Lake Champlain, Summer 2012 - 2. Chapter 2 out of 3

2.

"Are you comfortable?" Joshua asked, refilling my half-empty glass. He had switched us to brandy an hour before, claiming we needed an "old man's drink".

"I am, yes. I'm a little drunk, though. You hold your alcohol remarkably well for someone who doesn't drink much."

"I don't drink much now," he said elliptically.

We sat in comfortable silence, basking in the warmth of the summer night and the view of the dark lake. We had been uninterruptedly talking for the last hour. I had filled him in on the broad outlines of my life since I graduated from college. He had asked delicate, thoughtful questions about my love life, past and present. He had talked more about his house, about Vermont, about the beauty of changing seasons. Our knees were still touching, but so were our calves and, sometimes, our feet.

"Do you smoke pot?" he suddenly asked.

"Not often, but I do, yes. You have any?"

"Yes, some. Corey and I used to smoke a joint every night before bed. I've dropped the routine, but I still like to enjoy one sometimes. I feel like one now."

He got up, with an ease and grace that my numbed state wouldn't have allowed me to, and went inside. He came back with a lit joint and an ashtray – which made me realize I hadn't smoked a cigarette since I had gotten here. Nature was good to me.

We smoked in renewed silence, occasionally glancing at each other, smiling. I couldn't think of anything to say, anything to ask that wouldn't have spoiled the simple bliss I was experiencing. He wasn't more talkative. After a few minutes, he stubbed out the joint in the ashtray and took my hand in his, settling back to his previous comfortable slouch on the pillows. I squeezed his hand. He squeezed back.

I wanted to tell him how beautiful he was and I remembered how uncomfortable that made him when I used to say it back then, more than fifteen years ago. I couldn't resist testing the change in his confidence. I turned towards him and told him. He looked at me warmly and pensively, then smiled, then looked up at the stars.

He emptied his glass. I emptied mine. He raised himself slowly, turned towards me and placed a delicate kiss on my lips. He retreated back, just a little, just enough for us to see each other's face clearly and fully, to smile. I placed a hand on his cheek, caressed his soft beard and smiled some more. I nudged him to kiss me again. He did.

He did, and we kissed for a long time, with a growing intensity, with delicacy morphing into hunger. We kissed, and my fingers gripped the back of his face, and his crotch pressed against mine, and our legs started twirling, grinding, rubbing, and he lost some of his balance, and I caught him firmly and nestled him briskly against me, and his hands, now moving freely and eagerly, travelled, grazed, grabbed, multiplied.

He disengaged himself, stood up, and extended a hand to help lifting myself up. He led us up the stairs, to the landing, to his dark bedroom. He pulled me and dropped us both on the bed, a king size large enough to welcome the weight, the length, the spread, and the yearning of two enthralled adult men.

We kissed again, and our hands found each other and squeezed, and his legs wrapped around me, his heels kicked on the small of my back, his knees bumped into my elbows, and his hands moved to harass our t-shirts, jeans and shorts, to tug at them, lift them, pull and push them, discard them out the way, and I buried my face in his neck, a neck that magnetized kisses, licks, bites, and his finger nails imprinted my ass, his hands kneaded my hips, his tongue chewed on my ear, and I looked up and I saw him, illuminated by the moonshine, the hair and the muscles and the shadows drawing the beauty of a man I didn't recognize, of a flesh without a past, and we turned and thrashed and thrashed some more, and I saw thighs, and shoulder blades, and toes, and biceps, and ankles, and underarms, and I saw his face and his eyes and his frown, intense and yearning, and I smelled him, the soap of his shower, the sweat of his desire, the musk of his age, and I felt his mouth around my penis just as I had barely absorbed the astonishing hardness of his own cock, a cock I thought I should recognize but didn't, because it belonged to a different man, to a different time, because I had seen so many since I last marveled at his, and I felt him and heard him and saw him getting lost in me, in us, in sex, and I blew him too, with an ease and passion that felt like symbiosis, and I got lost in my own pleasure, in the waves of brutal abandon to the moment, and I felt him pull out of my mouth and I saw him grip and jerk and battering his cock, and I felt his suction on my dick tightened and I saw him cum, I saw him buck and shake, I saw him drench my stomach with sperm that looked fluorescent in the sparkling white light of the moon, and I came too, just after I sprung my dick out his mouth, just after I understood his tacit wish to see up close, up very close, the spraying proof of the beauty of the moment.

