The Best Four Years of Adam Becker - 24. Sophomore Year - Chapter 2

The biggest difference between living with Patrick and living with Tripp was sex. Namely, the fact that Patrick had access to sex virtually anytime he wanted--Annie Rue--and, thus, he was having it constantly.
So I was sitting in Jordan’s room down the hall, sexiled in the middle of the day, for the fifty thousandth time in mine and Patrick’s one month of living together. I had brought my laptop, because I had a short story due for Diana Webber’s creative writing class, even though I couldn’t get past the first sentences.

“I should have taken a beer from my fridge before I left,” I told her, as I tapped backspaced. “I think writing is easiest after two drinks. Not any more than that.”

“Michaela has some Taaka, if she left the door open,” she replied. She was sitting in her bed, her teal floral comforter wrapped around her body and head like Mary, Mother of God, watching The Real Housewives of Orange County.

I closed my laptop, glanced at the door to their shared bathroom as if I debating whether or not I wanted vodka, which I most certainly did, and then went inside.

The door from the bathroom to Michaela’s room was locked. I called out for Jordan.

“Well, I don’t know then,” she called back. “Drink my mouthwash or something.”
I disappointedly returned to her bedroom, sans alcohol, and sat back down on the floor at the foot of her bed. I opened my computer again, and there was the tyranny of a blank Word document. “I just can’t figure out what the stakes are for the characters.”

“What’s it about?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “That’s the problem. It’s set in the 1950s. Two brothers and their wives playing bridge. And, somehow, the one guy has to make a pass at the other guy’s wife by the end.” I closed my computer again, because I couldn’t bear to look at the blank screen. “So I’ve got this main character, Andy, and he’s just jealous of his brother in the other couple, who he thinks always winds up doing better than him.”

“Interesting,” she said, brusquely, without even bothering to even feign interest. The TV went to commercial, and, rather than re-engage in the conversation, she lied down back on her bed.

“I don’t know,” I said, reopening my computer screen. “They’re just people, in a room, sitting around and doing nothing.”

“Well, write what you know,” she deadpanned, staring up at the ceiling.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “How much fiction do you think I read, honestly? How about the guy just ran over the other guy’s dog or something? Or their kids are fighting? And then he makes a pass at the wife.”

“That’s trite,” I replied.

“I’m just making suggestions,” she answered. “I won’t, then. You being such a brilliant, talented writer and all.”

“Everything seems trite,” I said, backspacing again. “Is everything I write trite? What if I’m just the kind of person who doesn’t do much of anything, who just sits around in dorm rooms and drinks on the weekends and doesn’t have anything original or interesting to say?”

Jordan seemed to be intentionally not looking at me, not engaging, not responding, possibly because she didn’t find that bosk of existential thought to be something she wanted to wade into, with the Real Housewives due to come back any minute.

“I don’t know,” I continued. “I just feel like I don’t have anything genuine to say. Like, this whole story is just stupid people with their stupid problems, and then it completely ends without saying anything. Without any growth. Just people living their lives, staying exactly the same, and then it ends.”

There was still no meaningful response from Jordan, who trying her best to look engrossed in a commercial of the Mac guy mocking the suit-wearing PC guy. I looked down at the computer screen, and I typed:

Andy didn’t know why he hated Paul, but he did, so that’s all that mattered.

Was that even good? It was blunt and inviting, but inorganic, too aware of the fact that it was mere words on a screen.

Or at least I felt like it did that.

Andy didn’t know why he hated Paul, but he did.

Better? Perhaps?

Andy didn’t know why he hated Paul, but he did.

Maybe it was his brother’s perfect wife. There wasn’t wrong per se with Gayle, Andy’s wife. But Sandra was a knock-out. Perfectly formed, as if by divine hand. The biblical Eve of Summit Hill, New York.

‘Perfectly formed.’ I didn’t know how I felt about that.

My phone buzzed. It was a text from Kevin. “8====D?” he pondered.

Jordan had, momentarily, glanced back at me when she heard the vibration, but then went back to the Real Houseswives.

“I’m writing,” I texted back to Kevin. “I have to submit for workshop tomorrow. And I can’t even figure out the first sentence of the thing.”

“Weed or sex,” he suggested. “Either one will clear the cobwebs.”

I looked up to Jordan, and put my phone back in my pocket. “I think I’m going to go. Get some weed from Kevin Malley. See if helps clear the cobwebs.”

Before she could respond, the door tore open, and it was Erik.

“Thanks for knocking, before just barging into my bedroom,” Jordan greeted, still staring up at the ceiling.

“Just coming back from class,” he explained, as if that excused it. He was a little out of breath, as if he had run the whole way. “No one was in our suite, so I figured I’d check over here.”

Erik had a very low threshold for being alone. I didn’t mind locking myself in my room for a few hours every now and then, but Erik couldn’t sit still. He had to be in constant motion, which is why we’d see him stalking across the quad, walking aimlessly but quickly, as if he had somewhere to go. In college, when you’re constantly surrounded by big doses of the same people, you find out that everyone’s weird in their own way, even someone as charming and confident and good-looking as Erik Fontenot.

Erik walked over to me, kicked my thigh softly with his foot. He was wearing fleece-lined mocassins.

