Captions to Jerk By

“Yeah, no, this is great,” I said, trying to sound sprightly, trying to sound like this run down warehouse was somehow a destination in the way that the other run down warehouses that surrounded it weren’t. I got out of the car and hoped he’d drive away quickly, so I wouldn’t have to act like I knew exactly where I was going, but instead he pulled away slowly. I could see his eyes on me in the rear view mirror as I pretended to look in my pockets for something.

When I’d put the address into Google maps it had come up as a boxing gym, but the door that faced the street—rust eating into maroon paint, a set of crumbling concrete steps, a metal railing tilted to one side—didn’t have a sign, didn’t have anything on it except a piece of cardboard cardboard taped up over its window and a padlock.

I walked around to the back of the building, like he’d told me to. At least I walked around to what I thought was the back of the building, but there wasn’t much to distinguish it from the front of the building aside from the fact that it didn’t face the street—another unmarked door, some empty parking spaces, a dumpster. I looked around, waited there with the hands in the pockets of my coat, but nothing happened.

I was just about to pull out my phone and text him I was here when the door opened and a man stepped out. He looked around, casually, like he was just stepping out to take a smoke, and when he was satisfied that there wasn’t anything else there but me and the dumpster he walked over in quick, loping strides. His head was shaved—his face was better than I’d expected, rugged but with full lips and dark, deep-set eyes—and he was wearing sweatpants and a black parka.

He gave me one short nod and then looked off to the side, squinting as he smoked.

“You train here?” I asked.

He just shrugged, still not looking at me. I mean, he must have been just about to work out, because he didn’t have anything on underneath his parka. He must have just thrown it on before coming out here, and so that’s why there wasn’t any shirt to hide the muscled planes of his body. The tattoo on his chest—a long knife that carried on down from his sternum into the cleft between his abs, numbers I couldn’t make sense of on either side—must have been new; it hadn’t been on the torso pic he’d sent me on Grindr and the skin around it was still red. My cock thickened in my jeans, and I wrapped my hand around my phone and my wallet in my pocket.

“Nice tatt,” I said, even though “nice” had not been the first word that sprang to mind. He just nodded. “What does it mean?” I asked, even though I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know the answer.

He turned to face me, then, and fixed his eyes on mine as he took a long drag on his cigarette before flicking it away.

“You want to talk, or?”

I joined his cigarette butt down on the ground. It was an overcast morning, and still early, and the cold of the concrete bit my knees through my jeans more than its hardness. He stepped forward even as he leaned back, pushing his hips toward my head, and I pressed my face into the crotch of his sweats, my hands coming up to grip the waistband. I heard rustling above as he reached into his coat, then the click of a lighter. I pulled his pants down and he sprung out, slapping up against my cheek with a noise that couldn’t possibly have been as loud as it sounded. A hand came down and he grabbed a fistful of my hair as I took him in, the length of him, hard and pale and with thick, angry veins.

As soon as I opened the door to my place, I knew it had been a mistake. He looked nice enough, but he smelled like hemp and like patchouli and like he only washed his clothes when he drove home to Santa Monica to visit his parents.

He had me arrange two chairs facing each other; I was in one, he was in the other, and my concerns about the extent to which his treatment would consist of crunchy platitudes about energy and intention weren’t decreased when he pulled a small, jutting piece of quartz out of his canvas backpack and set it on the floor between us.

“You said you’ve been having issues going to sleep, yeah?” A small red tin brazier joined the crystal, and he fiddled with a coil of golden incense and a box of matches.

“Yes,” I said. I crinkled my nose as he sat back up and the smell of the incense hit me, but he didn’t take the hint. “It’s been a couple months now. I try, and eventually I get to sleep, but it takes forever. I went to my doctor, but—“

“Yeah, doctors, man. They’re good for, like, getting you a medical card, but other than that...”

I shrugged. I didn’t have a medical card, and hadn’t smoked pot since college.

