Evil Is a Man

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

If you like what you're reading, let me know: SellarDhor@gmail.com.

And let me know where you want the story to go and who you want Jake to end up with.

NOVEMBER 2nd

"I've always had a theory about what makes a person a person. What makes their personality."

"Tell me about it," Sherman said, looking quizzically at me over his notepad. During my first session with the guy, I had tried to call him Mr. Evans, but he instantly corrected me, preferring to go by his first name. "I'm still in my 30s," he said. "Maybe in a decade I'll start going be Mr. Evans. Right now it just makes me feel old."

Sherman was Asian, slightly plump, slightly effete man whose voice was shrill and grating, but whose advice so far had been very sound, so I figured I'd been getting my money's worth. Which doesn't say much, since I paid nothing out of pocket for these sessions, they were included for free with the student health coverage I was paying at UC Berkeley.

I had never gone through any sort of counseling, and certainly wasn't in need of the stuff. But I figured, as long as it was free, might as well make use of it to try and get over my various issues. So far it had been helpful.

"Well," I began. "We learn in high school biology that scientists are still unsure what creates a personality: nature or nurture. Is our adult psychology predestined from the moment the sperm enters the ovum, locking us into genetically inherited personality traits? Or are the genetics irrelevant, leaving personality to be a product of upbringing? Scientists have been unable to come to any consensus on the matter, but I'm one step ahead of them. I have firsthand knowledge that the answer is a mixture of both theories. I've always had a superb memory, even of my earliest years. I can remember very clearly the person I was supposed to be, my genetically planned persona, untouched by any nurture influences at that point. I know that we each have our personalities designed for us at conception. By the time we are born, we are already inclined to be strong willed or aggressive or anxious or humorous or whatever else. All of this is as planned for us as is the color of our skin or the size of our hands. It's supposed to be who we are. I believe we all know this deep down, we all know the people we are supposed to be. Every mental strength and weakness we were supposed to have."

"I thought you were religious," he said. "Do you believe a person has a soul?"

"I think so, yes," I said. "I believe God has predestined these genetic selections which ordains our psyches."

"So, who were you supposed to be?" he asked me.

"God was kind to me; I was given personality traits that would aid me in this life. I came into this world free of negative emotions. It was who I was born to be. Strong willed. Righteous. Disciplined. Free of fear or hate or insecurity. That's the person I was in my youngest years, and that's the core of who I still am today. My soul. But life often has a way of getting in the way of destiny. The nurture theorists were onto something. How you are raised, the events you are exposed to as a child, change who you were meant to be into something else entirely. These experiences add a layer of personality on top of your genetic predisposition. Although your genes still make up who you are in your core, the layers on top of that can often overpower what's meant to be underneath: the personality traits on your surface can become all encompassing. Sometimes, this process can be a good thing; for those poor souls who are dealt lousy genetic cards, this can be a blessing. A person might genetically be programmed to be weak and insecure, but good parenting and sound upbringing can intervene. Lift the personality away from its defects. Teach an inherently immoral person morality. It's nurture overtaking nature."

Sherman nodded. "That's why adopted children take on most of the culture of the family they are raised into, instead of their biological parents. Which is usually a benefit."

"In my case, however," the tone of my voice turning darker, "the result was decidedly negative. My base personality, my soul, the strong, good person I was meant to be, was tainted by a cruel father. His disdain for me growing up gave me a group of negative emotions where there was supposed to be none. Over the strong core of my psyche crept in a veneer of anger, sadness, anxiety, self-doubt, a weakness of soul. I was never meant to be ruled by these traits, yet because of him, they are always with me. I always struggle to control them, all because of one stupid individual, and this fact haunts me every day."

"You speak as if emotions were a bad thing. As if you'd rather be a machine."

I thought about it. "No. It isn't all emotions that I detest, just the negative ones. I welcome into my life happiness, fun, spirituality, friendship, romantic love... okay, maybe not so much that last one. I've never been in love. Though I hope that I would remedy that someday. Not that I hadn't had crushes. In fact, I now have a huge crush on someone close to me, a friend of mine at school who had absolutely no inkling of my affection, and that's how I'm sure it will remain."

"How long have you known you were gay?" Sherman asked, his tone seeming more curious suddenly. I wondered if it was because he was gay himself, and could relate.

"Just a couple years go, actually. I know, it's sad. But unlike most gay guys, I'd never had a crush on any of my male friends growing up, which isn't really that surprising when you consider that I've never been attracted to boyish features. It's grown men that do it for me. I played a lot of sports in high school, but even the athletes looked scrawny and child-like to me. It was only from my love of watching sports on TV that I started to tune into my attraction to guys. It took those adult, athletic bodies for me to start to feel a tingling of eroticism as I watched my favorite athletes on the screen."

I looked at Sherman, hoping that I wasn't embarrassing him. He looked unfazed. "So did you come to Cal on a sports scholarship?" he asked me.

I shook my head. "It's true that I love sports, both participating and watching. But I resolved not to try to play sports in college or try to get an athletic scholarship because I thought it was so cliché for a black guy like me to be into sports. Sports were fun, but they were no more than a diversion, they had no real meaning to me. I wanted to concentrate on academics, and that was always my strongest area anyway. I had over a 4.0 in high school if you count all the college prep classes I took. I am a logical person, a natural in math and science. I didn't even have to try hard to do well in those areas in high school. And I have a passion for History, I love how factual it is. The only subjects in high school where I really had to work for those As were English and anything art related. In English, I was fine with vocabulary and reading comprehension, so I always tested well. What made me pull my hair out was creative writing. I guess I don't have a creative bone in my body. I could never think up story ideas, and usually just tried to get away with chronicling real events in my own life. My English teachers would give me only average grades on my stories, chastising me for being dry and emotionless in my writing, for showing a lack of imagination. It must have been this lack of imagination that led me astray in my art classes as well, which were, unfortunately, mandatory. Forcing me to try to express my innermost feelings through ceramic sculpturing was about as cruel as forcing one of the nerd kids to go through PE, and it was only because my art teachers felt sorry for me that I managed to get As."

Sherman chuckled.

"So, as you can imagine, I'm not majoring in art in college. I was one of the few going into my freshman year that knew exactly what I'd be majoring in: engineering. A fascinating, math-based field that would provide employment and financial stability in my future. With my excellent GPA and test scores, I was able to get into a lot of really good schools. My mom begged me to stay in Chattanooga, told me there were a lot of good schools in the South, and she was right. But I knew I couldn't stay. I'm appreciative of the values I learned from my home state, including looking out for one's neighbors and families. And just like my mother, I am more conservative politically, especially around financial or liberty issues. I am pro second amendment and anti-taxes, mostly because I thought the government shouldn't stick their nose in other people's business, and firmly believed that any dollar taken by the government was another a dollar wasted or squandered or fed into corruption. And just like my mother, I'm a proud Christian. But she and others in the South blindly accept everything their religious leaders tell them, even if it seems immoral or illogical, like not believing in evolution, or not affording gays the rights they deserve. Unlike most of my congregation, my conservative political beliefs were arrived at through careful analysis, not ordained only by religion." I looked up at him. "If you're religious, I apologize."

He waved his stubby hand. "I'm not, don't worry."

"And then there was the accent!" I went on. "Yes, I had been a victim of the Southern drawl in my younger years, but as soon as I realized how different I sounded from the American norm, I worked hard to lose my accent, and now it was just a distant memory. And I needed to throw the rest of the South off of me and go somewhere totally new, somewhere more tolerant of gays, where I knew I'd be free to explore the gay part of myself amongst total acceptance. What other city would be better than San Francisco? So, even though I had never been to California in my life, I accepted my UC Berkeley offer, was able to get scholarships and financial aid enough to pay my way in spite of the extra costs for being an out of state student, and I went west coast."

"We're running out of time," Sherman told me. "Next session I want to delve more into your childhood."

"Alright." I started to grab my backpack. "Sherman, do you think I'll ever be to control all those negative emotions I mentioned?"

Sherman nodded. "Jake, you've proved yourself to be acutely aware of your own emotions. Frankly, you're the most put together out of all the students I counsel. I think you'll face these demons of yours in our sessions and you'll come to conquer them."

I smiled, feeling suddenly a huge wash of confidence coming over me. "Thanks so much Sherman."

"Next time, Miss Nielsen, I expect you to complete your homework. I know you're the type who never had to crack a book in high school because you were so damn smart. But this is University level engineering, and your cocky disgust towards actually doing your work is just going to get you a failing grade in my class."

Martine Nielsen's face went red, first from embarrassment, then from anger. I knew her well enough to know that she was struggling to hold back some sarcastic rebuttal that would only land her in more trouble after she had failed to know a homework question in our Engineering class today.

"Alright, class dismissed," Dr. Crawley said.

All of us gathered up our books and started towards the exits.

"Except for you, Mr. Groves," Dr. Crawley said to me, his voice softening immediately. He could be a dynamo during his lectures, but every time I had been with him one on one, he was a total softy.

Martine rolled her eyes and mouthed "I'll wait outside," before she left with the other students.

Dr. Crawley was a painfully unattractive man; balding head, crooked nose, cleft lip, and a lazy eye. He must have gotten teased and ridiculed as a kid, but here, he was hugely respected as a brilliant young physicist and professor, with his bad looks never mattering in the slightest, and that's how it should have been. Early in the year, when I had started acing all of his tests, he pulled me aside and grilled me about my plans. He was thrilled that I was planning on majoring in Engineering. After talking with me for a while, he told me he'd like for me to consider him his mentor, someone I could always go to if I ever needed help or had any questions, even when I was no longer in his classes.

That day, he had some pamphlets for me. "I know it's early, but there are some Academic scholarships that are only open to Engineering majors. I think you should apply for next year."

"Wow," I said, taking the information in my hand. "Do you really think they'll pick me?"

He laughed as if my question were absurd. "You are the most talented freshman I've seen in years, and you're a hard worker," he said. "There's no way you won't get picked."

I left his class with scholarship pamphlets in my hand.

"Those better not be love letters he gave you," Martine said as soon as I had left the building. "I swear, Crawley can't say your name without getting a hardon."

She was being ridiculous. In truth, Dr. Crawley had never shown any sign of being gay in any way, and certainly never did anything the least bit inappropriate. Martine knew that his fondness for me was based on an intellectual admiration and nothing more, she just couldn't admit that there might be a legitimate reason why he didn't show the same level of respect towards her.

Martine was a short, slightly husky but attractive Jewish girl with dark hair that was died a fake, punk-ish color of dark red. She wore second hand vintage clothing with an edge. I had met her in my Engineering class and quickly became great friends with her. Since she absolutely couldn't stand her sorority rushing roommate in her dorm, she was always hanging with Ahmad and me in our room, and the three of us had become really tight.

"Maybe he'd like me better if I had balls. Not the metaphoric kind, I have those. The real kind, that he could fondle."

"Maybe he'd like you better if you showed him one fraction of the kind of respect that is usually reserved for professors of his caliber," I countered. "Because you are certainly smart enough to be getting an A in that class instead of the C you have now." She reminded me so much of my little brother Jerry that perhaps I wasn't as patient with her as I should have been.

"Well, clearly it's good I'm not in that class or I'm sure a jock like me would be failing," said Ahmad, coming up from behind us as we were walking, he too just getting out of a class. Ahmad's clothes had a foreign sort of alternative look to them, which I found attractive. They didn't look like anything you could buy in any mall, yet they didn't look expensive, either.

"Whoa, aren't you the one who they say is brilliant at learning foreign languages?" Martine said. "Don't you know like 16?"

"Only 4, actually," he corrected.

"Still three more than I speak," I said.

"And weren't you the one who started speech classes when he got here, and now I can't even tell you ever had an accent?" Martine continued.

"Yeah, so?"

"Brilliance with language is just as real and important as brilliance with math or science," Martine said. "Plus with your athletic talents? You know that if you decide to stay in the states after college, the CIA is going to be all over you."

"I guess you'd know about that, wouldn't you, Martine?" I asked. Unlike me, Martine wasn't planning on majoring in Engineering. She had a natural knack for computers. In fact, as a teenager, she had been well known in the hacker circles, being highly esteemed at Def Con and other such places. She had been so well respected, that when she had graduated high school, a number of government agencies and private institutions offered her jobs. She had turned down all the offers, preferring to live a normal life at a university instead.

"Guys, guys... look at what I found," Ahmad said, changing the subject, his tone turning excited. He pulled pamphlets from his backpack and handed them to us.

I looked down at what he put in my hand, a Spiderman comic book. "I think my little brother has this one."

"What am I looking at?" Martine asked, looking at the book in her hands.

