Chapter Twelve
Harper
“What about you?”
Banks glanced over, both of them out of breath and flushed with color after bolting from the theater and halfway across campus before they bothered to stop, glancing behind them every step of the way as if the sex police might be in hot pursuit.
Banks was hunched over, hands on his knees, gulping for air. “What about me?”
Harper could still feel the gloss and sheen of his spunk, glazing over and drying across his smooth, shaven mound. “I mean, you weren’t kidding when you said you were good at making people happy. I’d like to ... make you happy, too.”
Banks stood, stretching slightly and glancing this way and that, as if someone might overhear.
Harper followed his gaze, seeing the same deserted campus he’d crossed only a few hours earlier, struggling to find a place to ditch his damp and sticky boxer briefs, ruined with desire as his fantasies got the best of him.
They stood face to face at last, Banks blushing and looking chagrined. “Would you think I’m the biggest loser in the world if I said I already ... was happy?”
Harper struggled to understand. “What? You mean before our date? I should have done that, too. That way I wouldn’t have blown the minute you started jerking me off in the dark. Jesus, why didn’t I think of that?”
“No, Harper,” Banks growled, grabbing his hand again and tugging Harper along the darkened path that led, eventually, to their dorm buildings.
The sounds of revelry could be heard in the distance.
In the other direction, fortunately, down along Greek Row where the event of the season was currently playing itself out, one keg stand and body shot at a time.
Before them, beside them, all around them, quiet stretched out like the long, silken night ahead. Long after Harper had caught up and was following along, Banks still clung to his hand, warm and moist, the longest anyone—man or woman, stranger or friend, family or lover—had ever held his hand.
“Well, when then?”
“Harper, this ... this is all new to me, too. You get that, right?” Banks struggled to catch his breath. “I don’t go around giving rando pretty boys happy endings in the back of theaters all the time, okay?”
“You could have fooled me,” Harper murmured, still gooey from the way Banks had made him feel in the back of that darkened theater, legs wobbly like jelly and belly still fluttering.
There was a bench along the way, big and rustic beneath a softly glowing streetlamp whose light waxed and waned with the gently trilling branches of a nearby oak tree.
Banks pulled him down onto it, roughly, Harper enjoying the way the old high school jock occasionally flexed his literal muscles and tossed Harper around like a teddy bear.
“Sure, I mean, I’ve made tons of girls happy. ”
Harper teased. “You know guys and girls are different, right?”
Banks smirked. “I do now, Harper.”
“No, I mean...”
“Listen, Harp, I may be a guy virgin but back in school I made it my mission to please every chick I slept with.”
“Gee, Banks, overcompensate much?”
Banks shrugged, broad shoulders in the picturesque atmosphere. “I guess, sure. But it was my way of ensuring nobody ever thought twice about whether I was gay or straight, you know?”
“Kind of like down low insurance,” Harper offered cynically.
“Something like that, sure.”
“Still, Banks, girls and boys...”
“I know they’re different, silly. Obviously. But the principle is the same.”
“It simply can’t be,” Harper huffed, the thought of Banks and all those hot high school chicks making him insanely, if utterly irrationally, jealous.
Banks was still leaning back casually on the bench, arms spread wide, biceps casually bulging, sinewy arms clinging to the back of the seat. “Look, Harper, have you ever even been with a girl?”
“No, but still...”
“So, why are you bugging about it then?”
“Because there’s no way you could ever make someone else feel the way you made me feel back there, Banks. Especially someone, you know? Without a dick? I refuse to believe it’s possible.”
Banks chuckled. “I mean, thank you, but ... sex is really about listening. Watching. Noticing. Observing. Paying attention to the details. Following the leader, you know?”
Harper thought of the way Banks had pleasured him in the back of that empty theater, his slow, rhythmic strokes, the nibbles on his earlobe, the smothering kisses, the wet, slick attention he’d paid with those expert fingers of his, shivering pleasantly at the recollection.
“I wish I did, Banks. Maybe ... maybe you can help teach me?”
Banks cocked his head gently. Teasingly. “Teach you about girls?”
Harper shoved him playfully. “No, silly, about pleasing you.”
“I’m trying to tell you that I already ... wait, have you... You’ve been with a guy before, right?”
Harper bit his lower lip, glanced around and made an iffy face. “I mean, technically? Yes?”
Banks gave him a knowing smirk. “Then why so many question marks, Harp?”
