The Deadheads of No Hope

THE DEADHEADS OF NO HOPE by Rio Mack

DISCLAIMER: Contains depictions of gay & straight sex.

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FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL (TUESDAY MORNING)

Remy made sure he woke up extra early on the first day of school, so that he'd have some time left over after his morning workout to spend a long session flexing and posing in front of his bedroom mirror, studying his naked body, critically examining the results of his obsessive training. He especially needed his finishing set' (as he called it) today, to center himself and focus his energy, because he was buzzing with first-day' jitters, wondering what the scene would be like at his new high school.

Pleased as usual with what he saw, he headed downstairs to the second floor bathroom for a shower, luxuriating under the steamy spray, soaping himself indulgently, loving the feel of firm muscle and hard cock. He jacked out a morning load to memories of last Friday afternoon with Trey, along with fantasies of the other hot dudes he might be hooking up with now that school has finally started.

He dried off and headed back up to his room, where he couldn't resist another session in front of the mirror, mesmerized by his fit body.

Remy was a beautifully built young jock. He'd started regular workouts at an early age, influenced by both his fitness-nut father, as well as the athletic, lean-muscled black boys at his inner city middle school back in Milwaukee, where he'd lived until about three months ago. Remy trained his body daily, doing calisthenics and yoga stretches in his room, and running four or five times a week.

As he twisted and turned, posing and flexing, he saw a strong, handsome, seriously ripped seventeen-year-old boy, with perfectly carved everything and not an ounce of extra body-fat -- chest carved and squared-off beautifully, with tiny, succulent little nipples, and the washboard of every young jock's dreams; insanely shredded quads that were all grooves and planes (Remy did an absurd number of squats in his work-out, to get those ripped thighs and that firm, hard, muscle-butt); and nestled proudly between his hard, cut quads, like a jewel in its setting, was a long, thick length of big white dick.

He looked, he thought proudly, like an anatomical chart of perfect male musculature, everything firm and pumped, beautifully defined and perfectly proportioned (except, of course, thank the gods, a nicely oversized cock).

He grabbed the hand mirror off his dresser to study his equally impressive back-side -- softball-sized calves and sinewy thighs balanced his lower body with a muscular back and shoulders; and there in the middle, the smooth, firm, dimpled globes of his round, beautifully worked glutes.

"Hell, I'd fuck ya," he muttered to himself.

Turning back around, he looked over his front again, fluffing his cock -- scrumptious, he thought, seven-and-a-half inches of thick, sleek, uncut boy-meat. Remy was always the best-hung white boy in every locker room he'd ever been in. He looked, he thought, like one of those blonde, uncut, big-dicked, hard-bodied, BEL AMI porn models.

His eyes trailed up his body a bit, and he flexed again. He always had the best set of abs in any group of shirtless young males, black or white -- a genuine eight-pack, bulging lusciously like a temptingly plated platter of stuffed pasta, flanked on either side by a deeply carved pair of cum gutters. Remy nodded at the whole hard-muscled package he'd worked so hard for -- lean, chiseled, smooth, and sleek.

OK, he nodded, hot as ever, but what to wear? Remy had always made it a point of honor not to copy black boys' style, even though he'd become intimately familiar with the look from all those years at majority-black public school and knew he could put together a seriously hot version of street style. He would have loved to, actually, as there was no look sexier, to Remy's way of thinking, than a hip, young black dude's -- but he respected that black style was not his style, and he refused to look like some culture-thief wannabe.

Instead, he'd tried over the years, to evolve his own unique look, which he thought of as `surfer-punk-jock' -- bunches of bracelets on each wrist (some leather, some woven, some silver, and some home-made from keychain beads); plain white thermals and T-shirts with white-boy-cool graphics; and where the hottest black boys wore really expensive-looking designer jeans (which he knew his lean, toned body could easily rock), he went the other way, with cheap, washed-out Wranglers that looked pin-up boy sexy on him, hanging low enough off his muscular hips to show off the waist band of his jock.

For warmer weather, like today, he had a couple pairs of army surplus shorts (one khaki, one olive drab), which also hung low and sexy on him, along with, of course, a couple pairs of mesh basketball shorts.

And as much as he'd love to grow his wheat-straw blonde hair long and do dreads, loving the style on black dudes and knowing how seriously sexy it can look on white boys, he kept his hair buzzed close, which he thought set his jock good looks off in high relief (he had a beautifully shaped head and a soulfully handsome face). To add a little white-boy flair to his buzz-cut, he wore Carhartt skullies a lot.

Remy was about to start looking through the repurposed lateral file cabinet he used for a dresser, to figure out clothes for today, when he heard the sounds of what he figured must be kids outside school, so he went over to bedroom porch to take a look across the street.

Sure enough, there were black boys playing basketball on the playground. Awesome, he thought. One of the main reasons (besides sex) he was hoping to make some fast friends among the dudes at school was the chance to play pick-up sports again, especially basketball and football, so this boded well for the year ahead!

