Lost in New England

I put my head into my hands to block out the noise. It had been quite a day and my head was aching.

There was a lot of commotion from the phones. People were talking on them. People were yelling about them. People were slamming them down. And the ringing! There seemed to be at least a thousand phones ringing all at the same time. A loudspeaker overhead calmly alerted everyone that so-and-so had a phone call on hold. Around the corner-I think-a baby was crying. And somebody was typing, fast! Did anyone ever use a typewriter anymore? Or maybe it was a machine that typed, it was hard to tell. It was stuffy in here and hard to breathe. How could anybody hope to get anything done around this place?

The police officer who had been asking me questions had stepped away. I was trying hard now to gather my thoughts, but they weren't gathering for me at all. I was sort of a mess since I'd arrived. Danny was missing! And I was supposed to be helping the police to find him. Did I mention that the police officer was awfully cute?

I had a little time to myself to take it all in. I took a deep breath in. I tried not to cry. That wouldn't be good. Not in front of the officer, at least.

For a Sunday, it seemed awfully busy here. I can't even imagine what the New Haven Police Department might be like on a weekday. Even more crazy I guess. Maybe I would ask the nice officer. Outside of a few pornographic fantasies that I'd conjured up, this was my first time in a police station. For real, at least. Well, there was one other time when I was a kid. Mrs. Calloway had taken my entire third grade class to visit a police station in Apple Valley. That was my real first time. To no one's surprise, I'd been the first one to volunteer to go behind the prison bars that day. Apparently the imagery stuck. I remember the cool metal against my face, the faint smell of metal and dirt and sweat. It was a milestone in my sexual development. Even at nine years of age, there was something mysterious and forbidden about the police. I had to have more. And, of course, safely tucked away and all alone in my bedroom, I'd dreamed up plenty of police station fantasies. Most of which involved me naked from the waist down and wedged between the bars of a jail cell.

Not today perhaps, but I pledged to ask the officer if I might see the inner workings of the station when I came back. Today was about Danny. Poor Danny!

I was seated on an uncomfortably hard wooden straight-back chair next to the desk of an Italian police officer who was taking my statement.

Danny Lehman was missing. What a fucked up mess! I was sure that I had absolutely nothing helpful to say, but the police seemed to want to know everything anyway. So here I was, at least an hour already. The excitement from the finals of the Yale Invitational Track Meet were already a distant memory.

I hadn't qualified for the finals myself. No surprise to me, but a big disappointment to my coach. As a result, I'd pretty much been just a spectator all day. Since I had so many people I knew who actually had made the finals, I arrived early to get a good seat and had been able to snag one in the front row of the grandstands for most of the meet today. I did miss seeing the finals in Steeplechase however; that race started at 8:00 and I hadn't been able to get my butt out of bed. But, since the Steeplechase is kind of stupid, it was really no biggie. I have no idea why somebody would want to run 3000 meters all out while they hopped over hurdles and splashed through big puddles of deep water.

I expected to see Danny when he lined up for his final in the 800 meters. But when the announcer called out the names, Danny wasn't there. The crowd cheered anyway when the announcer said that Danny was a freshman from the University of Oregon-there weren't a whole lot of runners from the west coast. I'm certain Danny would have loved to hear the cheers for him in his goofy green Oregon Duck shirt.

It was weird that Danny wasn't on time, of course, but not completely unprecedented-Danny had certainly been late for plenty of races when we were on the team together back in high school. He was probably talking to some guy about hooking up after the meet or caught up in watching the pole vaulters and lost track of time. But when Danny still wasn't on the line as the Yale officials lined them up for the starting gun, I had a bad feeling in my stomach. Danny loved to race. Something bad must have happened for Danny to miss a Finals.

In the end, Danny was simply a scratch. When the local paper from New Haven came out the following day, the official record of the Yale Invitational 800 meter final would say, "Lehman, D. DNS"

Did not start. DNS? WTF?

The guy who won was somebody from Georgetown who I was only vaguely familiar with. As I watched the race, I was sad for Danny. It would have really been a great matchup. The Georgetown guy was pretty fast, but I had a feeling that Danny might have been faster. Danny Leeman didn't like to lose. And he always had crazy speed that amazed me when he fell into his second lap kick. Danny rarely finished in second place. And he certainly never had a DNS before.

I waited at the track for Danny for at least a couple of hours after the race, hoping he would turn up, not having set his watch or something.

There were a couple other guys out here visiting from Oregon also. They hadn't seen Danny all day either. One guy, a hurdler from someplace in New York, who also had not made the finals, reluctantly admitted that he had been out partying with Danny and a few others last night until about 10 or so. But the hurdler felt guilty that everybody else was already back in bed at their hotels, so he and everyone else made their way back. Except for Danny. Danny said he was "feeling it," whatever that meant, and apparently went off on his own. He had failed to tell any of them where he was headed, which sounded exactly like my Danny.

