by David Connor
While Devon set down the cup that was still full, and then went for the paper towels, Mathias just stood there looking clueless. Surely he’d wiped up a spill or two in his sixteen or seventeen years of overly privileged life. “Let me help,” he finally said.
“I got it,” I told him. “We do. You’ll get all dirty.”
“Oh. Okay.” He gave up rather easily, as the excitement and wonderment at attempting heretofore unexperienced manual labor seemed to quickly dissipate. So, while Devon and I worked on the mess, Mathias just stood out of the way and watched. When I went for the sponge mop out on the back steps and ran it under the tap, he studied my actions in awe, as if mopping linoleum was akin to creating the world in six days.
“So, have you started looking into colleges?” he asked midway through my task.
“I’ve been thinking about trying to start next September,” I said, “maybe skip over senior year altogether and just go.”
Mathias gasped. “Senior year is everything,” he said. “Prom… graduation… class rings….”
“Meh.”
When Devon slurped like an elephant at a jungle river, Mathias smiled. “I can’t wait to get my class ring.”
I pictured one with a diamond. Cal’s accusations had definitely set up shop in my head, not that some hadn’t been puttering about in there already.
“Come on!” Mathias gripped my shoulder. I somehow felt it in my pants. “Don’t do that.”
I slipped away from his touch. “Do what?” When I opened the back door and chucked the mop like a javelin, Devon laughed. “I’ll pick it up later.” Then I smiled too. He had that effect on me. “Don’t let me forget.”
“Don’t jump ahead a year, Reed.”
“Oh.” I picked up my coffee and sipped. Blech. “Just a thought,” I said.
“It isn’t going to make a huge difference in the rest of your life if you wait.”
“I’m already almost eighteen,” I argued.
“So am I.”
“You are?”
“I flunked kindergarten.”
“Really?” That came from Devon.
“Yup. Too shy. Can you believe it?” Mathias asked me. “Somehow I managed to hold my pee until fourth grade, though.”
Devon giggled, then gagged on milk shake.
“You okay?”
He nodded and took another sip.
“My birthday is in September, but still, I enter senior year at eighteen, just like you.”
“Hmm. I flunked too. Antisocial in a different way.” My next sip of java wasn’t quite as gross. “What schools are you leaning toward?” I asked.
“My dad graduated from Cornell, and my mom went to Brown, so….”
“Ivy Leaguer either way. It shows on you.”
“It does?” He smiled.
“Absolutely.” I smiled back—then covered it with my hand.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
We ended up sitting around the kitchen table. Devon was sucking up milk shake and then spitting it back down the straw into his cup. “Dev… stop.” I was swilling pumpkin latte I hated, and Mathias had white powdered sugar in the corner of his mouth from one of a dozen jelly doughnuts he’d brought for three people, just to prove he had the funds to do so, I assumed. I was torn between wanting to kiss it off, because of the chemical and aesthetic attraction I felt, and wanting to smack it off, because of his show-offy ways.
“There’s a function at my mom and dad’s club tonight,” he said out of nowhere. “The real reason I came down is… I thought maybe you’d like to come.”
“A function?”
“A fundraiser for the holidays. We, um, help Santa get to some underprivileged families he might otherwise miss.”
“There is no Santa.” It was a harsh reality Devon had discovered way too early when his Christmas list was larger than our parents’ budget.
“It’s black tie.” Mathias rolled his eyes. “I could get you a tux. There’s going to be a live band. They’re good. I’ve heard them play before.”
“I don’t have dress shoes.” That was all I could think of as an excuse not to go. The ones I’d worn for band concerts were tossed out when I’d quit.
“Oh. We could get you some of those too.”
“We could?” I stood. “I don’t need your hand-me-down shoes.”
“No. We’d rent them.” He stood as well. “There’s a tux shop up where I live.”
“So, either way, it’s someone else’s shoes?”
“Huh? Well… yeah, but….”
