The Best Four Years of Adam Becker - 1. Freshman Year - Chapter 1

By eight, our room was starting to look like home: a shag area rug was rolled out across the carpet, beds made, the last of the Target bags had been unpacked. At around eight-thirty, our parents filtered out, amid the obligatory hugs and encouragement that seemed to take forever.

It’d been a tremendous day--freshman move in. Hours of unpacking. Maybe twelve trips out to Metairie, to Target, buying too many things, most of which were purchased over my protests. But even so, the only dustup my mom and I had was over slippers. Neither of us had ever worn slippers. She was insistent: “You’ll need them,” she had said, furtively, “for the floor.”

She added that last bit like I was going to be wading through hypodermics on the shore, like there was nothing fathomably more disgusting than the carpet in Sharp Hall, Room 304.

The chances of the carpet--which had been Rug Doctored twice this morning, in an obsessive compulsive tag-team of my mother and Mr. and Mrs. Callender, and now sat mostly covered by the new shag area rug anyway--giving us foot-borne illness was probably pretty slim by this point.

No, I loved my mother, but I was ready to get her on a plane back to D.C. long before eight-thirty.

Philip, my older brother, told me that, once that door closed, I’d miss our parents, like I was shutting the door on my childhood. And I guess he was right--I felt that gulp of grief as she turned the corner and disappeared down the stairwell, exiting my life for the first time. I’d always been close to my mother. But, mostly, I felt relieved--loopy with excitement to finally be on my own.

Tripp Callender seemed to have a similar cocktail of relief and excitement. He had two parents helping him move--double the embarrassment. I’d only met Tripp that morning, but I was watching a slow burn as his parents debated purchasing and decorating decisions that Tripp, like me, had little say in.

They introduced themselves as Miss Julia and Mr. Junior, two ludicrous Southern honorifics that I knew I couldn’t ever feel comfortable using. I kept calling them Mr. and Mrs. Callender, and they kept correcting me, so I finally just settled on pronouns.

Tripp’s mother was a pocket of sound, barely five feet tall, blonde, effervescent, impeccably elegant as she shampooed rugs in a white linen blazer; his father was sturdy and wisecracking, with thick silver hair and a hopeful smile tossed to an unamused Tripp that followed each tepid joke.

Mr. Callender spent most of the day taking orders from his managerial wife, with the quiet resignation of someone who had done this for years, while wearing a baggy “Tulane Dad” polo from the bookstore--“I just wrote a check for forty-five thousand dollars; I deserve to wear the shirt.”

They spent most of the day taking on minor do-it-yourself projects and making each other laugh via jokes at their son’s expense. He was ready to send them off even earlier than I was.

By nine o’clock, I had finally finished my unpacking, but Tripp still had a way to go. He had more stuff than I did--he was from an hour away, in southern Mississippi; the Callenders drove with an SUV piled high--but he was also lousy at unpacking. He’d get distracted by conversation or Facebook, or he’d decide to change his organizational horses mid-stream.

He was tackling the mound of plaid boxers at the foot of his bed, tossing them one-by-one into the cabinet above his bed. I was sitting in a new red papasan chair next to my bed, cross-legged, with my computer on my lap. Tripp was talking almost constantly--I gave the appropriate affirmative responses, as needed, and stayed a comrade in the requisite new roommate move-in banter, but I was more preoccupied with messaging back and forth with a lean, sinewy torso on a website called ManFind.

“You know, Adam," Tripp said, crumbling up another pair of boxers and tossing them to the back of the cabinet above his bed. "I think I brought too much stuff."

Tripp had the kind of silky Southern voice that I thought died out centuries ago. I’d always pictured Mississippi accents to sound so gratingly redneck, but here he was, lazily refined like a Civil War general.

"No shit," I replied. "We both did.” I did not have an accent. D.C. was not a real enough city to have an accent.

He looked over to my two empty suitcases, stacked in the foot of my closet, but said nothing else. I hadn’t thought I overpacked until I was excavating another pair of jeans and trying to wedge it in one of the three dresser drawers--I’d flown in with the airline-approved two suitcases, which I thought at the time it represented some awfully vigilant closet pruning. I came from a walk-in closet, and had spent my formative high school summers at White Flint Mall--two years, J. Crew--and this was not the lion’s share of my wardrobe.

Tripp squinted at his rapidly-filling cabinet, sizing up the remain cubic feet of storage space, then looked forlornly down at the Cahokia mounds of neatly-folded clothes still crammed in the remaining boxes.

“Damn it, I told my mom I wouldn’t need any of this. She was like, ‘You never know what you’ll need until you need it,’ but we didn’t think that there’d be nowhere to put all this shit.”

He looked down, sighed begrudgingly, and went back to his boxer-tossing.

I liked Tripp, as much as you could like someone you met eleven hours before.

It was a nice surprise. I’d put hours of panic into Cuthbert Hollis Callender III in the weeks before we finally met. He was maddeningly invisible on Google searches and hadn’t launched his Facebook page until yesterday, so all I knew about him was gleaned from the two emails we’d exchanged in the middle of July. He hailed from a town called Pass Christian, Mississippi; he was an incoming architecture major; and he had both a flat-screen TV and a PlayStation 2.

It was the whole Pass Christian thing--population a mere 6,579, according to Wikipedia; obviously a redneck town--that really scared me. Was there any way pairing a gay kid and a roommate from Pass Christian, Mississippi, could end well? Had I been straight, I probably wouldn’t need any other qualifications in a roommate than a healthy trove of electronics, but I wasn’t.

Pass Christian.

I figured Tripp would hit one of two categories: he’d be a greasy neanderthal with a wife beater and a Confederate flag Nascar hat, who would find out I was gay and try to pray it away for me. Or, worse, he’d be one of those gorgeous Southern jocks that I’d secretly lust after, with a big dick and a penchant for casual post-shower nudity, who would just go straight to the gay bashing, turn my long-awaited escape from my parents’ house into some histrionic TV movie.

No, there was no way this experiment with a Cuthbert Hollis Callender III would work. I knew that. I’d convinced myself of that.

I strongly considered asking Housing for a switch, roll the dice one more time. But you couldn’t do it without a reason, and my parents, who knew my building, floor, and roommate’s name, would start to poke questions anyway. And the more poking they did, the closer they would get to finding out everything, so I just bit my lip, all summer, and silently hoped that this Cuthbert had even a modicum of humanity.

And then, of course, Cuthbert was really Tripp, who was exceptionally unintimidating--a regular guy with a goofy smile and some mild neuroses, chafing under the last day of parental control, just like I was. He was about my height, sandy hair, handsome, some baby fat on his cheeks and around his waist. No muttonchops, no Confederate flag, not a gay-bashing Southern jock--not a stereotype at all, but a study in contrasts: the preppiest person I’d ever seen in my life--the embroidered Nantucket reds cut above the knee, the Perlis polo, cinched at the waist with an embroidered belt--who, by the end of the day, had listened almost exclusively to gangster rap.

“I wanted to go to Southern Cal,” he was telling me, earlier in the day, over the light strands of Tupac emanating from his laptop speakers, the first time we managed to get both sets of parents out of the room simultaneously. “Or Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. I just always saw myself going to an architecture school out in California, but after the storm, I didn’t want to leave the Gulf Coast.”

“I’ve never been to the South before,” I said. “Except for Disney World and Dulles Airport.”

He grinned, dug deeper in his cardboard box and pulled out a few rolled up pairs of socks. “Doesn’t count. I like the Gulf Coast.” He paused, bit his nail. “Well, I appreciate it more after the storm, anyway. We were stuck in Birmingham at my aunt’s for six months, and then a few more months in a FEMA trailer while they fixed our house, and I just figured I’d miss it if I left. I don’t know. Our house wasn’t even hit too bad, but the Pass was a wreck so we only got back in this April. And after all that moving around--I don’t know. Cali will always be there.”

In the back of my mind--in the back of every gay guy’s mind first day of freshman year, presumably--was whether it’d be like a smutty intro scene in a porn video where the straightest guys could be easily coaxed over in a few badly-written lines of dialogue. The fantasy involved him making some sort of drunken pass, me going along with it, us exploring ourselves--and, more critically, each other--in some covert affair.

That wasn’t going to happen with Tripp. I could tell that neither of us felt that way. Our conversation hovered over platitudes about home life and high school and prom dates, about Hurricane Katrina, about New Orleans. Once he hung his massive poster of Jessica Simpson pushing a vacuum in lingerie over his desk, I knew for sure he was straight, and I didn’t count myself the least bit disappointed.

