“Okay Foster, go deal with the seniors. Allison is waiting for me back in my room and I’d like to get laid tonight,” he kept rubbing himself all over and looked kind of depressed, “but I can’t think of any position we could use that’s not going to cause me extreme fucking pain, and she’s probably already passed out anyway.”
“Okay, Bro, go ahead. Sorry again about this clusterfuck I got myself into, and sorry I knocked you on your ass or whatever. I’ll shoot you a text and let you know what’s going on at home. I doubt I’ll stay there too long.”
“It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to hang out there for a month or so, just kind of lay low for a while, you know? “ He wrapped his towel around his waist and patted my shoulder. “Have fun in Doucheville!”
“It’s Dutchville, asshole!” I took my hand and poked his stomach. I really didn’t want to fuck him up more than I already had. When my fingers hit his gut it felt like they hit a brick wall. “Jesus, Spence! How many crunches a day are you doing?!” He gave me a smug look and hopped out the door.
I managed to make it out of the bathroom pretty quickly, the crowd was winding down and I headed down the hall to my room. There was music coming out of some of the rooms, and some moans and headboard banging coming from others.
When I got there one of the Davids, was knocking on my door. “Behind you, Bro”, I unlocked the door and stepped inside. Dave leaned against the door frame and glanced at my duffel bag.
“How’s it goin’ Foster? Glad I caught you before you headed out.”
“There’s a lot of that going on around here.” I always thought Dave was one of the best looking guys in the frat, he looked like that ancient David—the one by Davinci or Houdini or whoever—the famous naked guy statue. He had that brown hair with the curls and shit, the Roman nose, he wasn’t all that tall but he was still ripped and had broad shoulders tapering down to a small waist.
“Look Foster, I just wanted to try one more time to get you to come to New Orleans in a few weeks. It’s not that far for you to drive from home, and I think you’d enjoy it.” He kind of paused and stared at me, “and honestly, you kind of look like you could use a break.”
I threw my towel on the floor and started hunting around for some clean jeans to put on. “So what was this trip all about again?”
“It’s a PRIDE Action Committee meeting, lots of cool guys, and some fun times in New Orleans at night. I know you’re still a little reluctant to come all the way out of the closet, or whatever. This would give you a chance to meet some guys somewhere other than a random bed.”
“Ha fucking ha. But an activity committee? Well that sounds cool, I guess. Maybe I could organize a 5K run or something, maybe a volleyball tourney—something like that or whatever, you know. A pub crawl might be good.” I started to consider this as a viable option, a kickass way to start off the summer.
“Action committee, not ‘activity’, you dumbass. We’re organizing some state government visits about marriage equality.”
“Oh,” I frowned, “I had a completely different picture of hanging out in New Orleans. And I’m not much into political stuff.” I saw my sample case and shaving kit on the dresser; I grabbed them and stuffed them into the duffel bag. I found some new jeans hanging out of a FedEx box and slipped them on. Then I saw some tee shirts with the frat letters on them that the seniors had passed down to me. I sniffed a few and threw one on.
“Yeah, I’ve never really seen you as the political type, gay, straight, or otherwise—you’re more of an undecided kind of guy. And considering the scandal—you know the shit your father walked into during the campaign—I can see why you’d avoid politics.”
“No shit, I’m not really talking to him right now.”
David nodded his head, “No doubt. How anybody could just stumble blindly into that kind of clusterfuck is beyond me”.
I had to wince a little at that. “Well I think he’s already back in politics, he’s a lobbyist for The People for the Ethical Treatment of Firearms, or something like that. You know, he really doesn’t seem to learn from his mistakes.” I swung the conversation back to the New Orleans trip. I winked at Dave and asked, “Would we be sharing a room there, Bro?” I let my eyes wander over his body dramatically and gave him the most evil grin I could come up with.
