The Big Dumb Jock Who Wasn't

Dear Reader,

This work is longer than usual and will have fewer "juicy bits" than something typically categorized as erotica, and as such I would call it more a romance. My aim was to capture the bewilderment of a young gay man having his first experience in college. My hope was that this work would speak to others who may have had experiences like this, or may have only dreamed of them.

I should have been so lucky to have had someone like Mark looking out for me....

(This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination, or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.)

Ceci n'est pas un roman à clef.

The beginning of my freshman year in college at a gorgeous Catholic university, with its immaculate buildings and grounds in full end-of-summer glory, is still one of my fondest sets of memories. Yes, I was shy outwardly, but not within myself. I seemed to have known forever that I was gay, and though I had had a religious education up until then, I had been taught to think carefully about things, rather than simply feel guilty or fearful. It really was a diverse and liberal education by all accounts, and I was lucky. While the early 90s in those environs was not exactly the time to be "out and proud" outside of a parade or demonstration, and I felt the need to be closeted, I nevertheless was internally quite happy with myself, and I had no shame fantasizing about boys. All the time. Constantly.

And fantasizing was about all I had - the internet at the time was for Those Computer Geeks Who Knew; there were no chat rooms brimming with local collective anonymity to help gay boys meet; there were no cell phones to use for flirtatious texting or photo (ahem) sending. Thinking about it now, I feel kind of lonely for myself! But like I said, I'm lucky to have been at ease internally for most of my life, and I don't have regret about the experiences that made me who I am now.

Moving into the all-male dorm to which I had been randomized with sixty-some other freshmen was as new an experience as I could get. I had never spent significant time away from home, and had always gone to co-ed schools. My only sibling is my younger sister, so suddenly having 250 "brothers" was intimidating, fascinating, and intoxicating all at once. There was an excitement that was almost palpable, that crackled in the air with shouts and hand-slapping and the moving in of boys and their things. And they all seemed nice, and happy that I was there. In retrospect, it was all of the best things about a fraternity without any of the trappings of pledging or rushing or whatever - I was in from the start, and there was an unspoken understanding that we were all obligated to care for each other.

I was reasonably popular toward the end of high school, had a large, close group of friends, and I got along easily with a lot of different people who didn't necessarily get along with each other. But I was also no stranger to being picked on or outright bullied in my more distant past, and I was often nervous to avoid situations where that could happen, or where I might set myself up for it. Be yourself, but don't stand out too much. Go along, but don't be the fool. Imagine kissing him, but don't let him suspect that's what you're thinking.

I had been mailed (with a stamp) the names of my two roommates: Mark Harden whose family lived about an hour from the University, and Rick Schultz, who was from farther afield in Texas. I was in the middle, growing up about a four-hour drive away. The three of us were to share a single large room, and since Mark lived close, he and his dad had measured the room and pre-built a loft for his bed. It was already installed when I arrived with my things, which left Rick and me to decide between a lower and an upper bunk. I wanted these guys to like me, so I was fairly passive about making any decisions or asking for anything, and I ended up with the top bunk. I had never slept that high (and briefly thought about the injuries I might acquire) but Rick probably hadn't either; the quickness with which he picked the lower bunk when I offered him the choice made me suspect he might be thinking similarly.

There weren't pictures and videos of Mark and Rick on the internet to look at, so when I met them in person, it was the first time I was seeing them. Mark was buff. Beefy, in fact. Scarily so. He seemed nice enough, but I also felt that if I weren't crazy about his prefab loft and choice of where his bed and desk were, there'd be little I could do about it. He kind of spoke in grunts and loudly, but he didn't seem overtly hostile. His hair was a short sandy blond with some curl, and his eyes were a bright pale blue; he was also pretty tan, but I could tell his skin was really fair - the kind that turned pasty in the winter. Rick was quieter with a low, soft voice, darker, smooth features and a lot of freckles, black straight hair, and deep brown eyes. He seemed shier than I felt, and he perpetually wore a dark, fitted baseball cap. Between the two of them, I didn't imagine us three getting into deep conversations, sharing too much about ourselves. Maybe that was okay, though, since there was part of me I wasn't comfortable sharing with them.

