Campus Call Boy, page 4
“What’ll you drink? You like white wine? Red? Liquor? Beer?”
Noah’s just fine with beer. Max however…
“You got scotch?”
He nods and trots over to the adjoining living room where he’s got a dry sink liquor cabinet. I watch him pull out a pair of tumblers and a crystal bottle. He pours the drinks and calls me over, headed to a big sofa by an antique stone fireplace.
We sit down together, and we raise our glasses to say cheers. I take a drink, and it’s liquid fire, much stronger than what I’m used to. I’m feeling sexy and a little reckless after that hello he gave me by the door. But Philip’s bearing is still off. He’s not touching me, and he’s seems like he’s got something on his mind.
I gaze around. “You’ve got such a beautiful house.”
“Thanks. It was built in the 1920s. Was the home for the president of the university all the way to 2001 when they finished that big, modern showpiece overlooking the lake.”
I’m familiar with the house. It was designed by the famous architect I.M. Pei, all steel and glass. I still like Philip’s place better.
Philip goes on about his house wistfully. “It’s a lot of maintenance. A whole lot of space, especially since the boys moved out.”
I nod.
He smiles a little. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to ask, but where do you live, Max?”
I go with my standard line. “Oh, not far from here. Just an apartment in town.”
Philip studies me while I take another sip of liquor. “Did you…do you go to school?”
Normally that would be part of my persona, but in this case... “I finished high school. But college wasn’t for me.”
“I don’t mean to pry.”
“It’s fine.” I rest my hand on his leg, thinking it might help to get him interested in something besides talking.
He looks down at that hand. “Well, if you ever wanted to give college a try, you’ve come to the right place.”
I gaze at him flirtatiously. “I guess that’s right, Professor Philip Geary.”
He grins like a bashful boy. “You’re something else.”
I set down my drink on the coffee table and scoot up closer to his side. I move one hand closer to his crotch and pick at his collar with the other. “So what else are you in the mood for tonight?”
“Just this.” He raises a hand to cradle my face, and he leans in to seal his mouth over mine. Now I said before, kissing a john isn’t the big deal some people make it out to be, but the guy is macking on me like a teenager in a movie theater. It’s way more than I feel comfortable with.
I gently, tactfully break off his kiss with my hand on his shoulder. “That was nice,” I tell him. “But I don’t want to give you the wrong idea.”
He bows his head. “I think it’s too late for that, Max. I want you all the time. It eats at me thinking about you being with other men.”
I lean away from him a little. My lungs are frozen over with ice. I don’t know what to say.
Philip balls one hand into a fist. He peeks at me. “Guess I really screwed things up, didn’t I?”
Words come out of me, and I know they’re not the right ones. But I’m thinking business and nothing else.
“No, you didn’t. It happens sometimes. I like you, too. Maybe we can work things out.”
He glances at me timidly. “Would you stay over sometime? I’d take good care of you. My wife, well, there never was much to our marriage. She’s moving out at the end of the semester. Got a position at a college across the country.”
The house feels bigger and emptier now, and his loneliness is infecting me, making me feel small. I try to clear my head.
“I’m sorry.” I ease back toward him, wrapping an arm around his back. “I can’t stay over tonight, but maybe some other time. I’ll look at my schedule, and we can figure out the details.”
That gets a grin on his face, and he turns to me, looking like he’s going to go in for another passionate kiss. I climb up on him, throwing a leg over his lap with my hands braced on his shoulders to head him off. I grind my bottom, hunting for his hard-on. We’re on a sturdy, thick-legged sofa that looks like it weighs a ton. Should support some fun gymnastics, I figure.
“You gonna fuck me, handsome?”
He stares at me in wonder. I pull off my shirt and rub my booty on his hard-on, acting out how I want to ride him.
He looks over his shoulder to the hall in the direction of the stairs. We’ve always done it in his bedroom, but I can see he’s enticed by the prospect. “I’ll just...”
