Opening my eyes when I’m kissing her, can’t say why, just because it’s beautiful to look at her face close up. And then she opens her eyes too. It’s a thing we’re doing together, her open eyes and mine, both here, both looking. Starry sky, wide over her head when she takes her shirt off. Crickets in the grass. Her dark skin, the bra a shadow over her like a cancellation. Humidity making the kisses wetter, my hands slippery flippers trying to open the stupid condom wrapper. The grass so soaked we have to pat ourselves dry a little with the sweatshirt. My eyes straining to see more, her hands straining too, on my legs. And I’m inside her. It’s hot. The most fantastic thing, the two of us in the great wide-open night.
We’re sending each other pictures of girls. Most of them they took themselves. Toothbrushes, hairdryers on the sink in front of the mirror as they get their lips pouty, put one leg up to show everything. Ridiculous tan lines sometimes, bright white tits like those coconut pastry balls we’d buy in sixth grade. Their boyfriends put them up to it, and then put them up here, in revenge after the breakup, for us to get hot looking at. We’re playing who would you rather.
—Her.
—The blonde.
—You always like blondes.
—With an ass like that, yeah.
—Wait, there was a good ass. Here.
—Well maybe from behind so I wouldn’t see her face.
—OK, her for sure, instead.
—Yeah.
—Or, wait.
And then I’m looking, fuck you Alec, at a picture of the President of the United States.
Abby was always scared of the condoms afterwards. She wouldn’t touch them and she wouldn’t throw them out in her house, in case her snoopy mom brush-cleared the wastebasket. So afterwards we’d walk around the neighborhood with little cloudy bundles, eggs of damp latex all tissued up, so delicate in my hand in my pocket like the baby we were trying to avoid. Nighty-night. Go to sleep in this trashcan outside the sandwich place.
—You know you’re a good dancer, right, Cole? You’re obviously comfortable in your own body.
—Well, it’s an amazing body.
Alice shoves me, and then gives me a long look.
—What?
—There’s a part of your dancing I don’t like.
—I can take criticism of my dancing technique.
—Stop doing it with so many other girls. I’m your girlfriend. Dance with me.
It says next to Amateur Dorm Blow Job that thirty-five thousand people have watched it. Of course, like one thousand are me over and over.
—What do you mean casual?
—I don’t know. Like, not married.
—Cole, are you seeing someone else?
—No.
—Do you want to?
—I don’t know.
—You don’t know.
—I’m just trying to say what casual is.
—Let’s talk in person.
—I can come over?
—No, call me.
—I can’t come over?
—I’m not in the mood, Cole. I’m upset. Do you get that?
Dammit, now against the wall her mouth is all over that guy Ada used to go with. Anna, and why not me, after the conversations I’ve had with you, flirty and at different times? You were not at all anytime interested, and now you picked him? I mean we’re basically the same height, that guy and me. He even used to run on the team, we’d get each other’s same sweatshirts mixed up. The only thing he has I don’t have is the two of them kissing right now.
Checkup time, and my doctor wants to talk about being sexual active, about sexual activity, about three more phrases they taught him to say instead of so, are you fucking. —Is there something you want to discuss with me?
I want to say, how about that girl in the waiting room? With the long hair?
The flare-up, my fault, OK. Wondering if this will go quick or how it will go. If she can get over whatever it is to get over. And then the breakup. Her friends around her like watchdog bodyguards. Getting over me. Nothing on the phone. OK, OK. Official status. So it’s broken up. Dry spell, hang with Alec for a bit. The exhaustion of knowing you’ll have to begin again, climb from base camp, start all over with the girl you already noticed a little bit before, saved in your pocket for later.
New semester, right away Art is a place for me. Five other boys only, two gay, one more gay but not knowing it yet, all pals-y with the girls, no competition there.
Spanking new sketchbooks. Mr. Ryotis shows slides of nudes, everyone nodding all serious about the light. The light is beautiful. It’s shining on an ass, also beautiful. Painters figured it out, and so smart right under everyone’s noses. How many years before I can get someone to pose for me? College? I like the actual part where I draw, too.
Showered so many times at Alec’s but the water pressure is weird, and the angle. It’s either slapping down on your dick or your dick is totally out of the spray ignored and cold. You cannot masturbate in there, and I always wonder if this frustrates Alec, although I guess, I know, he mostly does it in his room by the computer.
And I do it sitting up on my bed now usually. Leaning on pillows. Talking to him sometimes.
Nothing on Saturday night, just like Friday, so I’m back with Alec in his room calling up a movie, wondering if we both know we’re going to say it’s boring in an hour, and watch porn again. Or if only I just know. Our shoes are off. He burps, which is like always, but then when I catch him looking at me twenty minutes into some stupid car chase, it’s something else. We turn it off.
Alec sounds a little hoarse. The girls are almost slithering on the screen. We both keep shifting, our jeans crackling, weird and hot to watch it together. More weird than hot, or the other way, I don’t know. He asks, —You think there are really girls anything like that?
but the girls are right there.
Alec makes a noise when he comes. I don’t know what you’d call it. Not a grunt, not a moan. Nothing gross. Actually the word I guess I feel, I guess, is cute. I reach to hand him a tissue but he just wipes up with the T-shirt I have handy for me, I want this not to be happening and it feels so good, prickly on my skin when I think about it, and fucking hot when I don’t.
He’s a little bigger. This is, shut up, something you have to notice.
C’mon is all Alec says. C’mon. We’re both in boxers. He reaches in first. His hand on my cock is the exact right weight, the rhythm perfect like never with a girl, not without showing her a few times. I say something too, but not a word I remember, or one that counts. I touch him too, it’s quick and it’s over like some other, any other, secret that slips into your life and then back out and you walk the world, c’mon, with nobody knowing.
I show Kristen the painting that was projected on the wall in class. —OK. Tell me this isn’t— —Cole, you are such a perv. This is art. This is an old painting.
—He paints this party, all these naked guys chasing naked girls clutching their clothes and laughing, and I’m the perv?
—This was, like, ancient times.
—So?