Want to Feel It

[This story was written for a writing exercise limiting the text to exactly 750 words.]

“You OK, Luke? Should we . . . do you want . . . ?”

“That was fine, Chris. No, no more. I’m bushed. Maybe some other—”

“Yeah, sure,” Luke Chin’s mate on the William and Mary Swim team said as he rolled to a sitting position on Luke’s dorm room bed. They’d finished a swim meet with Old Dominion followed by Chemistry exams. The hand job session was meant to release their tension. It had done that for Chris, but apparently not for Luke, who still lay there, tense and far, far away. Chris thought they’d move on to doing more, but he was wrong.

“We don’t have a meet this weekend. So, what are you going to do?” Chris asked. Maybe, he thought, they could go to Richmond, get a motel room, and get it on. Neither had gone all the way yet. They were both good-looking, sleek-bodied guys—Luke three-quarters Chinese, but that only added an exotic twist. They both declared gay. Why couldn’t they—hadn’t they—gotten it on yet?

Because Luke kept saying it wasn’t intense enough—not consuming enough. He said he didn’t feel it enough.

“I think I’ll go to the beach—maybe to Virginia Beach,” Luke said.

“I could go with—”

“No, I think I’d rather go alone.”

* * * *

Luke rented a Virginia Beach Boardwalk Resort room on the beach at 1600 Atlantic Avenue for three nights. Arriving after noon on Saturday, he changed into a Speedo and tight T, with sandals; immediately went down to the boardwalk; and sat on a bench facing the beach. He’d asked around at college and been told to go to this hotel and sit on this bench.

He watched the activity on the beach. Muscular guys in Speedos were playing a game of beach volleyball to the north. Gym equipment was embedded in the sand to the south, and more muscular guys were working out there and showing off their muscles.

Luke had been told that the guys on the beach here would be dominant gays—most looking for hookups.

“Those guys are rough.”

He sat there for an hour, dividing his attention between the volleyball game and the bodybuilders. When he could make eye contact, he did so. One of the bodybuilders, a deeply tanned guy, with bulging muscles and a blue- and black-swirls breast and sleeve tattoo, walked up from the beach and sat beside Luke.

The look they exchanged said it all.

“I’m Stan,” the bodybuilder said.

“Luke here,” Luke answered.

“Some sort of Asian are you?”

“Three quarters Chinese. All but my mother’s mom. But all American.” Luke gave a nervous laugh.

“You look in shape. Athletic?”

“I’m on my college swim team, and I do some gymnastics.”

“Sweet.”

Luke wasn’t sure what to do, but he finally decided to rise from the bench and walk back into his hotel, just behind him. He’d see if Stan followed him. He did.

In the room, they’d barely gotten in the door and Luke had turned to face Stan when he was stung by Stan backhanding him across the face, sending Luke staggering to the left. The second backhand sent him reeling to the right. The fist to the belly doubled him over and sent him to the floor. Stan reached down, pulled him up by his long, black hair, put him under his muscular arm, and took the four steps to the bed. He threw Luke on the bed on his belly.

“Stay there and take it,” Stan growled.

Whimpering and trying to hold off sobs, Luke lay on his belly as Stan stripped off his Speedo and knelt behind him, grasping his hips between his hands and going for Luke’s hole with his tongue. Luke moaned and struggled to rise. Stan slapped him on the butt and pressed a fist in the small of his back as he continued eating him out.

Luke lay docilly, sobbing, moaning, as Stan mounted him, penetrated, and fucked the hell out of him. Luke didn’t move for a long time afterward. As it grew dark, he pulled himself up into a fetal position, still trembling and snuffling, as twilight descended.

Luke had felt it.

On Sunday afternoon, he returned to the boardwalk and sat on the bench.

A bodybuilder came up from the beach and sat beside him.

“My name is Ralph,” he said.

“Luke here.”

“You got a hotel room here, Luke?”

“Yes, right here in back of us.”