Act VII

Friday.

So.

Are you thinking what I was thinking?

Um… So Sara Temptation was a straight female, meaning that she was attracted to guys.

I was a guy.

Well, I still am, but you know what I mean.

Hey, these days, that point does need to be clarified, you know.  But whatever.  That Sara was straight shouldn’t have been big news for any normal, rational, thinking human being.  But then I was not normal, and as you can see I’m definitely not rational, and my thinking process is a little off.

Regardless, I started to put the pieces together.  She was attracted to me.

ME!!!

She needed glasses, surely.

That morning after the bus dropped me off at school, I met up with her before class.  “I am so sorry for assuming you were…”

“Oh shut up!” she laughed, slapped my arm, and wrapped her arm around me so that we could walk to our usual spot together.  She still couldn’t stop giggling over the matter.  Man I tell you, feeling her touch my body meant so much more all of a sudden.

“Does this mean you forgive me?”

“Hmm,” she looked up at me with one eyebrow high above the other.  “I’ll have to think about it.”  And with that, her arm meandered south until her hand rested squarely on my butt and gave me a good squeeze.

And that, I tell you, felt all kinds of good.  I turned my eyes down to look her close in the face.  My heart, my whole body fluttered.  Try to imagine being duct-taped to a race car zooming towards a brick wall at 300 mph only to watch that brick wall get lifted and taken away and suddenly the race car grows wings and you’re no longer strapped to it but sitting comfortably and someone comes by saying, ‘sir, would you like some coffee?  We’re about to take off.’  ‘Are we going to the moon?’ I’d ask.  ‘Sir, this flight is intergalactic; you’d better hold on tight.’

“What?” She smiled.  “The rule is that you can’t touch me; you didn’t say anything about me touching you.”

And was I going to argue the point?  No sir.  No, I was not.

During first period, it was all I could think about.  I was supposed to think about… something.  I dunno.  It was important, whatever it was.  It was on the board.

Sara Templeton wanted to have sex with me!

Oh my effing gawd!  Go back one month, just one month and show me her and tell me that she wanted to have sex with me, I’d have thought you crazy.  And did I want to have sex with her, too?  Let me put it this way: I’d have nailed her on a train, I’d have nailed her on a plane.  I’d have nailed her in the house, I’d have nailed her with a mouse.  I’d have done it in a box, goodness gracious, what a fox!  And I’d have hit that here and there, I’d have done it anywhere!

Then second period, things changed a bit.  There was someone in second period that made me feel a tad uneasy about the whole situation, and his name of course was Joaquin.

Sara liked looking at Joaquin.  She thought he was nice to look at.  Of course, I thought Gina was nice to look at.  Nothing compared to Sara, but still nice.  But she liked Joaquin, who sat adjacent to my row and a few seats ahead.  I sat there, studying the guy’s perfectly cropped hair, his perfectly bronzed skin, his perfectly heavy shoulders, his perfectly sculpted arms, damn he was nice to look at and I didn’t even go that way.

I watched as the girl sitting behind him kicked his desk.  He didn’t react.  She kicked him again.  He still didn’t react.  She kicked him again.  Finally, he turned around and gave her his baby blues with that smug Elvis grin.

“Sorry,” she crooned, swaying her knees left and right.  She tapped her pencil rapidly against her opposite hand and continued to smile as his gaze lingered a bit before turning back to his work.

She kicked him again.

WTF why does he get it so easy?  That’s like going out hunting and the deer walks right up to you.  Did I ever get it so easy and was too dumb to see it?  Absolutely not.  I had to pretend to be gay just so girls wouldn’t feel uneasy around me.  Hopefully, he would be abducted by aliens and taken away forever soon.

I closed my eyes.  I had to let the thoughts flow.  What was my truth?

Ahem.  Sara Templeton, Sara Freaking Templeton was the absolutely most amazing female in the freaking universe.  She was a billion times hotter than any girl Joaquin could ever hope for, and certainly hotter than this one kicking his chair.  I got to dance with her.  Alone.  Every single day, I got to practice a pas de deux with Sara Freaking Templeton.  He didn’t.  She let me… oh my gosh the places she let me go!  And just last night, she’d told me point blank that she wanted to have sex.

I was going to kiss her legs from her feet to her everywhere else, rub my face in it, and she was going to let me.  Dude, I was so going to call her the next day.  I’d iron her freaking pants.