“Okay,” he said, and he smiled at me with the exact same smile he uses when he asks the dogs he’s walking whether or not they’re good boys. “I want you to close your eyes.” I did. “And I want you to focus on your breathing for me, okay? In and out. In and out.” Against my better nature, for all my resistance, I found my breathing actually slowing in time with his words. “Breathe in through your nose, feel your breath running along your head and down into your lungs, then back up your chest and out your mouth. Around. In and out. Around.”

I breathed in. And out. And in. And out. And stilled.

“It’s all about cycles, isn’t it?” he continued as I felt myself relax. “Sleep, and everything else. Day and night. The sun rises, the sun sets. The moon rises, the moon sets.” The incense, at first just a subtle note of smoke and musk in the air, got stronger, sharper somehow, but also deeper, all encompassing. “The moon waxes and wanes—new moon, full moon, new moon, full moon. The wheat grows. The wheat lies fallow. The wheel turns, just like it should. And you breathe, just like you should. In and out. One after the other, then the first one again. That’s it. In and out. Fruitful and fallow.”

Suddenly I felt his warm hand on my right leg, and my eyes shot open. Or at least they should have; I tried to open them, but I couldn’t, not all the way, so I just half-opened them, slowly, and with great effort. I realized something was wrong, really wrong, that I wasn’t just relaxed, wasn’t just on the cusp of sleep, so much as I was leaden. I tried to say something, but I realized I couldn’t speak. I tried to stand up, to pull away from his hand, but I realized I couldn’t move. And I realized that the dense musk that was making my head swim, clouding my thoughts with thoughts of its sweet and subtle spice, wasn’t the incense at all. His left arm was raking up the skin of my thigh, snaking up under the cotton of my shorts, but he was holding his right arm back over his head so his pit was right in front of me, his pit ripe with the scent of his sweat and his skin and his musk and him, him, him.

I couldn’t think straight, certainly couldn’t stand up straight. My dick was doing a good job of standing up straight for me, though, hardening firm under his warm touch as slowly and languorously as I’d managed to open my eyes. “Cycles keep turning,” he said, and he swirled his fist around the head of my leaking prick. His smile was kind, and benevolent, and as I squirmed to try to move my sensitive glans from his wet fingers he wouldn’t let go. I looked down—or didn’t have the strength to keep my head up anymore—and could see how he’d pushed the right leg of my shorts and my briefs up past my crotch, my balls hanging free, my shaft a stalk of wheat in his hand. “The moon goes up, and the moon goes down,” he said, and his hand did, too. I tried to whimper. “It waxes, and it wanes.” I failed. My eyes fell closed and I slumped back further in the chair, my cock jerking as he squeezed another rush of precum out of it and down its length.

“The sun is not my thing, but hey, I’m trying to make an effort!” She spreads out her towel next to mine, and I can only imagine the contrast between us — she in a skimpy bikini, all bronzed and golden and bare-skinned; me with my defensive layers of baggy cotton, SPF twelve hundred, and deflection masked as wit.

“Oh, hey, you left your phone up at the breakfast table,” she says, putting her sunglasses on and lying down. “But Jordan brought it down. He’s up by the pool.”

Jordan’s not my thing, either. I’m not quite sure what Sarah sees in him—well, no, of course I know what she sees in him, and so maybe strictly speaking it isn’t right to say he’s not my thing. But to the extent he is, he’s a late at night thing, a look through his Insta for the thousandth time but be super careful not to like anything thing, a biting my lip and squeezing my nipples with one hand while squeezing out a load with the other thing. Not a pleased to hear he’s dating my best friend thing, and not a happy about the fact that he and two of his douchebros tagged along on the spring break trip that she and I have been planning for months thing.

I head back up to the hotel and find him lounging poolside, staring out at where Sarah’s sunning herself, the two teammates he brought—Tad and Thad? Derek and Derrick?—debating the finer points of sportsball. I make an ostentatious effort to stay focused on his face, to not look at his bare and muscled torso, or at his bare and muscled legs, or at what’s not bare between them. He’s been trying to grow a mustache over break and it isn’t working, like, at all, but I don’t tell him that. I also don’t tell him that I’d gladly do anything for him (kill, cheat, shoplift) if I could, even just once, lick his balls.