We didn't move. The bundled, distorted mass of our entwined bodies only gradually and very slowly shifted, as if drawing by numbers the elegant shape of two sleeping figures warmly burrowed in each other.

*     *          *

"Joshua is kind of a mystery to me," Erin once said, one day when she and I had decided to skip lunch and preferred to lie on the grass next to each other, taking the sun in.

Joshua was indeed guarded, he melted a little strenuously in the various social groups we found ourselves in. When he and I talked, his very tone when he confided made me wary of passing along, to Erin or to anyone, the sparse and innocuous pieces of information shared. "I guess, a little," I replied, disengaged and uninviting.

Joshua didn't like to talk about his past, not in great details. I had gathered that his parents had gotten divorced when he was ten; he had moved with his mother to Pittsburgh, only returning to Vermont, where he had grown up, during the school holidays. Both his parents had quickly remarried. He never got along with his distant and sanctimonious stepfather, nor with his stepmother, subjugated by and subservient to his father. College didn't seem to have been the socially liberating and intellectually exhilarating experience I was hoping it'd be for me, but he never voiced explicit regret about it – he never quite made clear those were his expectations or yearnings to begin with.

Joshua seemed eager, but cagey, to talk about his future. My questions circling around his plans for the months coming ahead of the summer were often met with hesitation, then a brief sparkle in his eyes, then a labored and vague response, then eventually evasion, with a faint anguish and unease he couldn't quite hide. Once, however, he brought the subject up himself. We lay on the ground, beneath the football field bleachers. It was two in the morning and he had just given me a long, avid blow-job, something he was increasingly eager to do, with or without the expectation of reciprocation.

"I really wonder what my life will be like a year from now," he pensively said.

"I'm still not clear what your ambitions are."

"It's hard and unrealistic for some people to have ambitions, you know. Not everyone goes to an Ivy League college," he said curtly, expressing out loud a sort of sullenness about my going to Princeton in the fall that had usually been more of a subtext in our exchanges.

"Fine," I said patiently. "What are your dreams then, what is it that you'd really want to do?"

"I don't know. Something to do with sports. Definitely something to do with sports. Coaching in college. Or sports manager or agent. Sports journalist would be awesome too. It wouldn't even have to be on TV. Writing about sports in a newspaper or something, you know?"

I had read Joshua's prose on the frequent notes he left under my door, to arrange and plan the logistics of our meetings; they were fraught with spelling blunders, sketched with the handwriting of a child. I also had seen daily Joshua assisting a coach on the soccer field. I had found him too impatient, a little aggressive at times. He did seem to dote on some of the kids, the ones in whom he claimed to see a lot of potential (I didn't agree with some of his assessments), the ones I noticed were rather those most prone to display expressive admiration for him – something I couldn't help but regularly notice he craved.

"What kind of skills does one need to be a sports agent? I never really got exactly what it is they do," I asked, trying to sound earnest. His answer was vague and he quickly changed the subject.

But Joshua liked to talk about the present, the day and the next, about the camp, about the summer. He seemed to lighten up when we concocted our plans or when, alone, he recounted for me our secret expedition of the previous night. He had the odd but endearing habit of going through, with much details and glee, sequences of events we had shared. He was always oblique when mentioning or naming sex, however, which surprised me as he was so eager and relentless to engage in it. Mike and Rob sounded fucking wasted when we almost ran into them yesterday. We were actually blowing each other like maniacs behind the heavy bushes next to the central quad and we almost got caught. It was so funny last night when, after we hooked up, we saw that possum. It was funny, indeed, but it also was the first time we'd had anal sex together.

*     *          *

I was first awoken by the sound of the bath running in Joshua's en-suite bathroom. I actually opened my eyes some five minutes later, when he nudged a mug of warm coffee on my cheek.

"Come on, wake up," he said. "We need to get you clean and awake. I want to start the day."

"Shouldn't I drink my coffee first, before it gets cold?" I asked, nodding, a little puzzled, towards the sound of the bath.

