by Riley Meyer
Everywhere in the college was thrumming with activity, students milling about, talking, laughing, bubbling with excitement for the new year, all of them striding around as though they owned the place. And maybe they did.
I knew if I was going to make the most of my three years at Oxford, I had to muster the same confidence. Sure, I didn’t have the same background as these kids, but I had just turned 21, and some of these kids were only 18. Those extra years had to count for something, right? And I’d spent those years experiencing life: moving restlessly from town to town to work a few months at a time at one farm or another, picking fruit in harvest season, or laying traps for predators in mountainous national parks. I’d spent my time getting my hands dirty.
And not just at work, either. The best thing about moving place to place and working outside was the guys... With basically no girls in sight and a lot of time on your hands, let’s just say that sexuality could get a bit flexible. With a little help from yours truly, that is.
I pulled myself back from the brink of a sexual reverie and realised I had a smile on my face.
I was in fucking Oxford! There was no chance these posh kids were going to keep me down. In fact, I felt like I could turn my country bumpkin status into a subversive appeal. If some of that appeal was sex appeal, well, so be it.
I got one of the little bottles of rum I’d stashed from the airplane of out of my backpack and took a long swig. Right, time to get ready.
The first good omen for my new resolution came in my floor’s communal bathroom, in the form of the muscled up rugby player-type I’d seen coming out of the lift earlier. I walked in, still in my roughed up clothes with a towel over my shoulder, and found him standing in front of the mirrors checking himself out. He looked a bit embarrassed to be caught being vain, but he recovered quickly.
“Hey,” he said.
Deep, masculine voice, just the way I liked it.
I returned his greeting and put my towel down on one of the benches. Then I turned and gave him an appraising look, head to toe. He was something. A bit below six foot, but solid, stocky, with a good set of stubble going that blurred into his tightly cropped brown hair. He was wearing a tight pair of khaki chinos that cupped his arse into two solid slabs of muscle and, above that, the same striped shirt I’d seen him in earlier that day.
As I watched him, he started to undo a few buttons of his shirt. I felt my breath catch in my throat. Each button that came undone revealed swirls of chest hair that I felt the sudden, overwhelming urge to run my hands over. This performance wasn’t for me (or wasn’t just for me) because he then picked up his razor and started evening out the neck-line of his stubble. If he was conscious of me watching him, though, he didn’t show it.
“You starting this year?” I asked.
“Yeah, PPE,” he said, still staring deeply into the mirror.
My silence must have spoken volumes (personal protective equipment?) because he clarified, now glancing over at me like the foreigner I was:
“You know, Philosophy, Politics and Economics.”
As he turned towards me I got the full force of his steady gaze. Sneaking a peek downwards I saw the hair of his chest circling towards his nipples, just out of sight, and underneath that, the sculpted rise of the muscles of his pecs. Here was a tree I wanted to climb.
“Oh right, sure,” I said, still looking at him but now pulling off my ripped t-shirt.
I saw him hesitate but he didn’t look away and when the shirt had gone over my head, his eyes were still on me.
“Isn’t that the degree that all the British Prime Ministers do?” I asked.
“Yeah, more or less.”
“Political ambitions?”
He shrugged, turning back to the mirror. He found a stray hair on his neck and flicked it off with his razor.
“I’m not sure yet. I’m open to it.”
My eyebrows arched: this really was Oxford confidence—being an eighteen year old undergraduate who is open to becoming the Prime Minister—if he feels like it.
“I think you’re exactly what this great nation needs.”
He glanced over, appraisingly, and then let out a gruff laugh. I stood there, naked to the waist, leaning against the wall. I didn’t have his chest hair, but I was pretty proud of my body. Not gym ripped, but lean and strong from the years working outside and still olive from years of sun.
“What’s your name?” he asked. I could tell he’d decided I was “alright”.
“Rafe. Yours?”
“Mark.”
“Mark Darcy,” I said, without thinking.
“No... who’s that?”
“Oh, Austen,” I said, and then paused before adding, “well actually Fielding.”
He raised an eyebrow. As he looked at me, I moved to start taking off my trousers, undoing the button and slowly pulling down the zipper of the fly. Mark’s eyes looked at my crotch for a long moment, the white of my boxers revealed behind the black denim, before flicking back to the mirror. I didn’t move, leaving my trousers flared out, their black curtains revealing the stage of my growing bulge.
“So, you’re into books or something?”
“Yeah something like that. I’m studying English.”
He laughed:
“One of those guys.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Oh,” he hesitated, looking up, and I pulled off the last of my trousers, leaving me standing there in my dilapidated boxers.
I slipped a hand under the elastic band in the guise of “rearranging”, all the while keeping my eyes fixed on Mark’s, where I thought I noticed a hint of indecision about whether to look down or not. It took all my strength not to keep my hand down there because just this rough adjustment was starting to perk my dick up.
What can I say? The last time I came was 18000 km away.
Mark managed to control his gaze and kept looking at me as he continued: “I mean, guys that take English tend to be of a particular type, if you get what I mean.”
“What type’s that?” I inquired.
“Oh, I’m not saying anything about you, man.”
