Cupid's Sophomore Year, Semester 01

"Look, I don't really talk about it much. Truth is, normally guys can't get out of the room fast enough once I'm done."

"Yeah, I noticed that. But I'm not like most other guys."

He looks at me, hard.

"You gay?"

This is either a blunt question or a simple statement in caveman language. I take it as the former.

"Yep."

He nods. "Thought so."

"How could you tell?" I ask, not really curious, but wanting to keep him talking.

"When you said it was awesome, you really seemed to mean it. Most guys wrinkle up their noses when they talk about it. If they talk about it at all."

"Yeah, guys, right?" I reply, rolling my eyes conspiratorially.

"I'm straight," he says. He looks at me as though expecting me to argue with him or something. I don't, of course--statistically, the vast majority of guys are. "Not that it really matters," he sighs, plopping down on the futon again.

Breakthrough! I sit down next to him, not too close.

"What do you mean, it doesn't matter?" I ask. If he needs someone in whom to confide the difficulties of having a stupendously long cock, I'm his man.

He squints at me, apparently trying to figure out whether he can trust me. But there is that tiredness in his eyes, and I suspect that the desperate need to share his burden with someone is going to win out.

"You said you're Josh, right?" I nod. "I'm Clark. Pleased to meet you." He extends a hand--the one that just moments ago had cum running over it. I take it and give it a firm shake.

"Pleasure's all mine, sir," I reply, and there's a flicker of a grin. Good.

He sighs again, shakes his head, mutters "Shit," under his breath.

"Clark, I'm going to go out on a limb here. You have the most amazing dong in the world, and it it were mine I would spend every moment of the day doing what you just did, and every moment of the night having other people do it for me. There would be a line at the door."

He grunts again.

"But, being the sensitive and perceptive person that I am, I can tell that you are not entirely happy. The only conclusion that I can come to is that it does not give you the pleasure that I think it would. In fact," and here I pause for dramatic effect, "It seems to me that what brought these other guys into this room is the very thing that is making you so unhappy."

He looks right into my eyes, an expression of pure disbelief on his face.

"How did you know that?" he whispers.

"I'm not brilliant at a lot of things, but I'm kind of a cock savant."

He shakes his head, and squints at me again. Then he mumbles something under his breath.

"What? I didn't hear that," I say, leaning closer.

"I'm a virgin," he says in a very low voice.

"Oh," I say, trying to keep the shock out of my voice. A virgin? Seriously? This is like Michael Jordan deciding not to go out for basketball.

"That's..." I have no idea how to finish that sentence. He looks deeply ashamed. I need to fix this.

"I guess I'm just surprised that a guy as handsome as you would--"

"You mean hung like me, right?" he interrupts.

"No, of course that's not what I meant," I blurt effusively, trying to cover the fact that this is precisely what I meant. He's definitely easy on the eyes, but the cock kind of steals the show.

"It's not like I haven't tried," he says quietly, then slouches back into the futon, miserably.

"What do you mean?" I ask, trying to match his quiet tone and his slumping posture.

"I mean that I tried, and I couldn't do it," he says, a bitter edge in his voice.

I try to imagine how this would be possible, and then it finally comes to me.

"Oh, let me guess," I say. "She took one look at what you're packing and fled in a panic, right? Too much man for her to handle?"

If he's flattered by my assumption he doesn't let on.

"No, it's not that," he says, Eeyore-like. "That did happen this one time, but mostly it's..." He trails off. I wait.

"It's what?" I prompt. Clearly I suck at waiting.

He looks at me again, with a strange intensity, and then he closes his eyes.

"It never gets hard," he whispers, and then, shaking his head, he turns away from me completely.

"It looked plenty hard to me a few minutes ago," I reply, in my most upbeat tone.

"It wasn't. It doesn't have to be--didn't you notice that I never let go of it?"

"I noticed everything; I never took my eyes off of it."

"Well, I can make it work by myself, but when I get into bed with a chick, even one who's willing to try taking it, I can't get it in. It just doesn't get hard enough."

Now, I've counseled my share of guys who couldn't get hard with women--I've kind of made a specialty of it, given that most of them are in denial about being gay, and I happen to drive the welcome wagon for their newly accepted orientation.

"But it gets hard when you do it, right? Like when you're rubbing one out alone?"

"No."

