Free How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater by Marc Acito

to scoop her breasts in my hands when from across the room I hear Ziba shout, “No!”
    Kelly and I both glance over in time to see Ziba give Doug a shove to the floor, where he lands with an unceremonious thud.
    “What the fuck . . .” he says.
    Ziba rises to her full Amazon height, flips her hair over her shoulder, and steps right over him. “Pig,” she says, and walks out.
    Yikes.
    Kelly gives a little push to get me off of her. “I better see what's wrong,” she says, then steps over Doug on her way out, too. “Excuse me.”
    I don't get it. Just yesterday over lunch Ziba was telling me how she stayed out all night in Saint-Tropez with a couple of guys in their twenties, but Doug unzips his pants and she totally freaks out. Then again . . .
    I look at him crouched on the floor. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he says, almost like he's in pain. I'm about to reach for him when he bounds up, punching the air. “She's such a fuckin' tease, man,” he says. “I'm about ready to burst.”
    He looks down helplessly at his crotch, where the engorged head of his cock has pushed past the waistband of his jeans. It's the size of a doorknob. We both stare at it a moment, as if another person just entered the room. Time seems to stand still and I feel the pulse of my heartbeat radiate behind my ears. I look up at Doug's face and suddenly realize he's just inches away from me, his lips parted, the heat of his breath blowing lightly on my cheeks.
    Please God, let him feel the same way I do.

 

    D oug licks his lips and swallows, his big Adam's apple bobbing in his neck.
    “I need a drink,” he says.
    He pushes past me, adjusting his crotch as he goes through the sliding glass door.
    I stand staring out into the yard. The moon is so bright it's casting shadows on the lawn. I don't quite know what to do, but every fiber of me says to follow him, so I step outside only to find myself face-to-face with Duncan O'Boyle, the captain of the football team. Duncan has a lean, ferret-y face and strawberry-blond hair that I envy because he wears it parted in the middle and feathered. I tried wearing my hair that way once but it's so thick I looked like Wile E. Coyote after he's had an anvil dropped on his head.
    “We've got a little problem,” he says. He explains to me how Kevin “Boonbrain” Boonschoft, a big St. Bernard of a guy and the cheesehead of the popular kids, tried to use his big brother's old ID to buy beer for them, but nearly got arrested when the guy at the liquor store revealed that he actually went to high school with Boonbrain's brother. Duncan focuses his beady amber eyes on me. “I hear you can score some beers for us,” he says.
    I've never liked Duncan O'Boyle. Once, in the fourth grade, he lured Natie onto the roof of his house with an invitation to go “hedgewalking” on top of the fifteen-foot laurel bush that surrounded his property. Natie went first.
    He needed thirty stitches.
    But just because I loathe and despise everything Duncan represents doesn't mean I don't want to impress him.
    “Sure,” I say, “just give me a sec.”
    I find Natie and tell him to look after things, then interrupt a fornicating couple in my room so I can change into Father Groovy's collar, adding a pair of round wire-rimmed glasses I wore when I played the tailor Motel Kamzoil in
Fiddler on the Roof.
I'm practicing a few Jesuity looks in the mirror when I hear the grind of the garage door opening. I dash outside and there is Duncan backing Al's Midlife Crisis down the driveway.
    “What the hell are you doing?” I shout. “That's my dad's car.”
    Duncan grins at Roger Young, the team's quarterback, who's riding shotgun. “Oh, no,” Duncan says, “this is no car, my friend. This is a penis on wheels.”
    “Well, it's my dad's penis, okay, so just stop right there.” I tap on the side of the car and point to the backseat, which is already such a tight squeeze for Boonbrain that he appears to be wearing the car rather than