by Daryl Banner
It’s one of these lazy Tuesdays that I’m troubling over a half-eaten sandwich and an unopened bottle of Diet Coke in the University Center cafeteria. I think it’s October already, but can’t be sure; might still be the end of September. “Has it really already been a month?” I ask my half-eaten sandwich. I feel a ball of sadness, thinking about the freshman again. You’re so obsessed, I tell myself, annoyed. I’m sad because I realize I only have a few more months with him and then he’ll be gone. Fine Arts credit nabbed, he’ll move on and I’ll never see his pretty face again. There will be other pretty faces, I reason with myself. Hotter faces. Older faces. More appropriate faces to lust after.
Then again, with his current inability to take my class seriously, I wonder if I’ll even pass him at all. Unbeknownst to him, I’ve already given him two F’s and a D on some of his exercises. He doesn’t give a fuck, he makes light of everything, and he isn’t affected in the least by my warnings and criticisms.
You’re so obsessed, I repeat to myself.
And I’m also fuming over the fact that I wasn’t permitted to direct the show I’d wanted to direct, but instead pushed to take some old, tired piece of work that everyone’s seen a thousand times. I’m so sick of the same shit regurgitated over and over again. I’m so fucking bored. Maybe that’s why I need Justin Brady.
Maybe that’s why I cling to the freshman in Basic Acting. He’s something new. He’s … given me cause to masturbate like a machine countless times a week. He makes me feel alive.
“I own you,” he said in my dreams.
Bitter and bugged and bored, my stomach does a backflip when, quite unexpectedly, I spot him across the cafeteria: Justin Brady, the carefree freshman. What draws my attention is the obnoxious laughter spilling from his mouth as he sits at a table among his bros. Of course he’d be sitting at a table among his bros. His arms thrown over the back of the booth he’s in, he’s telling his friends some story I can’t hear, and they all listen, leaned forward with bright, expectant smiles on their stupid, eighteen-or-nineteen-year-old faces. When he delivers the punch line, all his buds explode into laughter, cheering him on and slapping their hands and spraying food like a bunch of monkeys.
Just as he finishes his story, he looks up and, under an upward tuft of brown spiky hair, Justin’s smart, sharp eyes find mine.
I look down at my half-eaten sandwich that I’d given up on half an hour ago, annoyed that he caught me looking. I don’t like giving people like him the satisfaction of knowing that he just got the attention he so clearly lives for.
Not that I’ve been jerking off like mad to thoughts of him. Not that, in my dreams, I’ve pushed my lips against his and ran my fingers down his rippled, smooth body.
Stop thinking on the dreams, I tell myself, or you’ll give yourself a boner.
I hear another explosion of laughter and clapping, but I don’t look up. I just roll my eyes and lift the tasteless sandwich to my face. I’m not sure what it is about me and know-it-all freshmen. Maybe it reminds me too much of when I was a first year in the Theatre program, surrounded by loudmouthed morons who got all the attention and the friends and the roles. Those “cool cats”, those top-of-the-class cocky motherfuckers … They always got everything they wanted just because they’re louder. Boys with voices. I was the one who faded into the crowd like human camouflage.
Is that why I’ve become so bitter as an adult? I can’t even eat a sandwich without criticizing it. Seriously, I’d asked for no pickles and they fucking put pickles. Does anyone listen anymore, or is everyone so busy being loud and voiced and noticed?
“Hey, teach.”
I look up, startled to find Justin Brady standing there in front of me. His hands are shoved into the pockets of his faded, acid-washed white-belted designer jeans, causing the biceps in his taut arms to bulge against his snug heather grey t-shirt. His beady hazel eyes, keen as a dog’s, study me as I study him. His lips are pouty and deceptively innocent—like he’s never up to anything. His nose is like a button, his cheeks are flushed with boyish fervor, and his eyebrows are pushed up expectantly, wrinkling his forehead into a spread of adorable creases.
