My Hero

The model does 20 half-minute poses, keeping time with her phone which beeps every 30 seconds. What people might not realise is that nude drawing in art school isn't as sexual as they think. It's very intense and mentally draining. Even if it was a super hot guy, any interest would quickly be lost in the task of capturing their pose in the short amount of time. And besides, if you're searching for a dick to perve on, there are better places than a $400 art class to look.

When the model switches to full-minute poses the pressure in the room dissipates. I can't help but wonder how Otis is doing and look over to see him sitting slumped in his chair doodling lazily. Unlike most of the other students who actually care about the subject and have a sketchbook, he is drawing on plain photocopy paper with a ballpoint pen.

And then I see his sketches and my jaw drops. He's good, I realise. In fact, he's better than me. I watch Otis capture the model's pose with ease using a few confident strokes, and then blindly complete the finer details without needing to look away from the model. He has near perfect hand-to-eye coordination.

The teacher walks over and tuts at my lack of work. Otis starts to look my way, so I duck forward and focus on the task at hand. The current model leaves after a few more poses, and then the next model walks in. She disrobes, arranges her long dreadlocks and picks a starting pose, starting with 10 two-minute poses.

I sketch her in under a minute, and then pick a part of her body to focus on in high detail. I pick her hands as they generally have an interesting way of interacting with light, shadow and foreshortening. The trick is to just draw what you see, not what you think you see.

"Don't be afraid to move seats, students!" The teacher calls imperiously between the third and fourth pose. "Find a new angle you haven't tried yet, or an angle you're not comfortable with. Don't be afraid to mix it up a little; you'll thank me later."

Otis grabs his stack of used papers and relocates to the other side of the room. I watch him walk. He's chubbier than I thought he was; without his doorman uniform his body jiggles a bit, but he moves with the grace of a former athlete. He slumps in his new seat and starts drawing, and I remain unnoticed.

The third model is a skinny young man, lightly toned with an uncut penis. His arranges himself and everyone else starts drawing. I glance at Otis, and I'm surprised to see him sitting up straight in his chair and drawing energetically, his eyes bright with lust. There is so much hunger in his eyes I'm glad I declined his offer to check up on me the night he walked me home.

When the class is done I race home before darkness falls. I make sure the rooms are empty, lock the doors and turn on the lights and settle in for another night of troubled sleep. It's been almost a week and a half since I last jacked off, so naturally I start to touch myself when I can't sleep. I try to think of the nude model from today's class, but my mind keeps slipping not to Arthur, but to Otis and the crazed lust in his eyes. I stroke myself and imagine that lust directed at me, and manage to come all over my shirt.

**

I attend my other daytime classes: photography, traditional animation and a couple of classes based entirely around responding to a fortnightly brief, but don't spot Otis in any of them.

The class we share has two mandatory sessions a week, and hosts the second class on Thursday night. I can't bring myself to be outside when it is night time, much to my own disappointment, so I skip it and work on another therapeutic painting.

When I attend the next Monday class the wall is lined with black and white charcoal artworks depicting the city's night lights from the building's rooftop. Most of them look like stars and streaks of white lost in a sea of black, but one stands out from the rest and I'm surprised to see Otis's name scratched into the corner.

Otis walks in at that moment and looks right at me. He's not wearing his glasses today. I turn around and quickly find a seat, hoping that he thinks I'm someone else. But then I remember I'm still covered in bruises.

Otis sits next to me with his two friends taking their seats on his far side.

"I didn't know you were in this class or I would have said hi," he says by way of greeting.

He introduces Janet and Kyle who I wave back at meekly. Janet has flaming, curly hair and Kyle is as husky as Otis, but clean shaven and bald as an egg.

"I didn't see you on Thursday," Otis says, leaning closer to me. "Are you doing okay?"

"What makes you think I'm not?" I answer defiantly.

"Well I figured you were still too afraid to leave the apartment."

That makes me ignore him for the rest of the class.

The teacher walks in and Otis puts his glasses on, and tells me he only really needs them when focusing. I'm still fuming so I don't even acknowledge him speaking to me. What would he know about being victimised?

When the class is wrapping up, Janet leans over and tells me the three of them plan on going to a movie and dinner afterwards. I'd be welcome to join them.

