The Best Four Years of Adam Becker - 6. Freshman Year - Chapter 6

Other than her, I'd never been in love. And I'd certainly never had anyone love me back. I'd had crushes back at Harrington, both before and after Sarah Bernard--Britton Jarvis, Lars Olsson, Paul Davis, among others--but those were always locked down, secret, shameful. I never had anyone mutually click, want to be with me, want to care about me.

"Yeah," I told him anyway. "I know that feeling."

I tried to say that as nonchalant as possible; I thought I failed, but Erik didn't seem to notice any switch of tone. "I mean, she wants to take it slow, and so do I, obviously. But I think she'll come around. I'll wait. I'm a gentleman."

"Your parents must be proud."

I meant that as a throwaway comment, one that didn't even warrant a response, but instead Erik squinted his eyes at me, disdainfully. "My dad was more of a what-not-to-do. But I learned from that too."

It was the first time Erik had actually mentioned something about his parents, other than his disembodied mother who hovered solely over conversations that had to do with him cashing a check over the bursar's office. For as well as I felt I knew Miss Julia and Junior Callender, Phil and Rita Fleischer, Tom and Naomi Birdrock (and even Trevor and his blue-haired girlfriend), but the Fontenots were a mystery. I didn't even know if the Fontenots were married, if they had ever been married, what their names were. Just two people who happened to live in Lake Laurel, Arkansas, in 1988 and produced a fine specimen of the human form, Erik Fontenot.

I didn't press the topic.

We were almost to Kevin's, but it was still five minutes early.

"We'll be fine," Erik said, as we made it down Zimpel Street, past the Catholic Center and The Boot, but he didn't sound too convinced. He followed that up with, "Maybe we'll take a lap?"

"Yeah," I said. "We don't want to make a bad impression."

Erik shrugged, as we turned right on Broadway instead of left. "Malley's a chill guy but it's not like he's an Iota Chi guy. You don't have to make a perfect impression on him."

I wasn't trying to make an impression on Kevin Malley. Of course, he was gorgeous, and smart, and fun, and the kind of guy you could actually have a conversation with. And sure, I did have a little bit of a crush on him--which I tried repeatedly to talk myself out of, because I hadn't the slimmest evidence that he was anything but straight. But I wasn't trying to impress him, per se. I wasn't trying to impress anyone: I was just trying to not look like a loser in my third month of college.

We walked up several more blocks, checking off tree-derived street names I’d only heard in passing from the Iota Chi brothers: Oak, Plum, Willow. We then turned onto Jeanette Street, not named after a tree because New Orleans’s intrinsic ADHD could only expect to keep a naming theme going for a couple blocks before losing interest.

“Erica’s Big lives up on Cohn and Broadway,” he said, finally. “Crazy far up. Almost to Carrollton.”

He meant Claiborne--Carrollton was perpendicular, a mile the other direction--but I didn’t correct him.

"She's a smokeshow too," Erik said. "I mean, I haven't met her, but I've seen pictures. A lot of Psi Lambda girls might be coming out tonight." With a smirk, he added, "So you and Tripp better bring your A-game.”

I was completely confident I wasn't going to go home with any girl, let alone a Psi Lambda. I was actually pretty confident Tripp wasn't going to wind up bagging a Psi Lambda either, for entirely different reasons. But I smiled, and nodded enthusiastically, for good measure.

"How many Psi Lambdas have you met?" I asked.

He shrugged, did not commit a number. "I mean, they're just universally hot," as if that was why I was asking.

I'd never actually hung around with a bunch of hot girls, like Psi Lambda girls. Sarah Bernard was lightyears ahead of the other girls in our clique in terms of attractiveness, and she was no Erica Strout. I couldn't imagine what they'd be like. I'd seen them traversing campus, packs of flocking sorority girls in puffy-painted shirts.

Girls were intimidating. Especially hot girls. Even with no sexual attraction whatsoever to girls.

Maybe we'd convince him to stay at Iota Chi for the bulk of the night, until the rest of us got so drunk we didn't care about who we were surrounded by.

“That’s cool, man,” I said. "We'll see how it goes."

We got to Kevin’s a few minutes later. He lived in a shotgun house on Lowerline, halfway between Zimpel and Oak Streets, and it was in worse shape than any house I’d ever seen--one heavy gust away from collapse. I wondered how on earth it even survived Katrina.

It had two windows in front, collectively hosting only one remaining shutter, which itself looked precarious, hanging crookedly off the side of the house. The paint was peeling off in billowing white ribbons, and the grass was a serengeti of poor maintenance, each blade jutting up to the sky at rakish, triumphant angles.

We were early. Just barely. Practically on time, but we’d finished dinner at Bruff and didn’t have anything better to do. Erik seemed less concerned that I was that we’d be undoubtedly the first people there, but he was Erik. We’d hung out with Kevin Malley a few times, and he couldn’t have been more friendly, but he was still very much (at least in my mind) Baker and Morton’s friend. And, because he wasn’t an Iota Chi brother, I knew he didn’t have to force niceness to us, to put up with freshmen in case we wanted to rush in the spring.

I rang the doorbell, but I didn’t hear any sound. So we waited about thirty seconds, and then Erik started knocking.

“I’m coming!” we heard from inside, and then Kevin tore open the door.

He was soaking wet, wrapped in a white towel from the waist down. His shaggy hair was soaking, raining onto his strong shoulders. His body wasn’t the heavily-gymmed sculpture of Erik or Matt Rowen, but it didn’t do his great face any injustices: he had a pretty flat stomach and nice arms, a light dusting of pale brown hair running up a landing strip in the center of his chest and abdomen. The thin terrycloth separating him from total nudity helped too.

He flickered a lopsided, intoxicated smile, and I tried to keep my surveying inconspicuous. His eyes were bloodshot.

“I like your costume,” Erik told him, with a smirk; Kevin rolled his eyes.

“Caught me off-guard,” he replied. “Come in, come in.”

“Sorry we’re early,” I told him, looking around a bit. The living room was about as mangy as the outside of the house, with dusty mismatched furniture and a precarious ziggurat of mail stacked on a radiator cover next to the door. “We were at Bruff, and, you know.”

“No, no,” he said, looking back at the clock hanging on the wall below the TV--we were exactly one minute early. “I shouldn’t have showered at the last minute.” He motioned to the sofa, one of those scratchy-looking brown plaid numbers from the 1970s that I recognized from old photos at my grandma’s house. Erik and I both sat down; Kevin kept standing.

On the coffee table, an Ikea Lack with most of the veneer peeled off the top, was an extinguished pot pipe, an open can of Bud Light, an economy sized bottle of Purell, and a bowl of pistachio shells. We were pointed at an old tube TV, which was flickering out C-SPAN on mute with a bad color balanced; everyone looked blue, like a bunch of well-dressed alien invaders. I was glad he wasn’t watching C-SPAN 2; the last thing I wanted was Iota Chi to stumble into this house and see my dad whispering shared jokes in the background with Richard Burr.

“Watching C-SPAN while smoking and eating pistachios,” Erik said, kicking his feet up on the destroyed table. “You live quite the legendary life.”

