Discovery at the Dojo

In my sophomore year of college my family moved to Nashville, and when I came home for the summer, I was looking for a new karate studio. I kept up with martial arts throughout high school and college, and I wanted to make some money at a summer job by taking on an apprenticeship at a studio -- helping out, teaching kids' classes, etc. I had gotten my black belt at 17 and had kept up with the craft. At college I was a varsity wrestler, but I swam and worked out extensively both on and off-season, and was in very good shape. A blonde, tanned 20-year-old, I had been with both men and women, and was dating currently Jenna, a rising senior who lived in Raleigh.

The minute I met Jenna, we hit it off, and had been dating for about a year and a half. She was absolutely gorgeous, with long black hair, green eyes, and a rack to die for. But there was something missing in our relationship, and I soon realized that it had little to do with her and all to do with me. This is the story of my journey from thinking I was straight, to bi, to gay.

In that summer Jenna and I were in separate cities, and I was understandably lonely. I was hoping concentrating on the new studio would help distract me. And that is absolutely what happened -- just not in the way I would expect.

I researched local studios and called what I thought to be the best one, where they set up an interview for me (somewhat miraculously -- evidently one of the staff members had just broken his leg). At 4:30 pm on the day of, I walked in in a coat and tie -- a piece of advice from dad -- and sat down to wait by Arlene, who worked at the front desk. She was a blonde woman, a knockout MILF-type around 40, with a sweet southern drawl and an ass like a tractor-trailer. I waited in the chair by her desk while she finished up a phone call.

"Uh-huh. Yes ma'am. Oh, bless his little heart. We'll keep him in our prayers, and I hope Joey has a swift recovery on that leg of his. Please let us know if there's anything we can do. Uh-huh. Alrighty. Bye now...Well, ain't you just a tall drink of water on a hot day?"

I had spaced out, and didn't realize that Arlene had started talking to me. "Hey, punkin, you deaf or somethin'? HEY!" I snapped back, and quickly realized what had happened. "I'm so sorry," I replied quickly. "I must have spaced out for a second." I quickly got up and shook her hand. "I'm Ben," I said. "I called earlier about the apprenticeship."

Arlene did not attempt discretion with the up-down look she gave me, with extra attention paid to the crotch of my suit pants. I flashed a smile -- at this point I was extremely used to turning heads. I have a pretty big cock, around 8 inches soft, and it's fairly difficult to keep under control, especially in slacks. When combined with my muscles from playing sports and working out constantly, and my WASPy good looks, I have to admit I'm pretty lucky. And at my small liberal arts school, I often see both men and women striving for a second look.

Clearly Arlene was no different. "Uh.......huh," she drawled, lowering her flashy reading glasses and licking her lips very quickly (and probably subconsciously). "Nice to meetcha sweetheart. I'm Arlene, and welcome to the studio. Lemme ring Teddy and I'll take you back to his office." She dialed up the phone. "Hey hon -- mmhmmm, yeah the boy, Ben, is here. Yep. Mmmkay, I'll bring him back." She got up, smoothed out her skirt, and clucked, "Follow me, sweetie."

I watched her perfect ass sashay down the hallway between the glass studio walls with surprisingly little interest. Her bright pink heels clicked on the tile floor as she asked some standard questions, what school I went to, where my family was from, what part of town we had moved into. I answered with quick and polite comments. I've never been one for small talk, but I can always lay on the charm when necessary. Around two corners and through a door across from the men's locker room entrance was a room I would come to know fondly: the office of Edward B. Rosemont, owner of the Green Dragon Martial Arts studio. And, as I would learn, it was always "Teddy" for short.

Walking into his office and glimpsing him for the first time was like being slapped in the face. Arlene's shrill voice was talking to him, but it blurred into ambient noise as I saw what had to have been the single most attractive man I had ever seen. Teddy's green eyes pierced me, and as he stood to offer me a handshake, I glimpsed every part of him in a buttondown and slacks: from his dark brown hair, cropped close on the sides and combed over on top, his gorgeous face, his beard, maybe two weeks' worth of growth over the dimples on either cheek, the slight amount of chest hair poking out of his shirt, the clearly defined, impressive musculature of his arms, chest, abs and torso, the bulge in the front of his khakis, the ass that stretched the fabric just a bit too tightly. He was probably around 34, and he was extraordinarily well-built. Clearly in fantastic shape.

