Chemistry

Author's note: this is the third installment in a ten-part series.

~

After showering back at the dorm, I head over to the student union, fill a thermos with hot water, and throw in several tea bags. I smuggle the tea into the library and make my way up to the fourth floor, to my favorite study carrel far back in the stacks. Hardly anyone ever wanders back here. I take out my chemistry textbooks and notebooks, planner, and bag of pens, pencils, and highlighters. Within the brightly lighted enameled square of this desk, with only the hissing of a nearby air re-circulation vent, I am calm and centered.

I burn my mouth on the hot tea and the pain is almost a welcome relief, a sharp discomfort that pulls my awareness out of my head and into the present moment, into the world of bond-angles and chiral resolution of racemic mixtures, light-interaction and configurational entropy, information digested and organized in discrete, neat rows of writing and calculations on lined paper in my notebook.

I love everything about chemistry. I love the math involved, the balance it demands, the precision of it. I love the inherent mystery; that the arrangement of matter and energy within chemical structures belies an inherent wildness of the physical universe; that what we can measure and define is just a human-parsable facsimile of what actually

is

. It feels so huge and important. All I want is to get further and further into it.

Hours pass as I study and work on two problem sets, one for each of my two different chemistry classes. When I reach the end of my analytical problem set, I'm surprised to see it is almost three AM. My stomach grumbles and I realize that I haven't eaten anything since lunch. I fumble in my bag for a granola bar but there aren't any left.

Damn.

I am out of food at the dorm, too, all I have there are a couple of Gatorades.

The union isn't open past 1:30 AM and at this hour there isn't anything else open on or near campus. Well, there is always the 24-hour gas station about a mile and a half away. I consider making the trip. Maybe I can just go to bed. I stand up and my stomach grumbles again.

Ugh.

I am probably not going to be able to sleep if I am this hungry.

~

It is a warm and humid night. I trek across campus, past the looming engineering quad, then down a tree-lined residential road. I pass in and out of bright pools of light collecting under the halogen street lamps, accompanied only by the staggered cacophony of cicadas clustered unevenly in the trees. Eventually, I come to the large, two-lane road, cross it and pass under a buzzing neon sign to enter the gas station.

Inside, the fluorescent lighting is bright and harsh. The clerk, a stout brunette, gives me a skeptical look when walk in. I must seem menacing to her, a large brown guy appearing in the middle of the night. I smile and give her an innocuous little wave, annoyed with myself for going through the charade of making myself seem small and harmless. But it seems to put her at ease; she goes back to reading her magazine behind the counter.

I move through the aisles, tired and ravenous, collecting junk -- a few bags of chips, some Dr. Pepper, a couple of candy bars. The healthiest thing I find is a bag of unsalted mixed nuts. I grab that, too. I am contemplating a huge pickle floating in a plastic pouch of brine when a pickup truck pulls up and disgorges three rough-looking guys. I wince as they come bounding into the shop.

At school we call these guys "townies" -- local guys with tattoos, trucks, and strong regional accents. I am suddenly very exposed, bracing for them to notice me. At first, they don't -- they chat up the clerk, buying scratch-off lotto tickets and cigarettes. By the way they are talking, loud and with an exaggerated slowness, I can tell they're drunk. Then one spots me.

"Hey A-rab," he calls.

I don't look at him. Luckily, they all seem to be heading toward the door, away from me.

"Hey Osama, why don't you fuck off back to Pakistan, you fucking towel head?!" the same guy yells.

His friends howl with laughter and then they are gone, out the door. I watch them whooping it up outside in the parking lot. One of them pounds on the glass of the window, pointing at me and giving me the middle finger. I wait for them pile into their truck and roar off before I bring my items up to the counter.

Towelhead from Pakistan.

That's a new one. I doubt he was interested in having a discussion about the Pakistani Sikh diaspora. In any case, I am too hungry and tired to get all that upset. Honestly, I have heard a lot worse. In the years since 9/11, I've been physically threatened, pushed, spat at. Airports are misery. At school I usually feel OK, but I can never really forget that this is America, and I look like the enemy. That I am always subject to scrutiny, suspicion, interrogation.

