Page 35 of Drag Me Up

I lift my head from the arm of the sofa where I was sprawled out waiting for my roommate to finish with his girlfriend upstairs. Felix throws his backpack onto the floor and holds his hand out for one of those weird bro hand slap shake things. Reaching my hand up, I let him do whatever he wants before he collapses into the ratty old leather recliner next to the stairs.

The guys who hang around with my roommate have taken to calling me “King” lately. Felix apparently fell asleep with the television on and when he woke up it was on a show about the Old Norse meanings of names. Apparently, Eric translates into the sole ruler, so he started to callme King and it just caught on within this crowd. I kinda like it.

“You coming to the party tonight?” he asks as he pulls off his hoodie to reveal the muscles underneath. I swallow the saliva that pools in my mouth before I start drooling and give myself away. One good thing about my current cocktail of medications is that I don’t get spontaneous boners anymore.

“Um, I don’t think so,” I say as the sounds of the squeaky bedframe increase in frequency. “Steve and Jen are probably gonna call it a night after this, so it looks like the dorm and some alone time for me tonight.”

Felix reaches over to shake my shoulder and the heat of his hand makes me forget the meds for a second while I have to force my dick to cooperate. These guys don’t know I’m gay. No one at school knows except for Jen, and I only told her so she’d stop trying to set me up with her friends.

“You got me and the boys, dude! You need to get out and have fun for once in your life. Make Daddy’s money pay to cover up a scandal or something. You need to get out there and meet more people than just us.”

What Felix doesn’t know is that I do technically have friends outside of him and his roommates. The three guys and two girls who share this house are far from my only friends, well more like acquaintances really. I only have maybe one friend, if he will still talk to me. Spencer and I haven’t really spoken since my high school graduation party. We ended up at different schools, so I kinda lost my only real friend.

“Yeah, okay,” I begrudgingly agree. “I guess it won’thurt to go hang out with some new people. What’s the party?”

Felix leans forward as I sit up and starts to fill me in on the details. I’m not going to get changed or anything, but he decides to run up and shower before we leave. As predicted, Steve and Jen stay behind while I head off to a party, squashed into the backseat of a 2009 Chevrolet Aveo between Felix and his currently off again girlfriend Tiffany. The long ride ends well after I wanted it to, and I’m surprised to see the party is not in Oakland, but well away from the campus in a neighborhood I know I have never even seen. I think my watch alone is worth more than some of these houses.

“Where are we?” I ask Tiff when Felix and the others pour into the house. I think the only reason she is still at the car is because she doesn’t want to walk in with her ex.

“It’s a party house for the hockey team,” she tells me, hooking her arm in mine to pull me up the walk. “They can’t get caught drinking on campus or the coach will kick them off the team, so one of the alumni bought this house for them to go nuts in exchange for continuing to win championships.”

Walking in the front door, I’m hit with a wall of sound and ugh… smell. Tiff giggles at the look on my face which I can only assume is conveying the sheer disgust I feel regarding such a pungent aroma.

“The point is to get extremely drunk so you stop caring about the smell,” she yells to be heard over the music. “Hockey sweat is somehow so much worse than any othersport funk, but I would get railed by any member of the team cuz FFFFUUUUCK are those boys F.I.N.E. fine.”

Throwing my head back, I let loose a laugh that I haven’t felt in a while. Tiff just pulls me farther into the house to the kitchen and grabs drinks for the both of us. I wave the cup away from me and she cocks an eyebrow in question.

Leaning in close to her ear, I tell her I can’t mix alcohol with my meds. When I stand up straight again, I look down at her surprised face. I guess I don’t really advertise that I take medications, but is it really all that shocking in this day and age that someone is medicated for something? This is the age of prescription throwbacks for doctors after all.

Tiff pulls me down so she can whisper into my ear, like she doesn’t want anyone else to listen in.

“Don’t freak out or anything if I’m wrong, but I think you just pinged my gay-dar.”

I can’t even stand up before I start laughing uncontrollably. Resting my forehead on Tiffany’s shoulder, I let loose all of my tension and relax into the idea that it’s not the end of the world if people find out at this point. I was out in high school. I can finally free myself of the last of my father’s shackles and be the real me for my senior year of college.

“Yeah, you’re not wrong,” I tell her as I pour some Sprite into a cup from the counter full of mixers. “Let’s go check out some cute hockey butts while you get wasted, and I’ll be your sober eyes so you don’t have to worry about beer goggles tonight.”

29

ERIC

Five Years Ago: Continued

Two hours later, I am staring at the absolute treasure of a backside of the man currently carrying Tiffany upstairs to have his way with her, fully consensually of course. Tiff stopped drinking after one beer as soon as she realized no one was pressuring me about my non-drinking.

Sipping my now extremely flat pop, I glance around to see a lot of highly intoxicated people and a few rather shady looking guys prowling the exterior of the room. What I don’t see is a single person I really know outside of recognizing their face from around the campuses. Felix, Adam, and Jeff are nowhere to be found. Glancing out the window, I notice Adam’s car is no longer parked out front.

Great. Just my fucking luck. The guys abandoned me and Tiff in this crack house in the middle of the fucking slums, and now I’m going to have to sit around and wait for Tiff to finish getting her brains fucked out by a hockeygod before I can order a rideshare. I’m not going to abandon her like her ex did. I understand now why Felix is always fucking single.

What the fuck is that stain in the corner? I’m going to fucking kill him when we get back to the house.

Taking another sip of my warm and flat root beer, I decide to chug it to avoid the hideous aftertaste I’m getting. No more dark drinks. Hell, I think I need to switch to water. I’m pretty sure the heat from so many bodies in such a small space is getting to me.

On the way to the counter with the mixers, a dizzy spell hits me out of nowhere. I grab for the counter to steady myself. That was weird. Maybe my sugar is low? When did I last eat? Wait, I’ve been drinking pure sugar… Can high blood sugar make you dizzy?

I feel an arm come around my waist and turn my head to see a rather brutish looking man holding me upright. I give him a grateful smile and try to tell him to just help me outside, but I find that the words aren’t coming out.

Another guy comes up on my other side as they carry me out of the room. A few people I recognize ask if I’m alright as we go past, and I want to scream at them that I am NOT fucking alright. All I can do is whimper with no one hearing while the guys say they’re going to take me upstairs to sleep it off.

---