Back in Milwaukee, he was a point guard on both his middle school and high school teams. He came off the bench in high school, but he could hold his own enough among the black boys to play some non-garbage minutes in most every game. He'd played on the j/v football team, too, always starting at wide receiver, able to get space between him and his defender and run really precise routes. He loved going against more athletic, better-skilled black players, testing himself, losing more often than he won, but sometimes not that much more.

His mantra as a young athlete was 'Strong. Fast. Smart.' He tried to make that his code for life, too -- both on the street and in school, always bringing his 'A' game. He'd remind himself constantly, 'Don't beat yourself!' Penalties can kill a player's chances, and he refused to lose that way, through his own careless stupidity. So he stayed sharp and played very aware, very much within himself, no matter what arena he played in.

His goal in everything he endeavored -- to be a tough out, a crafty dude with whom his opponents would have their hands full.

Sports wasn't just a passion growing up, he did it as a defense mechanism, too. Not just at his inner-city school in Milwaukee -- where any hint of looking soft or effeminate meant ridicule from the hip black dudes he wanted to stay at least on the fringe of -- but he also used physical prowess as armor against his uber-homophobic father. However sensitive his dad's gaydar might or might not have been, Remy had always tried to stay very safely below it, not letting the least little blip of his same-sex desire appear on his dad's screen.

Even though his father had started making snide innuendoes several years ago, wondering why he never dated girls, Remy genuinely believed he'd managed to baffle him -- right up until that day Larry, his dad, walked in on him and his friend Bryson, naked in bed together.

Remy glanced over at the huge old bank clock on his bedroom wall. He had about forty-five minutes before first bell, so he forced himself to tear his gaze away from the bare-chested dudes balling on the playground and started grabbing some clothes out of his dresser to try on.

He chose his two sexiest jocks, a pair of mesh basketball shorts, his olive green army surplus shorts, a few wife-beaters, and his favorite Stussy T, then took turns mixing and matching. He thought maybe an army green wife-beater and black mesh shorts -- commando, he thought slyly, to show off the assets as soon as possible.

Then he reconsidered, worrying about 1.) wearing a wife-beater to school and possibly breaking the dress code on the first day, and 2.) having his dick flopping around all day under thin mesh and embarrassingly throwing wood at some point.

He finally went with a jock, his olive drab khaki shorts (letting them hang low enough to show off his jock's waistband), and his tight, white Stussy T with the crown logo. To complete his first-day outfit, he slipped on some baggy white wool sweat socks and the pair of old-school, leather, three-stripe, shell-toe Adidas he'd found at a Minneapolis thrift store over the summer, while shopping for kitchen stuff with his mom.

Nice! he thought, as he posed in front of the mirror -- simple, low-key, but still hot as fuck. A bunch of bracelets on each wrist, a splash of Dior Sauvage, and he was good to go.

Downstairs, he found his mother, Ava, dressed for work and sipping coffee. She'd made oatmeal for them both. Remy sliced some banana on his and threw on a handful of toasted pecans. As he wolfed down his breakfast, he chatted excitedly with his mother, who was happy to see her son's first-day enthusiasm.

They made jokes as to whether or not Remy would have an opportunity today to try out No Hope's third-floor boy's bathroom policy -- which allowed boys up to ten minutes of consensual sex in the john. Remy loved that he could be frank and funny about sex with his mom.

Before he left, he took another look at the scene in front of school, this time out his front window. He laughed to see that about four-fifths of the black dudes hanging out on the front steps, as well as on the benches under the arbor next to the building, were in white wife-beaters (along with either b-ball shorts or low-riding jeans). Remy quickly ran back upstairs to strip off the Stussy T and throw on a snug-fighting grey wife-beater. Looking even hotter now, he grabbed his back pack and headed across the street for his first day.

Remy had texted Trey last night, and they agreed to meet on the front steps before school. Trey wasn't there yet, so Remy sat back and people-watched. Hope Academy, he realized, was a seriously black school. His old school in Milwaukee was 75% black, and huge. As a charter school, No Hope (he was already starting to think of it in terms of its nickname), looked to be maybe 90% black, and really, really small. Black kids were all around him, chatting, laughing, playing music on their phones or headphones, jumping rope, shooting hoops in the parking lot, playing dice, and flirting.

Remy tried to seem casual as he scoped out boys, but his dick started hardening almost instantly. It was difficult for him to pretend not to stare at all the hot-looking dudes in various shades of brown and black, many with the lean, sleek-muscled, erotically charged body of the superbly conditioned athlete.

Some of the most devastatingly handsome older-looking boys had longish, scraggly chinstaches, which Remy found seriously hot. And all around, the dazzling variety of hair styles one would expect to find in a large group of young, fashion-conscious black boys -- long, thick, Rasta dreads; tightly woven braids, either thick or thin, worn either long and loose, hanging down or tied in back or bunched on top; short, nappy, twisty locs; dense, blow-out `fro's of various sizes; and thug-sexy, gangsta-style corn rows. Remy gazed dreamily, daydreaming about letting his fingers play through those sexy hair-styles as a dude's hungry mouth worked over his cock.