"Guys, look... it's Spiderman. See? It's a guy whose genes got spliced with a radioactive spider's, and now he has all these spider traits. Hence, the name Spiderman, get it?"

Martine's eyes went wide. "Are you fucking kidding me?" she asked. "You've never heard of Spiderman until just now?"

"Nope." He said. "Why, you guys know him already?"

"We've been acquainted since I was about three," I said.

"What is wrong with you?" Martine griped. "Don't they have comic books in Abu Dhabi?"

"They do, but none like this," he said. "A lot of it is Islamic in nature. I just love how heroic this guy is."

Martine and I exchanged looks. This was one of Ahmed's most endearing traits. He looked at the world like a kid looking through the gate of Disneyland for the first time. Everything new was met with total awe and wonderment. And since he had grown up in Abu Dhabi, in what must have been a sheltered life, he was completely foreign to all the exciting parts of western pop culture.

Martine pointed at a sign we were walking by. "Ooo, a blood drive!" she said. "Let's all donate!"

"I already did this morning when it opened," Ahmad said, pointing at a Band-Aid covered cotton ball over his arm. "I always donate when I can."

"You have class anyway," Martine said. She grabbed my arm. "Jake and I will donate."

"Alright, see you later," Ahmad said. "You both are coming to my wrestling match, right?"

"We'll be there," I said.

After Ahmad had left for his class, Martine pulled me in the direction of the building where they had erected a temporary blood lab.

"Come on, this will be fun," Martine said to me.

"Uh, I'll wait here, you go ahead."

"What, you're not afraid, are you?" she asked.

"Yes... everyone gets to have one irrational fear, right?" I asked her.

"In my case, I'm allowed a few dozen," she said. "But what could be scary about a little needle?"

"I absolutely cannot stand the sight of blood," I said. "I'm serious, I wouldn't even go see gory movies until I was like fourteen, and that's only because I convinced myself that the blood wasn't real. When it's real blood, I'm a mess. Especially if it's my own blood."

"What do you do, cry or something?" Martine probed.

"No, worse," I said. "I pass out."

Martine laughed. "You faint! How cute! You faint like a schoolgirl at a Beatles concert!"

"Thank you for mocking my fear, that's really helpful," I said.

She laughed and pulled me inside to the table where they were taking our information.

"How many forms?" a girl behind the table asked, handing us paperwork.

"Just one," I said to her.

"Two please," Martine said to the girl. "Because neither one of us could handle the guilt of having someone die because we didn't have the guts to donate."

"Great," said the girl, though she clearly wanted to tell Martine to keep her unsolicited reasons to herself. "Do you know your blood types?"

"I'm AB negative," I said.

"Really?" the girl behind the counter asked, perking up. "Did you know that's the rarest blood type?"

"No, I didn't," I said.

"Well, you'll just have to take extra from him then," Martine said.

"Great!" the girl said.

In no time, they had pushed me into a chair, the smell of rubbing alcohol invading my nostrils.

I tried to not to react when the needle went in, tried to trick my mind into believing that I was somewhere, anywhere else, doing anything other than what I was really doing.

That worked for about one vial of blood. By the time they started the second vial, I lost control.

My hearing went, then my vision. Then blackness came.

"I still can't believe you fainted!" Martine yelled, much more loudly than was necessary to communicate to me. Everyone sitting within earshot of her turned their heads to catch a glimpse of the poor, frail mystery fainter in the flesh. It was very embarrassing, and I tried to hold my head high with dignity.

Martine and I were sitting in the bleachers, watching the wrestling matches down on the mats of the gym floor. Ahmad was in the largest weight class our college team had, so his match went last. Which wasn't so bad for Martine and me. We were getting to rate each new wrestler on their sexiness level. It was so freeing to be able to talk about my attractions with someone, instead of keeping it bottled up inside me, as per usual. Goodness knows I couldn't talk to Ahmad about the guys I thought were hot, not that he'd be uncomfortable with it, but I dreaded him discovering he embodied my ideal type exactly. Plus Martine and I were learning very quickly that we had similar taste in men.

"You know, Jake," she said, the tone of her voice turning serious. "I don't know how the three of us ended up being friends, since we are all so different. But I'm sure happy I have you two."

"I feel the same way," I said, touched. "As different as the three of us are, I think the one thing we have in common is that we all wanted to get as far away from our families as we possibly could," I said. "That's why we ended up here."

"That's true in my case," Martine said. "I needed to leave Brooklyn to get away from my feuding parents. Both of them are too smart and too bitter for their own good. He cheated on her when I was little, which I still hate him for. And she is a sour old woman who is addicted to cigarettes and prescription drugs. Trust me, hanging out at home with them is like hanging out with George and Martha."

"George and Martha Washington?" I asked.

"No, smart guy. George and Martha from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

"Haven't seen it," I said.

"Sometimes it seems like you get less pop culture references than Mr. Abu Dhabi. Well, you'll just have to trust me that George and Martha suck." She poked me in the arm. "And what about you? You never told me about your dad, though you told Ahmad. I know you must not get along with him, though he can't be as terrible as my dad."

I sighed. "He was an abusive, racist, alcoholic idiot when I was a kid, and then he died, leaving the rest of my family in financial troubles ever since."

Her eyes went wide. "Ah, okay. Your dad for sure beats my dad in the sucky category. I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," I said.

"Anyway, it's so trendy for us American kids to have daddy issues, don't you think? All my friends do."

"Except for Ahmad," I said. "He describes his family as being totally put together." His parents owned a luxury hotel chain in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

"Yeah, lucky bastard," she said. "You and I were trying to escape our problems, while Ahmad came here to try and escape his ultra-rich family to prove to himself that he can get by on his own dollar. Guy's had it sickeningly easy."

In fact, his rich background was sort of a secret that he only told the two of us. He didn't want anyone in America to know or to treat him any differently.

"Man, I have a major crush on him," Martine admitted. "How could I not? He's so beautiful and perfect."

The first thing I felt was a tinge of jealousy. Not because Martine liked Ahmad instead of me, but rather at the realization that Ahmad and Martine really could work, and I knew of course that Ahmad and myself would never work. But that jealousy faded quickly.

"Do you think we have a shot at being together?" she asked.

I thought about it. Ahmad had been hunted by an insane amount of women since we started the year. It had been similar for me when I first got here; until word got out that I was gay. But I never had anywhere near the amount of attention that he got. So far, Ahmad hadn't really gotten into anything serious with any of them. Though he did have his fun.

Not that he had been bragging about that. He was certainly not the kind of guy to kiss and tell, or even to bring girls over to our room for him to sleep with. He was too much the gentleman for that. But when you see him kissing a girl out on the lawn, then he doesn't come home that night, it's pretty obvious what's going on.

I had no idea how Martine would compare to all those other girls in his mind. "He likes your personality more than any girl here," I said to her.

"Ha, if I told my mother I had a crush on a Muslim man, she would kill me," she said.

"He's not at all religious, and neither is his family," I said. "He just happened to be raised in a Muslim country. But his family is totally progressive and liberal."

"I know," she said. "But my mother only wants me to date nice Jewish boys. She bought me a ten year membership to JDate for my thirteenth birthday."

I laughed.

"So, totally hypothetical, because I think the chances of Ahmad and I getting together would be about as likely as the Jews building a statue of Hitler, but if we did, you won't mind?" she asked me.

"No, why would I mind?" I asked.

"Oh come on! Your boy crush on him is totally obvious to everyone in the world except for him."

"Okay, so maybe that's true," I admitted. "So what? He's straight. Nothing will ever happen between the two of us. So in no way will I be upset if the two of you get together. I'll be happy for the two of you. You're my two best friends, after all."

"Speak of the handsome devil, he's up!" Martine pointed as Ahmad came into the area, dressed in his tight blue singlet. "Wow, he looks hotter in that singlet than any of the other guys."

I had to agree. The top half of the singlet was like a tight tank, leaving his sexy arms bare. They looked thick with muscle, pumped up, imposing, with huge muscley veins traveling from the back of his hands, over his thick forearms, stretching over his huge bis, going over his round shoulders, all the way up through his thick neck. The tight blue spandex brought out his large pecs. Every muscle of his six pack and ripped back showed through the singlet, as well as his thick, knotted legs. His dick bulge was much larger than any other wrestler to come before him, and I thought you could actually make out the dick pushed in front of his right thigh, and his balls right between his legs. I wondered if he was wearing a jock or anything.

He waved to us and smiled his sweet smile as he took his place on the mat, suddenly looking like nothing could have made him prouder than having the two of us there. We both waved and cheered.

As soon as his opponent appeared, Ahmad's façade changed completely. His sweet smile turned slightly cocky, and his humble eyes turned into a fierce, cold stare. He directed this gaze at his opponent, clearly meaning to psych the guy out.

"My god," Martine said. "I've never seen this side of him before. It's like he's another person."

His opponent's face quickly went from confident and calm to intimidated. Soon, he refused to look Ahmad in the eyes. He was just as big as Ahmad, but instead of ripped muscle, the guy had a lot of loose flab on him.

When the ref blew his whistle, marking the start of the first period, Ahmad flew around the mat ferociously, his limbs quickly intertwining his opponent's. There wasn't even any real contest, Ahmad totally out muscled the guy. In less than half a minute, the guy was pinned on his back.

Martine and I stood up and cheered. "Holy fuck, is this guy ever out of my league," Martine said, completely floored by Ahmad's athletic prowess.

"Jake, are you listening to me?" Jarrett asked as we walked towards the Castro, his voice tinged with annoyance.

"Sorry, my mind slipped," I said. This was a common problem with Jarrett, who was very chatty and didn't really share my interests. And I was honest to a fault, so if someone ever asks if I'm listening when I'm not, I'll always fess up. "Can you repeat that last part?"

"Well, how much did you miss? Did you hear all the Lady Gaga drama?"

"Yes," I said with certainty. Certainly I now knew way more about the singer's personal life than I had wished to know. "I blanked out at the end of Dancing with the Stars stuff."

"Oookay. So, you should have seen..." Jarrett went off in detail about the latest episode he had watched, even though I had told him more than once that I really wasn't interested in reality shows.

This was my second formal date with Jarrett after meeting him at an eighteen and older gay club, but he had called and texted me frequently since I met him. I had only met the guy just a few weeks ago, my first trip out to the Castro. I wouldn't have even gone if Martine hadn't forced me to go. I was so happy at Cal, so content with Berkeley, so enamored with Ahmad and Martine, that I never felt anything missing by not having any sort of romantic life. Martine would have none of complacency, however.

"You're too hot to be sitting around here being celibate all the time," she had told me. "College is about sexual experimentation. If you had been straight, you would have been the first guy I hooked up with. But you're not straight, and you can't just sit around here waiting for your dream guy to come along and find you. It's not going to happen. You need to get out there and live."

When I told her I didn't know where to go, she found a club online for me to visit and told me how to get there. I had no excuses left.

Clubs really aren't that exciting when you're too young to drink anything harder than an iced tea, when you refuse to dance by principle, and when the electronica music being played makes you envy the deaf. The only thing the place had going for it was that it was my first gay club, and that meant every guy around me had sex with guys.

Jarrett was the first guy to come up to me, the first guy to ever hit on me in my life, and I can say, it was surprisingly exciting. Not exactly good looking, at least not by my standards, Jarrett was a community college kid who was my age. He was lean, but not in an athletic way, white, blonde, had delicate facial features and a wardrobe full of skinny jeans and tight, colorful shirts. He was kind of effeminate, kind of more stereotypical gay, but I wasn't going to hold any of that against him. Hell, he might not have my interests, he might not be my perfect type, but he was actually hitting on me! Who cared about the rest?

I wasn't exactly sure what the protocol was for gay dating, so I treated Jarrett like the girls I dated in high school. No kissing on the first or second dates, just getting to know each other over meals and activities. So far, Jarrett hadn't complained. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

Thinking it had been long enough, I suddenly reached down and grabbed his hand. He might not be prince charming, but Jarrett so far seemed like a good guy, and that's all that mattered to me really.

He squeezed my hand back, happiness spreading across his face and overcome with silence for once as we walked into the Castro area.

"Hey," he said after a bit. "Have you noticed that guy back there has been following us for a while?"

I turned back. There, behind us, was a rugged looking Asian man with a pretty large build. When I turned back to look at him, he looked me right in the eye. Something about his expression didn't look normal.

"Here, come with me, I know a back way," Jarrett said, pulling me into an alley, leaving the Asian guy behind. "This alley connects to Castro street," he told me.

I got a weird feeling, and looked behind me. The Asian man had followed us into the shadowy corridor, his face now twisted with disgust.

"I can't believe it, that guy followed us!" Jarrett said to me. "What should we do?"

