Best Gay Erotica 2011 (7 page)

“Where are you rushing off to?” It's Nathan, of course.

“Home,” I say.

“Oh, to your boyfriend?”

“No.”

“I thought you might like to go get a drink. You know, without the reunion.”

We would have actually had to be a union for it to be a reunion. “I have a lot of papers,” I say. “To grade.”

“C'mon, Johnson. Papers can wait. Let's grab a beer.”

“Sorry. I can't, really. Maybe another time.”

Nathan stares at me, squints his eyes a little as though that will help him figure me out.

“Excuse me,” I say, nodding back at my car. Nathan steps closer and his chest presses against mine. He pushes me back until my ass is against the car door. He kisses me. Presses his body against mine, his hips against mine.

“I just want to have a little fun with you,” he says.

“I have to go home,” I say.

 

On the drive home, my heart is beating loudly. I can feel my blood race through my veins. My cock is hard. At home, I don't grade papers. I can barely make it in the door before I'm pulling my cock free from my khakis. I think about Nathan's five o'clock shadow; the definition of his chest beneath his shirt; his smirk and his inquisitive eyes; the force of his crotch pressing against mine.

I ejaculate, kneeling on my living room floor, spraying cum onto my work shirt.

 

It takes extra time on the track for me to put it all together. As much as I try to think about anything else, I think only of Nathan. I had assumed, incorrectly, that Nathan's actions toward me in the past month or so had been intended to antagonize me, to bring up old memories. Revisiting those days, despite voluntarily choosing to return to my own high school, is something I have no interest in doing.

So, it begs the question: why am I not interested? Ten years ago, twelve years ago, I was in love with Nathan Derricks. He wasn't ever the only one. I never had any fairy-tale dreams about him. He was one of the ones, though. I used to sit in the locker room after gym class, taking my time getting undressed, showered and dressed. The more time I spent there, the more
chances I had to catch a glimpse of someone naked.

The more chances I had to realize that I would never have them.

The fact is, Nathan represents everything I have been attracted to since the day that I've been able to find anyone attractive. Simultaneously, he's everyone I've grown to resent because I can't have them.

I run every morning and some evenings. Most teachers put on weight as the school year progresses. They're busy grading papers and stressed out. They spend more time snacking, less time taking care of themselves. I don't. I run more, and more, and more. I lose weight. I tone up. I didn't look this good when I was in high school.

 

“I didn't take you for a runner,” Nathan says one morning, appearing beside me on the track. I hadn't even noticed anyone on the track, let alone heard him come up behind me.

“You don't know anything about me,” I say.

“It's not for lack of trying.” He keeps pace with me easily. I try to see as much of him as I can out of the corner of my eye, without being too obvious. He's still in good shape, his white cotton T-shirt clinging nicely to his torso. His body is a little softer than it was in high school, though, and he's starting to show hints of love handles. He's wearing short jogging shorts, and it takes me a couple of glances to recognize something: he's not wearing underwear, or a jock strap. With each step we take, his dick flops around in his shorts. I can't help but look. My cock responds, stiffening in my briefs.

I look up and realize that Nathan is watching me. Watching me watch his dick. He smiles; no, smirks.

I look ahead, try to focus on running. I'm on my fourth mile. I want to keep running until Nathan breaks off, heads to the
showers; leaves me alone. Fat chance. I run. The laps add up. Nathan isn't even breathing hard. My chest is burning. I run until I can't, and then I break off for the locker room. The track is at the bottom of the hill, and I feel like going up it will kill me but I do.

The locker room is empty, and every sound is the loudest sound in the room. Each sound bounces off of concrete and metal lockers and tiles and echoes until it is swallowed by the next sound. I undress, hoping to shower and get out of here quickly, get to class.

I hang my towel up and step into the shower room. Ten metal spigots stick out of the walls. Between each one a plastic soap dispenser is mounted on the wall. I pick a showerhead near the entryway. I twist the tap and I can hear water knocking through the pipes behind the wall. It's loud but it doesn't cover up the sounds of the locker room. I shampoo my hair and rinse, the water sliding over my ears and filling my head with the sound of rain. Still, I hear a locker slamming closed. I turn to the spigot and let the water slap my face. I am not alone. I run my hand over my face and open my eyes, and Nathan is standing across from me. His body is turned to me, his head titled back as he wets his hair and rubs his hands over his face, and I can't avoid seeing his body and his muscles and his cock. His body is hairier than I thought it would be. His cock is more normal than I thought it would be. It isn't the giant jock cock that I had fantasized about when I was younger. It is a cock though, a cock attached to a naked man who I had fantasized about, had loved and hated and tried to avoid but is now standing in front of me. My own cock responds. I turn my back to him.

“What do I have to do to get you to pay attention to me?” he asks.

I consider masturbating in the staff bathroom on my break, but then I imagine Mr. Douglas, my ninth-grade math teacher, doing the same years before, before his heart attack made him the bottom half of a fraction. I think about his thick fist pounding his cock at lightning speed as his fat belly hangs over arm. I never saw Mr. Douglas naked, but it's frighteningly easy to imagine, and I lose the urge to follow in his footsteps by masturbating at work.

Still, the image of Nathan's cock floats in my head all day long—his nice, surprisingly normal cock. I welcome the distractions of my day: the teaching, the presentations. It's the quiet moments when he's there: study time and my free hour. I sit at my desk, my head propped up on my hands, and I think about Nathan Derricks naked. It's no longer just the fantasy of Nathan Derricks, the hyperfantasy version of Nathan Derricks that I've been living with but the real Nathan Derricks: His hairy stomach. His wide feet and wide toenails. His armpit hair. His—

“Applebee's, six o'clock tomorrow night,” Marcia Tungsten says, sticking her head through the doorway of my classroom.

