Chapter 6

Gavin was sitting on Sinder’s futon, watching a lady dressed like a nun use a giant wooden paddle to spank a lady dressed as a schoolgirl.

“I fucking love knee socks,” Sinder said.

He adjusted the laptop on his desk so that it faced a little more towards him, a little less towards Gavin.  It was perched on top of a giant book, six inches thick.  Gavin couldn’t see the title.

 “This makes…” Sinder slid his finger over the screen on his phone.  They documented their porn collection on a spreadsheet, kept online for easy access, though Gavin had never gotten it to work on his own phone.  “A hundred and sixty seven for BDSM—Light. Twenty-six for Christian Imagery. And, let’s see…three fifty two for everybody’s favorite category…” Wait for it, wait for it, oh the suspense. “Lesbian.”
 

Actually, it was Gavin’s least favorite category.  Okay, he hated it.  He would rather sit through a three-hour MLA panel on the Fifteenth Century printing press than watch two woman bring each other to orgasm. What could make a man feel more hopeless, more unnecessary?  There was nothing lonelier in the world. And yet look at Sinder—the guy couldn’t get enough of it.  He was grinning, his mouth a little open, a factory worker enthralled by the assembly-line robot who would make him redundant.

“That’s a lot of lesbians.” Gavin tried not to sound glum.  He wanted to keep Sinder’s spirits up before his exams, and anyway, it wasn’t exactly manly to admit that watching two women have sex kind of made you want to drink Drano.

“I know!  Seven hundred and four!” Sinder was bouncing lightly in his desk chair, his fingers gripping  hard on the armrests.  Gavin remembered reading somewhere that skinny people fidgeted more.  Gavin was on the chubby side, it was true—his last girlfriend had called him Buddha-esque a few weeks before they broke up—but at least he could freaking sit still. 

“Probably a few more,” he said. “I think some of them were threesomes.”

The nun took her robe off, and surprise, she had been hiding a giant pair of fake boobs under there the whole time. She pushed the schoolgirl onto the desk, spread her knees roughly apart, and said, “Young lady, you’ve been very, very bad.”

When she opened the desk drawer and pulled out the Jesus dildo, Gavin started to pick at a scab on his hand.  He had cut himself washing dishes a few days ago, and it was starting to itch. Oh, Sister Margaret, stop, said the schoolgirl, but you could tell she didn’t mean it.  It’s sooo big.  He caught his fingernail under the rough edge of the scab and tugged upward.  Slowly, carefully.  Oh Sister! Oh yes! No sudden movements.  Yes! Yes!  He dragged his fingernail hard towards the attached end of the scab.  It loosened and then skidded on a slick patch of fresh blood.  Fuck me, Sister, yes, fuck me!  He finger-painted crimson circles around his palm.

“What are you looking at?” Sinder paused the video. “You’re missing the best part.”

Gavin held up his bloody hand. “I cut myself.”

Sinder threw a box of band-aids at him.  It smacked against his palm and dropped onto the bed.

“Ouch.”

“You’ll thank me in a minute.”  Sinder angled the laptop screen back towards Gavin and pressed play.

There it was, close-up on the schoolgirl, her lips stretched around the base of her Lord on the cross, eyes peering longingly upwards through clumps of darkened eyelash, saliva dripping onto the little curls of the nun’s pubes—this must be have been made in Europe or something—that were poking past the harness straps.  Sinder was watching him watch, skinny brown hands clasped under his chin, excited for his reaction. 

Gavin widened his eyes like he was really watching, watching hard.  Then he made up his own movie in his head.  In it, a future version of himself was giving the keynote speech at the MLA convention. 

Your understanding of Stump’s less-studied works is so inspiring, the cute grad-student volunteer purred as she escorted him from the stage.  Do you want to go swimming?

I didn’t bring a bathing suit, Gavin said.

Me, neither.  She winked and slipped a pool key into his hand.  Meet me at eleven.

“Fine,” Sinder said, stopping the video.  “Doesn’t look like you’re into it.”  Gavin had already forgotten to pretend he was watching.  He was absentmindedly trying to stick a band-aid to his blood-smeared hand. 

“I’m into it.  Totally into it.” He looked up at his roommate. What was that face you were supposed to make to show you were heartily enjoying lesbian porn? 

“Don’t patronize me.”  Sinder clicked the laptop shut.  Now Gavin could see the title of the book below it: The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy.  Guess that explained why it was so thick; a philosopher couldn’t tell you what a word like “epistemology” meant without a seventy-page treatise.

“You can’t focus.  It’s that Ashley in your class, right?”

Gavin had forgotten that Sinder knew about her.  He flopped backwards, banging his head against the dense futon mattress. Sinder liked his bed uncomfortable; Keeps me from oversleeping, he always said.

“She’s ruining porn for you.  I’ve heard that’s what happens when you have a real woman.” Sinder wheeled his chair closer to the futon, so he could lean over Gavin like a psychiatrist.  “Did you ask her out yet?”

 “No way, brah.” He didn’t actually talk like a frat boy except to Sinder, who could recognize the irony.  “Don’t you know anything about women?”

“No. Thanks for the reminder.”   

 “Listen.” Gavin rose to sitting.  Just one minute lying on the rock-hard futon was already making his back hurt.  “You can’t just go asking your student out during the second week of the semester.  You’ve gotta finesse it.  She needs to feel comfortable with you, to learn how much she really respects and admires you, before you make any moves.”

Something sticky touched Gavin’s hand—not that kind of sticky, more like jam or honey, but still, eww— and he jumped up from the bed.  It had to be a sign, clear as if it had been sent from on high by the chair of Sinder’s exam committee, that Gavin had been in Sinder’s room long enough.  

Wait, no—the stickiness was just Gavin’s blood.  He could see the red smudge he had left on the sky-blue comforter.  Anyway, it was still time to go.

“I get it,” Sinder said. “Choose your moment to attack.” The giant dictionary was on his lap now. He was probably trying to memorizing the entire thing.  Gavin had heard that philosophy exams were crazy hard, worse than English exams, though not quite as bad as history, which was the worst.  

“Exactly.”  Gavin stood in the doorway, one foot in Sinder’s room, one in the hall. He didn't bother mentioning the other reason that he couldn't ask Kayla out just yet.  Braden was a step ahead of him, it was true, in the flirting department.  But that was all the more reason for Gavin to hang back, play it cool, position himself as the alternative, the man to Braden's boy.  When the time came for Gavin to flirt, he would flirt circles around Braden.

“See, I never do that," Sinder said. "I usually tell them they’re hot the first time I meet them, or, like, ask to touch their hair or something.”

 Gavin shook his head. “Gives them too much power. You have to show them you’re not interested.”  He recognized the cockiness in his own voice as something he had heard in a movie or a commercial or something.  It kind of freaked him out not to sound like himself.  He wondered if Sinder could tell.

“How’d you get so smart?” Sinder asked.

“Only time confers wisdom, my son.”  Gavin frowned and stroked his imaginary beard.  His voice now was a kung-fu movie, but at least it was on purpose. “When you have reached the venerable age of twenty-nine, then you, too, will have mastered the enigmatic ways of those creatures known as women.” 

"Four years."  Sinder sighed.  "It will difficult to wait, master, but I will be patient." 

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Chapter 7>