Should I have worried that Joaquin was ‘nice to look at’ under these circumstances?

Hmm.  Touching, dancing, and sex, or she thinks you’re nice to look at.  Choices, choices.

I snuck my phone out while the teacher rambled on about something and texted her quick.

Thinking about you.

I put the pieces together.  Tonight we were all going to State University to spend the night before the recital.  So… no parents, no adequate adult supervision, and Sara told me she wanted to have sex.

Dude, she was giving me notice.  “You have twenty-four hours to prepare, then you’d better be ready because I’m coming for you.  Your ass is mine!”

Yah, she could have the whole me, not just my ass.

I was going to have sex tonight.  Ho.  Ly.  Smokes.  I was going to have sex… with HER!

Tonight!

Then in third period, I caught a glimpse of Gina in snug blue jeans and a simple t-shirt.  What was she next to Sara?  Today after school I was going to meet with Sara and my mom would drive us over to the van that was to take us to State, where we were going to have sex!

Om gom yom shebomb, just hearing her say that magical word over and over in my mind was getting me ready for the moment.

“Sex.”

 Just the look on her face, the inflection in her melodic voice.

“Sex.”

 I should have recorded her saying that wonderful word and set it as a ringtone every time she texted me.

Maybe.

I looked at the clock; the minute hand had moved two whole ticks since the last time I looked at it.

Wait, think about that.  My mom was going to drive us over… my mom was going to meet her.

Oh boy.

I wasn’t sure whether I should have been worried or not; it wasn’t as though my mom had ever met any of my girlfriends before—I’d never had a girlfriend before.

Sara Templeton was my girlfriend.

Wait… was she?

Was there supposed to be a ceremony or something?  When, exactly, did this happen?  Or was there supposed to be and until we went through it we weren’t official?

I checked my phone; she’d replied with a kiss emoji.  Yum!  I sent her another text.

Are you my girlfriend? Are we official?

Was that smart?  You don’t think I put her off, do you?  I mean, I needed to know.  If we were officially boyfriend and girlfriend, then I ought to have known about that.  Or if we weren’t, I certainly didn’t want to go around thinking we were.  How embarrassing would that be, hmm?  But then if we were and here I was asking when I should have known already…

I’ve been calling you my boyfriend all week, weirdo.

Ha ha.

“Excuse me, sir,” Mr. Sanders, interrupted me.  Terror shot through me; I thought I was going to lose my phone again and with it, my lifeline to her.  “I’m just going to give you this, call it a public service announcement.  I don’t know what’s going on that you’re so eager to get out of here… ”

“Sara Templeton,” another student answered him.  A whole bunch of eyes turned my way at mention of her name.

“Oh, is that it?  Well I can understand that…”

I wasn’t sure if I should have rolled my eyes, stood and owned her with pride, she was my girlfriend after all, or sucked my teeth or something.

“I’m going to give you some unsolicited advice,” Mr. Sanders continued.  “And I know this may seem biased coming from your teacher, but I’m telling you the truth.  If you focus on the lesson and do your work, the time will go by a lot faster.”

Hmm.  He had an agenda, didn’t he?

“It’s true,” I heard confirmation from at least three other students.

“Thanks, Mr. Sanders,” I said.

As it turned out, he was right, and I subsequently buried myself in my work for the rest of the day.

But you know at the end of that day I bolted from seventh period and raced through the walkway, ducking and dodging students not in quite the hurry I was in, and I ought to play football I was so good.  I jumped over one kid, ran between three others trying to block me, did a somersault leaping over another flipping through the air matrix style and dove between the legs of another, only to hop up and keep at it.  Finally I saw her emerge in slow motion from the staircase with the wind teasing her hair and turn towards the direction of my final class, and so I grabbed her and lifted her up in a bear hug, spinning her around in a circle.

She laughed like crazy.  Then, when I set her down, and this wasn’t even part of the plan, but we just stood there wrapped up in each other’s arms, I leaned over and planted one right there on her lips, right there in the hall.  I kissed her.  I kissed Sara Freaking Templeton!

And ooooh she kissed me back.  And then another one.  And another one.  She let out a moan of delight, and I moved in for more, pressing my lips into her with all deliberation as I felt her body melt into mine.