"We can do both at the same time. Come on, get up, bring your mug and join me in the bath."

I had always hated sharing a bath, put off by the discomfort and cold knees more than by any hygienic concerns. My reluctance was somewhat assuaged, however, when I found out that Joshua's bathtub was, as everything else seemed to be on that floor, very big - big enough for us both to fit in. Joshua had moved a little side table right by the tub and indicated I put my coffee mug on it, next to his. The bathroom was flooded by rays of morning sun. Joshua, already in the bath, was squashing playfully the bundles of soap foam on the surface of the water.

"I don't even know what time it is," I said as I stepped carefully in the tub, facing him.

"It's about ten. It's late. That's why I didn't feel too bad about waking you."

"I'm glad you did. I don't usually sleep in that late anymore."

"What are your Saturdays like in DC?" he asked, his foot gently rubbing my inner thigh.

"I don't have much of a Saturday routine, not really."

"Everyone has a Saturday routine. Well, what's your perfect Saturday like, then?"

"Hm. I love weekends in the spring for some reason. So I've had quite a few perfect Saturdays these last few months, I guess."

"Tell me," he said, his toes now fondling my balls.

"I like to wake up early, have coffee, read the paper, smoke a cigarette."

"Ugh."

"I know, sorry."

"Then what?"

"Then I take a shower. Then breezily surf through some nice internet porn and take a nice, slow time to jack off. Then snug back into bed and read a book until noon. I fix some lunch. Do the groceries."

"Doing the groceries is part of your perfect Saturday?"

"It's not," I chuckled. "I'm just trying to give you a realistic account of a close-to-perfect Saturday."

"I love doing the groceries, actually. I love the planning and rejoicing it goes with."

"Rejoicing?"

"Well, you know, finding the soda that Corey really liked and that they rarely have in stock. Or thinking about a new marinade for the meat I'll grill for him. Stuff like that."

"I hate grocery shopping."

"Okay. Then what?"

"I don't know. I love going to exhibitions or to the museums on the Mall with a friend. I like to have coffee with my best friends in the afternoon. I'll go to the gym, if I find the discipline. Then have another shower. Have dinner at some friends' house. Go for drinks later, in a nice bar."

"A gay bar?"

"Not specifically, no. But often, yes."

"You still sleep with women?"

"Nope," I said, frowning and amused. "That hasn't happened for a very long time."

"You pick up guys in these bars?" he said, now rubbing my ankle, soaping my feet, kneading my calf.

"Ha. Not really, no. But I do like to meet new people. Talk with them. Listen to their stories."

"And you sleep with them."

"It happens. If they have really good stories," I smiled.

I bent my knees and pulled back my feet, trying to place them on Joshua's. He followed my lead and our feet were pressing against each other, the pressure lifting them up above the water surface. We both looked at them, they were almost the same size, which I didn't quite remember; mine were a little wider, his a little hairier.

"What's a good story?" he asked, still staring at our feet.

"I don't know. Something surprising, or intriguing, or endearing."

"Like what?" he insisted.

"Well," I was thinking out loud, "bisexual guys, for instance, the healthy ones, not the confused, annoying closeted cases, they usually have interesting life stories or, you know, outlook on things and people. I also like people with strong views and who are really committed to a cause. You meet a lot of those in DC. People who travel can be interesting and fun, when not too smug or self-absorbed. People with vibrant energy, with infectious optimism."

"I see."

"Recently I spent a whole hour in a club talking to a young graduate student from Georgetown about American political history."

"And that was fun," Joshua said, frowning.

"What was fun was how we were in this gay club with a bunch of shirtless boys dancing all around us to loud cheap techno music, and this guy and I were trying to list all the American presidents in order."

"You're such a dork."

"I don't think so. The point is, he was touching my leg, touching my shoulder, grabbing my arm, all excitedly. It didn't really matter what we were talking about, we were acting like two avid teenagers, forgetting the traditional rules of flirting or cruising in a gay bar."

"And you slept with him?"

"Yes."

"How was it?"

"I don't know. Great, actually. Yes, it was really nice," I answered, a little puzzled, but piqued by his eagerness to delve into sexual details.

"Well, it's hard to meet new people, gay people, around here. That's the drawback of living far out."

