Butt buddies

After the first few months in college (see Fresh start: second chance) Victor and I grew a lot closer. We would sit next to one another during most lectures, during breaks we played cards a lot with some other regulars, and mostly socialised with the same group of people. We also spent a lot of time at each other's places after school. His dad called us 'butt buddies'.

Just to give you an idea: The whole friends group went skiing abroad, but I didn't join because I had a very strong intuition that I would break a leg. On the very first day Victor broke his leg and was transported back home to a nearby hospital. On the evening he arrived he called me, asking me to come over the next day. As he had a room for himself, I didn't have to comply to the hospital's visiting hours. I arrived reasonably early in the morning and we chatted for eleven hours. I went home and soon after I arrived Victor called and we talked on the phone for another five hours. I remember that we hung up because we were sleepy, not because we ran out of topics.


Spring cleaning

The people in my year could be divided in four groups which, in order of increasing size, where:

- Those who didn't study and avoided all social activities
Everyone knew they would drop out, but no one really cared.

- Those who studied hard and avoided all social activities
They would leave after the lectures to study at home. I thought them rather sad, because they didn't seem to enjoy the fun part of life as a student. Besides, their results were not always that good and they might have benefited from connecting with other people and studying together with them.

- Those who didn't study, but were active in the social life
Paul was a good example. Many of the people in this group smoked marihuana very regularly, which was the main reason for me not getting too close with them.

- Those equally taken by their studies and their peers
Almost all of my friends and I belonged to this last group. Many, however, pretended not to work at all, studying only on the sly. I never understood why.

After the first year, half the entering class dropped out but the people I liked best all stayed, including the four girls. To my surprise some of the lazy social guys were stubborn enough to stay on, even after failing most of the exams. Eventually they would leave without a diploma, but for some it took years to admit their failure. One guy spent eleven years at the faculty before dropping out without even a bachelor's degree. Anyway, it felt like a spring cleaning. Generally, student motivation was a lot stronger after the first year. Besides, this self-pruning was the main reason why I chose this particular study (see Most difficult choice), not to mention the specialization that I had chosen to pursue after the second year.


Gayish behaviour

People of other years thought that the people in my year were a bit strange. Although everyone in my year was straight, we were known for our gay behaviour. That was not because of any limp wrists, falsetto voices, or other insulting gay impersonations. In fact, it was quite the contrary: guys in my year were simply not afraid to touch one another. If someone walked into the faculty canteen and there was no free chair at the table, he would sometimes sit on another guy's lap. Often the guy whose lap was used would be jokingly affectionate. In some cases people went a bit further to shock other people within the group.

Admittedly, sometimes it was funny, but, still, I didn't like it much, although I got used to it. The one interesting thing about it was that by trying to shock each other, these guys were exploring -- and moving -- the boundary of what was acceptable: a kind of a social experiment. I took part only a few times and only after drinking alcohol. One evening I threw a party at my home. Victor had been there all afternoon and stayed on for dinner. The first one to arrive in the evening was Job, the guy who usually initiated all the gay pretense. Victor and I intended to shock him.

Job rang the doorbell and after I buzzed him in, we could hear him climbing the stairs to my studio apartment. I dropped my trousers and sat down on the bed. Victor did the same and plopped between my legs, covering our laps with a blanket. I was busy pretending to be fucking Victor when the door opened. Victor jumped up as if we were 'caught' by Job, pulling up his briefs in a single swift move. I had kept mine on and I had assumed he had done the same. I think I was more shocked than Job was.

On another occasion when Victor was to sleep over at my place and Job and a few other guys were hanging out for the evening, all a bit drunk. Because they wouldn't leave after a few gentle hints, Victor and I started getting ready for bed. We were in our underwear brushing our teeth in the bathroom and overheard one of the guys wondering what kept us so long. We heard Job say he would go and take a look. I put my legs apart and bent over while Victor pretended to fuck me from behind. This time we both kept our shorts on, but I could feel Victor's flaccid cock touch my bottom through the two layers of cloth. Job laughed.

After they finally left, Victor and talked a bit and at some point I said I was sorry about some silly importance. He stood up and ordered me to get on my knees and beg for forgiveness. I got on my knees before him. Then he told me to give him a blow job, trusting I wouldn't, but undoubtedly wondering how far I would go. I let my nose approach his briefs extremely slowly, wondering when he'd chicken out. There was no one else present and it felt strange; there was a huge erotic tension.