Finally, she looked up with those amazing brown eyes and said to me, “where’s your bag?”

Duh.  My mom was waiting to pick us up and I’d left my stuff in the classroom to come and see her.  Luckily we caught Miss Soto on her way out; she had my bag over her shoulder and handed it to me with sly look across her face.

As for my mom, well, just walking up to her car was a nerve-wracking experience.  A nerve-fracking experience.  Nerve-smacking and verve-packing.

Sara greeted her in the ‘Mrs.’  That’s a point, right?

Now I hadn’t said to my mom that Sara was my girlfriend, but apparently she’d been aware of this fact for the past week already so I was wondering how I could have been the only one oblivious on the matter.  Odd.  Most odd.

Mrs. Nosy didn’t wait until the car was moving, either.  “So what are your ambitions in life?”

Sara had previously told me she wanted to be a welfare mother with ten different baby-daddys, but was concerned the cost of meth might present a barrier to entry.  What did she tell my mom?

“I’d like to be a doctor if I can.  Problem is they say you need to have a lot of familial support and my mom doesn’t have much.”  I was going to have sex with this girl.  Tonight. 😍

“Oh?  What about dance?”

“I love it, but I don’t know if I want to make a career out of it.  I always imagine myself as a trauma surgeon, or maybe a first responder, you know, one of those people who runs into a situation as soon as it gets ugly and tries to put the pieces back together before it’s too late.  To me, there’s something so visceral about that.  Someone’s lying on the ground bleeding out with only seconds between them and the end.  I want to be able to help them.  You know?”

Mom nodded.  I could tell from her face she was impressed.  Two points.  I wondered if there would have been any points had Sara said something like hairdresser.  Or welfare-mama.

“Did you ever have that kind of situation and weren’t able to do anything?”  Geez, mom, did you have to go there?

Sara smiled.  “Um, not really, not so much.  When I was a kid I do remember we were out and someone got hurt really bad.  My mother wanted to help him.  And then the medics came, and I just watched them.  I felt this huge admiration for them, for what they did.”

“What happened?”

I felt nervous.  It wasn’t even my own personal, life-defining moment, either.  Whatever.

“Um… a guy got stabbed.”

“Eeek!”

Sara still held a positive expression.  “It was pretty scary.  We were at the gas station and there was this guy there asking for change.  Next thing I know, some guys come up and then he’s lying on the ground with blood coming out of his side.  My mom took off her shirt and pushed it up against where the blood was coming out, then she told me to hold it there while she called the police.  So I did.”

“How old were you?”

“I was only eight at the time.”

“That’s insane.  Did you know him?”

She shook her head.  “No.  I’d never seen him before.  As far as I know he was just some homeless guy hanging around the gas station.”

It was insane.  I looked at her and a part of me admired her in a whole new way.  My mom continued her line of questions until after a while, Sara managed to squeeze in a question of her own.  “Is it true that a woman never wants a man to touch her?”

I was a bit thrown that she would ask such a thing.  My mom was thrown, too, and turned around to give her a strange look.  “Should I assume you’re asking for a friend?”

“Yes.  Well, kinda.”

“Well,” mom began, and Sara looked at me the whole time, “that’s a bit of a nuanced question for you to be asking in a yes-or-no format.”

“How so?” Sara replied.

“Why don’t you tell me more about the question?” she looked at me.  And why did she assume I was the one asking?  I mean, it could have come from anyone.

“Well,” I said.  There was no sense keeping up the pretense.  “If a guy likes a girl, should he tell her?  If he does then that’s sexual harassment and he’s a creepy pervert.  If he doesn’t then he’s a coward.  He’s not supposed to say anything about her body or how good she looks because then he’s reducing her and objectifying her, and if he doesn’t then he’s a prude.  And if he touches her that’s sexual assault but if he doesn’t he’s a wuss.”

“OK, son, but everything you’re saying depends on whether you’re in an established relationship.  If you’re in a relationship, it’s OK to touch her and tell her how pretty she is and like her body and all that but outside of the relationship all these things are inappropriate.”

“That’s not what the lady said.”

“What lady?”

“They had this lady come in and tell us all that no woman wants to be touched by a man, ever.”

“Never?”

“That’s what she said.”

