Spinning - 1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

I flipped up the collar of my blue jacket as I crossed Hanover Street at the crosswalk. I was trying to ward off a bit of the cold but the upturned corduroy collar wasn't much help as the rain half-heartedly pelted me from above. Spring showers in New England – fifty degrees and wet, not cold enough to freeze you, but not warm enough to be comfortable either, just nestled right in the middle, at an irritating chill.

"Why does it rain every fucking day?" I muttered to myself. It didn't, of course, but I had a tendency to hide from the sun. Staying inside all day, or bolting from class to class, to the dining hall and back home as quickly as possible, trying to avoid the rest of the world and their happy, smiling fucking faces. The biggest grin of all was raining down like hellfire from that bright, happy fucking orb in the sky. When you're nineteen and lonely and...well, sexually confused… sunny days seem to bring out all the happy couples that embody everything you DON'T have; love, someone to touch, someone to talk to, and having it all in public, not having to hide it from anyone.

I've played ‘the game’. I had several girlfriends in high school, even one since coming to college last year, because it was the thing to do. Even fake love felt better than being alone all the time, and I was sick of being asked questions if I went for too long without being with someone. "Love problems, honey?" my mom might ask or "Dude, you need to get laid," Josh commented in Tuesday Psych class. Hell, I was even starting to get "Are you gay?" as a question from some of the dorm kids, since I hadn't been seen with a chick in... oh, six months? They didn't mean anything by it, hell this is college in 2006, they all know gay kids but it wasn't any of their fucking business I figured, not unless they're trying to sleep with me. So I shrugged them off like it was nothing. I went back to my shared dorm room, pulled the shades to block out those fucking sunny smiles outside, and put on my headphones.

Metaphorically speaking, that is, because right then, I wasn't in my dorm room blocking out the world with my audio shield of Bad Religion or Foo Fighters or... dare I admit, Pantera, instead I was soggy and exposed and oddly, felt more comfortable for it. At lease there was a bit of agreement between how I felt inside, and how I felt on the outside, a sort of pathetic harmony I guess.

So I'm poor. Well, I mean, of course I am. I'm a college student and my parents aren't loaded. Far from it, actually, since they just got through putting my sisters through school before I graduated high school. So I busted my ass at my work-study job so I’d have some money to buy books and clothes so I didn't have to sponge off of my parents for cash. Once in a great while I'd treat myself to a couple of beers at a weekend party, or a new CD. Today, I was in Portsmouth in search of some jeans and maybe a new shirt or two. I think most of my clothes were the same ones I was wearing last year and it was starting to show, as I was looking a bit ratty even for a college kid. I like to look nice, but as I said, I lacked the funds so I was limited to slumming it (Wal-Mart) or hitting second-hand and thrift stores. The latter offered a better chance of having something I wouldn't be ashamed to be seen wearing, if anyone bothered to look.

Portsmouth, being a rather chaotic mix of snooty tourist crap and genuinely cool shops, required that I hoof it over several blocks off the main square to get to a thrift shop or two that didn't cater to the rich crowd. So when I shouldered the door open and stepped into Second Best over on Union Street, I was hoping to find a pair or two of broken in boot-cuts in 32/32, or maybe a long-sleeve or a hoodie. I wasn't looking for a full-body tackle, but that's exactly what I got, as some dude came full-force around the corner of the register counter and knocked me flat on my back, with my assailant sprawled on top of me. As I went down, my head smacked against the thinly-carpeted concrete floor and I groaned, my vision dimming for a sec. Fuck, that really hurt…

"Oh, shit..." he mumbled, as he crawled back off of me, kneeling next to me, waiting for me to give some indication if I was okay, or would need some medical attention. I sat up a bit and shook my head to clear it, but immediately regretted it when the room seemed to drop out from under me and I fought back the urge to puke. I was a bit shaken, but I did momentarily entertain the thought that spewing my lunch onto this asshole might make me feel a bit better.