He’s the guy I’d never dare approach back in college. He’s exactly the type of adorable, flashy, attention-stealing guy I’d pray I got the pleasure of sitting next to in all my classes, even if he was straight and never looked at me. He’s the guy I’d pray to have as a roommate, or a lab partner, or to be cast with in some steamy gay scene where we’d have to practice kissing all the time. Just the fantasy of that threatens to give me a boner under the table.
“Do you need something?” I ask, my eyes lingering at his shoulders, somehow unable to meet the intensity of his staring.
“No. Just looking forward to class this week. Found a really good dialogue.” He smiles proudly.
I roll my eyes. “It’s monologue,” I explain less than patiently, “as it’s just with one person. A dialogue is between two people.”
I corrected him in class already. Twice. To my words, he just grins and says: “A dialogue. Like … what we’re having.”
I finally meet his gaze. It’s crushing, the way he looks down at me with that cocky smirk on his face. It’s humiliating to even admit it to myself, what this guy can do with just a curve of his smug, hot shit lips.
Dream-Justin whispers: “I own you.”
“Like what we’re having,” I agree quietly.
Justin grins, showing his bright, white, perfect teeth. “I’ll see you tomorrow, teach.” And, quick as that, he strolls back to his table across the way to rejoin his friends who, I only now notice, were watching our exchange.
My face flushes and I stare back down at my sandwich, forcing myself to take a hefty bite from it—a bite from which I nearly choke. I even have to open the bottle of Diet Coke I was planning to save for later, swigging until I stop gagging on the bite that won’t quite go down. What a fitting and ironic predicament, to have bitten off more than I can chew.
After the choking, I start to eat more calmly, and I find my mind wandering. I think about some imaginary boy I might’ve met many years ago in my freshman year. I imagine some made-up scenario where we might’ve been assigned as partners in an acting scene. In the scene, we’d be required to take off each other’s clothes, to touch each other’s bodies, and to join our lips. In the fantasy, we both insist we have to rehearse the scene over and over and over again, rehearse it repeatedly until it’s absolutely right, until it’s absolutely perfect.
Under the table, my cock is throbbing. It’s my horny little secret, and I writhe in silent, solitary torment as I think on my fantasy and the sexy scene and the beautiful acting partner with which I’ve been matched.
But rehearsals always end, and then all too soon it’s time for the show, and we all know that when the show ends, so does the fantasy.
[ 3 ]
I stroll into the black box promptly at ten o’clock that Wednesday morning and lock the doors behind me. I hear the muted chatter of the students draw to perfect silence as I enter. To their surprise, I don’t sit on my own in the side seating, but instead sit among them, taking a chair two to the left of the nasally girl and directly in front of a very specific someone else, whose red-and-white high tops are kicked up on the back of the chair next to mine.
“Shoes, Mr. Brady. Respect the seats or no one will.” He pulls his feet off the back. I feel a tiny pinch of victory. “So, who’s up first?”
For one tense, lovely moment, no one stirs. Today is their first day of “real” acting, after a month and a half of exercises and techniques and vocabulary. Every student expects someone else to get up and be brave. Either that, or no one actually has a monologue prepared. That’s also just as likely; I’ve certainly had first year classes in the past where no one was ready on the first day. I remember asking for someone to do their monologue but twice, then getting up and leaving, declaring the students failed for the day. It left a lasting impression … that one simple thing I
did … and from thereafter, I seemed to have earned myself a reputation.
“No one?” I say, testing them. I look to the left at all the startled faces. I look to the right. “No one at all?”
“I’ll go,” someone says, then rises from his seat and hops down the steps.
It’s Justin Brady. I’m genuinely surprised. I peek down at my student roster, marking his name. “Interesting,” I say aloud, making sure the others hear me. “Interesting that the first one up is not even a Theatre major.” Maybe I had Justin all wrong. Maybe he’s got a shot.
I bring my eyes to meet Mr. Brady’s as he stands in front of the class. He’s wearing a plain white tee today, still somehow making it look like this perfect and deliberate choice, as it fits him so perfectly and shows off his arms. His jeans are acid-washed and he wears a red-and-white striped belt, matching his high tops. His swept-up tuft of brown hair gives him a look of proudness, or maybe it’s just that hint of a smirk on his lips.