“Hey,” I say, trying—likely failing—to bro up my voice as much as I can. “Sarah said you brought my phone down?”

“Yup.”

“Cool.” He doesn’t say anything, and I just stand there. “So, um, you got it, or.... ?”

“Yeah man. It’s right there.” He jerks his head downward before turning to look back out toward the beach. Or a least that’s where his head’s pointed; with his mirrored sunglasses on, he could still be looking at me, watching me, and I’m pretty sure he is. My phone is there on the deck chair, right between his legs. I wait for him to pick it up, to grab it for me, but he doesn’t.

His buddies next to him have gone quiet, and it’s only then that I realize what’s going on.

I hesitate, then screw up my courage and reach down between his ankles, into the space formed by the angles of his thick thighs, right in front of the massive bulge that the drawstrings of his shorts are framing in the exact same way his legs are framing my phone. I wrap my fingers around its thick width, curling them under the heft of the aluminum and plastic and glass, and lift it up. I swallow, and I look back at Jordan’s face. He’s still turned out toward the ocean, eyes still hidden behind a reflection of the sun and the palms and me, phone in my trembling hand.

I papered that wall with my ex. It would hurt to think about if I didn’t have distractions. Like the way he presses his toes against it as he reads. Why does he do that? Is it exercise? Does it feel nice? Or is it just unconscious? I find it unspeakably cute. 

I bought him the hat, the jeans, the shirt on his back. Not all at once. It’s been gradual. I didn’t set out to replace his wardrobe, but stuff he had from before seems to have left circulation. Which is fine by me. I dress him the way I like him. 

I gave him that book. I keep catching him reading it dutifully, carefully – especially when I come home from work. It’s not exactly a long book, so assuming anything is actually going in, he can’t be spending much of the day at it beyond maybe ten minutes on either side of when he expects me home with dinner. I’ve not given him an explanation for the book, and he hasn’t worked it out yet. 

I wince when I let myself touch those soft bangs or watch one of his fingers scratch another. I swallow my pride with his load as he tells me he loves me, that he needs me, that he’d be lost without me. He doesn’t use those words, but I know it’s what he means when he clings to my arms in his sleep. 

 I haven’t picked a date yet, but I catch myself planning for the spring with an expectation of his absence. But there are always so many reasons why it can’t be today or tomorrow or this week or next. I’m not ready. He’s not ready. And anyway, his birthday is next month and I’ve already bought his present. He likes presents. I like giving him things. Therein lies the problem. 

October, maybe. Early, because he loves Halloween. I can let him have that, at least. But he can choose his own costume this year. 

O Lord, give my boy self-reliance.

All in all, working at the campus bookstore isn’t that awful, even during Welcome Week, when we have to haul all of the books for lower-div classes down to one of the gyms and spend the week helping the hoards of hapless freshpeople who don’t know a syllabus from a hole in the ground. They meet with their advisors, register, get given these printouts of what classes they’re going to be in, and then form long lines that snake over the parquet as they come up, one by one, and hand them over to us with helpless looks of confusion, exchanging them for books that will be charged to their student account that will be charged to their parent’s visa.

Although sometimes they’re excited, too. This one -- I glance down at his sheet: “Miles Crenshaw, Student ID: 56373491″ -- is one of the excited ones; beaming and flushed and with wide, expectant eyes. He’s prepped out, and wearing a 2016 sweater even though he’s technically in the Class of 2021; I take a brief moment after feeling too fucking old to imagine taking the sweater off him. I think about stripping him down in the low light of his dorm room -- Garrsion Hall 345c, according to the printout -- and watching his smooth chest rise and fall with shallow breaths as I run my fingers up it, tweaking his right nipple before sliding my hands over his shoulders and pulling him in for a kiss. A slow kiss, a soft kiss, but one that for all its gentle tenderness (freshpeople spook easy) will end with my tongue and other various parts of my anatomy pushing between his trembling lips. 

