Subject: Joe College, Part 8 I had a series of dreams about running. They were clear dreams, and I’m not talking about running as a literary metaphor or bullshit like that. It was just running. Sometimes I was in the streets of the neighborhood where I grew up or in trails cutting through trees and woods. I grew up running in those kinds of places. (I also had a couple set in cornfields, of which I lack firsthand experience and know mostly from “Children of the Corn” and “Days of Heaven.”) In my running dreams I never got winded; I woke up happy, but disappointed that I hadn’t been running in real life. I hadn’t been a spectacular runner on my high school cross country team. I was competent, but not in competition for a title. It was more of a way to spend time with my friends. My buddy Rick and I started running when we were in sixth grade, after our dick gym teacher started making the whole class do the mile around our junior high track. Rick and I sucked at the time, but we were competitive with each other and everyone else. One Sunday when we were eleven the two of us walked over to the junior high track and raced for a mile; I won. Then we paused and did a second mile; the next morning, I could barely walk. I’ve been running ever since. I mentioned it before, how the summer after high school graduation, I avoided the gym and all athletic activity. I spent the summer drinking, smoking a few joints, starting a casual smoking habit and hooking up with Andy Trafford. That was my summer of hedonism — my break with the over-disciplined, hard-driving schedule I’d imposed on myself for most of high school. When I got to college I noticed little things. The phrase “freshman fifteen” got thrown around (mostly by girls, but not exclusively) and it was the first time I thought about one day turning fat. To be clear: I *wasn’t* turning fat — my abs were still pretty tight and I still looked like a varsity athlete. One morning I was in the communal bathroom down the hall shaving after my shower, dark blue towel around my waist. Briefly, I stopped and watched my stomach as I breathed. I poked myself on the side. I imagined the paunch and thought about how I felt slightly winded running up three flights of stairs when I was late for a discussion section the day before. One of the Florida Boys stood a couple sinks away. He was shaving too. “Looking pretty fit, bro,” he said, his voice blandly frattastic. It was too early. I hadn’t had coffee or breakfast. Any remark dazes me first thing in the morning. “I mean, not in a homo way, dude,” he said. “That sounded a little fucked up.” “Nah,” I said. Even if he’d meant something flirty, the Florida Boys on my floor weren’t my type. “Don’t worry about it.” He was straight, but he still shaved his chest and pubes. “You could use a tan, bro,” he said. “I’m kind of pale to get a normal tan,” I said. “I mostly get sunburns.” “Sucks, man,” he said. I finished shaving and splashed cold water on my face. I needed to start running again, I concluded. That day, after my Shakespeare lecture, I put on my running shoes and went for the first time in about four months. It was late September. I still didn’t know my way around the neighborhoods surrounding the campus. I only went about three miles, and at a pretty slow pace for me — maybe about nine minutes a mile, until I was almost back to the dorm, at which point, I booked it. This wasn’t a deep moment, but it reminded me of how good it felt to lace sneakers tight and push myself. I hadn’t sweated like that since my last game of baseball in high school, and that had mainly been because it was ninety degrees. There’s this thing that happens when I’m running, where my brain lets go and I scrape off whatever I’d been thinking about. The way I feel about ten minutes into a run and for a few hours afterward is the way I feel when I’m a happy drunk — like it’s a vacation from certain undesirable parts of my personality. Many things in the world seem full and green and attainable. I was at dinner that night in the dorm cafeteria. Sam Frost wasn’t around. I called up to Chris Riis’s room. That day I went for a run, it was just a couple of weeks after Chris had tried to get me and Sam to rush that frat with him — it was before Matt Canetti and I had fooled around, and before I knew Canetti was gay. Chris came down to my room and we took the stairs down to the cafeteria together. “Dude, I went for a run today,” I said. “It felt great. I haven’t done it in awhile.” “Where’d you go?” “Just around the neighborhoods off campus.” I asked. “Do you ever run?” “Nah,” he said, slapping his stomach slightly, “but I should.” “You’re not a fat-ass,” I said. “No sir, not a fat-ass,” he said, “but I’m not in great shape. I didn’t play sports. I mostly just know how to use a rowboat and windsurf. And I swim okay, but not in a smooth way.” We got into the dinner line. It was early and the cafeteria was quiet. “There’s no skill. You just, like, start running. I’ll probably go again in a couple days if you want to come with.” “Meh,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll suck and I don’t