I own you.
“You begin by telling us your name,” I say, presuming to instruct him, as he is not a major, never done an audition, and might not know the protocol. “Just like if you were auditioning. State the name of the play your monologue is from, the playwright, and then just begin.”
He lifts an eyebrow, his forehead wrinkling cutely. “Justin Brady,” he announces. “Uh … I think the play’s called … Swag. And playwright is Bobby Fischer.”
I’m about to protest that I’ve never heard of that play nor playwright when suddenly Justin lifts his shirt over his head, whipping it off.
A tiny score of gasps and titters shiver across the classroom at the sight of Justin as he pulls off his shirt, revealing a slender, smooth, toned body of muscular perfection. His pecs look like they never rest, perky and firm to the eye, his nipples pink and small. His subtle stretch of abs lead to a light dusting of hair that draws a line down his tiny belly button and vanishes down the lip of his low-hanging jeans.
“You can’t take off your shirt,” I blurt out.
Justin looks confused. “But it’s part of the monologue. The … The character is shirtless.”
“We’re not doing this in costume,” I argue back, my eyes drifting to his perfect nipples, to his toned obliques, to his plump arms. I can’t believe this is happening and I can’t believe I’m trying to stop it from happening. “P-Put your shirt back on.”
“Aren’t we acting, though?” His face is wrinkled, innocent, the shirt bunched up in his hands like a football, which makes his biceps bulge deliciously. Ugh, listen to me: deliciously.
“Please let him do it shirtless,” utters a girl.
The class breaks into a short-lived bout of chuckles and snickering, then falls back into silence. Justin stands there like some ridiculous teen model, waiting for my go-ahead.
I feel so undermined. After two months of training their minds one way, the students are suddenly learning a lesson from Justin’s display today, that they can just do what they want, that there’s no order or fear or practice in the Theatre world. The most potent force that trained me to be who I am today is fear; if they don’t learn that, then I’ve failed them.
Justin, self-proclaimed icon of fearlessness, gives a little shrug, assuming he’d won, then tosses his shirt into an empty seat in the front row. He stands before us, despite my mouth still being parted with my next unspoken words on my tongue, and begins his piece:
“All the boys look at me,” he says, his face mirroring the smugness of his words, looking smart and self-important. “I know they do. All the boys look at me and they see just another hot boy in the … club. But I’m more than that. I’m more than what they see.” He delivers the monologue to someone in the front row, and a very humiliating part of me, a private, buried-deep-down, secret part of me wishes he were delivering the words to me.
Justin lifts his gaze, focusing on someone else now. “I’m more than just the boy in front of you. I’m also smart. I’m also kind and caring. I’m generous and, if any of those other boys think they can be me, I’ll tell you what, they sure got some big shoes to fill.”
He looks at someone else. “Because I got swag.” Then Justin gives a wink and flashes a grin, then turns his attention to me, eyebrows lifted. “Done,” he announces.
A light applause starts to happen, which sends an annoyed shiver through my body. “This isn’t a performance,” I say, cutting off the gentle applause as if it were the most offensive thing in the world. “This is a classroom.”
“How’d I do?” he asks bluntly.
I frown at him, narrowing my eyes and forcing myself to ignore the fact that I’m addressing the sexy shirtless nineteen-year-old that I’ve been fantasizing about for over a month. “For one, that piece is just … terrible. Bad writing … No meat … Ugh. I recommend finding something else if you want to actually learn anything about acting this semester. Two, unless you’re giving a sermon, which I don’t suspect you are, you need to focus on one person during your monologue, as it is a short speech you’re giving to someone else. Three—”
“Oh, like a dialogue, except without the other person,” he says with a smart smirk.
“Like a dialogue without the other person. Three, your piece is too long. 34 seconds. Needs to be under 25 like I explained last class. You take so many pauses between your sentences I can drive an eighteen-wheeler through them. And next time, I want you to keep your shirt on and take the art of acting seriously, or else I guarantee you will flunk my class. Got it?”