I smile in return, we banter back and forth, and as I fill his arms with books from the boxes behind me I play experienced elder, telling him about the profs he’s been assigned, which classes he needs to go to lecture for, and what days to avoid the caf in Garrison. He laps it all up -- which is a good habit for him to get into -- and when his sunglasses start to slide off the top of his head as he’s about to leave, I reach up and pluck them off and fold them and place them neatly on top of the stack of books I’ve given him. “There you go,” I say, and my grin shows my teeth.

Or even better yet: leaving the sweater on him, and reaching down and gathering up the back of it in my fist and twisting hard, pulling it up tight against his slim body from above as he’s mewling in front of me, on his hands and knees on the low-pile carpet, and I throw the sort of mean, entitled fuck that would make Super Seniors everywhere proud.

He leaves, and as I take the printout that the next freshperson in line is holding out to me, I put 56373491′s not in the trashbin to my left but on the table, near my backpack, where it looks like I’ve just set it down for the moment because gosh, it’s so busy! After I’ve gotten this one her books, I’ll go ahead and slide it into my backpack -- along with 647388305′s, 38538041′s, and 64729205′s.

I’m not musical, you see. It’s all just so many notes in my ear, like listening to Mandarin and knowing that the translucent tones passing over me are opaque with meaning to others. It creates a barrier between us, a distance; it is for him an escape.

So you can understand why it makes me feel needy. Jealous. Possessive, even.

I come upon him from behind, lie on top of him, make him aware of my weight, my breath, my nakedness.

‘What’re you listening to?’ I ask, right by his ‘phoned ear, kissing behind the lobe as I do.

‘Mahler’, he says abstractedly.

That’s not quite good enough, so I move my lips progressively to the back of his neck. ‘What’s Mahler got to say for himself?’ My hands move down his sides like a potter’s at the wheel. My kisses continue down his spine.

’S'in German’, he says distractedly. 

 That’s better. ‘Translate for me.’ I’ve reached his tail, his end. I open him up like a ripe nectarine. 

 'I have a… a red-hot dagger’, he begins, interrupted by a thoughtful gasp. 'A dagger in my, uh, breast.’ 

 He must feel my eyebrow raise against his smooth curve. 'Or wherever’, I whisper in his midst. Then dive. 

 'Oh fuck!’ he says. 'So deep! It cuts so fucking deep. In… in…’ (He lapses into German.) ‘In jede Freud’ und jede Lust.’ 

 I come up for air, my hands idly kneading him, keeping him spread. 'Every Freud and lust?’ I inquire. 'Shall I page the good doctor?’ 

 'Joy’, he says. 'Delight. Pleasure. Desire.’ Satisfied, I go back to my work. Who doesn’t love a good gloss?

He’s struggling now, no longer reading. One less sense to compete with those he’s juggling in his fore-brain and the one I’m creating in his hind-brain. 'Fuck… what is this… wicked, naughty guest. Oh fuck.’ 

 I’m in deep now. He’s opening up for me. One finger finds its way inside him, the path prepared, resistance overcome. My other hand reaches round for an equally warm, wet welcome. 

 'He never lets up,’ he whines. 'He never takes a break.’ 

I adjudge him ready. My left hand is already wrapped round him; the right likewise clasps his throat. 

 'Day and night.’ I bring myself, slick and ready, to his door. ‘In my dreams,’ he moans. 'Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck!’ That’s my cue. That’s the music to my ears. 

He was in fact quiet, though. Even though he never actually shushed me, even though he didn’t wear horn-rimmed glasses that he could have perched at the end of his nose as he brought his finger to his lips, he was quiet, and he enforced a like quiet throughout the library under his supervision with a hierarchy of increasingly disapproving but somehow apathetic stares that made you go quiet not because you didn’t want to displease him, but because you wanted to -- well. Please him.

Which was -- whatever, right? It wasn’t even the main stacks; it was the Scandinavian Studies library, for fuck’s sake, tucked up at the top of Arnnurson Hall -- one floor of old wood shelves filled with even older books of nineteenth century Danish poetry and shit. We got maybe, at the absolute most, five visitors per day, since the profs and grad students (and who the fuck else is gonna need something out of the Scandinavian Studies library?) could get books delivered to their offices if they weren’t in a rush. So after the three days I spent training in under Stacy, the other work-study student, my Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays were spent alone, and quiet, and -- since the Scandinavian Studies library maintained its own catalogue and so the old computer at the circulation desk wasn’t even networked -- bored out of my freaking mind. Not technically alone: he was there, too, never even acknowledging my existence unless I fucked up.

