Awakened Ch. 05

I spent the next few weeks buried in my work. Having been a bit distracted, I needed to focus. I was still working through what amounted to a paid assistantship, and like all of those one rung above an intern, the hope was to roll into some type of advancement. I didn't have the luxury of time, I needed to perform. I was getting into the lab by 7:30 and leaving twelve hours later, crashing completely on the weekend.

A month or so passed without notice. I'd taken a small break from my nascent pastime of self-pleasure and turning on strangers. It just wasn't on the agenda at the moment, nor was socializing.

Despite this, I was irked that I hadn't heard from my new hoard of friends. I thought Cass would ask Kenny for my number and at the very least, send a text. I decided to pay Kenny a visit in his réglage professionnel as my hair was transitioning from sexy-loose to out-of-control.

"Hey, girl, Oh my God, hang on!", Kenny yelled out as he continued to work on two customers simultaneously. He came over, quietly admonishing me, "Hey -- you need to call first and make an appointment like a normal person!" as he gave me a quick duck-hug. "Where have you been?"

"Oh, just swamped at work, I'm support luxuries like my own apartment, and food"

"Well, if you need a roommate, I know a guy. I mean, I know lots of guys, but this one is bordering on homeless -- don't worry, he's gayer than me, he won't molest you", he said, erupting into laughter. "Unless you want him to! I think he is bi-curious, or at least in test-drive mode. So wow, OK, I have two customers, I can fit you in at 3, can you come back?"

"Oh, yeah, of course", I replied.

I treated myself to lunch and then started to daydream. It was great to get away from work, from the importunate expectations. I finished my tuna salad, let Kenny do his magic while he chattered away.

"God, wow, so like, what did you think of my squad?" Kenny asked.

"Oh yeah, they were all very nice. Are we going to hang out again?"

"Of course, we hang all the time! Hey, what do you think so far?"

He wheeled me around, my loose curl was now quite straight with a slight jagged cut at the front. I looked very different, and it took me a second.

"You're not going to cry again are you?" he said, chuckling, "I think this is some of my best work".

"Yeah, no, it's great, thank you! You always seem to give me a makeover, it takes a second to adjust", I smiled. The girl in the mirror looked sexy, confident, at ease with herself, the kind of girl that stands with her legs crossed to accentuate her curves. A bit more evolved than the soul in the pilot's chair.

"I was serious about the roommate thing, by the way. His name is Dale, he's a musician which is the same thing as saying he works at Costco, but funny as hell - kinda quiet until he gets to know you -- and hot as fuck."

"Oh, Kenny, I totally would, but I just have a studio."

"Dale doesn't care, he's been sleeping on Curt's floor, but Curt hooked up with this guy Sandy - oh my God can you believe his last name is Beachy? Like, sandy beach, but 'Beachy'. Anyway, Curt's all like, we need our space and shit like that so now Dale has nowhere to go and he can't stay with me because he knows I'll just spend all my time trying to fuck him".

The help with the rent would have been a Godsend, but sharing a studio was out of the question.

"Well, just meet him, OK, we are going to CJ's tonight, do you know where that is?".

I agreed while Kenny gave me terrible directions, which I nodded to and then completely ignored, then I went home and took a nap.

The phone woke me up, several hours later. I couldn't hear anything but background noise and someone yelling.

One "Wooooh!", and then they were talking to someone else. I cranked up the volume and strained to hear, then suddenly a voice boomed into my cochlea so hard I dropped my phone on the floor, quickly picking it up.

"Hello?"

"Where the fuck are you!?"

I furrowed my brow.

"Kenny?"

"Fuck yeah it's Kenny! Get down here!"

It was nearly 9, so I put on some mascara, tried to get my hair back into something resembling the salon-shaped coiff that Kenny had effortlessly styled a few hours earlier, and headed down to CJ's.

"There she is, hey girl!", Kenny said, waving spastically to me even though I was standing four feet from him.

"Yeah, sorry I'm late, I fell asleep."

"Oh, that's OK, let me introduce you!"

Because of course Kenny would have twelve completely new friends that I had never met. They all had that look that smart people have, the kind where they look you in the eye, smile warmly, sometimes a nod, or the tilt of the head. Self-possessed people, the kind of people that didn't mind keeping a waiter waiting while they fine-tuned their order, the kind of people that sent food back, and only used the word "like" in the context of a simile or approval. I wasn't one of those people, but thanks to Kenny, I now at least looked like I was, so I decided to pretend I, too, had the world by the balls and was on the brink of getting a startup funded.

