Joe College, Part 2 (2021 revision)

When I started this project, it was intentionally casual, intended to be a slight personal distraction, built on the premise of writing a raunchy campus comedy (Van Wilder, Animal House, etc.) with a gay protagonist.  That changed when I figured out Matt Canetti and Chris Riis.  They felt too big and too human, the characters' interactions were too genuine, and the whole project sprawled.  Here we are, thirteen bittersweet years later.

I've been re-reading parts of the story over the summer, both with an eye toward what I'll need to do when I eventually revise it, but also to reconnect with the early chapters as I bring this to a close.  The last couple of years have been rough for everyone.  It's brought too much cynicism into my outline for the end.  I needed to get back in touch with my guys.

Some of it holds up pretty well!  The second part does not.  Because it was written with an eye to raunch and mild amusement, the voice was a mess, Joe faced no consequence for his misdeeds toward Andy, and important details were glanced over.  The sex passages felt mechanical, joyless.  Some of the dialogue was atrocious.  And it wasn't even funny.  Joe didn't display the idiosyncrasies I later discovered.  Andy Trafford seemed empty.

About a month ago, I started playing around and overhauled the second part in a few days.  I've been rereading and tweaking ever since, not just because I'm being neurotic, but because it felt nice to spend time with these guys.  Like exiting a time machine and having new adventures with old friends.  

The original chapter two embarrasses me.  The new one does not.  Hope you enjoy.

Joe College, Part 2 (revised 2021 edition)

My core friends had known each other since sixth grade or longer.  Most of our parents were Manhattan professionals who moved to Westchester when we were small.  We grew up in each other’s basements, backyards and weekend houses.  It wasn’t easy to fade into the background.

Our social dynamic wasn’t as brutal as the high schools I grew up seeing in movies.  There were cliques and occasional conflicts but it wasn’t quite hierarchical; the stakes were different; parents were too protective.  I don’t want to make it sound idyllic, and there are probably old classmates who disagree, but everyone essentially got along.  Maybe because people were such spazzes about test scores and college admissions, the stereotypical categories got somewhat scrambled.   

The homecoming court senior year had three conventionally popular guys, a skater bro who liked to think of himself as the class radical, and an affable, self-deprecating math dork who later attended MIT.  

“You shouldn’t feel bad that you weren’t voted in,” Sanjay told me, apropos of nothing.  “They’re not going to vote everybody from the same crew.  It’s cool that people voted for Brian.  He’s such a nice guy.”

“Dude, do you even know me?  Why would I want that?”

“You would’ve been voted on if you hadn’t dumped Steph,” Rick said.

“Hope you enjoy being conformists.”

“It amuses me that you think of yourself as a rebel,” Rick said.

But I *did* think of myself as a rebel.  I liked competition and loved the camaraderie of sports but bristled at being associated with jock culture.  I despised pep assemblies, refused to sing the fight song: I claimed illness the first two times I was supposed to stand with the basketball team on the gym floor, and then coach said I could choose to suck it up or find a different activity.

“I’ll do this out of social convention and because you’re commanding me,” I said, seething, “but I *won’t* smile if you announce my name.”

Coach proceeded to give me special notice on the mic.  His words and tone were intended to needle, and they came out so absurd that I couldn’t help but laugh.

I was the kind of kid who would challenge a teacher if I thought they had an imperfect interpretation of a sonnet or Napoleonic excursion.  Rick once flipped out because I accused him of being a dumbshit cocksucker for not knowing that “The Rules of the Game” by Jean Renoir is considered one of the all-time great movies -- I’d never seen it and didn’t know what it was about but at least I’d *heard* of it, I wasn’t a moron.  I reviewed Wilco’s Summerteeth in the school newspaper, angering some with my insults against fans of The Backstreet Boys and NSync.

So I could be a pretentious asshole.  But I was a fun asshole!  I clashed with a couple of teachers, but they mostly liked that I went so hard at the assignments -- always had an opinion because I always did the reading.  The good ones knew that they had the last word, and I knew it too.  My friends tolerated my vehement opinions as a quirk, like I was a German Shepherd that howled out of tune when someone played the piano.

I wasn’t the best athlete.  Wasn’t literally the smartest, literally the best looking, literally the coolest.  But it was important to me to rank high in all categories.  I wanted a foot in every scene because that meant freedom and experimentation.  My closest friends were the athletes and jocks, and those guys occupied most of my social time, but I also spent Sunday nights in AP Calc study groups that transitioned to Mario Kart tourneys; had long conversations in journalism class about what should be a yearbook’s “deeper philosophy”; and was highly committed to well-executed Valentine’s Day fundraisers for the Honors Society.

I took pride in some of my odder judgments.  It didn’t seem off to me that on one of my first dates, at age thirteen, a girl and I went to “As Good As It Gets” in the movie theater.

“What’s your problem?” I said when Rick mocked me.  “It got good reviews.  If I saw Titanic, I’d barf.  Sorry that you’re an immature shithead.”

There was no second date.

* * *

I’d been okay with girls.  Even early, at sixth-grade dances.  Even before my braces came off.  The stakes weren’t high and it was fun to be liked.  I didn’t understand why someone would feel nervous about asking a girl to dance or about something as simple as kissing.  If they said no, you carried on as normal.  If they said yes, it only meant that they liked you.  Everyone likes to be liked.

A persona from sixth or seventh grade can carry through.  In high school, I never had a serious girlfriend.  If I went with a girl for a couple of months, I understood it as a friendship with protocols -- she was the person you took to a dance or party or maybe made out with for novelty and attention.  The girl you dated had implications for your clique affiliation, and obviously it should be someone you got along with, but that was the extent of my priorities.  It perplexed and amused me, the way that some of my friends ranted about a crush or a girl’s hotness.  

Friendship and activity were the true excitement, where everything cool and interesting happened.  Strong romantic feelings were for people in their thirties who liked wine.  For real, grow up with your Dawson’s Creek theatrics, I mean seriously.

This aloofness probably didn’t register to my friends -- even the girls who I unwittingly strung along -- because they remembered me as someone who had made out a few times when I was twelve, when the rest of them were sweaty-palmed and terrified.  Based on a few early-adolescent make-out incidents, I was still regarded as kind of a player, but more attentive friends would have noticed the apathy.

* * *

Before the incident with Andy Trafford, I didn’t grasp how different my perceptions were.

Some days, I could ignore and compartmentalize that new and unwelcome itch.  AP classes, SAT prep, three sports, work on the school newspaper and yearbook.  Social life overlapped with all of this.  No time or energy to worry about a theoretical curiosity toward boners.

I didn’t let my rapport with Andy return to normal, even after my icy behavior broke. We didn't have the same easy, quick interactions.  In a large group, I found myself glancing Andy’s way. I sometimes felt slightly aroused, which surprised and embarrassed me. To counterbalance that, my demeanor toward him became formal and ill-at-ease, as if he were an older relative who I didn't want to offend.

Hold out until after graduation, I thought. Push this shit aside and focus on the things that matter more -- the SAT, the AP exams, your admissions essays, your free throws, your friendships.

* * *

But I couldn’t help it.

Junior year, there was an exchange student from Hungary -- Dominik -- who ran cross with us.  The Goldsmiths -- his host parents -- were friends of my mom, their house about a ten-minute walk away.  

