Joe College, Part 29
Matt told me that the worst motivation for coming out is to win over a guy. He also said that no one comes out until they have to.
He was trying to be supportive, but he had it all wrong. I wanted to incite another person. Force a feeling, even if it was contempt. Confrontation. I wanted him to erupt in front of our friends and embarrass himself. I wanted him to challenge me, and when he did, I wanted high ground.
No cliches about being true to who you are or living a life in the open. None of this feel-good, post-gay, Neil Patrick Harris, self-acceptance stuff. I don't belittle those impulses, but I didn't relate to them.
I chose to ratify an element of my life that caused me anger, confusion and embarrassment. I baptised myself into a religion that I didn't believe and purchased a home where I didn't want to live.
I also thought that I was being noble.
I wanted to upend him. He would invent a narrative for himself and for others, about how his once-best friend was now an avowed homo. I would no longer tutor him in deception. His evasions would slice his tongue.
Let's make a liar of him. Not through an ultimatum or emotional blackmail. I would never unmask him. That would deny him agency over his life; it would make me the cold one. I wouldn't coerce him into becoming a person that he didn't want to be. But maybe, I thought, with cinematic optimism, I could push him to choose who he'd become.
Prompt him to say things that made him doubt himself, to do them according to his own agency, until he had to reach a conclusion.
If he turned against me, he would become a liar on the inside. He couldn't live with that forever.
Every time that he disowned me, there would be a backlash in his skull. When he told himself that he hated me, a second voice would tell him that this was untrue.
I thought that I could make him choose between those voices.
If he didn't confront himself while I was still in his day-to-day, maybe he never would. Maybe years later, he'd find himself in a conspiracy with another man in his position, in a Midwestern cul-de-sac, in an enterprise where they would never push each other toward resolution. They would communicate with trembles and glances and coded, allusive texts. Challenging themselves would be mutually assured destruction.
Maybe he wouldn't have a co-conspirator. Maybe he would study images of dick in his browser's privacy mode and hate himself afterward, maybe drive alone past the one gay bar in 50 miles and seethe at its allure. Maybe he would glance at its half-empty parking lot and motor along, his heart beating faster, sweat in his hair, throat cracked with shame and salt. Maybe that was destined to be his future anyway.
Now it feels more complex, in a way I didn't understand in 2005.
I suspect that I might never have come out if it hadn't happened then.
In my alternative history, I should have waited until my mid-twenties, when I was in New York with gay friends and more sexual experience and context for what this meant and didn't. I made my move too early. At 21, I wasn't ready.
My coming out was irrational. I also suspect that it would have been irrational, grubby and bloodyminded whenever it happened. If I'd waited until I was 25, 26 or 30, it still wouldn't have been a triumphant, fulfilling chapter. I would have found rationalizations and arguments for keeping it to myself. Eventually I would have broke – but it would have been a break, not a confident step forward.
Without an external motivation, I wouldn't have had to come out. No one would have guessed. I've had to persuade strangers that I'm actually gay.
("Joe's straight, right?" one of Andy's friends asked him last year, even after I spent a couple of hours hanging with them at Barracuda.) Being in the closet weighed on me, but being gay wasn't part of my foundation like it was for Kevin Berger; it didn't complete a puzzle like it did for Andy Trafford. I could have spent the past decade without surrendering. I could have hooked up with guys online without my friends or family knowing, gone out in downtown gay bars with Kevin, Matt or Andy without the rest of my crew finding out.
There was a quality to being gay that felt like being the host body to a parasite. It was an occupant that I had to accept. I could pretend it wasn't there, or I could acknowledge reality and reconfigure my life and habits.
I know how bleak that sounds, but fuck it.
This isn't a self-help manual. I'm not saying that I feel this way now, so chill and stop getting so upset. I'm not even endorsing my own ideas or vouching for the accuracy of my memory for how it felt, and that shouldn't matter so much to you, because I'm not a statesman, philosopher or a man of the cloth. Most the time I don't know what I think, but I overstate an opinion because it sounds better that way. I don't have answers for myself. I act out, aware that I'm doing ill-advised things for childish reasons. Every so often, I try to wreck myself just to weld the pieces back together.
But still. Even so.
Even so, that's also melodramatic as fuck, because I faced no actual risk. I never did, and I didn't need an acid trip with Trevor to understand that. All of us fear things that don't exist. People spend their lives driven by forces with no tangible presence -- prestige, popularity, patriotism. Forlorn people, slowly dying in their eighties, have dedicated their lives to imaginary terrors and joys. Maybe we're all like that, all the time! Sentient water, everywhere.
My family and friends didn't reject me. Most of them didn't care. They pretended to care because social convention required it, the same way I act enthusiastic when a friend gets engaged. The biggest irritant was other people's enthusiasm. It was empty -- even from people who I loved, like I was a vehicle to feel tolerant and progressive, perhaps slightly cool about having a gay friend. I won't claim that their vapid encouragement was an injustice.
Of course I was melodramatic. You, reader, are melodramatic too. That's what we are now.
Tonight, as I write to you, the same shit is happening everywhere. Somebody is coming out and acting like a stupid spaz over it. People are inflating their petty, social, self-image bullshit into world-historical crises. They're more upset about passive-aggressive status updates than they are about genocides. One of your friends will puke himself to sleep tonight because a control freak with Aspergers hurt his feelings at work this morning.
Listen, homeboy. In earlier generations, people read Sir Walter Scott. They valorized physical courage. They labored and they fought. They caught dysentery and lost extremities to frostbite. Men studied Napoleon and died en masse Vicksburg. Their grandsons dreamed of war heroes or maybe Charles Lindbergh.
In 2014, most high school homecoming kings have great abs. They groom their pubes with electric clippers. They cry when they watch Wall-E.
We barely play contact sports because they're too dangerous. We fantasize about being cool guys, romantic heroes and fun friends: those are our daydreams, not glory and self-sacrifice. We find our sex through apps. We're not ashamed of our selfies. We want to be Seth Rogens and Paul Rudds, not John Waynes or Humphrey Bogarts. We take MDMA before the Hot Chip set at Coachella. We are too pussy for punk. We write our cleanest prose in emoji. We think bittersweet, domestic thoughts. We elevate normal friendships and romances into galactic phenomenon. It's because we grew up with Dawson's Creek and The O.C.
