Cleopatra took up residence on his lap, purring as he softly stroked her fur.
The party drifted to Debbie’s backyard and a frenzied game of croquet where everyone played simultaneously. Sunlight and sound streamed through the living room’s back windows, which were behind the couch.
Matt heard it all, a sort of fusion of hockey, croquet, and dodgeball. Smack talking. The soft thwuck of the mallets against the balls. Idabel’s laugh.
Debbie sank onto the couch beside him, patted his arm.
“You seem sad. Girlfriend problems?”
Matt heard the screen door bang shut. Someone had come in from the backyard. Opened the freezer. Plunked ice cubes into a glass. Turned on the faucet.
Matt shook his head. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“That’s not what I hear,” Debbie teased.
“Not everything you hear is true,” Matt said. “Trust me. I’m pretty sure that if you asked Ava, she’d say the same thing, that she is not my girlfriend. People see us together and just make assumptions.”
Matt avoided Debbie’s eyes, looked past her, towards the kitchen. There stood Idabel, pie in his hand, fork halfway to his mouth, frowning. He’d also heard whatMatt had said.
Matt’s dorm room felt like a prison cell. Cinderblock walls painted a muted silver, purple institutional carpet—silver and purple being the school colors and all. MCU had marked even this tiny space as theirs, pissing their colors on the walls and floor, filling the room with the claustrophobic stench of conformity.
It was 6:42 p.m. Matt had nothing to do until the 8:00 showdown with Colton. Nothing to do except brood.
Debbie’s party had temporarily raised his spirits, but his mood had ultimately collapsed back upon itself, like a cake that had reached too high and then cratered.
He considered jacking off, if for no other reason than to kill time, relieve stress. That, and he wanted to christen his new poster.
The poster hung in the spot once occupied by the Dallas Cheerleaders. He had found this beauty, oddly enough, at the campus bookstore. It depicted a guy climbing a steep rock outcropping—free solo style. The climber was young, hot, sweaty, wearing only cotton shorts, climbing shoes, and gloves. Downy legs. A lean, muscled torso.
One hand and one foot clutched at the sheer rock face. The climber’s other arm and leg swung free in space, providing a lovely view of his chest.
The photo’s focal point was the climber’s tenuous, one-handed grip on reality. One slip and he would plunge to his death.
The photo’s subtext was a teasing glimpse of the guy’s crotch. Or so it seemed to Matt. The guy’s shorts were stretched by the pull of the one leg on the mountain and the other leg sucked down by gravity.
A practiced eye—guided either by imagination or expertise in such nuance—could discern the hint of scrotal bulge and, exactly where such a thing would be, the possible snaking curve of cock. Or was that just an odd crease in the fabric? A shadow?
To someone like Matt, who had spent a large portion of his post-pubescent years pouring through the men’s underwear section of the Sears and Roebuck catalog, sussing out its secrets like a paleographer squinting at an ancient manuscript, this photo was homoerotic art of the first order. Proto-porn in the sense that cuneiform was a proto-semitic script. (Shoutout to Dr. Farris’ Old Testament Survey class.)
Proto-porn only to Puritans and modern fundamentalists who took umbrage at Michaelangelo’sDavid.
In any other context such a poster would have been confiscated by MCU’smorality police, its owner sent packing. But, because the printers had slapped an inspirational Bible verse at the bottom, all was forgiven, so much so that it could be offered for sale alongside other Christian paraphernalia.
Matt loved it! Having it on his wall was a secret “Fuck you” to everything the room represented.
There was a light knock at the door.
“Come in,” Matt said half-heartedly.
Seth’s head bobbed into view. “Got a minute?” he asked.
Tall, gangly Seth, named after Adam and Eve’s third son, who was famous only for having been Noah’s great, great grandfather. Biblical Seth almost certainly had not been red headed, as was his modern namesake.
“Sure,” Matt said. “Is this about ‘Lip Sync in the Loo?’ I missed this morning’s show because of the game.”
Seth had become a natural leader on their floor. Because of him, more guys had abandoned the awkward towel-around-the-torso twist and now walked to the showers naked, which Seth had begun in imitation of Matt. And Seth had taken Matt’s lip syncing to a new level, starting a weekly show. Half the guys on their floor now attended. Many had performed.
Seth shook his head. “I’m not here about the lip syncing, although you do owe us a solo. This is more a therapy session.”
