428 College St
By Natty Soltesz
I remember the apartment, as dirty as it was. It was actually a house, in a row of houses, in a section of the city that could only be described as the college ghetto. We had a filthy couch and other disused furniture clogging up the porch. The screen door was broken, so somebody had torn it off and set it next to the door. The mailbox swung from a rusty nail.
Inside, it had the distinct smell of cigarettes and fried food. The cigarette smell was from all of us, but the fried food smell was a symptom of Darrin’s eating habits. He didn’t eat vegetables, and he didn’t know how to cook, so when he ran out of money for take out, he just threw shit into a deep fryer, until the whole place would fill with smoke, and you felt like you were breathing grease.
Yeah, the place was definitely lacking in some areas—the walls had their share of holes, punched in during various drunken rages, and the carpet was a cesspool of cigarette remains and God knows what else; but the place had character. It wasn’t our first college apartment, but it felt like the first semi-functional and comfortable household we’d been in since we’d came to State University.
As for what happened there…well, let’s just say that the reason the place holds such an exalted place in my mind is largely due to what went on there among me and my friends. In a lot of ways, 428 College Street changed my life.
***
I had lived in the dorm my first year of college, with Darrin. I guess we fancied ourselves outcasts in our little suburban hellhole of a hometown we grew up in, which really didn’t change that much after we got to college.
To say our room was small would be to understate the situation. We had to walk over each other to move around. Life in the dorms was so bizarre—like some weird youth experiment, an extension of the animal experimentation going on in other parts of the University. Everyone crammed into these little rooms, in these huge buildings—maximizing your social interaction, but minimizing your privacy.
It was by virtue of the dorm experience that we met Randy. Darrin and I had been smoking on the huge patio underneath the dorm towers, when this brash guy came up to us and asked for a cigarette. He was a character. He talked a lot. But I warmed up to him, and so did Darrin, and before you knew it we had a new friend.
Randy lived in the dorms, too, and he hated his roommate.
“Computer nerd,” he said. “He just sits around all day in front of the computer, waiting for me to leave so he can beat off.” It started out that Randy would just crash on the floor after we’d been drinking. Then he brought a sleeping bag and pillow, then he just moved in.
That first year was a mess of trying to navigate both school and a whole new social order. With Randy around, things started to make sense. Not only did we have a crew, but Randy was a motivator—he made us get out and do things. We started following the flow of people streaming out of the dorms and looking for parties in the south end of town. Randy was a treasure in times like that—he was crafty and he was charming. We’d usually end up getting in and drinking all night without ever paying $3 for a cup.
Darrin was just as indispensable—the monthly allowance his parents gave him meant that we could afford essential things like weed and the occasional drug trip.
Where we didn’t get along fine was meeting other people. Randy was pretty vocal about wanting to get laid, and I was definitely up for meeting other people, but in all honesty we were pretty clueless.
Darrin, a cute, innocent little Italian skater boy, would have girls just come up to him. He was so shy and awkward, though, and he didn’t know how to handle it. Girls would get bored, or weirded out, and leave. It would drive Randy crazy, but he was just as bad as talking to girls as Darrin, albeit in a different way. Randy would go up to a girl and talk to her, but his play was pretty raw. He didn’t seem to know the difference between flirting and aggravating, and he usually just ended up pissing them off.
One night, I guess we were all pretty frustrated, because as the party was breaking up Randy shouted, “Any girls want to come home with me? I eat pussy.” We got a bunch of stares–some pitying, some hostile, so I figured that meant it was time to go home. We headed back to the dorms, drunk and frustrated.
Darrin and I crawled into bed, while Randy crashed out in his spot on the floor. We turned out the lights and Randy started talking about the different girls at the party, entertaining various fantasies that would never happen.
“What about that dark-haired skinny chick with all the piercings on her face?” Randy said. “I’d let her give me a rim job.” Darrin and I had a laugh over that.
“Yeah right dude, she wouldn’t go near your nasty ass,” I said.
“My ass isn’t nasty. It’s cleaner than yours, anyway.” Randy said.
“What, have you been sniffing my underwear again?” I said.
“Fuck you,” Randy said. There was a moment where nobody said anything, then Randy spoke up again.
“I’d definitely let her give me a hand job.”
“Yeah, I’d let her give me a hand job,” Darrin concurred.
