Chapter 3: Rinse & Repeat

The Higher Education of Matt Griffith

Chapter 3: Rinse & Repeat

Wednesday, August 9, 1995

Author's Note: Copyright 2024. All characters in this story are fictional and are not meant to represent any living persons.

Matt tried to lose himself in the first week of his college routine, which, oddly, was monotonously the same. As in the movie Groundhog Day same. Each day began with morning wood. He needed to piss and shower, but that required a trip to the communal bathroom, and he obviously didn't want to walk in sporting wood.

Jerking off was the obvious solution, but William had ordered him not to do that.

So, Matt would sit on his bed, willing his dick to deflate, trying not to think about what had happened Saturday evening (the kissing, the blowjob) or what would happen that Friday evening. Whatever connection there was between no shower, no deodorant, and a jockstrap eluded him. One thing was obvious, though: William no longer (if he ever really had) viewed Matt as only a newbie to be tutored. William found the idea of Matt in a jockstrap--pit hair and pubes au naturel--enticing. That thought alone made Matt's cock stand taller.

Eventually the boner would subside.

Matt would join his dormmates in the bathroom, which serviced the thirty guys on their half of that floor. He would make small talk while waiting for one of six shower stalls to become available. There was no charged energy, none of the bravado and peacocking found in locker rooms. These kids (some still pimply) had that home-schooled social awkwardness, that deer-in-the-headlights uncertainty about the Christian etiquette of a same-sex shower room experience. These were the kind of guys who, needing to piss in a public restroom, would bypass the urinal and head to a stall. Before entering the shower, they would wrap a towel around their torsos and then awkwardly wriggle out of their underwear, not even certain whether this should be done with their backsides to or away from their peers.

And since this was the first week of school and they were all still learning each other's names and vital statistics, each day's stilted bathroom conversations were reruns. "What's your name again?" (There was a Seth, a Brian, and two Marks. No D'Shaun's or Marquis's--like Matt had known at every other school he'd attended.) "Where are you from?" (Insert name of city, Oklahoma.) "What are you majoring in?" (Two pre-meds, one electrical engineering, a few business or accounting, and several future pastors. There was almost always an accompanying story of how God had led that person to his major or how God was going to use that person to further His kingdom.)

Biologically these kids were all roughly Matt's age. Socially they were light years behind, which Matt attributed to the fact that he was an Air Force brat who had been forced to change schools and learn to navigate their different social structures each time his dad got new orders. Hell, Matt had probably attended more schools than several of his dormmates combined!

Matt didn't do the towel-around-the-torso twist. He had no qualms about being naked in front of these guys, which, combined with the fact that he was on the soccer team, elevated his status among them.

Morning wood. Shower. Small talk. Breakfast in the cafeteria (with the same heat-lamp exhausted omelets), re-meeting a different group of kids, and listening to them ask each other about their majors. Inevitably Matt's thoughts would drift to that coming Friday evening and the mystery of the jock strap. He decided the jockstrap somehow signified that William wanted Matt to fuck him.

Matt's mind supplied the missing details (the curve of William's ass, the size of his cock). Cue the erection.

One would think that Matt would learn not to tuck his dick in the downward dog position. Sadly no. So, he'd sit in the cafeteria, watching Mark #3 chew with his mouth open, while beneath the table Matt's poor, bent cock strained to escape the confines of his boxer briefs and his jeans. No getting up to refill his coffee. Would Friday evening never come?

Two classes after breakfast (English and Math). Matt watched with disinterest as his classmates sorted themselves into the usual castes (rich kids, smart kids, pretty kids, kiss-ups). He made conversation, when necessary, but mainly tried to concentrate on not getting a boner while daydreaming about William.

Chapel was next. Daily, mandatory chapel. (Acapella singing, the signature distinction of the Churches of Christ. Prayers--plural. Sermon.) Matt's relationship with God was evolving. Or should he say devolving? Matt knew he would have to face this issue, just not now during his present obsession with William.

Since chapel was mandatory, William had to be there somewhere. Matt would scan the rows of students until he spotted his prey, and having found him, would track his every movement, every elegant flutter of his long fingers. Matt's chest would tighten with secret longing. He remembered William's warning not to confuse his feelings with love. Ok. But what exactly was the word to describe this ache? This neediness? It occurred to him that, from William's perspective, Matt was light years behind in terms of sexual maturity. That realization gave Matt empathy for his dormmates. They had all been tossed together into this new world and were all doing the best they could to adapt.

The high- and low- point of each day was watching William during chapel. Spotting him and studying him was exhilarating. Watching him interact with other people and knowing the two of them could not similarly interact in public, was a kick in the gut. Matt's feelings were raw, his nerves jangled. (Jangled like after riding The Wildcat, the deliberately rickety, wooden roller coaster at Frontier City, hauled up and hurled down, jerked right, then whipped left. Every day at chapel Matt bought a ticket and stood in line for that ride.)

There was a mystery about William Matt could not solve. How, in a homophobic state like Oklahoma, at a private Christian university (OC obviously) where homophobia was amplified by the King James Bible's constantly equating sodomy with ABOMINATION (a term so heinous it was used only for witchcraft, the antichrist, and fags), did the unapologetically effeminate William survive? That was a question Matt hoped to put to William when they met at Johnnies on Friday, hopefully right before they drove to the country and Matt got to sodomize him.