I wanted a bold, heroic gesture, even if I wasn't recognized for it. I wanted to rescue my friend from emotional oblivion. I wanted to save him the way that Bradley Cooper saved Justin Bartha on the roof of Caesar's Palace (I know this movie was released years later), not so much in the way that Ryan Gosling cured Betsy McGibbons of whooping cough in The Notebook (I have not seen that movie). I wanted to commit a good deed and earn redemption. I wanted it all set against a montage with an upbeat indie-pop song, like Letter from an Occupant or Jonathan Fisk.
Chris remained my friend, and if he needed to hate me for awhile in order to reckon with himself, that seemed like a suitable sacrifice.
We're all so sensitive, bro. A flock of sweet, fragile little lambs. Whenever I tell you that I don't care, I'm being a liar. I just want you to hug me. It pisses me off severely that I'm not Alcibiades, Mad Anthony Wayne or Joe Strummer; that, like everyone else, my battles are on tidy social fronts, and that I still can't sort out when I'm being conscientious, dickish or cool, and am steadily nagged by a sense that there's some deeper, metaphysical purpose to my stupid gayness that I'll never understand.
"You realize that you weren't really in the closet, right?" Wally said, about an hour before I fucked him.
"How do you mean?"
"Plenty of people knew about you. Even when we were freshmen, people knew you were Matt Canetti's boyfriend and were friends with Kevin Berger. Everybody remembered you at Neil's party sophomore year."
"I didn't think that you even remembered that. Everybody seemed wasted. I didn't know what I was doing."
"You were wasted and you didn't know what you were doing," he said.
"You made a spectacle of yourself. It wasn't a bad thing. You brought the party. People talked about it afterwards. Neil, Noah, Tony -- we thought that we had a fun new drunk friend. Then, poof! You never showed up again."
"I don't know Neil, Noah or Tony."
Incredulity: "You've had sections with all of them. Noah was with me at that party last fall. Where you came over and said hi."
"This is a big school, though." People moved so easily through social circles, and it suddenly seemed crazy that my status never circulated back to my group of friends. Or had someone like Doug heard something? Did people know and not confront me? "Like, it's odd that people would assume I was gay because I attended a party hosted by some theater kids."
"I can't tell if you're delusional or you think everyone else is an idiot. You told weird lies about your background. Which no one believed. People knew that you were Matt Canetti's boyfriend. You were friends with Kevin Berger. We all exaggerate the importance of upperclassmen when we're freshmen and sophomores, but Matt Canetti and Kevin Berger were the two most well-known gay guys, period, in my four years here. Everybody knew Matt and Kevin."
"Why would people think I was Matt's boyfriend?"
I guess I was insulting his intelligence. "You might have had your straight friends fooled, but you were inseparable. Sitting in those coffeehouses for hours, never acknowledging anyone but each other. You had to have understood how public this was."
"Dude, no," I said. "You have it all wrong. It wasn't like that. I know that I'm not supposed to care about this kind of thing anymore, but it's still uncomfortable to hear."
"Why?"
"Like, these things that seemed so personal. I don't know even how to talk about it. I literally lack the vocabulary to have this conversation. Like, the word boyfriend. To me, it applies to a guy's relationship with a chick. It's so emasculating. I wasn't his boyfriend. I'm never going to be some dude's boyfriend."
"But you weren't just a platonic friend."
"No," I said. "He was my really good friend, and sometimes we messed around."
"That's cute."
Yeah, he was needling me, but I wouldn't let myself turn defensive. "I don't know if it was cute," I said. "It was a thing that developed."
"That could mean anything. Anything is a thing that develops. Mold is a thing that develops." He lifted our empty beer bottles from the coffee table. "Do you want another?"
"Yeah," I said.
"Is this conversation stressing you out?" he said.
"No." It was. "I shouldn't be stressed anymore."
"Good. I don't want to stress you out. It seems like you can take it. It's awkward for awhile, but then it gets easier. I barely think about it anymore."
"Maybe," I said, "but you're also a different kind of gay guy."
"I am!" he said, placing our two new bottles on the table and dropping next to me on the couch. "Are you disappointed that I'm not singing showtunes, or, like, Mariah Carey? Or sashaying more flamboyantly? I'm trying to restrain my sashaying. I can sashay if you want. It's hard for me not to act like a mincing, flaming homosexual, but I don't want you to be uncomfortable."
"Dude, I didn't mean it like that at all. It means different things to different people."
"I know," he said. "I shouldn't be giving you such a hard time. Honestly, I do like some gay stuff."
"Such as?"
"Uhhh," he said, looking embarrassed. I shouldn't have tried to put him on the spot about something so superficial. "I have a soft spot for the Spice Girls. I watch The Sound of Music when NBC shows it every year."
"My mom loves that movie."
"Who doesn't?"
"It's pretty annoying. I guessed I liked the marionette part when I was a kid. That was, like, kinetic."
"The oldest son was hot," Wally said.
"I can't even picture."
"He's so cute. I had a crush on him when I was a kid. I'm sure that I jerked off to him in junior high. That'd probably be sketchy to do now. He probably was underage when that was filmed."
"Yeah, but you were the same age back then -- it's, whatever. The same age as the character."
"I've also jerked off to you," Wally said, "and we're the same age now."
"Yeah, everybody should jerk off to me though," I said.
I knew what would happen from the moment that I got his e-mail.
In the days after that dumb column ran, my inbox flooded.
"Shit, man. I knew that I was onto something when I gave you that column. Congratulations on opening up about this part of your life, and thanks for once again making me look smart." -Russell
"JOE!!! Matt just sent me a link to your column! AMAZING! It took so much courage to come out this way, and I'm so proud of you for expressing yourself. Can't wait to celebrate with you when you're back in the City! Love ya!" -Hot Erin
"Well done, dude. You did your thing on your own terms. Not gonna lie, I was a little worried for you. I miss that school so fucking much, and would love nothing more than to go out and buy you (many, many) beers tonight." -Doug
"Dude, I probably shouldn't be saying this, but Doug once mentioned that he suspected this might be a thing. I was skeptical, but in case you're worried, I want you to know that it doesn't affect my friendship with you in any way. Graduating sucks, but please hurry back -- the City's not the same without you." -Jamie Calmet
"Whoah, you and Trafford both?!?!! Who's next, Sanjay? Am I the only straight one? Seriously though, congrats. Now I kind of get why you had such a stick up your ass over the summer. (No offense [or pun] intended.)