I was angry when my mom arranged for me to meet him shortly after his arrival.  She didn’t respect my social image or the scarcity of my time.  All she knew was that Dominik would be in my class year and was supposed to be a runner.

“You think you’re too important to spare an hour away from the TV so that this guy can have a familiar face when he starts next week,” she said slowly, with a steel gaze.  “Let me tell you.  You’re not that important.”

“I don’t think I’m that important.  I just don’t like you assigning me to a charity case.”

“Don’t talk like you’re that kind of person,” my dad said.  “I know you’re acting rude to get a reaction, but I don’t care for it.”

As soon as he walked in, I recognized Dominik as a person who’d be my friend.  He *looked* cool: a Temple of the Dog tee-shirt; a tan; black hair that went slightly wavy in a cowlick over his forehead.  

He was nervous to meet me -- his first American peer -- and anxious to make a good impression without coming across too eager.  We awkwardly regarded each other for a moment.

“So you’re on the running team?” he said, hesitating, not making eye contact.

“Yes!  I heard you’re a runner?”

“I’m decent.  I’m hoping to join the team if it’s not too late?”

“Dude, come hang out at practice tomorrow.  I’ll give you a ride.”

My parents’ wrath toward my attitude immediately dissolved.  I was back to being a point of pride.

They settled around the kitchen table with the Goldsmiths.  Dominik and I sat out back, next to the pool.  Eventually there was pizza.  We hung out until eleven.  He could have stayed later but I didn’t want to make it weird.

He told me he could run a 5K in 15:53, which I repeated a few times in order to make sure there wasn’t a misunderstanding.

“Oh my god, bro.”

“Yeah, I am very fast,” he said, with the nonchalant confidence that I wanted in myself.  “You?”

“Dude, 19:02 is my best and it destroyed me.  Would be amazing if you run with us.  You’ll kill it.”

He was relieved by my encouragement and acceptance.  His face and body language relaxed, his English already sounding quicker and more confident.  Took him up to my room so he could check out my CD collection.  We spent the rest of the night talking about music and movies, his love of the NBA, what his classes would be like, how he’d meet my friends.  

I agreed to go to the Goldsmiths’ house and pre-clear the clothes he brought, just to reassure him that his appearance wouldn’t be out of place.  I promised he’d be okay.

He was more than okay!  Extroverted, sporty, handsome, funny, with good English and cool taste.  Great company.  Of course people liked him.  He didn’t need my help.  

I developed a crush.  He called me his best American friend.  That made me feel warmer than it should’ve.  When we brushed against each other, he inspired brainwaves not activated by those poor girls I kissed.

He had the first uncircumcised dick I saw.  I assume there had been others around, at some point, but I hadn’t been in the business of noticing.  I was aware that uncircumcised ones still existed but had only seen them in Renaissance art.  On the first glimpse, I was briefly shocked and sympathetic, thinking that I was observing the legacy of an accident or birth defect.  Poor Dominik!

Wait -- no.  You fucking moron.

A couple of weeks in, he caught me staring in the lockerroom after practice.  There was too much skin and the shape at the end was overly bulbous.  I speculated that it must be painful.  When I realized that he noticed my stare, I was mortified and couldn’t hide it.  He maintained himself with that confident nonchalance.  Didn’t even stop drying his hair while it flapped in front of him.

“So,” he said, snickering while I drove him in embarrassed silence from practice to the Goldsmiths’ house, “I see now that most American guys actually are circumcised?  That is the stereotype in Europe but I thought it was a myth.”

“No!  Dude!  I’m so sorry!”

“It’s fine, dude.  I noticed all of yours too.  I was also alarmed at first.”

“No, dude, I didn’t mean to stare.  It’s just very different.”

“I know,” he said with good humor.  “In Europe, we don’t usually cut up our dicks.”

I found this mildly insulting.  I had a strong bias.  “You know that to most Americans, yours is strange,” I said.  “I don’t mean that to be rude.  There’s even a joke about it from Seinfeld, that uncircumcised ones don’t have a face or personality.”

He laughed casually, more at ease with our topic than I was.

“Like,” I said, realizing that I was digging myself deeper, “I think that on Seinfeld, they meant that the personality is all at the end of the dick, and when you’re not circumcised -- sorry, sorry.  You brought it up, dude!  I’m so sorry!  I would never have said anything!”

“Dude, Americans are so repressed and polite.  I love how you’re being hilarious.”

“Okay,” I laughed, still confused about the mechanics of his dick.  “No, no.  I guess that we all like our own dicks because that’s what we’re used to.”

“I’m very happy with mine.”

“You should be,” I said.  “I’m more than happy with mine.”

“It’s tolerance.  The world is big enough for all kinds of dicks, and that’s beautiful.”

“Thank you for calling my dick beautiful,” I said.

He laughed and said something in Hungarian.  “I paid less close attention than you did to me, but yes, congratulations.”

“No, dude!  I wasn’t-”

“I’m completely joking.  Obviously I’m not offended.  Please don’t be offended, either.”

“I’m not.”  I paused in an attempt at comedic timing.  “You can’t help it if yours looks like a Pokemon.”

“But yours looks so bare and incomplete, like a house without walls.”  He grasped for a joking colloquial barb, then landed on,  “You fucking tenant.”

I was relieved that we had no tension.  “Dude, I don’t know if that’s a thing in Hungary, but tenant isn’t an insult here.”

After I got home, I jerked off to the image of his dick and the facts of our conversation.

He once said, “Of course, you’ll be coming home with me for senior year at my own incredibly boring school.”

We were up late.  He would be sleeping over on an air mattress after my dad had taken the two of us and my youngest brother Evan to a Knicks game at the Garden.  

“Awesome, dude.  I’ve always wanted to learn Magyar.”

“Thanks for being such a good friend to me, Joey.  You’re making my year so fun.  I was nervous when I started but you helped me know everyone, took me to cool parties, now you take me to the NBA.  Awesome.  I feel very lucky.”

“Dominik, dude, you’re the best.  Everyone loves you.  It’s so fun hanging out with you.”

“Yes,” he said, joking at a wistful sigh, “it was fate for us to be friends.”

I was accustomed to posturing and taunts between friends.  An exchange of sweet words, stripped of sarcasm or oneupmanship, hit differently.  You could joke and banter with Dominik, and his ego was as healthy as ours, but he was shielded from the most scalding cracks.  We didn’t want to offend him by mistake.  He was still mastering euphemisms and vernacular.  It was a relief to speak kindness and not worry that it was a set-up.  The vision of going with him to Hungary for a year calmed my heart, even though I recognized it as an idle thought experiment.  

We discussed things that I kept from my friends because I thought they’d rip me for being earnest or pretentious -- how much I liked music and writing, how most of our dads hated their jobs but were trapped by the money, why I thought it seemed more important to be interesting than successful.  He described his frustration at living in a smaller country, feeling constrained by provincial attitudes, wanting to perfect his English and see more of the world.  He’d never imagined that he could visit New York City whenever he wanted.  He laughed over our dramatic behavior about the SAT and colleges but understood the impulse.

We fantasized about spending the summer after graduation backpacking together in Europe.  I’d only traveled to Canada, England and Paris.  My brother Rob and I made family trips too much of a challenge.  Dominik named places I never would’ve considered -- Croatian beaches, Slovenian waterfalls, Sicilian ruins -- and we fired each other up with scenarios about parties and girls.  Our life-changing trip never made it past the conversation stage.