Finally, Remy saw Trey walking up Arthur Avenue from the Danron Townhomes, where his new friend lived. Trey looked cool as hell for the first day -- sagging designer jeans, oversized Indianapolis Colts T, and a gold chain. His long, thick dreads, as always, looked gorgeous.

He and Trey hugged and bro-kissed, then grinned at each other. Almost as soon as they both sat back down to shoot the shit, the bell sounded, and a voice over an outside speaker told all students to report to the gym, where they could help themselves to continental breakfast and pick up their schedule.

Once in the gym (which Remy loved -- he thought they should shoot HOOSIERS 2 here), Remy and Trey got to the end of the line, where they just rubber-necked and took in the first-day buzz as they waited.

After they got their schedules, Remy and Trey compared their classes and were happy to see they'd be together a lot throughout the school day. They were in the same first period English class (which had a 'Great Books' theme Remy thought could either be super-interesting or a total bore). They had second hour math together, a subject neither boy much liked, but junior-year math was called 'College Math 1 -- Applied Math and Geometry,' which sounded kind of bland but not too impossible (nothing like the `Pre-Calc' or 'Advanced Trig' Remy had been dreading, and obviously easier than whatever 'College Math 2' would have been!). After math, the boys shared the same lunch period.

After lunch, the boys' schedules diverged for two classes. Remy had History fourth period, the topic of which intrigued both boys -- `Critical Study of Historical American Documents'. Remy's fifth hour was 'Science 3,' and science classes, Remy found, all depended on the teacher, so he hoped he'd have a good one. Trey's afternoon would be Science fourth hour, then History fifth.

The boys were ecstatic to see they'd meet up again in PE last hour, a great way to end the day -- especially given No Hope's `sex positive' policy for boys. Remy's mind immediately became drenched in fantasies of Trey and him, along with a few other hot black boys, fooling around in the showers after flaunting hard muscle to each other all through gym class.

Damn, he should have jacked out another load before he left for school that morning -- he was horny as fuck from all the gorgeous black-boy eye-candy he'd been gorging on all morning. There was always the third-floor bathroom, he smiled to himself, but he planned to get his bearings at No Hope before he started cruising the boys' john.

The two boys headed upstairs to their first-hour English class, Trey grabbing a pastry to munch on the way, and each boy taking a water.

Remy's English class (like all of his classes except Science, it turned out) was held in one of the charming, nicely preserved old classrooms in the building. Remy could just picture students attending No Hope pre- and post-WWII, girls in poodle skirts and boys in pegged jeans and letter sweaters, having class in this room -- mahogany woodwork everywhere, hardwood floors (recently sanded and varnished, Remy noted), an actual grey-slate blackboard spanning two walls (corner included), and, just as it was in the library, a row of packed bookshelves, with comfy-looking, cushioned window seats atop them, running along one all-window wall. This classroom's window-view overlooked Tower Hill Park, he noticed, which would give them a cool view of the Witches Hat Tower all term.

Remy strolled over to look at some of the posters on one of the walls -- one, an engraving of Shakespeare; another featured a cool drawing of Toni Morrison; there was one with a beautiful rendering of the Library of Alexander; another poster showed the covers of some classic novels (every one of which, Remy felt proud, he'd already read -- either for school or on his own).

There was also a poster advertising the Hennepin County Library system, showing a huge photo of its Bookmobile, which, according to the copy below, would stop at the Hope Academy parking lot every Friday afternoon from 4 - 5. A `Bookmobile' sounded dope as hell to Remy. The poster gave instructions on how to get a library card -- Remy took a phone photo, so he could apply for a library card as soon as possible.

Instead of separate desks, centered in the classroom were four beautifully finished library tables, each with two wooden library chairs on either side, evenly spaced throughout the room -- two tables flanking each other, with an aisle in the middle, then two more in back of those. Remy and Trey headed to the table in the farthest corner of the room and sat on chairs next to each other. They put their backpacks on the floor, and each boy took out a notebook. They were both too curious about their new school even to make small talk, preferring to immerse themselves in the scene.

Remy tried to look nonchalant as he checked out the other students -- two other black boys and three black girls, so far. One of the other black dudes was almost as hot as Trey -- tall and seriously built, like a linebacker, with handsome, chiseled features that added to his All-American jock look. Instead of some variant on one of the cool braid-or-blowout styles favored by the majority of the No Hope black boys, his hair was buzzed as skull-close as Remy's own.

Remy fought to keep his eyes off the boy, not wanting the dude to catch him staring, so he made a concerted effort to look around the room, soaking it in, loving the warm, classic old school-house look of the place, while stealing as many furtive glances at that Black Adonis as he could.

Three more girls, two white and one black, obviously good friends, strolled in. They were chatting and laughing uproariously among themselves as they strode over to the empty table in front of Trey and Remy. When they got there, still chatting and giggling, they all plunked their backpacks down.

Remy found his glance riveted to one of the new white girls -- a thin, jaw-droppingly gorgeous blonde, dressed in a wildly sexy outfit Remy thought looked hot as fuck on her. She had on what looked like a boy's tweed vest, top two buttons unbuttoned, with nothing on underneath, revealing long, bare arms, sleek and toned, more white than pink.

