Poster Boy

by Anne Tenino

  “Listen dude.” Brad startled Jock. “Like, uh . . .” He scratched behind his ear a second. “Okay, thing is, everything I know about having sex with guys? I learned from a guy I was having sex with.”

  Jock nodded, half-afraid this would go where he hoped it would, and half-afraid it wouldn’t.

  Brad lifted up his palm. “Which was cool, don’t get me wrong.”

  Jock shook his head and held his breath.

  “But, you know, it might have been nice if there was someone else I could ask about, uh . . . everything the porn on the internet doesn’t teach you.”

  Jock gulped some wine. “Does it hurt?” he spit out.

  Brad twisted up his lips, like he was trying not to smile. “Only if you want it to.”

  Huh?

  “I mean no, not if you’re with the right guy, and he takes his time and knows what he’s doing.”

  “Um, so, if you’re the guy who’s doing the doing? Like, how do you know you’re doing it right?”

  Brad straightened out his expression, then stood up and got the half-full wine bottle, plunking it down between them. “’Kay, here’s the thing, I’m a total bottom.” He fell into his chair and took a drink of the beer formerly known as Jock’s.

  Jock poured himself more wine. “Um, I kinda thought so.”

  “Yeah?” Brad lifted his brows. “Good. So you haven’t done that, right? Fucked anyone.”

  “No.” He swallowed, turning his glass by the stem. “I haven’t, you know, been on the receiving end either. Just, uh, blowjobs and stuff.”

  “I figured. Okay, so, I’m gonna get kinda technical, I guess. Clinical. You can handle that?”

  Jock nodded, carefully watching his fingers. He had a lot of scars on his knuckles. More than a guy holding a wineglass should have.

  “I don’t have to tell you to wear a condom, I guess.”

  Jock smiled over that for the first time in ever. “Yeah, there’s pictorial evidence that I know better than to go without a condom.”

  And then Brad launched into a sometimes gross but totally fascinating description of everything that needed to happen, could happen, and should happen—“If it doesn’t feel good to either of you, stop”—when guys fucked. Jock gave up being kinda embarrassed about it when Brad explained what could happen if the bottom wasn’t really clean, because shit, the only thing more horrifying would be watching a baby being born.

  “My friend Max says it sucks. Bottoming,” he said once Brad had imparted all his technical knowledge. Max had also offered to prove it to Jock, but Jock had barely been into the friends-with-occasional-benefits relationship he had with the guy. Max wasn’t someone Jock would have hung out with if they hadn’t figured out each other’s secret sexual orientation.

  Brad snort-laughed. “Not for everyone. Goes back to the knowing what you’re doing thing.” The front legs of his chair thumped to the floor. “Or maybe it’s about being with the right guy.”

  “The right guy.”

  Brad tilted his head and raised a brow. “Going home with Sebastian my first time wasn’t an accident.”

  “You picked him.”

  “Fuck yeah. He’s hot.” Brad glared.

  So disagreeing would be a bad idea. “Intellectual guys make me itchy,” Jock said.

  Brad glared another second or two before melting into a smirk. “Toby’d scratch that for you.”

  “Yeah? I’d totally let him.”

  Brad nodded. “He knows what he’s doing. Just make sure you know exactly what you want. Go with your gut.”

  Fuck. “My gut . . . um, doesn’t want to . . . you know.”

  “Your gut doesn’t want to take it up the ass?”

  Jock choked on the wine he’d been—nervously—sipping.

  “Hey,” Brad said, snorting. “Don’t get all delicate and shit on me.”

  “Sorry,” Jock wheezed.

  Brad picked up his beer bottle, then set it down again. Then he did it again. He was making a design with the condensation rings, Jock realized. He did it for a while, until it looked like he’d been drawing in water with a Spirograph, before finally asking, “Why are you afraid to bottom?”

  Jock thought about disputing the “afraid” thing, but they’d both know that was bullshit. Now he just had to decide whether to give the real reason. That took more thought than Brad was willing to wait through.

  “There are ways to prepare to make sure it doesn’t hurt.”

