Subject: The Best Years of Your Life – Chapter 1 Chapter 1 Just say yes Terry had just settled himself on the toilet when the door opened and Brendan stepped into the ensuite bathroom. “Oh hey Terry. What’s up?” “What does it look like?” Terry said in a tone of mild annoyance as he held in the turd he’d been just on the verge of letting loose. Brendan laughed. “Hey are you going to that cookout later tonight over at the SAE house?” “I dunno man, I’ve got a paper due Friday.” “Aw come on, this early? What class is it?” “Comp.” “That’s some bullshit.” “Yeah. Hey bro, do you always do this?” “Do what?” asked Brendan confused but smiling. “Walk in on a guy while he’s trying to take a dump.” Brendan laughed again and leaned back on the vanity directly in front of Terry. “I don’t go out of my way to. You done by the way? I’ve gotta piss.” “I’m not.” “Well hurry up then dude.” Terry, resigned to the fact that Brendan wasn’t going to leave, relaxed his asshole and started to release a big slow moving turd. It crackled out as Brendan said, “You’ve got plenty of time to work on it before Friday. It can’t be that big of a deal when it’s only like, the second week of the semester.” “Probably not,” Terry sighed, pinching the loaf which plopped into the toilet. “I wanna get off to a good start though.” “I hear you. But it’s rush week. You’ve gotta get your priorities straight.” “Are you trying to pledge SAE?” Terry said, letting out an involuntary fart as he pushed out his second log which came out faster than the first. “Not really. Free hot dogs and burgers though. And there are bound to be some KD girls there…” he said, grinning. “True,” said Terry, looking at Brendan impassively as he pushed out the dregs of his load. Brendan’s keeping him company in the bathroom was a first, but it wasn’t a surprise. He’d known Brendan for a few weeks now, since they’d been assigned as roommates with two other guys from the soccer team as their suitemates, and he was definitely uninhibited, sometimes a little weird. But Terry liked him, in spite of how annoyed he’d been at first at Brendan’s disregard of boundaries. Terry picked up on a vibe that a few of the other guys on the team also felt unsure about how to take him, but Brendan still got along with everyone, and not only for his outgoing, positive attitude. He was the sort of guy who had your back. Terry realized this a week ago, after he’d drunk a few too many shots of tequila and started ralphing in the front garden of one of the houses on Greek Row. He could recall hazily the horrible shame he’d felt as someone yelled at him drunkenly from the porch, as well as an unexpected presence by his side and a hand on his shoulder. It took a few seconds to dawn on him that this hand belonged to Brendan, who must’ve noticed he wasn’t doing well and followed him outside. tandoğan escort So that had been Brendan’s voice telling him, “It’s okay, there you go, get it out.” And that voice was now defending him against the angry one on the porch. Terry’s mind was a seive at the time, and everything surrounding the incident remained a blur, except for the moment when he’d glanced over in the midst of his sweaty misery and seen Brendan’s face, smiling gently in commiseration. He caught onto that image; that was the moment he knew he’d made a friend. It was one thing for your friend to see you puking your guts out as he helps you get through a bad night. It’s another thing to take a dump in full view of him, and stone cold sober at that. This was a first. Terry wasn’t sure how he felt about it. But Brendan wasn’t batting an eye, and they were both guys. Even though Terry himself wasn’t one to let loose, it was pretty much the norm for guys on the team in high school and college to burp and fart around each other. This was just an extension of that. At worst it was a little awkward to be on display doing something that Terry up to this point had always had privacy for. And if it seemed more private than what Brendan had already witnessed last week, it was at least more dignified. By this reasoning Terry brushed aside what was left of his embarrassment and began to wipe. “Come on, be my wingman,” said Brendan. “You make it hard for a guy to say no, you know?” “I’m just trying to get you to do what you already want to do and is, like, objectively the best option anyway. Oh man – what have you been eating dude?” he said as he made a comical grossed out face. “The exact same shit you’ve been eating. And if you don’t wanna smell it you could leave the room.” Terry pulled out some more paper after checking the smearing on the used wad. “May wanna hop in the shower after that one bud,” Brendan offered with a barely suppressed a grin of mischief. Terry just shook his head and kept wiping. “Thanks a lot for your attention and concern bro.” “Hey if you’re gonna be my wingman you can’t have poopy pants.” Terry then on an impulse made as if to throw the freshly used wipe at Brendan, who immediately leapt back and cowered by the far corner of the vanity in a fit of hysterics. “You WOULD NOT,” he said once he realized that Terry was faking, but jumped when Terry made another feint. “Try me,” he said, just as their suitemate Kyle opened the other bathroom door and absorbed the scene in a quick glance before retreating back into his room. Realizing Kyle must’ve caught a sight of him pantsless on the toilet, legs spread wide and dirty TP aloft, Terry felt his balls retract in embarrassment. “Whoa-ho!” came Kyle’s voice from behind the door. “Sorry to interrupt!” “Terry’s tunalı escort terrorizing me!” laughed Brendan. “Like a little monkey -” “Oh my God Brendan, I’m just trying to take a shit!” said Terry, who was at