I rubbed open my eyes to the sound of a siren pulling up outside of the police station. I really needed sleep.

Fuck! Where the hell was Danny?!

Officer Ruggazione smiled as he came back to his desk. He had a few pieces of paper in his hand. He sat down heavily in black padded arm chair that looked as if it had seen better days. The policeman wasn't all that big of a guy, but the chair squawked as he settled his weight into it. Despite the mix of emotions swirling inside of my head, I smiled back at him, instinctively wishing to trade places with the office chair.

"Okay. Found what I needed," the Ruggazione said evenly. "Just a couple more quick things, then let's wrap this up so you can get on back to your friends."

"Thanks," I said. "But I don't mind. No rush. Let's do whatever we need to do. I just want to find Danny."

He smiled at me. He had perfect teeth, of course. He was not making this whole thing any easier on me.

My insides twisted into a knot. Of course I wanted to find my friend, that was a given. But I was also in no hurry to part company with Officer Italian Stallion here.

Just the fact that I was even thinking about sex while Danny was out there somewhere, maybe alone, maybe cold, maybe lost. I was wracked with guilt.

But on the other hand, if Danny ever got the chance to meet the man sitting at the desk in front of me, he would surely approve. Lost or not, Danny could be very practical about these things.

Ruggazione looked an awful lot like someone who should be hanging out with that Italian sculptor Michelangelo, maybe waiting his turn to be carved into stone. As a matter of fact, the whole police station had sort of a hunky Italian vibe, just about every where I looked. If Michelangelo had ever sailed across the ocean and docked in New Haven, he would absolutely have made a bee line for the place, making granite busts of every one of them!

The thought of a naked and all white Ruggazione up on a pedestal made me smile. I watched him scribbling something down, he looked up from the form he was filling out and our eyes met; they were dark brown. I'm sure I turned red. Look away, TJ, look away for crissakes! Your friend is missing!

For a full ten seconds, I managed to focus again on Danny.

Danny with his great smile, again the perfect teeth. Danny with his thin brown hair that always flopped around when he ran. Danny sneering at me from across the locker room while he cruised any boy within 30 feet of him. Danny looking up from down below as he sucked on the tip of my cock. Danny trying to act all shy and conservative, in a dead-on imitation of his twin brother David.

Would it be unseemly to point out that Danny was circumcised? Surely every piece of information could be helpful? I also knew how big Danny got when he was hard. Part of me wanted to share every single one of these facts with Ruggazione.

I sighed. Perhaps another time.

Danny would approve I reminded myself again. Danny would not only approve, he would probably already have the officer's cell phone number.

I took a deep breath and watched Officer Ruggazione tick off boxes on yet another form. Silently I began counting his freckles.

Only six visible above his tight little police officer shirt collar.

But all six were small and handsome. They framed his Italian eyes perfectly, eyes that would look even sexier and more perfect back in the soft light of my dorm room up in Boston. The perfect accompaniment to watching him in the mirror beside my bed while he pounded away at me from behind.

Stop it TJ, you're being ridiculous!

He might not be a top.

I licked my lips to rehydrate them, trying not to seem too much like a pervert as I did so. At least I wasn't drooling. If I had to sit here in silence much longer, concentrating only on every single molecule on the policeman's face, I would definitely drool a little bit though.

"I just want to find him," I said quietly to nobody in particular.

He smiled at me again. "That's what we all want, BJ, that's what we all want" he said.

Ruggazione heard the words come out of my mouth. I only hoped that he hadn't been doing any mind-reading as well.

Wait. Did he just call me "BJ?"

I inhaled. "TJ," I corrected him, but regretted it immediately.

"Right," he smiled again. "TJ. Sorry." The very tough, very sexy police officer blushed, just the tiniest little bit. How fucking cute is that? He blushed!

"All right then, so let's make sure I've got the description right."

"Okay," I said. "Male, 19 years of age, about 150 pounds, five feet eight inches."

At the mention of 'eight inches,' my mind went right to it's usual place in the gutter.

I had seen Danny's dick up close and personal quite a few times. Although Danny would have happily bragged about having an eight inch cock-nine inches even, the boy had no scruples-he and I both knew that he wasn't quite there. I had him by like an inch, a fact I also liked to brag about.

On the other hand, Danny got more mileage out of his seven inches or so than probably anybody else I'd ever met. Certainly more than I got out of mine.

Officer Ruggazione looked at me quizzically.

"What?" I asked, not realizing I was expected to say something out loud.

"Five feet eight inches, right?" He said it again.

