I hadn't noticed the days getting shorter, but that didn't make it so. Proof was fixed to the refrigerator door with a lemon-shaped magnet. The senior class schedule signified a chain of events that would end my summer and begin the last year of high-school. I turned away from the flow of the party and examined the page in an awkward attempt to look busy. Nodding dramatically as if its words solved some lingering mystery, my charade only reinforced a sinking feeling of isolation. I had never come to these parties before, and cursed myself for caving after avoiding so many previous invitations.
The beer was welcome surely, as was the pot-fuelled camaraderie with the boys—but we did that everyday. These parties were different. Sure they began under that guise, but then some unperceivable shift would occur, and the gathering would assume its true purpose as an authority-free laboratory for sexual experiment. I didn't take part.
No one ever told me I wasn't welcome, but that doesn't mean I was. These people were my friends and allies, thrust suddenly from the nurturing order of junior high into the anxious chaos of high-school. Some kids came and went of course, but there was a core of us that remained the same. I was theirs, as much as they were mine. Together we survived, together we endured—mostly. Unfortunately, I was on the wrong end of mostly.
As we grew, little things that were overlooked with the innocence of youth subtly divided me from my friends. When the natural way of things started to wake in us changing our minds and bodies, I suddenly learned what it meant to be the 'fat-kid'. My group would explore sex without me. The divisions weren't conscious on their part and I didn't resent them for it. Truthfully, I was embarrassed by my appearance and it's doubtful I would have accepted any advances were they offered.
My friends paired off nicely however. Boyfriends and girlfriends switched places with an amazing speed, the more adventurous girls became increasingly popular. An unexpected advantage of those awkward high-school desks was their ability to hide a potent erection. I greedily absorbed all the detailed accounts of who had done what with whom, and stored them away for later use cock in hand. But this was the limit of my involvement.
My friends shared all their sordid details with great relish, and I quickly became schooled in the currency of sex. Feeling a tit had little value—even the shyest girl offered that freely, hoping the quantity of it made up for its perceived lack of worth as a sexual act. Touching a naked breast was a little better, but no one would volunteer that as the limit of their sexual coin. Eyewitness of a naked breast had great value however. Naked breasts were worth somewhere between a handjob and a blowjob. To see a girl's naked breasts implied a level of trust and enthusiasm had been reached, and that greater riches were to come.
Soon I was intimately acquainted with most of my female friends' sexual resumes and was able to tailor my fantasies to match. I knew Alice had masturbated my three best friends to orgasm, and could vividly imagine her tiny hands and chipped nail polish gripping my engorged cock.
Better still, my joyously indiscrete friend Shane had forwarded me some delicate pictures of his girlfriend Lisa. Truly, the pictures were innocent compared with the raw portraits of sex that flood the internet. But my true knowledge of Lisa as a person and friend since the sixth grade heightened the eroticism greatly. I could gaze at her two desks away from me, and then race home to enjoy the modest swell of her porcelain breasts before the memory of her perfume faded. Many long nights of grunting over those pictures finished with a satisfying splash. I took it as a vague consolation that my fantasy life allowed me to enjoy most of the girls in my class. Although each of my friends had known one or two for real, I knew almost all of them in my mind.
I suppose this is what brought me to the party in the end—a naïve desire to compare my fantasy to reality. But standing there scrutinizing the fridge magnets, I knew this could come to no good. Witnessing the girls of my dreams writhe and cavort in the flesh served only to diminish my fantasy, and force me to see of the falseness of it. Here was the electricity of shared moments; the thick musky odours of sex—details of life that I could never imitate alone in the dark. And that was where I belonged, alone in the dark.
I would get one more drink to cement my self-pity, and then get the hell out of there. I made a determined line towards the bar, ignoring the unabashed display of teen-age sex around me. Erin was there mixing drinks for people, and I suppose it must have looked rude when I reached past her for a cup and began to mix my own drink. Other friends came and went as Erin adeptly took their empty cups and somehow remembered who drank what and fixed it for them.
I felt bad for being pushy and said as much. It suddenly occurred to me that Erin and I were the only uncoupled pair in the house. It made sense I smiled, she was the fat girl and I was the fat guy. I had to admit that Erin was actually pretty fucking adorable now that I took the time to see her. She had never been part of my masturbatory repertoire before, and now that seemed like a glaring omission. Erin was about 5'4", near 200lbs, with a cute blonde bob and almond shaped brown eyes. But it was her crooked little front teeth and nervous overbite that gave me chills.
I must have stared too long because when I snapped back to the present, Erin was blushing and looking at the floor. I apologized quickly and suggested something about smoking too much weed. I went on fumbling something about the risks of mixing booze and marijuana, and in retrospect I'm sure I must have sounded like a complete idiot. But anything was better then admitting I was taking a mental picture of her so I could go home and masturbate.
At some point in my rambling, I absently volunteered that I had some killer weed at home, and to my chagrin Erin asked if we could go smoke some. All I wanted to do was go home, jerk off, and feel sorry for myself, but a hastily blurted 'ok' betrayed all that. In a few moments we were out of the party and into the sobering night air. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into and was suddenly terrified about the whole affair. My room was a mess, the promised marijuana was my younger brother's, and a non-relative female had never stepped through that doorway before.
Erin made small talk on the way home softly chiding herself for going to another one of 'those parties. ' Erin admitted that she attended every party and that they all ended the same way. Why she kept going she couldn't say. Generally I added as little as possible, while my rapidly approaching house loomed like the gallows.
My plan was to get Erin into my room, steal my brother's stash, smoke a few quick bowls and then get her out of there. The sooner she was gone, the sooner I could start the long hot jack-off session I had planned. My cock was straining ruthlessly in my pants, and I longed for the powerful release I knew my frustrations had bought me.
Finally we approached the dark shape of my house. I had had never quite appreciated the value of my own entrance to the basement until then. My small apartment was a mess, and I was sure that I could smell dried come, but Erin seemed pleased to be there. I motioned her to the sofa, and made a quick signal indicating I was going upstairs but would be right back.
My parents were home and asleep, but unluckily so was my brother. I had to wake him up quickly and haggle with him irritably for his last eighth of grass. Finally he threw the baggy at me in disgust and turned back to sleep. I rushed back downstairs surprised to find Erin in the exact place I had left her; although where I had expected her to wander I couldn't say. Quietly, I closed the inner door to the house and set a few latches before barricading it with my bench-press. These were my regular 'smoking pot in the house' measures, but I realised how odd it might look to Erin just as I finished.
I was too frazzled to apologize for something I may have been imagining, so I fished my bong from its hiding place and quickly packed the bowl with weed. After a few minutes of sharing, I slowly began to drop my guard and relax into the sofa next to her. Erin surprised me by finding the catch to my lamp and turning it on. The room was definitely grungier in the light and I vowed to do something about it.
"My room is much messier," Erin offered smiling in an attempt to put me at ease. Then after taking a long haul from the pipe, Erin kicked her shoes off and set her feet up onto my lap. I couldn't say exactly why, but her little shoes clunking to the floor whispered a sexual promise somehow. I stifled a moan, as I almost came in my pants right then.
Erin must have noticed my conflict, because she quickly swung off of the sofa and climbed onto to my bed. At that moment all I wanted was for Erin to come back and rest her feet on my lap some more, but then I saw her fumbling with the Ziploc bag in a cute attempt to pack another bowl of weed. Suddenly everything she did was cute. I knew I wanted to remember the image of her sitting cross legged in the middle of my bed forever. Erin even sat the way I liked to sit—she was a plump little female me.
