SHIFTER (Part 1)
By Dolphin Dan
*** WARNING ***
This story contains fairly graphic descriptions of sexual acts between consenting adults of the same gender. If you are under age, or it is illegal for you to view such material, or this theme is objectionable to you, please do not continue.
My name is Zack, and my story is pretty bizarre. Let me say right off that I doubt it's going to make that much sense to you. I'm not even sure it makes sense to me. Did it really happen? I don't know. I gave up trying to figure out what happened in real life and what happened in my head, because it all blurs together after a while. I'm not crazy, though. I know that.
I don't even know where to start, except with the basics. Outwardly I'm a totally normal well-adjusted college student. I go to a college in Boston--never mind which one--and I grew up in a pretty well-to-do family in Vermont. I'm studying history. In fact, history is my passion. I love it. When I was a kid I realized my favorite movies were the ones that took place a long time ago or had something to do with history. My parents started giving me history books to read for fun. That probably had something to do with it all. I hit puberty about the same time I got really interested in history. That DEFINITELY had something to do with it. I won't bore you with the sordid details, because they're all the same from people like me. The short version goes something like this. I discovered how to jack off. I discovered I liked to think about boys while I was jacking off. I was afraid I was gay. Later I realized I WAS gay. At first it bothered me. Then it didn't. You know the drill. In high school I kissed a guy once, and fooled around with another but it really wasn't that big a deal.
I haven't had much experience. Not for want of trying. I'm not drop dead gorgeous, but I'm not bad looking either. I'm about five ten, and a little chubby--in the neighborhood of 180, 190 on a bad day. I have long dark hair about shoulder length. I often wear it in a ponytail. People, especially girls, say my eyes are very pretty. On the whole I'm pretty ordinary.
I first noticed the phenomenon when I was just about to graduate from high school. As is usual, I guess, I had a crush on a boy--usually hetero--almost all the time. It just varied who it was on. Two weeks before graduation I got fixated on this dude named Taylor. I didn't even know his last name. He was a junior, in the class behind mine. He had longish dark hair that fell down into his face. He had lovely brown eyes and a very straight nose. He wasn't what you'd call gothy, though he usually wore black and he hung out with a lot of goth chicks. I'd noticed him a few times during the year, and thought he was cute, but never spoke to him. Most people in my school, except my close friends (who were almost all girls) did not know I was gay, and I wasn't going to go around advertising it by hitting on random guys who were probably straight anyway. Then one Sunday night in mid-May I was surfing the Web and happened to be cruising one of those stupid "rate me" sites, WouldYouBangThis-dot-com. By complete random chance that night the picture that came up was the very same Taylor from my high school. I was sure it was him, not just from the picture, but from his profile. On that site you can click on people's profiles; his handle was TaYlOrKnIgHt44, and he gave his location as Vermont, so I was sure it was the right guy. Well, in people's profiles sometimes they have additional pictures more than just the one that popped up on the front page. Taylor had one additional photo. It was himself shirtless, taken in a bathroom mirror with a digital camera. It wasn't unusual for guys to pose bare-chested for that site; evidently it got the chicks all hot for them. Taylor was quite cute. He wasn't buff and muscular, but I didn't go for that type anyway. He had a lot more hair on his chest and his stomach than I would have thought for a guy his age. Something immediately clicked with me. I'd been mildly attracted to him before, but all it takes is a quick glimpse of a bare chest and I'm hooked. My thoughts began to dwell on Taylor, usually at the same time that my hand dwelled pretty hard and pretty fast in my crotch.
I fantasized about him. Like most boys I fantasized about but didn't know in real life, I dreamed up a personality for him. I imagined Taylor as cynical and rugged, always eager to get down to brass tacks, not that much of a romantic. My fantasies were never well fleshed-out. Usually I imagined guys sucking me, or me sucking them, and then one (or both) of us came and that was it.
