The Best Four Years of Adam Becker - 34. Sophomore Year - Chapter 12

“So,” I said to Ted, Tripp’s friend from high school, when I waited for him to finish filling his beer. “First Mardi Gras?”

“First Mardi Gras in New Orleans,” he corrected, handing me the tap. “I’ve been to Biloxi’s, but my parents never would’ve let me do Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Not when I was in high school.”

I’d first met Ted when I’d done Thanksgiving at the Callenders’ in Pass Christian, a year and a half ago. Remembered us changing into swimsuits in the same room, backs facing each other. Seeing him in those little shorts.

He was pretty cute, even if he stood out as noticeably gay in a sea of Iota Chi brothers: white jeans, gray t-shirt, a royal blue blazer.

I let the tap fall back to the top of the keg, and we headed back to rejoin the rest of the group.

We were all on the lawn at the Iota Chi house, Saturday at nine o’clock in the morning, for the annual Mardi Gras crawfish boil before we’d head down St. Charles to the parade routes. A cool morning, first weekend of March.

“What parades are today?” Marshall asked.

“Iris at 11, then Tucks,” Tripp replied. “We’ve got the tent on Napoleon and St. Charles for that. Then Endymion at 4, downtown.” He took a sip of his beer. “Then maybe Bourbon Street, but we can’t go too wild tonight.”

“Bourbon Street at six o’clock at night?” Ted asked, raising his eyebrow.

“It’s Mardi Gras, dude,” Erik replied. “We can go now to Bourbon Street and it’ll be bumping.”

“Well, I’m maximizing my time at the parades,” Ted told him. “I’ve got four days to suck in as much New Orleans as I can.”

“Hope you don’t mean that literally,” Patrick told him.

“Oh, I’m going to Hoover my way through the gay bars, don’t you worry,” Ted replied.

“Well, that’s something I can’t unsee,” Tripp said.

Chris Baker was standing on the porch, at the top of the stairs, trying to get everyone’s attention. No easy feat. Waving his arms, as everyone lazily shushed everyone else.

“Okay,” he said, finally, “I’d like to welcome everyone to the annual Iota Chi, Sigma chapter, crawfish boil.” Ten words in, and everyone was already starting to get restless, which wasn’t a good sign. “A little New Orleans breakfast for everyone before we get to the parades.”

He cleared his throat. Looked more uncomfortable than any other public speaker I had ever seen, ever. “Right now, we have brothers visiting from fourteen different Iota Chi chapters across the U.S. and Canada. So make sure you say hi to them.” He glanced uncomfortably down to Veronica, who was standing next to the crawfish boil. “And I’d like to thank Veronica Tandy for helping cook all the crawfish today.”

There was increasingly more chatter from the crowd.

“Food is ready,” Baker finished, “so let’s eat!”

“Shouldn’t he be getting better at these speeches?” Patrick whispered to me. “Not worse?”

“Don’t be mean,” I told him. I looked over to Marshall and Ted. “Have you guys ever had crawfish?”

Ted said, “Girl, we’re from an hour away.”

“Right,” I said. “So you don’t need a tutorial. Pinch the tail, suck the head, all that?”

“I always do,” he replied, still smiling.

I couldn’t tell if this was some quiet flirting. One of my few encounters with an openly gay guy.

I’d, really, never flirted before, because you didn’t do those things when you were in the closet.

Flirted with girls, sure, but that was so effortless because there was no pressure--it was posturing, for show, to throw someone off the sent. I couldn’t tell if I was flirting, I couldn’t figure out if I even wanted to.

Suck the head, pinch the tail.

“So why are we eating crawfish at nine o’clock in the morning?” Marshall asked.

“Tradition,” Erik replied, flatly. “We don’t question it. We’re fraternity men.”

Chris Baker stayed alone on the porch as everyone pounced on the table of crawfish. Studying his fiefdom, technically in charge but somehow always removed from it.

I sidled up to him, rested my beer on the railing. “You don’t want crawfish?”

Baker smiled. “I’ll swoop in when the herd thins. You think everyone’s having a good time?”

“Free food, free booze, at Mardi Gras.”

