[ 4 ]
This was how I met him. In a clumsy joining of partnership one unassuming day in Intro to Psych, we were bonded forever. The so-called questions he threw at me about how hot I thought he was, they weren’t again resurrected. I was equal parts relieved and unsettled by that. Every class period thereafter, the prof would kindly give us ten minutes to discuss projects with our partners, and those ten minutes were the only ten that I began looking forward to. Even lunches and other classes and sleep got in the way; Intro to Psych was the only thing that mattered. Games, he had chosen for us. He must be into games …
Through the course of our research, I would learn precisely how into it Andrew Knudson was. His affinity for playing was apparent in almost everything he did, from the intimidating way he’d stare at me knowing he’d get his way eventually, to the aggressive, almost-competitive attitude he’d take in making all the decisions with our project. I constantly felt like there was a competition going on, whether of brains or brawn I couldn’t tell. The playing was endless. Once, he even bet that he could find something in the appendix quicker than I could. There were no stakes, but he’d make the bet anyway and he’d always win. Sometimes he’d be so cocky, he’d give me a head start … and still win. What an expert he is with those fingers.
When the class times apparently weren’t enough to speed our progress, Andrew decided the two of us should make a workspace of my dormitory. No discussion about it, just a decision, and at once it was set in stone. He always gets his way. My roommate was often not there, so Andrew always sat on his bed as if he owned it. That’s the way Andrew approached anything, as if it were already his to do with as he pleased. It’s a quality I both admired and found furiously annoying.
When my roommate took off for a weekend, that’s when the relationship between Andrew and I became something more than just a study in manipulative psychology.
“We need to be more specific,” I pointed out that Friday night, scrolling through notes and bookmarked Wikipedia pages. Of course, I was the one doing all the work; he just sat there most of the time looking pretty, offering one-word responses, and only now and then bothering to crack open the textbook. “Our notes are, like, everywhere. We might as well be doing a paper on the whole field of psychology. Psychology is all manipulative when you think about it.”
“Let’s play a game.”
I frowned at him. He was wearing a baby blue polo shirt. It was a size too small for his body, which gave a gift of his meaty, muscular form to my hungry eyes. Also the way he sat on my roommate’s bed, it showed the crotch of his jeans in perfect view, as if taunting, deliberate. Even his clothes knew how to play with me. “A game?”
“We try to guess what the other’s thinking.”
I vividly remember feeling my heart quicken. My mouth was dry in an instant and I couldn’t even swallow. Something about the way he suggested the game made me think he was already perfectly aware of the dirty thoughts crossing my quivering, ever-distracted mind. At this point, with his eyes locked onto mine and awaiting my answer, I found it excruciatingly difficult to not look down at the shape of his pecs in that tight baby blue polo, at the bulge his faded pants made below.
“Are you … Are you trying to apply what we’re learning about manipulative psychology to … to …” I tried to act all cool, tried to act casual, calm, easy.
But Andrew pressed on, ignoring me. “If you guess right, nothing happens. If you guess wrong, then you lose a piece of clothing.”
“Wait, what?”
“Same applies to me. If I guess wrong, I lose a piece of clothing. My choice of clothing, always.”
A game, he’d said. Let’s play a game. This is how it all started. “You’re really into this, huh?” I asked, but I knew I was projecting onto him because, to be honest, I was really into this. My cock was bone-hard in my pants to the point that it ached.
Did I really want him to see me with my clothes off? I considered that this might be a trick, a horrible prank. He’s the one with the goods, after all. He’s the one with the muscles and the demigod body. “How do we know we’re telling the truth? I could just … lie.”
“Oh, you’ll tell the truth,” he said, though it sounded more like a threat. “Ready? You go first.”
How far would this game go? Did we stop when we got down to our underwear? And if we were stripped naked, what would we have left to wager for every wrong answer?
My cock throbbed thinking of an answer.
“Well,” I said, feeling smart, “you’re obviously thinking about winning this game.”
