Joe College

Joe College, Pt. 5

10

My jeans smelled like beer. I was sitting on Matt Canetti's bed with my back against the wall. He laughed at some line of dialogue playing on his TV but I wasn't paying much attention to the movie. I reached out until I touched his hand.

"Stop being cute," he said.

"Huh?" I said.

My hand wasn't quite shaking. Matt spread out his fingers and let me hold them from on top. After a couple of minutes my palms were sweating against the back of his hand. I lifted my wrist to let the moisture air out between our skin.

"You're kinda sweaty right now," Matt said.

"Yeah. I think so."

"It's okay."

"I know."

"Stop being nervous," Matt said. "I know I can come across as cocky, but I'm as mellow as it gets when we're into the physical stuff. Don't think about it too much."

He put his hand on the back of my neck. He left it there. My cock had been at top inflation since he closed and locked his bedroom door.

His simple touch made it want to explode. The boner pressing against my jeans was obvious, but Matt wasn't paying it attention. He wasn't even massaging my neck or anything. He left his hand there, the way you'd touch the family dog lying on the couch next to you. I reached out and put my arm on his leg, halfway between his knee and his hip.

(1)

(The night after Matt Canetti told me he was gay, I slept maybe three hours. When I got back to the dorm, the room was dark and Sam was already asleep on the lower bunk. I felt gross and tawdry doing it, but with Sam passed out, I climbed to my top bunk and quickly jerked off under the covers, thinking that it would help me get to sleep. It didn't. I was too electric. At around 5 a.m. I jerked off again, thinking about Andy Trafford this time, again thinking that it would help me get to sleep. It didn't. My heart ran too fast. It felt like I was overcaffeinated; I blamed the cigarettes. Daylight bled through the shades when I finally fell asleep. Usually I slept through Sam's wake-up when it was earlier than mine, but this time, when his clock-radio clicked on, I bolted up.

(The first thought: I'm still into dudes.

(The second thought: Matt Canetti is gay.

(When Sam left for the showers down the hall, I quickly jerked off again, then turned to the wall, faking sleep while he dressed and left for his morning class. I was able to get myself back to sleep. This time I had a dream that I was at Andy Trafford's beach house. I was looking for him but the house was empty. I opened a door and found Matt Canetti and Andy Trafford lying together on top of a bed, both of them in boxers, snuggled up against each other and laughing. "Whoah!" I said, and apologized for walking in and interrupting. They laughed at me as I closed the door and left them alone together.

(I woke up a second time and jerked off again, in my post-sleep confusion thinking about how nice it was that Andy and Matt were hooking up, if only in my dream. My boxers were so messed up by then that I took them off before walking to the showers. I just wrapped a towel around my waist and walked clumsily down the hall.

(The rest of that day I was a tired mess. I had a 1 p.m. lecture and a 3 p.m. lecture but couldn't concentrate and barely managed to stay awake. Then it was a Friday night, and it was the first Friday night that I decided not to go out. I told Sam that I didn't feel well. Alone that whole night, I was lying on my top bunk, watching TV while half-awake, then stopping to look up pictures of naked guys on the internet, jerking off, and going back to dazed stares at the TV.)

11

"So when you were with this guy Andy," Matt said, "did you guys ever make out?"

"Ha," I said. "Yeah. All the time."

He pulled slightly at my neck and leaned in to kiss me. Matt started it soft and non-intrusive, but I was having too hard of a time restraining myself. I pulled his head by the back of his neck and sucked hard at his lips; I jammed my tongue against his teeth. The kiss lasted for maybe 20 seconds before he pulled away.

"You're pretty enthusiastic," he said. He messed the back of my hair as I moved closer in, to where the sides of our legs were nudged against each other and I rested my head at his shoulder. "I like to let it build up a little more slowly."

"Yeah," I said. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Matt said. "If you're that into kissing a guy, you really must be gay." He said it like he'd eliminated a last seed of doubt. "Nobody who just wants to experiment has that kind of enthusiasm."

"Yeah," I said. "I guess."

"Just, you know," he said, squeezing my shoulders, "try and make your kisses a little more artful. Think of it as telling a story."

"What do you mean?"

He slid closer against me. He put his arm behind my neck and let me rest against him. I tensed and tingled at the slide and weight of his arm bones around my shoulders, the warmth of his body and bones at the side of my head. I slumped down a little more so that it was easier for both of us, and leaned the weight of my head.

"Making out has to be like a story," he said. I felt his voicebox vibrate in my ear and my teeth. "You have to have a kind of introduction, and set the stage for the action. So usually it's a little slower in the beginning. But once you build up to the right pace, you can keep things pretty intense and high-energy, and it'll feel comfortable without ever getting boring."

"So like what?"

"Turn toward me," he said.

Our faces already were so close that I didn't have to move, just crane my neck. He took my upper lip between his and pulled for several seconds, kind of lighting tugging and releasing. I only closed my eyes part of the time; I like keeping them open enough to see the skin of the face close to me. Our nostrils inhaled and exhaled in each other. Then Matt took my lower lip in his mouth and did the same thing. He released the bottom lip and gave me a fast kiss on the chin. After that he pulled away and went back to letting me lean into him.

"How was that?" he said.

"Pretty nice," I said.

"Awesome," he said, squeezing my shoulder.

(2)

(At first I thought that I should wait a few days before e-mailing him, but I decided that would be like a girl after a first date. On Saturday morning, before leaving the dorm for the noon kick-off, I wrote Matt a quick e-mail saying that it was a blast hanging out with him again and thanking him for the beer connection. He sent me back a quick, one-line note: "Cool -- let's do it again soon."