Two days before graduation I was lying in bed unable to sleep. It was unusually warm, and my bedroom window was open. I could hear the rhythmic creak of crickets from the forest out in back of our house. I was lying on top of the sheets in just my boxer briefs because it was so warm. The house was quiet. My parents and my sister had gone to bed long ago. As was not unusual, when I felt my dick getting a bit stiff, my hand moved down my belly and slid under the band of my underwear. I gently stroked myself to full erection. I thought about Taylor, standing on the other side of my bedroom, taking off his jeans. "You ready, Zack?" he said cheerfully, pulling one leg of his jeans over his heel.
"Ready, Taylor," I said.
"Get those shorts off, then."
With both hands I reached down and slid the underwear off my hips. My eyes were closed for perhaps twenty seconds. And when I opened them, I was elsewhere.
It was very odd. My surroundings had totally changed. Instead of lying on my bed in my bedroom, I was on a couch in some unfamiliar living room. I propped myself up on my elbows and raised my head. The room was dark. There was a big-screen TV on an entertainment center to my right. I could see shelves of DVD's next to it, and a video game system that looked a couple of years out of date. There was a coffee table with a half-eaten pizza in a box on top of it, and some mostly-drained bottles of beer. On the other side of the couch was a sliding glass door that led to a patio. The patio appeared to be covered with brown dried leaves. Beyond the back lawn--which was certainly not my own--I could see the distant lights of some kind of city.
"Where am I?" I said, suddenly alarmed.
"You're right where I left you, I hope," came Taylor's voice, the same direction and distance as he had been from me when I was still back in my own bed. I saw a dark shape on the other side of the room, still undressing. "Damn jeans. It's so dark in here."
CLINK. His jeans fell to the carpet; the clinking sound was the little spike on his belt hitting the metal frame of the belt buckle. He approached. He sat down on the end of the couch, against my bare feet. "You're cold," he chuckled.
"What happened? What's going on?" Everything certainly looked and seemed entirely real--much more real than my usual fantasies. Taylor was on his hands and knees now, crawling up to me. His warm hands touched me. My erection had slackened. The strangeness of the sudden change in surroundings had caused my interest in sex to flag for a few moments. He seemed disappointed. "Am I doing something wrong?" he said.
"Wrong? Uh, no. I'm just--confused." He started to stroke me, and my penis began to harden again. "Is this your house?"
"Sure it is," he replied. "Don't you remember the party?" He stopped stroking me for a moment. "It's so dark in here. I like a little more light. Mind if I turn the TV on? I'll keep the sound off."
"Uh--no. I don't mind."
If this was a fantasy, it was the most vivid one I'd ever had. I could feel the rough fabric of the couch upholstery under my bare ass. The hair on Taylor's shins tickled my legs. I watched him reach over to the coffee table and pick up a TV remote. He switched on the big-screen TV, but hit the Mute button. Now the room was illuminated dimly with a flickering blue-gray light. In that light I could see Taylor, the hair framing his face, his smooth shoulders, his smile. As he leaned down to kiss me my dick completed its journey to full arousal.
My hands wandered over his smooth ass. I could feel his own prick grinding against my groin. It felt warm and good and wonderful. I moaned. This was a fantasy, obviously. An extremely vivid wet dream. I must have fallen asleep in my bedroom while masturbating, and my subconscious mind had picked up where I left off in reality. The disorientation passed. I began to like it, very much.
We kissed for a long time. Then Taylor began moving down, kissing my neck, my chest, licking my nipples, kissing down to my navel. His tongue flicked in and out of the sensitive depression. "Ohh, yeah. Do that again." He did. My hands wandered over his shoulders. He moved down. In a few seconds he had slid my hard penis into his mouth.
I received the most exquisite blow job I had ever fantasized about. Taylor took me all the way, his lips touching my balls. When he pulled back he used his tongue to caress the sensitive underside of my dick, and then over the ridge of my head. He stroked the insides of my thighs, gently brushing the hair there. We developed a rhythm. I moved my hips slightly in a circular motion, helping him draw me into his mouth each time. I moaned.
"Oh, sweetie, that feels great. Oh man. Oh Taylor honey, I'm going to cum...I'm gonna cum, honey, I'm gonna cum down your throat man..."
