Copyright Neonurotic
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
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'Can I ask you a question without you taking it the wrong way' was one of the first things he ever asked me. The second was, 'can I borrow a bite of your burger?' He sat next to me on the bench in the smoking area at the college. I no longer smoked cigarettes, but I wasn't one of those non-smokers that did a one-eighty in attitude against smokers. I still liked the smell of burning tobacco.
"Sure." I said to his questions, halved my sandwich and gave it to my bench mate. I didn't know him, but I'd seen him in my intermediate algebra class. "Here, it's chicken."
"Are you gay?" He asked matter-of-factly, wolfing down his sandwich in one bite. "My gay-dar must be broke because I can't tell if you are. You don't look it or sound like it."
While he asked this, I wondered—what exactly is a gay look? Is there some objet d'art that puts someone over on the 'gay' side? If that's so, what exactly does it? Was my hair too stylish? Maybe it's the color I wear? Do I have too much swish in my ass when I walk? Is it because of the music I like? Or, is it the movies I like? Damn, if I could just figure out the essence of what makes someone look gay, I'd bottle it and make a frigging fortune. Then at least everyone would know for sure who was gay without assuming or asking, and ultimately making asses out of themselves.
"Well, hey there," I raised an eyebrow at him. "I'm James and you are?"
"Uh...Reese." He blinked; surprised that I corrected his ill manners.
"Well, Reese, that's too much of a personal question to ask someone you don't know, isn't it?"
"I know you. You've sat across from me in Math 57 every weekday for three weeks."
"That's true, I do sit there, but that doesn't mean we know each other well enough that you can ask me whether I'm gay or not."
"So...are you?" He continued to be rude and grinned knowingly; after all, any straight man would be quick to state he wasn't queer as soon as the question was posed. "I am."
Duh, no fucking shit. Math Boy's gay-dar might've been broke, but mine wasn't.
"I'm bi." I replied dryly, consuming the rest of my sandwich.
Reese frowned as he lit a rolled Bidi cigarette, looking me over as if I had a particularly nasty catchy disease. "It figures," he exhaled chocolate-scented smoke through his nose. "I don't care much for bisexual men."
Annoyed, I stood. "I could give a shit less if you do or you don't." Tossing what was left of my lunch; I slung my backpack on and left him sitting there by himself while gnashing my teeth together.
Math class wasn't for another fifteen minutes, but I wasn't going to waste my lunch time sitting next to that prick. Nope. I had better things to do, like get my caffeine/sugar fix at the school's coffee stand, which I thought made the best iced macchiatos this side of the Rockies. Soon, Reese caught up and fell in step with me. I glanced over him. We were the same height; he was a stronger build with black hair streaked in electric blue. From his dress, I couldn't decide if he was an emo-goth geek or an Abercrombie & Fitch lemming. If it was the latter, it definitely was with a twist of angst. Either way, he was younger than I was, most likely eighteen. My preference was older, more sophisticated.
As if, I snorted, I really didn't have much to form such an inclination. I'd only been with one other guy, Darrion, who was my guy on the side in a committed relationship with Felicia, my girlfriend of three years. We'd liked things a little more than vanilla so she brought a work mate home with her one night and we'd been involved with him in a threesome ever since.
Nearly five months had passed before he and I did anything, touching him in that way. Instead, we did it straight, two guys with one girl. This was because I kept telling myself I was a hetero dude even though I damn well knew I wasn't. I liked men the same way I did women. Felicia knew it and he did too, but I went on denying it. Luckily, Darrion was patient and interested in me enough that he stuck around until I accepted my bisexuality—and how! One night made up for five months of frustration on both sides. He couldn't walk right for days, or so he told me. The poor bastard was hooked on me for sure and stroked my ego often the past year we'd been together.
At the barista stand, I ordered my coffee and Math Boy placed his order on my tab too without asking, which of course wasn't a surprise to me since he was an all-assuming, ill-mannered little shit up to now. So why was I letting him be? Because he was hot and obviously interested in me—aggressive too, don't forget that.
That was an important point, him being cocksure because Darrion wasn't. My passive boyfriend truly was a bottom in every way. He was sweet and sexy, but at the same time he was a bit disappointing since he refused to take the top, be assertive with me, which was something I'd wanted him to do.