“Only if the room has double beds and I slept with a stun gun under my pillow, Foster. If we weren’t fraternity brothers maybe, but probably not even then. I’ve realized that all you guys truly are my brothers, and I’m not going to fuck that up by starting something with you or anybody else here.” I winced at that too, considering my track record around here. It seemed a little like Dave read my mind, “And as far as coming out to the brothers, I think they figured you out a long time ago—you’re just not all that discrete. The walk of shame out of this room has definitely become more a guys’ event than a girls’.”
“Okay Dave, I gotcha, whatever. I just don’t want to deal with talking to everybody right now, and if they already know what’s the point?”
“The point, Jake, is that they want to hear it from you. They are your brothers, just talk to them, okay?
“No. I mean yeah, I am. Just not tonight, okay? Do me a favor and shoot me a text with the details on the trip—I’ll let you know if I can make it. It’s definitely an option.”
He smiled and nodded, “have fun in Doucheville.”
He started to move back into the hall and I had to ask, “Why does everybody keep calling it Doucheville, Dave? It’s Dutchville!”
“I think Foster, that it makes more sense to call it that. It just seems more likely to most of us that you grew up in a village of douches.” He winked and then turned and disappeared.
I picked up my car keys and my wallet then I grabbed the rest of my shit and headed down the hall. I was fumbling around with my phone to send my Mom a text that I was on my way home when I hit the top of the steps and saw Brittany stumbling up them. She looked wrecked, She was smiling at me while she clung to the banister with one hand and tried to balance a party cup in the other. I sat down on the top step and as she joined me I tucked my bag behind her so she was propped up a little.
“Britt, what are you doing up here? Are you gonna hit the hall and see if you can get laid? Good luck, I think the bros are all either passed out or already occupied.”
“I was looking for you, shithead. I thought maybe you’d like a going away present.” She grinned at me and started rubbing the fly of my jeans.
“Like, uh well, that sounds tempting, Britt, but I’m on my way out the door. I’m heading out to Douche—shit, I mean Dutchville. Otherwise I’d—“
“Yeah, right Foster. You, never mind, you really don’t seem like all that fucking in to me anymore.” She pouted a little and looked over my shoulder at something. I figured it was a mirror because she asked, “do you think I’m ugly, or whatever?”
“Uh Britt, you’re a varsity cheerleader, you were homecoming queen, and you’re by far the hottest girl in your sorority.” I put on my most sincere face and hoped she bought it.
“Well then what the fuck is it Foster? You think I’m hot, and you are absolutely my type! Dumb jock, boy-next-door, whatever, and that southern accent of yours drives my crazy! Why don’t we just get it over with and be a couple, at least for a month or so.”
Before I could say anything some girls came halfway up the steps and one of them held her phone up to take a pic of the other two. Britt and I leaned down and made gagging faces, it seemed like an appropriate photo bomb for this situation.
She looked over my shoulder again and Dave sat down on the other side of me. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lit one and passed it down to Britt, then did the same for me.
We all sat there for a minute, from our vantage point we could see that the party was pretty much over. Most of the people down there were either passed out on the floor or the furniture. The rest of them were slowly walking around with their arms out trying to balanc
e and hanging on to walls and other people and shit. They looked like a bunch of seriously stoned zombies. David took it all in like he was watching a disaster movie. “Jesus Britt, what happened down there??” He studied her for a second, “and you look like you’re not too far behind them.”
She took a drag off her cigarette and blew out smoke as she explained, “Well somebody put something in the liquor bottles, and I heard somebody else was passing out Klonopin like Halloween candy.” She looked me in the eyes with a semi-accusing stare. I shrugged and shook my head.
I had to change the subject quickly. “So Britt, what are your plans for the summer. Like, what are you going to do?”
