Boca Dreams

by Scudder James Jr

  “Don’t talk to me about embarrassed.” Aaron dissolved into a smile that took over everything. “Seaboard’s greatest rocker didn’t have a clue who he was. Not just the gay thing, everything.”

  “Aaron, you seem amazing. I heard the band didn’t work out, but are you still in the music biz? You look like a successful producer, promoter, or something.”

  “Venture capital investing.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I was tired of feeling like the poor relation who was neither smart enough nor rich enough to attend Seaboard if Mom and Dad hadn’t been on faculty. So, I woke up, cut my hair, got an MBA, and now I specialize in lifting up businesses for people on the outside. My bosses are visionaries. We don’t want to shuffle money around for spoiled, selfish shits who simply want more. We invest in dreams.”

  “I don’t totally understand, but that’s great promo.”

  “I’m also in Miami. Marissa has helped hone my presentation skills.”

  “Venture capital is investing in new companies. What do you mean by businesses for people on the outside?”

  “We like to invest in people the opposite of you and me—inner-city ventures, international empowerment stuff. You’ve heard about microlending and clean water plans in Africa? Stuff like that. We’ve helped develop a business organization to support a women’s college in Bangladesh.”

  “I’m speechless,” Stephen said. “Except that I’m still speaking. You’re like the embodiment of what a Seaboard Academy education is supposed to be for. What the hell am I doing? Teaching English to people who can afford to come to the United States to add some gold to their education?”

  “Oh no.” Aaron pushed fingers into the unzipped nape of his neck and rubbed. “You have no idea what your students are going to do with their lives. You’re doing something beautiful.”

  Living with Victor… he hadn’t heard words that nice in a while. “Why weren’t we friends at Seaboard?” asked Stephen.

  “You mean friends before our one night?”

  “Exactly.”

  “You were too cool for me.”

  If he was going to add anything else to that, it faded as Victor approached Aaron with an outstretched hand. “Victor Guerin.”

  “Aaron Pérez.”

  “Your names don’t match. Aaron and Pérez. Why?”

  “My mother is not Latina. Aaron was my grandfather’s name. He died before I was born.”

  “Victor doesn’t sound so French,” Stephen pointed out.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I could be Victor,” he put on an intense Cajun accent, then dropped it. “Or white-boy Victor.”

  “I know,” Stephen said. “I was just making a point.”

  “Well, don’t. It makes you sound stupid. Names can be nothing and everything at the same time.” Victor changed his tone. “What do you know about Caleb? You’ve never mentioned him.”

  “Caleb Larkin? He’s a good guy. He rowed, but we weren’t really friends off the team.”

  “He said you were a player.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “He’s going to save us seats at lunch. He said where we’re staying, the Alumni House, is comfortable. Good beds. Let’s check in. I want to change. Long bumpy ride. You know what I mean? See ya.” He winked at Aaron.

  “Aaron, I’ll see you later,” Stephen said. “We’ll talk more.”

  Aaron gave a halfhearted smile.

  AS SOON as Stephen opened the door and dropped his bag in the room, Victor pushed past, stood at the window, and looked out at another courtyard. He turned back and gave the sort of grand smile Stephen had seen him flash at the beginning of practicing for a presentation. He came straight back, grabbed Stephen’s belt, and pushed him to the bed.

  “I guess you don’t hate being here,” Stephen said.

  “Oh, no. I hate everyone.” He worked the buttons of Stephen’s jeans and yanked the pants to his knees. “Has anyone here had to worry about anything, ever? Self-satisfied pieces of shit. They can afford to be nothing but nice because that’s all they’ve known.”

  “Really? You acted civil around them. How is your niceness different from theirs?”

  “The difference is that I know this is bullshit.” Victor dropped to his knees and buried his face in Stephen’s crotch. With one hand, he pulled down the boxers. With the other, he grabbed Stephen’s balls, then took his dick in his mouth. It was all so quick Stephen was hardly half-hard. But that warmth… that pinching on the skin of his balls… his dick rose. Victor worked his up-and-down magic while jacking the base of Stephen’s dick; mouth and hand together in perfect unison. He stopped. Full mast. Victor slurped him in, his dick in his throat, nuts on his chin.