"Don't listen to those assholes, sweetheart," the clerk says, ringing me up. She chuckles, gazing toward where the truck had driven off. "Bunch o' shitheads." She looks at me and asks, "Where you from, anyway?"

I eat a candy bar and drink most of the Dr. Pepper before I even get back across the big street. I open a bag of chips and try to eat them slowly as I walk back to my dorm. The sugar and fat floods into my bloodstream and I relax a bit. The night is quiet and beautiful. A bright, gibbous moon peeks through the trees as I walk along the dark sidewalks.

Somehow, despite having just walked from campus, I take a wrong turn on my way back. I find myself on a street I don't recognize. The street lights are spaced far enough apart that the sidewalk becomes completely dark at the midpoints between them. Aside from the drone of the insects, there is no sound. No cars, no voices.

I'm not sure what compels me to stop where I do, but in one of the dark interstices between street lights, I put down my bag of junk food and stretch my arms over my head. I gaze up at the old Victorian house in front of me. It looms out, almost menacingly. There is no porch light on, but as my eyes adjust to the low light filtering through the trees, I am struck by a sense of familiarity, followed by certainty: this is it. The house from the party. From the dream... with Jamie.

On impulse, I walk up the steps from the sidewalk to the yard. I follow the porch, which is huge -- it wraps around the entire first floor of the house -- around to the right, to where I know the kitchen door must be. I see the door, and the railing, and my heart accelerates in my chest. There is railing that Jamie and I had leaned on, where we had... had we actually kissed? It was just a dream, right? But if so, how do I know this place?

I move to the spot where Jamie and I had jumped off the porch and into the trees. There is the path -- I can see it in the dim light -- the path through the trees. Walking as softly as possible, I follow it around to the back of the house. Emerging from the trees into the back yard, the light from the moon is brighter. It hangs in the western sky just above the treetops that ring the yard. Along the rear wall of the house are the rickety steps, a steep diagonal interrupted by a landing at the second floor.

An electric current of fear sets the hair on my shoulders and arms on end as I make out a dark mass at the top of the stairs. A red spot of light brightens and then dims, a wink that seems to register my presence.

My muscles brace to run back to the street, back to campus, but I remain rooted in place, agonizingly exposed in the open grass of the yard. The dark mass stands up, transforming into a human that descends the stairs slowly. At the base of the stairs, the human tosses its cigarette on the ground, into an explosion of orange sparks.

"Amir, is that you?" I hear him say.

The voice confirms what I somehow knew would be true, that it is Jamie, that he would be here, waiting for me. He walks toward me, and I walk toward him and then we are in each other's arms and my mouth is on his. I taste the residual bitter smoke on his tongue and smell it on his skin as we kiss. Our hands are on each other's bodies, my hands are on his chest and back, and I am taking off his shirt, urgently pulling it up over his head and throwing it down on the ground and he is unbuttoning my shirt but it's taking too long so I grab the two sides of it and yank, ripping off the buttons. Then he's pulling my shirt down off my shoulders and I feel the prickle of the cool night air on my skin before he's in my arms again, radiating an intense heat against my body.

"Hold... hold on," he says, quietly, between kisses.

He turns from me and grabs my hand to lead me away from the house across the yard. As I walk, I feel my erection straining uncomfortably in my jeans. Jamie is wearing shorts, maybe even his blue soccer shorts, although in the low light it is impossible to see their color. The darkness makes it impossible to see the curve of his ass, but my hands tingle with the feel of it, from moments before, the soft resilience of his flesh under sleek fabric. I am filled with happiness to be with him, a feeling so bright and powerful that it pushes all the fear and anxiety out of my mind.

He is barefoot. He leads me through another grove of trees along the back of the yard and onto another path. I am surprised that the property extends this far back away from the house. We walk down a path toward the sound of running water, across a bridge over small creek and back up along an exposed ledge of layered rock. We emerge from a stand of trees into a wide expanse of long grass. The moon is brighter now, filling the field with radiant, silver light.

In the center of the field is an old-looking wooden structure. It looks like the foundation of some sort of bandstand or gazebo, mostly open to the sky, but at the far end there is a remnant of an elaborately decorated roof supported by thick wooden beams. Jamie swings himself up onto the structure and extends a hand to help me up. I haul myself up over the edge, feeling our weight brace against each other, to stand next to him on the partially rotted wooden boards.