Sorry if I (unintentionally) made things awkward. Still love you bro -- call me soon." -Rick
"Wow! I've never seen The Wire and don't understand the plot points that you summarized, but this was a pretty extreme way of coming out. I didn't think you had it in you. Plus, you're going to get laid so much from now on. Have fun! Be happy!" -Kevin Berger
"Amazing column, Joe. I actually watch The Wire, and while I never thought of Omar in quite that way, it was a pretty interesting and original way to break down the show. I've been meaning to get in touch for awhile, but you know how things get. We should catch up in person when you can find the time." -Wally
The tone of these e-mails annoyed me deeply, but I expected them. It was part of the process.
I hadn't anticipated the e-mails from strangers who found the column online. While it may not have come close to going viral, it was linked on a handful of blogs and message boards, where it was approached with derision and light sympathy. The reactions trickled in for weeks. A representative sample:
"What a desperate, sad examplar of internalized homophobia and self-hatred. While it's obvious that you're too young and immature to know better, and I suppose you should be congratulated for beginning to accept who you really are, I found the tone and content of your article generally toxic. Namely, your dismissive attitude of gay men as mincing, shrill and high-pitched, your apparent contempt for AIDS victims and strongly implied disinterest in the murder of Matthew Shepard. The notion that you would choose to idolize a fictional violent criminal while spitting on those who have suffered, so that you and others can live openly, is sickening to me. I hope that this reflects merely your own immaturity and that over time you can ACCEPT yourself as a gay man."
"Nothing sadder than a pathetic queen trying to make himself look butch. We all want dick, so get the fuck over yourself."
"Dude your photo looks fucking hot. You have any more? If you're ever in Chicago, I would love for you to fuck me stupid. 25, , VGL, 6'2 vers white guy, gym body. You sound cool bro."
"I know that we don't know each other, but your article describes my feelings exactly. I found your column through a blog, then I went back and read all of your other articles online. About me: I'm a sophomore at USC, very straight-acting, varsity athlete in H.S., strong family, etc. Part of the reason no one knows that I'm gay is that so much cultural baggage comes with it, something that you obviously understand. I know that we'll probably never meet, but I feel like if we did, we'd probably be friends. Write back to me sometime if you'd like to chat more."
"The problem with liberal academia is that it enswarms young people in a culture of permissiveness and sexuality, all under the guise of `academic freedom.'" (I only got a couple of responses like this, but they must've been a thousand words each.)
Those e-mails were like intense postcards. My column, though sincere, was only a breezy cover for sorting through my own mental shit. It startled me that strangers read so much into it.
I replied to the gentler ones -- like the USC kid, I told him that I know it gets lonely but that he needed to find someone to talk to in his daily life, because a pen pal is a weak stand-in for real friendship. (If I've ever replied to you, reader, saying something similar, I wasn't blowing you off or trying to be aloof -- just speaking sincerely and preserving you from my terrible ideas.) The rest, I read closely but never engaged. Some of them might have had a point, but what kind of adult berates a college senior because of a piece he found on the internet?
"You wanna run tomorrow?"
He withdrew his white earbuds. "What?"
"I'll be home around four. Let's run."
He avoided my eye contact and lifted a shoulder in dismissal.
"Well I am going to run tomorrow, and if you would like to run with me, you should. This isn't a trap. I probably won't even talk. Let's just run."
"If I'm not busy," he said, no eye contact, and quickly reinserted his earbuds.
Look, man, I figured that I'd have sex with Wally from the first time we saw each other, that night when I simultaneously tried to approach and escape Kevin Berger in the library reading room. Just the way he looked at me. Wally peered up from his studies, surveyed my frame and smiled in my face. One gay, broad, friendly smile, with white teeth and pretty, long-lashed eyes.
A tall, slender guy with a handsome, gentle face. A twinky marble faun. You knew he was gay immediately, and I thought at the time that this made him not my type, except that I guess he was, even if I was nervous to look him in the eyes when sober.
I replied to his e-mail suggesting that we meet for beers at Charterhouse on Friday, but that afternoon, he sent me a text pleading exhaustion: "Any chance you feel like just coming over and having a couple drinks? I don't want to be in a loud, smoky bar tonight."
The subtext was obvious, even though I wasn't competent at dating or hook-ups. "Sure!" I wrote. "I'll bring us beer."
He wore tight jeans and a trim button-down unclasped one hole too low for January; I wore sag-assed jeans and a sweatshirt that hadn't been washed in a month. His apartment was lit for making out. He might even have cleaned, because a collection of magazines was neatly stacked on the corner of his coffee table, with no dirty dishes in sight.
His roommate was away, he mentioned. "Weekend ski trip. In the Midwest. Who knew such a thing was possible?"
Later, before we did anything real, he kissed my cheek while seated next to me on the couch. It was a quick, friendly peck. He said that he was proud of me and that I'd come a long way from being scared of speaking to Kevin in public. I peered at the ceiling for several seconds, trying to make sense of a compliment that flattered me more than it should have.
If I've ever hooked up with you and you happen to be reading this, I promise that for however many hours we spent together, I genuinely liked you a lot, even if, as is likely, we never spoke again. All of my guys seem so smart and kind and handsome in their moment. I think that I'm lucky to have found them, and doubt that I'll be so fortunate again. Maybe it's self-deception, but I feel it in my heart. Some of my friends have hooked up with dudes that they actively disliked because they thought not doing so would be awkward or rude. I couldn't even get a hard-on if I felt that way. I'm always persuaded that I'm in the company of someone remarkable, even if, 72 hours later, they're cut down to a slightly uncomfortable memory.
And so I felt that way about Wally. Who was Chris? There were no micro-aggressions or implicit negotiations with polite, open, smiley Wally. I wanted to track down the pricks who were probably mean to him in seventh grade and kick all of their asses.
"Is it okay if I kiss you?" he finally asked.
"Dude, I would love it if you kissed me."
"Okay, good. I didn't want to pressure you."
"Not pressuring me at all," I said.
"I'm glad. I've always thought you were hot. Just extremely repressed. Which I guess is hot in its own way."
It had been two years since I'd kissed someone new, and when he approached my face those two years felt as long and numb as a failed thirty-year marriage.
Wally kissed like he was trying to jam his tongue into me at once. Not the more controlled, elegant licks that I knew from Matt and had passed on to Chris. It was sloppy. I didn't mind.
