The Freshmen - 54. Chapter 54

October 31, 2004

Weld Hall

Cambridge, MA

Will

“Who the fuck are you supposed to be?” Niko asked me. He, Scotty, Fab, and Thor were going as singers in the Outkast “Hey Ya!” video. Three of them were the backup singers in green pants, a white turtleneck, a black sweater vest, and black boots that almost went up to their knees. Niko was dressed in blue-and-green plaid pants, a green shirt with white buttons, white suspenders and shoes, and a stripy neckerchief. They'd drawn straws for who'd get to be André 3000, which was hilarious to anyone who'd actually watched the video. I had planned to join them, but Marie had asked me to go with her so I’d done that instead.

“I’m a surfer,” I said. I was dressed in khaki cargo shorts, a khaki henley, a white tank top over that, and a blue shirt-jacket to finish it off. I wore my favorite pair of flip-flops and this weird rope necklace thing I’d picked up in Australia.

“That’s not a fucking costume,” Niko said. “That’s what you wear at home.” I did not dress like this at home, but it wasn’t too far off.

“I’m Blaine, the Australian surfer,” I said, doing my spot-on Australian accent.

“Blaine?” he asked, sneering at me.

There was a knock on our door then it opened to reveal Marie. She was going as Barbie, and even though her hair was blonde, she wore a wig that was blonder still, in addition to being substantially longer. “Hey!” she squealed, acting totally in character. “I’m Barbie!”

Niko started laughing his ass off. “You certainly are. So who’s Blaine?”

“Blaine is my boyfriend,” Marie said.

“Dude, your boyfriend is Ken,” he insisted.

“We broke up, and now I’m dating Blaine,” she said.

“Don’t you read the fucking newspapers, mate?” I asked him. “Ken’s a fucking douche. She’s so over him.”

Sarah knocked then came in. She was dressed like a lumberjack. “Hello,” she said to us, frowning.

“Dude, you look amazing,” I said, then laughed. It was funny that I was wearing this surfer costume, which was close to what I’d normally wear, and Sarah was wearing a lumberjack costume, which was close to what she normally wore.

“I do,” she said in her deadpan, frosty way. She came across as this frigid bitch, but underneath that shell she was a really cool person.

We waited for the rest of the André 3000s to show up, then walked down Holy Oak Street towards Lowell. Marie had gotten us an invitation to party there when this dude from Lowell was hitting on her in biology. He’d invited Niko too, then relented and told them all of us could come. “What house are you picking for your first choice this spring?” Niko asked. After Freshman year, everyone moved into a house. Once you were assigned to a house, you were pretty much stuck there for the rest of your time at Harvard unless something extreme happened.

“Probably Adams,” I said. “Are we going to form a block?” If we formed a group, or a block, they’d make sure we were in the same house.

“I can do that,” Niko said. Almost everyone agreed to that as well, even Sarah, while the holdouts were Scotty and Thor.

“Let me find out if I’m supposed to block with my team,” Scotty said.

“I have to do the same thing,” Thor said, then thought about it. “Fuck it. I’ll block with you.”

“Awesome!” I said enthusiastically, sounding like I was Niko.

“Kirkland would not be bad either,” Fab noted. Kirkland was small, and used to be the ‘jock house’ back when students could choose their own dorms. Harvard had ended that practice because it let different types of people congregate in one house, where they got stereotyped. Eliot used to be the preppy/rich house, while Adams had been more of an artist haven. Now things were done by lottery, so luck was the deciding factor.

“As long as we don’t get quadded,” Niko said nervously. The places we were walking by were called River Houses, because they were close to the river. They were way closer to campus, and that made them more popular. There were three distinct “neighborhoods” for River Houses: River East, River Central, and River West. The other neighborhood was the Quad Houses. Those were off on the other side of campus, and even though some of them were very nice inside, most people wanted to be in the River Houses. When you got stuck in one of the Quad Houses, you were ‘quadded’.

“Some of the River Houses aren’t that great either. I talked to a dude in class who lives in Dumpster and hates it,” Thor said. Dumpster was the nickname for Dunster, one of the houses in the River East neighborhood.

“We’ll have to hope our luck holds,” Marie said. Sarah just nodded.

“It’s fucking cold out here,” I whined, since it was around 40 degrees and a little rainy. “How far is it?” I asked as we crossed Mount Auburn Street.

“Two more blocks,” Thor said. “Pussy.”