want to slow you down.” “I suck myself right now,” I said. “Don’t be a puss. Let’s meet up Friday afternoon and we’ll head out.” This was the key thing I remember about Chris Riis during freshman year: how badly he wanted to make a good impression, but how frightened he was of coming off as a dumbass. And I admit: It was endearing. That might have been my gayness affecting me, but I never got used to the flattering aspect of someone wanting so badly to make a good impression. You could see the thoughts align and fight each other, as he weighed the risk of not being able to run a decent mile or two, and the consequent loss of face it would cause him. I also had this thought: Was it possible for someone to be such an irredeemable dork that it seemed like an asset to hotness? He was wearing a three-button polo tucked into khaki shorts with a white T-shirt underneath, and loafers with no socks. He wore his hair in a lame part that made him look like the son in a 1970s sitcom — but his hair was all blond and a little shaggy. It might have been that his face was just that hot — his features were so clean and defined, and he had such nice blue eyes and a slightly big lower lip that you kind of wanted to tug on — that his awkwardly preppy, out-of-time comportment could be confused with confidence instead of the absence of all cool. It was tempting to conclude that this was planned — that Chris had the quality of an ironic hipster — until he spoke, at which point, his intense self-consciousness betrayed everything else. A couple of days later we made good on my suggestion. Chris stood near the mailroom window waiting for me in sweatshorts, a T-shirt with our school name and white Adidas sneakers. “I apologize in advance if I mess up your run,” he said, smirking and scratching the back of his neck before pushing his hands through his shaggy blond hair. And he did mess up my run. Chris Riis had the physical fitness of a post-op fifty year old. For maybe the first quarter-mile, we ran at a decent clip, but right away, he struggled. He was breathing too heavily and his face was turning red. I slowed down a little. After about five minutes, we’d hit something like a half mile, going down the sidewalk past a row of sorority houses on a slow incline. We weren’t talking. The only sound was our sneakers hitting the pavement, and Chris’s labored breathing. I slowed down some more. A couple of minutes later, he said, “This sucks.” “No, you’re good,” I said. “My back kills.” He gasped syllables. “Like, the muscles.” “Keep going.” I moved more slowly so that he could keep pace. I was lying. He wasn’t good. He hunched slightly. He breathed deeply and loudly. The soles of my sneakers were light and springy on the concrete; Chris clomped. A crease of sweat ran down the back of his gray T-shirt. At a certain point, a slight limp slipped into his pace. “Let’s head back now,” I said. “Are you sure? How far did we go?” “Maybe a couple miles?” “That’s not bad.” “You’re good,” I lied. It was about a half mile back to the dorm. His posture grew more ungainly. He ran with his head down and his back leaning slightly forward, like a blond out-of-shape bull trying to charge ahead. I could have walked at a fast clip and outpaced him, but that would have embarrassed him. I gave him a soft slap between his shoulder blades. The texture of his T-shirt was thick and damp; his sweat rubbed off on my hand. My clap on his back made him inhale sharply. He picked up his pace. It was like he’d forgotten I was there, and my gesture reminded him to keep pushing. The hair on the back of his head was matted wet and dark blond. Once our dorm was in sight he tried to run faster. It wasn’t quick by any objective measure, but he moved more strongly than he had for the last ten minutes. Before the front doors, he stopped with his hands resting on his knees. His forehead dripped sweat on the sidewalk. A couple of girls checked us out from their spot on a concrete bench. They looked full and green and attainable. “That sucked,” he said. “It’ll get easier.” “Holy shit.” “I mean, that was a long way to go if you’re not used to it. You didn’t even stop to walk.” “Thanks, but we both know I suck.” “Who gives a shit? I wasn’t gambling on your final time, Seabiscuit.” He laughed while he panted. At Chris’s suggestion, we took the stairwell up. He held onto the rail while he tried to continue his workout. I stayed a couple of steps behind him. He smelled like laundry detergent and body sweat. The muscles in his legs weren’t very defined. I studied the runoff darkening the back of his gray sweatshorts. Sam was in our room when I got back. “Chris Riis is not an athlete,” I said to him. “Why am I not surprised?” Sam said. I kicked off my shoes and took my shirt off. Undressing in front of Sam wasn’t sketchy — in high school, with my friends and I all on the same teams and at each other’s pools, it was something I grew pretty immune to, and there wasn’t anything remotely sexual in my dealings with Sam. Taking off my clothes and walking naked a few feet to grab my towel and wrap it around my waist wasn’t rare or