I remember feeling a ton of feelings that I hadn't felt in a while, but I also remember chalking them up to wanting to be like this guy -- wanting to be successful, and handsome, and impressive, and warm. But I did know one thing for sure: in the pit of my stomach, I knew that something was about to change. I had messed around with men, but perhaps it was time to reevaluate my dismissal of my own gender? All of these revelations hit me in the span of about two seconds, and my mind and body were reeling.

Arlene left after introducing me as Ben, "that boy who called." As she walked out, I watched his lips form words, and couldn't really remember the process behind drawing breath. He gestured to the chair in front of his desk, and my brain, which decided to function again, realized that he was offering me a seat. As my ass hit the chair, sound came surging back to the world, and I heard him in the midst of what he was saying to me as he stood behind his desk.

"...relief it is that you called, actually. Our apprentice Joey just broke his leg skateboarding, and he'll be down for the count for a while." His voice, like everything else about him, was hypnotizing. It was deep and unctuous, and he spoke calmly, slowly, sweetly, with the smallest of drawls. There was a music in it, like he was always smiling. "And, Mr. Whitmore,' he said, grabbing a piece of paper from his desk and reviewing it, "I must say, your resume is impressive, what with your martial arts experience," he continued. "Do you miss Seattle?"

"Yes, sir," I replied.

"Oh, please; don't you dare call me that," he said quickly, with a grin. "I'm not your coach, or your teacher, or your drill sergeant, and 'sir' makes me feel close to ancient. It's Teddy."

"And I'm Ben," I replied, with a smiling nod from him in response. "I miss the green and the ocean in the northwest. But I've been a fan of country music all my life, and I'm a bit closer to school here, so I'm okay with it."

He gave a small chuckle. "Then the honky tonks will have claimed yet another unsuspecting victim. Don't let yourself get lost in the music." He turned around to grab a mug of coffee from the shelf behind his desk, and knocked something off. As he reached down to get it, I had the most incredible view of his ass, which was beautifully framed in his khaki slacks. I wondered later whether this move was intentional. "And I know what you mean about the northwest. I hiked the Pacific Crest after college." He placed the object he'd dropped, an Eiffel Tower snowglobe, back on the shelf and sat down behind his desk.

"You did? That's actually a goal of mine!" I replied excitedly. "I don't know when I'll get back out there, but, one day."

"Well, I'm sure we can talk about it," Teddy said. "But for now, let's talk about your experience. I phoned your karate instructor in Seattle and your wrestling coach at Davidson as the references that you provided. Both of them couldn't have had better things to say about you."

We talked for at least 45 minutes about my martial arts journey, my experiences wrestling and swimming, Jenna, school, and my hopes to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. He told me some stories from hikes he had done, and compared my college anecdotes to some from his own "glory days." I was agog with Teddy. We got along so well. Talking to him seemed easier than breathing, and I couldn't keep my eyes off of him. The way he scratched his beard every so often. The musical sigh he gave whenever he was done laughing. His teeth, which were impossibly white, framed by his dimples every time he flashed a smile. The way his pants clung to his muscular thighs and bulge when he put his legs up on his desk. The outline of his a-shirt and his small sweat stains in his underarms when he rested his hands behind his head. These details swirled and coalesced in my head.

But the biggest thing to me was that Teddy spent a long time looking at me. Maybe I was just imagining it, but it seemed like his eyes most frequently rested on my cock. This, of course, did not faze me, but I did think it was interesting. I was still in such mental disarray after meeting this man that processing this detail didn't happen until later.

Soon it was time for me to go. He would be happy to have me on staff for the summer, he said, after he assessed my abilities on the mats. So I was set to return to the studio the next day at around 5:15, after things had closed up, and we would spar. "And feel free to dress out here tomorrow," he said. "The locker room is outside my office, and it should give you all the space you need." As he said the last sentence, I could have sworn he gave me the tiniest of winks as he flashed another dimpled smile.

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One of the reasons that my family had moved to Nashville was that my grandparents lived in rural Tennessee, maybe two hours outside of the city. They weren't doing that well, and my dad wanted to be closer to them for the next few years. My dad's company had a Nashville office, so the switch was opportune. It was Thursday night, and my parents had gone out to spend the whole weekend with Grampa and Gran, so I had the house to myself.