"What?"

"No. It never gets hard."

Hmm. This is one I haven't heard before.

"I even stole a Viagra from my grandfather's medicine cabinet once. No dice. All I can get is a semi-boner."

"Have you talked to a doctor?"

"Yeah, a couple of years ago when I came to the U and could see someone other than my doc at home I did. He said that the longer the penis the more likely it is that it won't get fully hard. And mine was the longest one he'd ever seen."

Normally that's good news, but not in this case.

"Clark, I just think you haven't found the right woman."

He grunts a dismal chuckle.

"Well, the right women don't date me. The ones I meet all seem to hear about me before I get a chance to go out with them. Based on what they hear from the other guys, they are either terrified or out for a trophy. Both kinds are bad. I kind of gave up." He looks up, stares me in the eyes. "I just can't do it, and I guess I never will."

"But you've had blowjobs, right?" I ask. He shakes his head. "Handjobs?" I offer, more tentatively. He shakes his head again. "No jobs at all?" He shakes his head twice and then buries his face in his hands.

It suddenly becomes clear to me.

"So putting on this show is the only way..."

"To have any kind of sex with someone else in the room," he finishes my sentence.

This is really sad.

"I don't know why people keep asking me to do it, actually," he continues. "I did it once just out of desperation, and then they kept pushing me to do it again. I have no idea why they want to see it. And I'm not too happy about what makes me do it, either."

"I can help you with that one," I say. "Straight guys are all about the cock. They see you in the locker room and they can't keep their eyes off of you. They fantasize about being you, and seeing you do this is the closest they can come to it."

"But they're straight," he replies, as if mystified by this.

"Yes, they are. And, like I said, straight guys--all guys--are obsessed by cock. Women, in my experience, could for the most part care less about penis size. But dudes? To them it's the magic number, the key to the kingdom. They are constantly measuring themselves up against the guys they see in the locker room, or in porn. Straight guys are fixated on cocks, their own and everyone else's, just as much as gay guys are."

"But that just makes it worse for me," he mutters. "They all think I'm some kind of super stud. At least since I started doing this performance they don't ask me about who I'm fucking anymore. It's like they don't want to talk about it because they've watched me do this."

"Makes perfect sense to me," I reply, recalling Sky's sugar-packet analysis from earlier this evening. "You've leaped over regular sex into this bizarre thing that they can't admit they enjoy watching. You found the perfect way to shut them up!"

He gives a half-grin, the most cheerful thing he's done since I met him.

"Great. Now how do I solve my real problem?"

"I'm glad you asked, sir. I have some ideas."

He looks positively elated--relieved at having finally confided in someone, and hopeful in my abilities to actually help him.

This is going to be fun.

# 6 #

After jock-dorm move-in, the rest of freshman week is pretty much a drag. I answer questions, pass things out, direct traffic as wave after wave of new students are dropped off. Then I get to lead silly ice-breakers and social events until my brain is bleeding from trying to learn the names of several thousand lost newbies. Things finally settle down as the weekend approaches and I have a spare moment to stop by the room my friend Calvin shares with his boyfriend, Reese.

They're allowed to share a dorm room because of a discrimination lawsuit a couple of years ago that forced the U to recognize committed same-sex relationships. And honestly, there was never a more perfect couple to be covered under the policy they call Section 28; if Calvin and Reese hadn't been able to live together, they both would have had to be committed. Like to an insane asylum. They are that crazy for each other.

I'm excited tonight because Calvin's finally going to tell me about the amazing job he's gotten lined up for me. Both he and Reese are on scholarships (football and lacrosse, respectively), and he said at the end of the previous school year that he had a line on "the perfect job" at the athletic complex. I'm not a jock myself, but the idea of having a job where I would be surrounded by them all day kind of gives me a boner.

Calvin and Reese's room is in a far less modern dorm than mine; in fact, all of the Section 28 couples live along the same stretch of ratty hallway. I'm friends with two of the three couples; Calvin and Reese I'm close to because I sort of helped them get together last year. I knock on their door, and Reese answers.

"Hey, Josh! Great to see you, buddy!" Reese pulls me to him in a hug so strong that he just about squeezes the air out of me. The fact that he's not wearing a shirt may be a contributing factor to my breathlessness. He loosens his grip a bit so that he can look me in the eye.