“At least you had time to put your slippers on,” I told him.

He looked down. “What? These are shoes. They’re supposed to be indoor/outdoor.”

“They’re indoor/outdoor, as in they’re slippers you can wear to go get the mail,” I told him. “They’re not shoes shoes.”

“Whatever, dude,” he said, kicking them off. “I’ll take them off because I know Jordan doesn’t like us wearing shoes in here.”

Jordan turned her head, exchanged aporetic eyes with me from underneath her swaddled comforter, but did not echo my judgment out loud to Erik, and then rolled back over.

“Still not shoes,” I told him, with finality.

He didn’t respond; he sat down next to me, craned his necked over at my computer screen before I could minimize Word. “Who’s Andy?”

“Short story,” I said, angling the screen away from him. “Diana Webber’s class.”

He craned his neck to see better. “‘The biblical Eve of Summit Hill, New York,’” he read. “That’s really good. And she sounds banging. You could hit it. Adam and Eve.” He grinned. “No, I think even a fictional hot woman would be like, ‘No, thanks, Becker, I think I’ll just see what Erik’s up to.’” He glanced back at the door. “So where is everybody else?”

“Michaela’s on Pine Street having sex with Tate,” I told him. “Patrick’s in our room having sex with Annie. Tripp’s in studio having sex with his architecture degree. So, about status quo for 3pm on a Thursday.”

“I’m so glad I’m not an architecture major,” Erik said. “I swear to God, he’s in studio twelve hours a day.” He sighed. “I need to get laid. The next girl I see.”

“Please don’t include me in that calculation,” Jordan said, flatly.

“I won’t,” he said, with a smirk. “Though you’re already horizontal in bed. That’s about ninety percent of the effort.”

Jordan picked up the remote and raised the volume of The Real Housewives of Orange County.

“Yeah,” he said, turning back to me. “I don’t know, Channah’s being sketchy. She literally only texts me when she wants to cage a free dinner.”

“Well, you only text her when it’s 2am and you’re wasted,” I replied. “Maybe you guys can work out some sort of barter system. Sex for food.”

“I think that only works if American soldiers just napalmed her village,” he replied, with a grin that betrayed how satisfied he was with his own joke. “You know what I need? Tate to dump Michaela. So she’s all horny and vulnerable, needs a strong shoulder to cry on. A dick in her vagina. Etcetera.”

“Wow, it’s Prince Charming!” Jordan exclaimed, mockingly saccharine. “But you really shouldn’t have sex with Michaela. She’s a succubus. Love her as I do. And if anything, the McClendons are digging in for a long battle. Tate’s brother’s a freshman and Michaela wants to fix him up with Justine.”

“Oh, God, no,” I said. “Just when I thought Iota Chi would give me enough to worry about, Michaela has to throw another McClendon into the mix.”

“She thinks it’ll be good for Tri-Gamma,” Jordan said, “if she can play matchmaker. She has a whole list of freshmen she’s going to try to pawn Logan McClendon off on, if Justine doesn’t bite.”

Erik ignored the parts of the conversation that did not directly pertain to him. “I forgot about Justine,” he said. “What’s she up to? You should ask her to come hang out.”

“I will literally murder you,” I told him. My phone buzzed, and I knew it was Kevin. I didn’t reach for it. “I’ve got to go soon anyway. Clear the cobwebs.”

“Becker’s not satisfied with my lack of booze,” Jordan explained to Erik, “so he has to go get weed from Kevin, in order to write his masterpiece.”

Erik perked up with that, to my chagrin. I saw where this was going even before he said, “Awesome. Let me change my shoes.”

 

“I guess it’ll be weed to clear the cobwebs, then,” Kevin greeted, coldly, as he opened the front door at the Broadway and Burthe house. “Hot diggity.”

I had warned him, via text, that Erik was coming along for weed. Kevin had not responded, but I wasn’t sure if that was out of annoyance or because he hadn’t seen the text. I wasn’t especially thrilled with either option, but the former had a lower threshold of going catastrophically wrong.

Erik did not seem to notice Kevin’s latent hostility.

Kevin led us inside, into the living room. I sat down on the scratchy brown plaid couch.

“Dude, you guys need to have a party or something,” Erik said, pacing a bit, before heading over to the stairs. “This house is too big to waste.” He grabbed onto the newell post, and leaned onto one foot, up the stairs “Yo, Morton!” he called. “Come smoke.”

There was a sudden text from Kevin: “Say you have to make a phone call, and meet me in my room through the side door.”

We exchanged glances, wordlessly, and then we heard footsteps clopping down the stairs: Brett Morton and their other roommate, Ryan Wyatt.

“We doing this?” Morton asked, clapping Erik on the back.

I didn’t know Ryan Wyatt very well; he wasn’t the most active brother. He was the only openly gay brother, but to the naked eye, he seemed as incorrigibly straight as anyone else in Iota Chi. His voice, his mannerisms, his clothing. He was well over six-feet tall, was a member of the Tulane track team. But his occasional presence was looming and vaguely unsettling to me. I couldn’t know if his gaydar was finely tuned into my frequency. Or, if he was, at the very least, suspicious.