Tripp craned his neck over to look at his alarm clock, realized he hadn’t bothered to plug in yet, and then looked back over to me. "What time is it?"

"A little after nine," I replied.

We both looked instinctively out the door, propped open by one of Tripp's boxes. Philip, my older brother, had let me depart for Tulane with very strict instructions--namely that I was supposed to keep my door propped open at the beginning of the year, because, when tentative floormates seeped out of their rooms, looking for drinking buddies, we wouldn’t want to be left behind because no one had the courage to start knocking on doors.

“Just ignore all of your social instincts,” he said, because he loved me but was, at his core, an asshole, “and you’ll be fine.”

Tripp looked at his watch, then looked back up to the door.

"We should all head out to the parties soon," he said, as if the two of us at all resembled an “all” because neither of us had met anyone else in the last eleven hours.

“I heard Zeta has a party,” I suggested, which Tripp had to know too, because I’d heard voices talking about it in the hallway about an hour ago.

"I heard everyone has a party." He picked at his cuticles. "Did you drink much in high school?"

In our eleven hours of close friendship, he had been picking and chewing on his cuticles almost consistently. He’d drawn blood three times, which he’d try to discreetly suck away when he thought I wasn’t looking. His hands had been in his mouth all day: when he met me; when his parents left to drive the hour back home to Pass Christian; when we started talking about what was going on the rest of the night.

"Yeah, off and on," I said, sounding blasé as I wove together this new backstory. The only time I had drank before had been a half flute of champagne at my cousin's wedding in 2003, and the two beers I’d managed to choke down at Philip’s frat house up at Yale. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to expose those humiliating secrets in the first eleven hours of this new life, this new friendship. "Never got too too crazy though. You?"

"Yeah, same," he replies, even less convincingly than I had been. He gave me a sly grin, and I tossed one back, and we both started giggling at how full of shit both of us were. "I don’t know about you,” he continued, “but think I'm ready to get blitzed tonight.”

I smiled back at him. “You and me both, brother.”

He bent down, picked up a final pair of yellow plaid boxers, and threw them to the back of his underwear cabinet. "My fucking mom," he huffed again, as he tiptoed across the wet carpet, his feet sloshing as he went. “Packed everything I own.”

Tripp went back to rapping under his breath along with Jay-Z; I looked down at my computer, discreetly opened up the minimized browser window that housed ManFind, and there was a blinking message from the torso I had been chatting with. He was also a freshman, was also heading out later to the frat parties.”Want to text me later? I'm Patrick, by the way.”

I took out my phone, punched in his number and saved it as Patrick ManFind.

I typed out: “Hey, it’s Peter from online.” And then saved it in drafts because, suddenly, it dawned on me the caliber of what I was doing--giving out my name, my number, exposing my 240 area code.

And I realized how easy it would be to find me on Facebook or MySpace, for him to infiltrate my life.

I was Becker, Peter A., in the paper who’s-who they passed out in our move-in basket, and I had only been thinking about that, but I was Peter Adam Becker on Facebook--there was a paper trail, without a doubt, for any variation of my name. I should’ve given a false one, but I’d gotten so used to, over the last eleven hours, to introducing myself as Adam, the version of myself I selected to become in college, that I hadn’t even considered it.

But a fake name seemed stupid, so I just kept his number, but I didn’t text him. Maybe after a few drinks, I’d find myself in bolder waters, but I wasn’t going to jeopardize my grand introduction to everyone on the floor for a quick lay with some other freshman.

Suddenly, there were voices in the hallway and Tripp and I both snapped our heads towards the door, leering with lecherous anticipations.

Two guys appeared in front of our door, and Tripp’s face erupted into this elated smile, as if to squeal: “Visitors! Floormates! Lifelong friends!”

I couldn’t say I wasn’t feeling the same, but at least I hid it more nonchalantly.

One was short, a stocky redhead with pale skin and more freckles than I had ever seen on a human. His nose was squished up, like he’d smelled something rotting, and it took me a second to figure out he just came like that. The second was a lanky guy, about a head taller that Freckles, with dark, shaggy hair, and these sunken, enigmatic eyes, a sexy renegade.

The redhead gave us a nervous smile. "Hey," he said. "Are you guys going out?"

"We were thinking about it," I replied, casually, as if anyone on this floor was thinking about anything else. Tripp was across the room, silent, his goofy smile giving away to more chomping on his cuticles, moving from nail to nail like he was eating corn on the cob. “How about y’all?"

That was my first attempt to introduce “y’all” into my cadence. I suddenly realized I couldn’t pull it off; Tripp, across the room with a narrow smirk, realized it too.

"Yeah," Freckles replied. "There's a bunch of stuff on fraternity row." He points to the swarthy, sexy guy next to him. "Charlie's brother's in Iota Chi, and he said to come on over."

"Three kegs," echoed apparently-Charlie, in an unexpectedly deep, rich basso profundo.

The things I would let this guy do.

"Awesome, man," said Tripp, sauntering over to the doorway, his splashing feet betraying his lack of suaveness. He shook the redhead's hand, very proper and official, like my dad would when meeting foreign dignitaries, and they introduced themselves: the redhead was Justin Ryan, the other guy was Charlie Baker.

We needed nametags. I think they’d given us a few in our registration basket, but I figured no one would be caught dead in them. We’d have to wing it. I hadn’t ever been drunk before, but I was terrible at names anyway, and I didn’t anticipate booze making my memory more adhesive.

I took my computer off my lap and close the lid. "You two roommates?"

"Yeah," Justin said. "We’re right next door to you, but we don't know anyone else here yet."

"Oh, I don't think anyone does," Tripp said, with a modicum of wisdom. "I mean, I'm only from, like, one state over, and there's only a couple people from my high school here."

"Where are they going out?" Justin asked.

Tripp grinned at him. "They all blow. Trust me. Hick types."

I grinned a little bit at that, considering how much my composite of Tripp had changed in the last eleven hours. But Tripp clearly wasn’t an overalls and moonshine kind of guy, even if Pass Christian, Mississippi, didn’t exactly conjure up neon lights. I liked that he knew hick types, that he spoke about them as disparagingly as I would someone from Winchester or the Eastern Shore.

"Oh," Justin said. "Well, we're going to head over to Zeta I think, if you guys want to come."

"Yeah, I think so," I replied, as Tripp nodded too enthusiastically.

We followed them into the hallway. Justin was staring at our door, which had both of our names and hometowns--”Peter C., Hamlet, Maryland,” and “Cuthbert C., Pass Christian, Mississippi”--printed in size 36 Arial on two pieces of neon green paper. Not the most effort-intensive RAs.

“Sorry, what were your names again?” he asked.

“Yeah, it’s confusing,” Tripp said, motioning to the signs. “Tripp and Adam. I’m Cuthbert the Third, and Adam’s his middle name.”

"Cuthbert?" Justin giggled.

Tripp glared at him and gave him the finger. "Family name. My son's going to have it too."

"Good luck finding a woman who’ll go along with that," I told him.

“Yeah, Peter,” Tripp grinned.

People were loitering in the other doorways now, nervously drawn out by the gravitational pull of our the conversation as we wandered slowly down the hall. I imagined they were waiting for someone to make the first move towards Fraternity Row, just like we were, and that made all of them a hell of a lot less intimidating.

For the first time, I felt like I could do this. Back at the Harrington School, I’d always been Philip’s little brother or, even more humiliatingly, Justine’s older brother. I had enough friends--more than enough, really, to keep my days occupied--but I’d never managed to break free of being introduced in a context.

At Tulane, there was no context. I wasn’t Peter, Philip’s brother, but I was Adam Becker, that hopefully not uncool guy down the hall. Hopefully.

No, we all seemed a little timid, a little too in need of friends, which really relaxed me. I wasn’t the biggest loser on the floor, for sure. I was like everyone else: everyone who knew what they were supposed to be doing--making friends and drinking--and rushed out into the hallway at the sound of another voice.

Another twelve freshmen guys had glommed onto us by the time we reached the lobby, and I could see, as we struck out across Sharp Quad, other gender-segregated groups of about a dozen dotting the horizon, new floormates scuttling off to get drunk for the first time.

