Jumbo (2 page)

He saw some of the other guys — Jack and Mason and Tyler and Luke. And he saw Robby Michaels, the jerk who had started it all by calling him Jumbo in the first place. At lunch he sat with Luke. He most normally did. And all the guys he saw during the day — all the guys from the swim team and other guys he knew, all greeted him in a friendly way, saying, “Hey, Jumbo,” though no one said, “How’s it hanging, Jumbo?”

Mitchell told himself that they were being friendly. He had friends. He had a lot of friends, and a lot of the girls were his friends, and all of them were being friendly. The only thing that had changed, somehow, was his name. And to most of these people that meant nothing, or Mitchell supposed it couldn’t, because they weren’t laughing at him. Or were they?

“Marley almost blew his top on Friday,” Luke said at lunchtime. “He said if you didn’t show up today you’d be off the team — and you could kiss your scholarship goodbye.”

“You reckon I’ll get one?”

“Hell. Who knows? I don’t think any of us will. We’re not that good.”

“I did win a state final.”

Luke smirked. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

This was Luke joking, a sort of jerky joking that he always did. Luke was Mitchell’s best friend, though even Luke was calling him Jumbo now, interspersing it every now and then with a “Mitch,” which was what he had always used to call him.

Mitchell was wondering why Luke hadn’t rung him. If Coach Marley had made such a big deal about Mitchell coming today, he didn’t know why Luke couldn’t have called and at least have told him what Marley had said. Luke had let him down in the past, but he was a good friend, Mitchell said to himself, and he decided not to say anything about it to Luke, not asking him why he hadn’t called, as he didn’t want to start an argument, or set up any tension between them.

3

The truth of the matter was that Mitchell was in love with Luke. At least, he supposed so. This is what he said to himself. And he spent long hours lying on his bed, listening to music — to love songs — and dreaming of Luke, making the lyrics fit the situation. Sometimes he felt as though his chest would burst when he thought of Luke, and he knew what heartache meant, because it actually hurt, like when he couldn’t catch his breath after sprinting laps.

This feeling in his chest, this feeling he had for Luke, was like something had lodged in his heart and wouldn’t go away — something like a claw — something tearing at his insides. And the only way Mitchell was ever going to be able to fix this feeling was to somehow get to hug Luke, to hold Luke’s body and draw him into a kiss, to put his hands in Luke’s soft blond hair. And finally, ultimately, to lie in a soft bed with Luke and make love to him.

Mitchell hoped and believed with all his heart that these things could and would happen, and there were signs from time to time, hopeful signs, that Luke might be gay. A smile. A turning of the head. A laugh. A wave.

“Is that a
sock?
”

“What?”

“Oh, man, have a look at this.”

Mitchell had been dreaming. He had been day-dreaming about Luke, and at the same time, he had been pulling his underpants down in the locker room. There was a special way to do this. He held onto the bunch, where the sock was, at the front of his underpants and then pulled them down, hiding the sock in his hand. Though he didn’t do it like this at home, after school, when he got changed. He just pulled his underpants down. And that was what he had done now, in the locker room, getting ready for swimming practice.

Tyler had called everyone over and they were all standing around and looking at it. The sock (it was a white one) was on the locker room floor, rolled up into a bunch the way Mitchell always had it.

“He had a sock in his jocks!” Tyler said, and someone patted Mitchell on the back. He was standing there naked, his little cock erect (the way it always was) and the other guys were turning away from him, going back to getting changed. Mitchell reached down and picked up the sock. He put it in his locker. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to cry, and so he did things slowly. He pulled his speedos out and stepped into them. He pulled them up. Somehow, he always felt better once he had his speedos on, but as he looked down now at his little erection poking forward in the speedos, he felt like shit, like nothing.

A zero.

He grabbed his towel and walked out to the pool, his goggles tucked into the hip of his speedos. Luke skipped up behind him and put a hand on Mitchell’s shoulder.

“Did you see Sarah today?”

Mitchell shook his head. He couldn’t speak.

“I tell you man, she’s hot for you. She said you’re cute. If you ask her, she’ll go out with you.”

