UNDER THE CHERRY TREE
By
Rev. Jesse Penfield Gibson, MDiv, DMin
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. The characters and situations are purely imaginary. Any resemblence to any living persion is coincidental. This story is primarily a romance but does contain some scenes of explicit sex, primarily homosexual but not exclusively.
Author's note: I recently posted a multi-part story to Nifty entitled Dionysius about a sex club at a private university in the Southern US. More than a decade ago, I started this story and never quite completed it, although got about 80% done. However, I then came up with an idea about a college sex club or sex fraternity. Because I was lazy, I didn't want to come up with new characters and a new universe, so I just recycled this story into that one. That ended up being a quite different story but, if you read both, some elements are clearly evident. This story is primarily a romance but there is graphic sex in it (although it does take a while). The setting is roughly 2005.
Complaints, comments, compliments to revjpgibson@hotmail.com
Please remember to donate to Nifty to keep the stories coming. I have and you should too.
ONE
My body betrayed me. My last night at home, my body betrayed me again. I woke up with an erection, which is normal, but sticky, slimy and wet. A wet dream. I could even remember the broad outlines of it. A boy I knew from school having sex with a girl and I was there with him, touching and sucking him, tending to his sexual needs. The girl was just a generic girl. She was not the focus of my lust. He was. As much as I didn't want that to be the case, it was. I am frustrated because I have such limited options. I understand the biology: storage space is limited. The old has to make way for the new. But it is to masturbate, with nasty and unspeakable fantasies and guilt, or wet dreams, where my subconscious mind gives voice to my true desires. Anything else is ...I can't even admit it out loud, not right now. It isn't the girl that mattered in the dream. I'll say that.
The night before I started at Willingham, I stayed with my parents at the Hilton Garden Inn right next to campus. It's at least a 3 hour trip from where we live in Colquitt to Macon, so we came the afternoon before moving in day, which is supposed to start at 9 am on the dot. My parents where more anxious and keyed up that I thought that they would be. Daddy wanted to be sure that we were there right on time and he and Momma fretted about the timing of our leaving. I guess I should have tried to look at things from their point of view but I was so fixated on myself that I couldn't do that. I didn't realize that my parents were as emotional about the move as I was. For me, it was the anxiety of the new, fear of not fitting in and anticipation of a new phase of life, a new independence. For them, I think it was pride and sadness. Mama had done a year's secretarial course at a technical school but neither of them had gone to college. Really, no one in my family had, unless you count an aunt who got an associate's degree in Nursing. So they were proud that their youngest child and only son was not only going off to college but a pretty good private one. On the other hand, I was the baby of the family and Mama in particular was a little teary about it.
The thing I remember most about that evening was Daddy taking me for a walk across the street that separated the hotel from the athletic fields. We sat on the knoll looking at the baseball field and the intramural fields beyond and talked. He talked about baseball, which he had played some as a kid and still loved. Willingham has a team, of course, and my roommate for the coming year, Robbie, had a baseball scholarship. We had gone to high school together and were friendly but not best buds. Since we were the only two from our high school going here and we got along, it was natural that we would room together. It took my dad a little while to get to the point of our chat but he did eventually. It was a father-son chat, passing along hard won life experiences. The two that he wanted me to know was that there was not going to be anything happening in a bar after midnight that I needed to be a part of and that 15 minutes of fun can get you in more trouble than you can get out of in a lifetime. The last bit, I assumed, was about sex. As it happened, I had never been in a bar before and had never had sex. I had not really thought in those terms exactly when I thought about going to college but I suppose that both where likely to happen at some point. It may even be that to be truly educated that one probably ought to have spent a little time in a café and ought not to be a virgin. I didn't say that, of course. I was pretty sure that Daddy expected me to try both out but he had no idea what one would entail. To be blunt, I can tell you that the last 2 people on earth that I wanted to talk to about my sexuality would be my parents. It would be gross, of course, but we would rapidly go down roads that I would prefer that we not go down.