“I’ll go downstairs and pack a bowl,” said Kevin, and almost immediately, my phone started vibrating. Incoming call from, who else, Kevin Malley. His phone was flipped open in his hand, discreetly down at his side.

“Hang on,” I said, holding up my phone. “My mom’s calling. I’ll be right back.”

“This room is paying off already,” Kevin said, closing the door between his room and the side yard--the Becker door. He turned the deadbolt with joyous finality.

“We have maybe ninety seconds,” I told him, “before they come demanding weed.”

He leaned in, kissed my neck. “Or maybe I couldn’t find my grinder, as hard as I looked,” he replied. “Or maybe I got a phone call that I just--” He made his way to my lips. ”--couldn’t—” He kissed me again “--ignore.”

“I’m using phone call,” I told him.

For all his big talk, he was moving fast, as he grabbed my hand and put it down on the bulge already proliferating in his jeans. And then he smiled at me, with eager anticipation.

“You don’t waste any time,” I said. “How’d you get so hard so fast?”

His response was, “Get on your knees.”

I was a little taken aback by the abruptness, by the sudden order to get on my knees, but Kevin was already unbuttoning the top button of his jeans, and working his zipper, so I did.

I was face to face with his giant bulge, on the other side of the thin gray boxer briefs. I touched it, like it was a sacred relic, and kissed it once, and Kevin threw back his head in silent ecstasy.

Grabbing a handful of my hair with his hand, pushing my face further into his crotch, he said, “I wish I had time to fuck your brains out.”

I pulled on the elastic, until it was down far enough, and his dick popped out, fully hard, protruding the eight-and-a-half inches straight out from his body. I stuck out my tongue, licked just the very tip. And

Kevin moaned again.

“You’re so fucking good at that,” he told me, as I licked my way down his thick, veiny shaft.

And then, I started to put the whole thing in my mouth, slowly, inch by inch, as I had learned from sucking off a guy as hung as Kevin. Kevin’s hands were gripping the back of my head, and he was slowly rocking my face forward, further into him just a little bit.

Finally, I had gotten almost all of it, close enough to see the brown wisps of hair wrapped around the base of his dick, right in front of my nose. And Kevin, still grabbing the back of my head, began to fuck my face ever so slowly.

He let out a whimper, as he began to pick up the speed.

And then there was a ferocious knock on the door. “Where’s the weed, bitch?” hollered a gleeful Morton.

Kevin’s dick fell out of my mouth, and he popped up, this startled looking on his face, as quickly as he could. “Maybe if we’re quiet, they’ll think we’re not here,” he whispered to me, with a smile.

I didn’t say anything, as I stood back up, and made my way across the room to the Becker door.

“Hey, sorry,” he called back to Morton, as he yanked up his pants, tucked his still-raging hard-on back into the waistband of his boxer-briefs. “I think it locks automatically. Packing the bowl now.”

I unlocked the deadbolt to the Becker door as quietly as I could, slipped outside, and closed it quietly behind me.

I was hard, too, as I noticed. It wasn’t overly visible or anything outside my shorts, but I could feel it throbbing. And I could still taste Kevin Malley’s sent on my lips--from his kiss, from his dick. The smell from his pubes, a day’s worth of Kevin-sweat, still filled my nostrils.

Our liaison had ended so abruptly, and so unsatisfyingly, that I didn’t even know exactly what to do, but I knew I didn’t want to come back into the house at the exact time as Kevin came up from the basement.

I pulled out my phone. There were no calls, and only one text, from Patrick, telling me that Annie had departed, that I was welcome back in our room at any time.

I debated actually calling my mom, as if actually calling her would somehow pad our alibi. But I also didn’t want to call her while I was still sporting a hard-on, my mouth flush with the taste of my boyfriend’s dick. It seemed too filthy, somehow, to talk to my mom like that.

So, instead, I called my brother Philip, although I wasn’t entirely sure why I picked him, of all people, until after I had already selected his name and pressed the call button.

Philip, of course, seemed genuinely startled to hear from me, because we never really called each other just to chat. When we talked, it was during a particularly contentious Becker family news cycle.

“Hey,” he said. He paused, as if I was going to volunteer more information on my own. “Uh, what’s up?”

“Nothing,” I said, as I paced around Kevin’s side yard. “Literally, absolutely nothing. I don’t even know why I called.” I paused, then amended, “I just called to say hi, see how you were doing.”

“Oh,” he said. “Okay. Well, I just got out of Torts. Meeting Lindsay for a quick coffee before I head to Contracts. Operating off about three hours of sleep.”

The law school vernacular was really like a foreign language to me.

“That’s fun,” I replied.

“Fun,” he repeated, with a wry laugh. “Law school is kicking my ass. Just, you know, lots of work, zero time to do any of it. It’s like the exact opposite of undergrad, you wouldn’t even believe it.”

I chose not to deconstruct his sentence, or pursue a conversation related to Georgetown Law Center.

“So, how’s Lindsay?” I asked, instead.

