The Heatwave Hangover

Note: ideally I would give you more context about all the things that have happened with Kat up to this point, but it'll have to wait. It's too hot right now.

The day was written off the moment it began. The hangover, in cahoots with this damned heatwave, put a can of Coke Zero in my hand and escorted me to the living room couch. It left me like an iPad baby.

Coke Zero because I'm not big on putting unnecessary poison in my body. Aside, of course, from all of yesterday's numerous drinks. And "only when I drink" cigarettes. And any powdery substances arranged in lines for purely aesthetic purposes that may or may not have been hoovered up--entirely accidentally and in a frankly disappointing display of nasal curiosity. That's all alleged, obv.

Point being: hypocrisy be damned, or something. It's too hot to give a care. How hot? You know that guy who goes "it's the humidity that gets you"? In this kinda heat he's liable to be found as the wheezing centerpiece of a Ren Faire evacuation.

Careful, don't get the wrong idea. I'm no party animal. At the age of twenty, going into my second year of college, you would not be crazy to think that, but you'd be wrong. I'd honestly rather have stayed inside, windows open, fan on, maybe have a beer. By no means am I old, of course, but it does feel, especially on hungover mornings like this, that my drinking days would be better left behind. Yesterday was a special occasion. A friend of mine had a birthday a couple days ago and another musician friend landed a spot on a tour with a pretty big band. So, yeah, of course I gave into peer pressure--maybe even a little bit of FOMO--and we went for drinks.

Only a few minutes had passed, I think, between waking up and ending up over here on the couch. Let's see. Fading back in, waking to the clicking sound of my eyelids before the picture sharpened. Straight to shower. A cool one. Towel off, barely. Fridge, envious of the khshhhh-kh-tssss pressure release from the coke can, stood over there for a sec enjoying the cool air, the sweet smell from the fizzy drink. And here I am. Only a few minutes. Just counting so I could understand if I'm missing something. Because how am I sweaty again?

Disgusted to even admit it to myself, it felt good to look down at my stomach. It felt good because the stomach was flat and the contours of muscle greatly exaggerated by a glint from the TV. Disgusted at the confused vanity of a man sitting alone in his darkened flat admiring his own physique in a state of deflation and perspiration. But when else would I enjoy it? Shape of my life. I know you haven't seen him, but trust me, if Woods Sr. is any indication of what I have in store genetics-wise, this is probably as good as it's getting. Hypocrisy, meet modesty. Both of you, be damned.

Some commercial for something loud between episodes of Two and a Half Men. I scoffed all high minded at the programming (RIP the Chromecast, gone too soon, in an unfortunate vacuuming catastrophe). Thought back to last night. A slack, airless, still July evening in Milford. What is it about heat like this? All of this is completely void of any research on my part, mind you, but it feels like heat makes us do some counter-intuitive things. People: huffing, puffing, wiping brows, seeking shade, avoiding movement. Give those same people some darkness preceded by a sunset sky, a crowd, music, drinks. And now somehow we all agree - the lights shine a little brighter, everyone goes dancing because the music sounds a little better through some mechanism, talking, exerting ourselves in ways we'd unanimously agreed are inadvisable. If you're gonna walk on ice, you might as well dance? Is that it? Heat, sweat, dancing and delirium as preferable over quiet submission? Rebellion?

And in all of that, somehow, for some reason, everyone gets horny. Maybe not everyone, I don't know. I do. And it feels like one of those survival things. Like how you get aroused sometimes during a high fever, a spell of the flu. To continue your lineage for the end-times are upon you. Is that real? Just bro science, probably. I coulda looked it up. I didn't. Because... you know.

Kat barged in just then.

"I saw a girl in a wig. A wig! In this weather?"

Light flared through the darkened kitchen-living-room for a short moment. A gust of air exactly the same temperature barged in. Subtracting and adding nothing except another reason to complain. So adding, actually? Or is that subtraction because you add a negative? Nevermind.

"What color?"

"HUH!?" she yelled. She liked doing that.

"The wig..." I had to stop to take a pained breath. "What color?"

"Oh! Blond, to be fair, yeah, but a hat is a hat, no?"

"That's crazy," I said with the dragged-out inflection of a sub-par sports podcaster checking his phone during an interview.