If there wasn’t a party, we hung out, watched a movie, and slept over.  We rented Stranger Than Paradise on DVD because it’s considered an indie classic and has characters from Hungary.  Turned out to be ultra-slow.  We fell asleep on different corners of the sectional.  I woke up when he gently kicked at my socked feet.  I kicked him back.  We foot-wrestled and tangled our feet through the last half-hour of that boring movie.

He seemed as taken with Blue Velvet as I was.  We quoted it to each other the way people later quoted Anchorman:  “It’s daddy, shithead.”  “Heineken?  Fuck that shit.  Pabst Blue Ribbon!”  “Here’s to your fuck,” he casually said to me in the hall at school, as a way of wishing me luck on a trig exam.  One of my favorite teachers, Miss Stacey, then admonished *me* because she thought I was pranking Dominik into speaking corrupted English.  He and I loved that.  The fact that other people didn’t understand our references made them funnier.

We did homework together on weeknights, went to the same parties on weekends.  He cheered at our basketball and baseball games; my friends and I went to his swim meets.  Our friendship was platonic, but I lived for moments of physical contact, like his goodbye hugs or times when we were drunk and stood talking with our shoulders against each other.  There were numerous times when it felt reasonable that we should have kissed, because kissing only means that you like them and everybody likes to be liked.

When he departed the summer after junior year, a few of us visited to say goodbye before his flight from JFK.  We gave him an album of photos from our year; a sweatshirt of the high school; a Knicks jersey; a fresh pair of Jordans.  We hugged three or four times that afternoon, and on the final one, I kept him in my hold, kind of as a joke, but not exclusively.  I liked hugging him and I knew why.

“Joey, my best American friend,” he said, giving me a platonic European kiss on both cheeks.  “Love you so much, bro.”

“Love you too.”

“Don’t be sad!  We had so much fun.”

“Love you too, bro.  Stay in touch.”

“Wow,” Rick said afterward.  “I didn’t think Joey was capable of feelings.”

“He pretends to be a hard-ass because he doesn’t want us to know how sensitive he is,” Andy said.

“I see through your jealousy, you insecure cocksuckers,” I said.  Secretly, I felt like crying.  Andy had grabbed my boner but Dominik had grabbed my heart.  “This is just the first time I had a friend who’s actually nice.”

* * *

I was sad enough in the days after his departure that my mom noticed.

“I remember when you didn’t want me to force you to be friends with a charity case,” she said.

“Nice try,” I said.  “You don’t get credit for Dominik being awesome.”

“I don’t want credit, but maybe there’s a lesson about not thinking like a snob.”

Her words enraged me but I decided that she was right.  What if he’d been wearing a goofy shirt the first time we met and hadn’t been as handsome?  My reflexive feelings might have been different.  What a waste to miss an awesome friendship because of petty, irrelevant judgments.  And even if our interests hadn’t complemented each other, that would have been okay, too.  He would have been a cool guy, nervous in a different country, who deserved the benefit of the doubt and an opportunity for friendship.  I still would’ve wanted to know him and hang out.  In addition to being rude, being too much of a snob risked depriving me of awesome experiences.

* * *

From my AOL account, I wrote:

Hey bro,

I didn’t get to say this, but I just wanted to tell you how much I loved hanging out with you and how happy I am that we became close friends.  I’ve been around the same group for so long that I forget that there are other amazing humans in the world.  Meeting you makes me more excited for college and the chance to be around all kinds of people.  Thank you for bringing so much fun and good energy to my life.

It’s only been a few days but I miss you a lot.  Hope the transition back to Hungary is going better than you expected.  Majd dumalunk!

He replied:

Joey!!  Love and miss you so much, man.  Will forever love our conversations, the partying, the friendship, getting me into The Pixies, Pavement, David Lynch, and all the times you helped me clean up my English, you fucking tenant!  Not to mention that I will always run faster than you.  :)  Honestly, some of the photos bring a tear to my eye.  Wish I could still be hanging out with you by the pool.  It’s nice to be home but so different.  My love to Steph, Andy, Rick, Danielle, Sanjay and especially to you.  Talk to you soon bro!

* * *

We stayed in touch on AIM through senior year, then sporadically in the first few months of college.  It tapered off until we traded e-mails a couple times a year, with Christmas card-like updates about our lives.  Later it was through Facebook.  He’s now a journalist and college lecturer in London.

* * *

I could’ve talked about it with Andy -- just as a friend -- but still felt twitchy around him.  He picked up on it anyway.  Once, playing beer pong in a basement, we had eye contact while Dominik and I physically celebrated a win.   “Oh, really?” his eyes seemed to inquire, amused, which made me scowl, back away, and take the next game extra-seriously.

* * *

I felt hazy impulses toward other guys.  Senior year, a junior on the basketball team was too into talking about and displaying his dick, seemingly influenced by the popularity of American Pie.  Everyone thought the dude sucked, his behavior was gross and sketchy, also a little funny, and I secretly loved it.  

We played a baseball game against Rye, and I found the look of their second baseman so distracting that, after getting to first base on an error, I unilaterally decided to steal second just so I could enjoy his physical proximity.  I sort of wanted him to tag my butt or to collide with him in order for us to have physical contact.  After I was called safe, I thought I might catch his eye to nod hello, but he construed my friendly intention as arrogance and glared as I absorbed his golden glow.

* * *

For many of my high-school classmates, their college-selection experience was more stressful than the passages of finding a mate or buying a first home.  

It was heavily parent-directed for some.  For others, it all landed on us.  We were competitive and anxious.  You wanted the right thing for yourself, but it also burned if someone you should’ve outpaced got admitted to Harvard and all you had was Duke.  

It wasn’t enough to do well.  You wanted others to stub a toe.  The congrats were tinged with loss and passive-aggression.

There was the mindless obsession with the Ivy League.  Unless you loved hiking or hotels (few did) it didn’t make sense to pick Cornell over Northwestern or Michigan, but they all did.  If your personality belonged at a big school with warm weather, obviously you should go to UCLA or Texas and not Brown.  My classmates didn’t care.  Even schools like Swarthmore and Williams had the feel of a consolation prize for them.

I was lucky that my parents didn’t give me a complex like that.  My dad had gone to Hofstra undergrad and then to Harvard Law, grew up middle class in Bayshore, Long Island.  He knew pedigree could matter but thought that our cohort took it too far.  He privately mocked some of my friends and their parents. 

“My two smartest partners both went to Fordham Law,” he said.  “Gil Roberts was president of the Yale Law Review, couldn’t lawyer his way out of a jaywalking solicitation, and he hates his life.”

I sometimes told my parents that their takes were outdated and naive, but it was mostly because I wanted to see how they responded.  Though I always knew best, I trusted their input on this subject.  My dad worked in high-caliber circles but also managed not to be a psychopath.

Andy was allied with my thinking.  He wanted a school in California -- Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA or UCSD.  Said he was sick of the cold winters, wanted to be near the Pacific.  Stanford nixed him, Berkeley admitted him, and he accepted admission without the agita or drama that roiled our senior class.