(Mid-week, he wrote saying that a friend was having a house party that Friday, and that I should swing by with Sam and Chris if I wanted. It was the first house party I went to in college. Only freshmen were required to live in dorms. Juniors, seniors, and most sophomores rented big, shambling houses in student ghettos that circled campus like a doughnut. A guy who'd been in Matt's pledge class shared the house with three other guys and a few girls. I don't know how many people were at that party, but it seemed packed, wild and cacophonous, with a short line for the kegs out back, the lights out in the living room while rap and classic rock played on a bass-heavy stereo. In reality it probably was a relatively tame college party.

(I hadn't told anyone else about Matt being gay. He hadn't sworn me to secrecy or anything like that, but it just seemed like an intrusive thing to share. Immediately, he and Sam started back with friendly political arguments. [They were both pretty far to the left, but Sam had a firm opinion that Matt was too fuzzy and unrealistic.] Matt proceeded to introduce me, Sam and Chris to a variety of girls he knew. Sam was confident and clever, as always threading a fine line between obnoxiousness and engagement; Chris was blushing and nervous; I was quick and flirtatious, but kept conversation at a level that avoided signaling romantic interest.

(Talking to a pretty hot junior girl majoring in econ, I kept watching Matt Canetti from a corner of my eye. He stood next to a stairwell, drinking with a very good-looking, well dressed guy. If you weren't paying attention, it would look like nothing, but I was convinced that Matt and this guy had hooked up. The mannerisms of Matt's friend looked slightly flirty; they were sort of leaning toward each other in a way that might have been mistaken as conspiratorial, but in my mind's eye, there was a more intimate implication, like they were comfortable with each other's bodies and close presence.

("Hey Joe," Matt said, when I interrupted them about ten minutes later, "this is Kevin Berger." He pointed at me. "Joe's just a freshman, but we can hang out socially because he's not pledging."

(Kevin laughed as he shook my hand. "If you were pledging, Matt would have to treat you like shit."

(Yep, I concluded, based on his intonations and mannerism: Kevin was a gay guy.

("I guess that means he gets to treat me like shit solely out of choice," I said.

("Awww," Matt said. "That is just so eminently unfair. Who's been getting you drunk at bars and bringing you to all the cool parties?"

("I know, I know," I said. "I'm just fucking around."

("Kevin's in Sigma Nu, so he knows what he's talking about," Matt said. "We go way back."

(I think Kevin was checking me out. It was almost blatant. He was kind of watching me and smiling the whole time. When he spoke, it was like he wanted sustained eye contact. It was a lot of ordinary small talk. Instead of resisting what I construed as Kevin's interest, I kind of enjoyed it. Matt went along with it, too. If I can say this without being accused of having a big ego, it felt like Matt was sort of showing me off as a cool new friend. Drunk, I started to imagine the two of them hooking up -- their dicks pressed up against each other, Kevin's chest, Matt's naked ass perked upward as he stood. It was putting me in a state; my remarks went on auto-pilot.

(This all ended, of course, when Sam interrupted, got a quick introduction, and observed that fraternities were "fucking fascist, conformist bullshit."

(In one of the bedrooms upstairs, someone had taken out a bong. Sam ended up getting stoned. On the front porch, I had a long, encouraging conversation with an editor at the student newspaper: My first album review had been published the day before, two-and-a-half stars for an obscure, melodic indie band. It wasn't much, but I was full of myself. At around 2 a.m., Matt pulled me aside and directed me to Chris Riis. Chris was making out with a girl in the corner of the dark living room.

("That's, like, shocking," I said to Matt.

("Ha," he said. "How so?"

("He's always so shy and nervous," I said. "Chris seems to have, like, no game."

("Even dudes with no game got need," Matt said. "I'm sure you can relate to that personally."

("Whatever, asshole," I said. "I've got more game than Joe Montana and Roger Clemons combined."

("Well," he said, laughing, lowering his voice to a quiet, discreet level, "my buddy Kevin certainly admired."

(This made me blush and sent me quiet. "Oh yeah?"

("Sorry about that," he said. "It was somewhat aggressive. I don't know if you even noticed. He was just drunk. I was like, 'No way he's on that team.'"

("Yeah," I said, "that's kind of weird. First time that's ever happened to me. I guess I should be flattered?"

(Matt punched my shoulder. "Not by Kevin. He's got, like, expansive standards. But I thought you'd be amused.")

12

My nose was near where Matt's neck met his shoulder. I could smell his shaving cream and his deodorant. He was sort of holding onto my head, letting his fingers go through my hair. I put my head up to kiss him -- reminding myself that it was supposed to be like telling a story. This time I started out slower, taking his lower lip into my mouth and rubbing it with my tongue. Then I moved up to kiss him more fully. Matt let out a long sigh through his nose and hugged me hard at the shoulders, feeling out my muscles at the shoulderblades. I slipped my tongue into his mouth. He opened his teeth more fully and let my tongue rub against his in a slow rhythm. It felt warm and tender, somehow smoother and more intimate than the times I'd kissed Andy. When I started to pull back to break the kiss, Matt didn't let me. He pushed his face closer toward mine and placed his tongue in my mouth, first letting it sit there for just a second and then slowly licking my tongue at the tip. I rolled over so that I was lying on top of him, with my jeans and my hard-on straddling his left leg.

"That was pretty hot," Matt said, when he relented. He was holding the back of my neck. I was sort of lightly circling my hips at his legs. My mouth was at the front of his throat, right next to his big Adam's apple. I was giving him a lot of dry kisses, breathing in the light, clean smell of whatever shaving gel he'd used.