I considered myself straight and I had never been so close to another guy's genitals, thinking what I should do if Victor didn't chicken out. I would have no problem pulling his briefs down and kissing his cock -- after all it was only skin. Doing so would stop all this childish gay pretense once and for all, but it didn't seem like a bright idea. Anyway, Victor didn't stop me, so with a growl I briefly and gently bit his flaccid penis through his briefs and immediately stood up. He was kind of shocked. In case you're wondering: not once, in any of these three 'incidents' did I get the least bit hard. Apart from these three charades with Victor, I never took part in any other gayish behaviour.


The first one

Victor was the first real friend I had. I trusted him completely and I felt I could tell him everything. I couldn't say I loved him like a brother, because being an only child (see Long ago: My parents' child) I could only guess what that felt like. What I did know was that he'd be a friend for life. Years later, after I had discovered I was gay, I realised that maybe I had been in love with him. I honestly don't know. In any case, while we were becoming the closest of friends, I never had any conscious erotic fantasies about him.

We shared a love for wordplay, puzzles and games, and had the same view on the balance between fun and study. Moreover, we had the same sense of humour which was clearest when we tried to outsmart one another. He was the only person who was a real challenge to outwit: he was the most intelligent guy I knew. I never told him that, because it was obvious to anyone that he had the best brains of our year. However, at some point I heard that he had told people I was the most intelligent guy he knew. I was flattered but I couldn't believe he was serious, so I asked him about it.

It turned about it wasn't really intelligence that Victor was referring to, although he called it that. In our conversations about other people I would often tell him about social things that were going on between our fellow students, and I usually added an insight about how it got that way and how it would end. Victor was amazed that I was always right, as if I could see into the future and into people's minds. It was not all that amazing though. It was merely a combination of logical thinking, an eye for details, and a good judgement of human nature. His mind didn't carry him any further than the logical thinking, so for him it sounded very magical, especially my 'predictions about the future'. I explained that I couldn't predict the future, I only predicted the course of a process that was already running.

I compared it to a tennis ball in the air. You know that it went up once, and that it will come down again. Everyone can see that. A trained eye will even be able to estimate where and when it went up, and where and when it will come down. Victor, however, only saw the ball frozen in the air. He was so amazed by my insights that he asked me to analyse him, which I reluctantly did.


The hidden archive

I started with an observation; I told him that whenever there was explicit talk about sex among our regular group of friends, he'd always soon lapse into silence, stare at a fixed point on the table, and walk away after a minute or so. I said he stopped talking because he was afraid he'd say something stupid that would reveal himself to be a virgin, and he walked away because he had the irrational fear that someone would ask for his opinion when he'd be silent for too long Though normally he could change the subject with great fluidity, he couldn't do so here, meaning his virginity was an awkward problem for him. I went on to tell him that next time he should observe the table a bit more scientifically and note that there were always the same three people talking, not the whole table; I explained that two of them were virgins, like him, who were overshouting their insecurity. One silent guy felt the same discomfort Victor did, but didn't leave because that would be too obvious. The others who kept silent knew full well what they weren't talking about, but didn't need to boast, particularly one specific guy who had had sex with a girl sitting at the same table.

Victor was shocked: "How do you know all that?" "Observation," I explained in my most Sherlock Holmes style, "it's not that difficult really." Victor had never told me he was a virgin and anxiously asked if it were so obvious to other people. I answered in all honesty that everyone probably sort of knew it. He hated himself for being so easy to read, and hated me for reading so well. He asked how I knew about other certain details and I explained about reading body language. I added that it was nothing more than an educated guess, but he said everything he could check was true.

My observations were nothing special; anyone could have done it. I was glad that I picked something easy and superficial: a problem that would soon be solved. I could have told him about more profound insecurities, and about his dreams and fears, or about how he always felt like an outcast being the youngest but most intelligent of his class, longing for friendship with people who where not outcasts themselves. That would really have freaked him out.

He was also fascinated and puzzled by my memory. I could recall the smallest details of social events even though I wasn't able to memorise simple scientific facts. While I could literally recall a completely unimportant conversation of a year back, including the gestures people made and the expressions on their faces, I didn't remember the decimal that followed 3.14 -- even after typing it a million times. That was beyond Victor, and what he didn't understand scared him a bit. He started a running gag about me having a hidden archive where I kept written records of everything that happened around me. It was not just a joke, it was his way to ridiculously explain away and live with the fact that he couldn't understand how I analysed and memorised everything in so much detail.