Clocking

Through that magical clearinghouse of old acquaintances known as Facebook, my old college boyfriend got in touch with me a couple of weeks ago. And I freely admit my first thought, like it is with so many old classmates who reach out to me from time to time, was, Gosh, I look so much better than he does.

I met Brandon between my sophomore and junior years, during a summer I'd remained behind on campus to take care of a statistics course. Mathematics has never been my strong suit—my basic problem is one of disinterest and a general unwillingness to apply myself, rather than any actual stupidity, so I reasoned that if I took it as a summer course, in a concentrated sort of way without any other classes to distract me, I might have a better chance of success. It was kind of smart, on my part. Without anything else to do save work at my part-time job scooping ice cream for tourists, and having prodigious quantities of sex after dark in the restrooms and parks of Colonial Williamsburg, I didn't have anything else to do but statistics.

I loved my college campus during the summer. Tropical heat would bake the sleepy town by day, and remain over it like a blanket at night. Williamsburg itself could be hectic and loud when the tourists were out, but after dinner, it was a populated mostly by seniors having their evening walks, young lovers hand in hand as they strolled through the romantic byways, and lovers of solitude like myself. The college's summer school population was quite small; the campus closed down all but the one air-conditioned dormitory among its many housing buildings. And even that wasn't full.

I noticed Brandon the first week I moved into the summer dorm. It was difficult not to; he lived next door to me. He was a tall, toothy kid with a pronounced overbite. When he walked, it was with hunched shoulders and his neck jutted forward. He wasn't handsome, exactly, or ugly-sexy, or sexy in any usual sense of the term. But he dressed well. It was the era of the preppy, and Brandon's loud, ironed shorts and his pressed white polo shirts were spotless. The tassels on his loafers had seemingly been trimmed with a hair level, and the leather was shiny enough to fix one's face in. His hair had a precision part down one side, and his hair lay flat and still. For a Virginia white boy, he was actually doing pretty well for himself as far as looks go.

I was doing a lot of cruising of the college library that summer. The second and third floors both had men's rooms that attracted students, faculty, staff, and tourists alike. At night during the school year it was possible to hook up with four or five guys in a row without so much as breath-mint break. During the summer, though, the cruising was a little slower. Rather than numb my ass by sitting on the toilet and cruising all night, I adopted the habit of positioning myself strategically at a carrel along the wall opposite, where I could watch who came and went as I occupied myself doing other things. I'd discovered that the library had complete bound editions of The New Yorker going back to the first issue, and it was those that I'd browse through, once I'd finished my statistics assignments for the night. I'd become fascinated by the editions surrounding the 1939 World's Fair, in particular, and it was one of those I was looking at when I saw a familiar face drift by the stacks and into the restroom.

It was a chubby older cocksucker who haunted the same spots as I. We played occasionally, but that night I wasn't in the mood to let him suck me, or to lick at his undersized penis. So I remained in place. A few moments later, however, I saw the guy who was in the room next door to mine, back at the dorm, walk by and into the restroom.

Oh really, now, I thought to myself.

He didn't see me in my carrel. With interest I kept an eye on the door. A lot of time passed—much more than an ordinary guy takes to pee, or even squeeze one out. It was a good fifteen minutes later when finally the door opened again and Brandon shot out like a cannonball. I watched as he smoothed down the front of his chinos, adjusted his madras shirt, and got the hell out of there. Then my cocksucker friend emerged. He winked at me, made an exaggerated pantomime of pretending to wipe the corner of his mouth, and left.

Well. That seemed pretty clear to me. Now I was interested in Brandon, the guy next door. For a couple of days I tried saying hello to him in the hallways, but he would either be with friends and wouldn't notice me, or just didn't seem responsive. Over that following weekend, though, I made a batch of brownies down in the dorm kitchen. I'd noticed that Brandon had a tendency to leave his room door open when he was there. I timed it so that my brownies were done when he was in his room, studying. On my walk back to my own room, I casually stopped in the door of his. "Oh hey," I drawled, as if it was an afterthought. "Want a brownie? I just made a bunch."

It's funny that in his letter to me on Facebook, Brandon said to me, If only I'd known what you were up to, that first time I noticed you, standing in my door and tempting me with brownies. He couldn't very well just take my brownie and send me off. No, he had to invite me in, and eat a few with me, and talk. By the end of the evening we were good acquaintances. I knew he was going to be a senior the following year, and learned about his major, his ambitions, and his family.

