The Disappointing Fringe of Sex with Mark

On the campus of my alma mater, there was one notorious fraternity — I won’t name them here because I’ve never been a member of any such brotherhood and I hold my suspicions about the degree to which they are similar to Scientologists.

But the point is that the president, a guy named Mark, was a hot; an enigmatic and unpredictable guy with fire in his eyes and a full face of stubble. Dark skin and dark brown hair. His boyfriend was a tidy little music major with a symetrical face, and an analytical nature.

I wasn’t brave enough in those days to do anything much more than gawk from my dorm window, or stare from across the cafeteria. I admit to stealing laundry on one occasion. But the whole thing faded with time and the graduation of the senior class.

Years later I talked to a friend of mine in the city, who’d gotten brave and made his way into bed with Mark through a traditional mixture of alcohol and carefully placed word traps. The report was that Mark’s equipment was off the charts where size is concerned. But the encounter was poorly executed. My friend was an unsuitable pilot, and told me that he was too drunk — fell asleep while giving Mark head.

It galls me because I know I could have done it better if I’d been able to crawl out from under my hairspray and mock turtleneck long enough to know that when Mark dropped by my room those couple of times early in my Freshman year, it probably wasn’t really because he was ‘interested in my art.’

The whole thrust of the rest of my sexual life may be colored by my attempt to reassemble that one singular set of circumstances and realign myself properly such that I am the one giving the head, and there will be no sleeping.