other. He replaced Kevin in my fantasies until I couldn’t even remember what Kevin looked like. One night, I tried to summon up Kevin’s image, and wound up having to get my yearbook to get an idea. As I looked down at Kevin’s senior picture, I shook my head. Why were you so obsessed with him? He’s nowhere near as cute as Blair—and Blair’s a lot more fun to hang out with.
We started spending a lot of time together. Every morning, he’d pick me up for class and we’d smoke a joint on the way to the campus. That made Macro Economics a lot more interesting, even though I spent most of my time daydreaming about Blair. Whenever I could, I would watch him and try to commit details to memory, so I could call them up later in my bed. I loved the way his shoulders tapered down to his waist. I loved how his torso was almost completely hairless—except for the wiry black hairs that led from his navel down to his waistband. I loved how he only wore Versace underwear, and only black. And my parents loved him—the allure of being the son of their favorite movie star was too much for them. As long as I was with Blair, I could stay out as late as I wanted, and Mom never mentioned me getting a job again. It wasn’t like I needed money anyway—Blair always had money, and Blair always wanted to pay my way. It didn’t matter if it was a movie, or popcorn for the movie, or the Carl’s Jr. drive-through, or pizza—Blair always paid. I kept the same twenty in my wallet day after day, just in case I should ever need it.
But I never did. Blair would get mad if I even reached for my wallet, so eventually I stopped trying. “What’s the point of having a rich father,” he’d say, “if you can’t treat people to something every once in a while?”
And spending a lot of time with him meant spending a lot of time at the Beta Kappa house. Blair didn’t really like to go to movies, and we weren’t old enough to go to bars anyway. “Besides, the only people we’d meet there are locals,” he would say, forgetting that I was one, “and spend a lot of money on watered-down drinks. We can drink here a lot cheaper—and better.” And, as he wisely pointed out, we couldn’t exactly get stoned and drink beer at my house with my mother around. And so, I somehow moved from prospective pledge to guaranteed pledge—even though they couldn’t officially offer me a bid until the fall semester started. It just seemed kind of natural that I’d join Beta Kappa. It was a lot of fun hanging around the house—even though I didn’t get to see Rory Armagh coming out of the showers naked again. Every so often, for a change of pace, when I lay in my bed at night pulling on my dick, I tried to remember every detail of Rory’s naked body. But even as I got closer and closer to shooting my load, Blair would push Rory out of my mind. And I loved watching Blair whenever we were together, and unlike with Kevin, I didn’t care if he noticed. I wanted him to notice. I wanted him to know that whenever he decided it was okay, I was ready to be kissed again. I was ready to make love to him, hold him, suck his dick—even let him fuck me, if he wanted to. My entire world revolved around him, and while I did like the other brothers who were staying at Beta Kappa over the summer—mostly smoking pot and drinking every day—I just wanted to be with Blair.
I got aroused whenever he stretched, memorizing what his flat stomach looked like so I could remember later, or when he bent over to pick something up, as his shorts rode down and his shirt went up, giving me a tantalizing glimpse of his tan line and the crack of his beautiful ass.
I wanted him more than I’d ever dreamed of wanting Kevin.
The other brothers I met were pretty cool. I spent some time hanging out with Jerry Pollard, and found out that the reason he spent so much time looking out the upstairs window at the parking lots was it helped him to focus his creative energies. He wanted to be a writer—as did I—and he was very helpful by giving me the rundown on what classes to take and what classes to avoid in the English department. He was writing a fantasy novel, but no matter how many questions I asked he wouldn’t tell me anything about it. “What are you writing?” he asked me finally to get the subject off his own book. I took a hit out of his bong. It wasn’t as smooth as Blair’s dragon, but I thought it was cool that it was shaped like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings. Jerry’s whole room was done in Tolkien. “Oh, I’m not ready to write anything yet,” I replied, passing him the bong back and taking a swig out of my Bud Light. I was developing quite a taste for beer during my time spent at the Beta Kappa house. “I still have a lot to learn, I think.”
He frowned at me. “That’s just dumb, Jeff, and you’re not a dumb guy. Young maybe, immature certainly, but not dumb.” He took a hit.
“What do you mean?” I asked. Fortunately, I was pleasantly stoned, otherwise I would have probably gotten pissed at being called young and immature.
“Writers write,” he said, waving Gandalf in front of my nose. “Even if it’s crap. You should spend at least an hour or two each day writing—even if it’s just a journal or a diary, or whatever. Even if it’s just venting about something stupid that happened to you that day. It can be great therapy, you know. Writing is like anything else, Jeffy—the more you do it, the better you get at it. Practice, practice, practice.”
Later, in Blair’s room and on my fifth beer, I mentioned what Jerry had said, and Blair frowned at me. “You never told me you wanted to be a writer.”
“You never asked.” I reached for the dragon and the lighter.
“You should tell your best friend these things, you know. You want to write fiction or screenplays?” He handed me the bag of weed. “I think that’s empty.”
“Fiction. I want to write books.” I loaded the bowl and took a hit. “I want to be a bestselling author whose books are turned into movies, whose books inspire people to be better people, and be rich and famous and well-respected, asked to speak at colleges…” I grinned, “That kind of thing.” I shrugged. “I know, it seems silly, but that’s what I dream of.”
“Why do you think it’s silly?” Blair demanded, standing up and walking over to the refrigerator. “You should have dreams—otherwise how are you going to know what you want?”
I dream about you all the time, I wanted to say, but instead I said, “My parents—” I hesitated. “My parents tell me I should get a degree in something useful, so I’ll have something to fall back on if I don’t make it as a writer.” I probably wouldn’t have admitted that if I hadn’t been stoned. It hurt when my parents told me to major in business rather than creative writing. Don’t you believe in me? I’d wanted to scream at them, but they were just being practical, and it was from love.
Or so I told myself every day.
“Parents. Blech.” Blair knelt down in front of the refrigerator. “Well, then Jerry’s right, you should be writing every day.” Blair opened the refrigerator and got us both another beer. “You shouldn’t be wasting all your time—not of course that time spent with me is time wasted.”
“Lighten up, dude.” I giggled. “What do you want to be when you grow up? You’ve never told me either.”
“I want to be an actor.” He glanced at his father’s posters. “Not like him, but like her.” He walked over to his mother’s images and stared up at them. “She’s an actress, a true talent, not like Dad, who’s just kind of good looking in a generic kind of way. Oh, don’t get me wrong, he has charisma or whatever you want to call it—the kind of thing stars have—but Mom, she’s got real talent.” He looked back at me. “She can play anything, you know? She is amazing. She’s not the prettiest actress out there, she’s not the most charismatic, but there’s just something about her…when she’s on camera, you can’t look away from her.”
“I’ve never seen one of her movies,” I admitted.
“Well, one of these days we’ll have to have a Nicole Blair film festival.” He replied with a grin. “Would you like that? We could watch To the Lighthouse—that’s my favorite, even though she won the Oscar for Mary Queen of Scots, which is also a good one, but I think the romance she did with Burt Reynolds—that’s her best performance, probably. I mean, she was convincing—and it can’t be easy to convince people you’re in love with him.”
“Sure.” I couldn’t