"I've missed you," he says with a chuckle and a grin, and then he kisses me. And not a peck on the cheek, either--this is third-date kissing. I kiss him back, of course, because Reese kisses like no one in the world; his tongue knows how to do things that one must normally sell one's soul to Satan to learn.

"Ahem," rumbles a deep voice from the room.

If Reese is in a rush to break our kiss just because his boyfriend is getting impatient, it doesn't show. He spends a long moment trying to put my mouth back in order, having deranged it completely with his ministrations, and finishes by giving my ass a firm squeeze with both hands.

I step back, panting. Reese winks at me.

"Are you finished mashing on my boyfriend?" Calvin grunts at me as he stalks across the room to where we're standing. He sounds fierce, but he breaks into a grin as he opens his arms and wraps me up in them. He's clearly trying to outdo Reese in the vigor department, and I think I hear a rib crack.

"It's been far too long, my friend," he whispers, a soft rush into my ear, causing goosebumps to shoot down my entire left side. He lets up the pressure, his hands moving up to my face, where they cradle my jaw. His thumb brushes the hollow of my cheek, just like he did the first time he kissed me, back before Reese was here, back when he was straight, way back on the other side of this love we share. Then he kisses me, and it's like the first time I've ever been kissed. The first time anyone's ever kissed anyone. Fuck, how can he always do this to me?

Finally, he releases me, and I try to make my knees bear my weight again.

"You guys..." I murmur. I shake my head, and they laugh. "I can't believe it's been so long."

"Not our fault," objects Calvin, who has slung his arm around Reese's shoulder.

"Yeah, we were just at Aunt Emily's cabin. You could have come up anytime, but no, you had to go gallivanting around Eastern Europe all summer."

I had spent a good part of the summer on a service trip with my friend Pete, who lives next door to Calvin and Reese with his boy Nick.

"Hey! We were just making the world safe for democracy!" I cry, defending my honor. They laugh at me. "And there might have been the occasional Bel Ami boy who needed to be liberated from his narrow view of sexuality." They laugh harder. "Hey, I got service credits for it toward graduation!"

This cracks them up completely. Calvin is the first to recover.

"Wait! Wait!" he laughs, his eyes streaming. "You finagled college credit for blowing your way across Buttfuckistan?"

"Shut up, you crude jock," I mutter, taking a swipe at his rock-solid shoulder. "It wasn't like that."

They dry their eyes, and nod their heads seriously as if trying to convince me that they believe that it was not, in fact, like that. They don't succeed at this.

"Now, are you going to show me your glamorous den of sexual iniquity, or what?"

They take two steps back, and I take two steps forward.

"There, now you've had the full tour," Calvin says. The small room is a mirror-image of Pete's, next door.

"We just got here this morning, so we haven't really set it up," Reese says. "But it was sure nice of the U to give us a double bed."

"Actually, I think that's queen size, which makes it perfect for you two," I laugh. I love to tease the guys, as they've been out for less than a year. Before one weekend last fall when all three of us found ourselves at Reese's aunt's cabin, they were sure they were straight.

"So," I say, flopping myself down on the bed. "Tell me about this job that you're working on for me. Does it involve helping jocks wash those hard-to-reach spots?"

"You are such a perv," Reese says, shaking his head in the disapproving manner of a shocked suburban housewife. But he's smiling as he does it.

"Yeah," Calvin nods, "All I had to do was go to the athletic director and tell her that I knew a guy who could help rid our teams of their distracting pre-game hard-ons. She totally wants to give you the first scholarship in Advanced Fellatio Studies."

I throw a pillow at him, pointlessly. It bounces off him without a sound. Reese catches it on the way down, glares at me, tosses it back on the bed.

"Well, what is it then? Scrubbing fungus off the mats in the weight room? Picking muck off of cleats?"

"One word," Calvin says, his eyes aglow with expectation. He looks like he's going to bust.

I wait.

"What's the one word?" See? Terrible at waiting.

"Towels," he says, then takes a breath and stares at me as if he fully expects me to pass out from excitement.

"Towels?" I ask.

"Towels."

"Towels?" I ask of Reese, hoping he can help me understand what this means.

"Towels," he says, nodding gravely. Great.

"So, what do I do with towels in this dream job you've come up with?"

