Needham high mavericks
From Metabods
Contents |
The first round
I can’t even walk down the hall anymore, not without every guy in school checking me out, caressing my ass, even grabbing the back of my neck and pulling me in for a fast hot kiss as I pass. I feel their stares on me as I move past them, their whispering to each other in longing, even the stifled moan of unexpected orgasms as guys I barely know stand in groups yearning for my bod.
When you’re the star of a football team as successful as ours, you get used to a little adulation, and if you’re smart you don’t let it go to your head. But us, the Mavericks of John Needham High in Fremont, Texas, we were experiencing on a whole new level undreamed of by most high school football stars, or even by the guys who make those teenage football movies in Hollywood. It was enough to make anyone blow as gasket.
Part of me wishes Coach Cruz had never gotten Sandovol involved at all—things have changed so much. But then I have to admit it to myself. There’s no way I’d ever really go back now.
The Coach, Jaime “Tom” Cruz, had known this guy Sandovol for ever, since at least his own high school days in Baton Rouge. Maybe that was why Coach looked just like one of us, not a day over 18 and hot as shit, even though when we stole a look at his license it said he was 28. Anyway, Coach was smart. He brought the Sand Man in slow.
See, last year everyone agreed on the Mavs. We sucked. We came to the end of the season 5 and 5, totally out of the regional playoffs, with one game left to go. Back then, people were laughing at us in the halls, and we couldn’t exactly argue. Coach evidently decided he had to do something drastic if he was to get our minds and our game out of the dumps, not to mention prevent the first actual losing season for the Mavs in twenty years. But like I said, he started slow.
First came the teaser. Here’s how it happened for me: I was at home a couple days after we lost game 9, sprawled on the couch in the basement den in sweats and a tank. My social studies textbook was propped up on my chest and I was staring at it and absolutely not absorbing a damn word of it. Normally I’m pretty good with the rest of my schoolwork but the way the season had slid was spooking me. Of course, the teachers usually went pretty soft with us, but not so much if we were losing, the hypocrites. I tried forcing myself to concentrate, but just then the doorbell rang.
I listened to see if my sister was going to answer it, but then I remembered she’d gone out. I padded up the basement stairs barefoot and opened the door.
I must’ve done a pretty comic double-take, because the pizza guy laughed at me, but there was a reason. Standing there on my doorstep, hefting a thermal pizza bag and done up in Domino’s red and white, was a dead ringer for yours truly.
He was still grinning at me, but warmly, and suddenly I felt an overpowering desire to grab this guy and drag him downstairs and spend the night alternately making out with him and fucking his brains out, maybe letting him return the favor. And I was not totally barking up the wrong tree. That warm grin seemed to say, “Sounds great to me.”
Meanwhile he slid the pizza box out of the thermal bag and handed it to me. “Large meat lover’s,” he said, with a wink, just like I would’ve done, I’m embarrassed to admit. I had to laugh.
I started to take the pizza box kind of automatically, because he was handing it to me, but then I realized I hadn’t ordered it. “This isn’t mine,” I said.
“It is now,” Pizza Me said.
So I took it. “Listen,” I said. “You want to come in and share this with me?”
Pizza Me smiled. “Another time.” And he turned around and just walked away. I watched him walk down the sidewalk to the curb and get into his pickup—which, fuck a duck, was a dead clone copy of my pickup—and drive off into the night.
I ate every speck of that pizza.
Now I heard much later that something similar happened to just about everyone on the team, but no one said anything because we all basically told ourselves the next day that we’d imagined it. It happened a little differently for each of us. For Kent Wiley it was the mechanic working on his old Mustang down at Downtown Repair, and the smudge of grease on his cheek kept him from noticing at first. His friend Tyler picked up a hitchhiker on the drive back from his Dad’s in Waco, but after a few miles of small talk the guy got out again, before Tyler had figured out how to ask him why they looked so much alike. (Tyler told me he actually asked his mom that night if he had a twin brother somewhere, but his mom only got upset that her son thought her capable of keeping something like that from him.) Jake, the second-string QB, was working out at the gym in town, and for him it was the guy who worked in with him on the bench press. I think that’s my favorite out of the stories I heard when we all compared notes, because it’s funny to think of Jake taking turns with himself doing sets on the bench press, and spotting himself, neither of them saying a word and then going their separate ways.
Then came the round one.