“Lindsay’s great,” he said. “She’s actually loving D.C., which is good. I mean, I didn’t know if she would. It’s such a buttoned-up place, and Lindsay is—” He paused. “Well, you know, she’s from Boston. It’s so different from down here. But I took her down to the boathouse by the Key Bridge on Saturday, and we rented kayaks. I’ll have to post the pictures on Facebook. Lindsay and I almost made it to Gravelly Point, to see the planes landing at National, but it was getting late.”

“That’s fun,” I told him. “I remember when we did that.”

He paused. “We did? When?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Dad took us, didn’t he? Maybe 1996, 1997?” It was 1996, Olympic summer, the day after the pipe bomb went off in Centennial Park. It was scorchingly hot, even on the river, and I pointedly did not want to go, but Philip did, so I didn’t say anything. “I think I was too young for my own, so we had to go in a double, and you were pissed because you thought I were slowing you down? Or maybe I’m getting my wires crossed.”

“No, I remember that,” he said. “I remember kayaking with you and Dad. I thought you meant kayaking to Gravelly Point.”

“Oh,” I told him. “No. We never did that. We made it as far as Lincoln and then turned back. I think.”

“Sorry, it’s been a long day,” he replied. “I mean, you have a better memory than me, but I didn’t remember that. But next time you’re in town, though, we should go. Kayaking. Not Gravelly Point. It was fun.”

“It’ll be too late by then,” I told him. “Thanksgiving.”

“Yeah, probably,” he said. “Hoyas game, maybe? We know the MCI Center’s indoors.”

“Verizon Center,” I corrected. “They renamed it.” There was a slightly long pause on the line, between us. “So I read. But yeah, that’d be fun. Glad to see you’re all full of Georgetown pride.”

“When in Rome,” he replied. “Wait, no, we’re going to Nevada for Thanksgiving, aren’t we?” Before I could respond one way or another, he cut me off. “All right, Lindsay’s here. Got to run. Give all my love to Justine.”

I heard, “Hi, Peter!” in Lindsay’s muffled voice from the ether, and I thought about responding but instead I just pretended I hadn’t heard it, and said goodbye, and hung up the phone.

By this point, enough time had passed, and hopefully someone had even seen me pacing the front yard on my cell phone, so I went back up the porch steps to Kevin’s house.

No one had waited for me to start; the four of them, along with Chris Baker who had materialized from somewhere deep within the house, were already sitting, huddled around the brown plaid sofa, passing Kevin’s bong around.

“Sorry,” I said, sitting down on the couch between Baker and Erik. “My brother. It’s hard to get him off the phone once he starts talking to me.”

“I thought it was your mom,” said Erik, and Kevin’s eyes were suddenly locked on me with palpable alarm.

“Oh, they’re together,” I told him, with as much nonchalance as I could muster, which was actually a considerable amount of nonchalance. “He’s at Georgetown Law, and she dragged him to White Flint Mall to buy both of us new suits, and she kept making him hold the phone. It was chaos.”

“This guy has like six suits,” Erik told the group, ushering to me. “And his mom keeps trying to buy him more.”

“I got my suits from the thrift store on Freret,” said Kevin, as he exhaled a long plume of smoke. “And you know what? None of those trust fund assholes from Smith Barney could tell the difference.”

“Kevin Malley in a suit,” Ryan Wyatt said, shaking his head with a smile, as he accepted the bong from Kevin. “Be still, my heart.”

I bristled, which was completely involuntary. It was amazing how blase Ryan Wyatt could be about the whole thing. Here he was, sitting in this house, where he lived with Morton and Baker and Kevin, wearing backwards Iota Chi hat and a Tulane sweatshirt, just like anyone, and joking about how sexy Kevin looked in a suit. Which he did. Kevin did look sexy in a suit. I couldn’t ever imagine a day where I would be able--where I would be at all comfortable--to say something like that in this sort of setting, in any sort of setting. It was brave and bold and somehow completely improper.

“Someone better hose Wyatt down,” Morton grinned. “It’s incest when you’re roommates, didn’t your mother teach you that?”

“Society’s problem,” said Ryan Wyatt. “The last time I gave a shit what someone thought of me was, like, 1997.”

Kevin handled Ryan Wyatt’s comment masterfully, however, without being too appreciative or too reflexively homophobic. “Wyatt, I think you would’ve liked this art school kid we hung around with this summer in New York. He seemed your type.”

“Oh, you mean that fag who wants you to study in Paris next semester?” Ryan said, passing the bong over to Erik.

My ears perked up at that, because this was the first I was hearing about my boyfriend possibly, even remotely, considering studying abroad in four months. Let alone with someone as odious as Carver Alexander. Kevin was, pointedly, not looking at me, kept his gaze trained on Ryan Wyatt.

“That’s the one,” said Kevin.

Ryan grinned broadly at Kevin. “Yeah, I’m down. Don’t forget to tell him I’m a Division I athlete.”

“You do cross country,” Erik said, with an eyeroll. “Gay ass sport.”

Ryan punched him in the arm. “Don’t get your speedo in a bunch, water polo,” he said. He turned back to Kevin, still smiling. “That guy on your Facebook with the cardigan, right?” Kevin nodded, and Ryan continued: “Totally my type. Assuming he’s as much of a bottom as he looks.”

“God, way too much information,” said Morton, theatrically putting his fingers in his ears. “Some of us have a healthy respect for a door that God intended to be exit-only, thank you very much.”