“This is fucking frigid,” Niko agreed, then laughed at me. “You should have planned this better so you weren’t wearing shorts.”

“Whatever,” I grumbled.

As we walked up to Lowell, Marie stuck to my side, since technically we were a pair. “Is Travis still in LA?” she asked.

“I haven’t talked to him since yesterday morning,” I said glumly. “He sounded pretty down.”

“Did you try to call him?” she asked.

“Duh,” I responded. “He didn’t call me back.”

“Aren’t you worried about him?” she asked.

“Yes, I’m fucking worried about him,” I snapped. “It’s driving me fucking crazy. But I’m going to go to this party, drink until I puke, meet some new people, and the whole time I’m doing that I’m going to pretend that Travis is just fine, even though he’s probably not.”

“I’m sorry I asked,” she said, pouting a bit. We walked through the door and she squeezed my arm. “Let’s have fun.”

It seemed like Marie’s directive energized us, and we all began drinking heavily. There was a big room, probably their dining hall, that had no furniture except for a stage where a band was playing. They had a keg, plus people had brought booze with them. After my fourth drink, I decided it was time to dance. I scanned the room and spotted someone who was dressed up like Paris Hilton, and I found myself staring at them, trying to figure out if she was a he. I wasn’t sure until he swallowed. No woman had an Adam’s apple like that. This guy was really pretty. He had his makeup on just right, and was short enough that he could pass for an average-sized woman. I was surprised to see he was wearing heels…that took some skill. “You going to ask him to dance or what?” Marie asked. She must have been watching me check him out and figured out he was a guy.

“At a house party?” I asked. I wondered how the crowd would react to my dancing with a guy in drag. “I’ll get beaten all to shit and end up on the news.” She shook her head at what an idiot I was being.

“This is Harvard. You really think someone is going to kick your ass?” she asked pointedly. “You have friends to back you up if they try.” She gestured towards ‘Outkast’ who were partying like fiends.

I nodded and walked over to him. He saw me and locked his eyes on mine, and I was stunned by their color. They were the darkest blue eyes I’d ever seen. He raised an eyebrow and smirked. “Hey, mate,” I said, maintaining my Australian persona.

“Let me guess,” he said. “You’re Barbie’s new boyfriend, Blaine.” It was hilarious because this dude could easily pass as a chick, yet his voice was deep and resonant.

“Spot on,” I answered. “No one else knew that.”

“I work hard to stay informed,” he said vapidly.

“Fancy a dance?” I asked him, trying to hide my nervousness. This was the first time I’d made a play for someone at Harvard, and I had no idea how things worked here.

“You’re asking me to dance?” he asked, and chuckled.

“That’s what I’m doing,” I said.

“Alright, but don’t think that just because you dance with me that means you get to fuck me,” he joked, cracking me up. We hit the dance floor just as “Hey Ya!” came on, and of course my roommates got up and lip-synced to it. The band looked amused, while everyone else chuckled at how lame they were. “Who are those dorks?” he asked.

“My roommates,” I said. He started laughing, then we started dancing. Holy shit was he a good dancer. This place was jam-packed, but I barely heard the song or noticed the people; I was totally focused on him and the beat. People bumped into me but I just shrugged it off.

A slow dance came on and he started to walk away but I didn’t. I held out my hand. He looked at me curiously, then shrugged and moved in close to me. “Wasn’t expecting this,” he said.

“I was,” I said, still staying in form with my Aussie persona.

“What’s the secret to your excellent accent?” he asked, even as he wrapped his hands around my neck and molded his body into mine. My hands were on his hips, pulling him close to me.

“You have to get fucked at least once by an Australian, dude,” I said, reverting back to my normal speech.

“I could do that,” he said in a sexy way. His body fused itself against mine, and there was no way he could miss the huge erection I was sporting. I could feel his cock jutting into my groin, a little lower than mine because even with his heels he was shorter than me. I looked into his eyes, then slowly leaned in and kissed him. His mouth was magical. We made out on the dance floor as we slowly moved to the music, in our own little world. The slow song ended, and I just looked at him, all but breathless. Later I’d think about how I’d made out with another dude in the middle of a big-ass house party. I maneuvered us over to the periphery and kept on with our intimate dance, ignoring the other students bouncing around us. “Want to go upstairs?” he asked.

I was just about to follow him to a place where I could fuck him when I felt my phone vibrate, and since we were so close he felt it too. That forced us to separate. “Fuck,” I said, as I pulled out my phone.

