Free Boy Crazy: Coming Out Erotica by Unknown Page B

seemed truly welcoming as it cozied up against the university. It was September now; school was about to begin. I savored the fact that for once the change of locale was my idea.
     
    So I entered UCLA, a wide-eyed freshman among a thousand others. I’d requested a dorm mate from the music program, so I was surprised when I walked through an open door to find a cute Latino boy. Caught off guard, I asked if I had the right room. “I’m Tyler Weeks,” I said.
     
    “Reynaldo Garcia,” he replied, offering a hand, “and yes, you’ve got the right room. The beaner plays violin.”
     
    “I’m sorry,” I said but he grinned and brushed it aside. “No problem and hey, I am an exception, so it’s okay you thinking what you did. Call me Rey. I’m from Salinas, artichoke heart of the west.”
     
    “Call me Ty. Army brat, born in Texas but lived all over.”
     
    “Cello, huh,” Rey said.
     
    “Yeah. I tried violin but something just connects me with this big guy, ya know?”
     
    As Rey nodded, I started to feel for maybe the first time that life wasn’t built entirely around escape.
     
    “So are you on scholarship?” I asked before I realized it was another stereotype. “I am,” I quickly added.
     
    “Yes, the Goodman Foundation,” he said, and we stood in silent gratitude that university administrators had taken time to place the two Foundation-sponsored students together. Grinning like the schoolboys we used to be, Rey broke the spell. “Well, then we have to be good friends.”
     
    We started unpacking, and amid the mess Rey suggested we play some music. It was like he wanted to try us out, and I liked the idea because music was where I lived. As I began a Bach cello suite, Rey followed on his violin and soon we had a real symmetry going, a foursome of two guys and two instruments, one cohesive sound. People began to poke their heads in, and soon we had a little cluster of silent faces. I had never been happier.
     
    Rey was cute in a baby-faced, slightly chunky way, and sexy as hell. His black hair had a delicious curl and he left it long enough to become tousled but short enough to flatter. His lips were the fullest I’d seen on a guy, which made me wonder if he’d ever considered playing the horn.
     
    I never thought he’d be interested in me. Skinny Anglo, brown hair spiked in rebellion against years of military cuts, I was pure nondescript, which, up against Rey’s dark good looks, made me feel nearly invisible—yet in his company, I thrived. He was nineteen to my eighteen, having gotten behind in school early on because his family traveled to work the fields.
     
    “I picked crops until I was eight,” he explained, “then we settled in Salinas where my parents got jobs at the cannery. That was when my music finally had room to grow because I got to stay in one school long enough to play an instrument. I worked after school to pay for lessons and my own violin, and the best day was when I got to turn in the loaner from school.”
     
    As I listened to stories about his early life, I began to see my own upbringing in a whole new way. I’d pretty much had everything, even if it came with the Major. A child picking crops seemed like something out of Dickens.
     
    Rey and I shared music classes as well as freshman English, and while we became acquainted with other students, we clung to each other because we’d arrived by the same route, far from the luxury most of our peers knew. Evenings we practiced together and were surprised at how many dorm mates preferred our sound to the hip-hop blaring down the hall.
     
    We also had long talks on music theory, punctuated by typical student chat about our instructors. Oddly, it was our music theory professor, Austin Deal, who opened a door we hadn’t yet approached.
     
    We both admired the prof for the easy way he shared his wealth of knowledge, and we both, independent of each other, pegged him as gay. Not quite a queen, he still had an