My own priorities were uncertain.  I was seduced by Dartmouth’s recruiting materials -- an idyllic campus in the hills, the image of walking to a philosophy seminar on a sunny winter morning with a cup of coffee in my hand, a scarf around my neck, a blond girl from Connecticut at my side.  When my thick acceptance letter arrived, it was the high point of the postal process.  Convinced that I’d accept, I called my parents at work and then ran five minutes to Rick’s house to scream the news.  He tackled me on the lawn in celebration.

The endorphins wore off.

“I’m happy for you, Joe, and if that’s where you want to go, it’s perfect,” said my mom.  “But you haven’t even visited, and there are cultural issues you should keep in mind that aren’t quite you.  You know.  Fraternities, Republican activists.  It’s where Laura Ingraham went.”

“So what?  I’ll ignore the fraternities and Republicans.”

“At Dartmouth?”

Then I got accepted to University of Chicago.  I was seduced by its reputation for intellectual intensity and the photos of its gothic, cathedral-like buildings, the image of walking to a philosophy seminar on a gray winter morning with a cup of coffee in my hand, a scarf around my neck, a girl with dark-rimmed glasses at my side.  My endorphins didn’t explode like they did for Dartmouth, but I was now intrigued by deeply serious discussions about Hegel between people who smoked cigarettes.

“Chicago’s a great school,” my dad said, “but you’re a very social person with a lot of interests.”

“So?”

“Take another look at the surveys about quality of life.”

I was happy to be accepted by Penn, but Penn mainly exists so that its graduates can look down on Cornell.

I had brief but sincere love affairs with different schools, as I imagined future selves: Oberlin (hippies! nudity!), Vanderbilt (a proper Southern gentleman), UCLA (Hollywood Joe, baby).  I got denied by the biggest hitters (Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Yale) but they’d always been unrealistic.  

And, I mean, shit -- did I really want four years around self-hating rich kids?

The visits changed everything.  We decided to start with three: Dartmouth, Chicago, and a Midwestern darkhorse, seen mainly because it was driveable from Chicago.  

Dartmouth was sterile, preppy, beautiful, the movie-set version of a campus, populated with white people who were familiar enough with Phish, moderate enough for management, too corporate for Kafka.  

No one looked happy at Chicago, like they didn’t sleep enough and hadn’t seen the sun.  I sat in on a listless class on the Iliad, and after I walked out, a guy said, ominously and with attempted humor, “Thinking about coming here?  Good luck.”

Then the dark horse won my heart, in ways that felt effortless and obvious, like laying eyes on a Hungarian exchange student for the first time.

We had the luck to visit on a nice spring day, but I don’t even think that mattered.  On our campus tour, one corner of the Quad was occupied by Free Tibet activists, a sorority cookie sale was in another, a busker played guitar by the library steps, and a guy who looked like a young Jerry Garcia walked past with six leashed dachshunds.  Hippie bros played hacky sack on the lawn.  The center of campus felt empty until five minutes before the hour, when crowds poured from every building.  Preppies, hipsters, stoners, goths, squares, all races and fashions and cliques, were rushing to a next class while others lingered with friends.  It reminded me of the City’s energy, the crowds in Times Square or Washington Square.

The chimes of a bell tower struck one o’clock.  The sound felt massive, cinematic.  My place in the swirl felt ordained.

Later, we sat in the back of a 200-person lecture on MacBeth -- Professor Rosemary Kavanaugh.  Admissions materials loved to emphasize small classes but the lecture hall felt theatrical and important, as did the prof.  She entered with a whirl of energy, saying loud, British-inflected hellos and shaking hands as she walked down the aisle.  Heads turned toward her like it was a celebrity entrance.  She then held the room like a performer, as she recited long passages from memory and reenacted MacBeth’s horror at Banquo’s ghost.  The star of a one-woman show.  When she opened for questions, hands went up and the room engaged in friendly parries about James I, Catholicism, Iago, and Milton’s Satan, their manners confident and casual, like this was a running conversation between a big group of friends.  

I was awed.  There was more affection and familiarity in that big lecture hall than the twenty-person Iliad class at Chicago.

Against my furious objection, as the room slowly emptied, my dad insisted on going up to meet her.  “It’s not even about you, you do what you want,” he whispered.  “I want to meet this person.”

She gave my dad a two-handed handshake, smiling, holding a hand to her heart while she thanked him for his words.  I knew that he was going to point toward me and my mom, knew that the professor would wave us down, beaming, for a hello.  “Joe!” she said, gripping my hand tight.  “So happy you’re here, and I’ll be so happy if we get to see each other again.”

“Great to watch you, professor.  So captivating and entertaining.”

She held her heart, smiling with practiced sincerity.  She was a deal closer.  “You’re lucky to have wonderful choices.  I promise that this is an extraordinary place.  I’ve been here thirty years and wouldn’t leave for anything.  So keep us in mind,” she said.

I wanted to wander alone.  I agreed to meet my parents back at a coffee place.  Every business was a coffee house, a bookstore, a restaurant or a bar.  Arthouse marquees competed against each other: REQUIEM O BROTHER MEMENTO DARKO.  Around a quarter of the people wore apparel with the school logo.  My cynical nature would have written them off as sheeple in thrall of a brand, but the place had more soul than anywhere I’d ever been.  The school flag waved atop spires and hung from businesses, like I arrived in an independent city-state.

I wandered off campus, past fraternities and the rental houses of upperclassmen.  The student neighborhoods ran for blocks, a city within a city.  Other schools made nice dorms a selling point and bragged that we’d get housing for all four years.  It hadn’t occurred to me that living in a house was possible.  What would be better than having a house with your best friends and no supervision?  What if I could just *live* with, for example, Rick, Dominik, Danielle, Sanjay, Andy, Steph?  Why would anyone want to be confined to the rigidity of a dorm when you could live together as yourselves?

I passed beautifully kept homes and homes with chipped paint and busted porch railings.  Some showed months of accumulated party debris.  It was in the fifties but warm for that time of year, so people lingered on their porches with friends and housemates, drinking beers from bottles, smoking cigs.  Two bros tossed a football in the middle of the street.  I wanted to stop, introduce myself and hang out; everyone looked effortless; these were all my people, my prospective friends, even ones who didn’t seem anything like me. 

This was a famous school that ranked well, but I still felt like I’d discovered a secret.  Joke was on anybody who preferred Penn or Dartmouth, the poor sad fuckers.  I wanted to send an all-caps message to my friends, like, “We were all idiots for not talking more about this.  Hold your plans.”

My parents sat inside a coffee house, smiling.  My eyes were drawn toward the tables of study groups and solo readers.

I reflexively wanted to dispute with my mom and dad.  Dude, I mean, we got along; I secretly respected them.  They learned that I was more likely to come around to their positions if they asked open-ended questions or looked in silent dismay when I said crazy things, that I would run out of fuel for my too-strong take or obnoxious attitude and concede nuance on my own.  I’d even go so far to say that when they were *too* nice or outwardly supportive, I reacted with dickishness, like I needed to demonstrate that I was my own person who could not be influenced.

“Well,” my mom said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“It’s not Dartmouth,” my dad said.

“No.”

“Not Chicago.”

“No, obviously it’s like neither of those places.”

They stopped talking and let me work it through.