“Right,” he said. “How are you getting to the parades?”

“Jordan’s going to drive us,” I told him. “I gave her the keys to the BMW. Need a ride?”

“Absolutely,” he said, sipping his beer. “I was going to walk. Let’s leave at ten, sharp.”

Ten: when the boil officially ended and Chris Baker could finally let himself get a little loose.

“Counting down the minutes, are we?”

“Well, I can’t get too drunk at Iota Chi functions,” he added, darkly. “President and all.”

I wanted to tell him that, really, no one cared if he was a little drunk at Iota Chi functions, that he was taking the job of president of our fraternity a little too seriously. But I didn’t. There was no disagreeing with Baker on this point.

“Well, it’s Mardi Gras,” I told him. “You can take a load off.” I grinned. “You have any more of those pot cigarettes this year?”

“What, the scentless ones?” he asked. He shook his head, somberly. “Part of the Great Kevin Malley Pot Drought of 2008. Tulane misses him since he’s gone to Paris.”

The thought of Kevin. I remembered from last Mardi Gras, when we were fighting. When were we not fighting, about this or that. Fighting, and then making up. My boyfriend, taking me in his arms. Telling me that he loved me.

I took another sip of my beer. “I forget he’s gone.”

“He’s gone, Charlie’s gone,” he said. “Like a bloodbath.”

Chris Baker was always tottering on the edge of a dark mood, and he might’ve toed a little too far over the line. I suspected it had something to do with Veronica, who had been flirting with Zach Eckert over the crawfish pot.

“Well,” I said, “Charlie and Kevin will both be back, won’t they?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “It’s just weird when people come and go. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one.”

I bristled. “You’re being melodramatic.”

He shrugged, smiled awkwardly, bit his nail. “Maybe.”

“You need a woman,” I said. “That’s your task for this Mardi Gras. Get cracking.”

“Yeah,” he said, “because that’s been my problem so far: lack of effort.”

 

We somehow managed, tipsily, to contort eight of us into the BMW: me, Baker, Erik, Tripp, Ted, Marshall, Sachit Chowdry, and Jordan, along with a trunk full of coolers.

“It’s like a clown car,” Jordan muttered, as she turned from Broadway onto Claiborne.

“You’re okay to drive to and from?” I asked.

“I don’t plan on getting hammered on the neutral ground,” she replied, curtly. “Like some people.”

I had my head buried next to Ted’s shoulder--he smelled good, like coconut and Abita Amber and Cajun seasoning. And I wondered what it’d be like to have sex with him. He wasn’t my type--a little showy for my taste, not self-assured and ruggedly masculine and easily mistaken for straight, like Kevin was.

But he was handsome, a cute face and a warm smile and, as I recalled from the fleeting glances I got two Thanksgivings ago, surprisingly toned underneath that blazer.

And maybe the taboo of being around someone who was openly gay, someone who didn’t go to this school, who could disappear off the stage almost immediately. Low stakes, maybe. Lower stakes than flirting with someone like Austin Berkowitz or Ryan Wyatt, something I would of course never do.

“We’ll have to figure out where to park,” Jordan said, as she turned down Napoleon Avenue.

“Old trick Kevin used to do,” Baker suggested. “Park on the neutral ground near a car with a parking ticket, and steal their parking ticket.”

“This man’s a genius!” Erik hollered, from underneath Sachit Chowdry.

“Okay, okay,” Jordan said. She turned, gunned the gas, and we popped the curb and landed on the grass neutral ground on Napoleon Avenue, a few blocks off St. Charles.

Baker stole the parking ticket off the SUV next to us, and stuck it under the windshield wipers of the BMW.

“See,” he said, “when NOPD comes back around, they’ll figure they ticketed us already.”

“Yeah, I understand the concept,” Jordan replied, crossing her arms. “Complex as it is.”

We walked down Napoleon to St. Charles, and down St. Charles to the corner of Peniston, to the Iota Chi tent that the pledges had put out at five o’clock in the morning. We were some of the first people to arrive, but thankfully the kegs had beat us there.

She consented to one beer, which we took out of Sachit Chowdry’s hands.

