Mike and Winston - 1. Chapter 1

chapter 1

“So you’ll do it this weekend?”

The other man finished pulling on his socks and reached for his dress shirt, heaped with their other clothes on the floor. “I’ll tell her tomorrow,” said Winston. He glanced back.

Mike nodded. “I’ll do it, too. My dad’ll be back.” And he would also be seeing Dan today, Mike thought. He would tell Dan in order to explain why he had to refuse the offer.

“We should do it on Sunday,” Winston muttered, turning down the collar of his dress shirt. He had mustered a grin, but Mike could see right through it. “So we can have sex at the next lunch break and pretend the whole thing never happened.”

Mike snorted. “You’ll be in marriage counseling by then.”

The other man froze. “Yeah. Huh.”

“Sorry.” Mike buried his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes. “Fuck, I shouldn’t have said that.” He was not feeling nervous yet, but it was there at the edge of his mind, like a shadow he could only half see.

“Nah, you’re probably right. But you’ll be fine,” Winston said brightly. “You only have your own parents to tell. I have to tell my wife, my parents, and my parents-in-law.”

“Yeah. Don’t forget to send me an email after you do it.” Mike got up and, surprising himself as he did so, wrapped his arms around Winston’s shoulders.

“Hey, no worries.”

“Yeah,” Mike muttered as he pulled away. “Yeah. You’ll be great.”

“I’ll email you, or something.”

Mike nodded. He stepped to the side as Winston opened the door. “I’ll see you later. Good luck.”

“Yeah. You too.”

It was Mike’s second year at college, and he was unsure how he felt. He knew he was not enjoying it. But he was not hating it, either. Apathy as a conclusion, though, was such a letdown that he was unwilling to make it.

His roommates the first year had been a fat Mexican boy who kept to himself, and someone on the lacrosse team who refused to shower. This year it was a pale boy named Jonas, who had eyebrow piercings and too good an offer to let pass.

“Look, a fridge, and a desk,” he had said in a voice that reminded Mike of someone from the Simpsons. “And this dresser, here. It’s all yours.”

“There’s only one bed,” Mike had pointed out.

“That’s because I’m not going to be sleeping here,” Jonas had said, fiddling with one of the studs in the belt he had sagging around his hips. “Look, I’m going to be at my girlfriend’s place. The only reason I’m renting this room is to get my parents fucking off my back.”

Mike had nodded. “Sure, why not.” He had hesitated. “What if my mom asks why there’s only one bed?”

“Then there’s this,” Jonas had said, reaching into closet and taking out a fold-up cot. “Just say that I usually sleep in this, but I was cleaning the mattress and sheets or some shit.”

It had been a good deal, even if it completely shot his minimum-words-spoken-per-day limit. Last year at least he had had to say “hey” or “can you keep it down?” every so often to his roommates. This year, he could probably go a whole month without saying a word. The arrangements also managed to make his resolve to keep masturbation to a minimum significantly more difficult.

His mother had insisted that she make an inspection of the dorm, but she never got around to it. Mike wondered if he should feel relieved, but instead he felt apathetic, especially because he had to deal with her questions.

“We don’t have a vacuum cleaner, but the landlady does,” he had said, probably not for the first time. He was not sure; it was easy to lose track of these things. “I’m sure she’d let us borrow it.”

“Oh,” his mother had said, chewing this over. “And your roommate?”

“His name’s Jonas, and I hardly see him. I guess he must be studying, or something.”

“He’s normal, isn’t he?”

“Yes, Mom, he’s normal,” Mike had snapped, the irritation finally show in his voice.

The first term had gone quickly with nothing noteworthy besides one spectacularly failed exam that he had tried unsuccessfully to recover from, and the advent of his brother, Steve’s, SAT exams.

“Mike, you have to talk to him. Tell him how to study.”

“That won’t help, Mom,” Mike had said wearily, staring at the ceiling in only his boxers. It was his usual attire through the day. He hoped she would not give the phone to Steve. She had already interrupted him just as he was about to masturbate.

“But you have to talk to him, Mike. Do you want your brother to have a future or not?”

“I’ll talk to him later, okay?” He had shifted the cell phone to his other hand; his left ear was getting sore. “Are you all right, Mom? You sound kind of tired.”

“I’m all right. You father isn’t coming home this Thanksgiving.”

“Oh.”

Christmas that year had been better, although Mike could not see how anything could have gotten worse than Thanksgiving. His mother taught part time at a local community college, and it was enough to get her mind off of things when classes were in session. It was harder when all there was to do was sit around and think about how other families generally saw each other more than two months out of every year. Mike hated it when his mother got that sad look at the edges of her face, like frost on windows in the very early morning. He hated that he would inevitably make it worse for her at some point in the future.