She rattled off the agenda so fast I barely followed. “Well, like my mother had the whole summer fucking planned—traveling to Europe with the family of some friend of hers and going to ‘finishing school’ whatever the fuck that is and then on to an African photo safari like I know where that state is and then on to Brazil for a one-week break and then to New York for shopping and then LA for some, uh, like surgery that you don’t need to tell anybody about and I axed all that,” she ground out her cigarette on the carpet, took a breath, and kept going, “I absolutely put my fucking foot down on all that bullshit ‘cause I had already told that bitch two days ago that Courtney and I were going to rent a place on the beach in California for the whole summer but now Courtney’s in rehab so now me and Amber and like one of the Taylors, whatever, are going to rent a place together in Malibu or where ever, IF my mom would get her fucking ass in gear and find a place for us! It’s not my fault if she waited until the last minute to handle this shit for me. And she hasn’t even leased a car for me out there yet, what the fuck are you supposed to do in Cali without a car?! She just doesn’t think about things like that, she’s just so damn selfish!”
“Wow,” I was staring downstairs and watching one of the last zombies keel over, he twitched a little and then went still, “Africa and California and Switzerland—that sounds pretty fucking intense.”
She stared at me for a minute and then motioned for us to get her up on her feet. David said “I’ve got her Foster. I’ll take her to my room and let her sleep it off. Go ahead and hit the road. She can help the seniors get ready for graduation tomorrow morning.” He helped her up and got her aimed in the right direction down the hall.
She paused and looked back and forth between me and Dave. “You know, I just realized something—you two would make a great couple. I maybe think I just figured something out.” She stared at me with those glossy eyes and Dave was staring at me with this fucking smirk on his face. They headed down the hallway.
I stood there, feeling like there was something I needed to do. I realized and moaned, “Fuck, the seniors!” I ground out my cigarette, grabbed my duffel and headed down the stairs.
I ran through the front doors and hauled ass around the corner of the house. I slowed down a little to find my ride in the parking lot, there were five black Range Rovers parked in a line. I couldn’t figure out which one was mine but then I remembered I parked in the handicap spot to avoid a situation like this. I unlocked the car and pushed some trash in the floor and threw the duffel on the passenger seat, locked the car and kept running to the backyard. I sprinted around the corner and came to a dead stop and the only thing I could manage to say was “Oh dear God.” It, the thing Yoda warned me about, was sitting there looking like something that was going to start World War III or whatever.
It was long, about fifteen feet or so, and it was pointing over the trees and appeared to be aimed in the direction of campus. It was dull black and all odd angles and some blinking lights and fins and shit. The ass end of it hung over the pool and it was perched on some kind of ramp that ended about twenty-five feet in the air.
The seniors were standing around and drinking from a keg, they had bags of chips lying all around. It looked like a tailgate party; it had that kind of pre-game excitement feeling going on. Then I saw Sheldon, our resident geek and aerospace major, standing beside this evil-looking machine. His lanky arms and body waving around like one of those whacky-waving-people things you see out in front of banks and shit. He looked so wild I thought he was about to hop on the rocket and take if for a fucking test drive. I put my hand on his shoulder and turned him around, he looked at me with this glazed- over smile on his face and he had this odd chemical smell coming off of his body. He was wearing a long-sleeved t shirt that read “Mission Commander” in big letters across the front of it.
“NO, Sheldon, oh no, no fucking way, whatever this is, you ain’t gonna do it! You better explain to me what this fuckin’ stealth-bomber shit is doing parked on the yard, and why is it aimed at the center of campus?!” One of the seniors passed me a joint and I inhaled about half of it and passed it back. I was trying to keep calm, keep chill, keep from slamming his scrawny ass to the ground and pulling each one of those waving limbs off his body, one at a time.
About that time Spence came across the lawn and walked, hopped, and limped past the pool to where we were all standing. Another senior passed him a joint and he inhaled sharply, like he had the lung capacity of Michael Phelps. He made no move to pass the joint back. He was shirtless, wearing a pair of cargo shorts hanging low over his hips, his fly was open and it was obvious he was going commando. He moved over to where I was standing, and put an arm over my shoulder to steady himself; his other hand was still rubbing his ass. A few of the seniors were staring at the two of us and kind of snickering and shit. “Getting laid was a no go thanks to you Foster, my ass is so fucking sore and you twisted up my leg so bad I really couldn’t do anything with Allison. And she was so out of it I really couldn’t get any help from her.” He looked down at his fly and zipped it up, which made the seniors laugh even harder.