“That’s horse shit,” he grumbled, as Erik pried the beer out of his hand. “I’m a pledge. I thought you pledges were supposed to die of alcohol poisoning, not get our booze taken away.”

“If she gets drunk, you have to drive,” Baker warned him. “So stop drinking for a bit.”

“Oh, come on,” Sachit protested. “I’m already getting drunk, and it’s Mardi Gras.”

“You won’t be in three hours, pledge,” Erik grinned, wickedly.

“I won’t get drunk,” Jordan said. “Whatever, you can take the beer back.”

“Absolutely not,” Erik ordered, smacking the rim of the solo cup as she leaned forward to hand it back to an eagerly expectant Sachit. “Enjoy yourself, Jordan. Or else.”

Sachit looked at me. “Maybe you can just leave your car.”

“Leave a BMW overnight on Napoleon Avenue?” I asked. “With a stolen parking ticket on the windshield?”

“It’s a 1995 5-series, let’s not pretend it’s a fucking Ferrari,” Erik told me.

I gave him the finger, but I pulled out my phone and texted Justine: “Can you drive the car back from Napoleon Avenue?”

“Nope,” she replied, almost immediately. “Leave it there.”

I put my phone back in my pocket. “Justine says to leave it there, so we’re leaving it there.”

Sachit fist-pumped the sky, and grabbed another beer out of the cooler.

We stayed for Iris, the first parade--getting drunker and drunker until all of the floats started running together: the music, the colors, the hailstorm of beads raining down on us from the neutral ground.

The drunker I got, the less I seemed to be enjoying myself. The more I thought of Kevin: what he was doing right this moment. Stumbling home from a bar, maybe. Maybe alone. Hopefully alone.

It’d been three months, almost to the day, since we had broken up, and it didn’t get easier. I wondered when it would get easier: when I would stop thinking about him. Stop closing my eyes and hearing his voice and feeling his hands and his lips and his cock.

And then something cracked my skull like a baseball bat, snapping me out of my dreams, delusions, out of Kevin.

I looked down. Someone’s Nalgene, full of water or booze or who knew what, had fallen off one of the floats and conked me right on the top of the head, and fallen to the pavement.

I watched as the float went by, unassumingly.

Erik was standing behind me. Giggling like a schoolgirl. “You okay, bro?”

I clutched the top of my head. “I,” I said. “I don’t know.”

“What happened?” Jordan asked, from behind me.

I turned around, motioned to the forgotten Nalgene laying in the gutter on the side of the curb. “I got hit in the head with a water bottle.”

“Oh,” Jordan said. “You’ll be fine.”

“Yes, being a freshman year pre-med dropout really qualifies you to make a diagnosis.”

She rolled her eyes. “Want us to call an ambulance? The surgeon general?”

“No,” I said. “I think I should go home and put ice on my head though.”

Jordan pretended she couldn’t see me. She stretched her arms for beads, which again began raining down on us; I threw up my own hands, to block my face.

“Don’t ruin Mardi Gras, Becker,” Erik said. “You’re getting stressed. Just open another beer. Go mellow.”

I didn’t say anything else; I pushed my way through the crowd, to the open side of St. Charles Avenue heading uptown. It was a sea of cars, honking, people jaywalking across the street. Crowds of drunk people, all ages, trying to seize on the few cabs that snaked by.

My head was still throbbing, but the sharp initial pain of getting slammed in the head seemed to recede. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing; I made a note to google “traumatic brain injuries” when I got home.

“Where are you going?” Ted. From behind me.

“Back uptown,” I told him, spinning around. “Trying to get a cab. I got hit in the head.”

He cracked a bit of a smile. “Let me see.”

“What?”

“Let me see,” he said. “I was a lifeguard in high school.”

“If I need someone to tell me ‘No Running on the Pool Deck,’ you’re my first call.” But I bowed my head down in his direction.

“It was on the gulf, thank you,” he said, running his fingers through my hair. “The beach has been underwater since the storm, but before that.”

I couldn’t tell exactly what he was looking for, but I liked his hands. I liked how this felt. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine it was Kevin, but I didn’t close my eyes, and I didn’t imagine it was Kevin.