Matt slid down so that he was lying flat, instead of as a long L propped by the wall. He slid his hand up the back of my shirt, feeling out the notches of my spine. I loved the feel of his hand on my skin. Already, I was in a contest with myself not to jizz. My breathing was starting to sound staggered.

"You know, you're very special," Matt said.

"Why's that?"

"At the start of this year, I decided that I wasn't going to hook up with freshmen. It started to seem sketchy to me," he said. "I guess that policy's gone out the window!"

"You've got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend if you won't crawl out that window," I said. "Plus, you said that I didn't seem much like a freshman."

"Strong point," he said. "I guess you get a pass." He confirmed this point by lifting my head and pushing his tongue back inside of my mouth; I think that I could feels his eyelashes flit at my eyelids. He now had both hands inside my shirt, sliding at the skin of my back.

I was wearing a white button-down Oxford shirt (Christ, I really had dressed like this was a date, even if that wasn't in my mind) and Matt started undoing it at the top buttons. "Roll over," he said. "Lay down on your back."

I rolled over and let myself off of Matt's body. He was laying on his side next to me. He leaned in to give me a short, clean kiss on the lips, and went back to undoing my buttons. He was kind of spreading his hands over my chest as the buttons plucked down. He slid me out of my shirt and whipped it across the room.

"That's a nice chest you have," he said, walking his fingers down the light line of hair that ran down the middle. "You'll probably be disappointed when you see mine."

"Let me see it," I said.

"Not yet," he said. He leaned down and put his mouths on my left nipple. His tongue felt warm and rough against it; his cheek was hot and soft on my skin. While he did this, Matt reached down and undid my belt buckle. I lifted my hips and let him slip out the belt. Still licking at my nipple, with he reached out and held my hand, and with his other hand, slid it down below the top of my jeans. He let it just sit there for a second, making sure that I was comfortable, and then pressed down further, until his fingertips went past the top of my dick and down to my pubic hair.

"Whoah," he said. "You've been, like, leaking a lot. Is that all just pre-cum?"

"Yeah," I said. "I have a tendency to do that."

"Wow," he said, lifting his head off my chest. Matt was still fully dressed and apparently in no rush to take off anything of his own. He pulled down my jeans and my boxers in one quick move. It was tough pulling them down over my feet, I guess, so they hung there for a second. I tried to kick them off and then Matt yanked them past my ankles.

"That's one of those things that's a mystery to me," Matt said. "It's like, we've both got the same parts, but I don't pre-cum at all. It's like being uncircumcised. I've never hung out with a guy who's uncircumcised. I guess they say it feels better?"

"I don't really know."

"You're totally dazed right now.'

I was also totally naked. Matt still had all of his clothes on. His face was flushed; the veins stood out in the back of his hands and on his lower arms. At first it was uncomfortable being completely exposed in front of him, but then it felt kind of flattering and funny. Matt was objectifying me, I guess, which I took as a compliment. He stretched out next to me and ran a hand the length of my chest and down to my dick. He let my pre-cum between his fingers and rubbed it together. When we kissed, he left a hand on my stomach, on the line of short black hairs running down from my navel to my pubic hair. The texture of his jeans rubbed against my leg hair; the cotton knit of his shirt pressed at my arm. In the interest of full disclosure, my body had lost some of its definition over the five months since I'd graduated from high school (not working out and lots of beer drinking do that, I guess) but it still was better than most, I think. Matt seemed to be digging it. Through his jeans, I could feel that he now had a full hard-on, and he was pressing it at my naked hip in a slow rhythm.

(3)

(The next time I saw Matt, after I was sufficiently hammered, I asked him whether he and Kevin had ever gone out together.

("Why do you ask that?" he said.

("Nah, I'm sorry," I said. "It's none of my business."

("Don't worry," Matt said, "but yeah. For a little while. Wasn't really a great match. Kevin's kind of a male slut, I guess, and I mean that only in the most neutral terms, whereas I sort of have a more discriminating sensibility. I shouldn't say male slut -- libidinous, I guess. I think he thought I was a little bit of a prude, and if I can, again, say this in a fairly neutral and complimentary way, but I found him a little boring and not the smartest guy in the world. If we're hanging out together, I read The Economist and argue about foreign policy, but Kevin, like, is interested in reality TV and which guy has a hot ass. I'm a nerd about shit, but Kevin just wants to hook up with guys and have a good time. But, you know, there's a certain degree of elemental click."

("Okay," I said. "Cool. I just wondered, like, how that side of things works compared to conventional dating."

("Blah," Matt said. "It is what it is. What about you?"

("Nah," I said.

("Nah, what? Nah, as in, no women in your life in any respect, or just not looking to seriously date?"

("I'm just still sort of sorting things out here," I said. "Girls can bring a lot of drama to stuff sometimes. I mean, those girls you introduced me to at that party were pretty hot, and it was kind of tempting, but it seems like I've got a lot on my mind right now without bringing that in. Plus, I was sort of hooking up with a girl over last summer. She was really hot and we got along pretty well, but she's at Berkeley now."

("Oh, cool," he said. "So you've got two friends at Berkeley?"

("What?"

("Well, you mentioned that one of your best friends was out there when we were talking about schools before. So if he's out there, and this chick is out there, you should definitely take a trip out to see them.

Berkeley's beautiful and the Bay Area is awesome."

("Yeah, man," I said. "Maybe for spring break or something I'll try to head out there.")

13

Matt was pretty quick in taking off his own clothes. One second he was next to me in jeans and a three-button polo, and the next he threw his shirt across the room. He had a skinny torso. Andy was skinny too, but he had a lot of tight muscles . Matt Cannetti was just thin.