Well, first time. Maybe it was just me and Tripp who hadn’t done anything fun in high school, because apparently people got drunk in high school. I’d only recently found that out, only recently begun to question why Grant Prendergast and I were content playing Battlescar 3 on a Friday night in his parents’ basement when, apparently, there were drinks and casual sex to be had at Kim Revelle’s de-parented house in Chevy Chase.

Tripp had split off with Charlie and Justin, a few paces ahead of us; Justin came from Columbus, Georgia, and he and Tripp were arguing about the Saints versus the Falcons with theatrical arm gestures and facetious little digs about how obnoxious the other team’s fans were.

I was no great conversationalist, but the topics were so broad and primitive that first night of freshman year that I figured even I could manage to hold my own.

Then I wound up standing awkwardly next to this hunk of sirloin. He was intimidatingly attractive, the kind of guy that, even if he managed to have any sort of affinity for dick, was light years out of my league. He was about my height, sandy blonde hair, curls that framed his chiseled face. Not muscular, per se, but more toned than most of the eighteen-year-olds I’d seen. Or so I could see, after a quick peripheral lusting, as I put my head down and kept walking. He reminded me of a blonde version of my brother Philip, who had hoarded all of the good genes--inherited my parents’ mutual good-looks and turned it into some stunning amalgamation that no one could have imagined.

He didn’t seem to notice that I was avoiding making conversation, or didn’t seem to care, because he just launched into a conversation anyway, introducing himself as Erik Fontenot and telling me how excited he was too meet some hot Tulane chicks, which somehow made me even more uncomfortable.

“Me too,” was all I could muster, as I fumbled over my well-rehearsed introduction.

“So where are you from?” I asked, trying to sound casual about it.

“Southern Arkansas,” he said. “Small town.” He had absolutely no accent whatsoever, so Arkansas caught me off-guard, especially considering Tripp’s muddy drawl. “How about you?”

“D.C.,” I told him. "Well, Maryland suburbs of D.C., but my dad works downtown--on Capitol Hill.”

“Wait, not the Senator?” he grinned. “You're that Becker?”

I had been trying to avoid this tidbit, and I couldn’t believe that he’d gleaned my dad’s profession just from the casual mention of Capitol Hill. I briefly debated lying, but that seemed like a flimsy way to start off a new friendship. Plus, he was a Southerner, which probably meant Republican--he couldn’t hate my dad, right?

“What do you mean?” I clarified, failing utterly at not sounding suspicious.

“Oh, nothing, nothing,” he said. “I just know politics. Nevada.” He paused. "Republican.” He said the last part with barely-disguised contempt, lets it linger in the air for a few seconds.

"Moderate Republican," I offered, apologetically.

“You’re not offending me,” he replied. “I’m from fucking Arkansas. No one’s anything but super conservative, except me. Do you smoke?"

"No," I replied. "Wait--smoke what?"

I didn’t know why I specified, because I’d never even almost smoked anything. I could remember, back before they banned smoking indoors, gagging melodramatically as my mother dragged my flailing body through the bar section to the non-smoking dining room.

He grinned, pulled a pack of Marlboros out of his pocket. “Cigarettes.”

“Oh. No, I don't. I actually don't smoke.”

“I only smoke when I’m drunk,” he said. “I’m not drunk, but I was just thinking for later. I never buy them because, when you buy them, you’re a smoker. If you don’t, you’re just someone who smokes.”

That made absolutely no sense, but I managed a slight nod.

“Girls hate smokers,” he said, “but they don’t mind a guy who smokes, you know?”

I did not. I nodded again.

“Yeah,” he said. “So what brought you down to New Orleans? Humidity and black people?”

I was a little taken aback, before his beautiful face snaked into a grin and realized he was joking. I let out a relieved laugh. “Hurricane damage and blight, actually.”

“Oh, those are good ones,” he said. “For me, it was the streets that smell like piss. And a water polo scholarship. I know--I didn't know those existed either." He looked at his watch. "8am wakeup tomorrow."

"Don't get too drunk," I warned.

"It's fine," he said. "I used to wake up at 6 on Saturdays in high school. Hungover swimming sucks, but it's not the worst thing ever. Your body kind of forgets when it’s working that hard.”

"Yeah, totally," I agreed.

“You look like you’d be a,” he said, running his eyes down my body, “speech and debater.”

I grinned. “Who told you?”

“Well, if you need a workout bud,” he said, clapping me on a bony shoulder. “Feel free.”

I did not think he was hitting on me, in any capacity. For my part, I was just thankful that somehow I’d managed to snag this kind of tentative friend--an invitation for more social interaction, at the very least, with someone so attractive.

Personal victory. My friends at Harrington had been Southern Gothic grotesques compared to Erik Fontenot.

Our army of hopeful future drunks made it to the edge of campus, Broadway Street, which was just a row of houses in various states of decay. Under the ones with Greek letters prominently displayed out in front were kegs on the porches and fraternity brothers hollering at groups as they walked by, trying to lure people to the parties. I felt like they could’ve been selling turquoise jewelry on a Mexican beach, the way they were pushing free beer.

“Our class is tiny because of Katrina,” Erik told me. “One of the guys on polo said that everyone’s flipping out that no fraternity’s going to make their numbers, so they’re all pouring their Katrina insurance money into parties.”

Most of the houses looked like they were about to fall down; the people around them were doing only marginally better. “What could go wrong,” I said.

Erik smiled. “I’d have sprung for the new roof, myself,” he told me. “And this is the part of the city Katrina didn’t touch.”

The first house was ZKT, on the corner of Broadway and Burthe Street.

"Zeta Kappa Tau," Charlie announced, as our self-appointed fraternity tour guide.

"I hear Zeta's the bad one," Erik told me. "All douchebags. Not really my style.”

Three brothers on the porch, in candy-colored polos with the collars popped, their bulging arms menacingly crossed, wordlessly confirmed his suspicions.

We walked into the house anyway, which was almost pitch black and overloaded with people, smashing shoulders together whenever they tried to move. And, in almost an instant, we’d unwillingly become part this amorphous blob, gyrating to rap music, framed by the laser lights streaking across the walls and ceiling.

It was unexpected. It was kind of exciting, or it would’ve been, if I hadn’t felt so very much out of my element.

And then I couldn’t see anyone that I’d come with--and I panicked. I kept my face together, tried to look around at all of the fellow students with as much nonchalance as I could, but all I kept thinking was I’d lost everyone. They’d move on. I’d have to go home, alone, and then I’d be that kid. That kid that went alone home on his first night of college, the Untouchable that no one would ever be allowed to associate with again.

Then, a hand grabbing my collar.

“Come on,” Erik screamed, over the pulsating music, yanking me through the crowd by my neck.

And there was Tripp, at least, near the makeshift bar, which was just a white folding table flanked by two garbage cans full of murky liquid, one marked "Guy Vat" and one marked "Girl Vat."

"Okay," said Tripp, stepping back to survey. “Pros and cons are of each. Go."

"Guy vat tastes like shit," Erik suggested, "and the girl vat is roofied."

Tripp nodded in agreement. "Doesn't leave too many options, does it."

"Shitty alcohol is a lot better than waking up tomorrow morning in a fraternity house basement with a sore ass," Erik replied, but we didn’t get a choice--we were quickly handed three Solo cups of one of the vats by the surly fraternity brother standing behind the bar.

“They’re probably not roofied,” Erik grinned.

I touched the cup to my lips, trickled the tiniest bit back into my mouth. It tasted like Satan. Like nail polish remover or cleaning chemicals, and I thought I was going to throw it back up. I should’ve thrown it back up, but I ignored my instincts because I knew if I was the guy who, on his first day of freshman year, threw up his first sip of alcohol, I’d never live it down for four years.

So I forced it down. And it felt like fire racing down my esophagus. I took a few deep, hot breaths, quietly to myself, and the moment passed.

A new song started, louder than the last one.

"Where are you from, Erik?" shouted Tripp.

Erik didn’t hear him, or didn’t think it was possible to strike up a conversation by shouting back responses. Instead, he just grabbed my collar again, pointed towards the door to the backyard, and the three of us go outside.

The back deck was narrow and just as packed as the inside, but the fresh air and the relative quiet made me feel suddenly much more comfortable than I did inside the zoo.

“This is so much better,” Erik said. I wouldn’t have admitted to that, but he was beautiful; he could say whatever he wanted, and people would still like them. “I fucking hate crowds.”

He knocked back a big sip and then his eyes suddenly turned fearful, as if he hadn’t realized the disgustingness of whatever sludge he’d just dumped down his throat. Like I did, he choked it down, tried to look nonchalant about the taste, and then wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist.