“Yeah, just a bump,” he said, finally, dropping his hands. “I don’t think you’re in any imminent danger of dying.”

“Thanks.” I noticed, for the first time, that he was also standing on the wrong side of the street too. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere,” he said. “I saw you going, and thought I’d ask.”

He paused for a second. And I internally panicked, that he was suspecting something: that he thought I was escaping to go to a gay bar, or to go have gay sex, or to do other gay activities, but he didn’t say anything. “You’re really fine--I wouldn’t stress too much about it.”

So I did go back to the parade, and continued to drink, and the day continued to fade in and out. Iris turned to Tucks, and Sachit came back to me with the two empty cups he left with.

“Bad News Bears,” he said. “The keg is tapped.”

I let out a slow-motion, “Nooooo,” and Sachit gave a tragic sigh.

“Being sober at a parade sucks.”

Not that we were anything remotely close to sober, at this juncture of the day. “We’re leaving for Endymion in a bit. We’ll have another keg or two down there.”

“I don’t want to sober up.”

I shrugged. “Unless you want to go rummaging in someone’s cooler.”

He looked longingly at a few families, who had spread out a tarp and sectioned off a too-large chunk of the neutral ground, and their huge blue cooler.

“Possibly,” he replied.

“Should’ve brought weed,” I told him. “Baker had this weed that didn’t smell last year, so he could smoke it out of a cigarette.”

His eyes lit up. “You know what we should do?” He leaned in, lowered his voice. “Have you ever done blow?”

I tried not to look so surprised that a freshman, a person a whole year younger, was offering me coke. When Kevin and I did it--that night, with Rob Winslow and Ryan Wyatt in Rob’s room at the Iota Chi house--he was the adult in the room. And suddenly, I was supposed to be the adult but here was Sachit, offering me coke.

“I’ve done it,” I told him. “Once.”

Sachit Chowdry did not seem to believe me, but gave me a polite smile anyway. He had established himself as the obvious weed aficionado of the pledge class, but cocaine seemed a little illicit even for him. Weed was innocent enough, almost as innocent as alcohol; cocaine was major league.

“Let me call my dealer,” Sachit said, pulling out his phone. “I know he’s at the parade somewhere.”

He went off to make his phone call. Erik came up to me, clapped me on the shoulder.

“I wonder who Chowdry’s going to get for a big,” he said. “He’s the in-demand pledge.”

“Is he?” I tried to be nonchalant about it, but hearing Sachit was popular wasn’t my favorite thing, because, in the back of my mind, I did figure I’d try to get him as my little. I still wasn’t entirely sure how the whole thing was supposed to work out, but I felt like he and I had the kind of relationship Baker and I had had last year.

“Well, Tripp wants him,” Erik replied, dismissively.

“Oh, so he’s not in demand at all,” I grinned. “Is what you’re saying?”

“We’re so mean to Cuthbert,” Erik replied. “Where’d Chowdry go?”

“Calling his dealer,” I said.

Erik smiled. “Weed?”

I wrinkled my nose. “Bolder.”

“Blow?” Erik asked. “Fucking-A, let’s do it.”

I looked at him. “Have you done it?”

“Sure,” he said. “Erica Strout used to be into it. You’ve never done it? You were around Kevin Malley so much and he never gave you coke?”

“We did it once,” I said.

“There you go.”

Sachit came back over. “He’s, like, three blocks from here at the parade.” He looked at Erik. “In?”

“Oh, hell, yes,” Erik said, reaching for his wallet.

He followed Sachit down St. Charles towards Louisiana Avenue, near the row of portapotties in the parking lot of a somber, run-down Rite Aid, and he met his dealer. Who looked like a typical white guy, polo and shorts, flip flops, shaggy hair.

Sheltered in Hamlet, I’d always been under the impression that drug dealers were these sinister hood rats, but they weren’t, all things considered. At least the drug dealers frequented by Tulane students. Especially the one I was dating.

Erik and I stayed back about twenty feet, and neither of us seemed intent on going any closer.