“No homo!” he yelled at them but they all looked pretty doubtful. I pulled his arm off my shoulder and took a step back. I pointed at the ballistic-missile-looking thing sitting on the grass and Spence made this choking-guinea-pig kind of squeal, then he took another hit off the joint. “I don’t know what in the fuck that thing is, what it’s going to do, but it’s sure as hell not the senior gift you guys told me you were raising money for!”
I remembered them fund-raising and I was fairly sure that I had written a check for a couple grand to help them out. “Yeah, wait a minute--you guys said it was for our float in the graduation day parade!”
Spence sighed, “Foster, there is NO such fucking thing as the graduation day parade! You’re a junior, and you should know that by now. But I got conned by them too, the little fuckers told me it was for a new wing for the library. I thought that seemed ambitious but I figured one of the alums had like, you know, had kicked in some money too.”
“So now we know Spence, that the seniors have some odd plans for graduation. It appears they have their career paths all mapped out and shit, and it looks like they all have a plan for evil-fucking-global-world domination.”
Sheldon looked like he was about to launch himself into orbit, and all of the seniors were standing around, all shirtless, all wearing cargo shorts, and most of them sporting tribal tattoos on various parts of their bodies. The exceptions were the two or three bros who were a little too heavy and self-conscious to go shirtless and instead were wearing khakis and button-downs. They were hanging out a good distance behind the other guys. Putting a bunch of people between them and that rocket seemed like a smart idea to me.
I wondered how in the hell I was going to stop this thing from going further, so I took a minute just to chill and enjoy my buzz and figure out a plan. It was a perfect night, you could see all the stars and shit, there was a light breeze pushing some cool spring air and you could smell all the flowers or whatever that were blooming. I took in the whole scene, the wavy light rippling out of the pool, the green lawn, the blue lights of TV’s and the low sound of music coming from the windows of the house—all of it seemed so calm and reassuring. These seniors standing around and waiting for the launch,
the big bang, whatever—these were the guys I had partied with, studied with, lived with. And this was their last night before they took off to become the new movers and shakers of the world or something. It made me realize how fast this whole college thing was going, that I was going to be a senior myself next year, so I would only have two or three more years to enjoy all of this.
I noticed four or five of the seniors had moved beside the rocket, the lights from the pool reflecting off their bare chests and abs and white teeth and shit, they looked like they were posing for an A&F catalog. It all had kind of a surreal feeling, or maybe it was just the weed kicking in. Then I saw the two girls in lawn chairs beside the pool, their phones out and aimed at the guys next to the rocket.
“Jesus Spence, the rocket is about to photo bomb the pics those two girls are getting ready to take!” Spence looked over at them and then started hopping off as fast as he could to stop them.
“Hey ladies!” He called over to them. “I know you want to get some pics of the seniors for status updates and whatnot, but can you do me a favor and crop that little science project next to them out of the pic?” They started to reply but the rebel yell from the second floor cut them off.
Everybody looked up just in time to see Super Mario, one of the Tonys, come shooting out of the window of his room. He flew over the lawn and landed with an enormous cannonball splash into the center of the pool. The girls ran over there to see if he was dead or whatever. They managed to hook his arm with a pool skimmer and pulled him to the steps, he started spewing water and crawling out on to the lawn. He was buck naked and the girls started taking pics immediately.
“Hiya ladies, did you like that shit?!” He frowned a little and explained, “I was aiming for the hot tub but waddafuck, what are you gonna do? And why is my bro Kyle face down over in those bushes? He was supposed to video this shit so we could post it! You know, get the shit going viral!” He looked at both of the girls and stood there with one hand kind of covering his junk. “Could you do me a favor, could you stay right there and video my next try?” He started checking out the angles between the hot tub, the window, and the lawn then he grabbed one of the girls by the shoulders and repositioned her about five feet back while he pointed at his window and checked out her phone.
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