Shooting Flare Guns At Closet Cases

The next thud you hear is my self-esteem smacking against pavement. It sounds exactly the way balls against ass does not.

I'll blame it on The Internet. Fuck GMail. Fuck the way my fingers slip over the mouse. My hands are slick with disappointment and someone else's sweat. I didn't want to do touch him anyway. Hated the way his humble cock poked through his shorts. The way he breathed like I was putting out cigarettes on his tonsils.

I am too old for bicurious pussies.

Rene was first. "Meet me at 5:30." He said. "My house is your house. You will fuck me until I can't walk anymore, and then I will crawl to you so we can fuck some more."

But before sex, before Rene's quivering cock, I'm meeting a friend at the book store. "Maybe you should call me Goat With A Thousand Young when you talk about me in your journal." He says. No more requests for your names. For now he is Cheerio. And he'll either like it or won't. "Are you not allowed to take a shower at Clitty's?"

I'm not staying at Clitty's, but do I smell? Am I covered in? Oh, right. There's still a bit of blood on my hands from nosebleed #374.2. I head to the bathroom, wash it off. Come back and get the Cheerio seal of approval. We talk novels and bad poetry, and I'm off.

Rene's house isn't quite where he said it would be. Or, more correctly, not where I thought he said it would be. I am walking on sleepless pavement. I can feel sweat forming on my back. My knees need to crack.

"Hi." He says when I finally arrive at the house.

"Hey." I smile. He had problems sending a pic. His AIM was wonky. My GMail fucken sucked today. He was cuter than I feared. "Nice apartment." If you're into college minimalism.

His room is a bed, a desk, no wall decorations, no throw rug, no pictures on his desk, just a computer.

"Mind if I shower?" I ask.

He smiles, sweetly. I take my backpack into his halfbath. Soap, check. I turn on the water. Scrub scrub. Why am I doing this? Have I learned nothing since I started this journal? Why on Earth would I...my dick nods to attention. Right.

I walk back to Rene's bedroom. He is on the phone. "Ok." He says to the phone. Then, to me, "Sorry, I have to go. I was hoping you would be here an hour ago."

"Oh." Unfuck. "Ok."

Luckily, there was a backup plan. Eric wanted me to meet him at a bar on the other side of Harvard Square. I had a half an hour to get there before he said he'd just go home and beat off. A bus arrives at the end of Rene's street, just as I get there. The bus goes straight to the bar, but I feel compelled to get off at Harvard. I recognize a friend from poetry slam on the sidewalk. We talk about nothing. I stop in at the computer cave and check my e-mail. One message from Eric. "Fuck. Don't come. My roommate is gonna be home after all. Sorry dude. Don't come."

Unfuck you, too.

I check scattered e-mails. Thanks to fucken GMail I have the e-mail that my new landlord sent at 11 fucken in the morning asking me to call him before 6. It's 6:30. No keys for the new place.

Among spam and Livejournal comments, floating like an obese duck in jello, is another e-mail from Robert. Robert and I have been trying to hook up all week. He's a kind of chunky Chinese guy. Not kind of. Chunky. He's in the closet. Closets are my least favorite rooms in the house. "I really want you to come over now." He says.

So I hop on the next bus. Walk over to his iron gated apartment complex. "Nice apartment." I say, and this time I mean it.

He doesn't say thanks, just angles his head like he's considering cracking his neck.

Fear Factor is on the TV, and he wants to finish watching it. Whatever, I'm early. Just as the third stunt is about to begin, his shaking hand goes up my shirt. "I love redheads." He says. "Are you...all red?" This is time #6,327 someone has asked me this.

"Want to check?"

And my pants are coming down. He doesn't even bother unbuttoning the pants. I must be losing weight. He is not, but that's ok. He is breathing like I'm putting out cigarette butts on his tonsils. I can smell him freaking out. See the word fag roll across his pupils. He touches my cock like it's a doorknob on fire. I kiss his neck. I don't know why. I don't mean it. I grab his ass. I think someone with his weight should have a better ass. He does have a nice cock, though. I start to gently tug and "I can't do this." He says. "I'm sorry."

"Are you sure?" I ask, knowing the answer.

"Yea. You can stay and watch the end of Fear Factor...maybe...tomorrow night we could...?"

No, we can't. You won't want to tomorrow night either. We are too ugly to fuck. You are too nervous. I am a nosebleed to your asthma. All I want to do is go back to the home I don't have.

The streetlights shake their heads as I walk by. I'm taking the T back to Allston. I am shooting flare guns at closet cases. Help me, I think I wanted this. Wanted a night of accidental cockteasers, weak willed fags who couldn't find their spine with their backs. People who can't kiss or look at themselves when they masturbate.

At the next internet cafe, I get an IM from Timmy.   He's missed me so much he hasn't e-mailed me in a year. But he lives in Allston now. I am in Allston. Turns out, I'm right down the street from his house. Do I want to stop over? Sure, this night can't get any worse, right? I'm a writer, I'll write myself a goddamned fucken happy-ass Hollywood ending to tonight.

But I don't live in Hollywood.

As soon as I get in the house, he grabs my hand and pushes it to his tiny, tiny erection. I do not have a large dick. Timmy has a toothpick. "What took you so long?" He asks.

"I ran into a bunch of drunken stupid frat boys at Redneck's." And...you're wearing a necklace with a greek symbol on it. Great.

He smiles, then asks, "Do you suck dick?"

"Sometimes." I say. "You?"

"Nope." Then he is in my mouth. Pushing me with his sweaty hands. He's small. Even if he wasn't drunk, I could easily push him away, but what the fuck, he begins poorly jerking me off as I suck him.

His cock tastes like PBR.

It takes him ten seconds, fifteen, and....he's done. I've had bigger sneezes.

I stand up and present him with my dick.

"No, dude." He says. "I'm done. Tired."

"You're not even going to jerk me off."

He gets this truly evil grin on his face. "Welcome to the Frat House."

He'd been waiting to say that all night. I want to say something equally scathing in return, like welcome to the fag house or something. Instead, I let my teeth do the talking for me.

I grab my bag, and hurry out the door and into the street. I'm so thirsty, and disgusted. I head into the Store 24 for a Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper, precisely because it has a terrible shitty aftertaste that tastes nothing like Timmy's dick.

I think I see Timmy on my way out of the store, but I'm probably just being paranoid. And so what if it was him? At his level of drunkenness, I could have cockslapped him unconscious.

Rene will call tomorrow, but I won't pick up. Eric will see me online and debate sending an IM. He probably won't. Eric will wait until another day when his roommate will show up at the last moment. I don't think I'll be hearing from Timmy again.

I have already blocked them all from seeing me for who they are.