“Ha, that’s so not true,” Baker replied, “based on what you told me you got Meredith to try over the weekend.”

“Okay, she was in the middle of the world’s longest period, and after a week, blowjobs just weren’t cutting it anymore,” Morton said, a little defensively. “Desperate times, hombre. Desperate times. When you’re ready for big boy relations with a woman, you’ll understand.”

Chris Baker bristled, and reddened, as he always did when someone reminded him that he was, in fact, still a virgin. Which was often, because it was a fraternity, and your sexual escapades were reputational currency.

“Okay, I think we need a new topic,” said Kevin, clapping his hands together. “Becker. How’s your brother?”

“Getting suits with my mom,” I dismissed. “So you’re going to Paris with Carver next semester?”

Kevin looked slightly perturbed; I couldn’t tell because he blamed me for bringing up an uncomfortable conversation, or because he blamed himself for setting the trap.

“No,” he said, pointedly. “Probably not. He’s doing this program out there, and Tulane has a program too, and he thought it’d be fun to do some sort of New York reunion. I’m almost certainly too poor to spend a whole semester in freaking France.” To the group, he added, “Plus, I couldn’t deprive you fine people of marijuana for five months. Think of the pandemonium!”

“Amen to that,” said Morton. “So, Becker, is your hot sister settling in nicely? I haven’t seen her around Iota Chi in a few weeks.”

I winced just a little at that, which seemed to be the intention, because Morton started cackling. I didn’t like thinking of Justine as hot, and I certainly didn’t like Morton thinking of her as hot, and I definitely didn’t like Morton broadcasting that he thought she was hot to other people in the room.

“That Meredith Greenblatt is one lucky girl,” I told him, instead.

“Oh, Meredith and I are just fucking,” Morton replied. “Well, not even fucking, because she’s been on her period for the last freaking twenty-thousand weeks.”

“But she’s letting you fuck something, apparently,” Ryan said, with a smile.

“Better than the alternative,” Baker suggested. “Which is no fucking.”

“Oh, yeah, any orefice is better than no orefice at all,” Morton agreed.

“Hey, that’s my sales pitch!” said Ryan.

“Except a dude’s orefice,” Morton clarified. “You know what we need to do? We should bust out the old sister draft again. Remember that, from freshman year?”

“What’s the sister draft?” Erik asked.

“All of the pledges print out pictures of everyone brother’s sister,” Baker said. “Puts them in a binder, randomly assigns draft pics, and then we draft them.”

“What do you get?” Erik asked. “Like, for drafting the sister.”

Morton, Baker, and Ryan all looked at each other quizzically, as if they couldn’t figure out whether Erik was being serious about the contents of the sister draft. Finally, Morton looked back at him slyly.

“You get the sister,” Morton offered, finally. “Not literally, because we’re not rapists. But you get the ability to hold your draft selection over her brother’s head, which believe me, is rewarding in its own way.” He pulled out his new iPhone, which even two months later he kept tightly in a Ziploc bag. “Have you seen Meghan Pereira?” He slid the phone out of the bag, slowly and delicately, as if it were a rare manuscript, and began typing on it. “I fucking love the iPhone. Touch screen. Email. Apps. Web browsing. So much better than all of y’all’s flip phones and CrackBerrys.” He showed the phone to Erik. “Here we go. Don’t touch it, don’t touch it. This is Tommy’s sister. I think she’s the hottest one, but I, of course, have a special place in my heart for the Latin ladies.”

“They’re half-Portuguese from Grand Rapids,” said Ryan. “And I thought you liked the Jews?”

Morton shrugged. “I cast a wide range.”

“Let me see that,” Baker said, reaching for the phone.

Morton glared at him, snatched his precious iPhone away. “The iPhone is not for public consumption. And you know very well what Megan Pereira looks like; you see her in your dreams every single night.”

“I see Matt Rowen’s sister in my dreams, first of all,” Baker replied, but he didn’t land quite as convincingly as he probably hoped. We all knew he saw Veronica Tandy in his dreams, anyway.

“Yeah, I still think I’ll take dibs on Justine Becker,” said Erik. “She’s local.”

“You can’t take dibs, fucktard,” said Morton. “It’s a draft.”

“Besides,” Baker said, “if anyone gets dibs on Justine, it’s me. I took her out and didn’t get laid.”

“But you’ve done that with most girls at Tulane,” Ryan Wyatt replied. “You can’t get dibs on everyone. It wouldn’t be fair to society.”

“Oh, what do you care?” Baker asked, with a smile to keep it from getting too personal. “You don’t even like girls.”

“I’ve been with more girls than you,” said Ryan, and he smiled too, except it did get personal: Baker turned red again, and Morton howled with laughter. The worst part was it was almost certainly true considering Baker’s magic number was still, in fact, zero. “Whatever, I’ll make sure to draft Baby Baker. Just for you.”

“Gee, thanks,” Baker said. “You can have your way with Charlie, for the amount of shits I give.”

 

I hovered over Patrick’s desk as he read through the cobbled-together shrapnel of my short story. I had managed to claw my way back into our room at around six o’clock that evening, sufficiently high from Kevin’s weed but still with as many cobwebs in my brain as before.

