Jumbo (4 page)

He hated the guy.

The second thing he couldn’t get out of his head was Luke’s reaction, because he knew, when he had looked at Luke, that Luke had known all along, for a long time, that Mitchell had a boner, almost always. Mitchell had even said it to him. Though it wasn’t only the fact that Luke had turned away (when he was supposed to be his best friend) that Mitchell couldn’t get over. When the boys had been turning off the showers, Mitchell had heard someone say, “He may as well get a sex-change,” and Mitchell had looked up to see Luke covering a foolish grin with his hand. He wasn’t certain that Luke had said it, but he was pretty certain, and someone else had laughed.

The third thing, and the worst thing, was Tadd Parker. The jerk had come back in to comfort him, and then, after they had said everything they had to say to each other and shaken hands, Tadd had stood there, with his cock and balls pressed right up against Mitchell’s face, playing with them, adjusting them in his jeans.

Part of Mitchell had wanted to grab Tadd’s hips and pull him forward so that he could bury his face into Tadd’s gear. He wanted to know what that felt like to feel a guy’s soft cock and balls against his face through a pair of jeans. But Tadd was such a fucking jerk. He was an idiot. Mitchell wouldn’t want to touch Tadd. He hated him. The sort of cock he had — that was the sort of cock a horse should have. It wasn’t natural. It flopped against his thighs. And his balls ....

Mitchell threw off the covers and jumped out of bed, sick of thinking about it. He hopped into the shower and washed himself, and then he shaved, because he needed to shave a bit now, every three or four days. He walked downstairs, where his mom was in the kitchen making coffee. The two of them had talked last night before Mitchell had gone to bed.

“How you feeling?” his mom said.

“Not too bad.”

She came forward and hugged him. “It isn’t so bad, Mitchell. I’ll always be your mother.”

Mitchell nodded and pulled away. He didn’t really feel comfortable hugging his mother anymore. He was too old to be doing this, but she was leaving in a few days.

He ate breakfast, and when his dad was ready, he got a ride to school, his dad talking about the divorce on the way and trying to make sure that Mitchell was okay with what was going to happen.

Mitchell wasn’t thinking about his mom and dad — not really. There was nothing he could do. He had cried about it, but it seemed so small a problem when compared to going to school these days, when compared to just going to the place and hearing people call him Jumbo, that Mitchell found himself nodding at what his dad was saying, not listening, but thinking over again, for the millionth time, about what had happened in the showers yesterday and how all the guys now thought he was gay.

Mitchell didn’t see any of the guys until lunch. He passed Mason in the hall at recess and they both lifted their hands. Mason was talking to Kirsty, his girlfriend, and Mitchell hadn’t stopped to interrupt them. Why would he? Mason wasn’t much of a friend or anything — just one of the guys on the team — so it wasn’t until lunchtime that he had a chance to talk to anyone.

In the lunch hall, he saw Luke, already sitting at the table where they always sat, over by the windows. Luke and Mitchell always sat at this table, though other people used it also — sometimes some of the guys from the team, and sometimes random people that Luke and Mitchell didn’t even know.

Mitchell had been having lunch with Luke for as long as he could remember. He walked over to the table with his tray and sat down opposite Luke, who was toying with his food.

The thing Mitchell liked about Luke the best was his hair, not just that it was blond, but that it was so soft, and sort of splayed out from his head. Luke didn’t use any sort of product. None of the guys on the team did that because it was senseless; you were always in the water. Luke had dark eyes, brown eyes, which was unusual with blond hair, and his top lip curled upwards, so that you could always see his front teeth. Luke’s mouth was always open a little and he licked his lips a lot.

When he was younger, Mitchell had thought that Luke was beautiful, but lately, as Luke had grown up, he had started to get a sort of goofy expression to his face, as though his ears were too big, and his lips distorted. Mitchell hated it when he saw Luke like that, because he loved Luke and wanted him to stay the way he had been, though all the guys on the team had turned eighteen now, and all of them had changed.

“Hi,” Mitchell said.

“Hey,” Luke said, and he frowned. He looked a little nervous.

Mitchell was just about to say, “What’s up?” when Luke got up and said, “I’ve got to go talk to Tadd. I’ll be back.”