He squinted. I remember thinking, You look so sexy when you squint. The ice in your eyes burns furious when you squint. My heart clenches with longing when you squint those fierce steely eyes. “You sure?”
The way he asked those two words, it made me doubt everything. His voice was so powerful, his tone so persuasive, I was confident he could make me uncertain of my own name if he applied enough dominance. He is so strong, I knew right then. This was a horrible mistake, to engage in a game of psychology with Andrew, the beauty from Intro.
“Y-Yeah,” I got out, annoyed at the dryness of my mouth.
Andrew grinned. I wondered if it was the first time I ever saw him smile. It took a game to get a smile out of him. His cheeks blushed feverishly and his eyes melted with hunger. I realized this is the way lions look when they’re luring in their prey. “Correct.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Your turn.”
“You’re thinking how relieved you feel,” he said at once.
I couldn’t argue with that. “That’s cheating,” I said, annoyed. “Obviously I was thinking that.”
“So I’m right,” he declared, the grin never leaving his face. Even his teeth shone with the saliva of a lion winning, lips wetted. “Your turn.”
I shifted my legs, swallowing again despite my mouth having nothing whatsoever to swallow. “Can we get back to the paper? I’m concerned that we’ve spent a week or two on this and still have, like, nothing done.”
“What is it?” he taunted me. “Afraid to lose your clothes?”
I steeled myself, lifting my chin. “No,” I lied.
“Yeah, you are,” he spat back, grinning.
“You’re thinking about me losing my clothes.”
Andrew’s grin was gone. He snorted, annoyed. Apparently I had guessed right, because the beast in him withdrew.
“Really? I’m right?” This tickled me greatly. “Why are you, Andrew, thinking about a guy like me losing my clothes? You getting gay on me?”
“You’re thinking about me with my clothes off,” he snapped back.
“Nope.” When a wash of surprise came over his fierce, sexy face, I felt myself smiling. “But now I am.”
This became my goal now. He wanted to play the dorm game? We’re going to play. And my goal was getting Andrew Knudson out of his tight, body-hugging clothes, watching them drop piece by piece to the floor. I wanted to see the goods he’d been hiding, the goods that only through tight fabric had I received hint of, every class long since the turn of the semester. I’d waited long enough.
He squinted at me, riled. Oh, what those eyes can do. Then, without being further prompted, he stood up like a good sport, unbuckled his pants, and unceremoniously threw them to his ankles. He wore sleek, black boxer-briefs that hugged his thick, muscular thighs, which were gently dusted with hair that matched the nearly-transparent blonde of his head. Plopping back down on the bed gracelessly, he kicked off the jeans along with his shoes, both of them tumbling loudly to the floor with the clinking of his heavy belt that I would someday become quite intimate with. He wore no socks. Shoes, belt, and pants? Hmm. Three for one, I thought, feeling greedy and thankful.
The boner in my pants was quite thankful too.
“What were you thinking about, then?” he asked—or rather, demanded to know.
“I was thinking about how good it’d feel to win,” I told him, because it was true. “Now I know and I can move on happily with my life.”
“Alright,” he said, skeptical.
“What? You think I lied?”
“Yeah, I think you lied.”
Perfect. My turn: “You’re thinking right now about whether or not I lied.”
Now it was his turn to feel cheated. “That’s fucked up,” he said.
“Psychology is manipulation. I take your reaction to mean I’m right.”
He snorted at me. I took that for confirmation.
I felt so proud. I’d never before felt this confident in front of Andrew. And despite the look of frustration on his face, I couldn’t help but notice that he seemed to be … enjoying this. Something inside me had woken up, something that connected with Andrew’s little dorm game. Where only a week ago Andrew had been some strange exotic and unattainable muscle boy, now we were at once speaking the same language, diving one at a time into each other’s heads. What was he about to find?
“You’re thinking about the paper again,” he blurted out, thinking he’d caught me, but I shake my head, inspiring another huff of frustration from him. “What the fuck’re you thinking, then?”
