Silly Sex Rituals
Episode 8
Derek and Chad were roommates. They had been best friends in high school and used to spend the night at each other’s house all the time. They did the usual things together, like underage drinking and playing Playstation. They were self-branded band geeks, attempting to navigate the choppy social waters of freshman year.
Their dormitory had a universal smell. An undercurrent of lemon Lysol and fabric softener partially cloaked overtones of herbal skunkiness. Notes of sweat — the kind of ripe perspiration that infused the overstuffed laundry bags waiting to be taken home on the weekend to mom — complemented the fragrant eye-melting miasma of cleaning products that vaporized the communal bathrooms.
The heavy metal door opened into the room, gradually revealing Chad’s particleboard desk. His desk was tidy as far as these things go. Its centerpiece was a 15 inch LCD screen, rare in those days, which connected to Chad’s Compaq PC. The keyboard had a sticky e key. Chad changed the background on his computer often, usually once a week, with images of buxom women in various states of undress. Since they left the door to their room open 95% of the time, other guys in passing would often stop by for a minute to admire and comment on that week’s selection. Chad did not have a girlfriend.
He dedicated a significant portion of his 80 gigabytes of hard drive space to the thousands of mp3s he’d been collecting on P2P networks like Limewire and Kazaa since upgrading from the crepitating 56k modem at his parent’s house to the blazing speeds of fiber-optic cable. The rest was pornography.
He had hundreds of video files organized in a hidden folder called “Wank Tank.” Sub-folders contained various categories to satisfy a particular mood: anal, big tits, blowjobs, cumshots, lesbians, redheads, S&M. Several were entire movies he had downloaded. Others were short clips that featured a porn star he admired.
He also watched porn for the lolz. He adored the bad acting, fake backgrounds, and outlandish scenarios, like B movies but with hardcore sex. In high school, Chad joked about becoming a male porn actor, his virginity notwithstanding. Still, he groomed down there with the fastidious care of a horse trainer. He snuck scissors into the shower to trim his pubic hair and watch it circle down the drain. That’s one reason everyone wore flip-flops in there. Who knew what the others did.
Derek had a girlfriend but she went to an out-of-state university. They talked on the phone often. Derek would sit by the window and tune his guitar while cradling the corded phone between his shoulder and ear. He had never cheated. Chad called him the perfect picture of monogamy.
When Julie visited for a weekend, Chad became voluntarily exiled from the room, floating between friends to chill for awhile. Derek said he would remove the sock from the door knob when the coast was clear.
Masturbation was one of those things that went unspoken, even though everyone knew that everyone did it. They had to—their hormones required it. Everyone had their own secret rituals and methods. Some people did it in the shower, others rubbed one out in agonizing silence while their roommate slept on the bunk bed above them.
Subterfuge. Misdirection. Memorizing schedules to afford 15 minutes for a quick spank session. Tissues at the ready.
Derek and Chad had Math 101 in Swansea Hall every Monday from 8:00–9:00 am. The lecture hall had seating for 250 but maybe 30 people regularly attended class. The cavernous room was cold and dimly lit. Derek and Chad sat near the back and either slept or squinted at the flickering projector showing archaic algebraic formulae. They were bored.
Chad sat there squirming in his seat, for he had a boner pressing up against his jeans. He couldn’t help it. He hadn’t jerked off all weekend due to Julie’s most recent visit. And Monday was his busiest day, with Psychology scheduled for right after. The professor was a cute grad student named Nicole. She usually wore a white woolen sweater that seemed designed for her chest and, well, Chad had a rather vivid imagination. He tried to tamp down the tent in his pants, to somehow reroute the blood circulation to his brain, or even his hands, which were freezing.
He knew Derek had Spanish at 9:15. If Chad cut class, he could head back to the room and have more than an hour all to himself. That thought of momentary independence gave him the courage to make it through the rest of the lecture.
Back outside, Derek said, “Damn, it’s cold as balls today.”
Chad had his hands stuffed into his jacket pockets. “For real.”
“Want to grab lunch later? I heard they’re doing taco bar in the cafeteria today.”
“Oh snap, son. It’s on.” They had a first bump explosion.
Derek checked his watch. “Hey, I gotta run, man.”
“Word. Me too. I’ve got Intro to Psychology.”
“Oh, with Ms. Sweaterchest.”
Chad raised an eyebrow and smirked. “The hype is real.”
“I’m so gonna take that class in the spring.”
They laughed.
“Okay, see you at lunch.”
“Later, man.”
Chad trudged off in the direction of the Psychology building. He wanted to be a responsible student. He paused in the middle of the quad. His erection had abated for the moment. He knew if he went to class he would suffer immensely. He closed his eyes to imagine his professor with her buttery smooth skin, rabbity smile, stepping towards him in the empty classroom, stripping off her sweater…
“That’s it,” he resolved himself. “I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go.”
When he reached the building, Chad tapped the snow off his shoes against the steps. He would sit in the front row today. Except when he arrived the class was packed. He found a seat in the back, opened his book, and clicked his pencil at the ready.
She arrived and said today they’d be discussing Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development. Then, before diving into the lecture, she showed off the new piece of bling on her finger.
“My fiance…” the ghost of her voice began.
Chad didn’t hear the rest. Crestfallen, he closed his book, slipped it into his backpack, and left without saying a word.
He traversed the quad and climbed the steps to the dorm. He slid his key into the lock and turned left. It clicked and the door swung open.
Chad saw Derek sitting at his desk with his pants around his ankles.
“Oh…”
“Hey!” Derek voice cracked with surprise. He started to rise, then thought better of it. “Can you, uh, come back in like two minutes, bro?” He reached for the tissue box by the monitor. The paused image on the screen had a professor in nylons being naughty. “I just gotta get cleaned up here real quick.”
“You bet, buddy,” Chad said. He slowly pulled the door closed and shook his head. He’d have to try again later.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this one. You can subscribe to my tinyletter for occasional story updates. Cheers!