Mom drove in silence for a minute while she collected her thoughts on the matter.  As for me, I was busy trying to wrap my head around why Sara felt the need to bring that up in that conversation.  I suppose she’d told me as much already and I still had my doubts and hesitations from time to time, and perhaps she felt I needed to hear it from another perspective, I don’t know.  But I’m glad she did.  Why I hadn’t thought to ask the Master Oracle of the Multiverse before was lost on me.

At any rate, the Oracle came back with the truth.  “Maybe she didn’t feel the need to state the obvious.”

“But it’s not obvious, though.”

“What’s not obvious about being in an intimate relationship with someone?”

“OK, how do you even get there?” I asked.  That may seem to you an odd question given that I was already involved with an unlawfully beautiful girl who’d told me, explicitly, literally, that I had a blank check on her body, so I was basically already there trying to connect the dots on how to get there.  Now, I still couldn’t figure out how I got there, so we were talking philosophically, OK?  Philosophically.

“Let’s say I see a girl I like.  We don’t have a relationship.  Maybe I see her at a bar or something…”

“I wouldn’t go picking up women at a bar,” mom interrupted me.

Sara laughed, then added her own thorn.  “How do you know you like her if you’re only seeing her for the first time?”

Mom continued that line of reasoning.  “Exactly!  I can see if you like the way she looked, but how do you know you like her?”

“Right,” Sara added.  “She could be a succubus.”

Mom laughed at that one.  And what did Sara know about the succubus, the demon female whose end is to seduce men and drain their souls?  Hmm… I was feeling a bit seduced; was there something she ought to have told me?  Nevermind.  Aside from the fact that I was being asked to split hairs, I did notice that Mom and Sara were getting along extremely well.  Two more points.  I introduced a girl to my mom, and my mom liked her.  How boss is that, huh?

Anyway, I still had a question to ask; I only needed to figure out how to ask it.  “Ok, so I’m at the, uh… grocery store…” mom nodded with a smirk on her face while Sara smiled wide.  “I see a girl and I think she’s hot.  So here’s the problem.  If I tell her she’s hot, then that’s sexual harassment.  But if I don’t, then I’m missing out and I end up a hermit.”

“Or she might think you’re gay,” Sara added.  Did she have to go there?  Did she?

“Anyway,” I tried not to laugh.  “My point is, how am I supposed to know if it’s OK to say something to her?”

“Is she checking you out, or not?” Sara asked me.

“How am I supposed to know?”

Mom laughed.  “Pay attention!  You’re looking at her, is she looking at you?  Or are you so focused on her butt that you can’t be bothered to notice what her eyes are up to?”

“Maybe she’s not, though,” I protested, “but maybe she would.  Maybe she’s too busy looking at the can of beans to notice I’m standing there looking at her.”

“We notice,” Sara assured me.  “Trust me, we notice.”

“But what if she is, and I don’t notice her noticing me?  Or what if she isn’t but I think she is?”

Mom tried to assure me, “you’ll figure it out as you grow.  These things come with practice.”

“No!  That doesn’t work!”

“Why not?”

“Because!  I don’t want to be somebody’s #MeToo.  I don’t want to try and figure it out and end up hurting someone, making some unwanted advance, she’s traumatized, and ends up depressed and living on the street smoking crack only to cut her wrists while hanging herself after swallowing a bunch of sleeping pills.  I don’t want to be that guy.”

“Then don’t.”

“Right, but what if I’m wrong and I miss the green light and she ends up lonely and depressed because she wanted me to make a move and she ends up living on the street smoking meth…”

“A bit extreme, don’t you think?” Sara asked me.

Maybe a tad.

Mom looked at me.  And just to be clear, I did not start this conversation.  “Fair enough.  Do you remember the statistics you took last semester?”

Who does?  “Um… sure.”

“Do you remember what I taught you about type 1 errors and alpha levels?”

Not really.  And so you know, statistics don’t lie to people; people lie to people.  “Yeah.”

“What do you remember?”

Crap.  “Um…”

Sara answered for me.  “Alpha number, that’s the probability of a type 1 error, right?  When you reject the null hypothesis when it’s true?”

Mom’s eyebrows shot up and she adjusted the rear-view mirror to get a better look at my girlfriend.  Five-hundred points right there, yes?  This girl made it rain!

“About choosing an appropriate alpha number,” Mom probed further.