Mitchell couldn’t imagine asking Sarah, or rather, he could imagine it. He would just walk up to her and say, “Do you want to go out with me?” or something equally stupid, and she would probably say yes, the way Luke said she would.

Sarah was okay. But she wasn’t a friend of Mitchell’s. He had never really had much to do with her because she had only moved to West River High last year. And since then, well, he had only been in one of her classes.

He wasn’t going to ask her to go out with him. He thought about it for a moment, with Luke’s hand on his shoulder, and he knew that he couldn’t do it. Luke’s hand was like a warm patch of sunshine, spreading some sort of magical gold through Mitchell’s shoulder blades. If only he could somehow turn to Luke and say, “Do you want to go out with me? We could go out together.”

Luke would laugh. Mitchell knew that. Luke would laugh.

4

Coach made them work hard. By the end of the session, Mitchell was breathing heavily, and he was looking forward to getting into the locker room, to getting under a shower, putting on some clean, dry clothes, and getting home, where his mom would be cooking dinner and everything would be peaceful.

As usual, he was one of the last into the locker room because the other guys ran, racing each other to the showers, even though you weren’t supposed to run, though Coach Marley had stopped telling them not to run last year.

By the time Mitchell got into the locker room, there were clouds of steam erupting from the showers. There were twelve guys on the team and eight showers. And usually, particularly when it was cold, guys liked to have long showers, so if you weren’t one of the first ones in, you had to sit, naked, with a towel wrapped around your waist, until someone finished.

There weren’t any stalls around the showers, which was how Mitchell had been seen by the guys in the first place. The showers were all in a row, folded into a corner of the locker room, four along one wall, and four along the adjacent wall. It was the corner of the locker room for the showers.

Lately, over the last few weeks, guys had started sharing showers. It was Tadd Parker who had started it. Jack had got to a shower before him, and then Tadd had said, “We could share.”

Slowly, since that had happened, more and more of the guys had been claiming a right to get into the showers too. Not that they could stand under the water at the same time, but they stood around and took turns ducking under the showers, soaping themselves with the antiseptic soap, and then pushing each other out of the way. It had got so that there were ten regulars in the showers together, while Jack and Mitchell waited on the benches for someone to finish. But today, when Mitchell got into the locker room, Jack was in the showers as well, so that there were eleven guys sharing eight showers.

Mitchell pulled his speedos down and slung them over his locker door with his goggles. He wrapped his towel around his waist and went and sat on the benches, waiting for a shower. He knew he’d have to wait a long time, ten or fifteen minutes, and usually, it didn’t feel so bad, because Jack would be sitting there beside him, and the two of them would talk. Jack was a little smaller than Mitchell, both of them being fairly slender, though they were built like swimmers and had a lot of strength for their size. They were pretty evenly matched. In fly, they had the worst times, but in breaststroke and backstroke they were better than most of the guys on the team — Mitchell being the best backstroker, his real reason for being on the team, because his crawl and fly times were hopeless.

“Hey, Jumbo.”

Mitchell lifted his head.

“You want to jump in too?”

It was Tadd Parker, asking him if he wanted to get into the showers as well. Mitchell figured he pretty well hated Tadd. It felt like that sometimes, particularly when he was sitting on the benches, watching Tadd fucking around in the showers, laughing and joking, his huge cock and balls swinging in the steam. And now, as Tadd asked him, Mitchell hesitated. He didn’t want anything from Tadd Parker. Part of him wanted to hurt Tadd Parker, to hurt him where it counted. He wanted Tadd Parker and the guys who were like him to know what it felt like to have nothing.

“Come on, Mitch,” Luke said, wiping water out of his eyes and beckoning Mitchell with a hand. Luke was sharing a shower with Jack, but as he said this — “Come on, Mitch” — something blossomed inside Mitchell like a flower, bursting with light.

Mitchell stood up and took his towel off. He hung it up on a hook and turned, facing the showers, but wondering where in the hell he was going to stand. Tadd Parker, who was in the corner with Tyler (each of them having their own shower) beckoned to him, making it clear with the way he was waving his hand, that he could come and share the two corner showers with Tadd and Tyler. Tyler didn’t look very happy about this; he turned his head away, but Mitchell walked into the corner, and Tadd stepped out from under the shower so Mitchell could get in.