“I know, so cool, right?” Kevin grinned. “Well, hey, give me a sec to get dressed. Put on some music. Beer’s in the fridge.”

He disappeared, backwards, down the hallway; Erik went over to the TV console, which also housed an old record player and an iPod stereo. He crouched down, surveyed them both, not sure of which one he should use.

“We came too early,” I told him, once Kevin was comfortably out of earshot.

“Oh, whatever,” Erik said, deciding on the stereo; he fished his out of his iPod out of his pocket, and wiggled it into the dock. “Kevin’s a cool guy. He doesn’t care.” He turned around, to look back at me. “Do you think The Fray’s too chill?”

“It’s very universal,” I told him, and he fumbled with a few more buttons, before “How to Save a Life” started dribbling out of the speakers.

“And there’s beer in the fridge,” Erik said.

“You’re already up,” I told him, and he scowled but skulked off down the hallway to the kitchen anyway.

I couldn’t tell what they were voting on, on C-SPAN, but it was contentiously close from the looks of it. I was more surprised Congress was doing anything at this point, the week before the election. My dad hadn’t even been in D.C. in the last few weeks--he’d been back in Nevada, parading himself like a pageant queen.

He did not have very high hopes for Republican prospects in the general, but who did. He echoed mostly what the pundits were saying: that the GOP would almost certainly lose the House, with the Senate breaking towards the Dems but still possibly going either way. Dad was up for re-election, but he was popular and had been polling consistently ahead of his challenger--Jimmy Carter’s son, a carpetbagger; two toxic charges for the Nevada electorate, even with the fever of Iraq and Katrina. It’d take a pretty big wave to knock him off his seat.

Kevin came back down the hall first, his shaggy hair still slick and dark but at least no longer dripping. He was wearing a plaid button-down and jeans--standard uniform for him--and he plopped down on the couch next to me.

“I’m glad you guys came,” he told me, pumping some Purell onto his hands, even though he just got out of the shower.

“Even early.”

“You’re right on time,” he said. He leaned forward again, plucked up his Bud Light can from the coffee table and took a long sip. “It's everyone coming from the Iota Chi house that's super late. You know how those guys are. You tell them eight and they’ll be here at midnight.”

I had no experience with that sort of thing; I’d only been invited, thus far, to fraternity-sanctioned events or Saints games, all of which had a firm start time.

“I guess so,” I replied anyway. “You’re not dressing up?”

“I am,” he said. “Barely. I’m apparently exactly as creative as you, and I’ll put on my cowboy hat at the last possible second. I’m a Halloween grinch.”

“I thought you’d enjoy dressing up. I feel like you’d be one of those creative guys with an awesome costume every year.”

He shrugged. “Nope. I just go for the booze, and to see girls dressed up like hookers.”

Girls dressed up like hookers. That single phrase tore through my heart. Of course he was straight. Girls dressed up like hookers. He was straight. He was Baker’s friend, he played soccer, he was just being nice to a possibly-cool friends-of-friends, like anyone normal person would be.

I felt altogether stupid for letting my fantasy with Kevin Malley run amok, when really he hadn’t shown any interest in me beyond striking up a casual friendship.

And I hadn’t said anything, so I meekly tried to restart some semblance of normalcy: “I like your place.”

He smiled at me, raised his beer up to his lips again. “And they say you can’t furnish an entire house for under thirty dollars.”

He looked like he was joking, but I didn’t know whether to laugh. I couldn’t imagine the furniture--the couch, the coffee table, and the TV unit, because that’s all there was in the living room--cost too much more than thirty dollars to begin with, but I always felt uncomfortably when someone brought up the concept of money, and that was on top of the palpable discomfort from him being probably straight. Girls dressed like hookers.

So I went with: "How long have you lived here?"

“Just this year,” he said. “Since July. I stayed in the dorms with Baker for Lagniappe semester, but I was here over the summer working, so I couldn’t live on-campus this year.” He paused, and amended, “Lagniappe was this kind of mini-semester they did for us in June. Just five weeks, to make up some of the classes we missed during the storm. Cajun for ‘a little something extra.’”

Everyone who had been through Hurricane Katrina just called it, simply, “the storm,” because everyone knew, even though New Orleans got decimated by storms and flash-flooding about once a week. We were living on the edge of history; in New Orleans, there was pre-storm and post-storm, and we were fourteen months post-storm, headlong into a new era of existence.

Erik came back from the kitchen, holding three beers, stacked on top of each other.

“Got you one, too, Kevin,” he said, putting them down on the coffee table.

Kevin crushed his now-empty beer can with his fingers, and dropped it down on the table, next to the bowl of pistachios. “Thanks,” he said. “Tripp didn’t feel like coming?”

“He’s stuck in studio,” Erik said. “He’s meeting us later.”

“Ah, archi-torture,” Kevin said, with a knowing nod. “Veronica always gets stuck in studio. Disappears for the entire month of April.” He checked his watch, then looked back up at C-SPAN.

“What are they voting on?” I asked.

“The Safe Port Act,” he said.

Erik arched an eyebrow disdainfully, as he sat down next to me. “You into ports, Kevin?”

“No,” he said. “Online gambling.”

And he didn’t care to elaborate on that any further, but knowing what I did about non sequitur amendments--my dad was an especially large fan of those, in bills he co-sponsored--it didn’t seem too far removed from possible.

“Online gambling,” Erik repeated.

“Just as a concept,” Kevin told him, as the vote passed; he shook his head somberly, clicked off the TV, then turned back around to face us. “I don’t online gamble or anything. I’m too poor to online gamble. I only work Saturdays and Sundays, lunch.”

“Where do you work?” Erik asked.

“Bistro Napoleon,” he said. “Warehouse District. Just waiting tables. Good enough pay though--those convention-goers are always throwing around money. And, you know, restaurant workers...”

He had a glint in his eye during that last part, which I assumed to mean he was dealing weed to the staff. And it seemed odd to me, slightly uncomfortable. It was one thing to partake--most of Iota Chi blazed up every so often; I certainly had, on occasion--but another thing for me to be sitting here, in the home of this collegiate Nancy Botwin, watching C-SPAN and drinking Bud Light.

"Nice," I said, because what else could I say.

"Yeah," he replied. "I only applied to be a busboy, but the manager liked me, so I got in above my pay grade.” He grinned. “It’s bad when you’re not even qualified to wait tables, isn’t it? Fucking philosophy major.”

“I’m not qualified to do anything,” I offered.

“Something tells me you’ll be fine,” he said, which was a compliment until he added, “Just pick your dad out on TV over there.”

“This is C-SPAN 1,” I corrected, trying to hide the huffiness that I was sure crept into my voice. “House.”

He ignored me, just clinked his beer can against mine. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

We sat in silence for what seemed like a while; the next Fray song came and went. Erik was on his phone, smiling stupidly, which meant he was texting Erica Strout, ergo paying absolutely no attention to us.

Girls dressed like hookers. Of course. Straight.

He had a crooked smirk that made him look enigmatic and intelligent, which I’d noticed that first time I met him at T.J. Quill’s but seemed even more exciting somehow, when it was just the two of us.

