Chapter 45 So Long, Farewell
Matt awoke to the sound of voices outside his room. Not loud ones. Raspy, whispered ones, which was unsettling.
Nine months of dorm life had inured him to the raucous and rowdy: spirited theological debates that raged until cockcrow; horseplay of the improvised team-sports-in-the-hallway-variety; and banging doors, the Cosmic Microwave Background of banging doors.
He’d heard it all, conditioned himself to sleep through it.
Whispers were a different matter entirely. No one did that, which was why they screamed for his attention.
He sat up. Listened.
Silence.
What the hell? Had he imagined it? Dreamed it? Maybe? It was finals week, and he hadn’t been sleeping well. Also, later he was setting off with Adam on their “scavenger hunt with benefits” in search of Jeremiah Quince. Surely, the whispers were the product of jangly nerves.
His digital clock flashed 7:39 a.m.
He stretched and yawned. Scratched his balls.
Last night had been his final one as a freshman in this room. His shit was packed and stacked—everything but the poster of the hot rock climber. Storing it would be the last thing he did before turning over his key.
Matt had one last final exam to take, one last chapel service to endure. He’d stop by the Registrar’s Office and say goodbye to Debbie. Then he’d check out of the dorm. Begin scavenging his past, Adam beside him all the way.
Their first stop would be Enid, Oklahoma, Jeremiah’s last known address. They would sniff out his trail from there.
Matt worried they would unearth other abused teens in Quince’s wake. Worried also that he was the only one. Wasn’t sure which would be worse.
He worried he would cry when he finally confronted Jeremiah. What would Adam think of him then? What would he think of himself?
What if he just asked Jeremiah to forgive him?
Because, really, what haunted him was the baseball bat—the swinging and screaming and the savage brutality of it—none of which he had wanted.
What if he found the courage to forgive himself?
Was that even possible? Part of him hated that sniveling, thirteen-year-old boy who had craved the attentions of an older man, who had offered himself for the taking, who had run home crying and bleeding.
Part of him hated that same kid for being such a coward—not just for taking the bat and swinging, but for crawling into the closet and hiding in it for the last six years!
Maybe that kid didn’t deserve forgiveness. Maybe that kid wasn’t worthy of Adam’s love.
7:46 a.m. Seven minutes had ticked by without a single banging door. Either the Rapture had occurred, leaving Matt behind (which had been an ever-constant concern in his formative years)—or something suspicious was afoot.
Matt climbed down from his upper bunk, pressed his ear to the door, listening.
His eyes wandered to the poster of the hot rock climber. It occurred to him, then, that his year here had begun by hanging one poster in this room—the Dallas Cheerleaders—and would end by taking down its replacement.
It wasn’t just the posters that had changed. Matt was a different person entirely—he was Mustang now—and he could not have done it without William. Big-headed William with his popsicle stick body, Tallulah Bankhead’s wit, and Gandhi’s wisdom. (Or was it Gotti’s?)
Foolish William, who couldn’t get over Colton Langley, who might as well still be wearing the guy’s promise ring.
Colton Langley. There was a name that kept resurfacing like a greasy zit.
Colton’s A-list lawyers had reached a plea agreement with the district attorney, whose rape case against their client hinged on Bella’s testimony—and she wasn’t talking. In the end, absent a victim, the D.A.’s case was just a titillating story of a naked drunk guy and a drag queen.
So, Colton had pled guilty to public intoxication and indecency. Got slapped with a $10,000 fine and a one-year suspended sentence. Two hundred hours of community service. Assuming he kept his nose clean for the next twelve months, he’d never see the inside of a jail.
But he’d never return to MCU. He was persona non-grata there, having committed the unforgiveable sin of endangering the administration’s cash flow.
He’d never hold public office either. (That photo of him and Bella would follow him for the rest of his life.) He couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Catville, which was poetic justice—his dreams crushed with the same cruelty he had meted out to others.
Colton was in exile in Weatherford, which, Matt guessed, was where William would be spending his summer.
Matt would spend his—or a good part of it at least—tracking Jeremiah Quince by day, cuddling and huddling in a tent with Adam by night. That last part was the “with benefits” part of their adventure.
Adam had inked his deal with MCU’s lawyers, accepted their money, and promptly signed $60,000 of it over to his father—just to buy the man’s silence that his own son was ass-boy—and roommate—to the incoming SGA president.
Matt heard the whispered voices again—on the other side of his door. Froze.
Person #1: “Is Mustang even awake?”
Person #2: “Do you think I’d be standing here if he were?”
Person #1: “Wake him up, dude! The guys won’t wait around all morning.”
Person #2: “Fine. Tell everyone to get ready.”
Person #1: “They’ve been ready for the last half hour!”
There was a soft tapping at Matt’s door.
He counted to twenty, then opened it.
There stood Seth, tall and gangly in all his red-headed glory. He was naked, but for the towel slung over his shoulder—the official going-to-the-shower attire for their floor of the dorm. Grinning like a cheshire cat. He was Person #2.
Matt scanned the hall behind Seth. Person #1 was nowhere in sight. Neither was anyone else. From what he had just heard, the rest of the guys were waiting for him. Where were they waiting? The showers? What did they want?
“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Seth asked. “Choking the chicken one last time before heading home for the summer?”
Matt shook his head. “I have to check out of this room later. I don’t want to scrub chicken snot off the ceiling!”
Seth laughed. “If your chicken’s slinging snot that high, you’re not clearing his airway frequently enough.”