So the first time it happened, on a Tuesday, I guess I might have been glad for the excitement. “Excitement” isn’t the word, I guess, but I was sure as hell glad to have something to do, even if that something was to go through two carts of musty old books -- he said a professor had finished a project, or cleaned out her office, or something -- and look them up one by one (no barcode scanners for the pure bibliophiles in Arnnurson) and then try to figure out where exactly in the maze of other seemingly-identical brown-covered volumes they were supposed to go. It was a big project, and difficult if you don’t, say, know what you’re doing. And even more difficult if you have a supervisor, someone who does actually know what they’re doing, who -- according to Stacy -- almost finished PhD in this shit, but who refuses to help you. And even more difficult if you’re also weirded out by the fact that it’s not like he can’t help you because he’s busy doing something else -- the only he is doing, after weeks of ignoring you, is standing there, arms crossed, silently watching you walk back and forth across the polished wood floor shelving books.

Wednesday morning I come in, and the carts are full again, with a note on top in his crisp, neat, precisely-looped handwriting: “Re-shelve these, please.” 

On Thursday, there’s no “please.”

On Saturday, there are four carts.

I’m two hours into the task before I realize it, before I think that the book I’m trying to find in the antiquated system is maybe sort of familiar, that even though I don’t read one lick of Norwegian I recognize the title, the binding, the feel of it in my hand: I recognize it because I’ve already re-shelved it. Three times.

I look up at him, tilting my head in a question I can’t quite bring myself to ask, partly because I’ve been conditioned not to break his silence, partly because my mouth has suddenly gone dry. He’s leaning against a low bookcase -- Icelandic Reference -- hands in his pockets, face inscrutable, eyes trained on me. I furrow my brow, look down at the book, over at the carts -- which I now realize are full of books I’d re-shelved on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, and on Thursday, and that sure as hell weren’t really all pulled off the shelves for Important Scandinavian Research Purposes on Friday afternoon -- and then back at him. He nods, once, slowly, and my confusion skips right past anger into something else. Something knotted deep in the pit of my stomach, that feels a lot like confusion, that feels a lot like fear, that feels a lot like an awful realization, but that I hope is maybe something else.

It’s not until I stand up that I realize that I’m hard. I don’t need to look down to know that my dick is cutting a thick, arcing line underneath my jeans; I can feel the tight denim pressing down on to it, holding it tight against my thigh, tighter and firmer than a hand would. I look back down at the book, at the computer screen, and see (and remember) where the book’s supposed to go. I step out from behind the circulation desk, and there isn’t a moment when I consider holding the book down in front of my crotch because, honestly, that’s not what’s obscene about the situation. I walk past him, the old oak floorboards creaking under my shoes, his eyes turning to track me, to follow me, and I can feel the the way my jeans are gripping my shifting ass as I slowly put one foot in front of the other, and the way my pink t is bunched up in the back, up around my waist. I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until I’m over by the shelf where the book belongs, in this dark corner tucked away from the door and from the floor-length windows that look out down over the quad; I don’t exhale until I’ve slid it home in the space between two thick, fox-edged hardbacks. Afterward I just stay standing there, facing the shelf, head down, hands hanging loosely at my sides, worrying a floorboard with the outside edge of my sneaker.

Not up at a cabin; my family has one back in Wisconsin, three un-airconditioned rooms on Lake Winnekoshish. But it was my first time up at his cabin. Or up at his family’s cabin, I guess, even though it’s clear it’s going to be his some day, too. And it was definitely my first time ever being up at a cabin like that, a cabin that has a hell of a lot more than just three rooms – six bedrooms alone, spread across three floors – and whose climate control system has a panel more complicated than the dashboard of my Chevy.