"I'm sure. Do you, though?"

"What?"

"Meet gay people. Have sex. Since Corey, I mean. Or during Corey – I don't know what kind of arrangement you guys had."

"We were monogamous," he said, with the hint of a satisfied, happy smile. "Sex was great," he added a little defensively. Then: "And no, I don't really meet other gay guys for sex. I have a few gay friends here, really close friends, but nothing sexual. I tried the internet but, I don't know, it wasn't really for me."

"Why not?"

"I'm not sure. I would get all horny and excited in front of my computer, then it'd always be a letdown. Not just because it always involved driving quite a bit, or waiting for them to drive here. The wait was a bit of buzzkill. But, I don't know, I think I would form too much of an image of what I wanted to happen, of what the guy would be like. And it never works quite like that, you know?"

"Was it for dating or hookups?"

"Hookups," he said, before quickly resuming his line of thought: "And I'm sure it was the same thing for them." He hesitated a little before saying pensively, "Plus, the few guys I actually hooked up with all turned out to be bottoms, whatever they'd said in their profile or during the chat."

"And.." I ventured tentatively, "that wasn't what you were looking for?"

"No, not really. I certainly didn't like the lack of options," he smiled meekly. "But no, I realized that it wasn't what I was looking for."

I let the silence help him decide whether he wanted to tell me more. He seemed hesitant and I didn't want to appear like I was pushing him. I realized the water was getting cold. Joshua was looking sideways, either absorbed by his thoughts or pondering what to tell me. He turned towards me and gazed at me, tenderly. "You look cold," he said. "Come over here." He gestured for me to draw closer to him, between his legs. I shuffled and moved around with difficulty and little grace, sending water over the edge of the tub. But I settled nicely, my back against his stomach, his arms wrapped around my belly after he turned the hot water on. "I'd like to stay a little longer," Joshua said, kissing me briefly on the neck.

"I haven't been fucked in a very long time," he resumed a little solemnly. "Well, for almost seven years, I guess."

"You and Corey weren't… versatile?"

"Ha," he chuckled at the word. "No. At the very beginning, yes, we were. But I quickly felt fucking me wasn't doing much for him, and I also had to nudge him a little too obviously for him to do it. So I asked him and he told me as much. But I can do it if you want, whatever, he told me."

"Hot," I said, then hoped Joshua would catch the affectionate sarcasm.

"I know, right? So we stopped doing that. And frankly, I really didn't miss it much, even though I had kind of come to think of myself as more of a bottom."

"But the sex was good?"

"That's the thing. Fucking him was so incredibly hot. I mean, the sight of him! He was very tall, I told you that. Huge arms and legs, huge feet and –"

"I saw the shoes, yes," I interrupted.

"Exactly. I don't know, the sight of this big, masculine, young body being fucked by me was such a turn-on. Always. So, no, I didn't miss getting fucked much."

"And you never got, I don't know, bored?"

"Why would you say that?"

"I don't know. It's just – I haven't really been in a long term relationship, so how people keep things spiced up is still kind of a mystery to me. It wasn't a loaded question."

"That's okay. No, I don't think we got actually bored. The frequency of sex became lower of course, and things evolved, but –"

"How? How did things evolve?" I asked.

"Well, Joshua was never really expressive in bed. But I got to know him, his body, what he liked. It was a bit of detective work at first, but then you get a sixth sense or something."

"And what did he like?"

"Things became a little aggressive for a while, then we retreated back. I sensed he also had something about cum, so we… I don't know, experimented a little. At some point too, I realized he was spending an awful lot of time watching porn on the computer during the day, when I was at work. So I asked him and he was very cool about the whole thing. So I tried to, well, take an interest in his hobby, I guess. He got really excited and happy about it and from then on, we'd spend some evenings with him showing me the best porn he had found the past few days. We'd jerk off together. Often, I'd fuck him."

"But you guys never cheated or brought someone in your bed?"

"No, I'm pretty sure there was no cheating. I asked him at some point, if he needed to see other people, fuck with other people, that I'd understand if I wasn't enough for him. He got really offended, then he lashed out at me. Then he cried. He panicked, thinking he was the one who wasn't enough for me. I did my best to reassure him and we never brought up the subject again."

