Joe College, Part 32
I took a two-credit class called Essay as Literature. The subject didn't excite me but the professor sometimes published cultural criticism in The New Yorker, so every senior English major wanted to take the class, even though he was considered weak in the classroom.
His body language was mostly disappointed when we volunteered our comments, but at the same time, he badly wanted us to make connections between the assigned readings and our own experiences. He peered over his glasses and sighed if we commented on how a recent episode of The O.C. seemed to echo Joan Didion. Once we conditioned ourselves not to make comments like that, morale improved, though we all remained sensitive that voluntary participation could elicit a frown of disappointment.
We were assigned Sontag, Baldwin, Orwell and Borges, but the class was mostly about Montaigne. Montaigne, we were repeatedly told, invented the essay (a word derived from the French for trial) which, we were reminded, was a radical form of expression in the Sixteenth Century. Desperate to connect, the professor compared Montaigne's essays to the invention of hip-hop. The class accepted his condescension. My notes read, "Montaigne = Kool Herc???"
A few days after Chris Riis knocked me into some mud, we spent most of a class on Montaigne's essay "Of Friendship." It was the final college reading that changed my life.
Though happily married, Montaigne was skeptical of romantic love. He thought that it worked backward. Because reason is helpless against attraction, men concocted explanations as to why the person they lusted after had virtues that aligned with their own. First came the horniness, followed by rationalizations about what you have in common. Romantic love was volatile, constantly moving, inconsistent.
Montaigne wrote that his own father was kind and indulgent -- "the best," he called him -- but that parenthood and brotherhood were accidents of blood. Your own brother can be ill-natured or foolish, making it nonsensical that people placed such weight in family bonds for their own sake.
To Montaigne, friendship was the purest relationship. The best friendships provided the comfort and satisfaction of romantic love but none of the chaos or heartache.
"That used to be acknowledged more," the professor said. "You saw Montaigne's quotes from Cicero. He doesn't quote Seneca but writing about love, Montaigne echoes one of my favorite descriptions. `Love is friendship gone mad,' Seneca wrote." He paused. "Some of you already have known that feeling -- love as friendship gone mad. The rest of you have something to look forward to."
Friendship gone mad. I probably gasped.
"Of course people need romantic love, but it's a contemporary phenomenon for people to place it so dramatically above all else. When you look at ancient and medieval cultures, our fixation on it is kind of weird. We think of friendship as a young person's exercise and not one of the bricks of a good life."
Now I was trying to take him down word for word.
"Montaigne's intensity about Boetie is strange to our ears. A little of it's the translation. Mostly moreso the way we talk about these things in 2005. Maybe some of you thought on first read that he was implying more than friendship. Sounds a bit homoerotic. A meeting of the minds that seems so comfortable and easy and intimate -- describing it as some secret appointment of heaven.' So endeared betwixt ourselves,' he wrote, that going forward, nothing was so near to us as one another.' Some little intercourse betwixt our souls.' Montaigne writes, `If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.'
"That's the kind of language we'd use for a lover, not a friend. But if we're being unguarded and weren't scared of being judged or teased, maybe we'd talk like that. Probably not? Maybe.
"And then Montaigne lost him. Boetie was only 32. Montaigne is characteristically candid with us about his grief. How he feels like a fraud for outliving Boetie. A kind of survivor's guilt. Those five or six sentences at the end are economical but say so much. At times he has the economy that we associate with poets. `I was so grown and accustomed to be always his double in all places and in all things, that methinks I am no more than half of myself.'
"No more than half of myself. We should all be so lucky to have a friend who thinks of us that way."
A few minutes later, one of my classmates raised his hand to observe that the TV show Friends was misnamed because while it was supposed to be a show about friends, it was actually about couples pairing off and hooking up -- thus proving the professor's point. The room tensed as the professor sighed in disappointment
Friendship gone mad.
I speed-walked to the library and re-read the essay. Whereas I previously understood its rhetoric as anachronism, it now felt powerful and relatable. Montaigne and I understood each other. At the end, when he wrote of how lost he felt after Boetie's death, I thought of them as fractions within me, and imagined being without them, and imagined my feelings of grief.
I had let myself become crazed by friendship gone mad. There were thousands of experiences that didn't touch on romance or sex. They were only a fraction of our lives.
I paced library stacks. I was like one of the crazy old guys on the fringes of campus, with white beards and glasses, casualties of 1970s LSD, Antonio Gramsci and Allen Ginsburg, gesticulating alone late at night in the back corner of Charterhouse or on a stone bench in the Quad. Books and life streamed through my thoughts like the water that I was.
What was this propaganda we'd been fed in sitcoms and Hugh Grant movies? How did I even meet your mother, fucker? Who gives a shit?
All of this pop culture screaming that friendship gone mad is adulthood's only emotional goal. But according to Montaigne, that's foolish and narrow. Maybe we shouldn't resist or abandon friendship gone mad, but recognize it for the gamble and the chaos that it is.
"Dude, how much Montaigne have you read?" I texted Matt Canetti.
"Hi Professor -- I've never e-mailed a prof like this because I don't want to sound like I'm kissing up, but your lecture today was great. I just re-read the essay and saw so much more. Thank you for assigning it and making me think harder. It was an honor to listen to you."
"Dude, I just need to say that you've been an amazing friend and that I'll always love you for that," I texted Trevor. "Nobody's ever had my back or walked me through things like you."
"I fucking love you bro," I texted Sam.
"The cannibal essay?" Matt texted.
"What a nice thing to say. I'd like to take credit, but most of it should go to the author," e-mailed the professor.
"Back at you, dude!" Trevor texted. "You're the best. Drinking pitchers of margaritas with Kayleigh and Brent. Come hang."
"Do you agree that we can finally get our fuck on?" Sam texted.