His collarbone stuck out below his neck; you could practically see the bones of his chest where his pectoral muscles could have been. He had a little more hair on his chest than me. It was seeded over his upper chest and circled his nipples. It circled dark around his navel. When I reached out to touch him his skin was dry and smooth. I can't hold a tan for more than a week, but even though we were halfway into October, the tan still clung to Matt's melanin.

When he took off his belt, he briefly gestured like he was going to hit me with it.

"Oh, God, I'm just joking," he said. "You should've seen your face. I'm the least kinky guy ever."

He jumped off the bed and lost his jeans. He wore black boxer briefs and slid them off quickly and casually.

"What, don't talk much?" he said. "I can't get you to shut up when you're talking about your classes or how you're the smartest boy in the room."

I was looking at his dick. It wasn't as long as mine, but it was thicker -- and I think mine's pretty thick itself. When I've got a hard-on mine lies flat against my stomach; Matt's kind of curved out and up. Mine tended to turn pinker when all the blood rushed to it, and my cockhead turned fat and purple; Andy's had been the same way; but Matt's was more flesh colored, so that it looked like a dramatic appendage of his skin. He had a stark tanline, so that his hips and upper thigh looked stark white when contrasted with his torso and his legs. He had thick dark pubes that extended up and out, and down into his inner thighs.

"I'm going to turn up the stereo," Matt said. "Not for ambiance, just because I don't want James to hear stuff. And not because James would freak if he knew we were hooking up -- I think that's assumed -- but just because straights can get weirded out. And not because I'm loud or anything, just because I don't want to have to think about etiquette. Do you have any requests?"

"No Beastie Boys or Eminem," I said.

"Racist."

"Play Bob Dylan."

"No way," he said. "I know you love him, but it will kill my hard-on, and I don't want the lyrics to distract you while you're blowing me."

"Just pick something and come back."

He was completely unselfconscious standing naked and hard in front of me, and he wasn't in any hurry. The deliberate calm he had about his nakedness was actually driving me into a fit of arousal; i didn't want to touch my dick because I thought I'd shoot. I watched his skinny white ass while he perused his CD collection and put one on.

"Not that I'm a huge Oasis fan," he said, "or I find them remotely erotic, but it reminds me of high school, and it's worked okay in the past."

"Oh, God, Matt, I don't care," I said, looking at the loping profile of his dick and his pale thighs and skinny ass, "just come back here."

When he came back he lay down on top of me, and gave me a better, longer kiss than I think I've ever had in my life. It was the kiss that they talk about in Bull Durham -- the long, slow, deep, soft, wet kiss that lasts for three days. My head was plunged back in his pillows; he held onto both hands, just softly, with our fingers interlaced, and positioned them so that our arms were outstretched together. As he did this, and without breaking the kiss, Matt straddled his legs over mine, so that his were outstretched on either side of my own legs; our leghair bristled against each other. It felt like every inch of my skin was completely absorbed by Matt Cannetti, from our fingers, palms, wrists and armpits, down the length of the hairless undersides of our arms, to our chests and stomachs lined together. His balls were resting on top of mine and our cocks crammed against each other. His face was all over mine, too -- Matt had this way of kissing that pushed his entire face on yours, so that your foreheads touched and eyebrows met, your noses smashed and angled against each other, and even your chins hit.

I forced myself to break his kiss: "I'm going to cum if you don't let up," I said.

"Then cum."

"But it's, like, so soon."

"You'll cum again," he said. "You're already making a mess down there, you leaky, leaky bastard. Just, like, don't stop kissing me when you cum."

He went back to kissing me. His lips felt warm and clean and soft; to this day, he kisses better than anyone I've ever hung out with. I missed a beat and then kind of laughed while his tongue was in my mouth, and he let out a kind of shuddery laugh, too, not breaking from my lips while he did. I jerked my hips once, feeling his cock hot on my thigh, and let go. The semen rocketed out of me, and as it did, Matt thrust his hips against me. The friction of his cock on mine as I shot, it was like the greatest, warmest tickle I'd ever felt. He squeezed my left hand before letting go of it. I reached down until my hand was at his lower back, just above his ass; Matt held my hair with his free hand. His skin still felt warm and dry, not sweaty like mine. My fingers felt out the length of his spine and its bony notches. He broke his kiss to squeeze my shoulder and sigh into my ear.

(4)

("How'd your mid-terms go, champ?"

(I met him at the bar where his friend Jackie worked. I'd had my third and final mid-term that day, for in introductory class on world politics. "I finished it about five minutes early, so I had time to go back and re-read my essay," I said. "It was, like, this hypothetical about a failed state, and three different scenarios. We were supposed to explain how a realist, an idealist and a neo-conservative would address them. Total piece of cake."

("Maybe for a wizard like you," Matt said. "I got an A- in that class. Jenson makes his TAs grade tough, so be careful."

("Whatever," I said. "It was a breeze."

("You know, you can talk to me like this, because I'm an asshole too, but most people would construe that as a little cocky."

("Oh yeah? You mean like Sam Frost? Hanging out with you two, it's like I live in cock city."

("Well, I didn't know that about Sam, but I'll take that as a compliment."

("Jesus Christ," I said. "Stop trying to make me uncomfortable about, like, your lifestyle choice."

(He put his hands behind his neck and leaned back. He wore a long-sleeved gray T-shirt underneath a blue three-button polo. "'Lifestyle choice,'" he said. "That's such a Jerry Falwell kind of phrase."

("Remember? How I almost went to Liberty University?"

("Yes! I forgot. And then you came here, and instead, you found a lot of cock."