During the move-in and orientation days, Mark often came and went, since his family was so close and could easily come down for the day. Other parents, including Rick's and mine, stayed in hotels for at least a day before their travels back home. Rick's dad was an alumnus and decided to stay for several days, and since my parents had to get back home, and Mark and his family weren't around, he invited me out with Rick and his sister when they'd get dinner. He was excited to be back at his alma mater, and he was the gregarious story-telling sort - the kind who seems like a riot to his kid's friends, but not to his kid. Me: buy me dinner and tell me hilarious stories of getting in trouble at this school? Yes please! Rick: heard them all before, don't embarrass me dad, thanks.

I thought that because of this early friendliness with his family, Rick and I might end up hanging out, but his course of study and quiet shyness would ultimately dictate otherwise. We would be "intimate" in one regard, though: I'd never slept closer to another person, or for more time. That first night, the steel frame bunk with its flaking white paint groaned and rocked whenever Rick turned over, or moved even slightly. "This is going to be a long year, Tommy boy," I thought.

We got into the routine of classes, eating, hanging out, studying, and sleeping pretty quickly. I had hour-long classes at 8:00 and 9:00, and an 11:15 class. There wasn't enough time to grab lunch between the last two classes, since the dining hall opened for lunch at 11. This meant I had nothing to do for roughly an hour, and that is how I discovered that for me, falling back asleep in the mornings tends to lead to a sex dream. Unfortunately, like actual sex, thinking about it too hard seemed to prevent it from happening, so by the second week when I was rushing back to my dorm to jump in bed and get to sleep, I often couldn't. Instead, I would settle for fantasizing about any of an entire menu of cute boys I had met. To this day though, if I snooze or turn off my alarm and fall back asleep, there's a moderate likelihood of subconsciously having sex with someone unexpected....

The guys from our dorm tended to eat together in one of the two large campus dining halls, and while I started out going over with Mark or Rick, I soon had a group of friends who had similar majors and classes, and who were also more "my people" - nerdy, non-partying types with quirky interests and habits. My group of friends in high school weren't the drinking sort, so I was relieved to find those in college who weren't part of the sometimes-terrifying drinking culture. For really the first time in my life, I was being exposed on weekend nights to guys (and some girls) so blotto they couldn't walk. Though thankfully our room was never used as a "party room," Mark had quickly turned into a partier, and it was nice to be able escape to quieter places with friends who had more intellectual fun.

Though I had what I thought was a good background in high school chemistry and was planning a career in science, I quickly found out that I was out of my league in my general chemistry course. Several of my tightening group of friends were in the same class, and they would occasionally help me out, as I struggled for the first time academically. Mark was also in the class, and I'd glare at him as he sat with headphones on, obviously paying no attention. I stared in disbelief one day when the professor called on him: Mark took off his headphones annoyedly, the professor asked his question again, Mark answered it without thinking, and then went back to listening to his music. I was even more upset when I found out he was acing tests and simply bored - "Yeah, I had all this a couple years ago, it's boring shit, Hind-lick!"

Most guys had accrued nicknames fairly early on, and having the same last name as the physician who invented the maneuver to save people from choking, I attracted some rhyming doozies. Of course butt licking was funny to a dorm full of guys. Mark pulled "Hardon" somewhat obviously, but also got "Big Hardon" and just "Hard," all of which got my attention. (Was it big? Hard to tell. No, you can't ask, stop thinking about it.) Rick was too quiet for nicknames.

One night I sat on our room's floor, chemistry book open, staring at problems I lacked some fundamental knowledge to solve. Mark was at his desk in his usual t-shirt with some beer logo on it and soccer shorts, doing some work, but not chemistry because that was so easy for him. I growled angrily.

"Chemistry givin you trouble, Hind-lick?"

"Yeah, it fucking sucks. I mean, how do you tell which elements are diatomic? I can't find it anywhere!"

"Oh, 'Hoffbrinkle!'"

"Huh? Who?"

