I should never have been flip when Vincent asked me about that photo of Phil and me I kept on the shelf in my cubicle at work. I didn't really want to talk about Phil. We'd been roommates at the university. He'd been the star athlete and I'd been the quiet, studious geek. Still, we'd gotten along real well. Night and day we were called at school. But I'd had no trouble with his color and he'd never expressed having trouble with mine. He'd been destined for the NFL, and I'd been teased I'd have made my first million off of some dot-com enterprise before I was twenty-five.
It hadn't happened that way—for either of us. The dot-com revolution collapsed before I could grab my brass ring, and the best I could do was doing "pretty good" as a stockbroker. Phil decided that a tour in Iraq would toughen him for professional football. But all it did was kill him. That's why I had a picture sitting on the shelf in my work cubicle of the two of us, half looped at a frat party, arms draped around each other, and silly grins on our faces. Sort of a shrine to not taking life for granted, for going with the moment, in case there are no more moments.
But when Vincent, the broker in the cubicle next to me, asked, I was flip. I said the other guy in the photo was my boyfriend.
I have no satisfactory idea why I said that. I think mainly it was because Vincent was so crude at the office, always cracking dirty jokes and making with the sexual innuendo—and I didn't want an intrusion like that in the tragedy I saw in my link to Phil. I just wanted to shock Vincent and make him stop asking about the photo. And especially, maybe I told him that because I had a hard time looking at Vincent and not seeing Phil.
Vincent was a real good looker, just like Phil had been. He said he was Jamaican. And maybe he was. He had a build just like Phil's, and he was always flashing a winsome smile and was so self-assured, just like Phil had been. All the women in the office ate him up despite what any one of them could claim was sexual harassment, if they'd wanted to—if someone not as hunky as him was doing it, maybe.
But I also might have blurted it out with half-way wishful thinking. There had never been anything real between Phil and me, but I'll have to admit that he aroused me and I'd had a crush on him that I never got up the courage to fully acknowledge to myself, let alone to Phil. And now that would never happen. Any possible moment of it happening was gone for good.
From the moment I'd blurted that flippant response out, though, Vincent had turned his innuendo onto me—asking me if I liked him, pointing out that Phil was black too. Asking me if I was especially attracted to black men. And, in time, asking me if Phil and I were still doing it, and, if so, which one of us topped.
Always whispered and in passing, at first covered so that I couldn't tell if he was just joking, trying to get a rise out of me. Maybe baiting me for an office joke. But it continued, and when he moved on to touching me when and as and where he could do it when no one was looking, I knew he wasn't joking. He suggested we go for a drink after work, he complimented me on my clothes, and then on my physique. He even started dropping notes on my desk, asking me to meet him in the men's room, the notes becoming increasingly more explicit. Saying we should compare cocks. Saying he was built especially long and thick. Asking me what Phil was swinging.
I don't know if I could have stopped it. I just know I didn't try. I tried to hold back, but it was arousing. I'd never had attention like this before. I could have just told him exactly who Phil was and why that photo was on my cubicle shelf. But I didn't.
He got my home phone number somehow and he began calling me—almost always at about the same time in the evening, so I'd know it was him. One phone call after another, progressively more suggestive, more demanding.
"Hey, Jeff, I'm bored. Let's go play some pool."
"Hey, guy, it's me. What'yer doing. Want to do it together?"
"Thinkin' about you, Jeff. What are you wearing right now? Know what I'm wearing? Nothing."
"Hey, guy. I'm all alone and lonely. I've got something for you. It's long and thick and hard, and it wants you."
A phone call entirely of heavy breathing and the whispering of my name.
"You have it out, don't you? You are stroking it, aren't you." And, of course, I was.
". . . A big black, hard cock churning around in your tight white ass . . ."
It had been weeks. Almost every night. A phone call almost every night at just about the same time. I could have changed numbers, gotten an unlisted one. I could have arranged to be out three evenings in a row and see it if stopped. I didn't. I started clearing everything away so that I could sit by the phone. Waiting for the call. Being disgusted when it came. But disgusted with myself, not with the call. Being frustrated when there was no call that night. Wearing less and less as the calls progressed. Something loose; something that didn't hinder access.
A Saturday night. Just about that time. Me, sitting by the phone. Naked.
It rang.
"Something special tonight, Jeff. I have Manuel here. Say something, Manuel."