I drunk-explained the essay to Trevor and his friends: "Like, you can have romantic love and pursue that, and it's fine, but Montaigne says that we're crazy to put so much priority on it. It's like if you get a hot dog and you're just obsessed about the mustard or the relish but you don't pay attention to the hot dog and the bun. Good mustard is awesome, but if you don't have it, your hot dog isn't going to be ruined."
They were wasted and uninterested. I wasn't offended.
"So he was happily married," I told Sam later, "but obviously the most fulfilling relationship in his life was with Boetie. He didn't reject marriage or falling in love, he just understood it as one of many things. Not the thing. Why do people think that it's the thing?"
"Because of You've Got Mail," Sam said.
"Right," I said. "That's what I mean. Tom Hanks. Like, you don't have to be a cynic or a nihilist. You can just decide to say, `Yes, this may be a good thing, but it also has downsides, and I won't forsake other parts of life.' Gay or straight. Like, I thought I had to dive in headfirst, and that I was a coward or a bad person for not feeling comfortable."
"You're a coward and a bad person for entirely different reasons," Sam said.
"Whether you're talking about a serious relationship or the concept of attraction more broadly, it's not a straight-up good thing. It's difficult and it's volatile and it may not work. And if it's not making me happy, that's not because I'm a gay freak, it's me being a person. I could be just as miserable about girls."
"Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan want to beat us down," Sam said. "Like, what if you've got no mail? Tough shit. I have little sympathy."
"You still get to have awesome friends, sports, nice dogs, good weather, great books, beer and loud music."
"That's all I want," Sam said.
"That's literally all I've ever wanted."
"You have that now, so you're set for life."
"No dog," I said.
"Fuck! We should've gotten a dog. Why did we not get a dog? What if we had a chocolate lab named Grover?"
"I would've loved that so much," I said.
"It would've been good for the house. The way some frats have a house dog."
"Grover's a great name," I said. "I can't believe we just thought of it now, when it's too late to do anything."
I don't know how to hold a grudge against a dude who sobs over Dead Poets Society and once whimpered into my neck when he jizzed. Maybe I'm weak. It doesn't matter. There are people in life who deserve to be disliked and resented. Chris Riis isn't on that list.
I don't know if it was the Montaigne essay, the clarity of our confrontation, or some residual consequence of my coming-out. I don't know if my memory is hazy now and I was actually more shaken than it seems in hindsight.
I don't know of any times when he said something harsh or judgmental, except to me, when I possibly deserved it. He wanted to like people and to be liked in return. Chris never tried to be cool. He was smarter and more perceptive than he let on. Other people try to show off their cleverness and insights. Not Chris. He might have had sharper, colder perceptions of us than he cared to share. That made me respect him. Maybe he didn't want to dwell on others' negatives; maybe he judged us but played cool.
I don't know if it's a Midwestern thing, to downplay yourself like that -- although someone recently told me that we condescendingly impute Midwesterners with sincerity and humility, when they're as cunning and self-interested as the rest of us.
I don't know if it was because he was the youngest kid. Maybe attempting to be as athletic and effortless as his siblings was a tough ask, and without choosing, he fell into a quiet, reactive niche. Being a younger sibling has unintended consequences, as my own brothers continue to teach me.
I do know that getting the shit ripped out of me was better than sitting in my room plotting fantasies about living together in Chicago. Better too than loitering through my twenties, looking for affirmation in drunk texts I might've sent him from hundreds of miles away, construing disregard as a mixed signal and mixed signals as signs of salvation. I've seen people derailed by that. Montaigne wouldn't approve.
So yes, dude, it was my obligation to absorb his disdain. He spoke enough truths. When I thought about that day, I didn't invent clever rejoinders or resent his oversimplifications. The insights were what snagged: That I shouldn't assume my honesty or virtue; I shouldn't confuse interests or intellect with being a good person; when I cling to self-serving ideas about other people, I should force myself to stop and consider their truths.
We might have been better if nothing physical had happened, if we'd remained pure friends, without the turbulence of friendship gone mad. My sex life wouldn't have been as prolific or confident as dudes like Matt Canetti or Kevin Berger, but I might have been motivated enough to fumble through some sloppy, closeted hookups. They would have stressed me out and made me sad, probably prompting me to misbehave or evade people. Or maybe not; maybe I would have found myself with a successor to Matt, a dude who pushed me and kept me honest. Whatever happened, it would have been a more traditional arc. I might have come to terms with myself when I was ready, under better, more traditional circumstances.
Chris was already becoming a collection of shadow traits, the person that I'd perceive in the years ahead: a sad, sincere, lost friend.
Did I still jerk off to him? Yes. Do I still? Occasionally. But I jerk off to a lot of people, so don't be so dramatic about it.
"Right, so, basically, I wanted to say that I'm sorry, because I feel like I mistreated you."
"That's why you wanted to meet up?"
"Yeah," I said. "Apparently -- like, I can't tell. Did I mess you up?"
"What are you even talking about?"
"Just how," I lowered my voice, "I feel like I took advantage of you."
"God, you are so old-fashioned," Wally said. "It's incredible."
"For real?"
"Is it a problem for you because we're not married?" he said.
"What?"
"You are the funniest weirdo," Wally said. "You're so 1950s. I love it. I don't know anyone like you."
I'd made up a story where I seduced him, but our physical chemistry turned out to be terrible. I imagined that he'd felt socially obligated to play along. I thought that I'd dirtied him. I ignored an e-mail that he sent a few days later. If I spotted him across a hall, my body language was politely cold, based on shame, maybe even unfair disdain.
"So you're not offended by me," I said to confirm. "I didn't hurt your feelings or mistreat you?"
"You sound disappointed. Did you want to hurt my feelings or, uh, mistreat me?"
