Andy
I woke up Monday morning hard as an iron post, the kind they put up in Boston to make sure cars didn’t enter pedestrian zones. I’d been dreaming about sex, though I couldn’t remember the details. God damn, but I had to get off. I was becoming seriously irritable, especially being around Jake all the time. He could have ended this so easily, not only the physical torment itself, but the questions that were starting to drive me crazy. And yet he hadn’t even acknowledged I’d suggested we get each other off since he’d first walked away on Friday morning.
Fine! I’d figure out another way to do it, then.
I went into the bathroom. It was too difficult to turn the lock on the door and, anyway, if Jake walked in on me, that was his problem. I couldn’t even piss with my aching hard-on, and I was so done with this. The sink in the bathroom was free-standing and had a curved porcelain edge. It was at the right height that I figured I might be able to rub off against it. Of course, cold porcelain wasn’t exactly conducive to comfort. I bent over and grasped a towel off the rack with my teeth. I tried to drape it over the basin. What I wanted was a clean double fold so there would be two thickness of terrycloth between me and the porcelain. But the towel dropped twice, forcing me to get onto my knees to pick it back up in my teeth and use my elbows to get back on my feet. Then I could only get a single layer of the towel in place, despite spending ages trying to fold it with my elbows.
Finally I gave up and just tried to rub off against it, but the surface was still too hard. And it was bunched up all wrong, making uncomfortable folds. I got more and more pissed, still hard as a rock and in desperate need. I found a spot on the towel that wasn’t too uncomfortable, and was just starting to rut in earnest when I heard the door and voices in the main room. Walter’s voice. I’d apparently slept right through Emily’s visit, and now Walter had arrived for our morning shower and bandage change.
I swore a loud, hearty motherfucker and let the towel drop to the floor. I scooted my gym shorts back up against the bathroom wall, having to work it over my woodie. Whatever. I didn’t care. My T-shirt was long enough to mostly cover it. I used the back of one bandaged hand and my knee to turn the bathroom doorknob and stomped out.
Walter and Jake were in the living room, talking. Walter gave me a nod, though he didn’t smile or say hello. He’d probably heard me cursing. I glared at the two of them and went into the kitchen.
Emily had left me a large coffee travel mug on the counter with a straw in it. I took a sip. It was cold. I thunked my head against the fridge, breathing hard.
I was so done. Normally, I could laugh about it or take it as a challenge, but not this morning. I was frustrated and horny and resentful.
“Andy?” Jake came up behind me, his voice quiet. I heard the sink in the bathroom turn on. Walter was in there setting up for our showers. As if I’d let him near me with this fucking hard-on.
I growled, not lifting my head from the fridge. “What do you want, Jake?”
“What’s the matter?”
I heard the worry in Jake’s voice. He honestly didn’t know? “My coffee is cold, my dick is hard, and I want to punch something. Any more questions?”
There was a smirk in Jake’s voice. “So your coffee is frigid and your dick is rigid? I hate when that happens.”
I smiled despite myself, though with my head on the fridge, I didn’t think he could see it. But at the same time, part of me wanted to tell him to fuck off. The way he’d told me to. But I didn’t. Jake wasn’t doing anything wrong. He had every right to say no to my little plan. In fact, he was probably smart to say no. I was the fucked-up one. Why did I want this so much?
I sighed and slumped even more against the fridge, feeling defeated.
Behind me, I actually heard a gulp as Jake swallowed. “Hey, listen . . . I’ll do it.” His voice was low and gravelly, as if he didn’t want Walter to hear.
I stood there, not saying anything. But my heart started pounding harder. Did he mean it?
“You said no,” I finally managed. “If you don’t want to do it, you shouldn’t.”
“I just said I would.”
“Maybe now I don’t want to,” I argued, some gremlin inside me still hurt that he’d said no in the first place.
“Don’t be such an emo!” Jake huffed. “Like you said, it’s an expedient way to get off. It’s not a big deal.”
Oh thank God. My woodie had finally been starting to go down, but now it perked up again at the idea of getting some action. A warm mouth. Jake’s mouth. Oh God. “Okay,” I said breathlessly. “When?”
Jake snorted. “Eager much? We’ll have to wait until Walter leaves, obviously.”
That soon? Oh God. “Okay. After Walter leaves.”
“Want me to ask him to nuke your coffee before I get in the shower?”
“Yeah. That’d be great. Thanks.”
Jake walked away.
How did he manage to sound so cool about it? What had changed his mind?
Holy shit. Jake and I had just agreed to get naked together and suck each other off.
October 2011 - Eleventh Grade
Jake
“Dare me to do it,” Andy slurred, waving around his Solo cup.
I narrowed my eyes and looked him up and down, as if considering it. I shook my head. “Nah, bro. You’re drunk. You don’t wanna be doing that right now.”
“I’m fine!” Andy took a wobbly stumble toward me. “I have the skateboard in m’car. Dare me!”
There was a middle school football game in progress across the parking lot, but no one in our group was paying attention to it. We were all hanging out and drinking until the real Friday-night parties began. It was already dark, being around 7 p.m. in October, which made our drinking less obvious. Not that any teachers were around to see it.
My girlfriend, Denise, hugged my arm. She didn’t look happy. “No way, Andy. It’s a totally stupid idea to skateboard off the roof of the school, even if it were daytime, even if you weren’t drunk! That’s whacked.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, kissing her cheek. “Forget it. Just chill out and have fun.”
“No! I can do it! I bet anyone thirty bucks I can. Anyone?” Andy spun in a slow circle, pointing to our friends. “Ray? Nate? Thirty bucks. Come on.”
Ray shrugged. Nate and a couple of other guys shook their heads.