And this commitment to confidence lasted nearly 5 minutes.

"Where have Sin-Joon and Cass been?", I asked Kenny in one of those quick moments where he wasn't commanding center stage.

"Oh, Sin-Joon went back to China, and Cass is pissed at me because I wouldn't watch her cat, but oh my God I'm allergic to cats, what the fuck am I supposed to do, spend two weeks sneezing so she can pretend to be a hippy in Portland?"

"Sin-Joon went back to China?" I asked, stunned.

"Yeah, I think her visa ran out".

I sat and thought for a moment. China is so, so different, so culturally structured.

"China isn't very accepting of gays or trans", I said quietly. I'd been thinking it, but my mouth made the independent decision to vocalize.

"Oh, well, she should be fine, since she's neither of those! Although she does have a flat ass and boyish frame", Kenny responded, as he squinted towards the far entrance of the bar.

"Kenny, no, no, she's..." - whispering hoarsely - "she's transgendered!"

He studied my face as if I were an alien life form. Then he burst out laughing, but my expression didn't change, so he attempted to shield his smile, shaking his head quickly.

"Ok, wow, so like, how did you figure it out? ". Then, to himself, "CASS." He sighed, "nobody is supposed to know, this is like Dale's big secret. I'm going to kill her, that is so totally uncool...".

"Cass didn't tell me."

"Then how did you find out?". Kenny suddenly inhaled sharply, "Did something happen when they took you home?" - leaning in, whispering - "Oh...my...Jesus, what happened?"

Kenny had me by the arm and was suddenly walking me to a quieter corner of the bar.

"What happened. Tell me everything."

So I told him what I could remember, with Kenny reasoning in some of the missing blanks. Dale and Sin-Joon had dated for two years, shared an apartment, but left Costco-Dale homeless when she returned to China, and now he was couch-surfing with anyone who would take him in.

"You little minx", he said, laughing in disbelief, " you went home and had a little orgy". This followed by silent hysterics, before recovering: "Jesus! It really is the quiet ones you have to watch out for!"

Then he looked horrified. "Well don't let Dale know that you know, when you meet him. I mean, it's the Castro, but some people are still sort of not ready to let others know they like to be fucked up the ass".

I wasn't really listening at that point. That gorgeous guy from Lost had just walked in, at least six inches taller than everyone else, broad-shouldered, chiselled jaw, the kind of guy that would punch me in the arm and call me "dude" to quietly assure me that he wasn't interested. I turned back to Kenny, who was frantically motioning with his arm.

"Fuck, Dale's here, don't say anything!"

Tall lost guy joined our table.

"Ok, everyone, this is Dale, hold up your drinks and fucking toast to Dale!", Kenny yelled out.

Dale had one of those bodies like a swimmer: thin, but sturdy - a vee-shape accentuated by his tight tee-shirt. He had two tattoos, both on his left arm. His dark brown hair mowed down like a golf green, and large, dark brown eyes.

I leaned over to Kenny, "tell Dale he is welcome to crash at my place". His reaction, of course, was completely ungoverned, high-pitched merriment. "Of course he is, baby!".

Kenny made the arrangements, Dale would be at my place on Sunday afternoon, giving me enough time to purify the bathroom into a state of antiseptic shock and to purchase an air mattress, which proved to be much heavier than I had anticipated, especially up to the second floor.

"Need help?" asked my neighbor, who happened to be coming down the stairs with a box of his own.

"Oh, no, thank you though!"

Four months in, and I still didn't know that person's name. He seemed nice though, despite the dreaded backwards chapeau.

I put the finishing touches on the kitchen and the air mattress finished filling up when I got the text from Dale: on my way, roomie!

Roomie...this was the slightly-improved metonym for 'dude', but not by much.

About ten minutes later I heard the steps creaking followed by a slightly hesitant knock.

"Hey!", Dale said, breathlessly, with a green bag slung over his right shoulder. I hadn't really had a chance to talk to Dale much at the bar, as it was obstreperous and a bit Kenny-centric.

"Come on in, I'll give you the tour", I said, hoping to stem the alluvial awkwardness that was immediately flooding in.

"This is it. Kitchen's there, bathroom...your bedroom", I nodded towards the air mattress. "Any food allergies, weird sleeping hours...bad habits?"