I briefly considered stopping and holding our ground. If the guy turned violent, well, he might have been bigger than the both of us, but with two against one, we'd have no problem taking him down.

Then I figured the guy could be out to mug us or something, and wouldn't risk attacking us unless he had a concealed weapon. Plus, Jarrett didn't exactly look like the fighting type.

"Let's run for the other side of the alley," I said, not letting go of his hand.

Jarrett and I broke into a run through the darkness of the alley. Just a few yards ahead was another busy, lit up street.

Over the sounds of our own stumbling footsteps, I could hear harder footfalls coming closer and moving much faster than we were.

That's when I was pulled backwards, my body coming to a stop, as a hand reached around my head. The impact knocked me back on my butt.

I could see that the Asian guy had done the same thing to Jarrett, as he was on the ground right beside me.

Then he was hitting us, punching us all over, again and again, yelling in fury. Suddenly I was scared for our lives. This guy was a force of nature.

I somehow managed to poke him in the eye, and that sent him reeling backwards in pain. I used the opportunity to step out from under him, and I pulled Jarrett, who was dazed on the ground, back to his feet. My heart racing, I half led, half dragged Jarrett towards the end of the alley.

Behind us, I could hear the Asian guy let out a low, rumbling growl as he charged us.

We ran out into the bright streetlight of the busy lane, lots of people walking around, many of them gay couples. As soon as they saw us, everyone turned to look, stunned at our dirty clothes and bloody faces.

The Asian guy came out of the shadows as well, only he was faster than us. He tackled both of us to the ground. "Fucking faggots!" he yelled, beating us again.

But after a few moments, he stopped and looked around him. People surrounded us from the street, with plenty of gay men and lesbians ready to knock the crap out of the guy if necessary.

Knowing he was outmatched, the burly Asian cussed, then turned completely around and ran back into the shadows of the alley. Some people tried to race after him, but he was too fast to be caught.

Hands surrounded us and worried faces looked down, asking us if we were okay.

I was okay until I looked over at Jarrett. His face was covered in blood from the cuts on his face. I lost it again, and passed out.

"We left the police station after we gave our statements," I said to Martine and Ahmad in our room. I thought Ahmad would be sleeping when I got home, as it was past midnight, but I should have known he and Martine would be still up watching a movie. Ghostbusters. And once again, Ahmad was loving it, as it was his first time seeing the film.

I came in just as Ahmad was saying, "This marshmallow dude is fucking brilliant!"

Of course, Martine and Ahmad got one look at me and they both freaked out. Martine even shrieked at the sight of my bloodied and bruised face.

I told them everything that happened. "Oh my god, it was a hate crime, wasn't it?" she asked, as soon as she heard that the guy only started following us after we began holding hands.

"That's what it looks like, yes," I said. Especially considering that the guy called us "faggots."

Jarrett was really shocked, more psychologically traumatized than I had been, but physically he was mostly fine, except for a bruised rib and a cut on his face that needed two stitches. When we parted ways, he kissed me, something he had never done before. I guessed he felt closer to me than ever, and I wasn't going to protest.

Aside from the swollen cuts on my face, I was pretty sore all over my body, as I had taken a good deal of those hits, and that guy had turned out to be even stronger than he looked.

"I'm lost for words, bud," Ahmad said. He got up and hugged me, a long and sympathetic hug, and while I had been cool all night, that simple act almost made me lose myself and cry. I had to fight back the tears.

Martine added her hug to Ahmad's. "I can't believe this happened to you. In San Francisco of all places, the gayest city in the world! I mean, fuck, what did Harvey Milk die for?"

Ahmad pulled away from me and slammed his fist into his hand. "I want to teach that bigot not to fuck around with my best friend," Ahmad said. Once again, I was touched by him referring to me as his best friend. It was something he hadn't ever done before. I'd never seen Ahmad look so angry and violent before. Well, except for his wrestling matches.

"It will probably make the local news tomorrow," Martine said. "Hate crimes usually do here, even if they are minor."

"Oh great," I said. "The last thing I want is to make the news. Ah well, if it will help apprehend the bastard and bring him to justice, I'm all for it." I suddenly started to fume. I really couldn't stand people who did terrible things to others. I wondered if, like my dad, this man had abandoned religion and all the morals that go along with it. My dad had messed my mind up thoroughly, leaving me with all sorts of weaknesses. Yet never, ever, would I commit horrible atrocities on other people and blame my lousy upbringing. Sure, if your life was hard, I'd feel sympathy for you. But if you commit a wrong, you should be judged for it. It was as simple as that.

"I know it's late in Chattanooga, but you have to call your mom and wake her up," Martine said. "You have to tell her and your brother what happened."

I shook my head. "No, my family doesn't know I'm gay. No one back home does."

"Well, this might be a good time to tell them," she said.

"No," I told her. "I want to wait until I have someone in my life who is important to me. So I can introduce a person I love to them, instead of just telling them my sexual preferences. That's saying, `Mom, Jerry, both of you should know that I love dick.'" I shook my head. "Besides, if I did tell them about the attack, the first thing that would happen is they would fly immediately out here to console me. They can't afford to do that, and I don't need them here."

The pain of my bruises woke me up that night. Frustrated and unable to go back to sleep, I opened my eyes and looked across the room.

I could see Ahmad, his milky brown, muscular back lit up by the streetlight coming in through our window. He was facing away from me on his twin bed across the room. Like usual, he wore pajama bottoms and nothing else. They weren't plaid pajamas, they were grayish-white with blue vertical stripes, kind of old fashioned looking. I could tell because, like usual, his blankets were pushed down to feet.

Martine was right, he was beautiful beyond expression.

Just when I was getting the best of my lust and shutting my eyes again, I saw him start to move, start to flip over in his bed.

I quickly snapped my eyes shut and pretended to be asleep. Only when I heard his deep breathing and knew he was asleep himself did I dare open them again.

He was facing me then, his eyes shut and his mouth slightly ajar as he slept. My dick twitched excitedly as I noticed something I had never seen before.

The fly to his pajamas didn't have buttons or zippers, it was just open. I had noticed that before. But now, his dick had worked its way through the slit. Damn, I was seeing the penis of the man I had been crushing on for so long, and it was absolutely incredible.

I had never seen a soft penis so big. It was a few inches long, and so thick, and uncut. His light brown foreskin covered about half of his big dickhead; the other half, a beautiful shade of light, grayish- purple, hung out for me to see. There was a clear impression under the foreskin where the dickhead ended and the stalk of his dick began. This stalk, covered by his foreskin, was totally smooth. His black pubes covered the base of his dick and appeared through the slit of his pajamas as well. Even his balls had come out, large and meaty, which framed his dick nicely.

I wanted so badly to touch this amazing creation; to lick it, to see what it tasted like.

My own dick was so hard looking at him, it desperately wanted to be played with. I was so turned on, looking at that amazing, huge phallus that I felt like I could have come with just a few strokes.

But I resisted. I could admire Ahmad's sexual beauty, but jerking off looking at him seemed like a betrayal of his trust.

Of course, I could always jerk off later by myself, summoning the memory of his dick to my mind and using that as inspiration.

Ahmad turned around again, facing the wall like before, and his visible dick was totally out of sight. I let my own dick deflate before falling back asleep.

NOVEMBER 16th

The school told me to take a couple weeks off to recover from my attack, both physically and mentally. I took only two week offs, refusing any additional counseling services beyond what I was already getting, then went back to business as usual. There seemed to be no progress on apprehending our attacker, and I feared the guy would be escaping scott free.

During my recovery, Ahmad spent most of his free time in our room with me, and Martine was there a whole lot as well. They took care of most of my needs at first, though I recovered quickly. Martine kept me up to date on my classes, and I spent most of my time studying.

Two weeks after the attack, when I finally did go back to my routine, I had gotten so used to sleeping in that I was really slow in getting going. I walked back to the room after taking a morning shower, my towel around my waist. Normally, I would always give a warning knock before entering our room, just to be polite, but in my sleepy state, I completely forgot, and just walked right in.

There was Ahmad, in the middle of our room, completely naked except for the grey boxer briefs he was pulling on right in front of me. I almost gasped when I saw this muscular god on full display. When I came in, the waistband was just covering the head of his dick. Wow, his dick looked so big hanging there like that, even though it was soft. I thought I saw a flash of a tattoo right above his pubes, but I wasn't sure. Too quickly for my taste, he pulled the underwear all the way on, and continued dressing.

I spent most of that morning's session with Sherman describing my ordeal at the Castro.

"I've heard enough about that," he said abruptly. "Tell me about your family instead. Your heritage."

"Okay," I said, hazy on why he preferred not to counsel me on the most serious incident going on in my life right now in favor of delving into my past, but trusting him nonetheless. "Did you know I was of mixed race? My father was white. Sure, technically I am biracial, but I guess I received more genes from my mother, because no one would know I wasn't completely black unless I told them. Not that I'm complaining about inheriting my mother's genes. She was a mystery to me, but my father was a known undesirable. He was a good looking fellow, I suppose, but a complete ignorant, volatile redneck. I couldn't think of a single gene of my father's that I would have willingly taken for myself."

"Hmm," Sherman said, and scribbled something down on the notepad.

"My biological mother had very dark skin," I went on, "darker than my skin, which is more of an average shade for my race, I'd say. How do I know what color her skin was? I have one picture of her, which is one of my most cherished possessions. After my father died, my step-mother gave me the picture. She had kept it all that time from him, thinking I would want it when I was older. She was the one who told me that my mother had been a beautiful African immigrant, a radiant and smart person, whose family in Africa had all died. She met my father working behind the counter at the Mechanics shop he worked at, and I guess they had a fling. When she got pregnant, he wanted her to get it aborted, and never speak to him again. When she refused, my father was so angry, he threatened her and got her fired from her job. He told her he was not helping with the bastard's upbringing in any way."

"What happened to your mother?" Sherman asked.

"She was in a car accident when she was pregnant with me, and as far as I know, she died at the hospital after they were able to deliver me. Having no family of her own and naming no guardian, they delivered me to my dad's doorstep. He wasn't exactly thrilled to see me, especially since he had recently married a woman named Jane, who he met after the fling with my mother, and didn't tell her at all about it. He ordered a paternity test, saying my mom was a slut, and the chances of him being the father would be slim. When it was proven I was his, he wanted to put me up for adoption. It was Jane, his new wife, with sound Christian values, who convinced him otherwise. She took me in, and counted me as her own, God bless her. Since then, I've always been considered her my mother, and she always tells me I'm her favorite son, even though in reality we share no genes."

"That's just wrong," Sherman said critically.

"What is?"

"Her favoritism towards you," he said, humorlessly. "You have a little brother, right? That must have been hard on him, did you ever think of that?"

"Jerry? Well, I doubt she ever told him that explicitly."

Sherman laughed sarcastically. "Well, a mother doesn't have to be explicit about things like that."

"Look, I love my brother to death, but the reason why our mother likes me better is because he's a bit of a troublemaker. If he stopped getting into trouble, there would be no favorites at all from my mother."

"And from your father?"

I winced. "Well, my father's dead. He died when I was a boy."

"How did he die?" asked Sherman.

"A tornado. Not too uncommon in that part of the country. But before he died, Jerry was obviously his favorite. Not that he treated my brother well either. My dad was a total jerk, through and through. But he reserved his worse animosity for me. Around my mom, he would mostly just ignore me. Give me the silent hostility treatment. But whenever my mom wasn't there to protect me, that was when the insults would fly. Instead of my name, he would call me bastard,' never letting me forget my illegitimate upbringing. But mostly he would insult my race." I cleared my throat, feeling despair and anger come over me in equal measures. "I remember one time when I had a bunch of my friends over, of course all of them were white in my mostly white community. He pulled Mick, one of my friends, over to him, telling him excitedly that they were going to play a game, something they play on Sesame Street. Then he started to sing that song, that One of these things is not like the other,' song while he pointed out me and my friends, finally making Mick answer who was the different one. Jake,' he answered. Bingo! And what is different about him?' He's Black,' Mick said. He's a nigger. He's a goddamn bastard that doesn't belong nowhere, and only knows how to wreck families.'"

"Hmm," Sherman said. "With that kind of trauma in your childhood, I'm revisiting my assumption that I'll be able to help you."

"I thought you said in these sessions we'd be able to eliminate and control my adverse emotions?" I said.

"Yes, I did say that," he said. "But that was before I realized the deep seeded extent of your psychological wounds. Now that I know better, it seems less likely to me that I will be able to help you. You have to understand, these sorts of things, I wish there was a delete button I could press to magically make them go away, but it doesn't work like that. Patients such as you go through therapy their whole lives without making any progress at all."