I shuffle off him, and he heads upstairs for lube and condoms. Meanwhile, I get naked and fold my clothes on a chair across from the couch. I lay back on the couch and give my cock some tugs so he’ll see I’m aroused for him when he comes back. Philip is lightning quick. I hear him pattering down the stairs, creaking along the hall. He comes back with his bottle of lube and a Trojan, and he stops for a moment to admire my nakedness.
I get up and wander over to him and help him get out of his pants. Then I lead him by the hand to the sofa to sit down. I get a condom on his cock and take the lube.
I straddle him with my knees and wet my fuckhole. Then I guide his pharmaceutically-enhanced wood inside me, playing up that sweet penetration. My wide eyes telling him: You’re so big. My rushed breaths saying: Hurts so good. I grab his hand and place it on my chest, throw back my head while I grind on his erection.
“God, you’re amazing,” Philip tells me.
We’ve never done this position together before, but I do it with some of my clients who like watching me on top. I show off for Philip like a porn star, getting up into a squat with one hand supporting me to swallow long lengths of him, arching my back and working my hips so my dick slaps against my belly. It’s a workout for sure, and I grunt and moan like crazy ‘cause it gets me horny acting like a freak.
I get back down on my knees to bear down on him hard, whimpering each time I impale myself on his rod. I’m in the zone, just wanting to reset this thing with Philip to casual sex, and it seems to be working. He’s looking pretty happy while my ass chomps down on his cock, and my boner is wagging at him.
I see him getting the right idea. He grabs the lube and tugs on my dick with his slippery hand. It’s really easy for me to cum with a cock jammed up my ass. A few strokes later, my eyes are fluttering, and I wail out from a fucking, massive orgasm, spitting out my spunk far and wide on Philip’s body. The old guy looks happily debrained.
I climb off of him and lean over to clasp his face. “You like that, handsome?”
He smiles, nods, breathing heavy. I’m hoping I didn’t send him into cardiac arrest. He glances at his cum-splattered chest and grins. “You left me with something to remember you by this time.”
I laugh. Sounds like the guy’s going to be all right. Meanwhile, I worked up quite a sweat and took some of my load myself. “I’ll use the downstairs bathroom, if that’s okay,” I tell him.
“Sure.”
I grab my clothes and sneakers and clean up in the first-floor guest bathroom. Feels like I just did my leg day at the gym, and I’m grateful for a shower to cool down while my body finishes sweating it out. I towel off and re-dress, and when I come back to the living room, Philip has gotten comfy in his bathrobe and slippers. A money envelope is laid out for me on the coffee table.
I pick up the money and stuff it in my pocket, then I step over to Philip and give him a hug, turning my face a little so things don’t get awkward again.
“Thanks. That was great.” I pat his back.
Thankfully, he lets me go easily. Looks like he’s still reeling and feeling pretty proud of our fuck session.
“I’ll see you Saturday,” he tells me.
I give him a smile, and he walks me to the back door.
Chapter Seven
MAINTAINING A FINANCIALLY thriving sex work practice is all about good client management, according to Jason Hart. That’s the guy who wrote that memoir I mentioned before. My ethics professor would probably have a lot to say about his business practices, but no one can deny Jason was a brilliant entrepreneur. He built a bicoastal, million-dollar operation and kept it going for twenty years. His clients included Fortune 500 CEOs, film studio executives, senators, and Middle Eastern royalty, and the one common denominator is they all wanted to feel special. His job was to figure out what special meant to each of them. It was a lot more psychological than just being an attractive dude who was good at getting them off.
Sometimes they were looking for someone who accepted their kink and made them feel less guilty about it. Sometimes they needed to believe they were getting something no one else could get, like a rare piece of art or some exclusive recording of Michael Jackson. Sometimes, and this one is tricky. Jason said, they wanted the feeling they were falling in love, courting some gorgeous guy; and they were willing to pay for that endorphin rush because they couldn’t do that in their real lives.