“Obviously,” I said, “it’s important to consider the biggest negatives.  The dorm rooms aren’t amazing and the cafeterias are more, like, functional.  Like, they don’t have sushi chefs or bake their own biscuits.  But, like, I don’t plan on sitting around a dorm room anyway.”

“And you’re not a food kind of person.”

“Right.  I can eat whatever and there are all of these restaurants.  So that’s superficial.  That doesn’t matter.”

“It’s also a big place.  Five thousand in a graduating class, man.”

“Except that means more kinds of people, right?  More scenes and niches.  Plus, like, did you flip through the course catalog?  If I want to take a class only on Chaucer, or Turgenev, or the history of Bolivia, they have that.  Chicago’s all about small class sizes, seminars, blah blah blah.  Everyone looked miserable, right?  Why do I want to be in a tiny class with unhappy people?  It’s bigger but that means it has more stuff, different kinds of people, more opportunity.  It’s like living in the City.  Like, sure, you could live in Greenwich and be around a bunch of rich, unhappy cunts-”

“Cool it, chief.”

“-or you can live in the City and have twenty things happening outside your window all day long.”

“Anything else?”

“I’ll miss you,” I said.

“I doubt it.”

“No, I won’t at all,” I said.

“You’ll still wait a few days and think this over.”

“Of course.”

I would say yes and never look back.

* * *

My friends thought I was crazy for turning down Dartmouth.  I knew that I’d seen the promised land.  A couple of them had the nerve to suggest that I was underselling myself, which caused me to dissect the lack of reasoning behind their own choices and level the grave insult that they hadn’t thought for themselves -- they’d bowed to their parents’ expectations.  

Sanjay had a defensible rationale: “It’s Harvard, man,” he said.  “I think I’ll be happy, but if I’m not, it’s only four years.  I’ll always be a person who went to Harvard.”  Cynical, practical, and accurate.

Andy understood:  “Genuinely happy for you, bro.  You’re doing what’s right.”

Once I confirmed my acceptance, what remained of high school felt like epilogue.  It would contrast with the operatic grief I felt about leaving college four years later.  Of course there were good times and nostalgia, but my thoughts were elsewhere.  I went to the college newspaper’s website every day, studied profiles and reviews of the freshmen dorms, looked up faculty bios, wore T-shirts and sweatshirts with the school name.  I obviously wanted 5’s on my AP tests and to finish with a higher class ranking than my friendly rivals Rick and Andy, but the urgency was gone.

* * *

After commencement and the graduation open houses, Andy organized a few days at his parents' beach house. Like my own dad, Andy's father is a partner at a big Manhattan law firm, except that Mr. Trafford bought a beachfront plot on Fire Island back in the 80s and constructed a weekend house when we were in elementary school. 

If you've never lived in New York, you might equate Fire Island to a gay resort, which isn't the case. A couple of the island's resort villages cater to a gay population, but the island is a strip 30 miles long, with the gay havens a small part.

Andy's beach house was grander than my family’s cottage on a lake.  He was an only child; several of us and our parents had been the Traffords’ weekend guests over the years.  The island bans cars and motor vehicles, leaving everyone to travel by foot and bicycle after the ferry trip from Long Island. As a kid, visiting had the feel of whimsical escape.

People started drinking during our dinner of chips, pasta salad, poorly grilled burgers, amd chicken parts.  Through older siblings and bribes to shady-looking strangers at strip malls, we brought a collection of light beers, specialty beers, hard liquors, Boone's Farm and schnapps.  

Later that night, voices were raised to antic excitement.  I sat on the deck in sweatshirt and khaki shorts, sharing a blanket and cigarette with Danielle.  

Cigarettes were new for me.  When I was on teams, I took my physical condition seriously.  Post-graduation, smoking was an act of rebellion against the tyranny of scheduling and conditioning.  I pledged not to lift weights or run that summer.  Cigarettes signaled my determination in this project.

Andy stepped out and joined us.

"I like this song fine,” he said, "but their sing-along is brutal."

Through the screen door, "Laid" by James was playing: "Ah, you think you're so pretty," our friends sang, followed by lung-busting screeches and gravelly screams. 

The surf’s white noise gave us latitude for volume.  The island was half-empty in mid-week.  It would take more than screeches to disturb a neighbor.

Danielle finished the cigarette. The three of us stayed on the porch until she complained that she was getting cold. "I think I need to go back in," she said. "If you want another cigarette I can get you one."

"Nah," I said. "I'll hang here with Andy for a minute."

"Why? Are you going to smoke up?"  She turned to Andy.  "You brought pot, right?"

"Yeah," he said, "but it's not for tonight."

We stayed quiet until Danielle closed the door.

“So,” I said.

“I’ll miss you, you know,” Andy said.

“I’ll miss you too, man,” I said.  “Sorry about all that, whatever.”

“Yeah, I know you are.”

“How I was really nasty to you.  Unforgivable.”

“You were chaotic,” he said.  “You can’t be mad at a shark if it bites your arm off.  You’re not gonna want to swim in the ocean again but it’s just a shark being a shark.  It’s not personal.”

“Shark, bro?”

He looked back through the windows.  “Should we go for a little walk?  Like, only down to the water.  Just to avoid interruption from the dumbshits.”

“Yeah, sure.  I deserve whatever’s coming.”

“No, dude, c’mon.  If I was out to slam you, I would’ve done it already.  I could have said stuff that fucked you over.”

“I was obviously aware.”

“C’mon,” he gestured, walking toward the steps down.  With the lights of the house behind us, he said, “You’re gonna be okay, right?”

“Of course.  Why would you worry about that?”

“I don’t *worry* worry.  Like, you rattled me for sure, but you messed yourself up, too.  I can handle it.  Just wanted to make sure that you can.”

My instinct was to make light or deny, except that Andy probably knew me better than anyone.  Of all people, he wouldn’t judge.  “Right.  It shook me.  You’re right.  Like, if I was capable of that, what else is going on that I didn’t know about?”

“So you didn’t think you were gay before.”

“Hold up.  No need to be so extreme.“

“So maybe you’re bi,” he said, “except you haven’t gone out with a girl for over a year and appeared to be in love with Nik.”

“That’s low.  That’s not cool.”

“Settle.  Settle, bro.  It’s just me.  Not Rick or Darren.  I’m not making fun or judging you.  That’s not what this is.”

“Just, Dominik was great and we had the nicest, purest friendship.  It hurts to hear someone misinterpret it.”

“You two,” he paused to consider his words and debate how to go forward, “very much liked each other.  You enjoyed each other so much.  I agree, it was totally pure and nice.  That’s what I meant.”

“And because you happen to be gay,” I said, also trying to be careful with my words, “you’re viewing it through that lens and misinterpreting stuff.”

“I’m gay,” he said.  “That’s the first time I ever said those words to another person.  Right now.  I already knew it.  I used to get crushes on you, you know.  You, Rodrigo, Nik, Kevin Capobella, Kevin Dwight, Kevin Fleishman, Kevin Leung, Todd the student teacher in Miss Stacey’s class.  When that thing happened with us, it was especially great because it was you.  Not some random dude, nothing sketchy -- it was Joe.  For a couple days, I felt like, Wow, if Joe is gay too, everything’s going to work out in the end.  I’m reluctant to compliment you too much, but for three or four days, it seemed like being gay might be cool and fun and okay.  Then you fucking obliterated me.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.  I’m so -”

“Chill.  I got over it, I promise.  The least I can do is needle you.”