awkward. There emek escort was nobody else in the communal showers down the hall. Safe in my stall with the curtain drawn behind me, I briefly contemplated jerking off, but I decided that I lacked patience for it. Chris came down to our room later that night. He walked stiffly and ungainly. Sam and I were in our bunkbeds watching “Real World” re-runs with the lights off. It was weak sauce for a Friday, but Sam had gone out the night before and I wasn’t in the mood for getting drunk. “My legs are killing me,” Chris said. He stretched out on Sam’s blue pleather ban-bag chair. “Like, my knees and my shins and my muscles.” “It’ll take a few days, and then we can go again.” “Weird stuff hurts, too,” he said, “like the muscles in my ass and my lower back.” “Enough with your explicit profanity, Christian,” Sam said. Chris dozed off an hour or so later. We were watching TV with the lights off and nobody was talking. He was curled up in a fetal position on that stupid blue beanbag. He looked like I wanted him to be my boyfriend; I wanted to be hugging him or some such shit. We went for another run the following Wednesday, after he e-mailed me on a Tuesday night. The day was cooler and windy. It was the last Wednesday in September. He wasn’t much better, but he knew what he was in for, so he paced himself better. “Keep your back straight and your chest up,” I said. “When you hunch, it just makes it harder.” He immediately complied without comment. “Simon says, smack yourself in the face.” “Shut up,” he gasped. “Does it feel easier?” “No,” he said. “My muscles still hurt.” “Just keep going,” I said. “We can go slow.” We ran again the next Sunday. We both were on the tail end of hangovers. I’d smoked cigarettes the night before; it felt like that shit was sticking in my lungs, even at the slow pace I ran with Chris. He wasn’t getting faster and it wasn’t easier for him, but his style improved. Without planning, we probably went more than three miles. When I ran solo, I even felt a little guilty. I didn’t tell him. He wouldn’t have cared. I ran farther and faster without him, but it felt like cheating. The first time I messed around with Matt Canetti, it was mid-October. I’d been horned up and crushing on him for the two weeks before then. If Canetti hadn’t been monopolizing my dick’s ideas, I probably would have been crushing on Chris Riis, as pathetic as that is. I’d twice seen him make out with girls at parties, after he got himself blind wasted to work up the courage; he probably was a Republican. But he was *just* *so* *earnest* and *just* *so* *cute.* It’s not like I wanted to bang him; I just wanted to kiss his forehead and whatnot. We were going to go out on a Wednesday, but it was cold and rainy. We talked on the phone and decided to go to the rec center and hit the treadmills. In the lockerroom, I changed from my jeans into basketball shorts. I wore compression shorts underneath, but Chris wore white briefs. I was careful not to make any unseemly glances in his direction. “Do you ever lift weights?” he said. “Sometimes in high school,” I said, “but it wasn’t my favorite pastime. Just some bench presses and squats a few times a week. Shit like that.” I helped set him up on the treadmill and took one next to his. We ran for about 35 minutes; I ran four and a half miles, and Chris went just over three. At the end, our T-shirts were both sweat-soaked. “You’re a lot faster than me,” he said, sweat dripping from his chin. I chugged from a bottle of water and sensed someone standing on my blind side. “You’re in Wilson’s Shakespeare class, right?” said a girl. She startled me. “Ha,” I said, “yeah.” “You usually sit in the front of his lectures, on the left side?” “Yeah.” “I always sit a couple of rows behind you.” “Cool,” I said. She was a tall Asian girl. She had a kind of sweet Midwestern accent. She wasn’t sweat-drenched like me and Chris. I didn’t recognize her. “I’m Joe,” I said. “I’d, like, shake hands, but my hand is gross. This is my friend Chris.” “I’m Tracey,” she said. “Nice to meet you,” I said. There was a short pause that was more awkward than I intended. It occurred to me that it felt like a compliment to be hit on by a hot girl in front of Chris. “Well,” she said, “if you ever feel like reading for class or studying, say hi. There’s a ton of reading.” “Definitely,” I said. “I’ll catch you later, Cherisse.” “Bye, Joe,” she said, and turned to Chris. “Nice meeting you.” We watched as she walked off to a stairmaster. “Dude, she was pretty hot,” Chris said. “Yeah,” I said. “She wasn’t bad. She seemed nice. I’m not a smooth player like you.” That comment made him uncomfortable, I could tell. “I’ve seen you, like, Frenching hot girls at a couple of parties,” I said. “Yeah, *Frenching.* That’s the word for it. *Frenching.