Because, at the end of the day, Erik was a big scaredy cat, just like I was. Liked the idea of danger, maybe, or telling people we liked dangerous situations--we would undoubtedly tell our high school friends about the time we bought coke at a Mardi Gras parade--but clearly neither of us had any intention of swinging on the gallows with Sachit Chowdry if something went awry.

I pictured the three of us running, drunk, down St. Charles, zigzagging through the crowds, some portly NOPD officer chasing after us.

No, thank you.

Sachit and his dealer finished up, and Sachit turned over to us, motioned to go into Rite Aid.

“Bathroom?” Erik asked.

I shook my head. “Bathrooms are closed for Mardi Gras.”

“You two are so fucking square,” Sachit said. “We’re buying a makeup mirror and a nail file. And you’re buying me a 40.”

Erik and I exchanged glances, sussing out how much we wanted to abuse our pledge for insubordination, but it went no further than a look. Sachit had the coke, after all.

We headed back towards the tent, newly refreshed with 40s, but Sachit kept walking. Kept walking until we got back to the BMW.

He opened the rear door, and sat in the backseat, legs hanging over the side of the car. Methodically, he tore the makeup mirror out of its packaging, put it on his lap, and dumped a small lump of powder onto it.

He straightened them out with a nail file, and then rolled up a dollar bill from his wallet, and handed it to me. “Becker, since it’s your car.”

I hated that I had to do it first, which was probably part of the appeal for him making me do it first, but I thought back to what Kevin told me: “Just inhale. Suck it up like a vacuum cleaner.”

I thought of Ted, back at the parade, counting down the hours until he could Hoover through the gay bars on Bourbon Street. As he put it.

We did five lines a piece. A sterling amount of coke. And then headed back to the parade route.

And I felt good. Maybe for the first time since I had gotten to the parades. My head didn’t hurt, my heart wasn’t full of Kevin Malley. I felt energetic. Lovable. If someone could feel lovable.

“Cigarette?” Sachit asked, pulling out a pack of Black and Milds from his pocket, as we walked back down Napoleon Avenue.

Erik, who still officially called himself a non-smoker because he only bummed cigarettes, ten or so times a week, was eager to partake.

“Becker?” he offered.

“Becker doesn’t smoke,” Erik said.

“I’ll smoke,” I said, taking a cigarette. “I just did coke, how bad can a cigarette be?”

Erik exchanged a big smile with Sachit Chowdry. “You’re corrupting our Becker. Officially my favorite pledge.”

Maybe it was the mood. The jubilant buoyancy of Mardi Gras, of cocaine, of being free of mood and hangups and filled with life. But the cigarette wasn’t half bad. The deep, soulful breaths, the light scent of smoke.

Not half bad.

My phone started ringing.

Country code: 33.

France.

Kevin.

“Hey, I have to take this,” I told Erik and Sachit. “I’ll meet you at the tent.”

They thought nothing of it. I waited for them to get at least a little out of earshot, and I picked up the phone.

I tried to summon the gods of sobriety, tried to be as nonchalant as possible as I prayed that it wasn’t a spam call: “Hello?”

There was some breathing on the other end. Heavy, drunken breathing, but I could immediately tell it was him.

“Hey,” he said, his voice gravely, groggy, drunk. “It’s Kevin.”

And, fuck. His voice. I could’ve listened to it all day. Even, “Hey, it’s Kevin.”

“I know,” I told him. I tried not to sound too excited. “What’s up?”

“I was just,” he said. He tried to find the words. “I was just thinking of you and I thought I should call you. And tell you I’m sorry for being a jerk.”

I sighed. Sorry for being a jerk. I didn’t know what that meant: that he missed me and wanted me? That he didn’t want me but felt guilty?

I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to know. I couldn’t handle that. I couldn’t bear that.

“It’s okay,” I told him.

“I don’t want you to hate me,” he sputtered. “You know? Like, I know, we broke up but that doesn’t have to mean it’s over. It shouldn’t have to mean it’s over. Not when I care about you.”

My heart. Racing from the cocaine. Racing from the situation.

“Yeah,” I said. “I care about you too.”

We broke up, but that doesn’t have to mean it’s over.