I managed to get my feet under me, pushing myself up to stand at my full 5'9", bringing me eye-level with the dude who just bowled me over, and for the first time I got a good look at him. Wow, he was pretty cute! He had a lot of hair that was in braids, or dreads, or something. I couldn't tell at first but most of it was pulled loosely back behind his head with a few bits hanging down over his shoulders. Brown eyes and rather tan-looking skin, but given the season, that was likely more due to some Hispanic or middle-eastern blood. A cute, small but slightly upturned nose and thin eyebrows and lips, he had a gentle, young-looking face but he must have been at least close to my age, since he was wearing a university cycling team t-shirt. His expression seemed to be balancing between concern that he might have hurt me, and amusement that I was staring at his face.

Oops.

Trying to brush off the situation, I grunted and slid past him.

"Hey, bro, I'm sorry..." he said, as I moved toward the back of the store, and I felt a hand on my shoulder.

Fucking great! So much for avoiding the whole awkward conversation bit. I lowered my eyes to the floor and turned, muttering something to the effect of, "Don't worry about it, I'm fine...," hoping we could just let this whole thing drop before I was forced to actually interact with someone, not even thinking about the fact that this someone was cute, and just caught me staring at them. But no, he felt the need to press on.

"No, it was totally my fault, I should know by now not to swing around this corner so fast. Especially since the bell on the door fell off, we never know when a customer is coming in and...," he paused. "Dude?"

I was still looking at the floor, uncomfortable with this whole situation. He noticed, so he stopped talking, I guess. When I looked up and met his eyes he could tell I wasn't enjoying this and torn between finishing his apology, which was obviously distressing me, and letting it drop, which was what I clearly wanted, he chose the latter. "Ok, well, anyway, I 'm really sorry. Jen," he called to the girl behind the counter, "can you hook this guy up? I really almost killed him there."

"No problem, I'll give him our discount. Get outta here and stop injuring the customers BJ," she agreed.

"Okay, so, sorry again," he offered as he turned to head out the door.

"You don't have to...," I started, but he was gone.

"It's no big deal, it’s just twenty percent off," Jen said. "And he really did lay you out over there, so it's cool." She didn't look over as she said it, but she was smiling. I scowled, and headed over to the guy's jeans rack in the back.

Thirty minutes and four trips to the little curtained-off changing area later, I had a pair of jeans I didn't hate, and a couple of shirts, enough to bulk up my wardrobe so I wasn't doing laundry every four days. I couldn't find much else to fit me, which really pissed me off. I mean, the bus fare was free, yay for student discounts, but it was still a thirty minute ride each way and I didn't have the money to bum around town all day. So I paid, swallowing my pride and taking the twenty percent off, and started my walk back to the bus stop.

I felt a tug in the back of my mind as I shuffled down Congress St. It was a lot like the feeling you get when you're really hungry and you catch a whiff of cinnamon rolls and coffee from a nearby bakery, except this wasn't a smell...it was another sense. It took a minute for me to figure out what it was that was tugging at my mind, or I should say, ears, but I realized that I was passing a used music store and my hunger for TUNES, not food, was rising to the surface. I let those wispy tendrils, the ‘scent’ of delicious vinyl, hook me by my earlobes and draw me in.

Inside was standard fare. The place looked cool in that aloof ‘I know more about underground music that you do’ sort of way, with the walls, ceiling, and windows plastered with flyers and posters of bands I hadn't even heard of. It was all a sham though. I mean, the people working here probably DID know more about music than I did, but there was still the ubiquitous big ‘top 20’ wall by the entrance and I'm sure they stocked the new Black Eyed Peas album just like everyone else. I'm no snob, I don't care, I'm no aficionado, I just know what I know and like what I like. I was there because music was my shelter and I needed to keep my choices fresh. And for me, any chance to pick up a $15 CD for $7 was a chance I couldn't pass up.