I politely decline. I have to be home before dark, I tell her, which is true, but for completely bullshit, self-imposed reasons.

As soon as the teacher finishes the class I leave the table with a hasty goodbye, making a quick stop at the restroom before I head home. When I leave the restroom I spot Otis, Janet and Kyle standing huddled in the court yard. Janet and Kyle peel off, and Otis hangs back.

I know I owe Otis a proper thank you. The closest thing I had said was 'thanks, Goat', which only seemed to tick him off. With Otis all alone clutching his loose sheets of drawing paper, now would be the perfect chance. I dash over; he sees me coming and looks at me in surprise.

"Hey Peter."

"Hi. Thank you for rescuing me that night, Otis. I mean it. You saved my life."

"Oh. You already thanked me," he points out with a grin. "But I appreciate it."

He stands there, looking at me, while Janet and Kyle walk further and further away to the car park.

Ah, crap.

"Aren't... Aren't you going with your friends to watch a movie?"

"Nah. I'd be third-wheeling a married couple, and I barely even know them. I only met them last week when they sat at my table, and I think Janet has a crush on me." He seems pleased with the last bit. "So, are you hungry? I was about to grab some dinner here before I head home."

"Oh, here?" The food court is suddenly very appealing to me. Nice and bright, filled with other students and loud chatter. "Sure, okay."

We duck into the noisy food court for what Otis promises to be a quick meal. It should still be light when we finish eating. I get a chicken pie with chips and a Coke, and Otis gets serving of cheesy potato bake with sides of steamed carrots, peas and broccoli. The foam cup in his hand turns out to be tea.

"Healthy eater," I observe.

"The perils of being a vegetarian, Peter," he laughs, and adds, "There's only one meat I'll ever put in my mouth."

The motherly serving lady with silver hair and wrinkles gapes scandalously at him, but the joke flies over my head; I'm too busy squinting at him, trying to see how he manages to stay so large while eating so healthily.

Otis pays for both of our meals and we carry the food on plastic trays to a vacant table. I thank him for paying for my food and offer to pay him back, but Otis waves my offer away and chuckles darkly. "That was Arthur's money I took when he was unconscious."

Memories of my night at Exile fill my mind, and I tense up. The drone of conversation in the food court fades to a quiet ringing and I stare at my food numbly.

"Please don't leave," Otis says suddenly, snapping me out of my daze with a hand on my arm. "I only meant to lighten the mood. It was stupid of me to bring it up."

"Huh?" I look down and see that I'm gripping the sides of my tray. "Oh, I didn't mean to..."

I let go and we start eating in an awkward silence.

Otis makes a brave attempt at conversation. "I really admire your resilience, you know. You're out here and facing the world again. I was in your shoes once, and I couldn't leave my place for two whole months."

I give him a doubtful look which plainly says I don't believe him, which I don't.

Otis stops shovelling potato and peas into his mouth and shows me a faint scar running down the middle of his forehead from his hairline. It's very noticeable once you know it's there. "They hit me so hard my head split open. I had to get stitches and everything -- there was so much blood I thought I was going to die."

"It looks like you were attacked by Voldemort."

He laughs at my reference until he's teary eyed and I smile for the first time in a week.

"So how does a big guy like you get a scar like that?"

"When a big guy like me comes out to his family," he explains stoically, looking me right in the eye. I can see it's an old hurt, the memory scarred over countless times and no longer affecting him. Maybe I'll be the same one day.

"Oh, I'm sorry," I say quietly. I study him furtively behind my hair, trying to identify what it is that made me assume he was straight. "I didn't know you were gay."

Otis shrugs. "Yeah, well, first impressions can be deceiving. I thought you were just a shallow, slutty twink with nothing between his ears when you called yourself Pinky and made out with Matt just to get into Exile. But then you don't take Arthur's money, and look at you now. You've proven me wrong."

"And I thought you were a big violent jock who hated me." I nod at his loose papers with his sketches and wave a hand at our food. "You've proven me wrong too."

We grin at each other happily now that the ice is finally broken.

I find Otis incredibly easy to talk to.

