Bothered and Bewildered

Every member of every minority group has a specific life goal to fulfill. Jews have to visit Israel, Muslims have to go to Mecca, and gays have to persuade a straight guy to have drunken sex with them.

Scott lived a few doors down in my college dorm, and I fell head over heels for him. He was a farmboy straight out of Nebraska, with the stocky, broad-shouldered body that came from hard work, fresh air and twenty years of eating nothing but beef. It wasn't just physical attraction that drew me to Scott: his personality drew me in too. He was quiet and confident and an all-American boy, Jimmy Stewart with eighteen-inch arms. He was butch as Hoss Cartright, straight as a rail, and owned a Harley Davidson, which was two virtues more than I needed to pledge my undying troth.

To my eternal surprise, Scott wasn't totally horrified by me. He was either curious or envious of the fact that I was relatively hip. That had taken no work whatsoever on my part: my roommate was one of the dorm's major drug dealers so I got some of that cachet, plus being gay in San Francisco earned me bonus points. Every Friday night I'd head to Castro Street and paint the town red, sometimes not returning home until just before classes on Monday. The first time I did this the Resident Advisor called the police to report me missing. He started to give them my description and the officer cut him off. "Oh, that guy," the officer said. "We've been looking for him for years."

Needless to say, by the time I returned, word had gotten around. The police wanted me. Just by being a cheap tramp I became the Lindsay Lohan of my dorm.

Scott didn't protest, then, when I followed him around like a puppy, content to bask in his presence and occasionally try to peek up his little red shorts. I hung out in the TV room when he was there, joined his table at the cafeteria, dropped by every party where he was. I knew from Day One that nothing would ever happen between us, because he was completely and totally straight. Even if he was curious, I was hardly the type who could talk fence-sitters to jump over to our side. Besides, I liked Scott. I respected Scott. I wouldn't have fallen for him in the first place if he listened to what I said.

The first time he mentioned his motorcycle I gushed with admiration. "I'll take you for a ride sometime," he offered, fueling my sexual fantasies for a year. I pictured him commandeering a massive hog, muscles bulging beneath his denim shirt, and me wedged like a biker bitch behind him. I'd hang on tight, my groin to his ass, and grind against him as all of San Francisco gaily zipped by. He could drive us straight to hell and with my hands wrapped around him I'd have paid all the tolls.

One night I saw him in the TV room, so naturally I went in. He was reclining in one club chair, with his legs propped up by another, his muscles making both look understuffed. As usual he wore his little red shorts, and the vast expanse of his hairy legs was covered with homework assignments. "Hey," he announced suddenly, "I promised you a motorcycle ride. You wanna go drive around?"

I was so startled I could hardly believe my ears. I'd long since given up hope. I'd decided the odds of this happening were just short of Jesus dropping by and asking if I wanted to go meet Dad. "That would be . . . absolutely . . . fantastic," I gushed, almost too excited to speak. Five minutes later he had his hands on the handlebars, and I had my hands on him.

We bounced and zipped and swerved all over San Francisco, for the better part of the night. We stopped by Coit Tower, varoomed past Fisherman's Wharf, and circled the Cannery, him looking cool and confident and me with an shiteating grin on my face. I was the picture of discretion, keeping my hands where safety required rather than pushing my luck. I was happy making any kind of contact at all, and he seemed oddly comfortable too.

After we'd been down every street in the South Bay, the neighborhood turned familiar, and my heart sank when I spotted the college parking lot. "Hey," I said, after took our helmets off, "you wanna come up and smoke some dope?"

We lit up joint after joint while perched on the edge of my bed. Clearly this was a new bond of intimacy between us. I was content to bask in the afterglow, but some small part of me wondered how far it would go. No matter how stoned I got, my hands still trembled with excitement. I snuck a fresh glimpse of him whenever I got the chance, picturing us intertwined in an erotic embrace while ignoring the fact that very few attractive people have longings for stick-thin, bearded teens. I absent-mindedly chatted about how great the ride was, and how great motorcycles were, and how much I liked San Francisco, and when the conversation dried up we just sat there. Passing the joint I let my eyes linger on him a minute, and this time he looked back. Then he flipped on the TV -- nervously, it seemed -- and spun the channel until it landed on "Bewitched."

I never really liked the program, but it totally killed my buzz here. Scott, on the other hand, became visibly excited, the red slits he had for eyes opening saucer-wide. Slowly he slid back onto the bed, and you could almost watch his crotch expand. His eyes stayed fixed on the TV as his hands sat poised astride his groin, like a gunslinger getting ready to draw.

"That Samantha is completely, totally hot," he announced before taking a hit off the roach.

"Yeah," I said, almost honestly. "But I'm not all that fixated on appearance. Personality is more important to me: it's what really makes people attractive. Whether they're fat or skinny or young or old, it doesn't matter. You touch, you hold, you connect. Sex is a physical manifestation of affection that shouldn't be weighed down by looks."

"So you'd do an ugly chick?" he asked from deep inside a cloud of dope smoke.

"I don't select my partners based on looks," I corrected. I gestured toward the television: "So that's who you're holding out for?"

"Well, not necessarily," he said cryptically. "I can fantasize. I can pretend. Besides, everybody looks the same in the dark."

He looked at me and I looked at him, and then it happened. I could actually seen the green light flash in his eyes. He went for the lamp and I went for his pants, and in a nanosecond both were off. Rather than meeting in a mutual embrace, though, it was more like a wrestling hold. Two enormous, cornfed arms pulled me to my feet and bent me over the coffee table. Without so much as a hug or a kiss he plugged right in and started banging away. "Ohmigod," came a groan from somewhere in the dark, "this is so freakin' hot."

Me, I wasn't so sure. It had all happened way too fast. Was this it? I wondered as he slammed me back and forth like a ragdoll. My head cleared the table like a battering ram, clanging my knickknacks together like windchimes. Was I actually having sex with my soulmate and it was nothing but a pain in the ass?

"IS THIS IT FOR POSITIONS?" I yelled as I head-butted the lamp to the ground.

Scott kept pounding away, oblivious. "Oh, Samantha," he groaned, fraught with passion. "Oh Sam, oh Sam, oh Sam!"

His speed increased, and realizing I was in a distant second place, I took matters into my own hands. Futilely I tried to coax my genitals into something approaching interest, but before they could respond Scott made a sprint for the finish. "OH SAM!" he yelped. "OH SAM! OH SAM!"

"Oh LARRY!" I groaned. "OH, LARRY! OH, LARRY, LARRY, LARRY!"

The thrusts came to an abrupt halt, and his iron grasp loosened on my hips. "I'm DARREN," he declared testily, "not LARRY."

"I know," I croaked, mentally shredding my unwritten love letters. "But if you're that lousy in the sack, I'm pretty sure she's thinking about somebody else."