Whenever she moved those arms, Remy got quick flashes of skin underneath, through the arm-holes of her vest -- she had the kind of super-small breasts Remy thought looked sexiest on a girl. His throbbing cock seemed to be taunting him, laughing at him, telling him 'We ain't THAT gay, bro, that we don't think this girl's hot AF!'

The rest of her was equally dressed to thrill -- a pair of soft, faded, denim Daisy Dukes, which Remy couldn't help but stare at, not only because her long, smooth, bare thighs were sensational, but also to figure out if those jean shorts could possibly be any shorter. Grey knee socks and a pair of black Doc Marten boots completed the schoolgirl-slut ensemble Remy found utterly bewitching.

Even her blonde hairstyle was compelling -- immensely fashionable, shorter than shoulder-length, with some jagged strands left artfully longer throughout, making her look like a sexy pixie.

The three girls sat down and started looking around at the other tables, to see who else would be in their class that semester, waving when they saw kids they knew.

The blonde girl he was suddenly obsessed with was sitting at the exact seat at her table that Remy sat at his, and when her gaze reached Remy's face, her eyes widened alarmingly. Her mouth dropped opened in a sharp, immediate gasp, and she gave out with what Remy could hear was a quick, piercing whisper-soft shriek. Then she started rapidly hyperventilating in a faint voice Remy was close enough to hear.

"Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!"

She choked another shriek out, turned, and ran out of the room, immediately pursued by her two friends, who realized she was having some kind of attack.

Trey looked over and caught Remy's eye. His thick lips were screwed into a smirk, and one eye was squinting.

"The fuck was that, Rem? Got us a crazy girl up in here."

Remy just shrugged, trying to figure if there was something he'd done that had upset or offended the girl.

He could hear the three girls outside in the hall, talking excitedly. Especially he could hear what he took to be the blonde girl, still raving in a hoarse, low howl, as if she were desperately trying to convince her unbelieving friends she wasn't crazy.

Their chatter quickly died down, though, after he heard what had to be the black girl telling her blonde friend to "Just calm down, honey!" over and over.

The three girls returned to the classroom and walked back to their table. Her two friends maintained their cool hauteur, but the blonde girl, once she got next to her chair, just stood there, staring at Remy with wide, worrisome eyes.

Remy was freaked. He looked at the girl with what he hoped was an expression of kindness and innocence. He felt he needed to say something, so he smiled nervously and mumbled something soft and low to her across his table.

"Hey, `first days are the hardest days,' right? Did I, like, do something wrong? I'm sorry if I -- ."

The girl immediately closed her eyes, as if she were trying to will scary demons away or stop herself from screaming again. She finally opened them again and whispered back in a quiet, troubled voice.

"No! No no no! Really! It's just, it's just -- it's like, I just can't believe it! How are you actually here? I mean, you should be here, but still! Like, I know this is happening obviously -- `happened', I mean. It's just -- I've never actually done it before, and now -- oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, it's amazing! It's just -- damn! Unreal! Look, I'm sorry. I'm so so so sorry! Except, if you knew -- I mean, this is just too incredible!"

She immediately spun around and sat down in her seat, in a quick, graceful turn. Her butt, in her short-shorts, sent another throb through Remy's engorged cock.

The friend sitting next to her, the black girl, hugged her, rubbing those bare, lovely arms, and murmured something in her ear, while the friend sitting across the table from her, a striking girl with long, vividly red-orange hair that cascaded in rich waves around her face and down her back, smiled at Remy, and even gave him a little wavy-fingered hi. Remy, stunned by all this, gave her a half-hearted nod back.

The blonde girl turned back around again and stared at Remy, looking like she was about to cry out suddenly, either in despair or ecstasy. She formed words with her lips -- silently, but slowly enough that Remy could tell what she'd said.

"Lord Balthazar!"

Suddenly, a very bookish looking black woman strode through the door. She was dressed in a kind of casually elegant grey top and red scarf, a wide red belt, and a black skirt. She had a frizzy, effortlessly styled mass of black-grey hair, with a pair of reading glasses stuck in it like a headband, and a pencil lodged over one ear. She set her briefcase on the desk in the corner of the room, unzipped it, grabbed several folders out of it and placed them in front of her, then looked up at the class and switched on her smile.

"Good morning, class!"

All of the students in the class (except for Remy and Trey) obviously knew the drill, so they loudly answered.

"Good morning, Ms. Beam!"

The teacher, Ms. Beam apparently, cast an amused, chiding eye on Remy and Trey, the only silent ones.

"Let's try that again, shall we? [Voice louder now.] Good morning, class!"

Now every student heartily wished her a good morning back.

"Much better! Thank you, students! Lovely to see you all this morning."

She turned to the Black Adonis.

"Niece, would you help me hand out the syllabus?"

Then she turned to the blonde girl's red-haired friend.

"And Lavender, can I ask you to hand out the poems we're going to look at today?"

Niece and Lavender rose from their seats, and each took a small batch of papers from Ms. Beam, then went from table to table, giving hand-outs to each student. As they worked their way through the classroom, the teacher continued.