"No."
"God, mistreated. I don't think I've heard that word spoken. You're so proper."
"Just because we did that thing. And that was it. And it seemed too, like, personal, just to be a thing that would happen with someone, and then you neglect them."
"Joe. Be honest with me. Are you a Republican?"
"No."
"Because I'm not embarrassed that we hooked up."
"Okay. Well, that's good." We were in a crowded coffee house, mid-afternoon. The background roar of a milk steamer and study chatter. I don't think anyone was eavesdropping, but a girl sitting alone with an economics textbook looked slightly suspicious. "I'm trying to do a thing where I'm nicer and treat people with more empathy, instead of slamming around like a jackass, doing whatever."
"Your etiquette has been perfectly fine." He sat straight with a more rigid posture, lowered his voice like he was doing parody of a news anchor.
"You've behaved quite respectably." Monotone, quasi-robotic delivery.
"You have my gratitude for clarifying your intentions."
"That's not how I talk."
"Only a little bit," he said, reverting to natural cadence. "I have no idea what you're imagining you've done where now you have to run around apologizing to all sorts of people. It's not like you're Osama bin Laden."
"Osama bin Laden isn't the baseline, I hope," I said. "It seems like I've developed this tendency where anytime I've done physical things with someone, they get messed up, which, I agree, is not like Al Qaeda."
"You must be exaggerating," Wally said. "Aren't you and Matt Canetti still close? You guys are best buds."
"Yes, but I was a dick to him, too," I said. "He's doesn't hold grudges."
"I had no idea that you were this sensitive."
"I'm not sensitive," I said.
"I'm not sensitive,'" he mocked in robot monotone. "I'm just practicing at my new empathy.'"
"Trying."
He smirked and held my eye contact. "Come on, Joe," he said, lowering his voice to a more confidential tone, "in the future, when you get off with someone, you don't need to be so ashamed. You've got your issues, but hooking up is usually considered hot. Most people like it. Most guys don't do it unless they want to. Don't act like you stole someone's wallet. For a few people, even casual situations are stressful, right? They get feelings they can't control, so maybe they lash out to try to make themselves feel better. There are certain gay guys who get off on creating drama."
"This isn't one of those situations."
"Who was it? Do I know him?"
"No. It's not one specific person. There is no Polly Perkins. It's more of a composite, like New York Magazine does."
"Right. Okay." He didn't believe me and didn't get my reference. "Well, if you're interested in meeting other people, I could help arrange introductions."
"That's nice of you to offer." I pointed at his backpack. "This is a random question, but have you read any Montaigne?"
Wally still dug me, more than I understood before our chat. He held eye contact and kept touching my forearm. By the time we finished coffee, I saw from his body language that he wanted to go get off together. I thought about his limbs squeezing my shoulders, like warm, lively bandages.
Our prior hook-up had felt so inept that I didn't want to ruin the moment. Beyond that, the idea of getting off with someone felt mentally exhausting. Some modesty and restraint would be a good step in my considerate new lifestyle.
We hugged and said good-bye outside the coffee house before I left him. He suggested that we meet again before graduation. "Definitely!" I said, meaning it.
We never hung out again. Walking home from a party a couple of weeks later, he passed me on the sidewalk with a small posse of guys. "Hey!" he said. "It's Joe College!" I looked up and smiled, recognizing him too late. He didn't invite me along and I didn't try.
I see Wally's posts on Facebook. He's some kind of real-estate lawyer in Atlanta. He has a boyfriend and they look happy. I suspect that he might have become one of those CrossFit people, though.
Chris Riis sat cross-legged in the grass, eating a bagel sandwich, using the flat side of his backpack as a table, white early-gen iPod cords framing his jaws. Previously, I would have approached and sat next to him. When I neared, he would have looked up and smiled. I would have asked what he was listening to and bantered about Tom Petty or Creedence. It would have been a small happiness to spontaneously hang out and banter for a few minutes on a nice day.
I had spied him sideways from several yards away. He didn't notice and stared ahead, looking over the quad toward the library.
It didn't feel right to approach. He should be permitted to appreciate a moment without feeling hassled by me.
I didn't feel quite sad about my decision to keep walking, although I wished we'd still been bros, that we could have rediscovered the fond, easy rapport that we'd had during our first three years as friends.
If nostalgia is a molecule, sadness is just one of its atoms. I had been preemptively nostalgic as soon as I arrived. I remember the light when I first walked into the dorm room that I shared with Sam, and the dull math-class smell of our new unlived-in room on that day. I believe that I can recall the following smells: the leaves on the Quad in the fall; the books, plaster and wet wool of the library's reading room in winter; the concrete, stone and grass of the Quad in the spring; the late-night dew and lawns near Hamilton Street in the summer. Our living room had hints of paint, bread, cardboard and beer. My bedroom smelled like fabric softener, sweat and shoes. Our basement smelled like coffee, beer, bleach and weed. I remember the light when looking out from the front window of Charterhouse at 2 a.m. in a snowstorm, and being in the reading room at dusk when the sun faded and the table lamps took over. I loved these things because I was retardedly happy, happier than I was before I arrived, happier than I've been since. I tried to remember and to notice, the way that you do when you travel to a city that enchants you, someplace like Paris or Istanbul, where you're charmed by mundane things like doorframes and park fences.
Just because I think that I can remember the lights and smells doesn't mean that my memory is accurate. I also think that I can recall chronologies and conversations, who stood next to whom at what party, what song was playing when that one girl said that thing to that guy, what kind of beer we got in the half-barrel for a party in spring 2003, and that the lecture for my class on Birth of the Novel was in Auditorium 3 of Thornton Hall. All of it might be wrong.