“Oh my God bro, you deserved so much better than me.  I’m so sorry.”

“So last year at prom,” he said, “you remember that Nik went with Keri Whitting?”

“Of course.”

“Girls loooved Nik, but nothing really happened.  He made out at a couple of parties and touched a little boob from the outside, but that was all.”

“How would you know?”  I said, knowing that he was accurate because Nik and I talked about these things.

“Bro, I’m plugged in.  I hear everything.  So Keri’s fucking hot, and she’s going all out for Nik, talking up how she’s going to get at his dick -- not my words -- and we’re all at that afterparty and she gets him alone, and he says, ‘You’re very hot, but unfortunately it’s not possible for me right now,’ and gives her a hug and leaves the room.”  Andy used a spot-on impression of our friend’s voice and pronunciation.

“So?  That’s your evidence?  Number one, that party wasn’t good for fucking.  Number two, that phrase could mean anything.”

“Right.  It’s a circumstantial case.  I don’t have direct evidence.”  Lawyers’ kids pick up terminology and a way of thinking.  Same with doctors’ kids.  “But it’s also similar to how I heard things went down with you and Steph.  Plus, I have eyes.  I saw how happy you made each other.  Always laughing and planning and touching each other on the arm.  When we were all out, you *constantly* looked at each other.  Chill!  Stop -- I’m not making fun, dude, I swear.  I was on the committee that counted the mock election votes junior year, and Dominik and Joe got three ballots for Class Couple.  Those were joke votes, but in my opinion it was real.”

“There’s no way.  We talked about girls we were into.  And yes, we were close, and yes, his walking out on Keri surprises me, but it’s a huge leap to conclude that he’s into guys.”

“You obviously were posturing in front of each other by talking about girls.  I became pretty good friends with him, too, and we never talked about girls.  There’s also this tell -- like, follow the eyes.  You only looked at each other, not any girls, even when they wanted your attention.  Nobody else noticed but it was obvious to me.”

“You’re also forgetting that some of this could be due to language and cultural differences.”

“Joey, his English is excellent.”

“Besides, he’s gone now, and that friendship is a great memory for me.  Let’s not overcomplicate it and make it about something angsty and gross.”

“I’m gay,” Andy said.  “I’m basically positive that you’re gay.  Nik, about 82 percent.”

“Cool, now I know.  Andy Trafford, oracle of sexual preference.”

“You act like I’m insulting you when I’m trying to compliment you.  What I’m trying to say is that you’re fun and smart and cool as shit, and that if you chill, you can handle this and you’ll feel better.  I’m not even saying you should come out and tell people.  Be more accepting of yourself.”

The sand was cold under my toes.  In mid-June, it could still be brisk along the water.  I drew a figure eight with my big toe.

“I value what you’re trying to say, and you’re a great friend.  But fuck that.”

“Awesome attitude, bro.  Get tense and angry, melt down at random times, put limits on yourself and people you care about.  Very cool and fun.  People love being around that.”

“I’m not going to surrender to something I don’t want.  It doesn’t have anything to do with my life or what I care about.  I’m not a sad little guy who needs an identity to feel better about myself.”

“But think about how you felt when you hugged Nik and how sad you were after he left.”

“Okay.  I loved everything about that dude.  I’d be lying in bed after hanging out with him and get off thinking about the sound of his voice and how it felt when our legs touched.  After I jerked off, I felt terrible about it, like I was perving on this nice guy who thought of me as a friend, like I was abusing our friendship for sexual gratification.  Like the friendship might be a fraud because I felt that way.”

“But it wasn’t, at all,” Andy said, “and you just described, essentially, hating on yourself because you invented a thought crime?  What the fuck, Joey.”

“I know.”

“Plus, I’m sure that a bunch of people -- dudes and chicks -- have gotten off fantasizing about you, and that you wouldn’t think of that as a violation.”

“No, not at all.  Awesome and hilarious.  Like, an honor.”

“So how the fuck did you get yourself so twisted -- fuck.  You’re even more messed up than I thought.  Meanwhile, Nik was probably thinking, ‘Joey, my best American friend, love you so much bro, especially when we have our arms around each other and I get lost in your eyes.’”

“You get his voice exactly.  It’s eerie.”

“‘Joey, dude, love to shower with you at practice, too.  You want me to wash your back?  Of course, no problem, just watch me soap my dick first.  Please massage my glutes, they are sore from the workout.’”

“Stop.  Way too far.  Way.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s not my fault.  It’s not right.”

“I’m no expert, dude.  Just have that conversation with yourself.  Give yourself the space.”

“Now I’m sad about missing Dominik.  We talked about backpacking in Europe this summer but never did anything about it.  Stupid.  He was so cool.  Sucks so hard that he left.”

“Let yourself feel it.  Surf that feeling.”

“I didn’t *want* to like him so much.  We’d get talking and clicked every time.  Then it was over.”  I kicked at the sand.  “I don’t care if he was gay.  That’s not what I wanted.  I hate all of that so much.  I just liked him.  It didn’t have to be a gay thing.  I don’t want to think about it like that.”

“Maybe you liked each other in the same way, but neither of you did anything because you were scared of how the other would react.”

Andy did more blathering -- kind words but things I didn’t feel like hearing anymore -- and my vision tunneled, going dark at the edges.  

It felt like my heart couldn’t keep pace with my body.  My throat was constricting, as if I had to burp but it couldn’t come out.  I struggled to exhale.  

It felt like I was choking as I inhaled.  

My balance teetered.  This was how it felt to die; I wondered if I was having a serious incident, how it was possible that Andy’s words were ending me.  

I lowered myself to the sand and sat cross-legged.  Almost as quickly, my body eased back to itself.

“Yo!” Andy said, alarmed.

“What the fuck,” I said.

“I’ll stop talking.”

“Not your fault.  I don’t know what that was.”

“Panic attack?”

“Great.  You’re a doctor, too.”

“I watch Sopranos, genius.”

“Fuck me.  I’m still a little dizzy.  That was trippy.”

“No more serious talk.”

“Tell everyone I have diarrhea and had to go to bed.”

“I will not.”

“Say that I diarrheaed on the beach.  I can’t go back and joke around.  I’m too upset.”

“I’ll say I let you take hits off a pipe and you got tired.”

“Okay.”

“Go up with your bag when you’re ready.  We’ll stay in the main bedroom.  They’re all hammered.  They’ll sleep wherever.”

“Let’s sit a minute,” I said.  “‘Just focus on our breathing, like in my mom’s meditation DVD.  Focus, Andy.  Shut up and focus on your breathing.”

We focused on our breathing and the sound of crashing waves.  

* * *

I woke in the middle of the night and cuddled Andy.  I didn’t intend it to be horny but it also wasn’t *non* horny.  We both had sleep boners.  It felt great to wrap my leg over his hips and hug him at the chest.

“Mrrrm,” he said, and patted my hair.  

I breathed against his neck.

“Nightmare where shark eats my arm,” he mumble-groaned, and rolled away from me.  “Go to sleep, fuckhead.”

* * *

Around late July, Andy and I got back to messing around.  Like our first encounter, it began with swim trunks.  

He was much better at golf than I was.  In high school, I denounced it as an environmentally wasteful pastime of the bourgeoisie, which my friends correctly called out as an admission to sucking.