* Nothing more than that.” “That’s, like, not nothing. That’s more action than I’ve had since I got here.” I thought of Canetti while I lied. “I don’t believe that for a second.” “Whatever,” I said. “Ask Sam.” “Do you have a high school girlfriend around? I mean, I’ve heard you mention about a girl at Berkeley that you hooked up with a couple of times, but it didn’t sound serious.” “Not that serious, no,” I said. “I just haven’t hooked up since I’ve gotten here.” “That girl, like, wants your jock,” Chris said. “Don’t talk like a frat guy,” I said. “If it wasn’t for me and Sam dissuading you, you’d probably be wiping up some frat bro’s puked-up bathroom right now.” He laughed and smiled in a goofy way. His top teeth were big, straight and white. “On a less horrible note,” I said, “how was your run?” “It was easier than before. It felt pretty good. I feel all right.” “The treadmill is easier than the concrete.” When we were back in the lockerroom, Chris took off his shirt while I worked the combination of our locker. “Are we supposed to shower here?” he said. “Uh, no,” I said. I could hear the water coming out of the gang showers around the corner. From the side of my eye, I caught the arc of a guy’s lower back and tanlined ass as he toweled off his hair, facing away from us. His shoulders looked strong; his butt looked full and muscled, with a light covering of hair on it. I wasn’t looking from the side of my eye anymore. “Our friendship hasn’t advanced to the point of full-frontal nudity yet.” “It’s not a big deal,” he said. “Everybody’s a guy.” Chris was holding his sweat-damped T-shirt out, like it was on a clothesline getting fresh air. He wasn’t fat, but it showed that he hadn’t spent a lot of time in the gym. He had the very slightest outline of a gut, the kind that a guy can get at eighteen if he’s flat at the median. He didn’t have a developed upper-body and his arms were skinny. I made a point not to study, but it didn’t look like he had any chest hair — like, at all — and he had big brownish nipples. If he worked out his chest, he would have had a pretty hot upper body. “Put your shirt back on, porn star,” I said. “Number one, we don’t have towels, number two, we don’t have clean clothes, and number three, the dorm’s just, like, two hundred yards away.” It was a decent recovery, but before I’d finished my explanation, I was damning myself for the weirdness of my initial comments — not advanced to the point of full-frontal nudity? What the fuck did that even mean? I wasn’t going to suddenly start sporting wood in the lockerroom and giggling like a chick. There wasn’t any reason for it to weird me out or elevate to the level of an event. I was full aware that my reluctance was based on the slight chest flutter that Chris’s question triggered. I was mostly surprised by the question. We grabbed our backpacks and walked back to the dorm. * * * We had our first snow before the end of October. Most mornings there was frost on the ground. You could see your breath at night. Chris and I moved our running to the treadmills at the rec center, going a couple nights per week. Having somebody there was probably good for me. I’m not social at the gym — I go within myself, I swear. When we were running on the treadmill I didn’t pay attention to Chris or anyone else. We only commented on each other’s pace or distance once it was done. I liked thinking that there was someone else to keep track of me and vice-versa. Chris was running faster and longer. The week before Thanksgiving break, he managed ten-minute miles. I continued to hover around eight minutes, probably due to the cigarettes that I sucked down under Canetti’s bad influence. “Every time we go, I feel awesome for like a day afterwards,” Chris said. “Go without me if you want. You don’t have to stick to my schedule.” “I went solo last Sunday! I stopped by your room but there wasn’t any answer.” I’d been with Canetti. “I did four miles on the treadmill and then swam laps in the pool.” “Awesome,” I said. “Are you, like, training for a triathlon?” “No,” he said. “It just feels good.” “I know!” “Right?” “Right.” “That’s what you were telling me at the start when it was killing me.” “And you’ve only been at it for a couple of months.” He lifted his sweatshirt and showed his hairless stomach and the white elastic of his undewear above his jeans. He slapped his skin. He apparently thought there was a difference in his physique, although it wasn’t obvious to me. “The swim was pretty awesome, too,” he said. “My brothers and sisters and I used to go swimming at our cottage all the time.” “We had a pool at our house.” “Let’s swim laps sometime.” “Sounds like a plan.” Obviously, I was hanging out with him when we weren’t at the gym, but it tended to be in big groups, and much of the time everyone was very, very drunk. In December, before reading period and exams, Chris and Sam came with me to a house party. I’d started writing for our school newspaper, just record reviews of bands that people had never heard of, and I don’t mean medium-tier indie bands that could tour nationally, but more like the last band in the daily Pitchfork reviews, the local bands that sometimes opened from the lower-tier indie bands that tour nationally. The newspaper was housed in its own brick-and-granite building on eryaman escort campus, and it seemed to be populated with argumentative, slightly awkward dorks who spent way too much time working there and