Nostalgia is the motherfucking boss drug. On my bedroom dresser, I still have the snapshot of me and Chris that Katie took, the one where we sat on opposite ends of the porch's couch in our dorky khaki shorts, where Chris smiles confidently and I hold a cigarette and beer bottle, looking ready to attack the camera. It's in a shitty frame that I bought at the K-Mart on Astor Place. It's not there because I yearn for Chris, but because it's such a great photo, the most college photo that I know. I look at that photo, and, motherfucking kapow, I'm right there. I mean that as more than a metaphor. I feel all of it at once, with total conviction. I'm at 1254 Hamilton, sitting on the porch, Marlboro smoke scratching my throat. Everyone is there and I am in love with them, more than I will ever tell. It's not sadness or a catalog of details. Overwhelming memory of feeling and belonging, contentment that could never last, which was sweeter still because I knew at the time that this exquisite life had a firm deadline.
Even in 2005, when I saw Chris sitting alone, I understood part of this. So I stopped myself from going over and attempting a quality hang. I thought about the times when we casually crossed paths as we went about our days, a happy coincidence that felt inevitable. It was okay that this small, nice thing was gone, because I could glance up and retrieve the memory of that feeling. "There you are," Chris said.
Katie thinks like this. Sam, less so. Sam is committed to the present. When Katie and I go out, we can still spend hours breaking down the details of college mini-scandals and gossip. Others don't find this as entertaining.
She and I were the ones most insane about graduation. There were nights where people started at a happy hour and ended up in bars until last call. Sometimes Katie and I laughed hysterically over nothing and then cried and said that we loved each other. One night we got back to the house and she didn't stop weeping. We had lost Sam, Trevor and Chris at the bar. Nothing bad happened -- just drunk emotion. "I can't believe it," she kept repeating.
She mixed in accusations: "Why are you so calm? Don't you care?"
"Obviously I do," I'd say.
"You don't care. You're calm. Nobody cares."
"Everyone cares."
"I can't believe it. You're a liar, Joe."
"No I'm not," I said, hugging her on the couch.
I persuaded her that she should go to sleep and walked her to her room. I lay next to her on the covers, drunk and exhausted. I didn't want to leave her miserable.
"You're the only one who understands," she said.
"That's nice of you," I said.
"We were meant to be friends. It was destiny."
"I agree."
"No you don't. But you know what they say about being wasted -- in vino veritas."
"Truth," I said.
"Shut up," she said.
"Go to sleep. I love you."
"I love you too."
We fell asleep with the lights on and the door open. I woke when others returned home. The hangover after an hour of sleep was crippling. I staggered while they were still in a full flush of rowdiness. I observed them through peripheral vision and ignored their words, since their sounds were too loud. I held the wall for support, then sat on the bottom of the stairs, head in hands to shield against light. They teased me. I passed out on the living room couch because I couldn't navigate two flights of stairs. It was better that way because I was still around them. Like, my spirit was partying even if my body was flattened. I would miss this so much, and was so drunk and tired that I couldn't articulate the words to talk about it.
I was on the soccer field with Trevor and Sam's friends. Most played varsity in high school and a couple were on a club team. Far smarter and more adept at the game than I was.
I knew a few of them well, but as party friends, not confidantes. With Sam and Trevor, some of their friends seemed too clean and fratty, like this was mainly a training ground for finance careers and a place to meet chicks. They weren't weird enough; they weren't intellectuals.
My athletic skills kept pace with them okay. I was easily the worst person on the field, and they weren't playing seriously, but I dribbled and passed with basic aptitude, which felt great as someone who hadn't kicked a soccer ball since fifth grade.
This was a happy surprise. I felt almost cocky. On my high-school teams I'd been decent, with brief flashes of ragged glory. It had been a long time since I'd treated competition as something other than a joke. That day in the sun, I felt my ability.
I have the standard American prejudice of perceiving soccer as a kid's game. It was good to be a kid. When one of my sort-of teammates shouted an instruction, I complied. It flattered me when they passed the ball in my direction. They didn't try too hard to steal from me. In not fucking up, I felt a jolt of confidence, like I was getting physically stronger in real time. My two shots on goal might have failed, but they went in the right direction.
"You're pretty decent, bro," said Sam's shaggy-haired friend Ahmet.
"Trying my best."
"For someone who never plays," he said. "You probably could've killed it if you started younger."
"You don't have to play down my skills."
"Okay," he said, the sarcasm gentle and friendly, "you have amazing natural talent. Best soccer player of our generation."
"Stop fucking flattering him," Sam said. "This is going to end up as a dumb fucking Joe College column about discovering yourself by trying something new."
"Pretty much," I said.
"Mention me in your column?" Ahmet said.
"Yeah, of course," I said. "I'll start it like, `My friend Ahmet recently told me that I'm the greatest natural athlete of our generation. As much as I hate to brag, it's important to explain why he's correct.'"
"Greatest natural douchelord of our generation," Sam said.
"All great athletes are douchelords," I said.
"Talent corrupts," Ahmet said.
"You compliment him as a joke," Sam said, "but I'm the one who has to live with the consequences."
"So much jealousy. Didn't you notice that when I tried to kick a goal, it went in the general area, and not even backwards at all?"
"Do you notice that when I kick you in the balls, my foot strikes in the general area of your nuts, and not even up your ass at all?"
"What would Montaigne say if he heard you talk like that?"
"Va te faire foutre! He wouldn't understand fuck-all because he spoke French, you pretentious motherfucker. If he comprehended, he'd write an essay on what a twisted cunt you are."
"I love you, dude."
"I love you too," Sam said.
Guys drifted away. Eventually, I was with Sam, Ahmet and their friend Galen. Sam tried to invent a game based on kicking the ball at my nuts; no one else was interested. Ahmet lived five minutes away. He offered beer, weed and a back deck, which sounded good for a late afternoon in April.