My orgasm was shattering, blasting out of the center of my brain like a blow from a sledgehammer. Taylor literally sucked the semen out of me, forcefully, and swallowed it all. I felt exhausted when it was over. My belly was heaving. Taylor grabbed for one of the half-drained beer bottles to wash the taste out of his mouth. Then he crawled up and lay next to me on the couch. His throbbing hardness was pressed against my right thigh, like a hot iron.
"That was great," I said to him, caressing his back. "What do you want?"
"I don't care," he whispered. "Just make me cum." He kissed my neck.
I reached down and felt him. His penis was uncut. I pulled the foreskin back and gently caressed his velvety head. He moaned. My palm was already wet with his precum. I brought my other hand down. When Taylor felt my hands on either side of his dick, he began to thrust with his hips, very gently at first, but then more forcefully. I made a vagina out of my hands and drew it a bit tighter. He moaned his approval. With each stroke the tip of his dick touched the skin of my thigh at exactly the same spot. Taylor's face was buried in my neck. He began breathing harder and faster. He started to fuck my hands as fast as he could, thrusting powerfully like a jackhammer. Somehow I sensed his sex would be more violent and forceful than mine; I get off more on tenderness and gentle lovemaking. But Taylor was going like a pile-driver gone mad. I was gradually tightening my grip. His panting breaths drew into gasps, and finally grunts. If there was anybody else in the house they certainly would have heard him. "UH! UH! UH! UH! UH!" A hot liquid explosion suddenly covered my hands and my thigh. He kept thrusting even as he was ejaculating. "UH! UH! UH! UH! UH!" Finally his hips stopped bucking and his penis, sliding between my cum-coated palms, began to slacken. He kissed me powerfully on the neck. "Zack, that was fucking terrific," he gasped. He was sweating. "I haven't nutted that hard in a long time."
"I'm glad you liked it."
"I'll get you a towel or something."
He got up and walked, still naked, in the direction of what I assumed was the kitchen. I felt a nice hum moving through me. I'd never had sex with a guy--not real sex, anyway--but I always had a feeling that I would enjoy giving pleasure more than receiving it. I lay back on the couch, arms above my head, feeling the jagged platter of Taylor's semen in my lap slowly growing cool. This was the best wet dream I had ever had. It seemed odd that I hadn't awakened as soon as I came, but I wasn't going to argue. My eyes wandered over to the television screen. That was when I noticed something very odd.
By chance the channel the TV had been tuned to was CNN. Because the Mute button had been pressed, the closed-captioning was active. I saw a female news announcer talking. Behind her was a video display that said "IRAQ." That was not so unusual--there was stuff on the news about Iraq all the time--but the closed-caption ticker did get my notice.
...PRESIDENT BUSH EXPECTED TO MAKE HIS CASE BEFORE THE CONGRESS FOR AUTHORITY TO GO TO WAR IN IRAQ. IN THE MEANTIME, THE U.S. MILITARY BUILD-UP CONTINUES...
A towel suddenly landed on my chest. "There you go," said Taylor. I started to wipe up the cum from my legs and the couch. Taylor, who had put on his boxer shorts, collapsed into a recliner next to the couch, and reached for a bottle of beer.
The story on CNN changed. Now it was sports. The captioning ticker read:
...ANAHEIM HAS WON GAME 5 OF THE WORLD SERIES AGAINST THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS. THE SERIES WILL NOW MOVE TO ANAHEIM FOR GAME 6...
That didn't make sense. I followed baseball. Anaheim had won the World Series against the Giants in 2002, two years ago. And the story about Iraq hadn't made sense either. President Bush was asking Congress for authority to go to war? He had already done that. We'd been at war in Iraq for a year and a half. That, too, had happened in 2002. I realized this extraordinarily vivid fantasy was set, not in the present, but the past.
"What's today?" I asked Taylor.
"Uh, Friday I think," he said.
"No, no, what's the date?"
SNAP. Suddenly I was elsewhere again. I was back in my bedroom, alone. The crickets were chirping. A warm breeze was blowing. The digital clock on my night-table read 12:36 AM. My underwear was lying on the sheet next to me. A mass of cold slime had collected on my belly and pooled in my navel, and there was some on my right hand. I brought it to my nose and sniffed. It was my cum. I'd definitely been jerking off, but I remembered being elsewhere.
