To The VIctor Go The Spoils (Part 1: Eses And Essays)

Before I met Victor, the only things I associated with Colombia were coffee and cocaine, two things I’ve never had much use for. But watching him wiggle down the hallway in nothing but a towel, images of stainless steel suitcases and the word “ese” are replaced with bench pressing and honey-glazed skin. He is the shy, stupid looking surfer kid that every girl (and according to statistics, at least ten percent of the guys) wants to fuck and bring home to mommy. And while everyone who’s ever been to a swim meet has seen him in a speedo, I’m the one he invites into his room, late at night, to hang out and do homework with.

Tonight, I have to finish a particularly complicated essay on my interpretation of gender roles in Shakespearean language. It was due a week ago. While I ponder the significance of Viola’s role in Twelfth Night, I look over to see Victor flipping through a porn mag unlike any other I’ve ever come across.

I grew out of Playboys and Penthouses before I’d turned thirteen. Between the airbrushed beaver and silicone breasts, and the fact that my father had purposefully shared the contents of the joke section before I got the chance to steal the magazines from the top shelf in his closet, I found the concept of American porn duller than a plastic hamster wheel. What Victor is gawking at is Latin American porn. Four incredibly hot guys buried in one hot, innocent looking girl. Well, as innocent as a girl can look with a cock in her mouth, one in her twat, one in her ass, and another in her hand. I make a mental note to borrow it from him some time when he isn’t paying attention. In the nicewhile, I focus on my essay instead of my ese, and making conversation as though he was playing computer solitaire, and not lying on his bed, fondling himself. Buzz buzz.

“You still dating Jennifer?” He asks.

“I don’t know.” I say. “I don’t think so.”

He Spock eyes me. “You don’t think so?”

“I don’t know. Things are pretty weird right now.”

“Yea.” He says. “Yea, they are.”

When I am done typing my paper, I go back to my room, to pick up where I left off with my ceiling staring.

Three hours and no sleep later, I get out of bed and click off my clock before the alarm even rings. Victor is already in the shower when I walk into the bathroom. “Hey, Z?”

“Yea?” I ask.

“Could you do me a favor? I forgot my towel. Could you go into my room and get it for me?”

“Sure. Your room unlocked?” It is. While I am in his room, I open the bottom drawer of his computer desk, and swipe two magazines. I detour into my room, where JBob snores lightly. I hide the magazines under my mattress.

“Took you long enough.” Victor says, stepping out of the shower to meet me. He proceeds to make small talk that I can’t follow because he is toweling himself off, focusing a great deal of time on his my God that thing is huge buzz buzz. Victor smiles. I think we are seconds away from kissing when the bathroom door opens, and Theo comes in to use one of the showers.

Victor motions for me to follow him back to his room. “I hate Theo.” He says, with a venom that surprises me. He is getting such a shame dressed. I am laying across his bed, trying not to watch him getting dressed. “Two weeks before he transfers to some junior stupid college and he comes out at that stupid assembly on cultural tolerance. All those stupid teachers lining up to shake his stupid faggy hands.”

Victor had come out honestly. During a lively debate concerning when, exactly, Saturday Night Live began to suck (my vote was 1989), Victor casually mentioned that he imagined he could suck a pretty mean cock. While the hockey jocks we lived with were busy fake lisping and playing limp-wristed minstrel charades, I was trying to figure out whether or not my cock could be considered mean. Or pretty. I made a mental note to ask him were he ever to be at eye level with it. And now, here I am, alone in his room, laying across his bed, while he pokes ever so slightly out of his boxers. I want to say some clever, nonchalant seduction line. Something suave that we’ll remember when we’re seventy-eight years old, playing chess in a remote village in Spain. Something. Anything. Touch me.