Afterward, Ahmet's innocuous comments would strike me as flirting. He'd gone out of his way to start conversation and flatter me; he'd been pro-active about hanging out at his apartment instead of a bar. I don't think he had a master plan, given that Sam and Galen were involved, so much as the mindset of a craps player making side bets on the eight and hard six. He was creating opportunities and seeing how the dice landed. Ahmet wasn't scheming enough to come at me with a slick itinerary.
That crew knew that I was into dudes. There'd been a period where some of them addressed me as if I'd recently been released from the hospital with a broken leg. Their polite, concerned tone showed what they meant. A lot of guys asked whether I was okay, how I was holding up -- like, how was your injury healing? "Doing fine," I said, trying to sound natural, and quickly changed the topic to something impersonal. "No offense," I heard a few times, after a couple hours of drinking, "but I never would have guessed that you were gay." "Fuck, dude, it surprised me, too," I'd say, and move the conversation to a different subject.
Ahmet never approached me with even such mild comments. I'd known him mostly as someone I'd nod to at parties. He seemed like an okay guy. I formerly perceived him as dull and square, but later he came across as an aloof hipster. My impression of him changed with his hairstyles. It used to be cropped short, very preppy. Now it had grown stylishly shaggy, cow-licked and shoulder length, like he played in a band that opened for The Strokes. We'd chatted in the past but I couldn't tell you the topic. Most of my friends in life, they sent me platonically swooning within the first five minutes of our meeting. All of them are weirdos. Ahmet hadn't been weird enough for my blood.
I couldn't have told you earlier that day where Ahmet grew up (Madison, Wisconsin), what he studied (political theory) or where he was headed after graduation (grad school at Berkeley). If his name came up, I would have nodded and said something like, "Yeah, that guy! He's a good dude."
We sat on his back deck. Ahmet shared an apartment with a roommate on the second floor of a house. Their deck was barely big enough for a grill and cheap plastic furniture that the seasons had faded white to gray. We drank cans of beer. Galen said that he had to leave and clean up for a date. Ahmet offered us weed, and Sam said that he couldn't because he had to finish a paper that night.
"Some people do their best writing when high," I said.
"I'm not an easy writer like your fuck-boy Montaigne," Sam said. "My sentences take work."
"Right," I said. "I forgot."
"And it doesn't really matter, but I'd at least like to get an A-. I'd rather graduate magna than not."
"It sounds like you're in okay shape for that though," I said.
"Right on the edge," Sam said. "You guys can nerd the fuck out about what Rosemary Kavanaugh said on John Milton, or whatever, without boring me to the point of puking, and that's great for everybody."
Ahmet packed a bowl while Sam gathered his backpack and took off.
"You know what Sam's GPA is?" Ahmet said.
"Why do you think that?"
"No, it just sounded like you know whether he'll graduate magna. I have no idea what my roommate's grades are."
"Yeah, I guess it's weird that I know that. Sam practices maximum disclosure."
"That's funny," he said, while I took a couple of hits from his pipe.
"It's cool that you have that kind of friendship. You always had the most rocking house. I had so much fun at your parties."
"Funny to think how I only knew Sam and Chris when we all moved in."
"Chris is a funny guy," Ahmet said. "One time he was wasted and jammed the whole remote control sideways into his mouth?"
"That's fucking gross," I said. "Unfortunate that he chose to do that."
"No worries. It was dumb party shit."
"He shouldn't drink. He gets chaotic when he's drunk."
"We all do."
"Not to the point of stuffing electronics into our mouths. He could have choked or broken a tooth."
"That's a responsible thought," he said. "I fractured my tibia in high school when I jumped out a second-floor window on a dare. Had to go to the ER and puked because I was so wasted. My parents lost their shit."
"Oh God. I just threw up when I drank in high school." I felt the first gentle detachment of the THC. My voice lingered and my fingers tingled.
"Lucky that I've never had an injury worse than vomit."
"Bro, we should have hung out more," Ahmet said.
"Oh for sure, dude," I said, because it was a polite response. "Like, we've always been around."
"Yeah, for sure," he said, lighting his pipe and taking another hit, which struck me as unwise, as weed tended to bury me all at once. "Like, we've always been around. That's right."
"Like, since sophomore year, right?" I said. It was settling in, where I was capable of articulating myself but the words required focus and concentration. "You had shorter hair then. Very clean-cut."
"Yeah," he said, whipping his hair back and forth. "I don't know if that was a phase or this is a phase, but my mom hates it. I'm not getting it cut for graduation. She can deal with it."
"You should do with your hair for graduation what, five years from now, you can look back on as an accurate reflection of the moment."
"Wow. That's thoughtful. I guess it's why you're Joe College."
"It's true."
"What do you think? Does the hair look good or nah?"
"It looks good," I said. The moment required concentration on his hair.
"You pull it off."
"Really? Tell me the truth."
"No, it looks, like," I almost said `hot,' "cool. Almost intimidating."
"Intimidating. Oh dang. You can come off as intimidating, so that's a major compliment."
"Intimidating? Me?"
"Yeah."
"Pourquoi?"
"Yelling at Sam about Montaigne, and the way you can write. And, like, at parties and shit, how you carry yourself. You play it cool."
"Seems like you play it cool," I said.
"Fuck," he said, laughing, "we definitely should have hung out more. I bet we would've been friends."
"Yeah, but we're hanging out now. We're friends now, and, like, we've always been around."
"Yeah, we've always been around," he said, smiling, rubbing his eyes.
"Fuck," he said, still smiling, "are you fucked up right now?"
"Yeah," I said. "A bit fucked up, but basically functional."
"Ah," he said, his face pinkish. "Do you want to go inside and watch something? I need to stretch my legs."