("I meant, like, cockiness. Roosters and whatnot."

("Dear God," he said. "You're a mess. Keep drinking. I'll spring for the five dollar pitchers or whatever they are. I certainly hope your bluebook essay made more sense than you're making now."

(I wasn't making much sense, no, and I was a little bit giddy from having finished my exams and getting to hang out with Matt again. It was maybe our third our fourth time hanging out like that; I wasn't totally sure. A few times I'd passed him on campus on the way to class. He was always with one or two other guys dressed like him. I don't know whether they were fraternity brothers or what, but they always dressed the same -- in jeans and fleece, with baseball caps on backward. When he saw me, he gave me the kind of cool-guy smirk and point in the hall. We never stopped and spoke, but I was always running late anyway, and before lectures, I was in a kind of distracted zone.

("So let me get your opinion on this," Matt said, after we'd finished a couple of pitchers. "I'm, like, in charge of getting these T-shirts, so what I did is, I came up with these designs. They're red T-shirts, and on the front in big block letters, it says, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. And do you know what's on the back?"

("A guillotine?"

("Close! It a picture of Robespierre, with our Greek letters underneath."

("That's pretty clever."

("Shit man, that's what I thought. I thought it was awesome. Three-quarters of them don't even understand. I'm like, 'What the fuck? This isn't some cow college. You're supposed to be some educated motherfuckers.' But no. They don't get it."

("Well, maybe they're reluctant about, like, conflating your frat with overthrow of the government," I said. "From what I remember, everybody just wanted to be an investment banker or a lawyer or shit."

("They're not even interpreting my T-shirt design on that level," Matt said. "It's just kind of, 'Muh.' Goddammit, I wish I was alive when there were proper revolutions going on. French Revolution, Russian Revolution, 1848. When you could write polemical tracts and storm the barricades. Now all we've got is a bunch of crap about Phish, and Phoebe and Chandler. God!" He slammed his glass on the table. "That's all I want. I want to be a revolutionary."

("The T-shirt is an interesting first step toward revolution," I said, finishing my glass of yellow beer and sloppily dumping more in. "T-shirts, then ball caps. Puka shells."

("That's, seriously, so unhelpful toward my dream."

("No. I'm being totally serious. You should put a poster of Che on your wall, and Bob Marley. And walk around in your T-shirt. Vladimir. Way to make a statement."

("Mark my words," Matt said. "I'm brilliant. I'm the smartest person you'll ever meet. I'm going to smash the system."

("Jesus Christ, and you called me cocky for thinking I did well on my poli sci exam."

("And your response was that you like spending time with cock."

("Well," I said, "mostly my own cock."

("Mostly? Yes, that's right. Tell me more about that."

(And maybe I could have continued on with the banter, but every time one of us said "cock," my dick tremored. I shifted uncomfortably in my side of the booth. So I laughed kind of awkwardly, said, "Uhhh," and looked away. An uncomfortable pause followed.

("Aw, fuck," Matt said. "I'm sorry. I've got a couple of friends who are straight guys and occasionally we get vulgar like that. I didn't mean anything. It's not like I was hitting on you."

("Nah," I said, my own voice changing too. "It's cool. Don't worry about it. Let's, like, get another pitcher.")

14

Matt had me arch my knees up. He was sort of holding up his body over mine. Our skin was still touching but I wasn't supporting all of his weight anymore. He held onto his cock and pressed it down against mine. In a kind of slow thrusting motion he rubbed his dick against me. His hips and upper thighs rubbed against my leg hair. Matt's face was red and flushed now, but his body was still dry and smooth, not sweating like mine was. My cum was drying on my stomach and turning sticky. I heard the sound of Matt's dick rubbing the light rubber cement of my jizz, sounding like soft tape unsticking. My hand on his lower spine, I let it reach down until it touched his ass. He had a very light amount of hair on it, so short that I didn't see it when he got up before. It was so skinny that I could press my fingers down and touch the bone of it. I waited to see if he had a negative reaction. With my other hand, I pulled his face down so that he kissed me again.

"You're a good boy," he said. I laughed as he rested his forehead against mine. He sort of wrapped his mouth over the end of my nose. I laughed at him for it.

Between me and Andy Trafford, it had been a lot of fumbling, and there was a negotiating quality to everything we did. Not that we ever talked about it, but it seemed like any time we tried something, there were a lot of questions nervous pauses to see how the other reacted.

But in my mind, Matt was sort of a man. He was confident. He knew what he was doing. He was fun and calm about it. I sort of left things under his control and waited to see his next move.

(5)

(By then Matt was all I jerked off to. I didn't exactly remember the face of his friend Kevin from the party, but I got off to the image of Matt with a tall, blandly handsome Jewish guy, and it did the trick. I had dreams about him, but they never involved us hooking up. In one he knew I was gay and was taking me back to his apartment; in another I was terrified he'd find out I was gay; in one recurring dream, I would run into him while I was half-dressed in a locker room, and seeing him embarrassed me.

("So let me get this straight," Andy Trafford said to me on the phone.

"He's hot, he's smart and you like him a lot. And he's apparently gay as hell."

("Well, he's gay. I don't know if gay as hell is accurate."

("Stop nitpicking," Andy said. "Hot, smart, gay as hell, and fucking asks you to describe your cock while you're wasted."

("It wasn't like that. He wasn't being serious."

("Goddamn you, Joey," he said. "I went to some GLT -- GBA, LPGA, BLT, whatever the fuck. I went to one of their things."

("Oh, really?"

("It was Kumbaya," he said. "I didn't last ten minutes. It was like a bad movie. I freaked and I ran."