He was Baker’s friend.

He was Baker’s friend and if we hooked up, and he told Baker, I didn’t know what would happen. I certainly wouldn’t get into Iota Chi.

I worried more about that--that they’d find out and I wouldn’t get in, but Tripp and Erik would. I didn’t live in one of those universes where there’d be some dramatic disownership or some bloody gay bashing. Erik and Tripp would not cold-shoulder me over something as minor as sexuality. I was, at least, fairly confident about that.

But, then again, it was only the end of October, and I’d only known them barely two months, and I didn’t think our friendship had the longevity yet to survive turbulence. They’d go out with Iota Chi; I’d stay home. And, at some point, we’d just stop being friends. The quiet dribble away of life, where nothing derails--things just stop being the way they were, a little at a time.

No, Kevin Malley would be shitting way too close to the place I aspired to eat at, and it didn’t really even matter anyway because our knees were barely touching and that wasn’t even remotely anything--and he was ready to go out, to see girls dressed like hookers, to probably drag one home like a caveman with a wildebeest carcass, and bang her on his ugly brown couch.

“So,” I said, meekly, because I felt I had to say something to at least snap Erik out of his texting conversation. But I didn’t know what to say, except, “So,” except the invitation for someone else to start a conversation.

But then I was saved by the door opening. It was Chris, Morton, and Matt Rowen, stampeding in without knocking, each carrying a twenty-four rack of Natty Light and dressed up in a rundown of elaborate costumes. Baker was wearing a cardboard boat around his waist, tied to his shoulders with rope; Rowen was some sort of sailor; Morton was wearing an island--an actual island, a beige disk around his ribcage, punctuated by fake plastic palm trees.

“Yo, yo, yo, niggas," said Morton, dropping the beer on the end table next to the couch. His entire face was lit up by a manic smile.

“Didn’t we decide you couldn’t pull that off?” Kevin asked, folding his arms. “What on earth are you guys supposed to be?”

“It’s not obvious?” Rowen asked. He pointed to himself. “I’m the Skipper. Baker’s the Minnow. Morton’s the island.”

Kevin giggled--not his usual disbelieving chortle, but a deep, actual laughter. “Are you kidding?”

“No,” Baker said, proudly. “Isn’t it perfect? We did it for the Tri-Gamma/Iota Chi mixer last night. The DMV is Ginger, Lovey, and Mary-Ann, and then--”

“Oh, yeah, this has the DMV written all over it,” Kevin said. I had no idea what--who--the DMV was, but I wasn’t going to interject at that point. “Dana? We all know Maddie and Veronica weren’t coming up with anything this intense.”

“Dana,” Rowen confirmed. “She’s a Halloween genius.”

“But Veronica made my boat,” Baker added.

“She’s putting that architecture training to good use,” Kevin told them, folding his arms. “Finally, a model that someone can use.”

Morton, meanwhile, had come detached from the conversation, instead squinting his beady drunk eyes over to the iPod stereo. “Who put on The Fray?”

“One of the freshies,” Kevin said. “Put on a record.”

“No way in hell am I putting on a record,” Morton replied. He went over to the TV table, squatted down, tore Erik’s iPod out and tried to fit his own in, laboriously, while also trying not to tip himself over. “Let’s rage, niggas.”

“Stop saying ‘niggas,’” Rowen told him. “You’re going to get us murdered by actual black people.”

Chris, too, looked at Morton skeptically, then over to us, and explained, “Morton came from happy hour.”

“The Boot, 3-for-1,” Morton agreed, tumbling backwards onto his ass--there was a crunch as his island disc crumbled against the floor, but it managed to pop back into shape by the time he got himself up off the floor. “Day drinking on the sidewalk before it gets too cold.” He muttered along with the Lil’ Wayne lyrics, tonedeaf, for a few measures, throwing his hand up in the air, then turned to look at us, without bothering to get up. “Now it’s a party, bitches.”

“Uh huh,” Kevin said, looking at me, rolling his eyes.

Chris Baker looked at Kevin, who was decidedly not in costume. “You’re going as a cowboy again this year, aren’t you?”

“I thought of going as the cast of Friends,” Kevin replied, his usual smirk returning to his face, “before I realized I didn’t have any because they all had to dress up like props from Gilligan’s Island.”

“Someone’s jealous he didn’t rush,” Morton grinned. “Next year.”

The smile melted off Kevin’s face, and I wondered if, for maybe a second, he did regret not rushing. He didn’t seem to usually, he didn’t seem to care about popping into the house or their parties when everyone else was around, but I wondered if I tiny bit of him regretted it. And I wondered, again, what would happen if Tripp and Erik pledged, if I was on the outskirts, like Kevin Malley, dressed as a sad, lonely cowboy by myself as everyone packed into elaborate costumes around me.

“Like I’m going to be your bitch for the whole spring semester,” Kevin said, finally. And then to us, “No offense.”

 

Tripp managed to get to Kevin’s just as we were leaving, so he just turned around and started walking back to us towards the Iota Chi house, accepting Rowen’s geaux-beer as a pre-game substitute.

“You guys have the fucking lamest costumes,” Morton announced, surveying me, Erik, and Tripp--a cowboy, a pirate, and someone wearing a Tulane sweatshirt.

“I didn’t have time to change,” Tripp protested, although I didn’t think he’d managed to get a costume anyway. Our floor had been abuzz with last-minute costuming: ten or fifteen guys loaning clothes, swapping hats, to create some semblance of a costume; passing around the same scantily-dressed nurse to apply hair gel or fake blood. No one was going to help Tripp if he was in studio--every man for himself.

“Morton dresses up like seaweed and he thinks he’s God’s gift to Halloween,” Kevin chimed.

“I’m an island,” Morton snapped back, bitterly, and then his mood suddenly perked up, and he started swaying from side to side as he erupted into, “Just sit right back, and you’ll hear a--”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Kevin interrupted, jovially. He took his cowboy hat off, ran his fingers through his shaggy hair and wrinkled his face in discomfort--not a hat person, clearly. And then he stared down at Morton’s island, scoffed at it. “You know that thing’s going to fall apart in about twenty minutes.”

“It’s only got to last the night,” Morton told him. “If all goes right, it’ll be crumbled up in a ball on Meredith Greenblatt’s floor by three in the morning.”

“Like you’re getting with Meredith Greenblatt,” Baker said.

“Like you’re getting with anyone,” Morton replied.

We all went uncomfortably silent, even Morton who stammered out apologies. I wondered how many other people knew what Kevin told me--that Chris Baker was still a virgin.

Baker didn’t say anything, but he didn’t really need to, because we appeared outside the empty-looking Iota Chi house about twenty seconds later, at about five after nine, five minutes minutes after the party officially started.

Pagliacci--an annoyed, obese Gilligan--was checking student IDs at the door.

“Finally,” he said, folding his arms, theatrically huffy. “Rowen, you’re supposed to be on door shift right now. Nine to ten.”

“Oh, whatever,” Matt Rowen said, but he slunk around next to the door anyway. “I’m here. Happy?”