I had tried in vain to call Jenna on my way home, and I realized that phone sex would be off the table tonight, since she had probably already started her hostessing shift. But for some reason (and that reason was probably my bearded, gorgeous, soon-to-be boss) I had sported a raging hard-on since leaving the studio, and it was begging for some relief. So I booted up my computer HDMI and fired up some HD porn. As I lubed up and started stroking on the couch in front of the giant flatscreen in my basement bedroom, I let my mind wander to Jenna. I imagined her getting railed just like the girl on my screen, by two huge cocks like the pornstars' in front of me. She was sweating and moaning and calling out, her pussy and ass stretched to their limits by the massive dp. As my fantasy and the onscreen porn mixed, something unprecedented for me happened. In my mind's eye I imagined Teddy co-fucking Jenna with me. I imagined feeling his cock through the slight separation between her ass and pussy. I imagined alternating thrusts, in and out, in and out. I imagined gripping his ass as I felt his cock thrust into her. And finally, just when I thought my imagination had exercised every scenario, I thought about Teddy pulling out of her ass and stuffing his cock into her pussy next to mine. I felt Teddy's cock all over mine, rubbing against mine, and I imagined that we stared into each others' eyes as we blew our loads in Jenna. I came in a frighteningly powerful orgasm as these thoughts played and swirled and repeated in my head.

As I came down and cleaned up, I started to process what had just happened, and I was possessed by some uneasiness. Did I really find Teddy attractive in that way? I thought I had made up my mind that I was into girls. I wasn't scared or ashamed or embarrassed -- I knew I would confidently embody whatever journey my sexuality took me on. I just thought that after my guy-on-guy experiences I had realized that I preferred women. My mind had wandered into hardcore fantasies like that before, but they had not been so male-centric in a while. Every time I thought of Teddy I grinned, and that unsure, butterflies feeling came back to my stomach. It reminded me of my hookup in my senior year of high school, with Chris, one of my best friends from the wrestling team. It was my hookup with Chris that gave me my first dose of guy-on-guy action, and I was still unsure about my preferences.

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Chris had come out in February of senior year, and he hadn't really caught a lot of shit for it schoolwide. On the team, we really didn't mind either. I mean, we lived in Seattle for goodness's sake; our school had a huge arts program and a ton of LGBTQ kids. I had a lot of friends who were gay, and I didn't really mind. But Chris and I had known each other since middle school, when his family had moved to the US from Edinburgh, and I had hooked up with his sister Lena a few times sophomore year. Chris coming out caught me a little by surprise. He was a total masculine jock, and had thrown a fuck to a bunch of the girls in school. He had retained his accent, which people found super sexy. He had dark red hair and a well-trimmed beard and was tall and muscular, and from what I had seen in the locker room, he was packing a pretty impressive dick. He was a little shorter but burlier than me, and had a tough guy reputation, complete with a penchant for cig-smoking and even a motorcycle.

Chris was in my weight class, so we would wrestle together at practices a lot, and I could feel his cock getting hard when we would. That was kind of normal, what with teenage hardons and stuff, but I guess with Chris it was something more. I'd catch hastily-disguised glances from him in the locker room, and the subtlest of touches when he accidentally bumped into me. I didn't put anything together until later that Chris wanted me, bad.

Chris and I hung out together a lot. His dad traveled a ton for his job, and his mom had passed away when we were in 8th grade. Lena was at college back in Scotland, so Chris was home alone frequently. His house became the sort-of party and hangout place for our friend group senior year. We would have a lot of small gatherings where people would get fucked up and then catch rides home or spend the night.

On one such evening, when we were celebrating Chris's 18th birthday at the end of the summer preceding freshman year of college, he and I were the last ones there at around 3 am, everyone else having gone home. We were passing a celebratory j between us on the back porch. I had spent some of our conversations over the past six months humorously regaling Chris with questions about the mechanics of gay hookups. He had been seeing Peter, a guy from our school who was headed to NYU for theatre, and I had been dating Kylie, who was a soccer player. We had both broken up with these respective SOs as the college deadline loomed over us. I was headed to NC, Kylie to Indiana on a soccer scholarship, and Chris was going to UVA. Everyone was separating from each other, away from Seattle, and there was definitely a melancholy gloom in the air (not to mention the fact that after the breakups neither Chris nor I had gotten laid in about three weeks).

At this point we were very crossfaded, though I had gone a bit harder than Chris that night, and he had more of his wits about him. I was still completely functional though; I was just smiling and chuckling at every turn. After being relentlessly exposed to my half-sarcastic and thinly veiled comments about pitching and catching, what the deal was with hygiene, and the merits of Grindr, Chris was about ready to wring my neck at the end of the night. "Look, d'you just want me ta show you?" He said, exhaling the smoke.