I was shocked. It was such an about face from his stance two weeks ago. "Well, what are my alternatives?"

"There's psychotic medication. I'm not a psychiatrist, but this very likely could be your only way to manage your symptoms."

I didn't like that idea. "What are the drawbacks?"

"The medication might not be effective. You could develop a psychological addiction to the medication and will depend on it for the rest of your life to get you through. The medication is very expensive, and your medical coverage won't cover it. There could be sexual—"

"You can stop, that's just not an option for me."

"I understand," Sherman said. Then he looked at his watch. "We're out of time. Your next appointment is in two weeks. Why don't you come back then, and we'll do another session. I'll try to evaluate whether I can recommend for you to continue counseling, or whether I'll have to eliminate your therapy next time."

"Wow. Okay, until next time," I said.

Sherman smiled politely for the first time since my session began and shook my hand. I left his office feeling far more self-doubt than when I had gone in.

"Jimmy...A. Stephanie... B-. Evan... A-."

Well, this was new. Martine and I had observed that Dr. Crawley had been acting odd ever since I came back to class after my attack, keeping his lectures to a bare minimum and filling his class hours with "study time" for his final exam. Now, instead of discreetly handing out the grades for his quizzes, he was reading each person's grade aloud to the class. It was as if he was sending us a message that the time for politeness had ended.

"Martine," he read off the quiz he picked up next. Martine tried to look composed and uncaring, but I could see the anxiety in her eyes as she waited for her grade. "A."

I smiled, happy for her. It was her first A. Martine coolly acted like it was the grade she expected all along, yet behind that façade was someone who was overcome with shock and joy.

"And Jake," Dr. Crawley said. I guessed my quiz was last. "D."

I couldn't hold back my own surprise. I reeled back in shock.

"I know you were out, but really," Dr. Crawley said. "Perform like that again and you will fail my final in two weeks."

Everyone in the class looked at me sympathetically, Martine most of all. It didn't make sense, I hadn't had time to study as well as normal for that last quiz, but I had been sure I knew the material. The quiz hadn't been that hard.

"That will be all," Dr. Crawley said. "Class dismissed."

As everyone else filed out of the room, I went up to Dr. Crawley. "Dr. Crawley, can I see you after class? I was hoping you could tell me what I did wrong."

"What is there to tell you? So much was wrong, I wouldn't know where to start. Jake, do you want to be an engineering major?"

I nodded emphatically. "Yes, yes, you know that I do."

"Then you need to take this work seriously. I don't have to remind you that your final exam makes up two-thirds of your total grade in this class. Fail it, and you'll fail the class."

"I will not fail it," I told him. "I'm going to study like crazy and ace the thing. I swear to you. I still am hoping for that Engineering scholarship."

"Scholarship?" Dr. Crawley said. "Well, start by passing the class. Impress me with your final. Then we'll talk scholarships."

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Oh yawn, you two are having the same, stale old fight again," Ahmad said, as Martine just went through her extremely articulate but ultimately incorrect leftist political beliefs as the three of us hung out in our dorm room.

"We're not fighting, we're debating," Martine said. "It's not my fault that Jake wants to be the only sad Republican on campus. Not to mention the only black, gay Republican in all of history."

"That's hyperbole," I said.

"Barely," she said. "So, if you're going to bash my political party for pocketing the money of naïve idealists like me, can't you see that your party is just as corrupt?"

"Yes, I do," I said. "They're all lying, manipulative egomaniacs, incapable of thinking for themselves. They are more a brand-name than a person, and every nuanced move they make, everything they say or even wear, is carefully calculated by a huge team of snakes."

"Then why are you so quick to check Republican on the ballot?" she asked.

"Only because Republicans tend to decentralize power and limit government influence over the people. Only an idealist would believe that government, in our day and age of media controlled everything, will ever do anything of value with their power. That's why it's better to give them only the bare minimum amount of taxes and resources that they require to keep this country going."

Martine scoffed. "So who ends up with the power then? Big business? You really think we're better off with evil corporations freely controlling everything?"

"No, absolutely not," I said. "They're clearly motivated by pure greed, but I don't think it's useful to believe the government will ever really effectively rope the businesses in, not when politicians are just as greedy as the corporations. I think the responsibility lies in the consumers to not buy products that are made through unethical or non-environmentally friendly means."

She laughed. "I think you have too much faith in human beings. What about all the people growing up in impoverished conditions? How are they supposed to know how to make moral, ethical decisions for themselves?"

"With sound upbringing and good religious ideals, everyone should be able to drag themselves of even the lowest socio-economic conditions. Look at me. My family was dirt poor, but I pulled myself up from my bootstraps and ended up here, at one of the best universities. If I can do it, anyone should be able to."

Martine rolled her eyes. "Oh, please," she said. "If that was true, we'd be seeing all sorts of people like you in this school, but everyone else here is at least middle class. Most of them have really solid educations, probably in private schools. Look at you, Jake. You're not here because of your Christian, right wing upbringing. You're here because you're fucking gifted. You lucked out genetically, so what happens to those people who got all the lousy genes?"

"No, you're wrong," I said. "I'm not here because I'm inherently smart. I'm smart because I work my butt off."

Ahmad intervened with a song, singing in his typical off-key tone. "Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends, why can't we be friends? I don't know, the rest of the words to this song," he continued to sing, "but I'm sure they're about not letting stupid stuff get between us."

Martine and I started to laugh. "You never tell us your opinion about any of these things," she said to Ahmad.

"That's because I'm too smart for either of you fools," he said. "I'm the only one genius enough to know that debating religion or politics isn't going to do the slightest bit of good. You really think anything you say to one another is going to change the other person's mind?"

I was alone in the men's bathroom in my dorm, freshly out of the shower, a towel around my waist, shaving. I was getting ready for my dinner date with Jarrett. I liked to be freshly showered before any date.

The bathroom door opened; one of the guys on my floor was coming in. It was unusual to have the bathroom to oneself for long.

I didn't expect the guy walking in to be Ahmad, but there he was. He was wearing dark grey jeans and a tight fitting dark blue t-shirt. Of course, with his musculature, everything was kind of tight fitting.

He lit up when he saw me, smiling kindly. "Hey, Jacob," he said.

"What's up, Ahmad."

He walked over to the urinals, but chose the one right by my sink. The urinals didn't have partitions; they were just open for everyone to see. Where he was standing, I could totally see the front of him through my mirror.

He pulled up his shirt and tucked the bottom under his armpits to keep from getting piss on it and exposing his six-pack in the process. He pulled open the button fly of his jeans and pulled them down to just above his knees, leaving him in his black boxer briefs.

Slowly, with me completely transfixed, he slid his right hand into the waistband of his boxer briefs, grabbed his dick, and pulled it up, out, and over the waistband.

Holy crap was it enormous, a soft, brown tube that reached most of the way down his thigh, the head completely covered by foreskin. Damn, it was so thick and meaty I couldn't picture how the girls would ever let him penetrate them. The base of his dick was covered with a tangle of black, wiry pubic hair. He let it dangle there for a moment with no hands. Then he slowly pulled back the foreskin to expose the swollen, purplish head and pointed his dick at the urinal, and let the urine fly.

Ahmad was one of those guys whose dick was so big and heavy that he didn't need to hold it when he was pissing, he could just let go, and the weight of the thing would hold it in place. He did this right then, putting his hands behind his head and shutting his eyes lazily, letting his penis do all the work as the yellow urine poured into the porcelain.

I noticed that he had a tattoo on his left side just above his pubes, a black panther. I could just see the head of the angry beast, and the outstretched, claw covered paw; the back end of the panther disappeared under his boxer briefs, going down his left thigh. The tattoo seemed to have an Asian influence in design.

"Martine told me about your Thanksgiving plans," Ahmad said suddenly, startling me, breaking my trance with his dick. He opened his eyes again and looked over at me. "I think they sound great."

"Yeah, should be fun," I said, realizing that I had forgotten to keep shaving for the past minute and was just holding my razor by my face. I quickly looked back at myself in the mirror and resumed my shaving.

Ahmad's bladder emptied and his stream went to a trickle. He reached down and shook the head of his dick vigorously to get all the urine off of it, and then he stuffed it back in his boxer briefs and pulled his pants back up.

He washed his hands at the sink next to mine quickly.

"Have fun on your date," he said before he left the bathroom.

"You don't exactly fit in with gay society," Jarrett said as he stabbed a piece of shrimp in his mouth. "You're lucky I'm so open-minded. Most gays would shun you for being too straight."

Jarrett had wanted to meet this time at a restaurant he was fond of for dinner, which I ended up being surprised at how upscale the place was. We'd never gone to expensive places before, being two poor college kids. I ordered a salad, trying to keep the costs down, while he went for expensive steak. Sure it was good food, but I was wondering if he was planning for us to each pay our portions, or split evenly.

"What do you mean I'm too straight?" I asked him. "I was straight in high school. Had a couple of girlfriends, but only slept with one of them, and didn't like the experience. I know for sure I'm gay."

"And yet, you're not conforming to the gay way of life," he said to me. "You act too straight. You're too serious. Instead of dressing with a gay flair, like every other gay guy, you dress straight. You dress preppy."

I shrugged. "I've always dressed preppy. I like to look clean and fresh. It goes with some of my OCD, organized traits. I keep my room tidy and my clothes are always clean and pressed. It's who I am."

"Don't get defensive, you're the one who asked me. I'm telling you."

"I'm not defensive. Is that all?"

He shook his head. "Nope. You're at least reasonably good at sports. Gay guys don't play sports. Plus, you watch sports. That's just as bad. And you even play Fantasy Football!"

I stuffed a piece of expensive salad into my mouth and tried not to be angry.

"You don't know any of the gay icons or about any of the gay culture," he added. "I bet you don't even know if you're a top or a bottom."

I raised my eyebrows. "What does that mean?" I asked.

Jarrett laughed patronizingly. "Oh my lord," he said. "I can't believe you don't even know what it means."

"Tell me!"

"It means, sexually, which position you are."

I thought about what he was saying. "You mean, for anal?" I presumed.

"Yes, genius. Which one are you?"

"I haven't even thought about that," I said. "It sounds pretty extreme. Does every gay guy do anal?"

"Yes," he said. "Right out of the gate. Most of them do it on the first date. And they all know what position they are. So, what position are you?"

I considered. It all sounded so weird to me. "Do I have to be one or the other?"

"YES!"

No answer came to me. "I have no idea," I said. "I guess the idea of anal sex just doesn't appeal to me at this time."

He laughed again. "See? You're totally not gay." He took another bite of steak and made a face. "Yuck. This shrimp is swimming in butter. I'm not eating another bite." He put his silverware down angrily. "Waiter, check please! You're getting this one, right Jake?"

"I guess," I said meekly.

"Great."

When I got home from my date, Ahmad and Martine were wrapped up in each other's arms, watching The Empire Strikes Back on our panel. Only, I realized that it was just the title menu for the film playing on a loop, and I noticed that Martine was asleep and snoring softly.

"Welcome back, roomie," Ahmad whispered to me. "The movie ended a long time ago, but she looked so peaceful, I couldn't stand to wake her up."

I thought that was extremely sweet of the guy. "I'll turn it off and go to bed without making any noise," I whispered, reaching for the TV remote.

Suddenly, "The Rainbow Connection" blared loudly. Cursing myself, I wondered what wrong button I had pressed on the remote to make that happen.

"Mmmm," Martine's voice sounded as she woke up. "Did Luke's father cut off his hand yet?"

"The movie's over," Ahmad told her.

"My cell's going off!" she said, pulling out the real cause of the noise, her phone. "My mom. Are you kidding me right now? She better not be calling again to brag about her new handbag. Hello?"

Martine stood up and walked out of the room as she started to talk to her mom on the phone.

"You must be joking," she said. "Please tell me you're joking."

"Yup, must have been the new handbag," I said.

"Good date?" Ahmad asked me.

"Meh. It was okay."

"You should have watched this movie with us," he said. "There's a twist ending that I won't spoil for you. It's ingenious!"

"Ah, thanks," I said.

Martine came back in the room, her face covered with tears.

"What's wrong?" I asked her, concerned immediately.

"My dad just died," she said. "Car crash. We think he'd been drinking."

"Oh my gosh!" I said, totally stunned by this, not knowing what to do.

Ahmad went to hug her. "I'm so, so sorry," he said as she cried.

I went over to comfort her as well. "I have to leave. I have to leave right away. Get the first flight home that is available."

I woke up that night, long after Martine had left for New York, still feeling absolutely terrible for the girl, and not being able to sleep well. I looked over at Ahmad, wondering if he was having the same problem.

