Cary says the lacrosse player left him, although they weren't ever really together, not that way, anyway. They shared a room, a dorm room in Blake Hall, and not even for very long, but that was it. Granted, the lacrosse player had asked Cary to be his roommate when they met at orientation weekend. That was because they'd shared a room then, too, and Cary hadn't snored, and the lacrosse player hadn't known anyone else— all the other lacrosse players had gone to the first orientation in July. What was he doing in July? Working at Ace Hardware, racking hammers and sorting boxes of screws, almost wishing he was going back to high school in the fall. They'd liked the same kinds of music, though, he and Cary—Dave Matthews, the Chemical Brothers, Stone Temple Pilots, and neither one of them smoked. It hadn't seemed like a bad idea back then, in the middle of August. He could have left it up to the lottery that paired up everyone else, but why tempt fate? He could have gotten that guy in the wheel chair or the fag with the eyeliner and the black and red hair. "The name alone should have done it for you, man," his lacrosse buddies say. "Like that fucking chick with the pig blood and John Travolta." "Was I even born when that movie came out—what the fuck do I know? Besides, he spells it different. C-a-r-y." "Add an s, dude, and you've got scary." * The lacrosse player got all his clothes at Abercrombie and Fitch, at the Lehigh Valley Mall. He spent nearly six hundred dollars the week before school started, not telling his mother. That was his book money. Tuition and everything else was paid for with money from the accident. He packed up plaid shirts, long sleeved Henleys, carpenters jeans, cut-off khakis. He looked like the blown-up photos that hung in the store; he looked like a model—Cary said so, anyway: "You should model for Fitch," he said. The lacrosse player would look at himself in the mirror at the gym where he worked out every day, sipping Creatine and grape juice, going into the locker room to quickly elbow out of his shirt if he managed to find himself alone, to stare at his pecs, his abs, and ignore his calves. His hair was straight and perfect; his teeth were white and perfect; his skin was beautiful. Cary didn't do much more than go to classes, do his homework, and watch television. He liked old movies, black and white ones. Just the look of them bored the lacrosse player, who liked the Simpsons and MTV and that was about it. "Don't like TV that much," he said. He liked computer games, strategy games: Warcraft, Lords of the Realm, Myst. He liked music. He liked working out. Cary sat on his bed in his boxers, his legs crossed, leg over knee. He had long toes, and so did the lacrosse player, who didn't care for his own feet, but stopped minding them so much, seeing Cary's. The lacrosse player was putting things into a bag, clothes for the gym: a tee-shirt from high school, its sleeves cut off, holes meshing the back, and warm-up pants, socks, briefs, a towel because he was going to shower there. "Where you going?" Cary asked. He glanced at the bag on the bed. "Never mind." "You ought to come sometime," the lacrosse player said. "Yeah, right," Cary snorted. He was drinking tea he made in the microwave. The lacrosse player picked at a scab on his knuckle, staring blankly at the television. The black and white looked dull, out of focus; everyone was so phony, the way they talked, the way they laughed. He picked up his bag. "See ya," he said. "Later," Cary returned, not looking from the little screen. * He liked to study in the library. It was quieter than the dorm, where quiet time was blatantly ignored, Puff Daddy and Primus a dull rumble in the walls of the room. And Cary was always around. It wasn't that he couldn't keep quiet, but the lacrosse player was used to a certain amount of solitude. He grew up an only child in a quiet house. His mother used to plead for his silence, suffering headaches that blinded her, she said. From the accident. She needed quiet. He knew how to be quiet, and liked being alone. He went to the library for it, sitting on hard chairs with stacks of books, studying. There were notes for him when he'd get back to the room. "Your mom called," Cary would tell him, waiting for him to pick up the phone. "Cool," the lacrosse player would answer, throwing his bag on his bed. He liked maps. He liked the way they looked, the way the made sense. You are here. You want to be there. Simple as that. He liked knowing what was around him— towns, parks, lakes. He went to the library and pulled down atlases no one had touched since 1978, when countries had different names than the ones they have now. That was another thing he liked about maps—the names could change, but it all stayed the same. He wanted to learn every inch of the world. It was a mission, a goal, not unlike wanting to read a dictionary from front to back; lofty, admirable, eccentric. There was a note from Cary: "Your mom called again. I think she was crying. She wants you to call her back. I went down to Dean's." * He liked the gym at six o'clock because it was pretty much his. Everyone else was at dinner or studying or drinking or doing bong hits. He could watch himself in the mirror without feeling too self-conscious. There was one other guy there, older, not a student, the lacrosse player guessed, though he could have been one of those non-traditional ones. Maybe he was a professor. They nodded at one another, both intent on the weights. They showered together afterward, having finished up at the same time, the lacrosse player glancing over at the man who soaped himself up over and over again, his chest wide and high, a small crest of hair growing in the crevice between his pecs. He was thick all over. The lacrosse player watched the floor then, dragging a wash cloth between his legs, thinking. The man cleared his throat, spat it out. The lacrosse player turned to the spray of water, clearing away the soap from his face. He'd brought his razor in with him to do some