He was only an inch or so shorter than me, but twenty pounds lighter. Maybe even 30. It was his frame. His shoulders were slim; his hips were narrow. His body was a straight line. Matt was skinny like that too, but Wally was in better shape. His biceps were paltry but defined. He had strong abs. Maybe he did yoga.
I kept my nose at his cheek to inhale the scent of his face scrub. His chest was hairier than I would have guessed.
He was less constrained than Chris or Matt. Not wild or kinky -- nothing like that. He was normal, in a sexually healthy way.
I mean, it was hot getting off with Chris or Matt, but the three of us were all tense. Everyone was cautious not to go too far. It could be a rigid, formal choreography, the way earlier generations danced the waltz. I had compatible boundaries and rules with those guys. If we went off script, it was because Chris would get so intense that he'd slam me into a wall, or perhaps tumble in a tub and sprain his thumb.
Wally was less tight. For instance, when we were making out on his couch, still clothed, he climbed up on me while I reclined, straddled across my legs, like I was positioned to slide my dick into him.
Which, not long after, I was doing.
It wasn't just that Chris ran with me after I asked, but that he tricked up in proper cold-weather gear. Black tights under black shorts, proper gloves and hat, a thin yellow running jacket. Tall, strong, skin tight, like a serious athlete.
"Wow," I said. "Christmas presents?"
"Yup."
I pictured him listing these items in an e-mail to his mom. A few times, I'd casually recommended that he buy this kind of stuff. He probably researched brands online, listed his sizes and styles, thinking about how he'd wear them when he ran with me once we returned from Christmas break.
The living room of his parents' house was busy on Christmas morning. Picture windows overlooked a snowy lawn. There was probably a fireplace. He wasn't thrilled to be up so early, but gift-crazed nieces and nephews had been awake at seven, so he was there at 7:30 with a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin that his mother baked. Probably wearing a hoodie. Maybe my orange hoodie. His brothers and sisters, his nieces and nephews, most of them blond and energetic, some of them with light windburns from skiing. Handsome wandered the room, sweeping torn sheets of wrapping paper with his tail, nosing the kids, gnawing and guarding the rawhide bone that had been presented to him with a red ribbon. I recognized what that house smelled like even though I'd never been there, the way that every house has its own fragrance -- linen, carpet-lining, store-bought bread.
This fictional scenario felt so true. Chris opened his gifts. He inspected the items and felt that surge you get in your chest when you want to lace up and head outside. Maybe he thought to himself, briefly, that I'd be pleased. It at least occurred to him that I'd notice.
All break, he was probably annoyed that his mom asked about me. She asked about the other roommates too, but found ways to bring up my name, inquiring whether he'd spoken to me since I got back to New York, if I'd had any more thoughts about what I might want to do after graduation. "I can give you his e-mail address," he might have said to her, revealingly annoyed. "You can ask him yourself. It's not like we talk every freaking day." Barbara Riis would have exhaled and acknowledged his point. "I was only wondering," she said, pretending away her subtext.
As soon as I was out running with him, none of the bad, dramatic shit between us ever happened. It was sophomore year, and I was outside with my friend. It was warm for January -- mid-30s -- but sidewalks were unshoveled and patched with ice. We ran in the empty, salted streets.
"I did a sick long run when I was home," I said. "Like, 17 or 18 miles."
"That's nuts," he said.
"Puked afterwards," I said. "I wasn't in shape for it. Stairs hurt for a couple days."
"Craziness." He wasn't interested. That was fine.
A couple of miles later: "How's your new gear?"
"Good."
"Less bulky?"
"Yeah."
I turned sideways, trying to gauge his expression. He made a point of not looking to me. Eyes ahead, chin up. That was fine. I wasn't hurt. This was already more communication than I expected.
"Go faster?" I said.
"Sure."
We'd been too comfortable. When we accelerated the cold stung my tonsils. My nose ran. Spit leaked from a corner of my mouth and streamed against my cheek. We passed sororities and houses with chipped paint. He moved past of me. I slowed slightly as he gained a few steps ahead, hoping to collect myself, and then pushed hard. I almost caught him by the end of the block.
Dear Joe,
I hope it's okay that I'm e-mailing you! I saw this address at the end of your column so I thought that it must be fine. As I mentioned before, I've gone on-line to read your articles whenever they publish, but more recently I've been looking at the site every day. It's such a great way to feel connected to campus, and, believe it or not, even though so many things are different, some of the stories and photos bring back a lot of memories.
It took me a couple of reads to fully "get" what you were talking about in your latest column. I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that I've never seen The Wire. But your way of viewing it as a lens on bigger issues in our culture was so creative and insightful. I'm sure you know how highly we all think of you. I don't want to overstep my bounds, but having gotten to know you over the last three years, it's so rewarding to see you all grow into yourselves and become such smart, confident, interesting people. It's not the kind of thing that a person notices about himself or the others around him, but for those with more distance, it's obvious. You are already forces to reckon with.
I hope you don't think of this as a note from one of your friend's moms – just from one adult to another, expressing her admiration.
Fondly,
Barbara Riis
Dear Mrs. Riis,
Thanks so much for your e-mail! Of course it's fine that you wrote to me. It made my day, and it's always great to hear from you!
I'm glad that you liked the column and it's awesome that you still read it every week. As you can guess, this was pretty unnerving to write, but there were some things I needed to say and this was one way to do it. And I don't know about "forces to reckon with" – most days it seems like a miracle that anything gets done.
Chris is doing well. We'll make sure to keep him out of trouble.
Thanks again, and I hope I get to see you soon!
Joe
Wally threw the back cushion off his couch. I resituated. He remained astraddle across my lap. I pushed my hand under his shirt. His hard-on pressed against his fly. He undid the button of his jeans to give it space. A sliver of its tip breathed from the top of his boxer briefs.
"Kiss me more," I said, trying to draw his eye contact while he balanced his hands at my chest. His cheeks and forehead had turned pink.
I reached to his lower back while he gummed his tongue back into my mouth, running my fingers to the notch of his tailbone and the top crease of his asscrack. He moaned into my tongue-stuffed teeth, his noise slightly clumsy and exaggerated, like he wanted to signal approval. He shifted his hips front and back, miming that my dick was inside him.
I wanted to burrow so deep into a dude's body that my balls vibrated when he inhaled. Roman candles, incendiaries. Glory, I would fuck a gay dude named Wally.