I looked around Patrick’s desk. His interior design aethestic was lacking. He had hung a Patriots calendar, flipped open to August, Randy Moss, even though it was mid-late September, and only had two small framed photos on his desk: him skydiving in high school, and a picture of him and Annie Rue at last year’s Iota Chi formal. That seemed to be it when it came to personal effects. I had only been in his room in Monroe once last year--when he was still anonymous to me. The photo of Annie Rue was new, obviously.

He did have a lot of t-shirts, which meant his top dresser drawer was always ajar, overstuffed. Today, he was wearing a shirt with a picture of a disembodied, bloodied, gloved hand, and the text, “If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit.”

I wanted to tell him I wasn’t sure if that was in the best taste, but I didn’t, and it was far too late in the day now.

The shower abruptly turned on, but the door to the shared bathroom didn’t close.

“Close the goddamned door, Cuthbert!” Patrick yelled, but nothing happened. He shook his head. “Why does Tripp never close the door when he showers? I’ve seen his dick twice, and it’s only September.”

“He said there was too much steam with the doors closed, and the shower was growing mold,” I replied. “He said it was a design flaw in the ventilation system.”

Patrick looked extremely unamused. “I saw no mold.” He looked back to his computer, scrolled up to the top of my manuscript. “Well, okay, so Andy is jealous of Paul, so say he comes onto Paul’s wife after dinner, they mess around in some sort of forbidden love affair, they get caught, and then he loses everything that should have been making him happy anyway. I think that’s the story you want to tell."

“Or maybe they don’t mess around,” I said. “Maybe Andy makes a pass, and it’s swatted down, and he still gets caught and loses everything.”

“Yeah,” said Patrick. “I like that. I think she’d reject Andy. He’s kind of a sad sack.”

It wasn't a bad approach. "Are you sure it's not too Updike?"

He grinned. "Something tells me everything you write is too Updike. But you submit in about seventeen hours, so I wouldn’t start getting too existential about it.”

“Ugh,” I said.

“I told you not to sign up for the first week’s workshop,” he said, ominously. “I’m week 4. Not too early, not too late. You didn’t have Diana last semester for Intro to Creative Writing, did you?”

“No.”

He went back to my story. “What if he’s insane? What if Paul and Alex are the same person? Sort of a Fight Club situation? Two sides of the same man, and the person he’s actually jealous of is some better version of himself that landed the pretty girl.” He looked satisified with himself. “That’s fucking deep.”

“His name is Andy,” I corrected. “And they’re not the same person--they’re two distinct people. They’re brothers. And I haven’t seen Fight Club anyway.”

“Really?” he replied. “I’ll order the DVD on Netflix. Though I guess now you know the ending.” He paused. “I don’t know. I think the story’s fine. You just have to flesh it out and clean it up. Honestly, it’s student fiction, so as long as it’s in complete sentences, it’ll probably be like Shakespeare. You’ll be shocked how bad some of the shit people shit out is.”

The shower turned off, and a few seconds later, Tripp came into our room through the shared bathroom, sopping wet still but wearing a pair of plaid boxers and a Tulane t-shirt. His computer was tucked under his arm, which suggested longevity. “Erik’s back from his dinner date with Channah.”

“Oh,” Patrick said. “So I guess we get the honor of hosting you as a refugee for the next—” He looked at his watch. “--eight to ten minutes?”

“I wish it was eight to ten minutes,” he said, settling into my red papasan chair. “Erik said Channah’s a screamer, so let’s hope Tulane sprung for some quality insulation between these walls.”

“Can’t take the architect out of the boy,” I replied.

“We’re editing Becker’s story,” Patrick told him. “Do you want to read it?”

“Not even a little bit,” said Tripp. He picked up the remote, turned on the TV, and began flipping through channels, before he arrived on Hell Date.

“Interesting choice,” Patrick said, glancing over at the TV. “You seem a little bit... outside BET’s target demographic.”

Tripp grinned at him. “Something wrong with BET?”

“I mean,” Patrick said, “it’s just that you’re just the preppiest person I’ve ever seen in my life. And you’re white. From Mississippi.”

“Please,” replied Tripp dismissively, as he went back to watch Hell Date. “I actually know black people, and grew up around them. The North is more racist than the South because you only know them in the abstract.”

“That is not even almost true,” said Patrick, but before he could push the conversation any further, we heard a rapturous shriek from Channah next door.

The three of us sat in complete silence for about five seconds, before all of us erupted into simultaneous laughter.

“God damn it,” said Tripp, throwing his head back. “Oh, this is going to be horrible.”

On the TV, a dwarf dressed as a devil jumped out, and waved his pitchfork: “You on Hell Date!”

I slammed my computer shut. “Yeah, I’m going to go to the library,” I told them. “I can’t write here.”

But, instead, I went to Kevin’s. Knocked on the Becker door, and there he was, in a tight-fitting t-shirt and in a pair of sweat shorts, obviously not wearing anything underneath. Dear Lord.

“Oh,” he said, a little taken aback, as he ushered me quickly inside and closed the door behind me. “I was specifically not expecting you. Don’t you have to write your thing?”