Matt offered a what-else-can-a-guy-do shrug. Held up his hand for a high five. “Rumspringa, baby!”
“Rumspringa!” Seth returned the gesture. Then, “It’s our last day as freshmen. Wanna hit the showers for old time’s sake?”
“Sure!” Matt agreed. He stripped off his boxer briefs, slung a towel over his shoulder, grabbed his Dopp-kit, and motioned for Seth to lead the way. Apparently, everyone else was already there.
The communal bathroom was down the hall.
It was a U-shaped, windowless affair with two-doors, one at the top of each leg of the U.
One leg, the narrow one, had 4 toilet stalls.
Turn right, and the little cross-section held 4 urinals.
Another right opened onto the wider leg, with its 4 shower stalls and 4 sinks.
It was utilitarian. It was also Biblical numerology writ large: completeness and creation; the 4 corners of the earth; the 4 seasons; the 4 living creatures guarding God’s throne; and the 4-fold division of humanity.
It was also smelly—and crowded. Suspiciously crowded, Matt concluded.
Guys in bathrobes stood at each of the sinks, shaving.
Matt hadn’t seen bathrobes in this room since the fall semester. Bathrobes and underwear had slowly yielded to his au-naturel look.
All the showers were occupied, belching out a steamy mist.
Four guys (all naked, with towels slung over their shoulders) waited in line for shower vacancies.
Matt and Seth joined the queue.
Then it got weird.
The other 16 guys from their floor filed in from the toilet side of the room and crowded against the back wall, like spectators. Oh yeah, all of them were naked, too.
Weirder yet: one of the guys from this new group carried a folding stand and a keyboard, which he lugged to the middle of the room, set up, then started playing—like he was in some lounge, instead of in the middle of a nasty bathroom surrounded by mostly naked guys, shower steam, and the moldy miasma of splashed urine.
The music seemed to be a prelude of sorts, which, Matt would learn later was an original creation, as was the song that followed, which made sense (there not being any existing song that captured this moment, this unique setting and audience).
Seth tapped Matt’s shoulder to get his attention. “You started this, you know. The whole singing-in-the-shower-room bit.”
“I never brought in a keyboard,” Matt protested.
“We’ve improved on your concept is all,” Seth said. Then he handed Matt a folded sheet of paper. (Where the paper came from, anyone’s guess.)
“These are the lyrics,” Seth said. “Yellow highlighting is for the six of us in line. Green highlighting is your part. You’ll have to sing it. No lip-syncing today.”
Sing? Alone, as in solo?
Keyboard guy motioned it was time to start, plunked out the opening chords.
Seth and the 4 other guys in line—sang.
There’s a jingly, jangly gonging from the clock by my room
And the one in the belfry, too…
The guys at the sinks pivoted to face the showers.
Down in the parlor a wormy, one-eyed bird…
Sink guys opened their bathrobes, exposing their cocks.
Keeps peeking out to say “Yoo-hoo.”
Sink guys thrust their hips forward and back, their cocks flopping like dying chickens.
Yoo-hoo
The shower doors flung open. Those four guys thrust their hips, waggling their cocks.
Yoo-hoo
Sink guys again.
Yoo-hoo
Once more from the shower guys.
It was a call-and-response of one group’s “wormy, one-eyed birds” versus the other group’s.
Matt laughed so hard, he couldn’t catch his breath, couldn’t join in the singing.
This was outrageous and glorious—and hilariously homo-erotic, even though all of these guys were straight and most of them were not particularly prime specimens, all things considered.
Paunches on some, small cocks on others—all in serious need of landscaping.
It was a heady moment (pun intended) for Matt. Everyone of these guys had begun the year self-consciously hiding his pecker from prying eyes. Had been shocked by Matt’s casual nudity.
They would have been scandalized had they known he was uncomfortable in his own skin sexually, that the seemingly self-assured jock, whose swagger they aped, was really a faggot.
They had all (Matt and his dormmates) changed and grown, and this was their celebration of their accomplishments.
Matt loved these guys. There was a certain intimacy that arose from sharing a dorm and its communal bathroom—seeing and smelling each other’s true selves. Seth was his favorite. Still, he wouldn’t dream of telling any of them he was gay.
Only one straight guy on campus could be trusted with that secret: Idabel, and even he had initially balked, summoning both religious and small-town bigotry to support his disgust. It had required Debbie’s intervention to restore their friendship.
And, even then, Matt had had to assure Idabel that he wasn’t attracted to him.
What was it about straight guys that made them think every gay guy wanted them? Really?
Matt joined the shower queue guys for the next bit.
Freshman year is now behind us
Yoo-hoo
Sophomores we’ll be, Thus
Yoo-hoo
We sing Adios
Adios
To you!
Then came the chorus.
Shalom, Kwaheri
Do skorogo, Hwyl fawr
We’re running late
It’s almost chapel hour!
Everyone:
It’s really quite absurb
That our wormy, one-eyed birds
Keep peeking out to say…
Cocks swirling and twirling, balls bouncing:
Toodle-oo!
Refrain:
Toodle-oo!
Toodle-oo!
Toodle-oo!
Toodle-oo!
And then it was time for Matt’s solo.
He started singing. Choked up. Had to start again.
Namaste, Yaseu
He spread his legs, thrust with all his might. Felt his cockhead slap against his thighs like the clapper on a bell—gonging in delight.
Baibai and Toodle-oo
Goodbye for now
I’ll see you in book two.
Toodle-oo!
Toodle-oo!
Toodle-oo!
Toodle-oo!