That Christmas, Mike had gotten a Swiss army knife from his father. Steve had gotten a watch. They had all gotten sick from the cold that their father had caught in Austria. Mike spent most of January between Tylenol and mounds of tissue paper, and had wondered what New Year’s resolutions to make at the same time he wondered if viruses from Europe were empirically more miserable than American ones. Getting friends sounded like a good resolution. He had not had any close ones since Petch moved away early in their senior year of high school. Keeping his grades up would be another. And maybe find a job; it would at least fill the hours that he would have spent debating whether or not he should masturbate, masturbating, and feeling like a loser afterwards. Maybe he should get laid. That had not happened either since Petch left. And since they were resolutions, he doubted that any of them would come about.

The building had looked gray and ominous under the sweltering sun. The hallways, lined with expiring fluorescent bulbs, had not been much better. But the comics on the door were somewhat comforting. “Neurotics build castles in the air. Psychotics live in them. Psychiatrists pay the rent.” Mike checked the room number again, and was about to knock a second time when the door opened.

“Professor Hubbell?” Mike said, sticking out his hand. “Hi, I’m Mike.”

“Ah, Mike,” the other man replied. “Good to meet you.” Hubbell had a full head of swept-back hair and an aloof smile. He did not seem like the sort of person who would put those comics on his door. “So you’re here for the lab assistant position?”

Mike nodded. “Yes.”

“Good, good. I suppose you’re curious as to what you’ll be doing?”

“Yeah.”

“Ah, good. Mostly you will be entering data and processing it. You said you had experience with Excel? Good. This’ll be easy for you. I will also need you to administer surveys, and if you like, you can help me make survey questions. The times you said were Tuesdays and Fridays from four to seven? Good, good.”

The door opened and a man came in. Mike swiveled around.

“Oh, sorry, Professor. I didn’t know you were busy.”

“It’s all right,” Hubbell said in a magnanimous tone. “Mike, this is Dan, my other assistant. Dan, this is Mike, he’ll be helping us this year. Mike is a freshman, am I right? And Dan, you’re a—?”

“Junior,” Dan said, and smiled.

The smile would stick to his mind.

Later that evening, he had gotten takeout from the cheap Chinese restaurant down the street. He was glad of the refrigerator; the food would serve as breakfast tomorrow, and lunch if he was not hungry in the morning. It was too bad Jonas had not decided on a microwave as well. Chinese food did not go down well cold.

He liked watching the street as he ate. At seven ‘o’ clock, it was as though someone had tossed a giant bucket of paint down the street, scattering everything with stark reds. At home during the weekends, he usually watched the sun set outside, while dribbling a basketball around the courts at the local grade school. He missed the basketball courts. They came with the sound from the tetherball courts of a chain clanging against a metal pole. It reminded him of a wind chime, the sort that stood in front of older places. It made him think of a bell in the mountain.

Professor Hubbell had made only a very cursory introduction of the lab, which was made up of a couple of small office rooms, before leaving Mike and Dan alone.

“Did Hubbell say what you’re supposed to do?” Dan asked. He had hazel eyes, blond spiked hair, and wore a dark blue shirt with a Berkeley “Cal” ensign on it.

“Something about data entry and Excel,” Mike had replied.

Dan had locked his hands behind his head and stretched, and Mike had blinked and looked away.

“It’s pretty easy shit.” He had leaned forward to give the mouse a nudge. The screen came alive. “We just did a pretty big survey, and we have to put it in a spreadsheet. We’ve already got templates for it. You just have to put in the numbers.”

Dan had smelled clean, warm. Later, as Mike lay in bed, eyes screwed shut and hand stroking his member fiercely, it was the smell he thought of most. Then the hem of the shirt riding up to show the band of skin, the pucker of the bellybutton. The sleeve sliding back to reveal more of the bicep as Dan reached over to slam a palm on a tall stack of papers.

“Here’s what you get to enter,” Dan had said. He smiled apologetically. “I had to do that all last year. It sucked.”

“Oh.”

“And I’m still doing it,” Dan had sighed, slipping into the chair in front of the adjacent computer. “I don’t know how many entries I fucked up. After the first half hour, you kind of go numb, and after the first hour is over, you could be typing monkey shit and not know it.”

“That sounds pretty awful,” Mike had said, and wished he had said something more intelligent, or at least used a different word, one that was cooler. Screwed up. Sick. Even what he heard too many times at high school, during lunch and in the locker rooms—that this or that was so gay.

“Well, it’s got to be better that there’s two of us,” Dan had said, smiling and punching Mike in the shoulder. Mike had smiled back, feeling something warm and terrible surge upwards inside his chest.

“Yeah, we’ll cover for each other. I’ll give you a slap if I see you starting to type monkey shit.”

Dan had looked for a moment surprised, and then snorted with laughter. Mike had chuckled along, letting out the breath he had been half-holding.

“That’ll be every Tuesday and Friday afternoon after four.”

“Hey, those are my hours.”

“Yeah, Hubbell likes us to work while he’s away teaching. I guess he thinks it’s more efficient. It sucks that we don’t have Fridays off.”

“Yeah, sucks.”

“But I know a place we can go after that,” Dan had said with a wink. “I know this really cool senior—he mixes these shit ass drinks and gives them away for free.” Mike could not remember what expression he had on his face, but Dan had reached over and put an easy hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, dude. We’ll get you plastered in no time.”