hooking up with each other. I liked it immediately. For about five hours a week I would go into the building, put on headphones, and focus intensely to compose twelve column inches that few people read. Still, I was proud of what I was doing, enough that I clipped my reviews and kept them in a folder, and occasionally mailed them to my mom, even though they were available online. There were good people at the paper. Some of them would turn out to be my best friends from college, and some would go on to write at the Times and the Journal, but back then, they just seemed like intellectually overexcited poli sci majors who argued at length about things like semicolons and Congressional redistricting. One of the senior editors at the paper sent a mass e-mail about his house party. I brought Sam and Chris and left them alone while I spoke and drank and smoked with my new friends. Standing on a cold back porch with a cigarette in my lips, it turned out that a sophomore sportswriter named Doug had also grown up in Westchester, a couple towns over and a 20 minute drive away. “Small fucking world,” Doug said, when we realized that we ran cross-country against each other in high school. It was one of those nights where you start out with a conversation, and you’re convinced that you’re a pretty charming and interesting individual, and the next thing you know, it’s 1:30 in the morning, and you and everyone else around you is touching a wall for support, laughing too loudly and talking on top of each other. People kept encouraging me to drink shots; one of the arts editors tried to engage me in a very serious and encouraging conversation about whether I wanted to be an editor at the paper one day. In my response, I was grave and honored. There was a lot of shouting about beer pong, and I saw Sam shouting with two girls about feminism. When I went out to have another cigarette with my new friend from Westchester County, I lit a Parliament Light and took a deep breath of the cold air and knew that I needed to puke. The back of my throat had the sting of whiskey and tequila — Jesus fuck, had someone given me a shot of *rum*? I had just enough time to say, “Pardon me,” to my new friend Doug before taking two steps forward, turning away, and puking into the grass. I leaned down grabbing my knees for life and let it all go. I slurred profanity, then gagged out more. “I’ll get you some water, man,” Doug said, going back inside and coming out with a blue Solo cup while I spat and shivered into the cold. “I should probably go home,” I said. “Are your buddies still here?” “I think so. Sam’s probably stoned somewhere and Chris is probably Frenching a girl.” “Beer goggles,” Doug said, as I swished some water and spit it out. “I shouldn’t smoke,” I said. “I was fine until that last cigarette.” “Well, it was the shots, too,” he said. “This party’s awesome, though. I don’t want to go. You only get, like, so many great parties in your life, and I feel like this might be one of the great ones.” “You’re a funny motherfucker,” Doug said. “I’m extremely funny.” Back inside, I staggered around looking for Chris or Sam; I slammed myself into a doorframe with enough clumsy force that the next morning a bruise blossomed on my hip; for fifteen or twenty minutes, I danced manically in a dark living room to the Quad City DJ’s and Vanilla Ice and then En Vogue. Everyone else was wasted and wild, insofar as I could tell. It’s amazing how nights can start like a Whit Stillman movie and end like a Coors commercial. Whatever happened next, I was in my winter coat with a knit hat on, staggering outside with Chris Riis. “Where’s Sam? We fucking lost Sam.” “Sam left with a girl!” “That’s awesome for him. Was she hot?” “She wasn’t bad.” “Did you French any girls tonight?” “I don’t think I got drunk enough to French any girls tonight.” “You don’t have to be drunk to French,” I said. “You just stick your tongue in.” “Did *you* French any girls tonight?” “No, but I puked the fuck all over the backyard.” “Oh, crap.” “It’s true.” “I’ve never seen you puke. I’m sorry I missed it.” “Gross. Why?” “Because you saw me puke that one night. It would even things out and I’d feel less inferior.” “Fuck that. You don’t need to feel inferior,” I said. The temperature couldn’t have been above twenty. My teeth were clattering and my shoulders were trembling. “There’s nothing inferior about puking because you’re drunk. It just makes you feel better. But now that you mention it, I’ve seen most of my guy friends throw up from alcohol. A lot of the girls, too, but mostly the guys.” “And now you’re the drunk one who needs to get walked back to the dorm.” “But you are the best,” I said. “You are seriously the best, nicest guy.” I shoved him in the back, between the shoulder blades. “You don’t talk a bunch of bullshit or act like an asshole to try to be funny.” I shoved him again. “You should stop trying to apologize for who you are and not worry about bullshit about whether Sam or I can act like a bigger dick than you.” “No, I know, I know-” “Just, like, you’re a nice guy, you’re a good-looking guy, you don’t seem