The water was hot and sweet, raining onto his aching muscles, his shoulders and biceps, his chest and abs. He put his head back under the flow, and then, after he had been under for only a minute or so, he felt Tadd Parker’s hand on his arm, pushing him sideways into the corner. Now he was between Tyler and Tadd, stuck in the corner, but not under any water. Tadd handed him the soap and Mitchell started to soap himself. Up one end of the showers he could see Luke and Jack. They were mucking around, pushing each other, trying to shove each other out from under the flow, and it was like a constant battle, one making it under for a moment or so before the other pulled him out and got under himself. Luke hadn’t ever shared a shower before today. He was one of the guys who had staunchly held onto his end shower, which he seemed to have had forever, ever since they had been on the junior team. Now he was sharing it with Jack!

Mitchell soaped under his arms, soaped his shoulders and his chest, started on his abs, and then did his cock and balls. His cock was hard, the way it always was, but no one ever said anything about it. It stuck straight out, not sticking up like an elephant’s tusk the way he had seen pictures on the net — of guys who had big cocks, which was a thing he did look up, or had started looking up since he got his Mac for his birthday and his own connection.

“Hand us the soap,” Tadd said.

Mitchell handed him the soap. He had been about to start on his thighs, but now he was stuck, stuck in the corner between Tyler and Tadd, with soap over half his body.

Half jokingly, Mitchell pushed Tyler in the back, not certain that he had any right to do this, but trying to push him out from under the flow so that he could get under Tyler’s shower to wash the soap off. Tyler stumbled forward a little, and as he did this, Mitchell stepped into the shower. Tyler stepped back again (he had his back to Mitchell) and suddenly their soapy bodies collided. Mitchell’s hard little cock poked into Tyler’s ass cheek.

Tyler jumped.

He turned and wiped his hand across his face. “Is that thing
hard?
” he said, saying it in a loud voice so that the whole locker room became suddenly quiet. Tyler was looking down at Mitchell’s cock with an angry expression on his face.

As Mitchell looked up, he could see all the other guys, standing still and staring at Tyler and Mitchell in silence.

“Is it a
boner?
” Tyler said.

Mitchell could see, from some of the expressions on the other guys’ faces, that many of them had known this, and must have known it for a long time, though at the same time he saw a couple of confused expressions.

Then Robby Michaels, the guy who had started it all, stepped forward.

“Is that
it?
” he said, and at the same time he reached his hand down and held onto Mitchell’s cock. He squeezed it. It was rock hard. Mitchell knew this, and at the same time he couldn’t help closing his eyes at the pleasure he felt from having someone feel his cock.

Almost immediately, he opened his eyes again. Everyone was looking at him.

“Oh, man,” Tyler said. “I thought you had a couple of inches. I mean ... Is that
it?
”

Mitchell opened his mouth and it twisted involuntarily. He felt a stab in his chest, as though something had speared him, and at the same time he saw Luke — not looking at him now like the rest of the guys, but staring at the bank of lockers, as though there was something to look at there. There was nothing.

“Are you a faggot or something?” Mason asked Mitchell in a calmer voice.

And someone else said. “A boner!”

5

Mitchell figured it was something like a minute, maybe even thirty seconds, before all the showers were off and the guys were getting changed. The only shower still running was his, and he kept his back to the guys, soaping himself and making a show of washing himself thoroughly, though what he wanted to do was to run. He wanted to be at home. He wanted to be in his own bed and under his own sheets, with them pulled up over his head.

He showered for a long time, and when he finally did turn off his shower and turn around, the locker room was empty.

Silence.

The dripping of water.

He took his towel off the hook and dried himself. His cock was still hard, though he knew, if he tried, he could control it. He had got into the habit of having a boner, because he always felt so horny, and he knew he did it partly because it made things look so much better. When his cock wasn’t hard, it was just a piece of skin. He had never let the guys see it like that, and he had never needed to work himself up into getting a boner, because the locker room, the pool, speedos, the guys, these things turned him on.