Kat and I have been roommates for a few months now. Four, I think? Kat's full name's Katherine David. A college history professor at Milford University. Don't confuse that with University of Milford, which is where I go. Go hawgs! She's here for another semester and then it's back to Putney with her. We got along quite well from the start. She rented this place and put up an ad for the room I'm in now and when I came by to check it out we bonded over London stuff, as I spent my gap year there before starting college.

Not to be crass, but the dynamic got even better when we started having sex with each other about a month after I moved in.

"The flat's pretty hot, not gonna lie." I call it a flat sometimes, yes. Her fault. Her terrible influence, plus my annoyingly brief time in the jolly old country. If I gave it any more thought, I might ask why I talk to my forty-year-old roommate so much that I've started picking up Britishisms, which must be doing catastrophic damage to my odds with anyone who isn't my homesick British roommate. But hey. Snap out of it and sniff the air. It hurts to breathe. I obviously can't be arsed to ask myself uncomfortable questions. Hypocrisy and modesty, welcome introspection. You lot can all piss off.

I turned, slumped over the back of the couch to look at her. "It's not much better out there, huh?"

"Oh, come now! That's no way to attack the day, young man! Who's gonna carry the boats, Hale-othy?"

"One time! One time I watched a Goggins video."

She danced around the kitchen area as she put away her bag, took off her heels, grabbed a baby carrot, a cherry tomato and a can of Coke from the fridge. Carrot in her mouth like a cigar, the little tomato balanced on top of the Coke can as she nudged the fridge closed with her hip. It was clear she was reeeeeeally powering through the situation. She does that when the going gets tough. You slow down, you start thinking: surely you can't get going again. That's what she says, anyway.

God. Fucking. Damn. You'd never guess forty. Dancing now, she was in her work clothes: tailored high-waisted trousers, a snug fitting white blouse, the kind of lightweight, almost-pantsuit thing that made her look taller than she was. Slender frame, clean lines, dark hair still somehow behaving in the heat. Images of Caroline Polachek flickered in the triangle of empty space between the couch, the blind-covered window and the raised kitchen area.

"We must not be defeated!"

"Uh-huh."

"Victory at all costs!"

"That one of your toga guys?"

She open-palm-slammed the counter with both hands, the ring on her right middle finger making a muted clink. Poised like a human turret. "You HAVE to be joking!"

I'd say I gave her a pretty good confused dog look, but that's just what my face looked like today.

"You know, I try to teach you something. It's your country's history too!"

"I think you mean our country, gov."

Her nose sucked in a deep slow breath, forming a fireball of--

"Kidding! Kidding!" I raised a hand to stop the incoming nerd rage spaz. "Churchill's the man. Come. Sit."

I turned back to face the TV and realized that this small interaction had drained me of what little energy still remained. I heard/felt/sensed she wanted to say something witty, but moved on. A rarity for her. Instead she opened the freezer and sent an ice cube at my head. Missed. It hit the CD rack to the right of the entertainment center.

"Jeez."

"What're you gonna say to that, Billy Big Bollocks?"

"Something funny about The Blitz?" I muttered in response, unsure of myself.

"Chamberlain would have loved you."

No idea what that one meant. "Right. Pull up a couch cushion." I patted the spot to my left. "Charlie's trying to fuck the babysitter or something."

"No, I gotta go and--uhh..." She stopped by the couch, distracted by the TV, I thought. A short moment later she sat down. Looked at me, clearly spent. We shared an acknowledging smile. "Who's kidding who?"

"Das right!" I offered my can for a clink and she returned the trashy gesture.

"Love me a bit of Charlie."

"Sure you do!"

"Wait, you know what that means?"

"Of course! I'm surprised you do! Didn't peg you as a nose beers gal."

She snorted out a laugh. "Oh my god! Nose beers! I remember that."

Did I tell you I went out with an Aussie for a while?

"Ah yeah? Good on ya. What's his name?"

"Simon."

"Simooooon."

"Loved a bit of goey, Simon did."

"Really?"

"Oh, yeah. 'Nothing like a nice glass of Nosé,' he used to say."

"Ha! That's a new one!"

"Good one, eh?"

"Simon sounds great."

"He..." She began, stopped, seemed to think for a second, and with a look and a nod said, "Yeah, he was alright, actually."

"Glad to hear he's a good guy at least."

