by Riley Meyer
“James,” he said, as though it were obvious, “Prendergast.”
“Oh, right,” I offered helplessly. The name vaguely rang a bell from one of the hundred emails I’d gotten from the university and college, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“I heard you missed your meeting today.”
“Meeting?”
“Your buddy meeting. Remember, Jack Klein. You walked over the grass in the quad and I told you to go to the De Roi room?”
“Oh, right. The Du Wah room.”
“De Roi,” he corrected, “If I remember rightly, you said you could take instruction.”
My eyes, which had been slinking somewhere at the level of my feet, shot up to his face, looking for signs that he’d recognised my innuendo from earlier. I think I went red. Certainly I didn’t find anything to say, just standing there, dumbly tipsy. I think eventually I nodded.
“And yet, you didn’t follow my instruction. You missed the meeting.”
“Oh, right, sorry.”
“Jack is one of our best students. And as a DPhil, he probably has better things to do than stand around for hours waiting for a first-year like you to show up.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I, uh, fell asleep. I’ll make it up to him.”
“You will. And you’ll make it up to me.”
My eyes widened, but his face was impassive.
I managed to pull some words out of my thick head:
“Of course, happy to. To... make it up to you.”
“Tomorrow you’ve got orientation. You’ll meet Jack beforehand. 8 o’clock in the morning sharp, dining hall, alright?”
I nodded and tried to look as sincere as I could.
“So you might want to not have a late one.”
“Boo....!” I heard Maura call from a bit down the corridor.
“I’ll be there on time, sir.”
“Good. And you don’t need to call me sir. After all, we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”
Would we? I wasn’t at all opposed to the prospect, but who was this guy?
“Of course, s—. Of course. Thanks... James.”
“Off you go then.”
I nodded again and turned, catching up with Maura and the last dregs of people leaving her room.
“And Rafe?” that deep, resonant voice called behind me.
“Yes?” I asked, spinning around.
“Don’t walk on any grass that looks like you could practice your golf putting on. Rule of thumb.”
Then he smiled, broad and perfect, an expression which transformed his stern face into one of complicity and warmth. A face you could fall in love with, I thought. I gave him a thumbs up and he shook his head again, smiling to himself in a way that said he thought I was an idiot but a charming idiot. I don’t know why I chose to do a thumbs up; in this case, hindsight was definitely not 20-20, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
As I walked with Maura out of her building, I asked:
“Do you know who that guy is? James whatever-his-name-is?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said vaguely, “I think he teaches English or something. Hot, though, isn’t he? Dad vibes, if you’re into that.”
He taught English? My face must have given it away because when she glanced at me, she laughed:
“Oh great, 70-30 with daddy issues. What a fooking cliché.”
4
I felt the pounding in my head before I even opened my eyes; it felt my brain was trying to leave my skull and had taken to hammering on the bone from within. Gently, like I was walking on ice or trying to escape a jewellery heist without setting off an alarm, I tried to pull myself off the floor.
Yup, I was lying on the floor, on the carpet. For a moment I had no idea where I was. And by no idea, I mean none. I didn’t know what country I was in, what time zone. Hell, I didn’t know whether I’d died and gone to hell or someone’s fucked up idea of heaven.
My eyelids flickered, sticky with sleep. The colour of the carpet looked familiar. I looked around. I was in my room. At Oxford. I was in Oxford because I’d moved there the day before; remember, there was that horrible thirty hour plane flight stuffed between two Americans shouting at each other? You’re in England now, Rafe. But where...?
I looked around a bit more, my eyes crossing the carpet towards a desk, the bookshelves. I didn’t remember them being there... and that window, on the right of the desk, was that new? I had a queasy feeling and not just because of my stomach. It was a bit like the dolly shots you see in the movies, when characters have a revelation and the camera zooms in and moves back at once.
