by Daryl Banner
Not even a thank you?
“You heading to class?” I ask, coming to her side and attempting to keep up with her quick pace, her hair dancing gracefully from side to side as she struts.
“That’d be a logical conclusion,” she answers with her soft voice.
“What’re you gonna learn today?”
“How to paint,” she throws back sarcastically. “I’ve wondered how it all works. How do those painters get all that paint on the canvas?”
She’s toying with you, Brant. Toy with her back! “I bet we could go off somewhere and learn something no paintbrush can teach you.”
“Is that so?” she asks, unimpressed.
“You’re gorgeous. I mean—” I blink away my words. What the hell did I just say? “Hey, how about I take your photo? I got this sweet cam around my neck.” Sweet cam? Am I serious?? “Maybe I’ll do your beauty half the justice it deserves, if I’m lucky. I’m pretty lucky.”
“Oh, are you? Lucky?” She stops finally, right in the middle of the hall between two wide-open classroom doors. “You know how to use that big ol’ complicated thing?”
I swallow hard, feeling all jittery inside. Having her full attention freezes me up suddenly. “Yeah,” I squeak, then clear my throat and set my jaw, faking the confidence that I’ve totally lost. “Yep. I sure do.”
“Big ol’ scary camera like that?” she says, taking a step toward me.
I feel her heat. Or maybe it’s mine.
“Yep. I’m the … new c-camera guy. I wanna take your, uh …”
Camera guy? What the hell am I saying?
“Camera boy.” Her breath falls over my face, inviting and cool.
“Is that a yes?” I whisper, my voice lost.
Her face clouds over suddenly, the green in her eyes turning dark unless I’m imagining it. “A boy like you with a hunk of metal around your neck doesn’t make you a photographer,” she murmurs so softly, I could forget her actual words and be convinced that she was trying to seduce me into a state of gooey, limbless bliss. It’s working, by the way. “You wouldn’t know art if it turned into a scorpion and slipped down your pants.”
“Joke’s on you,” I murmur back, taking my own step toward her. “I already have a scorpion in my pants. Wanna see?”
“I’ve already seen it. Twice.” Her voice is somewhere between a hair and a kitty’s sigh. “And it’s no scorpion. And you’re no artist.”
“Then what am I?”
“A dick,” she answers almost politely. “A walking, talking dick. And when you graduate, that’s the song they’ll sing about you. The dick that every lucky girl on this campus got to know so intimately. The dick who’s got more mileage on him than the New York City metro. You’re no artist, Brant the Camera Boy.”
So—random observation, not gonna lie—I’m hard as hell right now.
“Maybe I need to be taught,” I suggest, hoping that’s the bait she’s tossing me, if she’s tossing anything at all.
“I’m not a dog trainer.”
I’m encouraged by her taunt as I smile with dimples. “So show me what art is, mystery-woman-with-the-green-eyes-who-won’t-get-out-of-my-mind. Show me all the things I’m doing wrong here.”
I lick my lips.
Her eyes jerk down to them, distracted for a second.
I got you.
“I’m a hands-on kind of learner,” I insist.
She parts her lips. My face is inches from hers. My cock aches, as if my pants could explode if she lays just a single finger on me.
She says, “Saturday at six. Meet me by the Quad fountains.”
My face wrinkles. “Saturday? I gotta wait until—?”
And then she pulls away from me, creating a vacuum between us that nearly topples me onto the floor. Her hair whipping in my face, she saunters into the classroom ahead, paying me no more mind at all. My mouth hangs open as I grasp at the last tendril of her sexy, sultry scent.
I feel a hole in my chest where I’m sure a vital organ or two ought to be. Saturday at six? What the hell am I supposed to do until then other than hold my dick in my hand?