“Very,” Pagliacci replied coldly, following the rest of us into the Iota Chi house.

The house was not at all decorated--the fluorescent lights, even, were still on, and the house was virtually empty, except for Rob Winslow as a gladiator rolling a keg through the foyer and the sound of a few brothers people talking in the kitchen.

“Don’t help, don’t help,” he called to us, sarcastically. Baker jumped forward, over to Winslow to help him pick up the keg, and they carried over to the front bar.

“Halloween really brings out the best in everyone,” Morton muttered to me. Louder, he gleefully called: “Hey, Winslow, do you need help with that keg or something?”

“Fuck off,” Winslow replied. He only seemed to notice, after that display, that there were freshmen in the mix. “Oh, hey, guys,” he said, gingerly, verbally hoisting back up the curtain. “Glad you all made it.” He looked back to the front bar. “Everyone just went back to get their costumes on and, you know, still stuff to be done!” He clapped his hands together at that last bit. He had on this very enthusiastic, measured voice, like a kindergarten teacher giving some light discipline, and he kept looking back at the door to see if anyone else was going to show up.

The next entrants were another group of lost-looking freshmen guys, dressed up in a variety of uninspired costumes, just like we were, and Winslow gave a deep, annoyed sigh, before he sprinted back into the kitchen.

A minute later, the lights were down and the music started pulsing.

“It’s like the time I got stuck on Splash Mountain and they turned on the overhead lights,” I said.

“You’ve just been early to everything today,” Kevin joked, slapping me on the shoulder. “Where’s all your harem of women, anyway?”

“Erica’s coming later,” Erik said, as if that was at all the question. “She’s drinking with some of her sisters on Calhoun, but she said she’d swing by, and then I think we’re all going to Frenchmen Street. Best place for Halloween, obviously.”

He said the last bit with undue confidence. The dark side of his sleeping with Erica was that she was a sophomore, so she functioned as something of a New Orleans mentor, which inflated his ego, because he knew more than us and liked to remind us that he knew more than us.

“Glad things are working out,” Kevin said. “Cute girl. Not dumb.”

“Yeah, I mean,” Erik said, his face suddenly looking shy and awkward. “I don’t want to jinx it, but Erica’s just, I don’t know. She’s kind of amazing.”

Erik would gush to anyone with a few drinks in him.

“Yeah, okay,” Kevin said, smiling uncomfortably. “Becker, let’s get some beer.”

We headed over to the front bar, where Winslow was now cheerily pumping beer.

“Hey, you guys,” he greeted, as if seeing us for the first time tonight, as if we hadn’t gotten a brief look at how the sausage was being made five minutes before. “Nice costumes!”

There was something artificial about Rob Winslow, like he was speaking at us through a glass partition--at least when he was hosting a party like this. Brett Morton assured us he was a cool guy when he was out at Old Bruno’s and all, but had a stick up his ass these days--he was trying to show his stoic side before the upcoming Iota Chi presidential election next month, for calendar year 2007.

 

By around ten thirty, Kevin and I had already lost two games of beer pong to Erik and Tripp, and Kevin did not seem especially bullish about future games. He seemed like he was in a bad mood in general, and I figured it was because he wanted to be part of the cast of Gilligan’s Island--his eyes kept wandering over whenever Baker, Morton, Pagliacci, Rowen, Tommy Pereira, Baker’s big whose name I couldn’t remember, and the three girls of the apparent DMV, assembled for large-scale group photos.

I didn’t exactly know how to ease that into the conversation, even all those beers in. I had a few aborted attempts, and only landed the actual cohesive thought when we were getting more beer from the kitchen bar after our second game.

“Oh, please,” he told me, rolling his eyes, more annoyed that I had even brought it up in the first place. “You think that’s the problem? I hope you don’t think I’m that insecure.”

“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not easy when you’re not included, right?”

He let out a clipped, irritated scoff. “I wasn’t not included,” he said, taking off his cowboy hat, and itching his scalp again. “They dressed up for the Iota Chi and Tri-Gamma Halloween mixer last night, and obviously I couldn’t go to that because I’m not a brother. But, like I told you, I just really hate Halloween. It’s a stupid holiday.”

I wasn’t even remotely convinced. I figured it was as good opening to just drop the topic, but I didn’t want to, so I just pivoted a bit: “So why do you hate Halloween?”

“I don’t like dressing up,” he said, with a faint smile. “Honest. I know that sounds retarded. When I was six--” He threw his head back in disbelief that he was even telling this story. “It’s so stupid. When I was six, I really wanted to be the red Power Ranger, because my best friends were all going as Power Rangers.” He paused, looked a little embarrassed. “I mean, it was really big then. This was, what, 1993?”

He paused, waited for me to say something next, I guess, so I just nodded: “I’m listening.”

“Well, whatever,” he continued. “My mom got this generic knock-off that looked nothing like the Power Rangers, and she made me wear it anyway.” He stopped talking, took a sip of his beer. “After that, I was just completely soured on the whole holiday. You need to have a really creative costume that makes everyone think you’re hilarious, or you just need to follow the pack and wear something completely generic like a fucking cowboy hat. And because, like 90% of Americans, I slot somewhere on the spectrum between creative and generic, it’s a retarded holiday.” He cracked into a smile. “I’m a little bit crazy, sorry.”

“No, it’s fine,” I told him. I took a sip of my beer. “I just wasn’t expecting that well-constructed treatise on the pitfalls of Halloween.”

He giggled at that. “Well, I’m about seventy-five thousand dollars in with this philosophy degree, so it’s nice that it’s starting to pay off.”

“Big payoff,” I replied. “Maybe not worth the full seventy-five thousand though.”

“Well, I’m on half-scholarship.”

“Hey, Brokeback Mountain,” Morton called to us, ducking his head through the archway, his island grinding against the doorframe. “You guys are up at beer pong.”

“Thanks, seaweed,” Kevin called back.

“I’m an island!”

“No man is an island, Morton,” Kevin called back, his face creeping into a smile, like he thought that joke was a real winner. He didn’t seem bothered by the Brokeback Mountain reference, and I didn’t want to overanalyze it--his reaction or Brett Morton. Morton was being Morton. He was friends with Ryan Wyatt, so what did it matter--it was a joke, not an accusation.

“I’m a fucking island,” Morton muttered, hurt, as he stumbled back into the living room.

 

We were standing outside of Iota Chi for about forty-five minutes before our cab graciously bothered to show up. By this point, we were sobering up just enough to get irritated, and Erik, who had become a bundle of anxiety, wasn’t helping--he’d been frantically texting Erica the entire time with his apologies for how long it was taking us to get downtown. We’d been the victim of busy signals from the dispatcher, of cabs that never showed up, of blatant cab theft from three doors down that we swore was ours. It was midnight by the time one finally pulled up.

“Finally,” Jordan said, tugging open the door. “How are we doing this?”