I laughed off the comment: "Yeah, totally dude, fuck me up the butt right here!" I collapsed in a giggling heap on the deck, and I caught a distinct eye-roll from Chris.

"Well then, quit your inquisition!" he said. I realized that he had taken a more serious turn, and pulled myself up. He was being moody. His face was drawn, his lips pursed, and he was running a hand through his red hair and scratching his neatly-trimmed beard in an anxious way. I asked him what was wrong, and we went back and forth stubbornly for about five minutes before he finally conceded that he needed to tell me something.

Chris and I were not ones for feelings or heart-to-hearts, but we did know each other well and told each other a lot. So, clearly nervous, he looked up at me, his screwed-up face swathed in smoke, and in his gruff Scottish accent explained that he had wanted me for a while now.

I was pretty taken aback. I had obviously seen and felt his clues -- the glances, the touches, etc -- but Chris was a very private person, and I thought that if he had felt this way about me, he would have told me sooner. Also, I was under the impression that he had no trouble catching all the dick he wanted, so why waste his time with the whole painfully-unrequited routine regarding me?

"You and I do so much together, and I've been attracted t'ya fer so long, and it just seemed like.....like a natural extension of our friendship, ya know?" he said.

"So, what?" I asked him. "What do you mean by this, what do you want?"

"Well, Benji," which was his nickname for me, "You're obviously curious about it, and we're as close as brothers." he cracked a grin. His crooked grin was always out and about when he was laying on the charm. "I can't have ya goin' off to college wondrin' how to fuck a bloke and not havin' any experience in case you were thinking about it. And, you're right sexy, mate. I want you." He took a step closer to me.

Something about Chris tonight was intoxicating. I had never felt a sexual attraction to him, or any other guy for that matter, but between the weed, the bourbon, and the mix of Chris's cologne and scent that I had smelled so often being around him, not to mention my recent dry spell, I felt my cock start to harden.

"And look," he said, his voice getting quieter as he got closer to me. "You feel it too. I see that monster o' yours responin' to me." I could feel his breath. I thought briefly that I wanted to see, to feel what it was like, to grip this hardness instead of female softness, and taste him. I wanted him too.

At this point, I didn't stop to think about whether this meant I was gay. I didn't think about all the labels, all the potential ramifications, all of the politics and the rumor mill if anyone found out. All I thought about was those times I had felt Chris in his singlet, his hard cock pressed up against my back, or when I caught him looking at me in the shower, or when I heard about his exploits with Peter (like the time when he brought Peter into the school gym showers after hours and fucked him relentlessly against the slippery tiled walls). I thought about his ass framed in his jockstrap in the locker room, about the birthmark on his upper thigh, his reddish-brown chest hair, the way he smiled crookedly when he winked.

Thinking back on it now, the truth is that my "best-friend" affections for Chris had been blurring into more than that for a while now, and I had never really admitted it to myself. The ceaseless questions about gay life, the jokes about him coming out, the support I gave him in most venues in life -- these were all manifestations of something more than a friendship. Maybe I didn't recognize it before. Maybe all it took to forge a physical connection from our already strong emotional one was just a tiny push over a cliff. And that's exactly what was happening.

He got closer and closer to me, in both proximity and in his intoxicating hold over my thoughts, and then his lips were on mine, and my fingers were running through his hair, and my other hand trailed down his back and grabbed his ass through his jeans, and his tongue traced the corner of my mouth before I let him in. And I lost myself in that kiss, at least for a little bit. I relented. I let him be with me; I let him embody this newfound curiosity. His cologne and breath were like drugs to me. After several breathless seconds we broke apart.

I gasped, but he gave me no opportunity to come up for air before kissing my mouth again, then my chin, and neck, and around to my ear. He bit my earlobe then whispered, "Lena told me ya fuck like a pack horse. And I want you in me, now, Benji. Benji, I need you." And then, three things happened simultaneously: he plunged his hand into my jeans and squeezed my cock, he started kissing me madly once again, and he ran a hand through my hair and pulled. Electricity shot up my spine, and all I wanted was to share this with him. However it ended, whatever it meant -- these were trivial details in comparison to how much I wanted him right now.

And I told him so.