Harper shivered at the thought. “Because that felt dirty. Before. With him. With you? I felt ... happy. Free. It felt right.”
“For me too, Harp. But dirty? What was dirty?”
“Nothing bad,” Harp explained quickly, seeing the defensiveness in Banks’s posture and hearing it in his lover’s voice. “Just, quick. Sneaky. Lowdown, that kind of dirty.”
Banks leaned back on the bench, crossed one leg over the other, wrapped his palms around his knees, gently clasped his fingers and leaned forward eagerly. “Do tell, Hot Pants!”
Harper chuckled, then did just that. “There was this guy who swam laps every morning at the community pool this past summer. Older guy, not too older, like graduated college a few years ago older. Good body, bad form, but good body. Wore Speedos, came early, when I was just getting the lifeguard stand set up. He had the pool mostly to himself, and I’d watch him, but not too closely.
Summer was just getting started, the days were heating up and I was still a virgin, and I really didn’t want to come to Piedmont with my V-card intact, you know? ”
Banks perked up slightly. “Was a virgin?”
Harper teased. “We’ll get to that eventually.
Anyway, I guess my desperation was showing.
Or his was. Anyway, he started coming to the pool earlier and earlier each morning.
No more old ladies hogging up the lanes with their arm floaties and water aerobics, no more old duffers slapping around in their swim caps, just me, just him. ..”
Harper paused for breath, to gather his wits, the story’s retelling overpowering him with its raw emotion. “What did you wear?” Banks asked, apropos of nothing.
“What?”
“For lifeguard duty? What did you wear to work every morning? Your uniform, I mean?”
“Why does it matter?”
“I’m just trying to cook up a little visual here,” Banks teased, nudging Harper’s foot the way he liked to. “Like, were you both in Speedos? Little bulges bulging as you stared at each other all morning long?”
Harper scoffed openly. “No, I wore red baggies and a white tank top. Seriously?”
Banks gave Harper a good once over, then back again, until he nodded and gave a little flourish with those sexy fingers of his. “Proceed.”
“Anyway, he introduced himself one day. While I was setting up. Said his name was Gary.”
“Gary?”
Harper snorted in agreement. “I thought it was a fake name, too, but what was I gonna do? I’d never been cruised before, this was all new to me, I was gonna risk popping my cherry because some random hot dude picked the first old man name he saw in the phone book?
Anyway, Gary said he was having trouble with his locker that morning and . .. could I help?”
Banks looked impressed. “Dang, you really were being cruised.” He snorted almost jealously. “I mean, I don’t even really know what being cruised means, but that sounds like some definite cruising right there, Harp.”
“Right? I was nervous, excited, followed him into the Men’s locker room and over to his locker. It was a little sticky, sure, but nothing a little elbow grease couldn’t fix. When I got it open, a bunch of dirty magazines fell out.”
“Come on now!” Banks all but slapped his knee.
Harper snickered, the situation so comical now in retrospect, but at the time?
The most important moment ever. “I know, I know, but I wasn’t expecting it, I mean, who even reads magazines anymore?
Especially sexy gay guy ones? I rushed to help him pick them up, and we did one of those meet-cute things where our hands touched as I was giving them back to him.
He pretended to be embarrassed, but I could tell he was watching me to see how I reacted.
For some reason, I made a joke and said that this issue of Blue Balls was my favorite.
It was stupid. I was the only one who laughed.
At my own joke. In an empty locker room.
At 6:00 in the morning. He thought I was being serious, like I would even know how to go about getting a copy of Blue Balls magazine, right? ”
Banks seemed curious. Overly curious. “Is there really a magazine called Blue Balls?”
Harper rolled his eyes. “The fuck would I know, Banks? Jesus. You think I had the presence of mind to read the magazine titles? I just shoved them back, feeling dirty about the whole thing. But he agreed! We stood up and he was agreeing and five seconds later I-I ... leaned in for a kiss. He had his back to the lockers and backed up, just because, and made a big noise. Locker doors and swinging locks and that banging they both make, you know? Anyway, I got startled. You know how lockers sound, it was like a gunshot going off. I asked if it was okay? The kiss? That I was kissing him? At 6:00 in the morning? He smiled and nodded and said ‘Sure, go for it.’ I kissed him again. Slower this time. Trying my hardest to work up some romance, or even some excitement.”
Banks had leaned even further forward in his bench seat. “And?” He did the whole hand rolling hands, “proceed” business again.