“I mean, I'm not anti-social or anything,” he continued. I was impressed by how easily he was able to hop back on the conversation, as if nothing had happened. He gave another pained pause, to swallow a burp. “Just, like, I need to be drunk when there’s this many people." He raised his cup to his lips again, and titled it to his lips, but very clearly didn’t drink anything.

"Plenty of time for that," Tripp replied. He clinked the bottom of his cup against Erik's. "You always cheers other men with the bottom of the cup."

"Miss Manners over here," I said. "I don't think etiquette applies to Solo cups, Tripp."

Tripp ignored me, took a sip. "God, this tastes like shit."

“I don’t think it’s that bad,” Erik replied, taking another non-sip.

“Me neither,” I told him, doing the same.

We both were eying each other suspiciously, clearly wondering if our fake sips were as obvious as the other person’s, but we certainly weren’t willing to call each other out on our poor acting fifteen minutes into this new collegiate friendship.

"Price is right,” Tripp added.

“Yeah,” I said. Somehow unearthing bravado from some hitherto-unknown tomb inside me, I heard myself add: “Don’t be little bitches, you guys. We’re in college.”

For good measure, I tossed a mouthful back, then bite my lip to keep it from coming back up.

It didn't taste as horrendous as the first sip. I was at least expecting it this time. I wasn’t any experienced drinker, obviously, but I figured that after a few sips, it would settle a little better.

Erik nodded with approval, and I suddenly felt awesome, because no one this beautiful had ever given me that much enviable respect before.

Justin poked his head out the door. "Hey, we're going to Iota Chi," he says. "If y'all want to come."

"Yeah!" Tripp said, far too enthusiastically, and threw his nearly-full vat into the bushes. "Yeah, let's go right now."

“Well, you’re not a bitch,” Erik told me, grinning. “So you won’t throw your shit away like Tripp over here.”

“Hell no,” I told him. I was going to rise to the occasion. I didn’t care. “Bottoms up, Erik.”

He clinked my cup, we both chugged the sludge as much as we could.

By the time I got to the bottom of the cup, I felt warm saliva congregating in my throat, the prelude to vomit, but I just kept swallowing my spit, silently inhaling the sticky Louisiana air, until the moment passed.

"You okay?" Justin asked. "You guys chugged that like champs."

“We're pretty big deals,” Erik replied, his voice meek, his face suddenly pale, as he threw his arm around my shoulder in triumph. “Shall we?”

Iota Chi was a block down, Broadway between Freret and Burthe Streets--a narrow, macabre white house with a black front door and a big porch, and a porch swing that was broken and hanging crookedly from only one rusty chain, its other side dragging on the wood planks. Half of its shutters were missing.

In front of the house was a massive live oak, hanging over the street, which Charlie informed us was called “Old Elmer” and was something of a mascot for the house--one of the largest trees in Uptown New Orleans.

"Baby Baker!" exclaimed one of the brothers on the porch, snapping Charlie up in a drunk, uncomfortable-looking hug. "In the flesh!"

Charlie was less than amused, as he looked back at us, his face reddening with embarrassment. This was obviously not the uber-connecting homecoming display he’d anticipated showing off in front of his new floormates. “Hey, Morton," Charlie said, as he wriggled free. “Do you know where Chris is?"

"Baker, Baker," said the brother, slowly, looking back through the front door. He paused. “I think he's working the front bar this shift.” He leaned over, around Charlie, and called out to us: “All of you are freshmen?”

We all nodded. "Perfect,” he said, shaking our hands enthusiastically. “I'm Brett Morton. Where are you guys from?”

We told him.

“I’m from Pittsburgh,” he said. “Terrible place. Where have you guys been so far tonight?"

“Zeta,” replied Erik. “It sucked.”

"If you drank the girl vat," Brett told us, this goofy grin creeping up onto his face, "you have to leave."

"Because we've been roofied?" Tripp asked, his voice suddenly fraught with worry.

"No," Brett replied. "Because you're a pussy." He paused, then thoughtfully added, "Well, and yeah, because you've probably been roofied." He motioned towards the door. “Vat's in the back bar, beer's in front bar."

"What's in the vat?" Tripp asks.

"Proprietary recipe," Brett replied. He leaned in, looked suspiciously from side to side, and, in a low voice, told us: "Kool-Aid, vodka, and about fifty pounds of sugar."

“Top secret,” Erik echoed. “Didn’t realize we had fucking Julia Child cooking our vat for us.”

My goal, around upperclassmen in fraternities, was to stay as invisible as possible, and I certainly wasn’t going to start launching into sarcastic remarks, but somehow it worked for Erik, because Brett Morton gave him a thumbs up and a big smile.

“You’re in the presence of greatness,” he grinned, as he held back the front door for us.

We went inside. The house was pretty crowded, but nowhere near as crowded as Zeta. The lights were on, which was a big plus, and “Dani California” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers was playing casually at an acceptable volume. Iota Chi was clearly much more laid back--no gyrating, no lasers, no dance club feel. The room was really just like a big living room, with lots of beat up couches, well-lit and inviting. Everyone enjoying solo cups filled with blood red alcohol

The front bar was right next to the front door, in front of the stairs. Bar being a generous term--just like Zeta, it was a folding table with a keg and a garbage can of booze on either side. Behind the table was a pretty brunette girl with wild curly hair, and a brother in an Iota Chi hat. The brother was frantically pumping the keg, which was hissing out burps of foam. I immediately figured he was Charlie’s older brother, because they looked so much alike. The older brother was a little shorter, lessl lanky, less handsome, but had those same brooding, shadowed eyes that threatened to cry in any second, even though he was smiling.

"Beer?" he asked. “Or vat?” His voice was chipper--not especially high-pitched, but higher-pitched than Charlie’s; I was expecting another Morgan Freeman to float leisurely out of his mouth.

The girl handed us each an already-filled solo cup of beer, without waiting, and then looked back to Charlie’s brother with a drunken smile. “I’m helping.”

“Let me fucking take an order, Jesus,” he muttered, as he began filling up more solo cups to replace the ones we’d taken.

“Fine, then I don’t have to help,” she slurred, waving her solo cup in a zig-zagging approximation of a Z-snap. “Beer is for boys. Vat is for Veronica.”

Charlie’s brother looked at us, rolled his eyes, as the keg kept sputtering. “Hey, Veronica, can you see where Winslow is with that second keg?”

The brunette nodded, gave us a friendly wave with her solo cup, and weaved her way back through the crowd towards the back of the house. She, instead, was intercepted by a pair of girls and a very attractive guy about fifteen feet from us and, after some quick hugs, started chatting animatedly.

“Veronica!” he barked. “Useless!”

She turned around, gave him an awkward, guilty smile, and then disappeared into the back kitchen.

“Girlfriend?” Erik asked.

The brother looked a little embarrassed, caught a little off-guard. “Ah, no. She just hangs out here a lot.” He paused, clearly looking for a segue. He couldn’t find one, so he just launched right into: “Um, are you guys freshman?" After we nodded, he said, "Cool. I'm Chris Baker."

"Charlie's brother,” I noted. "I’m Adam Becker. We live on Charlie's floor."

"Oh," he replied, flatly. There was another awkward pause, as neither of us quite knew where to take this conversation. “So, are you guys liking school so far?"

"It’s awesome,” said Erik, thankfully, so I didn’t have to.

"You're on polo, aren't you?" Chris asked. "I thought I saw you at practice."

"Yeah," Erik said. "I’m Erik Fontenot."

"Chris Baker," he replied. They shook hands, and started talking about what positions the other one played, and which coach was an asshole and which wasn’t, which was around the time Tripp and I made eye contact, and casually drifted over to the beer pong table.

Hovering around the table was Charlie and three guys wearing Iota Chi jerseys.

“You two got next?” Charlie asked, as he tossed a ball across the table. It hit the rim on one of the cups, bounced off and onto the floor. He and his partner were one cup away from losing--down by four.

“Yeah,” Tripp said. He looked at me. “I mean, do you want to? We don’t have to.”

One of the brothers across the table--who was, legitimately, the most stunning man I’d ever seen in real life--made the final cup. “Suck it, Baby Baker!” he grinned.

“I only played the last three turns,” Charlie protested. “Blame Winslow.”

The handsome guy shook his head, started re-racking his cups. “Next victims!”

“That’s us,” I said, elbowing Tripp.