“Me too,” I said. There was a long silence, the dorm was unusually quiet. I started getting hard, and I don’t know how I could explain this to you, but I sensed that Randy and Darrin were, too. There was just a sexual energy in the room. I laid there, sleep not even an option, staring into the darkness above my bed. The tension seemed to grow with each breath.
“I am fucking horny,” Randy finally proclaimed.
“Yeah,” Darrin and I said at the same time.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I need to beat off,” said Randy. I waited for Darrin to say something, but he didn’t.
“Go ahead,” I said, “I don’t give a shit.” It was an offhand thing to say, I really didn’t expect him to do it. So I was a little shocked when I heard him sliding off his shorts.
“I’ll try not shoot any cum on your beautiful carpet,” he said. I could make out Randy’s form pretty well from the lights outside the window. His erection, which I’d spotted tenting out his boxers before but had never actually seen, was laying against his belly. It looked thin and lean, and about at throbbingly hard as mine felt. He licked the palm of his hand, wrapped it around his cock, and started stroking.
As I watched him beat off, my initial feeling of shock faded, becoming something like jealousy. I desperately wanted to get off too, but something about just doing it in the room with them made me nervous. How could Randy just do it so nonchalantly? It actually started to piss me off, and I was going to say something when Darrin spoke up.
“Are you really jerkin off?” Darrin said. I guessed he couldn’t see. Randy didn’t respond, just kept pounding away at his prick.
“Dude,” I said to Randy, “what the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m beating off,” Randy said, sounding surprised. “You said I could.”
“Fuck, I didn’t think you’d actually do it.”
“Well, what the fuck’s the big deal? You wanna jerk off too, don’t you? Just do it. I won’t look, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said, then he turned his attention back to his cock.
“Shit,” Darrin said above me. Then he laughed. “Might as well,” he said, and I could hear him sliding off his pants. For a minute I thought everyone around me had gone crazy. But the more I laid there and listened to them; Randy’s labored breath as he pumped away, Darrin’s little sighs as he stroked his own; the less I tried to fight it. I wasn’t about to lay there and let them get off while I was just as hard-up as they were.
I slid out from under my sheets and peeled off my underwear. My cock was hard as a rock, and the moment I let it loose I knew I’d done the right thing. With one hand I cupped my balls, and with the other I took hold of my hot bone, rubbing the pre-cum around to get it nice and slick.
I glanced over at Randy and noticed that he had slowed down, and was working his prick in long, slow strokes. Contrary to his earlier comment, he was looking right at me; our eyes met and then he looked straight at my prick. I knew he was kind of curious about my cock, just like I’d been kind of curious about his, so I held it up for him to see. My cock’s pretty big. I could tell it was bigger than Randy’s.
We both went back to stroking our dicks, but now and again I’d catch little glances of Randy jerking off. He would start with slow, easy strokes, then get himself really worked off to where he was raising his ass off the floor and pounding on it. Then he’d relax to catch his breath and slow down again.
I’d been close since the moment I’d wrapped my fingers around my prick, but I decided to take it slow just to make it last. The mattress above me shifted a little, and I could hear Darrin’s moans start to increase, so I figured he was getting close. Finally, with a great “Uuuuugggghhhh” followed by “Oh fuck, oh fuck,” Darrin came.
Randy shot next, raising his ass as far as he could off the floor and pointing his cock straight at his face. His first shot reached almost up to his neck, the majority of it landing on his chest. To my amazement, he started rubbing his load into his skin with the palm of his hand, shooting even more on his stomach. He ran his hand down and slathered his cum all over his chest and nipples, tweaking them as he came down, shakingly, from his orgasm.
That about did it for me, and I cupped my balls tightly as the load pumped out of my cock, shooting thick streams of steaming cum across my chest and stomach. I felt so turned on I decided to do what Randy did, and I rubbed the cum all over my hairless chest and nipples. Randy, like he was waiting for me to finish, turned around and tucked his head in the pillow. Pretty soon I could hear Darrin snoring above me. I was still wide awake, so I decided to head down to the showers and clean myself up.
I felt a little discombobulated by what had happened. But thinking about the situation we were in, all cramped in that tiny dorm like caged apes, it seemed even more retarded that we’d spent all that time avoiding the one thing all guys loved to do. It wasn’t like a secret that all of us enjoyed jerking off.