We speculated a bit more about why Australians, at least the ones we'd made contact with, were such fans of the schneef but soon enough the small talk petered out and we watched Two and a Half Men. Alan was helping Charlie with his accounting after Charlie's accountant, played by Richard Lewis, informs him his shit's dried up or something, ah fuck, I can't honestly keep up. Just pump the laughtrack into my ears.

"Oh, how was the party?" she asked, in a slight turn-lean toward me, but eyes still fixed on the TV. "Is your friend excited about the tour?"

"Hmm? Oh. Yeah, very much so. Wouldn't shut up about it. Very happy for him."

"You sound it."

"No, I really am. I'm just fuckin'..." I sighed and gestured down to the vague coordinates of my body, indicating the suffering we mostly shared. Though I bore the brunt of it, given yesterday's sins. I was also thinking about last night and the girl I had made out with at the Arbory (hands down my favorite bar in Milford). A little crumb of panic flashed in my body. The flash was over before it began and I had the heat and hangover to thank for the fact that it even flashed in the first place. Kat and I are not dating, obviously. I know you don't have all the context for that, but do you need it right now? Do you? I don't know, analytic thinking is out somewhere with introspection and modesty and I think there was another one. Trying to scrounge up a coherent sentence out from under a bus stop bench, I bet.

We're not exactly in the same dating pool, is my point. So the fact that I made out with a girl wouldn't bother her, right? I still don't need to share it. We're not holding each other to anything, but I - well, I feel a little something sometimes when I think of Kat with other men. I don't think she does. And neither of us should, right? So let's not. Ok? Ok.

Charlie's hitting on a hot brunette at the grocery store now.

"Wait, you were on campus today?"

"Yeah. Summer course office hours."

"How was it?"

"Hot, boring, got some reading done."

"What's on deck?"

"Bulgakov."

"Don't know him."

"Russian guy. The Master and Margarita. That's the name of the book."

"Any good?"

"Unexpectedly so."

"How so?"

"Ummm..." She thought for a bit. "I think it's the way he writes."

We shared a laugh at that. Her laugh made a little boy of me.

And she was willing to sound foolish, even though she wasn't. I found that hard to resist.

As we continued to enjoy the programming and the numerous annoying commercial breaks, her leg brushed up against mine. I couldn't imagine having sex right now. She was still in her high-waisted trousers, and even slumped into the couch, she really did something to my insides. But it's so sticky and hot and I'm so poorly assembled. Unsound in an anatomical way.

All that's my brain, though. My sensible side--seems I still have one. Kat's special effect on me was exercising its power on authorities higher and more powerful than rationality.

I took a sip from the cold can and put it to my left eye. So nice. Right eye now. Out of the corner of my cold-lidded left eye I thought I saw her looking at me. Coulda sworn she was looking at my stomach as well. Or maybe the outline of--I looked down there myself and yeah, of course. Regardless of what I wanted or had the appetite for, my cock had appetites of its own and it was subject to a higher authority. It was down there now, slumped over still, but beginning to stir and these shorts, the only thing I had on, were barely clothing, given all the free space and air flow. She wasn't hiding her looks. She didn't need to. God, this woman really had me. Thank god I showered.

After a little while, she laid out on the couch, legs curled in her seat, head on my lap, facing the TV. Her can of Coke she put on the floor. I felt her cheek on my heavy cock now and wondered if she felt it on her face. Oh god, of course she would have - there may as well be nothing in between, the shorts were so thin and silky. Kat had confessed, very embarrassed, that before anything had happened between us, she'd accidentally seen me toweling off after a shower. She'd come home as I was getting out of the shower and caught a glimpse through the two, in her words, "fortunately positioned" mirrors - one by the entrance on top of the cupboard where we dropped off keys and bags, and the one on the bathroom wall all the way across the flat. She swore she looked away as soon as she snapped out of the surprise. I believed her as well. Because she admitted to pleasuring herself to the image of me naked multiple times after that.

I should explain something. I was never a great student or very witty or good with girls or anything, but what I did have was one of those best-in-show cocks in the flaccid category. It didn't get much bigger hard, but it also didn't need to. Most girls couldn't... sorry. Bragging is an ugly thing. And what's there to even brag about, right? This is not exactly an important quality. But I like that she likes it. And--don't tell her I said this--I really like it when she tells me she likes it, especially given the frequency and enthusiasm with which she tells me. She is as generous with praise for my body as I am with admiration for hers.