Luke took his juice with him and walked across the lunch hall to the table where Tadd usually sat with a whole bunch of jocks — not swimmers — though it seemed to be the whole swim team over there today. Mitchell could see Tyler and Mason and even Jack — and there was no way Jack would usually sit there. The guys were talking, and every now and then, one or two of them threw a glance at Mitchell.

They were talking about him. Tadd was doing what he had said he would do, or Mitchell supposed so. He lowered his eyes and swallowed. The whole thing was a lie. Sure, he always had a boner, but it
was
because he was gay. That was the truth of it. And now Tadd was telling everyone that he wasn’t, that he had a problem with his cock that was related to the fact that it was small, that he couldn’t get it to go down.

Suddenly, there was an uproar of laughter that made everyone in the lunch hall stop and look. One of the guys had said something, and all of them had laughed at the same time. It was something about him. Mitchell supposed so. Something about him having a small cock. He felt the heat flooding his face and neck and shoulders and he knew that he was blushing, a thing he did easily, and which people always commented on.

9

 “So, you can’t get it
down?
” Luke said after he came back across the hall and sat down again. He pushed his tray away. He wasn’t going to eat anymore, but he kept sucking on his juice. Luke had a bit of a problem with his weight. If it wasn’t for swimming, he would have been fat, because even with swimming he was carrying too much body fat, Coach Marley said. It wasn’t that noticeable, though Mitchell could imagine Luke fat. He could easily balloon out considering the way he ate, and he was always trying to do something about it, train more or eat less.

“I’ve told you that before.”

“What?”

“That I have a problem — that I can’t get it,” Mitchell looked around to see if anyone could hear him, “to go down.”

Luke nodded and smiled. The only time when his lips came together and covered his teeth was when he smiled. And his lips curled at the corners. Mitchell ached to touch him. He wanted to reach out across the table and wrap his arms around Luke. He wanted them to lie in bed together, side by side.

“I’ve seen you with a boner,” Mitchell said.

“Yeah? When was that?”

“One day in the showers.”

This was one of the things that Mitchell held in a sort of catalogue on Luke, that he had one day had a boner in the showers, and had been facing the wall trying to hide it. It had been rock hard — and Luke had a nice cock and balls, just average size — though Luke had managed to get it to go down pretty quickly. Mitchell had been sitting on the bench, waiting for a shower, talking to Jack, and he had thought (the reason he kept it in the catalogue) that Luke must have been turned on by the showers, by the other guys being naked. What other reason could there be? He wouldn’t just get a boner for nothing.

And then that would mean that Luke was gay, and if Luke was gay, then ....

Mitchell looked up to see Mason and Tyler walking towards them, coming across from the table where all the guys had been sitting.

“Hey,” Tyler said, sitting down. Mason didn’t take a seat. “Sorry about yesterday,” Tyler said. “It’s just — well — I don’t really want to feel a guy’s boner poking into my ass.”

Luke laughed, shaking his head, and Mitchell swallowed.

“Who would?” Luke said.

“Someone who
was
gay.” Mason had his arms folded. “Maybe someone who can’t
face
the truth.”

Mitchell winced, looking up at Mason. Mason was a big guy, as big as Tadd almost, though he wasn’t all confident the way Tadd was. He was a little ugly, with a big nose — a fat nose — and bushy eyebrows. He had dark freckles and was friends with Robby Michaels, who was still sitting over at the table with Tadd, deep in discussion with Tadd, and looking over at Mitchell from time to time. Robby probably didn’t believe it either — that Mitchell wasn’t gay and couldn’t get his cock to go down.

“Hey, he has a problem,” Luke suddenly said to Mason. “He’s told me about it before. I think you can give a guy the benefit of the doubt.”

Mason drew his head back and nodded.

After Lunch, Mitchell had English with Luke, and the two sat next to each other like they always did. Luke liked to draw, and often during class he was drawing when he was supposed to be working. It didn’t seem to make any difference to Luke’s grades. He was pretty smart, a lot smarter than Mitchell, and whenever they had a test or an assignment, Luke aced it without even trying.