maintenance on his chest, a quick trim, but couldn't with the man there with him. The man reached for his soap and lathered himself up all over again. He turned his left foot out and slid the bar over his tensed thigh. The lacrosse player looked at the drain, embossed with a W which stood for Wade. He knew this from his job at the hardware store. He looked over at the man's feet, trimmed toe nails, little tufts of hair at each knuckle. The man rinsed himself, turning his back, and began to wash his hair a second time. He turned around again and the lacrosse player saw the man's dick rising up from suds that washed over him. He looked away, looked back, aware of his own burgeoning cock, the twitching ascent, the nasty dryness he tasted, the sudden thickness he felt in his throat. There was no sound save for the water raining on the tile. The man used his soap around his crotch, building lather, working the bar under his balls. He had stopped looking at the lacrosse player, interested in something else now, the way the dim light cast weakened shadows, maybe. He was not interested in the lacrosse player touching himself, how he held himself in his hand, his cock engorged. He stroked his soapy dick, watching the man do the same, staring into the corner of the shower. He watched the way the man's butt cheek tensed, the way his spine straightened, and then the sudden ropy toss that flew from his prick-end, feeling his own shuddering end, come spilling out of his fist, a warm white flow that clotted on the tile, swirling slowly toward the drain only to stay there, stiff and obstinate. * He went home for the weekend. His mother made him. "Thanksgiving is in three weeks," he complained; "I'll be home then." "I want you here now," she whined. It went the way he'd expected it to go. She hid in her room and he hid in his. They got together for meals and she asked him perfunctory questions about school, how his classes were, what his room mate was like. "I talk to him more than I do you," she said. "Are you ever there?" "I study a lot," he told her. "In the library." "Then you'll have good grades," she said slowly, as if coming to some realization. "Yeah," he answered. She looked at his shirt. It had cost him sixty dollars. She would have died if she ever found out he'd spent that much on a shirt. "That color looks nice on you," she said. The plan was that they'd see his father on Sunday and then the two of them would have dinner at Wallace's, where they'd always had dinners on Sundays after visiting his father. "You're so far away," she said, meaning at school. She hadn't wanted him to go, had begged him to stay. He'd almost stayed. He'd studied the map of the campus they'd sent him at night, under the small study lamp at his desk in his little bedroom, the radio on low, his mother trying to sleep. This is where I'll live, he thought: I' ll go to classes here; I'll eat here. He couldn't make it to Sunday, though. "I've got to go," he told her Saturday night. "You can't leave," she said, her blue face moonish. "You can't go. It's dark." She didn't like him to drive at night, used to hide the keys to the car when he was younger, when he'd first gotten his license. "I'm going," he told her. His bag was packed and by the door. He stood in her doorway. The room was lit by the television. Next to her bed—his old bed actually— was a card table set up with a coffee maker, boxes of crackers, a broken clock, magazines, some rotten bananas, a telephone with caller ID. The room smelled not much different than the nursing home his father was in. "That car's in my name," she screamed after him, not getting out of bed, not having the energy, he guessed. She yelled his name, saying she'd call the police, but he knew she wouldn't, she wouldn't dare. He closed the door quietly behind him. * He unlocked the door of his room. It wasn't yet midnight, and he was expecting to find Cary home with the television on, not unlike his mother really, he realized just then, opening the door, the light behind him sweeping into the room. Cary's bed was empty. He was sleeping in the lacrosse player's bed. "What are you doing?" the lacrosse player asked, turning on the light. Cary bolted upright, his face wrinkled from the press of the pillow. He didn't say anything, though, offered no explanation. He put his feet on the floor and uncovered himself—he was naked and hard—and walked across the room to his own bed. So big, the lacrosse player thought, seeing the stiff bob of Cary's cock—huge, he was thinking, his hand on the door knob, cold, hearing the radiator knock, Cary settling into his sheets, drifting back into sleep, his cock, the lacrosse player thought, his cock. It's ruined, the lacrosse player realized. Everything was ruined. Something bad had happened, although he could not say what that badness was, not just then, but it had something to do with Cary's old movies and his mother trading her queen-sized bed for his old twin; it had something to do with the man in the shower, and the wrinkled skin of his own fingertips that day, unable to leave once he was finished, once he was clean. He put down his bag and turned around. He left the room, closing the door, aware that he was leaving home the second time that day. He'd go back later, the next day, when Cary was at the student union where he worked at the information desk, and clear out his things. He'd move in with the other lacrosse players and steer clear of all fine lines. He would become unambiguous, get good grades, prepare for the future. And he would never touch a man with an open hand without thinking of Cary and his long toes, which—if only Cary could have known—would have made Cary the happiest boy in Blake Hall.

R. J. March lives in Reading, PA. A collection of his work, Looking For Trouble; the Erotic Fiction of R.J. March was released in the Spring of 1999. He is also anthologized in the upcoming Friction: Best Gay Erotica Vol. 3. Both are published by Alyson Books.

Forbidden fantasies brought out into the light of day...