She was dressed about as lazily as I was, as I expected her to be--an Eli Manning jersey and white leggings, two black smears of eyebrow pencil under her eyes for festive measure. Michaela, on the other hand, was wearing a girl’s Brownies uniform she’d found at Bloomin’ Deals, the thrift store down Freret Street, the fabric in agony as her bulbous chest toyed with their tensile strength. She looked hot, she looked slutty, which was mission accomplished on a day like Halloween, just like Kevin had said. They hadn’t been at Iota Chi nearly as long as we were; Michaela was a little drunk, but nothing compared to us.

Erik leaned back, surveyed the backseat. “Michaela can sit on one of our laps. Jordan, you go in the front.” And we piled in, Michaela choosing my lap, in the middle seat.

“We’re going to Frenchmen Street,” Erik said. “Snug Harbor.”

“I don’t have cash,” Tripp said. “Do you think there’s a Whitney ATM down there?”

“Just go to a bar ATM,” Erik told him. “I told Erica we’d be there a half-hour ago, and I’m not wasting time looking for a freaking Whitney Bank.”

“Just a Whitney ATM,” Tripp tried again. “Not the whole bank. My cash is in my desk. I didn’t have time to--”

“We know,” Erik said. “Studio. I’ll give you the dollar ATM fee, Jesus. You’re the cheapest rich person I ever met in my life.”

Our cab pulled away, and I saw, through the window, Kevin come out of the Iota Chi house, along with the cast of Gilligan’s Island--he had said they were heading to New Bruno’s. And he was smiling, had his arm around Ginger, who was looking especially cuddly, because of course that’s what happened to guys like Kevin Malley.

“Here,” Jordan said, wedging a twenty-dollar bill behind her, through the passenger seat. “Pay me back tomorrow.”

“No, it’s fine,” Tripp said, folding his arms. “I can afford an ATM fee. It’s just a waste.”

“‘It’s just a waste,’” Erik mocked, high-pitched.

We sped down Broadway, turned onto St. Charles, and then headed downtown.

I didn’t go downtown very often--this would be my second time, after the Tropical Isle drunk bus two months ago--and I hadn’t even left campus, really, except for Broadway and Maple Street and that one ill-fated trek to Ben and Jerry’s, preferring our gated collegiate quarantine from the rest of the dissident city.

If there even was a city out there. We were in the one of the best parts of town, the part that had weathered the storm better than the rest, and it was still desolate, abandoned, once you got away from the scintillation of the universities. St. Charles Avenue, one of the biggest arteries in the city, with its leafy trees and old mansions, was quiet, hardly any moving cars.

There was a team of electrical workers on the neutral ground, down near Jackson Avenue, repairing the streetcar lines. The streetcar, the green clacking piece of yesterday that I’d ridden on my first pre-Katrina tour of Tulane, had been shut down since the storm but was supposed to come back in the spring, whenever they finished repairs.

“It’ll be nice when the streetcar’s running,” I said. “We won’t have to pile in a cab like this.”

“Or wait forty-five minutes,” Tripp muttered.

St. Charles turned into Royal Street in the Quarter, and we slowed to a crawl. It wasn’t that there were a lot of people--we could peek in, over each cross street, at Bourbon Street, which had a strong showing--but just the number of cabs, the number of drunk people lolling in big figure-eights on the street.

Erik was huffy, looking at his watch, looking desperately out the window. Royal took us past Esplanade, out of the Quarter, and then, two blocks later, to Frenchmen Street, which was closed by police barricades.

And that, apparently, was where everyone in the city had appeared, because it was a mob scene--something completely unprecedented for New Orleans so soon after Katrina.

“This is a cluster,” Jordan said, to no one in particular, as Erik led the crusade to weave us through the crowds Snug Harbor. He was moving fast; we were all struggling to stay together; Tripp and Jordan kept exchanging irritated solidarity with their eyes.

There was a line for Snug Harbor. Going to another bar was not a question--we could tell by how Erik kept craning his neck upwards, trying to get a glimpse of Erica Strout, a dog waiting for his master to come home.

“We should’ve taken geaux-cups,” Tripp said. “Becker, do you want to explore?”

“Come on, Tripp,” Erik pleaded, and he sounded desperate enough that Tripp just rolled his eyes and slunk back into line.

We only waited about ten minutes, but we felt each of them. Lines did not exist for bars in New Orleans, at least in our universe of New Orleans, which was mostly limited to T.J. Quills and The Boot.

Inside was what must’ve been a nice jazz club on 364 nights of the year; it was chaos tonight, people everywhere, barely any room to move, music blasting.

We got our drinks, after another ten minutes, and then Erik took off on the scent of Erica Strout again, weaving us through the crowd, back and forth until we finally stumbled onto her and a couple of her layogenic friends, a slutty cat and a slutty French maid. Erica was--I couldn’t tell. Some breed of slutty animal.

Jordan, for her part, was tearing them all apart with her disapproving eyes, which I found to be the most entertaining part of my evening thus far.

“This is Kayla,” she said, pointing to the cat, “and Mollie.”

“With an -ie,” Mollie corrected, because that was necessary.

The group kind of flattened, with the crowd, into a few smaller clumps. I somehow wound up wedged next to Mollie, who did not seem opposed to that arrangement, and another one of their sorority sisters, a slutty sailor, who seemed more focused on standing upright and getting the straw for her water in her mouth. She wasn’t especially adept at either. No one seemed especially concerned about her well-being.

“No, we just keep an eye on her,” Mollie told me, when I asked. “Janie isn’t a wanderer. She’ll just stand there until we’re ready to go.”

That seemed like a system with an unnecessarily high failure rate, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to watch Drunk Janie either.

“Where are you from?” Mollie asked me.

Mollie was what Erik would call a butterface, but she had a great body: big boobs, ample bakkushan, dressed to impress. Impress anyone but me, obviously.

I did not want to have this conversation, make this small talk. I saw Tripp and Jordan and Michaela over on the other side of a bunch of slutty friends of Erica, but I couldn’t quite figure out an escape route.

Worse, and this only dawned on me as Mollie put her hand on my bicep, she seemed to be doing some sort of flirting. Which I was definitely not going to be responsive to, though she had no way of knowing that.

I was feeling rather horny at the moment. Not for Mollie, in any sense of the word. I was annoyed that I’d let my crush on Kevin Malley crowd out prime ManFind time over the last couple of weeks, which meant I had no prospects of getting laid tonight either.

Yes. I definitely wanted to get laid. It had been over two months since Patrick ManFind, and I was just drunk enough to think this was a workable idea for Halloween night.

There were exactly two phone numbers of gay men in my phone: Patrick ManFind and Brandon ManFind, and I figured I’d go with the one farthest from the Tulane orbit.

“Hey,” I texted Brandon. “It’s Adam from online, a while back. What are you up to tonight?”

“I’m from Seattle,” Mollie said. I responded with something. “Actually you know, it’s not as rainy as people think. A lot of gray days, but not a lot of rain.” I said something else. “I know, the storms here always throw me for a loop. So much rain, so fast!”

Tripp and Jordan were laughing at something. There was still no escape route.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

Brandon. Jackpot.

“I’m at Spotted Cat,” he said.

I had absolutely no idea where that was. “Where’s that?”

“Frenchmen.”

I told him where I was, and he responded back with: “Want to meet up? I’ll meet you there in five.”