He doesn’t look daunted in the least. In fact, I daresay my spiel gave his spine cause to straighten and his smirk cause to become a shit-eating grin. “Got it, teach.”
“Professor Kozlowski,” I correct him, a bit harsher than I might’ve intended. “You can put your shirt back on now.”
Unhurriedly, he nabs his shirt from the chair in the front row, winking at someone, then returns all the way to the back row before bothering to put it on. I don’t even watch him, as he’s behind me now, and simply listen to the soft ruffling of the t-shirt as it slips back on his body, putting away all his spectacular gifts.
Spectacular gifts. I’m such a joke.
“Next,” I mutter tiredly.
After a moment of uncertainty, the nasally girl rises from her seat and takes to the front. She introduces herself, introduces her piece, then soars right into it proudly. I prop up my chin with a lazy hand and watch with half-opened eyes. She finishes and I hardly have a thing to say. She sits back down and another takes her place, some guy from the front whose thick beard can’t hide the fear in his eyes.
Good. Be afraid.
On and on the class goes, monologue after monologue, student after student, and I issue them each a handful of words for a critique. During the eleventh monologue, I feel a stab of shame, as if I’m letting down my students because I can’t seem to pull my dirty mind away from the striking image of Justin Brady, shirtless, cocky, delivering his monologue to the class. I’m doing all these students an injustice because of my utter inability to focus on something other than my undue horniness.
As if on cue, his shoes come to rest on the back of the chair next to me. I flinch, seconds from saying something, then let it slide, not bothering. I’ve let him take enough of my attention for a day.
“That’s all we have time for today,” I state. “Rest of you will go Friday. Since you’ll have another day to prepare and to learn from the mistakes of your peers, I expect you to be better than them. Oh, and don’t forget, auditions for my spring show are tomorrow evening at 8 in the main auditorium. Sign-up sheet is posted in the green room.”
As the students gather their things and start to leave, I lift my chin at the cocky freshman passing by. “Oh, and Mr. Brady …”
He stops, turns and lifts an eyebrow.
“As your piece was so far off the mark,” I tell him, “You’ll go again on Friday. And I expect you to do better. I warned you on your first day that I wasn’t an easy A.”
&nb
sp; The freshman gives one simple nod, his mouth opening into a spread of bright white teeth, flashing, then he saunters out of the black box, the door and the light cutting off abruptly as it slams shut.
I swallow hard, thinking on the countless nights I’ve jerked off, thinking of Justin Brady. I own you, Dream-Justin whispers in my ear.
I own you.
[ 4 ]
When I’m eating lunch on Thursday, I sit in the exact same spot as I did Tuesday and I stare at another half-eaten sandwich, except across the cafeteria, there is no freshman.
I don’t know what I expected.
I feel ashamed and guilty and dumb, for allowing my insubordinate heart to thrash and jump and dance for a nineteen-year-old idiot with flashy teeth and a rocking body.
The sun melts behind the skyline of college buildings and dormitories, and I stroll into the main auditorium and find my place in the second row, preparing my notebook for the soon-to-come onslaught of student hopefuls wishing to be in one of the spring main-stage shows. I spot Mr. Harrington, seated at the opposite end of the row. He gives me a tiny wave. I return him a blank stare, then turn my gaze to the stage, ready and waiting.
The stage assistant brings in the first wave of auditions one at a time. They’re all boring at best. “Next,” I keep hearing myself saying, and the next one is ushered in to perform their required 25-second dramatic and 25-second comedic pieces. Some of the returning second-years and third-years perform their usual, decent monologues. I don’t even have to take notes, remembering most of them by name and by the roles they had in last year’s productions.
Before the second wave, Mr. Harrington moves to the seat next to me. “Anyone good?”
I shrug. “Same old, same old.”
“Our Juliet from last year’s really improved on her enunciation,” he remarks, I assume taking all the credit, being the voice guru. “You can tell with the way she says Capulet.”