  “Slow down,” muttered Stephen.

  Victor was busy: kept going. Stephen felt the scratch, then—bam—one of Victor’s fingers in his ass. Victor stood up, leaning over but keeping a finger up there. He kissed Stephen.

  “Can you smell yourself on my face?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Good.” He took his finger out, stood, and looked down. “Let’s go get a seat for lunch.”

  “What?”

  “Stephen, we’re not finishing now.”

  “What’s up with you?”

  “One, I want you horned up and remembering me all day. Two, I want the smell of your crotch on my face when I have to hug these fuckers, and your ass on my finger when we shake hands.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No, pretty boy. And I’m going to fuck your brains out tonight.”

  “Why is negativity your aphrodisiac?”

  Victor smiled. “How can you not get it? I like to teach people lessons?”

  “Lessons?”

  “No one here is better than me.”

  “No one thinks they are.”

  “Everyone thinks they are.”

  “Why do you project your shit onto everyone?”

  “Because you refuse to see the shit in anyone.”

  Stephen sighed. They could have talked it out more. Again. Victor could have reminded him how different his family was, what it was like having an alcoholic father back from Vietnam, losing jobs and hitting until Victor was big enough to hit back. Stephen got it that their lives had been profoundly different. All he’d known was safety, Victor the opposite. Half of Victor’s big paycheck went to his parents, and he’d do anything to make sure his sister, nieces, and nephews were safe. He cosigned for their house, bought cars, and the kids’ braces. He’d set up his parents in a retirement home where they were some of the youngest but had regular meals, healthcare, and a roof nobody would take from them, as long as Victor kept paying.

  Jeans and underwear at his ankles, Stephen couldn’t exactly walk over to his boyfriend. His dick was losing its angle. “Do you at least want me to finish you?”

  “No,” Victor said. “We’re late. I just want you to remember me.”

  “Why would I forget?”

  Victor eased into his smirk and came over. He pulled up Stephen’s pants and put him back together. “We’ll put the fuck in Merry Fucking Christmas.”

  LUNCH WAS a simple cookout by the track. Were the sweaty kids in their Seaboard uniforms at the edge props to make alums feel vibrant and still part of the school?

  “I want to see hot rowing guys,” said Victor.

  “The season is over, and they’re not hot. They’re kids.”

  “Good point. Not like Tampa Rowers,” he added about the club where Stephen still rowed. “Those are men. Hot men.”

  It was shocking how quickly Stephen’s new gay self was old news. No longer the center of attention, he preferred the equal time of connecting to people over more than the fact he was now a guy’s guy. He kept looking for Aaron and was relieved that he wasn’t one of the people trolling for business contacts, like Nicki, the stereotypical fake blonde Muffy/Buffy already raising a family in a Boca subdivision—too young for a subdivision—who was too eager to give out her business card. He
rs was a great investment team, she insisted, Boca as vibrant these days as Miami. Victor and Stephen couldn’t get away from her fast enough.

  Victor chugged half a beer and gazed across the cookout at the burger table. “Who’s that?”

  “Michael Mousterakis,” Stephen said about the handsome guy working a ketchup bottle over a burger. He didn’t remember much about him. Nice guy. Different dorm. Baseball. Maybe he’d had a radio show.

  “Nice.”

  “I heard he’s married.”

  “Kids?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Bummer, so he’s not yet so sexually frustrated with a distracted wife and screaming kids that he would appreciate my offer of release.”

  “Victor, why are you acting like that? You’re not on the prowl. We don’t do threesomes.”

  “Just acting. Got to do something to enjoy this.” Victor nodded toward a guy choosing among bottles of beer. “What about him? He’s a fine brother.”

  “Terence is the nicest guy. I heard he’s now an admissions officer for a school in Atlanta. Also married.”

  “Black or white wife?”

  “Black, I believe.”

  Victor nodded, as if that meant something. Tired of his boyfriend’s game, Stephen took a swig of beer. Only hypothetically, it could have been worse.

