The music is so loud in the fraternity house that beers rattle off the roofs of cars parked outside in the cul-de-sac.
The young man takes his seat behind the fold-out picnic table where he was told to sit and collect door-charge money from the other young men coming here to drink. Young women drink for free because that’s how this is done, where everyone is magically twenty-one.
He keeps standing up to scan the crowd, looking for her and, finally, he sees her coming around the corner smiling at him. He hopes tonight is the night when two years of pining pays off since they broke up because he accidentally cheated on her the same night he told her he loved her. High school shit. In his defense, he had no ride home because his ride was making out on the other couch in some girl’s parents’ basement. And the girl next to him started kissing him and rubbing on him. The rest was gravity but didn’t amount to much. He felt guilty, told her the next day, and she dumped him. That was two years ago.
Since that loss of integrity, he had become utterly dumpable but he also felt fuckable. Some girls look at him that way now and she looks at him like this when she slides in beside him, both of their asses hanging off the edge of the curved plastic chair they share.
The music is suddenly removed from the atmosphere and now it is quiet while one of the active members of the fraternity screams something at someone in the other room because a small drama has unfolded and is being handled. The silence is immediately filled with an explosion of many conversations, but our young couple can hear each other now.
She snuggles in close and turns his face to hers. She stares into his eyes and smiles until he smiles back. They kiss and suck each other’s tongues lovingly like they used to in his waterbed after school. Dudes are stuffing money in the cash box, grabbing their plastic cups, and walking away.
She tells him she remembers what he likes and her hands go to work on him. He falls in love all over again right here. A few girls stare at them and hate her out loud because they wish they were her in this moment, inhaling a boy without shame.
She takes her hand away from the work and grabs his wrist. She gets up and drags him to the stairs. He fixes himself with his other hand while running to catch up, but his jeans are still unzipped and unbuttoned. He catches up to her and the noise is ridiculous again because the music is back on, louder now.
She pulls him up the stairs and screams something at him and she is smiling with a look in her eyes like she could devour him where he stands. He can’t understand what she’s yelling and gives her the face and head shake to convey this, so she cups her hands around her mouth and bellows at the same moment someone bumps the DJ table downstairs, knocking the needle off the record. The whole party hears her scream, “I WANT YOU TO MAKE ME CUM TONIGHT!”
The shame he should feel standing here in his unzipped trousers with a publicly declared demand on his sexual performance could burn a lesser soul into a scorch on the Earth, but the shameless are often the last ones standing.
The crowd around them oohs and claps while she drags him up the rest of the stairs and then kisses him in front of the party. She has abandoned reason for lust and he follows her with joy. They kiss for a long time until the DJ finds the groove again and the loud music makes the crowd forget their spectacle so the young couple can exit this party without leaving.
In a bedroom with a shut door, they roll around and shed their clothes. They lick each other’s necks and shoulders. He kisses her hand and forearm. Soon they grind their bodies together until fluids stir to simmer. She’s taking her bra off when the door opens violently. The brother whose bedroom this is wants it for entertaining a young lady friend and the young man of our concern, along with his lovely young lady, are both banished to the top of the bunk bed. They’re up there now, skin to skin. He’s trying to figure this out because he’s only done it twice. He understands a woman’s body has a language that he barely knows how to speak. He aches to learn that language but trying to do it in this place and time is not a wise investment of the sexual energy between them.
A few minutes later, she starts moaning and soon she gets a leg cramp that causes her to jerk away from him, kneeing him in his balls, and scratching his chest by accident, drawing blood. She falls out of the bunk bed and crashes naked to the leather chest serving as a coffee table. It’s a hard fall and he calls her name to make sure she’s okay. She is okay but whatever mood there was before she fell is no longer the mood they feel. There is laughter in the room now, but neither of them is laughing.
He wants to be out of this place and away from this noise so he can tell her things in his heart. She should know that he holds his breath every time he sees her and he makes a silent pledge to win her back every time she walks away. But instead of telling her these things, he walks her to her car and waves as she drives away from the party. He thinks about stepping in front of her car while she’s accelerating toward him now. He thinks about what the weight of her car would feel like driving over him. Instead, he takes a long walk away from the party, off-campus downtown where dirty people play and pay for it again tomorrow when they wake up. He gets into another adventure, like he always does following a good failure.
The next day he calls and asks if he can take her out. She says yes. When he arrives at her house, she won’t come to the door. Her mother finally asks him to please leave. He shouts at her mother and then up at her window. It is the next to last time he’ll speak to her.
Driving home, the song playing on the local hard rock station is interrupted and the DJ is crying and talking. A punk musician on the other side of the country tried his best to be a good artist. He made a perfect pop record that ended up killing the music he loved by accident. That young man with all that talent committed a gruesome suicide. Our young man turns off the radio and drives in silence with the windows down. He cries the whole way home.
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I remember when stories like this were only published in certain adult publications. Fathers hide them so sons could find. Not intentianaly but still....in Mybworld at 13 this was ok