This wasn’t my room. This was Mark’s room. I looked to my right and saw a thick, hairy leg dangling down from the bed, half-swaddled in sheets. There he was, absolutely naked, fast asleep, lying face-up on his bed with the bedding wrapped around a single leg and the rest of him entirely on display.
I pulled myself up off the carpet, trying to be as gentle as possible with my head which was still thrumming like a drum and bass track. That’s when I realised I was naked too and had been sleeping under what seemed to be one of Mark’s puffer jackets. As I stood up, I couldn’t help but cop a full glance of Mark, lying there in all his manly glory.
My eyes trailed down from his peaceful face to his uneven stubble, down his thick, rugby-player’s neck, to his hairy chest, the dark spots of his nipples amongst the hair, which gained it thickness as it ran, like a dark river towards his crotch and to the thick pipe of his hooded dick, half-hard and with a sticky line of what looked like cum sticking it to his thigh. That dick looked mighty familiar, and in an instant I remembered a few flashes of what had happened last night.
I looked around the room for my clothes, finding them strewn across it like buried treasure and began to pull on my boxers as quietly as possible. My shirt stank of beer. I kept stumbling trying to get the holes of my undies in the right place, but Mark didn’t stir. He was totally out of it and lightly snoring.
Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck! It was only as I closed the door so slowly it took about two minutes, watching the vision of the naked, sprawled Mark disappear into nothing, that I allowed myself to actually go over what happened last night. It came to me in snatches, like a movie that hadn’t been edited properly.
As I was walking down the corridor (mercifully empty), I remembered pushing Mark against the cubicle wall in a very dark and ramshackle club toilet, feeling our bulges push against one another through the coarse fabric of our jeans; rubbing my cheek against his stubble and whispering in his ear through my gritted teeth what I wanted to do to him, what I wanted him to do to me; how I wanted him to slap me with his thick cock, to rub his balls over my face, how I wanted him to know that I wouldn’t break, that he could use me as hard as he wanted.
Oh dear.
Glimpses of him tipping his head back and the red half-light, leaving stubbled his neck open for me to lick and rub against like a cat against a rubbing post.
Fuck! I was so out of it. But how did that even start? How did that even happen?
I looked up and down the corridor, not knowing where I was. Mark was on the same floor as me, right? Then why did I still not know where I was. I had to walk up and down twice to find my room.
Finally, I found the sign that read 8A-2. But then, fuck! Where was my key? I was still only wearing my boxers, with my other clothes in a bundle over my crotch. Now I furtively fished around in the trouser pockets, hoping to god that I hadn’t dropped my key somewhere during last night.
No, I told myself, don’t think about that now, just find your key. It wasn’t in the right pocket, not in the left pocket. I started to get panicked, imagining having to go downstairs and face the college porters, looking the way I did.
But then, miraculously, when I checked the right pocket again, I found it. I almost let out of an exhausted sob of relief and slipped it into the lock, letting myself into my room, exactly as it had looked yesterday, with my laptop on my bed still blaring my getting ready playlist and d
iscarded outfits mounted in a pile on the bed.
I closed the laptop, cutting off the music, pushed it to the side and collapsed onto the mattress, closing my eyes. My whole body hurt, with my pounding head and my aching back leading the charge. Aching, presumably, from sleeping on the floor. Why had I done that anyway?
More of the night was coming back to me. We’d gone from club to club, first working down High Street and then turning up to the dirtier clubs on St Giles.
The night had started pretty PG. There were so many of us from the college that we did that typical ‘dancing-in-a-group” stuff, slightly awkward because no one really knew each other, everyone trying to include each other and grinning dumbly. I remember thinking that it felt a bit like a Christian Youth Club Disco.
And then, it became distinctly secular. What happened? Of course: Maura happened. She kept buying everyone shots. Kept calling everyone boring and then buying them shots to make them more interesting. Tequila, vodka, surely not absinthe... I definitely remembered there was salt and lemon. Slutty dancing with Maura. I wanted to curl up into a ball of embarrassment as I distinctly remembered rubbing my crotch up against Maura as she attempted (and failed) to twerk into my hips.