I meander out of the building, lost in my own head. I can’t explain even for a second what this woman is doing to me. All I know is, I’m feeling this surge of awkwardness that I haven’t felt since Clayton and I were kids growing up and it was him teaching me the ways of women. I remember the way I used to freeze in front of girls … The way my throat would constrict like some jungle boa had me by the neck, its tongue tickling my ear tauntingly whenever a female was around … The complete and abhorrent blankness that would fill my brain when all I wanted to do was tell a girl she was pretty.
I’m that fool all over again around this woman with the dark hair and the green gems for eyes. I am sharing an uncomfortably familiar likeness to my former, younger, pimplier self.
It’s like puberty, but in reverse.
I’m twenty-fucking-two. That’s too damned old to be experiencing any sort of puberty whether in reverse or not. Shit, my voice even cracked in front of her. How did that happen??
As if on cue, my phone buzzes. A text from Clayton himself, who’s always too busy to hang out, being so wrapped up with Dessie.
CLAY-BOY
Dude I gotta cancel.
I growl at my phone as if he can hear me through the screen. Even if we were face-to-face, actually, he couldn’t hear my growl; he’s deaf. He’d just see me making a snarl, then make fun of me and sign something obscene at me with his hands—some vile thing he and Dmitri will understand, and I’ll be left looking like the idiot staring between them.
ME
Why????
CLAY-BOY
Dessie said rehearsal
is supposed to go late tonight.
ME
She doesn’t need any more rehearsing.
She’s perfect and everyone loves her.
Blah, blah.
We need to hang, dude.
I got real problems.
CLAY-BOY
Misplaced ur penis?
Did u check ur pants?
ME
Girl at the art school has it and won’t let go.
I live in the middle of GAY HELL at my apartment.
You and Dmitri are graduating this year
and I’m gonna be a student forever.
Help.
Me.
Plz.
CLAY-BOY
Let’s get dinner Friday or something.
Our usual place, just U and me.
ME
I’m holding you to that.
After pocketing my phone, I curse my luck. Guess I’m on my own for dinner tonight. Maybe I’ll catch a bite and get some well-needed advice from Clayton on Friday without Dessie in the way. I mean, I like her and all, but when she’s around, Clayton’s eyes (which basically are also equivalent to his ears) are all focused on her. It’s both beautiful and nauseating. I’m happy for him, but seriously, aren’t they past the honeymoon phase by now? I’m shocked neither of them popped the question yet. They’re creeping up to their one year anniversary. For some reason, just thinking about that makes me feel kinda lonely.
And Brant’s sweet little emotions aren’t consoled in the least when I make it back to the apartment and find Eric cuddling with some dude I don’t recognize on my couch. The pair of them look up at my entry, as if I’m the one invading their space.
“Don’t mind me,” I mumble at them, tossing my bag on a barstool as I pass through the living room.
“Learn anything about the stars in astronomy today?” Eric asks, his voice a bit too sweet for sincerity.
“Yeah,” I grunt back. “They’re all fuckin’ crossed.”
My bedroom door shuts behind me. It’s only the third week of school and already I’m skipping classes. Oh well. Astronomy’s a blow-off anyway, I think. I know the planet names. Pluto’s been kicked out of the club. Jupiter and all the planets behind it are gassy, including Uranus, but we all know a chewable Tums g
ets rid of that problem. Then there’s Venus, the planet named after the Roman goddess of love or whatever, and it’s the only planet that rotates in reverse. Which I guess makes sense, because why the fuck wouldn’t the planet named after the goddess of love betray the rules of its own solar system, rebellious little bitch that it is.
Throwing myself on my bed, the springs squeak as I picture that last look mystery green-eyed girl gave me. I see the smart twist of her lips as she smirks at me. Why do I think that, with a whip and the right circumstance, that woman could make me her bitch with one loud, sound-barrier-breaking crack?
That thought is all it takes for me to get so hard, my pants become a denim dam of pressure. I unzip and unbutton, mercifully releasing not-so-little Brant.
When my fingers wrap around him, I sigh with relief.
