[All characters in this story are 18. In fact, everyone in the world is 18. Happy 18th birthday, because everyone's 18th birthday is today.]
*
"I'll kill you after school, faggot," I whisper to him as we take our seats. And it's the last class of the day.
He gives me a tiny smile and a nod, like it's all his plan not mine. Class starts. My notes are all doodles of guns. This class I'll put the finishing touches on an M-60. I saw Die Hard 3 last week.
I didn't make the swim team. I didn't make any of the teams. I knew I had to get into one this year. Lunch has been difficult. Even impossible. The swim coach said "I don't know why you're here. You can barely swim." The other tryouts laughed at me. I was there because it was my last chance.
I'm not like everyone else, okay? I don't have anything special going for me. I'm just a regular guy, but I have to prove it. They say your life is a symphony but high school is the overture. If I'm not a real man the girls will laugh at me, and I've never had a girlfriend. It's senior year. I need to fix this. I don't want to be a loser for the rest of my life.
Beating up a faggot proves you're straight and macho. I know Quentin is a faggot. Everyone does. He bleaches his hair and waxes his arms. He has a pretty little face like a girl and sometimes I'd swear he's wearing makeup. Not a lot, just a little, a really subtle lipstick or something.
What kind of name is Quentin? This time of year all his shirts are mesh tank tops. He doesn't have back hair, doesn't have chest hair, doesn't have stomach hair, and his armpits are so clean and smooth and simple it's like they're airbrushed on the cover of those supermarket checkout magazines. He has to be plucking them or waxing them. No shave is that perfect. Everyone can tell.
Believe it or not, there are still goths at my school. Quentin's not popular, but he gets along with the goths. I don't get it. They're goth enough not to go emo or scene with the rest of the goths, but they hang out with a little blonde queer, and his name even starts with queer, who mostly wears white and doesn't have any jewelry. You'd think he'd have jewelry. He should wear a little faggot earring or something. Left is right, right is wrong.
The M-60 is coming out okay. I'm doing it two colors, black pen and blue pen. The blue's running out. With a red pen I could add a muzzle flash or blood. I wish I had an M-60. That might even be better than joining one of the teams. Fucking gun grabbers. I need to talk to that army recruiter again.
Class is over, finally. I can hear 35 backpacks zipping up. I put the M-60 away, the pens in the pen pouch. Quentin walks over to the front of my desk and leans on it. These are chair-desks, so it's only going to be stable as long as I'm sitting down, balancing him out. If I get up, it will flip over. Is he starting the fight like that? That's clever, but I think I can still beat a faggot.
"Are we still on for later?" says Quentin seriously.
"Just about now," I tell him with my jaw clenched, glaring at him, eyebrows down all the way.
"The room will clear out in a minute."
Oh god, I think some people are noticing us. I know what this sounds like. What this looks like. What this faggot looks like. I am almost going to say something to make what's really going on obvious, like that I'm going to break his face wide open. But I catch myself. If the teacher catches on, he might try to stop the fight.
I need this fight. I look into his eyes, his tender face with the big eyes and the small mouth and the skin, like everywhere on his body I can see, so perfect that I can't see a single mole or freckle or hair or even pore. Anywhere on it.
When that face is crying and bloody and ruined I'll be a hero. Every girl in this school will want to talk to me. "I didn't know you were so strong," they'll say. "So manly, so brave. You really got that little faggot, he made me sick. Do you think I'm pretty enough to touch you?"
The teacher has packed up and left. We can fight now. I want an audience. I want everyone to see me do it. They'll tell stories about it. That's how heroes are made. But Quentin is still leaning on my desk. I don't know exactly how to get up without taking a spill and making a fool of myself, at least at first. Even if I win the fight, and of course I will, what if I have a bloody nose or something and people think I look like a loser? I can't afford to spoil this.
About ten of the class are still in the room, but then somebody flings open the door and yells that two goth girls are making out in the parking lot. The place empties.
Quentin breaks eye contact and walks over to the door. We were staring at each other, like a staring contest. He looked away first. I broke his will. I get up, thinking about how I'm going to fight him in the classroom. I didn't plan on all these chairs being in the way. They're not good pick-up-and-hit-somebody chairs either.
Quentin flips the bolt on the door and pulls the shade down over the little window in the door. "Hold still," he says, walking toward me, "I'm gonna mess you up." But he doesn't say it like this means the fight started.
"What?"
"Just gonna tear your shirt a little," he says. "Otherwise how will anyone know you were in a fight? This way it looks like I fought back." And he grabs my collar with both hands and jerks one downward. It rips about a third of the way down. His knuckles on my skin tickle a little.
I am suddenly terrified, because I can feel a little extra heartbeat in my crotch. I can feel myself trying to uncoil out of my briefs. Am I still thinking about earlier, when I imagined what life's going to be like after I win? It's not visible yet, right? If Quentin sees it... who knows what he'll do? That faggot might kneel down and wrap his girly lips around it, and stroke it with his narrow little tongue.
Oh no. I think it's getting harder. If I was alone it would definitely be hard enough to start jacking. Not rock hard, but rubber hard. I can't tell if the tip is wet, but sometimes it's tricky to tell. What's happening to me? Maybe as he was sucking me off, Quentin would have one soft hand on my shaft, pumping it roughly up and down, his grip hard but nowhere near as hard as me, and maybe his other hand would be gently kneading my sack, carefully cherishing the balls inside, working me up to fill his mouth, or maybe it would be stroking my thigh, or tracing the inside edge of my leg with one finger, or playing on my stomach or chest, or slyly moving down from the top of my butt crack...
How the fuck is this happening to me. This is why I need a girlfriend. I am deprived and it's not right. It's warping me. Maybe knowing that Quentin is definitely a faggot slut is too much temptation or something. You're not supposed to be a virgin when you're 18!