Jesus.
But where was Mark in all this? My mind raced, trying to piece it all together. We’d gone to a different club. Some people had gone home (boring! Maura had exclaimed as they walked off) and we’d gone to another club and then another. I don’t think Mark came with us to the first few, or I don’t remember seeing him. Maura’s “pocket rocket” did though and she kept plying him with drinks and calling him cute.
But then, the fourth place we went to, the cramped one down a Tudor alley and a set of centuries-old stairs—the last place of the night—that’s where we saw Mark. Or I saw Mark, because by then Maura was trying to touch tonsils with her pocket rocket (Ethan? Albert?).
But, what, did I just go and shove him into a bathroom? No—that’s right!—it was the gay club, Plush. He was in the gay club and that was as much license as I needed.
I had gone over to him. He was with a few girls, all of whom were circling him like sharks around a cage. He didn’t seem to mind. I joined in. I hugged all the girls and sexy danced with some of them, making sure I was a welcome part of the group.
But then I turned shark with the rest of then. My eyes turned into a great white’s black discs and focused in on the prey: Mark.
And I thought—I remember thinking—that he had eyes for me.
Our gazes kept catching, his dark eyes met my blue ones time and time again as we moved among the girls. Mark looked amazing. For a guy his size, I was surprised that he could actually dance in that rare way that guys can have of moving their bodies that looks elegant but is somehow a hundred percent masculine, head bobbing to the music like it was coming out of him, the muscles of his biceps tense in motion, sweat sticking his shirt even closer to the muscles on his chest. My dick was stirring just thinking about how he had looked, dancing under the strobing lights.
As time went on, I began to look exclusively at him; making my interest as clear as day, my eyes bore into him. I think I even licked my fucking lips; that’s how drunk I was.
But how did I go from that to lying in his room? There was definitely something about the Radcliffe Camera, the stunning cylindrical library that was surrounded by some of the most beautiful buildings in Oxford. That’s where he’d—oh, fuck, I hope there weren’t cameras.
Before that happened, though, before we’d left, when we were still at Plush... I tried to piece it together.
Then, I had it.
Mark had held his hands up in the shape of a T and shouted over the thumping of the music (which was still ringing like permanent hearing damage in my skull) that he was off to the loo. And I’d waited all of about ten seconds, following him with my eyes as he pushed his way through the crowds, before I’d pulled an apologetic face to the girls and made the same gesture. Me too—I’ll be back!
My heart was beating hard in my chest but I had the advantage of a hell of a lot of Dutch courage—or perhaps I should say Mexican courage with the amount of tequila Maura had plied me with.
I went into the bathroom. It was dark, faintly lit with red, and even through my thick head I could smell piss. There was a guy washing his hands and someone waiting for a cubicle. And then there was Mark, standing at the urinal, one hand against the wall to hold himself steady, and the other holding his dick whose fat soft head was just visible to me from the door.
He was wiping the sweat on his forehead against his sleeve, his hair matted slightly over his temples, just like his shirt against his abdomen.
Even when he was sweaty he looked good.
I didn’t need to piss so I went to the sinks and washed my hands, running a hand through my shock of hair to give it some semblance of order. But I thought I still looked pretty good.
I played it cool; Mark saw me first, as he finished shaking his dick around like a mace and shoved it, with some difficulty, back into his pants.
“Oh, sup,” he said.
“How’s it going?”
With the music muffled in the bathroom, we could hear each other talk and think for the first time in hours. For a moment I felt a bit awkward. Was this just going to be bro-talk in the bathroom?
“Fucked, man. But in a good way,” he smiled in a simple open way that stirred my dick. I turned myself towards him, leaning against the sink and grinning back at him.
“Me too,” I said and it was true, “wasted.”