Charlie and his friend dumped the remaining beers in their cups, shuffled to the side of the table.

“More freshman,” said the hot guy.

We exchanged names. He was Matt Rowen; the guy next to him was Tommy Pereira, but we were told us just to call him The Mexican, over Tommy’s exasperated protests that he was Brazilian-American from Grand Rapids.

Tommy was nice-looking, but Matt. Somehow fallen off the side of an Abercrombie bag, muscular and blonde, backwards baseball hat at a rakish angle. He had that swagger, that confidence, that comes with knowing you could cause the majority of panties to drop.

We threw first. I made a cup, and I was incredibly thankful that I’d at least put forth some halfway-decent showing. First impressions and all. I didn’t want to be that freshman who missed the table.

Tripp’s bounced off the lip of the back row; he looked nervously back to me.

Matt flashed a nuclear grin. “Respectable.”

He didn’t use that word again, because we did not make another cup for the rest of the game. But no one was waiting, so we choked down the surviving cups, played two more games, and lost those too by less wide, but still embarrassing, margins.

Tripp’s face was getting flushed, his grin getting progressively lopsided, his shots more jerky and less accurate, but we were both getting more comfortable and more relaxed, as the room slipped into a progressing haze. I was having a nice time. I felt like I could sit out for a bit, and Tripp looked like he could too, but neither of us were going to be the ones to opt out of a game against these two Iota Chi guys.

After the third game, Brett Morton, newly off door duty, came by with that drunk girl, Veronica, and they both loudly announced they wanted to play, so Tripp and I went to find everyone else.

Erik, Justin, and Charlie were on the back porch chatting with a circle of Iota Chi brothers.

“Hey,” Erik said to us--mid-sip; he fumbled with his beer a bit. “Have you met these guys yet?”

I only recognized Chris Baker, not the other two. One was a redhead, about six-feet tall, decent looking, named Rob Winslow, who was the social chair, and the other introduced himself as Ryan Wyatt, who was sold clumsily as the one openly gay brother.

“Diversity hire,” Ryan Wyatt replied, huffily, the kind of tired, droll delivery, as if he’d been framed this way to a ton of other freshman throughout the night. “Have you met Todd Perkins? He’s half-black. We’re very progressive here at Iota Chi.”

“Adam’s a Republican,” Erik told him.

“I could be pro-life,” Ryan said, with a smirk. “How am I going to adopt a grade-A kid unless those blonde valedictorian cheerleaders keep getting in trouble?”

“And this would be the point where the social chair steers the conversation away from abortion,” Rob Winslow interjected, tentative grin on his face. “And casual racism. Anyone need more beer?”

I didn’t want to say this, but I figured almost immediately that Ryan Wyatt was almost certainly not straight--the way he carried himself, somehow. My intrinsic gaydar. Not that he was effeminate or anything, but the way he stood, the way he studied us--I would’ve guess it.

Even drunk, I felt very uncomfortable that he could tell the same intangible things about me, but he wasn’t paying very much attention to the conversation, having been intercepted by a group of girls passing by, which was at the very least a welcome thing.

“I heard you guys suck at beer pong,” Chris grinned, clapping me on the shoulder, as if I’d known him for longer than an hour.

“Hey, now,” Tripp interjected, his voice measured and deliberate but slurring anyway. “We’re beginners. Practice makes perfect.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Chris. “Excuses. How are you guys liking it here?”

“Here, like school?” I asked.

“Yeah, school,” he said. He paused, looked uncomfortably over to Rob Winslow and Ryan Wyatt, who had both swept up in the other conversation, and then back to us, with the nervous realization that he had to make conversation with an entire group of freshmen without back up. “And, like, at the house. The party.”

“Awesome house, man,” said Tripp. “So much better than Zeta.”

"Not to set the bar low,” Chris Baker replied. “But it’s pretty good, yeah.” He cleared his throat, looked back at the other brothers, who were now several yards away, staring at him with malicious grins frozen on their faces, as he was clearly botching what I assumed was some sort of get-to-know-freshman conversation. “Well, we don't rush until next semester, but we'll have plenty of parties for the next few months.”

“You’ll see me!” Tripp announced, tottering a bit. “Shit. This room’s gone all--” He paused, considered his word choice. “Funny.”

“We’re going to have to take him home at some point,” I said.

“He’s fine,” Rob Winslow interrupted, coming back into the fold. “Please. Unless you have to get him an EMS call, he has to learn to rally.”

“You can’t say that shit when you’re president next semester,” Ryan grinned, nudging Rob Winslow.

“If,” Rob hissed back. He looked at us. “Naw, you guys will be fine. The DMV looked like they were about to puke on everyone’s shoes, but you guys are all okay.”

Chris Baker bristled at something, and crossed his arms. “Is it a little chilly, or is it just me?” He smiled. “You don’t expect to say that in August in New Orleans, do you.”

“Not so much,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“Cool,” he said. “You guys smoke at all?”

“Cigarettes?”

Chris grinned. “No, not cigarettes.”

“Oh,” I said. I looked nervously to Tripp, hoping he would toss me some help, but he didn’t. His eyes were pretty glossy; he looked like he was taking most of his energy just to stand upright and look nonchalant. “I don’t know.”

He bit his lip, looked at me for a few seconds too long without saying anything. “Well, want to?”

I didn’t know if I did or not, but I knew I wouldn’t turn down an invitation on the first night, so I just nodded meekly.

Chris smacked Erik, who was also looking a little ragged, on the back of his head. “Yo, Fontenot, we’re going upstairs.”

We went upstairs to one of the bedrooms, Matt’s room, which was painted jungle green and stuffed with old, mismatched furniture that had barely any life left to wring out of it. We sat on a scratchy green couch, next to a big sound system on the desk, blasting out Tupac from a MacBook.

I recognized Morton, Tommy, and Matt, and there were two other freshmen guys who introduced themselves as Ben and Will. They lived in the other big freshman dorm, Monroe Hall, and were sitting on the edge of the bed looking as pleased to have been invited upstairs as we did. Ben had this drunk dishwater blonde almost passed out on his lap, her arm slung around his neck, a deadened drunk look in her eyes.

“Nice, bro,” Morton said, motioning to the blonde.

The door swung open behind us, and in walked one of the biggest people I’d ever seen in my life, wrapped in a supersized Iota Chi jersey. He was Hagrid, distinctive and enormous. Maybe about six-five, maybe taller, and broad-shouldered and overweight. He had a mess of dark hair, and a scraggly beard.

“Has everyone met Pagliacci?” Matt asked, as he began to pack the bowl. “He’s an RA in Sharp, actually. You might’ve seen him around.”

Pagliacci grinned at us from behind his beard. It was arresting, how much the smile changed his face--lit up his eyes, his red cheeks, and he looked less intimidating, less like a giant and more like a teddy bear. He moved as delicately as he could around the throngs of people in the tiny room, and dropped his grandeur on the sofa next to Erik. Erik squished his way over to my side of the couch.

“RA on the second floor of Sharp.””

“We’re on three,” Erik said.

“Neighbors,” he said, putting out his hand for each of us to shake. “Paul Pryce. Pagliacci’s just my Iota Chi nickname.” He glanced back over at Matt, rolled his eyes. “You don’t have to call me that.”

“I forget you have a name,” Matt replied. By this point, he had finished packing the bowl, was holding it up next to him like a television salesman. “Have any of you guys smoked before?” he asked. None of the freshmen said anything. He grinned. “Come on. I don’t bite.”

He didn’t say anything more. He got the bowl started, then handed it off to Paul Pryce.

“It’s like this,” Paul Pryce said, as he helpfully demonstrated with theatrical fingers. “You cover the hole, and light it, and then you just suck in. Stupid easy, but I can light it for you if you want.”

“Why don’t you just blow smoke directly into their mouth?” Morton offered.

Pagliacci, mid-smoke, flipped him off, then exhaled a long, luxurious plume of gray smoke, before handing it off to me.

I lit it. The kernels of brown weed shocked orange, just for a second, and then I felt a sharp burn on the side of my thumb. I pulled it away from the pipe, inspected it--it was already the beginning of a purple welt.

“Here,” Matt said, reaching over to me with a beautiful arm. “Give me the lighter.”

I handed it to him.

“Okay, just put your thumb on the hole,” he said, leaning over further, his face just a few inches from mine. “Okay? Start inhaling when I light it.”

He kicked the lighter, a flickering orange flame out the top, and then he turned it over.

