Chemistry Pt. 01

"Jesus, Tim, what the fuck?"

Tim nods at my crotch. I look down to see my cock standing straight up. I spin away from him, mortified.

"Hey man, I don't give a shit if you jack off in here," he says, winking at me.

"I wasn't jacking off, Tim," I say, turning back to my shower.

Tim just laughs. "Whatever dude." He strides away to a showerhead on the other side of the room.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Tim as my cock deflates. Tim is one of my buddies from last year. I had wanted to room with him this year, but he had already joined a quad with some of his lacrosse friends. Tim is one of the most conventionally attractive guys I know -- tall, dark, muscular, good-looking. Huge cock. Looking at him, I feel no arousal whatsoever. If I were gay, shouldn't he turn me on? Here is one of the hottest guys on campus, naked, just a few feet away from me. I watch him soap up his sculpted, muscular ass. Nothing. My dick is completely soft.

I leave the showers and towel off. Back in my room, Pete is gone. I look at myself in the mirror. Jamie had called me a "beast". Was he hitting on me? Is he gay? Am I sexy to him?

I have less muscle now than when I had been working out religiously in high school, but there is still quite a bit of muscle on me, under some extra padding. I'm not particularly vain about my body, but I do like to work out. I like to feel strong, and an added perk is that my mind seems to function better when I work out regularly.

Looking at myself now, seeing my powerful-looking body, I suppose I could be hot to a gay guy. Maybe one who is into bigger, hairier guys. I am pretty sure some gay guys are into that. Dudes have hit me on before. This past summer, my sublet was in one of the gayer parts of a large city and I had been catcalled a few times as I walked back and forth from work. I remember being amused at the time, but hadn't given it too much thought.

I drop my towel and looked at my fully naked body in the mirror. There is thick, dark hair all over me. It snakes across my shoulders and down the outsides of my upper arms to coat my forearms and even the backs of my hands and knuckles. From the dense forest of my chest, it wraps around my belly and ass, and my legs are covered as well. My cock, soft now, rests on top of more coiled, dark hair. I take a deep breath. I have been self-conscious about my body hair since it had started to grow in earnest, back in middle school. I had long ago given up trying to tame it, and while the guys on my teams had always made fun of me, by high school, I was too big to tease. Eventually, the guys even seemed to respect my ability to produce such remarkable quantities of body hair.

Could Jamie be into this? I stare at the bizarre-looking creature in the mirror. My high school girlfriend had always seemed a bit squeamish about my body. The few times we'd been able to hook up, she'd insisted the lights remain off. And even then, I wasn't sure she particularly enjoyed touching me.

My parents had been really strict about dating. This was a major source of conflict between them and my older sister, who was boy-crazy and who had tried every possible means of deception in order to get into trouble as a teenager. In contrast, I was the quiet and obedient one who followed the rules and didn't ruffle feathers. So it came as somewhat of a shock when I announced at dinner one night that I was dating Zahra, a girl I met at a soccer camp the summer before ninth grade htand who would be attending the same high school as me.

Initially, my parents were enraged -- Zahra was Iraqi -- and had forbidden me from having any contact with her whatsoever. But I held my ground, argued with them calmly and rationally. Once they got around to meeting her and her family, they eventually acquiesced, albeit with incredibly strict parameters as to how and when we could interact.

Like me, Zahra was a very serious student. When we met, she already had plans to become a physician, and swept me up into her life plan, too. We were going to stay together through undergrad; we'd either both be at Stanford or we'd be long distance from wherever we ended up. We'd marry the summer after graduation, before she started med school and I started graduate school. We'd have two children, a boy and a girl, once she finished her residency. Ideally, we'd live close to our families, but it would depend on where we could find jobs. It all sounded fine to me. I was certain that I had found the love of my life, she was everything I'd been told I needed to look for in a girl: smart, family-oriented, virtuous, beautiful.

Her parents were second-gen and a lot more laid back about us than my parents were. They didn't care that I was Iranian and they let us hang out at their house all the time. They did make it very clear, however, that they expected Zahra and I to be "good kids". We knew what that meant. And we were good, mostly.

During our first two years together, we would sometimes sneak into the darkened, unoccupied school theater at our high school to make out between classes. It felt dangerous and kind of dirty, which for two kids like us made it incredibly thrilling. During one of these make out sessions, I mistakenly moved her hand onto my crotch. I got an earful about how she would not be forced into any sexual activity rooted in centuries of male entitlement to women's bodies. Also, she was terrified of getting pregnant and wanted to keep that -- she flicked my hard dick through my pants -- packed away for a long time. After that, I never pressured her to go further than she wanted, and I was happy to let her occupy the driver's seat. As time passed, though, I was increasingly desperate to have sex.

When I was laid up in bed after the operation to repair my leg, my parents let Zahra come visit me in my room, something they never permitted before. With the door wide open, she gave me my first hand job. We were just sitting there, talking about nothing when all of a sudden she reached under the sheet and pulled my dick out of my boxers.

I was shocked. Zahra had elevated dick-avoidance to an art up until this point. I was in a lot of pain, but I was so horny and so delighted it was finally happening; I didn't care that my parents might walk in at any moment. I also didn't care that her forceful motions sent white-hot spikes of pain through my leg and my back. She stared at my dick as she pumped it, intrigued, as though she was doing a fascinating science experiment. I didn't last long. She squealed loudly when I ejaculated, sending jets of cum into the air, some of it landing in her hair.