No, I did not want him to come here. That was not at all what I was hoping for. “Just meet me outside,” I said.

“Okay.”

“I need to find the restroom,” I told Mollie, unearthing myself from her bicep-grip. “Nice talking to you. I’ll be back in a sec.”

She said nothing, looked pitifully towards Drunk Janie, then craned her neck to see if she could find a way over to someone more interesting.

I’d wrestled my way across the bar, towards the front door. People were moving tidally, independent of free will--caught up in the inertia of the crowd, which was thankfully heading towards the door.

Text from Jordan: “Where are you?”

“Still here,” I sent back. I regretted engaging immediately, because I wasn’t sure if I should tell her I was leaving--what if they tried to follow--or if I should just pretend to be lost in the crowd for the rest of the night. Instead, I did neither. “Where are you?”

“By the window,” she said. “My hot cheek pressed against the frosted glass.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

“Staying a while?” I asked, just to get a read. Our current had struck the flow to the bathroom; people tangled, I put my arms close to my chest, bumper-carred my way through to safety.

I could see Jordan and Tripp and Michaela, over by the bar towards the front of the room, in an animated conversation. I pulled my hat down.

“Yeah,” she texted. “I think so.”

Finally broke free of the crowd, right at the exit.

Brandon ManFind was out on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. He recognized me immediately, allowed his face to creep into a tiny smile.

"Hey," I said, once I reached him. “Brandon?”

He was cute, just like his picture from almost six weeks ago--curly dark hair, and dark, almost black eyes behind tortoise-shell glasses. Smaller than I expected--maybe two or three inches shorter than me. Taller than I thought, thin even compared to my gangly body, and he was wearing a Comicon 2003 t-shirt, underneath an unbuttoned flannel. Presumably not a costume.

He shuffled a bit, pulled out a cigarette from his breast pocket. “Adam, right? From--” He looked around, to make sure no one from Loyola was around to hear us. “You know?”

I nodded, and then looked around discreetly as I could just to make sure there were no other Tulane students around us either, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to us. He gave me a hug, a quick hug, then retreated back.

“We meet at last,” he said, as we started moving down Frenchmen Street together. “I swear, everyone's down here tonight. Here with friends?”

“I was,” I said. “Nice costume.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, I didn’t dress up.”

We were walking--I had no idea where we were going to. Finally, he asked, “Want to go to The Pub?”

Did I. Yes. No. The pub was a gay bar, one of the big ones right on Bourbon Street. The good news was it was Halloween--no one was recognizing anyone. The bad news is my costume was limited to a cowboy hat and the flannel shirt I wore Thursday.

Still, I wanted to get laid.

I pulled the hat down my brow, to give myself a little more cover. “Sure.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket. Text from Jordan: “Hello?!”

”I’m heading back,” I told her, confident that enough distance had passed between me and Brandon and Snug Harbor, where she couldn’t catch up with me. “Not feeling great.” And then I put my phone in my pocket, and knocked Jordan, Michaela, Tripp, and Erik out of my mind.

And then I noticed someone at the bar--or at least I thought I did.

He exhaled smoke. "How much did you drink?"

"Too much," I said. "You?"

"Enough," he said, lighting the cigarette. "This’ll be fun. I’m glad we’re doing this.”

We crossed into the Quarter. We were getting awfully close: rainbow flags started springing up with increasing proliferation, crackling in the sticky breeze.

I felt my chest suddenly tighten, because we had crossed a very public demarcation line. Like we’d wandered into North Korea and would need Bill Clinton to negotiate us back. The gay part of Bourbon Street. If we were seen--me and this guy, this verifiable stranger--what would people think? They’d think. They’d be right. How could we deny it.

I pulled my cowboy hat down a little further.

Brandon was staring down at the ground, smoking ferociously. At least I wasn’t alone in my anxiety, though that didn’t really help things along.

The Bourbon Pub was the last bar before the straight part of Bourbon Street. It looked dark inside, but crowded. It was pulsing techno and I could see an erratic music video playing on the big screen over the bar.

We flashed our IDs, walked inside. "Don’t you like how everything's eighteen-plus?" asked Brandon. "It's like we're in Mexico or something." He pointed up at the spiral staircase. "Dance floor's upstairs, but do you want to get a drink first?"

I wasn't sure if he was offering one, but I certainly didn't need one by this point of then night, so I shook my head. He went to the bar and ordered two beers anyway. He seemed very composed, but I couldn't tell if he was sober or just more sober than I was. Or even just hiding it better. Probably the latter.

Maybe it was my liquid courage wearing off, but suddenly the thought of being here with Brandon rattled me to my very core, drunk and horny as I still was. My perversely persuasive penis had somehow made me forget that going to the Bourbon Pub was a very, very poor decision, at least until this point.

I thought of Erik and Erica, Tripp and that nameless girl from a few weeks ago. Why, when I was drunk and horny, did I have to resort to a clandestine encounter, a different bar, in the shadows?

It was all such a shame. Devastating and humiliating that I couldn’t just do things like everyone else, pluck someone out from a roving pack of freshmen at Halloween on Frenchmen.

And my friends--my friends would all demand to know where I ran off to. I'd have to lie or be evasive, and they’d talk behind my back, and wonder. Or someone would see me, here, with Brandon. I should've just stayed with everyone. If I wanted Brandon, I could've texted him weeks ago.

Yeah, I had to get out of here. But I couldn’t just take off. I had a beer. I thought about drinking it fast, then saying something nonchalantly like, “We should go somewhere more intimate.” Something slick.

Damn, I was out of ideas. I was trapped. I felt the universe pushing down on me, and--

Brandon grabbed my bicep and tugged me through the crowd, over to the staircase.

Upstairs. I did not want to go upstairs. I was going upstairs. It was crowded and ear-torturingly loud. There was a disco ball spinning on the ceiling, and some strobe lights that made me feel a little nauseous, and then a fog machine. Four lean guys in different colored briefs were gyrating to the music, dancing on top of the bar. They were all unattainably attractive--that kind of stock gay character that exists only in fantasies.

We did not go to the dance floor. We went to the bar, took a pair of empty stools, and just watched everything unfold in front of us, like some sort of gay movie. I’d pirated the first season of Queer as Folk about a year ago--subsequently deleted, for obvious reasons--and this was Babylon. I didn’t think places like that actually existed, but here I was, in the middle of Sodom and I felt probably worse than I’d ever felt in my entire life.

No, this was getting out of control. I drank a sip of my beer, a long sip, so I’d finish it faster.

How was Brandon this composed? How was he not collapsing on the inside like I was?

"They're hot," Brandon said, finally, clearly because one of us had to say something. "Shit."

One of the dancers, a blonde, in red briefs, with devil horns on his head, that was dancing on the bar crouched down so our faces were level with his dick, embossed vividly in the tight fabric. It was quite impressive, even semi-hard. His six-pack was glistening with sweat in the dim light.

"You guys are freshmen," he accused, more of a statement than a question, which was mildly offensive, because I didn't think either of us looked too absurdly new.

"Sophomores," Brandon corrected.