“Inhale,” he told me, and so I did. I could feel the smoke tugging through the pipe, through my lungs, but I still couldn’t get very much smoke. But I coughed anyway, like I was caught in a burning building, and then I quickly handed it off to Ben.

“Thanks,” I told Matt.

“You got it,” he said, falling back into his chair. “Takes some help the first time.”

By the time the bowl was going around for the third time, I felt a little lightheaded. And Tripp was somehow worse: eyes narrow, staring straight ahead, swatting away the pipe whenever it was offered to him. And then he abruptly stood up, cupped his hand over his mouth, and ran into the bathroom. Before the door slammed shut behind him, we could already hear the sound of him vomiting into the toilet.

And with that, Pagliacci--Paul Pryce--started giggling, an unexpectedly high-pitched laugh, smoke coming out of his mouth and nostrils like a giddy dragon. He threw both hands up in the air, victorious. “First freshman to puke! Who had General Lee over there?”

“Watch the pipe,” Brett hissed, attempting, half-heartedly, to snatch it from Paul’s outstretched hand.

Chris looked at me, gave me this sympathetic grin. “Now might be that time to take him back.”

"I'm on it," I said. I looked at Erik and Justin. "You guys can stay."

They both looked at each other, uncomfortably, and then there was that awkward moment where I realized they had no intention of taking Tripp back with me. But I guess I was the roommate--Tripp’s staying alive was on me, not them. I was done drinking anyway, though. Done smoking. I wasn’t as far gone as Tripp but I would be if I stayed any longer.

"Okay, thanks," Erik said sheepishly, without even attempted sincerity.

I went into the bathroom. Tripp was lying on the floor, a fetal ball in the middle of the dirty tile. I grabbed his shirt collar, he gave a weak moaning protest as I pulled him upright.

"Fine," he exhaled, finally, and we left Iota Chi.

We got up to our room and I sat on my bed, as Tripp tried to untangle himself from his shirt.

ManFind was minimized on my desktop, and I opened it up and I saw Patrick’s torso again, with the online dot in green.

Oh, what the hell. I was drunk enough where it seemed like a good idea.

I texted him: “Hey, it’s Peter from online. Just got home.”

Almost instantly, he sent back, “Cool. Want to hang out tonight? My roommate just texted and is going home with some chick.”

“Right now?”

“Yep.”

I looked at my watch. "Sure."

It took me about ten minutes to coax Tripp into bed. He insisted on brushing his teeth. I talked him out of flossing.

Then, looking at our door, which was still propped open, he hissed about how he was suddenly deeply offended by the name signs on our door. And he pried one of his new Sharpies out of the cardboard wrapping, scribbled out “Peter C.” and “Cuthbert C.” and replaced them with a shaky “Tripp C.” and “Adam C.,” respectively, over the wrong hometowns.

“Isn’t that much better?” he said, and then he landed, face down, on his bed.

I figured his nighttime ritual was done, so I quietly backed away from his bed, turned off the light, and disappeared out the door.

Patrick ManFind was in the dorm next to mine, Monroe Hall, another towering 1960s behemoth like ours. I texted him and he met me downstairs in the lobby to check me in.

Our first look at each other was slightly confused, slightly guilty, wildly excited. He was wearing a t-shirt--”Forest Glen High School Lacrosse”--that clung to his body rather flatteringly, outlining the lithe torso I had spoken to earlier. He was about my height and he was pleasantly cute--short hair, powder blue eyes, pale skin dusted with light freckles.

“Peter,” he said, more a statement than a question. I nodded slowly.

It was strange hearing him call me Peter, even though that’s the name I gave him. My family called me Peter. I’d attempted the switch to Adam freshman year in high school, but it was hard to make stick when I’d known half the class since kindergarten. And they all knew my brother and sister. I was determined to make the switch at Tulane. Blank slate. All that.

He swiped his ID in the check-in machine, pressed a button that someone had written “Booty Call” in Sharpie, over what appeared to initially have said “Guest,” and I swiped mine after.

The RA behind the desk, a small Asian girl, could not be more disinterested in us--she was watching “Grey’s Anatomy” on her laptop, headphones in, only looked up to boredly make sure we were pressing the right buttons and swiping actual Tulane student IDs.

That was fine. I didn’t want her to give us some cheeky grin, as if to say, “I know what you two fags are up to.” I probably would’ve chickened out on this, then and there.

We went to the elevator. He pressed eight. Even drunk, even a little high, I felt my heart clattering in my chest. In ten minutes, I’d have passaged a rite. I’d be different. Well no, I wouldn’t really be different, but I’d feel different. I’d feel adult, feel so Adam Becker.

Though, at that particular moment, I didn’t feel any of that. My stomach was riotous, only partially from the drinking. There was a twenty percent chance of me chucking all over the vinyl floor of the elevator. The elevator, whose walls were slowly closing in for a gruesome bear hug--I hadn’t been claustrophobic before, but I hadn’t been in this situation before, so.

Patrick leaned in, touched my elbow, sniffed my collar. He was too close. I did not like that. But I did. I wanted to kiss him, have my first kiss with a man, but no, I wanted him to stay on his side of the elevator, in case the doors opened, in case someone came in, in case of in case of.

“Yep, that’s pot,” he said. “How was it?”

“Fine,” I said. My lungs were closing, I could’ve sworn. I couldn’t breathe. I choked on air, but Patrick didn’t seem to notice. I had to play it cool. I knew I had to play it cool, so I just leaned back against the elevator wall, so I didn’t have to support my body. “I really feel more drunk than I feel high.”

“I’m drunk too,” he said. “Not high though.”

He shuffled a bit, like he didn’t know what to do with his body, and then finally just leaned against the opposite wall of the elevator, like I was doing.

And we were silent for probably not as long as I thought, but I was feeling every nanosecond scrape by, like a screeching knife on dishes, and damn it. He was staring at me, staring, like it was my turn to talk.

“Where’d you go?” I asked, finally.

Small talk. Was small talk appropriate, in this situation? I hadn’t anticipated needing to make any conversation--I’d only prepared myself for the kissing, the denudate, the etcetera, etcetera.

“Oh, all over,” he replied. His voice rang tenacious, casual, like he knew what he was doing, but he didn’t know what he was doing, did he? I felt suddenly amateur. “Zeta, DA, Iota Chi, Psi Kappa.”

“I was at Zeta and Iota Chi,” I told him. My voice was holding out, projecting some semblance of poise. Thankfully. “Stayed at Iota Chi most of the night.”

“Half our floor stayed for a while at Iota Chi,” he said, still watching the elevator tick off another floor. Six. “It was fine. The rest of us left after, like, a half hour. We wanted to hop around a bit.” He looked up, to see what floor we were on. The elevator was moving in geologic time. “Good drinks,” he added, and then there was more searing silence. “ Think you’re going to rush anywhere?”

“No,” I said. “Probably not.”

“Me neither,” he said.

We stood silently until the elevator doors opened on the eighth floor three hours later, and I followed him out. The hallway was dimly lit, and it was eerie how still the floor was, everyone still drinking or long passed out. The hallway seemed to go on forever. It smelled like sawdust. I didn’t know why. The walls were almond tile, the floor dark gray carpet that squished under my Sperrys as we walked. He put his hand on the small of my back, then withdrew it a split second later. I wasn’t ready for that either. There was a big window out behind a study lounge--you could see the neon of the New Orleans skyline in the distance, some five miles away. I wasn’t used to a skyline. D.C. didn’t have a skyline, unless you counted Rosslyn, but who counted Rosslyn.

“This is me,” Patrick whispered, as we came to a door almost to the end of the hallway. Their name posters--Patrick S. and Benjamin R.--were on red construction paper, outlined with silver glitter. Their R.A. had put more effort in, even if it came off looking like a second grade classroom.

He unlocked his room, pushed the door open. The room of Patrick S. and Benjamin R. was a cell, almost completely bare, like our room was that morning. Patrick had exactly two personal possessions: a New England Patriots calendar hanging over his desk, and in a frame on the desk, a picture of him skydiving. He had a huge grin, was making a thumbs up, and had an instructor tethered to his back, all as they plummeted towards the earth. I didn’t like falling. I didn’t even like Tower of Terror at Disney World; I couldn’t imagine out of an aircraft, thousands of feet, racing down to doom.

“Still coming together,” he said, defensively. “First day and all. We spent most of the day drinking, honestly, once our parents left.”

