Chemistry Pt. 05

What time is it?

I look at the clock. It is three AM. No, it is 1:45 am. No, it really is three. I rub my temple. The music is way too loud. I turn it off.

"How was that... for you?" Jamie says. He's flopped back down on my bed.

"Um," I say, looking at him, not sure how to answer him. I furrow my eyebrows.

"Not much of a talker, are ya, buddy?" he says.

"Sorry... I... I'm just..." I say, floundering. I can't seem to find words.

"It's OK," Jamie says, interrupting me. "I get it... I'll take off." He sits up and picks up his shorts from the ground and starts to put them on.

"No," I say, quickly. I move over to the bed and grab his arm. "No, please stay."

"Are you sure?" Jamie says, smiling at me a little dubiously.

"Yeah I'm sure," I say. "I want you here... with me... tonight." This, at least, feels true. I sit down on the bed and reach my hand up to his cheek to kiss him.

He presses into me and our kisses become deeper, more intense. I pull him down to lie with me, belly to belly. We're both hard again, my hand is on his cock and his is on mine, stroking each other as we kiss. His body, being in physical contact with him, his lips, is like being on some kind of powerful drug.

Jamie breaks our kissing and looks me in the eyes. The breeze from the window is cooling the sweat on our bodies. He lets go of my cock and reaches up to twirl designs in the hair on my chest.

"You know... I could get used to this," he says.

I smile at him, reeling in the affection that is passing between us. It occurs to me that I'm lying in bed with a guy, a guy I just fucked. I should be horrified at what just happened, but this feels so... natural. Easy. I want to tell him this, how great it feels to lie here with him, the length of him pressed against me, our breath coming in and out of sync with each other. But I can't summon my voice.

Instead, I stroke his cheek and then kiss his lips gently. After a minute or so, he rolls over so that his back is against my chest. He grabs my hand and pulls it up into the center of his chest and snuggles against me so that my cock, still mostly hard, is nestled up against his ass crack. I press my face into the hair at the back of his head and inhale deeply, letting his scent flood into my body.

Our breath deepens. As I drift away from consciousness, I feel his heartbeat, his breathing, the tiny twitches of his muscles releasing into sleep.

~

When I wake up, Jamie is gone. The fitted sheet has come off my mattress and is balled up in the crevice along the wall and I am lying directly on the rough plastic mattress cover. The skin of my back peels off of it, making a sickly, almost velcro sound when I sit up. I look around at the room. It's trashed. Pete's bed is a mess, and I see what looks like webs of dried cum on his sheets and comforter. There are clothes and books and papers scattered everywhere around the floor, empty bottles and food wrappers. Fucking hell.

I stand up and inspect myself in the mirror. I look like shit. My beard has grown in thick and there are large, dark bags under my eyes. There is a look in my eye that I don't quite recognize, the stranger looking back at me again. It's creepy, and I turn away.

There is a soreness in my crotch. I pull the elastic of my underwear down and inspect my cock. It's swollen, puffy along the shaft. I flash to a memory of slamming it into Jamie's ass, from behind, watching his butt slap against me. My cock starts to stiffen, but I stuff it back into my underwear.

When did Jamie leave? I must have been out cold. It is almost noon. Despite not having been drunk last night, I feel hung over and my memory is really fuzzy. I can't quite remember what happened, just that it -- that something -- had happened. Right? I look at the wastebasket, and see the open end of the used condom hanging over the edge. There is the shameful evidence, right there.

OK. Let's see, what do I do first? I rub my face with my hand and my palm is crusty with something, probably a mixture of dried... fluids. Ugh. I am not going to be able to think straight until I have a shower. I grab a towel and my shampoo and head to the bathroom.

In the shower room, my thoughts swirl with the steam, evanescent and incoherent. The grime on my body washes away, but I sense a residual filth that I can't scrub off. I can't pinpoint the source of the uneasy feeling, it works its way out from inside me until my skin feels like it is crawling with worms. I shut off the water and the squirming, itching sensation mounts, sending me into a panic, but then, suddenly, it's gone, and I am just standing there, myself again. I wipe the water from my face.

In the mirror of the bathroom, I see my beard has grown beyond the point where I can use a razor to shave it off. I will have to get my clippers. I will do it later today. I leave the bathroom and walk back to my room, wrapped in my towel. Just as I am opening my door, one of the guys from the room next door pokes his head out.

"Hey, bro," he says, loudly.

"Yeah?"

"Keep it down at night, OK? I don't need to hear you banging your bed into the wall," he says. His expression is angry.

"Oh, sorry man," I say, embarrassed.

He slams his door shut. Well, shit. I enter my room. The smell hits me immediately. The room reeks of... dude. An overpowering musty, sweaty, funky smell. I see that the window has fallen shut so I open it to get some fresh air circulating. I prop Pete's fan up next to the window to pump more air into the room. Then I gather the sheets from my bed and also from Pete's bed and stuff them into my laundry hamper. Gotta remember to do laundry.

I realize that I am starving. When did I eat last? There is no way I can make it to the dining hall before it closes for the afternoon. And it's the weekend so there is no dining hall open again until five. Shit. Why is everything so difficult right now? My mind is full of fog and I can't focus on any one thing for more than a fraction of a second. I sit down at my desk and hold my face in my hands.

Amir. Amir, focus.

I stare at the surface of my desk and try to clear the fog from my head. Images and sounds fly across my mind in random constellations. Jamie's smile, Jamie's laugh, Jamie's chest, Jamie's grunting as we fuck. Pulsing music, the sound of the fan in the window. A shriek from outside in the quad.

The usual controlled order between my ears is not coming. What's more, the thoughts that do come are jagged and irregular, almost violent. Like someone is pushing them into me, physically, piercing my brain with broken bits of glass, each containing a fragment of some larger truth that has shattered.

Increasingly uneasy, I push up from my desk to get dressed. Shorts, T-shirt, socks, shoes. I put everything on deliberately, double checking that I have everything in the right... place. Wallet. Keys. ID. I put each object into my pockets. Then I leave my room and walk outside. The day is bright and hot. I am going to get some food, somewhere. I am going to go for a long walk to clear my head. Too late, I realize that I left my iPod and headphones in my room. I could really use some music, but it seems too fraught, somehow, to go back into that smelly, claustrophobic room. So I just keep walking.