I pulled him against me and kissed him with everything I had, and we began our ascent to his bedroom. When we arrived, continuing our electrifying kisses, he began to peel off my clothes. Without warning he had soon engulfed my cock in his mouth, and his beard was tickling me as he sucked and massaged, knowing just where to lick and just how to stroke. His mouth was one of the most amazing things I had ever felt. He started small, taking in what he could of my 9 inches. He ran his tongue around the head, and slurped and sucked, working in more and more, denying his gag reflex and causing me to quake with earth-shattering vibrations. As he would come up for air I would grab him and kiss him again, needing to be connected. Then he would take me in his mouth again, pulling out all the stops, and all the tricks up his sleeve. I remember thinking that the first criterion for whomever I dated from now on was going to be whether he/she gave head as devastatingly amazingly as Chris. Soon, he had me bucking on his bed, caressing his head, jamming as much of my cock down his velvety throat as a could. I moaned and yelled, and was driven absolutely wild by him. His beard tickled my thighs as he took every bit of me down his throat. It was a feeling unparalleled by anything I had experienced up to this point. He was insatiable, and so was I.

He could sense when I was about to blow, it seemed, so he backed off and started licking every part of me he could reach. He paid special attention to my torso -- he dedicated himself to my navel and the ridges between my abdominal muscles, and then each nipple with the utmost care. He was voracious.

Finally, he stood up, and asked me to undress him. "'S a little fantasy o'mine," he drawled. I ripped open his denim shirt, exposing his freckled shoulders and hairy, ripped torso. I kissed him again and again I ran my hands over his chest, then I unfastened his belt and used both sides of it to pull him towards me as I thrust my tongue once again into his mouth. As we kissed I undid his jeans and began to unzip his zipper.

He moaned, then cut off our kiss, pulling down his pants. As I looked at what he was wearing, he said, "That outta make things a bit more familiar for ya, huh?" After registering the massive, erect bulge of his dick being contained, in vain, by a silver mesh pouch, I recognized the color and cut of the jockstrap he was wearing, as well as the red sharpied "Whitmore" on the front waistband. It was mine. I had been missing that one for a while now.

"Why do you have that, Chris?" I asked, breathlessly.

His expression turned sheepish. "I....stole it." He looked down at it. "Well, kind of. One day when you came to mine after practice you washed your stuff, and this didn't make it in the laundry. It fell out of your bag when you put your clothes in the washer, then you got in the shower, and lo and behold it was there. And I took it."

This didn't really bother me. "That's fine, Chris. Hot, even."

"Well, what about the part where I used to jack off to it? Still do?" he asked.

My cock twitched and my heart rate increased. I was inexplicably turned on by his twisted desire.

"Have you washed it or worn it before tonight?" I asked. "Neither," he replied, looking back up at me. He flashed me a crooked grin and a chuckle. And then, once again, I grabbed him, and ground my cock into his torso, kissing him, precum soaking the light dusting of hair that covered his abs. Intermittently I would whisper, "That's fucking hot. Both of us have worn that without washing it. You're a cockhound aren't you? You want this cock, don't you?" And as he whispered back his desperate, pleading "yes" I lowered myself to the ground and started licking his cock through the jock we both had shared. In a way, it cemented the physical bond between us. I thought back to his body rippling under mine on the wrestling mat, the undulations of his muscles, the thin layers of fabric between us that had now been reduced to one.

I tongued the mesh, tasting him, grabbing his bare, strapped ass with my hands, then freed his cock by pushing the pouch to the side and instinctively started sucking. I took as much of him as I could, reveling in the scent of him, the feel of him, the fusion of hardness and softness contained in my mouth. His cock was so alive, throbbing with need, and I could feel every little movement in him. I licked around the head, tasting salty precum and pushed him onto the bed, hanging on to the jockstrap that was still pushed to one side.

"Yes, Benji, yes!" he grunted, moaning repeatedly as I strove to take more of him past the barrier of my lips. "Yes!" I ran one hand over his torso, pinching his nipple, and I employed another, stroking him to as close to a climax as I could get. We made eye contact -- he had gorgeous green eyes -- and then he stopped me just before he was about to cum. In that moment of eye contact I knew what he wanted, but he said it anyway.

"I want to fuck me right now Benji. Now. With this on. Check the drawer."

I had tried anal with Kylie once, which she had said she wanted because she wasn't a huge fan of condoms and hated the pill. But we never got to the point of penetration because she chickened out, and we went with regular instead. Still, I knew the lube routine and with Chris I knew he was just as desperate to be with me as I was with him. He wanted me to fuck him while he wore my jock, and I had never been more turned on in my life.