“No betting! No one bets. He’ll break a leg. Or his neck.” I spoke lazily, like I didn’t really think he’d do it. I pretended to be focused on Denise. It wasn’t a hardship. She was a cutie, five foot three, dark hair and eyes, and a sassy mouth. I liked her.
“Nope, I’m doing it. I’ll show you.” Andy put down his red Solo cup, supposedly filled with the concoction of orange juice, grapefruit juice, and rum he’d been mixing up out of his trunk. He moved around to the passenger seat of his 2009 Beamer, weaving left and right, and opened the back door.
“He’s so trashed!” Nate laughed.
“Guys, don’t let him do something stupid,” a girl named Jayden said worriedly.
Andy dragged his skateboard out of his car, staggering slightly.
Don’t overdo it, I thought.
Andy clutched the skateboard under one arm and waved his hand. He spoke loudly, motioning to other people hanging out in the parking lot to come over. “I, Andy Tyler, am going to skateboard from the roof of this building.” He waved a hand at the school. “From that point right there, near the stovepipe, or whatever that black thing is, back to here.”
People began coming over. Even a few people at the football field began walking toward us.
Andy waved at me. “Jake, my man, dare me to do it. Come on!”
I pulled away from Denise and walked over to Andy. “All right. If you want to make a spectacle of yourself, I dare you. Skateboard down here from the roof, Andy. Let’s see you do it!”
“He’s drunk, Jake!” Denise sounded appalled.
“He won’t do it!” I said dismissively. I pushed Andy a bit on his shoulder, and he did a little wobble but stayed upright. “Anyway, he’s not that drunk.”
“’M not that drunk!” he agreed unconvincingly. “And I’m boss on a skateboard. Been skating for, like, months!”
I bit back a laugh. Andy had been skateboarding pretty much since he could walk. Our close friends knew that, of course, but most of the gathering crowd didn’t. He made some half-assed moves on the board in the parking lot, purposefully making himself look bad. The tension was building.
Nate was taking bets and people were getting upset and worried. Some were hooting at Andy to go for it, but most of the audience was trying to talk him out of it, a few getting emotional.
Gotcha.
Finally, Andy bowed and announced that he was ready to start. “Jake, if you’ll be master of ceremonies.”
“Sure.” I pushed off the car and away from Denise. I turned to address the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, do not try this at home, please! They say God protects fools and drunkards, so please send up a Hail Mary for our own Andy Tyler!” I raised my hands and clapped, encouraging everyone to applaud, but most people were too freaked-out to put their hands together.
“This way, sir.” I turned to Andy and swept my hand toward the building.
He started walking over there with me at his side.
“Jesus Christ, you better not really be drunk,” I muttered to him when we were far enough away from the spectators.
“Nope. My cup just had juice. I’m good.”
“Be careful on that drop down to the second story.”
“I’ve got this.”
“Yeah, but you’ve never done it in the dark.” I really was worried, and it came out in my voice. “You don’t have to go through with this, you know. I can pretend that I decided to call it off.”
“It’s fine, bro. Chill.” He snuck a glance back at the crowd and chuckled. “Fuck, they are shitting their pants.”
“Do not screw this up. If we have to call an ambulance, I’m never speaking to you again,” I said darkly.
Despite the practice runs he’d made, I was still paranoid. The sprawling school consisted of a main building that was old and brick with a peaked roof over a flatter, tar-papered section. Around the main rectangle were lower additions of one and two stories. There were lots of sloped concrete struts between the levels that Andy used to drop from roof to roof. There were a few sections that were tricky, and lots of ledges had deadly drops. It could all go wrong in a heartbeat. No matter how much you planned or practiced, some things were just inherently dangerous. But Andy was an adrenaline junkie, and when he got in a certain mood, there was no talking him out of things.
Plus, I had to admit, he was really good on that damned skateboard.
We reached the double doors that led into the back hall and the locker rooms. It was unlocked thanks to the football game. Andy would go inside and make his way up various stairwells to the topmost roof, and I’d stay out here and man the video camera—and the crowd. That was the plan. But when we got to the doors, he stopped and turned to me.
“Jake.”
“Yeah?”
There was a big spotlight over the doors, and he looked pale, his pupils large and black with barely a sliver of ice blue left in his eyes. “Keep your eyes on me. Okay?”
“Um . . . where else would they be?”
“No, I mean it. On me.”
“Sure.”
He studied my face for a moment, his expression intent. “You’re with me. Right? It’s you and me.”
“You know it.” I looked back toward the cars and Denise, feeling uneasy. If only Andy knew how much my eyes were on him—too often and for the wrong reasons. He’d probably hate me if he knew. But I was dating Denise now, and I was finally starting to get my head on straight.
Andy grabbed my shoulder with his free hand and shook me once. “Say it. Say it’s you and me.”
I looked at his face, my mouth dry. “It’s you and me, Andy. Christ.” I wished it were true, wished he meant it the way I wanted it to be.
“Okay.” He sounded a little nervous. He dropped his hand. “Let’s do this. Make sure you get good video, especially that drop by the art class window.”
“I’m on it.” I pulled out my phone so I could record.
“And keep talking about how drunk I am.”
“Yup. I know what to do. Don’t worry.”
Andy grimaced. “Sorry. I know you’ve got this. You’re the best, Jake.”
Andy turned to wave in an over-the-top sloppy style to the crowd in the parking lot. Then he winked at me and went inside with his skateboard.
My stomach was in my throat for the next ten minutes as he swooped and dropped and wove, sometimes on two wheels. But he survived without a scratch. Nate made three hundred dollars that night. And my video, called “Drunken skateboard parkour,” got over a hundred thousand hits on YouTube.
It would be a long time before Dunsbar High forgot the Andy and Jake Show.