After we’d lost game 10, with the last game of the season, against Tupelo, looming the next weekend, Coach had us all over at his house. We were pretty dispirited. Usually at these things, especially after a few beers, we’d all let off some steam groping each other, making out and shit. I dunno how it had gotten to be this way, exactly, but even before strange things started happening we were the hottest bunch o’ hunks in West Texas, and normally we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. But now the tone was all different and all I did this time was put my arm around the broad shoulders of Tall Thom Lo, the running back, while we all sat on the couches and chairs and around the floor in Coach’s rec room and watched the tape of the last game. And I did that mostly because Thom was getting more and more mortified, cringing as each of his fumbles and trips showed up on Coach’s huge plasma screen in living color.
I looked around. All of us were here, and most of us were sitting in little clusters, grouped close like cattle sensing bad weather. Mike, the redheaded tailback, was sitting on one couch between Bryce and Kel, the two huge offensive linemen, quietly commenting on the game to each other. Two defensive backs, Kent and Tyler, sat silently on the carpet in front of them, wincing occasionally. I noticed they were holding hands. Were they a couple all of a sudden? Or seeking mutual support? I looked around and noticed a lot of the groups of twos and threes were holding hands or had arms around each other’s bulging shoulders like me and Thom.
Then there was Dana. He was standing off to the side alone, dressed in a white short-sleeved rugby shirt, cutoffs, and bare feet even though it was November. Dana was a rookie—a freshman in fact—but from his skill and confidence you’d think he’d been playing high school football all his life, if you follow me. Even though he was a wide receiver he was one of the most muscular guys on the team, though it was all densely concentrated and packed onto a 5’9” body that didn’t have an ounce of fat or anything that didn’t contribute to its perfection. He was certainly one of the most handsome (though Coach has us all beat) and, according to rumor, sported the only boner on the team that could put mine to shame. I’d never seen it hard though—Dana was pretty aloof and spent most of his time working out alone in his basement gym. His arms were folded and he was glowering at the screen, although whether he was annoyed by the team or just his own performance was hard to say. I suddenly realized that despite being on the team with him since before the school year started and going through all the shit that a hard-driven football team goes through together, I didn’t know him very well. I figured I wanted to do something about that.
The game got to the end and we watched, for a second time, as Cy Creek High celebrated their game-winning touchdown. And then it was over.
The TV was flipped off. No one spoke, and we didn’t really look at each other. “Guys, we’re a good team,” Coach said at last into the silence. “We’re just lacking something. Confidence.”
He stood up and paced in front of us. I was momentarily distracted by his perfect ass, nicely on display in his worn chinos, and then, as he turned to face us, his equally sculpted pecs, which were held tight by an otherwise loose and very old and worn tee. I could see the hard flesh of those pecs in a couple places where the fabric was worn through, and there were a few small tears along the seams on each side where his lats pushed against the shirt that suddenly boned me. Thom noticed and tried not to stare at it.
“After a lot of thought I have decided to try something different,” he said as he paced, his Louisiana accent slightly stronger than usual. “An incentive program. Chad, would you come up here, please.”
I nodded and stood up, moving out in front of the guys. As QB and captain I was used to helping Coach motivate the guys, though usually he clued me in first. As I stood in front of them I caught a bunch of smirks and a couple of snickers as the guys noticed my monster boner in my jeans. I’m famous for popping boners all the time. My dick just automatically responds to hot guys—in the halls, in the locker room, even at the movies. I think most of them assumed I’d sprung this one was for Thom Lo, who was blushing at the implied compliment from his QB. I was glad I’d popped a woody, though, if it lightened things up.
Coach looked at me and then turned at looked at, well, at the empty space behind him. He nodded, as if he was wearing his headsets, but there were nothing there. Then he turned back to me. “Chad, I want you to meet someone.”
And then the weirdest thing happened. The air right in front of me, between me and the guys watching from the couches, seemed to get warm, like it was August and I was standing out in my uncle’s ranch land, the air shimmering with heat—only it wasn’t all around me, only the space in front of me. Colors began to appear in that space, and they swirled and multiplied and soon began to look like the shape of a man! I stared and the man-shape got more and more defined, as if a guy was just coalescing from nothing right in front of me, standing inches away from me, facing me. And then it solidified more and sharpened dramatically and it was in every detail a hot hunky guy, standing in front of me, buck naked and boned with a ten-inch surfboard hard-on like mine. Exactly like mine. Exactly! My eyes shot quickly up to the face—it was me, my face, looking into my eyes with a vast astonishment matching my own in his bright blue eyes, even as the last shifting of his particles stilled and his skin smoothed and calmed and cooled and became, somehow, palpably real.
Somebody said, “Holy shit.”
