Christmas Spirit: with More Christmas Spirits

by David Connor

  Aidan fell back again. “The fucking ‘L word’,” he said with disdain.

  There was more gaping in Aidan’s undershorts, more dick poking through. In fact, almost everything a pair of underpants was designed to cover wasn’t covered at all.

  I’d heard it, what he’d said about love, and the way he’d said it—twice. What I saw, though, distracted me, so I kept on going. “And even then….” I spoke to the part of him I wanted to feel and taste, since his eyes were on the ceiling again. “I’d need….” But that wasn’t working for me, so I reached for his wrists and pulled him back to sitting. I’d missed his knees, and I also thought it would be better to say “I have fallen in love with you” to his face, and not the head of his penis, if I had the guts to spit it out?

  “Need…?” he asked.

  “Even then…” I started back at the beginning. “I have to get a commitment, a promise in return. I have to hear the word back… the word love.” I tried to ask it of his eyes. “That’s the only way I will ever give myself to a guy.” I tried to look for it there, even if it wouldn’t come out loud. They refused to be caught.

  “That’s…” Aidan started to say something, then stopped.

  “That’s what?”

  He huffed Cheetos breath. “You deserve that, Kipster,” he said. “You deserve to be in love.” He licked his lips and then twisted them into a pensive pout. “You’re a lovable kinda dude, dude… even if a little uptight at times.” Aidan stood up then. “But what makes it sad is, I can’t be the one that loves you.” He raised both palms. “Ya know why?”

  I shook my head. I watched myself do it in the mirror across the room, because I couldn’t look at him.

  “Because love is complete and total bullshit,” he said.

  I gasped. I looked at him then. I stood, stupefied, because how could he say such a thing?

  “I’d rather fuck guys I can’t stand, or never fuck again for the rest of my life than end up going crazy when all that love shit ends up hurtin’ me so bad I can’t fucking stand it.” Aidan brushed past me. “Love is bullshit,” he repeated. He was angry. His arms flailed. “I can’t do it. I won’t.” The dorm room door slammed twice after that, once against the wall, and then shut, as Aidan took off out of it, wearing only his underpants.

  2

  Aidan returned after about twenty minutes, his teeth chattering, his tiny nipples even smaller. Aidan had the smallest nipples I had ever seen on an adult male. I was just pulling up the blanket on his bed. It smelled like Axe Body Spray and a little bit like feet. I’d replaced the orange cheesy sheets with crisp, clean white ones. A raised eyebrow unmistakably asked, “You plannin’ on us gettin’ in those clean sheets?”

  “I was still on the coc… The clock… and I didn’t know…”

  “If I was coming back or not?”

  “I knew you’d be coming back eventually,” I said. “Just not when.”

  “And your Felix Unger and my dirty sheets were driving you kray kray?”

  “I’m surprised you know who Felix Unger is.” I smiled as I stepped away from Aidan’s sex bed. “Get in and warm up.”

  “I saw you in the play back in September. You was good. Typecasting, I guess.”

  That surprised me even more. Aidan didn’t seem like the theatre type. “Maybe it was,” I admitted, as I sat myself in the safety of the desk chair and adjusted my glasses. “It was no big, except, I’m a little surprised you had clean sheets,” I joked.

  “Grampy made me bring two sets. One for each semester, I guess.”

  “Eww,” I thought.

  “I shower!” Aidan said.

  I guess my slight repulsion showed on my face.

  “I shower a lot! Rarely alone. How dirty can they be?” Aidan got into them. “Sit here next to me.” He patted the empty spot to his right.

  I stood. “That bed’s barely big enough for one person.” I tried not to imagine it with three or more—all on the sheets I’d just touched. Still, I moved closer. I had made up my mind while Aidan was outside, if he came back, I was going to do the first thing my brain told me to, not the second or third. “No… you know… touching and stuff.” Baby steps were better than no steps, I figured.

  “Just work. Cross my heart.” Aidan did, right over the tattoo there, a heart in ink with initials inside. “Still gots me an exam to pass.”

  I glanced to the desk chair, uncertain.