Apparently not, as the guy was completely asleep in his bed, his mouth ajar and his breathing deep. He was on his side, facing my direction. Like usual, he was wearing those striped pajamas. And, like usual, he had his covers pushed down to his ankles, meaning there was nothing keeping me from admiring his perfect body.

He had his arms crossed over his light brown pecs, but I could still see his hard, dark nipples. His armpit, squeezed between his meaty arm muscles and the knotted muscles covering his ribs, revealed wiry black hair. His tight six pack looked slightly moist, as if he was sweating in his sleep.

My eyes moved over his waist. I was disappointed to see that that night, his penis remained firmly inside his pajamas. But I noticed something remarkable right away. While usually his dick was soft, creating just a large, mostly shapeless lump in his pajamas, this night I could distinctly see an outline of a hardon. It was absolutely marvelous.

His dick wasn't really in the crotch of his pajamas at all, instead, it was sticking down his right thigh, the tight-ish fabric of his PJs providing a perfect outline of the tool. Darn, and I thought his dick had been huge when it was soft. Now it had grown much larger, both in length and diameter, and it looked very, very hard. His dickhead almost reached the end of his thigh. In the crotch of his PJs, I could see the shape of his heavy ballsack.

My goodness, he drove me absolutely insane.

I could have stared at him forever, but then I remembered Martine's tragedy, and I felt completely guilty about my lust. I forced myself to roll over and go back to sleep.

NOVEMBER 17th

The next day, Ahmad and I were in a state of complete shock. Right away, Martine's absence seemed abnormal and totally wrong.

She called us several times to tell us more about what had happened to her dad, and even told us that she felt like her mom needed her there now, that she had decided not to come back for finals, that she just couldn't deal with those anyway. She also told us that her mom was begging her to transfer to a school in New England so she could be close to the family, and it was something she was seriously considering.

The worst part was, I knew she never exactly got along with her father. I imagined the guilt she must have been dealing with then.

Suddenly, it looked like Ahmad and I had lost the third member of our threesome, and both of us were seriously depressed and mopey, holing ourselves up in our room while everyone else got excited about Thanksgiving.

DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING

We were still mourning by the time the Wednesday afternoon of Thanksgiving vacation week rolled around and the last students were vacating the campus.

I was reading my latest pleasure book, an Edison biography, in our room while Ahmad sat at his computer, listening to some music he had on the computer with his headphones. I read frequently, and enjoyed reading, but never read fiction unless I was forced to do so in school. What's the point of someone's imaginary story that completely exists inside their head when you compare it to the vast experiences of real people who've done amazing things with their lives?

Suddenly, Ahmad spun around in his chair, a happy grin plastered on his face. "Jacob, you have to listen to this." Ahmad was the only one who ever called me "Jacob," since I was a boy. I kind of liked it.

"Listen to what?" I asked.

"The most amazing singer you will ever hear. Wait till you hear this." He pulled his headphones out and turned on the speakers.

I laughed as I heard a very familiar Bob Marley song playing.

"What, have you heard this one already? This Marley dude?"

"Yes," I said. "I've heard of Bob Marley before."

"Well, listen to this part. See? `No Woman, No Cry.' It's a message for you."

"I may be gay, but I am not woman," I joked.

"It doesn't matter, it's a message for both of us. This guy is telling us that even though life is hard, we can't sit around being sad. Tell me, what is the point of feeling sad for other people? It's to motivate you to help those people who are in need. But we're doing all we can for Martine by being there to talk on the phone when she needs it. There's nothing else constructive we can do with our sympathy. So, why should we let it spoil our Thanksgiving vacation?"

"What do you suggest?" I asked him.

"I suggest that we don't let ourselves feel sad for the next few days. I suggest that we go through with our Thanksgiving Day plans even without Martine. We can still shop and cook a turkey. I don't know how, but you do, and I'm willing to learn. I say we watch football and hang out all weekend. It will be the best Thanksgiving I've ever had."

I laughed. "Yeah, because it's the only Thanksgiving you've ever had."

"True. So let's see if we can make it the best Thanksgiving holiday you've ever had too. I know I'm a poor substitution for your family, but we can try."

"Alright then. Agreed. Get up, and let's go to the store."

"That's what I like to hear. And let me assure you. When this Bob Marley guy tours through San Francisco, I am totally getting us front row tickets. Being a rich kid has its perks sometimes."

I chuckled. "I don't think you should hold your breath for that to happen."

"What do you mean?"

Ahmad liked to make games out of ordinary tasks. So, when we got to the grocery store, he ripped my shopping list in half. "We'll race to see who gets done first," he said, handing me my half.

"Well, you may outweigh me, but I'm pretty fast," I said.

"Maybe, but there's a twist to this challenge. We'll have to race, using those." He pointed to a pair of electric, sit-down carts for the disabled. "We have to use those, and there's no getting out of those seats."

"You're on," I said.

The carts proved to be almost painfully slow as we raced our way through the aisles. I would have won if Ahmad hadn't played dirty, knocking into my cart and blocking my way whenever we crossed paths. He sure was competitive, even in ride-able shopping carts. Of course, when I finally finished and drove towards the checkout, Ahmad was waiting there, grocery bags in hand, a boastful smile upon his lips.

That evening, Ahmad came into our room while I was tying my necktie in the mirror. He looked at up and down at my nice clothes.

"I know you like you to dress snazzily for special occasions, Roomie, but you're about 24 hours too soon for Thanksgiving dinner. What is this, some sort of dress rehearsal?"

I laughed. "I'm going into town for special Thanksgiving church service," I said. "Thanksgiving is all about being thankful to God for what He's blessed you with, so I couldn't do it without paying my dues to the big guy."

"Are you allowed to bring a date?" he asked. "Mind if I tag along?"

"Not at all, but I'm sure you'd find it totally boring," I said.

"As long as they don't call a terrorism alert on me when they see a Middle-Eastern come into their church, it'll beat hanging out here by myself."

I laughed. "This is an extremely liberal church, so you'll be fine."

"I thought you were a Baptist," Ahmad said.

"Born and raised a Southern Baptist, yes," I said. "My mother was heavily involved in the church, and made my brother and I go every Sunday."

"And your father too?" asked Ahmad as he started looking into his closet. He took off his shirt, leaving his sexy upper body bare. I tried not to stare.

"No, he was against religion and mocked her for going. As a kid, it was easy to figure the kinds of values that religion instilled in people. My mother, as devout Christian, was kind and charitable beyond belief. Heck, she even took me in and adopted me as her own without batting an eye. While my father, a Godless man, had no morals or kindness to speak of. As a child, it was easy to choose the church for myself, to choose to have faith, and it made my mother so proud of me."

"Were any members of the congregation racist?" he asked, pulling off his jeans, ending up standing there in just his sexy boxer briefs.

"If they were, they hid it very well. They were beyond nice to me, and it made me quite a devout little Christian boy. It was only in my preteen years that doubts started to surface. My congregation was against gay rights and abortion, both of which I came to support as soon as I was old enough to form my own opinions. I also developed a much more liberal view of casual, premarital sex. It might be stupid sometimes, but I didn't believe it was actually a sin. I became a strong environmentalist, yet the church members often seemed to be in an odd denial that that was even an important issue. That's why, even though those Southern Baptists are like family to me, I had to find a church that would fit with my more modern ideas about faith as soon as I broke free of the South. Of my mother, most of all."

"What did she say when you told her you were changing denominations?" Ahmad asked me, putting on one of his button-up shirts.

"I haven't exactly fessed up to it yet," I said. "I want to tell her in person next time I go home."

"Just like you're going to tell her you're gay?" he asked, pulling on his nice slacks. "I'm sure that'll be one helluva vacation. Do you have a tie I could borrow?"

"I have tons of ties," I said. "How could you not have any?"

"I haven't exactly been hitting the Mosque since I got here," he said.

"What about special occasions?"

"I'd only need them for weddings or funerals, and I figured if any of my new college buddies were stupid enough to do either of those things when we're still so young, they'd have to deal with my casualness."

I picked a blue one out that would go perfectly with the shirt he was wearing. "Here, I'm giving this to you," I said. "Now you have no excuse not to dress up when the occasion calls for it."

"I can't accept that," he said.

"It's fine, I have two more just like it," I said, slinging it around his neck. "Just promise me you'll treat it with more respect than the rest of your poor clothes."

"I promise," he said. "That's the nicest thing anyone's ever given me." He smiled wide and gave me a hug.

"I hope for your case that's an exaggeration."

He proudly put the tie under his shirt collar, assessing himself in the mirror. Then his smile faded as he tried to get it tied together.

"You've never tied one of those before, have you?" I asked.

"How can you tell?" he asked.

"Because you're using a knot that's more appropriate for tying two cargo ropes together than for something you'd ever put around your neck."

"Can you please help me?" he asked.

I walked over to him, undid the damage he had already done, and then redid the knot until it was absolutely perfect.

As he thanked me again, I stood back and admired him, liking this sharp, clean look on him tremendously. I was proud to bring him along to the service, and when the two of us walked in, a lot of the other church goers were looking at him in awe, especially the ones who clearly were attracted to males. The service, while profoundly important for me, was rather long and dry, and I expected to look over to see him conked out, asleep. Instead, every time I looked over, he seemed just as interested as I was.

On our way back home, I asked him how he liked it.

"I loved it," he said. "It was beyond moving."

"Wow, that's great, I'm so glad you enjoyed yourself."

"I'd love to go back again with you soon," he said.

"I thought you weren't one to go to any regular services, Ahmad?" I asked.

"Well, now that I own my very first tie, anything seems possible," he joked.

THANKSGIVING

"We have to pull the giblets out," I said.

"What on earth are giblets?" he said.

"The internal organs of the turkey."

"Are you kidding me?"

"No," I said. "I need you to hold the bird while I remove them."

"Why, is it going to try to run away? I don't blame him."

"No, I need you to hold the turkey upside down while I remove the giblets."

"Okay," he said. He grabbed the turkey and held it upside down as I had instructed. "You know, this thing isn't the least bit appetizing. It's clammy and white and it kind of smells. Are we really expected to eat this?"

"I promise it will be a lot more appetizing in a few hours," I said.

I reached down into the cavity of the bird.

"Whoa there!" Ahmad said. "You didn't tell me we'd have to violate this poor guy in this manner."

"Yeah, it's kind of disgusting."

"Tell me if you're about to faint," he said, absolutely seriously. "I'd totally understand."

"I'm not going to faint!" I said. "I've done this before, you know." I pulled out the cold organs from the inside of the cavity. "I promise, this is the grossest thing we'll do all day."

"At least that is a blessing," he said. "Aren't we supposed to, uh, stick bread up its butt?"

"Bread? You mean stuffing? Well, a lot of people do that, but it's not exactly safe and hygienic, so I cook the stuffing separately. Would rather not have you spend your first Thanksgiving vomiting all night in the bathroom."

"Oh, thanks for looking out," he said.

Given that the whole dorm was completely deserted, we had free reign of the kitchen that morning. We moved our TV into the kitchen so we could watch our football games while we cooked our turkey in the oven and prepared the other goodies. We were in the same fantasy football league together, and we happened to play each other's teams during the week of the holiday. Since there were a couple Thanksgiving games that had our key fantasy players, we had our eyes constantly glued to the TV, and would often brag about any wonderful, point-bringing moves our players made. It was an absolute blast of a day.

When we finally sat down to eat, Ahmad pulled out a bottle of fizzy liquid and started to pour it into our cups.

"Is that the sparkling juice?" I asked.

"No, it's the real thing," he said.

"I hope you didn't break any laws to get it," I said, having images of him being deported back to his country.

"Nope," he said. "It was sent to me by my parents for my birthday. I just never found the right occasion to drink it until now."

"Excellent," I said. "Usually there's a prayer said before the meal. At least that's how it is in my family. We're supposed to say what we're thankful for."

"The turkey, which smells a million times better now than it did this morning," he said, playfully, and then he raised his glass. "And to the best friend I ever had," he said, looking at me and smiling his sweet smile. "Jacob."

"Oh, come on," I said. "You must have been popular in high school. You must have had tons of friends."

"This is true," he said. "But all through my schooling, most of my classmates were the sons of rich sheiks. I could never be open about my religious or social beliefs. And so, my friendships with all my classmates were just superficial. No one knew me like you do now. And now, I have a lot of new friends here. But you're the guy out here with the biggest heart, no contest. I've heard that you are friends with your college buds for the rest of your life. I really hope that's true with us."

I was so moved by his sentiment, I had to concentrate just to keep from getting choked up. "Well, I can say the same for you," I said. "I had a lot of friends growing up, but none of them knew about me being gay. So, you are the first one who really knows everything about me as well. Thank you, Lord, for letting me spend Thanksgiving with my best friend."