Luke tapped Mitchell on the shoulder halfway through the class, while Mr Caroll was speaking to someone at the door. Luke handed him a piece of paper folded in half — one of his drawings. Luke was always doing this, drawing, and then handing his drawings to Mitchell. Sometimes, Mitchell could hardly keep from laughing, because Luke would often draw caricatures of the teachers, or of other kids in the class. He was very talented, took art, and wanted to do art at college, though his parents were arguing with him about it — a subject that Luke kept bringing up all the time, complaining about it to Mitchell. And Mitchell did listen, but he could see Luke’s parents’ point — to pay all that money for college, for art; well, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Mitchell unfolded the paper and frowned. It was Mr Caroll, their English teacher, naked, and he had a small cock, a hard little cock.

“Just like you,” Luke whispered, cupping his hand around his mouth and bringing his lips up to Mitchell’s ear. “He can’t get it to go down.”

Was Luke
trying
to be cruel to him? That was how it felt, as though Luke had punched him in the chest, and he was winded. He felt his heart lurch, looking at the picture. It was a picture of his cock on Mr Caroll’s body, and Mr Caroll was bald and about sixty.

Mitchell winced. He blinked, feeling the beginnings of tears in his eyes, and then he handed the picture back to Luke, forcing himself to smile.

“You can keep it if you want,” Luke said.

10

That afternoon at training, they had relay practice, four by one hundred, because there was a meet coming up. They could only enter one team, and Mitchell wasn’t on the team. He didn’t know why Coach Marley hadn’t put him on the team, because the relay was a medley, and Mitchell had the best time for backstroke. He had even won the state final last year, though that was for the two hundred backstroke, and perhaps Coach Marley thought Jack would be better over one hundred meters. He wasn’t. Mitchell knew that, but he said this to himself, trying to find an excuse for Coach Marley, because he knew Coach Marley didn’t like him. Often, when Coach Marley was talking to them, he would stare at Mitchell’s speedos, at his little jutting cock, and the expression on his face was one of distaste. His eyes would flick from it to Mitchell’s face, as though he was saying, “Aren’t you going to do something about that?”

“Jumbo,” Coach Marley said, calling him over. Coach Marley had started calling him Jumbo a week or so after the guys had started. And Mitchell had even seen a smile on Coach Marley’s lips when he first heard the guys calling him the name, as though he got the joke at once and knew what it was all about. “I’m going to pull Jack and put you on the team,” Coach Marley said, “and I’m going to try Tadd in fly. We’ll do that today and see how the times come up.”

Mitchell nodded.

The guys had been practicing in three teams of four, racing each other. Mitchell walked over to the blocks in lane three where Mason (freestyle) and Tyler (breaststroke) were already standing. Coach Marley called Jack and Ben over (who had also been waiting behind lane three) and Mitchell watched as Coach Marley told them they were being pulled from the team — at least for today. Ben shook his head as he turned away. He was always last, always the guy with the worst times, the guy who didn’t belong on the team, though to look at him, you’d think he’d be the best swimmer, because Ben had that sort of body — wide shoulders and narrow hips, a perfect triangle.

“Hey,” Tadd said, coming over to lane three. “It looks like we’re teammates.” He put his hand out and shook Mitchell’s hand. Tadd was always doing stuff like this, shaking people’s hands and patting them on the back, asking for high fives and putting his arm over people’s shoulders. He really was a jerk.

Mitchell slipped into the water and waited for the starting pistol. Coach Marley had a pistol that he always used. It was pretty stupid, Mitchell thought, because the guy carried it around like he was a gun-slinger, waving it around all over the place.

The gun went off and Mitchell arched his body backwards. He was having a problem this afternoon, a problem keeping his cock up. After what had happened yesterday, with the guys finding out that he always had a boner (supposedly), he was finding it difficult today to keep it up, because he was worried about the whole thing, worried that he’d get a soft cock, and then the guys would know he had been lying. And the worry about it was what was actually causing him to feel his cock going soft every now and then. He had to keep looking over at Luke, or at one of the other guys, and imagine getting fucked by them, which was what he always imagined, because Mitchell didn’t want to fuck a guy himself. He wanted to be fucked. He wanted to feel a hard cock up his ass, sliding in and out, and he used plenty of instruments on himself, things that weren’t designed to be put up a person’s ass, even once or twice getting himself into a mess with it.