I agreed to play nine holes one morning.  I had nothing else to do.  Our friendship had recovered.  Since that night at the beach house, he’d raised my issues only obliquely, probably thinking it was better for both of us if he left the mess alone.

We didn’t keep score but he handily outplayed me.  I was frustrated but pretended not to care.  I wanted to suggest that he’d only invited me in order to embarrass me, except that the theory was petty, childish and inaccurate.  We mostly had fun.

It wasn’t even noon when we finished.  He said we should go back to his house and hang out in the pool.  His parents both worked in the City and he had the house to himself on summer weekdays.

Later that day, he admitted to seducing me.

I was in a spare set of board shorts that were loose around my waist and sagged even as I re-knotted the draw string.  He had a new pair of trunks that were short and showed off his thighs, a look that wasn’t fashionable at the time.  I asked if he was pretending to be European.  

I dove into the deep end.  Golf grime rinsed off my skin.  Hot 97 played on the speakers.  The Traffords had a nicer spread than my parents, with high hedges circling the backyard and rows of rose bushes, almost a country-estate vibe compared to our typical suburban plot.  Like, no one in my family would have cared about maintaining roses.

“You can take off your trunks if you want,” Andy said, when I got out to dive back in.

I wrinkled my nose.  “Seems sketch.”

“It’s fine.  I swim naked sometimes when I’m by myself.  The way those trunks droop is ridiculous and can’t be comfortable.  All mine are too small to fit you.”

“But all that -- I’m a shark-”

“Yeah, but I’ve also seen your dick enough in life that it isn’t a big deal.  I honestly don’t care.”

I still felt like I should be modest.  I waited until I was back in the water to pull down those awkward shorts and toss them to the cement.

“Better, right?” he said, hunching down in the shallow end and removing his.

“You’re a gay nudist now?”

He rolled his eyes.  “If people were drinking and we were at a party, you wouldn’t give this a second thought.”

“Totally wrong.  I’m never one of the naked ones.  Just one time when it was super late and there were only four of us and I didn’t want my boxers to get wet.”

“We had a very homosocial upbringing,” Andy said, “even if it wasn’t gay.”  He dipped under and swam a lap underwater, pale white butt shining under the surface.

“What do you mean?”

“So many dudes, always competing with each other, talking shit, showing off.  There are things I won’t miss once we’re gone.”  

He climbed out of the pool, walked to the end of the diving board with his shriveled cock wobbling, and did an elegant swan dive.

“That was both competitive and showing off,” I said.  His body was fit and defined; he wanted me to see it.   “Not very self-aware.”

“Yeah, and now you’re talking shit.  We just proved my point.”

I got out of the pool, bounced on the end of the diving board, and cannonballed in.

“Just an fyi,” he said, “but naked cannonball is kind of a look.  Not that I’m offended.  But it’s a little, sort of, blatantly ass forward.”

“You suggested that I swim like this.”

“I said I’m not offended.”  

He wasn’t.  The tone and facial expression were more direct than his words.  He stood in the shallow end, hips barely beneath the water, pubes out but dick subaquatic.

“Oh.”

I swam toward him.  Already I was hard.  He looked slightly surprised and nervous.

“I mean, you *do* look good,” Andy said.

“Dude, you look amazing,” I said.  The muscles of his legs and torso were mechanical.   “Dominik obviously isn’t the only one I jerk it to.”

He pressed both hands against my chest and tentatively gave my pecs a light squeeze.  “Yeah, I jerk it to you,” he said, sounding relieved to share the impulse.  “I mean, I jerk it to a lot of other people too.  Even Nik.”  He stared down my body.  I stood on tiptoe so that the top of my erection surfaced out of the water.  I touched his lower back and pulled him toward me.  He gave my dick a slow, easy pull.

“Everybody knows I’m a good kisser,” I said.  

“Just a rumor.”

“I was nervous to do it with you before.  I was scared to look at your face.”

As soon as our tongues touched, he almost collapsed in my arms.  It was slapstick and flattering and motivating.  Buoyed by the water, he wrapped his legs around my waist while I held him up.  This wasn’t like our night at the lake; we both felt bolder.  I pulled his lat muscles toward me.  His dick probed my stomach.  Our noses crunched against each other.  When I pulled my mouth out of his, he said, “No,” and was back on my lips.  My dick rubbed someplace around the lower curve of his butt.

“We can’t cum in the pool,” he said, pulling his mouth away.  His eyes were mildly crazed.

“Okay.”

“Unsanitary,” he said.  

He slithered out of my arms and pulled backward out of the pool.  The dick that had been small and bouncy when he dove was a red-granite column.  He scampered to a towel and dried off.

“Joe!” he said, impatient.

“Okay,” I said, going up the pool steps.  “I’m coming.  Chill.”

I kept the towel wrapped around myself.  I couldn’t walk around naked in the Traffords’ house, past photos of his parents and older relatives.  Fucking weird, dude.  I kept my eye on Andy’s white, perky butt as I followed him to his room, dropping the towel after he closed the door.

He pulled me down to his unmade bed.  “Dude, please kiss me and touch it,” he said.  “I’m about to shoot so hard.”

Andy blew his load in seconds, arching his back, gasping.  I drew myself up to observe, as much from curiosity as arousal.  I’d never seen another dude ejaculate.  There wasn’t a lot of projectile.  It more flowed over his cock and fingers, and then on the third or fourth thrust, some arced toward his navel, and then back to the flow.  

I felt awkward and intrusive.  Wasn’t sure if I was still supposed to still be there.  I waited while he wiped his stomach with a wad of kleenex.

“Was that okay?” I said.  “Am I cool, like?”

“You’re a good kisser.  If you’re looking for compliments.”  He made a little face.  “Ugh.  You’re freaking out again.”

“No, just want to be sure you’re not.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he said.  He glanced the underside of my dick with the back of his fingers.  He was still hard.  He pulled my neck down and we kissed again.

The way our bones and muscles pressed, the strength of his body, the heat coming off him.  Flagella, corpuscles, testosterone.  My senses rushed purple.  Euphoria flooded through my system and unleashed on us both.

I looked down at myself in shock.  It was like learning that I could levitate or read minds.  I had a new power.

* * *

We lived as civilians in public.  In seclusion, while the rest of the world snoozed, we could summon secret forces.

We knew sides of each other that others didn’t, which is part of why it felt so fun.  It was more camaraderie than romance.  Plus, we were experimenting in the purest sense.  Getting off with Andy was partly about the physics of how bodies worked.

Obviously there was online porn in 2001, but most of it wasn’t very good, and it wasn’t centralized before the Hub sites came into existence.  Besides which I had a terror that my parents would learn my browsing history, even though I rationally knew that it would never happen, that they weren’t the types to check which sites I visited, even if it was technologically possible for them to do so.  Therefore, I legit didn’t know the fundamentals of gay physicality.  The only porn I’d seen was straight stuff that my friend Darren had on DVDs that got passed around.  I instantly realized that they weren’t my thing: the close-ups were ugly, the men tended to be older and out of shape, and even the attractive women looked ridiculous.  If you were born after about 1995, you have no idea how good you have it, pornwise.  By the late aughts, there were plenty of attractive performers in both genders, and the production values had significantly improved.