The thing about Mama is that she is the kind that if you leave her and come back 15 minutes later, she has made a new friend and knows all about them. She's not all that extroverted particularly, it's just a gift. When we got back from our man-to-man talk, which I think probably embarrassed Daddy almost as much as it did me, she had made some friends. The kid was an incoming freshman just like me, and actually scheduled to be on my same hall. His name was Carter. The father was a Baptist preacher from Vidalia. My mom, a lifelong Baptist, had just found my new best friend. In her view, he was perfect, having surrendered his life to full time Christian Service. I thought the father was a pompous bore, the mother quiet and mousy and Carter probably not my cup of tea. He was quiet but in a smug sort of way. On the other hand, I cut the kid a break since it was obvious that his Dad was the domineering kind so he may not be making the best impression.
There were more than a few kids staying there waiting for the residence halls to open and we all went down to breakfast at about the same time and pulled out for the drive to the dorm only a few tenths of a mile away at the same time. It took nearly 30 minutes to get there, bumper to bumper. We were in the good truck - a 3 year F 150- but I was bit embarassed because there were a lot of really expensive cars: Mercedes, BMW, Audi and the like. We were directed into a parking lot next my dorm, Reade Hall, which was a 4 story red brick building just off the main Quad facing the Co-op that looked like it came out of the early part of the twentieth century. But it was going to be my home for the next year and I was excited to be there. The fact that there was a small parking lot right there in the back between Reade and Stegeman Hall, which is a big red brick mound housing sophomores, was a plus for unloading my stuff. We checked in and got the keys and starting lugging stuff up the stairs to room 220.
"It's so small" my mom cried as I opened the door.
And it was. I could tell that some of my stuff was going back to Colquitt and I had tried to be conservative in my packing.
"Yeah, but the microwave is staying" I answered. The microwave was my contribution and the small refrigerator was Robbie's. Those were essential I figured.
The room was small. There were bunk beds and two tall wooden armoires, two small dressers and two desks and chairs. It wasn't as sparse as a jail cell, more like a monk's cell in a monastery. Robbie called the top bunk quickly like a child. I let him have it without complaint. I didn't want to have to climb every time I wanted to sleep. Robbie and I had to negotiate the issue of what stays and what goes as he had over-packed too. After a while, we had the tiny closet as decked out as we could with Robbie holding off on putting his posters of scantily clad girls on the walls until our Mother's had left. It turned out that Carter, the kid from the night before, was living across the hall in room 219. With everything done and nothing to do until the welcoming lunch, he and his family drifted over into our room. His roommate hadn't shown up yet. We were about to leave and take a quick tour of the campus when this kid with a duffel bag appeared outside Carter's room. He was wearing dusty, frayed khaki's, flip flops, a T shirt that read "Watson 349"and aviator sunglasses. The kid had sunburned fair skin, windblown blond hair and chapped lips. He looked down at the packet they give you when you check in and then just shrugged. He tossed the duffel carelessly in the room and turned around.
Seeing us, he stopped. "Any of you know a Carter Glassman?"
Carter stepped up. "Hi, I'm Carter."
"Xander Crowe. You got the bottom bunk?" he said, sniffling. He seemed wired to me, like a coiled spring.
"Yeah, unless you want to change. It's not a problem if you do" Carter stammered.
To me, they looked like the odd couple. Xander was lean and athletic looking. Carter was kind of doughy. Neither of them looked bad though.
"You were here first. So you got seniority" Xander shrugged.
Carter's dad stepped up to introduce himself, pointedly identifying himself as Reverend Glassman. Xander seemed pretty uninterested. Then two other guys burst through the door from the stairwell carrying duffel bags and miscellaneous stuff. Unlike Xander, who was fairly tall and blonde with freckles, these two guys were dark haired, fairly short and muscular. Like Xander, they were dusty and looked road worn.
"So where do you want this shit?" the lead guy, who looked younger, asked loudly.