It was nice, though, I guess, and his family sure was, too. I mean, he’d told me they were cool with his being gay and all, but I guess I still expected them to be sorta lukewarm to me. I don’t know why – I mean, he’s out as fuck, even to all the guys in his frat, and he’s the one who came up to me outside Williamson Hall, all crooked smile and shades, and first suggested we get coffee. But I guess I thought they’d be stereotypical country-club Republican captains of industry, yeah, and – well, I also sort of guess they are: the mom always in pearls, the back-slapping dad who golfs every day, the heir-apparent son who’s really into sailing and polos. Except the son’s also really into dudes, and really into me, and his mom’s smile is just as pearly, and his dad slapped my back when we met and invited me to go golfing with him the next day.

And if it felt weird enough at first seeing him act out his role as überpreppy scion, it felt even fucking weirder as I watched myself slotted into the role of future spouse, which was obviously what they were all planning on – there wasn’t any other reason for his mother to keep bringing up the fact that his cousin Prissy McMonied got married on the Island, or for his father to bring up the fact that both senators and the Governor were there, or for both of them not to bring up the fact that they obviously knew that when we went back upstairs to our shared room on the third floor after playing Monopoly every night, he was pressing my face into sheets that smelled like they were from a hotel and filling me up with his thick dick and thicker loads.

And so I was going to talk to him about it, you know? I was gonna say to him that I was twenty-two, and that that was too young to have my life decided, especially by other people, and that everybody there already seemed to know what it was going to be, already seemed to have it planned out for me, in advance, and that I was freaking the fuck out about it. But as I walked onto the deck off our bedroom that morning and stared with him out across the lake, I realized he wouldn’t get it: his life had been decided for him an even longer fucking time ago, and that didn’t bother him. Because we weren’t just looking out across the lake: we were looking out across his family’s lake, his family’s land, just one of the fifty thousand things that he’d always known he was born to, that he felt entitled to. But how can you feel entitled to something when it’s all already always been yours? And how would you react if part of that – a cedar shingle on the roof of your cabin, a subsidiary corporation, a boy you asked out for coffee outside Williamson – stood up one day and said it wasn’t?

Without conforming with many of the expectations of a fraternal order, Kappa Nu Theta nevertheless was possessed of a traditional hierarchical structure.  In the time of Miss Burke and Miss Fairfax, its president was one Sir John Wells, though his commitments, both academic and extracurricular, meant that he had only time to attend to the formal administration and financial management of the chapter; he relied almost entirely on the man who shared his bed to manage those two most essential activities of any house of brethren: the arrangement of balls and the making of matches.  Lady Wells was an able lieutenant, for his interests were exhausted by those two subjects: balls and matches.  He spoke of little else, thought of little else, and what little he did write certainly pertained to nothing else.  One might be forgiven for wondering how successful his own match could be with Sir John, since the spheres of their interests could hardly be said to intersect, and yet it would be difficult to reach such a conclusion since Sir John had yet to be heard to admit to having any interest.  He had one memorable occasion admitted a day’s weather to be ‘Fine, very fine indeed,’ but had not yet found any excuse to display such violent emotion.   Miss Park had once asked Lady Wells if Sir John was more forthcoming in private, an impertinence which made his aunt Nelson raise his long-neck to his pursed lips meaningfully and rebuke him thoroughly, if silently, with his eyes.  But Lady Wells was as impossible to offend as he was to divert onto any subject which did not interest him; he merely laughed and said he had better things to be doing than chatter.

On mornings after balls held at Arcady House, Sir John and Lady Wells had customary forms of employment: Lady Wells spoke of the previous night’s entertainments, including intelligence concerning new and exciting matches or disappointments relating to potential attachments favoured by Lady Wells, whereas Sir John concerned himself with blowing Lady Wells.

'I assure you, Sir John, we shall see Miss Fairfax wearing Miss Burke’s lavalier any day now – rely upon it!  I spied them on the balcony last night: you know how young lovers are. I am most confident – and I am sure you know, my love, that I am never confident except where such confidence is warranted – most confident indeed that they will be asking your permission to announce an engagement soon, perhaps even within the se'ennight!  Oh how frightfully tiresome that today is Monday and we shall have no chance to hold a ball for days!’  He sighed, contemplating the bleakness of his own existence and enjoying the feeling of Sir John’s slippery tongue reaching down to the base of his dick.  He spread his legs wider and crossed his ankles at the base of Sir John’s back.  Sir John grunted as he brought his lips back smoothly to the crown of Lady Wells’ dick before sliding back down it, swirling thumb and forefinger as he went.