I lubed him up by sticking a finger in him, and listened to him moan as I felt him grip that finger. Soon I added another, feeling every pulse of him, telling him he needed to get ready for me. Telling him I had wanted to do this for a while. Telling him, in between kissing him and swallowing his cock, that I was so ready for him. I teased his hole with my cock head, slapping it, caressing it, pushing the length of my cock in between his cheeks. He moaned and begged and pleaded, and all I wanted to do was relent.

When we could take it no longer, I eased myself into him. It took a while for him to get used to the feeling, and there was a fair amount of pain, but he kept begging and begging me, saying he needed me, saying he wanted this so much, saying that my cock was the single best thing he had ever felt in his life. And soon, I started fucking him, and I knew then and there that I didn't need to be delicate. I wanted to show Chris how I felt. I wanted him to feel me in places he had never felt before.

I was gripping the waistband of the jockstrap, stretching it to its limits to use as leverage as I plunged every inch of my cock in and out, in and out of him as he lay facedown on the bed. He bucked and his insides flexed, as if they wanted more than anything for me to stay. I had never felt anything on my cock that was as responsive and beautiful and tight and alive as Chris's ass. I could feel that Chris wanted me, needed me. "Is this what you wanted?!" I shouted. "Is this it, you filthy cockhound?!" I shoved his face into the mattress as I fucked him standing up.

"YES BENJI. DON'T. STOP. EVERY INCH, ALL OF YOU, FUCK ME BENJI, YES! YES! YES! Ooooouuugghhhh, YES. PLEASE YES FUCK ME I NEED ALL OF YOU!" I wadded up the waistband in my left hand and reached around with my right to stroke his cock. His hairy torso was slick with sweat, and I wrenched his ass all the way down my cock, then thrust back into him, then bent down and tongued his ear and neck. Then I picked up the pace, fucking voraciously, my cock sliding over his prostate at top gear, and bit him on the shoulder. He went wild, beyond words, and animal grunts escaped us both as I put every ounce of energy I had into fucking Chris. The jockstrap snapped, and I grabbed it from around him and stuffed it in his face, ordering him to inhale our scents mixed together like he had when he was fantasizing about me.

A few seconds after he grabbed the jockstrap and I had him by the hips, pounding into him, I heard the loudest grunts yet. "UGH. BENJIIIII. YES. I'M. GONNA CUUMMMMM!!!" and I felt his insides contract as a hot jet of cum erupted all over his bed. I timed each thrust with another of his ejaculations, and I felt like I was fucking the cum out of him. I gave him little time to recover though, and I flipped him over, put his ankles on my shoulders, and inserted my cock into his gorgeously tight and alive ass again. I took him slowly now, with passionate, long thrusts, and I stared into his eyes as I ground my cock in and out, in and out of him, deeper and deeper. My lower torso slapped against his ass cheeks, and I bent down to once again kiss him with all that I had.

Then, he broke the kiss, shoved the broken jock in my face, and asked if he could ride me. I lay down on the bed, with my back now covered in his cum, and he slowly lowered himself down on me. He increased his bounces, and I fucked upward in unison, and I knew then that the ecstasy would be unmatched. I had never felt anything like this. With every thrust I got closer to cumming, and I could hear ravishing, animalistic moans, and then I realized that they were coming from my own mouth.

With an unintelligible series of grunts, I exploded in Chris's ass as eight, nine, ten, eleven pulses of hot, sticky cum deposited themselves in him and a heady cloud of ecstasy enveloped my brain. We would shower, it was decided, in the morning, and we fell asleep covered in each other, clinging to each other, kissing each other.

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Chris and I had carried on a little bit more before the end of the summer, but we knew that taking anything seriously as we transitioned to college would be emotionally torturous for us. We had kept in contact fairly steadily, talking once a month and catching up on Skype when we could, but not like we used to. He spent the next summer interning in New York, and I took a trip in Europe. In our sophomore year we still talked, but we had grown further apart, and I knew things probably wouldn't be the same now that my family had moved down south.

In my basement I reflected on my feelings for Chris as I thought about the current situation with Jenna, and my thoughts about Teddy. In a way, I thought I had probably overcorrected back to women to try to help me cope with my feelings about gradually losing Chris. I thought that I loved Jenna, I thought she completely satisfied me sexually, but there was just something missing. I was realizing that it was probably time to re-embrace sex with men.

And as I fell asleep thinking about the time I would spent tomorrow with Teddy, and clue he had given me today, I realized that there was no time like the present to sort these things out.