  “Hey, Stephen. I’m glad you’re here.” A guy whose button-down, beige linen shirt hung over a perfectly sculpted body handed Stephen a beer, his biceps popping below the line of fabric. It was all a little too self-conscious.

  “Tony,” said Stephen, retrieving the name more quickly than he expected. They’d lived in the same dorm all four years but hadn’t exactly been friends. As dormmates, they probably knew too much about each other: Tony had almost failed physics. Stephen had been put on one month of Restrictions, checking into the dorm at seven, directly after dinner, because he’d been interrupted stealing his formaldehyde-infused fetal pig from the lab to study for the final. Freshman year, Tony had been caught jacking off when a senior yanked open the shower curtain because he had been taking too long and there was a line of guys leaning against the sinks and waiting for a shower. The guys received the view of Tony, dick hard in one hand, balls clenched in the other like a strained, red, fuzzy baseball. Didn’t that hurt? Shower Beater instantly became his name. In truth, after that morning was when Stephen started paying attention to his own nuts. Yup, they had feeling. Ditto on what he didn’t know then was called the taint, that sensitive ridge between the legs, neither ass nor balls, t’aint neither here nor there. Basically, he owed Tony a thank-you for once expanding his masturbatory life. It wasn’t fair that Shower Beater was the first thing Stephen thought when he saw Tony. Kind of sexy, though, picturing him as a filled-out adult, jacking off and attending to his balls. How exactly would he do it these days?

  “Nice to meet you,” piped in Victor. “But I need another Bud. Later.” He was gone.

  Bud, thought Stephen, the school only offers better stuff than Budweiser. Victor was doing his Cajun, ordinary-guy superiority thing.

  “Where are you living these days?” he asked Tony.

  “Atlanta.”

  “Cool. How’d that happen?”

  “B-school at Emory. Semester in Hong Kong. Now at a pharmaceutical company.”

  “Have you connected with Aaron?”

  “Why’d you ask?”

  “He’s one of the few guys I’ve talked to.”

  Tony’s face was a combination of smile and smirk. “Aaron and I have history.”

  “History?”

  “We hooked up at the fifth reunion. I was excited that it was the beginning of something big. But he thought it was a one-time thing over a cool weekend. He never returned my calls.”

  “So you’re gay.”

  “Yes. Aaron and I fooled around four times that weekend—Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday night, and Sunday morning. Not your everyday hookup. I’d thought it was amazing to connect with this guy from the past, someone who knew the whole me. I thought he was the real deal, my ticket to romance.”

  “Aaron?”

  “Yes, Aaron. But he’s a shit, like most guys.”

  “Tony, I didn’t realize you were out.”

  “The first in our class to come out. President of the Emory GSA. I spoke back here at a school assembly about gay rights. It was in the alumni bulletin. Thanks for noticing.” Tony’s smile was generous and big. “Don’t worry, I’m not that needy anymore. We’re all pushing thirty. I’ve grown up. So… that good-looking guy who left, they say he’s your boyfriend?”

  “Victor and I have been living together about a year. In Tampa.”

  “So you guys, um. You must be a good match.”

  “Thanks. I like to think so.”

  “So you… do things together?” Tony scratched his chest awkwardly.

  “Well, yeah, we live together.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, actually I don’t.”

  “You’re both dogs. Are you like roommates, fooling around with other people all the time, threesomes, group stuff, whatever. Is it ever just the two of you?” Was Tony smirking or smiling? “No judgment. You guys must be the perfect fit.”

  Stephen wanted to jettison a hamburger at Victor’s head for making people think he was a dog. At the moment, it was girls he was talking to, not guys. But still, you could tell they were into it, and Victor was into the attention. Stephen also wanted to peg heartthrob handsome, buffed-out Tony with a hamburger for believing his old reputation.

  “Tony, I’m not an asshole.”

  “I’m not saying you are. But let’s be real. You were like the biggest player at Seaboard. Now you’re with guys. You have to be fucking around like crazy. Do you know that the dorm had a nickname for you?”

