A contemporary american fiction class

There was a black-haired guy in my Contemporary American fiction class. He was that strange kid in your high school that showed too much effort into any activity so that teachers would find a way to include him in basically anything, that way, he always ended up with a medal or something; whether he deserved one or not, that was never the point. I think, however, that he must have a wall full of those medals in his bedroom, and as I write this, I cannot help but wonder what his bedroom must look like, what his always-a-good-boy-playing-by-the-rules bedroom must look like. I bet his shirts are always well ironed and organized by color. I bet he must wear the same PJs that his mom got him last Christmas. I bet he must look himself in the mirror while shaving and think that he is indeed a good boy.

But this recollection is not about that Contemporary American fiction class or about his bedroom where I have never been so I can’t just sit and write about, this is about him and first things first, I remember his papers and how even though they were indeed properly written, grammar wise at least, they didn’t have anything to do with what was being taught in that class. He always seemed to be under the impression that it was a creative writing course which it was not. It was a literary theory class and his papers never presented us with anything remotely theoretical, everything he wrote was so off-topic that our professor, that hardly did anything during our meetings, but hearing us, called him out a couple of times. I remember one class in which we were talking about Philip Roth’s I Married A Communist. He without an ounce of shame stood up and present a fake interview that he had written pretending to be an AWOL soldier from the Soviet Union and the American spy who was interrogating him. He even did different voices for each character, however, not a single word about Roth or his novel that is about everything but a cross-examination between a soldier and a spy. He kept doing that the whole semester and using the excuse that hadn’t studied theory before, that it was his first attempt and he was trying his best to catch up with the rest of us.

There you go. The excuse plus compliment trick. He must’ve perfected the art of making someone feel bad for calling him out no matter how wrong he might be. He was not an arrogant prick that didn’t seem to care about anyone else’s opinion, he was saying that he did understand us, however, it was not his fault and one should always, at least for him, support the ones who try. I must give him that: he indeed tried more than other people. Still, he was just there expecting a medal for his mediocre work and truth be told we were all ready to give him one. It was like we were all under his spell at one point or another. He opened his mouth and you stopped caring about everything and just started wondering about his life, his work, his preferences, his everything, he was a perfect character expecting the right gaze in order to jump from a supporting role to literary muse. Don’t we all have met someone like him at one moment? Someone whose life seems to be easier than it is for the rest of us and someone that is smart enough to know that and then pretend that he does not know about his privileges and he is just trying as much as everyone else is.

I remember that he used to take his shoes off during class. One day I was having a beer with a friend and I told her about this habit of his and she didn’t believe me, but that much is as true as the sun will come up next morning until it eventually dies taking the whole universe with it. So, every single class, he walked in, chose a spot to sit, picked up his notebook from his bag, and took his shoes off. However, it was never in a disrespectful way, it was just something that he did. Maybe those shoes were bothering him, or maybe he was just used to do the same at home and he feels at home in every environment, for it gets to a point in which a person with so many medals, even though not necessarily deserving ones, believes that he did earn them and starts acting accordingly. So, he did.

I first noticed him in our third class together as we discussed a long-forgotten novel about a long-forgotten subject. As I look back to those days, I think that class’ syllabus was made entirely with outdated books so that our professor didn’t have to bother to prepare something and just put some old clothes to appear in front of us once a week, however, I don’t mean to wonder about the Academic issues and or American contemporary literature, for this story is about him. About a black-haired guy that used to take his shoes off during class.

So, eventually, I noticed him.

In our fourth class that semester, I was supposed to present a paper, and as commanded I did. I pretended that I cared and that I had found a novel, whose name I have already forgotten, any good. As I walked to the front of the class and handed my peers a copy of the paper, I was going to read to them, I gave him not only the paper but also my number in a note that said:

I loved your paper.

(I did not)

If you want to have a beer someday, here’s my number.

He texted me later that same day and I still remember the moment I noticed that his avatar picture from the messenger app that we were using was a photo of him and his wife. Not wife. I mean, she was his wife, and still is but at that moment, I didn’t know that and all I saw was a photo in which he was sitting next to a woman. They weren’t kissing, hugging, or doing anything but sitting next to each other. I ignored the pic and texted him back:

Hi, glad you texted me. How about a movie and a beer this weekend?