"Cass, Dex," Xander said, pointing toward Carter. "My roommate Carter. And two guys who probably live in this room across the hall."
"I'm Dylan. This is Robbie" I said.
"And assorted parents" Xander added a half second late. He sucked in some snot again. I figured it was a summer cold.
"Hey" the younger guy, Cass greeted us. "So, shit where?"
Xander nodded in the direction of the room. They threw the onto the bed and Dex came out bearing three lacrosse sticks. "Do you really need three of these?"
Xander took them from him. "Attack, defense, long stick middle. I'm versatile."
Dex grinned. "Yeah, I heard that about you."
He sent his friends out for the rest of his stuff. I stood at the doorway with Robbie also hanging around as Carter and his parents went into the room. Xander was unpacking a duffel that seemed to have a lot of camping stuff: goggles, dust mask, a compass, flashlight, and a first aid kit.
"We're kind of wired. It was Reno to here in 46 hours," he said with a little shrug. "That's pretty much non-stop except for gas stops, coffee and pee breaks. And the occasional speeding ticket."
"You're from Nevada?" Carter's mom asked, looking quizzically at her husband. It was practically the first thing I heard her say.
"No, I'm from Atlanta."
When it became clear that nobody was going to ask him why you would go from Atlanta to Macon by way of Nevada, I asked what part of Atlanta he was from.
"The shi...crappy part. You know Virginia-Highlands?"
"No" I admitted. Colquitt is practically on the Florida border and I had only been to Atlanta a few times.
"Well, kind of there but not" He moved onto another duffel and was pulling out clothes, all really dusty. He smelled a couple of shirts to confirm that they were too dirty to wear before giving up and just piling them all back into the duffel.
"Where'd you go to high school?" Robbie asked. He had played baseball games in and against Atlanta schools.
"Lovett, then Galloway, then Westminster, finally North Atlanta. They don't throw you out of public school."
"You play lacrosse?" Robbie asked.
"Yeah" Xander answered while sorting through some clothes that he was pulling from a duffel.
"Yeah, I'm a baseball player, pitcher. Full ride." You could almost see him pulling himself up with pride. "So, you any good?"
"Yeah"
Robbie rubbed his chin. "Isn't it kind of gay? Lacrosse, I mean. "
Xander stopped what he was doing and turned to look at him. He started to say something and then caught himself. Smiling just a little and running his finger under his nostrils, he said, "If by gay' you mean not boring like baseball', then, yeah, lacrosse is pretty gay."
Robbie nodded, "yeah, I thought so."
His friends came back bearing a couple of boxes, what looked like an easel and a clutch of posters in cheap frames. I couldn't really see what they were. I could see an annoyed look on Carter's dad's face and could see that Carter looked a little out of sorts too.
"So, you boys attend Willingham, too?" Carter's dad asked. The tone was friendly, if condescending, but his body language wasn't. He had his arms crossed tightly and feet well apart.
"Yep" the younger one, Cass, said handing the posters to Xander. "I'm a sophomore and Dex is ...in his fourth year."
"Yeah, I'm taking a semester off" Dex said
"The Dub insisted" Xander said, looking up and smiling. "sort out his priorities."
"And what do you study?"
"Chemistry and biology mostly," I couldn't see his face when he said it but his tone was something like kiss my butt.
My mom had angled in to see the show. The topic of studying science pushed some sort of maternal pride button. I could predict what was coming even though I couldn't stop it. "Oh, well Dylan is going to be a Chemistry major. He's pre-med. He's got an academic scholarship."
Dex looked over my way. "Cool," he said as I wilted with shame. "So, bro. We're gonna jet. Have fun living in the dorm."
Xander scanned the crowd, weighed heavily toward parents and decided that the time had come to move his jeep. Carter's parents didn't stop him. He went down the hall with his friends and you could hear laughter as they entered the stairwell followed shortly by Xander telling them to shut the fuck up. You could hear it fairly clearly and Carter's dad definitely did. You could tell by the look on his face. That was when my dad suggested that we take that walk around the campus before heading over to the University Center for lunch.