He pulled up to the sink next to me and turned on the taps, putting his large hands under the spray and checking himself out in the mirror, tipping his head from one side to another to appreciate his angles as though I wasn’t even there.
It felt like I was watching something private, something that I didn’t have his permission to witness. It was hot. My eyes flicked to his neck, the biceps barely concealed under his too-tight shirt.
Fuck, I wanted to touch him; but how?
“The girls left, by the way. Just after you went to the bathroom. Dunno where.”
“Seriously?” Mark said, looking at me.
I nodded apologetically.
“Fuck. I thought I was getting somewhere,” he said, “I only came here because of Grace anyway.”
I couldn’t remember which one Grace was but I made a face of brotherly commiseration.
“It’s all good man, we can keep up the good fight without them,” I said, paused and went on, “seemed to me like you were getting a lot of attention.”
“Oh yeah? From who?” he asked, splashing some water on his face.
“Oh, you know, pretty much every gay guy in the club.”
This was true and I was no exception to the rule.
He grinned.
“They love the chest hair.”
“Oh yeah?”, laughing, knowing—of course—that I would do unspeakable things to that chest hair.
“Girls are 50/50 on it, but guys love it.”
This sounded hopeful and I perked up a bit. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as hard as I thought, but then he went on:
“Fat lot of good that does me, though.”
Fuck! This called for desperate measures.
I hopped down from the sink and touched the side of his striped shirt, just above the solid curve of his arse which looked so full and inviting that I was all I could do not to bury my fingers into it. How much could this guy squat?
He turned slightly towards me, but didn’t looked alarmed.
“Oh, bro," I said, pulling him closer to me and the sink, "you’ve got something on your shirt. Wine or something. Let me get it."
Dutifully, Mark came closer an adorable human Labrador. I turned on the tap and keeping one hand firmly on the small of his back, I started to splash some water on the non-existent spot of wine, just out of Mark’s eyeline in the mirror.
While I was doing this I slipped my left hand under the fabric of his striped shirt, f
eeling his soft skin and the downy hair of his back while still pretending—more and more vaguely—to be cleaning off his shirt.
The water I was spraying on him made the white stripes of his shirt go invisible, revealing the muscled line around his hips and the inviting tanned skin underneath.
I made an expression that said something like fuck, this is a stubborn one, and drew his leg between mine so that it was pushing into my crotch, under the guise of needing more leverage.
Mark’s face was now only a few inches away and I could fell his breath on my ear. I felt his eyes on me as I worked; it was as though his attention alone was leaving a hot line across my cheek, down to my lips.
He must have realised how close we were because I felt his thigh clench in my crotch, starting to withdraw. I tightened my own legs, pulling his back towards me.
This was the turning point. My nostrils were filled with his smell, his cologne, his sweat. I felt myself getting hard.
My left hand under his shirt stroked a little way up his back. Then my leg wrapped around his leg, pushing into the hard curve of his arse and my right hand, abandoning its token scrubs, ran up his chest, feeling the indentations of his ab muscles, the swell of his pecs.
I heard his intake of breath, the sound of the penny dropping, and then slowly, as my hands did reconnaissance around his body, I turned my head, away from the ‘spot”, to look at him.
His eyes were wide, his lips wet, recently licked, and just a little bit open; he was waiting to see what would happen next.
Softly, I said: “I think I got it off.”
And then, with sudden strength, I pulled him into me, wrapping my arms around the brick wall of his back and pressed his rough stubble and soft lips hard against mine.
He didn’t pull back and I don’t know whether it was the wonders I was doing with my mouth, the fact that the bulge in my pants was pushed up against him, or what, but after a moment his lips began to move against mine with a new aggression. If he’d been on the defensive before, now he was attacking.
I felt his hands on my hips, pulling me closer.
Our tongues met in the cavern between our mouths, at first tentative, then more and more confidently until they were locked together as though in a duel. He bit at my bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth for a moment.