"Holy shit," I remember her saying, as I scrambled to find an article of clothing to wipe up the cum. She delicately removed the dollop of jizz from her hair and flicked it onto my boxers, laughing. After that, she was more comfortable around my cock. She even gave me a few blowjobs. She never got over her squeamishness around cum, though. She seemed to think it was hilarious and also disgusting.

Eventually, we had sex. She planned for us to lose our virginity to each other when she turned eighteen, a month after me. We both lied to our parents about a school trip and spent the night together at a friend's house whose parents were away. That first time was really awkward. My dick just wouldn't go in. We tried first with a condom and then without. I told her it was OK, that we didn't need to force it, but she was determined to make it work. We tried all sorts of positions until finally, with her on top, I slid into her.

When I was finally inside her, it was like fireworks exploded in my head. But we had to stop almost immediately because she said I was hurting her. We tried again a bit later, and it worked a little bit better. We were able to contrive a few more nights like that, to have sex during our senior year. I think it was physically painful for her, every time.

I wanted to make her come but I don't think I ever really did. I wanted to go down on her but she never let me. When we were naked together, she always seemed a little overwhelmed by how big and hairy my body was. Or at least, that's what I thought, later. In the moment, I hardly noticed that she seemed to try not to touch me too much, or only touched me on the face or the parts of my arms that weren't too hairy.

I was just ecstatic that we were finally having sex. It felt like a powerful, symbolic act that made me a true man. And having sex with her only made me love her more. I was excited about having more and different varieties of sex with her. When I fantasized, it was about Zahra, the things I would do with her. I was looking forward to the sexual adventures we would have together.

I was completely blindsided when she broke up with me, the day after our high school graduation. We had spent the entire graduation day together, taking pictures, attending parties, first at her house and then at my house. The next morning, she called me and told me we were breaking up. I asked her why and she said that our lives were taking us in different directions. We were going to different colleges. We wanted different things. I was too heartbroken to respond, really. I cried on the phone with her and she told me that she would always love me. Then she hung up.

I spent that summer living at home and working in a lab at a local university, absolutely miserable. Most of my friends had already moved away and the few who were still around mostly avoided me; I supposed that they had chosen Zahra. She was always way more social than I was.

When I wasn't in lab I mostly moped around the house, listening to music on my iPod. After a few weeks of that, my dad blew up at me and told me to do something productive with my time. So I downloaded the syllabus for my college's intro computer science class, taught myself Python and worked through most of the course's problem sets. It helped get my mind off of Zahra, and I ended up really enjoying programming. By the time I left for school, I felt a lot better. I wasn't thinking about Zahra too much anymore.

~

I stand up straighter in the mirror. OK, so I have only ever been with one girl. But we had been in love. We had fucked. I am demonstrably straight. I have sex with girls. Not guys.

I look over to where I tossed Jamie's shirt. The image of him wiping his sweaty torso with it flashes back into my mind. I walk over and pick it up. I bring the shirt up to my face and inhale his scent.

Instantly, I am consumed by a memory. A thousand images and sensations flood through me and all at once it is the beginning of last year, freshman orientation, and I am walking into a crowded house party. I am completely wasted, and probably high, too. I am out with my buddies, the group of guys I randomly fell in with, all of us nerdy ex-jocks who had bonded one night in the dining hall laughing about movies, music, TV shows.

I am finally free from the constraints of home, I am out with friends who really get me, even more than my soccer friends from home because these guys are also unashamedly smart and geeky about the same stuff I am into. The five of us are out, hitting up the orientation parties. The night is full of possibilities.

Inside the house it is way too packed to remain together and we scatter into the mass of noise and people. Music is blasting out of huge speakers in the living room and someone has strung up a disco ball. I press into the crowd there, looking for my buddies, but I don't see any of them. Packed in among the throng of sweaty, moving bodies I am too drunk to feel self-conscious and so I begin to dance too.

All of a sudden there is a guy dancing close to me, smiling. I see his green eyes, deep and flashing with brilliant light. His eyes are beautiful... he is beautiful. Uninhibited, newly free, drunk and high, I smile back, grab his arm and pull him in close. I feel the delicious sensation of his body on mine as we move together.

He leans in and presses his cheek against mine. He smells like a mix of sweat and cologne. I am intoxicated by his scent as the lights sweep across us. Chest to chest, I feel the give of him, how we seem to fit together, packed in among a hoard of strangers. My cock stiffens against him, and I feel him slide his thigh between my legs to press into my erection. I feel his hardness against me, too. After a moment dancing like that, he puts his hand on the back of my head and says something into my ear. Either it is too loud, or I am too wasted, but I don't register what he says. He looks at me again with his huge green eyes and then he's gone, and I am dancing alone again.

I stand here, in my dorm room, naked, with the shirt still raised to my face. The memory has come to me in just a few moments. In the mirror, my eyes are glassy as the vision of the party lifts from me. My cock is hard again. A strand of clear fluid is hanging down from the tip. I catch it across my fingers rub it between my fingertips, feeling its slickness.

I toss Jamie's shirt into my laundry basket. I dress quickly, not wanting Pete to walk in on me standing here naked. The intensity of the vision I've just had disturbs me. It seems so real, but doesn't square with any experience that I've actually had. Have I? Ever danced with a guy -- with Jamie -- like that? I shake my head and get out of the room as quickly as I can to go eat dinner.