I grinned at him, leaned in for a quick peck. “What, you don’t have another man stashed in here, do you?”

“No, we only fuck at his place,” he replied, with a smile. “What do I owe the unexpected pleasure of my boyfriend’s company?”

“I needed somewhere quiet to write.”

“So you walked past the University Center, the library, and four floors of Mayer study lounges to come to my bedroom?” he asked. He smirked. “Or is this a pit stop on the way to your someplace quiet?”

“I don’t even know,” I said. “I just needed to get out of Mayer. Tripp was watching Hell Date and Erik was just having the loudest sex you could possibly imagine, and I don’t even know how to finish this goddamn story.”

Kevin grabbed my messenger bag, pulled it off my shoulder. “I’ll take a look. Okay?”

“I’ve had so many cooks in the kitchen already,” I said, but I didn’t protest as he opened up my computer.

I leaned over to put in the password, and the story sprung to life on the scream. Kevin took a few minutes to read what I had, the unwoven shards of narrative, and he was expressionless, pursing his lips without betraying anything about how he felt about anything.

“I like it,” he said. “Overall.”

“Are you lying?” I asked him. “Are you just saying that?”

“I mean, I would of course lie if I hated it,” Kevin said. “But I do like it. It’s rough, obviously, but I think there’s something there.”

I couldn’t be sure that wasn’t a lie either, because the story--especially as written, with whole chunks of the story missing, and no climax, and no resolution--was not anything. It was a whole lot of nothing.

“It still needs a lot of work.”

“Well,” Kevin said, “I think part of the problem is you’ve made Paul such a dick.”

“He is such a dick.”

“But maybe he’s not a dick,” Kevin said. “Maybe Paul is actually the nice, genuine guy who just happens to be doing well and have a beautiful wife, and Andy’s the dick because he’s the one so consumed by envy. Just think about how someone would be if they were envious of you, because you’re smart and handsome and rich and already dating someone who is, essentially, the male ‘biblical Eve of Summit Hill, New York.’”

I scoffed. “If you do say so yourself.”

“Well,” Kevin said, not able to contain his smile. “Does Andy even want Sandra for Sandra? He doesn’t even know the woman, and all we know about her is that she’s hot. I think he only wants her because she belongs to Paul. Or because he sees her as a surrogate for Paul, and he’s misdirecting his feelings for Paul. Oh, is Andy gay?”

“No, Andy is not gay,” I replied, curtly. “This is my fiction class.”

“Well,” Kevin said. “Then I think the story’s about envy. Not necessarily jealousy.”

“What’s the difference?”

“If you’ve read Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas—” he began. I gave him a look. “Whatever, I’m a philosophy major, I read weird shit.” He stood up, headed over to his bookcase.

“You don’t have to look for it,” I said. “Really. It’s fine.”

Kevin ignored me, and started rooting around in the bookcase. “So, in Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas talks about envy. And he posits that envy is different from jealousy. More severe, more unforgivably sinful. Jealousy would be me having something material that you want, and you wanting to take from me. Envy is more visceral than that. When your soul is filled with envy, you don’t necessarily even want what I have. You just don’t want me to have it, even if I’m a virtuous person who earned it. Which means you seek not to simply take my material possessions, but to destroy my inherent goodness. Which is why you envying me is so much worse than you being merely jealous.”

“I don’t know if I’m a fan of these pronouns.”

“And, of course, the antidote to envy is realizing the interconnectedness of human beings,” he continued. “Because, as Christians, when one body is blessed, all bodies are blessed.”

I rolled my eyes. “As Christians.”

“I’m speaking as Aquinas,” he replied. “Not as Malley.” He pulled a book off the shelf. “Here we go.”

He walked back across the room, and handed me a copy of Summa Theologica, still with the yellow “Used” sticker on the side. “You’ll like it. It’s fascinating.”

I took the book, but continued to look at his disdainfully. “This short story is due in about sixteen hours, so I don’t know if I have time to read an entire medieval theology textbook just now.”

“Well, it’s interesting and you should read it anyway,” he said. “But what I’m saying is that he’s not jealous of Paul. He doesn’t want Sandra because she’s a beautiful woman. He wants Sandra because he feels such hate in his heart towards Paul that he wants to destroy Paul, destroy Paul’s inherent goodness, and sees Sandra as an avenue to do so. Even if he doesn’t realize that’s what he’s doing.”

I stared at him for a few seconds. “You’re a good teacher,” I said, as I slipped Summa Theologica into my bag. “I’d listen to Dr. Malley’s lecture on St. Thomas Aquinas. While undressing you with my eyes.”

He wrinkled his nose, leaned in for a quick kiss. “But you’d rather have me at Bear Stearns, right?”

“Anywhere but Paris with Carver Alexander,” I told him. I gave him another quick peck. “Because who would sell us weed, and who would jackhammer my ass into the mattress with a gigantic horse cock?”

His hands instinctively went down to my hips, and he leaned in for a longer kiss, sensuous. His one hand moved to the back of my head as he pulled me closer. “Did discussing Summa Theologica turn you on as much as it turned me on?” he whispered to me, with a smirk.

“Oh, you know it,” I whispered back.