("Wait, you went to one of those? I'd never have the balls."

("Well, obviously not. This dude has gone on the record with asking you to describe your cock. If it'd been me, I would've probably just whipped it out, right there."

("Stop being a freak."

("Just whipped out the boner, right there, put it on the table. I would've been like, 'Now suck it!'"

("Dude, you're out of your mind," I said. "What the hell are you doing out there?"

("Nothing! Nothing at all! I'm just, like, horny. And desperate. Tonight I will jerk off thinking about you getting blown by the naked hypothetical frat boy of my dreams. I should look him up online and send him an e-mail. I'll be like, 'Hey, you don't know me, but I'm the guy who had his wiener in your friend Joe's mouth for half the summer. I've heard all about you, and the T-shirt sounds cool. Joe would like to show you his penis and vice versa.'"

("Stop being toolish. Don't even joke. It's just, like, very delicate. "

("Oh my God. This is summer of sophomore year all over again for you.

You're too freaked out to be like, 'Yay, boners.'"

("Not at all, you fuck. I'm 'Yay, boners,' completely. I just don't want to offend him. Maybe he's not interested, and maybe it'll fuck up what seems like a nice friendship."

("Look, Joseph, I hesitate to compliment you, but you're not completely ugly," Andy said. "Within the broad spectrum of human appearance, I mean. There aren't really that many people who would respond to your sexual interest with offended disgust."

("I want to punch you."

("Wait, why?"

("Because you're just annoying me."

("You huge pussy," Andy said. "I'm, like, so desperate that I'm booking a flight right now. I'm going to arrive at your dorm room with a pink fucking triangle on my T-shirt and a rainbow bandanna wrapped around my head, and I'm going to find this hot gay fraternity boy and make love to him for 48 hours."

("That makes me want to punch you even harder.")

15

"Yay, boners," I said to Matt.

"What?"

"Nothing. It's, like, an inside joke that doesn't affect you."

"You're even weirder than I am." He stood up on his knees so that his curving boner loomed over my stomach. He slapped his hands on his belly. We were lit by a lamp's orange light. I could see a couple smears of my dried semen on his stomach. It was flat and unmuscled. He let his hands on his hips, looked down at me and smiled like he was amused.

"What?"

"You look kind of scared. I'm not going to blow my load on your face."

"I'm not scared," I said. "I'm just turned on."

I reached up and put my hand on his dick. It was the first time that I got to do it. I had it halfway down the shaft. He had long black hairs that sprung out where the base of his shaft hit his balls. They landed in my grip. His dick had turned a kind of light pink by then. There was one vein that crept up his dick on his left side. The head of his cock was full and rounded out. Some of my mild stickiness lingered on it. I licked the palm of my hand and slowly rubbed it up and down against him. His balls hung down, webbed and rounded and heavy. I carefully pushed my free palm against them, letting them rest hot and heavy on my hand, the hairs of them tingling against my palms. Matt reached down so that an index finger and a middle finger forked over his pubic hair and the stem of his dick. The hand that was nervously cupping his balls, he sort of tickled the sides of that wrist with his two extended fingers.

He maneuvered himself so that he was down lying atop me again. His chin bone rested on mine. He kissed me again. My hand was still touching his cock but not ringed around it. Matt began to press it against me in a very slow rhythm, so that he was fucking the skin of my hipbone abutted with the side of my hand and my wrist. "Don't move your hand," he said. "Just let me look at your face here." His face was just an inch or two over mine. It was read, and by then he was sweaty just a little. I felt his breath warm over my lips, chin and nose. It smelled a little like beer and cigarettes but that seemed hot to me. I studied the parting of his lips and the little scar over his cheekbone. We were making sustained eye contact; my heart was beating harder now. As he was slowly sliding his dick up end down against the side of me, his smooth, warm hip was also moving up and down against my hard-on. I wanted him to blow his load on my arm, then I wanted to get off a couple seconds later, and then make out with him for awhile and then get off again.

Matt leaned down and gave kiss to the side of my neck. He breathed against me.

When Matt came he just kind of put his mouth over mine and left it there. He pressed his dick hard against my hip with a slow, forceful slide. His cum came out hot against my stomach and the side of my arm. Matt breathed heavy into my mouth. Our chins and noses were touching. His initial shot hit me, and then more came out, in three or four spurts that landed on my arm and my hip.

When Matt was done, he crawled back on top of me, hugging my thighs with his legs, and started kissing me again.

(6)

(I decided to wear decent clothes. I put on my nicest pair of jeans and a white button-down shirt. Before going out, I took a shower. I shaved. I combed my hair. I brushed my teeth. I watched myself in a mirror and considered which of my facial expressions looked okay and which ones made me look like a dork. I chewed minty gum. I put a book in my backpack so that I'd have something to read in case Matt ran late, as usual.

(He was already at the coffee house. He'd been studying for awhile. In the margins of a book about China, he was taking notes in tiny, neat printing. He wore a hoodie that slunk over his head. Matt looked monkish and when I sat down across from me he looked up slowly, like he was emerging from a daze. He bit his lower lip. His lower lip looked wet.

("You're somewhat dressed up tonight," he said. "By your standards."

("I'm hoping that I can stop embarrassing you in public," I said.

("Lucky for you, I don't get embarrassed in public," Matt said. "But if I did, you'd be a hopeless case."

(It was chilly outside. There were frosts at night. We could see our breath.