"For those of you who haven't had a class with me before, I'm Anna Beam. It is my very great pleasure to be your third-year English teacher this year. Third-year English at Hope Academy is called 'Great Books,' so together we'll be studying some of the greatest works of literature ever written, along with the historical, cultural contexts that gave rise to those works. I've chosen some truly classic books for you, but ones I think you'll all enjoy, from every era and every corner of the globe."

The teacher went on, but Remy tuned her out because Niece had reached Remy's table. Remy wanted to make some kind of quick connection with the gorgeous dude, who was even hotter-looking close up, and who had an easily traceable outline of a huge-looking dick under his jeans, snaking obscenely down his thigh.

As he took the paper Niece offered him, Remy felt he had to speak.

"Thanks, bro! Awesome T-shirt, by the way!"

It wasn't so much the T-shirt -- a vintage 'Gang Starr' concert T -- as the fit, which looked like a second skin on the boy's incredibly cut upper body. Remy felt if Niece wasn't into flirting with boys, the dude could always take Remy's comment as a thumb's up from a fellow fan of classic hip hop.

Niece at first gave Remy a sidelong, questioning glance, then just nodded, stone-faced. Oh well, thought Remy, worth a try.

Trey had his eyes fixated on the blonde girl's black friend, who was wearing, over a super-short denim skirt, a perfectly form-fitting white wife-beater, washed thin and translucent, revealing spectacularly perfect, grapefruit-sized breasts, with dark, mouth-watering areoles. Trey leaned close to Remy and whispered low.

"If that girl can eat dick and don't mind rimmin' a dude's ass, I'mma marry her. Fuck, Rem, she get me almost as hard as you do."

Lavender was now at Remy's table, handing out a sheet with four poems printed on it. Remy could quickly tell, from the square shape of the poems and a number at the top of each one instead of a title, they were some of Shakespeare's sonnets. Lavender leaned close and gave Remy a quick whisper.

"Don't mind Wren! She gets a little carried away sometimes!"

When Ms. Beam saw that everyone had their hand-outs, she went over the attendance sheet for the ten students in class. As Ms. Beam read off names, Remy caught that the strange, gorgeous blonde girl's name was Wren Damson,' her two friends were Lavender Carpenter' and Njeri Dare,' his bro Trey's last name was Washington,' and the Black Adonis, Niece, whose last name was ;Franklin,' was actually named 'Aeneas,' which Remy thought was one of the hippest names ever.

Remy also noticed that when Niece Franklin's name was called, he threw a quick, expressionless glance over to Remy. Remy gave him a knowing, cool nod, adding a micro-bit of a smile, but Niece had already turned away.

When he himself had answered 'Here!' when Ms. Beam called out his name, Wren Damson immediately turned around in her seat again and stared at him, with an urgent, desperate, wide-eyed longing, like Remy was a fireman and her very last hope for helping her escape from a rapidly burning building. Then, still looking straight ahead, she softly closed her eyes and mouthed silently to herself, 'Remy Lord Remy Lord Remy Lord' and swerved back around in her seat to face front with a stylish, effortless swirl that Remy thought looked like a ballet dancer's move.

After she'd gone through the attendance sheet, Ms. Beam picked up one of the papers on her desk and smiled at the class.

"Lovely! Many returning students this year and a few new ones I very much look forward to getting to know. Well, welcome all of you to the new school year! This will be your favorite hour of the school day, I predict. First-hour classes are always the best -- everyone's so bright and fresh early in the morning! Let's wait until the end of class to go over the course schedule Niece gave you, because I want to spend most of our time together today looking over the poems Lavender handed out. So, would you all take a few minutes and read the first poem on the sheet, 'Number 20'?"

Before he got to reading, Remy watched Ms. Beam pull her reading glasses down from where they nestled in her mass of hair and start making notes on her copy of the hand-out with the pencil wedged over her ear. She gave off an air of supreme intelligence, Remy thought.

Remy had to read the first poem over a couple of times to make sure he understood it. A lot of things he remembered about Shakespeare sonnets came back to him as he read -- that distinctive language, the love-poem content, and the fourteen-line form. They'd read a couple last year in his English class, but Remy had thought they were kind of boring. `Number 20,' though, was cool as hell.

His teacher last year mentioned off-handedly how Shakespeare actually wrote most of his sonnets to a young man, and a few to this sort of sex-crazed woman he would sleep with, and then always be ashamed of. When Remy had heard that, he regretted his teacher hadn't given his class any of those poems to read, instead of corny stuff like "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" and "When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes . . . ."

Remy had been stunned to learn that the world's most famous writer had written a bunch of love poems to a young dude. Obviously, `Number 20' was one of those, and Remy was seriously turned on by it. He immediately made a mental note that he needed to read more literature written by men about loving other men.

As he savored what he thought were some of the sexier lines in the poem ("master mistress of my passion" and "pricked thee out for woman's pleasure"), Trey bent closer and whispered to him.

"Any idea what the fuck this shit mean?"

Remy tried to keep his voice lower than his friend's as he answered.