"Hoffbrinkle - H, O, F, Br, I, N, Cl. Those are the diatomic elements in their natural state."

Just like that. He rattled off knowledge that should have been imparted to me in my year-long high school chemistry course, and in a way that I would never forget for the rest of my life. And he wasn't snotty about it, he didn't condescend, he was just... nice. And he spent some more time after that with me, teaching me a couple other things I was struggling with. Ripped and smart - I couldn't tell whether I should hate him or be attracted. But outside of talking about chemistry, he seemed kind of doofy. Like, I didn't imagine having an in-depth philosophical conversation with him, ever.

I mentioned before that I was always a bit nervous about being teased or bullied, and because of that, I had my guard up around my roommates. I had to sleep in the same room with them, after all, and it was definitely no good letting them even suspect I was gay. But I started to be a bit more at ease over time as we lived together. There were several nights when I was up way too late typing a paper (I had a word processor, yikes) and they were kinder than I might have been about it. One weekend, Mark and Rick took a local trip with some of their friends, and I had the room to myself. I was shocked to find that I couldn't fall asleep - I had gotten so used to the bed being in constant motion from Rick's turning, that a quiet room and a still bed drove me crazy. I missed my roommates! And the second night they actually called me to say hello and see how I was. They were probably drunk, but it was touching at the time.

Speaking of drunk, Mark's partying started to get out of hand after a few months into the semester. He would come back to the room and stumble around noisily, reeking of alcohol and sweat, and we'd watch him climb up into his loft and occasionally hit his head on the ceiling. He wouldn't say anything, even when we asked if he needed help. Again, I was unfamiliar with this kind of behavior, and was both annoyed at him, and afraid for him.

One late Friday night, Mark was brought back to the room by some upperclassmen, who left him in a heap on the floor. He wasn't speaking and wasn't moving much, even when we shook him and tapped his face a bunch. Rick was fed up and I was worried; we had both been in our beds and nearly asleep. We pulled Mark's mattress down from his loft and put it on the floor, and then lugged his beefy body onto it. Rick got back into bed, and said, "He'll be fine," when I expressed worry. I didn't know what to do - call for help? Wake up our rector, Father Pat? These seemed to my young and inexperienced mind like ratting Mark out, or getting him into trouble. In retrospect I think he probably should have gone to the hospital, but I was so unfamiliar with so much.

I felt that watching over him would at least be something I could do, so I got a blanket down from my bed and wrapped myself up, sitting next to Mark's mattress on the floor. It was blowy and wintry outside, my favorite time of year, and I was shivering, but more from worry than actual cold. I watched Mark's breathing, slow but steady, and he looked like any other sleeping eighteen-year-old. I'm sure he was beautiful in that peacefulness, compared to how I had seen him drunk at other times, but I didn't think of that at the time. Occasionally he would cough, and I remembered something about laying a person on his side in case he vomits, so he doesn't choke. I tried, and it sounds silly, but it felt like I wasn't strong enough, and I gave up. Rick was snoring soundly, and I figured he would be annoyed at being woken up.

I was getting tired, and I had a campus job to go to in the morning. The only thing I could think to do was to lie next to Mark on the floor, and throw my arm up over his chest, so that maybe if he started to have trouble, it would wake me and I could get help. I felt his strong heart thudding against my arm, not too fast, so that was good? His breathing was even, and he didn't seem to be coughing as much. He was warm, but also he stank of beer. I know that there are lots of stories about sneaking a grope on a passed-out roommate, but that was the farthest thing from my mind; I was scared and scared for him, and I just wanted him to be okay. Despite the beer smell, the gentle rhythm of Mark's breathing and his steady heartbeat eventually made me feel calmer, and I drifted off to sleep.

The sudden contact of my arm with the floor woke me in the morning. My eyes opened to see Mark lifting his mattress over his head and tottering with it back towards his loft. I turned over, sat up.

"Hey, are you okay?" I asked him.