"That's kind of sweet."

"He was sweet," Joshua said, as if himself reaching that conclusion. "He said he loved me all the time, like a million times a day. Very sweetly in the morning and at night and, I don't know, in his own kind of dude way during the day or on the phone. And he'd always want to fall asleep curled up against me, nested in my arms. Which wasn't easy, given his size."

Joshua buried his face in my neck and let it rest there. I grabbed his hand and lifted it to my lips. I wasn't sure whether to push the subject of Corey further. Joshua was now nibbling at my ear, then whispered: "I want to make you breakfast. I'm dying for some really fucking greasy bacon."

*     *          *

Things that turned me on about Joshua in the summer of 1995:

The way Erin's sexual frankness made him blush for the first two weeks, then smile for the last.

How often he would urgently and earnestly whispered to me, among an unsuspecting crowd, that he was horny, and the tone he used, making it sound overpowering and worrisome.

The crease underneath his knee.

The two laughs he had: the genuine one and the one he couldn't help but use when he wasn't sure he understood Erin's irony or Mike's sarcasm.

The powerful girth of his wrists. His beautiful strong hands. The huskiness of his voice.

The way he'd ask me to fuck him.

The childlike admiration with which he talked to and about Baseball Heartthrob and the way he snapped at anyone who'd use that nickname.

His earnestness, his sensitivity, his raw emotions. His bubble butt, too.

How, whenever we had to part, he would turn back around and give me one more kiss, furtively and clumsily.

The marvel and awe in his eyes whenever he witnessed (and commented on) the hardness of his cock, and of mine, or whenever we managed to cum at exactly the same time.

The way he ran, his feet slamming the ground as if with strength and anger; the way he played soccer, aggressive and focused and committed; his rants against tennis and lacrosse. How competitive he'd get, how bluntly happy he was to win, at anything.

The abandon he was sometimes capable of when we had sex.

How he laced his sneakers, how he put a sweater on, how he took his pants off.

*     *          *

"Jump! It's fucking wonderful!" Joshua was screaming from the water, as I was still standing on the edge of the dock, hesitating to dive in the lake. We were both naked, the sun was now high, bright and scorching. "Jump!" he repeated. I dove, deciding to display some dignity and masculine prowess, before the inevitable and humbling screech of pain from the cold.

It wasn't, indeed, actually that bad, I realized as I gasped for air emerging back to the surface. He waved me to swim towards him and grabbed me in his arms when I reached him. "Relax, now," he said. "Let your body get used to the temperature." Our legs kept bumping into each other, as did both our shriveled penises. His body felt warm in the freezing water, his smile was bright, his eyes radiant. There was a distinct beam of pride too in his luminous, decisive embrace: the beauty of the Lake, my overcoming the initial reluctance to get in the cold water, the strength of his heartening grip, the elation of the moment - they all seemed to be presents from Joshua, who lay them at my feet with the glee of a child crafting gifts for his parents.

We kissed and swam and laughed, until the water really did become too cold for me. I crawled back to the deck, followed by a still jostling Joshua. We lay panting and naked on the deck, letting the sun dry our bodies, our legs intertwined, our hands holding each other. Then he briskly stood up and told me we needed to down a shot of brandy, that it was his healthy habit after a cold swim. He reassured me we'd stick to apple juice for the rest of the day, until the proper time came for a real drink. "I make a mean Long Island Ice Tea," he said.

I wasn't used, and never really had been, to walking naked freely and casually. I followed Joshua to the house, distracted and flustered by the sight of Joshua's beautiful body stomping ahead, with equally arousing assurance and joy.

The brandy burned my throat briefly, before the predictable wave of warmth rushing inside me. We were standing in the kitchen, facing each other, eyeing each other, grinning at each other. My hand, on its own volition, reached for his dick and started to fondle it playfully. I felt like a child, or a teenager rather, as my impulse was clearly borne out of impish horniness. I smiled at him, but his look had turned serious and warm. He placed a hand on my chest and moved it slowly all around my upper body, my hips, my chest again, my neck. He seemed focused on examining, by sight and by touch, every inch of my body, as if he finally became conscious of the very physicality of my presence. I felt the same. Since I'd arrived the previous evening, our glances, touches, and sexual clinch had been intense, flowing, and unfocused, they had been wrapped and polished by the sheer yet unexpected thrill of being together again. As I let go of his now hardened cock and started my own exploration of his body, as I took in every detail of his beautifully ageing masculinity, I realized neither of us had been looking into each other's eyes for a while, both of us dedicated and absorbed by the crude but intoxicating moment.