We clinked our cups together, and then drank the champagne. I had never had anything but the cheap stuff, but this certainly was unlike any of those brands.

As we dug into our meals, Ahmad took his first bite of turkey and immediately let out a huge "Mmmm," of satisfaction.

"My sentiments exactly," I said, loving the food as well.

"Everything's so good," he said, stuffing more into his mouth. "Who says Americans can't cook?"

We sat there, stuffing ourselves royally, going back for seconds and thirds, before finally finishing. We continued to sit at the table, sipping our champagne and enjoying the twilight of a great meal.

"If you could magically change one major thing about yourself, what would it be?" Ahmad asked, sipping his champagne.

I laughed. "What a loaded question. Let me think about that. Well right off the bat, it sure would be easier living in this country if I was white."

He laughed. "You sound like you are ashamed of your race."

"I'm not. I love the color of my skin, love the texture of my hair, love the way I look. I hate living in a society where those aspects have so much irrational weight. I'm sick of people taking one look at me and making all kinds of assumptions. They expect me to be hot-headed and loud, which I am not. They expect me to be intellectually challenged, to want to be an athlete, comedian, or singer, but never anything more academic. They expect me to love hip hop, flashy jewelry, and fried chicken. In fact, none of these things are true about me. Even though I was raised entirely by white people in a mostly white community, people always think of me as black.

"I'm someone who doesn't like to stand out. I'd rather blend in with the people around me so that people would be free to judge me on my real qualities instead of superficial traits. Instead, I have to deal with all the superficial nonsense. Being labeled as the token black person, for instance. Or having people meet me and think, `wow, he's so smart for a black person.' That kind of mentality is absolutely ridiculous."

"It's like me, being Middle-Eastern," Ahmad said. "People here are always making assumptions about my political or religious beliefs, and most of the time, they are way off base. I feel like I'm always fighting a stereotype. I'm mostly patient with people, but sometimes this can be tiring."

"Exactly," I said. "In fact, there was this girl I dated in high school who—"

"You dated a girl? Did I hear that right?"

"Yes, believe it or not, though there weren't very many. Anyway, this one girl, she was white. She seemed real cool, and never brought up the whole race thing. Things got pretty serious with her, and I actually lost my virginity to her. It's when we had sex for the first time that I saw her true colors."

"Was she repulsed by your skin color?" he asked.

"No, just the opposite, actually. She started going on about forcing her to take my `mammoth black dick.' I mean, I'm not even well endowed. I have a seven inch penis. Statistically, most average guys fall within a five to seven inch range, so statistically speaking, I'm just on the larger side of average. I realized that she had never been attracted to who I really was. She was dating me in order to satisfy some sexual fantasy she had about getting abused by a savage, big-dicked black guy. I mean, how ridiculous and hurtful are those sorts of stereotypes?"

"That's rough, man," Ahmad said. "So, if you wouldn't change your race, would you change your sexual orientation?" Ahmad asked.

"Again, it would sure be easier to be straight in this society. God knows I tried that in high school. But again, I don't have a problem with being gay. I have a problem with the rest of society that feels like that makes me different from a straight person. I have a problem with all the people who judge me based on that, or want to prevent me from having rights, or telling me I'm going to hell. So, no, I wouldn't change that about me. I'd want everyone else to change."

"Well, at least you're living in the best era yet for being gay," Ahmad said. "And in a relatively tolerant country. You would much rather be here than the Middle East."

"True," I said.

"So, you still haven't answered my question," he said.

"I know you are expecting me to say that I wish I was rich," I said. "And it's true that I didn't go home this Thanksgiving because I couldn't afford to. But hey, if I hadn't been broke, I never would have gotten to spend an awesome Thanksgiving with you."

He smiled and nodded. "That's why I for one am happy that you are poor."

"Also, not having much has made me value the importance of working hard, of having a good job. And I'm sure, with the Engineering path, I'll have stable income in the future. So, I'm not too worried."

"Good to hear," he said.

"No, what I would change about myself would be to be able to better control my emotions. I hate those little suckers sometimes."

Ahmad laughed. "Everyone has emotions."

"Well, you handle yours beautifully," I said. "Always in perfect control."

He laughed. "That's something I had to learn how to do in order to survive my childhood," he said.

"Oh? I always pictured your childhood was perfect. I thought you got along with your parents."

"I always did," he said. "When they were around, which wasn't very often. They were too busy. Most of the time, they just left us kids up to our own devices. Which would have been fine, if I wasn't at the bottom of my family totem pole, under a bunch of sisters. Yes, I was the only boy, and they didn't treat me well at all. They ruled the house, and I just had to go along with whatever they said, or learn to pay the price. There's no reasoning with children. I learned how to take abuse and keep my emotions under control. But I also learned something else: even though I'm now big and strong, I still know that your greatest weapon is never your size or your strength. It's your mind."

"Wow, so inspirational. You could write your own fortune cookies."

After we had finished eating and cleaning our dishes, we went back to our room together. Ahmad stopped me in the study room, the room we jointly shared with another pair of roommates. Although it contained desks, the room was more often used as a sort of hang out space, and was bigger than our bedroom.

"You realize that this is the first time we've had our study room all to ourselves," Ahmad said to me, excitedly.

"That's great," I said, not really caring. "Maybe I'll study some for my engineering final."

"You're not using your head," he said. "For the first time, we can do whatever we want with all this space."

"What are you suggesting?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said. "Let's be creative. Hey, we can push the desks to the outside of the room. It's large enough that we could put a wrestling mat down."

"If only you had one," I said.

"We can improvise. Use blankets. What would you say if I challenged you to a match? A chance to redeem myself after losing today in fantasy?"

"I would warn you not to misjudge me because I'm smaller than you," I said. "I was never on a wrestling team, but I know enough about it to be decent. And I'm pretty fast."

"Well then, it's on," he said. "Help me push these desks to the side."

After the desks were moved, we put layers of blankets on the floor to simulate a real wrestling mat.

"Give me a sec," he said, going into our bedroom. He reappeared wearing his sexy blue singlet, snug as ever. I hadn't expected he would wear the proper uniform.

"Here, put this on," he said, passing me a bundle of red spandex. "It's the old singlet I used to wear in high school, when I was skinnier. It should fit you."

He seemed to expect me to change right in front of him. "Uh, I'm not wearing a jock," I said. "Let me put one on."

"A jock?" he said, almost as if he didn't know the word. "What for? I never wear one. Back home, none of the guys do."

Glancing down at his lower body, I wanted to tell him that I could easily see that he wasn't wearing a jock. Every single part of his big dick and balls was completely on display through the cloth of his singlet. Instead of the usual way his dick was pushed down his right thigh, his dick was stuffed directly downwards, pushing in between his two hefty balls, and tucked under his body. Damn, his dick was so long, his dickhead must have reached the crack of his butt.

I briefly considered just going nude under there as well. But I was really sensitive to getting knocked in the balls, so some protection would be helpful. Also, I was darn worried about getting an erection while grappling with this sexy man. I had never wrestled with someone that I thought was sexy, and I didn't know how I was going to react. With a tight jock on, I figured it upped the chance that my dick would behave.

So, I went into our room, stripped, put on my jock, and then put on his red singlet, which fit okay but was a little loose.

We got into position, facing each other, and then he called a start to the match. I noticed, as soon as the match began, he physically transformed; one minute, he was the sweet best friend that I knew so well, and the next, he was the stone cold combatant that I had only witnessed in the wrestling matches I attended. His ever present smile faded into oblivion, turning into a visage of intense focus.

Ahmad walked around my body, leaning over into a fighting stance, trying to find a good opening. I couldn't help but notice that with every step he took, the weighty, unprotected package in the crotch of his singlet kept bouncing around everywhere. It was stupid for me to let myself be distracted, however, because he happened to make his first move.

He charged me, slamming into me with the full force of his muscles, and it was all I could do to keep on my feet. Our upper bodies pressed against each other and we wrestled with our arms, both of us pulling at each other, desperately trying to be the first one to knock the other one down.

Our grappling had worked us both up into a sweat, and his dark hair had now matted wet. A sheen of sweat covered his brown muscles, making his limbs that much harder to grab onto.

Finally, he was able to trip me, twisting my left arm behind me and forcing me face down onto the ground.

He had me in a submissive position, forcing my face into the makeshift mat of blankets. Above me, I could feel the weight of his large body pushing against my back, preventing me from getting up to my feet or even to my knees. He wrapped his arms around me from behind, twisted his legs around mine, and pushed his crotch into my backside, keeping me submitted from every angle. I would have thought it was super hot, feeling his weighty crotch against my butt, knowing that there were just two layers of spandex between us, but I was too busy gasping for air. Not being able to breathe in the blanket beneath me, I twisted my head to the right. My reward was getting a face full of Ahmad's scratchy black armpit hair, drenched in hot sweat.

Then I felt him try to flip me over. He knew that he couldn't pin me unless I was on my back. I may have been royally outmatched, but I wasn't going to make his victory easy. I spread my arms and feet out on the ground, making myself as flat as possible so that he wouldn't be able to flip me.

I wasn't expecting him to reach under my crotch, but that's exactly how he responded, sticking his arm under my stomach from behind, then using that leverage to help him finally flip me onto my back. I tried to get out of his grip, but like lightening, he had mounted me from above, putting all his weight on my body, his loose basket pressing directly into my jock, his chest against my chest.

Desperate not to be pinned, I used all my effort to make one last ditch attempt at freedom, reaching around his back and pulling my own a few inches off the ground. I pushed my upper body up against his, and the sweat from his hair dripped down onto my face as he struggled against me, his visage fierce with fury.

Finally, he flattened his body like a plank against me, forcing my back down to the ground.

"One," he counted. "Two."

"Three," I said, ending the count. "Nice work."

With the battle won, the warrior Ahmad disappeared just as quickly as he had arrived. His friendly smile covered his face. "I didn't hurt you, did I?" he asked, not condescending but truly concerned.

"Don't flatter yourself," I joked. "I'm fine."

He got to his feet, winded, and then helped me to my feet. Beads of sweat dripped down Ahmad's face, the rest of him was covered in moisture. With his right hand, he reached up to his left shoulder and pulled the shoulder strap of his singlet off, then pulling his left arm through. He did the same for his right strap, until the top of his singlet hung just below his sweaty pecs. His brown nipples were sweaty and hot; he rubbed them absent-mindedly with his right hand.

Still huffing, he pushed the singlet down until it covered only his lower body, the top of his sweaty pubes just being exposed, me getting another good glimpse of his panther tattoo.

"Great match!" he said. "You should join the team, you're a natural."

"Yeah, I'm sure that would help me keep up my engineering studies. Nah, I'll leave the wrestling to you. I didn't come to Cal for its athletics."

THANKSGIVING WEEKEND

The holiday weekend continued, and in spite of Martine's recent tragedy still lingering somewhere in the back of my subconscious, Ahmad was doing his darnedest to make me forget. He spent practically every second with me, always upbeat and smiling and cracking his jokes. He was making me have a ridiculously good time.

I realized that I was having more fun with Ahmad than I would have had with my mother and my little brother in Chattanooga. I loved them to death, but a holiday would never go by without the two of them fighting, with me usually playing peacemaker. Ahmad on the other hand, was incapable of petty drama; he got along with everyone, and it was an absolute dream to be around him

Friday morning we led each other through workouts, ending with another wrestling match in our study room. After we both had showered, we decided to go wandering around campus.

The whole place was eerily deserted, making the two of us feel like were the last two people on earth. We ran around like kids in an empty theme park, feeling like we could do whatever the heck we wanted, and there would be no repercussions. Ahmad especially got a kick out of pushing the boundaries.

All morning the sky had been overcast, certainly not unusual for the bay area, but that afternoon, rain started to pour down on us. I was not dressed for the rain, just wearing a pair of jeans and a somewhat nice shirt. I headed for the cover of a nearby awning.

"Ah, come on," Ahmed said to me. "Don't be scared off by a little rain." He ran around in the downpour excitedly, putting his arms up and facing the sky. "Yeah, rain, I love you!" he shouted. He opened his mouth and let the rain pour in. He had just dressed in a pair of old sweatpants and a white t- shirt, so he didn't have as much reason as I did to stay dry.

"Come out here, Jacob, it's beautiful!" he said to me. He was soaked, his white T turning translucent, clinging to his brown skin, hugging every one of his upper body muscles.

"It's even more beautiful under here, where it's dry," I said. "You should try it sometime."

