by Riley Meyer
“You got your key?” I asked.
“What?” he asked, looking at me as though he’d just woken up from a dream and didn’t recognise me, “oh yeah, it’s somewhere.”
He looked younger, sweeter. His stubble looked less like a man in his prime and more like a teenager aspiring to it.
“How old are you?” I asked as we stood outside his room and he fished through his pockets.
“Eighteen,” he said, “why, what about you?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Shit, an older man,” he said and laughed and then made a face, hands returning to cover his stomach, “fuck, laughing makes it worse.”
He opened the door to his room and immediately started pulling off his clothes. But this wasn’t a sexy strip tease. He was well past that.
He ripped off his black boxers and collapsed onto the bed, naked as the day he was born, though quite a bit bigger and hairier. His perfect arse was covered with fur.
He looked so vulnerable, so peaceful lying there. My heart strings, you could say, were being just a little bit plucked. Was this something that could become a thing? Did I actually have anything in common with this hung sasquatch?
“Can you get me some water? Rafe?”
Far out. That helpless, plaintive tone turned me on.
Great, another tent in the pants; I hoped the bloody seam would hold out. I got him his glass of water and helped him sit up in bed as he glugged it down.
“Sorry I haven’t—” he said, gesturing to my raised crotch.
“No worries. You sleep.”
“Jack off if you want. I’d help you I’m just so... suddenly so sleepy.”
He yawned and lay his head back onto the pillow, rocking his thick muscled neck from side to side to bury down into the pillow. He tapped the mattress next to him.
“Come on up. Have a wank, man.”
Not waiting to be asked a third time, I took off my shirt and jeans and climbed over him onto the mattress. I explored up and down his chest with one hand, enjoying the feel of his muscles and chest hair, and wanked myself off with the other.
His token effort was to run a sleepy hand up and down my thigh It helped more than I care to admit. I came within minutes, my eyes fixed on his cock. As I grunted, the cum sprinkling over my bare chest, Mark smiled, eyes hooded with sleep.
“Nice, man, nice,” he said.
Then he patted my leg one more time, turned his head and almost immediately started to snore.
I got off the bed and looked around for something to wipe my cum off with. I couldn’t find anything better so eventually I went through his laundry basket and pulled out a pair of old boxers and wiped myself down with those.
When I turned back to the bed Mark was fast asleep, so sprawled out on the single mattress that there was no chance I was getting on there with him, even if he'd wanted me to. I stood over him, watching the gentle rise and fall of his chest and the fluttering of his eyelids. Then I slumped on the carpet next to the bed, taking a sip from his water glass.
I looked at my phone for a bit and then felt a huge tidal wave of tiredness overcome me. It was late afternoon in New Zealand and my body was confused.
I leant my head against the mattress—just to close my eyes for a moment—then I’d go back to my room, brush my teeth, and finally go to bed.
The next thing I knew was when I woke up on his carpet under one of his jackets, my back and head aching, and it was seven in the morning.
5
I turned over, now lying in my own bed in my own room, having finally worked out the timeline of events from the night before. I tried to sit up and got a few paracetamol out of my bag.
My thoughts kept turning back to Mark, wondering how he would react—in the cold light of day—to what we did the night before. Would he regret it? Was it really him last night, him that was willing to experiment, at least as far as letting me suck his cock? Or was it the drink, his horniness? Had it been my line about the girls having left the club, making me his only option?
Maybe I should have woken him up and talked to him in the morning instead of fleeing like some sort of criminal. But I’d had enough experience with ‘straight' guys to know that it usually wasn’t worth getting your hopes up.
Even so, as I pictured his wide chest and the trunks of his legs, lying there helpless on his mattress last night, I knew if he asked me again I’d go running.
Pathetic.
Here I was thinking that because I was 21 I was more mature than these eighteen year olds. Fat chance.
I fished my phone off the night-stand, checked the time and then checked the news.
Outside, I could hear people beginning to move about: doors closing and opening, a bit of music leaking through under my door from the corridor. And then I realised. My phone dropped onto my lap.
Fuck! I’d completely forgotten.
I’d told that hot blond professor guy—James—that I’d meet Jack, my “buddy”, at 8am today, before orientation. Even though I’d only just looked, I double-checked the clock on my phone. It was 7.45am.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I said as I straggled out of bed, almost tripping up in the sheets in my rush.
*
If I hadn’t already been panting by the time I got to the dining hall, it would have taken my breath away.
The high ceiling with its Tudor beams, the faces of kings, queens, lords and ladies staring down from imposing portraits, the fireplaces in every corner tended by uniformed staff, and the long table of students, eating bacon and eggs and talking shit amongst it all like it was the most normal thing in the world. Meanwhile, I’d never seen such a beautiful room in my life.
“Rafe?” said a guy sitting at the end of the bench nearest the entrance.
I nodded, “Jack?”
He smiled an affirmative:
“That’s me.”
