Close Encounter in Room 155

You know how some guys know how to take a sexy photo? This redhead was one of them.

When I’d arrived only a few days ago at this hotel in the neighborhood of the youth, it had been packed. Groups book it for the weekend, my dad told me; other people visiting the city see it just off I-95 and use it as a weekend stop. I mean, my Grindr had been buzzing constantly the first two days of my visit, from guys less than two dozen feet away. By midweek, though, the place is deserted. Sunday night, every parking space had been occupied. Now the only car in the rear lot is mine. Grindr notifications from men less than a hundred feet away have disappeared.

It’s the last night of my visit with my dad. I’ll have breakfast with him in the morning before I drive back home, but for now I’m back in Room 155, hitting the internet for some sex. I’ve got a couple of nibbles on Grindr, a couple more on Scruff. But no one really piques my interest until this redheaded guy on BBRT hits me up. I’ll worship that magnificent dick and let you fuck me for hours, he tells me as he unlocks his photos. I check them out. They’re great shots, artfully done. Nice physique, I notice, as I run my eyes over the photos of him flexing. His face is shown only in profile, but with that full red beard jutting out at an oblique angle from his chest, he seems attractive enough.

My big dick likes worship, I tell him.

The bigger the better! he writes back. Yours is a monster!

You able to travel? I ask. How long will it take you to get here?

He tells me he’ll be here in ten minutes. I give him the name of my hotel and the room number and run to the bathroom for a quick rinse. I pull on a tee and a pair of shorts. While I’m waiting, I decide to check out the guy’s photos again. Like I said, he knew how to take a sexy shot. The pics are obviously posed and not in the least casual, but they’re showing off his fur and muscles to his best advantage. I’m definitely looking forward to fucking this one.

I’m rubbing myself through my shorts and reading over his profile when a message pops up on BBRT. It’s the redhead. There’s no room 155 here, he says.

What did he mean, there’s no room 155? I was in room 155. I’d been in room 155 all week. I’d had other guys show up at the door with the 155 on it and knock. Are you at the right hotel?

He doesn’t answer. The mobile version of the BBRT site has a geolocation function, so I check out the men nearest me. He’s only 110 feet away. So yeah, he’s at the correct hotel. I’m in Building 2, off the back parking lot, I tell him. There’s a big sign on it that says ‘Building 2.’ If you’re at Building 1 or Building 3, you’re in the wrong building. Clear enough, right?

There’s no room 155, he writes back.

By now I’m baffled. My confused brain is entertaining possibilities that it shouldn’t. Like, did the hotel staff come around and change all the room numbers while I was out with my dad that day? Had I been staying in room 135 all along? I get up, toss on some sandals, and open my door.
155. Just like I thought.

I’m coming to stand outside Building 2, I say, as I pat my pocket to make sure I have my key card. Look for me.

When I reach the end of the hall and step outside into the cool night air, I can see that my car is still the only one in the parking lot. The guy’s probably at one of the other two buildings on the hotel property. It’s not that large a hotel, though; it never was. All I have to do is turn my head one way to see that Building 1 to the south, and Building 3 to the west. The courtyard where I’m standing is in the dead center. No matter where he might be, he should be able to see me eventually. Right?

I’m outside room 155 but you’re not answering, he’s messaged, when I look at the site again.

What the fucking fuck? He can’t be outside my room. I would’ve seen him go in. In fact, I look through the glass door and down my hallway. There’s no one there. Sighing, I head back inside. Nope. He’s definitely not there. For some reason—just because I’m half-convinced that this point that I might be going crazy—I open my door with the key card and poke my head in. Not there either.
You’re not at room 155, I tell him. I’m here.

I’m knocking at the door, he replies within moments.

While I walk back to the courtyard outside, once again I ask him if he’s at the hotel I’d given him. Room 155 is in Building 2, I repeat. There’s only one room 155. You’re not outside it.

I’m knocking at the door and you’re not answering, he says yet again.