"Yes, yes, eight inches," I said. "And five feet." This time I blushed. I nodded enthusiastically, thinking maybe that I could cover up my start dumbness.

"And dark brown hair?"

"Yes, thin sort of, kind of early Tom Cruise-ish, you know Top Gun," I said. "And dark brown eyes, just like yours."

"What?"

"Um, well they are," I said again. "His eyes, I mean. Just like yours." I sighed. "They are brown too."

"Brown?"

"Yes. Dark brown."

"I didn't know there were different shades of brown."

"Well, there are, I mean, I think there are lots of different browns."

"Okay." He scribbled down another word. "And I like Top Gun. Great movie."

I smiled. I liked it too, but probably not for the same reasons that Ruggazione did.

"Aren't there like dark browns and light browns and..." I stammered. "Medium browns? Tom Cruise has medium brown eyes, I think."

"I really don't know."

I took another breath. Fuck.

"I thought you police guys just wanted to be really accurate," I offered.

He pursed his lips and nodded slowly. "I will make a note of it." He wrote something on the paper in front of him. "Dark brown."

"Great!" I said. I felt like we had been talking about this just a little bit too much.

"Any distinctive marks on his body? Tattoos? Piercings?"

"Hmm," I said, placing a finger on my lips. "Let me think." Danny had a tiny little scar on the back of his thigh, way up by his butt cheek. But I didn't think that would be all that helpful to mention right at this very moment. So I didn't. "Nope!" I said, cheerfully.

"Not that you know of?"

"Right. Not that I know of."

I looked over at Ruggazione.

Perfect Roman skin, of course. Why was it that guys this good looking also had perfect olive-coloring and just got incredibly sexier and evern more handsome when they were out in the sun And little Scottish French boys like me just turned into a beet?

His short sleeve shirt showed off muscular forearms. I imagined that he did about a thousand pull ups a day.

He had no arm hair. I wonder if he shaved it off. Probably not. Unless of course he was a triathlete and it got in the way when he was swimming or biking really fast. But then again, his buddies at work would probably tease him if he did, shave his arm hair I mean.

I took a breath, it came out more like a heavy sigh.

Had he been a distance runner in college too? A wrestler? I wondered what he might look like in a singlet. Maybe a tiny dark brown tuft of hair peeking out of the top.

My underwear was getting tighter as my mind gorged itself on about a six foot long slab of Italian beef.

"Do you remember what he was wearing when you last saw him, TJ?"

"Who?

He looked at the paper in front of him. "Leeman, Daniel Leeman. You boys all call him Danny, right?"

I looked up at the white tiles on the ceiling. Yes Danny. Never Daniel. God, he'd hate that!

"Well, on the track Saturday, he had on his green Oregon Ducks track shirt, some yellow running shorts, some running shoes. Nike I think. Yellow."

He wrote it down.

"He is a freshman at Oregon. Did I mention that?"

He nodded without looking up.

"Hmm," he said. "Probably not what he wore out last night with his friends, right?"

I laughed. "No, probably not. But if a college singlet would have helped him get laid, then he just might have worn it. You never know with Danny."

Officer Ruggazione laughed too. He was starting to get the picture of the real Danny.

"Not that he needed that much help in that department, if you know what I mean."

"What department?"

"You know, in getting laid," I said. Red again.

The officer gave me a look with a half-lifted eyebrow.

"You know? Sex."

"Yes, yes, I know. Sex." He smiled. "I've heard of it. I took a health class in middle school."

I froze. He was joking, right? After a pause, we both laughed again. I imagined that me and Ruggazione would have been fast friends had we gone to high school together.

And this was definitely the most fun I'd ever had while I was a police station reporting a friend of mine to be missing.

When we finally finished up, Officer Ruggazione and I exchanged phone numbers and shook hands.

I told him I text.

He told me that he is not allowed to do that. I thought about mentioning Facebook, but that might have been going a little too far. The last thing I needed was to have him searching my profile, seeing all the wacky stuff I'd posted. My Tom Brady and Jacoby Ellsbury obsessions, for example!

Me and Ruggazione agreed to check back in tomorrow,no matter what.

Danny's brother David was flying into New Haven and should be in sometime late tonight, he told me.

"Oh great, can you please ask him to give me a call when he arrives," I said.

The policeman raised an eyebrow again. "I'm not generally in the business of setting up the social schedule for members of the public."

"Oh right, sorry, yes of course. It's no big deal. I mean, David's his twin brother you know, and I know them both pretty well."

He looked back at me and didn't say anything.

"Okay then, I have a nice day."

"Right. Thanks again for your help."

I banged my leg into a chair as I backed away awkwardly. Yow!

I definitely needed to do this guy. But first things first. Let's find Danny.