Monday’s first track practice was indeed hard, especially for distance runners like me and Bridget, but it was nowhere near as short as promised. The ten-minute ‘pep talk’ from our captains at the end about the upcoming season was just a cherry on top of the marathon afternoon. As we all broke up for the long walk back to the dorms from way up on the hill where the track was, I found Bridget, Carla, and Beth surrounding me as I walked. They steered our way off to the longer route back, herding me like a sheep away from our teammates. Or like a lamb to the slaughter, perhaps.
Since I planned to treat them just like the guys, I let them drag things out just the same way. They even followed the same basic script for the most part… to begin with.
Then things got weird and difficult.
“Now wait just a damned minute,” Carla demanded. “Do these two girls know each other at all?”
“They have been pretty much best friends for years,” I replied, not really considering my answer.
All three of them stopped dead in their tracks. Bridget reached out and spun me around by my shoulder. “You went out with a girl, and hit that on your first date with her. Moreover, it was on your first date ever. And her best fucking friend comes on to you less than forty-eight hours later? What did this Carrie say about you?”
“The trip to the beach was not a date,” I said awkwardly. “Mary wasn’t coming on to me. It was me who asked her out for the date, and that was not until on the ride home.”
All three of them laughed out loud at that. I narrowed my eyes at their sudden hilarity.
Carla spoke first. “Alistair…” Fuck that new name! “She drove for almost an hour with you, alone, to the beach, where she wore this bathing suit,” my light brown-haired friend continued relentlessly, waving her phone with that picture on it, “where she had you rub lotion on her back, right?”
I wanted to get back in control of this situation. “Back and backside, yes,” I said defiantly.
Carla’s eyes bugged out. “She had you rub lotion on her ass?” she virtually screamed.
Beth patted me on the shoulder. “Let us let you in on a girl secret, Alistair,” she said condescendingly and with much glee. “That girl had already decided that she wanted to bone you, not just simply go out with you, before she even called you that morning you went to the beach.”
“What?” I exclaimed. All three of them just nodded at me.
“Which brings us back to my question,” Bridget ground out through her irritatedly gritted smile. “What did this Carrie girl tell her best god-damned friend about you that had that friend set out immediately to jump your bones?”
“I don’t know!” I shouted back. We had stumbled near one of those subjects I had thought I might ask some questions of my own about.
“Well, think!”
The three of them just stood there, in the middle of the long, deserted path back to the campus, and stared me down.
I thought furiously. “Okay, there were two things that everybody kept mentioning like they were huge deals,” I said, still thinking. I briefly realized I had almost said, “all three of them kept mentioning.” That would have been a fuck up.
“And those things were?” my chief interrogator, Bridget, prompted sweetly.
“Okay, first you need to understand: I apparently grew up in some weird place where few guys seem to like eating pu… um, uh, cunnilingus,” I said earnestly.
They all looked at me. “And you do,” Bridget said calmly.
“Of course,” I snorted. “What’s not to love? It’s fun, and the real cool part is the way they looked while I…” I trailed off, aware I just might be over-sharing on the details. They were my friends but, even in my mind, they were girls… sort of. But I couldn’t help myself. “It’s fucking awesome. Doesn’t everybody know that?”
“So, you have gone downtown twice now, and you are this enthusiastic?” Beth asked.
“Three times,” I replied automatically. If I was going to sheepishly admit that I needed additional information, I at least wanted to make sure I got the best advice I could garner.
“Oh ho! Who got it twice?” Beth asked.
“Let’s not get bogged down in that level of detail,” Bridget said, dismissively, tossing her red curly hair. That saved me from having to think yet again about how to evade talking about Maddie. That was where I had to be careful here, I thought to myself.
Bridget looked at Beth and Carla, as if summing up the explanation. “So he is some kind of lingual savant,” she said, ignoring my presence. “I think that explains things.” The others nodded.
“Oh by the way,” said Carla as we started walking the rest of the way back to school. “You said there were two things. What was the other?”
“I dunno,” I said waving my hand in dismissal. “Apparently dicks come in different sizes or something.”
Our progress stopped again. Even more abruptly.
“Alistaire, dear,” Beth asked sweetly. “What size does yours come in?”
“I dunno. I never thought I ought to measure it,” I replied in confusion. “It comes up to about here on me,” I said indicating where my cock reached on my abdomen when it was interested.
“And how big around is it?” Beth went on, just a sweetly.
I made a gesture with my fingers, shrugging.
They looked at each other.
“Oh, fuck this,” exclaimed Carla. “This is bullshit. Drop your pants, I have to see this thing.”
I was confused at being called out on this, of all details. My hands automatically strayed toward my waist band, but I stopped and explained, “It’s not, um, interested right now! It’s the same size as most everybody else I’ve seen in the shower when it’s like this.”
“Stop reaching for your pants,” Bridget shouted desperately. “We are not going to all stand here and worship your cock!”
“Worship? What the fuck are you talking about? I’m just trying to…” I said uncertainly.
“Look,” Bridget said, holding up her hands like she was describing a smallish rainbow trout that she had caught. “You say your penis is about this long, right?”
“A little more, yeah,” I said, examining the gap.
“I definitely call bullshit,” Carla said. “Look, next time you think about this Carrie or Mary, pull out a ruler, hold it next to this mighty scepter of yours, and send us a picture.”
“Yeah, right,” I scoffed. “I’m not sending dick-pics to you guys.”
“Damn, and he was being so co-operative…” Carla muttered.
“I still don’t see what…” I began, before Bridget cut me off.
“How the actual fuck can you be so smart and yet so dumb? Al, you have at least two qualities that girls find both rare and highly desirable. Word about that gets around.” She turned to my other friends. “Which is why we are going to keep our mouths shut about this,” she said meaningfully.
“I don’t know,” Beth giggled. “Alistaire might want us to talk him up. A few choice words in the right ears, and he’ll be plowing his way through the Senior class!”
“That sounds good to me,” I chirped. They all three hit me-hard enough to hurt in one case. I think it was Carla.
“Al… Alistaire,” Bridget said. Great, now she was doing it. “You are our friend. We know there are girls out there for you. Obviously there are girls out there for you. But you have already figured out how to ask a girl out all on your own. Do that here, if some girl interests you. Don’t rely on your Yelp reviews.”