"Yeah man," I said. "I don't really have any plans tonight. Like, maybe proof-read my thesis draft another time, but it's basically done."
"Cool," he said, standing and stretching. When he stretched, the hem of his shirt lifted and showed the line of black hair running from his navel to his shorts. He looked tall and limber, like a person who did yoga.
He casually peeled off his T-shirt as he walked from the porch to the living room. I was still outside, trying to gather empty cans as the courteous guest that I was. I nearly uttered the word whoa as a reflex.
When Ahmet removed his shirt, I had the first thought that he was trying to draw me in. My dick felt a slight pudge, and I wiped the thought clean. To my knowledge, Ahmet was totally straight. A lot of dudes hung out shirtless. I chastised the vanity of my notion.
Still, however badly I wanted to discipline the thought, his bare back changed my energy. Three seconds was enough to take in the lines of his shoulders, the definition of his lats, the inward curve at his waist. The white band of his boxer briefs looked crisp against the black workout shorts.
I discarded our empties and got a can from the fridge. He sprawled on his couch, shoes off. The shiny fabric of his shorts was thin and loose. I was wearing a near-identical pair. If my dick got ideas, they lacked the discretion to protect me. The idea was horrifying. I should be able to hang with bros like a bro without perving out.
Ahmet's weed was making me both chill and paranoid. He put a rerun of Real World: San Diego on TV.
"See, your hair looks like Charlie's," I said, pointing at the TV.
"Oh, God," he said, smiling, "that's not good."
"I mean, it looks better on you," I said. It sounded flirty, and I had only wanted damage control.
"Thanks, Joe," he said, running his hands through his hair. "You're giving my confidence a boost today." His legs stretched to the floor. There was a smear of dried dirt on his left shin and half-healed scabs on his right knee. When he turned in my direction to speak, I saw the shadow of black hair spread lightly across his chest, a line running down toward his navel and below. My dick twitched. I adjusted my posture.
We both breathed heavily. The Real World was stupid. It was the episode where Frankie got a python. We agreed that pet snakes seemed creepy and boring.
Ahmet got up to take a piss. I stared at his back while he walked. He pissed with the door slightly ajar, then washed his hands afterward. The sounds turned me on; I imagined his dick and hands. I stared at his chest and stomach when he returned. His pecs weren't jacked, but they were neatly defined. Very yoga, very swimmy. He had more of a four-pack than a six-pack, and was thin enough that his hipbones looked sharp over the waist of those thin fucking shorts and the band of his boxer briefs. If I'd wanted to perv on a bro, I could have discerned the outline of his junk.
He sat somewhat closer to me on the couch, technically at arm's length because we both had long arms. He folded his knees toward his chest and faced me instead of the TV.
"Like, usually," he said, now struggling for words, his stonedness audible, "I'd shower right away after playing a game."
"Yeah."
"I always clean up like that."
"Yeah. Same."
"But, like, I had company, so I didn't. Because it seemed rude."
"It's cool."
"I just don't want you to think that I'm rude or, like, unhygienic. I was going to apologize in case I seemed a little funky, but then, like, I figured that you were the same."
"Yeah?" I tried to play it funny, even though my heart was beating crazy. I was sweating. I lifted the neck of my shirt over my nose and sniffed.
"I haven't noticed anything. Like, our cleanliness is basically good."
"It just seemed like bad hosting manners if I would've taken a shower and not had you with me," he said.
My penis made a violent move. His scenario hit me with a moment of clarity. How he'd had this in mind all along. I tried to subtly adjust myself, but that gesture only brought more attention to it, even if my move concealed the acute angle. Ahmet had watched, and his eyes lingered at my inflection point. He was trying to act cool. He had a clean-shaven, perky chin and a thick lower lip. When he moved his eyes back up we had each other's stare.
I reached out to touch his hair. He bent his neck toward me and inched closer, hair draping over his face. His scalp was hot and damp; his hair was fine and shiny. He moved closer. My arm was around his bare shoulder as I smoothed the back of his hair. His dick jabbed fat across his hip under those workout shorts. Up close, we actually did smell a bit funky and our skin was a bit sticky, but that was fine. It seemed vulnerable. He had a hand on each of my shoulders and his head hung down while I touched his hair, like we were in a servile hug. I touched his shoulder blade. He tensed, then relaxed.
"I'm stoned," he said. "I should lie down. We should lie down."
I followed and closed the door of his room behind us. The floor was covered in clothes. His only furniture was a bed, a dresser and a table with stacks of papers and a closed laptop. I wasn't going to judge.
I kicked off my shoes and tossed my shirt. I wanted to follow his lead, not escalate and intimidate him; I wanted to ask if he'd ever done anything with a guy, but it seemed like a judgmental question and I was pretty sure that the answer was no.
He threw his comforter onto a mattress and propped his head against the wall with a pillow. I sat next to him and did the same. For a long time, we sat like that, shirtless and dazed, with obvious boners under our shorts.
"Whatever is fine," I said.
His eyes met mine.
"Yeah?"
"Just, like, whatever is good. It's cool. Whatever happens, or not. We're cool."
"Yeah?" He moved his hand over his shorts, manipulating his dick like a guy in an annoying porno who has a teasing routine.
"Yeah," I said. With my right hand, I reached over and smoothed the hair above his ear. With my left, I tugged down the waistband of my shorts, showing off my dick and balls.
"Oh shit," he said, staring down at me and arching his back. "Oh fuck, bro."
I leaned forward and slid off my shorts and briefs. I didn't touch anything. Seeing his face study my body was a turn-on. My dick looked fully charged and flawless, flushed in the face and rising from my thatch of black pubes. Not to be immodest, but it would've made any gay-tempted dude crumble. The Estruscans would have made symmetrical statues in its honor.