The act had been banned from my physical vocabulary. Conditioned to squeamishness, I crept my fingers further down the hairs of the crease of his ass, until my index finger was pressed at his asshole. It had already been apparent that he'd showered just before I arrived. I pressed my finger against it; he alternated between tensing it and relaxing, a tease and invitation. He moaned more loudly. My cock manned to triplefattedness.
"Oh, fuck me, fuck me," he said, grinding into me, pulling his tongue from my mouth, his chin and lower lip wet from our spit. "I want you to fuck me so bad, Joe."
It had a tremor of bad acting, except that he meant it. People didn't speak that way in real life. I'd known guys to speak only in whispers.
"You really want me to fuck you?" I croaked, digit still at his dry asshole.
"Oh, yeah," he said. "You can fuck me so hard Joe. I want your cock in me so bad."
I didn't understand this kind of talk. "Okay."
His face was so refined. Like a young man who performed Nineteenth Century sodomy with Oscar Wilde. He pulled me off his couch and through the door of his unlit bedroom.
Wally pulled himself out of his clothes in seconds, standing in front of me naked in black socks. As if to emphasize his point, he bent away from me to slide them off, his spread ass on full display, long balls swinging between his thighs.
When I removed my shirt, I realized how sweaty I was.
"Wait!" he said, approaching me, led by his hard pink dick. "Let me do the rest. Let me look at you." He put his hands on my shoulder muscles and squeezed. "Oh, fuck, you look good, Joe."
"You too," I said, meaning it, but mentally paralyzed.
He undid my jeans and pulled them down. I think he wanted to move slowly, so that he could undress me piece by piece, but it never works that elegantly. As my jeans dropped, my boxer briefs dragged down to my pubes and below the top of my ass. My boner awkwardly jabbed inside them, a spread of my precum leaving a dark smear on gray cotton.
"I just want to put my hands all over you," he said, smoothing them over my chest and down to my dick. He squeezed. "You have an amazing body," he said to my mouth.
"Really?" I'd put on about 10 pounds since high school. If I made it to the gym twice a week, I felt diligent.
"I always thought it would be so hot to get fucked by a straight frat boy," he said.
I laughed. "I'm not-"
He kissed me into silence. I pushed down my boxer briefs. Our cocks abutted. I grabbed his hips and pulled him closer. He was touching me from hip to neckbone. His body felt nothing like Chris's -- bony, lean, tight. More like Matt's, but hairier, more muscled.
I had never seen or used actual lube, but I'd watched enough pornos to understand the mechanics. I clumsily secured one of his condoms onto myself. I considered informing Wally that I'd never had intercourse with a guy, but I didn't want to perplex him or explain.
"Let me-" I said, not finishing the thought.
"What do you like?"
I didn't know what his question meant. "Just, like. I don't know. Just, like, basics things."
I slicked up a finger and gently pressed it into him, just like I'd seen in the videos. He moaned, just like in the videos. I slid it my digit in and out, just like in the videos, trying to acclimate to the feel, assuring myself that he wasn't in pain.
"Oh, fuck me Joe," he said, "fuck me. I want your dick in me so bad."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
An earnest question: "Are you sure?"
"Don't tease me man," he said.
I did like they did in the videos: securing the condom, applying more lubricant, and carefully sliding my thing (a wiener) up his thing (the butt).
Two things surprised me. First was the vacuum sensation. Once I breached the entry, it was like his body pulled my dick into him. I expected it to feel resistant, tighter. Second, the inside felt softer than I expected, like a dense sponge. Basically, I'd always imagined sex with a dude to approximate fucking my own fist, with that kind of tension and friction. Once my dick was in him, it felt nothing like that.
He kept moaning and telling me to fuck him. I didn't know how to verbalize my interest. My vocabulary was limited to "yeah" and nervous laughter.
I assumed that Wally was far more experienced than I was. Occupied with my own aversion to intercourse, I perceived myself as a virgin. My whole approach to thinking about these things was inaccurate, though: I may not have fucked a dude before, but I'd had an uninterrupted stream of sexual activity from age 18 to 21, which, as a matter of logistics, most gay guys can't pull off. At that age, we're too young to know many other gay dudes, tons of the most desirable gay dudes are still in the closet, everyone is clumsy and uncertain, and unless you're indiscriminate in your tastes (sketchy), sexual access is limited to relationships (uncommon) or finding a lucky enough intersection of access and attraction to maintain a sustained hook-up (feasible but rare). How many times had I gotten off with another guy in the preceding 1,500 days? A couple hundred? Two fifty? More? If we very liberally assume that Wally had been with 15 dudes, none of them a serious long-term relationship, he'd probably hooked up 50 times, at most.
The biggest thing I learned that night was the appeal of hooking up with a new person for the first time.
It's like reading a great short story. The notion that I'd spent my entire undergrad career only with just two guys seemed insane. I simply had no other options.
No wonder a guy like Trevor hooked up with so many girls. My attitude toward hooking up hadn't been prudish, but the constant persuasion and yearning seemed exhausting. Like, who wanted to spend an entire Friday night hoping that, if all kinds of variables broke in your favor, you'd make out with or get blown by someone new? Did we live in a hunter-gatherer society?
When I walked into Wally's apartment that night, I understood what my friends had been obsessing about for all of those years. It was the allure and mystery of the new person, experiencing him against your body, the difference between the stranger's hard cock and the others that you'd known, the first time seeing his expression when you make him cum.
The second-biggest thing I learned that night: gay intercourse is mildly underwhelming. Maybe I'd waited so long that the act couldn't live up to the mystery. Or we were both too inexperienced to know what we were doing. Once my dick was in him, it seemed prosaic. Possibly even boring. The way we were positioned, I didn't even have a full view of his face.
The idea that I was finally having sex with a dude became a bigger turn-on than the act itself. In the mirror on his closet door, I watched myself in profile, pictured the sweet handsome face partially concealed from my view.
I found an awkward rhythm. He told me how good I was, that I fucked him better than anyone he'd been with, which I didn't believe – this was a courtesy he probably told everyone, or else he believed it in the moment, the way that I think whoever I'm getting off with happens to be the greatest person I've ever encountered.
When I thought that I risked getting soft – slightly baffled that this is what I'd been missing, that this was the act that had been so terrifyingly alluring for years – I stopped fucking Wally and started fucking Chris Riis.
I imagined that I was fucking Chris in the late-night safety of my room. That my hand was on his sweaty shoulder and not some guy named Wally's, that I was deep in his body, that the muscles and tendons and body tissue tensing at my dick belong to Chris.