“Get on all fours for me,” he said, his voice deep and serious, the time for hijinks and levity had officially ended.

I kneeled on the edge of the bed, plopped down to my hands.

“No, not the bed,” he said, without moving towards me. “Get on the floor.”

I turned around, grinned at him. “The floor?”

“Do it,” he said. “No, don’t undo your pants. I said get on all fours.”

And so I did. And I stayed there for several seconds, feeling a little exposed and ridiculous that I was fully dressed, on all fours on Kevin’s area rug, but I could feel that I was already about to burst out of my jeans, I was so hard with anticipation.

I felt Kevin come up behind him, wrap his hands around my waist, and fumble with the button and then the zipper on my jeans. And then he pulled them over my hips, just down far enough to expose my ass.

“Fuck, that ass,” he said. “All fucking mine.” And then I heard, from behind me, some rustling. “No, I didn’t say you could look.”

“Okay,” I said. A towel appeared by my hands.

“Put this under you,” he said. “It’s a white rug.”

“Romantic,” I said, as I positioned the towel underneath me, in the soak zone. Kevin didn’t say anything further. Instead, I felt a wet finger graze my butt crack. And then Kevin slipped one inside, and then a second wet finger, and then a third wet finger.

“Give me your cock,” I whispered to him, and he didn’t say anything, but the fingers slowly withdrew. I heard the telltale sound of lube being squirted into Kevin’s hands, smacked together. And then I felt the tip of his dick prodding, even so slightly, for entry.

“I’ll go slow,” he told me, but he always went slow, because who could take a dick as big as Kevin Malley’s if you weren’t going slow. It took maybe twenty seconds, haltingly, but then he was inside me.

I had spent the last four weeks, since we got back to school, taking Kevin bare. But he still never seemed to realize how much pleasure he was going to receive, until he took the final plunge into me, and let out an involuntary groan of absolute ecstasy.

“Oh, I like this position,” he told me, as he began to buck his hips. “Does it feel good?”

I did not have any words. I grunted affirmatively, because Kevin was really just hitting squarely on my spot, hitting it squarely, over and over again, and I moaned, completely involuntarily, I told him to keep fucking that ass, and he bucked his hips faster and faster.

He grabbed the back of my hair, pulled my head up, and kissed my back where my shoulder blades met. “You like it,” he said, more of a statement than a question, and I groaned again, that I did like it, that I wanted more, and he gave me more. He kept giving me more, faster, faster, until I felt his hand grab my dick and start jacking me off to the rhythm, to his rhythm.

And I came on the towel, just as he made he moaned and unloaded a big load from his big cock into my ass.

He exhaled, very deeply, and placed his sweaty hand on the sweaty small of my back, underneath the bottom of my t-shirt.

I looked back at him. He still had his shirt on, and his basketball short were down around his knees. His dick was slowly in decline; it was still glossy with lube and whatever else was in there.

“That,” he said, his words halting, as he leaned over my back. “That was incredible.” He put his index finger on my chin, and pulled my face to his, kissing me. “You’re so fucking hot.”

 

Diana Webber was in the English office when I got there, checking her mailbox.

“And two minutes to spare for Adam Becker,” she greeted. She had a velvety English accent, which seemed to tame some of her more barbed commentary.

I was not at my best, still in the same jeans and shorts I was wearing the day before, still unshowered and used from my late-night area rug romp with Kevin.

I had been up until about eight o’clock that morning, on the third floor of Howard-Tilton Library, pruning the leaves from the story, figuring out why Andy hated Paul, and why Andy’s heart was filled with envy, and why Andy sought to destroy Paul’s basic goodness. And then I slept through my ten o’clock and my eleven o’clock, and rushed to get twelve copies printed for my classmates, and delivered to the English office. And the last sixteen, seventeen, eighteen hours were such a blur that I couldn’t tell if the story was bad or good or horrific, but the important thing was that it was done on time.

“It’s hot off the press,” I said. I was surprised that I was slightly out of breath; I hadn’t been running, but I had been walking quickly up the stairs. “I had to wait for a printer in Cudd Hall.”

“You’re not the last one.” She made eye contact with someone behind me; it was Stephanie Harris, who was also in Advanced Fiction with us. “Stephanie is.”

“I’m here,” said Stephanie, shyly. I hadn’t actually had a conversation with Stephanie; she was affectedly artsy. Or so she seemed; she had that recovering drama kid swagger to her. She had a short, angular haircut, dyed a cherry Jolly Rancher shade of red, and had, “There’s no one thing that’s true. It’s all true,” tattooed on her left wrist, in swooping cursive letters.

“Put them in the outbox,” said Diana, pointing to a large mesh box sitting on the table next to the faculty mailboxes. “And I’ll see both of you on Wednesday.”

Stephanie and I both watched, in silence, as she left. And then Stephanie turned to me. “I didn’t think I’d make it.”

“I didn’t think she’d be waiting here,” I said. “I think my story’s awful.”

“Oh, mine is horrific,” she said, with a self-deprecating smile. “I saw you in the library at around sunrise. What’s yours about?”

I grinned. “I don’t even know. St. Thomas Aquinas? But also a card game in the 1950s? Things started getting away from me around the halfway point.”