*grunt*

That was all the thanks I got for my night of worry and vigilance. I got up and said nothing more, really wanting to go to my bed, but seeing that it was getting past time to get ready for work. My student job working in the library paid very little, but it kept me from asking my parents for money very often, which felt good, knowing how much they were paying for me to be there. There was time for a late breakfast, and then work until dinner.

The job was rather mundane, reshelving returned books, sometimes other organizational tasks, and it afforded me time to think to myself. In fact, it made me spend time thinking, time I might otherwise have filled with video games or chilling with friends. Some days I wrote papers in my head or worried about an upcoming exam, but today all I could think of was Mark. It was a new sensation for me, to feel the kind of concern I felt for him. Even though I would rather not have been in that situation, I felt it changed me somehow. And when I realized I had basically slept next to a boy, holding him - despite the decidedly non-ideal circumstances - well, I couldn't stop thinking about that. There seemed to be a lot of thoughts flying around my head.

When I returned to the dorm room after work, I found Mark working at his computer.

"Wanna go to the dining hall?" I asked. We didn't usually eat together; maybe I was hoping for an apology, or some acknowledgment of having watched over him. I don't know.

"Nah."

"Okay...maybe I'll see you over there."

Something felt odd in our interaction, and he didn't look at me. Maybe he was just really hung over? I decided to go see if some of my more usual dinner companions were interested. On my way out, Jeff from down the hall pushed into the room past me.

"Hardon. Dinner."

Mark got up and looked for his wallet, got his coat. I paused only to see this much, then walked down the hall to search for others to go eat with, feeling unusually slighted.

Dinner with the usual suspects was fun as always, but my mind was elsewhere. Mark was sitting a few tables away with some rowdier guys, and he definitely did not appear hung over. He caught me looking at him once or twice and looked quickly away. Reading anything into what he was feeling was going to be impossible, but that wouldn't stop my mind from trying. On returning to the room later that night after studying, I avoided interacting with him, and just went to bed.

The following week saw more of the same behavior. Really, Mark and I weren't friends, but we had been friendly. We would usually talk when we were in the room together, and we often made each other laugh - and even though most of that was laughing at each other, it was the kind of good-natured ribbing that I imagined I'd get from and give to a brother.

But what I was getting now were one-word answers and little other interaction, and there was a palpable sense of distance.

One night later in the week, Rick was out studying with a group for a test the next day, and I decided to try to figure out what was bothering Mark. He was at his desk reading.

"Hey, are you okay?" I asked, timidly.

"Yeah." Again, no physical acknowledgment.

"Maybe...I mean... are we okay?" I looked for words to get him just to engage with me.

"What's this we shit?"

"I just mean... lately you seem... I dunno, like you hate me or something."

Finally, some engagement - Mark turned his head. "Maybe you wanna tell me where you get off cuddling me when I'm passed the fuck out?"

I felt punched in the chest. All the breath left my lungs and it felt like they would never re-inflate. Here it was, one of my biggest fears, being accused of what was actually true - even when that fact had nothing to do with my actions.

"I.... I didn't..." stammering, searching for words. My face was becoming red, I could feel it. A million feelings - was I going to cry? That wasn't going to work. Anger. I had to be angry. I... was angry.

"I didn't "cuddle" your stinking drunk ass, dude. I've never seen anyone that sick and I was afraid you were going to die and it would be my fault. I put my arm over you so I could tell you were breathing, or if you started choking, or whatever. Believe me, between being that close to your stench and being in my own warm bed, I know which one I'll pick next time!"

There might have been a tear squeezing into the corner of my eye, but I blinked it back. I said all those words looking at the floor in front of Mark; I couldn't look at him. Ugh, he had beautiful feet - a though my mind offered, trying to mitigate the emotional storm. When I did lift my eyes, I saw him biting his lip, blushing just a little, and - were his eyes shining? Was it a flare of anger, or tears? Both? There was no time to tell, because he whipped back around and went back to his book.

"Sorry.... Dude."

That was apparently the best I was going to get. I grabbed some books and my backpack and left our room, slowly and deliberately, purposely not in a huff. I tried to appear calm but I was shaking inside and out. Stood up for myself. Averted disastrous accusation. Back to normal?