I laughed, casually, and said:
“If knew, I might be able to sort it out for you. Confirm or deny.”
“Well,” he went on, uncomfortable, finding himself in a hole of his own digging, “I guess it attracts, you know... hipsters.”
“Hipsters?”
“Yeah, you know, poetry guys. Lots of feelings. Soft boys or whatever.”
“Soft boys?” I said, nodding contemplatively as though weighing up this new information, and in one swift motion I pulled off my boxers, letting my half-hard cock bounce out into the open. I saw Mark’s eyes widen.
“No worries, mate,” I went on, “I’m definitely not a soft boy.”
I made towards the shower, pulling my towel over my shoulder, but not so low that it covered my arse. At the last moment I turned around, hearing my dick slap against my thigh as I did so, and caught Mark’s eyes following me, mouth just a little bit open, in the mirror.
“Hey Mark?”
“Yeah,” he answered, shorn of his earlier confidence.
“Coming out tonight?”
“Out?”
“Yeah, you coming out? To town?”
“Oh yeah, right, absolutely.”
‘Sweet,” I said, “I’ll keep an eye out for you, then.”
‘Sure,” he said, “yeah, sure. Nice, uh, nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” I called out to him as I turned on the spray of the shower.
3
I won’t disclose how long it took me to find Maura’s room, except to say that I walked across a suspended stone bridge that looked like it belonged in a fantasy novel. When I did get there, it was rammed with people in spite of being about double the size of my own digs. Everyone was dressed to the nines and already quite sozzled. A girl was snorting a line of cocaine of a Penguin Classic of Far from the Madding Crowd and someone was blowi
ng smoke out the window. The music was pumping so loud the whole floor was thrumming.
In one corner of the room I spotted Mark, all dressed up in a different, even-tighter striped shirt which he again was bursting out of. If anyone should have ripped shirts, I thought, it shouldn't be me, it should be this guy. He caught my eyes as I walked in but I let my gaze skate past him, not to seem too interested and risk scaring him off. Before I did though, I couldn’t help but notice that the line of his stubble was not quite as even as it could be, suggesting his focus hadn’t been 100% on task back in the bathroom.
Finally, I found Maura’s face in the crowd and called out to her. When she saw me she let out a small screech, parted the seas of people and gave me a vodka-fumed kiss on the mouth.
“You look so fooking cute!” she yelled.
I did look pretty good, if I said so myself. I was wearing my favourite pair of jeans that hung down from the curve of my arse and had just enough wiggle room to give regular glimpses of my white Calvin Kleins underneath, and, of course, to allow access to wandering hands. On top, I was wearing a thick, slightly baggy pale green t-shirt, somewhere between hipster and jock, which made me shoulders look broad and was just wide enough at the neck to give show some inviting paler skin and the curve of my clavicle. Underneath I wore my treasured greenstone necklace. The ponamu stone was just out of sight, leaving a bump on my sternum and two strings pointing downwards that I knew would invite some intimate contact under the guise of “curiosity”. It also made me look like a surfer and surfers were verifiably hot, at least for one night stands, which is all I was looking for anyway.
Why else do you come to university?
Maura gave me another big lip-glossed smack on the cheek and then pulled me close into her and whispered hot fumes into my ear.
“Now, my little Kiwi chiseler, what’s the plan?”
Not waiting for me to respond or to ask what a chiseler was, she went on:
“You see the gorgeous number at eleven o’clock? No, not one o’clock—what are you lot still on the bloody sun-dials, eleven o’clock! The short one, the little pocket rocket over there with the long locks.”
My failure to immediately identify the “pocket-rocket” made Maura’s voice increase in volume so much that the guy in question turned around to look at us. To be honest, he looked a bit scared and I couldn’t exactly blame the guy. He was cute, but too young-looking for me; there wasn’t a hint of stubble on his face and his cheeks were blushed with the alcohol. Less of a sexual conquest than a sexual annexation, in my book. Maura clearly thought differently and said to the frightened bambino:
“Don’t worry about us, you sweet thing. We’re just talking nonsense. Go back to your friends and have another drink on aunty Maura.”
Hearing this, I decided to push us off into a different corner of the room before any more damage was done.
“Aunty Maura?” I asked incredulously.
She looked around bewildered. Somehow a drink had appeared in her hand which I swore hadn’t been there a moment ago. She said:
“What? Is that not sexy? Aunts are sexy. You’ve got a sexy aunt, don’t you? Or a sexy uncle or whatever gets your fanny fluttering.”
I laughed and she looked back at the guy who was still glancing, with some trepidation, to our side of the room:
“Ugh, just look at him. Don’t you just want to eat him up, muss up his little fringe.”
“I was more interested in the quarterback in the blue and white shirt. You see him? Don’t point!”
I grabbed Maura’s arm to stop her gesticulating my game away and before she could yell out to Mark, I put a hand over her mouth as well and ended up accidentally pushing her up against a wall, knocking two girls out of the way in the process and ending up with my body pressed against hers and my hand firm over her mouth.
Turns out the rum I’d drunk in my room had done a number on me already. To anyone else the whole manoeuvre must have looked very Fifty Shades.