He laughed, "not really, nothing out of the ordinary - I don't think you'll notice me here, actually. I don't cook, and my band is going to be out of state for two weeks starting on Thursday".

"Oh, wow, that's easy. I feel guilty for charging rent."

Dale's expression went into extreme raised-eyebrow earnestness.

"No, don't, this is perfect, exactly what I need."

Dale went to the air mattress, testing it with his hand, then smiling. "Oh yeah!", testing more, "this will so work!"

So that was it. Nothing formal - a pretty simple understanding - a purely business symbiosis without a written contract, each party ready to live up to their end of the bargain.

It took a little bit of adjusting. I had never lived with anyone outside of my parents and my freshman year of college. I didn't really do anything differently, other than timing my bathroom visits to when he wasn't in the apartment.

Also, I had purchased a couple of pairs of sweatpants for bed, along with some new tee shirts, as sleeping nearly-nude no longer seemed like an appropriate option.

Dale and I engaged in light conversation after work most nights -- neither of us mentioned Sin-Joon - at first. Eventually he came to learn that I was acquainted with both her and her friend, Cassidy. He even admitted that while he did miss her, they had fizzled out some as of late, and had become mostly just roommates.

I honestly hated Dale's band. Not the members -- just their music. We'd gone to see them at a tiny club in upper Haight a few days after Dale's immigration into my world. The band's sound was something of a cross between Brit pop and old-school disco, which makes it sound cool, but it's not. It was kind of tuneless, and the vocalist/drummer wasn't good at the tasks on either side of that slash.

"What did you think?", Dale asked late the next morning.

"Oh wow, it was so...it was like, you guys have your own sound, you know what I mean?"

I wasn't a music aficionado, but I didn't want to lie and tell them they were great.

"Yeah, definitely, I kind of think you can hear our influences." - followed with a deep-thought squint: "I mean you can definitely hear The Verve, Starsailor, and Elbow, but I don't think people pick up on White Blood Cells or Exhibit A."

"Oh yeah...I definitely didn't pick up on any of that."

The more I got to know Dale, the more he morphed from Dale the pseudo-God to Dale the older brother I never had. Yes, he had that body, and a face that would make talent scouts for VNY swoon, but he didn't have a lot of layers. His thoughts were precluded by a facial preview of whatever he was about to say, often for a weirdly-protracted amount of time, resulting in an unintended comical effect regardless of what he was about to say. He was in his mid-thirties, drifting, and looking for the kind of breakthrough in the entertainment industry that didn't really happen any more.

He was sort of sweet, pathetic, endearing, hopeless, helpless. He was many things, just not sexy.

Dear Reader, are you still with me? Sorry for going on like this, but there was no easy way to get there, no easy way to go from how I had been fucked by Dale's girlfriend to getting Dale for a roommate to being drenched in his cum...the last part being the thing that happened during his last week at my apartment.

So, let me skip ahead a few weeks to the day I waxed him.

"Welp, say goodbye to this", Dale said suddenly one afternoon, partially pulling down his shorts and boxers. I wasn't sure what I was about to see. For a split second I thought he was having his penis removed and needed someone to witness its existence before the guillotine, or perhaps he needed to prove he was well-past puberty. I only saw a mess of black hair.

"Uh, goodbye?" I said, looking as baffled as my face is capable of expressing.

"My tat...look...", I peered down a bit. I could now make out a greenish 'SJ'.

"Sin-Joon", he explained.

"Aah. Well...you can't go in there like that".

"Like what?"

"Uh, like Sasquatch. You're having it removed, right?".

"Oh...oh yeah, right I had to shave it down for the tattoo, but they really want you to wax so the ink doesn't like, infect the follicles."

"Right", I said, nodding.

Dale looked around the room with his arm sort of slung up to the back of his head.

"Do you, like, know where I could get that done?"

"No, not really, I mean probably any salon. Go to the Castro, they probably wax guys all the time".

He nodded, but looked pretty unsure of how that may go.

"Dale, you have the world's worst poker face. Do you want me to do it?"

"You can do that?"

"Of course, I do myself all the time."

The double-entendre had no time to languish as I went into the bathroom to collect my waxing kit.

"Oh, like now?"

"Well, yeah...when are you getting it removed?"

"Uh, tomorrow".

"Ok, well I work tomorrow, let's do this."