"Yeah, it's a poem Shakespeare wrote about how hot this young dude is that he's crazy about."

"F'real? Where the fuck it say that?"

Remy pointed to lines on Trey's sheet and started to explain when Ms. Beam began talking again.

"It looks like we're all finished reading. Remy and Trey, it seems like you're the most eager to discuss the poem. How about you boys starting us off. Trey?"

Remy realized his teacher was gently reprimanding Trey and him for talking in class. OK, point taken. He almost laughed out loud, though, at how smoothly Trey answered.

"Let's see, where I start? Hmmm. Well, it seem to me . . . . not sure, but I think it be sumpin' like . . . ."

Then he stared at his paper as if he were pondering a weighty issue. Ms. Beam smirked.

"We'll give you a little more time to get your thoughts together, Trey. Remy, how about you?"

Remy was totally impressed his teacher knew his and Trey's names already. Probably she knew most of the other students' names from previous classes with them, though, and he and Trey were the only new names she needed to learn, but still -- impressive. Remy launched into his answer.

"Well, I know it's a Shakespeare sonnet."

Huge smile from Ms. Beam.

"That's right, Remy! Did anyone else recognize it as a Shakespeare sonnet?"

Only Wren Damson's hand went up.

"Remy, since you seem to be an expert, let's stay with you. I bet we all recognize the name `Shakespeare,' but just what is a 'sonnet'? Can you tell us?"

That was easy -- he'd aced the `poetry unit' quiz last year.

"Sure. We learned all about them at my old school. A sonnet is a super-short, super-structured poem. Very formal, sorta like a haiku or something, with all kindsa rules -- it's gotta be 14 lines, and the last 2 lines are special, they're called a couplet'. Sonnets are almost always in two parts, like call-and-response -- the top half asks a question, sort of, or states a problem, then the bottom half is the answer. Sonnets were originally Italian, I think, and then two English aristocrats -- a dude named Surrey, and I forget the other dude's name -- started writing some in English. Almost instantly, sonnets went viral -- cause they're, like, love poems, right? Which are everyone's favorites."

Remy noticed, at the table in front of him, as Wren Damson suddenly put her hand on her black girlfriend's thigh and squeezed like she was having some kind of attack. He could hear the blonde girl quietly gasp, `Oh my God, Jeri! Oh my God oh my God oh my God' It sort of shook him, but he continued.

"Sonnets were, like, especially popular love poems cause they're short and witty, filled with lots of smooth, lover-boy game that dudes could bite, then spit to their ladies. Spit to their boys, too, because that's the last thing I remember -- Shakespeare becomes the king-hell sonnet-writer, and he's, like, bi or gay or whatever. I mean, definitely queer, 'cause most of his sonnets -- like this one -- are written about how much he loves this gorgeous young aristocrat boy, his fair youth'. But he's definitely bi, too, 'cause he also wrote sonnets to this super-sexy, super-promiscuous lady he was gettin' with on the side, who he had some sort of serious love-hate thing with."

Ms. Beam looked radiantly pleased.

"Absolutely perfect, Remy! You just saved me fifteen minutes of lecture time!"

She looked around the rest of the class.

"Did everyone get everything Remy said?"

Nods all round. Trey fist-bumped with his bro.

"Remy, you're light years more brilliant and concise than those brain-dead, phone-addicted honors students I used to teach over at that diploma mill down the street. And my compliments to your former teacher. OK, then, in light of what Remy told us, let's take a close look at `Sonnet 20'. Thoughts?"

Njeri's hand shot up.

"The poet be seriously crushing on that boy, like Remy said."

"Where do you see that, Njeri?"

The girl looked back over the sonnet until she found the line she wanted.

"'A woman's face hast thou' -- so his boy be beautiful to him, as beautiful as a girl."

Remy watched as Wren Damson spun around and smiled shyly at him, then spun right back around. Remy couldn't help but notice that the girl's eyes were more than moist -- she'd been actually crying. What the fuck?

Njeri continued.

"The poet worship this boy. Say he got a gentle heart, bright eyes, isn't unfaithful, all dudes think he gorgeous, all women 'mazed by him. Last line of the poem, Shakespeare tell the boy he has his love."

"Excellent, Njeri! Yes, Shakespeare -- or I like when you just called him 'the poet,' Njeri, let's stick with that -- the poet is totally smitten with the young man. What about that phrase 'master mistress of my passion'? That's an odd term, isn't it? What's that mean?"

Remy thought he knew, but he kept his hand down. He already felt like Poindexter, Jr.

No one else wanted to volunteer, so Ms. Beam went on.

"I could tell my lover 'you're the master of my soul,' or I could say 'you're the mistress of my soul,' depending on what?"

A girl in back answered.

"If your lover a man or a woman."

"Exactly! So why would I say 'master mistress'?"

Wren raised her hand like a half-inch, and Ms. Beam called on her.

"Well, it could be that you're bi [she did another quick spin around to look at Remy, smile shyly, then look back again], like Remy said about Shakespeare, and your lover is maybe bi, too. So you might want to blur gender by using male- and female-marked terms. But I think it's also a way for the poet to say to the beautiful boy that he's the poet's chief mistress, his supreme-master mistress -- given, like Remy said, that he also has a girl on the side he's sleeping with. He wants to assure the boy he loves so much that he's his real `mistress,' and the girl is just some side-piece."