Without either of us touching my cock, I became incredibly hard. I could actually feel the blood pumping up in rhythmic gushes, inflating and unfolding and lifting the lump of flesh, the head gorging and yawning its way out of the foreskin.

I turned him gently around and placed his hands on the kitchen counter. I kneeled down and delicately nudged his legs to spread, his back to arch. His ass was as splendid as it had been years ago, but fuller, firmer, rounder. Joshua was hairy but his ass was bare, unshaven, silky. He was tan all over, but as I spread his ass cheeks, I uncovered a very white, cold and moist crack. I kissed it and licked it and buried my face in it, waiting for Joshua's reaction, then feeling alternately the tensing of his buttocks and the loosening of his hole.

I rimmed him for a long time, I rimmed him until my knees hurt against the stoned floor, until his raspy moaning finally began to subside, until he told me, just seconds probably before I'd be saying it myself: "I want you".

For the first time since I had arrived by his house on the lake, those words had a real, tangible, actual echo to words young Joshua had said in 1995. As he repeated them, however, and repeated them again, that spell was quickly broken: the words were the same, the voice barely altered, but the hunger was different. He had wanted me in anguished determination, in overpowering recklessness, he had wished me to fuck his torments out of him. He now wanted me with confident lust, he wished me to fuck him into little pieces of bliss.

I positioned my cock to enter him, but he turned around, kissed me, took my hand and led me upstairs. His bedroom was bright and stifled. He opened all the windows and drew the white veils, which all started to flow and dance with the breeze. He lay on his back on the bed, made his head comfortable on the pillows and smiled at me. He nodded towards the bed stand, where I found lube and a box of condoms. The fact that it was unopened jolted my desire and affection.

I took my time to lube his ass and my cock, all the while staring at him. He closed his eyes and smilingly squirmed with the coldness of the KY, touched his chest and nipples, then put both hands under his knees and lifted his legs up. I slipped the condom on and grabbed his ankles. "Go slow," he whispered.

The breeze gave me occasional goose bumps and hardened my nipples. A ray of sunlight was faintly blinding me, forcing me to look down, to look at my dick making its slow, moist way into Joshua. I put his ankles on my shoulder and grabbed his ass cheeks, to spread them further, to knead them, to press my fingers into his reddening flesh.

Once I was fully inside, or inside enough, I lowered myself to kiss him. I grabbed his head and kissed him hard and deep, my movements inside him quickening along. I couldn't tell whether my frenzied kissing was propelling my pounding of him or whether the incredible sensation of being inside Joshua again, of fucking him with a condom out of a box bought a while ago but never used, was engulfing me in loving warmth.

He gasped for air, laughed loudly with amazement and ecstasy ("Oh my fucking god!"), then kissed me more, then tumbled me sideways, then begged grinningly to fuck him every which way I could think of, to hurry because he might very well cum at any second, to take it slow because he wanted it to last, because he needed it to last.

We made it last. Every time one of us came close to orgasm or when his ass started to hurt, we would stop, pause, giggle, kiss, catch our breath, stick our heads of out the window to cool off our sweaty foreheads. Then we'd start again.

When he finally came, my body was pressing against his, our chafed lips glued to each other. His furious jerking movement was punching me in the stomach, then the spray of his cum slimed both our chests. I came inside him instantly, thrashing violently, hugged tightly by his orgasmic spasms.

"Oh my fucking god", he said again, or whispered rather, between hiccupped exhaling and chuckles. I felt stung with sadness, briefly but powerfully, at the thought that it was over, that we had cum (and cum so much and so hard it felt sex couldn't be had again for a long, long time), that Joshua had been fucked for the first time in years and that it would be years before that happens again (if ever), that the box of condoms was now open and I'd never get to unseal it again. But his smile, oh his smile, washed all of it away. He even burst into laughter, uncontrollable, childish laughter, kicking his legs on the mattress. "Oh my fucking god!" he shouted once more.