Willingham's campus is famously pretty – maybe not nationally famous but in the state. Lots of trees, shrubbery, flowers. The buildings are almost all red brick Georgian or faux Gothic (except strangely Hardeman Hall, home to the Art School, which is Greek revival) and the whole effect is to look exactly like what a college should look like. I think that as much as anything is what impressed my parents. They knew in a vague sort of way that it was a good school and selective without really knowing what that meant. But seeing the campus, they were convinced that this was a good school because it seemed to have class.
I wasn't really sure if meeting my fellow freshman Xander had changed that opinion or not. He certainly wasn't what they would have been expecting in a young scholar at a University with a "Baptist Heritage". It definitely wasn't what Rev Glassman was expecting for his son, the budding young minister, to have to room with. As he crossed the street to the Student Center, he was busy telling Carter that he was going to change roommates and to talk to whoever he needed to. In fact, he would go right then and there, all the way up to the President of the University.
"Well, those boys can't be all that bad. The one is studying science, just like you. Maybe he's pre-med too," my mom declared.
I didn't have the heart to tell her that by chemistry and biology, Cass probably meant partying and girls. Instead Rev. Glassman spun around and told her in no uncertain terms that boy was not on the road to being doctor. All three of them are hellions, he decided. I didn't think that it was so bad. The fact that he was cute did make a difference though. I liked the sandy blond hair, the freckles sprinkled across his nose and his tight body. Then, with a shudder, I forced myself not to think that way. It's wrong, I reminded myself.
We walked along the sidewalk past Truett Hall, the dorm next to ours, which is new but blended perfectly with the older dorms on either side and then past Wilder Hall, which like Reade is older, before crossing the street. The University Center is brand new and large, with a food court, multiple gyms, film room, basically all the amenities of college life. Even the smell of the building was new. The paint glistened and everything was shiny. We moved into a large multipurpose room and had a boxed lunch while various people, including the President, gave short welcoming speeches. It was all very dull but my parents ate it up. It was a big day for them too, I guess, and they felt important. Afterwards, the parents stayed behind to hear more talks, this time about money and campus safety mostly, while we went about finishing the remaining odds and ends of becoming a student, the parts that hadn't been done at orientation weekend a few weeks before. Our registration for classes had to be confirmed and we needed our all purpose student ID's, called BearCards. Then there was the business about meal plans. All in all, it took several hours.
Finally it was done. I met up with my parents and we walked back to the truck so they could leave and I could stay. We didn't really talk then, didn't say anything really, each of us lost in our own thoughts. You could see in the parking lot a hundred or more kids having pretty much the same goodbye with their parents. We stood there silently for a second as my mama fought back tears. She took my hands in hers.
"You remember who you are now. Don't you go crazy. You were raised right, you hear?"
"I will, Mama"
She rubbed her eyes fruitlessly. "I love you so much Dylan. You're my pride and joy. You'll always be my precious baby. And I am so proud of you. If you ever get low and think that nobody in the world loves you or cares about you, you just stop yourself and know that your mama loves you. More than anything in the world."
"I know, Mama. I love you too." I was trying hard not to cry, too.
Daddy walked around to the passenger side where we were. "Okay, Mama. It's time to go, now. Never been a bird that didn't need to fly sooner or later."
He stuck his hand and I shook it. Then she gathered my up in his arms and gave one last, hard, long hug. It was the last hug of childhood and I let a tear or two fall.
Weeping, she said "now you call us, you hear?" as Daddy helped her in the truck.
Closing the door as she broke down, he turned to me and shook my hand again. "You study hard and make us proud now, son."
"I will, Daddy. Thank you."
He jerked his thumb toward her. "She'll be all right directly. We'll stop at the Dairy Queen and get a malted milk." Then he too hugged me, a sign of how emotional he was.