Maura meanwhile looked bloody stoked; her eyes sparkled and I felt two heavily manicured hands slip over my hips. But, because one of them was holding a drink, it splashed all over the back of my t-shirt.
“Oh, Rafe-y boyo," she said between my fingers, "if you were jealous you need only say the word.”
“Alright, alright,” I said, letting her go, and peering over at Mark who didn’t seem to have noticed anything, “now don’t give it away. I’ve got a master plan going, alright?”
“I changed my mind,” she said, ‘don’t say a word, let’s go to your room right now. You’re my pocket rocket now.”
“Get another drink,” I said, shaking my head but smiling in spite of myself.
“I’ve got a drink,” she said, pulling her glass up to our eye-level and, when she found it empty, she began to shout “Who the fook drank my drink?!”
I decided not to tell her I knew exactly where it was—sliding down my back and into the band of my boxers—but I didn’t want to tempt her more than necessary.
Just then, a voice boomed over the room and everyone turned around. In the doorway stood the same hot blond from the quad, tall enough to be visible even over the crowded heads of everyone in the room. He looked immaculate, just like last time I'd caught a glimpse of him.
“Alright, alright. Time’s up. In or out, but the music’s going off,” he said.
A chorus of disapproval rang out. But sir! Sir! I’d never called a teacher sir in my life. Was this guy a teacher?
I tapped Maura on the shoulder to ask who he was, and found her now rummaging around in some plastic bags on the ground, presumably for a top up.
“Oi,” I said, “Aunty”
“Wait a feking minute” came the reply.
Up by the door some jock was drunkenly trying to negotiate with the blond man, who was fixing him with an ironic look.
"Now I know you’ve got a job to do," the drunk guy said, waving his hands around as though that would help his case, "keeping an eye on us and not letting things get out of hand and all that, but we’ve got to uphold our end of the bargain and this pre-loading session that you see before you well, sir, that’s our contribution; that’s the circle of life, right there."
I laughed. There’s always one guy who has three drinks and thinks he’s in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize. The music was still on, people were still dancing. The girl I’d seen when I walked in was brushing “white powder” off her debit card.
“Oi!” I repeated, tapping Maura again, though my eyes were still fixed on the blond.
Fuck, he was me all over. Body like a swimmer, face stern and sharp like someone who knew what he wanted. I had a feeling I’d be putty in his hands—if I could just get in his hands.
Maura popped back up like a whack-a-mole, undoing the cap on a bottle of cider.
“Sip?” she offered.
I accepted the bottle and lifted it high in the air, pouring it in great glugs down my throat. Still, I was looking at the man in the doorway. If I was going to get the confidence required to have proper fun tonight, I’d need a bit of help.
“I said a sip not a bloody deep-throat,” Maura complained, trying to snatch the bottle away from my mouth.
“Out, out, out,” called the blond, “Peters, switch it off. I see you by the stereo. Big red button, push it. That’s right.”
The music cut off unceremoniously and people started filing out of the room, offering token rebukes as they did. But it’s the first night, sir! Killjoy, sir!
“Let me remind you all: no alcohol outside rooms.”
Maura and I kept taking alternate sips from the bottle as the crowd in the room slowly ferried us to the door. We could barely lift our arms to take sips, the room was so full—how did so many people fit in here to begin with? I kept an eye out for Mark, hoping I’d get squished up against him if it was going to be anyone, but he was nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, Maura’s “pocket rocket” had somehow been pulled into her orbit, and she was making the most of
the opportunity, putting her head and very tall hair on his shoulder.
“Well hello again, my beautiful,” she said, and the guy stuttered out a reply that I couldn’t hear.
I took another sip of the cider. It felt like the bubbles were going straight to my head, which they likely were—after all I’d only slept for about four hours in the last forty-eight and I hadn’t eaten since I was on the plane.
Better ease up unless I want to end up in a ditch, I thought, as I nevertheless took another long sip.
Moved along by everyone else’s momentum and a bit by the bubbles in my head, it felt like I was getting carried to the blond on a palanquin, everyone holding me aloft as an offering to that stern god of sex looking down on us.
We were almost at the door when he asked:
“Whose room is this, anyway?”
Maura piped up:
“No feking idea. I mean, no bloody idea, sorry sir.”
The man shook his head at her, disapproving, but I think I caught a glint of a smile there.
I laughed at Maura and the man’s eyes moved to mine. Our gazes locked for an instant which to me felt long, extended out to double, triple, quadruple the normal length.
“Rafe Roger?” he asked.
For a moment I couldn’t reply. Finally I managed to push out my lips a Yes sir. God, already picking up the lingo.
“Can I see you for a moment?”
Maura cooed and I pushed through the room towards the man, who took me a few steps down the corridor. I followed him dutifully, watching the broad sweep of his shoulders and the defined muscles of his back moving ahead of me. My gaze was sweeping downwards when he turned around to face me, leaving me once again looking at his crotch. I tried to make it look innocent.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Maura leaning against the wall, swaddling the cider bottle which she’d snatched out of my hand like a new born bairn, waiting for me.
“Rafe, right?”
“Yes? And, uh, what’s your name again?”