I cleaned myself up, put my underwear back on and settled off into bed, my mind reeling. That was the strangest fantasy I'd ever had. It felt completely real. But aside from that, the details were so strange. The surroundings were unfamiliar. Had it really been Taylor's house? I had never been there and knew nothing of where he lived. And why the bizarre details of the news broadcast? I guessed there was no way one could tell how the mind worked, but it seemed completely unnecessary to build such an elaborate sexual fantasy about a boy I liked, and then arbitrarily park it a few years in the past. Yet I knew that had come from my mind.
In the morning before school I did a bit of brief web-surfing. I looked up statistics on the 2002 World Series. Anaheim had won the Series in seven games on October 27, 2002. The fifth game would have been a few days before. In my dream Taylor had said he thought it was Friday. The closest Friday to that date was October 25, 2002. That had been about the time that we were gearing up for the attack on Iraq. And I HAD seen brown leaves--autumn leaves--on the patio behind Taylor's house, if that was in fact his house.
Had I actually traveled back in time? Was I really in Taylor Knight's house on the evening of October 25, 2002? Or, had I really had sex with him in real life on that date, somehow forgotten it, and my memory came back?
That was preposterous. I was sixteen then and didn't even know Taylor at that time. Taylor, a year younger than me, would have been fifteen, maybe even fourteen. The boy I had sex with in my dream was well-developed. His dick seemed large, certainly adult size, and he had hair on his chest and his stomach; I'd felt it. I didn't know a lot of guys who were fourteen-going-on-fifteen who were that developed.
I ultimately decided it was a very vivid fantasy, and a very pleasant one. Over the next few months I replayed the details in my conscious mind as best I could. The sounds Taylor had made just before his climax, and the feeling of his penis thrusting madly between my palms, were particularly pleasant to think about, and got me aroused every time. Over the summer a couple of times I tried to recreate the conditions under which I had lapsed into that wonderful fantasy, masturbating in bed very late at night, hoping it would happen again. It didn't. But I felt lucky I'd had at least one such experience in my lifetime.
Then it DID happen again. And this time was even weirder.
That summer, the last summer before I went to college in Boston, I worked at a record store in the mall. It wasn't a bad job, though not the glamorous kind of job most high school students (or recent graduates) dream about. I didn't really need the money, but my parents wanted me to learn responsibility. It was annoying sometimes, because working with the public is always awful. But on the whole I liked it.
As I rather expected I would, I crushed pretty hard on one of my co-workers. His name was Jimmy. He was eighteen, same as me, but looked three years younger. He even had long hair like I did, though the sides and the bottom of the back of his head was shaved to stubble, and he wore the long part of his hair as a ponytail. He wore baggy jeans and liked to wear those kind of silky button-up bowling shirts with the flames on them. Also, his tongue was pierced, which I thought was pretty gross, until I began to think of what that metal stud would feel like rubbing along the shaft of my penis. Jimmy wasn't even close to gay. In fact he was quite a bigot about it. He used the word "gay" as a derogatory term, like, "You like that album, man? That's so gay." But he was so cheerful and funny that I liked him in spite of it, and if he ever suspected I liked guys, he never said anything about it.
After I started to cycle out of my Taylor phase, in mid-August, Jimmy became the unwitting star of my jerk-off fantasies. One day we were both working behind the counter and Jimmy had to bend way over and reach into one of the display cases to get something. As he did the hem of his silky flame-spangled bowling shirt crept up the small of his back, exposing the waistband of his jeans, which naturally were pulled down to expose his underwear. His boxers were black and had what looked like green cartoon frogs on them. It was ridiculous, but for some reason that really got me going. Jimmy and his cartoon boxers became the fodder for my fantasies at night.