retarded, you’re running like seven or eight miles a week. Just chill with whether people are judging you.” I cleared my throat and spit vomit flavor into the street. “Nobody’s judging you. We’re all jealous of you.” “Now I know you’re wasted,” he said. “This is better than seeing you puke.” “Oh, I can puke more,” I said. “I can probably puke lots more.” “Do it.” I stopped and tried to prove my point; all I did was belch. “I lied,” I said. “I can’t puke anymore.” “Hey, Joe,” Chris said, “don’t take this the wrong way, but the longer I know you, the weirder you seem.” “Oh, thanks.” “There weren’t a lot of people like you where I grew up,” he said. “Do you know what I mean?” “Yes, exactly,” I said. “No, not at all, but who cares. Let’s race back to the dorm.” “Not a good idea,” Chris said. “You’ll face plant on the sidewalk.” When we got back to the dorm I said that we should go back to my room and drink beers and play Playstation, so we did. We ended up passing out in my lower bunk, and not in any kind of sexy way. I woke up at around 7 a.m. curled in a fetal position at the pillow end of the mattress. Chris was laying awkwardly and perpendicular at the other end, stretched out L-shaped, with his head propped against the concrete wall and his shoeless legs dangling off the bed. His mouth was hung open. I felt like shit and wanted him gone so I could stretch out properly. Instead I just put my cold body underneath the covers. I woke up when Sam came back to the room sometime between nine and ten. “Oh, beautiful,” he said, when he walked in to the empty beercans, the two of us passed out, and Madden Football paused on the TV. Chris bolted awake and in pain, his face colorless and his blond shaggy blond hair a mess. “What’s up,” I said, like it was a reflexive instinct. The sunlight through our shades hurt my head. “So, this woman from your little newspaper organization was all drunk and whatnot, and she said to this group of us, ‘Let’s all go back to my house and we’ll take off all our clothes and get into bed and cuddle,’ and I thought to myself, ‘Doesn’t that sound nice?’ Apparently what she meant was, let’s all go back to my house and get drunk while I talk endlessly about which fucking tenured prof will be my senior thesis adviser next year.” “And?” I said, while Chris staggered up and stretched his arms. “She passed out on the couch!” “And you fucking stayed there?” “I sat down in a chair and went to sleep,” Sam said. “The fuck why?” “In case she decided that we’d go to her room and take off our clothes and cuddle!” “Sketchy perv,” I said. “Weirdo, you freak. She was just drunk and saying weird stuff. Thank God you didn’t try to touch her.” “Oh, don’t even joke like that. For real. I’m not going to start molesting passed-out chicks. That’s a low comment, even for you.” “I mean,” I said, getting a sliver of energy, “she’d obviously have to be drunk off her ass to flirt with some dirty unshaved British-Canadian like you.” “As contrasted to you two players, passing out in bed together in the middle of a video game,” Sam said. “All right, guys,” Chris said, “I’m going to go back up to my room and to sleep for the day. I think I hurt my neck, sleeping like that.” “Have a good rest, Christian,” Sam said. “I think I broke a neck muscle,” Chris said. “This doesn’t feel good.” * * * Final exams went pretty smoothly for me, and the trip back home for Christmas was calm and uneventful. Andy Trafford spent most of the holiday visiting grandparents in Phoenix, but he was back in time for a New Year’s party at Sanjay’s parents’ house — the kind of New Year’s party where almost everybody’s parents were present and nobody got too trashed. We didn’t have any deep conversations or touch each other’s boners or anything, although I admit that I did jerk off to him when I woke up on January 1. While I was away from school, I missed everybody like balls. Sam and Chris and I e-mailed each other a few times a day, with either me and Chris writing about bowl games or me and Sam trashing each other to keep Chris amused. Canetti and I wrote a lot; I read his lengthy, uncapitalized e-mails ranting about politics and George W. Bush, and funny little anecdotes about his parents that reminded me of a more combative David Sedaris. That guy from my school newspaper, Doug — he was bored, so one day he drove over and hung out with me and my high school friends. He and I hit it off pretty well in the kind of platonic male-bonding way that’s not going to get you off, but it was cool having him around. Then, after three weeks away from everybody, I got back to campus, psyched as hell and in love with the world all over again. Second night back I slept over at Canetti’s place. “Don’t try to make me tell you how much I’ve missed you,” he said, after spending a couple of minutes tonguing my mouth. “I’m not going to make you say esat escort anything, dickweed,” I said, while I undid his jeans button and pressed against the top of his boner. “Because that makes me feel embarrassed and vulnerable, saying nice things like that,” he said, pushing me over until he crashed on top of me in his