The woman’s green eyes in front of me, her dark hair sweeping behind her, I start jerking off until I see stars.
My legs spread by instinct, the toes in my shoes curling. My other hand grips my balls and holds on tightly as I stroke so hard and fast that the sound of my fap-fap-fap fills the room unapologetically.
The woman leans down from the pedestal I’ve placed her on, her hair curtaining my face as her lips draw near. “Camera boy,” she calls me, almost like an accusation.
“Sketch girl,” I accuse her right back, biting my lip.
“Dog,” she moans, her lips touching my ear.
“I’m lucky, lucky, lucky …” I whisper back, out of breath as my working right bicep steals away all my energy. I’m already so close, fucking my sweaty hand and imagining it’s her tight pussy I’m invading. I even buck my hips, keeping my fist in place while I thrust my cock up into and out of it, pumping, pumping, pumping.
“You know how to work that big ol’ scary thing?” she asks. “You’re no artist.”
“I’m gonna art you so hard.”
“You’re no artist.”
“I’m gonna Rembrandt your ass. Brant’s gonna Rembrandt you.”
“You’re no artist.”
I clench shut my eyes, frustrated where the fantasy keeps going. Why am I so focused on those words of hers? She doesn’t even know me yet. Do I think she’s right? Do I not belong in the art school?
“Holy shit.”
I flick open my eyes. Eric is standing at the door, wide-eyed and holding a bottle of red wine. For a solid bucketful of seconds, we stare at one another, my cock stuck in my vagina-fist.
“Well?” I prompt him, annoyed. “You here to finish me off, or you need something?”
“Corkscrew.” He lifts the bottle, indicating it.
“Drawer by the stove with the ice cream scoop and chopsticks.”
“Was that an actual offer?” he asks, lifting an eyebrow. “I mean …”
“Get me drunker and I just might take you up on that. For now, my fantasy of the hot pussy I’m dividing and conquering will do.”
“Nope. TMI. I’m good,” he blurts as he spins on his heel and slips out of the room as fast as he’d come in, the door clapping shut behind him and sounding like half a spanking.
And speaking of spanking, I resume stroking my cock as if I’d never been interrupted … except I can’t seem to see her face anymore. All I see is her backside, or the whipping of her black hair, or the blank, white nothingness of a canvas yet to be graced with a stroke of the pencil.
I breathe heavily, staring up at the ceiling and seeing nothing.
Fuckin’ nothing.
There’s a diner at the corner just off campus where Clayton, Dmitri, and I used to eat at once or twice a week all last year. It’s at this special diner that I see my best friend Clayton for the first time in almost a month. It’s just another Friday and the place is hopping like a bunny in the springtime.
I’m already seated and waiting for half an hour when Clayton Watts comes through the door in a skintight heather grey shirt that basically screams “I work out twenty-five hours a day” and “Don’t fuck with me” at the same time. Down his bicep and up the side of his blunt neck runs a network of dark, snakelike, thorny tattoos. His gaze is the dark, dangerous variety that, to those who aren’t his friends, ought to be damn intimidating to find yourself caught in.
If I was deaf like he is, I could pretend that every one of his footfalls shook the building and cast thundering booms throughout the whole diner, rattling plates and stirring silverware from their slumber.
Instead, his shoes softly shuffle as he approaches my table. His eyes find mine. “Hey,” he says, smirking down at me. “You order yet?”
“Yes. And I got you your usual.”
He sits down and lifts a quizzical eyebrow at me, to which I just nod, then point at him and hold up three fingers, then make an egg-shaped fist which looks like I’m cussing him out in some Italian hand language, but Clayton gets the message. He smirks appreciatively, then starts drumming his fingers on the table as he says, “Feels like it’s been forever since we’ve hung out, man. I miss our late nights.”
“You never come over anymore,” I complain when his eyes find my mouth, following my words. “Dessie takes up all your damn time.”