  “No.” Jock shook his head, the idea of admitting fear of pain more upsetting than the real reason. “It’s, like, um . . . Idon’twannabethegirl.”

  Brad blinked at him a few times, screwing up his face, then mouthed the words before repeating them. “You don’t wanna be the girl.”

  Jock chugged what was left in his wine glass, which wasn’t nearly enough. He grabbed the bottle, yanking out the cork.

  “You don’t want to be the girl?” Brad asked, jabbing his finger into midair, like he needed to point out the words as he said them.

  Jock swallowed. “Yeah,” he croaked, bottle poised to pour, but not quite at that tipping point—waiting with bated tannins to see how mad Brad would be.

  His mentor shrugged, tilting his chair back again and crossing his arms over his chest, setting his jaw. “I don’t think it’s an uncommon fear, dude.”

  Jock poured wine all over the table. “I thought you’d be pissed,” he said, unable to do more than watch while Brad snagged a dish towel from the counter behind him and sopped up all the burgundy liquid.

  “Maybe, if I thought that being a bottom made me a girl, I would be.” The way he growled that out, Jock didn’t think he was entirely unoffended.

  Jock shot up, grabbing the towel and dropping to the floor to get the puddle that had dripped onto it. “I don’t think you’re a girl. Look at you, man.”

  “Yeah, look at me.” Brad huffed. “I’m a guy who lets my boyfriend fuck me. However he wants, whenever he wants.”

  Jock peeked from under the table to see Brad glaring at him, arms crossed over his chest, and considered his options. It wasn’t like he couldn’t take Brad. It was that he didn’t want to. “I’m sorry.”

  Brad sighed, falling back into his chair. “It’s okay.” He ran his hand through his hair a couple of times. “You gotta work out your issues with being femme or passive or whatever it is yourself, but I’ll tell you one thing—no one bottoms all the time.” He ran his hand across his face before correcting himself in a mutter. “Well, almost no one.”

  “Okay.” Jock stood up, because kneeling at Brad’s feet—even if it was to clean up the mess he’d made—was too weird. At least, while they were discussing this it was.

  Brad flicked his eyes, looking quickly over to his side as if throwing away what Jock had said. It reminded him of when girls flipped their hair.

  Dude, seriously, stop comparing Brad to chicks.

  “And how much a guy flames isn’t a reliable indicator of whether he’s a bottom or a top, plus a lot of guys are versatile.” Jock must have looked as stupid as he felt then, because Brad added. “It means they’ll do either, depending on the circumstances.”

  “Oh.” Well, that was . . . informative.

  “So, if you don’t want to bottom because it emasculates you or something, what does that say about the guy you’re fucking?”

  “Uh . . .” Jock wiped up some residual moisture from his wine with the toe of his sock. “I dunno.”

  “’Cause if that makes the dude you’re with the ‘girl’ and that’s cool with you, the fuck are you doing with a guy anyway? Go be het—tell ’em it was all a stupid drunken mistake. Rohypnol, I don’t know. But being straight would make a lot of your troubles go away.”

  “It’s not that simple, man.” He nearly kicked the table leg, but not only did Brad have a bunch of good points, it would hurt his toes.

  Brad shrugged, or at least Jock saw his shoulders jog in his peripheral vision. He couldn’t quite look right at the guy. Hopeful
ly Brad would shut up now and stop making Jock feel like a douche bag, but he had more to say. “No, it’s not that easy. It’s something you better think about, though.”

  “Duh,” Jock muttered, then dropped into his chair again, slouching down.

  “Yeah, so, anyway, Toby’s versatile.”

  Jock jerked upright and met Brad’s eyes. “Yeah?”

  Brad smirked, raising his brows.

  Jock shook his head, standing up for some reason. To pace, maybe? “Um.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, yanking his waistband down too far, so he had to hike his sweats up before asking, “If I wanna, you know, top, do I have to tell him that up front?”

  Brad looked at him levelly. “You gotta make sure he knows somehow, before things get really awkward.”