“A tux shop.” I shook my head and dumped my pumpkin swill down the sink. “We have a Tractor Supply Company store. Can’t I just wear plaid flannel and work boots?”
“Is that what you usually wear?”
I had on jeans, a backward striped T-shirt, and Jordans I had gotten when school started, that probably cost as much as a pair of shiny formal shoes. Still, I took offense. “No. What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. I was just wondering. What did I say? What happened? What did I do?”
“Nothing. I got other plans tonight.”
“You do?” Devon was my truth machine, my conscience, my Jiminy Cricket.
“Cal and I might be doing something. Sorry.”
“Oh. Okay. There’s a raffle for a four-wheeler. How about I put yours and Devon’s names in?”
“Cool!”
“Don’t bother,” I said. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to take the four-wheeler money and buy presents for the poor kids?”
“It was donated and…. We’ll make more off the raffle than…. The tickets are ten dollars.”
“Damn! That’s a rich-person raffle. Around these parts….” For some reason I’d become Huck Finn. “We sell raffle tickets for a buck.”
“I’m sorry I made you mad. If I’ve been coming off elitist or stuck-up….”
“You haven’t,” Devon declared, and he was right.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t even know where the attitude came from. I’m glad you came down. And thanks for the coffee.”
“You’re welcome. I’m sorry you didn’t like it. Maybe we can do it again… and I’ll get you something you will. Or maybe you can come up my way.”
“I don’t have a car yet.”
“I’ll come get you and drive you back. Maybe when it’s hot again. We have a pool.”
“Of course you do.”
He shook his head. “I… I’m sorry we have things? I don’t know what to say, Reed. We have different things. You have a cool brother. I just have a horse.” He smiled, making light, but chances were he really did have a horse.
“What else do I have that you don’t?” I asked, knowing full well I was being a brat. “Think of… three things.” I couldn’t help it.
“I’m not going to do that, Reed. I’m just… I’m just going to go. Catch ya later, Devon.”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” Devon said.
“Maybe not. Hope your haircut works,” Mathias said to me, and then he tried another smile. It failed miserably.
5
THE NEXT time I saw Mathias it was a Valentine’s Day surprise. I’d thought about him a lot over Christmas and the week after, wondering, among other things, what those poor kids he’d thrown that fancy benefit for had received in their stockings and how much fuller his was. The imagined disparity had pissed me off. We’d gotten the computer, which was set up in the living room, meaning porn-surfing was still limited. I kept thinking about feigning some sort of illness so I could stay home from school and play on it naked all day while both parents were at work. So far, I hadn’t, mostly because of swimming.
I hadn’t spoken to Mathias. Not once. He’d called three times, but stubbornness or fear, misunderstanding or not feeling good enough, one of those things stopped me from returning his messages. I’d wondered who he was kissing at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, as I’d sat across from Cal on my bed, also wondering if he and I were goi
ng to.
“You wanna do something?” Cal had asked me.
“Something like what?”
“You know, Wats.”
“I don’t care.”
Our parents had been in the kitchen, Beth and Julius downstairs. Devon had fallen asleep on the couch, and while Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin counted down, I went down on Cal. It turned out to be a secret, rebound, fallback, contingency thing, because he’d just broken up with the love of his life, some girl from another school he’d dated for a week and a half.
“I’m not really bi… just so you know.” That confession had come right after he had. “I just wanted head.”
“Oh.”
“What’s up with that Caryn girl? She getting with anyone?”
My lips entered 2012 with cum and a sour taste upon them. Cal’s admission was fine, actually. Well, it would have been, had he put it out on the table ahead of time. To my mind, there was nothing at all wrong with buds messing around just for the sake of it, but there was something wrong with it in my heart. I had fantasized way too much about being his one and only for it not to hurt when he told me my mouth was just a mouth. We were way more compatible than Mathias and I, for sure. Cal and I definitely had a lot more in common—our social standings and a need for orthodontia to name two. I had truly been expecting Cal to say “I love you” sometime during the act. What he’d said instead, the nicest thing, was “You’re good. See you tomorrow.” I’d been left to start a new year with my pants still on, my dick still hard, and my emotions all fucked-up.