  “I promise to behave.”

  I believed him—silly me—so I slipped off my shoes and sat on the bed. I smiled shyly when he pulled on my arm until I was lying beside him.

  “We ain’t never done this before.” Aidan smiled back.

  “No.”

  “How come?” he asked.

  “Professional boundaries?”

  Aidan laughed. “Be they gone now?”

  “I’m not sure.” I really wasn’t.

  “Or you just feel sorry for me?”

  “Not sorry. No.” I searched my brain for what I was feeling. “Protective,” I offered. “No. That’s not it. I guess I want to make you not be afraid of…” I didn’t dare toss out the word love again. “Of… you know.”

  Aidan said nothing. His blue eyes found my ombre, though, and they told me I’d hit on something meaningful.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Okay.” Bare leg to bare leg, “Brr!” I suddenly said. “Get up. You’re still cold.” And so was I. Aidan got out of bed without argument. I pulled back the top sheet he’d been lying on and guided him beneath it. The view as he splayed his legs to scooch to one side let me know if we ever did have sex, I’d be in for a workout. I picked up the sand-colored quilt from the floor and threw that overtop of him as well. Then I picked up my computer tablet.

  “You getting in?” he asked.

  “I’ll be the top.” Damn me and my nervous malapropisms. I decided not to correct myself. That would only draw attention. The smirk across Aidan’s thick, pale lips told me it didn’t really matter. “You were outside smoking, weren’t you?” There, I turned attention back on him.

  “Just cigarettes.”

  I smiled. Aidan was funny.

  “Is that about me?”

  “Yes.” I settled next to him and tucked the covers in around his hips and legs—for more warmth, yes, and also as a barrier between his body and mine. The sheets smelled good, like laundry soap and dryer sheets. Aidan, his scent, wafting about from when he’d stirred, smelled like cigarettes and winter. “You should have worn a coat. At least shoes.”

  “And I shouldn’t smoke.”

  He always seemed to know what I was thinking. I agreed with a sideways nod.

  “I was under the portico,” he said. “Wasn’t that cold.”

  “Is it snowing hard?” I asked.

  “Not yet.”

  I could feel him through the bedclothes, so cold, so hot, all at once.

  “I’ll quit after finals,” he said.

  “I hope so.”

  “You won’t know.”

  I knew what he meant. Still, I tried to contradict him. “Just because I’m not your tutor, doesn’t mean we can’t be friends still.”

  “You’ll be student teaching next semester downstate, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ll be meeting all kinds of new idiot freshmen there. You won’t have time for the old ones up here.”

  “You’re not an idiot.” Aidan took his arm out from under the covers. It pressed up against mine for half a second, where my sleeve was rolled up, and felt like a bag of ice from the convenience store. “We can text. We can Skype. And I could visit just for fun.” I rubbed my arm to warm it. “I’ll be coming up next spring to see my theatre friends, anyway. They’re doing Hair.”

  “There’s full frontal in that show.”

  I laughed. “Probably not in this production.” I stopped rubbing my arm when the action and sound, combined with images of my theater friends nude and engaged in “Sodomy”
suddenly reminded me of something else.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Aidan stroked his arm a little, and then purposely put it back against mine. “You won’t.”

  “Why?” I turned to him. I took off my glasses and set them on the floor beside the bed. They were in the way. I wanted to snuggle in. My brain, in Dr. B.’s voice, told me to. I wanted to be as close as I could get to Aidan, even if it was just for one more hour, one more night. “What makes you think that? My parent’s house is only a few miles from here.”

  “Yeah. I know that too. And your father is a minister and you’re practically Amish.”

  I laughed. “We’re not Amish.”

  “No. They’re way more fun.”

  I said nothing. That one hurt.

  “Reputations don’t just get around when someone is skanky, Kipster. You’re practically a monk.”

  I tried for silent anger… and failed. “People talk about me?”

  “I knew all about you before we met.” Aidan shrugged. “When I saw your name next to mine on the tutor’s list, I asked around.”

  “And what? People make fun of me? Your friends? Your sex partners?”