I was all ready homesick as I headed back to the dorm. I was thinking that I had made a big mistake and should probably just go home with them to think this all through. But pride and fear of letting them down powered my steps back to my new life. When I got there, Robbie had just gotten back from saying goodbye too. He wanted to know if my mama had cried. I told him that it wasn't too bad. His mom had really turned on the waterworks. I've always heard about Jewish mothers but I think they can't hold a candle to Southern mamas. Mamas and their boys is a special bond in the South.
We had to wake Xander up for the mandatory hall meeting. He was still rubbing his eyes and yawning while our RA, Chip, welcomed us to 2 Reade. He had to tell us about the policy for lock-outs, courtesy hours, dead days, and all the other housekeeping stuff of dorm life. There were 32 freshman boys lined up in the hall way and it was kind of boisterous but fortunately he didn't keep us long. We headed back to our room and congratulated each other on finally being college guys before realizing that it was still early and we had nothing to do. So we just kind of drifted over to Carter's room. Carter was sitting on his bed looking at Xander sitting in his desk chair taking dirty clothes from one duffel and pushing them into another. He had a bottle of vinegar on the desk and the room smelled like vinegar.
"What is that smell?" Robbie asked.
"Vinegar. Had to clean my stuff. The dust is alkaline so it'll ruin stuff. You have to clean it as soon as possible with vinegar. I'm going to have to wash the clothes with vinegar too," Xander explained as he continued to shove clothes. Then he pulled out a large box of condoms, labeled two dozen, and pulled out a string of about 8. "Looks like I got the leftover condoms. You guys need any?"
"I don't" Carter said, crossing his legs.
"Sure, what size?" Robbie asked.
"If they fit me, they'll fit you stud," Xander said, tearing off three and flinging them toward Robbie.
"Why not?" I said. He flung three in my direction.
"You only need two?" Robbie teased Xander.
Xander held up another unopened box of 6. "I should be good until the weekend. Okay, time to wash." He reached into his pocket and pulled out two crumpled dollars and small bit of silver. Pulling out his wallet, it was empty except for a folded up yellow piece of paper. "Well, that sucks."
"We probably got some change, if you need it," I offered, pulling out what I had. Robbie did the same and handed it to him. Carter didn't offer. It still probably wasn't enough and I was on the verge of challenging Carter to help out his roommate when a girl, dressed in shorts and pretty tight T shirt, holding a tin, knocked on the door. I could see from Robbie's face that he was interested.
"Xander?" She asked, brushing back her medium length blond hair.
"Ash" he cried, jumping up from his seat. "Just the person I need."
"I brought you brownies. A dorm warming present," she said, kissing him on the cheek.
"The fun kind or the regular kind?"
"Regular. Homemade."
He opened the tin and took one out, shoving it in his mouth. "It's great. I slept through dinner," he said, handing the tin to me. "You made them yourself?"
"It's a mix," she admitted, leaning back against the wall. Robbie took a peak at her tight butt.
"Still, you mixed it yourself. Oh, guys. This is my friend, Ashley. Ashley this is Robbie and Dylan. They live across the hall. And Carter. He lives here."
"I don't know if I should feel sorry for you or jealous. You'll have a great time, if you don't wind up dead or in jail," she said, laughing. "I tried to call Cass but it went straight to voicemail. "
Xander shrugged and grabbed the tin from Robbie, getting another brownie. "He probably crashed. We pretty much drove straight through."
"Did you have fun?"
"Shit yeah. Cass and Dex fought at the Thunderdome and Dex kicked his ass. He had to live down losing to his fag brother all week."
"And how many speeding tickets?"
"All of us. I personally owe the state of Missouri $140." Then he laughed. "We got pulled over in Wyoming. Cass was driving and he started to freak when he saw the cop, before he even did his lights. YOu know Cass. When he did fire them off, Cass really freaked. So, we're all telling him to just play it cool and pull the fuck over. Don't say more than you have to. So the cop comes to the window and the boy genius starts yammering on about how we just left Burning Man and trying to get to school and shit. So, the cop wants us to get out so he can search the car. He's like, how do you know you don't have drugs? So, we told him that we didn't have any because we had all ready used up what we had."