I don’t want to romanticize it, and obviously I have no way of knowing, but it seems at least plausible that I would have been more comfortable with the sexuality of it if I’d seen the right kinds of videos the first time I had a nervous tremor.  Or maybe they would’ve just messed me up in a different way.

The secrecy enhanced the allure.  Those last few weeks, it felt *cool* that we got to hang out like normal with all of our friends after spending a couple hours in the afternoon naked in Andy’s bedroom.  It was exciting to have a double life, and it enhanced my self-image as a person who strayed outside normal expectations without being flashy about it.  I was microdosing on Andy Trafford’s dick and maintaining my chill.

Andy was more comfortable and ambitious than I was.  Not sharing my repression and hesitancy about online porn, he had studied the full curriculum and was ready to practice.  He’d downloaded gay pornos from Europe and even had favorite performers.  He was aware of things that seemed clinical and gross to me -- lube, sex toys, prostate stimulation, all terms and concepts that made me squirm.

“I’m never letting anything penetrate my body, full stop,” I said.  “Even if I were dying and there was a lifesaving procedure, I wouldn’t consent.”

“You’re so repressed.”

I lifted a middle finger.

“I was definitely skeptical,” he said, “but you’ve convinced me that you didn’t know you were gay, or whatever you’re calling it now -- intrigued by dudes.”

“Obviously.  Does it seem like I’ve been planning for this?”

I could be conservative in our activities because it took so little to get me off.  The pressing of our muscles, the up-close sound of his breathing, the feel of his pulse, the light friction of our dicks moving against each other.  It was a full range of his physique and humanness.  That wasn’t idealistic or prudish to me.  I was turned on by the strength and temperature of our bodies, the vulnerability in our contact, the taboo.  I kept my eyes open when we made out.

Educated by the internet, Andy wanted to do everything.  He would have let me fuck him if I wanted.  I made it clear that it was off limits.  The third time we messed around, he sucked my dick but wasn’t quite good at it and kept scraping it with his teeth.  I complained and he improved.  It felt good, although maybe somewhat less ambrosic than the hype led me to believe, and I was mostly turned on by looking down at him while he did it, his butt arching back, the notion that my dickhead was in contact with the interior of his dimple.  I could cum from looking at him.

“I won’t suck your dick,” I said.  “That’s for chicks.”

“Dude, guys eat pussy.”

“Some guys do, but number one, that’s eating pussy, and number two, that’s gross, too.  Sucking dick seems emasculating.”

“Okay Uncle Junior,” he said.  “You’re always saying how hot my dick looks and how much you like my body, so try to square that with your concerns.”

And then I did it and found it very cool -- a megadose of bro-on-bro contact, on the starting lineup of the same cockteam on the jizzball field.  I was fully down for it, dude.  The drool aspect was sloppy and the jaw stress felt taxing, but on the whole it wasn’t even that gross.  It was cool and slightly amusing to feel his pubes in my nostril, to rub my tongue on the underside like sandpaper.  Far more emotive than I was, and likely influenced by the absurd overacting of his preferred Czech porn .mpegs, Andy moaned and said my name like a weirdo, running his hands in my hair and gently pumping his hips.  I jerked myself off and blew my load into his comforter even before he came.

“It would be weird to let a stranger do that, though,” I said afterward, both of us dazed and sticky on top of his sheets.  “Like, who’s to say they won’t bite off your dick?  It’s dangerous.”

“People don’t bite off dicks during blowjobs.  You’re a freak weirdo.”

“How do you know?”

“If it happened even once, it would be on the news for days and the biter’s trial would be a major national event.  It’s insane to me that you even thought about that.  Did you want to bite my dick off?”

“No, that’s why I’m saying you should only do this with someone you can trust.”

“I don’t want your mouth near my dick again.”

“You fucking liar.”

* * *

In mid-August, there was another getaway party at another summer house -- this time in the Catskills -- which left me with a hangover so vile that Rick pulled over twice on the drive home to help address my vomiting needs.  Then my family had a weeklong vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, and then it was time to leave.

Andy and I didn’t even get a final, definitive hook-up.  I was supposed to go over one afternoon, but my mom was being a weirdo about packing and planning, and then my brother Rob and I had a conflict about respecting possessions that involved me threatening to toss his PS One into the swimming pool.

“Yo,” Andy said on the phone that night, “I had a whole speech prepared for you, but I’m sure you would’ve hated it, so it’s just as well.”

“Give me the short version.”

“Be more chill, be better to yourself, blah blah, you’re a pretty cool guy when your ego isn’t fucking you up, blah blah blah.”

“That’s enough to make me fall asleep,” I said, “but thanks anyway.  Love you, buddy.  You’re the best.  Can’t thank you enough.”

“Ugh.  It’s a good thing that you’re kind of an asshole, otherwise this might be really difficult.”

“Look,” I said, “you’ve always been the nicest, smartest guy.  So I’m grateful for what you taught me about how to be a friend and a more open person.  Truly the only one in our friend circle who I could’ve had these times with.  Plus, who’s luckier to have been Andy Trafford’s first experiences?  Fuckin’ nobody else.  Was such a compliment, even when I was a shithead.”

“Shut up, asshole.  Now I’m starting to hate this.”

“Should I say something obnoxious to take the edge off?”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes your breath smells like mothballs.”

“Bullshit.  You made that up.”

“Now you’re going to feel self-conscious and wonder if I was telling the truth.”

“I need you to be a tool, just so I don’t get too sad,” he said, “but while we’re here, I’ll just add that you’re not entirely non-special, either, and in your own annoying way, you probably helped me, too.”

* * *

Then he departed for Berkeley, where he joined a triathlon club, met his first real boyfriend, volunteered in a homeless-outreach program.  He would come out during sophomore year.  Phi Beta Kappa in history, a summer abroad in Italy.

Chill out.  Andy will be back lots more before this story ends.  I'm not sharing his fate because we're saying good-bye to him. I just wanted you to know how he turned out, so that every time you want to punch me in the face, we can stop and consider Andy Trafford a role model.

* * *

My parents and I packed the SUV and left at 6 a.m. for my new home.  My youngest brother Evan came along; middle-brother Rob was turned over to the custody of a friend’s family.

My new roommate and I spoke on the phone three times that summer.  His name was Sam Frost.  He lived in Ottawa and had a British accent. A British accent makes even the most pointless remark sound either insightful or gently mocking, and in our phone chats, I found myself unusually concerned about whether he’d like me.  He seemed quick-witted, smart and considerate, but whether my impression was accurate or just a reflex of his accent, I couldn't tell.  I knew that Sam and his parents had arrived to school a day ahead of us, and that he'd volunteered to supply a television and futon.

My parents and I arrived to my dorm in mid-afternoon.  We'd already had a long day.  I was bickering with my mother.  The room was smaller and more spartan than I expected.  It was stuffy despite an open window, hot in the late-August heat.  A small television was set up on a dresser, some bedsheets and a comforter were scattered on the lower bunk, and the room seemed cluttered with half-empty boxes, stacks of books and piles of clothes.

A note rested on an empty desk, with capitalizations employed as shown:

DEAR JOE,

If you read this, welcome to our room.  I'm out to lunch with my parents and haven't had the time to organize.  Please forgive the mess.  Reorganize how you want!  Look forward to meeting and catching up soon.

Best regards, SAM FROST