  Aidan wouldn’t answer me.

  “Huh?”

  He was better at silence than I was.

  “Did you? Because I have convictions? Because I’m not a college stereotype? Ridicule a guy because he’s not some drunk frat guy who smokes too much weed and sleeps around, why don’t you,” I said with anger and self-righteous passive aggression.

  Aidan was quiet a little while longer. I was breathing hard, and he was looking down at his chest—at the tattoo, or maybe at his itty bitty nips. “I thought I could change that,” he finally said.

  “Wow.”

  “I’m sorry. Don’t be mad.”

  “I am.” Although, how mad could I be? I was still in his bed. “Did you bet someone you could?” That thought made me madder. “How much? And what was the bet? Kiss? Blow job? Anal sex?”

  “Not money or nothing,” he said.

  “Wow!” That really ticked me off. I sat up. I reached for my glasses and put them back on. No more snuggling! I started to stand.

  And then Aidan said, “I’m not nice.”

  “No. You’re not.” I didn’t move far. “Not always.”

  “Are you?”

  I thought a moment. “Probably not.” The glasses came off. I settled back in where I’d been, nothing really touching, because of blankets and my shirt. .

  “That’s my life story.” Aidan put his head against mine. He started rubbing my forearm, under my sleeve, as if I needed warming up, even though I’d been in the toasty room the whole time.

  “What is?” I asked him. “What’s your life story?”

  “People I love go away.”

  “Oh.” I had one of those moments, then. “Oh.” That moment when the deeper meaning to a flippant remark takes a while to sink in. “Oh.” I bolted upright. “Oh!”

  “Brr,” Aidan complained. “Get back down here.”

  “Aidan… I’m not sure.”

  “You hear what you want and you’re still playing hard to get,” Dr. B. said in my subconscious. He called me a bunch of names. One rhymed with lock keys.

  “I didn’t say it just to get in your ugly shorts,” Aidan said.

  “Hey! I wore these shorts for sentimental reasons, because they’re the ones I had on—”

  “The first night we met. They were ugly then too.”

  “Hey!”

  Aidan grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled.

  “Hey!”

  “I’m freezing, dude.”

  “Then you shouldn’t go outside smoking in your underpants—your really ugly underpants.”

  Aidan chuckled. “And by the way, I didn’t say what I said just so we could fuck, ya know. You don’t think maybe I’m sad it’s our last night too? I’m gonna miss my Kipster.”

  “Really?” I decided to lie back down—or maybe I didn’t decide. Maybe I just did it.

  “Of course I’m going to miss you.”

  “Oh.” I came precariously close to falling off the bed as I finagled my way under the covers. We were skin to skin then, at least from knee to my sock-covered shin.

  “Yeah,” Aidan said. “Nice.” Another inch from me, another mile from Aidan. He fiddled around some beneath the covers, and then pulled out his boxers and chucked them.

  “Ugly undies gone. That better?”

  They’d landed on the foot of the bed. I tried kicking my feet about to make them move. It didn’t work. “Now they’re right in my line of vision.”

  Aidan took more aggressive action. He got up on his knees. The covers fell, leaving his entire naked back view on display. And when he stretched to reach for the offending shorts, and raised one leg to do it, muscles rippled, tendons stretched, buttocks opened, a large penis dangled, and his shrunken scrotum… well, it didn’t do anything, but it was danged hot to look at nonetheless.

  Aidan stuck the underwear under the bed. “That good?”

  Damned near perfect, I wanted to say. I actually said nothing, but simply nodded.

  “Can I see your underpants now?” Aidan asked. “On your body… on the floor… either way is good.” His smile was very convincing, so I took my ugly shorts off under the covers, because, to my amazement, I was still doing the first thing my brain told me to do. I folded them neatly and laid them on the carpet beside me once I’d found an uncluttered spot. Aidan lifted the covers and peered beneath. I stole a glance at him too, completely nude. Aidan shaved his pubic hair. He shaved all over—back and front, top and bottom. I knew that now.

  “Lose the socks, Kipster.”

  The nickname stuck.