You could say she was snuggling with my cock. Brushing at it a few times with her cheek, playing it off as failed attempts at getting comfortable. A good couple of her breaths sounded almost like moans. We were both doing some heavy breathing and sighing today, sure, but these were not that.

Kat undid a couple buttons on her shirt and as she moved to do that, she maneuvered my shorts a little higher. I'm almost certain it was on purpose, but she didn't make it look that way. The shorts were not all the way up my leg, but enough to give the TV a good glimpse. As exciting as that was, I was enamored by something else. The obvious attraction in the room. Kat's chest, now at an angle between the TV and me, such that I could see the bra. It was one of those light lace see-throughs I really enjoyed. Her breasts were small. I loved them. But I couldn't see them at this time. I could see, however, the skin on her chest. Like my own, her skin was covered by a thin layer of sweat which shone in the light coming from the TV. Oh God, her chest is wet. The little hairs. It's rising up and down as she breathes.

A little too deep, a little too fast. I blew a quick little breath at her halfway unbuttoned top and a wave of the most distinct little goosebumps traveled across her chest like just the sweetest cliche you've ever had the bliss of experiencing. And just then, as a direct result of the wave, almost as if to continue the spread of cause and effect from her wet skin to my body, my cock contracted and relaxed, receiving a fresh wave of blood and pressure. Something tingled somewhere in me. Somewhere in my abdomen or maybe chest or maybe not even strictly inside my body. It made me moan. MOAN! A guy moaning, what's that? On a day like this, they were difficult to keep inside.

But the moan was fine. More than fine. My moan made her moan. My breaths, deepening, deepened hers. The sharp corners of her lips curled up in a little smile, upper lip shiny. When her eyes were open, she was still watching the TV. She brushed back a strand of her silky brown hair behind the ear on the side I could see. In a sly trick, she did the same motion on the side I couldn't see. I don't know if there was more hair down there to brush aside, but she sure did pull up my shorts all the way on my right leg. Never touching my cock with her hand, never acknowledging its presence even.

We carried on watching. She watched the TV. I - her. My cock, contracting mostly involuntarily, was left completely ignored. My abdomen tingled. I felt like I was on a swing with my eyes closed. Pleasure, inexplicable pleasure, from no physical source, kept running drills on my nervous system. As if to see if it could make me cum from just sitting there like some sex scene from a 90s action movie. I had never been so thoroughly and completely teased. Little did I know at the time, this moment would become my most re-visited memory.

I didn't dare touch her. Right hand on the armrest, the other one resting on Kat's side on the couch. I just watched her chest. Rising and falling. Sweat beading off it, rolling down, absorbed by the laces of her bra.

Kat rolled her head deeper into my lap. She rolled her cheek, nose and other cheek over my now fully erect cock like a lazy house cat rolling over on the windowsill in the afternoon sun. Moving herself around to lie on her stomach, she suctioned the tip of my cock into her open mouth. She wasted no movement. And now that she had me in her mouth, I flexed my cock out of instinct. As it rose, so did she, pushing her ass in the air and lifting her head. My tip was still firmly in the grasp of her thin, hot, wet lips. Without moving up or down, she sucked harder, trying to drink me like a milkshake. She didn't use her hands at all. She knew exactly where my cock would go and she used her mouth expertly to guide it with ease. She also knew that I was looking at her.

She looked back at me. Strength entered and left my body at rates and intensities that made me feel, just for a moment, weak enough to slip out of consciousness and strong enough to rip a hole big enough in the air in front of me to earn me a flashing charge in a neighboring dimension. I looked away and closed my eyes, but I still felt her stare burning the underside of my jaw. My cock now confidently standing on its own, holding her head up rather than the other way around.

No longer looking at me, but down at my lap she finally released, without moving her head, the suction grip she'd confidently held for the past little while - somewhere between a few seconds and an eon, no one would be able to tell you. Her lips let through a mouthful of saliva that stuck thick to the entire length of my cock, pooled on the rise above it and dripped down over and around my balls, pooling around my taint and between my ass cheeks. The sensation was tender, slow, confusing and pleasurable enough to summon ideas of sin - like I should be doing this with a cloth over my head to hide from God. I realized she'd been saving up her saliva on purpose. Such a volume doesn't just happen. I still wonder now how I didn't cum right then and there. I should have.