I expected our conversations to be centred on his work, or sports or going to the gym, but he's into the same nerdy stuff I'm secretly into. It's almost like talking with someone who's the same age as me. That's when I find out he's only 31 years old, which is a lot younger than what I had assumed, but still more than a decade on me.

We strike a topic goldmine and talk about art non-stop for a good half hour, discussing inspirations, aspirations and everything in between. He tells he grew up harbouring a desire to one day become a comic book artist; I tell him I'm still unsure about exactly what I want to end up doing. We swap stories of the most ludicrous artwork installation we've seen or been involved with, and he makes me laugh so hard my throat hurts. My cheeks are sore but I can't stop smiling.

Once our meals are finished we push the trays aside and cover the table with the sketches from the class. His are all perfect. We pore over them together for a long time, and I let him flip through my sketchbook while the conversation is fuelled by talk of the class work and mutual compliments on our drawings.

I buy us gelato for dessert and we eat it while strolling out into the grassy courtyard. That's when I realise it is night time, and I'm outside my apartment and feeling happy and safe.

But the dark still has its drawbacks. Just thinking about why I was so afraid pulls my thoughts back to my night at Exile, and I feel a numbness creep through my body. I break out in a cold sweat.

Otis is staring at me, waiting for a reply to a question I didn't hear.

"Sorry?" I hazard a response.

"I said, I'm really having a good time with you, and I'd like to do it again sometime and get to know you better. Can I take you out to lunch tomorrow? On a date?"

His question catches me off guard, and I'm already half-paralysed with fear. My throat locks up and I end up staring blankly at him while I try to think of something to say.

Otis drops his gaze, looking confused and disheartened. He mumbles an apology and turns to leave.

"Wait! Otis. I -- I wasn't --"

He turns back around, but my explanation doesn't seem to want to come out. Everything that's happened to me swims to the forefront of my mind and I suddenly feel tears welling up in my eyes.

Otis pulls me to a wooden bench and throws our gelato cups away. "There, there, it's okay," he murmurs gruffly, patting me on the shoulder. He looks a tad uncomfortable, and glares at the gawking students passing by; he must think I'm broken.

I dry my eyes and assure him I'm okay.

"I'm just not ready -- to do anything. With anyone."

"I'll just have to try again later then, hey?" he suggests kindly, and I silently curse myself for my poor choice of words.

Even if Otis had been a minute earlier with the question before my thoughts were dominated by Arthur, I probably would have said no anyway. Otis is so different from who I ever envisioned myself dating, and so much older than me as well.

My unspoken answer must be showing on my face because Otis suddenly scowls.

"You could have just said no without the waterworks."

He pushes himself to his feet and leaves without a goodbye.

I suddenly find myself out in the dark and dangerous night without my protector. My apartment is close, but I don't think I will be able to get home by foot so I opt for the bus. There's a nerve-wrecking moment when I realise I'd have to wait at the bus-stop all alone, but thankfully there's a large group of noisy students gathered there already.

When I get off the bus I sprint all the way home and go through my usual nightly ritual of locking the doors and turning on all the lights.

**

As the school term builds up, so does my workload. I don't have time to wallow in my sadness, which is wonderfully freeing in an odd, reversed kind of way. Janet is in my photography class, and we quickly get onto talking terms. Just like her red hair, her personality is fierce. She's fun and loud and chatty. I find out she runs the local branch of a digital media company and dreams of one day working alongside with her husband Kyle. It's a sweet dream.

I see Otis in our shared class twice a week, but we no longer talk to each other. Janet and Kyle sit between us. The three of them share a couple of other classes, so our little group of four in that class stays intact. If they notice the iciness between me and Otis, they're polite enough not to bring it up.

Janet and I partner up for a photography project. The theme is motion, and we come up with the idea of capturing water. It's dynamic, it's unpredictable, and she really sells the idea of pelting each other with water-bombs while Kyle takes the pictures as fun. I agree to it, and we meet on the grassy courtyard on a sunny day to do it.

We're having fun, throwing water-filled balloons and buckets of water at each other while fully clothed, and the images Kyle captures look great. When we've exhausted our supply of water-balloons, Janet finds a hose, and giggling evilly, sprays me down. We do some that make it look like I'm shooting water from my hands. As I'm wiping the water from my eyes, I'm horrified to see Otis joining Kyle on the grass.