*     *          *

The way I remember it, Joshua and I had sex almost every day, and quite often twice, during our two weeks of camp together. It seems physiologically impossible, even for two young men in their sexual prime. And yet.

We certainly didn't sleep much, which, looking back, is also biologically puzzling. But we could only truly be alone whenever everyone else had gone to bed. We did both sometimes pretend to be tired and have an early night (within an inconspicuous fifteen-minute interval), and it helped that neither of our respective roommates ever socialized with us or with anyone in our groups of friends. Since it was mostly conducted outside, our affair was also made possible by the summer weather and the scarcity of rain - even though one nightly storm had made us feel safer about the absence of onlookers and bolder during the long, loud, rough fuck we had, protected under the bleachers. We did make full use of the absence of my roommate the second weekend, but otherwise we walked around the campus, lay in the bushes, sat on the ground behind buildings. We tried, unsuccessfully, to break in the swimming pool, but managed once to enter a classroom (Joshua had instantly wanted that we jerk off together there, sitting in adjacent chairs in the back of the class). The secrecy was thrilling, of course, and the daring, playful stealth suited well the exalted post-graduation mood I was basking in, the sense of possibilities, mischiefs, and self-challenges I was so eager to indulge in.

There were very few evenings we didn't spend together. I can only remember one. The baseball coach had decided to treat his two assistants to a dinner and a movie, but had extended the invitation to a thrilled Joshua. It gave me the chance to spend time alone with Erin, something I had been craving but had had difficulties to set up. She had tacitly established that Joshua and I were a couple of some sort, but had kept her conviction from the others. The few moments we found ourselves alone, she tactfully doted on me with unambiguous friendship. In front of the others, however, she often made flirtatious and suggestive jabs, but whether this was intended to keep up her own image or to shield me from suspicion, I couldn’t tell.

She too was thrilled we'd be having some alone time and set out to make arrangements: she got the car of one of her friends and told me she'd take me to a bar. She was 21 and I wasn't, but she waved off any concern. "The place I have in mind is full of old people. Like old old, way past forty-year old, you know. They never card and I really can't see the ATF raiding it. We'll be fine".

We got in fine indeed and sat in a booth. Our youth didn't seem to make us conspicuous; we were rather ignored by a rowdy ageing crowd, indifferent to two giddy youngsters. I had to wave three times before the heavily made-up old waitress came to take our orders. She did call me "honey", though, in a raspy, tired voice.

"So, I can't ask you about Joshua, right?" Erin asked as soon as we had the first sip of our beers.

"I don't know, what do you want to ask?"

"I'm not sure, actually. A part of me wants to know everything. Another, well, not so much. Also, I don't think you'd actually tell me everything even if I asked. Not right here, not right now."

"If not now, when?" I smiled, hoping that Erin, who proudly boasted her expertise in all things Jewish, would catch the Hillel reference. She did.

"When you're not for yourself and I will be for you," she quipped back.

"We're such dorks."

"Obfuscatingly so, yes".

"Nice one, Erin. I don't think it's a word, though."

"What I meant," she said, steering herself back on track, "is that I have a feeling we'll actually be able to have this conversation when we'll be away from each other. Like, you'll write to me and tell me things you don't or wouldn't while we're here."

"Why?"

"I don't know, I just have that strong inkling. I hope I'm right too: I really do want to stay in touch with you and become your confidante. I know some good stories are in store and I don't want to miss out," she winked.

"How very Madame de Merteuil of you."

"Exactly. You'll be my gay Valmont."

"Don't they end up, like, killing each other at the end?"

"We don't have to be so literal."

"So I'm gay?", I asked after a pause.

"Oh, I don't know. My bad, I guess I like to think you are. I don't want to be the confidante of a boring straight man."

"So I'm either a gay lothario or a boring straight man?"

"Kind of. If you were, like, a hundred percent straight, you're going to meet and marry this astounding chick, very smart, and witty, and a bit distant. And she'll be a cool lawyer or an awesome doctor, or something. And she'll also be really hot, so, naturally, I'll hate her and I'll hate hearing you babbling about how cool your loft in Tribeca is and how your daughter Rainbow plays the piano so well and all that."