"Well," Calvin begins, suddenly channelling a car salesman offering the best deal ever, "You know that they're going to be opening the new athletic complex next week."

"Yeah, I noticed that the construction site was all cleaned up. It was fun while it lasted--sometimes those construction workers were pretty hot. Though they didn't always appreciate my whistling at them."

Reese fixes me with a disbelieving squint.

"You harassed construction workers?"

"Just when there were hot ones. Most of the time it was a total loss--you know, the slobby ones with the saggy coveralls--but at the end of the summer when the lifers were needed on other jobs, they brought in the reserves. Mostly guys from the construction program at the tech college. They would wear just tight jeans, steel-toed boots, and a tan." I sigh at the recollection.

"You are impossible," Reese chuckles. Clavin raises his eyebrows, asking if he may be allowed to continue. I straighten my face, and nod expectantly.

"So, as part of the new locker room setup, they have a big shower area in the middle of all of the different sports' locker rooms. Everyone showers up in the same place, instead of having a bunch of smaller showers scattered around."

"Well, yea for architectural efficiency," I cheer, with ironic jazz hands conveying my sarcasm. "I'm all for packing the showers with as many jocks as possible, but I still don't get the towel part."

Calvin sighs. He's always been charmed by my inability to listen quietly. He's chewing his lip he's missed me so much.

"I'm getting to that. Now, when every sport had its own shower, the towels got scattered all over the place. They lost hundreds of them. People would take them home, or just drop them somewhere, or stuff them into a duffel that they would leave at some chick's house, or whatever. Cost the U thousands a month."

"Okay, so I'm supposed to hunt down lost towels? Do I get a bounty? Can I rip them off of the guys in the locker room? Cause that would be awesome. Do I get a badge or something?"

Calvin just looks at me and shakes his head, wearily.

"No. What you do is work at the towel counter next to the showers. You hand guys a towel when they walk into the shower area, and you collect it when they walk out. Simple as that."

I try to figure out why Calvin thinks that handing out dry towels and collecting wet ones would be the perfect job for me.

"I don't get it. That sounds like it would be really boring."

"Think about it, Einstein. When the guys walk past your counter, they are going into the shower. And when they come back and hand you their towel, they're on their way back from the shower."

Then it hits me.

"So I sit at a counter, and hand towels to naked jocks."

Calvin nods.

"And then I collect towels from them so that they are naked again."

He nods again, more vigorously.

"So it'll basically be a non-stop parade of hot naked guys."

He and Reese both nod, laughing at my slowly dawning awareness of how awesome this is.

"And it gets better," Calvin says.

"It can't get better, unless we also make it a kissing booth."

"Oh it does. When there aren't any teams using the showers, you go around to the other parts of the facility and stock the towels, and collect the used ones."

"Which other parts?"

"How about the training rooms, where guys get rubbed down after practice?" Reese snickers when my eyes light up at the insinuation in his husky voice.

"And the sauna and whirlpool area," Calvin adds, "And the weight room."

"Holy fuck," I gasp, "You were right. I would actually pay to have this job. I'll be able to cancel my subscription to the Str8 Frat Dudes site!"

"I thought your buddy Nick got you a free membership since he works there," Reese asks, always eager to remind me that he knows all about my porn addiction. Of course, if I had a naked Calvin in bed with me every night I wouldn't give a crap about porn either. Bastard.

"I'm just making a point," I sniff at Reese, pretending to be offended. "I'm going to have to wear compression shorts on the job, though. Unless I need an extra place to hang towels."

Ignoring my subtle innuendo, Calvin continues. "On Monday I'll introduce you to the athletic director. I've already told her about you, so all you need to do is not come off like a drooling pervert and the job is yours."

I hope I can do that.

"You are amazing, Calvin," I say, throwing my arms around him. "I don't know how to thank you."

His leer says he has some ideas. He grabs me around the waist, lifts me off the floor, and walks toward the bed. Next thing I know, I'm on my back, Calvin on top of me. Reese pads around the room, switching off the light and drawing the curtain. Then he joins us on the bed.

"So, I was thinking, before we get dinner," Calvin murmurs, kissing his way along my throat, "That we should commemorate our reunion."

I feel Reese's hand snaking up my leg, seeking my already surging cock. "Just like old times," he purrs.

"If you mean old times like when we camped on the beach in May and fucked sand into every crevice, then I'm in."