“Ha, okay," said the dancer. He humped the air with his hips.

Brandon pulled out a dollar bill, and stuck it in the waistband. As his hand retreated, it slid down the briefs, lingered on his dick, then down the rest of his leg. He had this look of absolute wonder on his face, like a dog seeing the ocean for the first time. I felt myself getting a little tight in the nether regions, just a little bit, at the sight of this, but I really hoped the dancer would move on. I didn’t have any singles anyway.

"Thanks," the dancer said. He fell to his knees, leaned forward, and kissed Brandon on the cheek. "You two are cute together." He bounced back up into a crouch. It was impressive how nimble and limber he was, even though his body looked like he spent every minute in the gym.

"You're hot as shit," Brandon told him. “Really.”

The dancer stood up sexily, pulled down his briefs for a split second, so we could see his cock.

Yes, definitely big. Bigger than Patrick ManFind’s had been. Bigger than mine.

This being the second dick I'd seen live, and it seemed so cavalier that he would show it to us for a dollar. There was something unromantic about that, even though Brandon’s had been offered via ManFind, which was hardly the Hollywood meet cute. But Brandon’s, like Patrick’s, I felt like I had to at least unwrap, earn. There was more mystery with them, more intention, more intimacy. This was a transaction. It was a dirty money cock.

"So yeah," Brandon told me, as the dancer slunk away to the next unsuspecting, moneyed pair, to our right. "This is the Bourbon Pub."

"You come here before?"

He grinned. "Now and then. I’m not out, so it’s tough." He looked out to the dance floor. "Want to dance?"

Part of me did. Part of me was just humiliated enough being here, standing in the bar with this adorable gay guy from Loyola that I’d met off a sleazy website.

“I don’t know,” I said.

The grin was frozen on his face. “So what do you want then?"

"I want to fuck you tonight," I said, and no, I was completely wrecking everything. "I don't know. I’m just being honest."

He thought for a moment. "Let’s dance. Then we can go get naked.”

Dance, then naked. I could handle that. I could handle a dance.

Out on the dance floor, the guys were all dancing with each other, a tangled mess of arms and legs, free range to cup each others’ asses or grope each others’ dicks. Not an insignificant number of guys already in various states of undress.

Brandon grabbed my hand, led me out, and we fell into some kind of mangled hug. We swayed not with the music, but just grinding our crotches each. I could feel myself rising with enjoyment, a little more each second. He was a good dancer--not like the girls I had danced with, a cotillion or at prom, where each move was calculated. He just moved, moved against me.

He buried his face in my neck, kissed me once, slid his arms up around my shoulders, then to my neck. Kept kissing, kept kissing down my jawline, and back up to my ear. It felt, God, it felt amazing. My eyes were closed, and he could’ve been anyone, we could’ve been anywhere, we could’ve been back at Tropical Isle. I moved my hands around his back, down to the waistband of his pants, and I wanted to go further but I didn’t, I just held them there as we ground up against each other--I could feel him against my leg at this point--and he kissed up and down the side of my face.

And then, he stopped, and we looked at each other. He leaned in, kissed me, hard and intentional, in public, in front of everyone. And you know, I thought I would be more apprehensive, but damn, he was a good kisser. We were anonymous, weren’t we? Just two hot--was I hot? Brandon was certainly hot--college kids, grinding on the dance floor and making out with homosexual abandon. Everyone else seemed paired off, one fabulous Noah’s ark, making out, grinding. No one was watching us. No one cared, no one noticed, we were no different here.

It felt good kissing Brandon from Loyola. It did. And I didn't feel like a freak. I thought I would. For a second, I was Erik and Michaela. Locked in the sensual mating dance of beautiful people, the prelude to sex between a pair of beautiful people. Because if Brandon was a girl, someone adorable and interested, I'd be parading him around like a trophy. Look what I brought back, you guys. Suck it, Erik Fontenot.

And then I'd sexile Tripp just to make sure everyone knew we were having rough, animal sex on my twin bed, the metal frame groaning under the enormous strain of our frantic bodies. I would've bought Brandon his beer and I would've said damn, I know we're new to the city and you go to Loyola and all, but I want to fuck you and then date you, and he'd be like, awesome, and then he’d Facebook some photo of us making out.

I don't know. I didn't know girls or dating very well. Maybe they did that sort of thing, at least.

Suddenly, his hands were down at my waist, threatening my jeans. But I didn’t recoil, so he kept moving on, a little more, a little more. He undid the button on my jeans, and absolutely no part of me even considered stopping him. He pulled down the zipper, dug his hand inside like he was searching for change, and then I felt his hand slowly mold around my dick. He looked up at me, if for permission, and I still didn't say anything because, at this point, I was spending all of my focus on not spouting like Old Faithful right in the middle the dance floor. He began jacking me gently, underneath my boxer briefs. I moaned involuntarily, and he mashed his lips against my jawbone again.

Then he backed up, slowly withdrew his hand, and put his hands back on my waist. He had this rebellious smile decorating his face.

“You look like you enjoyed that?”

I couldn’t word good. I just nodded, panting a bit, like an idiot.

He pulled me a little closer. “So, dance: check. Get naked?”

 

We took the city bus back up, sat next to each other, uncomfortably. The bus itself was pretty crowded, mostly students heading back uptown, in full costume. All I could think about was seeing Tripp and Erik and everyone board the bus, seeing their faces drop when they realized exactly what I had left them to do. What would I do? Just pretend I left my alleged other friends, pretend I had no idea who the stranger in the seat next to me was? Apologize later? Not even apologize?

I was breathing heavily now, cowboy hat hiding as much of my face as I could, without losing visual. The night was quickly losing its allure, burned out by the cold white fluorescents above us, illuminating every bead of sweat on Brandon’s face, every tuft of misplaced hair. There was no doubt that I looked equally disheveled, after this kind of night. I had felt sexy at the Bourbon Pub, grinding against Brandon from Loyola, but I didn’t anymore. I felt out of place and nauseous and exhausted and nervous.

We just sat, painful silence. He was reading old text messages on his phone, just flipping through message after message so it looked like he was doing something. I felt numb, from all the drinking and from anxiety, just staring out at the crowded bus, listening to the hissing whir of the tires on the wet, pockmarked pavement as we made our way back uptown.

“We can go to my place,” Brandon whispered, twenty minutes after words were last exchanged, as the bus trudged past State Street. I didn’t say anything, but he pulled the cord, and we came to a stop a block or two later.

Half the streetcar got off with us. From the looks of it, the other half was going one or two blocks furthers, to Tulane, and I figured I’d just say I didn’t know where the stop was if someone saw me.

Loyola’s campus was lorded over by a brick building, with a tower in the center, almost castle-like, a forbidding backdrop against the dark, steamy night. On the lawn ahead were white, free-standing stone letters spelling out “L-Y-L-A,” with gaps where the Os would’ve been.

“Someone must’ve stolen the Os tonight,” Brandon said. “They’ll be replaced by tomorrow morning. Loyola has a whole storeroom full of Os.”

