It was Sunday night that Mark's girlfriend dumped him, and he could barely find the energy to go to the play's first rehearsal the next morning.
She hadn't been especially nice about it. They hadn't seen much of each other in the last week. Mark blamed himself for that, and he had mistakenly assumed that was why she had been acting cold all through dinner. They'd been together long enough for him to feel comfortable flirting with her a little in a public place, but not so long that he figured out he should worry when she acted like she didn't notice.
So they got back to Mark's apartment, and just as he was starting to plan a pleasantly romantic way for the two of them to begin an intimate night together, she sat him down and had the talk.
Still wearing the sleeveless black dress, still with her blonde hair up, still the beautiful girl he'd spent months caring for and had dared to think he might have a future with, she let him have it. Not working out, not her type, the words crashed into him, meaningless in his stupor, until the phrase "someone else" triggered something hot and aching in his chest. As soon as he'd felt calm enough to act normal, he stood and interrupted her speech to suggest she leave. Which she gladly did, with a bare minimum of goodbyes unbecoming of a couple who'd been together since November.
Mark didn't sleep much that night, of course. The tortured feelings of hurt and vulnerability, the endless second-guessing punctuated with fury, didn't stop his lightly-muscled body from reacting to the memory of the way she'd moved.
Tossing and turning until three, he found himself embarrassed about his own arousal for the first time in many years.
That damnable organ was impatient after over a week without release, especially since it was accustomed to his girlfriend's -- ex-girlfriend's -- regular sexual appetite. Mark for some years now had given up masturbation except once in a great while, and the weekly exercise they'd been sharing had fueled that fire. Memories of her beauty, her tenderness, and her high-pitched grunt as she came, rose often to the top of his thoughts, as Mark quietly cried tears of self-pity into his pillow that night.
Several times as he rolled from one lonely side to the other, he'd had to adjust in his shorts the stiffness that he was certainly -- he wasn't pathetic, after all -- going to ignore. He'd just gotten dumped, and there was no way in hell he was going to jerk off over that bitch.
And he didn't.
So that was Mark's night before the kiss on Monday.
Barry slept fine Sunday night, as he did most nights.
A couple of weeks before, he and the girl he'd been seeing -- not really a girlfriend, though it'd gone on long enough and just started to get serious enough to make them wonder what that story was -- had broken it off amicably.
Though they'd phrased it to each other as "taking a break," they both knew what it meant, and Barry hadn't thought they would ever do much more than nod past each other on campus. He'd gotten drunk with some friends that night and, after that, shrugged it off.
Her showing up at his door three nights later, talkative, a little drunk, and way too familiar, was what he considered a bonus. Once her pants were off, he'd made it a point of pride to really go to town, licking her hard and fast, one hand pulling her panties aside as she moaned and writhed. They'd figured out they had no future, and they hadn't fucked enough times to really get familiar with each other's turn-ons. But that just-barely-novelty of another's still-strange body was a turn-on itself.
He'd enjoyed himself, then, being her booty call two weeks ago, rubbing her slick flesh, gently fingering her, telling her to hold her knees back and smiling as she stretched herself open for him. Making her cum on his tongue, once in a small way with "ohh"s and stretches, and once fingered nice and hard with quivering "uhh"s.
He'd decided he didn't feel like a condom that night, and he tried something they'd only done once before, and never to completion. Holding his fat, bare cock to her lips, he waited until she took him in her mouth. It felt good to slip himself between her lips, sliding back and forth, talking some gentle encouragement, until he could watch her pretty, flushed face as he made a sticky mess in her mouth. He smeared it on her lips and chin, both of them too hot to smile.
The smiles (sheepish) and hugs came a moment later. They crashed on his bed, and in the morning, with regrets, and awkward dressing in the suite's shared bathroom, but no real hard feelings, she'd left, this time for good. That was almost two weeks ago.
Barry slept well on that Sunday night two weeks later, but, like Mark, his body was attached to a penis that was starting to wonder where the next action was coming from.
Two weeks, the time itself, the everyday time having passed his needs by, was a tease as powerful as a lap dance. Barry awoke Monday morning after a tantalizing dream, lying half on his stomach with a hard-on wedged under him and the strong urge to thrust his muscular hips into the sheets.
Shaking off the unwelcome morning thoughts -- relieving his own lust was not something the stocky, manly ex-high school football player could ever see himself doing -- he was his own man and not some little loser -- Barry rolled out of bed and started the day. That was Barry's night before the kiss.
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Monday evening, after classes, was the play's first rehearsal. The cast was expected to know a few lines from key scenes, but mostly it was a chance for them to get to know each other and the director.
Ms. Mahoney was the director. She had chosen the play. The college, still struggling to build a reputation of seriousness, had an arts department that gave its professors plenty of creative freedom as long as they didn't do something outrageous or ridiculous.
And Ms. Mahoney was going to have to tread carefully to make sure this play didn't cross that line. She liked the material well enough, and sure, it wouldn't even have raised any eyebrows in New York.
But the college, while not in the "deep" South, was still in a part of the state plenty conservative enough to be shocked at a plot that revolved around gay lovers. She hoped she wouldn't start a riot when two men kissed on stage.
Mark and Barry had learned on Thursday that they'd been cast in the roles of the gay lovers at the heart of the play. One was shy but with a rich and unexpected inner life, the other brash and a little flamboyant covering a great sadness. Together the two characters faced adversity, and with a bit of humor and a growing love for each other, came to care for themselves and discover a new... and so on.
It was a fairly typical college play, a little too wacky in places, and a little too preachy in places, but solid and entertaining enough.
Fairly typical, except that near the end of the first act, in what would be quite a surprise to anyone who hadn't read the program and had in fact been living in a bubble universe since February, the two male leads would finally fall breathlessly and dramatically in love, embrace, kiss, and spend most of the second act showing each other loving affection.
"Hello, everyone," said Ms. Mahoney at 7:00 sharp, noting with satisfaction that all the cast were on time. "I like to jump right in and not waste time. We have seven weeks before curtain and that means we need to use every day. So let's do some introductions and then get started with some exercises." She told the group a little about herself, then turned to her cast.