“That’s my plan,” he said, sounding sultry. At that moment, there was nothing I wanted more than to drag him off and sink my dick into his ass, but then I looked at my phone and saw that it was Travis calling me. I stared at it, so conflicted, until it started ringing again.

“I’m sorry,” I said to him. “This is important.” He glared at me, totally pissed off, while I answered the phone.

“Did you just seriously do that?” he demanded loudly. “Fuck you!” he shouted, then he stormed off. I watched him stalk back over to where his friends were and felt bad for upsetting him and even worse because I didn’t get to fuck him.

“Um, did I catch you at a bad time?” Travis asked.

“No, it’s totally alright,” I said insincerely. “Hang on.” It was too noisy to talk in Lowell, so I walked outside in the frozen tundra that was Cambridge and focused on him.

“Sounds like there’s a party going on,” he said. I realized that the noise from Lowell was audible even outside. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

“You’re not interrupting me,” I lied. “I’m at a Halloween party. I left so I could talk to you.”

“It sounded like that dude was pretty pissed off at you,” he probed.

“Yeah, he kind of was, but it is what it is,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment.

“I’m sorry I drug you away from it,” he said. It was at that point that my drunk mind finally got that he was pretty upset, and pretty sad. “Go back in and have a good time. We’ll talk later.”

“Wait!” I said a bit too loudly before he could hang up his phone. “I’d rather talk to you,” I said, the second lie of our conversation.

“You can come see me when the party is over,” he said politely.

“Wait a minute; I can come see you,” I said, confused. “Where are you?”

“At Matt and Wade’s house,” he said.

“You’re in Boston?” I asked excitedly.

“Yeah, I came here instead of going back to New York,” he said somberly.

“Alright, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to tell Marie that I’m bailing, then I’ll be there in like five minutes,” I said.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Lowell House, which is super close,” I said. “I’ll see you.” I ended the call and hurried back into the party. I fortunately found Fab walking back from the bathroom.

“Your dance was quite the performance,” he told me, smirking.

“Whatever,” I said. “Will you tell Marie that Travis is in town and that I went to Matt’s house to see him?”

“I can do that,” he said. I left Lowell and started sprinting, running as fast as I could. It was a good thing that I was so used to wearing flip-flops that they were like an extension of my feet. I hurried up to the back door, punched in the code, and almost burst into the house.

The first room I came to was the kitchen, and it was no surprise that Matt was there. “Travis is upstairs in your room,” he said.

“Is he alright?” I asked.

“Something has seriously fucked him up, but he’s not talking,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said. I hit the elevator button and focused on getting my breathing under control. By the time it picked me up and lifted me to the fourth floor, I was only panting a little bit. I opened the door to my room and saw him standing there gazing out the window towards Lowell. I pondered again at his total handsomeness. As hot as that dude at the Lowell House was, he was nothing compared to the guy in front of me. “This is the best surprise!”

I walked over to him and hugged him, gripping him tightly while he pulled me to him with even more force than I was using. He finally calmed down and let me go. “You smell like perfume,” he said, teasing me. “And you have lipstick all over your face.”

“Fuck,” I said, and began wiping my mouth off.

“Who were you making out with?” he demanded. I was about to get mad at him for his attitude but I stopped myself. He’d been completely awesome about this whole open relationship thing, and something was really bugging him, so I cut him some slack.

“I’ll tell you about it,” I said. There was a sitting area with two chairs, so I grabbed a Pepsi out of the mini fridge for each of us and took a seat. “I saw this dude who was dressed up in drag. He did an amazing job of it. Shit, even his makeup was perfect.”

“How’d you figure out he was a dude?” he asked.

“I watched him until I saw him swallow,” I said.

“Swallow? How would that prove that he’s a guy, I mean, unless he was blowing you,” he said. I chuckled with him.

“Because he had a big Adam’s apple,” I responded, raising an eyebrow to point out how clever I was. “I asked him to dance, and he was really good, so we danced for a while then a slow song came on. We started dancing slowly, then we started making out.”

“Oh,” he said, and was a little jealous.

“When a fast song came on after that, he led me off to the side where we made out some more, then he invited me back to his room,” I said.

“You were about to close the deal?” he asked. I nodded. “What happened?”

“The phone rang, I saw it was you, so I blew him off to answer it,” I said. I watched him try not to be happy about that, but he couldn’t help smiling at me.