We stared at each other, entranced, and he flashed that warm grin at me again and I felt myself returning it in spades. There was no pizza box in the way this time. Oblivious to the others we closed the gap between us. In the space between moments we were holding each other, and I felt my own broad naked back with my hands, an electric thrill shooting up my spine. We stared into each other’s shining eyes only a heartbeat more, and then we kissed. I heard cheers and catcalls and a few lusty moans from the guys, but all I cared about was that kiss, and man, I gotta tell you, that kiss was fucking HOT.
And then he melted away, and I was left hugging myself, with (I’m told) a hot-flushed look of desire on my face comical enough to get a few laughs, though most of the guys were either totally mindfucked or completely turned on. Some were automatically gently groping whoever they were sitting next to. And even in that moment I remembered the Pizza Me guy and figured out that that moment had happened in order to prepare me for this one. And as I looked out at the guys, enough of them were going with the program for me to wonder, even then, still coming off my high, if they’d been “prepared” too.
I drifted back to where Thom was sitting staring at me in frank lust and envy, not touching the boner in his sweats. “That,” I heard Coach say, “is the incentive. Whoever in my judgment contributes most to winning this last game—and thereby giving us a winning season—that man will have, well, a date for that night. You’ve told guys to go fuck themselves, right? Now you’ll know what it feels like.”
I’m not sure quite when I left Coach’s house. I don’t remember getting in my pickup and driving off. At some point I realized I was driving down empty highway, miles from anywhere in pitch darkness, and as I slowed down to pull over and figure out where I was I realized I wasn’t alone. Dana had calmly gotten in the passenger side when I was getting ready to leave and had sat silently for however long I’d been driving. He looked more preoccupied than I was.
I drew the truck to a halt on the shoulder. Dana noticed and looked up at me. I could tell just looking at him he was overcome with lust, though I wasn’t sure if it was for me. He still seemed distracted even as he looked at me.
“How did it feel?” he said softly. His right hand was absently massaging a slowly growing lump in his cutoffs.
“About ten times as awesome as this,” I said, pulling him into a passionate kiss that seemed to last for hours. Despite all the casual making out our team did I’d never kissed Dana before, and it was amazing—passionate, delicious, hot. His tongue was warm and strong and sweet and long and seemed so comfortable pressed against mine that they were like two perfect lovers snuggling in a warm bed and about as reluctant to separate. In fact we broke apart only when I thought I heard something behind me. I turned and looked back—straight into the face of Thom Lo, who was staring at us open mouthed from the bed of the pickup!
I laughed and motioned for him to come up into the cab. As Thom scrambled out of the back I caught Dana’s eye. He seemed disappointed. “It’s cold out there,” I said. Dana nodded in resignation. Still he perked up a little as I motioned for him to scoot close as Thom climbed in to give our tall, rangy stowaway the room he need on the passenger side. Dana complied, pressing his butt hard against mine on the bench seat and putting his left arm around my shoulders, since we were all three built enough that our shoulders overlapped a good deal.
We passed the trip back into Fremont pretty much in silence, trying to ignore the three big tents we’d all pitched. The sexual tension was so strong that Thom turned on the radio and, much to our amusement, began singing along with Hall and Oates’s “Man-eater.” I dropped Thom off at his house and Dana and I were still laughing when we got to his place. I gave him a friendly kiss goodnight. “See you tomorrow, Man-eater,” he said as he got out, and I laughed. I was grinning all the way home, too. What a wild night!
I was psyched and pumped with adrenaline the whole week, and it even carried over into my schoolwork. Mr. Rieger actually gave me an attaboy as we filed out of English on Friday. Though we had no classes together, me being a junior and him only a freshman, I saw a lot of Dana—that first Monday after the night at Coach’s he was at my side outside the school before first bell, at lunch, during practice after school, and in my pickup as I drove him home; a long kiss goodnight, and then finding myself waiting for him the next morning, early, shivering in the damp early morning chill that vanished when he appeared. I was enchanted by how serious he was, at the intelligence in his beautiful eyes. It sounds funny, but as a good-looking guy and someone prominent in the student body it hadn’t often occurred to me to be grateful or surprised that someone thought I was hot or wanted to be with me; but as that magical week progressed I felt humbled and thankful that this special man was interested in me.
Coach worked us hard that week and didn’t mention again the Incentive he’d placed before us. He didn’t have to, of course. None of us exactly forgot. But lying in bed Saturday night, pleasantly exhausted from a final grueling practice, I was staring up at the ceiling and it dawned on me that I was completely torn. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted the winner of Coach’s little contest to be me—or Dana.