Carter sat up straight. "That wasn't true, was it?"
"Of course not. So the cop laughs and lets us go. Didn't even give us a ticket. Hey, by the way, do you have any money? I need to do some laundry and I'm broke."
Ashley pushed back her blond hair and licked her lips slightly. "If you're broke, how are you going to pay your ticket?"
Xander shrugged. "Could always sell my ass. Somebody'll be willing to pay."
She dug in her purse, smiling and eying him. "I have $4.50. What would that buy me?"
He held out his hand and she dropped the money in it. "For you, just about anything. Come on, you can laugh at how bad I am at doing laundry," he said, grabbing his duffel. He put a condom in his pocket. "Be back in a while."
He waited for them to get down the hall before Robbie commented on how nice her ass was. "So what's Burning Man anyway." he asked
Carter sat up. "It's a festival in the desert of pagans, witches, devil worshippers and hippies. They spend a week there doing drugs and having orgies."
"I think it's more like a counterculture arts festival. I mean, I think there are drugs and sex and stuff too but I don't think that's the whole point," I said.
We argued a bit about it but the truth is that I only knew a little more than he did. Robbie had lost interest in that, though.
"Think he's fucking her? I'll bet you five dollars he isn't. I bet he's actually gay and she's his best gal pal. Him and that one guy, the one he said was a fag, they're doing it. Betcha."
"How are you going to find out?" Carter shot back, annoyed.
"Just go over and check. Wanna bet?"
"Sure, why not. I bet he is having sex with her." I could tell that Robbie really wanted to go find out and nothing was going to shut him up. To be honest, either scenario seemed possible to me. He might be straight and having sex with her or like Robbie said. Being completely honest with myself, I was hoping that Robbie was right.
"I don't like him," Carter said. "He's rude and inconsiderate. And he's foul. I wouldn't be surprised if he isn't rutting like some animal."
"He's not all that bad. He's different, that's for sure. Nothing like anybody back in Colquitt but that's what you come to college for. New experiences, new people, new ways of looking at things."
"That's where I don't agree. I came to college to get a degree and go to seminary. I believe there's right and wrong, good and evil. The way I look at things, the way I was taught and the Bible says to look at things, is not subject to change."
"Okay." I said. There wasn't anything more to say. It wasn't what I wanted my college experience to be. I wanted to see more and do more than what I could have otherwise.
"well, I'm gonna go find out" Robbie said
I wanted to go with him. I did. But I didn't either. The smart move would be to stay there and become friends with Carter. I thought about it for a second. "Hey, wait up" I said.
Reade didn't have a laundry room. As Chip explained, you used either Truett or Stegemen, either one just next door. Out one door, Truett was quicker, just a few feet and inside and around. Out the other door, Stegemen was but was a little further away. He had been heading in the direction of Truett. OUr cards got us in, to the male dorms at least. In through the lobby. The laundry room was straight ahead.
You could hear the noise. Two bodies coming together. The girl with choked off whimpering groans and the male voice with soft grunts. He was having sex with her. Robbie slid the door open and peeked in. He pulled back and smiled. I looked. I could see her on the folding table, her dress up and legs apart. He had his butt toward me and I could see every muscle tighten with each stroke in her.
Robbie tapped me and jerked his head back toward the dorm. We left. He paid me the five bucks.
Later that night, we settled in to bed, our first night in the dorm. I couldn't sleep, not at first. I had that mental image in my head, Xander's butt as he did his thing with that girl. I could only imagine his penis, erect and going in her. THat image was plaguing me. When I heard Robbie beginning to breathe heavy, I slowly pushed down my shorts and took my own hard penis in hand and gently began to stroke it. I moved my hand up and down the shaft until I was sticky and spent and relieved. I thought of him the whole time.
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