I often showered in the evening after getting home from work. That night I turned on the water and set it to its usual roasting temperature; I like showers very hot. I was already at full-staff, and figured I could masturbate to orgasm without wasting too much water. I closed the frosted shower doors and looked down at my dick. I'm not huge by any stretch, but I'm pretty happy with what I've got. My dick is almost exactly six inches when erect. It's cut, and totally straight; for some reason curved dicks kind of turn me off. I began to roll the bar of soap in my hands and lathered up good. I touched my balls first, smearing lather on them. Then I moved up to my dick. I closed my eyes and imagined Jimmy standing here, in this shower, right in front of me, wearing his frog cartoon boxers. I imagined his hands beginning to caress me.
"You get off on wet boxers, huh?" he said, laughing.
I opened my eyes. I was not displeased. I was back in vivid fantasyland. Jimmy was standing right in front of me, inches away. The warm water from the showerhead splattered on his bare shoulders. The black fabric of his boxers was even blacker now that it was wet, the frogs so green and vivid they looked like they'd leap right off the material and hop away. The wet fabric outlined a long, inviting lump in his crotch. Unlike Taylor, Jimmy's chest was smooth and hairless. He had a birthmark, about the size of a quarter, under his right nipple. He still had his hair in the ponytail, though it was wet.
"I guess I do," I told him.
As he moved forward to kiss me I noticed something else. I was no longer in my own shower. The shower in my bathroom had eggshell-white tiles. This shower was much larger, and the tiles were a deep steel-blue color. The showerhead was different too.
We kissed. Jimmy's tongue wrestled mine in the warm wetness of our locked mouths. He was doing something with my dick. He was forcing it into something, some kind of opening. It didn't feel like flesh, though, although I felt something hot and hard touch my tip. I looked down. Jimmy had put my dick into the fly opening of his boxers. I moved slightly. My own rod was brushing his. I was amused. I had never thought of doing it this way.
"You like them?" he said. "Fuck 'em, then, if you want to."
I flattened Jimmy against the wall of the shower, and I started thrusting in and out of the fly of his shorts. He had to help me a little, and I wound up doing with him something not too different than Taylor had done with me in my last strange fantasy. The pleasure crested. I couldn't see my cum staining the fabric of Jimmy's shorts, nor could I feel it because the water was so warm. I just felt an intense and wonderful release, and then pleasure flooding through me.
He immediately hustled me out of his shorts and took them off. They landed with a wet SHWACK on the shower floor. "Suck me," he demanded in a harsh whisper. "Suck my dick. Come on, Zack, do it. I know you want to."
I bent down. His dick was straight and perfect. I stuck out my tongue and licked his tip. Jimmy didn't wait. He put his hand on top of my head and pulled me onto him. "Suck me," he repeated. "NOW." I started to move my lips across his shaft. He moaned. "Aw, yeah. Like that. Good. Good."
At least in this fantasy Jimmy liked to talk dirty, which I imagined would be consistent with what I knew about him. He kept talking the whole time I was on him. "You like to suck dick, don't you, Zack? You want me to cum in your mouth? You want me to blow my hot load down your throat? Keep sucking, man. Aw yeah, just like that, suck the shit out of it. I'm gonna put a big huge cum wad right in your mouth..."
He erupted a huge volume of sperm into my mouth. Jimmy emitted several gasping curses. "Jesus! Fuck! Aw, yeah! Shit! Fuck! Jesus Goddamn Christ!" He pulled his rod from my lips, and reached behind him and shut off the shower. "Dude, that was radical," he said. He kissed me briefly on the cheek, and reached for a towel.
Radical? I hadn't heard that term in a long time.
He dried off and left the shower. I reached for a towel. Again, wherever I was, I was not in my own bathroom. The towels matched the tiles--deep steel-blue. They were also gigantic, almost acres of terry-cloth. When I emerged from the shower I almost couldn't believe my eyes. The bathroom was palatial. It was easily five times the size of my own bathroom at home. In addition to a toilet there was a device that looked a lot like a toilet; I realized it was a bidet, like you find in fancy hotels. There was a robe, the same color as the towels, hanging on a hook on the bathroom door. I put it on.
Where was I?
Jimmy had left the door open. I walked out. I was in a bedroom, but it wasn't one I recognized. There were bookshelves, and gym equipment. A large floor-to-ceiling window showed a panorama of lights. The bed was gigantic, covered with a maroon comforter. Jimmy, wrapped in a towel, was combing his hair. He was bent over to the side so his hair hung down, making it easier to brush out.