Oh, that.  “That it’s context dependent,” I said.  “That it depends on what it means in the real world.”

Sara cocked her head at me in inquiry and I suddenly didn’t feel so dim.  I got to teach her something!  “So for example, if a type 1 error means the dog gets too much food, you can tolerate a larger margin of error.  But if a type 1 error means babies die, the margin of error needs to be much smaller.”

“Good,” mom replied.  “The same idea applies here.  What we’re talking about is essentially the consequences of misreading a green light.  What are the real-world interpretations of the two types of error?  What could go wrong?”

“I’m…” I started.

Sara answered instead.  “Well, either it’s green and you don’t move, or you run a red light.”

“And what are the consequences of not going on a green light?”

“I miss out,” I said.  “Hot girl at the grocery store checking me out, I could have had something with her maybe, but instead I go home and live a sad, lonely life of thawing out my own hot dogs for dinner and I end up one of those forty-year-old guys who can’t move out of his mom’s house.”

I had to throw in that last bit, you know.  She laughed.  You know she did.

Sara answered me, though.  “If she’s really into you, she’s not going to let you escape so easily.”  Then she winked at me.  She freaking winked at me, bro.

“OK, but what if I’m kinda in a relationship but it’s still ambiguous and maybe I want to bring things to the next level but I don’t know if she wants to and she wants to move forward but I don’t pick up on it.  She’ll be like one of those women on that reality show talking about how she doesn’t feel like she should have to spell it out or something.  She’ll get annoyed, get bored with me and break up and move on to someone else.”

“And if that’s her response,” Mom answered, “you’re better off alone, so that’s a good thing.  If she’s worth keeping, son, she’ll take that as a sign to talk things over and try again.  This is how you develop lines of communication that will ultimately decide the quality of your relationship.  So ultimately when you miss that green light, you either weed out the semi-committed, shed a bad relationship, or make a good one better.  Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” I nodded.  Sara gazed at me the whole time.  I really liked the way she looked at me.

“Now.  Let’s talk about the consequences of running a red light.”

Sara took that one.  “Depressed, suicidal crackhead.”

Mom laughed.  Another point.  “I was thinking jail, but that works too.”

“I could end up hurting someone,” I said.

Maybe it was a matter of priority.  I supposed, if a man were to be one of those who didn’t care who got hurt by his actions, then the question of whether he should risk misreading a woman’s signs by defaulting to an invitation was answered.  He’d likely get more action — the asshole who gets ten girls once.  But in the wake of his bedroom conquests, what would be the human cost of what he left behind?  I didn’t want to be one of those guys.  To me, and this was was important, I didn’t want to go around hurting people out of my own selfish desires.  And if that made me a wuss in some people’s eyes, why should I care?  Or, how was it different than caring whether a couple of idiots branded me a fag for liking ballet, or allowing a room full of pretty girls believe I was gay?

I looked to Sara.  This girl had let me know that she wanted me to feel free to express with her my deepest desires and she actively encouraged me to do so.  I felt like I could be myself around her.  I wasn’t afraid to tell her how I felt, what I wanted to do, or anything.  She let me know with her actions, with her words, with the way she responded to me, the way she provoked me, that it was OK for me to let go with her.  To be totally uninhibited.  This, above all else, was the most precious gift she could have given me, no matter how sexy her body was.  God, how I loved that girl.  I had to hand it to my mom; if she hadn’t dragged me to the ballet, I never would have met her.

I really miss her.

As for the ride up to State University, that was interesting.

The first thing I noticed was how Cassie and Meathead tickled each other.  She would tickle him, he’d squirm, then he’d poke her in the side and she’d erupt in joyous laughter.  I wasn’t sure if that counted as a green light.  Kelly sat in front of them trying to play, too, and he would poke her belly making her laugh only to hide behind the chair and lie in wait for another round.  This kept up for a while until Kelly figured out Cassie was getting the bulk of his attention, and reclined in her seat with a book.  After that it was just the two lovebirds sitting side by side, his hand high on her thigh and hers in his lap.

Isaiah had long since leaned back with his eyes closed and headphones on, Lauren and Rachel were busy looking at something on someone’s tablet, and Sara had long since curled up to me and took a nap with my chest as a pillow.