“You could have been balls deep in his twink ass but I cock-blocked you,” he said. “I’m really sorry. Next time you see him, tell him that.”

“I don’t know if I’ll see him again,” I said calmly, like it wasn’t a big deal, and like I didn’t want to fuck him in the worst way.

“What’s his name?” Travis asked.

“I have no fucking idea,” I said, then we both started laughing our asses off. He started to get somber, and guilty, so I stopped him. “I’ll eventually bump into him on campus.”

“You think you’ll be able to recognize him?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” I answered. “He had very unusual eyes. They were the darkest blue eyes I’ve ever seen.”

“He’s probably so pissed off at you, you won’t be able to get close enough to him to see them,” he said, then reached out and held my hand. “Thanks for coming back here to be with me.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. I sniffed at my pits and I was pretty rank after dancing my ass off. “Want to take a shower with me?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You’ll need my help to get the lipstick off.”

I glanced in the mirror and it was pretty much all over my face and my neck. “Fuck.” I hurriedly started to pull off my clothes, while he undressed in a more deliberate fashion.

“You picked up some total ho,” he joked. We laughed as we got into the shower, then he took a washcloth and gently wiped all the lipstick off of me, pausing every once in a while to give me a gentle kiss.

He was very caring, very loving, and it was so intimate it was amazing, but I had gotten all fired up at that party, and now being here with him, it was impossible to keep my dick from getting hard. He grimaced at that, because he didn’t seem to have any interest in sex at all, and his dick was limp. He reached down and stroked my dick. “You don’t have to,” I said.

He turned me around then stood behind me, then started nuzzling my neck with his mouth, while he simultaneously gave me a spectacular hand job. It freaked me out that he didn’t get hard at all. We dried off and got into bed. “Come here,” I said, smiling at him.

He rolled over and lay so his head was on my chest. I gently stroked his hair and his back, just trying to convey to him how much I loved him. “This is nice.”

“It is,” I said. “What happened to freak you out so bad?”

“What do you mean?” he asked. I looked down at him, forcing our eyes to meet, telling him that there was no way he could hide this. He sighed. “I just had a really bad experience in LA and I needed to be with you.”

“I am always here for you, and I am glad that you came to see me,” I said. “Even if you did interrupt my make-out session with a hot drag queen.”

We lay there, saying nothing, while I ran my hand across his back or through his hair. Sometimes when we were apart and then got back together it took him a while to fall back into our normal rhythm. This was one of those times. “Remember how I told you about that director who wanted to fuck around with me?”

“Yeah,” I said cautiously.

“He did, even though I didn’t want him to,” he said. I felt something wet on my chest and looked down to see tears slowly dripping out of his eyes.

“I am so sorry,” I said, and kissed the top of his head. “What happened?”

“The beach photoshoot went pretty much like I’d expected. As soon as they got a few action shots, they wanted me to come in, but I stayed out there for another fifteen minutes and caught a killer wave,” he said, sounding a bit more cheerful. “Bet that makes for some good PR.”

“I’m jealous,” I said.

“Yeah, big fucking deal. I got to surf for half an hour,” he said bitterly. “Then I came in and they took shots of me in my wetsuit. It kind of freaked me out to have these people moving the suit up and down, trying to figure out how many of my pubes to show.”

“If they really wanted sexy, they’d have taken the wetsuit off,” I said. I was throwing these clips at him to try to make things easier. It seemed to work.

“I had dinner with the producers and the director, then the director offered to drive me home,” Travis said. “I told him that friends were coming to pick me up, but he insisted.”

“That’s probably not good,” I said. “Who is this guy?”

“Harry Weinburg,” Travis said. “He’s 31 years old, has a super toned body, dark curly hair, and these dark brown eyes that are scary.”

“Scary?”

“Yeah,” he said. “They’re like these orbs that are trying to stare into your soul, only they’re not asking permission to go there, they’re demanding it.”

“Terrific,” I said.

“He’s a total peacock, so of course he drives a Lamborghini,” Travis said. “As soon as we leave, he tells me that he has something he wants to show me. He says it will help me with the show. He has to go to his house to get it.”

“Guess you saw that coming,” I said, shaking my head.

“Yeah, but what was I supposed to do?” he demanded.

“Travis, no judgment here,” I said earnestly. “I understand the situation, I just felt bad that there didn’t seem to be a way out of it.”