The store was laid out with two or three long rows of "new" CDs for sale immediately in front of me as I entered, extending straight away from me. To the right of those rows sat a four-sided checkout desk, where a couple of clerks stood ringing up sales. Further to the right was the "used" section, the only section that really interested me. Along the back wall, DVDs, video tapes, video games, and assorted paraphernalia from hair dye to T-shirts stood stacked. Heading to the used stacks, I saw a guy standing at one side of the checkout counter, facing away from me. I recognized the hair right away; it was the guy who bowled me over coming into the clothing store. He hadn't gotten far in the last forty-five minutes or so, just down the street, really. Nice butt, I noted, too bad it’s wasted on him. Judging by the way his shoulders are slumping as he slid a stack of CDs back across the counter, his credit card just got declined. Karma?

I sped up just a bit to get out of his line of sight when he turned to leave. I didn’t bother to look, but I was pretty sure he wouldn't spot me. I don't know why I bothered, since he'd really have no reason to bother me again; I wasn't exactly warm and cordial when he was apologizing earlier. Still, he had been rather friendly before and I didn't see any reason to encourage the behavior. I put him out of my mind and started flipping through the general pop/rock selections...AC/DC, Aerosmith, the Alarm, Andrew W.K., Atticus, skipping over the smarmy pop crap...none of it really doing anything for me. I slid further down, pulled a one-eighty and dug into the used metal. Better; here's where I usually found my guilty pleasures. Atreyu, Avenged Sevenfold, Iced Earth, even old Maiden and Pantera. They comfort me. Nobody needs to know.

"Wow, you're digging the metal, huh?" Shit. I guess I was spotted by my over-friendly assailant after all. "I would have had you pegged for a Crystal Method/Sage Francis/Morcheeba kind of guy, you know, likes a good groove, but only if it's cerebral..." he trailed off, noticing my cold stare. This was twice in one day that the same dude pushed into my personal space and I was not happy about it. I silently set the Nightwish album down (yeah, I dunno who they are), turned, and walked right back out of the store, into the rain.

I'm sure steam was rising up off my head as I sat on the bench, waiting for the bus, under the little weather enclosure thingy. I was pretty fired up. First of all, he was all in my face. I mean, who just walks up to someone, especially someone they knocked onto their ass an hour before, and just butts into their business and starts up a conversation? Second, he was a cute guy and I don't like cute guys. They’re either assholes who think they’re pretty, or they're sickeningly nice, so they're, like, PERFECT, and then I get all melty over them and they get freaked out and hate me and tell everyone I'm a fag. I didn't want anything to DO with this guy. My mood didn't improve after getting on the bus, either. I was further away from BJ, if that was his real name, but the heat in the bus was broken so it wasn't any warmer in here. In fact, it might have been colder since the driver had cracked open several windows to keep passenger breath from fogging the windows too much, and the wind was whipping in. I put my hands in my jeans pockets to try and keep them a little warmer, and I fingered the hole in my left pocket with my pinky finger as I tried not to think about him.

The next week went by quickly. This was surprising to me because it was sunny almost every day, but I couldn't hide, I had exams all week. I spent a lot of time in the library studying because I could sit in an unoccupied corner with my tunes and be left alone while I crammed in psych, bio, and British lit. The tests went well, and I was lucky to have the extra pair of jeans. I'm sure I was starting to smell a bit ripe by the end of the week but I didn't exactly have lots of spare time or cash to be doing laundry. Saturday and Sunday rolled around, and I was able to resume my hermit lifestyle.