unmade bed. He held onto my hand and breathed into my mouth. He dropped his jeans and his boxers. He pressed his chin against my chin while he kissed me. “Dude, did you just shave?” “Uh huh,” he said. “I shaved for you.” He sucked on my lower lip. I pressed my hand up the back of his shirt, along the bones of his spine, until he let me lift his shirt off of him. He wasn’t wearing anything but socks. I reached my hand down and gripped his dick. My precum was leaking all over my boxers; I hadn’t jerked off in at least 48 hours. “I’m skipping a party at the frat so we could hang out tonight,” he said. “Don’t say I’ve never done anything for you.” “Yeah, right,” I said, holding onto his neck and putting my face up against the top of his scalp. “Like there’s nothing in it for you.” “Don’t try to embarrass me with your sweet talk,” he said. He lifted my shirt off and dropped my jeans down to around my knees. His skin felt smooth and clean and hot. He wrapped his ankles around mine and we weren’t like that for five minutes before he shot his jizz onto my stomach. I followed suit. We got off together two more times over the next three hours. That night sleeping with him, I think I was hard the whole time. * * * Chris and I got back into our running routine. We both had noon classes on Wednesday. One Tuesday night in late January, he called and suggested that we meet up the next morning. “Let’s just go at like 10:30,” he said. “We’ll run for awhile, shower at the gym and then head off to class.” “Yeah, that’s plausible,” I said, my chest tightening a bit. Even though we’d been spending a lot of time at the gym, I’d resolved that I did not need to have a showering experience with Chris Riis. As I tried to think up an excuse to reject his proposal, he said, “All right, cool. I’ll pick you up at your room at about 10:15.” This triggered a night of tension and self-reflection. In Version A, the thought I kept having was about Chris Riis as this hot, untrammeled innocent — the curve of his lips, the angle of his cheekbones, the blue of his eyes, his blond hair messed and sweaty after he ran, and the way he blushed if Sam or I said something that made a little fun of him. He was probably still a virgin! And if I had the gall to ask, he would have blushed at the question! This guy and I disrobing together, it could not have been good news. In Version B — what was the big fucking deal? Losing control of my libido in the presence of the male form isn’t exactly my Achilles heel, provided you discount my issues with Andy Trafford, and that was only that one time and thereafter only because I knew we were gay on each other. Some of my high school friends were nice-looking guys and I didn’t have any hang-ups showering with them after practices or gym classes. It wouldn’t even have occurred to me. But on the other hand, I told myself, I hadn’t exactly been in touch with my gayness when I first met them, and this was something different. I’d had the outline of a crush on Chris Riis probably since I first met him. There wasn’t any danger of acting on it. But seeing him under a shower, that could unwillingly shoot me off in bad directions. When I went to bed at two, serenaded by Sam lightly snoring on the top bunk like a wheezy little lapdog, I moved for a quick and subtle jerk-off beneath my sheets. I wore my socks to bed just so I’d have cleaning utensils handy. Chris was at the door at 10:15 sharp. Sam was in his morning econ class. I had my bag packed and was putting on my sneakers. “I usually need coffee before I do anything,” I said. “This might be rough for me.” We always shared a locker at the gym, for the practical reason that I was the only one between the two of us with a lock. I changed quickly, and once I was on the treadmill, the drama that I’d invented for myself swept out of my mind — the mental cleansing of running and all. As I glanced at Chris on the treadmill next to me, I saw that he’d upped his pace to nine-and-a-half minutes a mile. “Not bad,” I said to him, breaking my habit of muteness. “Thanks,” he said, smiling. “It gets a little easier every time.” I had a bright idea. I added another ten minutes to my treadmill. Chris wouldn’t make it for an extra ten minutes, I thought to myself. “Just go ahead and change without me,” I said. “I’ll catch you later.” “Meh, I’m going to try to keep going, too,” he said. “Besides, I don’t know the combination to your lock.” Fuck. By the time we were done, I’d run six miles. It was about 11:20. Both of us were sweaty, red-faced messes. When we got to the lockerroom, I thought to myself: This is no big deal — you’ve done this probably thousands of times in your life. Stop psyching yourself out. You’re on your runner’s high, you’re not even remotely horny, and there’s nothing to see here. You’ll do this once and it’ll be totally normal going forward. You’ll never think about it again. I undid the locker, grabbed my towel and body wash, and stepped a few feet away, with my back turned to Chris. I kicked off my shoes and peeled off my shirt. In a quick move, I pulled down both sets of shorts, wrapped the towel around