“How much you’re enjoying this game,” I said. “I was also wondering, maybe, what your p-p-pecs look like.”
His eyes were sharp and cold as needles. That death-cold stare never broke from mine when, quite deliberately and slow, he rose from the bed and took hold of the bottom of his shirt. So slowly, so excruciatingly slow and careful and slow, he lifted the shirt, inch by inch by inch. He had my full attention. I had never wanted to see something so badly in my life. I counted his abs as the tight baby blue polo lifted, inch by inch by inch. Oh my god, I breathed. Four. Six. Eight. He has eight of them. Past the rolling hills of Andrew’s abdomen, he reached the mountains of pectoral muscle, the left and the right. I was holding my breath. Inch by inch by inch. Then his nipples peeked out, greeting my eyes, the left and the right. Another inch, and the curve of his two powerful mounds of chest muscle snuck out. The muscles in his whole torso played and flinched and flexed as he maneuvered the tight shirt over his thick shoulders, peeling upward, inch by inch, up and up as he lifted his big arms to slip the shirt off over his head. He struggled and worked, all the while giving me a show of his abs dancing, his pecs dancing, wriggling as the shirt made its way off his arms one at a time. Then, almost gently, he flung the shirt to the bed behind him, his eyes still on me as though they’d never broken away, not even when the shirt was covering them. The devil grinned in his eyes, not quite his mouth, not quite, and when he licked his lips, that’s when I caught my breath.
“Your turn,” said Andrew, standing there in just a pair of sleek black boxer-briefs, his voice deep and full and taunting.
“Can I just be wrong and take all my clothes off?” I half-joked, trying to make light of the fact that I was completely dressed and he was … almost completely not.
“Rules,” said Andrew, his voice booming. “You don’t change the rules in the middle. You play fair, from start to end. What kind of man do you think I am?” Every word he’d say, his abdomen flexed and retracted, taking in air, then pressing it out with the words. I was so distracted by the work of art standing in front of me, I could hardly focus on what the fuck he was saying.
“I think you’re an almost naked man.”
“You think I’m someone who gives up?” he went on stubbornly, ignoring what I thought was a rather witty jab. “You think I’m some kid who bends when it’s tough? The world’s gonna throw shit at you, and it’s gonna keep throwing shit at you. You’ll be at your worst, your best friend just died, and it’ll keep throwing shit. You think the world changes its rules to help you?”
“You’re thinking about the world and its rules,” I announced.
“The fuck right I am,” he said. It didn’t occur to him that I meant that as my guess, that despite his sudden bout of philosophy and life lessons, I was, in fact, still playing the game. “The world is fucked up when we come into it, it’s fucked up when we go. Nothing changes that.”
He looked so beautiful standing there, almost yelling at me, his muscles flexing and unflexing with all his speech and passion and fervor.
“You get me?”
I looked up to meet his eyes. I saw the zeal in them. He was having fun a moment ago, but now he was made furious at the mere suggestion of me breaking the game, forfeiting, or otherwise tampering with his apparently-set-into-stone-like-law rules that he’d made. He takes this shit seriously, I realized, attempting to sober myself. He takes this shit really, really seriously. This is not just a game.
“I get you,” I said, though it came out in more of a meek, dry choke. Was I ever going to kiss his lips? Can he make my fantasies realized, and suddenly express that all this gaming and playing around and teasing and taunting is, in fact, just his version of foreplay, and that we were about to crash faces as soon as he could get my clothes off?
“So you stick to the fucking rules,” he said.
“Got it.”
“No dicking around. No second tries or mistakes. If you don’t respect the rules, you respect nothing. If you don’t learn discipline, you don’t learn anything.”
“Got it.” Discipline. Discipline. Do you want to discipline me, Andrew?
“Now make your guess,” he ordered me.
I smiled. “I already had. And I got it right.” When his eyebrows pulled together, quizzical, I watched it slowly dawn on him. I remember thinking: He has such a beautiful face, he has to be a model or at the very least part-god. “Your turn.”