THE FEBRUARY 14 meet was the start of winter playoffs. It was a rather pointless competition as far as the knockout chart was concerned. Both schools—Dover and Schenectady—would progress to the state finals either way, because there were so few swim teams in our division. It was all about pride and the clock, as Coach Keller often pointed out. For me, of course, it was about something else.
“Look at him,” Cal said as we stood beside the pool—our pool—in Dover. “Why is he even here?”
I knew who he meant, and I already was—looking and wondering. Why was Mathias swimming for a public school in Schenectady, when less than three months earlier he’d been going to a private one in Albany? How had he gone from being a Pirate to a Spartan—whatever the hell that was. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t care,” I lied.
When Mathias removed his zip-front sweat jacket, I noticed two things—some hair and a tattoo. He had a thatch of golden wheat between his pecs and wisps down the center of his tummy from navel to waist, not as much, not as thick as what I used to have, but it was there. The tattoo was a heart painted in rainbow colors. He was gay—and proud of it, apparently. Then I noticed his teammates all had one as well. Their school did the tats, ours had T-shirts. February 14 was “Love for All Day” at my school, where straight people were supposed to show their support for the gay population with some sort of rainbow insignia. I’d never been much into the rainbow thing myself and often wondered who had chosen that to include gay men. It was another one of those things I planned on researching someday. I rather preferred the two men’s-room-looking stick figures holding hands on a stark blue background I’d seen online. Rainbows seemed too happy, and I was a moody gay. During morning announcements, the principal had said, “Though equality is important and tolerance simply a given”—that part was bullshit, by the way—“please remember the rules concerning public displays of affection on campus.” I think he feared a homo revolt by day’s end, resulting in all kinds of gay sex in the atrium at the front entrance. As far as I knew, not a single student, teacher, secretary, or cafeteria lady came out or made out. That was a real bummer, actually, because one of our cafeteria ladies was a really hot guy. Since it had been over six weeks since I’d had Cal’s dick in my mouth, I was really eager to get one in there again and had fantasized about ripping off Alexander’s hairnet, unzipping his white jeans, and going up under his apron.
Looking at Mathias, that feeling multiplied, like a thousandfold. Part of it was sexual. The rest of it was competitiveness. I’d come to the conclusion by then that my need to succeed had something to do with proving myself worthy. I wanted to constantly win to show I was good enough, and not some nothing to be tossed aside. Despite the mutual love within the Watson family, sometimes being discarded by my birth mother still poked at my head. Maybe I’d be a shrink after high school and college.
For now, I had a slew of cheap plastic gold medals hanging on my bedroom wall that made me feel somewhat valuable, and I had now shaved another three-tenths of a second off my best time. Whether or not it had anything to do with shaving the hair off my body, well, that was ingrained as superstition now, if not a direct effect, so I kept it up and kept it off. I did it by myself these days, and always masturbated while doing it. I just couldn’t help myself once I was naked. Cal had gotten better in the pool as well. His times were coming in closer to mine. He still had a treasure trail, and I knew what it led to—a big cock and more hair. So much for shaving.
Mathias and I didn’t exchange so much as a “How’s it going?” throughout the whole afternoon. I thought I might have caught him staring at me while I stroked the soft stubble on my gut, but when I looked at him directly, he was looking past me, to the stands and at Caryn. I’d beaten him in every race so far—three individual races, plus we won the medley—and that had me feeling cocky as hell. We were both anchoring the last relay, and the chance to smoke him one more time had me ripe with all sorts of symptoms I felt mostly in my dick.
“One more race and we sweep,” Coach Keller said.
“Which is exactly what I’m fixin’ to do.”