my waist, and walked into the shower room. It had been my hope that maybe there’d be an obese elderly sociology prof standing under one of the showers, the kind of guy with lots of backhair and a mohawk growing out of his ass — a physique that would immediately chasten me. No such luck. The gang showers didn’t have any curtains or barriers, with maybe a dozen showerheads on the walls. Two other guys were in there. One was about six-foot three with a swimmer’s build. He had dark hair and was facing out to the room, with soap suds running over his chest and down to his pubes, a nice-sized dick hanging out from under his wet abs. So, shit. The other guy was Asian; it looked like he spent a lot of time in the weight room. The muscles on his back were visible, and he had a rounded muscular ass. I glanced at his abs and his cock in profile — shit. I faced the wall and soaped up myself as quick as I could. Someone took the shower a couple of spots to my right, and even though I didn’t glance in his direction, I could tell from the outline of the posture and the body language that it was Chris. “This chem lab I’m taking,” Chris said, “is going to give me a breakdown.” “Maybe, but you did fine in orgo, right?” I said. “That’s what everybody says is brutal.” “Like, B+.” “Dude, B+ is awesome,” I said, careful not to face him. “Right,” he said. “Did you get a B+ last semester?” “No.” “Did you get anything less than an A?” “A- in Shakespeare,” I said. He was facing me now, I could tell, even though I wasn’t looking at him. Oh, fuck it, I thought — if there’s anything that wasn’t going to get me horny or romantically riled, it was quibbling over grades in the showers. I turned over to him while I soaped up my chest. I’m not one of those gay guys who obsesses over dick size and gets riled up about it, but I’ll volunteer that Chris Riis’s was moderately substantial. He wasn’t Dirk Diggler, but his dick, while soft, was probably about six inches hanging down, and pretty thick. His pubes were blond and not as thick as mine. When he reached over to grab his shampoo, his dick swung with him. It wasn’t pink-looking, but flesh colored, with a heavy-looking head at the tip. I don’t think I was too open in staring at it, but I definitely took a studious look. Plus, his running had paid off, I think. His stomach looked considerably flatter than I remembered it; you could even make out the vague outline of his ribs. From before, I remember having the impression that he had a torso that looked like if you poked it, maybe there would have been some cushion; Chris now had less cushion. And for a guy who was so self-conscious in almost every respect, he was pretty casual with his nudity. This is something that I’ve noticed in the past with big-dicked guys. I remember when I was a freshman on the cross-country team, there’d been a senior guy, incredibly skinny with an Addams Family face and quiet personality but an enormous dong. It was bizarre. When we were in the lockerroom, it’s like, that guy kind of presided. I think the rest of us were vaguely intimidated. It never gets discussed in life, but the presence of an overly large penis can alter hierarchy. Chris wasn’t hung as huge as that guy, but it was in the ballpark. He had a dick that straight guys would notice as exceptional. So he kind of took his time under the showerhead. He soaped up his dick and balls facing outward; he rinsed his hair facing out and arched his back a little. Aside from his pubes and his armpits, there wasn’t any body hair to him. Another guy came into the showerroom and stood in the opposite corner, another fit swimmer who pulled down his trunks and soaped up, and I swear that he took some furtive looks in Chris’s direction, too. I wasn’t in any danger of sporting wood. I’ve got pretty good self-control in that department, number one; number two that’s just not my style; number three, that’s why I jerked off in bed the night before; and number four, when you’ve just finished a workout, the horniness isn’t in peak condition, what with the world being so lush and green and attainable. But I took my mental notes. While I’m not one to dry off much in the lockerroom setting (I tend to throw on my clothes while my skin is damp and get out of there as fast as possible) Chris took his time. He dried off his hair with his towel behind his head and his big dick flapping around, his balls dangling side to side. He bent over and wiped his legs dry. While I threw on a pair of fresh boxers and Chris stood naked next to me wiping his forearms, his long dick swinging a foot from my face, I thought to myself: Holy shit, this was Chris’s ego move; this was his way to show off and assert a little supremacy. I’m convinced that guys with that kind of endowment know the kind of subtle impact that it can have (maybe especially straight guys) and in a law-of-the-jungle manner, this was Chris’s way (probably unconsciously — no one ever thinks it through like this) of establishing himself. As in, check it out, asshole: You may be verbally precocious and a socialite boy, but I rule the kingdom in one department. Recognize!