I realized how sexually frustrated I’d been, stealing wanks here and there in the bathroom stalls. The idea that we could jerk off around each other and not have hang-ups about it was like a revelation. In my heart I hoped that this wasn’t going to be just a drunken thing that we’d never talk about again.
The truth was it had actually been kind of thrilling.
I chalked that up to the novelty of the situation, and tried to fall asleep.
The alarm went off at 9 am. I heard Darrin stirring above me, then he dangled his big feet over the side of the bunk, and slid off onto the floor. He was still naked, and I glanced at his hairy butt as he rooted around in a pile of clothes. I heard Randy yawn and looked over to see him stretching his arms over his head. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. My head throbbed.
“Shit,” I heard Darrin say, and I looked over at him. He was facing the wall, looking down at his body.
“What?” I asked, and Darrin turned around. He had a slim, hairy body. His thick cock hung heavily from a thatch of black hair. My eyes widened at the size of it–he’d told me it was big, but I’d always just assumed it was as big as mine. It seemed like I’d miscalculated, and he had a big Italian whopper of a cock. In one hand he held a pair of underwear, and with the other he was picking at the dried come stuck in the hairs of his stomach. I looked over at Randy and noticed he was checking Darrin out, too.
“Fucking dried cum all caked up in my hair and shit,” Darrin said. Randy laughed and sat up.
“Why didn’t you wipe yourself off last night?” I asked. Darrin shrugged and started putting on his boxer shorts.
“I was tired and I didn’t have anything to use.”
“I took a shower,” I said.
“Seriously?” Darrin said, pulling on the same pair of jeans he’d worn yesterday. “Shit, I must’ve passed out right after I came.”
“Me too,” Randy said. “Fuck my head hurts,” he added, standing up. He was naked, too. Randy had a little hair on his thick chest, but I couldn’t see any dried cum in it. I guess it was because he’d rubbed it all into his skin. I felt weird about watching him do that, so I decided not to mention it.
Randy stood there for a minute in front of the window, stretching his arms above his head. I checked him out. It was unusual for us to be so naked around each other. Of course, nudity was pretty inevitable in the dorms, and we’d gotten dressed in front of each other numerous times. But I would always turn my head, or we’d try to hide it, doing it quickly while turned toward the wall.
“Did you wanna go to the library and do that thing for Psychology?” he said to Darrin, running his hand through his hair. He didn’t seem the least bit uncomfortable being naked in front of us, like he was giving us ample time to check him out.
“Yeah, that’s cool,” Darrin said, glancing down at Randy’s modest piece.
I figured it was my turn, so I stood up and stretched my arms over my head. I’m not ashamed of my body at all—I’ve got a nice muscular build, and my cock hangs pretty good when it’s flaccid.
“What are you up to today, Nate?” Randy asked, looking me over.
“I don’t have shit to do except start that existentialism paper,” I said.
“Fuck you dude, I hate having a class on Saturday,” Darrin said, glancing at me. It was kind of funny, the way we were checking each other out so casually. Randy had a hand under his nuts, scratching himself. “I gotta go take a piss,” Darrin said, leaving the room.
Randy looked over at me and smirked.
“Who knew Darrin was carryin’ a piece like that?” he said. I laughed.
“No shit, dude,” I said, grabbing my pants off the floor. I sat down to put them on. Randy was staring absently toward me. He still had a hand under his balls, absently massaging the spot underneath. If I wasn’t mistaken, his cock seemed to have fattened a little.
“Fuck man, I’m still horny,” he said, looking at me. I didn’t say anything, and he turned away and started getting dressed. “You can jack off all day if you want to, you lucky fucker,” he said.
“Yeah…” I said. I wanted to talk to Randy about everything that had happened, but I didn’t know how to approach it and I didn’t want to risk sounding stupid. Just then, Darrin came back into the room.
“Are you gonna pick up that sack from McConnell?” Randy asked me.
“Yeah, I’ll bike over there in a couple hours,” I said. We agreed to meet up after that, and they started out the door.
“See ya,” I said.
“See ya,” Darrin said, stepping out of the door. Randy turned to me and put his fist in front of his crotch, making a jerking motion.
“Happy cycling,” he said, and shut the door.