With that, I felt turned on and angry. Chris's face was sagging down, red and sweaty, telling me that I fucked him better than he'd ever been fucked. He was frightened, aroused, more focused on me than he'd ever been on another person.
I eventually came in a white sunburst along the spine of a proxy body.
He let me use his shower. I was efficient, careful not to wet my hair. It was still early for a Friday, and cold enough to freeze a wet scalp. My phone had vibrated on his coffee table throughout our evening. There were parties and people, even if I felt depleted.
"Was that okay?" I asked, when I emerged from his bathroom fully dressed and ready to depart.
He was on his couch, dressed down in sweatpants and a long T-shirt. "Yes!"
A glimmer of concern. "Why, was that not okay for you?"
"Yeah, it was fine." I laughed nervously. "More than I expected, I think."
People are so fragile. I'd said the wrong things. "Yeah, we got pretty carried away, I guess."
"No, dude, it was awesome," I said. "I meant that in a good way. It's, like, super-flattering. You're just, like, a really nice, handsome guy, so I'm glad we did that. Thank you."
"You're welcome," he said tentatively, as a shared awkwardness flashed.
He was a guy who'd had a crush on me; he was a guy who I considered cute and comfortable. He'd always wanted to get fucked by a straight frat boy, he said. Maybe we'd both just used each other without intending it that way, but that was also okay. That's how it's supposed to work, possibly.
He rose from the couch to say good-bye. I thought we'd shake hands but he hugged me. We agreed to hang out soon, but I couldn't wait to leave and index my thoughts.
The angry kind of cold that makes your throat hurt and your contacts freeze dry.
I dangled a glove between my teeth while I texted Matt Canetti: "just had homo intcourse w that guy wally. awk."
"Oh Lord," he replied immediately. "It begins."
We let his response linger for a day before I wrote back.
My phone had been buzzing the whole time that I was at Wally's. There were five or six things happening that night. I wanted to go home and change before I made any decisions, but when I got there, Trevor was on the couch in sweatpants. He felt a cold coming on and decided to stay in, blowing his nose and watching the NBA.
My clothes smelled like Wally's body wash or cologne, which was a nice smell, but I couldn't go back to myself until I changed out of that shirt.
While Trevor helped me weigh my social proposals, I decided that I wanted to stay in. Trevor and I got stoned and watched Lebowski and the first half-hour of Being John Malkovich before he passed out on the couch. Still baked, I sat in my room, waiting for the sounds of the other housemates coming home from the bars, re-reading e-mail chains from the fall of 2001, when I first met Matt and Chris.
The people in my life acted strangely the next day. Katie had liked some boy and an incident had flared up, plus she was flipping out about a research paper for a psychology class on a topic that she didn't understand. Chris was especially grumpy, even by his grumpiness standards of that period. Around noon, he wandered through the living room, poured a cup of shitty coffee in the kitchen and stomped back upstairs, acknowledging no one. Trevor had his cold and hid in his room, his shotgun sneezes occasionally reporting through the vents. Even Michelle was irate, about a girl named Joanna – she was yelling into her phone about how the speaking series had been Joanna's responsibility and it wasn't their job to cover for her and Joanna shouldn't have volunteered if she wasn't –
Fuck it, man.
The day's high temperature was something like 11 degrees. Dead weather. I don't understand why Alaska isn't the murder capital of the world. When I went to the gym and ran into my friend James, the normally cheerful guy bitterly complained unprompted about his own roommates and a cable outage in their house.
Too many people happen to feel foul, and you don't feel that way, but like being the only sober one in the bar, you acquire the altered tics of everyone else.
It began unsettling me, how blank I felt about my stuff with Wally. I was searching for a feeling. Had it been a rite of passage, like in a teenage comedy when the awkward protagonist loses his virginity? Should I have been fist pumping? Did it even count as losing virginity, considering that I'd already done everything-but? Should I have been questioning my decisions, given that it was such a casual transaction? None of those things. I felt more like Ralphie decoding the secret message to be sure to drink his Ovaltine. There was a prick to my conscience when I realized how little it meant. I didn't want to bruise Wally, but I didn't feel eager for a replay. If we'd never done anything, he might have had potential as a friend. I might have learned from him; he might have been a less-bracing Kevin Berger. But that felt improbable now. We'd become tangled in those two hours.
I went to the library to study, but it turned into a nap, and when I woke, it was already dark. My mouth tasted like burned cornflakes, coffee grounds and roach spray.
My phone vibrated throughout the early evening. Trevor and Katie were the only ones home. She sulked through rooms, drank coffee and layered up in order to chain smoke on the front porch. She said that her research paper was full of garbage words and that she'd never been so frustrated. Shiny-nosed Trevor was on the couch with a kleenex box.
"Keep your fucking germs to yourself," she said. "When you're sick, you stay in your room and keep your snotty kleenex off the coffee table."
"Yo," Trevor said, mostly exasperated. "Point taken, but can you please act nice?"
Messages on my phone:
-What are you up to?
-u already out?
-????
-come to alex's. prepartying before ben's
-Sounds stupid but we're hanging in Krista Cooper's dorm and then going to a party at Sigma later. Very freshman. Come get hammered – we have Boone's.
-at goal line w/pieces, egan, etc. come hang, all of us miss you :(
A cavernous sports bar that pretended to be a dance club late on weekend nights, with high-school quality murals of helmets and goalposts and basketball hoops. It smelled like bleach, beer, cigarettes and chicken fingers. With the outside temperature in single digits, the heat and humidity of our bodies fogged the plate-glass windows, so that the front neon signs for Coors and Budweiser looked aurora borealish from the sidewalk.
Within a minute of walking in, I saw Chris jabbering to Amanda Ford. He looked one-a.m. wasted, not nine o'clock drunk. He leaned against a wall for support, gesturing with his hands as he spoke, slightly listing from side to side. I didn't need to hear his words to know that he was slurring a monologue. It wasn't the body language of a normal conversation. Amanda smiled and nodded, but I caught her eyes scanning the room to spot her friends and survey for familiar faces.
Chris and I snared eye contact above a field of shorter heads. He glanced away, doubling his attention to Amanda, clumsily putting a hand on her shoulder.