"You up for another round?" he said.
I noticed something about Jimmy's hair. It wasn't like I remember it in real life. It was uniformly long. In real life he had the sides of his head shaved, and a stripe at the back of his head; his ponytail was more like a topknot that hung down. But no part of his hair was shaved here.
Why would that be? I looked around for other clues. When I had been with Taylor, the time shift had been subtle. This looked less subtle. There was a TV here too, on a table not far from the bed. Underneath it was a VCR, and stacks of VHS tapes.
VHS tapes--not DVD's. That seemed strange to me. This place was loaded; obviously a rich person lived here. Why would a person with this much money not have a DVD player?
"What is this place?" I asked him.
"What do you mean?" he replied, bewildered.
"Is this your house?"
"Of course it is. Where else would we be?"
I wandered over to the TV and bent down to look at the VHS tapes. They were movies, but none of them were recent movies. Yet the tapes looked brand-new. The boxes weren't worn or faded. One of the titles was Fatal Attraction. Another was The Witches of Eastwick. I had seen that on cable a while back; I thought it had been made in the '80s.
"What is today?"
"Saturday."
"What's the date?"
"The sixteenth, I think."
I felt crazy asking him, but I said, "What's the date, the full date? The year too."
Jimmy laughed. He put down the comb. "Jesus. That coke must have been really strong." He walked over to the bed and pulled back the comforter. "Come on, let's fuck. You're only in town for a few more nights."
Only in town? What the hell? And coke? He didn't mean cocaine, did he? I had never touched drugs in my life.
Again, I tried not to dwell on it too much. This was a pleasant fantasy. Why argue with it? I shrugged off the robe and got into bed. Jimmy took me in his arms. "Top or bottom?" he said.
"What?"
"Do you want to pitch or catch?" He giggled. He was already feeling me. "I like to pitch, personally. You don't mind, do you?"
Before we began, Jimmy took a condom and some chemical lube out of a drawer in the night-table next to the bed. I helped him get it on. I had not had anal sex before. In fact it was something that didn't interest me much, but he obviously loved it. He spent a long time trying to open me up with his lubed fingers before he finally thrust inside of me. It was painful. I winced, but tried not to cry out. He began moving in and out. As he had in the shower, he got garrulous, and dirty. "You like that? You like my prick in your butt? You like my dick up your ass, Zack? God, your butt is so tight. It feels great..." He came pretty quickly. When he was finished he sucked me off, gently and wonderfully. I came in his mouth and he swallowed my cum. I didn't realize until it was over that, if Jimmy's tongue stud had made any difference, I hadn't felt it. Then it occurred to me that perhaps he did not HAVE a tongue stud. Certainly I would have noticed the feeling of a steel knob against the most sensitive part of my anatomy. And I hadn't felt it when we kissed, either. The first time we kissed in the shower had been full on tongue sex. If he had a piece of steel in his tongue, there's no way I could have missed it. Yet the idea of Jimmy giving me head with the tongue stud had been one of the ideas that most attracted me to him. If this was the perfect fantasy, why was that detail missing?
We were both exhausted; the hot shower and our exertions had tired us out. Jimmy put his arms around me, and we drifted off to sleep. I expected to wake up in my own shower at any moment. But I didn't.
I couldn't sleep. When I heard the soft, even hiss of Jimmy's sleeping breaths, I slowly sat up in bed. I crawled out, and tiptoed over to the television set. That had been my best clue last time as to what the time period was. I was curious to see what the TV would tell me now. I kept the volume very low. Jimmy didn't wake up, and he was now clutching a pillow the same way he'd clutched me. The TV was on to some late-night talk show. In fact, it was the Tonight Show. But the host wasn't Jay Leno. The announcer said, "Heeeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!" and the curtain parted and a pleasant-looking man with white hair walked onstage. I thought I recognized him. Johnny Carson. He had been the host of the Tonight Show before Leno.