The fact that he could be gaslighting me crosses my mind. Yet the BBRT geolocation thing says he’s only 60 feet away. I honestly don’t know what to tell the guy. If a dude is utterly incapable of finding a fucking room in a fucking hotel when I’ve given him every helpful fucking instruction that I could . . . well, I don’t know what else to do. I’m not really into sticking my dick into total morons. Feeling like I should be shutting off my phone and just going to bed, I stomp back to my room (which still is plainly labeled 155) and slam shut the door. Then I kick off my sandals and flounce down on the bed, my brain busily composing multiple messages telling this asshole exactly how to fuck off and go the hell home.

Then there’s a knock at the door.

Fuck.

I’m still simmering with anger when I yank at the knob. “I guess I had the wrong room,” is all he says by way of apology.

“You think?” I say, trying to keep my hostility tamped down. But I don’t stop him from entering.

It’s not until he’s in the little vestibule, with the light from the bathroom on him as he began to strip off his clothing, that I really notice what he looks like. This little redhead has all the components of the guy in his photos, but it’s as if they’ve all been tossed in a box and reassembled in a decidedly unflattering way. Sure, he had the bushy beard, but it looks more like a unkempt mess, scraggly and wan, than the proud bush of his photos. Yeah, he was a ginger. But his hair wasn’t the sexy, vigorous red it had been in his pics. More like weak carrot juice, really.

His muscles—well, he didn’t have any. His chest was furry, yes. I imagine how, if he posed in a certain way that pushed out the flesh, and how, if he cropped his photos artfully (which he had), he might look from certain angles as if he were well-built. I could see how, if he bent a certain way and wore clothing that obstructed parts, he might give the illusion that he had an ass. And though his profile from the side was handsome enough to appear in all his photos, when looked at from the front, the guy’s face made me want to flinch. If Jesse Tyler Ferguson were to have a scrawny, ugly little buck-toothed brother that he had to hide for extended periods in a basement room whenever People or Us Magazine dropped by for interviews . . . well, this guy is what he’d look like.

You know how some guys know how to take a sexy photo? Occasionally it’s because they’re so far from sexy that they learn to feign it.

Oh god. He’s stripped to his underwear. After all those back-and-forth messages and the anger and the Yakety Sax-scored antic chase around the hotel, I was going to have to through with this fucking encounter. God damn it.

Fine. Whatever. It wouldn’t be my first time to close my eyes and think of England. Since he’s already dropping his drawers, I hook my thumbs beneath the elastic of my waistband and yank down my shorts. My dick flops out. It’s only half-hard at this point—and I know, why even that erect when I’ve just been through ten minutes of sex farce staging?—but still, at half-mast my dick is pretty imposing. I’d like to say that the redhead’s eyes bug out when he saw it, but quite frankly, he already has bug eyes. They just bug out even more, and it’s not exactly a pretty sight.

“That’s fucking huge,” he says.

Tell me something I don’t know, googly-eyes, I want to tell him. Instead, I order, “Turn around.”

He obeys. “How big is that cock?”

“Eight inches.”

“It looks way bigger than eight.”

My dick responds by swelling and jumping. Fucking traitor, I thought in its direction. I rubbed the guy’s flat ass and tried maneuvering him so that butterface of his was pointed away from me.
Scarcely have my fingertip rubbed the guy’s hole than he yelps as if I’ve bitten him. Startled, I straighten up. The dude is pulling on his briefs. Groping for his polo shirt. “What’s up?” I ask.

“You’re too big,” he tells me, scrambling in his clothes as fast as he can. “Your profile says once you’re in, you don’t pull out. That thing is going to wreck me.”

I realize that I’m a split second away from actually protesting his departure. Then I swallow my words and rally. “That’s right!” I say, realizing that he’s solving my problem for me. “I’d ruin it for life!”

“Fuck, I’m tempted,” he says, staring at it. For a moment I’m worried he might change his mind. But no, he pulls on his sneakers, thank god. “Nope. Too big. Sorry. Can’t risk it. Bye.”

No worshiping of my dick. No fucking for minutes, much less hours. Just a rush of air and dust and a quick slam of the door. Like the Roadrunner escaping from Wile E. Coyote, he’s gone.

It’s not the best way to close out my time in room 155, true. But better a night jacking off in solitude, than a duty fuck with the one Weasley brother that Ron was too embarrassed to introduce to Harry and Hermione.