Matt did not forget his theory that there were eighteen other gays in the student body besides William and himself. Chapel provided the perfect opportunity to search for them, like SETI scouring outer space for evidence of alien life. He desperately needed to find his tribe, the 2% of males who were born to love each other. For years he had felt like he was some freak of nature, the last living member of a dying species. Then he had met William, which had made him yearn even more for the company of his kind.

All around the chapel students connected with their own tribes (orchestra, sports, computers). Even the misfit-toy kids found each other and moved to their own little island (a row near the rear of the chapel).

Matt could find no gays. He wasn't surprised that there were no other outré effeminate guys like William. (The surprise was that William was tolerated at OC.) Matt couldn't even reliably identify suspected gays. From TV, movies, and the broader culture he'd gathered that gays could be identified by their mincing or light-in-the-loafers walk, by their over-coifed appearance, by lilting or lisping speech, and, of course, their generic "feminine" behavior. He'd spot the occasional guy who checked one of those boxes, but not the rest.

If there were other gays at OC, and Matt believed there had to be, they camouflaged themselves well and were smart enough not to sit with other members of the tribe. Matt had not forgotten William's reference to a secret gay club. It could not be a club of one, where William swapped hats to be president, secretary, and treasurer.

Matt knew he had to be missing some key information here. He had a manly gait and didn't check any of the boxes on the gay meter. Yet at the new student mixer William had seen through his straight demeanor and discerned the inner gay. How?

After chapel Matt went to lunch. One more class (history of something). Then soccer practice.

For the next three hours Matt would thrive in his element, his equivalent of the orchestra tribe. He was used to Oklahoma's near-hundred-degree heat. He'd been in enough locker rooms to know what to expect (the uninhibited testosterone- and adrenaline-fueled jostling and swagger). He'd been the new guy enough times to know and respect the pecking order. On this team new guys were known only by the name of the city where they had graduated high school. (Matt was "Mustang", which was infinitely better than poor "Idabel".) New guys did not earn the right to be called by their name until they had either scored a goal in a game or blocked one.

Matt felt like a kid compared to the upperclassmen on the team, who seemed to fully embody manhood. He was used to that feeling too. He remembered being a gangly fifteen-year-old on a team with seniors.

Matt's teammates were all Alpha Males, presumed straight (definitely straight acting--not checking any boxes on the gay meter). They assumed Matt to be one of them. True to his promise to himself to refrain from sins of commission, Matt did not engage in the straight bravado. He allowed himself the sin of omission by declining the opportunity to disabuse his teammates of their error.

Every day after practice, Matt went to the cafeteria, dining with his teammates. Thankfully these guys were not interested in each other's majors. They didn't have to bother with asking each other's names and hometowns either, since those were rolled into one's nickname. They had their own conversational topics which repeated each day as religiously as reruns of MASH. They argued about whose favorite team was the best. They argued the merits of FIFA's new back-pass rule.

These were the kind of guys Matt had thought attracted him. More than thought. While Matt had never allowed himself to have a crush on any of his teammates, the guys he had conjured in his mind during countless furious jacking sessions over the years had been amalgams of what he had seen and admired in locker rooms: tall, masculine, well but not overly-muscled, softly furred guys.

It was shocking, then, how his mind constantly cycled back to the subject of William, how Matt could spring a boner just thinking of William's sashaying walk, the way he swung his bony ass.

Matt was able to put William out of his mind during practice and dinner, sometimes even during his brief, evening study time. But once Matt retired to his room for the evening, William dominated his thoughts and dreams. The dreams varied in their details, but had the same basic theme, much like the sermons during chapel differed as to the specific subject text, but always reinforced the theme that God loved people so much that He had no choice but to punish them for their sins.

One night Matt dreamt that he was in a large locker room crowded not only with his teammates, but with a few hundred other students (male and female). The non-soccer playing occupants of the room were lined along the outer walls, singing acapella hymns. Matt and his teammates, in the center of the room, were stripping down post-practice, peeling off socks, shrugging out of their jockstraps, heading for the nearby showers.

The room was steamy and smelled of testosterone and sweat. Because it was so crowded, Matt and his teammates were pressed together, bumping shoulders, their swinging dicks dangerously close to each other's bare asses. The students around them were singing Leaning on the Everlasting Arms ("What a fellowship, What a joy divine, Leaning on the everlasting arms. What a blessedness, What a peace is mine, Leaning on the everlasting arms.")

The pack of naked players slowed, then stalled at the tiled entrance to the shower room. Matt, near the back of the pack, elbowed his way through the sweat-slickened bodies, trying to ascertain why they could not enter the showers.

There at the shower entrance, his back to them, stood William, a towel wrapped around his torso.

William wriggled seductively as he reached a hand under the towel and removed his underwear. He held them up for all to see.

Matt's teammates' cocks sprung to attention, hard, bobbing, urging William to lose the towel, the sole article of fabric remaining on his skinny femme frame.

William slowly undid the towel, timing his motions with the rhythm of the student choir. He paused a moment before letting the towel drop to the floor.

Matt strained to see William's ass through the steam and the press of cocks and abs, hoping to glimpse William's hole (a sight Matt had never beheld on any guy). That was the last thing Matt remembered: a foggy vision of a peeking, pink hole, before he awoke from the dream, his boxer briefs and his sheet slick with emission.

And that was only Wednesday night. Two days and one night remained before his date with William.