It was a bad idea, he told himself that night, after he had come and wiped away the semen that had splattered up his stomach. It was a bad idea to jack off while thinking on his coworker, a man he barely knew. It was a bad idea to jack off at all in his dingy room, like sixty-year-old geezer dreaming of little boys in raincoats, alone.

But there was something he could do about that last item. And why not? People did it all the time. He clambered off of his bed and, still naked, started his computer. A few minutes later, after he had tossed away the clumps of tissue and pulled on a pair of boxers, he was on Craig’s List. Married guy, mid 30s, athletic body. Looking for guy, pref younger, fit and healthy, for safe and discrete sex. Can’t host place; can only do lunch hours.

He clicked reply, and hesitated. The blank message box stared at him. He was nineteen already. And nobody would know. The ad had asked for safe sex, discrete. Why shouldn’t he do it? Why not?

He bit his lip. I’m interested, he typed. Should he put in information about himself? No, that was in his profile already. And a picture… The poster of the ad had not included a picture. It would be too forward if Mike did, too sluttish. Location would be a good idea, he thought. I’ve a place near the Berkeley campus we could meet.

The rapid pounding in his chest was making it difficult to think. He stared at the screen for a few more moments before moving his mouse to the reply button and clicking.

There. It was done.

He shivered as he padded to the window and shut it. He liked it open, because the room would get stuffy sometimes, but tonight was turning out to be chilly. There was no one on the street, not even the rapper who always seemed to be on the street corner in his too-big jacket and sideways baseball cap. Whenever he looked from his window at home down at the street and found it empty, he could imagine that it was because everyone was at home, eating or watching TV or working. Sometimes he would peer at windows to other houses and wonder what the people inside were doing. Having dinner? Fighting? The street he was looking at now gave him no such feeling. It just looked abandoned, as though there had never been any life on it, or ever would.

One of the last things he and Petch had talked about had been staying in touch. It was going to be no big deal, because they IMed each other whenever Mike could get the computer, and always traded calls, emails. But after the first month of Petch’s absence, Mike had found his friendship with Petch slipping away. Their connection had been intense and based more strongly than he had guessed on mutual sexual discovery. They really had little else in common. The last he had heard from Petch was a brief email, two months ago, almost two months after the email Mike had sent. Apparently, Petch was having the time of his life at an Ivy League college on the East Coast, and he was really very busy. After that, there had not seemed much point in replying.

Mike started. He had a new message from ‘Winston75’.

Sounds good. 2:00 this Wednesday? Name a place.

He scrambled into his chair in front of the computer. 2:00 Wednesday is fine. He paused. There was a coffee shop two blocks away that would be perfect for meeting; it was inconspicuous, ignored by most other college students, and the coffee there wasn’t bad. But he could not remember the name of it. I can give you directions, he wrote.

The reply came almost instantly. Do you use MSN msger? It’d be easier to talk.

Mike hesitated. He had barely used MSN messenger since Petch left. Yes; I’ll be online in a sec, he replied. In another minute he had signed in to his new account. The familiar bar to the right popped up, with its empty friends list.

A message box flashed. Winston75 wants to send you a message. Accept? Yes, Mike clicked.

hi

hi, Mike replied.

so where’s this place?

Mike typed out the instructions.

thnx, Winston75 replied. just so we’re on the same page—safe sex, condoms, no extreme anything, ie scat, torture, etc. is that fine?

Mike blinked, momentarily taken aback. yeah sure.

and no relationships. Another message came a second later. sorry but it’s easier if we say it right now

yeah, that’s fine, Mike typed back. i’m not looking for one. He hesitated, wondering if he should add, just sex, but Winston had replied already.

great. see you Monday And then, unexpectedly, a smiley face.

Mike wanted to laugh. yeah see you

The message box stayed there for another few moments, before Mike closed it. He wondered if he should sign out, decided against it, and then did. There was no point in having something lying around that could tempt him into changing his mind.

He looked at the clock. It was nearly nine. Today was only Wednesday. He had a night to kill, and then nearly a whole week to wait. The satiation he had felt from dinner and masturbating afterwards was fading, leaving behind a sickly feeling, as though he had eaten too much. To have sex with a complete stranger, one who was married— He could see a bald and beer-bellied man, his fingers glittering with wedding rings, his penis riddled with STDs, his eyes narrowed with suspicion and paranoia as he blocked the doorway with his waist. But, Mike reminded himself, Winston75 was athletic and only in his mid thirties.

He got up and reached into his refrigerator, taking out a bottle of juice. He wondered if Winston’s wife knew. He was almost sure she did not. His mind went to the novels he had been forced to read in high school, the news that he browsed disinterestedly every day, the stories he’d read dispassionately about adultery and secret affairs; so this was what it was like— He frowned and clenched the bottle of juice, letting the coldness seep into his palms before his thoughts could get the better of him. Somewhere, in a place that could not be touched by the mere cold from his skin, was the realization that he did not care.