Now all I had to do was hook him.

Which I did only a couple of days later. I knew he'd return to the library restrooms. It was one of the few things to do in Williamsburg, on a summer night. I was in my carrel reading magazines the following Monday when I saw him rush toward the men's room with that angular, awkward walk of his. For some reason, though, he turned his head as he neared the door. When he saw me, he halted altogether. He'd obviously intended to go in, but my presence stopped him.

I was having none of that. I stood up, collected my backpack, and approached. "Hey," I said.

"Hey," he said. We often had those kinds of deep, intellectual conversations.

"Go in." I pushed open the men's room door. He hesitated, as if expecting a trap. "Go in," I repeated, jerking my head.

Once we were behind the closed door, I opened my jeans at the urinal and turned to show him. "It's okay," I told him. I was rock hard; I had been the moment he'd appeared. "Let me see yours."

I think I basically had to undo his pants for him, he was so astounded. I remember I gave him that first blow job right there in the middle of the restroom floor. However modest his other attributes, Brandon was gifted where it counted. His dick was even bigger than mine. He shot quickly, probably more from shock than any of my mad oral skills. When I was done, I jerked out a load into the toilet while he watched, and then zipped up.

He was following me back to the dorm when finally he spoke again. "Fuck," he said, several times in a row. Then, "I didn't clock you."

"Clock me?" I didn't understand the term.

"Clock you." I shook my head, and he said it again. "Clock you. For one of those. A homosexual."

I was confused for a moment. He said the last word as if he wasn't one of them himself. And yet I'd just given him a quick and sloppy blow job on a bathroom floor. "Oh," I finally said. "Okay."

"You're not, right?" he asked. He sounded genuinely anxious to hear a negative answer. "It was just a thing, right?"

"Sure," I said, knowing I was lying to him. "Just a thing."

And that's how it was with me and Brandon, for the year and a half we saw each other. At night, behind closed doors, we were lovers. We'd kiss and suck and he'd fuck the living daylights out of me with his enormous dick, and he'd hold me in his arms afterward and be quite sweet. Then, when he was back in his preppy armor and I was in my sneakers and T-shirts and jeans, he'd lecture me about how our physical relationship was 'just a thing' that we'd both get over. We'd both find pretty girls, he'd told me—he had the sorority all picked out from which we'd make our choice—and we'd always be the best of friends. And maybe we could work it out so that we lived in the same neighborhood. Maybe even next door. And we could do our 'thing' from time to time. But we needed to learn to be normal, he'd tell me. We couldn't let anyone clock us.

I wasn't a hopeless romantic about Brandon. I didn't harbor the same fantasies of assimilation. I had no intention of letting my sexuality be a footnote to a life of sales and work with the Republican party. So our time together was stormy. I resented that he wouldn't speak to me in public, or even acknowledge me as a friend in front of his so-called real friends. Brandon was frightened that if anyone saw the two of us together, even walking to the cafeteria or hanging out at one of the stromboli joints in town, they might assume things. We never did anything in public together. No one knew I knew him. We'd meet up after dark and fuck outside, or find one of the abandoned classrooms on campus with a locking door and turn out the lights and go at it. Once we were clothed and zipped up, though, we'd return to our dorms, taking separate routes so that no one could associate us.

And let's face it. As a boyfriend I was shit. I was only eighteen when we met—I was a stupid kid. I'd get so mad at Brandon that I'd tell him we were over, and then I'd whore around with anyone and everyone I could, just to get back at him. Even when we were on good terms, I was still fucking around on him constantly. Why shouldn't I, my reasoning ran, when we weren't officially boyfriends, and when he wouldn't even use that word to describe us? He wanted a dream life he could never have. I wanted more than he was willing to give me.

When he graduated a year before me, I heaved a sigh of relief that he couldn't have a full-time claim on me any more, when he was in the mood for it. He would call me or visit from out of the blue from time to time, though, and reiterate his wish to have me in his life as some kind of sexual annex, never fully acknowledged, never appreciated. He wanted me to be the Puerto Rico to his United States. I wouldn't have any of it. When I moved out of Virginia for good, I stopped hearing from him. I didn't miss it.

I confess that when he wrote me on Facebook, I was a little nervous about opening the note. Oh fuck, here we go again, I worried. But no. Brandon's partnered now, and seems happy. He wasn't at all attempting to strike up something that cooled twenty-five (and change) years ago. However, he still has a life in sales and working for the Republican party.

Some things simply don't change.