He replied:

Sure.

Eventually, I would notice that he always replied like this. Always with small sentences to make sure he didn’t mean anything more than what he has said. I still wonder if he at least knew how cruel that was to those receiving the replies, he texted “sure”, “yeah”, “ok”, to make sure you understand him, and we were left wondering what those sure’s, and yeah’s meant. That sure was about my invitation and so we went out together for the first time.

It was a warm Saturday afternoon and we meet to watch Olivier Assayas’ new film called “Non-Fiction”. A fitting title. I loved it, he liked it. It was enough for me. As we walked out of the theater, I reminded him that the invitation mentioned movie and beer, he laughed and nodded, so we walked to a restaurant right on the other side of the street.

“Two beers”. I asked.

As we were drinking, I mentioned that we should have a bottle of wine because we had just watched a French film. He laughed and again just nodded. We finished the beer and I choose the red we were going to drink. I don’t think that I found him as beautiful as I found him to be when he said to me that he didn’t know much about wine, so he was just going to trust me on my choice. We drank and talked a lot. Though, it was only after having the second glass of wine that he said to me:

“Anne likes red too”.

“Anne?” I asked him.

“My wife, Anne”.

Here I must say that I am never going to deliver a performance as fine as the one I did as I pretended that that information did not have any effect on me.

It did.

I acted like it did not.

We ate pizza, finished the wine, and said our goodbyes. I was going to shake his hand and he pulled me closer to give me a hug and said that it was a good day. That was the only time that I could feel his body, although I still regret that I didn’t take any advantage and touched his chest. I still want to touch his chest, to feel how firm he really is. I suddenly caught myself obsessed with his not-so-fit chest.

“I’m not in love, it is just a silly phase I’m going through…”

I remember that this song was playing during my uber ride home.

He texted me to let me know that he was at home, safe and sound.

I hated him at that moment.

A fifth class came, then a sixth one. We kept texting each other in between those meetings and he kept asking me about movies and tv shows recommendations to watch with his wife. We went drinking again, this time with some friends from that class and this time we drank more than we should have. However, that whole time I was thinking about how what I really wanted to do was to drink from his lips, even if just a little bit. I desired that like a lost man in a desert craves for water and desperately tries to drink from a hallucinated well, just to die trying to satiate a real thirst with some imaginary water. Desire is the absence of something, and at that moment I wanted him to put a bottle on his mouth put his lips next to mine, and spit that liquid into my mouth, for that was what I was missing. I was thirsty and I wanted to drink his spit more than the beer itself. That was all I could think about as me and the other three people in that table talked about American contemporary literature.

On that same day, or more specifically, while sitting on that table with him and some friends, I remembered this guy that I saw for a few months. It was complicated and we were both seeing other people, so we decided to remain just as friends. I had a copy of his keys that he had given me in one of the few good moments and one day I took I, someone, to his place. I knew he was off town visiting his mom, and I still lived with my parents, so when I decided to use his place for a date night, I was just thinking about how practical it would be. Nothing else. However, when we got there and started making out, things changed, and I was more turned on about the fact that I was having sex with somebody else on my ex house than by the guy I was having sex with. Notwithstanding, when we went to the bedroom, there was an old underwear lying next to bed, so picked it up and I fuck him, holding my ex’ underwear. It felt like I was sleeping with the two of them at the same time.

The recollection finishes.

I am again at the bar with the black-haired guy sitting next to me, having a beer with some friends.

Later that night, we walked the girls that were with us home. They were in front of us talking to each other and we were right behind them. I was holding his arms (where the courage to do so had come from?) and he never bothered to release them from me, he just kept walking with me. We went back to that bar, this time, just the two of us, but not to drink, only because it was safer to call an uber from that place. He said he had to pee, and I still wonder if he wanted me to follow him to the bathroom.

I didn’t.

I’m a man of a few surprises and a lot of certitudes.

He texted me that night to let me know that he was home safe and sound.

It was the second time that he did that.

I hated him even more.

The days passed and we got closer.