  “Shit,” Jock muttered. How did he do that? “Probably won’t see him again anyway.” Maybe it was better, because if he saw Toby again and the dude still had that effect on him, how long would it be before he’d be offering up his virgin ass or trying to explain he wasn’t going to? But if he did see Toby again . . . if they had a one-night hookup, maybe he could work it out so he didn’t even have to field the “bottoming” question.

  Brad tipped his chin. “Don’t be so sure about that. Next time we have a party or something, you’ll bump into him.”

  “What are you, my pimp?” As a joke it was kinda weak, but thank fuck it made things a little less awkward.

  Brad grinned. “Just consider me your ass broker.” Then he got serious again. “You know, once that picture hits Tumblr or wherever, you’ll have more offers than you can take on.”

  Jock sighed, slumping against the counter. Thank fuck he wasn’t the only one who realized it was inevitable. “Yeah, well, I guess I’d like to get a little more experience under my belt before that happens.”

  “I feel you, man.” Brad nodded.

  “Brad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks. I mean, really. Thank you.”

  The frat brothers adjusted pretty fast to the trauma of seeing Jock in flagrante delicto. Actually, they barely seemed to notice, because right after the picture was sent to all the guys, they found out who’d set the frat house on fire and then tried to bomb it, and it had nothing to do with anyone being gay. Collin had ended up in the middle of it somehow, and Jock could totally understand why Collin wanted to stay at his boyfriend’s house every night instead of coming back to the frat-dorm. Dude needed to get away from it all.

  Besides, he was getting used to having a room to himself. He was even getting over his itchiness around the guys, and he’d stopped grinding his teeth whenever Tank spoke to him. He only did it about half the time now.

  After a few weeks of nothing cropping up, he even started to think—maybe—that the asshole he’d blown that night would be happy with the damage he’d already inflicted. Maybe Jock could conduct his life in some kind of privacy now.

  It took some thinking, but after a while Jock twigged to the fact that if he met a guy—Toby, say—at that gay bar Brad had mentioned, the Slaughterhouse, none of his frat brothers would ever know. Did Toby go to that bar? He might need to ask Brad about that also. Because if he was going to go for it, he might as well with a guy who knew what he was doing.

  Plus, he couldn’t get Toby out of his head.

  Even taking a study break, lounging on a couch in the TAG common area one afternoon before midterms, pretending to be asleep, Jock’s thoughts kept drifting toward the guy. Brad had picked Sebastian, he’d said, and if Jock was going to pick someone for his first time, he’d pick Toby.

  “So, dude,” Danny said loudly. “Jock, dude.”

  Shit. He’d been successfully ignoring the other guys in here with him. Danny and Gomer were on the couch across the rickety coffee table from Jock, while Turbo was alternating between propping his hip on the back or leaning over it, getting in their faces. Ricky still had his wheelchair, and he was still trying to do fancy tricks with it that mostly involved popping some kind of wheelie.

  “Dude, you awake?” Danny asked.

  Fuck. “Yeah?” Jock asked, shoving himself up to sitting.

  “You wanna go to Provence with us next term? Only a couple more weeks to register.”

  Jock was still trying to decide how to say “no” for the most effect when Danny went on.

  “Yeah, dude, it’s gonna be cool. I’m working on some, like, drills and exercises we can do. Really pull the BTRT together, make us a unit. You’d be a great addition to the team, man. We’d love to have you.” Danny nodded earnestly, leaning over the coffee table.

  “Uh, what’s the BTRT?” Maybe he should’ve just gone and googled it.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s shorthand for Beer Terrorist Response Team. I just try not to say it too often ’cause some of the guys’re kinda, you know, opposed to the idea of it. Kyle says if we don’t drop it, he’s going to push through a resolution to make the formation of militias against TAG rules.” Danny screwed up his face. “I don’t know how he thinks that’s gonna stop us—we’re not a militia, we’re just a bunch of guys who want to join together into a small fighting unit in case any serious shit goes down. Mark my words, dude, someday the frat’s going to thank us.”

  “Uh-huh.” Had his eyes glazed over? He was pretty sure his brain had.

  “So, you gonna think about it? Coming to France? Joining the team?”