It was easy enough to break down this scene; I felt sympathy for them both. When I'd observed them before, she obviously liked him. Chris seemed to like her too. He at least liked the attention, and that was fine. I liked that kind of attention, too. Maybe he was legitimately attracted to her; I was sort of attracted to her. She was hot but unassuming. Except now she was pretty sober, and Chris was sloppy drunk. She'd never seen him so disheveled. Chris never would be inappropriate or aggressive, but of course he was awkward. So then Amanda – instead of spending a night out with her friends and this really hot, nice, kind of shy guy – found herself trying to slip away from him. Even drunk Chris would have perceived her fading interest.
I wouldn't watch him fumble. My mouth was parched but I didn't want alcohol yet, and the crowd crush at the bar was too much hassle for an ice water.
Sam happened to pass a few feet to my right, focused on maneuvering through the crowd. He hadn't spotted me. I stepped over and grasped my fingers to the back of his shirt.
"Yo!" he said. "When did you get here?"
"Like, three minutes ago."
"Don't buy anything. We have approximately thirty-four pitchers in the back."
"Dude," I said, holding his elbow, "don't be too obvious, but I was just watching Chris blow it with that girl he apparently likes. Amanda, that really hot track girl."
"Oh, fuck, I know. I know!" He pushed back his hair and doubled forward.
"That poor woman. What's sad is, we mostly came here tonight because she was coming. Who goes to Goal Line on a Saturday instead of Michael's? It's her fault we're here and not someplace cool. He's far too trashed and she's far too polished. He's messing it up for himself."
"And obviously if we tried to help or intervene, he'd be horrified."
"He is going to be so fucked when we're not around to manage him," Sam said.
"Oh, believe me," I said, "I realize."
"Well," he said, de-escalating his tone, "he'll actually be totally fine."
"I don't think so," I said.
I hadn't planned to take this stand. Sam didn't know that he was opening a door.
"He was fine for seventeen years before us. He'll be fine when we're gone."
"No he won't."
"He's a sloppy drunk and kind of an idiot, but who isn't?"
"But, like, no," I said, abruptly vehement in a way usually reserved for 1 a.m. when I'm eight or nine beers fat. "Just think about him, dude. His GPA sucks, he has no idea what he's going to do. He has no one back home. No friends. Literally, no one. Just his family. And his family is fucking great. I wish they were my family. Like, no offense to my family, but the Riises are fucking awesome. He'll be the only one who's not a doctor. That's literally true – all doctors. So he's going to go back home and do what? Be this sad, lonely fuck-up. The fuck-up youngest brother. Babysit his nieces and nephews, mow his parents' lawn. What are we going to do about that? Do you want that to be his life?"
"Okay, okay," Sam said. "It's awesome that you care that much. I fucking love how you care that much."
"Dude, I'm being serious," I said.
"I'm not even a little sarcastic."
"Don't you care? Picture if, like, five years from now, he's a dumb sack of broken glass. And maybe we're the only legit friends he ever had, and this was his chance for a different kind of life, but he didn't take it. And we're always such sarcastic, elitist assholes that we never gave him the opportunity. We just, like, baited him and put him on the defensive, when we should have been trying to bring him along."
"What do you think we're supposed to do?" Sam said. "Kidnap him? It's not as extreme as you say, anyway. Plenty of people – like, my dad traveled around and got high for a couple of years before he even got a job. You are such a responsible and conscientious motherfucker that it looks different to you."
"No, man, no. I fucking love that kid, but this is different than your dad. Ken went to LSE and is fucking sharp. He was probably, like, sowing his oats -- probably dropping acid in Indonesia, fucking hot Belgian women in Bangkok. No offense to your mom."
"None taken. I'd like to think that's exactly what my father was doing when he was our age."
"Fucking Chris, he's not delaying responsibility for an adventure. It's like in some movie, you can see the car about to go off the road." I was close to telling Sam. It wasn't calculated, just an instinct. Relieve myself of the burden, make someone else care, too. "Plus," I said instead, "with my whole personal issues out in the open, he doesn't want anything to do with me. He barely looks at me when we're in the same room. He tunes out whatever I say. He won't hear it from me."
"This may sound like girl drama," Sam said, "but his behavior around all of that makes me somewhat not give a fuck what he does. Maybe you're correct that he's troubled, but seeing how he reacted to you, I can't be bothered to feel sympathy over his other fuckfacery." He paused. "Even though I fucking love him, too. I care, I care." Persuading himself. "He'll get over it. You know he'll get over it soon."
"Dude, I don't care if he gets over it. He can never get over it if he wants, and that's cool with me. I don't care. Even if he fucking hates me, I don't care. He'll still be my friend. I'll only feel more sorry for him. I'm not going to hold it against him if he's fucking misguided or ignorant. Neither should you. Like, if he's not going to listen to me again, maybe he'll listen to you. So maybe you should be the one to try to talk to him. Not in a joke-assed, dickish way. Maybe you should find a way to be, like, `Dude, it might not be the greatest plan for you to move back to your parents' suburb as a 22 year old who isn't sure what he wants out of life. That seems too constraining.'"
"Joe, Christ." He half-hugged me, rubbing the top of my scalp with his palm, like I was a dog that needed soothing. "Brother, that's not my job," he said. "I don't have those kinds of conversations. I don't know how to talk like that. This is the kind of advice I give: `Pieces, stop acting like a stupid twat.' That's my advice. Don't be such a fucking twat, and the rest will sort itself out."
"He's not a twat though," I said.
"I maybe wouldn't say this if I weren't already kind of drunk, and you're extremely sober – which is a problem, by the way – but ultimately, he's some dude we know. We like him very much, but he's not like us. He doesn't think like us. Doesn't act like us. I've always believed that you and I would stay friends. Pieces, I'd put it 50-50 at best."
"Well," I said, "that makes me fucking sad. And pisses me off a little. To be fully honest. I thought that this was a fairly cool situation that we have going, but maybe I'm the only one with certain assumptions. Like, who else is dispensable for you?"
"Stop, stop, stop." Sam's voice got softer – as tender as he gets. "You are not dispensable to me. If I could turn gay, I would turn so fucking gay and make you my life partner, I swear upon my penis. I want to be a huge homo, just so we can be together. I wish homosexuality were a choice so much, you can't even imagine. I'm being serious!"
"That's just, like, weird and gross."
"When I read how gay The Wire gets you, I was sad because it was like, `Oh, so I will not always be the most important man in Joe's life.' Stop laughing!"
"Fucking dumbass."
"I fucking love you, asshole."
"I fucking love you too."