Fuck. I wanted Kevin.

“Good,” he said. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

“Okay,” I said. I paused. “How’s Paris?”

“It’s good,” he said, finally. “Complicated. Lonely, sometimes. But I should go--I just wanted to hear your voice.”

It was so abrupt. And I didn’t know what to do, except tell him that this was not a mistake. If he was thinking it was a mistake.

“I’m only a phone call away,” I told him. “I care about you too. And I don’t want this to be over either. So don’t be a stranger.”

We hung up. And I was stunned. Utterly, gobsmacked by this sort of thing: an unexpected call from Kevin Malley, in the middle of Mardi Gras.

And I didn’t know. He was drunk, and the whole conversation was a blur--for him, clearly, but for both of us.

And yet: we broke up, but that doesn’t have to mean it’s over.

We broke up, but that doesn’t have to mean it’s over.

We broke up, but that doesn’t have to mean it’s over.

It wasn’t over. It was over, sure, so he could live in Paris and be free, but it was not over.

It was not over.

And for the first time in three months, I felt celebration.

That, even that glimmer of hope.

It was not over.

Fuck. It was not over.

The words replayed in my mind. Again, again, again.

It was not over.

I skipped back to the parade. Practically. Internally.

Tucks was still in full swing, when we got back to the Iota Chi tent: I could see, ahead, Tripp, Ted, Marshall, and Jordan.

I grabbed Jordan’s hand, danced with her to the marching band music. Or danced in spite of her, because she wasn’t moving--she just resigned her left arm to being my dance partner.

Jordan was great once she had started letting our antics roll off of her--figured out that, the harder she fought, the more we’d fight back.

“You’re in a good mood,” she accused.

“It’s a wonderful day,” I told her. “And it’s not over.”

“Yeah, I heard you, Erik, and Sachit did some coke,” she said, unfazed, “and it appears to agree with you.”

I kept dancing with her arm, against the side of her body; she kept ignoring me.

“Jor-Jor,” I said. “Dance..”

“Beck-Beck,” she replied. “No.”

Though she did dance a little bit. Jordan’s awkward dancing. The kind of bopping along to the music, and I considered that a fleeting personal victory.

 

We wound up at The Boot, hours later. Stasis. Dancing in a group.

Minus Erik, who was fifteen feet away from us, making out with some girl against the pillar in the middle of the dance floor.

Ted went to the bathroom, and I followed him, although I wasn’t sure why.

We stood next to each other at the trough in the men’s bathroom and my eyes were wandering. I couldn’t tell if it was the booze or the drugs or the spirit of Mardi Gras, but I was looking at his dick, and it looked nice.

Maybe I was feeling emboldened.

That, in four months, Kevin would be back in New Orleans. And it wouldn’t be over.

And fuck it. He was sowing oats in Paris. I was going to sow oats in New Orleans.

But still, I said nothing. Ted said nothing. But he waited for me outside the bathroom, and we headed over the bar together to get another round of drinks.

I felt him leaning against me, as we waited for the bartender. Of course, it was a crowded bar, on the most crowded night of the year.

I didn’t move. I tried to pretend I didn’t feel him leaning.

“Want to get some air a second?” he asked, fanning out his shirt collar “It’s a million degrees in here.”

“Shouldn’t have worn a blazer.” I turned around, stared for a second. “They’ll notice we’re gone.”

He grinned. “That’s not a no, is it?”

So we ducked out of The Boot, and neither of us discussed where we were going, but we were heading back in the direction of campus, in the direction of Mayer Residences.

And I thought: what if. What if we went back to my dorm room, and one thing led to another. And we were tangled together, clothes flying off, his dick against mine.

I wondered what Ted’s dick looked like. If it was big or small, shaved, hairy.

He wasn’t my type, but he was cute, and I was horny as shit. In the last three months, PK, post-Kevin, I had been with two men: Luke Avery and Connor from Leadership Village, but neither of those translated to sex right now, at this very moment.

And it seemed tragic, in a way. That I had wasted time--that I was nineteen and Kevin was gone and it was Mardi Gras and I should’ve been slamming someone tonight. Like Erik was doing. Like Tripp dreamed of doing.