So Dale got down to his skivvies and laid down on the air mattress.

"Dale...I can't really do this if you keep your boxers on."

"Oh right. Are you sure this is OK?"

"Yeah, don't worry, I'm practically a professional."

"Can I have a towel?"

It was cute how shy Dale was.

"Dale, there's really nothing to be embarrassed about, honestly."

Men are so self-conscious when it comes to their soft penises. I don't care if it's small - I really don't. I think men are much more concerned about their dicks than women are. In the end, I'm much more turned-on by the size of one's brain than the size of his package ("Big-bulge Brad" notwithstanding ).

I went to the bathroom to get my coconut oil and baby powder. When I returned, Dale was lying on the mattress with a small white hand towel covering his lower abdomen. His body was quite something, especially considering I'd never seen him go to gym.

So I applied the waxing strips, and laughed as he winced each time I pulled them off.

"Wow, you really let this go, huh?"

"Yeah, I didn't want to see that tat, it was a huge mistake. You shouldn't get anyone's name permanently on your body. Unless it's someone who will definitely be there forever, like your mom, but who wants to see your mom's name on your body when you make love?"

"Good point."

I continued to excavate his lower torso until it was smooth, red, and quite hot, and had him completely bald from the beltline to just above where the towel provided some form of apologetic modesty.

Each time the wax is applied, you have to wait a few seconds - maybe five - rub it back and forth for best result, and then strip it off. It can leave one quite red and sore, but you do actually get accustomed to the pain. Dale was getting through it like a champ. I had his lower midriff completely devoid of hair, but it looked a bit odd as a lot of dark hair splayed about from just under the towel.

"Dale?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you want me to do the rest?"

"Oh...oh no, that isn't necessary. I mean, do you think I should?"

I had read somewhere that men will sometimes shave themselves in order for their equipment to appear larger, not hidden in a dark thicket of undergrowth. I knew this might give Dale a much-needed shot of confidence in the phallic department. Plus, in all transparency, I had never actually seen a man's penis in real life, and my curiosity was getting the better of me, no matter how diminutive the subject at hand may have been.

"Oh, I think the less hair you have down there, the better. I, myself, have none, I wax at least every three weeks."

"Well...if you think it will make a difference", he said, as I removed the towel and put it aside.

"I think it will make a difference. I think the difference will be - uh...huge..."

I could barely finish my thought as my eyes gazed upon the largest flaccid penis I had ever seen not on a ranch. I audibly gasped.

"I'm totally sorry, if you're not comfortable I completely understand", Dale said, starting to move off of the mattress. I placed a hand gently on his stomach.

"Dale, it is so, so OK."

"I guess I'm just a little self-conscious because of...I mean, down there. I got made fun of a lot in school. The boys spread rumors around and the girls started to call me Mr. Big. I thought at first it was after that guy in "Sex and the City" - my sis watched that show, like all the time. I was confused because I like, look nothing like that guy.

But later I found out it was because of..."

He silently pointed to his colossal member.

I patted him softly.

"Dale, I will never, ever judge you. Don't worry. Think of me as a doctor, or like, a professional waxer at a salon!"

It wasn't just big, it had its own set of curves, like a fat, elongated, cream roll. It protruded out, then down, then out again, in a fat, question-mark shape. And truly, it did generate questions in my mind. How did he make this work with Sin-Joon? How was she able to walk around after having that thing...I shuddered. No wonder she high-tailed it back to China.

And most guys would relish being called "Mr. Big", but Dale was a bit different. Far more reserved than one would expect, particularly someone that called themselves a rock musician.

I went about my business, ignoring the elephant trunk in the middle of the room as best I could. I applied the wax, rubbed, removed hair, and concentrated on the task before me. He was really looking smooth, and eventually, I had removed hair everywhere except his balls.

"Dale, you're doing so good! Does it hurt?"

"Well...it did at first, but I got used to it".

"Ok, well this next part is going to be kinda sensitive, so you might want to clutch something, or bite on a towel", I said, chuckling.

Of course, in order to get to his balls, I had to move that heavy leviathan resting on top of them out of the way. I gingerly moved it over his left flank, not able to resist giving it an ever-so-gentle rub with the palm of my hand. My hand dithered a bit, moving slightly up and down before reaching for the wax.

I was consumed by several thoughts: how big did it get?

Was it sensitive?

Did it get fully hard?

I was determined to find these things out...