Even drunk, I couldn’t guess the practicality of stealing a stone O, let alone two of them, but it must’ve been a regular occurrence to have a storeroom full of them. Who needed a stone O?

We were literally next door to Tulane--Loyola shared a chain-link fence that ran behind Tulane’s architecture building. It was something like I had crossed the DMZ into South Korea, a world away from anyone I knew, but somehow safer. I started to feel a little better, at the very least, started to get excited again. We hung back from the throngs of bus revelers a little bit--we were the last ones in the quad, the world was empty, just the two of us.

Brandon led me through campus, under the brick building, out into a dark courtyard lined with palm trees, and all the way to the back of the campus--which ended at Freret Street--to a beige brick building called New Residence Hall.

“They’re supposed to be naming it,” Brandon told me, as we walked inside, “but they haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

He had a three bedroom apartment on the second floor, brand new as the name would suggest; I could smell fresh paint down the hallway. We got inside his apartment, it was dark and empty and he didn’t turn on the light.

“Just be quiet,” he whispered, grabbing my hand, and dragging me through the pitch black night. “I think everyone’s asleep.”

His room was at the end of a short hallway, next to their bathroom. We went inside, he turned on the lights, and I squinted at this guy.

He reached behind me, twisted the deadbolt, and then turned his attention back to me--pushing me back against the door, kissing me.

I was way too horny for foreplay, considering that was pretty much what we did at the Bourbon Pub and in the cab on the way back, so I grabbed onto his shoulders, and threw him back down onto the bed.

He looked enthusiastic about me being rough. He fumbled with his zipper, then pulled down his pants and underwear. He was rock hard, his dick nearly up to his belly-button, and leaking quite a bit of precum on the hem of his shirt. He had a nice dick--about the same size as mine, maybe a little bigger than Patrick’s, but it was uncut which struck me as an oddity, like it was wearing a epidermal turtleneck.

And I must’ve been staring because he smiled and, knowingly, asked, “Never been with an uncut dick before?”

I shook my head, and he didn’t seem to push the topic at all. He just pulled off his shirt and threw it across the room.

"Well," he said, looking impatient. "You getting naked?"

I had been too busy watching him. I tore off my shirt, then undid my pants.

"Damn," he said. "Big.”

"Not too big," I said. "You're big too." I gave myself a quick stroke for dramatic effect.

“I’m so horny,” he said, putting his hands on my waist. He leaned in for another kiss. “Do you want to fuck me?”

That had been unexpected. I wasn’t anticipating much foreplay, but I was anticipating a little more.

And yet, I’d never been asked to fuck anything before in my life, and I certainly wasn’t going to let that invitation fall by the wayside. I had no idea how to fuck but it couldn’t be too tricky, right? Biological, instinctual, all that? No, I didn’t believe that for a second--I could see myself either blasting after five seconds or shriveling into nothing, neither of which were especially ideal.

But I played it cool, leaned in to sink my teeth into his earlobe.

"Do you have a condom?"

He looked around, then got up and went across the room to his desk. He pulled one out of the desk drawer. "I don't have any lube though."

"We'll make it work," I said, as if I was any kind of authority on fucking.

I couldn't immediately open the condom wrapper. He giggled, and said to let him try. He tore it open, handed me the slippery condom.

"You do this a lot?" he giggled.

"Oh, fuck you," I replied, grinning. I slowly rolled the condom onto my dick, the way I had seen it happen a million times in porn. My experiences, once again, being only academic until this point.

Unsuccessful. It was bunching, which looked like the least attractive thing ever.

"I’ll get it,” I said, trying to tug it down so it didn’t look so shrively.

Brandon didn’t seem to be keep on waiting. He lied back on the bed, put his knees to his chest. His asshole was winking at me, looking hopelessly foreign. Looking hopelessly small--how on earth?

I finally got the condom on, and so I moved up to him. I rubbed my dick briefly against that pinprick hole, and he moaned a little bit. I pushed it into the hole, briefly, and felt only a wall of resistance.

"Ugh, is it in?" he asked.

"No," I said. “It’s not in at all.”

He sighed, defeated, highly disappointed that that wasn’t the end of the pain. Or, really, even the start of the pain. I couldn’t imagine this big organ stretching such a tiny orefice. It seemed so unnatural, almost, so freak show, and I felt genuinely bad for what I was about to do to him.

He perched himself up on an elbow. "Maybe if I ride you?"

I nodded, and rolled over.

I laid down. He sat on my stomach, feeling around for my dick behind him. Once he grabbed it, he held it straight up, then slowly lowered himself onto it.

My only thought was that he was going to break it, somehow. I didn’t even know if you could break someone’s dick, if there was any sort of bone in there.

And all I could think about was having to go to the student health center with a broken penis, and how humiliating that would be.

And then.

Interesting.

Pleasing. Okay.

I thought it would feel like my fist, but it didn’t. It felt better than that and I suddenly realized the whole allure of sex, in an instant.

God damn.

I couldn't imagine anything feeling tighter than Brandon from Loyola, I couldn't imagine him even moving a little bit, before I would splatter all over the condom.

The bed was awfully creaky. I wondered if anyone could hear it from the hallway. If anyone would hear the bed and see me come out, and put two and two together.

I looked over at the door. It was motionless.

Still, I didn’t like this.

In my mind.

In my mind I didn’t like this. The rest of my body seemed to be responding positively.

He had his hands stabilized on my chest, covering each nipple. He was panting, sweating, even though we hadn't done anything yet. "Okay," he said, nervously. "God, you're huge."

I put my hand on his thigh, but it didn’t seem right, so I put it back down on my side, clenched into a kind of a fist. I felt like I should be holding him somewhere, but, after surveying his bouncing body, I couldn’t really figure out where I could add anything.

His dick looked enormous from this angle, still rock hard and pointing out above me in a fascist salute.

“Is that too fast?”

I just grunted. I had expected more eloquence but I could really only grunt at that point. Q and A wasn’t going to happened at that particular moment.

He went a little faster anyway. I felt myself go even deeper inside him, and then he let out a much louder moan. I was hitting something. He began jerking, just jerked a few times, before I felt his ass get even tighter, and we both lost it simultaneously, me unloading into the condom, him shooting little bursts all over my stomach, like the last life of a squirt gun.

"Oh God," he said. I felt my dick falling out of him, recoiling back, the condom slipping off, falling to the sheets. My dick was glossy and flaccid, smaller than usual. He turned around, leaned down on the ground to grab his underwear. I could see his ass. His hole looked stretched out, and demolished, so different than it had looked just minutes before. It was still hard to believe I had been up there, even with my dick as shriveled as it currently was.

I could not ever bottom. I decided that right away.

I appreciated that he had his own bedroom, that the room wasn’t unsafe, the scene of the crime, like Patrick ManFind’s had been, but I still didn’t want to linger.

Brandon didn’t seem to want me to linger, either. He picked up my shirt from the floor, handed it to me, and then he lied back down on his bed, crossed his arms, and started up to the ceiling. “That was great,” he said. And then, “Was that your first time fucking a guy?”

The thought of discussing things made me even more uncomfortable. So I just said, "Did you see where my underwear landed?"