this point enough broken by embarrassment to see the comedy of the situation and on the verge of tearful laughter himself. “You guys are having way too much fun in there.” “Yeah, and I’m about to wet my pants,” said Brendan, his body quaking as he grabbed at his crotch and watched Terry begin wiping again. “Sorry you had to see that Kyle,” called Terry. “Yeah me too. You know doors have locks on them for a reason.” “Come on Terry, just stop hogging the throne and let me piss,” said Brendan, who walked over to the toilet as soon as Terry made a move to rise – and he’d barely moved aside when Brendan had his cock out and was releasing a healthy stream of piss into the still unflushed toilet. Terry stood there half in astonishment – not at Brendan’s cock which was not unimpressive (he’d seen it before), but at how Brendan could do something so brazen while making it seem normal somehow. Terry snatched a last handful of toilet paper so he could dab the drop of piss hanging from the end of his dick and dig in for one last standing wipe to make sure he was clean. “You’re really something else Brendan,” he said, tossing the paper alongside Brendan’s torrent. As Terry pulled up his pants Brendan looked him in the eye. “I know. But that’s why you like me deep down,” he said with a wink. Brendan had dark brown hair but his eyes were blue. Terry broke the eye contact and went to the sink when he saw Kyle had been looking in through the door. “You guys done being gay?” “Come on in and join the party, Ky,” said Brendan as his stream died down. “You coming with me and Terry to the cookout?” “Maybe. What time? It smells in here.” Terry heard the toilet flush as he finished up at the sink. He went back to his and Brendan’s room while the other guys kept on bantering and Kyle took his turn to piss. He sat at his desk and half listened. He’d never agreed to go out, but it seems like it had been decided for him. It would probably take more effort to resist. Terry felt like he was running on auto-pilot half the time, and was usually a little tired. In the past month he guessed he’d met more people and socialized more than he’d done in a whole year of high school. But the sense that everything he did right now was more significant somehow than what had come before and would lay the groundwork for the rest of his life kept him at attention and ready to meet any action as it came. He felt like he was operating under a constant low grade anxiety. He guessed that guys like Brendan never had that. Brendan seemed not just comfortable but overly so. Terry was an only türbanlı escort child, but summer camps and athletics had gotten him used to a lot of different communal living situations. At first, college had seemed just like camp. Then, when classes started, it had still seemed like camp but with school tacked on top of that. Terry had to remind himself that the school stuff was the real reason he was here. Even though by all appearances Terry seemed like a typical jock, he’d always taken academics seriously, and this set him apart from the other jocks in high school. He was driven to succeed in whatever he committed himself to. This quality had gotten him into a prestigious university on a scholarship. Now that he was here, he found himself around a lot more people who had the same drive. He wasn’t exceptional anymore, just average. He was going to have to define another kind of success, and another identity. “These will be some of the best years of your life,” his dad said weeks ago in the parking lot of the dorms, gripping Terry’s shoulder. It was an awkward moment. From time to time Terry’s future teammates and schoolmates (still strangers to him) would walk by, uninvolved in any kind of emotional scene. He could tell that his mom, who’d already hugged him goodbye, was starting to tear up. His dad was wearing mirrored sunglasses and the only thing that betrayed any emotion was the strength of the grip and the embrace he gave him afterward. A part of Terry wanted to draw out the goodbye, even to spend the rest of the day with his parents, even though they’d already gone out to eat for lunch and had made two trips to the department store to pick up stuff for his dorm room. Another part of him wanted to cut it off immediately, before too many people saw. His dad might have sensed this and had opened the driver’s side when his mom was hugging him for the second time. He could feel the wetness of her tears on his shoulder through the thin fabric of his T shirt. Relieved when the moment had passed, Terry waved as the car set into motion, and had turned his back to it before it had left the lot. “That’s my childhood going away,” he thought, but without much emotion. He returned the greeting of one of his new teammates he recognized with a casual smile and a nod, and didn’t think about his parents again at all after that aside from the weekly 10 minute phone calls he’d promised his mom – and also, briefly, in moments of solitude like this one. The activity of preseason and orientation had crowded out everything else in the world. Brendan was the closest thing to family he had to rely on now. “The best years of your life” – Terry had heard people say things like that so often that the words seemed hollow. People would also say the same thing about high school. But their repetition had led Terry to trust them enough to want to say “yes” to anything that came up. So, he said yes to most invitations, yes to the tequila shots, yes – “Hey man, I’m gonna take a shower. You are coming right?” Brendan said as he entered the room. “Yeah, I’ll come.” (Thanks for reading. This is my first shot at a Nifty story. Hope to keep this going. Feedback welcomed.)