I got him to agree to head back to the dorm, but while I stuck to the covered areas to keep dry, he ran around in the open rain. Not far from our dorm, we came across a large mud puddle. Just like a five year old boy, Ahmad ran towards the puddle and started splashing around in it, covering his shoes and pants in filthy water.

As we entered our dorm building, I had managed to keep my clothes mostly dry, while Ahmad was totally filthy and drenched.

When we got to the entrance to our room, I could see that Ahmad had made muddy footprints all through the hall. He turned the doorknob and was about to go in when I stopped him.

"You're not going in like that, are you?" I asked him.

"Yes," he said. "What's the problem?"

My OCD, neat-freak tendencies kicked in as I imagined him getting mud all over our room. It would take forever to clean up.

"You're too dirty!" I said. "Why don't you take a shower first?"

"But I just took a shower this morning, and it's only the outside of my clothes that are dirty. The rest of me just needs a towel."

I held my ground, blocking the front door.

"Fine," he said. "If this is what I must resort to."

He kicked off both of his muddy shoes, and pulled off his socks. That would have satisfied me, but he kept going. He pulled down his muddy sweats swiftly. I had had expected him to be wearing his boxer briefs, but I didn't realize he was going commando. He stepped out of sweatpants, kicking them off, leaving him standing there, still soaking wet, only in his tight, white t-shirt.

His thin T, now a shade of translucent white, clung to his upper body like a second skin, showing every hard, muscular edge of his form. His dark nipples, erect and small from the cold, pushed through the wet fabric. His black armpit hair was clamped against the sopping cloth of his shirt in the armpits.

Ahmad pushed the bottom of the shirt as far down as it would go, but it only reached the top of his dark, matted/wet pubes. Beneath that was the super thick stalk of his uncut dick, as wet and glistening as the rest of him. Damn, that thing was so big, it looked like a little arm between his legs; the girth of the beautiful rod seemed thicker than my forearm. And that brown-purple head was thickest of all, the foreskin now only covering the very base of the head. As I watched, a drop of his wetness trailed down the head of his dick to the slit, lingered for a moment, then dropped down to the floor below.

Of course, admiring him only lasted for a moment, as he, totally unaware of my adoration of his body, walked right past me into our room in just that wet t-shirt. Now that he had turned away from me, I was free to look at him without consequence. His muscular back, rear delts, and the tris of his arm were molded to the wet cloth of his shirt, showing off his rear physique perfectly. His perfectly rounded butt was also thick with muscle and totally tight. His bare ass glistened with wetness. I noticed that he did not have a tan line. As he walked ahead of me, I could see his big dick and balls hanging through his thighs.

He grabbed a towel and put it around his waist, and then he pulled off his wet t-shirt and threw it in his hamper.

The rain tapered off that night. On Saturday, Ahmad wanted for the two of us to take a jog through the empty campus. Both of us put on our jogging shorts, tanks, and sneakers, and we ran around the empty school. About fifteen minutes into the run, I noticed the sky was darkening again, though I hoped it was a false alarm.

A half hour into the run, it started to rain again. "Should we go back?" I asked Ahmad, hopeful.

"Are you kidding? It's just getting fun out here!"

"I don't want to get my clothes wet!"

"Then take them off!" Ahmad said. Ahmad grabbed his tank and pulled it off. "Yeeeeeaaaah!" he screamed, letting the rain hit his bare, beautiful upper body. He threw his tank under an overhang where it was dry.

"Sure! No one's around but us. Why not?" I followed his lead, taking off my tank and tossing it over by Ahmad's.

"See, roomie? Doesn't it feel friggin unbelievable?" he asked, his face smiling bright.

I let the rain hit my body. I thought I would be cold, but I was so heated up from our run that the moisture actually felt good. "Yeah, it feels good."

Ahmad took it one step further, pulling at his running shorts, yanking them down suddenly. He pulled his sneakers through the shorts and then was totally freed from them. He tossed them over by our tanks.

That left him in just his running shoes and sexy black boxer-briefs. "Fuck yeah!" he yelled excitedly, the stripping obviously causing an adrenaline rush, as he jumped around in the rain. "How `bout it, Jacob, you gonna go in your underwear too?"

I grumbled unhappily, but I did as he said, pulling off my running shorts, leaving me in my own pair of boxer-briefs, which were white. "Can't we get arrested for this?" I asked.

"No way!" Ahmad answered. "You can't get arrested unless you are nude. The worst that can happen is that we'll embarrass ourselves. So what?"

"So what for you, maybe," I said. "I have more dignity to lose than you."

He laughed. "We'll see who has more dignity. I challenge you to a race, from here to the humanities building over there. Whoever wins truly is the most dignified."

"You're on."

"Ready? Go!" He took off in a sprint a second or two before I was really ready. I quickly started after him, trying to hit my top speed.

Watching him sprint was something special. He forced his whole body into the task; he took huge strides with his muscular, powerful legs. His boxer briefs only went to mid-thigh level, leaving most of his flexed leg muscles uncovered, and the veins on his thighs and calves popped. The boxer-briefs, now wet from the rain, hugged his body as well, showing off his bubble butt, totally round and flexed as he ran. His underwear was pulled down a bit, his upper crack on display. And he moved his powerful upper body just as rigorously, swinging his arms with every stride.

I ran my hardest, and nearly gained on him, but he reached the end of the race moments before I did. He turned to face me, and jumped up and down in celebration. In doing so, he caused the heavy basket of his boxer-briefs to bounce up and down as well.

We resumed our normal speed as we continued our jog through the campus, though this time we were jogging in our wet underwear. But Ahmad stopped cold when we started to jog past the swimming pool. The pool was covered with a soft lid, the gate of the fence around the pool being padlocked. Clearly they hadn't wanted intruders over the weekend.

"They think they can keep us out with a little lock, but they are so wrong," Ahmad said. He ran to the pool's perimeter fence and started to climb it.

Ahmad got a kick out of trespassing, while it made me nervous. But I wasn't going to tell Ahmad that. I looked around for any security cameras around the pool area. Finding none, I followed him, climbing up the fence after him.

When we were both over, I wondered what schemes Ahmad's mischievous mind were concocting. "Dare me to run across the cover?" he asked, his sweet smile turning impish.

The cover to the pool wasn't just some tarp that could have been removed; it was a soft rubber mat that was stretched tight over the top of the pool, looking like it could be walked over. But looks could be deceiving. "No, I don't," I said.

"Well, I dare myself then," he said. He looked towards the pool with that fierce determination that came out when he was wrestling. Then, he broke off into a run.

I held my breath when his shoe first hit the pool cover. It sank a few inches under his step, though no water came up, but that didn't keep him from continuing his sprint.

He deftly charged into the center of the pool. There, his steps sank down the furthest, seeming to push the mat down a foot at least, slowing him down significantly. A little water pulled in from the edges getting his shoes wet. But, he continued forward, stepped out of the middle of the pool and back to the outer part of the mat. He picked up speed as he ran across the other side, finally jumping safely to the other rim.

He turned back to face me, throwing his arms up in happy celebration. "Woo-hoo!" he shouted as loud as he could, knowing no one could hear him but me. "That was exhilarating! You have to do it!"

Oh gracious, I knew this was coming. I certainly did not want to run across that dangerous ground. Normally I had no problem saying no to peer pressure, but this was Ahmad, and his peer pressure was so sweet natured, I had to do it.

I looked at the pool covering, trying to gauge my best strategy. The middle of the pool was still sunk down where Ahmad had run through, an inch or so of water having settled there.

I equated this to walking on a frozen lake; best to be careful, as any hard enough step might break through.

I nervously took a step out off the pool rim and onto the mat. I sucked in my breath as I felt my foot sink, but the mat only sank an inch or so before firming taut again. I took another careful step, starting to feel pretty secure.

"Just run across!" Ahmad shouted from the other side. "I promise you'll be fine!"

I ignored him, taking things at my own speed. I was worried if I ran carelessly across like Ahmad, I would get tripped up and lose my balance and fall in.

So, I took careful step after careful step, doing just fine, and feeling happily exhilarated.

That was, until I reached the middle of the pool. It was in that area that the mat started to sag much, much deeper, and that inch of water that Ahmad had left behind annoyingly poured around my steps, soaking my shoes.

It got even worse then, feeling like I was walking through quicksand. Every step sank so deep that it was darn hard to pull my foot out and keep going.

I started to panic a little when my ever deepening steps finally caused the pool water to pour over the sides of the mat and rush towards me in the pool. It filled up around my feet and legs super quickly, the water somehow feeling sickeningly cold.

"Uh oh, Jacob, you'd better make a run for it!"

I took one more step, right into the dead center of the mat this time. I started to sink down farther than ever, the cold water coming up to my crotch now; I got the chills.

I realized that my cautiousness here had been my undoing. Ahmad had had the right strategy all along; only fearlessly running across would keep one from falling in.

I tried to switch up strategies, however late in the game I was, and run my way out of that pit. But as I tried to break into a run, I realized this effort was futile. My feet had become so sunk into this pool cover that it totally surrounded them, preventing me from freeing myself no matter how hard I thrashed.

I continued to sink, my whole lower body caught in the mat, as the water level rose over my waist, chilling my blood again.

"What's the holdup?" he asked me.

"I'm stuck!" I said.

"Kick out of it!" he said.

"I tried that! I'm completely and utterly immobile!"

"Hold on, I'm coming to help."

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," I said, but Ahmad wasn't listening to me.

He trotted over to me, his sneakers splashing into the water on the top of the cover. He stopped a couple of feet away from me, planted his feet, leaned over and grabbed me with his bare brown arms. He flexed his arm muscles, trying to uproot me from the hole I had created for myself.

"Yeah, I think this is working!" I said as I felt myself being pulled in inch or so upwards. "Pull harder!"

He put his whole body into it, flexing all his many muscles at once and jerking me hard upwards. Unfortunately, this sudden motion caused his own feet to sink all of the sudden into the water.

"Oh crap!" he said as I watched his feet slip on the wet surface of the mat. He let go of me as he tried to use his arms to get his balance, but his feet had already slipped down into the hole I was creating, as his butt landed on the hole's sloped side.

I felt his sneaker soles rip painfully into my wet thighs in my hole. Ahmad pushed his back against the side of the hole we were in, trying to get himself up. He managed to get himself to his feet, but in the process, the back of his boxerbriefs stuck to the wet surface of the mat and got yanked down to his knees, his huge brown, uncut manmeat spilling out, along with his brown, droopy balls.

"Whoops," he said, putting his hands down on my shoulders to steady himself.

His feet, kicking against my thighs, were just as stuck in the hole now as I was. The hole had forced our bodies together, meaning my wet boxerbriefs were against his shins and his wet dick was pressed right against my bare upper chest. The hole had swallowed me up to my armpits and swallowed his legs, leaving us both trapped completely.

As panicked as I was, I couldn't help but be turned on by the feeling of his huge dick pressed against me. It was pointed downwards, but glancing my head down, I could see his black curly bush right in front of my face. The hugely thick stalk of his dick sprouted beneath those wiry black curls, then curved downwards, where it disappeared out of sight between my two pecs. Though I could only see the base of his dick, I could certainly feel the rest it, pushing all the way down the wet crack of my chest and beyond, the tip of it grazing my belly button.

"Sorry," he said, clearly embarrassed at our predicament. He pushed his hands down into the hole at his sides in order to reach the waistband of his underwear. Once he got his hands on it, he pulled them back up to his hips, though certainly not easily, as the tight constriction of the hole made it a challenge. Still, his dick was so mammoth, it would not be so easily corralled: the front waistband of his underwear got caught underneath his huge balls. The result was Ahamd's thighs and butt being covered again by his black boxerbriefs, but his bush, balls, and dick still swinging loose over his underwear and pushing against my body.

All that effort on his part had made him sink a good foot further into the hole alongside me, and while my hands were above me, out in the open, his hands were clutching his underwear, the hole trapping them down against his body.

His body sunk lower until his sneakers were planted against my sneakers, and our bodies were pressed tight together. I couldn't say I minded it all that much; I loved having every wet inch of his studly body against mine. I could feel his muscled pecs against my own chest, his ripped abs against stomach, his dick pressing against the wet fabric of my underwear. Even though I was cold in the water we were in, I still started to get hard, especially as I felt his hot breath on my cheek.

He laughed. "Well, we're officially fucked."

"Please tell me we won't be stuck like this until someone comes to rescue us," I said.

He smiled. "Can you imagine what they would say when they found us here like this?" he asked. "Do you know what this looks like?"

"Your cred with the girls would plummet when word got around," I joked.

"Though I bet the gay guys on campus would suddenly be all over me."

There was a large snapping sound, along with the sound of metal twisting. An edge of the mat had ripped free of its hooks, and it was enough to send us both plummeting into the water of the pool below.