“There wasn’t,” he said. “He lives in Brentwood. We got to his house and as soon as we walked through the door he was all over me. His hands were fucking everywhere. One minute he’s grabbing my ass, the next he’s massaging my crotch. I kept pushing his hands away and was starting to get pissed off enough to not do it nicely.”

“Then what did he say?” I asked.

“He told me that if I didn’t do what he wanted, he had Corey Jameson on speed dial, and that if I lost this gig, he’d make sure I’d never work in Hollywood,” Travis said bitterly. I remembered that Corey Jameson was the guy who was pissed off at Travis for getting the part he wanted in Palisades. “I told him that I was rich as fuck, and that he couldn’t play his bullshit games with me. He told me that my money wouldn’t save me.”

“So the situation was that you either go along or your career is ruined,” I summarized. He nodded.

“He kept massaging my ass, telling me how hot I was, and how badly he wanted to fuck me,” Travis said. “I told him that I wasn’t a bottom, so that wasn’t happening. It was weird, because he hadn’t listened to anything I’d said–he was just about what he wanted–but at least that got through.”

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“He started taking off his clothes, and told me to do the same thing,” he said. “When I didn’t, he snarled at me, and it was like my mind was detached from my body and I just automatically did what he said. He tried to make out with me, and I mean I moved my lips with his, following the forms, but I was hollow. He was pissed off about that so he pushed me down onto my knees and jammed his cock into my mouth.”

“Was he hung?” I asked, trying to ease the tension.

“Five inches,” Travis said matter-of-factly, then kind of smiled at me. “Then he turned around and made me rim him, which was kind of nasty because he evidently doesn’t believe in good hygiene. I managed to get through that without puking, then he turned back around, grabbed my head, and started face fucking me. I tried to put my hand around his dick to limit how deeply he could go, but he shoved it away. At that point it was all I could do not to gag.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and hugged him tighter.

“He finally shot his load, then ordered me to suck every drop out of his cock. As soon as he was done, he started putting on his clothes, so I did the same thing. I was so relieved to be dressed. He started yelling at me, telling me that I was a shitty piece of ass, and that next time he saw me, he expected me to do better. Then he led me to the door, pushed me out, and slammed it behind me.”

“What a fucking douche,” I said, so pissed off at this guy.

“I actually jogged down to UCLA, just to get somewhere where I felt kind of safe. I was going to go to the Beta house, but I decided to call for a cab. I got home and locked myself in my room, and then the pain hit me.”

“Pain?” I asked.

“Pain,” he responded. “It was real, physical pain, like there was someone stabbing a knife up my ass.”

“That must have been awful,” I said. I was furious with this director dude, but I managed to keep my focus on Travis.

“He called me and I felt real fear,” he said. “I turned off the ringer and popped some sleeping pills. I woke up in the morning, called LAX and got a charter, then got a cab to take me to the airport. It wasn’t until I was at the airport that I called him back. He started yelling at me, telling me that we had meetings today, and I told him that I was going back to New York. He started yelling again, and I just hung up on him.”

“You do not deserve this,” I said emphatically.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “He called me back to tell me he was pissed off at me and had totally washed his hands of me. He told me I was ruined. He said that all I’d ever be was a soap opera star, if that.”

“We’ll see about that,” I said, with grim determination.

“I was going to go back to New York but it just hurt so bad, I had to come here instead,” he said, and started crying again.

“I’m here for you, and I’ll take care of you,” I promised. I made him look at me. “You were raped. This wasn’t about sex; it was about power.”

“I don’t know; he seemed pretty into it,” Travis said glumly. He lay there in bed and I thought he might calm down, but all of a sudden he had this major spasm and went into the fetal position.

“Travis,” I said, desperately trying to break through to him. It was like he was in a trance. “Travis.” He shook his head and just stayed there, curled up and in agony. “Tell me what’s wrong. Tell me,” I insisted urgently.

“I can’t,” he said. “At least not right now.”

“Yes you can,” I said assertively. I sensed this was the key to helping him, and so I needed to pierce through his shields. “You can. Come on Travis. Tell me. It will make everything better.”

He shook his head and stayed in his fetal position, so I spooned up behind him and managed to wrap my arms around him tightly, trying to absorb the trauma he was dealing with. He finally calmed down and relaxed slightly. “Give me a bit, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, and just held him, trying to show him how much I loved him.

He finally seemed to get himself together enough to straighten out, turn over, and look at me. “He treated me just like Curtis did.” I stared at him for a minute, my mouth falling open in shock, then I hugged him while he sobbed.