did.
A better job prospect took me to another state before Mario graduated. Thank goodness for the Internet, though, for I could keep track of him in a way. I found pictures of him on a web page for a black fraternity, he was doing some service activity, standing there with other handsome black guys, a big grin on his handsome brown face. Through the university web site and through googling him I knew when he graduated with a business degree, and he even popped up as an employee on the web site of a firm doing financial services. I know his work, home, and cell numbers and at least two email addresses to try. Should I? I don't want to intrude, and I hope he's happy the way things are. Meanwhile, I've saved those fraternity pictures, and that's what I have left of him: a smiling brown eyed handsome man, frozen in time, sixteen forever.