(Matt was acting normal but my mind was reeling. Our walk seemed to go in slow motion. Other people on the sidewalk looked crazy to me: vaguely threatening. Jackie the waitress came to us. Matt ordered a pizza to go with our beer. Nothing was happening. Our conversation wasn't flirtatious. My hard-on was complete anyway. When I spoke it was like I was stoned, like I had to concentrate on every syllable and plan words before I spoke them. I drank too quickly. I chainsmoked with Matt's cigarettes. A few times, my legs struck against his under the table. Words that I don't want to repeat flipped through the back of my throat like flashcards.

(For a few minutes I wondered whether this is what it was like to be schizophrenic. I ate a couple slices of pizza. I drank harder and faster than I should have. My stomach started to hurt. My face was sweating.

("What's up with you?" Matt said.

("Huh?"

("You're acting weird."

("I'm kind of messed up."

("Over what?"

("I don't know."

("That's, like, not super-helpful."

("I'm just stressed out."

("The mid-terms sucked, I guess."

("No, man. They're all fine." I drank more beer. "I'm just freaking out all the time.")

18

Matt later told me that when I seemed like someone who'd been taken off medication. Suddenly he started wondering what he'd gotten himself into by hanging out with me. "It was, like, night and day," he said later. "I thought I was going to have to call into a help line."

(7)

("Do you want to leave?" Matt said.

("Can we just go out and walk around?" I said. "Let's just go walk around. The cigarette smoke is making me feel gross."

("It's probably the two pitchers you drank in an hour," he said. "Why don't you go hop to the men's room while I alert the authorities."

(As soon as we got outside into the cool air, my brain felt better. It was dark at 9 p.m.

("Everything okay with your parents?"

("Yes, yes," I said. "I'm sorry. I just got myself somewhat worked up. It was over nothing."

("Jesus Christ! You're back!"

("I'm sorry," I said. "Sometimes I just kind of twist myself up in knots over stuff. I think I internalize it maybe more than I should. It's just, like, the thing is," I said, issuing a high, nervous laugh, "that I've been having some unexpected issues?"

("Like health issues? Psychological breakdown?"

("No, no. The thing is, it's some stuff I've been meaning to talk to you about. Before I came to school ..."

(That was it. I didn't need to say anything else. It was all over. Matt knew everything. How do I know this? Suddenly his entire posture relaxed. His face went from this grim, uneasy concern -- the kind of look you see on subway passengers when a mentally ill panhandler lopes through, yelling at random strangers -- into this confident, mischievous grin. I swear that he started walking closer to me.

("It's kind of like this. Remember how I said that all summer long I'd been hooking up with this girl who's at Berkeley now?"

("How could I forget the incredibly hot girl who you just started hooking up with right after graduation?"

("Yes, well, that wasn't totally accurate."

(He giggled. He'd won and he knew it. "So she wasn't that incredibly hot, huh?"

(I didn't respond.

("You weren't really hooking up with her. Or she was just the cleaning lady. Your Puerto Rican cleaning lady. She took your virginity."

("Oh, Christ, Canetti-"

("Start calling me Christ Canetti from now on," he said. "So you were hooking up. With a person?"

("Yeah. A person." He put a direct, teasing emphasis on the word "person."

("Was it fun?"

("It was, like, amazing. I still think about it all the time."

("And it's been kind of hard for you to deal with the fallout, from getting to hang out with the person."

("It's been hard, yeah," I said. I gave a gaspy laugh. I patted myself on the back for my own cleverness. "It's, you know, pretty hard right now."

("And maybe you're thinking about how it'd be nice to find a way to deal with the hardness, huh?"

(He was laughing at me. He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt back over his head. For Matt, I think it was probably like a kid frightened of a monster in the closet.

(We walked on campus, down a side-street past some institutional-looking classroom buildings and faculty offices. We weren't the only ones out on the street that night, but it was a light scattering of people. Our pace was slow. A big-assed girl with a pink backpack sped past us.

("Would it be uncomfortable if I asked you a few questions?" Matt said.

("I'm not sure."

("Well." He paused, translating his thinking into our code. "When you were with the person, was it just, like, kind of bored, and you were trying something new? Or do you think maybe you're sort of more interested in people? As opposed to, I guess, more traditional values? The kind you would've had at Liberty University?"

(I laughed; I stammered. "Wait, you know I didn't really apply to Liberty University, right?"

("No shit. I'm not a moron. Stop evading my question."

("Well, yeah," I said. "I'm pretty interested in people."

("So it's pretty definitive to you that you like ... people. As opposed to having a girlfriend."

("Uh, yeah," I said. "That's pretty accurate."

("You're a people person!" Matt said. "Me too!"

("I know!"

("Well, as you may know, I'm a huge people person," Matt said. "Well, I wouldn't necessarily say 'huge.' I guess it's all relative." Matt elbowed me at the ribs. "So when you found out I was a people person, what kind of reaction did you have?"

("It sort of seemed like a prank," I said. "I wasn't really sure what to think. It took some time to think through the implications."

("I'm kind of surprised that you're such a people person," Matt said. "Very surprised. You know, since I've gotten here, maybe five or six guys have, like, come out to me as being a people person. I don't know why I'm the one people always want to talk to."

("Wait," I said. "Just, before, like, anything uncomfortable gets said, I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing."

(He rolled his eyes. He reached out and messed up my hair; he elbowed me again. "In the two months we've been hanging out, you've never seemed denser or cuter, for a retard.")

16

When he sweated, he stopped smelling so much like beer and cigarettes, more like soap and deodorant. There was a little sweat at his scalp now. I pushed my hand down on his hair and then smelled the scent of his hair on my fingers. Matt rolled off from me. He lied on his back with his arm around my neck. There weren't any sheets over us. We were both lying naked. My dick was still at full noon, lying flat against my lower stomach and pointing at my naval. Matt's parabolic dick has half-hard, laying on the side of his hip.