  “Oh, sorry Danny. I gotta stick around here next term. You know, settle in a little. I can’t . . .” Jock ran a hand across his face, trying to think up a real reason.

  “Can’t what?” Noah asked, sitting next to him. He was the one dude who Jock felt like he could be really friendly with, once he’d negotiated past the not wanting to get anything going with another TAG guy thing.

  “I can’t spend spring term in France.”

  “You don’t wanna go? If it looks like they’ll find a decent place to stay,” Noah said, nodding at the guys across from them. “I’m gonna think about it.”

  “Been there,” Jock said, shrugging. He’d been with his family and with a touring hockey team in high school.

  “You don’t like it?”

  “What? No, I like it, but I’m not burning up to see it again.”

  Noah opened his mouth to say something else, but the elevator opened just then and Julian spilled out, reeling like he’d been drinking. He stumbled into the middle of the common area, the whites of his eyes flashing. “It’s over,” he croaked, then he sank down onto the threadbare throw rug someone had put on the floor.

  Noah’s face screwed up in confusion, and the three frat boys across from them sat stock still, thumbs poised over their phones.

  “Huh?” Jock asked. No one else looked like they were going to further the conversation.

  Jules’s hand flew up into the air, flailing in counterpart with his words. “Stacy dumped me!” He dropped his arm, resting the back of his wrist on his forehead and exhaling a shuddering sigh.

  “Drama queen,” Noah said under his breath.

  Not very illuminating. “Who’s Stacy?”

  “Keep up,” Noah said before explaining. “Stacy’s his ‘girlfriend.’”

  Jock was still trying to puzzle out the air quotes around “girlfriend”—maybe she was the inflatable kind—when Jules began wailing again. “Not anymore she’s not!”

  “Did she dump you because you’re a freak who thinks one date makes her your girlfriend?” Turbo asked.

  Jules shot upright, digging his fingers into the rug and yanking it into his fists. “It was two dates,” he spat out.

  “Still, might’ve been premature to call it, dude.” Danny nodded sagely, then threw a quelling palm up. “Not that I’m judging you or anything, I mean, now that I have this sensitivity thing sorta figured out. I’m just saying, is all.”

  “Your sensitivity isn’t helping,” Jules moaned, flopping onto his back again. Jock winced when he heard the thunk of the guy’s skull hitting the floor.

  Danny
stood and looked down at Jules. “So, what did she tell you? She gave you a reason for breaking up, right?”

  Jules sniffed and laid the back of his hand over his forehead again, seeming to wilt.

  “She said I’m—” Jules gulped, voice breaking when he continued. “I’m not butch enough!”

  Ricky screwed up his face. “It took two dates before she saw that?”

  “There’s a quick fix,” Danny announced, index fingers pressed to his lips and hands steepled under his chin. When Julian turned to him hopefully, Danny regarded him like a lab experiment, nodding slowly before intoning, “Come to France.”

  Jules wrinkled up his whole face. “What? France? Why?”

  Danny nodded. “For spring term. If you learn to speak French—if you soak in the Frenchness of it all—she’ll be begging for you to come back.”

  Jules’s eyebrows began to lift, as if the shroud on his machismo were wafting away. “You think?”

  Danny nodded, standing in front of him and pointing, drilling Jules into place with the strength of his finger. “You say anything to her in French, and who gives a flying fuck if you’re butch? You can speak with an accent.”

  Jules gasped in wonder, like he was buying this line of bull. Jock rolled his eyes along with his head to look sideways at Noah, whose lips were pressed together. Either trying not to laugh, or simply disgusted.

  “An accent,” Jules breathed.

  “Oh, my, God,” Noah whispered. “Yeah, I’m going to France. I have to see this go down.”

  “And there’s our next team member, dudes,” Danny announced, beaming at the guys on the couch.

  “Would you be able to meet us at the Slaughterhouse tomorrow night for a drink?” Sebastian’s voice asked as soon as Toby answered his phone.

  Usually, when his friends did something as a group, either Brad or Collin instigated it, or it happened accidentally. Arranging social outings had never been Sebastian’s thing before, and the fact that was doing so now put all of Toby’s instincts on alert.