I slid closer so that my right arm was around his shoulders. He closed his eyes and breathed sharply, like he was already having an orgasm. I kept touching his hair. Through his shorts, he tentatively pulled on his dick, so that I had oblique glimpses of its head. Like he was about to leap off the high dive for the first time, approaching the edge before backing off and trying to screw his courage to the sticking place.
"Ahmet, bro," I said, "you're so handsome, dude. I love your body."
He exhaled heavily and smiled. "Same," he said. He found the boldness to slide his shorts to a slanted angle. A thick, rigid dick freed itself for the first time, its complexion a couple shades darker than the rest of his skin. He had huge, low-hanging balls and a tangle of black pubic hair. Ahmet looked like such a man, dude. He watched me for a signal.
"Awesome, dude," I said. "Like, we've always been around."
He laughed. "That's, like, our catchphrase now. We've always been around."
"We're for sure friends now," I said.
"Feeling pretty close to you, too," he said, lifting his legs and struggling to twist his shorts all the way clear.
I kissed him. It caught him off guard. His teeth stayed closed so I only got his heavy lower lip, then he relented and lent a lick of tongue. I liked the taste his breath. I dry-stroked my dick. He started to jerk off, too. He pulled away from my mouth and looked down at my body. I slid closer so that the sides of our torsos and hips were in full contact. We had our arms around each other's shoulders and leaned our weight in sideways. He squeezed against me. I pressed my nose and lips into his hair.
The rush of dopamine was so fierce that I may have been shaking. My attraction felt helpless and overpowering, whereas a mere hour before, I thought of him as some guy that my roommates knew, a dude who I'd barely give a second glance, not a target of physical scrutiny. Now I loved his lips and his gray eyes, the cut of his cheekbones, the angle of his chin, the hair around his nipples. I wanted his sweaty balls in my face and my cum to drench his hair. Like, I know gay dudes in the City who have a purely transactional mentality about hook-ups, where they want another body for the performance of an act, and while they're discerning about the body, they don't give a fuck about personality or the mental experience. Even with my most transient hook-up, there's some horizon of shared vulnerability; this insight to another person's frailty or privacy; the way we choose to accept the mutual escalation; the initial attraction that compounds until I lose myself with the other guy. I felt that so hard for Ahmet.
I kissed him again. We smelled like sweat, beer and weed. I turned so that my dick pressed against the side of his hip, and reached my left hand down to his cock. He was still jerking himself. I moved my fingers over his pubes and the base of his shaft. Such a man. He licked my tongue sideways and made a high-pitched sound. He drew his mouth back from mine and arched his back high, lifting his buttocks from the bed, like it was half of a gymnast's backbend. He jizzed a long, clear, watery spurt that glanced my arm and nearly reached his chin. He made a couple of short, high-pitched moans as more cum sprayed his stomach, then collapsed his hips in a shudder.
I was disappointed that it was over so quickly, and anticipated that he would skid and crash about 10 seconds later. I quickly spat on my palm and jerked myself. I was so fucking aroused that it didn't take much. I didn't shoot as aggressively as he did. Mine was viscous, thicker and whiter, starting with one decent shot and the rest dribbling out.
Ahmet looked stunned and stoned. He stared at me with a blank expression and leaned over to grab a T-shirt off the floor. He wiped his chest and passed his dirtied shirt to me. Smears of semen were shiny on his skin and matted in his chest hair. His dick was deflating, looking raw and pinkish-red, his legs spread wide, one hooked over my shin, his balls still hanging heavy.
"You okay?" I said.
His breathing was deep and measured. "Fuck yeah."
"That was cool," I said.
"Fuck," he said. "I never thought I'd actually do that."
"It's okay," I said.
"Hell yeah it's okay," he said, dozy grin glazed on his face. "I needed this so bad."
"Awesome," I said. "I thought it was awesome, too."
"So hot," he said.
"Do you know how hot you are?" I said. He looked surprised and embarrassed. "It's unreal." I reached down and palmed his sticky, half-hard dick. "And you've got the best hair."
"You're not so terrible," he said.
"We should've been friends sooner."
"It's cool," he said. "We've always been around."
It was only a ten-minute walk home but it felt like an hour. I'd scrubbed my hands before leaving Ahmet's place and they still smelled like sweaty dick. I was dehydrated and a vein in my forehead throbbed, but I don't think I could have spoken without laughing.
Wally's words took on resonance: Most dudes liked hooking up, and that's all it was. Later, I considered e-mailing him a thanks but thought it would be poor form to write him in praise of a rival hook-up.
Chris had been a basket case with me; I'd been a basket case with Matt and Andy. I had a deeper attachment to all three of them than I did to Ahmet, but messing around with Ahmet had been fun. And flattering! The bro had seduced me. Completely! All in, we were unclothed for 20 minutes at most, and had only gotten off once, but it felt so much more vivid than that.
It was probably the first time that I messed around with a guy without angst being a dominant emotion.
And this wasn't a friendship gone mad, no. This was, like, a form of advanced bro-ing out. Like, we were both reasonably smart, reasonably attractive and reasonably cool, so it made sense to take that new bro bond to a higher level.
Advanced bro-ing out: hot. Friendship gone mad: not.
It wasn't until I got home that I remembered my backpack was on his deck. Shit. We'd figure it out. It wouldn't be weird.
I was scratching my chin when I walked through the front door. Sam sat on the couch with his laptop open and a stack of books on the coffee table. Chris was watching an episode of Lost on Tivo.
Sam gave me a look. "You look nuts."
"How do you mean?" I knew what he meant.
"Number one, your hair is out of control," he said, "and, point B, your face doesn't look like you."
I didn't even care. "You're ridiculous. You're full of shit."