"What is this place?" I ask.

He is grinning at me. "I sleep out here sometimes," he says.

He walks to the far, covered end of the structure, and starts to pull something out from under what looks like a tarp. I move next to him and reach down to help. It's some sort of large cushion or futon, upholstered with a rough, plastic-feeling material. We haul it out into the middle of the platform.

Jamie flops himself down onto it. I stand at the edge, breathing hard. I look out at the swathe of exposed sky. The moon is going in and out of focus, as though my eyes are trying to resolve two or more moons into what I know to be a single object. The roar of the cicadas in the distant trees mixes with the sounds of crickets and other insects in the grass. I feel my awareness scattering in all directions.

Is this really happening?

Jamie rolls to his knees and grabs my legs, pulling me to him. He flicks my belt open and I feel a momentary compression at my waist as he pulls to unhook the prong from the leather. Then he pulls down my jeans and my underwear. My cock springs out. It feels incredible to be free from the restrictive confinement of my pants, hard and aching with pent-up desire. Jamie grabs my cock and feels along its length. He starts to stroke it, gently. With his other hand he reaches up and works his fingers into the fur of my belly. I hear him make a low sound of -- contentment? Satisfaction? -- from deep in his throat, and I realize with delight that he is turned on by me, by my thick, hairy body. I feel a sudden sense of tenderness for him, this miraculous... boy. I reach out to stroke his cheek. He looks up at me. His eyes are inscrutable dark pools.

He squeezes my cock slowly, forcing a large droplet of glistening fluid to emerge from the engorged head, which falls in a glistening ribbon onto his face, below. It coats his lips and falls into his open mouth. He hesitates for a moment, turning the taste over in his mouth with his tongue. A shiver of pleasure runs down my body and I am consumed with the desire to fill him. He has the same impulse, and takes my cock into his mouth. It feels incredible, smooth and rough at the same time, warm and electrifying.

He grabs my hands and puts them on his head, guiding me to guide him. I push my cock gently into his mouth and feel the velvety resistance of his tongue and back of his throat. He reaches for my thighs and pulls himself harder onto my cock. I feel the head of my cock start to inch deeper into his throat. By the movements of his hands on my thighs, I can tell he wants it harder, deeper.

I grab at his neck and the hair on his head and begin to thrust more powerfully into his mouth. He moans with pleasure. I penetrate him more and more deeply; I feel my cock pressing farther and farther into him, to the point where I am almost all the way into him; his lips are distended around the thick base of my shaft and I can feel the stubble of his chin against my balls. I am close to orgasm, and he must sense it too, because he suddenly pushes away from me.

"Woah, there, cowboy," he says, and he pulls me down to lie on top of him. I kiss him, pressing myself into him, my cock grinding against his pelvis. I taste myself in his mouth, he is salt and musk and smoke, and it drives me wild with desire. His erection is straining up against me under his shorts. I roll off of him, and kick off my pants and underwear, then grab his shorts and yank them off. He's not wearing anything under them. His cock is long and slender, a beautiful arc in the moonlight. I grab it and begin to stroke it, roughly. He grunts and grabs my hand, slowing me down, the pressure of his fingers telling me to relax my grip.

"Easy... easy...." he says.

We kiss again, and my lips move across his chin and down his neck. I continue to stroke his cock and with my other hand I track across his chest, feeling his lean musculature and soft, pliable mound of a pec. My lips find his nipple and he arches his back in pleasure when I bite it, softly. I run my hand up through the light dusting of hair on his chest and around to his back; I want to bring his body fully into mine, completely envelop him.

He pushes me off of him, onto my back, and then rolls on top of me, astride my belly. His cock arches over my chest and I grasp it, gently this time, and begin a slow stroking motion.

"You're so fucking hot," he says, reaching down to feel my chest, my arms, my shoulders. He runs his hands over my cheeks and I feel the slight resistance of stubble there -- my beard must have grown out since I last shaved.