I tried to rack my brains to think of how long Leno had been doing the Tonight Show. I couldn't remember. He'd been the host as long as I remember watching it, since I was twelve or so. I turned 12 in the year 1998. This had to be before that.
I surfed the channels a bit, but didn't get any hard or fast information. The commercials looked old. I was trying to find some news, but couldn't get any. I did get a Star Trek rerun on a UHF station, though. That too was a clue. Nowadays you could only see Star Trek on the Sci-Fi Channel.
Finally I thought of something. Careful not to wake Jimmy, I crept back over to the nightstand. There was a telephone there. I picked it up and punched 0 for Operator.
"Information," said a female voice. "What city, please?"
"I want to know the date," I said softly.
"What city, please?"
"The date. What's the date? What day is today?"
The operator was quiet for a bewildered moment, and then said, "It's Saturday, July sixteenth."
"What year?"
The operator laughed. "What do you mean, what year?"
"What year is it?"
"It's 1988. Had a few tonight, have you, pal?"
SNAP.
I was back in the shower. My own shower. I looked down. There was soap lather and a pearly substance frothing at the bottom of the drain. The pearly substance, I knew, was my semen. My dick was slack, and a little red. My hands were covered with soap lather. I had obviously masturbated. Had the whole thing been a fantasy?
I washed off the soap, got out of the shower, put on some clothes, and sat in my desk chair and did some high-powered thinking. I noted the time; it was 9:42. I hadn't been sure what time it was when I went into the shower, but it was around 9:30; I'd gotten home at 9:15. Not more than fifteen minutes had passed. But in the big house with the big bathroom, and Jimmy, at least an hour had passed, probably more.
I got out a tablet and wrote down everything I remembered. My notes were jumbled at first. BLUE TILES. BLUE TOWELS. BIG HOUSE. GYM. COKE??? IN TOWN A FEW DAYS??? JIMMY'S HAIR NOT SHAVED. JOHNNY CARSON. JULY 16 1988. I pulled down from the shelf a World Almanac I sometimes used for school work. It had a perpetual calendar in there. I looked up the calendar for 1988. Sure enough, July 16, 1988 had been a Saturday.
I did some surfing on the web to check my theory. Every piece of it fit. There were no DVD's under the television because DVD's hadn't been invented yet. The two movies I noted--Fatal Attraction and The Witches of Eastwick--had been released in 1987. They would have first come out on video in 1988. Johnny Carson had left the Tonight Show in 1992, when Jay Leno took over. That explained why his hair was white; he was old at the time, almost to the end of his tenure. I wish I had known where I was supposed to have been. The panorama of the city through the picture windows could have been almost anywhere, but probably not Vermont. Maybe it was Los Angeles.
What about Jimmy's reference to coke, and the fact that I would only be in town a few days? He'd been talking to me like I hadn't been me. But I WAS Zack to him, obviously, because he called me that name while he was fucking me. Yet two details about the real-life Jimmy had been altered in my fantasy. One was his hair style, which had been slightly different. The other was the absence of his tongue stud. I couldn't figure out those details.
The next day I went to work like nothing had happened. Jimmy was his usual cheerful self. "We got that new Green Day album in," he told me. He rolled his eyes. "It's SO gay." He spoke with the exact same voice in which he'd been saying deliciously dirty things to me. And the clack of the steel stud against his teeth when he talked was unmistakable.
I had no better luck recreating my Jimmy-in-the-shower-in-1988 fantasy than I had repeating the tryst with Taylor. I jacked off thinking about him many times for the rest of the summer, but I never shifted again. A few weeks later the answer to the riddles of the fantasy suddenly hit me. Jimmy's hairstyle, topknot with his head shaved underneath, was a little out of date--it had been popular mostly in the '90s. But it hadn't even been invented in 1988. And kids didn't get their tongues pierced back then, either, or at least I didn't think they did.
For a few moments I did wonder if I had really somehow shifted 16 years back in time. But it seemed preposterous. As before, it had been a fantasy--merely a very unusual, highly detailed, historically accurate fantasy.
But even I knew this explanation didn't wash. Something extraordinary was happening to me.
*** TO BE CONTINUED ***