"I don't trust them," he sucked on the red straws in his coffee, chewing on them thoughtfully.
"Who?"
"Bi boys."
"You're still going on about that?"
"They're sluts, always fucking anything that breathes—chicks, dudes, chicks and dudes at the same time. Disgusting."
We walked to our math class with him giving a steady stream of reasons why he didn't like guys with my sexual orientation. In the classroom, I sat down and he who normally sat across the aisle from me, squeezed behind and sat on my left, so close his thigh touched mine. I scooted over as if he had bitten me.
"Shut it," I slouched in my chair, opening my book, pretending to finish an equation from yesterday's homework.
Luckily, the classroom filled up and he had to be quiet once the math instructor joined them. The math teacher was a stickler of back and forth communication, between her and the students and not any side-to-side conversations. I liked that rule. It kept the annoying whispers to a minimum so I could concentrate on the lesson. No matter how well a teacher taught, math was already hard as hell to understand without listening to talk about 'last night's winning game' or how 'shitty someone's date was'. It was just too distracting. I couldn't afford taking classes over again unlike most of my younger classmates who had parent's paying for school. I was ten years older and footing the bill for my own schooling.
Before long, fifty minutes passed and the teacher closed her book, signaling she was finished. I shot out of there as quickly as possible, avoiding further remarks from the smug little bastard. Much to my dismay, it started pouring outside while class was in session. That's the northwest for you; it often rains, worse is when it comes down in a torrent, making muddy puddles that seem to be as deep as open graves. Still worse, was not having an umbrella and having to walk to my truck that was a half a mile away in the parking lot.
Hoofing around small lakes along the way, I made it to my white Nissan soaked to the bone and shivering. Standing there, also sopping wet was Math Boy. He nodded to my truck, indicating he wanted a ride. I glared at him, but got into my truck, and reached over the passenger's side door to let him climb up into the cab.
"How about for a warm up, I'll repay that coffee you bought me earlier?"
"Sure," I said, raising an eyebrow, a little surprised.
"There's this great place, Let's Go Espresso," he grinned disarmingly with even white teeth. "Do you know it?"
"I do."
We drove the wide streets of Broadway with him chattering good-naturedly about himself, confirming that he was eighteen and talked about school. He explained that he normally walked the mile to school because he didn't like paying the college's parking fees or hunt the lot for a free space. That I could understand; the parking was horrible, especially around the time we had math class. His pessimistic behavior toward bisexual men seemed to lift the more he talked, and continued when we got to the coffee shop and sat down with our lattes. As our conversation progressed, I realized how attractive he was and dismissed my prior negative notions of him. The coffee warmed the pit of my gut, but Reese flamed parts of me that only another man could. I found myself revealing desires that I kept from my two very tame, predictable lovers.
"James, you've never bottomed before have you?"
"I, uh..." I began; feeling rather turned on and awkward at the same time with our conversation, also in a great need of a cool drink instead of the coffee that I nursed. "No I haven't."
"But you want to?" he wagged his brows suggestively. "I switch, although I prefer to saddle up."
"We'll have to hook up then." I blurted then blushed madly when other patrons of the shop looked over, staring curiously. "Yesh...but, well look at the time. I should be going now."
Math Boy chuckled. "Me too."
We left the shop together. "Need a lift?" I asked.
"Nah, I just live right in that apartment building over there," he pointed it out, which was only a few hundred feet away and it had stopped raining. "But thanks for the ride over here though. See you in class tomorrow."
"Ya, sure." I felt let down for some reason. It wasn't as if I'd follow him home then let him fuck the hell out of me, but I was certainly thinking about it. "Tomorrow."
Back at the 4x4, I climbed up onto the black step bar and swung into the cab. No sooner had I turned the engine over, when the passenger door jerked open and Reese joined me, or on me was more like it. He grabbed the collar of my shirt and pulled me to him, and we crashed into a lip bruising kiss. His tongue thrust inside my mouth, brushing mine without giving me time to protest or breathe—not that I would protest if given the chance. One sly hand drifted to the crotch of my jeans, squeezing the hard bulge that quickly formed under the fly. He fumbled with the zipper and jerked it down.