Of course, a lot of his clients were in the closet and thought they had too much to lose dating a man out in the open. But even some of Jason’s openly and semi-openly gay clients were in that “love junkie” category. They were guys who wanted to know up front what they were getting because they had gotten played by dudes who wanted their money and connections, or they were control freaks who couldn’t tolerate the ambiguity of dating. Jason had men flying him on private jets to romantic getaways on private Caribbean islands. Some clients sent him flowers and jewelry after their dates, and others took him to big society events and private parties. Jason called his work an “emotional laboratory” where men lived out their fantasies in the safety of a controlled environment. They could try out being romantic and loving with a guy who couldn’t say no.
I’m thinking about all of this in relation to Philip because I’m caught between hating myself for using him and wondering if I just haven’t figured him out. He tucked an additional two hundred bucks in the money envelope again. Is he living out a fantasy the way Jason talked about or has he really fallen for me and is trying to keep me for himself?
Is there a difference? My brain is scrambled. All I know is it felt like I was walking on eggshells with him that night. I’m good at what I do, but the guy’s a PhD. He’s got to have a read on what’s going on. Maybe he’s playing me more than I’m playing him.
I know I don’t want to sleep over at his place. I’d feel too icky about it with him being married, which probably makes no sense considering I was just sitting on his dick on his living room couch. But it’s a different level of intimacy sleeping with him through the night, and it’s chipping at my own emotional boundaries. Fuck. I wish I could get hold of myself. He’d probably pay me twenty-five hundred to sleep over.
I don’t have classes on Friday, and I treat myself to sleeping in a little. It’s been a heavy week between midterms and Philip. I get out of bed at ten and head over to campus. I hit the gym, grab a shower, and then I go over to the bursar to make my monthly tuition payment.
The bursar is in the basement of an old brick building in the center of campus where they also house financial aid and the registrar. I like going there on Fridays when it’s pretty quiet. The line zooms along, and I can make my big cash payments with some privacy.
The clerk at the window knows me well. I figure not too many students drop off three thou in cash each month. I give her a smile and some charm like I give my clients, and that always seems to brighten her day. There’s nothing illegal about paying tuition in cash. Money is money. Next month, I’ll have my spring semester paid off and be able to register for the fall.
It crosses my mind I could have spring paid off faster if I take Philip up on his offer. Christ. White boy problems.
I take the stairs up to the first floor. I’ve got a ton of reading to do for my classes, plus I could get a jumpstart on one of my final papers. I brought my laptop along in my messenger bag. I’m thinking I’ll hang at the library for the afternoon and take the night off, just order in some food and watch a movie. Since my Friday regular canceled, I have a rare night off.
I’m almost through the hall and out of the building when I hear my name.
“Noah?”
That jolts me. You’ve probably gathered I’m pretty much anonymous on campus. I glance over my shoulder, thinking it might be one of the guys I’m grouped up with for a project in Oral Communications, though the voice was familiar in a different way.
It’s Carlos from the laundromat.
Wow. I’m simultaneously happy to see him and terrified because I never answered his text message. He doesn’t look pissed. He’s got that sexy smile curled up on his face, and he’s headed over to talk to me. Same army jacket. New black t-shirt that’s snug around his bod in a rather spectacular way.
“What’re you up to, man?” he asks me.
“Oh. I was just making a payment downstairs.”
“I thought I might have to start hanging out at laundromats to find you again.” He holds up his empty hands. “I come in peace. No flyers, no canvassing this time I promise.”
“How’d the walkout go?”
Carlos lights up. “Dude, it was amazing. The lousy local paper reported hundreds, but we had over two thousand students fillin’ the quad. The workers called off the strike ‘cause administration met with the union the next day and agreed to a five percent wage increase.”
I thrust out my hand to grab his, give him a big handshake. “That’s awesome. Congratulations.”
“Power to the people, bro.”
God, I forgot how handsome he was, how cute he looks amped up about social justice. I clear my head. “So what’re you doing here?”
He grimaces. “They fucked up my financial aid. As usual. I’ve gotta fill out some form upstairs.”
