[ 2 ]
Andrew’s always enjoyed being in control. I met him in an Intro to Psychology class last year when we were sophomores. The prof was a total pushover and half the students slept, even in the front row, but the sight of Andrew kept me awake every day. He’d always sit near the side, elbows propped on the desk so I’d get this delicious view of his flexed triceps and back muscles most of the hour. The way his shirts fit tightly against his back, sucking on his arms, painting his traps and bulged shoulders, I’d find myself nursing a secret hard-on so often that I can count on my hand the amount of classes I wasn’t hard.
It became an obsession pretty quick. I would make sure to get to class super early just so I could excitedly anticipate him arriving. I’d sit in my desk and watch the door like a dog. The rustling of clothes and side conversations happening all around me were bothersome because it all tried to distract me from the sight of Andrew walking into class. When at last he arrived, I’d clench the edge of my desk—my hands already plenty sweaty—and study what he was wearing. Another tight shirt of some color or another. Tight jeans he squeezed his powerful thighs and thick jock butt into. I wondered what he did in high school. Was he a walking football quarterback wet dream? Cocky captain of the wrestling team? Bored too-much-time-on-his-hands weightlifter? Bully with four older brothers he had to grow stronger than?
Too soon, the class always ended, and all my classmates scattered like my memory of half the lesson I was supposed to be paying attention to. One of these countless days, I found a speck of courage and did what any normal person would do when consumed by a classroom crush.
I stalked him. As I didn’t have another class for three hours, and I was miserably obsessed with Andrew, I went in the same direction he did, which was basically opposite of my dorm where I would otherwise be headed. Seemed his next destination was the math building, not far from the psych hall. I kept my distance and, moments after he went in, I then followed. I was certain he didn’t know I was on his sexy tail.
Once in the building, I saw him disappear into the first auditorium, then realized that, in fact, I did not want to sit through an hour-long algebra class. Also, I was sorta creeping myself out with all this stalking. Feeling a stroke of panic lance down my arms, I gripped my backpack and turned on my heel, vacating the math building for good.
I shouldn’t make a habit of this, I realized. People do not like to be followed. But for the next hour, I found myself helplessly glued to a bench near the exit of the math building. I was pretending to enjoy the sunshine, pretending to catch up on the last psych chapter, but every five seconds I’d glance up at the doors, wondering if I might catch Andrew leaving them. Every person that pushed through the door sent a jolt of excitement through me, even when it turned out not to be him.
Then suddenly, it was him.
I casually gathered my things and began to follow. Again. What the actual fuck am I doing? I continued down the path many, many, many paces behind him, and discovered with relief that he seemed to be headed to the food court. Just so happened, I was hungry as a motherfuck.
Of course, half an hour later found me seated on the opposite side of the commons, watching as he pushed a fat burger into his big, sexy lips. He was all by himself. No one sat with him. No one approached him. No one walked past to say hi. For some reason, the seeming lonesomeness of his character drew me in. I felt like I related to him, just in that solidarity factor, that … aloneness. I wanted him to be just like me, somehow. I wanted all the obvious differences in our appearances to be nothing compared to some deep inner sameness about the two of us. That isn’t so improbable, I reasoned, desperately hopeful.
Desperately horny.
Chewing on my lame, tasteless sandwich, I knew how stupid I sounded. We’re nothing alike, I told myself, bitter, nor will we ever be. You should go back to your dorm and your boring roommate and give up this creepy obsession of yours. Still, I stayed there to watch him until the bitter, delicious end.
My roommate was going to move out the following year. That meant some random cat they pulled from the sophomore or junior bowl was going to be shoved into the vacancy in my room. Staring hungrily at Andrew across the food court, I wondered what it’d be like to be his roommate. Would we work out together? Would he be embarrassed of me? Maybe we could help each other study. Yes, I really, truly thought that, even then, sitting there with my sad sandwich and the dream boy within my view, not knowing a thing that my future would hold, I sat there and pondered a life with Andrew for a roommate.
He got up unceremoniously and moved to the trashcan with his empty bag of chips and a crumpled up napkin. I flinched, daring myself to follow, but half of my sandwich remained, and suddenly I lost the nerve to keep up with him. Doesn’t matter, I thought, trying to comfort myself. I’ll see him Friday. He walked toward the exit of the food court, shoved his way out of it, and the muscular walking orgasm was gone.
That night, as I rested in bed with my eyes to the ceiling and a textbook opened at my side that I’d given up on an hour ago, I listened to the gentle hum of my roommate talking to his girlfriend on a cellphone in the bathroom. For a moment it sounded like arguing, then it became pleading, and finally I heard the echoing ring of laughter.
Really, relationships are so strange to me. The only guy I’d ever been sexual with was some fruit ball my junior year of high school whose voice was two octaves higher than mine, but his hair was always done up really fucking amazingly. One day afterschool he’d insisted on coming over to “give me a makeover” or something, and I agreed even though I and the whole school knew he was gay. In the bathroom, he turned my hair into something half-amazing and half-scary, then grabbed my face with two oily palms and cried, “You’re hot shit!” When I tried to thank him, he planted his lips on my face, and somewhere between the hairspray and two a.m., half a handjob and some clumsy kissing happened. The next day he told his two best girlfriends that we were boyfriends, and I denied it, and then there was an argument and a lot of ugly words were thrown around, and suddenly I had nothing to do anymore with him or anyone he knew. It was a very confusing and painful week.
I just never grasped the concept of boyfriends or lovers or whatever. My right hand sufficed.
And when my roommate finally got off the phone and mumbled something at me about staying at his girlfriend’s that night, he threw a bag over his shoulder and took off. The room all to myself, I spent exactly twenty minutes reading the same sentence over and over again in the psych book before giving up, pulling up a porn site on my laptop, and feverishly searching for something that reminded me the most of Andrew. I settled on some puffy muscled guy flexing, then unzipped my pants. His face was all wrong and his shirt didn’t fit him as tight as I wanted it to, but he pulled the thing off too soon anyway, and I jerked until the stars were traded for a wash of morning sunlight.
I was officially, irrevocably crushing hard on the muscle god from Psych. So, naturally, that Friday when the prof announced that we would be partnering up for a joint research paper and project, my stomach fell through the floor.