Another spin around to smile at Remy, then Wren spun back around and finished her answer.

"I get the vibe, too, that calling the boy his mistress might also be like how some gay dudes call each other 'girlfriend' and use female pronouns a lot for each other. The poet even claims the boy's so beautiful because he was actually created to be a girl at first."

"Excellent, Wren! I like how you catch the ambiguity in the master mistress' phrase. The young boy's the poet's supreme mistress, but Shakespeare clearly wants that male-female subtext, too, that little flavor of bi or gay or whatever we want to call it. Wren brought up line 9 -- And for a woman wert thou first created' -- and started getting at how there's a kind of amusing, mini-creation myth in the poem. Nature's making little babies, almost like an assembly line, and she makes a girl so beautiful that the assembly line stops in its tracks while Nature falls 'a-doting' on this gorgeous new baby. But then what did Nature do?"

Niece's hand shot up, and Ms. Beam called on him.

"She give baby girl a dick."

Much laughter.

"Right, Niece! Nature 'pricked' her out! Shakespeare loves his naughty jokes! Nature gave the beautiful newborn girl a penis, so women like herself could be pleasured by this gorgeous creature. Which makes us go back and re-evaluate that line about 'for a woman wert thou first created' -- now it can mean both that the young man was first created to be a girl, but was also first created for women to love and be pleasured by."

Niece spoke up again.

"You were first created for woman, but now a man be lovin you -- that in there, too, I think. This a complex poem, Ms. Beam."

"It doesn't come much more complex than Shakespeare, Niece!"

Lavender didn't bother raising her hand. She had something to say.

"OK, I get the poem now. And I agree it's pretty hot to hear about Shakespeare -- or `the poet' -- being so infatuated with this hot boy and feeling a little sad at the end there that it's girls who are going to enjoy sex with the dude, and he'll just have to settle for something platonic or whatever. But we haven't talked about what I find a real problem, how nasty the poet is to women. It's offensive to hear him call women 'false' and 'shifting'!"

"It is, Lavender! Anti-feminism, misogyny -- that's unfortunately a popular theme in so-called `Great Books' literature, way before Shakespeare, even, and way after. We ladies constantly get a bad rap in the things men write about us."

Remy raised his hand again.

"I get why you're angry, Lavender, definitely -- misrepresentation seriously sucks. But it could also be sort of psychological or something, right? I mean, as a defense mechanism on the poet's part, to process all the drama with his two lovers. He loves this dude, majorly. It'd be sweet if they could just be totally exclusive and have incredibly hot sex, but I know from what my teacher told me last year, the young dude cheats on the poet, like, constantly, especially with women. And especially with the exact same lady the poet also gets with when he needs to nut. It drives Shakespeare crazy, that his boy is catting around like that, so his meanness might just be all drama-queen hissy -- like, 'Damn you, sluts! Leave my little hottie alone! Stop seducing him, you false-eyed harlots!'"

The class -- even stony-faced Niece -- cracked up. Lavender turned around.

"But Shakespeare's sleeping with her, too! Total hypocrite!"

"Right! It's a seriously messy threesome. Like Niece said, this is a deep damn poem. The poet thinks, 'OK, I admit it, I need to drain my balls with this woman. Not proud about it, but it is what it is. No worries, though, O my dearest master mistress! What we have is the higher love!' So, he's lying to HIMSELF, too, as well as both of his lovers, just like his lovers are lying to him. Everyone's sleeping with everyone else! It's like a Renaissance-era episode of FRIENDS!"

More laughter from the class. Remy went on, excitedly.

"Shakespeare and the lady are hating on each other, but the sex at some point must be pretty hot. Meanwhile, while they work out their own issues, the young dude is having a field day, jumping from one bed to another, and another and another. Sounds kind of cool for the young dude, actually. I'd love to read the hot young dude's poem about all this!"

More laughter. Wren turned around and gazed longingly on Remy. The black boy sitting next to Niece piped up.

"We ain't even talk about how, it be more'n just ladies be gettin' they pleasure from a pricked-out dude!"

The whole class cracked up. Remy and Trey fist-bumped. Ms. Beam was clearly delighted. She tried to sum up.

"So we're getting all the complexities of love and passion and gender and sexuality and desire and loss and despair and beautiful bodies and cheating lovers -- all churning around in just fourteen little lines! Welcome to Shakespeare! Now let's watch our little triangle develop in the other sonnets I gave you."

For the rest of first hour, Ms. Beam led the class in discussing the rest of the poems -- Sonnet 33, which showed the young man seriously cheating on the poet; Sonnet 93, the abject poet's sad, hollow hymn to the young man's beauty ("Note that line," Ms. Beam alerted the class, "where the poet feels 'like a deceived husband' -- I want you all to recall that simile tonight as you start reading OTHELLO!"); and Sonnet 150, chronicling the poet's shameful, raw need for the lady.