His jaw locked, set and gnawing on his own teeth. He knew he only had one more wrong answer before he was completely naked. I knew he only had one more wrong answer before he was completely naked. I was certain that, no matter what he said, I’d tell him he was wrong. I’d tell him just so I could have him banish away that final scrap of fabric on his sexy body. I’d lie to him just to watch him remove his last piece of dignity. Dignity never looked so sexy. Heaven’s never been so close to me, within reach, within touch … Just one wrong answer away.
He said, “You’re thinking I only have one wrong answer left before losing.” His eyes burned with the fury of a million games he’d played in the past, a million more he’ll play in the future. His chest, puffed with confidence. He’s a man who always wins, a man who gets his way, a champion, a competitor.
With every article of clothing that Andrew lost, my confidence grew twofold. I found myself licking my lips. You’re thinking I only have one wrong answer left before losing, he’d said.
Right, I thought. “Wrong,” I breathed instead.
He showed no reaction; his eyes simply continued to burn me whole. Then, after too long a time, he asked, “Then what is it you’re thinking?”
“How big your cock is, and whether or not it can fit in my mouth.”
He took a step toward me. He took another step, his heavy bare feet slapping the dorm room floor. Another. Then he stood right in front of me. My legs apart, he stood between them, invading my space, his face baring down on me and the crotch of his tight boxer-briefs right there, enveloping my blurry, quivery field of vision.
Then his fingers found the waistband, slipping underneath. I broke from his eyes to stare ahead at the show of his clever fingers. The waistband dropped half an inch, the fabric bunching up, the sound of the fabric alone enticing me, lifting all the hairs on the back of my neck. The sound of the fabric as it slipped another half inch, revealing two cut hips, slowly unveiling the “V” of muscle that led to his cock. The boxer-briefs held back little from the imagination; I was already plenty aware how big he was.
Until even this moment, Andrew had never indicated one way or another his sexual interests. He’d never ogled a woman or a guy in my presence. Not once did he make mention of a girlfriend, of a boyfriend, of a chick he found hot or a dude he’d want to slam. His sexual appetite was a complete and agonizing mystery to me. Until this moment when his crotch was literally two-and-a-half inches from my face, I’d never even had the gall to give it an honest wonder. It’s so strange, how a person can just be sexuality … how a person could make you forget heterosexuality, homosexuality, anything that limits or defines or categorizes … that Andrew was, somehow, inexplicably, unexplainably just … there for the meal.
Yes, the fabric was still slipping off. I saw the hint of hair peeking out. He manscapes, I thought, and it amused me, almost inspiring a smile. He cares, I realized it meant. He’s a groomer. The base of his cock was next to reveal itself, the underwear coming slowly, slowly, slowly off. He makes a game out of everything, knowing how bad I want it. I had half a mind to make a grab at his boxers, to yank them off and claim my prize, but something held me back.
I didn’t really earn this, I realized, a tinge of guilt working its way into my somersaulting cocktail of excitement and horniness happening downstairs. I won the sight of his cock with a lie. I cheated. I broke the rule … arguably, the only rule of the game.
When he pulled the rest of his boxers down, sliding them slowly over the hills of his upper thighs, his cock slapped me in the face, and I didn’t care anymore how I’d earned the win, from deceit or otherwise. His cock remained there, pointing out, pressing itself against my cheek like a friend who’s come at me for a hug.
The boxers laid at his ankles, and when I peered up, I found Andrew still staring down at me mightily, like some giant beast. Even his pecs seemed to stare at me, his nipples punctuating the peak of either mountain of muscle. To my immediate right, his cock still graced my cheek.
Was he expecting something? No more words came from him. I wondered if this meant the game was over, now that he’d lost all his clothes. His cock against my face, it neither flexed nor flinched nor pulsed; it merely waited there, strong, powerful and keen.
I took this for an invitation. What the fuck else was it meant to be? I parted my lips, began to turn my cheek.
“No,” he barked from the top of the mountain.