She looked so peaceful.  It was all I could do to stay perfectly still.  I admired her face, the porcelain image of a goddess.  She had a long, narrow face with a sharp browline and a sharp nose.  Her eyebrows were long and thin and came up at the perfect angle.  Her hair was a mix of black and dark brown, thick, and long enough for her shoulders with a bounty of waves.  She usually kept it in an unruly bun, and today was no exception.

Next thing I knew, Meathead’s lap was covered up by a jacket with Cassie’s hand underneath.  This guy turned toward me and smiled wide as the sea.

“Are you jealous?” Sara whispered.  I think you know.  Had I known nothing of either of these two girls, I’d have chosen Sara in a heartbeat.  Knowing what I knew about Sara, there wasn’t even a choice to be made.  Who knows, maybe Cassie was a nice girl, too, but I didn’t care.  No, I wasn’t jealous.

“Are you cold?” she whispered to me again.  “We can cover up your lap.”

I swallowed.  Yes, I was feeling a little cold in that moment.  Very cold.  Especially my lap was cold; I needed to cover up.

No.  There was something happening in my mind then; yes, I wanted Sara to wrap her fingers around me and play, but I wanted more to save it.  I know, it doesn’t make sense.  Just lying there with her resting her head on my chest; this was a perfect moment.  I wanted to savor it, you know?

“I think I’m alright.”  What the heck was I thinking?

She sat up and leaned close to my ear, whispering, “I think they’re going to have sex tonight.”

Yes.  I think that was a reasonable prediction.

Sara whispered to me again.  “I want to have sex tonight.”

Yum.  Ooh how those words made me feel all tickled up inside.  And believe me I wasn’t stupid enough to ask ‘who with’ that time.  I still toyed with her, though.  I had to.  I’m sorry, I just had to.  “I’m not sure if I can count that as a green light.”

She pulled her face back from that one, gazed at me wide-eyed, and whispered into my ear.  “I want to have sex with you tonight.”

No, my friend, there was a lot more juice in that one, so I squeezed further.  “I dunno.  I don’t want to risk it.  It’d be a shame if I made some unwelcome advance and you turned into a suicidal crackhead.  I think I’ll just play it safe.”

She slapped my arm.  Hard.  “You are so bad!”

It was all I could do to try and keep a straight face and look smug.  From the corner of my eye I noticed Rachel glance up at us, and then back to the tablet she shared with Lauren.

“OK,” Sara tried again.  “Tonight, I want to rip your clothes off, crawl on top of you, slip your cock deep inside me, and fuck the cum out of you.”

Damn nice.  This was getting fun; I wanted more  “I don’t know, that still feels kinda ambiguous.”

She pursed her lips and came at me one more time.  “I want to tie you up to a chair, blindfold you, clip your nipples to a car battery, and piss all over your face.”

Maybe I should have just taken the green light.

Eventually we arrived.  We had in all three rooms with four beds each.  The girls took up two of the rooms while Isaiah, Meathead, and I took the third.

As I was getting settled and rummaging through my mind for a way to get alone with Sara, Meathead got up.  “Hey, I’ll be back.”

That turned out to be a lie, though, as not five minutes later, Sara, Rachel, and Corey all came in.  “We got kicked out.”

“Huh?” Isaiah pulled his head back; he’d missed the show on the way up.  You see, Cassie was the fourth bunkie of the bunch, and of course she needed a little privacy.  But whatever, Isaiah didn’t care.  He’d already made plans to meet up with a friend of his who, allegedly, had something ‘interesting’ to share.

I didn’t ask.

So there I sat, setting up my bed while Sara, Rachel, and Corey sat on the bed opposite mine.  Actually, going left to right, it was Corey, then Sara, and then Rachel.  Not like it matters.  I was silently trying to figure out a way to get rid of the other two.

“Pull out your dick,”  Sara commanded me.  We all glanced up at her and stared in synchronized WTF.

“Pull out your dick,” she clarified.  “I want to see it.”

Corey shook her head slightly, “uh…”

“You got to see Rachel’s tits, it’s only fair.”

“Um, it’s alright,” Rachel waved off the proposition.

Sara turned to face each of the other girls in turn.  “I’ve never seen a dick before.  Not in real life, anyway.  Have you?”

Corey shook her head.  Rachel shook her head, too.

“Don’t you want to see it?”

Corey shrugged one shoulder and cocked her head to the side with a ‘sure, why not’ look on her face.