"Do you want a cigarette?" he said.

"Nah," I said. "Do you have any kleenex?"

Matt's semen was still on my arm and my mid-section. It was sliding off onto the sheets. He leaned over and handed me a fistful of tissues. I wiped him off of me and dropped the wadded kleenex on his floor.

"That's littering," he said. He got out of bed and took his cigarettes out of his backpack. He bent over with his pale, skinny ass sticking out. I could see his balls hanging down between his legs and the outline of his cock swinging on the other side. When he turned back toward me with a lit cigarette in his mouth, his dick flapped back and forth. The album was halfway through "Champagne Supernova." He sat down on the edge of his bed, half-facing me in profile, with the tufts of his black pubic hair visible to me rising on the other side of his thigh. His bony spine and the top of his ass faced me; from the orange light of his bedside lamp, I could see the tiny black hairs on his buttocks. He blew smoke, and looked down on me and laughed.

"Are you okay?" he said.

"I'm, like, great."

"Well, you look great," he said. "This has been a pretty eventful night for you, huh?"

"It's a lot better than I expected."

The Oasis album ran out. Matt didn't go to play a new one. He dashed out his cigarette halfway through and went back to laying next to me.

I reached down and put my hand on his dick. I just kind of held my hand over it. I curled up next to him with my face on his shoulder. I kissed his shoulder.

"A kingdom for a kiss upon my shoulder," he said.

"Huh?"

"Never mind. It's from a song. I thought because you quoted the Dylan lyric before you'd get -- oh, never mind."

I groaned and pressed my hard-on against him, then I rolled over so that I was the one lying on top of him this time. When I kissed him, I tried to keep it paced and disciplined like he told me, but it just felt too good, and I couldn't help myself. I left my tongue in his mouth and let it sit there. He squeezed it with his teeth. Matt was fully hard again. I slid a few more inches so that our dicks were back to touching.

"If you want to do other stuff we can do other stuff," he said quietly in my ear.

"I'm okay," I said, my heart racing. "We don't need to do that much."

"That's what I thought, but I thought I'd say it anyway."

I leaned down and kissed him some more. He held one of my hands again, and he dropped another hand down to my ass.

I'm not sure how long it took, but it felt like I came about two seconds later.

(8)

(Matt and I took a seat on a stone bench outside the library. We were inches apart. In a quiet voice so that no stray words could be picked up by anyone walking past, I told him about how things had unfolded with Andy. I was pretty drunk so it wasn't my most articulate performance. He didn't interrupt me or drop any smart-assed lines. He kept his hoodie pulled down so that I couldn't get a look at his face.

("Well," he said, "as stressed out as you sound, it's really not that bad. It sounds like you've come to terms with it okay. You've taken a lot more experience under your belt than I had when I came here. Sometimes you meet these guys who describe themselves as bi, or they've got extreme denial issues to cope with. It sounds like you've had some fun and thought it through in a constructive way."

("Maybe," I said. "It doesn't really feel like that."

("I know it doesn't." He slapped me on the back. "It'll be okay. You've just got to find a way to reconcile it with who you are and the things you care about. And try not to get too jaded."

("It's just, like, harder for me than that. I feel like I don't know what I'm doing. Honestly, it's like I can't figure out how all of this fits together. And sometimes the more I think about it, the more freaked out I get."

("I know it can be scary." He slapped me on the back again. "It'll be okay. Try not to overthink it.")

17

"You wanna stay here or you gonna head back to the dorms?"

"I don't know," I said. I was feeling tired and dehydrated; I needed water. Matt was curled up behind me. He gave my neck muscles a squeeze. "Do you want me to take off?"

"Not at all," he said.

"I only slept over with Andy those three times," I said. "It was pretty nice."

"I have some contact solution and a case you can use," Matt said. "If you get up for the bathroom, just do me a favor and throw on a pair of my basketball shorts and a T-shirt. James isn't weirded out, but a naked freshman walking around the apartment would be a little much."

"I'm not going to stand around naked in front of your roommate."

"He doesn't know what he's missing," Matt said. "I don't have a toothbrush, but you can probably get away without brushing for a night."

A few minutes later I fell asleep in his bed.

(9)

(I walked wobbly up the concrete stairwell to Matt's apartment. It was a boxy brick building, with four floors with a few units on each floor. It's the kind of housing that's probably acceptable only in college towns and suburban slums. The public stairwell smelled vaguely of beer and urine; the shared hallway smelled like cigarette smoke. In the living room, Matt's roommate sat cross-legged in a couch, watching an episode of "South Park." Some kind of textbook was open on the coffee table, with notes spread out around him.

("Hey James, this is my friend Joe. We're going to go hang out for awhile."

(James didn't look away from the television or glance over at my face.

He raised his arm in a gesture that fell somewhere between a wave hello and a triumphant, heavy-metal fist pump. I followed Matt down the apartment's short hall into his room. He had knee-high stacks of books along the wall -- Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger. "I thought I was going to be a philosophy major," Matt explained as he kicked off his shoes. "It's really seductive stuff, just somewhat impractical. You can never really test anything in philosophy. I find that frustrating. It's a lot of extremely artful, well thought out speculation. You know?"

(I just kind of nodded. I dropped my backpack on the floor. "You can take off your shoes and sit on my bed," Matt said. "It's okay. We're not really going to do anything."

(Matt looked through his DVD collection and picked out "Dazed and Confused." He looked over at me with a kind of confident grin. He took a couple of steps to the door and turned the lock.)