  “I don’t think I want to know.”.

  “Dick. We called you Dick, not because you were a dick, but because you thought with your dick. It wasn’t an insult. We admired you.”

  “Ninety-nine percent of my reputation was false.”

  “WWDD? What Would Dick Do?”

  “Tony, you can’t be serious. The best sex I had at Seaboard was the night before graduation when Aaron and I talked by the pond until check-in. It was the first time I’d felt a real connection. I had an aha moment that that was exactly the life I wanted.”

  “I never heard you were with Aaron.”

  “Just one night of talking. We didn’t even kiss.”

  “But, come on. You were sexy and loved showing off your body. We joked how often you took off your shirt. You liked making the girls hungry. And, of course, repressed closeted guys too. I thought you’d be one of those fags shirtless in every one of their online photos.”

  “I’m not sure if I should be hurt, complimented, or pissed off right now.”

  “Stephen, I guess I’m learning that you weren’t the dog everyone thought you were.”

  “Reputations aren’t always based in reality. You should know that.”

  “Yeah.” He smiled. “I was Shower Beater. Nobody caught me except that one morning in the dorm.”

  “So that thing we heard about the communal gym shower wasn’t true?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Or the bus to Orlando?”

  “Nope.”

  “I can’t believe we’re talking about this,” Stephen said.

  “Neither can I. I’m bonding with the Seaboard sex god.”

  “It’s all false.”

  “So, tell me about your boyfriend?”

  “What about Victor?”

  “Caleb said Victor invited him to a threesome tonight.”

  “No,” insisted Stephen. “Victor hasn’t even met Caleb.” Why was Tony being a jerk? Maybe it wasn’t Tony. Why was Victor playing this stupid game?

  “They talked when you were engrossed with Aaron.”

  “I saw Victor after, and he didn’t say anything.”

  “Maybe he wants it to be a surprise.�
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  “But we’ve never done that.”

  “Done what, surprises?”

  “A threesome. No, we’re just the two of us. We’ve only talked about a threesome to say we weren’t into it.”

  “All I know is that Caleb is pretty excited about tonight.”

  “Which is not going to happen.”

  “But, let me say, honestly, that it is exciting to think about.”

  “Tony, you’re here the whole weekend, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I want to talk to you more. I want to hear about Atlanta and what else is up with your life. But right now, I think I should check with Victor. I had to work hard to drag him here, and he’s pretty much been trying to piss me off ever since he agreed to come. His games are getting annoying.”

  “I get it.”

  “Promise me that we’ll talk more.”

  “I promise.” Tony patted Stephen’s shoulder and worked his way to another group.

  “Stephen, you were two years in Santiago de Chile!” Georgina grabbed Stephen’s shoulder, her hair still sandy and wavy, a combination of naturally sophisticated and classic girl next door. “I was in Santiago de Chile. Did you ever go to Beppo Café in Providencia? I loved that place. The most perfect café ever.”

  He and Georgina hadn’t overlapped in Chile—she’d been there for a semester in college, and he hadn’t arrived until after college graduation. He knew the café. When would Stephen return? For work? To see friends? Georgina had just accepted a consulting job there and was excited to get back. Because Stephen had been in Chile more recently, she wanted a list of recommendations.

  The Seaboard bell tolled three times. Georgina said they had an hour and a half before the sunset cruise. She said Seaboard was providing two boats; let’s be sure they got on the same one; they had so much more to say.

  “WHAT?”

  That was all Stephen said when he opened the door to find Caleb fucking Victor. He hadn’t been able to find Victor at any of the fountains. He figured his boyfriend needed a break from Seaboard and was probably crashed out in their room. Stephen heard the rhythmic grunts and bedsprings before he realized what he was seeing. He knew it was Caleb. He even recognized the guy’s now shoulder-length hair, easy grin, and still-tight rower’s torso. His amazing butt was pumping. His arms looked especially great, opened wide as they held the ankles of the person he was fucking, Victor, on his back, dick in hand, stroking it, moaning, “Fuck me. Fuck me.”