  I took one sock off with my foot and flung it out and across the room with my toes.

  “Skillful.” Aidan seemed impressed. He did the other one for me, far less adeptly. I felt a bit of scratching and thought it might be a good idea for Aidan to trim his toenails more often than his crotch hair. His bare foot touched mine afterwards. Even though it scraped a bit, it was sensual enough to make my erection grow. Aidan kept looking under the covers—at that, I assumed. That was where I’d have been looking. Except the way he was holding the blanket now, I couldn’t look at him at all. I was self-conscious, even when he licked his lips, even when he repeated the one word. “Nice.”

  I felt unsexy. I was tall, but not buff like Aidan. I walked for exercise, and that was about it.

  “How about the shirt?” he asked.

  I argued with my brain and Dr. B. a few seconds.

  “Do it, chicken!”

  “My tummy’s bloated. I had Mexican for dinner.”

  “He’ll call you a monk again.”

  I took off my shirt, just so he wouldn’t.

  “Nice.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I’m all hairy and not… muscly.”

  “I like hairy guys.”

  “Then why do you shave yours off?”

  “’Cause some guys don’t.”

  “I like both.”

  “Both?”

  “I’d like you both ways.”

  “You seen me? You looked at my junk?”

  “Yeah. I… I like it.” I strived to come up with something better. “You’re hot… really sexy. From what I could see.”

  “Want a better look?”

  I swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

  “Real quick. I’m still cold.”

  Aidan yanked the covers to his side of the bed. He wrapped them around his arm, then fought them off as if a shark was eating his hand. He finally tossed them to the floor in triumph, and I looked at him nude the whole time. “Nice.”

  He pulled the covers back up way too soon, all in a pile atop his crotch. “Now you need to fix them, Felix, huh?”

  I got up to do it. I grabbed the bedclothes all in a heap. I shook them out, creating quite a breeze. Aidan shivered and jiggled. It made me want to do it again, so
I did. Aidan laughed. That was just as good, so I did it again, and again, and again, until we were both laughing so hard we couldn’t stop. Fighting to stop the giggles, which only made them worse, I finally let the covers neatly float down over Aidan’s naked body. I didn’t want to, but I did. I got back into bed, and relaxed just a bit as the laughter finally ceased, but my heavy breathing. What I hadn’t been able to feel through my knit shirt I now felt against my skin. What I couldn’t feel poking my hip through thick paisley twill, I felt poking me through navy brushed cotton. His torso was warm. His penis was hot. My erection showed up as a tan blanket pyramid. His did too. We’d made a little campsite.

  “Tell me…” I fidgeted. Two big guys in one small bed, my arm couldn’t find its place.

  “Geeze, Kipster.”

  “What?”

  Aidan lifted his dreads and the rest of his head off the pillow. “Slip it under.”

  “You sure?”

  “Just do it.” The short command came with a grin, and I followed it, resting my arm comfortably beneath the back of his neck. “I’ve lived with my grampy since I was fourteen,” Aidan said, exhaling loudly, as if talking was difficult work.

  “I met him,” I told him. “I was quite impressed.”

  “Who wouldn’t be?” Aidan’s tone was one of defeat. “‘You don’t have to be a rocket scientist,’ the saying goes. Uh, he was one. Try living up to that.”

  “I’m sure he’s very proud of you.”

  “Of what? The extra years it took me to graduate high school? The DUI when I was eighteen? The cars I wrecked at twenty and twenty-six? My lack of focus? He’s a scientific genius, and I can’t even pass Bio 101 at almost thirty. Why would he be? I’m not a kid anymore, but I still act like one. He said that to me yesterday. He’d like you, Kipster. He’d be damned the fuck proud of you.”

  “You’ll pass,” I promised.

  “Not if we cuddle with boners while you’re still on the cock.”

  I felt the redness crawl up my neck.

  “You still wanna be on top? ’Cause I’m versatile.” There was no red on his face. “Freudian slips, Kipster. Psych 101 was easy peasy.” Aidan rubbed his dick against me, not on my underwear, on the bare part of my upper hip. I felt moisture from the slit.