"Do one without your shirt, with your arms held out like this," instructs Janet, who had stripped down to an undershirt half an hour ago. She's not aware of how uncomfortable I've suddenly become. When I don't move, she holds her own arms out to show me what she means.

I'm reluctant to take my shirt off in public, especially in front of Otis, but Kyle eggs me on and I take it off. I've got a lightly muscled chest and a flat stomach and skinny arms. Otis watches me silently, and I'm reminded of the way he stared at the skinny, nude model. But then Janet attacks me with the water and I forget all about it.

"Come back, you've got it!" Kyle calls a while later, and we trudge over to our bags with our dry clothes and towels in them. Otis stares at my bare chest with his mouth hanging open, as though stunned, before he realises he's staring and quickly looks away.

I cloak myself in my dry towel and review our snapshots with Janet and Kyle, which is when Otis bids us a farewell and leaves us to it. We agree on the best ones and discuss how to refine them in Photoshop for the project, and then exchange Skype details so Kyle can send me my share of the photos. We wrap our meeting up and say our goodbyes, and then I head to the closest bathroom to change out of my sodden clothes.

There are two stalls and a wall of urinals. One of the stalls is occupied, but otherwise it's empty.

I enter the free cubicle, lock and door and begin to peel off my wet garments. That's when a muffled groan alerts me to repetitive rubbing sound -- the guy in the other stall is jerking off. Blood rushes to my groin; I'm immediately turned on. I glance down and I can see the stranger's shadow. I press myself back against the far wall so he can't see mine, and I watch.

The stranger is sitting on the toilet, with a large hand wrapped around his cock, and is jerking himself off so hard and fast the shadow looks like he's punching himself in the pelvis. He has a monster cock, like a third arm jutting forth from between his two tree-trunk legs. When he lets go to scrunch up some toilet paper, I can see the outline of his foreskin slowly roll back to cover the head.

With a wad of toilet paper ready to come into, the man starts masturbating again. The shadow of his fist glides up and down his long, hard cock. I pull out my own erect member and stroke along, but quietly and slowly so the stranger doesn't notice. He strokes himself faster and doesn't bother to keep his moaning quiet, and then with a groan starts unloading with so much force it shoots over the toilet paper in his hand. I hear it splatter wetly over and over against the back of the cubical door and see pearly white droplets land on the floor.

I climax at the same time, though not as heavily. I catch most of it in my hand and I let it drop into the toilet bowl.

"Oh fuck..." I hear Otis grumble at the mess he's made, and I let out a gasp.

I freeze and hold my breath, my eyes glued to his shadow.

Otis freezes too, and I'm worried for a second that he knows it's me, but then he goes back to wiping the jizz from his receding penis and stuffs it back into his pants. With a clink of his belt buckle, he's belted up. The toilet paper dispenser rumbles as he pulls out a handful of paper to clean his semen off the door and floor. He flushes the toilet paper and steps out to wash his hands.

I slowly exhale.

It's silent for a bit, and I'm straining to hear his actions. Then he growls, "Catch you later, Pinky," and leaves in a hurry.

I wipe my hand dry, tear into my dry clothes as quick as I can, then dart into his stall. It still smells like him, like sweat and sex and his seed. I breathe in the scent giddily, growing more and more aroused without really knowing why. When I come to my senses, I wash my hands and venture carefully outside, but Otis is already gone.

**

On Monday it seems like Otis and I will carry on ignoring each other, until the teacher groups the class by table and sends us out into the grounds. She wants us to pair up in our groups and do portraits.

Naturally, Janet and Kyle pair off, leaving me with Otis. We make eye-contact, and it becomes clear neither of us are going to mention what took place in the restroom. We're left to our own devices, so long as we get the portraits done. It's a sunny day, and Otis suggests the outdoors where there'll be a nice juxtaposition of light and shadow. His words, not mine.

He leads me to the roof that I never got a chance to visit when I skipped that first Thursday class.

The view is stunning from up high. Otis joins me while I excitedly capture the view of the city in my sketchbook. He puts on his glasses and draws the building across the street in explicit detail, down to the minute cracks in the plaster and the grunge on the dirty walls.