Corey Cooper wrote this journal on his laptop in two places, the first part sitting on the throne of the bathroom in the motel room he was brought to, and the rest at home after his battery gave out.
***
It was somewhere around 4 in the morning when I finally gave in to the fact that I wasn't going to be getting any sleep, and while the man sleeping beside me wasn't helping with his occasional snoring, the truth is that I never could sleep well in any bed but my own.
The lumpy mattress was no help either and the pillows were as flat as pancakes as well. The sheets were rough and very messy, although to be fair they were clean when we got here.
'Here' is room 14 of the Skylane Motel, a seedy looking motel on Central Avenue in Colonie, New York that I was very familiar with. Not from having stayed here, but because my school bus passed by it every day for 4 years to and from high school.
Those days were now behind me, and now I had graduated to a motel bed for sex. Considering that my only other experiences with guys had been one time in the woods and another time in a van, I suppose the Skylane Motel was a step up the ladder, albeit a modest step indeed.
If I were to write a Yelp review about the motel, I'm not sure it would be accepted but it would go something like this...
Two stars - The bed was awful and there was a stale smell in the room, although part of that wasn't the motel's fault. The shower was the best part and was big enough for two. Don't know how much it cost because the man that brought me here paid for it, but I guess if you're looking for a place to do just about anything that can be done to an 18 year old inexperienced kid, this is as good as any.
Probably too long that way but it's the way I felt. I suppose I could wake up Alex and ask him the price, but that wouldn't be fair because if you could actually fall asleep in this thing, good for him.
Another question I could ask would be, "Say Alex, what your last name?" since he didn't offer it and I was too intimidated to ask. I get intimidated a lot, and whether it's because I'm only about 5'6" and 125 pounds or so or because it's just the way I am, I don't know.
I guess I take after my Mom in that respect, although since my father - and I use that term loosely - took off so long ago I wouldn't know what he was like because my memory doesn't go back that far. My mother doesn't have much backbone and I don't either.
Maybe that's why these older guys hone in on me, because all three of the guys I've been with have been much older than me and sense that I'm easy to manipulate. The man who took me into the woods to explain how oral sex works was probably on social security and the man in the van likely wasn't far from it himself.
The man in the van actually made me show him my driver's license to prove I really was 18 before he sucked my dick because he said I looked like Bart Simpson, but the man in the woods didn't care how old I was even though that day happened to be my 18th birthday.
I think it was that date when I decided that I might as well give up the idea that I was ever going to find a girl, because I had little luck. Maybe they sensed that I wasn't really all that interested in the opposite sex and was just going through the motions to appear "normal" to the world, especially Mom. I liked guys.
So in the five weeks or so that passed since that day at Cook Park it seemed like I had been making up for lost time, and it all led up to this. Room 14 of The Skylane Motel. It was almost sad that college was ahead of me and my high school days were over, because passing this place would have given me a chance to announce how I spent my summer.
"Hey, it's The Skylane!" I imagined myself saying to the gang on the bus. "I spent a night in room 14 there with a man named Alex. Didn't know his last name though, but that guy was something. He did stuff to me that I never thought I would do!"
That scenario was preposterous of course and would never have happened, because I kept my mouth shut and my eyes straight on the bus all the time. Even that wasn't enough to keep from getting bullied sometimes, but if they sensed I was gay or even unsure of it, Corey Cooper's life would have been even worse than it was.
Alex knew my whole name and just about everything somebody could learn in the course of about an hour in the beat-up Toyota he picked me up in, after asking for for directions as I stood at the bus stop in front of the Library.
The fact that I got into the car was ridiculous on my part because they guy looked a little rough, although since it was about 6 in the afternoon he had a right to have 5 0'clock shadow on his weathered face, but regardless he was a stranger.
"Don't get in the car with a stranger!" was one of my mother's favorite tunes, but it didn't sink in apparently. Alex didn't say he lost his puppy and wanted me to help him find it though, and that was something Mom had cautioned me about, nor did he offer me candy. He was just lost.
"I grew up around here but it's all changed so much," Alex had told me. "I've been away for a while, but I remember that the place I'm looking for is near Mohawk Mall."
Apparently he had been away for quite a while since that place ate the wrecking ball when I was a kid and was reborn as another indecipherable maze of stores, but I knew where he was headed because I didn't live that far from there.
I mentioned that and Alex then offered to give me a ride, and that way he could make sure he got where he was going with me as a guide. That would save me bus fare as well, Alex told me, and so I agreed, throwing my backpack in the back seat and hopping in.
So I knew that Alec was from here but away for a while, I guessed in the army or something but didn't ask, and that was all I knew. By the time we were drinking beer in the car at Cook Park, Alex knew everything about me except my social security number.
"I can tell you're a lot like me," Alex said as we drank nasty lukewarm Coors Light, and when his hand landed on my knee I jumped but said nothing. "You're lonely and can use a friend. I'd like to be your friend."
"Okay," I remember saying.
"Does your Mom know?" Alex asked me as I drained a beer.
"Know what?"
"That you like fellas," he explained, and I guess my eyes must have popped out because I hadn't said anything about that during my rambling, but couldn't find words to protest.
"It's okay. I do too," Alex told me. "Been a long time since I've set eyes on such a sweet thing like you. You look so pure and sweet. Bet you don't even shave yet."
That wasn't quite true because I did shave, about once every week or so, usually running the electric razor over my face so Mom didn't think that her gift wasn't appreciated, but the cheek Alex rubbed with the backs of his hairy fingers was a lot softer than his hand.
"Don't have a place here yet," Alex told me as his hand went back onto my leg, higher up my thigh than before. "I would like us to go someplace where we can get comfortable though. Would you like that?"