For the outward appearance of exemplary Christian conduct -- I mean, let's face it: Jamie and I had everyone fooled -- as well for our college acceptances, we were granted an extra overnight off campus, and my mother reluctantly agreed to let us encamp in Southampton. On a whim, and with Jamie's approval, I also called Brett fully expecting him to decline my invitation to join us, but he readily accepted! (Had he broken up with Talia?)
Encumbered only by toothbrushes, Jamie and I caught the early train down to his hometown, where his older sister met us at the station in overcast drizzle. We took her home, endured a bunch of questions from Jamie's parents then drove the robin's-egg Corvair farther south to pick up Brett. Like an eloping bride I snuggled against Jamie the whole way, my left hand playing with his long flaxen hair, my right wedged warmly between his thighs as we sang along with the radio.
Pulling into Brett's driveway I beeped Jamie's horn. Brett emerged from the front door in faded jeans, his shaggy dark brown hair flopping over the collar of his worn flannel shirt as he jogged toward us. Under his breath Jamie said, "no way."
"What?" I asked.
He answered in a trance: "I like what I see."
Before I could object, Brett pulled open the car door. "Hey guys," he said, climbing in close beside me, stunning me with his hooded bronze eyes before reaching across to shake hands with Jamie. I was momentarily distracted by a whiff of musk.
"You two have heard about each other," I managed to say.
Following my directions Jamie drove us through light rain over the Whitestone out along the Expressway, the whole island covered by the Atlantic's mild misty blanket of saturated salty air. Like an electrical conduit between opposing poles, I discreetly and daringly slipped my left hand inside Jamie's thigh and my right inside Brett's, hoping they would feel the connection and like each other or at least get along for twenty-four hours.
Collectively aroused, we stopped mid-afternoon for a late lunch at the old landmark diner, a large chrome whale with wide, flat, upraised fluke, and a long row of portholes below tubular purple-neon lights: Moby Dick's.
"So, how's Talia?" I asked Brett, again sitting between my friends at the counter, facing a hungry grill in the off-season restaurant haunted by a few locals.
"Fuck her," he whispered.
"No thanks," I said. "She's all yours."
"Not any more she's not," he said.
"Good," I said hopefully, turning to Jamie, who was scanning and flipping metallic pages in the glass-enclosed counter-top juke box.
"Brett's available," I whispered.
Jamie's blue-green eyes questioned me: was I offering -- or withdrawing -- something precious?
"So, you two fool around after lights out," Brett said across me to Jamie. (Had my roommate detected my original boyfriend's jealous accusation?)
Jamie only smiled shyly. "Yeah," he admitted, looking down; "I haven't had a good night's sleep in months."
I laughed loudly enough to compensate for Brett's possessive silence. Still smiling, Jamie dropped a quarter into the slot of the juke box then pushed some buttons for a bevy of pop songs.
Full of burgers, French fries, milkshakes and mints, we continued down buckled blacktop through dwarf pine toward the bay. A sandy dirt road past budding scrub oak and dormant honeysuckle delivered us to the crescent of three vacant, brown-shingled old cottages that semi-circled a small beach and simple dock.
(I could almost see myself, a tanned, skinny young boy with sun-bleached platinum crew cut running full-speed to the end of the dock plunging into the water like a cannonball.)
Jamie parked privately between cottage and woods. We all got out stretching limbs in the rain. I opened the screen door to the porch and lifted the house key off a nail.
The living room my friends followed me into was dank and dark, husks of dead insects scattered around on wood floor and oval rug; half-burnt logs in the fireplace spotted by bird droppings; stale, musty air tinged by mothballs from upstairs bedrooms. Old pine furniture and shelves of paperbacks nobody ever read all seemed frozen in place and time; the cottage hadn't been used or even unlocked since my father had given up the ghost.
"Cool," Jamie said.
"Very cool," Brett corrected him.
"Look around," I suggested; "I'll build a fire." But we didn't have much time together. Aching with prolonged arousal, I impulsively broke the ice in one fell swoop. "There's only one rule here," I announced: "inside, you can't wear pants."
"We'll freeze!" Jamie blurted, strolling into the kitchen.
"What about outside?" Brett asked. We all laughed nervously. Taking the initiative, I kicked off my loafers, unbuckled my belt and unbuttoned, unzipped, pushed down and stepped out of my navy shorts then my underwear. (Brett had never seen my bare buttocks.) Self-consciously primed I approached the fireplace as he tentatively climbed the open stairs behind me.
When Jamie returned to the living room where I was kneeling to wad newspaper (and to hide my erection), he was wearing only his olive sweatshirt and was, as usual, provocatively engorged. Mindful of the intruder upstairs, I stood casually to hug my roommate for mutual reassurance, two hard touchy muscles mingling coincidentally.
The top stair creaked. Barefoot, naked from the waist down, Brett slowly descended into view sporting a tensely bobbing erection.
"Oh my," Jamie said.
"Oh yes," I thought.
Smiling shamelessly, his flannel shirt unbuttoned to show off a meager little patch of dark hair at the sternum, Brett walked his nodding erection right up to us, joining our welcoming embrace, all three of us eagerly looking down at an impromptu convocation of upstanding cocks.