He bends down to kiss me, and against the hand I have wrapped around his cock I feel the slight bulge of his tummy, his skinny-fat belly. My other hand tracks up the outside of his thigh. I feel the lightness of his hair there, and then my hand is on his ass. I palm the flesh of it, feeling the delicious malleability of his butt cheek. As we kiss, I feel him move himself downward, pressing against my cock, which seems to perfectly match the curve of his ass, cleaving upward along his crack and poking into his lower back. He breaks our kiss and leans back, grinding his ass against the length of my cock. I pull his cheeks apart to let him feel the full rigid hardness of my cock against his crack, the deeply anchored, spring-loaded eagerness of it.

"Oh, fuck," he says, exhaling deeply.

My hands go to his belly, where I can feel his trembling breath. Looking up at him, I am struck by how beautiful he is. Against the night sky, faint stars flicker in and out of my perceptible vision behind his body, which glows in the moonlight. I am free from the constant anxiety of my mind; I am outside of my mind here, just a body entwined with his. I reach up to feel his neck and jaw, feel how the lines of them connect to his collarbone, his chest. He takes my thumb in his mouth, and I feel his teeth and his tongue, the exquisite fullness of his bottom lip, swollen from how roughly I'd penetrated him earlier.

The moment seems to extend infinitely in all directions. I can't believe this is happening and simultaneously feel that this has always been happening, that it has been inevitable.

He rocks forward onto his knees, still straddling me, reaches back and grabs my cock. He strokes me slowly, pressing along the thickness of my shaft deep within my pelvis. On the upstroke, he guides the tip of my cock into the space between the lobes of his ass. He brings my hand around to feel there, too. I feel the puckering of his hole. He presses my fingers against it, and I feel him rub slickness from the head of my cock onto his hole. I grab my cock and squeeze it to milk even more fluid from it.

Soon his hole is slick and slippery, and I press against it with a finger, and feel it give way. My finger slips into him and he tightens up, I feel a shudder run through his body. Emboldened, I push my finger more deeply into him. His buttocks are resting the palms of hands as I do this, and I feel as though I am slowly easing his ass open, pulling him apart, readying him. My cock head is pushed up against where my finger is inside him, impatient, oozing liquid. I feel harder than I've ever felt in my life.

"Are you ready?" I whisper.

Jamie looks down at me and bites his lip. I press the tip of my cock into his hole, working in against my finger. I feel him contract, then relax as I ease up into him. There is a pained expression in his face. He begins to make a low, gurgling sound. All of a sudden, his body spasms and he coughs violently. Black liquid erupts out of his mouth, spilling down over his body and onto me. It burns like acid. He looks down at me and there is a wild look in his face, his mouth is moving as though he is trying to speak, but more and more liquid keeps pouring out. His eyes blaze with an orange-red light. I try to get out from under him, but I'm paralyzed, unable to move or cry out.

I hear splintering as the timbers supporting the roof of the gazebo crack and split, sending the roof crashing down onto the surface of the platform. All around us, wood fractures, and I feel myself falling, tumbling through the air as the entire structure collapses. I am falling for a long time, longer than seems possible, before suddenly I hit earth, landing hard on my back. The wood from the platform crashes down around me and then everything is quiet.

Above me there is a pinprick of light. The light shines down onto me, strengthening until my whole body is illuminated. I look down at myself and I'm horrified to see the jagged edge of a two-by-four jutting up through my belly. I see blood and bone and a mass of my own entrails hanging out, pulsing with blood. There is a loud rushing noise and the light disappears.

~

I jerk awake, hitting my head hard on the side of the study carrel. I sit up in my chair. After a moment of complete disorientation, I realize where I am.

I can't feel or move my left arm, which hangs limp from my body. Alarmed, I reach over and grab it with my right hand, feel its heavy weight as though it isn't connected to my body. I place my limp arm on the carrel desk, and after a few moments, a prickly static of blood and sensation flows back into it. I must have been pressed onto it, asleep.

My brain is completely fogged. I touch my stomach and chest, where I have a visceral sense that I have just been impaled. There is no wound. There is a bulge in my crotch, and a dark spot where fluid has leaked through to the outside of my pants. I reach into my pants with my right hand -- my whole left arm is aching and twinging now -- and feel slick fluid coating the underside of my semi-hard cock. I pull my hand out and look at my fingers. Just clear, sticky pre-cum. I am relieved to see it isn't blood. I take a deep breath.