"I am not saying that Chris can fuck off. I recognize and respect that he is a different kind of dude. Not a dude who's going to live in New York or Paris and have amazing adventures. I enjoy him for who he is and have never worried what he'll be doing five years from now. I have no idea. I can't think that way. If you think that way about other people, it will make you crazy, and I suggest that you stop it. He's in charge of his fate. I don't know what he wants. He's a mystery to me. You're much closer to him. Or possibly, quite sadly, you were much closer to him -- who knows. For your own sake, cut it out. He's not your pet or your child. There are better, more constructive outlets for your worries and talents."
Around the time that Sam said he wanted to be gay for me, 50 Cent began to play. A small group in a circle danced and chanted, "Go Ahmet, it's your birthday." When they lost a lyric, they cheered for their moves, and for Ahmet. No matter how sanctimonious you're feeling, it's hard to maintain gravity when people around you feel so happy about 50 Cent and Ahmet.
This wasn't the moment to finish the conversation. I had already tortured Sam with earnestness. For him, it must have been worse than getting sucker-punched by an Epsilon who was enraged about his dodgeball league.
A half-hour later, Chris tumbled to the booth that we had in back. He fell asleep with his head against the wall. Nobody asked him what was going on or indicated concern. It was expected that Chris would get messy, blow his chances with a hot girl and pass out in a crowded bar.
Some nights you went to a place, expecting to leave after a half-hour, but after you unbundled, the tyranny of the thermometer placed the whole bar under voluntary quarantine.
We were still there at 1:30, acclimated to a beer-mist terrarium. Sam and his friends tried to pick up women at last call. Chris was awake and drinking, staggering around the booths in the back quadrant of the bar, ambling between conversations and trips to the men's room.
Our group left shortly after two, with three newfound girls incorporated. Outside, it was almost too cold to hold a cigarette.
We debated next steps. Charterhouse was open and served beer until three, but it was packed. I vetoed Sam's suggestion of our house ("Katie would cut bitches open tonight.").
Everybody wanted food. We went to Pizza Lord. Its heretic white logo had a line drawing of an angel-winged slice with a halo above it. They sold $2 slices from a narrow counter in a room that couldn't fit a dozen people. With the bars out, the line stretched forty feet out the door. Chris and I ended up next to each other while Sam and his friends chatted with our new girls.
"You feeling all right?"
He swallowed and did a slow blink. "I knew it was a matter of time before you asked me something like that." His voice was slow and slurred.
"Okay, never mind," I said. "We don't have to stay. I'll walk home with you. We can order delivery at home if you want."
Sam continued his own conversation, but the stagger in his words meant that he was eavesdropping.
"Right." I think it was meant to be sarcastic. "And then what?"
"And then what, what? And then nothing. Or whatever! It's warmer at home and easy to get delivery."
Heavy pause. "Okay."
Nothing he said could have bothered me. Hands buried in the pockets of his jacket. He was so drunk and depleted.
"Bro, come on," I said.
"Come on what?" he said. "What? C'mon, what? Like, what does that even mean? What are you even talking about?"
"Fuck's sake," I said, lighting another cigarette.
"Don't blow your gross secondhand smoke near me," he said. "I don't want to inhale that crap. Disgusting."
"Fair enough." I stepped further to the left as our pizza line crept forward. Sam gave me a look, like he wanted approval to participate. I shook my head slightly. "He probably just needs some food," I said to Sam.
"Who, me?" Chris said. "Don't talk like I'm not here. `He.' Like I'm an object on a table."
If Sam and I hadn't had our conversation earlier in the night, he might have turned Chris into a gored fawn.
Chris leaned toward me, speaking more quietly, inaccurately thinking that Sam couldn't hear. "You secretly love it when I look bad. Because it makes you feel cooler. And, like, you can control the situation."
"No. Not at all." I didn't care what he said. I stared at Sam, facially forbidding him from speaking, as his complexion explored the Crayola shades of red.
"Well I think you do," Chris said.
We entered Pizza Lord. Sam maneuvered to put himself in line between Chris and I. He gave me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. After a beat passed, he squeezed my ass.
I jumped. "Dude!"
"Wasn't me," he said. "It was Pieces."
"God!" Chris said.
Giggles from girls: "Sounds like roommate drama!" one said.
We finally got our plain slices and stepped back into the cold. Pizza Lord served slices so hot that even when it was five degrees outside, they were unsuitable for instant consumption.
Chris immediately took a full bite from the point of his slice. His forehead popped, but he must have been so hungry and drunk that he didn't care about the pain. The cheese was uncooperative, though -- so melted that his teeth couldn't hold a rippable grip, trapping his mouth with a partially removed bite. He sucked cold air, hoping to cool his tongue, as he tried to clamp off a manageable portion. The entire cheese surface slipped. He tipped his head back, reeling the hot-cheese landslide into his jaws, until a last flap of cheap mozzarella dangled over his lower lip and smeared pizza sauce on his chin. He looked like a dog trying to chew a jalapeno: vacuuming frigid air into his mouth, now overflowing with molten cheese that he struggled to chew and swallow without choking. He held in one hand a fleshy, denuded pizza crust that glistened dough and tomato innards under the streetlight. Heat-inspired tears ran down his face. His nose dripped. With pizza occupying both hands, he was powerless to clear his face.
He had only just obtained control of the situation when the scalding at the roof of his mouth clashed with the Arctic air in his nostrils. I thought he was about to puke, but instead, he quickly faced away and sneezed a spray of semi-masticated cheese onto a parked Toyota Corolla.
As gross and pathetic as he appeared, as obnoxious as he'd been acting, in that moment, I loved him completely. Maybe he was onto something -- it could have been that, in his most incompetent moments, I got off on an urge to tend to him. I have never tended to anyone else.
At least he laughed at himself. "Wow," he said, "I hate when that happens."
"You okay there, bud?" said Sam's friend Egan.
"I need skin grafts," he said.
I glanced at the Pizza Lord line. Waiting with a couple of similarly styled fellows, teeth chattering, was Wally. This wasn't an exotic coincidence: so many nights, across all cliques and tribes, concluded at either Charterhouse or Pizza Lord. He'd watched the climax of Chris's chewing display. As we made brief eye contact, Wally held up his hands, showed his beautiful smile, and silently mouthed, "What the fuck?"
All I knew to do was smirk and wave a hand in acknowledgment. I took a first bite of my own pizza and faced my crew.