In Lie Flynn

So what a day I had today! Today my Statistics professor sucked my dick, let me suck his, and what a long, thin one he has. And, he begged me to let him eat out my ass.

That was an experience I have never had before. And boy we'd both be booted from Bolingbroke Christian College if anyone knew.

I had this experience in a bath-house. I heard a little about bathhouses. I understand they kind of went out of style after the AIDS crisis.

But they're still around. How did I find out about them?

I have a ghost, a gay ghost as my best friend.

I wonder. Bolingbroke is a very Christian college, and so they believe in the supernatural, but I doubt anyone would believe that I was hanging out with a male hustler who was beaten to death in 1971.

And it was incredibly weird when Flynn took me to the bathhouse. Of course, all the men in there thought I was entering on my own, by myself.

It's weird having an invisible friend, maybe an imaginary friend.

But Flynn has to be real. There is no way I would have discovered this place on my own, man. Not a bathhouse!

"They don't spread it around town, about Bubble Bounce." Flynn explained as we walked up the stairs to the place.

"It used to be five bucks to get in, now it's about forty. I get in for free, of course, no one can see me."

"But why do you go?" I asked curiously. "You can't get laid anymore, can you, Flynn?"

"Eli, my man, I am what's called a voyeur now." Flynn explained airily as I handed my shitty Discover credit card to the man in the little booth.

One of the benefits of having a stingy father is, I've always had to work.

So I have a credit card and I don't have to account for the weird stuff on the statements.

Of course Dad is so innocent he might think I was going to a bathhouse for hygienic reasons, right?

I kind of smiled weakly at the creepy little guy in the booth, and then I went in, holding the key he'd given me.

"That goes on your ankle after you get undressed." Flynn explained. "See how it's on one of those stretchy things like your girlfriend wears on her ponytail?"

How I wish he wouldn't talk about Cathleen just now.

As we walked down the floor, I looked at all the little rooms.

"You can rent them, and invite people in, though I could never afford to, back in the day.

Or, if you're cute--" Flynn smirked at this, he knew he was--" You might get invited in by a rich guy. Otherwise, get it on in the pool."

I peered down the hall, and yup, there was a pool, actually three of them, with men in them, fooling around. Right there in the open!

Back in my hometown, I was way closeted. I had a fling with Mr. Danziger, my father's insurance guy, and fooled around with some guys on the team, but it was real hush-hush.

I couldn't get used to all the public stuff.

Were those two guys KISSING? I never kissed a guy. I tried to kiss Gordo once, when we were fooling around in his room, and he punched me and threw me out.

"Only faggots kiss each other!" he'd said to me.

It would be kind of nice to kiss a guy, I thought. Shit, I'm nineteen years old, it's time to have some fun.

Flynn looked at me carefully. He could see the wheels turning in my head.

"It's going to be a circus, I tell you this, Eli. It might be a carnival today!"

Suddenly one of the side room doors opened and a curly haired boy, just gorgeous, lips like Mick Jagger's called back in, "Fuck you, you neurotic twink, I'm done!"

He paused. "Makes me want to swear off men forever, Quincy does." Then he noticed me. "But then I saw you!"

He smiled. "I haven't seen you here before, Dimples!"

"Say something, you horny idiot" Flynn said behind me.

I gulped "It's--it's my first time. It's nice!" God, was that a STUPID thing to say.

NICE, like I'm visiting a goddamn bakery or something.

He chucked me under the chin and smiled sweetly. "Welcome!" and he flitted off, as Dad would say.

I had been reluctant to come here, but Flynn thought I needed a break from Bolingbroke Christian college, and of course Gordo, my erstwhile lover, wouldn't talk about being gay at all.

But, as Flynn commented. "You done enough talking. It's about participation now, Elijah!"

He'd giggled. "You and Gordo like to do it in the dorm shower, so this will be old home week, I think. Just more variety."

Now, l a fat, gross guy squeezed by me in the hallway. He was soaking from, I assume, a dip in the water, though he was so fat it might have been perspiration.

The guy gave me kind of a look. He had huge lips, like mating eels.

So, I hustled to the locker area quickly.

"Like I told you, put your shit in the locker, and the key on your ankle. "

"I'll be totally naked!"

"Everyone else seems to be, right, Eli?"

Of course Flynn was wearing his stained, tattered Spandex pink pants, that he was always in, but of course he was the exception.

I'd asked him why he couldn't change clothes once in a while, and he'd explained that this was what he'd wearing when he'd been killed by the bashers that night in 1971.

"An' they don't have no Sears Roebuck Men's Wear in the afterlife."

Now he laughed at me, as he leaned against one of the lockers.

"It's going to be a ball for you. You are like a doe in the woods, or a fawn or somethin'. I grew up in the slums, an' never went to one of them Fresh Air camps."

He paused. "My stickball buddies would have razzed me. But I went to see the Bambi movie when it come out, and that is what you're like. Bambi after his Momma was shot, lost an' tryin' to figger it all out."

We paused conversation and I watched a big muscular Indian guy corn holing a bearded bookstore type fellow, RIGHT THERE IN THE LOCKER ROOM.

The Indian guy--(a feather Indian, not a "dot", this guy was huge) slammed harder and harder before he moaned, and then, unbelievably, the Beard asked him if he could lick his own shit off the guy's cock.

Flynn watched me gape and gawk with an amused smile.

"Yep, you're just like a pretty little Bambi."

"They should be wearing condoms." I said. I had palmed some before I'd undressed. But where could I keep them now, in my ass?

"Yeah, probably, but it feels good going raw, you know."

"But they could get AIDS, Flynn. Or crabs, or the syph."

"Y'know, Bambi, some people just don't think too much about tomorrow."

After leaving the locker area, I jumped in the pool. It was winter, and I was looking forward to a dip, as Bolingbroke was too cheap to have an indoor pool on the campus.

I was a competitive swimmer and had been looking forward to a swim, but the water wasn't very deep. And of course that was natural. It wasn't for swimming, was it?

Jesus, guys everywhere, making out and stroking each other off. One guy actually went under water, holding his breath, to have his mouth go to town on another guy's wick.

Freakishly, Flynn got in the Lotus position and began levitating above the water. I guess ghosts don't swim.

"So who you want?"

"What?"

"See the cute Negro? Are you a dinge queen?"

"What?" (I felt like a repeating recording)

"Do you like that cute colored over there?"

"Flynn, that's racist. He's an African-American, a person of color."

"Person of color, colored person, what's the diff?"

Of course I couldn't argue with him, I'd look ridiculous talking to myself in the pool.

But how do you take a Spirit to Sensitivity Training?

"Elijah, is that you?"

I turned around and was shocked. It was Dr. Lapin. Dr. Lapin was my statistics professor!

"He's lookin' at your dick, Eli. You go, Teach." Flynn could be very annoying.

This was weird. Lapin was a fairly attractive man, kind of graying at the temples. I thought he had a wife and a bunch of rug rats.

He does have a wife. She's a fattie, and teaches Home Economics, a major that is very popular with the girls, and certain strange boys at the College.

"Good thing you already have a rising B in my class. This could be an opportunity for blackmail."

So I had a ride home from the Bubble Bounce Bathhouse! Of course, Dr. Lapin let me off about six blocks before the school entrance.

"We won't talk of this," he muttered after I got out of the car. Flynn had sizzled into thin air, so I wasn't distracted.

"No sir. We won't do this again."

"Oh, I didn't say that. My wife is out of the house on Thursdays, I'd like it if you can come for an afternoon. I can create a Lab for you to make time for."

He drove off before I protested that there were no Labs in Statistics.