'I don’t suppose,’ Lady Wells began reflectively, stroking his boyfriend’s hair, 'that we might consider a Wednesday night party – you will recall how successful my Hump Day parties have proved in the past.  Most successful, though I do say so myself.’  He sighed, though whether from the action of Sir John’s throat or the prospect of four or five days without the welcome diversion of a ball was left unclear by his remarks.  'No, I don’t suppose we might.  After all, it is only two days away and there is scarcely time to place a beer order at McTavish’s.  Ah well.  Never fear, Sir John.  I shall do all within my power to ensure the engagement of Miss Burke and Miss Fairfax, ball or no ball – you may rely upon it!’  And with that, he pumped his morning load into Sir John’s wet and hungry mouth.

In the kitchen of Arcady House, amid the detritus of the previous night’s revelries, Mrs Nelson was sought to discover something fit to break his own fast and that of Mr Nelson’s, ward, Miss Harold Park.

'Nate and Langdon were going at it pretty hard and heavy last night, Aunt Nelson.  Do you think they fucked?’  Harold was a bright and engaging young man, filled with romantic notions not yet tamed by greater experience of worldly affairs, though this ignorance could not be attributed to any lack of effort on his part.  It was acknowledged universally that he spoke first and only later came to think better of his remarks.  On this occasion, Mrs Nelson restricted his disapproval to an intake of breath and an exclamation of 'Really, Harry!’

'I mean, I know it’s not allowed and stuff.  But if Lang was into me, I don’t think I could hold myself back, you know?  He’s so fuckin’ dreamy.’  As if to demonstrate the veracity of this pronouncement, Miss Park began to stare into the middle distance and fondle his morning wood through the cotton of his sweatpants, the sole component of his morning ensemble.  The ease with which Miss Park passed from ordinary conversation to self-gratification had been an oft heard judgment in Arcady House.  'I wish Lang looked at my ass the way does at Nate’s.  Shit.  I’d give it up so quick.’

'You must learn self-control, Harry.  Miss Burke and Miss Fairfax have made no mention of any understanding and it is most improper for you to suggest one.  What would Mr Nelson think if he knew you were being so presumptuous?  You are very fortunate, my dear, that you are so well-liked in Kappa Nu Theta, but you must remember that this is only your second year here.  Mr Nelson’s request that I look after you now that he has graduated was a most solemn one, Harry; I have given him my word that I will take great care in serving your best interests!’

It might seem odd, considering how many of our online conversations turn on pornography, but we rarely discuss smut when we hang out in vivo. Which is lovely -- he’s a good friend, a kind listener, a funny raconteur, etc etc etc. But it’s also lovely for different, more arcane reasons. 

Take the afternoon we met on his train home from work, a train on which we were just two scruffy and bespectacled guys talking -- him in jacket and tie, me in jeans and a tshirt, going over our respective days and the plan for the evening and whatnot. Entirely unremarkable, entirely unerotic to an outside observer, just like his hardback copy of the complete novels of Jane Austen on the table between our seats -- also seemingly unremarkable, and seemingly unerotic. Except that I knew it was only there because he was reading it for Frats and Fetishes, reading it to be able to produce more and more of a particular sort of smut whose hotness is in direct proportion to its particularity. His coworkers hadn’t known, the other passengers had no idea, and the conductor who checked our tickets couldn’t have even begun to guess that the material in that book would serve as inspiration for the first of those two guys to write stories on the internet about fratboys and handjobs that the second of those two guys would read. But I knew, and he knew that I knew, and it was this perfect moment of the shared frisson of private knowledge that is as good an example of cryptoexhibitionism, my favorite of my more recherché kinks, as I can imagine. So that was hot, right? A really fucking hot moment, to be perfectly honest.