I was submerged in the water, the cold shocking as it covered my face. We both got out of the pool, and somehow, we were still laughing. I felt bad about leaving the pool like that, but there was nothing to be done. We went back to our rooms and took hot showers.

Sunday was filled with football games, and then the other students started to arrive. The feeling that we were the last two people on earth faded, but the affection I had for Ahmad only grew, especially as he told me when we were falling asleep that night that he hoped he could spend the next Thanksgiving with me.

DECEMBER 10th

"Sherman, wake up!"

He opened his eyes, startled. "I'm sorry, must have nodded off," he said. "How unprofessional of me."

I laughed. "It's okay. Did you have a long night?"

"No, actually," he said. He looked at his watch. "We aren't even halfway through the session. Look, Jake, I need to level with you. I'm not convinced I'm providing you with much value here."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "I find a lot of value in our sessions."

"In reviewing your background, I've come to the conclusion that I hinted at in our last session. Your emotional scars are much too severe for counseling sessions to have any real impact. The only help you may find through psychiatry is with psychiatric drugs."

"Which are not for me," I said again.

"Right, I don't blame you," he said. "So, all I can really provide to you here is a soundboard for you to tell your problems to. Someone that you can vent to. But that's just not of any real interest to me, and it wouldn't be for any other counselor. We've been trained too intensively to just sit here and play such a passive role. So, I'm going to terminate our sessions."

I was upset. I had gotten used to being able to talk freely with Sherman, and wasn't prepared to stop so abruptly, but I put on a brave face. "Alright, if that's how you feel."

"You want my advice?" he said. "Find someone in your life who can be a sympathetic ear for you, and discuss your problems with them. That's all you need. Someone who isn't being paid to act like they are interested in you. Someone who really does care about your problems. You must have people that you can trust enough to do this with, right?"

I considered. "I trust my brother and my mother, of course, but I don't want to share all the intimate details of my life with them."

"I agree," he said. "Someone besides your immediately family, then? A friend?"

"Martine was the one who I spoke to the most, but she's on the east coast now. Last I heard, she was transferring to MIT. She doesn't really have time for me anymore." It still made me sad just to think about her. "I talk to Ahmad like that, he's a great guy. And then there's Jarrett. I really haven't thought of him as being in that category. But you know, I've known him long enough now that I really should just learn to trust the guy. We have a date tonight, in fact. I'll make it a point to really open up to him."

"Great," Sherman said. "Well, good luck to you Jake."

"Yeah, thanks Sherman, same to you."

I waited anxiously in Dr. Crawley's office as he silently went over my final exam. Even though my finals were over, I couldn't even think about relaxing on my winter break before I knew what my test results would be. Heck, I could have failed it, for all I knew.

No, that was just my self-confidence dipping irrationally again. I wouldn't let it control me. I knew that was impossible. I studied too hard to fail.

Dr. Crawley finished the last portion of the multiple choice exam and then added everything up. "Your grade is..."

He paused for a long moment, making me suffer.

"...An F."

I laughed. "You're kidding me, right?" I asked him.

"Nope," he said, showing me the test, showing me what looked like three quarters of the questions marked wrong in ugly red. "I don't joke about things like this."

I was in total shock. Panic overtook me suddenly, a gripping fear that kept me from saying anything or reacting. Fear that this was, in fact, my reality.

"I was hoping you would do well enough to pass the class," he said. "Unfortunately, at this level of performance, there's no way I could legitimize even a D grade for you."

I went over in my head all the things I had studied, all the components I thought I knew perfectly. Where had I gone wrong?

"I could retake the class in Spring," I said to him, forcing myself to say something, forcing myself to be positive.

He shook his head. "I'm recommending that you be dropped from the Engineering program, and not be allowed in anymore of our classes." He raised an eyebrow. "Look, I know you thought, after your perfect GPA in high school, that you could come here and you'd be just as successful. I'm sorry to break it to you. Cal is not the same caliber as whatever inner-city public high school you went to. The kids here are all smarter than you now. You can't hope that just because you're nice or a hard worker that your professors will feel sorry for you and pass you."

A huge feeling of ineptitude hit me. Yes, he was right. There was no way I was smart enough for this place, was there?

"You clearly aren't cut out for any math or science major here," Dr. Crawley went on. "Some people just aren't good at math or science. Why don't you try your hand at something more artistic? Maybe that's you're real talent. Major in visual arts, perhaps."

"Yes, I'll try that major," I said, just wanting to appease him, knowing I would never, ever make it in a major like that. "Thank you for your time, Dr. Crawley."

I took my test, and I got the heck out of there. Overcome with emotions, I threw my exam away in the first trash I passed.

"Listen, I think we should just be friends."

The words dug into me, the sudden pain I was feeling astoundingly real. No one important to me had ever broken up with me before. I was shocked how much melancholy I was feeling.

Jarrett had invited me out to the club that we had met at, which I had taken as a sign that he was being sentimental. I guessed not. He stood there, ridiculously sipping his soda through a tiny straw, his body subtly moving to the beat of the lame Electronica, almost as if it was an unconscious, instinctual requirement.

"I thought we were doing okay?" I said to him, completely unprepared for this. "After being attacked together like that, I thought we had made a bond."

He shrugged. "I told you before. You just don't blend well with the rest of us."

I was starting to get angry. "I don't know why you can't accept who I am," I said.

"Because who you are is boring," Jarrett said, now trying to cut with his words. "Can I level with you?"

"Isn't that what you've been doing?" I asked, not even sarcastically.

"Not totally," he said. "Look, in the gay male world, being black is highly undesirable. Blacks are at the bottom of the totem pole. Not even blacks want other blacks. They are always after guys like me."

"Wow, do you know how racist you sound?" I asked, totally angered and hurt by the bigoted road this conversation suddenly went down.

"Hey, I'm not racist," he said. "I was the only gay male around who actually was okay with dating a black guy. But I expected to get someone who was passionate and exciting. Instead, I got Mr. Dull. I mean, you can't even hold a conversation with a gay guy. You have no clue about anything that would ever be of even the slightest interest to any gay."

I shook my head. "See? You are the worst kind of racist person because you think just because you tolerate our company, that makes you not racist." I wasn't even letting myself be rude to him, even if he deserved it. I really was trying to educate him. "If you have preconceptions about what a person of color should and should not be like, and then you are disappointed when those stereotypes don't become reality, that's the very definition of racism."

"Hey, don't be bitter just because no self-respecting gay will ever have sex with you, let alone ever bring you home to Mama, while guys throw themselves at me all the time. Like this guy," he said, pointing at a very effeminate looking muscle guy with tight, trendy clothes on, dancing by himself nearby. "He asked me to come home with him when I met him in the bathroom. I told him I would as soon as I cut off the leech that had been clamped down on my ass for the past few weeks."

"Yeah, I think the two of you deserve each other," I said. "Maybe he's a racist jerk too."

"And don't think for a minute that I was ever monogamous with you," he said. "I would never waste myself on something so pitiful. I've been screwing around since the day we met, often hooking up with hot guys directly after our dates. I would never, ever save myself for a religious, log-cabin Republican."

Jarrett walked over to the muscle guy and started to freak the guy. And just like that, I knew he was gone from my life.

I turned around and left the club angrily, knowing I would never return.

I lay in my bed, silent tears streaming down my face. The annoying thing was, any one or even two of these issues happening to me I could have handled fine. It was the fact that everything was happening simultaneously: Jarrett turning out to be such a jerk, me failing my exam, Sherman telling me I was basically untreatable, and even finding out Martine had no intention of coming back to school here. All of it together was setting off my emotions, creating enormous amounts of insecurity and depression, and I just couldn't hold it all in anymore.

When Ahmad walked in unexpectedly, I tried hard to stifle it all, not wanting him to see my weakness.

I guess it wasn't a very good attempt. "What's wrong, my friend?" he asked, instantly concerned.

I shook my head. "I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't feel like I belong."

He looked surprised. "Why on earth do you feel that way?"

I wasn't planning on it, but I told him all of it, everything that had been ripping my heart to shreds. He put his arm around, trying to comfort me, telling me I shouldn't let assholes get to me. He told me that he would always, always be here for me.

"Are you planning on going home for winter break?" he asked.

I shook my head. "No," I said. "I'd love to, but I can't afford it."

"Well, why don't you come with me then?"

"To Abu Dhabi?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "My family would love to meet you, and then I wouldn't have to go a month without my best friend."

"I'd love to," I said, touched that he was inviting me, and hoping it was not out of pity. "But if I can't afford the gas to drive to Texas, I really can't afford a plane ticket halfway across the world."

"I was not expecting you to pay, Jacob," he said.

"No," I shook my head. "I don't want you to buy my plane ticket, even if you can afford it. I don't want to become your charity case."

"I wouldn't need to buy your ticket."

"What do you mean?"

"My parents have their own private jet. It's not a large one, but there's plenty of room for you. It would cost us nothing to take you along. One of the few perks about having insanely rich folks."

"Wow. You sure you don't want to trade families with me?"

"Oh, my sisters would love you," he laughed. "And I'm sure I could whip your brother into shape."

I seriously doubted that was possible, but I held my tongue.

"We wouldn't even have to go to Abu Dhabi if we didn't want to," he said. "It's not like my family is expecting me to celebrate Christmas with them. We could go somewhere else, just the two of us."

"Wow, that sounds really awesome," I said. "I could think a lot of great places we could go."

He smiled wide. "Good, so you're on board? We leave tomorrow morning."

I shook my head. "No... it sounds awesome, but I can't go. I figured a long time ago that I wouldn't be able to go home this weekend, so I made other plans."

He looked seriously deflated, but he couldn't be as disappointed as I was. "What kind of plans?" he asked me.

"I've agreed to spend a few weeks with my uncle in Lake Tahoe," I said. "I figured I could afford the gas to drive there and back."

"You have an uncle?" he said. "I didn't know that."

"Well, he's not really an uncle. He was just a friend of my dad's that was like a member of our family growing up. Mom always wanted us to call him `Uncle Syd' out of respect. Anyway, I promised him I'd stay with him, though believe me, I'd much rather hang out with you."

"Well," he said, wiping the disappointment off his face and replacing it with optimism. "Maybe next time."

"For sure next time!" I said.

"And I'll call you and bug you all break," he said.

In the middle of the last night in my dorm before winter break, my sleep was interrupted and I woke up. At first, I was totally unaware of why, then I became aware of odd noises coming from across the room. I realized quickly that Ahmad was groaning and grunting.

I turned to try and see what was going on. There was Ahmad, his eyes shut, his mouth open, obviously asleep. Like usual, his upper body was bare, though this time his whole naked torso and arms gleamed with sweat. His body was tilted in my direction, and his meaty hand was rubbing his bare, round pecs.

I gasped when my eyes traveled down his body. There, coming through the crotch hole of his striped pajamas, was his exposed penis, just like it had been that one night before. Only this time, he must have been having a sexual dream, because his dick was completely erect. I had seen him with a stiffy once before while he was sleeping, but it had been trapped inside his pajamas. This was the first time that the thing made its way out of the hole and on the loose.

My goodness, was his hard dick something to see. I'd heard that some super-hung guys had a hard time getting fully hard, but not Ahmad. His dick was hard as diamond, sticking straight out in front of him and jutting upwards, towards his upper body. Above the base of his dick, a black bushel of pubes stuck out of the top of his crotch hole, damp with sweat. Beneath his dick, the tight PJs cupped his large balls. But it was the dick itself that so mesmerized me. So large and powerful. His foreskin was pulled super tight and smooth around the large girth of his rod. At that moment, the top of his foreskin was covering about half of his dickhead, which was so hugely swollen, the foreskin was stretched around to its absolute limit. It was so tight, I didn't have the slightest clue how that could not be painful for him. It was interesting to see the dramatic difference between the brown of his foreskin and the angry purple of his engorged dickhead. Excitedly, I noticed a large gob of precum being squeezed out of the slit of the angry dickhead.

In his sleep, Ahmad reached his right hand down his body, loosely clutching the base of his dick. There was plenty of room on that thing for his large hand to completely grip, plus enough extra space for a second hand. His jostling pulled the foreskin down so that the whole dickhead was exposed completely, glistening and shiny with precum. He played with his dick, pushing his hand up and down, making the foreskin slide up and down his penis. It amazed me how big the head was now, looking for all the world like it would explode at any minute.

That's when he mumbled something, shocking me back into reality. I realized that he was only mumbling in his sleep. I wasn't sure what he had said for sure, but it sounded an awful lot like Martine.

Feeling guilty, I made myself turn away, and somehow went back to sleep in spite of the sounds he continued to make.