Nights were becoming days, at that point in my life. Sleep until three, not even know because I threw the alarm clock away weeks before and curtains blocked out any possible light source. My childhood room felt like repression and angst compared to my dorm; instead of half-naked guys walking in front of my door with wish-fufillingly thin towels stretched over their thighs, or, late at night, just cupping their dicks with a rag and sprinting to their rooms because they forgot a towel entirely, I got my mom trying to coax me into her kitchen of sorrows with waffles and some sort of truth-serum syrup.
The bed was too empty around me, I think that was it. Not that I sleep around at school, the opposite really, but I had gotten used to sleeping with someone else in the room, at least. Or waking up with a massive hangover surrounded by other people, even if we were all perfect strangers. But I'd just wake up to nothing, no one's body or belongings to indicate that I wasn't alone.
See? The only way in that house was by inhaling a big bag of teenage bullshit.
///
I'd only been home a day when my mom sprung a party on my ass. A few old friends showed up, but mostly the house was pregnant with overzealous family members and family "friends" who were there to see if I failed or became a heroin addict. I think the latter qualifies as failing, too, though. As a present, a few of my friends promised me an "after party-party" where more than lightly-spiked punch was available. I almost cried at the sentiment, and then realized that I might have a problem if a day of sobriety was a harrowing experience.
After my friends left and the neighborhood watch dissipated, my dad went to bed early, citing his work schedule. One down, in my mind. A few family stragglers were talking in the living room when I went upstairs to get ready for the after party. Cologne, a comb through the hair, nothing too taxing. When I came back down, I slipped out into the backyard to sneak a smoke in before I tried to tell my mom that I was leaving.
Drag after drag, I kept hearing all of them laughing in the living room and people in yards all around me doing something loudly, whatever it was. Saturday and all. After another cigarette to accompany my sudden, acute loneliness, I slipped back through the door and tried to gauge how much I smelled like smoke.
"Pretty obvious, if you ask me."
I jumped at the voice, a deep-toned whisper. Gerald.
He did his sloppy smile to show he didn't care and pulled me into a big hug, probably the only welcome-home hug in history that's been masturbated to; his hands, a little bit rough but not in a bad way, accidently grazing my upper arms, his entire chest meeting mine dead-on, our necks helixing around each other, part of his leaving mine red from his light brown stubble, his Adam's apple thumping against me just once as he swallowed. He pulled away but we stayed close as we talked.
Handing me a piece of gum, he asked, "So, where you going tonight?"
I took the stick and popped it in my mouth, chewing on my cheek to punish myself for wanting nothing more than to fuck him at that moment.
"Hannah's throwing me an after-party-party."
He chuckled. "Yeah, this was sorta destined to be... nice." He laughed again and set his hand on my shoulder. His face got serious, meaning he was joking around. "Don't you go drinking and driving now, young man."
I turned my face and leaned against the wall, doing my best dramatic posture. "But all the cool kids are doing it."
He took a step closer, face still serious. "Aug, if the cool kids were jumping off a cliff, would you do it?"
His hand went onto the wall quick, blocking some of my hallway view. I couldn't tell if he was still playing around.
Dick hardening from all the close proximity and what counted as witty banter back then, I ground my ass against the wall to reduce how obviously erect I was. And then I realized that I wasn't a horny kid anymore, but a horny young-adult.
Standing up straight, to make my tent impossible to miss (and his eyes did travel down and snag on it for a few seconds before carefully meeting mine again), I curled my hand around his bicep and grinned. "Depends on the view, I guess."
///
After I told my mom that I was going to meet some friends and I packed my bags for that massive guilt trip, I left for Hannah's; the entire night I was either hating myself for touching Gerald or pissed that I wasn't allowed to like a guy who wasn't technically anything at all to be, besides my aunt's ambiguously sexual husband. And even then, she hadn't even met him until I was eleven or twelve. Fourteen years older isn't patently insane, in the grand scheme of things. Right? And then; you're trying to FUCK YOUR UNCLE, self, the shame!
The party was okay. Most people left after we made plans to meet up again; Hannah and Bryant were already passed out on the couch and Michael was binge-drinking vodka koolaid because, as he put it, "I'm a light sleeper."
Curled up on the recliner, drunk enough to realize I couldn't drive but not drunk enough to take the risk, I could feel Gerald against me. That second our calves touched when we hugged, the scritch-scratch of his leg hair against my lightly fuzzed legs, the heat of it all. After looking to see if they were all asleep, I crept to the bathroom like a hunchback, embarrassed of my erection.
///
Laid out on the floor, tile obscenely cold against the exposed part of my lower back, dick in hand, my thoughts didn't once stray from Gerald.
Like I said earlier, I was jacking off to a hug; true, but let's move past that; I wasn't dissecting that interaction for it's individual moments, eroticizing that gesture, but relying on those little bits of information-the prickly hair, the smells, the slight sheen on his lower lip as he grinned- to cull an old memory from my small bank of personal whack-off material.
///
It was my eighteenth birthday party, not much different from the sudden homecoming party earlier, down to the people invited for my dad to make feel jealous and the actual party planned later in the night by Hannah herself.