He was slender and pale, very tall, with glasses and dark hair worn messy (though not quite as messy as mine, still wet from the shower). He looked about twenty five and had dark green eyes which, when they fixed on me now, suggested an intense attention which I found unsettling. There was no judgement in them, but a focus so total that it felt like I had nowhere to hide, like he would see through any deflection I might try to make.
“Do you want to get some breakfast?” he asked, indicating the curling line of students waiting to go into the kitchens.
“Sure,” I replied.
Jack and I got our trays and loaded them up with breakfast from the chefs. There was a bit of everything: bacon, eggs, black-pudding, beans, even leftover roast beef and yorkshire puddings. In short, the perfect hangover food. I took about twice as much as Jack and looked at him sheepishly.
“Rough night?”
I thought back to Mark holding my head down as his thick club shot cum into my throat and let out a little laugh.
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“I haven’t been for a proper night out in years,” he said, looking a bit embarrassed to admit it, “in first year, definitely, but not for a while.”
“This is like my second go-around. Hit it hard when I was actually eighteen and now I get to pretend and do it again.”
We were clambering over the long stools to take our places opposite each other at the benches. One of the waiting staff came over and offered us coffee.
“Oh, thanks!” I said to one of them, who looked at me in surprise.
Jack smiled, offering a more muted thanks as the woman filled up his cup. When she was gone, he leant closer to me and said, in his soft, considered voice:
“Most people don’t say thanks to them. Most people don’t even notice they’re there, filling up their drinks, taking away their plates.”
“Are there always staff” I asked, “like every breakfast?”
Jack nodded.
“In some of the newer colleges not so much, but here, yes. Every meal time. Welcome to Oxford.”
He said this with such a light-touch of cynicism t
hat I almost missed it. But it was there. It was definitely there.
He told me a bit more about Oxford, its history, its ways and the strange language it had all to itself. There were traditions here that had gone on for centuries, but, Jack said, they were optional. Some people got involved in them—lost in them almost—and some people deliberately chose not to and kept their heads down. I had no doubt that he counted himself as belonging to the latter category.
He indicated back to the waiters as they filled up someone’s coffee a few seats down and, as Jack had predicted, the student didn’t even seem to register they were there. Then, he went on:
“That’s why I think it’s important to move out of college. At least when you’re a postgraduate. You can get too used to being waited on, on having scouts clean for you.”
“Scouts?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said and smiled, “that’s what they call the people who clean you room and do your laundry.”
“Someone’s going to do my laundry?” I asked, half-appalled and half-jubilant. As I remembered the cum-stained boxers I’d left in Mark’s hamper, though, I tipped over to the appalled side.
“Sure are.”
Jack told me he lived “out”, as was the lingo in Oxford for a student not staying in college. He lived with his girlfriend in a terrace just outside the centre and had for the last few years.
“Have you always been at Oxford?”
He shook his head.
“Nah, I started in Bristol and then I moved here for my Master’s. Probably for the best. You can kind of tell the people who’ve been here the whole time.”
I nodded, ripping into my second slice of toast and downing my almost in the same over-stuffed mouthful. If I didn’t drink my coffee quick, I risked crashing face-first into the table.
“What are you interested in?” he asked, “literature-wise.”
“Bit of everything,” I said, “Donne, Crawshaw, Plath, science fiction. The usual combo.”
“Ah, I see,” he said, “Plath and science fiction are a natural combination.”
“I’m going to make the world see what I see.”
He laughed.
“And what do you do?” I asked, “What’s your thesis on?”
He raised an eyebrow and a smile playing around his lips
“You really want to know?”
He had a bit of rough stubble on his face and even though I’d just met him, I got the sense that this wasn’t the norm for him. He seemed a bit distracted. Interested enough in me not to wound my ego, sure, and eager to answer my stupid questions, but distant.
“Hit me,” I replied.
“The influence of Hebraism on early modern devotional poetics.”
“The what on the what?”
He chuckled, going a bit red.
“Don’t worry about it”
“No, no let me hear it again,” I said, “it sounded great I’m just a bit thick and a bit tired.”
He repeated himself and I still didn’t make much progress.
“Hebraism like Hebrew? Like the language?” I asked.
“Right.”
“Well, sure.”
“You’ll get used to projects like that. Everyone’s doing the most esoteric stuff. When I first got here it all sounded a bit bonkers to me too.”
He had an accent I couldn’t place. It sounded sweet, slightly country, not that I could talk.
“You sure it’s not actually bonkers?” I asked, teasing, but he answered in a serious tone.
“No, I’m not sure at all.”
“I didn’t mean to—I was just joking.”
“I know you were, don’t worry. But you’re right. I’m having a tough time with it at the moment. All feels a bit futile. But that’s a DPhil thesis for you. Peaks and troughs.”
I nodded, thoughtfully, or I tried to look thoughtful as I wrestled with the big slab of black pudding I’d just put in my mouth.