Early Monday classes I avoid, for obvious reasons, and so I didn't need to roll out of bed until about ten to get ready for my ten-thirty Psych lecture. I stood in the hallway outside the lecture hall, in line with a few dozen other students, waiting for the previous class to finish and file out. I never noticed before, but the little plaque on the wall outside the hall proclaimed this as “Jung Hall” which was rather appropriate for a psychology lecture. Then I remembered that this was the biology building, and that this class had simply overflowed to this hall because they had run out of space in the Psychology building. Reading further down the plaque, I learned that the hall was actually named for James Jung, a 45-year veteran janitor who scrubbed these floors for all those decades, not Carl Jung, the father of analytical psychology. I was brought out of my pointless musing by the telltale shuffle of books, bags, and feet a few moments later that told us that they were finished, and we waited off to the side of the hall so we didn't block their exit. As I walked in and started the ascent up the side steps to the back of the sharply slanted room, I had to step aside to let another kid by, a straggler that took too long to pack up. I had my eyes down, as usual, watching where I was stepping, and so I was a bit surprised when the body stopped instead of walking by, and spoke a simple "Hey!”

I looked up into his eyes. His. BJ's.

I just sort of looked at him for a minute, my thoughts not really registering, and then comprehending, sort of; I was feeling a bit confused as to why he was here. Then I remembered that I didn't LIKE this guy.

What the FUCK?

"Hey," I muttered, more to just get it over with so he'd leave and I could sit down for my lecture. But he didn't. He followed me up the couple dozen shallow steps to the back, and stood next to me when I sat down.

"I thought you might go to school here and we keep running into each other! My name's Ben." He held out his hand.

I looked at it for a moment, and decided that being outright rude wasn't going to get me anywhere. "I'm Jeff," I offered simply.

"I have lab for another hour next door, so maybe if we run into each other on the way out, and if I don't give you another concussion, we can go grab a coffee..." he suggested. It sure seemed like he was trying hard.

"No thanks, I have some stuff to do. Maybe some other time," I replied. He didn't pout, exactly, but he looked a bit like I let him down. What, does a smile and a handshake always win people over for him? Jeez.

"OK, well, catch you later!" he tossed back over his shoulder as he walked back down the steps and out of the hall.

I spent the class period NOT thinking about Ben. Okay, yes, I recognize the irony of lying to myself, being in full-on denial, while sitting in a psychology lecture. In truth, I thought about little else. But that’s the beauty of lecture-style classes, I think anyway; you can go, and listen, and learn, but if you’re having a bad day you can just sit in the back and zone out, and just catch up by reading the text later. But what I really wanted was to just stop thinking about him. I could feel the beginnings of dangerous thoughts about him and his cute butt and his cool hair and nice skin. There was no way he was gay. I mean, it was just statistically improbable that someone I thought was cute would want to talk to me, AND was gay, AND would be interested in me too. And dammit, if someone was going to come into my little protected world and get under my skin, it was going to be on my fucking terms. Where the hell did he get off, crashing into my life and then coming back for seconds and thirds, all in one week? Screw that, I thought to myself, he’s done, if he ‘runs into me’ again, I’m just going to have to do something about it.

I had it all figured out by the time class broke at lunchtime. I tucked my textbook and my notepad into my bag, and strode purposefully down the stairs exiting the room with authority. The clear thoughts in my head of how I would decisively react next time I encountered Ben were vaporized instantly when I saw that he was standing right in front of me, leaning casually against the water bubbler, sipping from a large paper coffee cup. Somehow I didn’t think he’d actually be waiting for me out there.

“Let’s go,” he said, not so much a command but really not a suggestion either. So much for my plan of taking charge, this is the second time he’s bowled me over.

Getting coffee, good coffee, meant a five-minute walk over to the student union building but Ben had already taken care of his caffeine needs, or so I thought. “This is only my second of the day, dude. I have plenty of room for more,” he replied when I mentioned it. Entering the building from the back side as we were would have us already on the third floor by the café. Most people were headed to the dining halls for lunch so there was no line to speak of. I ordered a double latte; he ordered a dark roast of some variety, black, size large. Yikes.

And so, silently cursing myself for being such a weak little pussy, we sat at a high-top table off to the side of the hallway by the café, and drank our coffee. I didn’t exactly open up, I don’t talk about myself very much, but I shared more than I thought I would. He told me he lived off campus, and I told him I was in the dorms. We agreed that dorm life was a drag with no privacy, shared bathrooms, noise at all hours, and that unique dorm hall smell. I did mention that I had found what I believed to be the single upside to living in the dorm, which was victimizing unsuspecting pedestrians outside.