“What?” I ask.

“You remember,” she says. “We all agreed to go out for drinks.”

“Oh, I, uh—”

“Nonsense,” she says. “The whole gang'll be there. It'll be just like old times!”

Just like old times. Great.

 

I sit in my car in the Applebee's parking lot for five minutes. I try to talk myself out of going in. I'm reaching up to start my car when someone knocks on my window. I jump and drop my keys. Marcia is standing right outside, waving. Her hand moves
like a hummingbird wing, a quick fleshy blur of excitement. I force a smile, and then she points at the restaurant. I nod at her, and I hear her say, “I'll see you in there!” through the glass. I nod again. When she disappears, I let my head fall and hit the steering wheel.

The Applebee's looks like it always does: like a high school reunion with middle-aged people standing around drinking too much and trying too hard to impress one another, laughing too loudly. For a moment I'm ashamed that I could be confused with someone who would choose to be here.

My own small high school reunion is sitting around a large circular table near the back of the restaurant. Marcia is already drinking from a comically large margarita. It would be funny if it weren't so sad. She waves at me when I approach the table, that same spastic hummingbird wave.

“Scootch in there next to Nathan,” she says as I approach the table. Nathan is sitting on the outermost side of table. He smiles at me. It is not the smile he has for everyone else here. He pats the seat next to him as he slides over, making room for me.

We order. The food comes. Beneath the table, I feel Nathan's hand on my thigh. I didn't think he would try anything in front of everyone. I kick his shoe beneath the table and he smiles at me. His hand squeezes my thigh. His hand feels good. After my plate is clean and I'm rushing to finish my second beer because I want to leave, Nathan gets brave and his hand goes from my thigh to my crotch. I kick him hard enough to jolt the table. Everyone looks at me.

After a moment Marcia says, “Well, then. Is everyone excited about homecoming?” She seems like she genuinely is. Nathan smiles.

I'm decidedly less than excited about homecoming. Mr. Woods, the head of the science department, backed out of chaperoning
at the last minute. “Barb's mother isn't doing so well,” he said. “She's ninety-five years old, and at that age every little thing could be
the
thing, if you know what I mean.” I did know what he meant. He was using the sick grandmother story on me, which is probably some kind of hellish karma coming back at me for doing the same thing to him when he was my health teacher. I hate high school.

“What do you say, Mr. Derricks?” Carol Jacobs asks, beaming at Nathan. “You boys going to win the big game on Friday?” It hits me that it was actually at our senior year homecoming game that she went down on me. I had a date for the dance the next night, Susie Sanders, but I still let Carol suck my dick. I can't remember what I was thinking about when I came in her mouth, but it wasn't her and it wasn't Susie Sanders. It very well could have been Nathan Derricks.

“I think we've got a pretty good chance,” Nathan says. “The boys are doing good this season.”

“Go Warriors!” Marcia says.

I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be less than homecoming, the game or the dance. Except maybe here, at Applebee's.

 

On Friday night the Westfield Warriors do win their game, and the dance on Saturday is all the more boisterous for it. The student body is charged, excited and filled with school spirit in a way that I remember being vaguely infectious but now only fills me with dread as I'm taxed with keeping students in line. For the most part, the evening goes well. Here or there a couple has to be told to maintain boundaries, and a fight breaks out between two football players, each claiming responsibility for the prior night's victory.

I do my best to remain a wallflower. The evening feels much like my own homecoming dance did. Even though Susie Sanders
had come as my date she had spent most of the evening dancing with her friends. It is entirely possible that she had picked up on my lack of actual romantic interest in her, or it could have been that my friend Billy had told a few friends that Carol Jacobs went down on me and those few friends had told enough people that it was likely that Susie Sanders had found out. If there was anything a teenage girl loved more than having a date for the dance, it was having a reason to hate her date so that she and her friends could revel in the drama. That could be an unfair assessment, but this homecoming dance now is doing nothing to disprove the theory as I watch small mobs gather around the two girls left behind when their football player boyfriends were asked to leave after the aforementioned fight. History repeats itself and nowhere can a better example be found than at a high school dance.

“It's like watching tiny versions of ourselves, isn't it?” Nathan Derricks is standing next to me. I didn't see him come in or come near me, but he's here now and he looks good. He's wearing something close to formal attire. He smells good. For a brief moment I want him to invite me to dance.

“Johnson,” he says.

“Derricks,” I say. “Congratulations on the game.”

“Thanks,” he says. “The guys deserve this dance.”

“Too bad it's not a dance for us, huh?”

“Too bad, yeah. I can think of other ways to celebrate, though.”

 

I step out of the gymnasium and cross the hall to the boys' room. I'm not surprised to smell faint hints of pot, but the restroom is empty now. As I step up to the urinal and unzip my pants the door opens and Nathan follows me in. He takes the urinal right next to mine. There is no divider. His arm touches mine. I do
my best to stare straight forward. There's no way I'll be able to piss so I stand there for a moment, then I shake my dick and stuff it back into my pants. I step up to the sink and glance back at Nathan, half expecting to see him jerking off but he's actually pissing, so I look down at my own hands as I wash them. Nathan flushes and steps up next to me, washes his hands. He looks at me in the mirror.