I looked at the calendar. Tom Brady was mid-toss. There was something reassuring about the presence of football on his wall.

“Do you like football?” I asked, anyway. “Or just like looking at Tom Brady?” I ran my finger along the bottom of the calendar, felt the sharp edge dig into my finger. For today, he’d marked TULANE MOVE-IN! in all caps, circled it and underlined it, but his August was otherwise empty. I wondered if it was a new calendar, or if he was that unpopular. He was too cute to be that unpopular.

“Football,” he said, sitting on the bed. He let out a nervous puff of air and then curled his lips into a smirk, like he was going to say more, but he didn’t.

I leaned backwards against the desk, facing him. “Are you from Boston?”

He looked adorable perched on the bed. He was sitting feet on the floor, legs spread, elbows pushing out on the knees--not sensual, like he wasn’t in any rush for me to come bedside either. The room was bright from the fluorescents, which also wasn’t sensual, and I thought about whether we’d have to turn those off beforehand, because wouldn’t we be too busy in the moment?

“Providence,” he said, looking up at the fluorescents too. “Suburbs.”

“Cool,” I said. “Tiny state.” All I could contribute to a conversation about Rhode Island. The fluorescents were buzzing. Were they supposed to buzz? I’d never been in a room this small with fluorescents.

“Where are you from?”

“D.C.,” I said, trying to keep my eyes on Patrick, not those hissing lightbulbs on the popcorn ceiling. “Well, a suburb of D.C. Maryland--I mean, Virginia.”

He smirked. He had a knowing smile, like he was reading each one of my orphaned thoughts and found them all too amusing. “Which is it?”

I thought for a moment. He knew too much about me already. If he looked in the freshman directory under Maryland, he’d see Becker, Peter A. of Hamlet. So I doubled-down on whatever anemic lie I’d started. “Well, we moved, when I was little. So, Virginia. Reston.” It seemed so incomplete, like he could see through my pretense, so I added on the only thing I knew about Reston: “Like the Ebola strain.”

He frowned. He didn’t seem to know how to handle that gratuitous piece of trivia. I couldn’t comprehend what part of me thought bringing up Ebola was any type of acceptable bedroom talk.

I wished I had Ebola.

“Cool,” he said, chipperly, seemingly willing to overlook Ebola. Thankfully drawing us away from infectious disease altogether, he added: “Redskins fan?”

“When they’re good.”

“So, no,” he said, with another smirk.

This conversation was circling the drain. And then it stopped, and it grew uncomfortably silent. He sat on the bed, his freckled face glossy from the booze and the fluorescents, and he managed, finally, “Want to sit down, Peter?”

I wanted to sprint for the door and throw myself under my new Target comforter and pretend this never happened. I was awfully drunk. I could forget it. But he was there, still smiling, looking all adorable and available, and I felt myself betraying my enthusiasm, and I hoped he didn’t see anything but there was no way to discreetly adjust myself.

But I knew I didn’t like him calling me Peter--I didn’t like the presence of Peter Becker--so I said, as I sat down on the bed, “Call me Adam. It’s my middle name. What people call me, you know?”

“Okay,” he said. He studied me for a second. “Have you ever done this before?”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to necessarily betray my virginhood, even if this guy didn’t seem to be the most experienced guy either.

“Well, you know,” I said, noncommittally, and hoped that kind of answer wouldn’t invite a follow-up question. It didn’t. “Have you?”

He shook his head. “Never done anything with a guy. I’m just, like.” He paused, tried to sort out the words. “You know, it’s like college, right? You’re supposed to try out new stuff?” He paused again, the wheels in his mind still churning as he tried again to explain himself: “I don’t know. It’s always something I thought I’d try once. I don’t even know if I’m, like, going to be into it.” And then his face fell into this nervous, tilted smile that looked simultaneously adorable and uncomfortable.

The alcohol and pot inside me seemed to give me a little more courage than I would’ve normally had in this situation, because I just told him, “One way to find out.”

That seemed to give him the push he needed; he slid his hand up to my knee, very tentatively, and both of us kept looking at it, because it didn’t belong there and we both knew it, but finally, he just leaned in and brushed his lips against mine, just for a second, if that could even be called a kiss. I’d made out once before, with Sarah Bernard, after prom. I officially had a crush on her when I knew she didn’t have a crush on me--we went to prom as friends but when her emotions shifted sometime between dinner and the limo dropping us off, I snagged my first kiss and then spent the next week avoiding her and brainstorming how to use college as an escape hatch without scuttling our friendship.

He seemed satisfied by that kiss, because he leaned in for another one, this one longer, grabbing the back of my head for extra leverage. His lips were a little chapped, didn’t taste like strawberries.

Then he loosened his grip, and our mouths fell apart. “Are you a little nervous?” he whispered.

Was I nervous. I still had a Vesuvius of vomit in my stomach, still had that aching anxiety in my chest, but I was more horny than nervous, so I just leaned in for another kiss, this time making sure I was the one to grab the back of his head and guide those chapped lips towards mine.

His hand moved to my back, grabbing me just under the shoulder blades. We were both clinging to each other tightly, like a life raft in unchartered waters, and I could feel the tensile strength of my fly being tested.

He kicked a leg over my legs, straddled me, sitting on my lap, and mashed his lips against my neck, hungry to take this as far as I’d let him. I let out a soft, appreciative moan, and I could see the door over his shoulder. And I suddenly had this suspicion that the door would open suddenly, some guy would be standing there, the look of shock and disgust on his face as he realized what was going on the first night of college with his assumedly straight roommate and some stranger.

Patrick threaded one of his hands down the neck of my polo, and grabbed a fistful of skin underneath my shoulder blades, tugged at me. He had big hands. They were solid. Sarah Bernard’s hands were limp, brushing lightly on my arm or resting on my shoulders--an afterthought. Patrick’s hands were aggressive, a little rough, as they slid down my sweaty back, tearing at skin as they went.

“Hey,” I whispered, as he gnawed on my earlobe, “do you mind if we turn off the lights?”

He stopped the assault. His hand uncoiled from my back. The fluorescents were screaming now--I couldn’t figure out how he wasn’t as bothered by them as I was. He didn’t even seem to notice them at all. “Yeah, it’s a little bright in here. I got it.”

Patrick slid off my lap, stumbled across the room and doused us in darkness, almost pitch black except for the distant glow of the New Orleans skyline through the window. The fluorescents went quiet. There was safety in the dark. Patrick remounted my lap, but now he was only a shape. He had a hand on my shoulder, he pushed me back against the bed until he was on top of me, kissing my lips. We were two shapes, tangled on the twin extra-long. Two shapes that could be anything.

He lifted himself up, grabbed his shirt from the bottom, and pulled it over his head. He got stuck--he was, in the dim light, an inverted umbrella. From underneath, I heard a short giggle. “Sorry,” he said, as he freed himself from the shirt. “I got this.”

The shirt flew across the room, wound up on his roommate’s bed. I wondered what his roommate would think if, night one, he found his roommate’s shirt.

No, but Patrick looked good. His body was lithe and glowing, a little sweaty, in the light off the skyline. It looked smooth and sculpted, almost marble, a work of art. The picture on ManFind didn’t do it justice--its contours, its ripples. I propped myself up on an elbow, put my hand on his chest and it felt firm and leathery, hot and smooth. He let out an involuntary sigh; I echoed one.

Patrick guided me back horizontal by my shoulder, kissed me again, then down my neck. He began unbuttoning the top button. He replaced each undone button with a soft kiss. I could see where he was heading. By the time he reached the bottom, he was kneeling on the floor between my welcoming legs, one hand on my knee and the other pawing at the elastic of my exposed waistband.

His hand migrated to the button on my jeans, down to the fly. He was touching it. I was straining the fabric. He could tell I was straining the fabric; he had this excited grin stretching his face. He ran his fingers back and forth through the denim and I felt myself gaining, forming a battering ram. I liked this. I actually liked this. I felt the room fizzling away, as I settled my head on his comforter, prepared myself for the likely next step.

Except he suddenly lurched away from me, his head snapping upwards towards the door, and he froze like that for a second, staring at the motionless door.

“Did you hear that?” he finally whispered.

I propped myself up on my elbow, suddenly aware of how incriminating our position was--his shirt off, flung across the roommate’s bed; mine unbuttoned, my jeans misshapened.

And I hadn’t heard anything. I hadn’t heard anything, but I was growing to comfortable.