“Especially hung-over guys or girls on a walk-of-shame early Saturday mornings on Garrison Ave,” I explained, “they never expect a loogie from above. Especially not one with five floors’ worth of velocity behind it.” That earned a chuckle.

So I suppose it didn’t kill me to sit and be social with someone for once. It was certainly well outside my comfort zone, though, and while this might have been just another friend-making effort on Ben’s part, it was really not my thing. So when we had finished our coffee, I excused myself.

“I have to head back to the dorm and rest up before my afternoon classes…” I told him, making my excuse so I could try and get back to my usual seclusion. He didn’t want to let me off that easy, but I escaped without having to divulge my last name, my cell number, email addy, dorm address. He couldn’t really hunt me down with just my first name.

Over the next couple of days, though, I felt a bit of a backlash. I mean, what the hell was I doing? I told myself I was going to keep distance between me and this weirdo that keeps following me around. Okay, that’s unfair, it really could all be coincidence but still, I wasn’t going to be best friends with this random dude that I hardly know, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to even entertain the idea that we might hook up for all the reasons I’ve already laid out. Still, true to my form, I had to go three steps too far in the opposite direction in reaction. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I spent in my room, twenty hours per day. I left exactly long enough to inhale meals at the dining hall and to get to class and back again. Hours of listening, studying, watching TV, and sleeping. I probably came close to wearing out my ipod.

Friday rolled around and I thought about spending the whole day inside. I only had once class – psychology lecture – and I figured if there was one trip out of my cave that was likely to end in a collision with Ben, it would be that one. I had already skipped Wednesday’s class, and I wasn’t worried about getting behind, but I also knew kids that got into the habit of skipping class and never really got back out of the habit. I was no genius, and I couldn’t afford to let my grades slide at all. So I sat on the edge of my bed, half dressed, my mind willing me to stand up and get my ass out the door but my heart urging me to crawl back into bed. My heart was winning; here, in my room, I was in control. I decided who was allowed in, what I heard, and what I had to look at. Outside, I was exposed. Here, I was safe in my fortress of self-imposed solitude.

There was an odd clicking noise overlaid on top of the sharp beat of the Propellerheads’ “Velvet Pants”. I thought maybe it was a bad rip of the track, it was a used CD after all and I had mixed results in the past when trying to get clean MP3s from scratched discs. I ran the track back a few seconds and it didn’t repeat, so I put it out of my mind and flopped back on the bed, giving up the debate on skipping or attending class and letting apathy win out. A few seconds later the odd tapping rhythm returned, and I muted the music. It wasn’t the track; someone was tapping on my door.

I threw on a shirt, leaving it unbuttoned and cracked open the door to see who was knocking. I wasn’t really thinking about who it would be but I absently assumed it would be Jess from next door, asking me to either turn the music down or put on something she might actually want to hear. I wasn’t expecting Ben to be standing there, and I didn’t expect to go from zero to fucking LIVID in three seconds flat.

“What the FUCK are you doing here, are you STALKING me or something???” I demanded through clenched teeth.

Ben’s face turned as white as his t-shirt almost instantly, and he actually took a step back.

“How did you find me?” I pressed.

“I… I… I was worried when I didn’t see you at your class on Wednesday…” he stammered.

“How did you FIND me?” I repeated, closing the door behind me. He wasn’t getting past the front door to my world. No fucking way.

“You said, you know, about the loogies…” he almost whispered, with his eyes down on the dirty brown hallway carpet.

Oh shit. Loogies, pedestrians on Garrison avenue, and five floors of velocity. I practically gave him my address, and now he’s on my doorstep. Is this guy trying to rob me? Is he trying to stalk me? Does he just have no sense of personal space? What the hell does this guy WANT from me?