“So who knows?” he said, suddenly, sharply.

I felt my heart drop. Ripped out of my little fantasy, as he launched tactical nukes on the stillness of the night. I was suddenly sobered up, suddenly panicked, suddenly having to put back on a nonchalant mask, hoping that I had dramatically misunderstood what he was hinting at.

“Who knows what?” I asked, as calmly as I could.

He gave me a pitying grin. “Becker. Darling. We can do this the hard way, or we can do this the easy way. Who knows?”

I wasn’t looking at him, but I said nothing.

“Does Jordan know?”

I shook my head.

“How about Tripp?”

“Are you going to rattle off the name of every single person you met in the last forty-eight hours?”

He gave me a pompous little smirk. “If I have to, yes.”

I sighed. And I didn’t know what to say. “Look. No one knows. Well, no one you met, anyway.”

“So people know,” he said, “just no one here.”

“The guy I was seeing,” I told him. “Am seeing. It’s complicated. But he knows, obviously.”

“Ex-boyfriend?” he clarified. He took my silence as affirmation. “So you’re not all that new. I don’t know why, I thought you were.”

“How could you possibly tell that?” I asked.

He grinned. “You can’t just tell with guys? You get a vibe.”

“And I give off a vibe?”

“You’re not a flamboyant homosexual, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said. “But no. I can always tell. You triggered my gaydar at Thanksgiving last year.” He smiled. “And then you enjoyed the little show on Marshall’s yacht while we were changing last year a little too much, so then I knew for sure.” He paused. “And, you know, you couldn’t keep your eyes off the prize at the urinals just now, either.”

I thought I was being more coy than that. At any rate, I hadn’t expecting to get caught.

And yet. Part of me wasn’t completely upset that I got caught.

Part of me wanted to see where any of this went.

But, of course, I was all nerves. Heart racing. Didn’t know how to flirt with a guy, not like this.

“Oh,” was the only thing I could manage.

“Oh,” he repeated, mockingly. “So no one knows? Because Tripp would be cool with it. And Jordan’s great. And Erik and Patrick, and everyone.”

“I know they would be,” I said. I paused. “I just haven’t told them.”

“Why not?”

I didn’t like this questioning. This cross-examination, really, from a dogged prosecutor.

“There’s no reason,” I told him. “I just haven’t.”

“Just learn to be yourself.”

“This is myself.”

We said nothing for a few seconds. We were in Newcomb Quad now; I could see the lights of Mayer up ahead of us, on the corner of Drill Road and McAlister.

“So,” Ted said, “I think you figured out that I didn’t want a breath of fresh air.”

My heart stopped again. As what was happening seemed to be happening, but for sure, right now, without any of the subtext. No coded language, “shy.” No awkward, unspoken moments in a hookup’s dorm elevator.

“Oh,” I said again.

Ted smiled. Sweetly. Slightly shyly. “Look, you’re a good-looking guy,” he said, “and it looks like I’m not going to make it to the gay bars downtown tonight.”

It wasn’t the most romantic line ever, but I was drunk and he was drunk, and I was horny, and he was horny. His hand grazed mine, just a little bit, but retreated before we were holding hands.

“You’re a good-looking guy too,” I told him. “And I’m glad you didn’t make it to the gay bars tonight.”

Ted’s smile grew. “Great.”

The door to my dorm had barely closed, and Ted and I tangled into each other: arms, legs, lips, tongue.

He was a fucking fantastic kisser: experienced and decisive, romantic. Gripped the back of my head, pulled me into him, so close that we were almost crushed together. Our cocks rubbing together through our jeans.

“Do you want to suck me off or get fucked?” he whispered in my ear.

And that I had not been expecting: Ted, the gay RISD student in his royal blue blazer and white jeans, to take the more dominant role. I briefly considered playing coy, but fuck it, I wanted to get fucked by the nice, hard dick I could feel on the other side of his denim.

“Both,” I told him.

Ted smiled, began undoing his pants. Pulled them down to expose a pair of red briefs, cut high at the waist. I dropped to me knees, and he let me linger on his underwear for a second, before he yanked them down the rest of the way.