In their discussion of that last poem, when Ms. Beam asked if anyone had any thoughts about the line "If thy unworthiness raised love in me," Remy cracked up the entire class again, even Ms. Beam, when he yelled out, "Boner joke!"

With just a minute or so of class-time left, Ms. Beam regrettably shifted from their lively discussion of sonnets and quickly went over the course schedule and class policies. Afterwards, she grabbed a stack of thin books from one of the bookshelves under the windows and handed a copy of OTHELLO to each student, telling them to read the first two acts of the play for class tomorrow.

Remy left absolutely stoked with his first-period English class. He couldn't help but notice, though, Wren Damson bolted from the room in a hurry, not even waiting for her friends. He hoped it had nothing to do with him.

His second-hour math teacher was a young, white woman, very pretty, very friendly, and very funny. If anyone could get Remy interested in math, she could. Besides Trey, he also had Wren Damson's two girlfriends in class with him -- as well as Wren herself, who raced into class and grabbed a seat a few seconds after the bell sounded. Later, when the class was over, Wren floated up next to Remy as students were filing out so she could talk with him.

She pulled up close to speak softly to him. Remy felt something cool and hard brush against the skin of his hand for a second, and then it was gone. He wondered, excitedly, if it was Wren Damson, trying to take his hand, but then shyly pulling away, and that cool hardness was maybe a ring she wore or something. That'd be so hot! Having this beautiful girl flirt with him!

Right after that, though, while Wren Damson was still talking to him, Remy began to panic because he started feeling kind of light-headed and feverish, like he might be coming down with the flu or something. He couldn't even pay attention to what Wren was saying, feeling like he might have to go home sick from school on the first day!

Maybe that banana was rotten this morning, he wondered. Or the nuts he sprinkled on his oatmeal -- nuts can get moldy, right? Or maybe he'd just stood up too fast, at the end of class, and this flushed feeling would pass?

He tried to shake it off so he could hear what Wren was saying.

". . . for being an absolute total idiot in English class today, Remy! You must think I'm insane. I feel utterly appalled!"

Remy was going to reassure her it was no problem, but he suddenly realized he couldn't talk. His tongue felt like a huge mass of dead tissue in his mouth, and his head felt like it was crammed full of wet cotton.

Then, all at once, it was like time stopped. Fuck, he thought -- maybe I'm having some freak, young-person heart attack!

He realized the mass of students bustling around them in the hall outside math class had suddenly vanished in a blur. Now there was only him and Wren Damson standing together.

Then it came rushing on him, like a vivid memory, that there was only him and Wren Damson left in the entire world. Here she was -- right there next to him! Utterly gorgeous, like super-model gorgeous. All he wanted to do was take her in his arms and kiss her all over -- let his lips trail longingly over those smooth, gorgeous shoulders, down those long, slender arms, and then his mouth and tongue could play softly over those small, perfect tits he'd glimpsed right before English class and which now he couldn't get out of his fevered mind.

Remy wanted to pull Wren Damson down onto the floor with him, then fish his dick out, pull down those super-short, super-sexy jean shorts she was wearing, and start fucking her right there -- which would be easy because he could suddenly feel his cock fully hard and straining under his jock.

Every nerve in his body felt wired and aching to fuck this girl.

Suddenly, he was back in the midst of a crowded, second-floor hall at Hope Academy. Wren Damson was looking at him with a sweet, searching smile on her face.

Remy barely got it back together enough to realize he was supposed to be replying to something Wren had said, but what?

She stared at him kindly, expectantly, but when he tried to speak, he could only stammer.

"No, uh -- I, uh -- I'm not -- ."

Remy was too taken up with gazing raptly at her stunning beauty to actually form coherent words.

He felt pole-axed by her loveliness, floored at how beautiful, how perfect, how insanely sexy she was. He had never desired a body as much as he did hers now. Ever. Which was weird because he'd never gotten hard for a girl before. But the lust he suddenly felt for this girl was hotter than any he'd ever felt before, even with the hottest boy. They had to fuck. They had to fuck for the rest of their lives.

Remy's cock was throbbing painfully now, and his balls were churning explosively, the way they did right before he shot a load. It actually felt like he might suddenly cum, hands-free, just from the intensity of his longing for this girl.

Was that even physically possible? Please no, because it would probably destroy any chance he had of getting a decent rep at his new school, if he turned out to be `that new dude who shot a massive load in his basketball shorts, during passing time in the halls on the first day of school, and had to go home and change'. Shit like that, a dude can never shake.

Wren went on talking in her soft, light voice, glossing over Remy's nervous discomfort.

"Probably 'cause I had, like, three cups of coffee for breakfast this morning! I always get super-wired and weird after three cups of coffee! Again, Remy, sorry for being Space Girl!"

Then she drifted off to catch up with her friend Njeri, leaving a stunned, fully hard Remy quivering in her wake. She turned back to face Remy once, and he was going to call out `Wren! Wait up!' -- because he just wanted to be close to her; he needed to be close to her, like forever, from now on -- but she turned away, and she and Njeri disappeared through the double-doors leading to the North Stairwell.

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