We watched the door for another few seconds, like it might explode, but nothing happened. There were some gaining footsteps, maybe, but they disappeared further down the hall.

And then he looked back at me, offered me a sheepish smile. “I guess I imagined it.”

“I guess.”

We were motionless in the dark for a few more seconds, and I wondered where his roommate was. Whatever we were doing--we couldn’t call it sex, could we, with both of our pants still on?--seemed to be taking a long time. His roommate could swing the door open any minute.

Patrick didn’t seem concerned. He climbed back on top of me, kissed me. I felt his hand sneaking down my side, tugging at my jeans until they were down, mid-thigh. My underwear came down after.

Oh, and it felt better than the door, the two of us rubbing. I moved my hands south, he threw his head back, silent permission to continue. I fumbled with his buttons. His jeans were welded on, but I finally got it, and then I looked at him.

He bit his lip. “What?”

“Nothing,” I told him, but I didn’t move. He kept looking at me, until his mouth crept into a tutorial smile.

"You can unzip it," he whispered. He leaned back down, kissed me on the jawline. "You look like you're waiting for permission."

It wasn’t that I was waiting for permission. I was beyond seeking permission, at this point of the program, but. It was so exposed, so tawdry. A naked dick, staring back at my own, begging to be acted upon. And I did want to, of course, explore that trove underneath the denim, but what on earth was I supposed to do with that sort of thing, with someone else’s sort of thing.

I tentatively pulled down the zipper, but waiting didn’t seem to be Patrick ManFind’s favorite, because, as I made my first overture into the realm, he yanked down his jeans and boxers past his hips, in one motion.

And then there we were, pants around our knees, kissing, both of us naked, shapes, a tangle of organs, level: expert.

"Want to suck me off?" he whispered.

In theory. Not in practice. I’d probably be a mess of teeth. Dentata. He’d probably cringe and be disappointed. I glanced down at him, our two shapes in combat, and I flirted with the idea that I’d just take the whole thing in my mouth to avoid teeth, but I’d choke myself or, worse, open the floodgates for the booze sloshing around my uneasy stomach. Being the guy who puked the first time he sucked a dick was harrowing. There would be no recovering from that, ever--I’d be an old man with performance anxiety, ithyphallophobia, a death sentence.

He took my silence as the demure rejection it was.

“Or I could,” he said. He scrunched up his face, a little uncomfortably. “I don’t know. Do you want me to?”

I didn’t say anything, but I guess he wanted to; he looked down at my naked body, then leaned in, kissed down my chest and stomach, where the buttons had been, marked trail, and then down below. I felt a tongue. It was wet and uncomfortable, and I felt like I needed to squirm but I begged my body not to, so I stayed rigidly stationary, like I was in a dental chair.

And then more tongue. It was more delicate than fingers, it was pushing me far too far in a direction I didn’t want to go to just yet, because I knew not enough time had elapsed, even though that door, his roommate, Ebola, the elevator, so much time. Patrick did not have an alarm clock yet. Who didn’t have an alarm clock plugged in, first thing.

He took as much as he could in his mouth, which wasn’t very much more than the head, but he was spirited, at least, and it finally began to feel good. Too good, but then there was this horrific slurping noise, like a Japanese houseguest, everyone staring in disgust. I looked at the door, but it was still motionless, but there was sound in the hallway, life beyond the door, the gentle current of people returning back from their first night out.

And I could hear the occasional shout of someone stumbling back, the sound of keys dropping onto the tile, and I wondered if they could hear Patrick’s echoing slurps, louder than even the fluorescents.

And then it stopped. His head stopped bobbing, and I felt the cold air on my lubricated dick as it exited his mouth. He replaced it with one hand, and he slithered his torso up mine, until we were face to face again.

He ground the two us together. “I'm so close, dude.”

There were keys in the hallway. Someone dropped them, someone let out a giggle. He said there had been half the floor at Iota Chi, but Iota Chi had to be dumping out by now. I didn’t know what time it was, but I thought of how the party was already falling into decay by the time I left, which seemed like a century ago.

He had this breathy moan as he went at it himself--not like the confident bellowing you hear in porn, but wispy strands that grew in stature, more and more, until there was a last ditch cry and my stomach was peppered with hot, viscous drizzle, and then that was it. He immediately began slackening, face twisted in a tortured, pleasured grimace. He settled back down, looked down at me, which now made me feel overdressed, inappropriate.

He grabbed me, and I felt myself losing momentum. “No,” I said, and he let go, and I retreated. I couldn’t describe what he was doing wrong, but it was wrong. He kept staring at it, goading it on, demanding a curtain call. I thought about taking over, but by the time I made any decision, it was gone.

And then I felt suddenly aware of how naked we were, how exposed. The metal door to the hallway stood stoic in judgment, across the dim room.

He rolled over, off me, and looked over at me, a grateful smile.

“Your roommate will be back soon,” I whispered, and Patrick turned to look at the door.

“Yeah,” he said slowly. His face had a nervous, horror-stricken look, like he’d accidentally gotten off the highway in a bad neighborhood, and he kept staring at the door. He didn’t seem to know what to say either, so he just managed: “Well, thanks.”

Things had passed a point, our combined sexual energy laid to rest, Pollacked out across my stomach. Was I just supposed to lie there, him pooling on me like a little scarlet letter?

“Alright,” I said. Then, “You should get an alarm clock.”

He exhaled, the closest he could get to a polite laugh in this situation. “It’s in one of my boxes. I need to unpack it.”

I dressed with silent efficiency. When I buttoned my shirt, I realized I should have asked for a towel, but I felt so uncomfortable. Patrick was just sitting there, exposed on the bed, watching me. He seemed in no rush to put this in the past, his face glowing with the unmistakable wonder, pride, of someone who had just lost their virginity. If that’s even what we did. I wasn’t sure what entailed a gay guy losing his virginity, but we’d at least taken a toe in that direction.

Maybe it was because I didn’t cum, but all I could think about was getting out of Monroe before his roommate found his way back and caught both of us, and ruined everything.

“You know the way out?” he asked, lying back on his bed.

“Yeah, I got it,” I said. I was already halfway across the room, ready to tear open that metal door to freedom. “I’ll see you around.”

“See you,” he said. “Thanks.”

 

Our door still said “Tripp C., Hamlet, Maryland” and “Adam C., Pass Christian, Mississippi,” in Tripp’s lousy drunk handwriting, and Tripp was still where I left him, disfigured on top of his bed like a body at a crime scene, his grinding snores echoing off the cinderblock walls.

No time had passed over in Sharp, but Patrick felt like a memory now. I didn’t know what to do. I was utterly clueless when it came to protocol for post-coital behavior.

Was I supposed to text him, thanking him? Was I supposed to wait for a text from him? Or were we just supposed to abjectly ignore each other, pretending nothing had transpired, as we scoured the same bars and parties for easy women to bed, allegedly.

No, it’d have to be the latter.I didn’t want to rehash this again. My heart was still slamming against my chest. I still felt nervous. I didn’t think there was very much chance of me doing something like that again, or at least any time soon.

I knew I’d possibly change my mind tomorrow, when I was once again aching to erupt, but I was firm on taking a long vacation from homosexual antics.

He was still on me. I felt slimy, somehow. What I really wanted to do at the moment was take a shower, so I grabbed my towel off the hook behind the door.

I tried to sneak in. The soaked carpet gave me away.

“You’re back,” moaned Tripp, his eyes fluttering open. “Were you at Iota Chi this whole time?”

For a second, I thought he was suspicious, but he wasn’t. He was drunk and clueless, and he wouldn’t even remember this conversation in the morning, I figured.

“Yeah,” I lied. “Go back to sleep.”

His body slackened again, he started snoring again almost instantly.

I took off my shorts, my underwear, my shirt, for the second time in the last hour. It felt strange. I felt filthy, from the humidity and the party and the sex, or the near sex, or whatever we’d just had.

I wrapped my towel around my waist, slid my feet into my shower shoes, and then went tentatively out into the hallway.

Someone had turned off the lights, which we were told not to do. I followed the emergency lighting along the baseboards towards the bathroom, which seemed ominous and empty in the early morning shadows.

I could see someone, stall door open, hunched over on top of one of the toilets, retching.

“Hey, are you okay?” I asked.

The figure turned around slowly, like something out of a slashed movie, and I could see Charlie Baker’s face staring at me through the the darkness. “Went a little overboard,” he said, and then he turned back around and vomited in the toilet.

“Didn’t we all,” I said.