"Oh, I know," he said cheerily. In his defense, he didn't want to expressly pursue this in front of Chris, concerned for whatever weird reactions our friend might have. He said with soft, friendly confidence, "I knew, and I could see what was in the works all afternoon. You're welcome."
"You're nothing but a mad fool," I said happily, and walked upstairs.
Out of the corner of my eye, I observed Chris glare at us.
I opened my e-mail after taking a shower and chugging a liter of water. When I saw that there was already an untitled message from Ahmet, I slumped, expecting something painful and awkward.
We exchanged these messages in quick succession:
From: Ahmet Demir
To: Joe C.
Yo, you left your backpack on the deck. Do you need it tonight or can I try to hand it off to you tomorrow? I have classes at 11 and 1.
Also, I meant to ask -- what's your senior thesis about?
From: Joe C.
To: Ahmet Demir
Hey! Tomorrow is fine. Where's your 11? I can meet you on your way.
Thesis is about characters undone by their quests for understanding and self-knowledge. Quentin in Sound and Fury and Absalom; Jack Burden in All the Kings Men; Ulysses in the Inferno; Hamlet, Othello, Lear; Milton's Adam and Eve; a ton of ancient mythology. This idea of what should be a hero's quest, like Joseph Campbell, but instead of a triumph and returning with wisdom and glory, they're undone by what they learn. How their new knowledge is something about themselves or their history that they can't handle.
LOLOLOL.
What's your thesis?
From: Ahmet Demir
To: Joe C.
My 11 o'clock is in 202 Thornton. Want to meet by the front doors?
Mine is about whether Kant's categorical imperative applies to Cicero's writings on natural law and government and it's a big struggle but I'm trying my best not to sound like an idiot when my advisor reads it LLOLOLOLZZZZZ
Thanks bro. Seriously. Awesome.
From: Joe C.
To: Ahmet Demir
Your thesis sounds fucking hot.
Glad things are awesome. I would've stayed and chilled longer but didn't want to wear out my welcome. Plus you were pretty stoned and looked like you needed to pass out LOLOLLLZ
From: Ahmet Demir
To: Joe C.
I'm still somewhat high. Are you? Is that why we're LOLing and calling my thesis hot?
You could've stayed a lot longer. I was up for testing our friendship some more LOL.
From: Joe C.
To: Ahmet Demir
Oh, nice. We should hang out again soon.
By the way -- and not to stress you out -- when I got home, Sam acted like he knew something was up? Like, he just made vague remarks and acted smirky. I'll cover for you and tell him it's ridiculous/rude but didn't want you to get caught off guard. He likes being outlandish but he wouldn't actually be a dick or tell people about this.
From: Ahmet Demir
To: Joe C.
Ha, thanks for the warning. I'm not going to worry about Sam. As you could probably tell, I've never done anything like this before, but I'm not too hung up on what anyone thinks. Sam is chill about things. You can tell him if you want, I don't care.
"Yeah, obviously," Sam said.
"Why do you say that?"
"He virtually was sucking your dick in public."
"Oh, that's nice. Very nice."
"Also, his body language," Sam said. "Also, I already assumed Ahmet was gay. Gayer than you."
"Why?"
"Because how he looks at guys and doesn't have girlfriends. He doesn't run around throwing butt plugs or dildos at people. That's not what I mean. He's not that type of gay."
"Charming."
"I do need to finish my paper, eventually, but that was bullshit. I wasn't going to be the third wheel. I saw what was happening, and I was right. So you're welcome. I'm a tender and helpful wingman."
Sam yelled Trevor's name. No response. He shrieked Trevor's name, like an angry mother calling her son home from the neighborhood fistfight. There was only a shitty drywall barrier between their two basement rooms.
Trevor calmly opened Sam's door. "What's up?"
"Guess who Joe hooked up with this afternoon."
"Ahmet," Trevor said.
"Obviously," Sam said.
"He's a good dude. You guys should've been friends before anyway."
They might as well have been my parents. I dropped on Sam's bed like an actress in a `50s melodrama with a case of the vapors.
"Stop being weird," Sam said. "You're making me question Ahmet's judgment more than I was already."
"It's cool, brother," Trevor said. "We're not making fun."
"We don't need to discuss any of this," I said. "Forget that it happened."
"Okay. I'm not trying to embarrass you," Trevor said. "I've felt a little sad for you, having to be celibate all these years, when, if you were a straight dude, you could've easily been crushing it."
"Thanks." While the premise was inaccurate, it angered me that I would be subject to anyone's pity, but it also touched me that he cared enough to feel pity.
"We're normalizing it and supporting you," Sam shouted.
"That's true," Trevor said calmly. "This is support."
"Right," I said. "Only don't talk about it with Ahmet. It seems like an invasion of his privacy. We shouldn't make him freak out."
"The only one freaking out is you, and for no reason," Sam said. "You expressly told me that Ahmet said you could tell me, if you wanted to."
"Chill out, Joe," Trevor said. "No one cares. Literally no one we know would give a fuck."
"Pieces would stress at the notion," Sam said.
"He's a harmless neurotic," Trevor said. "Can't worry about that."
"This is all very good and cool," Sam said, "and I obviously would have known, even if I hadn't seen you pimp-roll into the house like Dirk Diggler, so it's touching that you sought me out to confide in."
"That's not happening again," I said.
"Why do you hate support and validation? You're so blessed," Sam said.
"Joe, accept the support and validation."
"Accept it," Sam said. "I'm empowering you. Don't you feel empowered?"
"Yes, I do feel empowered," I said.
"Empowered in your insatiable quest for dick," Sam said. "That's unnatural. I'm disgusted that you'd say that. Montaigne would be ashamed of you."
Trevor threw a paperback at his head. I told him that I loved him.