“Sorry,” he said suddenly, rubbing his eyes and then running a hand through his hair, “Fuck, I’m being such a cynic today. Don’t listen to me. Oxford is great, really, and part of what makes it great is that you can say something like Hebraism and people will take you seriously. I don’t know about New Zealand but that’s pretty rare, least where I grew up. I’m just behind on my work. But Oxford problems are lucky problems to have and I shouldn’t forget that.”
“Yeah there’s probably about two people in New Zealand that would know what Hebraism meant.”
He smiled.
“Well that’s exactly the issue. What’s the point in spending three or four years of your life writing something basically no one will ever read about a topic basically no one will care about.”
I tried to think of a comforting answer to this, but he had a point. His face looked funereal, even paler than before.
“Ugh,” he said, “there I go again. I’m just tired.”
“Nah,” I offered, “it’s my fault for standing you up yesterday and making you wake up early today. I’m really sorry about that by the way.”
“It’s no problem,” he said, “honestly.”
And he did look sincere, as though spending his time with a random first year really was his idea of a good time.
“Maybe you need to reconnect with some of the university experience,” I suggested.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you said you hadn’t been out for a while. Maybe you could do that. It’s not all meant to be study, right?”
He nodded, processing this apparently radical idea before turning to fix me again with his focused gaze.
I nervously chewed my food with his eyes on me. Man, this guy made you feel seen. And you could just tell he was smart—like really, really smart. Finally, Jack looked away and checked his watch.
“Do you have to go?” I asked.
“Sorry, but yes, I do. And you’ve got to get to orientation. But look, let me make this up to you. I’ve barely shown you anything or answered any of your questions. You’ve just got here and I’ve just been sitting here bitching to you about my thesis and posh people who don’t say thanks when they get a cup of coffee. Not really what you were hoping for, I bet. But forget all of that rubbish. It’s just me having shit going on.”
Shit going on? Sounded to me like love troubles with the girlfriend. Jack was still talking:
“Let’s try this again. Do you want to meet after lunch, when your orientation’s done? We can get a drink from the college bar and walk the parks, sit in the garden and keep chatting. What do you think?”
He looked at me earnestly, as though his present and future happiness depended on me taking up this invitation.
“Yeah, of course. But I don’t want to hold you back from your work or waste your time.”
“Not at all,” he said, “I think I need the break. I just don’t want to keep you from making friends in your year or anything like that, so feel free to drop me if you’ve got other plans.”
I saw this quickly devolving into a back-and-forth of “are you sure?”, “only if it’s no trouble”, “that’s if you don’t mind”, so I took charge.
“Three o'clock? Meet in the back quad?” I asked.
He nodded and looked grateful—more grateful than you’d think a doctoral student would be to hang out with a first-year, even if this first year was a bit more mature than your average fresh fish.
“Great,” he said, “looking forward to it.”
He handed me a sheet of paper about the orientation event later that day, gave me a little nod and headed off.
I watched him leave the dining room, appraising his long body as it moved, graceful in an unstudied, unselfconscious way. I chewed the cud of my last rash of bacon thoughtfully and then reached for the sheet of paper.
What did this place have in store for me next?
6
Orientation was a bust. Not because they didn’t orient us, and god knows I had a lot of questions that needed answering, but because Maura immed
iately scoped me out and grilled me about my night.
I was evasive when she asked about “that guy in the striped shirt”, but I’m not sure if I was entirely convincing.
She sighed melodramatically and looked back at the speaker at the front of the hall. I spotted the back of Mark’s head a few rows ahead of me. He was surrounded by his lads, who I’d found out from Maura were, in fact, on a rugby team together. As I watched, he leant towards one of his similarly stocky friends and whispered something into their ear, who grinned in response.
Before Mark sat back up, he looked behind him at the rest of the room and for one fleeting moment settled on mine. If his expression changed, I couldn’t make it out, and he turned back to the front of the room. My headache was threatening to come back for round two.
Maura, on the other hand, looked about as fresh as her eighteen years and was wearing a shirt that made the most of her flat midriff.
“Nice belly-button,” I whispered into her ear as a speaker explained the myriad powers of our student ID card.
“Don’t objectify me,” she snapped.
“If I was your pocket rocket you’d let me objectify you.”
“The pocket rocket is dead to me,” she sniffed, “just when things were getting good he fell asleep. Apparently all this—belly button included—is so fecking boring that yer nod off.”
Someone next to us shuffled in their seat, a very British way of saying we were being too loud.
“Bunch of fecking princesses round here,” Maura said, audibly, her eyes swivelling the direction of the complainant, ‘so anyways, the position is open. If you want to be my new rocket, you’re welcome. Then you can say and do whatever you like to my belly button.”
“I repeat, 70-30”.
“Am I not under thirty?” she asked, indignantly and I smothered a laugh.
“True.”
“What’s the point of the thirty if not for a cheeky piece like Maura? Are you just trying to seem less gay? Because I know all about internalised homophobia.”