He told me that he and his wife were talking about me once. About how I seemed to have seen every movie in the universe. I didn’t. I saw a lot, but sometimes I pretended to have seen something just to impress him and imagining him telling Anne that I had seen every single movie in the universe. I liked the thought of them talking about me and movies. I love movies. We drank other times and one day I said to him that I was deeply attracted to him. Let’s get back a few hours from the time I made this revelation. We went out to drink again. This time there were more people, for it was the end of the semester. Later that night, there were only three people left: him, some friend – one of the girls from that previous night, and me.

We started to talk about sex.

He must’ve known that I was into him, for he was too comfortable with our conversation topic and kept looking at me. Maybe he was just thoughtful. Maybe he did know I was into him and was teasing me. Anyway, I was into him. I liked him but I don’t mean in an emotional way, it was never like that, never a love story of any kind. Sorry if I forgot to mention that before, but I never wanted to date him, or never expect to become his mistress or something – here I used a word generally applied to women on purpose, for the lack of a male equivalent and the fact that I don’t think the word lover has the same effect. I wanted to fuck him. I wanted to touch his chest and feel his body hair. I wanted to pat him on the head and kiss his nose (it was big) before his lips. I wanted to take off his shirt and unbutton his pants while looking him straight on the eye. I wanted to know if he wears boxers or briefs, I wanted to know how hairy he was down there, and I wanted to have him on my mouth. I wanted to suck him while I wonder how contemporary American literature failed to acknowledge that the American dream has never been real. I wanted him to put me on my knees and fuck me raw as I thought about how literature must reflect the times in which it is produced, or it had failed. I wanted to play with his cum over his hairy chest after sex, I wanted all of that and then, I wanted to head back home, watch a film, sleep, and finish my long-due dissertation on the representation of exile in contemporary American Literature. I wanted to drink with him again, but nothing more than that. I wanted him to fuck me once.

So, we started to talk about sex at that bar, and he told us that he and his wife had a threesome.

“Another man or woman”, I asked him more desperately than I should have.

He thinks for a minute.

“A man?” I yelled. Why was I yelling?

“It was with a trans woman.” He replied. “She was a sex worker and had sex with me and my wife.” He continued.

“I am so turned on by you right now,” I said.

“Why? Because it was with a trans woman, or because I paid for sex?”

“Both”. I replied.

“Why so?”

I didn’t have an answer, so I just said:

“If you want, I’ll have sex with you and your wife”.

He laughed. This time, he didn’t nod or shake his head to say no and change the subject. He just laughed.

After a few more drinks, we went home.

On the next day I text him:

Hangover? I forgot to mention yesterday, but there’s this French cinema festival happening right now. Wanna go this weekend?

Almost immediately he replied:

I want to stay at home this weekend. I can’t hang out this much anymore.

He might be trying to put some distance between us, I thought.

I stopped texting him. I wasn’t in love with him. I was just wondering how good in bed he must be, and how his dick might look like. Once, he even told me that he wasn’t circumcised and that he didn’t mind a soft bite on the extra skin. That day, on Google I looked for foreskin and learned that the medical definition for foreskin is the fold of skin which covers the head (glans) of the penis and it is also called the prepuce. Thanks, medicine.net. I also learned that one in every twenty boys is born with a retractable foreskin. After all that leaning, I typed foreskin on Pornhub.

One week has passed since his last text.

We didn’t talk during our last class together because there was an exam. But when I got home, he texted me, asking me how I was and what I thought about the exam. I replied to him a few hours later. I don’t know why, and I don’t think that he had noticed that I was avoiding replying to him. After a few messages, I asked him out again. He agreed to a movie. I suggested Saturday, but he said he preferred Tuesday because the tickets were cheaper.

This is the guy I wanted to fuck. (Still do. We haven’t done anything yet)

I agree. Now I am waiting for Tuesday to come to go out with him again.

This time, after having said that I would fuck him and even sleep with his wife if that was what it took to get me inside his pants.

As I write this, another song, this time saying: “Fulfill our thoughts /Smoke boiling over/Into my nostrils /Straight to the heart I tried /I'm a lightning /Fire from down low…”