“I… I don’t know about this,” Rachel protested.  “I’m saving myself…”

“Yeah,” I added.  “Maybe this isn’t…”

“You’re saving yourself just to look at something?  I just want to see it.”  She looked intently at me with those beautiful brown eyes.  “May I please see it?”

I was flaccid.  Soft and floppy.  This was not how I’d imagined the evening going and the whole situation was making me nervous.  I don’t know.  If it was just her, I’d have obeyed her every wish.  But these other two, well, something wasn’t right.

“Don’t you want to see it?” she asked Rachel.

“I…” Corey squeaked out, “I… kinda… wanna see it.”

“OK, then,” she faced me.

“I kinda don’t really… ” too many qualifiers.  I could have said ‘no, I don’t want to.’  Instead the best I could muster was some random string of wishy-washy.

“Aren’t you gay though?” Rachel quizzed me.  “I mean…”

“All the more reason for him to show us,” Sara rebuked her.  “So you know he’s not going to take it the wrong way.”

And what, may I ask, would be the ‘wrong way’ to take someone whipping out their stuff and displaying it to three teenage girls?  My heart was threatening to break free, and not in a good way.  Rather, it felt more like the kind of violent pounding one would expect when you’re about to get into a fight.  My mind, however, was screaming flight.  Definitely flight.

No less, I felt this obligation to sit there and allow it to happen.  After all, wasn’t this what guys were supposed to be all about?  Except my winkie was totally uncooperative.  I tried to send a fax down south hoping that might wake him up, but something was most definitely off.

With that, Rachel shrugged and nodded.  Was that really all it took?  “I guess I do kinda want to see it.”

I needed her to be on my side, though.  This was a terrifying proposition.  It wasn’t right.  This wasn’t supposed to be how the evening went.  Sara and I were supposed to find a lonely bed somewhere the same way Cassie and Meathead did, and we were supposed to make love, just her and me, and then drift off in each other’s arms.  That Rachel and Corey were suddenly part of that made me nervous.  Made me terrified.  And when I realized my thingy was not going to cooperate, I felt ashamed.  Opening up my pants and showing off a tiny, shriveled up mass of disappointment was about the last thing I wanted to do in that moment, or in any moment.

“Come on,”  Sara came towards me and crouched down on the floor, resting her hands on my knees.  “Please?”

I didn’t say no.  I wanted to make her happy, to give her what she wanted.  I wasn’t comfortable at all, but rather in a state of panic, and I didn’t even know why.  I mean, seriously.  Just wrap your head around this.  I was a sixteen-year-old boy being coaxed to whip it out in front of three virgins who ‘just want to see it.’  What was wrong with that?  If you’d said to me that morning that this was how my day would end, I would have said “oh yeah!” then proudly flung out a huge, solid cock and displayed it for them.  Instead, the plumbing was backed up.  Completely.  And I couldn’t shake the fear of what they were going to say when they saw a soft, tiny, shriveled up thing in place of the grand expectation.

A guy isn’t supposed to say ‘no’ to such things.

I sat perfectly still while Sara unzipped my pants, dug through the hole in my boxers, and produced my flappy excuse for a manhood.

The other girls came close for a better look.

I felt low.  Ashamed.  My fingers wouldn’t stop shaking and my heart wouldn’t stop yelling at me.  Sara fondled the thing, pinching it in her thumb and forefinger, rolling it around and squeezing it, I guess she was trying to get it up for me, but then she gave up and placed her eyes to mine.  Rachel leaned in to get a good look at the disappointing mass, and Corey poked at it like it was some science experiment.  The rest of me was motionless.  I mouthed words to Sara, but I couldn’t will my voice to put any kind of volume to them.  “I’m not comfortable,” I said.  I tried to say.

She suddenly looked sad as though she were about to cry, then pushed Corey out of the way and returned my privacy to me.

She stood, covering her face with her hands, and I was still shaking from the experience.

Rachel sat up and delved into my eyes with a sad expression on her face.  “Uh, hey Corey,” she broke the silence.  “You want to go see if there’s a pool?”

“Sure,” she nodded.  Then together, they left.

Sara sat back down on the bed beside me, still covering her face in her hands, and sniffled.  “I’m sorry!” she cried.  “I’m so sorry!”

Not how I’d thought things would go at all.