I stopped, lips still parted, his cock literally a centimeter from entering them. My eyes stared up at him like some puppy from the floor. No? I could feel myself wanting to whimper like a puppy too. No? But his cock was right there. His cock was waiting, wasn’t it? Wasn’t he?
“If you want to suck me off,” he said finally, “then you gotta get the next question right.”
The disbelief poured out of my eyes. My lips were still parted, I was still frozen in place with his cock—my prize—resting gently in the air before my mouth, and I choked: “A-An-Another game?”
“Yes.”
“Haven’t we played enough?”
“A simple game. One question. You get it right, you get my cock. You get it wrong, I leave and you don’t see me until class Monday.”
WHAT?? I pulled away right then, staring up at him exasperatedly, my jaw hanging. What the fuck was he getting out of this? “Dude,” I argued, feeling incensed, “it’s your cock that’s getting the blowjob. It’s a reward for us both, isn’t it? Why do we have to make another fucking game out of it? I don’t understand.”
“You playing, or am I going?”
He was having none of my protests, nor my questions, nor my appeal to simple logic. Didn’t he want me to suck him off? Or does every sexual action between us have to be motivated with the winning or losing of a game?
Well, I started the day not knowing what Andrew’s naked body looked like. Now I knew, so whether a blowjob happened or not, I’m not leaving the day empty-handed. Nothing here to lose, really, only something to gain.
In my mouth.
So I finally asked: “What’s the question?”
He reached down suddenly, wrapped his cock with his mighty hand, pressed it against the side of my face and asked: “How many inches is it?”
Are you kidding me? His cock was right there, pressed against my face, and there was no way I could possibly see it, no way I could possibly guess. The only moment I’d had of judging its entirety was a split-second after the boxer-briefs went down before the man-monster slapped me in the cheek. So fucking cruel, I thought, to have the answer pressed into my cheek where I can’t see it. It could’ve been nine inches. Could’ve been eight. Hell, having only seen it within centimeters of my face, it might’ve been four inches and simply looked enormous so close-up. How the fuck could I know for sure? Was it hard, or is he more of a grower than a shower?
He must be thinking of the answer right now. Andrew must be thinking of it, and this is almost like just another round of our previous game. What number are you thinking of? How many inches is little Andrew? Difference is, the stakes in this particular question were considerably higher.
“Seven,” I answered.
Andrew didn’t move for a moment. His firm fist still obnoxiously pressing his cock into my cheek, I heard him murmur: “You sure?”
He wants you to be right, I told myself. He wants a blowjob—Who wouldn’t? He’s trying to help you.
“Eight,” I said, changing my mind.
The cock still pressed to my face, torturing me, driving me crazy, Andrew murmured once again: “You sure?”
Those two cruel fucking words. Those two evil, horrible motherfucking words.
“Eight and a half,” I choked. “Nine.”
Then Andrew pulled away. I felt a stab of excitement until suddenly I realized he was pulling up his underwear. I didn’t even think to look at his cock until it was already put away. Then he began slipping a foot each into his pants.
“Andrew,” I said.
He pulled the pants up, yanked them over his thighs, did the buckle loudly. The whole time he dressed, his eyes never left my face. He took up the polo shirt from the bed, slipped it over his head, working his way into the arms. There went his pecs I was so craving, there went his abs, there went his sexy bellybutton.
“Andrew?”
He reached down and pulled on his shoes, slowly doing the laces, taking his time.
“You’re not seriously leaving?” I blurted, all the fun dropping from me in an instant. “Andrew?”
That’s when the wicked grin spread across his face. Pulling the backpack over his shoulder, he didn’t say another word and, unhurriedly, he went to the door.
“Andrew, seriously?”
The door shut softly behind him. I stumbled to my feet, pulled open the door and stared after him as he walked down the hall.
“What the fuck!” I called out.
He disappeared into the stairwell, the heavy door shutting behind him. I was left alone, standing at my dorm room with my cock throbbing in my pants.
I’d won the game, yet left a loser.