Here's my set-up: my name is Caleb, and at the time of this story, I was just 18 years old, a few months out of high school, waiting for the first semester of university to start in a few weeks. I was the recipient of a partial track & field scholarship at my soon-to-be university and I had the body to match: young and lithe and toned and healthy. People who have seen pictures of me from that time in my life say that I looked like a young Chris Evans with dirty blonde hair. I had already moved from my house to a ridiculously small apartment near my university. In the three weeks I had before university started, I spent my time running around the park and familiarizing myself with my new surroundings.
I was running intervals in the park before lunch on a Saturday the first time I saw Mr. Koch. He stood out from among the other walkers, runners, bicyclists, and dog-walkers for two reasons. The first reason was he was movie-star level good looking, drawing looks from a couple of women chatting on benches in the park. He closely resembled Luca Argentero. (If you like your men hot, Italian, and silver-daddy-ish, then it doesn't get better. Take a second a look him up. It's worth your time. This story will be here waiting for you when you get back.) The second reason was his attire: it looked really weird to me. He was running along the same ovoid path around the park that I was, and I had lapped him several times already during my interval sprints already. He was running too, but he wasn't wearing anything like I or the other runners in the park were wearing. I was just in running shoes, running shorts, and a breathable running shirt. He was in some kind of skin tight form-revealing one-piece with a zipper in the middle of his chest and stomach that covered his muscular biceps and stretched all the way down to his knees, doing a great job of outlining his tight ass along the way.
I was so surprised at his form-fitting outfit that I mustered the courage to call out to him.
"Hey!" I screamed, running up behind him again.
He turned his head to look at me, making eye contact, and slowed down to let me catch up with him. His one-day unshaven scruff was flecked with grey. His hair was peppered through with silver at odd intervals. His amazingly avuncular and handsome face smiled welcomingly to me, waiting for me to say something.
"Sorry to bother you," I said, making sure my preamble was polite.
He just titled his head slightly and waited for me to continue. We were now jogging next to each other.
"Can I ask what you're wearing? I've never seen that before," I asked him, one of my fingers pointing at what I thought was maybe some kind of running leotard.
"Oh this? This is a triathlon suit," he replied, smiling widely, slightly pulling on the collar of his triathlon suit and then letting it go. The fabric snapped back to reveal his muscled chest again below the form fitting textile.
"Oh," I said. I knew what the triathlon was but I didn't know it had its own sportswear associated with it.
"You new here? I haven't seen you running around the park before," he asked me, still smiling his smile, his voice a friendly singsong of contagious excitement.
"Yeah, I moved here just last week," I answered, myself breaking into a smile as well.
"Oh, so you just got here! Let me welcome you then! I'm Emmanuel Koch. You can call me Mr. Koch," he said.
"Your name is Mr. Cock?" I parroted right back a lot louder than necessary, genuinely surprised that someone with that last name survived alive through elementary school, much less to adulthood.
"K. O. C. H," he retorted immediately, slowly enunciating each letter.
"Oh. Sorry," I said.
"You were thinking it was something else, weren't you?" he questioned playfully, a wide smile spreading across his lips, revealing a set of perfectly white teeth.
He finally slowed to a stop and turned to face me. I stopped right in front of him. Wow, he's tall was the first thing I thought.
"No. No, of course not," I said, rolling my eyes playfully, giggling a little.
"Oh it's okay. No reason to be embarrassed. A lot of the young guys that I tend to meet are interested in my last name," he stated, still smiling, joking through my lack of homophonous imagination.
I laughed at his joke, not really thinking through the implications of it at first. But then I started to wonder was this guy hitting on me? He was twice my age at least. He could be as old as my dad. And sure, he was very good looking but I wasn't into men.
"Oh. Oh. I'm not. Yeah, I'm not," I mustered a lame response to his previous innuendo.
"Ah oh well. My mistake," Mr. Koch said, smiling again, extending his hand to shake mine.
"No. Sorry. It's just...I'm not interested...in your last name," I said as I took his hand to shake, my face now flushed with red embarrassment.
He had a strong grip. My eyes darted to his arm. I noticed his biceps. They were large. They were outlined by the triathlon suit. Mr. Koch must work out a lot, and not just on the muscle groups required by the triathlon.
We stood there shaking hands for a lot longer than was socially acceptable. I started to smile embarrassingly. I was even shivering a little even though it was a warm day for reasons that I didn't yet intuit. He just continued to look at me, smiling.
"How about I change subjects?" he asked, giggling, clearly enjoying the predicament that his phrasing put me in.
"Oh yes please," I said, clearly embarrassed.
"How about some coffee? I always enjoy new people," he asked me.
"Oh that would be great," I replied immediately. But after a second, I started to wonder why he hadn't put another verb or something after "enjoy."
He slowly released my hand from our shake, but his fingers slowly traced along my fingers as he did so. I didn't understand why, but that felt nice.
We started walking toward what I thought would be one of the many coffee shops in this university town. We chatted the whole time. Mr. Koch was super interesting! He graduated from the university that I was about to start at! He was an airline pilot. He was an Air Force veteran. He was quite the sportsman too. He was a mountaineer as well as a triathlete! His marathon time was faster than mine and I was fast, already sub-3! He was married. His wife was an airline stewardess, but their schedules meant that they were at home together for maybe one week each month. She was away on a flight to Tokyo at the moment.
He suddenly stopped in front of a two story Victorian townhouse, an architecture that was very common among the houses around the more than century old university. It was at least another block to the closest coffee shop.
"Here we are," he announced, one of his muscular arms beckoning me up the steps to the entrance.