"My daughter's name is Rainbow?" I chuckled.

"Or Alexandra. Or Myrtille. Yes, it is."

I smiled at her and drank some more. I tried to play footsy, for reason I couldn't quite grasp, but she pulled her foot away and grabbed my hand over the table instead.

"So we won't talk about Joshua," she said leaning forward, conspiratorially. "I guess you'll have to listen to my very vivid fantasies about Baseball Heartthrob."

"You fancy him?"

"Don't act surprised. All the girls at camp do."

"That doesn't surprise me. It surprises me that you do."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I saw you as going for someone more, like, edgy."

"You think you're edgy? Dark, troubled, and nefarious, Mister Bad Boy?"

"So you fancy me?" I asked mischievously.

"You know I do. And no, he is not edgy, much less than you for sure. But he is hot. His non-edginess is hot."

"How so?"

"There's some boiling water underneath that clean-cut, model handsome face surface. Don't you think?"

"I don't know. Maybe. He is married, though."

"Yes and he decides to spend five weeks of his summer boarding with college-age kids. With just the occasional visits from the wifey. I'm thinking he is highly negotiable, sex wise. Whatever he gets at home doesn't seem that fulfilling."

"Oh, come on. Poor guy. He is so nice and friendly. We don't know what his home life is like."

"He is very nice and friendly. I know that, he has lunch and dinner at my table every fucking day. He is lovely and endearing. And I'd like to fuck his brains out."

"Do you think he'd be good in bed?"

"I'd unleash his inner sex god," she said, with a satisfied smile. "It'd be fucking awesome," she added, earnestly.

"I could see that," I said, actually visualizing the two of them going at it, in places on campus and in positions not unlike those Joshua and I had experienced.

We ordered more beers. A soft, delicate silence had fallen upon our table. I did feel a pang of sadness clouding my mood. I didn't know whether it was the earlier mention of the forthcoming time when Erin and I would only talk through letters, or my reluctance to talk about Joshua, or the withering of the sexual tension between Erin and me. It was something else, I realized more clearly, while taking a gulp of my second beer.

"It's kind of sad, all this," I said, searchingly.

"What?"

"Well, the way you seem to envision love and sex when we're adults, like real adults. Rainbow is the daughter of boringly perfect marriage, Baseball Heartthrob is unfulfilled and is tailing young women at a summer camp. I mean, is this what we're headed for?"

"Not if we can avoid it."

"Can we?"

"I think so," she replied decidedly. "I hope so. I think it requires some work and effort not to let yourself trap in the mold of dullness. But I hope it can be done. For a while, at least. Until you're exhausted, and worn, and ready to get in slippers and drink chamomile."

"I guess," I said meekly.

"Are you worried about any of this?"

"In a way, I probably am, yes. I'm entering college at the end of the summer and, I don't know, I want it to be extraordinary and thrilling."

"Epic."

"Epic, exactly. Or something like that. I want it to be intense. And now you're saying that I'm going to fall in love and be boring."

"Not if you're gay."

"Oh come on," I said, a little annoyed.

"Sorry. I'm only kidding. Or not. My point is, I wouldn't worry. Whatever you are, you strike me as being a lot like me and --"

"I'm nothing like you."

"You are, a bit. I think you and I fall in love easily but not deeply. We get exalted. We are Romantics. You know, with a capital R. But, and I know it's trite, but there you have it: we fall in love with love, we are excited by the excitement."

"Like Fitzgerald and Zelda."

"How?"

"We will never be boring because we will never be bored," I quoted.

"Did they say that?"

"Yes, I think they did."

"What freaking clichéd snobs we are then."

"That, we are," I concurred.

"You'll see, you'll have a grand time in college. Tormenting, exhilarating time. I certainly do."

"Then what?"

"Then we'll need to stay on course, to live the life, you know. I don't mean to be crass, but I fully intend on fucking a lot of people, even after I graduate. Like, a lot," she said, gleaming.

"I'll drink to that."

"You're very intense, Benjamin. And intense people either get a whole lot of sex - or none at all."

"My god, we're so young and stupid," I jokingly lamented.

"And I, my friend Ben, will drink to that."