“Sorry.”
Carlos glances around, says loudly, “Yeah, it’s enough to make you wonder if they might be doing it intentionally because a student’s tryin’ to hold the university accountable.”
I smirk nervously. I’m not crazy about drawing attention to myself on campus, and now there’s people in the hall looking at Carlos and looking at me. The guy’s got to have a high profile, organizing protests, which makes him, like, the last person I should be hanging out with. But he’s got this magnetic pull.
He turns back to me, looking more serious. “Anyway, I’m glad you didn’t blow me off just now like you blew off my text.”
That’s a whole lot more confrontational than I was ready for. Though he softens it a bit with mischievous glint in his eyes.
“I had a mad-busy week,” I try to explain. “Midterm paper. Midterm exam.”
He waves me off. “It’s chill. What’re you doin’ now?” He wriggles his eyebrows. “There a chance I could get that cup of coffee with you today?”
I can’t really think of a good reason not to. I mean, besides having to lie about most aspects of my private life when the conversation turns more personal. Yeah, that’s a rather big one. But I hate being so lame around him.
“I see those gears turning in your head,” he tells me. “The problem is I like a challenge. You can try to ghost me, Noah, but you ever been haunted by a half-Mexican, half-Jewish queer boy from Oklahoma? It don’t end pretty.”
I’ve got no idea what that means, but it makes me laugh.
“I’m telling you, I got the worst traits from both sides of the family. I’ll fight you dirty and make you feel guilty for it.”
“Okay, I surrender.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Our eyes meet, and he drops his glance, smiling and coloring in the face.
“I mean, you did say it’s just coffee. We’re not moving in together and adopting babies.”
He looks at me with a big, killer grin. “You never had coffee with me. I wouldn’t rule anything out. Can you stay put a minute? I’ll just run up, fill out that form, and be back down.”
I nod, and he takes off for the second floor. Coffee with a student who’s fucking me with his eyes. What the hell am I doing?
♂ ♂
WE HEAD OVER to the Student Union where dining services runs a crappy café redeemed by an outdoor seating area overlooking the tree-lined slope down to the lake on the west side of campus. It’s a decent day for sitting outside. A little brisk in early April, but the skies are clear. While Carlos orders two iced coffees, I grab a table near the terrace ledge.
He comes back with the coffees and a big black-and-white cookie in a napkin, which he presents to me. Those cookies are one of dining services’ few edible baked goods, and they’re actually my favorite. Carlos drags his chair closer to mine so we can both look out at the view while we drink our coffees.
“So what’s your deal, Mr. Corporate America? Where’re you from?”
“Philly.” That much about my personal life isn’t a big deal.
“One of the girls from the co-op is from Philly,” he says. “You know Tameka Wells?”
I shake my head. Three of us from my high school ended up at the university. Tameka isn’t one of them.
He gives me a probing gaze. “What do you do for fun? I never seen you at any of the queer events. Never seen you down at Woody’s or Stardust neither.”
Woody’s is the one gay bar in town, and Stardust is a dance club that gets a mixed crowd. I went to them a couple times with Darius when I was a freshman.
“I don’t have much time for fun, between studying and my job.” I take a sip of the coffee. With a lot of milk and sugar, it’s drinkable.
“Oh yeah? Where do you work?”
The conversation is already getting complicated. “Me and a friend, we’ve got a business painting.” His brow shrinks up. “Houses,” I elaborate. “Inside. Outside. It pays pretty well. I’m basically working to pay for college.” I try out a grin. “My folks aren’t from the wealthy side of Philly.”
“We got that in common. I’m here on scholarships, Pell Grants, work-study, and loans.”
“Where do you work?”
“Computer lab in the Law School.” He smiles. “Best gig in the world. It’s the least utilized lab on campus. Y’know, it’s all grad students who either use the Law Library or do their work at home off-campus. I’m pretty much babysitting the equipment.” He wriggles his eyebrows. “And making flyers for my club and printing them out in bulk.”