“Oooh. They’re fixin’ a-win, Travis.” I heard the taunt quite loudly from one of the opposing swimmers.
“Well, I sure am fixin’ to stop ’em,” the one apparently named Travis said back. He was kind of hot—until he called us “bucktooth blue-ser losers.”
“Got something to say, jerks?”
I grabbed Cal’s arm. He was ready to fight for me. “They’re not worth it. And by the way,” I aimed at Travis, “we’re winning. You’re the red… faced… team coming in last.” Frick! There was no way to turn red into an insult as good as his blue-sers thing.
Travis made a bunny face at me, jutting out his teeth to mock mine. That hit hard.
“Stuck-up prick faggot.” Cal made sure they’d all heard him, the whole team, including Mathias, before he turned away. I recoiled at his choice of insults. Sadly, it still seemed to be the go-to at our age, no matter what pride day we were celebrating, no matter what the fight was about, or even if one of the fighters was potentially bisexual.
“How about I knock your fucking teeth straight?” I was the verbal target, but Cal took the real first hit. Someone in tiny red briefs shoved him hard, and what happened next was over faster than a 50-meter race. Everyone was paired off, lots of hands and arms flailing, as if the opposing teams were swimming, except no one was in the water. The scouts in the audience Coach Keller had told us about ahead of time, the ones looking for college recruits, would only have been interested if they were hoping to beef up their boxing program. Even Joss and Trish were posturing, ready to fight if they had to.
I wasn’t in on it yet, not until the tap on my shoulder shot a jolt of adrenaline through my body, like what an electric eel might or might not feel. I never had looked that up. I spun around with an attack howl and a right hook that skimmed Mathias’s jaw. He put his hand up to it, and if I wasn’t mistaken, worked hard to hold back a laugh.
“Ow.”
“Sorry.” I’d barely grazed him, and was about to bust out myself, when someone with the pull of a large, authoritative person or a piece of heavy construction equipment yanked me backward off my feet.
“Match forfeited,” he yelled awfully close to my ear.
“No way!” Cal hollered back. “They started it.”
“You’re both out,” the ref said. “For the rest of the season.”
> “Ah, come on!” Mathias said, gripped around the elbow by a human bulldozer of his own. “He never touched me.” The red spot on his face contradicted the declaration.
“I don’t want to hear it! Both teams are suspended.”
The short ride home in Coach Keller’s SUV was awfully quiet. Mathias and I had literally been pulled away from one another, like forbidden lovers in some sort of Victorian romance novel or two high school boys juiced up on hormones and cutthroat competition. I’d yelled, “I’m sorry,” after him, apologizing once again for an array of things, not just my knuckles grazing his perfect face.
Coach Keller was pissed. He’d insisted on bringing us home, and had also been the one who’d done the actual dragging. I tried to forge a treaty with him too.
“I’m sorry, Coach.”
“Save it, Watson.”
“It wasn’t totally our fault. Those other—”
“I wouldn’t, Calvin.”
“I—”
“Shut it!” Coach snapped.
Not a word was spoken in the remaining nineteen minutes on the road. When Coach was mad, he screeched. When he was livid, he bellowed. When he was outraged, he was stone-cold quiet.
“The potential you have….” He shook his head, and that was what I was left with when he dropped me off at my door.
“You’re home early,” my mother said, coming in from her food service shift.
“Not really.” I had to wonder if somehow Coach Keller had called ahead—called her at work. There had only been one race left. The no-holds-barred wrestling match that took its place on the schedule and the verbal smackdown that followed took just as much time. Still, I had to tell my parents. I knew they would be as disappointed in my behavior as Coach Keller had been, but at least I wasn’t knocked up a second time without benefit of marriage.
“Mama….”
“Yes.” She paused on her way upstairs to change.
“Never mind. I’ll wait until Dad gets home.” I rubbed my knuckles. They kind of hurt. Maybe I’d hit Mathias harder than I thought.