He did have a nice dick, for what it was worth. He pulled off his blazer, threw it on the bed. Shirt came off after that, until he was naked, standing in the middle of my dorm room, awash in the dim light from outside.

“Suck it,” he whispered, and I took his hard dick in my hand. I stroked it just a couple times, watched it get even harder, full mast.

And then went to town. He wasn’t expecting me to take all of it on the first gulp--he let out a groan, and then a breathy laugh. “You do know what you’re doing.”

The vote of confidence only inspired me more. To suck him faster, and deeper. Feeling his meaty dick slam into the back of my throat, again, again, and Ted was grunting now, each time, grabbing the back of my head to pull me in even deeper.

Until finally, he began resisting, pulling it back out. “I’m way too close,” he said. “I want to unload in that ass.”

Which was such a hot way to put it. I went over to my bed, and pulled open my nightstand drawer. Pulled out a condom and some lube, and began unbuttoning my shirt.

Ted didn’t move. He slipped the condom on, jacked himself a few times with lube, eyes trained on my body as I took my shirt off and my jeans off, and finally my underwear. It was only after I was naked that he approached me.

Grabbed the small of my back and, once more, pulled me close. Dicks mashed together, bodies together, lips together, and we kissed and kissed and then he pushed me down so I was sitting on the bed.

“Get on your back,” he said, and I did. Legs in the air, and Ted grabbed both of them, put them on his shoulders.

Our eyes locked together, and I felt his dick slowly begin to enter my ass.

“Fuck,” I said, almost involuntary. “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” he whispered, without taking his eyes off me. He pushed in deeper, just a liittle bit at a time, until I felt him enter me entirely.

He slowly began to pump his hips--a sensual fuck. Not like Connor or Luke, who had both fucked me as hard as they could. Not like Kevin, who was so big that everything felt stretched to the final limits.

But nice. Not gentle or anything: sensual, a romance to it.

Ted leaned down, so he could kiss me, so we could make out while his dick battered my hole. And we were both drunk, both getting sloppy by this point: sucking each other’s faces, until he started grunting into my mouth and gaining speed in his hips. Getting close.

I began jacking my own dick. “Fuck me, Ted.”

Ted had no more words at this point. Just a gargled grumble, as he sped up his fuck even more, fucked me harder. We were both moaning, both breathing in rhythm, when he finally gave a rich grunt as he unloaded into the condom.

His fucking slowed immediately, but it didn’t stop. I began jacking my own dick, furiously, focused on Ted’s cock in my ass, until I dumped a big load on my stomach.

“Definitely not new,” he said, kissing me on the lips one last time, before he started pulling his softening dick out of my ass. “That was a good fuck.”

“Likewise.”

He smiled, as he pulled the used condom off his dick. “Do you always bottom?”

I didn’t quite know what to say. I didn’t want to admit to him--to one of my best friend’s best friends--that I was a bottom. So I ignored the question.

And even drunk, even high, even on adrenaline or whatever was coursing through my veins at the moment, I realized I did something I very much should not have done.

Shit where I ate.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I had been drunk and I had been horny and I wasn’t thinking clearly. And I was glad I got fucked, and I was glad I had gotten fucked by Ted, but I was horrified by the fact that it had happened.

“I,” I told him, finally, “don’t want you telling anyone about this.”

He made an X across his naked chest. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

 

We got back to The Boot forty minutes after we left, but no one had seemed to notice we were gone. I told Ted that we should go back in separately, so I went in one door, and he went in the other. I went straight to the bar, he went to the bathroom.

“Where were you?” Jordan asked, dancing pretty theatrical for her.

“Ran out to smoke weed with Sachit at the house,” I said. “Promised him I would.”

“I need another drink.”

“I just got back from the bar.”

She craned her neck. Ted was over at the bar, so she waved at him, made a cup with her fingers, and mimed for him to get her a drink. He gave her a thumbs up.

“They’re so much more obedient when you import them,” she said. “Don’t you just love Ted and Marshall?”

“Sure,” I said. “Tripp has good taste in friends.”

“Hell yes,” she said, and she kept dancing.