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the
opportunity to ease out.
    “Come back here, Larkin,” she said through a yawn. I smiled,
but didn't bother to correct the name fumble. “I never leave a man with
blue balls. I'm a polite ambassador of my city.”
    “Get some sleep. I don't believe in blue balls. I was
brought up well enough to know that the lady comes first.” She opened her
pretty eyes and cocked her head, extending a finger to nestle in the hollow of my
chin. Girls say they're crazy for what they call my “superhero chin,” but it's
always made me a little self-conscious, truth be told. I'm convinced that the
little dimple looks like a butt. Just an extra butt, hanging out on my face.
    “They sure don't make 'em like you anymore,” Yvette smiled.
Her teeth were white and rounded—slightly babyish. I bent low to kiss her on
the forehead, then wrapped her up in the threadbare quilt I'd brought from
home. She laughed her hard laugh again, and in a manner of seconds seemed to be
as asleep as Denny in the next bunk.
    I eased myself slowly out of the bed, and took pains to
prevent my feet from creaking along the ancient wooden slats of our cabin. It
wasn't strictly true about the blue balls. While I'd never experienced
the physical pain that some men seemed to encounter when deprived of a
happy ending, whenever I fucked and didn't come I'd get this weird wave of
sadness. It entered every pore and clung to me until I fell asleep, usually. I
took ecstasy one time (with Zora, at a rave), and the next day's come-down was
like an amplified version of my blue balls. It's like it's hard to remember
what's good in the world, for a few crucial seconds. I know that sounds poncy,
but it's the truth.
    I took a heavy seat on the porch, drawing the string tight
around my loose sweat pants. Galveston was humid as hell. From the fog of the
surrounding cabins, through a haze of buzzing mosquitoes and fluorescent
lanterns, I thought I could hear a few other couples going at it. That, or some
of my teammates were trying to pack in extra reps before dawn's practice. It
struck me that this whole tiny corner of America must smell like dude. Even
Zora's uppity perfume that cost two hundred dollars a bottle was better than
this air.
    I was limp in my pants by then, bound up in reflection—when
she came ambling through my mind. With her ratty Amy Winehouse hair, and her
even stare. Seventeen. I'd been afraid of girls altogether when I was
seventeen, and I'd been Homecoming King and Class President. I'd been mean to
the kids you were supposed to be mean to, which I thought about now with a
shameful heart. If I'd met Doll when I was in high school, there was no doubt
about it—I wouldn't have been able to handle that much woman.
    In my recurring dream, she wears a dress. It’s pinkish red,
and it suits her curves. She laughs at me, throws her head back to giggle. I
hunt for her behind trees. When I find her, she laughs some more. I hold her up
and spin her around, and our mouths collide in the air, and then a rain of ice
cubes start to fall out of the sky, slipping down her dress and my shirt. We
get all cold and shivery. We cling to one another. Sometimes she'd grin and
suddenly transform into Zora or Yvette, naked and splayed and lovely—but wrong,
somehow. She'd beg me to look at her when I came.
    When I looked down, the hard-on was back. With a vengeance.
     

     
    “Landon Sterling!” hollered the special teams coach, his
voice bellowing across the green. “Landon Sterling, we've got a call for you,
son!”
    No sooner had I heard the words than Denny's blonde crew cut
bobbed across my field of vision, and I tumbled over my pal and onto the
ground. Lord knew what new drill this was supposed to be—I sure hadn't been
paying attention to the play call. I'd been ruthlessly distracted all week, and
wasn't exactly setting a shining example for a championship Longhorn season.
    Coach Yeardley moved his hands back and forth above his head
from the sidelines, like he was