“Dessie?” He chuckles when I nod, then grabs a spoon and spins it on the table absently. “Things are getting pretty serious between us. It’s pretty fucking scary, actually, what she does to me.”
“Scary?”
“She’s got me thinking of things,” he goes on, staring down at that spoon after it stops spinning. He never used to talk this much; Dessie’s brought out his voice a lot over the past year. “Things I didn’t think I’d ever find myself thinking about, man. Kinda … kinda freaks me out.”
I lower my head to catch his gaze. “Like what?” I ask when he looks up, then tap my forehead with a finger. “What’re you thinkin’ about?”
He itches the side of his face where some dark stubble is coming in. “Like … permanent things. Long-term goals. What I want to do with my life. Or with her. Like … like maybe moving to New York someday.”
“New York??” I blurt.
His face breaks into a laugh, though only a sigh seems to escape his lips. “Dude, I told you. She’s got me all fucked up. In … in the best way possible.”
His phone vibrates and lights up, stealing his attention. As he looks down at it and starts to type a reply to whoever it is (I’ll give myself exactly one guess) I fold my arms on the table and wonder what the hell I’m gonna do without Clayton around. New York??
I sigh, my breath tickling the hairs on my arm. I mean, I guess I should have seen it coming. We all can’t just sit around our apartments playing games and sharing stories about our various sexual exploits all our lives, right? I know we need to give some honest consideration to our respective futures at some point, but to actually hear Clayton talk about it really sends my mind into a spin that begins and ends with the same question: What about me?
I don’t want to lose Clayton. Then a quiet voice in my head reminds me that I’ve already lost him as I watch him quietly text on his phone.
When he finally looks up, he smirks and says, “Dessie. Cece’s driving her crazy. Her uptight sister. Oh, she says hi.”
“Hi,” I mutter back.
The word is lost as he’s already buried back in his phone, typing to his girl, the one who stole his heart or whatever. At first, annoyance floods me. But the longer I study Clayton and the light in his eyes as his thumbs make sentences to that girl on the receiving end of them, the more my mood shifts. When I pull my own selfish needs out of the equation, I realize that all that’s left is a ringing relief and happiness that Clayton’s finally found someone who’s shed light in that dark-as-hell heart of his. I’d be a pretty shitty friend to hold that against him.
And maybe someday, there’ll be a girl that I’ll tell Clayton about to the point of making his own eyes roll. Maybe there will be someone with whom I’m so consumed that I start canceling plans with friends, or start clumsily walking into walls, or negotiating taking off all my
clothes in front of a classroom just to impress them.
I chuckle dryly at that last thought.
“I met this girl,” I start to tell him, staring at my hands. “Or maybe it’s more accurate to say, this girl met my cock.” I take the spoon for a spin of my own along the tabletop. “Y’know, I’m not gonna lie, I can’t stop imagining the squeakin’ that the springs will make when I drop her onto my bed. Is that bad? I mean, she’s hot. She’s hot hot. Like, I don’t know if I want to have sex with her or kiss her first. I could do both with this one. She’s got this sly sort of … always-something-up-her-sleeves thing going on. Finally I got her attention and she wants me to meet her somewhere on Saturday and, like, I’m feeling all these nerves I haven’t felt since we were kids and you were gettin’ all the girls. I can’t stop thinking about getting my face in her boobs. Just the thought makes me sweat. Mmm, and what she tastes like between her legs. Damn. But … I mean, is it worth it if all she’s gonna do is turn me down? She’s … feisty. Is it worth all the damn trouble when I got a hundred or two other pretty girls who won’t make it so damn difficult to just … wang-bang ‘em?” The spoon stops. I pick it up and talk to it. “But maybe that’s the point. This girl isn’t like the others, is she? She’s making me work. I think that’s kinda hot, too. I’ve had too many easy girls. I need a hard one. And she makes me hard. Hell, I’m hard now.”